I am saying that computers can't ever under any circumstances become AIs assuming that an AI is a meant to be a conscious agent; with 'free will', able to generate thought that is original with itself (and not random nor merely an output directly determined by inputs).
You will see immediately that the discussion goes to a deep, metaphysical level concerning the nature of life, consciousness and agency.
For me, believing in an 'animated universe' and given that I regard everything as 'alive and conscious' to some degree and in some way; the question is one of agency. Computers are alive and conscious in the way that - maybe - rocks and rivers are alive and conscious; but is not an agent in the way that a Man is.
This is because agency is possible only to Beings, and Beings have existed from eternity. And Agency is not possible to all Beings, but only to Men.
I don't know why this is, but it seems to be a basic fact of reality. God created creation, and the main purpose is that Men may develop (if they so choose) to become gods on a level with the creator and participating in creation.
But this does not seem to apply to everything that exists or is created - not everything is apparently capable of evolving to become divine. It may not be appropriate to ask 'why?' - because things must be set-up one way or the other: either some things (including Men) can become gods, or all things can become gods - and my intuition is that it is some things, not all.
A Man might 'become a computer' with agency, but a computer could not become an agent.
Discussion is welcome - but in the end it will probably merely be a matter of different assumptions. So, it is best to start from there.
Monday, 18 November 2019
A plot hole in Delaney's Donkey
Now Delaney had a donkey that everyone admired
Temporarily lazy and permanently tired
A leg at every corner balancing his head
And a tail to let you know which end he wanted to be fed
Riley slyly said we've underrated it, why not train it, then they took a rag
They rubbed it, scrubbed it, they oiled and embrocated it
Got it at the post and when the starter dropped the flag
There was Riley pushin' it, shovin' it, shushin' it
Hogan, Logan and everyone in town
Lined up, attackin' it and shovin' it and smackin' it
They might as well have tried to push the Town Hall down
The donkey was eyein' them, openly defyin' them
Winkin', blinkin' and twistin' out of place
Riley reversin' it, everybody cursin' it
The day Delaney's donkey ran the halfmile race
The muscles of the mighty never known to flinch
They couldn't move the donkey a quarter of an inch
Delaney lay exhausted, hangin' round his throat
With a grip just like a Scotsman on the five pound note
Starter, Carter, he lined up with the rest of them
When it saw them, it was willin' then
It raced up, braced up, ready for the best of them
They started off to cheer it but it changed its mind again
And there was Riley pushin' it, shovin' it, shushin' it
Hogan, Logan and Mary Ann Macgraw
She started pokin' it an' grabbin' it an' chokin' it
It kicked her in the bustle and it laughed hee-hah
The whigs and conservatives, the radical superlatives
Liberals and tories, they hurried to the place
Stood there in unity, helpin' the community
The day Delaney's donkey ran the halfmile race
The crowd began to cheer it, then Rafferty, the judge
He came up to assist them, but still it wouldn't budge
And the jockey who was ridin' it, little John McGee
Was so thoroughly disgusted that he went and had his tea
Hagan, Fagan were students of psychology
Swore they'd shift him with some dynamite
They bought it, brought it, and without apology
The donkey gave a sneeze and blew the whole lot out of sight
There was Riley pushin' it, shovin' it, shushin' it
Hogan, Logan and all the bally crew
Police, and auxiliary, the Garrison Artillery
The Second Enniskillen's and the Life Guards too
They seized it and harried it, they picked it up and carried it
Cheered it, steered it to the winnin' place
Then the bookmakers drew aside and they all committed suicide
The day Delaney's donkey won the half - mile - race
I am a great admirer of this account of an event in Old Ireland - but even as a young child I was troubled by what seems like a plot hole - and one that indeed casts doubt on the authenticity of the whole narrative.
I refer to the way in which the song begins by informing us about the day Delaney's donkey 'ran' the half mile race, but by the end the donkey is described as having 'won' it - despite the large measure of unfair assistance the beast received.
What clinches it for me, is that the bookmakers are said to have 'committed suicide' as a consequence of this result. But I find it inconceivable that the bookmakers would have agreed to pay-out when it is candidly acknowledged that the donkey was picked up and carried over the line.
As I say, this has bothered me since I was a kid. I know that Val Doonican was regarded as being a thoroughly decent chap (unusually among major showbiz stars) - but I think that with Delaney's Donkey (his first and 'breakthough' hit recording) he may have been guilty of a significant degree of dishonesty - perhaps driven to it by many preceding years of obscurity?
