Adam And Eve; Through A Survivor's Lens.

The video which provoked this discussion:
​  
(A live reading of this blog)


@giannischrysinas6654  
offered this, in a comments-section discussion:

"Gaslighting is when you know someone's experience is true but you pretend that it isn't." -- My reply: That's a fair definition. Thanks. And yes, that certainly applies to the story we're here discussing. "God" tried to make Adam and Eve doubt
* their own character,
* motives,
* their worthiness to just exist,
* and their worthiness to be loved (rather than used up and thrown away like trash). The writer (technically a plagiarizer and adapter) gaslights their readers; in many ways.
He does that via the "God" character in that story.
He's trying to make abuse seem justified. Why? Because that's what narcissists need. They need to abuse people. And they need that abuse to be either entirely unnoticed or otherwise justified as "totally not abuse". They also need to be seen as the "victim", as part of how their actions are justified. That's where gaslighting becomes essential. So that anyone noticing the severe abuse transpiring right before their eyes ... will hopefully doubt their own mental capacity for identifying what count as abuse.

[Although, this would be taken to a whole other level, once modern fundamentalism refines this gambit into its' purest form, as "Presuppositionalism".] Consider how hard-hitting and unrelenting the abuse and gaslighting really is in that story.   Consider the idea that only a an entirely worthless child would want to: a.) be more like their Father; aspiring towards a beloved and towering parent. b.) be more mutually-relatable with their Father; making a deeper relationship possible. c.) take steps to grow towards a greater understanding of NOT ONLY their parent but also themselves and their life in a greater context. Today, you and I know that these are healthy traits of a loving child; not a bad child. Today, you and I also know that such an extreme treatment heaped upon any vulnerable person ... would be monstrous. Any sufficiently matured victim (if they ever mature enough to really take proper inventory of what they'd been through) would have been internally conflicted; - torn between what she knew was true about her own character and motives vs the simplistic and unfair narrative that the Parental Narcissist was trying to saddle her with. She took a courageous and decisive action towards personal growth. "I know why I wanted to eat that fruit" vs "Daddy says I did it for other reasons. And daddy is making illogical connections between his gaslighting narrative about the facts vs how that supposedly justifies his feelings vs how that supposedly justifies his extreme reactions". So now he is saying "look at what you're making me do to you". He's dressing up his extreme abuse as a necessary manifestation of righteousness. We didn't understand the situation he maneuvered us into. He even let it slip that he realized this; by admitting we didn't become morally culpable until AFTER we ate it. But He's taking no responsibility for how he set me and Adam up for this fall. It wasn't our idea to place a poisonous but tempting tree right in the middle of our garden home. It wasn't our idea to DESIGN us to powerfully WANT things that the tree appealed to. It wasn't our idea to LIE to us about the consequences of eating it; -both direct lies and lies of omission. In fact, we didn't even know what "die" meant. We had no frame of reference for this. Nor were we told about the long term consequences for our descendants. But now he's acting like we were fairly and accurately warned. And now he's making HIS choices OUR responsibility. He's also making every descendant's suffering our responsibility; as if it's "logical" and "ethical" that other people should be: a.) inheriting debts and sufferings from our actions, and b.) assuming they are under such debts, in the absence of good reason to think so, and c.) looking for a way to have those debts paid off. He also admits (later) that he pre-planned all of this with certainty of how it would go, and that it's all part of his plan to have something to "save" everyone from. And all for what? For his highest goal of his own ego being glorified. "Look at me! ... saving some lucky people from the fires I duped someone else into setting!" That means his anger is scripted. It's not genuine. He USED US in his plans to be a Supreme Arsonist so that they could offer refuge FROM those fires of destruction ... to a lucky few who make a string of impressively lucky and undeservedly flattering guesses about him. " [end of paraphrasing what it would have been like for Eve (if she had been real), as she mentally struggled to make sense of her circumstance.] --- --- What are the main themes and objectives to that story? 1. Religiously-themed authoritarianism is divine. 2. Obedience to religious authoritarianism is an ultimate human virtue. 3. Don't even RISK outgrowing your utter dependence on larger-than-life, entitled, cult-personalities. 4. The entirety of your life's meaning and worth are all about how much UTILITY you provide to the entitled and ever-hungering EGO that looms over you. Failing this, all lives are entirely disposable. In reality, "GOD" is the ultimate "Narcissist's mask". While wearing it, anyone can then feel justified in saying "To doubt, question or criticize me ... is to doubt, question or criticize your GOD. Only a worthless person would do such a thing. Worthless people should be treated as such. Use them up and toss them out. Dust off your feet, move on, and never look back". ---- There is so much gaslighting in that story that fully articulating them all would require more pages than the book itself. Now, we can take comfort in the knowledge it's all just stolen and adapted fiction. [Although, most scholars don't like the word "stolen" or "plagiarized". I've heard their reasons for saying "let's not call it that". I think those reasons are junk. Perhaps they feel like it makes their profession less grand or romantic to be studying badly edited and stolen crap. But I'm really not concerned with this.] What these stories reveal is that Major Personality Disorders were common back then, and that such Disordered Persons (same back then as today) tended to rise into stations of prestige and influence. That's where these "holy texts" come from. These stories are a testament to how the writers and adapters saw life, and how they most assuredly treated the unfortunate people in their lives. The fact of these stories being seen by billions of people as a "How To" for thinking and acting in the real world ... continues to be one of the most pervasively powerful drivers for amplifying all human dysfunction and tragedy in our real world. Adam and Eve did not literally exist. But they function as archetypes for people who DO exist.  
Parallel injustices happen every day, in every city, all across the globe. And it will keep on being so terribly common until humanity collectively grows beyond it. To move beyond a limit, we must grow beyond it. This happens as we gain the sight to see beyond it.

For that, we must draw from cognitive sciences and lived experience.