How God And Evil Can Coexist

One of the great philosophical and theological conundrums is how God and evil can coexist. This question has been discussed for over 2,500 years, and no resolution has been agreed upon. This essay will describe how the conundrum is resolved by the philosophy of Elementalism.

This conundrum is usually expressed in the words of Epicurus (see image at top of page). Believers in God often make the claim that God is both omnipotent and omnibenevolent. This creates a paradox in the mind of non-believers, on account of that evil and suffering exist in the world.

If God is unable to prevent evil, then God cannot be omnipotent. If God is able, but not willing, then God cannot be omnibenevolent. This paradox could be called Epicurus’s Fork, on account of that the believer in God cannot easily reconcile their belief in God’s omnipotence and omnibenevolence with the fact that evil and suffering exist.

Reconciliation of this paradox is easy for the Elementalist, however.

The first thing to state is that Elementalists have a particular conception of God and creation. The Elementalist believes that all individual consciousnesses are fragments of God, and therefore God is not something separate to ourselves. It’s more accurate to say that we, collectively, are God.

Likewise, Elementalists have a different conception of creation. The material world is not something that we woke up in – the material world is a dream that we collectively manifest through our will and karma. More specifically, our experience in the material world is considered to be an infinitely small subsection of something called the Great Fractal.

So how does that relate to the coexistence of God and evil? The answer lies in understanding what existence would be like without the illusion of a material world.

Our consciousnesses only feel suffering because we identify with our bodies. Our bodies are transitory phenomena, and like all transitory phenomena they are in a constant state of flux. This flux is usually painful. As a consequence, we need to act to balance it out. When our bodies get hungry we eat, when they get tired we sleep, when they feel pain we need to attend to it.

Without the illusion of a physical body in a physical world, our consciousnesses would exist in a state of perfect bliss, united with God. Absent a body, we would not have any cause to feel pain or fear of death. Absent a mind, we would not have any cause to feel anxiety or fear of the future. The only thing that would exist would be consciousness.

And it would be as boring as shit.

What would it be like to not suffer? It would be to live a life that was utterly devoid of meaning. Without the possibility of suffering, it wouldn’t matter what actions we chose. Every choice would lead to an identical outcome, at least as far as suffering is concerned. As such, our choices would be totally meaningless. We’d simply drift senselessly through life, like a leaf on a river.

This absence of meaning is the root of spiritual suffering, a worse affliction than any physical suffering could be. People rarely kill themselves from physical suffering, but they kill themselves from spiritual suffering every day. The physical suffering inherent to life, then, is not the worst thing in the world. Neither is the emotional suffering that is also inherent to life on account of that we cannot possibly satiate all of our desires.

We might have to act like physical and emotional suffering is ultimately terrible in order to give life meaning, but the reality is that an absence of meaning would be an even greater suffering.

It’s possible, then, for an omnibenevolent God to allow a minor suffering in order to prevent a major one. If the meaninglessness that accompanies existence in a state of perfect bliss can only be overcome by casting individual fragments of consciousness into a world of eternal misery, then so be it. Cast us, O God, into eternal misery!

At this point, some people will ask: “If Elementalists think that suffering is good, what’s stopping them from deliberately acting to increase suffering? If suffering gives life meaning, then why not go around raping and murdering? After all, it would create plenty of meaning in people’s lives as they struggled to resist you.”

Such questioners must be referred to the Law of Assortative Reincarnation. Elementalists believe that the energy one expresses into the world becomes the energy of one’s consciousness, and that the energy one receives from the world is a reflection of that same consciousness. As within, so without, and as without, so within.

An Elementalist would only act to increase the level of suffering in the world if they themselves wished to incarnate in a world of beings who behaved in that manner. Because this is extremely unlikely, it’s also extremely unlikely that an Elementalist would knowingly act to cause more suffering. The Elementalist belief is that there is enough suffering in the world naturally to give everyone’s life meaning, and so it doesn’t need to be added to.

In summary, Elementalists see no contradiction in believing in an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God despite the presence of evil. It doesn’t matter that a will to cause suffering exists in this world, because that will ameliorates a greater suffering: that of living a meaningless life.

If you enjoyed reading this essay, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2019 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis). A compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018 and the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 are also available.

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Is It Time For New Zealand To Embrace Apartheid?

Most people consider apartheid to be one of the recent century’s many evils. Elderly Kiwis speak with pride of opposing the 1981 Springbok tour and helping to bring the regime in South Africa to its knees. Today, though, it’s apparent that race-based policies are making a comeback. This essay asks the inevitable question.

