As I was musing this morning, it struck me (but not for the first time) how all actual societal honours (prizes, awards, recognition) are now corrupted...
How it is a simple fact that those institutions which award honours - whether the monarch, government, NGO or supranational agency; in science, literature, arts, academia, medicine, churches or the socio-political realms - such as law and administration... all are corrupted beyond the point of having embraced net pursuit of evil.
Given this situation; I could not imagine any honour, from any organisation, that would be worth anything now. Quite the contrary! To receive an 'honour' from any actual modern institution is to be marked and tainted, since one has been 'recognised' as an exemplar of the values of an essentially-evil group-entity.
Honours - which are 'supposed' to encourage and enforce both societal cohesion and social teleology; are instead systematically-deployed to dissolve all Godly, natural, spontaneous and social bonds; to set each against all; to delete overall purpose, hence destroy genuine motivation.
The effect of this is an extreme form of abstract 'socially-distancing'. In our inverted world, to be 'honoured' is to be 'marked as his own' by a representative of Satan.
Simultaneously - the best are ignored, if not actively hurt. And thus the organising status structure of human association has been destroyed, and reconstituted against-itself.
It seems as if the world in 2020 is a reification, a materialist model, of Ahrimanic spiritual reality. Our public, bureaucratic, media-mediated world of dead-data explicitly represents its own demonic ideals. Our tokens of esteem have become injections of poison.
Hidden in plain sight... Hidden, to those on the inside of this ideology.
Incoherent chaos to those whose understanding is superficial and mechanistic.
Obvious to those who recognise the malign guiding intelligence, and its goals.
2020 is spiritual war, not an arena of political in-fighting; the true proximate measure of success is Goodness, not happiness; the true ultimate stakes are damnation, not death.
Saturday, 8 August 2020
Wednesday, 5 August 2020
What are Their plans for Us?
I suppose Their eventual plan is for a massive population reduction - down to about 1 billion (that's what some of Them have said, anyway).
So I guess the intermediate stage will be a world of almost pure materialism and denial of the spirit; in which 'non-essential' workers are pretty much on permanent house-arrest and curfew (like a couple of months ago); living off diminishing doles provided by the 'essential' workers - who are paid less, work more, and are told exactly what work to do.
And then, incrementally, being killed-off by whatever combination of starvation, disease, poison and violence best suits each location and society.
But then, this isn't an end-point either, because these are demonic powers - and They have no End Point except self-chosen-damnation.
The ongoing situation is being engineered to prevent awakening among both the doomed masses and the Establishment and their minions who are dooming them.
The Establishment need to believe that they are doing-'Good' (i.e. to believe that evil is Good) - and that is why the social goals cannot be approached directly and explicitly. The 'cover stories' (Climate Change, Antiracism, Birdemic etc) are aiming at the Establishment self-conception, mainly.
These are among the Big Lies that enable Them to convince Themselves that they are fighting for Good.
When only the Establishment and Their minions remain - they will be set against each other - pursuing different evil priorities (sexual revolution versus antiracism, socialism versus feminism, fighting Climate Change versus fighting the Birdemic etc). That is, a war of rival versions of inverted-Good.
The Godless masses seem able to damn themselves whatever happens, and for whatever reason - whatever implausible and incoherent, temporary fig leaf of justification is casually tossed in their direction.
The one thing the masses seem sure about through everything - is that God is not real. Or, if God is real; God is not important. Therefore, the Only thing which Really matters is that their own short-term suffering should be minimal.
So long as the masses can imagine being forced into a worse situation than they currently inhabit, they will strive to avoid that worse situation At Any Price.
Hell is a world of negatives - there is no positive Good, only the double negative of lesser suffering.
Taken from my comment at Francis Berger's Blog.
Hope for this world? And/or the next?
As Christians, we hope for the next world - for life beyond the portal of death. It is this hope that prevents despair; and this hope is the natural (unforced) consequence of trust in Jesus Christ; which is trust that he can and will lead us to resurrection into Heaven; also trust in God (the creator) who will ensure that we are able to do this, if we choose.
But what of hope in this world and for this-world (the temporary world of our mortal life)? Well, such this-worldly hope is not necessary. I see no reason why a Christian must live in hope of betterment of this-world.
The main thing that can be said in favour of hope in this-world is that we never truly know all the relevant information, nor how other people will choose; thus we never know for sure that the worst will happen. This is the best argument for never-giving-up.
We may calculate that there is zero hope; but our calculations may be defective and will certainly be based upon incomplete - hence distorted - information; plus at least some of the information in our calculation will be false - lies or misunderstandings.
However, there is nothing wrong with a Christian having no realistic hope in this-world - so long as it does not lead to despair and giving-up. A Christian might perfectly well write-off this world, and work for the next.
But a hope-less Christian would also need to recognise that - in the meanwhile - there is a reason for his being alive, here and now, in the situation he actually is-in; and that therefore there is something important that he ought to be doing - some lesson that he yet needs to learn.
The point I wish to make here is that I think it is probably a waste of time for Christians desparately to try and generate some grounds for hope in this world - but I would observe that many Christians (including myself) are prone to do this. I mean, we tend to use the wriggle-room of uncertainty about the future to insert some grossly improbable scenarios about what might happen - like tens of millions of people suddenly becoming Christian (at the last minute).
Of course it might really happen, such is not precluded --- but really it is futile to waste our time on such scenarios - and certainly we should not Pin Our Hopes upon them - or else despair is even more likely.
I think it would be better to say something like: I see no realistic hope for the world from our present situation and on current trends; but I might be wrong... And leave it at that.
If we try to define one or several of the most probable directions of the (highly improbable) saving of this world, and if then we then put most of our (finite) resources of time and work into accomplishing this remote hope - then we are probably misdirecting our efforts.
When the future of this world is evaluated as hope-less, this means it is unworthy of any specific hope; and it is wrong to push for (almost-certainly) futile hopes - when there are so many other things that need to be done, that we personally can do, and which have much better hopes of yielding fruit.
Our proper task is most likely to be something specific and close-to-home, and directed at preparation for Heaven, which has reasonable hope of yielding fruit --- rather than some-thing directed at saving a world/ civilization/ nation etc. that (our honest evaluation tells us) does not want to be saved and very-probably is not salvageable.
Tuesday, 4 August 2020
Motivation misdirection (more on why we are such cowards)
A major reason why modern people are such cowards (compared with all previous generations) is that they lack strong motivation - this is ultimately because they lack religion; and proximately because the actual primary motivations that modern people do have are feak and weeble.
We are officially supposed to be motivated by artifical, false, incoherent, changeable, and distant concerns. That is what is permitted and encouraged; and any other concerns we might have that are personal, based on experience and common sense - are demonised and (increasingly) punished.
Modern motivations are feak and weeble because they are misdirected: deliberately. What I mean by this is that our precise, primary natural and spontaneous motivations; are culturally-misdirected into vague, secondhand abstractions.
Take for example the three things that are this week supposed to motivate the people of the world: 1. the birdemic, 2. antiracism and 3. CO2-related global/ climate/ warming/ change...
1. Pretty-much everything we know about the threat of global pandemic is abstract, statistical and via the mass media; concerning people we don't know, don't care about - and maybe don't exist. We are supposed to be concerned not by the actual risks to our health but acting to keep 'other people' safe. And this is not something that lasts a few days or weeks, but the New Normal. In essence, we are supposed to be motivated in our moment-to-moment actions, now and forever, by our desire to contribute to better data summaries, and the blanket approval of the media/ government.
2. Antiracism. Everybody is supposed to care passionately about some incident that is supposed to have happened in the USA. We know nothing about this except what comes via the mass media; and we have been told what this is supposed to mean, and what we are supposed to do about it. In sum, the supposedly major ethical principle of our lives is that unknown strangers in foreign countries who are (apparently in as many ways as possible) defined as qualitatively different from ourselves (yet, somehow, simultaneously identical...); must matter more to each of us than people who we know and love - our relations, friends and neighbours.
3. The 'environmentalism' of change/ warming/ climate/ global/ carbon... Again personal knowledge and experience counts for nothing. We are instead told to care only about the average concentration of a chemical, assertions about what is has happened thousands of miles away and hundreds of years ago. We must believe the truth and accuracy of statements linking remote causes with distant effects, mathematical theories about the future, socio-economic hypotheses about what 'must' be done - and we are expected to feel all this as an overwhelmingly urgent imperative.
In sum, we are cowards because we cannot genuinely and strongly and personally be motivated by unnatural, artificial abstractions; and these unnatural, artificial abstractions are the only ones officially allowed us.
Thus abstraction doth make cowards of us all...
We are officially supposed to be motivated by artifical, false, incoherent, changeable, and distant concerns. That is what is permitted and encouraged; and any other concerns we might have that are personal, based on experience and common sense - are demonised and (increasingly) punished.
Modern motivations are feak and weeble because they are misdirected: deliberately. What I mean by this is that our precise, primary natural and spontaneous motivations; are culturally-misdirected into vague, secondhand abstractions.
Take for example the three things that are this week supposed to motivate the people of the world: 1. the birdemic, 2. antiracism and 3. CO2-related global/ climate/ warming/ change...
1. Pretty-much everything we know about the threat of global pandemic is abstract, statistical and via the mass media; concerning people we don't know, don't care about - and maybe don't exist. We are supposed to be concerned not by the actual risks to our health but acting to keep 'other people' safe. And this is not something that lasts a few days or weeks, but the New Normal. In essence, we are supposed to be motivated in our moment-to-moment actions, now and forever, by our desire to contribute to better data summaries, and the blanket approval of the media/ government.
