Human psychology evolved under in the social milieu of constrained complexity. Currently, humans live in unconstrained complexity. What has this done to our minds? These topics are addressed in various parts of An Archaeology of the Fall, particularly in chapters 8C and 11B.
[Progressive television redefines ‘love (agape)’ as the hero and the victim uniting against an exploitive foe.
It does not matter that this exploiter is a literary creation (that does not exist in actuality).
The foe is portrayed in television reality.
We all know: Reality is not Real.]
[Clearly, the televisionaries redefine the term ‘love (agape)’ so that ‘it no longer proceeds from grace and no longer requires conversion’.
Such a redefinition allows a person to use the word ‘love (agape)’ along with the word ‘free’, where ‘free’ means ‘without obligation’. The movie ‘hero’ is ‘free’ to ‘love the victim’. But this is not a love of equal standing. The victims can never repay their obligations.
Again, this expresses the attitude of royalty.
The hero obligates the victims by rescuing them. Plus, the hero reduces the victim’s freedom, or, should I say ‘self-esteem’.
Even stranger, the rescued victims are less obligated to defend themselves. The hero will take care of them.
Ah, royal patronage.]
[Schoonenberg’s translator used the word ‘love’ to indicate, foremost ‘agape’.
Yet, “he” did not rule out ‘eros’.
To me, this implies that ‘love’ is rooted in the realm of possibility. Contradictions are allowed. Real love, in contrast, is actual. It emerges from and situates agape and eros. Real love cannot be reduced to ‘brotherly affections’ or ‘feelings of attraction’.]
Summary of text [comment] page 72
Real love proceeds from grace. Conversion is crucial to love. The inability to love is an immediate sequel to sin.
[However, as noted in the previous blog, televisionaries and their fellow travelers repackaged ‘the inability to love’ into ‘television broadcast love’.
Of course, the word ‘love’ has been redefined in two ways.
Television viewers now associate the word ‘love’ solely with ‘eros’ (love between male and female, in the broadest sense of the term).
Television producers usurp the other word for love, ‘agape’ (love of friends, kin and fellow believers, in the broadest sense of the term). They substitute the union of the hero and victim against the (imaginary) victimizer. Here is ‘a union in hatred of another’.
Are either of these ‘real love’?]
[Today, delusion and idolatry are pop.
Turn on the TV.
So many people on the screen are victims.
Of whom?
They are victims of malicious, obsessed, thinkanti-objects, who exist only on the screens of mainstream television.]
[The first two figures are allied against the third.
The first accuses.
The second is an accomplice to the accusation.
The third is is the receptacle of their projection.]
Summary of text [comment] page 72
[There are three figures in many Progressive TV programs.
[The golden calves have always enticed their admirers into surrendering their small golden ornaments. They melt the donations down and fashion a statue in the image of themselves (the golden calves).
Unfortunately, television is an ideal medium for this exploitation. TV is an imagistic way of talking (which is far more emotionally salient than radio (pure voice) or writing (pure script).
In America, the exploitation of the television viewer sustains a falsehood that is so foundational that it must be presented as the truth itself.
What is this lie?
The golden calves, who produce Progressive TV, and the viewers, who watch yet are not empowered to reply, are on the same side, the former as hero and the latter as ‘someone who sympathizes with the victim’.]
[ThinkProgressive_TV does not follow the standard ‘golden calf scapegoats victim’ storyline.
As such, it may appear to be an exception to Rene Girard’s theory
But it is not an exception. Progressive TV merely expresses scapegoating in a new medium.
The medium is the message.]
Summary of text [comment] page 72
[ThinkProgressive_TV is not Christian.
It loves its gods … er … celebrities (the golden calves).
It pretends to love its victims (the ornament-bearing but silent target audiences).
It hates evil, twisted, and immoral exploiters.
Therein lies the fraud.
The exploiters turn out be projections by thinkProgressive_TV onto people minding their own business.
As such, thinkProgressive_TV parodies of Schoonenberg’s concept of ‘real love’.]