Temporarily lazy and permanently tired
A leg at every corner balancing his head
And a tail to let you know which end he wanted to be fed
Riley slyly said we've underrated it, why not train it, then they took a rag
They rubbed it, scrubbed it, they oiled and embrocated it
Got it at the post and when the starter dropped the flag
There was Riley pushin' it, shovin' it, shushin' it
Hogan, Logan and everyone in town
Lined up, attackin' it and shovin' it and smackin' it
They might as well have tried to push the Town Hall down
The donkey was eyein' them, openly defyin' them
Winkin', blinkin' and twistin' out of place
Riley reversin' it, everybody cursin' it
The day Delaney's donkey ran the halfmile race
The muscles of the mighty never known to flinch
They couldn't move the donkey a quarter of an inch
Delaney lay exhausted, hangin' round his throat
With a grip just like a Scotsman on the five pound note
Starter, Carter, he lined up with the rest of them
When it saw them, it was willin' then
It raced up, braced up, ready for the best of them
They started off to cheer it but it changed its mind again
And there was Riley pushin' it, shovin' it, shushin' it
Hogan, Logan and Mary Ann Macgraw
She started pokin' it an' grabbin' it an' chokin' it
It kicked her in the bustle and it laughed hee-hah
The whigs and conservatives, the radical superlatives
Liberals and tories, they hurried to the place
Stood there in unity, helpin' the community
The day Delaney's donkey ran the halfmile race
The crowd began to cheer it, then Rafferty, the judge
He came up to assist them, but still it wouldn't budge
And the jockey who was ridin' it, little John McGee
Was so thoroughly disgusted that he went and had his tea
Hagan, Fagan were students of psychology
Swore they'd shift him with some dynamite
They bought it, brought it, and without apology
The donkey gave a sneeze and blew the whole lot out of sight
There was Riley pushin' it, shovin' it, shushin' it
Hogan, Logan and all the bally crew
Police, and auxiliary, the Garrison Artillery
The Second Enniskillen's and the Life Guards too
They seized it and harried it, they picked it up and carried it
Cheered it, steered it to the winnin' place
Then the bookmakers drew aside and they all committed suicide
The day Delaney's donkey won the half - mile - race
I am a great admirer of this account of an event in Old Ireland - but even as a young child I was troubled by what seems like a plot hole - and one that indeed casts doubt on the authenticity of the whole narrative.
I refer to the way in which the song begins by informing us about the day Delaney's donkey 'ran' the half mile race, but by the end the donkey is described as having 'won' it - despite the large measure of unfair assistance the beast received.
What clinches it for me, is that the bookmakers are said to have 'committed suicide' as a consequence of this result. But I find it inconceivable that the bookmakers would have agreed to pay-out when it is candidly acknowledged that the donkey was picked up and carried over the line.
As I say, this has bothered me since I was a kid. I know that Val Doonican was regarded as being a thoroughly decent chap (unusually among major showbiz stars) - but I think that with Delaney's Donkey (his first and 'breakthough' hit recording) he may have been guilty of a significant degree of dishonesty - perhaps driven to it by many preceding years of obscurity?
Mental pathology - how to define it?
It seems useful to have some plausible definition of mental pathology - psychological pathology or psychopathology - to set against the pernicious inversions of mainstream culture.
Mental pathology is associated with a probable reduction in (proximately) survival and (ultimately) reproduction.
Reproduction is the key; because it is this which links medicine to biology, to the modern (post 1950s) understanding of biology as the science of entities that have been subject to natural selection.
So, in this objective sense, a mental pathology is not about what makes someone happier or more miserable; but about the effect of consequent behaviour on probable reproductive success. Does the phenomenon make that person more, or less, likely to conceive and successfully raise children?
This definition is particularly useful in clarifying the situation with human sexuality - where people get endlessly confused trying to predict what conceptualisation may optimise human happiness (in individuals or among groups); when the biological reality is crystal clear. 'Abnormal' is pathological when it reduces reproductive success.
The flip side is that a biologically valid treatment should restore or enhance probable reproductive success... Most obviouly by extending expected lifespan, but more fundamentally by making it more likely that a person will have children, and raise many biologically-viable children.
Interventions that - by contrast - reduce or obliterate reproduction (such as 'gender reassignment') are revealed as Not being treatments.
A softer, but useful, aspect of mental pathology is that it does not come as single isolated traits, but as clusters of several or many reproduction-damaging features.