2. Antiracism. Everybody is supposed to care passionately about some incident that is supposed to have happened in the USA. We know nothing about this except what comes via the mass media; and we have been told what this is supposed to mean, and what we are supposed to do about it. In sum, the supposedly major ethical principle of our lives is that unknown strangers in foreign countries who are (apparently in as many ways as possible) defined as qualitatively different from ourselves (yet, somehow, simultaneously identical...); must matter more to each of us than people who we know and love - our relations, friends and neighbours.
3. The 'environmentalism' of change/ warming/ climate/ global/ carbon... Again personal knowledge and experience counts for nothing. We are instead told to care only about the average concentration of a chemical, assertions about what is has happened thousands of miles away and hundreds of years ago. We must believe the truth and accuracy of statements linking remote causes with distant effects, mathematical theories about the future, socio-economic hypotheses about what 'must' be done - and we are expected to feel all this as an overwhelmingly urgent imperative.
In sum, we are cowards because we cannot genuinely and strongly and personally be motivated by unnatural, artificial abstractions; and these unnatural, artificial abstractions are the only ones officially allowed us.
Thus abstraction doth make cowards of us all...
Monday, 3 August 2020
How is it possible to discuss metaphysical assumptions?
One reason for the near-universal uninterest-in/ hostility-towards metaphysics (i.e. the philosophy of our primary assumptions about reality) is that people assume that there is nothing to say about them.
Person 1 claims to assume ABC, while Person 2 asserts BCD, while 3 asserts E and F... and where can we go from there? Each person argues from somewhat, or totally, different premises - and no real discussion seems possible; merely each party asserting his own (possibly unique) point of view...
In practice, however, there is work to be done before any such negative conclusion is possible.
Firstly, most people deny they have any (un-proven/ un-proveable/ un-evidenced/ not-derived-from-logic) primary and foundational assumptions - they would need to come to a point where they acknowledged that they did simply-assume some things as valid (even though unaware of them).
Others might claim assumptions, but closer examination reveals that their self-knowledge was in error: either their true assumptions are significantly/ altogether different than supposed; or else the people have not sufficiently and correctly articulated their own assumptions - and when these assumptions are better stated, perhaps they will no longer be accepted as valid?
One way in which such errors come to light is by identifying assumptions and following them to their implications - to make sure we endorse the implications. Another 'check' is that all the assumptions are compatible, and do not contradict or clash.
So, there is usually a fair bit of work to be done before engagement.
Perfect coherence is not necessary; because all linguistic or mathematical statements of assumptions are secondary and indirect 'models' of reality; simplified hence ultimately wrong; being necessarily selective and biased models of the fullness of reality.
Once assumptions are acknowledged and indentified and found to be sufficiently coherent; then their origins can be looked-into. From whence did these assumptions arise, and what kinds of check have been applied to them?
Are they perhaps spontaneous and intuitive, or were they arrived at from external experts, or from logical analysis; or are they scientific hypotheses - and if so, what is the foundation of the validity of testing them?
What is regareed (assumed to be) the best origin for assumptons - and why?
When one has oneself done metaphysical work, one becomes able to identify others who have done (or are doing) this. Even when/ if that other person settles upon different assumptions, or reaches different conclusions from them; then it is often interesting and helpful to see how they proceed.
I personally am well-disposed towards any well-motivated writer who is making an honest and sustained metaphysical effort - and will usually feel I am learning something worth learning.
In a world where unconscious, unexamined, denied and incoherent metaphysics is not just the norm - but increasingly mandatory and the necessary rationalisation for strategic evil - I feel among friends when I read any real metaphysics, from anyone.
Person 1 claims to assume ABC, while Person 2 asserts BCD, while 3 asserts E and F... and where can we go from there? Each person argues from somewhat, or totally, different premises - and no real discussion seems possible; merely each party asserting his own (possibly unique) point of view...
In practice, however, there is work to be done before any such negative conclusion is possible.
Firstly, most people deny they have any (un-proven/ un-proveable/ un-evidenced/ not-derived-from-logic) primary and foundational assumptions - they would need to come to a point where they acknowledged that they did simply-assume some things as valid (even though unaware of them).
Others might claim assumptions, but closer examination reveals that their self-knowledge was in error: either their true assumptions are significantly/ altogether different than supposed; or else the people have not sufficiently and correctly articulated their own assumptions - and when these assumptions are better stated, perhaps they will no longer be accepted as valid?
One way in which such errors come to light is by identifying assumptions and following them to their implications - to make sure we endorse the implications. Another 'check' is that all the assumptions are compatible, and do not contradict or clash.
So, there is usually a fair bit of work to be done before engagement.
Perfect coherence is not necessary; because all linguistic or mathematical statements of assumptions are secondary and indirect 'models' of reality; simplified hence ultimately wrong; being necessarily selective and biased models of the fullness of reality.
Once assumptions are acknowledged and indentified and found to be sufficiently coherent; then their origins can be looked-into. From whence did these assumptions arise, and what kinds of check have been applied to them?
Are they perhaps spontaneous and intuitive, or were they arrived at from external experts, or from logical analysis; or are they scientific hypotheses - and if so, what is the foundation of the validity of testing them?
What is regareed (assumed to be) the best origin for assumptons - and why?
When one has oneself done metaphysical work, one becomes able to identify others who have done (or are doing) this. Even when/ if that other person settles upon different assumptions, or reaches different conclusions from them; then it is often interesting and helpful to see how they proceed.
I personally am well-disposed towards any well-motivated writer who is making an honest and sustained metaphysical effort - and will usually feel I am learning something worth learning.
In a world where unconscious, unexamined, denied and incoherent metaphysics is not just the norm - but increasingly mandatory and the necessary rationalisation for strategic evil - I feel among friends when I read any real metaphysics, from anyone.
Why it's best to be English
I take it that being English is the best thing to be - since the mass media regard it as so shameful. The rule in mainstream culture is Anything But English - much as spirituality is Anything But Christianity.
If I was a celebrity; I would call myself Irish - and would years ago have obtained an Irish passport on the basis of my Granny's birthplace; just as I would say I was spiritual but not religious, with a particular interest in Zen - or, even better, Sufism. I would play-up all non-English (exotic, victim-status) aspects in my history as happens in almost every celebrity biography on Wikipedia.
(Exaggerating, inventing and lying-about one's origins and ancestry to claim victim-status is regarded as acceptable; since it displays agreement with the prevalent moral framework, and accepts the validity of our dominant paradigm.)
Since the mass media are puppets of Satan (to put matters succinctly); this hostility tends to suggest that if you are - like me - an English Christian; this might just be the best possible thing to be - simply because the worst kind of people regard you as their prime enemy.
I know this isn't conclusive; because even the most evil people have some good in them; and it might be that there is indeed something especially evil about the English - but on the whole, I take the prevalent anti-Englishness on the part of the most loathsome of persons and institutions as a big compliment!
But why should it be that there is enforced a perpetual Open Season on the English by people who are themselves deeply subservient to the agenda of evil? My understanding is related to what I call Romantic Christianity - and that there was some divinely-required work of this kind that the English were supposed to do, from around 1800-ish...
This Did Not Happen; and instead the English abandoned Christianity and the spiritual; invented such (over the long-term) blights of leftism as radical atheism, the sexual revolution, abolition, pacifism, feminism and socialism; to make modern England among the worst examples of anti-Christian, morally-inverted, soul-crushing, bureaucratic, nihilistic, materialist and despairing nations.
But, apparently, something about the English is still feared by the powers of evil; as was evident after the pro-Brexit vote: there followed a shock wave of (almost incoherent) terror through the Global Establishment, apparently because they feared that the English might awaken to their destiny...
Well, it did not happen, and now shows no sign of happening. To all appearances, the current English are abject in their embrace of the new Globalist, self-loathing, before-'other'-abasing totalitarianism.
But the Establishment remain uneasy, and intend to ensure that the English are pressed-down; and stay on the ground, sprawling and grovelling...
For such reasons, I think it is still - despite everything - best to be English (assuming you are English); and I shall not be trying to pass myself off as anything else.
If I was a celebrity; I would call myself Irish - and would years ago have obtained an Irish passport on the basis of my Granny's birthplace; just as I would say I was spiritual but not religious, with a particular interest in Zen - or, even better, Sufism. I would play-up all non-English (exotic, victim-status) aspects in my history as happens in almost every celebrity biography on Wikipedia.
(Exaggerating, inventing and lying-about one's origins and ancestry to claim victim-status is regarded as acceptable; since it displays agreement with the prevalent moral framework, and accepts the validity of our dominant paradigm.)
Since the mass media are puppets of Satan (to put matters succinctly); this hostility tends to suggest that if you are - like me - an English Christian; this might just be the best possible thing to be - simply because the worst kind of people regard you as their prime enemy.
I know this isn't conclusive; because even the most evil people have some good in them; and it might be that there is indeed something especially evil about the English - but on the whole, I take the prevalent anti-Englishness on the part of the most loathsome of persons and institutions as a big compliment!
But why should it be that there is enforced a perpetual Open Season on the English by people who are themselves deeply subservient to the agenda of evil? My understanding is related to what I call Romantic Christianity - and that there was some divinely-required work of this kind that the English were supposed to do, from around 1800-ish...
This Did Not Happen; and instead the English abandoned Christianity and the spiritual; invented such (over the long-term) blights of leftism as radical atheism, the sexual revolution, abolition, pacifism, feminism and socialism; to make modern England among the worst examples of anti-Christian, morally-inverted, soul-crushing, bureaucratic, nihilistic, materialist and despairing nations.
But, apparently, something about the English is still feared by the powers of evil; as was evident after the pro-Brexit vote: there followed a shock wave of (almost incoherent) terror through the Global Establishment, apparently because they feared that the English might awaken to their destiny...
