Violence against people of color. Violence against women. Authoritarian and confused reaction to a pandemic. A fundamentalist distortion of Christianity. And controlling influence by the rich and powerful.
Thesis #18 - Future human well-being, and possibly even simple human survival, will depend on learning to substitute more nonviolent and creative manifestations of the individual and social defense mechanisms against the anxiety provoked by the religiously/culturally Dissimilar Other for the more destructive manifestations we have habitually employed.
Thesis #17 - Modern human beings, simply because we are becoming more consciously aware of the processes of socialization, group dynamics and psychological functioning, are already more likely in the first place to suspicion the fictional character of their cultural/religious narratives than those of previous generations.
Thesis #16 - Hence, culturally/religiously Dissimilar Others may be a creative source for helping us widen and enhance our own vision; or, they may be encountered, in the most literal sense, as mortal enemies.
People who do not share in the basic assumptions of our cultural/religious narrative are a big problem, since by their very existence they cast doubt on the transcending and absolute certainty of our truth (revealing to us its essentially fictional nature) and thus expose us again to the repressed anxiety our fictions function to allay in the first place.
Thesis #14 - There is power in numbers for sustaining the transcending plausibility and viability of any particular dominant cultural narrative. The more you rub shoulders only with people who believe the same cultural narrative you do, the more plausible that narrative becomes.
This is what the Book of Revelation is really about. It's not about the end of the world, as such. It's about the destruction of the feudalistic, repressive, economic monolith which it calls “Babylon the Great”.