Mental Symmetry Forum

2 Corinthians 7:13 refers to ‘the Titus joy’. Looking at this literally, Paul was happy to see the joy of Titus. Symbolically, Titus means ‘honorable’ and joy refers to Teacher emotion. The end of 2 Corinthians 6 describes a new intimate relationship between God in Teacher thought and humanity in Mercy thought. ‘The Titus joy’ gives the impression that a new form of honorable Teacher emotion is being experienced.

The epistle of Titus makes sense when interpreted as a new kind of society that emerges from a new set of ‘honorable’ mental networks that have been transformed by the Teacher mental network of an integrated understanding. 1 Timothy was interpreted as a revitalized global economy in which transformed mental networks are added to the existing economy. Titus appears to be describing something that goes beyond the revitalization of Timothy to a new spiritual economy emerging out of transformed mental networks. This more extensive transformation is also reflected in the list of qualifications in Titus for so-called elders and deacons, which has a more personal and emotional flavor than the list of qualifications given in 1 Timothy.

The final chapter of Titus appears to be describing the interaction between human society and non-human intelligent beings.

A 45 page essay on Titus has been posted.

My previous essay was on 1 Thessalonians where Paul talks repeatedly about wanting to visit Timothy. The name Timothy combines ‘value’ and ‘God’. Value is a core concept of economic thought and a concept of God emerges when a sufficiently general theory applies to personal identity. Therefore, Timothy would represent a global economy guided by universal concepts of value. And Paul wanting to visit Timothy would presumably represent a desire to apply the insights of Paul the apostle to the economy.

Applying this to current society, we live in a global economy that is driven by an inadequate sense of value. Mental symmetry examines lasting value in the light of personal transformation and mental wholeness. The current global economy desperately needs a ‘visit’ from an integrated theory of lasting value.

1 Timothy makes sense when analyzed from this perspective. It describes the development of today’s technical world with its excessive regulations as well as looking at Paul’s path of personal transformation. The rise of wokeism is also outlined in considerable detail. The principles of Paul are then applied to the economy, leading to a transformation of mental networks of society which is followed by an escape from today’s system of servitude to a global elite.

1 Timothy also discusses so-called overseers and deacons. The word overseer actually means ‘looking intently in a fitting manner’ which describes some form of research or development, and the list of qualifications given in 1 Timothy makes sense when interpreted from that perspective. Going further, an academic book that did “an exhaustive study of diakonia in Christian and non-Christian sources from about 200 BCE to 200 CE [found] that in all such sources the word is used to mean ‘messenger’ or ‘emissary’, and has no implications of humility or of helping the needy.” Thus, deacon refers more accurately to advertising or marketing and the list of qualifications given in 1 Timothy makes sense when interpreted from that perspective.

A 110 page essay on 1 Timothy has been posted.

I wrote a brief essay on 1 Thessalonians back in 2016 when I was just starting to analyze biblical books. This epistle needs to be analyzed more carefully because chapter 4 contains the classical passage on the Rapture and that topic is very relevant today considering that much of evangelical Christianity has gone into apocalyptic mode. The result is a 60 page essay that places the verses on the Rapture within the context of the entire epistle.

The verse that describes the second coming in 4:16 outlines four stages: First, there is a voice of authority. Second, this voice is revealed to have great generality in Teacher thought. Third, the Teacher generality descends from the heaven of Teacher thought to impose itself upon human reality. Fourth, a new elite class of humans emerges who are familiar with this Teacher theory.

Four similar stages can be seen in a communist revolution: First, there is a new voice of political authority. Second, this political voice claims to be supported by the theory of Marxism. Third, the theory of Marxism descends from the heaven of political theory to impose itself upon human institutions and daily life. Fourth, a new class of party members emerges who are familiar with the theory of Marxism.

Alien disclosure would also follow the same four stages: First, aliens would reveal themselves as a voice of authority. Second, it would become apparent that aliens (and angels) live within a realm that is characterized by Teacher thought. Third, aliens would use psychic powers to impose their will upon humanity and human society. Fourth, a new class of humans abductees would emerge who were familiar with alien thought and practice.

I REALLY do not want this passage to be fulfilled either as a version of communism or as an alien disclosure. That is because neither Communist Party member nor aliens grasp what is required for human well-being. It is also becoming increasingly clear that evangelical Christianity has an inadequate grasp of what is required for human well-being. Therefore, I have been developing mental symmetry as a general Teacher theory of human well-being in order to search for a nicer way of fulfilling this passage.

1 Thessalonians is the only epistle where the author ‘adjures by the Lord’ (in 5:27) to have the letter read. I think that this is because 1 Thessalonians describes the process of going from apostle to fellow believer, from legislator to fellow citizen. Preaching some message, such as the message of the Rapture, does not guarantee that one will be able to enjoy the benefits of this message. Paul mentions this in 1 Corinthians 9:27. Instead, an apostle, legislator, or preacher has to go through a long and painful process of becoming small (the name Paul means ‘small’), experiencing personal rejection, and waiting until others apply the message, before finally being able to enjoy the fruit of the message along with others. Similarly, I would dearly love to live within a society that is guided by mental symmetry, not because that would make me and my theory well-known, but rather because I have become convinced that mental symmetry really does summarize key principles for maximizing human well-being.