Well, it did not happen, and now shows no sign of happening. To all appearances, the current English are abject in their embrace of the new Globalist, self-loathing, before-'other'-abasing totalitarianism.
But the Establishment remain uneasy, and intend to ensure that the English are pressed-down; and stay on the ground, sprawling and grovelling...
For such reasons, I think it is still - despite everything - best to be English (assuming you are English); and I shall not be trying to pass myself off as anything else.
Little Lord Fauntleroy by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1886)
Just a brief note to endorse what generations of readers already know: Little Lord Fauntleroy is a superb children's novel!
Having found the same to be true of Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden - I moved on to tackle FHB's earlier, and most famous, story - but I must admit that I had to force myself. I needed to take Fauntleroy on trust - because I could not really believe that it would be much good, nor that I personally would like it...
My mind was too full of images of nauseating, cloying, simpering boys with long blond hair in velvet suits with lace collars (some depictions of LLF even cast a pretty girl in the lead role). But eventually I got myself to tackle it - and was quickly swept away by enjoyment and appreciation.
The USP (Unique Selling Point) of Fauntleroy is that he is close to being a perfect child - beautiful, tough, clever, kind, stoical, generous, athletic, brave - and everybody loves him (including other children)...
Now, saying this is one thing, but to make such a good child firstly convincing, then interesting (let alone likeable to the reader - since we are usually most inclined to resent perfection), is quite an ask: a tall order. Many have tried, and failed... But FHB does it!
The way she achieves this, is to structure the book as (mostly) a series of interactions between Fauntleroy and a sequence of contrasting people, in a variety of situations: his mother, the local grocer, a shoe-shine boy, other kids playing a game, a lawyer, sailors on board ship, the Earl his grandfather, a 'society' debutante beauty surrounded by her admirers etc.
Thus she does not just tell, but shows us the effect that a truly good child could have on the people he met. These dyadic interactions also lead to much humour of the 'talking at cross-purposes' kind - generally because Fauntleroy is immediately liked by people, and naturally assumes the best of them; so they do not want to disillusion him or let him down. Most end-up becoming better people themselves in response to F.
So, in multiple ways - small and larger - we find Fauntleroy making the world a better place, and in a way that is very believable - given the premise that he is indeed, the kind of 'perfect' child that he is depicted.
Altogether, Little Lord Fauntleroy is an unique, original, enjoyable and extremely effective novel; of the first rank in its genre. So, don't be put-off!
Having found the same to be true of Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden - I moved on to tackle FHB's earlier, and most famous, story - but I must admit that I had to force myself. I needed to take Fauntleroy on trust - because I could not really believe that it would be much good, nor that I personally would like it...
My mind was too full of images of nauseating, cloying, simpering boys with long blond hair in velvet suits with lace collars (some depictions of LLF even cast a pretty girl in the lead role). But eventually I got myself to tackle it - and was quickly swept away by enjoyment and appreciation.
The USP (Unique Selling Point) of Fauntleroy is that he is close to being a perfect child - beautiful, tough, clever, kind, stoical, generous, athletic, brave - and everybody loves him (including other children)...
Now, saying this is one thing, but to make such a good child firstly convincing, then interesting (let alone likeable to the reader - since we are usually most inclined to resent perfection), is quite an ask: a tall order. Many have tried, and failed... But FHB does it!
The way she achieves this, is to structure the book as (mostly) a series of interactions between Fauntleroy and a sequence of contrasting people, in a variety of situations: his mother, the local grocer, a shoe-shine boy, other kids playing a game, a lawyer, sailors on board ship, the Earl his grandfather, a 'society' debutante beauty surrounded by her admirers etc.
Thus she does not just tell, but shows us the effect that a truly good child could have on the people he met. These dyadic interactions also lead to much humour of the 'talking at cross-purposes' kind - generally because Fauntleroy is immediately liked by people, and naturally assumes the best of them; so they do not want to disillusion him or let him down. Most end-up becoming better people themselves in response to F.
So, in multiple ways - small and larger - we find Fauntleroy making the world a better place, and in a way that is very believable - given the premise that he is indeed, the kind of 'perfect' child that he is depicted.
Altogether, Little Lord Fauntleroy is an unique, original, enjoyable and extremely effective novel; of the first rank in its genre. So, don't be put-off!
Sunday, 2 August 2020
Instead of culture...
Unless we are cotent for life simply to be less; to experience 2020 as pure subtraction; we need to consider how to replace what has been taken and destroyed.
(I'm assuming that what we have now is - pretty much - what is in store; assuming the present System continues.)
There is a lot to replace! Culture has substantially gone - theatre, opera, art galleries, orchestras, museums, libraries, bookshops, singing, dancing, church bells - whatever culture you valued, chances are it has either gone-altogether or been substantially diminished in volume and quality.
With heavy and prescriptive social control, social separation etc; the replacement must be something we can do 'on our own' - or rather, what we do will be between our-selves and God.
I would say that we may wish to create - draw, sing, write poems - but for our-selves and God. A very pure act of divinely-oriented creation.
And, in the same direction, we may strive to become more of the nature of mystics, romantics; we may consciously value, intensify, make-more-frequent those times of contact with the divine - from all causes and in the most creative, participative, ways.
Not just contemplation - although that is essential - but acts of creative consecration. The lack of a human audience may be something we can learn to set-aside - to become like the legendary medieval stone masons who carved their non-visible roof ornaments for the Glory of God.
Saturday, 1 August 2020
Doubt thoroughly, and every thought leads to infinity - From Philip K Dick's Exegesis
If you have ever done any sustained metaphysical thinking - i.e. thinking about the ultimate nature of reality - then you will soon have reached the point of either 'It Just Is', or an infinite regress - infinities of infinities...
I don't think there can be any other terminus of thinking.
If we keep asking why, seeking explanations; it seems we must always reach a point at which we just must accept 'because that's the way things are'. Or, if we cannot or will not accept some kind of 'first cause' that Just Is; then we arrive at some kind of infinite regress along the lines of of :"this, because that, because another, and another, and another - without end...".
What does this mean? Well, for Philip K Dick (at least in some moods) it meant that infinite-regression was how God appeared to us; it was the evidence for God - but not evidence in the form of a conclusive proof; but as a kind of soft, probablistic, practical matter.
Since this problem does not go-away and cannot be eluded, we must either engage in a kind of systematic self-blinding and refusal even to ask the questions (which is the course taken by the modern world) - or else must consciously make an assumption relating to the purpose and meaning of reality (or the lack of purpose and meaning).
The problem does not go away, the assumptions stay 'assumed' - we are always pushed-back onto our own responsibility - or, most often, our own refusal to take responsibility; our self-chosen enslavement of soul.
On November 17, 1980; Philip K Dick made this exploration in his Exegesis notebooks (1:262) - published 2011. I have lightly edited this for clarity:
God manifested himself to me as the infinite void; but it was not the abyss; it was the vault of heaven, with blue sky and wisps of white clouds. He was not some foreign God but the God of my fathers. He was loving and kind and he had personality.
He said, “You suffer a little now in life; it is little compared with the great joys, the bliss that awaits you. Do you think I in my theodicy [i.e. that discourse on the justic of God, relating to goodness and suffering] would allow you to suffer greatly in proportion to your reward?” He made me aware, then, of the bliss that would come; it was infinite and sweet.
He said, “I am the infinite. I will show you. Where I am, infinity is; where infinity is, there I am. Construct lines of reasoning by which to understand your mystical-religious experience in 1974. I will enter the field against their shifting nature. You think they are logical but they are not; they are infinitely creative.”
I thought a thought and then an infinite regression of theses and countertheses came into being. God said, “Here I am; here is infinity.”
I thought another explanation; again an infinite series of thoughts split-off in dialectical antithetical interaction. God said, “Here is infinity; here I am.”
I thought, then, an infinite number of explanations, in succession, that explained the experiences of 1974; each single one of them yielded up an infinite progression of flipflops, of thesis and antithesis, forever. Each time, God said, “Here is infin- ity. Here, then, I am.”
I tried for an infinite number of times; each time an infinite regress was set off and each time God said, “Infinity. Hence I am here.”
Then he said, “Every thought loads to infinity, does it not? Find one that doesn’t.” I tried forever. All led to an infinitude of regress, of the dialectic, of thesis, antithe- sis and new synthesis. Each time, God said, “Here is infinity; here am I. Try again.”
I tried forever. Always it ended with God saying, “Infinity and myself; I am here.”
I saw, then, a Hebrew letter with many shafts, and all the shafts led to a common outlet; that outlet or conclusion was infinity. God said, “That is myself. I am infinity. Where infinity is, there am I; where I am, there is infinity.
"All roads - all explanations for 1974 - lead to an infinity of Yes-No, This or That, On-Off, One- Zero, Yin-Yang, the dialectic, infinity upon infinity; an infinity of infinities.
"I am everywhere and all roads lead to me; omniae viae ad Deum ducent [all roads lead to God]. Try again. Think of another possible explanation for 1974.” I did; it led to an infinity of regress, of thesis and antithesis and new synthesis.
"This is not logic,” God said. “Do not think in terms of absolute theories; think instead in terms of probabilities. Watch where the piles heap-up, of the same theory essentially repeating itself. Count the number of punch cards in each pile. Which pile is highest?
"You can never know for sure what 1974 was. What, then, is statistically most probable? Which is to say, which pile is highest?
"Here is your clue: every theory leads to an infinity (of regression, of thesis and antithesis and new synthesis).
"What, then, is the probability that I am the cause of 1974, since, where infinity is, there I am?
"You doubt; you are the doubt as in: They reckon ill who leave me out; When me they fly I am the wings. I am the doubter and the doubt [From the poem “Brahma” by Ralph Waldo Emerson].
