The Old TRAGIC World of Societal Life: The Upside Down World Before It Was Turned Right

Unfortunately, many people want to control other individuals by wrongfully dominating them. Alternatively, those in charge construct systems so that certain groups of people are excluded and, therefore, oppressed. In more severe situations, these dominating people seek and gain political power, asserting their cruel domination over groups of people.

America and the world are at a fork in the road.

Historian and authoritarian expert Ruth Ben-Ghait calls this era we are in, the age of the bully and authoritarianism.

"Authoritarian leaders appeal to bullies who already exercise their skills in the workplace, at home, and on the street, but they also elevate bullying by giving it a political value in societies based on coercion and domination."

Ruth continues, exploring how this domination approach is part of the structure of the authoritarian paradigm.

"...authoritarianism integrates bullying into state practices, because such states depend on violence, intimidation, and on getting people into states of submission and surrender. A favorite authoritarian game is "making an example" of people, since staging occasions of public bullying encourages others to embrace cruelty."

We are often not prepared to handle this type of domination when it comes our way. And, this authoritarian approach is more pervasive in our society (and perhaps ourselves) than we'd like to admit.

Ruth expands.

"As Karen Stenner and other scholars have found, about 30% of the population holds authoritarian attitudes to private life issues, from childrearing to family hierarchies and gender relations. Such people do not permit dissent or insubordination and they need to put people down to make themselves feel powerful, so they engage in bullying performances, whether it is in front of other family members, at sporting events, or in boardrooms."

These dynamics and this part of society are something we'll always have to deal with but when a demagogic leader like Trump comes on the scene, he attracts and emboldens these types of people.

"These authoritarian personalities can then be "activated" when a demagogue gives those values a political expression. They feel at home with this demagogue and respect him, so even though they are the mini-Mussolinis at home or at work, they willingly submit to the leader outside the home, the leader being the only person who can bully and not be bullied in return.

Authoritarians use ritual humiliation to "keep order" in their worlds, fulfill their ego needs, and calm their insecurities. Trump is a master bully who uses ritual humiliation to “keep order” within the GOP."

We can't eliminate this layer of society, but we can keep it at bay, preventing its toxic spread.

Ruth closes her piece with a quote by a journalist during the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1930s.

“He channels his brutality into humbling their pride, crushing their freedom of conscience, diminishing their individual merits and transforming his supporters into flunkeys stripped of all dignity. Like all dictators, Hitler loves only those whom he can despise.” - Curzio Malaparte, Techniques of the Coup d'Etat

That status is the destiny of those who submit themselves to the domination hierarchy.

Throughout this article, we're going to continue exploring the type of society that identifies a weak victim and is grounded in the oppression of that person.

We're exploring this because the Western Christian paradigm is grounded in a structure that is in strong contrast and opposition to the structure that came before it and that currently competes with it in the current changing world order. This authoritarian dynamic is often masked by other group identities, including Putinism, Trumpism, and forms of Christian Nationalism.

Jesus flipped the world upside down, but we have to better understand what the world was like before he did that so we can appreciate what he's flipped upside down.

Without this clarity and understanding, we risk regressing. And that regression has already begun.

Hatred > Imperialism > Totalitarianism

A simple framework to get us started down this road of a domination-oriented hierarchy comes from Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism.

Totalitarianism is the third stage of the process with stage two being imperialism.

Stage one is hatred of a group. This could be a racial group, class, or gender, ultimately classified as the outsider. In Arendt's book, she's primarily speaking of Nazi Germany, and their hatred is directed towards the Jews.

Stage two, imperialism is a form of endless domineering expansionism (power and economic) without a specific territorial goal.

More, more, & more. This insatiable pursuit of more becomes a primary driving force that weakens a society's legal and political structures and institutions.

Totalitarianism is the final form of total domination. It's about controlling every thought, word, and action. If you've ever seen Star Trek, the Borg collective is a great example of how totalitarianism operates. It takes over everything and then those that have been absorbed conform to the collective.

To quickly recap, first is the hatred of a group. Second is the endless expansionism. And last it's total domination.

What makes this domination paradigm more frightening in the modern world is due to the value-creation advancement of societies and how totalitarianism (value-extraction-based society) leverages that value created by others (but can't create itself) to inflict worse horrors on people in their expansion and domination.