There may well be some undiscovered unitary underlying 'lesion' that causes this variety of observable pathological symptoms and signs - such as a gene mutation, or a structural brain abnormality, or a chemical change somewhere - but such unitary causes nearly-always cause multiple adverse consequences; because organisms are made of linked and interdependent systems.
So, again with human sexuality as an example; when a sexual phenomenon is associated with increased rates of other pathologies e.g. other associated mental illnesses, increased rates of self-harm and suicide, increased annual death rates... then that behaviour is plausibly pathological, by normal medical and biological standards of evaluation.
Of course, modern Leftism operates by exclusion of normal medical/ biological criteria, by inducing and maintaining permanent confusion, and by imposing pseudo-solutions by massive propaganda and overwhelming coercive force.
Nonetheless, in this spiritual war we can know what's-really-what with mental disease, if we bear the above criteria in mind.
Mental pathology is associated with a probable reduction in (proximately) survival and (ultimately) reproduction.
Reproduction is the key; because it is this which links medicine to biology, to the modern (post 1950s) understanding of biology as the science of entities that have been subject to natural selection.
So, in this objective sense, a mental pathology is not about what makes someone happier or more miserable; but about the effect of consequent behaviour on probable reproductive success. Does the phenomenon make that person more, or less, likely to conceive and successfully raise children?
This definition is particularly useful in clarifying the situation with human sexuality - where people get endlessly confused trying to predict what conceptualisation may optimise human happiness (in individuals or among groups); when the biological reality is crystal clear. 'Abnormal' is pathological when it reduces reproductive success.
The flip side is that a biologically valid treatment should restore or enhance probable reproductive success... Most obviouly by extending expected lifespan, but more fundamentally by making it more likely that a person will have children, and raise many biologically-viable children.
Interventions that - by contrast - reduce or obliterate reproduction (such as 'gender reassignment') are revealed as Not being treatments.
A softer, but useful, aspect of mental pathology is that it does not come as single isolated traits, but as clusters of several or many reproduction-damaging features.
There may well be some undiscovered unitary underlying 'lesion' that causes this variety of observable pathological symptoms and signs - such as a gene mutation, or a structural brain abnormality, or a chemical change somewhere - but such unitary causes nearly-always cause multiple adverse consequences; because organisms are made of linked and interdependent systems.
So, again with human sexuality as an example; when a sexual phenomenon is associated with increased rates of other pathologies e.g. other associated mental illnesses, increased rates of self-harm and suicide, increased annual death rates... then that behaviour is plausibly pathological, by normal medical and biological standards of evaluation.
Of course, modern Leftism operates by exclusion of normal medical/ biological criteria, by inducing and maintaining permanent confusion, and by imposing pseudo-solutions by massive propaganda and overwhelming coercive force.
Nonetheless, in this spiritual war we can know what's-really-what with mental disease, if we bear the above criteria in mind.
Sunday, 17 November 2019
Certainly not the best, but certainly the fastest performance - Vivaldi's sopranino recorder concerto RV 443
This is one of my favourite concertos Of All; the slow movement being - in particular - sublime. But not here. In fact, this constitutes a kind of musical assault and battery!
On the other hand, it is very amusing, and it is hard to take your eyes away from the soloist: a certain Maurice Steger who is regarded by some as one of the greatest current recorder players. A striking figure - doing a good job of transforming just about the wimpiest classical instrument into a potential weapon of mass destruction; by means of simian crouches, spasmodic head-butts, jerks and grimaces, and - in general trying to bite-off the mouthpiece and spit it into your face at the speed of sound.
The garb (shiny suit three sizes too small) is apparently modelled on Alexei Sayle, the 1980s alternative comedian; but he looks and acts more like a cross between Andy Serkis and a psycho Croatian assassin with a small man complex.
Herr Steger minus his recorder (presumably having been rammed-into some victim) or Alexei Sayle dancing... who knows?
As for the performance... musical it is Not! Playing at-least double the normal speed for human beings, there is no time for anything like tone quality or phrasing - and indeed the slow movement suggests that Herr Steger is far too impatient to worry about such things. He seems to become bored by simply playing what the composer wrote, and so goes-in for the maximum number of rapid and improvised decorations - which certainly keep it interesting!