“You are not the doubter; you are the doubt itself. So do not try to know; you cannot know.
"Guess on the basis of the highest pile of computer punch cards. There is an infinite stack in the heap marked INFINITY, and I have equated infinity with me. What, then, in the chance that it is me?
"You cannot be positive; you will doubt. But what is your guess?”
I said, “Probably it is you, since there is an infinity of Infinities forming before me.”
“There is the answer, the only one you will ever have,” God said.
I don't think there can be any other terminus of thinking.
If we keep asking why, seeking explanations; it seems we must always reach a point at which we just must accept 'because that's the way things are'. Or, if we cannot or will not accept some kind of 'first cause' that Just Is; then we arrive at some kind of infinite regress along the lines of of :"this, because that, because another, and another, and another - without end...".
What does this mean? Well, for Philip K Dick (at least in some moods) it meant that infinite-regression was how God appeared to us; it was the evidence for God - but not evidence in the form of a conclusive proof; but as a kind of soft, probablistic, practical matter.
Since this problem does not go-away and cannot be eluded, we must either engage in a kind of systematic self-blinding and refusal even to ask the questions (which is the course taken by the modern world) - or else must consciously make an assumption relating to the purpose and meaning of reality (or the lack of purpose and meaning).
The problem does not go away, the assumptions stay 'assumed' - we are always pushed-back onto our own responsibility - or, most often, our own refusal to take responsibility; our self-chosen enslavement of soul.
On November 17, 1980; Philip K Dick made this exploration in his Exegesis notebooks (1:262) - published 2011. I have lightly edited this for clarity:
God manifested himself to me as the infinite void; but it was not the abyss; it was the vault of heaven, with blue sky and wisps of white clouds. He was not some foreign God but the God of my fathers. He was loving and kind and he had personality.
He said, “You suffer a little now in life; it is little compared with the great joys, the bliss that awaits you. Do you think I in my theodicy [i.e. that discourse on the justic of God, relating to goodness and suffering] would allow you to suffer greatly in proportion to your reward?” He made me aware, then, of the bliss that would come; it was infinite and sweet.
He said, “I am the infinite. I will show you. Where I am, infinity is; where infinity is, there I am. Construct lines of reasoning by which to understand your mystical-religious experience in 1974. I will enter the field against their shifting nature. You think they are logical but they are not; they are infinitely creative.”
I thought a thought and then an infinite regression of theses and countertheses came into being. God said, “Here I am; here is infinity.”
I thought another explanation; again an infinite series of thoughts split-off in dialectical antithetical interaction. God said, “Here is infinity; here I am.”
I thought, then, an infinite number of explanations, in succession, that explained the experiences of 1974; each single one of them yielded up an infinite progression of flipflops, of thesis and antithesis, forever. Each time, God said, “Here is infin- ity. Here, then, I am.”
I tried for an infinite number of times; each time an infinite regress was set off and each time God said, “Infinity. Hence I am here.”
Then he said, “Every thought loads to infinity, does it not? Find one that doesn’t.” I tried forever. All led to an infinitude of regress, of the dialectic, of thesis, antithe- sis and new synthesis. Each time, God said, “Here is infinity; here am I. Try again.”
I tried forever. Always it ended with God saying, “Infinity and myself; I am here.”
I saw, then, a Hebrew letter with many shafts, and all the shafts led to a common outlet; that outlet or conclusion was infinity. God said, “That is myself. I am infinity. Where infinity is, there am I; where I am, there is infinity.
"All roads - all explanations for 1974 - lead to an infinity of Yes-No, This or That, On-Off, One- Zero, Yin-Yang, the dialectic, infinity upon infinity; an infinity of infinities.
"I am everywhere and all roads lead to me; omniae viae ad Deum ducent [all roads lead to God]. Try again. Think of another possible explanation for 1974.” I did; it led to an infinity of regress, of thesis and antithesis and new synthesis.
"This is not logic,” God said. “Do not think in terms of absolute theories; think instead in terms of probabilities. Watch where the piles heap-up, of the same theory essentially repeating itself. Count the number of punch cards in each pile. Which pile is highest?
"You can never know for sure what 1974 was. What, then, is statistically most probable? Which is to say, which pile is highest?
"Here is your clue: every theory leads to an infinity (of regression, of thesis and antithesis and new synthesis).
"What, then, is the probability that I am the cause of 1974, since, where infinity is, there I am?
"You doubt; you are the doubt as in: They reckon ill who leave me out; When me they fly I am the wings. I am the doubter and the doubt [From the poem “Brahma” by Ralph Waldo Emerson].
“You are not the doubter; you are the doubt itself. So do not try to know; you cannot know.
"Guess on the basis of the highest pile of computer punch cards. There is an infinite stack in the heap marked INFINITY, and I have equated infinity with me. What, then, in the chance that it is me?
"You cannot be positive; you will doubt. But what is your guess?”
I said, “Probably it is you, since there is an infinity of Infinities forming before me.”
“There is the answer, the only one you will ever have,” God said.
Thursday, 30 July 2020
The Place of the Lion - as a radio play...
If you are interested in hearing a one-hour radio dramatization of Charles Williams's novel The Place of the Lion (1931); then pop-across to my Notion Club Papers blog for a description and link...
"What about the election?"
We are all those two naughty boys, bottom left - we now know there's an agendum behind the curtain
Which election? Any election, anywhere - but perhaps one in particular: the US. As usual, this election is being regarded as the most important ever, different from any before, etc. But now, in 2020, we know that on the contrary this is the least important election in the history of the world.
Why so trivial? Simply because we now know for sure (it isn't just a theory any more) that the whole world is being run by a Global Establishment for whom elections are no barrier to doing what They want.
After all, a supposedly radically-different, supposedly political-Outsider, supposedly-nationalist and common-sensical - apparently (by their hysterical reaction) genuinely anti-Leftist US President [Trade Mark: Most Powerful Individual in the World] was (allegedly) 'in power' when that nation, along with every other in the world, succumbed to an international, extreme Leftist coup.
And all nations (so far as I know), 'ruled' by all of the various different flavours of mainstream politics across a spectrum from nationalist, conservative, republican etc. to various types of explicit radical, socialist, progressive; and including first-world, third-world and whatever lies between... All of them conformed (almost simultaneously) to the same set of priorities and policies; and all of them are now en route to the same destination.
So now We Know, if we were previously in doubt, how stupid it was for so many anti-Left people to put hope in elections, to hope that any mainstream option could achieve any significant good.
(And, incidentally, how equally stupid were the angry Leftists, who were so utterly terrified about pseudo-opposition parties and leaders getting power! What fools to be at all worried by such a pathetic bunch of fakes, cowards and quislings!)
If not exactly marching in lock-step, the entire world is currently shambling-chaotically towards precisely the same Agenda 2030/ Great Reset destination; at somewhat varying speeds - true; but none are pushing-back against the mass movement.
The lesson has been given us - whether or not we choose to learn from it. And we should be thankful for such a revelation, such an apocalypse.
Just think how much time and effort you can now save by refusing to allow your consciousness to be colonised by the political Punch and Judy show that is democratic politics! - now you know that both 'antagonists' are controlled by the same puppeteer.
Wednesday, 29 July 2020
Because we are *already* living in the Black Iron Prison - 'resistance' really is futile
We are already living in the Black Iron Prison; and since earlier this year we know that this jail is global - with nowhere to escape into (only places where the restrictions and rules are currently somewhat less onerous).
Once you have taken this on board, you will realise that this ought to put to an end all this talk of socio-politically 'resisting' the imposition of worldwide totalitarianism. So far as our socio-political status is concerned; we are 'assimilated' into The Borg/ The Matrix/ The System; and Resistance Is Futile
Too late: it's happened. It has been imposed. (Past tense.)
The revolution has won. Any action to do more than delay the Great Reset - any action to change to a fundamentally different and better direction - would entail a counter-revolution; and seeing the broad support of the BIP it could not be a 'mass' revolution.
The ruling classes are on-board with the programme; and far too many of the masses are clamouring for more oppression, faster, please!
And anyway, a counter-rev to what we had before 2020 would not be worth having - since it was pointing and pushing this way. So it would need to be a new revolution. And to be better; it would need to be a new and Christian revolution.
But it turns-out that the Christian church leadership are in-bed-with the new regime, support the program, and have closed the churches and all-but ceased their activities (gathering, worship, singing, ritual... and - most significantly - sacraments).
There are individual real Christians distributed across and outside-of the pseudo-Christian churches; but when did scattered individuals ever mount a successful revolution? And (more importantly) when was such a revolution ever a change for the better?
So, let's stop pretending that there is any meaningful hope of resistance, revolution or any other socio-political mechanism for fundamental change. The System will have-to unfold according to its own evil, and thus self-loathing and self-destructive, tendencies.
Let us instead do what actually can be done - what our religion insists that we ought to be doing; as individual Christians, working on our selves and with those we love; and any real Christians that happen to be in our vicinity.
We are compelled, for lack of any viable alternative, to stop being political and to put everything into being spiritual. And is that such a bad thing?
Once you have taken this on board, you will realise that this ought to put to an end all this talk of socio-politically 'resisting' the imposition of worldwide totalitarianism. So far as our socio-political status is concerned; we are 'assimilated' into The Borg/ The Matrix/ The System; and Resistance Is Futile
Too late: it's happened. It has been imposed. (Past tense.)
The revolution has won. Any action to do more than delay the Great Reset - any action to change to a fundamentally different and better direction - would entail a counter-revolution; and seeing the broad support of the BIP it could not be a 'mass' revolution.
The ruling classes are on-board with the programme; and far too many of the masses are clamouring for more oppression, faster, please!