Without the trust, coordination, technologies, and other resources developed by value-creation-based societies, totalitarianism would be limited. And this is why they weaken over time, especially when expansion is denied. The denial of expansion is essential to stopping it, but pushing back will force the conflict to flare up.

Regardless of who the outgroup is, the key is to understand that the value extraction society is fundamentally erected on top of this hatred. The weak victim who can not stand strong against these forces is the baseline of the hierarchy.

Modern Domination Paradigm Examples

I'm pulling in a modern example of this dynamic and how it shapes that society; Russia.

Here, I'll be referring to the work of Kamil Galeev, who is an expert in Russian culture and a Kazan Tartar (a historically oppressed group in Russia).

He provides a modern day glimpse of this tragic domination reality, that sits upon the hatred of weak victims (in the Russian prison system) by the hierarchy-climbing perpetrators.

Warning, some of this is disturbing.

Here's how Kamil describes the Russian hierarchy.

"Prison culture permeates society, especially the army, police and state security *far* deeper than foreigners would believe.

Prison has very complex sexual code.

First and most importantly, *active* homosexualism is okay. It's not even perceived as homosexualism, but as a way to reinforce the social hierarchy. Passive role though is shameful and is reserved for the non-touchable, the "cocks" (петухи)"

In the Prison culture, and Russia as a whole, the society is built on a hierarchy of the hatred of the "cock", the weak victim of which all others oppress, from the top down. This shapes the primary societal narrative.

Kamil continues.

"To become a cock you need to be "moved down" (gang raped, usually). Now you become a non touchable. Nobody can touch you except for sex, otherwise they also become the ritually unclean (законтачиться). If they want to beat you, they should do it with legs, not by hands"

This shaming ritual elevates and separates one group over the other.

In the Roman Empire, it was the barbarian or rebel who was the hated member of the society. Rome mastered tormenting and crucifying people who started and participated in insurrections (or did not submit to their expansion). There was nothing more humiliating and abhorrent than being crucified.

To overlay an ancient example, Rome leveraged their brute power on the rebels. Submission to Rome was the way of the land. 

In America, we elevate victims, wanting their oppression to stop and having a desire to help them.

In Russia, the victims are at the ground level and seen with contempt. They see them as deserving of oppression because of their weakness and cowardice. Like the untouchables in the Hindu caste system, these prisoners are believed to deserve their status.

Here's what Kamil says next.

"Social hierarchy has a spatial dimension. The cocks get their own place in the prison canteen so that normal ones can avoid contact with them. They must sleep near the toilet, ideally on the floor. They get a special spoon with a hole, marking their outcast status."

He continues.

"Prison culture shapes the Russian public discourse. Consider Lavrov who "mocked" the French pointing out to their national symbol. A very witty observation, apparently. When Lavrov looks at the Gallic rooster, first thing he thinks about is a prison cock. Why? Because he is deeply influenced by the prison culture, as nearly 100% of the Russian ruling class. Prison culture defines their thinking and behaviour, they just can't think in other terms.

Russian elites think in prison terms, too.

Those at the bottom are weak and deserve oppression. Those at the top are strong because they've worked themselves up the hierarchy by pushing others down it.

This domination paradigm was how the Roman Empire, the center of that world order, operated and how the Russians currently see themselves. Kamil shares the following about this perception of the new Rome.

"So now Moscow, the Third Rome, is the last bastion of Orthodoxy, the rest of the world being swept either by infidels or by the Latin heresy. And if the Third Rome falls to this heresy, it will share the fate of the Second Rome. Which will literally trigger the Domesday."

If they fail at their mission, it is the end of the world (or more accurately — from our point of view — the end of their world).

Trumpism

"We're all capable of cruelty. I've been cruel before. Everyone has. The way cruelty works, as a process of community formation is like, when you're a kid, there's a group of cool kids who are teasing the nerdy kid and if you're not part of either group, you might join in, because you want to be part of the cool kids or you might simply be silent because you don't want the cool kids to come after you. The kids who are teasing the nerdy kid are bonding with each other over this act of meanness and transgression.

And to some extent, this is what's happening on a political level at these rallies where Trump is attacking people who symobolize a political or cultural change that the Republican base finds threatening or menacing. It's an aspect of human nature that has been weaponized by a certain style of politics." - Adam Serwer, Was The Cruelty The Point?

Let's explore one more modern anecdote as it relates to Trump's takeover and reforming of the Republican Party into his domineering and often cruel paradigm.

