The Truth Animating the Political Left

The Savior is Hidden in the Margin.

-The push for free speech is in service to this truth.

-The idea that the savior is somewhere among the oppressed outsiders is what causes identification with the victim.

-As human beings, we usually act out the hidden truths of reality before they become fully conscious.

In order to seek out the savior, you must first identify. The problem is this identification with the savior leaves you susceptible to the deception that you’ve already actualized the savior. You can observe this among many political activists of the left in the West.

Free speech has traditionally been a value of the left. It’s the willingness to let some snakes into the garden in service of the search for the savior. Mass censorship, cancelling, throwing out the non-conforming are the opposite.

If you falsely believe that you’ve already reached the finish line and actualized the savior within yourself or your group — and the victimized have not been rescued — this leads to two possible responses. The first is to resign yourself to the reality check telling you you’re wrong.

The second is to defy the reality check and double down. One manifestation of this is trying to purify the environment of the victim group in order to preserve the savior identity. Another is to deny the reality where the victimized group has not been rescued. These two play off each other. If there is any instance of bigotry toward the victim group, then the false savior will have the impulse to quickly and forcefully purify the environment in order to recover the false reality of rescue. Inevitably, this escalates and.. no more free speech.

The deception of the false savior is very strong, so the political left being captured by it is to be expected. The Batman archetype can be useful to learn from as the way forward. The way Batman solves the false savior problem is to identify with, not only the marginalized he serves, but also the monsters he hates (bats in his case).

“You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”

This is how reality works. You cannot seek the savior without identifying as the hero and you cannot overcome the false savior problem without also identifying as the villain.

Early in the story, the shepherd guards the flock of sheep from the wolf. However, this isn’t enough to save the sheep. The shepherd then allows some of the lost sheep near the flock, but a wolf dressed in sheep’s clothing enters the pen and ravages some of the sheep. Finally, in order to truly save the sheep, the shepherd realizes he must leave the flock and live among the lost and damned in order to find the savior.

This is the story of John the Baptist. It’s part of the Batman story. It’s the story of reality.