And anyway, a counter-rev to what we had before 2020 would not be worth having - since it was pointing and pushing this way. So it would need to be a new revolution. And to be better; it would need to be a new and Christian revolution.
But it turns-out that the Christian church leadership are in-bed-with the new regime, support the program, and have closed the churches and all-but ceased their activities (gathering, worship, singing, ritual... and - most significantly - sacraments).
There are individual real Christians distributed across and outside-of the pseudo-Christian churches; but when did scattered individuals ever mount a successful revolution? And (more importantly) when was such a revolution ever a change for the better?
So, let's stop pretending that there is any meaningful hope of resistance, revolution or any other socio-political mechanism for fundamental change. The System will have-to unfold according to its own evil, and thus self-loathing and self-destructive, tendencies.
Let us instead do what actually can be done - what our religion insists that we ought to be doing; as individual Christians, working on our selves and with those we love; and any real Christians that happen to be in our vicinity.
We are compelled, for lack of any viable alternative, to stop being political and to put everything into being spiritual. And is that such a bad thing?
The meaning of mortal life? Becoming Sons (and Daughters) of God
In the Fourth Gospel it is said that part of the mission of Jesus was to enable us to become Sons of God, as resurrected Men in Heaven.
Yet Jesus also makes clear that we are already children of God: God being both our father and Jesus's father, in what seems to be a literal rather than a metaphorical sense. Indeed, it is a new teaching of Jesus that God is our father in a personal sense, not only a tribal patriarch.
I make sense of this by assuming that we are born as spiritually-young children, and Jesus offers us the possibility of choosing to become spiritually grown-up children in our resurrected state.
This leads on to the question: why grow-up? Children are wonderful - and perfect in their way; so why go to the bother and hazard of growing-up? - especially as it requires negotiating the (extreme) spiritual dangers of adolescence.
This has to do with the Christian understanding of creation - which I take to be a more like a continual dynamic work-in-progress (a process) than a finished perfection. If creation were instead regarded as complete, then Man would have no active role... Man could at most aspire to contemplate the finished-work of creation (in some kind of blissful state) - and for this there would be no need to become spiritually grown-up.
Indeed, if contemplation was the ultimate goal; there would be no need for Man to incarnate - he would be better to remain a spirit; nor would there be any need for mortal life - he would be better to be created directly-into Heaven (like an 'angel'), and stay there.
And this is, indeed, the goal of some Eastern (oneness) religious ideas, and the Platonic tradition in the West - even within Christianity. These systems have no necessary function for mortal incarnate life, and no active role for Men: the ideal is passive, inactive, absorbed (ego-less, self-less) contemplation - for which angelic spirits in Heaven are presumably better suited than incarnate mortal Men on earth.
And it is hard to see even why such a God would want to create Men, or indeed angels, or anything else - so complete, self-sufficient, perfect, inclusive and desire-less is this God understood to be... Such a God is better described in terms of an abstract deity, defined in terms of divine properties (such as omnipotence and omniscience). But the God that Jesus speaks-with and speaks-of is addressed as a person - so it is hard to see why Christians should go down the path towards abstract deity...
To my mind, matters are clarified when it is assumed that God wants us to become active participants in the on-going-work of his creation.
That makes sense of why we are encouraged grow-up; we need to grow-up if we aspire to become our-selves active creators, rather than remaining as children - who are absorbed-in life, and are not creative.
My understanding is that we are all born as children of God - in a personal and 'literal' sense. We are initially passively-absorbed-in the ongoing creation. But by stages we separate from it and become self-aware; so that we may mature and consciously-choose to return to participating-in creation - but this time as active, contributing, co-creators with God.
(And indeed with Jesus - since this active co-creation is what Jesus did, first as a mortal Man from the advent of his divine mission at the baptism by John; then after his resurrection to eternal life, and ascension. Examples of co-creation by Jesus include, but are not restricted to, his miracles.)
Thus, the definition of spiritual adulthood or maturity, is one who participates actively in creation, who consciously contributes some-thing from-themselves - and this is to be a Son or Daughter of God in the sense that Jesus promised to those who follow him.
We may do such active participating during mortal life, in a temporary way, as a part of our learning.
We may, for instance, learn (as I have) that active participation in creation is the single most satisfying experience of life (outside of family love); and may wish to continue it fully rather than partially.
And such active participation is the life of those grown-up children of God who choose - after biological death - to commit themselves eternally to resurrected Heavenly life. If we want this, we can have it; and that is to grow-up, spiritually.
Yet Jesus also makes clear that we are already children of God: God being both our father and Jesus's father, in what seems to be a literal rather than a metaphorical sense. Indeed, it is a new teaching of Jesus that God is our father in a personal sense, not only a tribal patriarch.
I make sense of this by assuming that we are born as spiritually-young children, and Jesus offers us the possibility of choosing to become spiritually grown-up children in our resurrected state.
This leads on to the question: why grow-up? Children are wonderful - and perfect in their way; so why go to the bother and hazard of growing-up? - especially as it requires negotiating the (extreme) spiritual dangers of adolescence.
This has to do with the Christian understanding of creation - which I take to be a more like a continual dynamic work-in-progress (a process) than a finished perfection. If creation were instead regarded as complete, then Man would have no active role... Man could at most aspire to contemplate the finished-work of creation (in some kind of blissful state) - and for this there would be no need to become spiritually grown-up.
Indeed, if contemplation was the ultimate goal; there would be no need for Man to incarnate - he would be better to remain a spirit; nor would there be any need for mortal life - he would be better to be created directly-into Heaven (like an 'angel'), and stay there.
And this is, indeed, the goal of some Eastern (oneness) religious ideas, and the Platonic tradition in the West - even within Christianity. These systems have no necessary function for mortal incarnate life, and no active role for Men: the ideal is passive, inactive, absorbed (ego-less, self-less) contemplation - for which angelic spirits in Heaven are presumably better suited than incarnate mortal Men on earth.
And it is hard to see even why such a God would want to create Men, or indeed angels, or anything else - so complete, self-sufficient, perfect, inclusive and desire-less is this God understood to be... Such a God is better described in terms of an abstract deity, defined in terms of divine properties (such as omnipotence and omniscience). But the God that Jesus speaks-with and speaks-of is addressed as a person - so it is hard to see why Christians should go down the path towards abstract deity...
To my mind, matters are clarified when it is assumed that God wants us to become active participants in the on-going-work of his creation.
That makes sense of why we are encouraged grow-up; we need to grow-up if we aspire to become our-selves active creators, rather than remaining as children - who are absorbed-in life, and are not creative.
My understanding is that we are all born as children of God - in a personal and 'literal' sense. We are initially passively-absorbed-in the ongoing creation. But by stages we separate from it and become self-aware; so that we may mature and consciously-choose to return to participating-in creation - but this time as active, contributing, co-creators with God.
(And indeed with Jesus - since this active co-creation is what Jesus did, first as a mortal Man from the advent of his divine mission at the baptism by John; then after his resurrection to eternal life, and ascension. Examples of co-creation by Jesus include, but are not restricted to, his miracles.)
Thus, the definition of spiritual adulthood or maturity, is one who participates actively in creation, who consciously contributes some-thing from-themselves - and this is to be a Son or Daughter of God in the sense that Jesus promised to those who follow him.
We may do such active participating during mortal life, in a temporary way, as a part of our learning.
We may, for instance, learn (as I have) that active participation in creation is the single most satisfying experience of life (outside of family love); and may wish to continue it fully rather than partially.
And such active participation is the life of those grown-up children of God who choose - after biological death - to commit themselves eternally to resurrected Heavenly life. If we want this, we can have it; and that is to grow-up, spiritually.
Tuesday, 28 July 2020
What do I personally mean by 'God'
My personal definition of 'God' is The Creator. This entails that we inhabit a created reality - a created universe; and that this was created by a 'person'.
That definition is my understanding of what A God is.
While not universal, this basic definition is pretty widespread.
Then comes the nature of this personal God; which is perhaps unique to myself and has developed from a personal, intutive-revealed process. So I do not try to persuade others of the truth of it; it is up to each individual to discover such matters for himself. But for those who are interested...
My understanding is that God is not one individual but a dyad - specifically the eternal and loving creative relationship of Heavenly Father and Mother; our divine (actual, spiritual) parents.
This understanding also informs me of the motivation and method of God; in that the love of our Heavenly parents is what led to the purpose of creation being the procreation of spiritual children of God, and their developmental growth (via mortal life) into divine Sons and Daughters of God (as described in the Fourth Gospel). That is the motive.
The method is love: love is what makes creation possible, because it is love that transforms the primordial chaos into creation.
That definition is my understanding of what A God is.
While not universal, this basic definition is pretty widespread.
Then comes the nature of this personal God; which is perhaps unique to myself and has developed from a personal, intutive-revealed process. So I do not try to persuade others of the truth of it; it is up to each individual to discover such matters for himself. But for those who are interested...
My understanding is that God is not one individual but a dyad - specifically the eternal and loving creative relationship of Heavenly Father and Mother; our divine (actual, spiritual) parents.
This understanding also informs me of the motivation and method of God; in that the love of our Heavenly parents is what led to the purpose of creation being the procreation of spiritual children of God, and their developmental growth (via mortal life) into divine Sons and Daughters of God (as described in the Fourth Gospel). That is the motive.
The method is love: love is what makes creation possible, because it is love that transforms the primordial chaos into creation.
If motivation is primary - then obedience requires discernment
I keep returning to the fact that it is motivation that is primary; and/but real motivation must be inferred (since it is so easily denied, disguised or concealed). Such inference is called discernment, and it is unavoidable.
If you obey somebody or some-thing (e.g. some institution, including a church) then this does not absolve you of responsibility; rather it means that you have taken responsibility for that person or thing.
