According to Peters, the first commandment goes like this: You shall have no other gods before me.  You shall not make for yourself a pesel (Exod. 20:3-4).

A “pesel” is “a graven image”.  The Greeks translated “pesel” into “eidolon”, which is related to the word “eidos” or “form”.  Today, we are familiar with a word derived from eidos: “idol”.

The idolatry of the modern world does not come in the eidos of pesel.  Instead, we have made pesels of our ideas (another word derived from eidos).

What ideas have become “graven images”?  In 1969, Langdon Gilkey argued that, for Americans, “the idea of freedom” was our equivalent to a graven image.  I guess some graven images do not last long.  In 2012, “Freedom” pales in comparison to modern “Celebrity”.  Is “Celebrity” the next “American Idol”?

Do “free people” define “reality”?  Do “celebrities” define “reality”?

The answer is “yes” for both questions.  But there is a difference.  The difference can be seen on the pages of the Enquirer every week.

Pride puts anxiety(faith^UnChristian) into context.

Humility puts anxiety(faith^Christian) into context.

Did “pride” play a role in the temptation of Eve?  Yes, the serpent promised Eve that she would become like God if she ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

If the serpent was simply telling Eve ideas that she already – at some level – knew, then pride – at some level – dwells in all of us.  We are always waiting to hear confirmation of what we already – at some level – know.

And what do we know?  At some level we know that, like our Creator, we can define “reality”.

Thus, pride is the beginning of sin.  It exalts a power that we all know – at some level – we have: The power to define ‘reality’.

Pride is the feeling that puts anxiety(faith^UnChristian) into context.

Pride makes the emotions of anxiety(faith^UnChristian) so real that we feel compelled to take our self-absorption to the next level.

Self-esteem is the foundation of faith^Progressive.

“Esteem” is the xiety that the Progressive person has, or could have had, or pretends to have.   Anxiety is how Progressive people situate their “self-esteem”.   Anxiety is the fear of the loss of self-esteem, which reflects the very principle that binds mind to body.  Like any sinner, they will aggressively seek out and commit violence on anyone who stimulates their anxiety.

But what puts the anxiety(faith^Progressive) into context?

I now turn to Chapter 4 of Peters’ book.

For the pursuit of “affirmative action”, “esteem” may require that any institution have members in proportion to the frequency of particular types of “selves” (decided by the experts) that occur in the general population, but, on condition that all members adhere to one worldview, that of Progressivism.

I call such adherence “lemming-hood” and I warn: Beware the mob action of the lemmings, er, I mean, college graduates, or really, any group of people who believe that the “self is what binds mind to body”.

The deductions that follow from the model of humans as mind(body(self)) constitute a significant component of the cryptotheology of Progressivism.

I mention only a few examples.

Progressive “self-esteem” demands “freedom to” rather than “freedom from” (which follows the classical liberal definition of “freedom” as basically, “freedom from (state) coercion”).  These “freedom to”s require the exercise of sovereign power in order to establish the end result (the “to” that “anyone with a mind” esteems).  This justifies “affirmative action” in hiring as well as court orders for “gay marriage”.

Progressive “self-esteem” may demand experts that establish “what constitutes esteem”.  These experts suggest criteria expressing “what constitutes esteem” such as “fairness” (progressive tax rate), “equality” (see next example), “safety” (elimination of all danger), “opportunity” (determination of career options by the state) and so on.

If someone questions these experts, that person is “less than human” because “she threatens to diminish someone’s self-esteem”.

So far, I have presented the Progressive model of the human as “soul(body(self))”.

Any Progressive would reply: We do not believe in “souls”.

Allow me a substitution: “Mind(body(self))”

Now, doesn’t that sound more “scientific”?

Doesn’t that sound more “Progressive”?

The Progressive principle of “self” appears to be a “scientific” term. However, “science” pertains to the realm of actuality and the word “self”, as “the Progressive principle that binds soul to body” belongs to the realm of possibility.  “Social scientists” may treat their abstraction (of whatever the “self” means) as actuality, but this subtly changes the level of analysis from “maybe scientific” to “cryptotheological”.

My proof is by way of demonstration.

I can present the “self” in terms of an ancient Greek definition of “human” as “a soul bound to a body by way of spirit-descent”.

Here it is:  The “self” binds soul to body and establishes the person’s orientation towards “self-esteem”.

The Progressive principle of “self” that binds soul to body and establishes the person’s orientation towards “self-esteem” would be, according to my previous nomenclature, “faith^Progressive” as a species of “faith^Christian”.

The fact that Peters could not identify the “unfaith” of the public Progressive Movement (which, by 1994, dominated politics in California) underscores several important points.

First, his treatment of sin, in Sin: Radical Evil in Soul and Society, was limited to a narrow definition of “radical evil” as “an individual’s conscious awareness of intent and form in the harming of others”.

Second, this narrowness was a consequence of his focus on Satanism as the “dark magic” complement to the “light magic” of the New Age Movement (which has been a popular topic since the 1970s and was the subject of a prior book).

Third, the Progressive Movement’s denial that it was a “religion” constituted an effective deterrent (maybe, provided a convenient excuse) against examining sovereign policies as “evil” or “sin”.  After all, Progressive Institutions have produced more systematic harm than any of the criminals that Peters mentioned.  In fact, in 2012, they are just getting started.

Simply put, the Public Cult of Progressivism that grew alongside the private cults of the New Age Movement was simply “invisible” by definition.

Fourth, if Peters had examined the Public Cult of Progressivism as “religion”, he would have been in deep trouble.

“Regulatory capture” entails infiltrating and controlling sovereign (or “state”) institutions.  In 1994, Progressives were well on their way in the State of California, especially in the legislature, the various media, and in education.

If Peters had extended his treatment to the Public Cult, he would have injured someone’s “self-esteem”.  Then, the lemmings would have had an excuse to eat him alive.

Ironically, the parallel described in the previous blog is exactly what Christians see in Progressives, a “relentless pursuit of self-esteem” that produces air-head ideologues who are convinced that “their worlds reference actuality” and consequently, “do not know any different”.

College graduates are lemmings.  They are trained to “progress” in one direction, like a heard of rodents running to the sea – the sea of “entitlements” – the sea of debt.

Christians proudly wear the label “we know different”.

But now, perhaps, they are learning to fear the lemmings.

Criticism of the lemmings causes mob action.  The critic has dared to violate a lemming’s “self-esteem”.  Eat her alive!

Ann Coulter is an expert on this.

Progressive cryptotheology asserts that the principle binding soul to body is – let us consider Becker here – “self”.

In parallel, the Progressive’s xiety (what they had, could have had, or pretended to have) must be “self-esteem”.

If this is so, then the Progressive anxiety would be the fear of the loss of self esteem.

There is a certain beauty in deduction, is there not?

The secular parallel to the cryptotheological assertion that “self-esteem is the one thing that we cannot lose” is nothing less than the pursuit of “the sense of not knowing any different” that permeated the world of our ancestors.  This was the world that humans evolved in.  Is it also our destiny?

Once Progressives achieve Total Self-Esteem, then “the things that words refer to” will become real and we all will not know any different.  We will also be bureaucratic zombies under mind control.  But that is a topic for another blog.