There's an insightful podcast series called The Corruption of Lindsay Graham. Graham went from being a strong opponent of Trump to being a loyal and vocal supporter. Graham once passionately spoke against Trump and now he can't understand why Republicans are voting for Harris.

Here's how Will Saletan, the journalist who did the series, describes Graham's response to Trump's defeat in the presidential primaries.

"So instead, Graham turned the other way. He told himself that democracy had worked. The good and wise Republicans of South Carolina and other states had chosen Trump, not Graham. They must have known better than Graham did. And if the good people of America went on to elect Trump, then Graham would accept their judgment. He wouldn’t just tolerate their decision; he would embrace it. He would defer to the people’s verdict. He would withdraw his criticisms of Trump." - Will Saletan

There is this sense from Graham that he has to submit because Trump defeated him in the primaries and won the presidency. It's a sentiment shared by many other former Republican presidential candidates. Power in America is derived from the people. And those people spoke against Graham and for Trump. Therefore, as a man of the people, Graham must now submit to His victor, Donald Trump.

When we have no authority we submit to, above the worldly power, this submission to our tribe's leader is our natural destiny.

"The difference between fatalism and faith lies just here. Fatalism means, "My number's up; I have to bow to the power whether I like it or not; I do not know the character of the power, but it is greater than I am, and I must submit." The submission of faith is that I do know the character of the power, and this was the line Job took—"Though He slay me, yet I will trust the fact that His character is worthy." This is the attitude of faith all through — "I submit to One whose character I know but whose ways are obscured in mystery just now."' - Oswald Chambers, Our Ultimate Refuge, The Insistence of Autocratic Authority, Job 33, p105-106

The story of David, Saul, and Goliath in the Hebrew Scriptures is another great contrasting example. There we see the cowardice of King Saul, the intimidation of Goliath on the trembling Israelites, and the courage of David (submitted to God first and foremost) as more powerful than the visibly stronger man (Goliath).

This subversive dynamic of the weak defeating the strong (as we see in the story of David & Goliath) surprised Rome, and turned it upside down when Jesus arrived on the scene and launched the church. Christians would defy Caesar and Rome for Jesus — our ultimate authority and refuge. And that defiance would not be through domination and violence but rather the power that comes from service and love.

This love is a strong contrast to the contempt and hate that undergirds totalitarianism. And, it's why those fueled by love are able to let go (and forgive), whereas those fueled by hate must keep going.

The Contrast Between Two Worlds

"Autocratic authority means to rule by right of insistence, not necessarily by right of personal integrity. Napoleon said of Jesus Christ that He had succeeded in making every human soul an appendage of His own because He had the genius of holiness. Other men exercised authority by coercive means, Jesus Christ never did, His authority was worthy. He proved Himself worthy not only in the domain of God, which we do not know, but in the domain of man, which we do know; He is worthy there, consequently, He prevails to open the book (see Revelation 5).

Authority to be lasting must be of the same order as that of Jesus Christ, not the authority of autocracy or coercion, but the authority of worth, to which all that is worthy in a man bows down. It is only the unworthy in a man that does not bow down to worthy authority." - Oswald Chambers, Our Ultimate Refuge, Job 32, The Inspiration of Autocratic Authority, p103-104

So, let's rewind in time back to Rome itself, to dive deeper into that cultural paradigm. Here's how Tom Holland, in his book, Dominion (affiliate link) describes the paradigm of Rome.

"Iron courage, unbending discipline, mastery of body and soul: these were the qualities that had won the Roman people their rule of the world. The role of Greek philosophers was merely to gild this self-image. 'Always fight bravely, and be superior to others... All was for the best. The whole world was there to be set in order. The future belonged to the strong."

The strong dominated. But it was a material and inferior form of strength that was elevated. In a talk for Mockingbird Ministries, Tom Holland shared the following about how offensive Christianity, which elevated the physically weak and vulnerable over the strong, was to Friedrich Nietzsche.

"And Nietzsche wrote, of Christianity, that to devise something which could even approach the seductive, intoxicating, anesthetizing, and corrupting power of that symbol of the holy cross, that horrific paradox of the crucified God, that mystery of an inconceivably ultimate most extreme cruelty and self-crucifixion undertaken for the salvation of mankind; for Nietzsche the horror of it, is precisely, that by valorizing the weak, by valorizing the suffering, by valorizing the man who is tortured over the strength and the power and the authority and the glory of those who have the power to nail him to the cross.