Specifically, when your belief in specifics is obedient to some external person-thing, then you are responsible for the motivations of that which you have chosen to obey.
Because you have-chosen that obedience (including having chosen not to choose, but just going-along).
For example; if you have chosen to make a master of an habitual or manipulative liar, and to obey a liar; and if you then believe the lies, defend the lies, propagandise for the lies --- then you yourself are a liar, and you are spiritually-responsible for those lies.
That's just the way it is; whether you like it or not.
If you obey somebody or some-thing (e.g. some institution, including a church) then this does not absolve you of responsibility; rather it means that you have taken responsibility for that person or thing.
Specifically, when your belief in specifics is obedient to some external person-thing, then you are responsible for the motivations of that which you have chosen to obey.
Because you have-chosen that obedience (including having chosen not to choose, but just going-along).
For example; if you have chosen to make a master of an habitual or manipulative liar, and to obey a liar; and if you then believe the lies, defend the lies, propagandise for the lies --- then you yourself are a liar, and you are spiritually-responsible for those lies.
That's just the way it is; whether you like it or not.
The Love of God, what it could mean to Christians
I tried to explain a couple of days ago why Jesus affirms in the New Testament that Love of God must come first - and what it means to 'come first'. But the picture is incomplete without the knowledge that God loves us, each and individually, as children.
Firstly, God is the creator; so that this world is God's work - and 'creation' includes create-ing, moment to moment.
Then God loves us as ideal parents love their children - all and each. God wants for each and all children to grow, spiritually, each in his own way - to become 'Sons of God'.
This means that the world has meaning, being organised around this principle and aimed-at this result; raising Men to become Sons of God by their experiences and choices; which means dwelling in Heaven and (at least some Men) growing-up spiritually towards greater divinity.
So this Love by God (who is creator) structures the world. Then comes our personal love for God. What this means is that we come to know that God is creator and loving parent; and, knowing this, we ourselves come to love this reality.
It is a close analogy with human families of the best sort. The parents will love the children - but for the family to work requires that the children also love the parents - which means the children wish to join with the work and purposes of the family. This is decided by each child as he matures - will I, do I, love my parents?
The wishes of the individual children are all the while being harmonised by their love for each other (i.e. love of neighbour) as well as the (primary) love of God (i.e. love of God: love of the basic set-up, full accord with Gods basic motivations in creation).
So love by God is a fact; but love for God is our decision.
And that's it.
Firstly, God is the creator; so that this world is God's work - and 'creation' includes create-ing, moment to moment.
Then God loves us as ideal parents love their children - all and each. God wants for each and all children to grow, spiritually, each in his own way - to become 'Sons of God'.
This means that the world has meaning, being organised around this principle and aimed-at this result; raising Men to become Sons of God by their experiences and choices; which means dwelling in Heaven and (at least some Men) growing-up spiritually towards greater divinity.
So this Love by God (who is creator) structures the world. Then comes our personal love for God. What this means is that we come to know that God is creator and loving parent; and, knowing this, we ourselves come to love this reality.
It is a close analogy with human families of the best sort. The parents will love the children - but for the family to work requires that the children also love the parents - which means the children wish to join with the work and purposes of the family. This is decided by each child as he matures - will I, do I, love my parents?
The wishes of the individual children are all the while being harmonised by their love for each other (i.e. love of neighbour) as well as the (primary) love of God (i.e. love of God: love of the basic set-up, full accord with Gods basic motivations in creation).
So love by God is a fact; but love for God is our decision.
And that's it.
Monday, 27 July 2020
The Antichrist will probe for your personal weaknesses
We all have our weaknesses! And - after decades, centuries, of developing The System - the Antichrist spirit has something to lure everyone.
I am intensely aware of this nowadays, with the ramping-up of evil in the world: a greater dominance by evil-motivated persons, their ideology more widely and deeply spread by the media and bureaucracies; more passively obeyed and passionately endorsed by the mass majority...
One of my weaknesses is on display just here: explaining social trends, thereby trying to define, understand and predict The System; thereby increasing my attention and involvement.
Following which; I become an advocate and defender of my latest 'model' of what-is-happening/ what-will-happen - despite that even the best model is always wrong (because a model is always - by its nature - grossly simplified and distorted compared with reality).
On the other hand, through the Gospels and Paul's Letters - as well as the teaching of the Holy Ghost, it is clear that we shouldn't be thinking this way - or, at least, if we do so think this way, it ought to be done lightly and without attachment.
Mostly we actually spend our lives alternating between worries and schemes for the future, and nostalgia and regrets about the past: oscillating between anticipation and memory.
But mostly we need (as always) to try and live here-and-now in the context of eternity: to live in the present and life-everlasting.
There are many snares of many kinds intending to stop this; but if we know what we ought to do, we can at least repent our (inevitable) failures and keep trying...
And that is something anybody can accomplish - if they wish; and (for salvation, albeit not for theosis) it is all that Jesus requires of us, after all.
I am intensely aware of this nowadays, with the ramping-up of evil in the world: a greater dominance by evil-motivated persons, their ideology more widely and deeply spread by the media and bureaucracies; more passively obeyed and passionately endorsed by the mass majority...
One of my weaknesses is on display just here: explaining social trends, thereby trying to define, understand and predict The System; thereby increasing my attention and involvement.
Following which; I become an advocate and defender of my latest 'model' of what-is-happening/ what-will-happen - despite that even the best model is always wrong (because a model is always - by its nature - grossly simplified and distorted compared with reality).
On the other hand, through the Gospels and Paul's Letters - as well as the teaching of the Holy Ghost, it is clear that we shouldn't be thinking this way - or, at least, if we do so think this way, it ought to be done lightly and without attachment.
Mostly we actually spend our lives alternating between worries and schemes for the future, and nostalgia and regrets about the past: oscillating between anticipation and memory.
But mostly we need (as always) to try and live here-and-now in the context of eternity: to live in the present and life-everlasting.
There are many snares of many kinds intending to stop this; but if we know what we ought to do, we can at least repent our (inevitable) failures and keep trying...
And that is something anybody can accomplish - if they wish; and (for salvation, albeit not for theosis) it is all that Jesus requires of us, after all.
Sunday, 26 July 2020
Love of God versus Anything else
What is the true category of a person, an institution, nation or civilization? The answer is that all of these can and should can be divided - and this division is clean - in terms of whether it is organised by 'Love of God' -- or Not.
Other attempted categorical divisions such as 'Left and Right', or subdivisions or refinements of such, are invariably partial selections and distortions of this reality...
Either we are trying to put Love of God (and everything to do with LoG - such as understanding the nature of God, and what loving God entails for us personally) as the focus; or Not.
And if not Love of God; then ultimately it matters little what different principle is primary: whether economic growth, equality, freedom, nation, diversity, political power, antiracism, social stability, the environment, human health or happiness...
Of course; if Love of God is primary; then this may differ between individuals, between denominations and religions, and over time - nonetheless it constitutes a category of life.
For those who acknowledge Love of God is the primary and proper First Thing; then any society that fails to put Love of God as its First Thing is wrong, is evil.
And this is a very easy discernment to make in the modern world! Because those who do not love God first and foremost, no longer even pretend to do so; but they are quite explicit about their other and different ideologies.
And even when they attempt to deceive on this point and pretend (for a moment) to be putting God first, their underlying true Not-God priorities are easily seen from their behaviours.
But the great characteristic of these times is their simplicity and clarity. It is easy to perceive, to know, that Love of God does Not motivate those who have greatest power, welath, status and influence... because they are increasingly explicit about the fact. Neither does Love of God motivate the great majority of the Western Masses. We live in a Godless/ God-denying and increasingly explicitly anti-God world.
Furthermore, such observations are not difficult and feel absolutely solid.
But it is confusing and over-complex, it is indeed a snare, to try to describe (and prove) just exactly what specifcially and explicitly does motivate the mass of modern people and their leaders... since (superficially at least) all this seems very changeable and incoherent, complex, multi-layered and deceptive...
Yet this difficulty in stating what People Really Do Believe (here-and-now) does not matter and should not delay us nor distract us.
It does not matter because we know for sure that whatever it is, it Certainly is not the Love of God.
All we need to know (at least as a beginning, but this is vital) is where sombody, some society, stands on this one issue of Love of God.
If they are not For it, then they are Against it; and if they are indeed against the primacy of Love of God, then it does not really matter in what exact and specific way they are against it...
By not being For the Love of God; they are on The Other Side. And that is what it is necessary to know.
After that? After one has decided to make Love of God the primary principle of one's Life?
Well then a whole new set of matters unfolds itself, varying between persons.
Love of God is a beginning, not a solution.
Indeed, Love of God is the beginning of the reality of purposive human Life - and anything else than this, is a refusal even to enter the arena of living.
Other attempted categorical divisions such as 'Left and Right', or subdivisions or refinements of such, are invariably partial selections and distortions of this reality...
Either we are trying to put Love of God (and everything to do with LoG - such as understanding the nature of God, and what loving God entails for us personally) as the focus; or Not.
And if not Love of God; then ultimately it matters little what different principle is primary: whether economic growth, equality, freedom, nation, diversity, political power, antiracism, social stability, the environment, human health or happiness...
Of course; if Love of God is primary; then this may differ between individuals, between denominations and religions, and over time - nonetheless it constitutes a category of life.
For those who acknowledge Love of God is the primary and proper First Thing; then any society that fails to put Love of God as its First Thing is wrong, is evil.
And this is a very easy discernment to make in the modern world! Because those who do not love God first and foremost, no longer even pretend to do so; but they are quite explicit about their other and different ideologies.
And even when they attempt to deceive on this point and pretend (for a moment) to be putting God first, their underlying true Not-God priorities are easily seen from their behaviours.