To be candid, as a strong generalisation I deplore the way that Vivaldi is currently played and over the past thirty years - having been brought up on the 1960s and 70s Baroque era vinyl recordings of the Academy of St Martins in the Fields, English Chamber Orchestra, I Musici, Munich Bach Orchetra, Leipzig Gewandhaus and so on. These orchestras and their genius conductors played Vivaldi, Bach, Handel, Albinoni, Corelli, Telemann and the like; with attention to beautiful tonality and lyrical phrasing, as if it was... you know... music.
I can't find a YouTube recording of this piece that I would regard as living up to those exalted standards; but here is one that is good, and gives an idea of how it could and should be played when musicality is the primary goal.
Better playing from Alberto Domínguez Gálvez; but if it came to a scrap, Steger would wipe the floor with him - probably literally...
However, so long as we are not bothered about the actual piece - Herr Steger has much to offer. And it is fast and virtuosic (albeit replete with fluffs). As Samuel Johnson said: "It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."
However, I would be too scared to tell Maurice S this opinion face-to-face - nor, if he happens to read this, would I care to bump into him in an alley on a dark night...
The 'new socialism' is a fake
I have noticed (in my shallow, headline-perusing way of keeping in touch with current affairs) that both in the UK and the USA there is a pseudo-revival of 'socialism' as an explicit political platform in the coming elections - or indeed crypto-communism in the case of the UK Labour Party - where the leader Jeremy Corbyn, and the shadow Chancellor John McDonnell are both revolutionary communists.
But there are no real socialists or communists now; or at least none in public life or positions of power. Not a single one. The species is extinct.
The Old Left (dominant up to the middle 1960s) was primarily economic in its focus - hence the role of Karl Marx as a founding figure. The primary unit of analysis was class.
The New Left which took over, marked a massive change - leading incrementally to the Left as we now know it everywhere - where there is a 'rainbow' coalition of multiple 'units of analysis' including strands such as anti-white antiracism, feminism, pro-non-biological sexuality and sexual identification, anti-native/ pro-immigrationism etc.
(It is important to recognise that dishonesty is foundational to the New Left - without systemic lying there have no policies. Their first, and continued, lie was to suppress and demonise the mass of common observation backed by science that psychological, as well as physical, attributes differ between classes, sexes and races - and these differences are substantially hereditary. This fact invalidates the totality of New Left policy - or rather reveals it as purposively evil.)
In the UK, the watershed came with Enoch Powell's 1968 defence of the native, white working class men against the damage of mass immigration; in which the Establishment Left all united against Powell, and against the native male white working classes that had previously been (ostensibly) their main focus and highest priority.
At that time; the trades union representatives of native, white working class men still had a major role in UK government and public policy; after that time the Left was progressively and completely taken-over by the upper middle classes ('student revolutionaries' and bureaucrats) and a few of their tame puppets. Leftist policy became focused on psychology rather than economics.
What happened to the Old Left? Almost without exception they became the New Left.
Some, like the current crop of politicians claiming to be socialists, maintained Marxist economics and a kind of nostalgic affection for The Working Class; but in practice these are merely window-dressing - and are utterly swamped and negated by the vast New Left agenda.
The modern pseudo-socialists see Marxist economics merely as a means to the end of getting control of the apparatus of the state, and extending direct state control into all institutions - where it will be used to pursue a New Left agenda: e.g. pro-mass immigration and the sexual revolution.
(The same applies to the Green/ Environmentalist agenda. It has been selected, distorted and lied about to rationalise the totalitarian takeover of everything. The Left has always been totalitarian, hence destructive; but the New Left's aim is much more wholly destructive than the Old Left. The Old Left aimed at the total destruction of Christianity specifically and tradition in general; but the New Left aims at the inversion of values - which is a more advanced and complete type of evil.)
The native, white male working class will be destroyed or converted into an underclass (indeed, this has already mostly happened).
That is the difference between socialism 60 years ago and 'socialism' now.
In the past sincere socialists wanted a Marxist Proletarian economic utopia; now 'socialists' want their hands on the coercive and propaganda power of the state to enforce a New Left agenda that has no place for the Proletariat.
And nowadays there are no sincere socialists in mainstream public discourse: Not A Single One. They are all liars, serving the Satanic agenda - the only distinction on the Left is between the few high level strategists of deliberate evil, and the mass of low level dupes and psychos.
Note: New readers should be aware that I was a serious (but anachronistic) Old Left 'Fabian'-type socialist for a few years from my middle teens, reading the theory and history going back to the late 19th century, and the earlier precursors of socialism. I joined the Labour Party on my 16th birthday, and gave branch lectures and held some representative roles before I had left school. I rapidly became disillusioned with the mainstream Labour Party but went through several other types and degrees of Leftism, including the most extreme form of anarchism I could find; not finally and fully abandoning Leftism (including New Leftism) until after I became a Christian about a decade ago. Indeed, it was only after becoming a Christian when I realised that the entirety of actual (and possible) non-religious/ secular politics is a variant of Leftism.
