ACTIVISM: SEEKING COSMIC HARMONY NOT PERSONAL ATONEMENT

I participated in supporting the candidacy of John Fetterman, partly because Dr. Oz, who ran against him, is such a quack and fraud. But Fetterman has betrayed our trust with his unbridled support for the genocide against Palestine and his lust for AIPAC money.

But I don’t believe it is necessary to “ make amends” for Fetterman’s betrayal of humanity and justice — we had no way to predict that. The whole atonement/penance/guilt-trip/make-amends is an inheritance from pre-Mosaic superstition.

In Sumerian and Babylonian cultures (3rd–2nd millennium BCE), rituals of expiation were common. If someone sinned or angered the gods (often inferred from bad omens or events), priests conducted purification or substitution rituals (like sacrificing a goat or bread effigy.

Hittite texts describe scapegoat-style rituals, where guilt or impurity was symbolically transferred to an animal or object and cast out, similar to the later Jewish “Azazel” goat in Yom Kippur (Leviticus 16).

In Vedic religion (pre-Hindu), rituals like yajña were offered to balance cosmic and moral order. I suggest a focus on restoring tranquility on the planet Earth rather than expiation for our personal guilt.

…I think we all struggle with the inherited focus on guilt and sin. Liberation may entail release from spiritual bondage as well as the chains of authoritarian law and violence.

Photo: William Holman Hunt — The Scapegoat 1854 Public Domain