But the great characteristic of these times is their simplicity and clarity. It is easy to perceive, to know, that Love of God does Not motivate those who have greatest power, welath, status and influence... because they are increasingly explicit about the fact. Neither does Love of God motivate the great majority of the Western Masses. We live in a Godless/ God-denying and increasingly explicitly anti-God world.
Furthermore, such observations are not difficult and feel absolutely solid.
But it is confusing and over-complex, it is indeed a snare, to try to describe (and prove) just exactly what specifcially and explicitly does motivate the mass of modern people and their leaders... since (superficially at least) all this seems very changeable and incoherent, complex, multi-layered and deceptive...
Yet this difficulty in stating what People Really Do Believe (here-and-now) does not matter and should not delay us nor distract us.
It does not matter because we know for sure that whatever it is, it Certainly is not the Love of God.
All we need to know (at least as a beginning, but this is vital) is where sombody, some society, stands on this one issue of Love of God.
If they are not For it, then they are Against it; and if they are indeed against the primacy of Love of God, then it does not really matter in what exact and specific way they are against it...
By not being For the Love of God; they are on The Other Side. And that is what it is necessary to know.
After that? After one has decided to make Love of God the primary principle of one's Life?
Well then a whole new set of matters unfolds itself, varying between persons.
Love of God is a beginning, not a solution.
Indeed, Love of God is the beginning of the reality of purposive human Life - and anything else than this, is a refusal even to enter the arena of living.
Thursday, 23 July 2020
The Empire Never Ended and the Black Iron Prison
The Empire Never Ended is a maxim used often by Philip K Dick, especially in his novel Valis (1978), but also throughout the philosophical journal the Exegesis (2011).
The Black Iron Prison (BIP) was PKD's term for the manipulative, modern, totalitarian System based on bureaucracy and propaganda.
What I personally derive from this is that The Roman Empire was an institutional structure, a System, that has continued to this day. But, while continuous in The West; The Empire has changed considerably - especially in response to the breaking-in of Christianity; which was profoundly at odds with The Empire.
My summary understanding of what happened (not that of PKD) is as follows: Jesus Christ and his posthumous followers were a transformative force acting upon The Empire. Initially there was no 'church' but Jesus's followers worked like a family, based on loving personal relationships and without any abstract institutional structure.
The first stage in assimilating Christianity was to create an institutional church which could take its place among the other institutions of The Empire (the Emperor and his bureaucracy, the Military, the state religion etc). But such was the spiritual power of Christianity, that its church rapidly grew to take-over the Empire as its primary system.
Over the centuries, however, The Empire first assimilated then dominated Christianity - in multiple ways; until from the 19th century The Empire began to eliminate Christianty from the public realm altogether - first with the Communist and Socialist totalitarian Systems, then with the whole of the world.
At this point - where Christianity became almost-wholly corrupt, of fully assimilated at the institutional level - The Empire became The Black Iron Prison - an atheist totalitarian and global bureaucracy.
Just this year of 2020; the process came to near completion, with Christian churches closed and suspending core activities across the whole world.
The Black Iron Prison has won.
Edited from Exegesis 19:34-5:
The BIP is a vast complex life form which protects itself by inducing a negative hallucination of it: muddled thinking, loss of faculties and perception (as a protective mechanism). It has come here and because of its defensive devices we are not aware of it.
This BIP a sinister life form indeed...
1. First it takes power over us, reducing us to slaves.
2. Then it causes us to forget our former state
3 And to be unable to see or think straight so that the BIP becomes invisible to us, by reason of what it has done to us.
4. But we don't even know that we cannot think straight.
5. We cannot even monitor our own deformity, our own impairment.
Even the edifice of the church has been subverted by the BIP and made into an instrument of its occlusion of us. Ii is interesting how effectively the impairment works. If you derange the brain in precise ways, not only will it be damaged, but it will be unaware that it is impaired and will not seek to rectify the damage.
My note: At this point the BIP has become a single, global, exclusive and self-perpetuating system - based on the positive feedback of mutual reinforcement.
There is a primary concealment of the BIP controllers by using human puppets; true motives are hidden by a labile-rotating and incoherent pseudo-morality (e.g. healthism, environmentalism, antiracism, sexual revolution etc...) to mask the true selfish and exploitative nature of The System.
All autonomous institutions or groups are destroyed or assimilated - including the primary, natural and spontaneous human groupings of marriage and family, neighbourhood and nation.
The defences of the system are manyfold and are underpinned by a false metaphysical monopoly; such that all 'evidence' (itself heavily controlled, and overwhelming in volume) is seen to conform to the rigid cultural assumption that excludes God/ Spirit/ Objective values; and the whole BIP functions on the exclusive assumption that this is a materialistic, positivistic, meaningless and purposeless world - in which autonomous life and consciousness are essentially epiphenomenal illusions.
Further interventions (justified by the metaphysics and pseudo-morality) themselves also impair thinking and suppress motivation. The BIP deploys addiction, and dependence (on distraction; stimulation, sedation, hallucination) from mass media, entertainments and actual drugs.
As a relief, and to rationalise suppression, the BIP adds intoxication (pharmacological and social - eg riots).
Most recently, there is the general strategy of imposed social isolation such that individuals are single units within the official System; by means of 'untouchable'-style social-distancing, prison-style lock-down, face-concealment, driving all of 'life' into the remote, demotivating abstractions of online communications and interaction.
The Black Iron Prison (BIP) was PKD's term for the manipulative, modern, totalitarian System based on bureaucracy and propaganda.
What I personally derive from this is that The Roman Empire was an institutional structure, a System, that has continued to this day. But, while continuous in The West; The Empire has changed considerably - especially in response to the breaking-in of Christianity; which was profoundly at odds with The Empire.
My summary understanding of what happened (not that of PKD) is as follows: Jesus Christ and his posthumous followers were a transformative force acting upon The Empire. Initially there was no 'church' but Jesus's followers worked like a family, based on loving personal relationships and without any abstract institutional structure.
The first stage in assimilating Christianity was to create an institutional church which could take its place among the other institutions of The Empire (the Emperor and his bureaucracy, the Military, the state religion etc). But such was the spiritual power of Christianity, that its church rapidly grew to take-over the Empire as its primary system.
Over the centuries, however, The Empire first assimilated then dominated Christianity - in multiple ways; until from the 19th century The Empire began to eliminate Christianty from the public realm altogether - first with the Communist and Socialist totalitarian Systems, then with the whole of the world.
At this point - where Christianity became almost-wholly corrupt, of fully assimilated at the institutional level - The Empire became The Black Iron Prison - an atheist totalitarian and global bureaucracy.
Just this year of 2020; the process came to near completion, with Christian churches closed and suspending core activities across the whole world.
The Black Iron Prison has won.
Edited from Exegesis 19:34-5:
The BIP is a vast complex life form which protects itself by inducing a negative hallucination of it: muddled thinking, loss of faculties and perception (as a protective mechanism). It has come here and because of its defensive devices we are not aware of it.
This BIP a sinister life form indeed...
1. First it takes power over us, reducing us to slaves.
2. Then it causes us to forget our former state
3 And to be unable to see or think straight so that the BIP becomes invisible to us, by reason of what it has done to us.
4. But we don't even know that we cannot think straight.
5. We cannot even monitor our own deformity, our own impairment.
Even the edifice of the church has been subverted by the BIP and made into an instrument of its occlusion of us. Ii is interesting how effectively the impairment works. If you derange the brain in precise ways, not only will it be damaged, but it will be unaware that it is impaired and will not seek to rectify the damage.
My note: At this point the BIP has become a single, global, exclusive and self-perpetuating system - based on the positive feedback of mutual reinforcement.
There is a primary concealment of the BIP controllers by using human puppets; true motives are hidden by a labile-rotating and incoherent pseudo-morality (e.g. healthism, environmentalism, antiracism, sexual revolution etc...) to mask the true selfish and exploitative nature of The System.
All autonomous institutions or groups are destroyed or assimilated - including the primary, natural and spontaneous human groupings of marriage and family, neighbourhood and nation.
The defences of the system are manyfold and are underpinned by a false metaphysical monopoly; such that all 'evidence' (itself heavily controlled, and overwhelming in volume) is seen to conform to the rigid cultural assumption that excludes God/ Spirit/ Objective values; and the whole BIP functions on the exclusive assumption that this is a materialistic, positivistic, meaningless and purposeless world - in which autonomous life and consciousness are essentially epiphenomenal illusions.
Further interventions (justified by the metaphysics and pseudo-morality) themselves also impair thinking and suppress motivation. The BIP deploys addiction, and dependence (on distraction; stimulation, sedation, hallucination) from mass media, entertainments and actual drugs.
As a relief, and to rationalise suppression, the BIP adds intoxication (pharmacological and social - eg riots).
Most recently, there is the general strategy of imposed social isolation such that individuals are single units within the official System; by means of 'untouchable'-style social-distancing, prison-style lock-down, face-concealment, driving all of 'life' into the remote, demotivating abstractions of online communications and interaction.
Victims of The Zap Gun (Philip K Dick, 1967)
I am now reading some of the more minor works of Philip K Dick, most recently The Zap Gun from 1967. I bought and read this in, I think, 1984; expecting very little based upon its title and the cover illustration - I assumed it would be some kind of fighting adventure... Nothing of the kind!
All I could remember about the book until I took it up again a few days ago; was that it was surprisingly good, and surprisingly thought-provoking - and indeed that is the case. It is classic PKD territory, written at the height of his powers - and it is Not about a zap gun! - or, at least, the 'deadly' weapon turns-out to be very different from a gun, and very relevant for our current malaise.
Spoilers follow...