The weak have been privileged over the strong. The powerless have been privileged over the powerful. And that for Nietzsche was repellent and revolting and disgusting. And that was a 20th century perspective that fed into the most anti-christian ideology that Europe had ever seen since the conversion of Constantine. And that was fascism and its most radical expression being Nazism. And the Nazi's absolutely repudiated the core Christian conviction that there was value in being weak and oppressed and that there was a glory in suffering rather than inflicting suffering. And the Nazis also scorned the other core Christian principle that all human beings have an inherent dignity." - Tom Holland, History, Horror, and Hope, Mockingbird

It's a glimpse into this entirely foreign paradigm. For a Western citizen, these insights are quite horrifying. That's because we've mostly lived in a safe bubble, shielded from this reality.

In his book Dominion (affiliate link), Tom Holland describes his Romantic attachment to Rome, disintegrating the more he learned about the tragic reality beyond our safe bubble.

“It was not just the extremes of callousness [of ancient Romans] that unsettle me, but the complete lack of any sense that the poor or the weak might have the slightest intrinsic value.

Why did I find this disturbing?

Because, in my morals and ethics, I was not a Spartan or a Roman at all. That my belief in God had faded over the course of my teenage years did not mean that I had ceased to be Christian.

For a millennium and more, the civilisation into which I had been born was Christendom. Assumptions that I had grown up with - about how a society should properly be organized, and the principles that it should uphold - were not bred of classical antiquity, still less of ‘human nature’, but very distinctively of that civilisation’s Christian past.

So profound has been the impact of Christianity on the development of Western civilisation that it has come to be hidden from view.

It is the incomplete revolutions which are remembered; the fate of those which triumphs is to be taken for granted.” - Tom Holland, Dominion p16/17

And this illuminates profoundly the contrast between our worlds at war. To keep what we have, we must understand what came before it, and how that was transformed into something better.

Mark Vernon carries us further into the heart of the matter of what makes this new and better world possible.

"What the German disliked about Christianity, as [Nietzsche] saw it, is the way it turns human weakness on its head, by valorising it, rather than attempting what the Epicureans did. They strove to overcome weakness with practices that strengthen resolve – in Epicurus’s case, an ability to face suffering and death with equanimity.

Jesus was born into the moral melee of the ancient world... If the world really is to change, people need a radical revolution of heart that makes life look utterly transformed. Centuries of moralism had shown that route doesn’t cut it." - Mark Vernon, Against Moral Christianity

Jesus Inverting Reality & The Antithesis of His Mission

"It is one of the most extraordinary turnarounds in history that the symbolism of crucifixion said, "we run this world and if you get in our way we will rub you out". That is callous, brutal power. To have within 20 years, the crucifixion as a symbol of all conquering self giving love, that's just quite extraordinary." - NT Wright, NT Wright & Tom Holland • How St Paul changed the world (Full Show)

Tragedy is reality. So, how did Jesus invert this reality, so that redemption undergirded tragedy?

He died at the cross, as a victim, who overcame death. He was an innocent man who was punished as guilty. He was a rebel and barbarian. 

The new world was born. And it's not immune to the ways of the old. They creep back in, often leveraging the new world dynamics. Christians's highest event, the crucifixion, is the ultimate victim story (an innocent man and God wrongly tortured and murdered). So, for any nefarious actor who wants to dominate others, they usually must leverage the existing paradigm and meta-narrative so that they can dominate (often leveraging the victim narrative) to begin unflipping the world backward. 

In my discussion with Jessie Nigro on the Share Life podcast, he shares the following insight.

"MacIntyre is saying, when you pretend there's no such thing as a Telos (transcendent purpose/vision) what happens is you get the sort of Nietzschean reaction, which is to say that, someone with a will to power is going to come along and apply their will to this situation and we'll all just be doing what they think we ought to do, regardless of what the sort of surfacy, cover story is."

This vulnerability of modern Western societies is for someone to come in under the guise of the victim-oppressed narrative, a wolf in sheep's clothing, leveraging our paradigm to take power and transform the Western paradigm back into the strength over weakness hierarchy. The inverse of the passion of Jesus is the undoing of the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.

