Beware of Globalist Psychologists
Hiding behind his scientist mask, a psychologist pictures a global utopia without considering the downside.
The Conversation website is a mixed bag of sweet and sour ideas, about 5% sweet and 95% sour. The latest sour idea comes from Steve Taylor, a Senior Lecturer in Psychology from Leeds Beckett University in the UK. Like most on the Left, he is full of grandiose ideas that never work. Here’s his utopian dream:
What if the world was one country? A psychologist on why we need to think beyond borders (The Conversation). Do we need to? Maybe for a few seconds. It’s a fair question, but it leads to a half-truth garnished with a non-sequitur.
There are countless different species on the surface of this planet. One of these is the human race, which has over seven billion members. In one sense, there are no nations, just groups of humans inhabiting different areas of the planet. In some cases, there are natural borders formed by sea or mountains, but often borders between nations are simply abstractions, imaginary boundaries established by agreement or conflict.
The question is fair, and some of this is obviously true. Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweikhart, whom he quotes, didn’t see any national borders from orbit. It led him to philosophize about how wonderful it would be if people could just get along. Let’s just all hold hands.
The non-sequitur is the notion that since we do not see borders, we should not have them. The truth of the half-truth is that borders are “imaginary boundaries established by agreement or conflict.” The lie is that eliminating borders would help people get along in one big happy family. That has never worked.
Next comes some psychobabble to make Steve’s globalist preferences sound scientific.
One pertinent finding from my own research as a psychologist is that people who experience high levels of wellbeing (together with a strong sense of connection to others, or to the world in general) don’t tend to have a sense of group identity.
I have studied many people who have undergone profound personal transformation following intense psychological turmoil, such as bereavement or a diagnosis of cancer. I sometimes refer to these people as “shifters”, since they appear to shift up to a higher level of human development….
As I report in my book, The Leap, one of the common traits of “shifters” is that they no longer define themselves in terms of nationality, religion or ideology. They no longer feel they are American or British, or a Muslim or a Jew. They feel the same kinship with all human beings. If they have any sense of identity at all, it’s as global citizens, members of the human race and inhabitants of the planet Earth – beyond nationality or border. Shifters lose the need for group identity because they no longer feel separate and so have no sense of fragility and insecurity.
A little taste of either-or fallacy helps him pre-empt any criticisms of his psychobabble. If you disagree, he virtue-signals and shames, you must feel frail and insecure. Those shiftless non-shifters must be (gasp!) nationalists, like Trumpers (America First) or UK separatists (Brexit). It would be impossible to love your country and also feel like a member of the human race, right? He adds a big lie— the idea that a world government would be able to solve problems quicker, like pandemics. The European Union has not offered a particularly good example; that’s why pro-Brexit folks wanted out.
Moving beyond those disagreeable nationalists, (disagreeable, that is, to Leftists), Steve ends with his sermon, decorated with some glittering generalities, adorned with a photo of a sign hoisted high, “One World” (see Visualization fallacy).
Ultimately, nationalism is a psychological aberration. We owe it our ancestors and to our descendants – and to the Earth itself – to move beyond it.
What would grandma think if you didn’t join the Brave New World? Instead of judging what constitutes psychological aberrations (notice that unsupported assertion), Steve could learn a bit about history.
This is a prime example of why you never should want to put psycho-experts in charge of anything. This guy, a lecturer in psychology, should just shut up and go back to school. He should get out of Utopia Fantasyland and study the rich history of political philosophy, read some Montesquieu, some Locke, some Jefferson, perhaps The Federalist and most of all, the Bible. He knows nothing about human nature. What will happen the moment you put people into a one-world government against their will? They will fight and create new nations! (That is, they would if they could.)
It’s quite ironic that Steve values unity when the Left is celebrating diversity. It’s also ironic that he wishes everyone to feel like global citizens at the very time the Left is pigeonholing everyone into classes, fomenting the very conflicts he thinks would be avoided in a world government by relegating people into oppressed and oppressors. The Leftists are the last ones any sensible human being should want to be in charge of the world. Their vision of paradise is having everyone assimilate into a philosophical Borg, where everyone conforms to the evolving paradigm and resistance is futile.
In a short speech at the RNC, Maximo Alvarez almost cried when he thought what would happen if America went communist, like his home country Cuba did: “There is no other place to go!” Alvarez had heard the promises of socialism, and had witnessed the terror that came instead. He gave up everything to come to America. Is Steve so ignorant of totalitarian governments, that he really thinks that a one-world government would offer freedom to its global citizens? What if the global government were to become tyrannical and totalitarian? Given human nature, that’s exactly what would likely happen. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Today, victims of tyranny can hope to escape and find the liberty their soul craves. Many have given up everything for the chance to be free. Think of North Koreans, starving, wearing rags, dodging bullets while crossing an icy river to run for a chance at freedom. A global government would unlikely tolerate individual liberties. Look at what American leftists are doing right now, censoring the opposition and dictating what people are allowed to think, and what voices they are allowed to hear. (Listen to Rudy Giuliani’s speech Friday Jan 15.) This is what the communists and Nazis sought to do: crush the human spirit in a machine designed to exalt the State and destroy the individual. Have we forgotten Animal Farm and 1984? Has the world so soon forgotten Brave New World? What if there is no other place to go? Everyone except those in the privileged class would suffer in the same re-education camps and gulags together.
The Bible explains why fallen human nature will never succeed in a global collective: the problem is sin. It is manifested in selfishness, pride, and hate. Cain envied his brother and killed him. No sooner were people multiplying on the earth than Nimrod boasted of his conquests. The world was filled with violence, and God destroyed it with a Flood. Then they gathered to create a one-world government at Babel and God confused their languages, to send them away from each other. Paul explains what happened next:
The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. 26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, 27 that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. (Acts 17)
America’s constitutional system is built on separation of powers. Similarly, a world needs separation of powers to act as a check on each other’s evil advances. God said, “Thou shalt not covet.” That applies individually and nationally, because both can covet each other’s property and rights. The authors of The Federalist agreed that if men were angels, governments would not be needed; everyone would do right by nature. Since we are not, governments are instituted to protect individual God-given rights. And since absolute power corrupts absolutely, a global government would quickly degenerate into a nightmare of tyranny, with a class of the powerful aggrandizing all the wealth for themselves, and the rest suffering under their dictatorial rule. There will be no place to go.
This is why nobody should trust a psychologist (especially an evolutionary psychologist) to advise on political theory. They have a flawed understanding of human nature. Men are not angels; their human power needs to be checked. Concentrating world power into an internationalist scheme is the worst possible thing to do to fallen humans. Sure, it will be very efficient – at torturing every freedom-loving individual and forcing everyone into conformity. Did you notice that most psychologists are evolutionists? Did you know that Marx thought that communism was the next stage in evolution? Nations must be vigilant at keeping Darwin and Marx out of government; their track record is one of death and misery.
Oh, incidentally, there will be a world government. It’s not pretty. You can read about it, and the consequences that will shortly ensue, in Revelation 13 and following. After that ends in global war and death like the world has never seen, then there will be a second world government with Christ himself as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, with a thousand years of peace and prosperity (Revelation 20). But because humans born in that millennium are still not angels, even that will end in a war. It goes to show that a perfect government cannot tame fallen human nature. Globalists dream in vain that they could ever achieve utopia. A world of independent nations is not perfect, but at least it gives freedom-loving hearts a place to go, a place to hope for. There will never be perfect peace on earth forever until sin is vanquished (Revelation 21-22).