Truth Over Tyranny: Biblical wisdom for defeating the Technocrats.
These are my insights for defeating the Transhumanist Technocracy movement, based on the teachings of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, of blessed memory, on the weekly Bible portion.
Many people today feel their life is going to pot.
Their close family members are taking a shot that could kill or maim them; calling it a “vaccine;” and shunning them for not taking it.
Their school board is promoting a curriculum that promotes racism; sponsoring programs that sexualize their children; and allowing boys to use the girls’ bathroom.
Their own government is doing everything it can to erase national borders; cripple the economy; and enable our enemies to run our lives.
It’s no wonder people feel desperate.
But is despair the only option?
Rabbi Sacks answers with an emphatic “No!” In his commentary on Parashat Vayeshev called “Improbable Endings and the Defeat of Despair,” he teaches us about hope. It is seen in the life of Joseph.
https://www.rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/vayeshev/improbable-endings-defeat-despair/
Like many of us, Joseph hit rock bottom:
“Nowhere is this set out more clearly than in the story of Joseph in this week’s parsha. It begins on a high note: “Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his sons, because he was a son of his old age, and he made a richly embroidered robe.” But with dramatic speed, that love and that gift turn out to be Joseph’s undoing. His brothers began hating him. When he told them his dream, they hated him even more. His second dream offended even his father. Later, when he went to see his brothers tending their flocks, they first plotted to kill him, and eventually sold him as a slave.”
“At first, in Potiphar’s house, he seemed to be favoured by fortune. But then his master’s wife tried to seduce him and when he refused her advances she accused him of attempted rape and he was sent to prison with no way of proving his innocence. He seemed to have reached his nadir. There was nowhere lower for him to fall.”
Then he was hit with false hope:
“Then came an unexpected ray of hope. Interpreting the dream of a fellow prisoner, who had once been Pharaoh’s cup-bearer, he predicted his release and return to his former elevated role. And so it happened. Joseph asked only one thing in return: “Remember me when it goes well with you, and please show me kindness: mention me to Pharaoh, and get me out of this place. For I was forcibly taken from the land of the Hebrews, and here also I have done nothing to deserve being put in this pit.”
“The last line of the parsha is one of the cruelest blows of fate in the Torah: “The chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph; he forgot him.” Seemingly his one chance of escape to freedom is now lost. Joseph, the beloved son in his magnificent robe has become Joseph, the prisoner bereft of hope. This is as near the Torah gets to Greek tragedy. It is a tale of Joseph’s hubris leading, step after step, to his nemesis. Every good thing that happens to him turns out to be only the prelude to some new and unforeseen misfortune.”
But just when his world was darkest, light appears:
“Yet a mere two years later, at the beginning of next week’s parsha, we discover that all this has been leading to Joseph’s supreme elevation. Pharaoh makes him Viceroy over Egypt, the greatest empire of the ancient world. He gives him his own signet ring, has him dressed in royal robes and a gold chain, and has him paraded in a chariot to the acclaim of the crowds. A mere thirty years old, he has become the second most powerful man in the world. From the lowest pit he has risen to dizzying heights. He has gone from zero to hero overnight.”
How did this occur? It’s because Joseph realized that “the game ain’t over til it’s over:”
“…The human condition is not inherently tragic. Heroes are not fated to fall.”
“The reason is fundamental. Ancient Israel and the Greece of antiquity – the two great influences on Western civilisation – had profoundly different understandings of time and circumstance. The Greeks believed in moira or ananke, blind fate. They thought that the gods were hostile or at best indifferent to humankind, so there was no way of avoiding tragedy if that is what fate had decreed. Jews believed, and still believe, that God is with us as we travel through time. Sometimes we feel as if we are lost, but then we discover, as Joseph did, that He has been guiding our steps all along.”
“Initially Joseph had flaws in his character. He was vain about his appearance;[1] he brought his father evil reports about his brothers;[2] his narcissism led directly to the advances of Potiphar’s wife.[3] But the story of which he was a part was not a Greek tragedy. By its end – the death of Joseph in the final chapter of Genesis – he had become a different human being entirely, one who forgave his brothers the crime they committed against him, the man who saved an entire region from famine and starvation, the one Jewish tradition calls “the tzaddik.”[4]”
“Don’t think you understand the story of your life at half-time. That is the lesson of Joseph. At the age of twenty-nine he would have been justified in thinking his life an abject failure: hated by his brothers, criticised by his father, sold as a slave, imprisoned on a false charge and with his one chance of freedom gone.”
“The second half of the story shows us that Joseph’s life was not like that at all. His became a tale of unprecedented success, not only politically and materially, but also morally and spiritually. He became the first person in recorded history to forgive. By saving the region from famine, he became the first in whom the promise made by God to Abraham came true: “Through you, all the families of the land will be blessed” (Gen. 12:3). There was no way of predicting how the story would end on the basis of the events narrated in parshat Vayeshev. The turning-point in his life was a highly improbable event that could not have been predicted but which changed all else, not just for him but for large numbers of people and for the eventual course of Jewish history. God’s hand was at work, even when Joseph felt abandoned by every human being he had encountered.”
The key for Joseph was his realization that God was with him. Looking back, he saw that God had actually been working to fulfill his deepest aspirations:
“We live life forward but we see the role of Providence in our lives only looking back. That is the meaning of God’s words to Moses: “You will see My back” (Ex. 33:23), meaning, “You will see Me only when you look back.”
“Joseph’s story is a precise reversal of the narrative structure of Sophocles’ Oedipus. Everything Laius and his son Oedipus do to avert the tragic fate announced by the oracle in fact brings it closer to fulfilment, whereas in the story of Joseph, every episode that seems to be leading to tragedy turns out in retrospect to be a necessary step to saving lives and the fulfilment of Joseph’s dreams.”
It certainly does seem that the events of today are leading towards tragedy. How can we possibly stop the evil, psychotic Transhumanist Technocrats from killing off most of the human population, and enslaving the rest of us with biotechnology? The key is not giving into despair, and watching for curses turning into blessings:
“… Despair is never justified. Even if your life has been scarred by misfortune, lacerated by pain, and your chances of happiness seem gone forever, there is still hope. The next chapter of your life can be full of blessings. You can be, in Wordsworth’s lovely phrase, “surprised by joy.”
“Every bad thing that has happened to you thus far may be the necessary prelude to the good things that are about to happen because you have been strengthened by suffering and given courage by your ability to survive. That is what we learn from the heroes of endurance from Joseph to the Holocaust survivors of today, who kept going, had faith, refused to despair, and were privileged to write a new and different chapter in the book of their lives.”
“Seen through the eye of faith, today’s curse may be the beginning of tomorrow’s blessing. That is a thought that can change a life.”