The world of The Zap Gun is one in which a cognitive elite ('cogs') rules the masses - pursaps, or 'poor saps' - by a version of the 1984 strategy of pretending perpetual war between Western and Eastern blocs. But this war is in fact a permanent state of mutual deterrence, secretly agreed by the governments, who pretend to be continually developing deadly anti-personnel, tactical weapons.
The process involves using rare individuals who have the psychic or mystical ability to go into a trance and return with accurate illustrations. These are made into blueprints and then fake weapons; shown to the masses via faked videos of them having terrible effects on human-lookalike androids.
The fake-weapons are always something else that is either useful (e.g. a household artefact) or amusing (a game), and this is reverse engineered from the plans; and the technology is 'plowshared' (referencing the proverb about turning swords into plowshares) into these new devices.
This situation is destabilised by the appearance of insect-like alien slavers in satellites who are incrementally taking the population of the planet - when a real weapon is needed to defeat them. Since this is a PKD novel - we never actually encounter the aliens (their nature is inferred); and the 'action' of their destructive slave raids, and their eventual defeat, are described only indirectly - happening 'off-stage'.
The surprising twist is that this alien-defeating weapon turns-out not to be any kind of gun, but a maze game toy; a toy made by an animated figure in a maze who cannot ever escape.
The game player comes (by a telepathic empathic field) to identify with the creature in the toy maze; and with trying to help it escape this unsolvable, because pre-emptively shifting, maze. The earth maze toy was originally manufactured with only a mild empathic field, to function as an enjoyable, educative pastime.
But to make it a weapon, the strength of the empathic involvement is amped-up. The mazes are put into the possession of the alien creatures, who cannot resist trying-out the game, by which they are quickly trapped in the endless, changing loop or this artifical world from which escape is impossible. The invaders soon lapse into a cut-off, psychotic state; and the invasion is defeated.
This maze game now seems exactly like an allegory for the many hand-held 'entertainments' of recent decades, beginning with the 'Game Boy' devices in the 1980s, and culminating in the smart phone - by a process of empathic amplification...
But of course this was actually PKD using his own remarkable intuitive 'precog' abilities to foresee and describe how individually- and socially-lethal such technology could be in a spiritually-empty world that has no motivating values higher than personal comfort, convenience and distraction.
Wednesday, 22 July 2020
Pointing-out the obvious; trying to save those who don't want to be saved
Much of my kind of blogging is a matter of pointing-out the obvious; the idea being that (at least for Modern Man) we need to be explicitly aware of that which is important - that it is not sufficient to operate on the basic of unconscious, unarticulated and implicit knowledge.
However, it seems pretty obvious that if this is indeed a creat-ed world; then it is one where God wants us to do most things for ourselves, and from ourselves. (That is how this world is set-up.) Learning which is merely passively-absorbed from other people, other sources, is not really the point.
So, unless (as RW Emerson correctly saw) we are stimulated to think for our-selves by it; reading generally does harm rather than good, even when what is said is true and well-motivated.
Such are these times. What good is done by pointing-out to people during many weeks of lockdown that they are now living under a totalitarian system of government?
If people confined to their houses for 23/24 hours for weeks on end, and who must daily engage with the mass media to be told of the latest (oscillating) change to the laws - if such people are not able to notice the fact from their own resources; then why try to impose this knowledge upon them by argument?
The same question on a civilizational scale arises when we try laboriously to demonstrate (perhaps with statistics!) that policy X (and Y and Z, simultaneously) will destroy our village, town, nation, civilization...
This stuff is typically blazingly obvious to the meanest intellect - and those who cannot see obvious harm, who indeed actively-deny and argue-against the obvious, do so because they desire that harm.
And that is the situation.
Nobody needs to be told that the changes of 2020 constitute totalitarian tyranny, which will lead to more bad things, because it is obvious; and when a person/ an institution/ a nation does not perceive the obvious, this situation is not helped by making it Even-More Obvious.
What must be addressed is that covert, implicit desire which underlies the denial and block.
I mean such desires as the widespread conviction of the futility of our actual, experienced life; and a hatred of that nation and civilization which imposes such a life upon us; and the inner blankness, fear and despair resulting from such convictions.
We would understand this if we observed it in animals kept in factory farm, zoo or laboratory conditions on an artificial and unnatural (increasingly artificial and unnatural) regime. When (despite plenty of food and comfortable shelter) such alienated and captive animals cease to reproduce and essentially Give-Up on living, we may be saddened but we are not surprised.
The fact that Modern Man has similarly Given-Up under conditions of ever-increasing phsyical, psychological and spiritual alienation, should likewise be easy to understand.
Modern Men are creatures that have Given-Up due to their alien environment; even worse, most of them have chosen to remain in this environment, to defend their environment against all substantive criticism, and to refuse to leave. To reason-with such confined and tamed creatures is futile; to inform them of the specifics of their dire situation is somewhat cruel.
What such creatures most need is to be shown someplace better to live and how to get there. As Christians we can try to do that - but that is all we can do.
We cannot make people want the better world, we cannot even make them pay attention for long enough to understand what is on offer...
In fact there is not much we can do!
But what little we can do - we should do. DO it, and then pass-on to continuing our primary work in this mortal life, which is ourselves to do exactly what we recommend to the lost souls.
Because the fact is that we ourselves are in a situation almost exactly as bad as the deluded Masses...
Just that We know why this is bad, that there really is somewhere Good where we aim to be; and that we know how to get there.
For us; knowing is Not the problem, but Doing.
In sum - our modern Western situation is indeed analogous to a wild animal in a factory farm, zoo or laboratory; but where the door to escape is open, and the animals could - if they turned and looked - see the world outside their captivity...
But some fear to leave their comfortable captivity, others find reality boring. Yet others among the confined creatures are so deep in despair that they prefer not even to look at the free and wild world outside, and assert it is just an hallucination, or a tormenting trick of their captors.
Ultimately, the captivity of Modern Man is self-chosen, self-imposed; which is why they cannot see the obvious.
Thus they despair, and pine, and soon become extinct amidst material abundance; thus they insist upon doing-so; thus they hate those who clarify that all this is their own doing.
The situation is what Christians often call 'Sin'.
However, it seems pretty obvious that if this is indeed a creat-ed world; then it is one where God wants us to do most things for ourselves, and from ourselves. (That is how this world is set-up.) Learning which is merely passively-absorbed from other people, other sources, is not really the point.
So, unless (as RW Emerson correctly saw) we are stimulated to think for our-selves by it; reading generally does harm rather than good, even when what is said is true and well-motivated.
Such are these times. What good is done by pointing-out to people during many weeks of lockdown that they are now living under a totalitarian system of government?
If people confined to their houses for 23/24 hours for weeks on end, and who must daily engage with the mass media to be told of the latest (oscillating) change to the laws - if such people are not able to notice the fact from their own resources; then why try to impose this knowledge upon them by argument?
The same question on a civilizational scale arises when we try laboriously to demonstrate (perhaps with statistics!) that policy X (and Y and Z, simultaneously) will destroy our village, town, nation, civilization...
This stuff is typically blazingly obvious to the meanest intellect - and those who cannot see obvious harm, who indeed actively-deny and argue-against the obvious, do so because they desire that harm.
And that is the situation.
Nobody needs to be told that the changes of 2020 constitute totalitarian tyranny, which will lead to more bad things, because it is obvious; and when a person/ an institution/ a nation does not perceive the obvious, this situation is not helped by making it Even-More Obvious.
What must be addressed is that covert, implicit desire which underlies the denial and block.
I mean such desires as the widespread conviction of the futility of our actual, experienced life; and a hatred of that nation and civilization which imposes such a life upon us; and the inner blankness, fear and despair resulting from such convictions.
We would understand this if we observed it in animals kept in factory farm, zoo or laboratory conditions on an artificial and unnatural (increasingly artificial and unnatural) regime. When (despite plenty of food and comfortable shelter) such alienated and captive animals cease to reproduce and essentially Give-Up on living, we may be saddened but we are not surprised.
The fact that Modern Man has similarly Given-Up under conditions of ever-increasing phsyical, psychological and spiritual alienation, should likewise be easy to understand.
Modern Men are creatures that have Given-Up due to their alien environment; even worse, most of them have chosen to remain in this environment, to defend their environment against all substantive criticism, and to refuse to leave. To reason-with such confined and tamed creatures is futile; to inform them of the specifics of their dire situation is somewhat cruel.
What such creatures most need is to be shown someplace better to live and how to get there. As Christians we can try to do that - but that is all we can do.
We cannot make people want the better world, we cannot even make them pay attention for long enough to understand what is on offer...
In fact there is not much we can do!
But what little we can do - we should do. DO it, and then pass-on to continuing our primary work in this mortal life, which is ourselves to do exactly what we recommend to the lost souls.
Because the fact is that we ourselves are in a situation almost exactly as bad as the deluded Masses...
Just that We know why this is bad, that there really is somewhere Good where we aim to be; and that we know how to get there.
For us; knowing is Not the problem, but Doing.
In sum - our modern Western situation is indeed analogous to a wild animal in a factory farm, zoo or laboratory; but where the door to escape is open, and the animals could - if they turned and looked - see the world outside their captivity...
But some fear to leave their comfortable captivity, others find reality boring. Yet others among the confined creatures are so deep in despair that they prefer not even to look at the free and wild world outside, and assert it is just an hallucination, or a tormenting trick of their captors.
Ultimately, the captivity of Modern Man is self-chosen, self-imposed; which is why they cannot see the obvious.
Thus they despair, and pine, and soon become extinct amidst material abundance; thus they insist upon doing-so; thus they hate those who clarify that all this is their own doing.
The situation is what Christians often call 'Sin'.
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