The inverse would be for a completely guilty man to be seen as completely innocent. It'd be for a truly lawless criminal to be seen as an innocent savior of the people. It'd be for people, and Christians in particular, to see this man (or woman) as the messiah. This, by definition, would be an anti-Christ. I'm not claiming this dynamic in a supernatural sense, but simply in a moral and human sense. This would be the opposite of Jesus and what he went through and it'd be an attempt to undo what God did. These types of demagogues have come and gone throughout history, leaving a trail of blood behind them.

This endeavor to undo is impossible (because of Jesus' resurrection) and it will always snap back, but not without consequences as we've seen in the many 21st century horrors.

But, the good news of Jesus is God's kingdom is near and here. Jesus is flipping the world upside down, and freeing the victims and captives.

The contrasting good news that comes from those who embody the opposite of Jesus (which is at some point, all of us) is that the kingdom of man is near and here. The anti-Christ wants to flip the world back to the way it was, enslaving the victims and captives so it can dominate them, inflicting suffering and destruction, or at a minimum, giving us what we desire. We see this dynamic repeatedly across history, and most horrific in the past century. People go along and enable terrible things, vulnerable, because of their blind spots and desires. 

Jesus brings the kingdom of God to earth. The Antichrist undoes that. And the cross sits between the two.

If the kingdom requires someone to hate, for a victim to sit at the bottom of civilization, Jesus says, let it be me. And when we do, transformation unfolds. 

Fantasy End Times

Growing up as a Christian of the 1990s, we were marinated in the Left Behind books, end-times theology, and the rapture (where Christians are suddenly sucked up into heaven as the Apocalypse subsequently unfolds)

In retrospect, I wonder if that whole future fantasy world that terrified us was simply a big distraction from the more practical grounded reality of Antichrists we’ve encountered in ourselves and others, throughout our lives and our history; and of which we will continue to encounter as time unfolds. The demagogues and tyrants who torment and destroy people that we've experienced over and over deceive us Christians and we become participants in evil over and over across time.

What if instead of all the rapture end times teachings, Christians taught about  Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao? What if we were taught about the corrupt politicians from within our tribes? What if we taught about how Christians, over and over again throughout history, were active or passive participants in some of the most evil events and eras in modern history? Or more locally, what about the child abusers and the spouse abusers within our communities? Imagine if we warned about those who steal, kill, and destroy in our day-to-day lives. This is the spirit of the antichrist that we fail to see; that which is antithetical to Jesus' mission and way of life.

Ultimately, it's about stepping out of the fear of the end times (or whatever we fear) and stepping into living in victory, learning how to love and heal others.

Trying to Unflip The Western World

“The nationalists and the populists hate the very idea of a ‘rules-based order’, because it limits their ability to act any way they wish.” - Gwynne Dyer, Hypocrisy and the ‘Rules-Based Order’

Totalitarianism is a unique paradigm that manifests as a result of the Western paradigm. It's a corruption of something successful that takes over, corroding the things that made the success possible to begin with. That which was once good becomes a shell of its former self. Simply put, think of it like a solid growing business that is taken over by a toxic leader who drives it into the ground. 

Ultimately, it is corruption (even if it's not obvious or prominent) that's undoing that success. That former success enables the cancerous reversion to the domination of others. As the decay unfolds, the domination becomes more intense. Like sin, it's simply a distortion of the healthy good that came before it.

This is the essence of tragedy. And while that is part of the story, it's not the full story.

"Both stories [of tragedy and redemption] are true. Both worlds are real. And that each human life is a kind of intersection point between time and eternity... what does it mean? First, the point of intersection between worlds is a place where there is hope beyond all hope. It is a place where the story on the news feed is neither the only story not the final story. Eternity is not limited by the circumstances of the present. It is a place where death by crucifixion is not a final act. Concretely, for you and me today, I think to recognize that we live at the point of intersection is a call to resist the spell of despair about the present. It is to see a horizon beyond what the world sees. A horizon of life and possibility and resurrection, no matter how dark the circumstances... So to live in eternity is to live in hope, even when you don't have reason for hope." - Simeon Zahl, It Is Finished, Mockingbird Ministries

Here we have the contrast between two worlds and this is our opportunity as Christians.

Jesus rejects the victimhood and hate hierarchy, which he could have embraced. Instead, He chose to be the victor, on a mission that we can all join in on, and it's a paradigm where what we naturally think of as strong is weak, and what we think of as weak is strong. 

Additional Resources

• Watch: What Freedom Requires by Andy Stanley