The Antioch School System is “an accredited and integrated tool designed to help church leaders train current and future ministry leaders.” I was not aware of this system until a friend asked me to evaluate it from a cognitive perspective. The result is this short essay.

In brief, the Antioch School is an accredited university level system of education that partners with local churches which attempts to avoid some of the shortcomings of the normal academic system.

Unfortunately, the Antioch School replaces the academic bias with a corporate bias while limiting Biblical analysis to a strict historical reading of the text, explicitly rejecting the cognitive approach taken by mental symmetry.

The Antioch School System may be appropriate and helpful for third world Christian students and it may be useful as a new practical paradigm of education but it is inadequate as a general paradigm of knowledge.

Edward Bernays is one of the most influential modern people that the average person has never heard of. He was a nephew of Sigmund Freud and developed the field of public relations. Although he was a Jew, his methods of propaganda were enthusiastically adopted by the Nazi regime. And the methods of marketing that he pioneered dominate modern advertising.

I have added a 28 page analysis of Bernays to the end of the essay on wokeism. This analysis looks at his 1928 book entitled Propaganda, examines his excellent description of mental networks, and attempts to understand the precise relationship between Bernays’ propaganda and Nazi horror.

I was researching the topic of wokeism in preparation for writing an essay and I stumbled across the new discourses website by James Lindsay, which contains many articles on various aspects of wokeism including an encyclopedia of wokeist terms. Lindsay is clearly anti-wokeist but he is also a careful scholar who has researched the topic of wokeism extensively and writes clearly and carefully on the topic.

Thus, I thought that it would be more effective to use mental symmetry to analyze the new discourses website. I have not listened to the audio, but I have read most of the articles and have gone through most of the encyclopedia. The result is a 100 page essay that analyzes wokeism from a cognitive perspective based primarily upon the material contained on newdiscourses.

Like Lindsay, I think that wokeism is a form of insanity that threatens Western society, but a cognitive analysis makes it possible to understand the nature of this insanity and place it in a larger perspective. In brief, mental symmetry suggests that the mind can function in three primary ways: technical thought, mental networks, and normal thought. Technical thought pursues some goal upon some limited playing field guided by a collection of carefully-defined rules, as illustrated by a game. Mental networks can be thought of as emotionally triggered schema, and the mind uses mental networks to represent people and guide social interaction. Normal thought works with patterns and analogies that are known with partial certainty.

Technical thought has been used to physically transform the world through science and technology. Meanwhile, the emotional realm of mental networks that guides culture, religion, and social interaction has remained largely unchanged. This has led to the juxtaposition of clever technology and dumb consumers. For instance, designing, constructing, and running the Internet requires extensive technical thought. But the average Internet user is driven by mental networks to explore social media and has no concept of the underlying technical complexity.

Wokeism appeals to the mindset of the dumb consumer, and the insanity of wokeism threatens the rational thinking of modern technical thought. But technical thought actually enabled this insanity by transforming the physical world in an objective and specialized manner and then shielding the consumer from technical thought. While wokeism is irrational, it is also an accurate description of how mental networks are functioning within the mind of the wokeist. This essay uses the material taken from the newdiscourses website to analyze various aspects of wokeism (including Marxism) from a cognitive perspective.

In 2020 I wrote a 640 page essay on Matthew 2-24 which shows that the Gospel of Matthew can be interpreted symbolically as a detailed prophecy of Western civilization. I have just finished a 550 page essay on Luke 1-12 which shows that the Gospel of Luke can also be interpreted symbolically as a detailed prophecy of Western civilization. This analysis stops at chapter 12 because that appears to correspond to the current time.

Comparing these two, Matthew contains more details about the medieval era and the enlightenment. Luke contains more details when looking at the last century. These two essays combined provide about fifty times as much prophetic detail as any other book on biblical prophecy. This prophetic detail is not random but rather makes rational sense as a path of cognitive development for human society. In other words, if one drops the scriptural references from these essays, then they still make sense from a cognitive perspective. This type of cognitive prophetic analysis of Scripture is unprecedented.

In 2020 I wrote a 640 page essay on Matthew 2-24 which shows that the Gospel of Matthew can be interpreted symbolically as a detailed prophecy of Western civilization. As far as I know, showing that the entire original Greek text of a biblical book can be viewed as an extended sequence of prophecy is unprecedented. One might think that those who study biblical prophecy might find such an analysis interesting. But when I have mentioned this research to such individuals I have found that what they really want is a transcendent God who will magically intervene to rescue them from rational thought. They do not want a rational God who uses cognitive mechanisms to lead human society step by step as portrayed in the essay on Matthew.

