The second part of this book title is called teaching love. However I will define love throughout this book primarily in the apothatic sense by explaining what love is not.
There is a difference between having a loving intention and a loving action. If someone wishes to save someone's life (who rightfully should be saved) by providing them with medicine and accidentally gives them poison hastening their death they had loving intention but not loving action however if they wish to murder someone and try to give them poison but accidentally gave them medicine they accidentally did a action which appears to be loving but had intention that was not loving. In order to deliberately and knowingly do a loving action one needs not just loving intention but knowledge, those with loving intention will have a desire to learn what loving action is.
Love can be described apothatically for example avoiding murder is loving. However if a wicked one were to try to get someone with loving intention to do actions that were anti loving, such an individual could use unethical influence by persuading them that murder is morally good when done through following the orders of clergy, commanding officers, politicians, parents, employers, spouses, friends, family, etc. They might even say because a god said so or they reached a statement of enlightenment to come to this knowledge or even because without obedience to the government society would fall into chaos that would be much worse than a single murder or that your parents know what is best and so you should obey them even if you think murder is morally wrong.
All of those reasons listed are ways to use unethical influence based on an appeal to authority. Hence my book is entitled undermining authority. This unethical influence has been done to humanity at large in part accidentally and in part intentionally and this unethical influence has resulted in people with loving intention doing actions that are not loving. There are some individuals who however may very will be doing things opposed to the nature of love who have no loving intention this book is not written for them unless they can be persuaded to change from being against love to having loving intention for otherwise to know what actions are loving but have no intention to do loving actions will not result in an individual acting in accordance with love.
I am going to make the case that religious teachings can be used to provide information to provide a good influence by being used as a polemic against undue influence or they can be used as a form of undue influence also. I wish to show how to use the Bible and other sources of religious teaching in order to combat undue influence throughout this book. This does not rest on the necessity of the existence of a god for the way I shall show scripture can be interpreted can influence someone's thinking patterns even if there is no god but I will try to make the case that there is reason to believe God exists and that he has provided public revelation as a means to combat undue influence although I do not claim this is the only reason for such revelation to be used by an individual.
The Bible can provide an apothetic framework to show what love is not. There was a general prohibition against murder given to Noah from whom all humanity descended and would have had opportunity to hear such a prohibition if Noah's descendants chose to pass it on by oral tradition prior to the giving of the Mosaic law. These descendants of Noah later would label themselves as being of many different religions and faiths but would all have had opportunity to hear God's command against murder if it was passed on by their ancestors.
But specifically the descendants of Jacob's twelve sons listed in the Bible would later be identified as being of what is today frequently called the Jewish faith by mainstream society. An intentional community was established during the time of Moses a descendant of Jacob in which God was claimed to have told this community a set of rules and all the men agreed. Prior to Moses in the time of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob these rules were not yet given or not given in full or at least disregarded by Abraham who married his half sister although forbidden in Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20 not yet written at the time. I suggest the possibility that other communities were given no such extra rules and that the new testament does not subtract from the laws of God or create a new contract but simply restates what was already the moral code God wished for humanity prior to the rules of the intentional community during the time of Moses.
I am going to try to show apothetic teachings of what love is not based on the overlapping moral teachings of the old and new testament not to initiate as an aggressor in a non defensive manner, murder, kidnapping, fraud and theft as well as other forbidden things. But I will also show how the nature of what is a violation of such things maybe unclear and how the Mosaic law would provide a skeletal outline with additional details of what maybe good for one society which none the less was insufficient. I propose that theft maybe viewed different in one society than another based on different individuals having different opinions of ownership, the Mosaic law provided one set of definitions that may have been good for that society at that time but as I will demonstrate could not possibly work in our society today as the proper initial owner in today's society is unlisted in the Mosaic law. I believe this will naturally result in national anarchism as the most reasonable system of property (I know of) based on this lack of non relativistic objectivity (it is objective but only as objective as a group of people has agreed to a property convention) and will suggest that having a local community law in the times of Moses may have been in alignment with the principles of National Anarchism.
The word anarchism means the moral teaching that there should be a goal of no involuntary slavery, although what constitutes involuntary slavery is highly disputed so there are many different schools of anarchism. This involuntary slavery is brought on by certain teachings about authority which are by there very nature contrary to love as for example if it is unloving to murder someone than using authority as an excuse that murdering someone would be good is contrary to the nature of love. I am going to suggest that at the heart of it an anarchists life maybe to teach and practice ethical influence in opposition to unethical influence and that this maybe the same as the core heart of what Jesus taught as well as many other religious people.
Copyright Carl Janssen 2017
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