To Kiwis in Generation X, apartheid was placed along the Holocaust as an example of the worst of all possible crimes – racism. We were made to write essays in school denouncing it. The television and radio told us every day that ending it was one of the world’s most pressing issues. So when apartheid ended with the democratic elections in 1994, we all cheered.

In recent years, however, apartheid has surged back into fashion. The powers that be, for reasons nefarious, have encouraged a renaissance in racial consciousness. In 2020, most people’s identities are once again based primarily around their racial heritage. It’s once again common for people to think of themselves as their race first and as a Kiwi second.

In New Zealand, successive strategic Government decisions have rejected the idea that New Zealanders are one people under one law. They have enshrined separatist sentiments, promulgating the belief that the essential nature of relations between whites and Maoris is one of oppression, deceit and exploitation.

Part of the New New Zealand history is that white people have stolen some innumerable wealth from the Maoris, and that justice demands therefore that the Maoris get their own back on white people whenever they can. This blatantly racist narrative has inspired an anti-racist counter-reaction, as the nation has been set against itself.

Anti-racists were appalled by recent news that the Sixth Labour Government was allocating coronavirus support funding on the basis of race. GPs of Maoris and Pacific Islanders were given $4.50 per patient, but GPs of white people were only given $1.50 unless those patients had been previously marked out as belonging to the poorest quintile. This is a blatantly racist policy, and some were surprised it was even legal.

Given that the most recent Budget allocated $1,000,000,000 to Maori causes alone, some could be forgiven for thinking that the Sixth Labour Government had given up on the white working class completely, and had settled for being a brown party. If this is the case, then we’re arguably on our way to an apartheid system where political factions argue for racial interests first and foremost.

This news came in the context of the realisation that the Police had no intention of stopping certain Maori tribes from blockading public roads, particularly roads in Northland. Despite the fact that blockading a public road is a crime, the Police have not made any arrests, and have even said that they weren’t going to do anything about it.

So many people have supported these actions that it seems as if New Zealand is taking tentative steps towards a fully apartheid system, where different laws apply depending on one’s skin colour.

The question raised by this essay is: should New Zealand embrace this shift, and institute full apartheid? Should we organise our society to reflect a fundamental and unbreachable difference between Maoris and non-Maoris, such that the two different groups cross each others’ paths as little as possible?

The first step would be to entrench the Maori Roll. This would mean that all Maoris were forced to vote in the Maori electorates whether they wanted to or not. Their race being their defining quality, they would no longer be eligible for the General Roll. Correspondingly, Maori voters would not be permitted any influence over non-Maori affairs.

The second step would be to declare certain areas as tribal reservations. In principle, these already exist. The areas being blocked by roadblocks are, by virtue of that residents are allowed to block them, effectively the same as North American-style reservations. Eventually, Maoris would be transported from the cities into these tribal enclaves.

Future steps would entail the institution of separate drinking fountains, toilets and beaches. Sports leagues would also be segregated, with a special Maori league for rugby. Maori players would no longer be eligible for the All Blacks or Black Caps.

The reality, of course, is that apartheid between Maoris and whites in New Zealand is impossible on account of that they’re already too mixed together.

At least 25% of New Zealanders – including the author of this piece – are some kind of mixed-race Northern European/Polynesian. Those of us who are cannot reasonably be expected to pick a side in the great race war that so many seem to be agitating for.

If you’re a mixed race white-Maori, you are probably the result of a relationship in which a white person and a Maori loved each other. Your entire existence is an expression of co-operation and goodwill between these two peoples. Therefore, it’s impossible for a Kiwi of mixed blood to choose one side over the other, any more than they could choose their left hand over their right one.

The majority of New Zealand already has white ancestry. Sooner or later, the majority of the country will also have Maori ancestry – this is inevitable given that Maori ancestry is already carried by many Kiwis who are indistinguishable from fully white people, and that interbreeding rates between Maoris and whites are extremely high (the average Maori woman is more likely to breed with a non-Maori than with another Maori).

Seeing as there is no reproductive barrier between the two groups, it seems inevitable that mixed-race white-Kiwis will eventually comprise a majority of Kiwis. From that point, there’s no looking back.

If apartheid really is impossible, then it’s a mistake to take steps towards it. That means that all separatist measures have to be opposed, both intellectually and legally. No Treaty favouritism, no race-based funding, no Maori roadblocks, no official narrative of hatred, division and revenge. It’s time to replace our national narrative with Esoteric Aotearoanism.