The previous essay stopped at Matthew 24 because that corresponds to the present time. Since then, I have found that Acts 1-12 appears to start at the present time and continue into the future. That analysis makes it possible to look at the final four chapters of Matthew. I have just posted a 160 page essay on Matthew 25-28. It appears that Acts 1-12 and Matthew 25-28 are both describing a similar period of future history that starts with the present.

My basic premise is that there will soon be what I call a ‘theoretical return of Jesus’. This will not be a ‘rapture’ away from earth to heaven but rather a rational understanding of the nature of Jesus Christ the Incarnation. That will be followed by what I call ‘spiritual technology’, which will add a spiritual dimension to existing technology. This will gradually expand to form a complete spiritual economy. But this spiritual economy will eventually lead to fundamental questions about what it means to be human. Deep fear over where this might lead will cause society to ‘crucify’ the spiritual economy, which will eventually become reborn at a deeper level.

These are the sorts of topics that are normally discussed in science fiction. In contrast, most books on biblical prophecy are like fairy tales that end by saying that ‘Jesus returned and everyone lived happily ever after. The end.’ The essay on Matthew 25-28 talks about angels, spirits, supernatural powers, and even genetic manipulation. But the same cognitive mechanisms still apply, making it possible to discuss the subject rationally as well as compare prophetic incidents with similar episodes in history. In brief, it appears that future society will go through a transition involving the spiritual economy that is similar to the cognitive and religious transition being experienced today. The crucifixion story of Matthew seems to be describing the cycle that will happen in the future, while the crucifixion story of Luke seems to be describing the current cycle that is being experienced today. That hypothesis is briefly explored at the end of the essay on Matthew 25-28.

As far as I can tell, the primary foe to the coming work of incarnation will be a religious system that distinguishes between clergy and laity–between holy and secular. But this continued opposition will force the spiritual economy to continue developing and eventually push it through to a new level of functioning. At the personal level, this opposition will force people to ask themselves whether being a follower of Jesus means submitting to the words and institutions of religious leaders who claim to speak for Jesus, or walking a path that leads to personal salvation. After all, the name Jesus means ‘salvation of God’. This is similar to the way that my cognitive analysis of biblical books has forced me to ask whether believing that the Bible speaks about Jesus means blindly accepting the interpretation of religious leaders who claim to know what the Bible says about Jesus, or studying the original Greek text of the New Testament from the perspective of following a path of personal transformation and salvation.

The book of Acts makes sense as a detailed prophetic description of the near future. (Acts 7 appears to be looking back at our present as the past of the future.) The picture that emerges is consistent with the prophetic description found in other biblical books, with a theoretical return of Jesus followed by spiritual technology. This grows into a spiritual economy that expands into alien disclosure. This is followed by a rethinking of existing religion and the backlash of the kingdom of the beast. That leads to… well, read the essay to find out.

I know that this sounds more like science fiction than theology. However, I have used the same methodology and the same symbolic meanings that I use to analyze ALL books—both religious and secular. And the same cognitive mechanisms that have guided the past and rule the present also continue to function in the future. In addition, this analysis looks so closely at the original Greek text that I stopped using the NASB translation halfway through the essay because it was insufficiently accurate and started using the Berean Literal Bible.

I have uploaded a 380 page two-part essay (book?) on the first twelve chapters of Acts. The analysis stops at the beginning of Paul’s missionary journeys. By the time one reaches the end of chapter 12, one becomes suspicious that these missionary journeys may end up resembling the voyages of Star Trek more than the travels of Paul the Apostle.

Daniel 11 contains a detailed prophecy about the rise of Alexander the Great and the feuding of two of his successor kingdoms. The first part of the chapter describes history with sufficient accuracy that most modern scholars ‘conclude’ that it must have been written during the time of the Abomination of Desolation of Antiochus IV mentioned in verse 31. However, chapter 11 stops corresponding with Jewish history after about verse 35, and the rest of the book of Daniel is regarded by prophetic scholars as applying to some future time.

I have found that the Bible makes sense when treated as extended sequences and analyzed from a cognitive perspective. One of my hypotheses is that the divine plan was for science to emerge in Alexandria as a result of Greek and Jewish interaction. This almost happened. Applying this hypothesis to Daniel 11 leads to the suggestion that science did not emerge because Jewish history diverged from the divine plan at about verse 35. This suggestion can be explored by comparing the verses around Daniel 11:35 with Jewish history during the period of the Maccabees. And Jewish history indicates that the Maccabees made several unwise decisions that had lasting consequences for the course of Judaism.

Another general hypothesis is that the divine plan can be delayed but not thwarted. This leads to the suggestion that the sequence of Daniel 11 will eventually be carried out. Previous essays have shown that both Matthew 2-24 and Revelation 4-11 describe the course of Western history in symbolic form. Applying the same cognitive analysis to Daniel 11-12 leads to the conclusion that Daniel 11 describes Western history starting with the Enlightenment. This interpretation leads to the conclusion that we are currently (in early 2021) at about verse 40.

I have posted a 130 page essay that describes the historical divergence between Daniel 11 and the behavior of the Maccabees, and then examines the correspondence between Daniel 11 and recent Western history.