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Paula Bennett’s Cannabis Stance Emblematic Of National’s Failure

Yesterday’s Reid Research poll suggested complete and utter failure for the National Party in this September’s election. Most media commentators rushed to congratulate Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Party, and suggested that their steady hand during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic was the reason for the good polling. The alternative explanation, as this essay will explore, is that National are shit.

The poll suggested that Labour is currently favoured to win 56% of the vote at the next general election. This would only be a fraction lower than what the African National Congress won in last year’s general election in South Africa, a country often criticised for being a one-party state. It’s a triumphant poll for Labour supporters; their opposition lies scattered and disorganised.

Predictably, most National supporters reacted by bleating about how Reid Research was in Ardern’s back pocket and how everything will be different once the economic effects of the lockdowns are more widely understood. But it won’t be. The fact is that the country has fundamentally lost confidence in the current National leadership.

This magazine reminded everyone last year, in response to increased complaining about the human rights abuses committed by the Sixth Labour Government, that Labour were only in power because National were shit. The Fifth National Government had unmistakably demonstrated its indifference to the suffering of New Zealand’s working class and younger generations, and, subsequently, Winston Peters went with Labour after the 2017 General Election.

Nothing has changed on National’s part.

Deputy Leader Paula Bennett has announced that she’ll be voting to keep putting cannabis users in cages this September. She isn’t bothered that cannabis prohibition costs the taxpayer $400,000,000 a year to enforce, or that it causes great suffering to many of her fellow citizens for no justifiable reason. She wants to charge on with cannabis prohibition as if we’ve learned nothing at all from the past 45 years of failure.

This position is a microcosm of National’s failings.

We tried the politics of cruelty for nine years – the term of the Fifth National Government. We saw John Key and then Bill English sit on their arses as medicinal cannabis was legalised across the world, leaving desperate Kiwis to suffer needlessly. They wasted some $3,600,000,000 on enforcing cannabis prohibition during their term, with nothing to show for it at the end.

During those nine years, we saw the suicide rate climb as the mental health system was pared down to the bare bones. Banking and finance interests grew fat and wealthy, while working New Zealanders were driven first into debt and then to the wall. The National Party rejected all pleas for relief with the same contemptuous indifference that the previous National Government had shown.

By 2017, New Zealanders decided that they’d had enough cruelty. National lost so much support that they lost their grip on power, and Winston Peters dealt the killing blow. It seems that National didn’t learn much from this, however. They have continued to campaign for a kick in the guts to all the usual victims.

Bennett’s position on cannabis shows that National still don’t give a fuck at all. They don’t give a fuck about science, or evidence, or what’s happening with cannabis law reform overseas. They’re just drifting along, in their own little bubble, as if it were still the 1990s.

Things were different in the 1990s. The Fourth National Government passed a Budget in 1991 that left the children of poor families to go hungry, and were rewarded. Kiwis didn’t care about hungry kids then, so we voted National back into power – twice. In the 1990s, we didn’t give a fuck either. But we do now (at least generally speaking).

New Zealand, and the world, have moved on from beggar thy neighbour politics, but the current National leadership has been slow to see it.

Today’s National Party are so out of touch with the average New Zealander that they might as well have a Deputy Leader who wants to put homosexuals in cages. Bennett’s position on cannabis is ludicrous in the light of existing evidence. The electorate inevitably punishes someone holding antiquated positions, and cannabis prohibition is an antiquated method of dealing with cannabis misuse.

To be in favour of cannabis prohibition today is to deny reality. A person is insane if they think that, by using the criminal justice system to put cannabis users in cages, the Government decreases the sum total of human suffering. Kiwi voters can sense this, and so they have overwhelmingly chosen to support the opposition.

The National Party needs to move away from the politics of hate that have characterised it in recent decades, and accept that policies like cannabis prohibition belong in history’s garbage can. This might necessitate a clearout of their current leadership. Nikki Kaye has previously demonstrated a 21st Century approach to cannabis law reform, and the electorate might reward this good sense over what Bridges and Bennett are offering.

Vince McLeod is the author of The Case For Cannabis Law Reform, the comprehensive collection of arguments for ending cannabis prohibition.

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Everything’s Legal If You Have Superior Firepower

The majority of New Zealanders wander the streets in a child-like stupor, thoughts of flickering television and cellphone screens like a safety blanket around their minds. So when reality intrudes, it can have a powerfully disturbing effect. Sometimes people realise that life is much different to what the screens say it is. This essay explains one recent example.

Much discussion has filled conscious space recently on the subject of whether the Level 4 coronavirus lockdowns were legal in New Zealand. Many people, including Leader of the Opposition Simon Bridges, have questioned whether New Zealand law actually affords the Government the ability to shutdown the entire country and to force people to stay in their homes.

Even more discussion was created by the release of the Sixth Labour Government’s COVID-19 Public Health Response Bill recently. Section 20 gives the right to any “enforcement officer” (notably not “Police officer”) to enter private property without a warrant if they have “reasonable grounds to believe” that Section 11 of the bill is not being complied with.

This section of the bill has upset many people, because it seems to be doing away with a number of fundamental human rights. It seems like we New Zealanders have suddenly lost the right to free assembly and the right to unreasonable search and seizure. How, these people are asking, can such a thing be possible?

Many of the people commentating on these issues haven’t thought hard enough about how the world actually works.

There are five million of us stuck down here in the South Pacific, closer to the middle of nowhere than any other nation. The British Empire that created the order of New Zealand society is long, long, long gone, the rump state (the United Kingdom) now being a sad parody of its former glory. We have not been independent for long enough to have created a philosophical or spiritual tradition that we can fall back on for wisdom.

Our situation is very much like that of William Golding’s boys in Lord of the Flies. There is no higher power to which we can appeal. There is no wise and benevolent authority looking out for the goodwill of all people. There is no God here, just the Sixth Labour Government. We’re all alone – and this loneliness risks turning us feral.

In the situation we’re in, the ten thousand or so Police officers in the country are the law. If you doubt this assertion, ask yourself this – what happens when a Police officer breaks the law? The answer is: nothing. If you doubt that assertion, wait for something to come from today’s revelation that the Police trialled facial recognition technology on the populace without their knowledge, and without permission to do so.

Or wait for anything to come from the Operation Whakahumanu harassment campaign, where hundreds of Police officers were sent to the houses of various Internet commentators in an effort to intimidate them into silence. Using the Police to intimidate one’s political critics is illegal – but there is no-one to hold the perpetrators to account.

The reality is this: the Government of our country is a pack of pirates, who have arrogated to themselves the right to enslave the rest of us with laws that are enforced by arse-licking sycophants, who are themselves happy to destroy their fellow man in exchange for a full belly. This is true whether the Prime Minister is from Labour or National, because in either case they represent the piratical ruling class and not the New Zealand people.

The arse-licking sycophants don’t care what the Government tells them to do, as long as they get paid and get pats on the head for being good boys. As this column has previously discussed, the Police will kill to enforce any law, no matter how trivial. This follows inevitably from the fact, as this column as also previously discussed, that the psychology of Police officers and their relationship to the Government is analogous to that of dogs and their masters.

However, if you don’t like it, what can you do about it? They have all the guns, therefore there’s nothing you can do, in practice, to resist their will. As Mao Tse Tung realised, political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. One man with a firearm can easily keep several dozen under control out of a fear of getting shot. Ten thousand men with firearms, like our current Police force, confers legitimacy.

New Zealanders mistakenly think that our votes confer legitimacy to the Government, who in turn delegate some legitimacy to the Police. The reality is that whoever has the guns, the organisation and the will to use them has the power, and in our current situation that’s the Police and the Army. Therefore, it is the loyalty of the Police and the Army that confers power – and they take orders from the ruling class, both the visible government and the invisible government.

If you disagree, ask yourself by what process New Zealand law came to be the law in the first place, or ask yourself what the law would be if New Zealand was invaded by a hostile foreign power and an occupation government installed. The fact is that all life on Earth operates under the law of the gun: everything is legal if you have the firepower to get away with making it so.

There is only one simple way out of this grim situation.

The first step is to rally around this sevenfold conception of inherent human rights. The Sevenfold Conception is an elementalist exposition of inherent, God-given human rights that are not to be violated by any government law or action. If all New Zealanders would rally around this conception, we would no longer allow the Government to divide and conquer us by playing off factions that support one right against factions that support another.

The second step is to normalise the recognition of this sevenfold conception of human rights until it becomes commonly accepted, in all instances, that it applies. This will involve the raising of a parallel Police force – one that is loyal to the soil, the water, the wind and the Sun of these isles, and to the people from them above all.

A Police force that has been made to swear to the Sevenfold Conception before becoming officers will not slavishly obey orders to violate the human rights of New Zealanders. Not before the Sevenfold Conception is widely understood, and is widely insisted upon, can we can expect that our rights to free assembly, to self-defence, to free speech, to unreasonable search and seizure and to access spiritual sacraments will go unviolated.

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