But there are no real socialists or communists now; or at least none in public life or positions of power. Not a single one. The species is extinct.
The Old Left (dominant up to the middle 1960s) was primarily economic in its focus - hence the role of Karl Marx as a founding figure. The primary unit of analysis was class.
The New Left which took over, marked a massive change - leading incrementally to the Left as we now know it everywhere - where there is a 'rainbow' coalition of multiple 'units of analysis' including strands such as anti-white antiracism, feminism, pro-non-biological sexuality and sexual identification, anti-native/ pro-immigrationism etc.
(It is important to recognise that dishonesty is foundational to the New Left - without systemic lying there have no policies. Their first, and continued, lie was to suppress and demonise the mass of common observation backed by science that psychological, as well as physical, attributes differ between classes, sexes and races - and these differences are substantially hereditary. This fact invalidates the totality of New Left policy - or rather reveals it as purposively evil.)
In the UK, the watershed came with Enoch Powell's 1968 defence of the native, white working class men against the damage of mass immigration; in which the Establishment Left all united against Powell, and against the native male white working classes that had previously been (ostensibly) their main focus and highest priority.
At that time; the trades union representatives of native, white working class men still had a major role in UK government and public policy; after that time the Left was progressively and completely taken-over by the upper middle classes ('student revolutionaries' and bureaucrats) and a few of their tame puppets. Leftist policy became focused on psychology rather than economics.
What happened to the Old Left? Almost without exception they became the New Left.
Some, like the current crop of politicians claiming to be socialists, maintained Marxist economics and a kind of nostalgic affection for The Working Class; but in practice these are merely window-dressing - and are utterly swamped and negated by the vast New Left agenda.
The modern pseudo-socialists see Marxist economics merely as a means to the end of getting control of the apparatus of the state, and extending direct state control into all institutions - where it will be used to pursue a New Left agenda: e.g. pro-mass immigration and the sexual revolution.
(The same applies to the Green/ Environmentalist agenda. It has been selected, distorted and lied about to rationalise the totalitarian takeover of everything. The Left has always been totalitarian, hence destructive; but the New Left's aim is much more wholly destructive than the Old Left. The Old Left aimed at the total destruction of Christianity specifically and tradition in general; but the New Left aims at the inversion of values - which is a more advanced and complete type of evil.)
The native, white male working class will be destroyed or converted into an underclass (indeed, this has already mostly happened).
That is the difference between socialism 60 years ago and 'socialism' now.
In the past sincere socialists wanted a Marxist Proletarian economic utopia; now 'socialists' want their hands on the coercive and propaganda power of the state to enforce a New Left agenda that has no place for the Proletariat.
And nowadays there are no sincere socialists in mainstream public discourse: Not A Single One. They are all liars, serving the Satanic agenda - the only distinction on the Left is between the few high level strategists of deliberate evil, and the mass of low level dupes and psychos.
Note: New readers should be aware that I was a serious (but anachronistic) Old Left 'Fabian'-type socialist for a few years from my middle teens, reading the theory and history going back to the late 19th century, and the earlier precursors of socialism. I joined the Labour Party on my 16th birthday, and gave branch lectures and held some representative roles before I had left school. I rapidly became disillusioned with the mainstream Labour Party but went through several other types and degrees of Leftism, including the most extreme form of anarchism I could find; not finally and fully abandoning Leftism (including New Leftism) until after I became a Christian about a decade ago. Indeed, it was only after becoming a Christian when I realised that the entirety of actual (and possible) non-religious/ secular politics is a variant of Leftism.
What is the Holy Ghost? - more from the Fourth Gospel
(The argument behind this post can be found in my mini-book on the Fourth Gospel.)
The Holy Ghost is essentially Jesus - as is made clear from the fact that the Holy Ghost could not be present on earth and operate until after Jesus had first resurrected, then completed his divinisation by ascending to Heaven.
The resurrected Jesus has an indestructible and eternal body; that is to say he is solid and located. Therefore to operate across the whole world, in all people's hearts, to lead as all to life eternal after our deaths; then Jesus must 'project' an immaterial and universal spirit. That is the Holy Ghost.
Jesus is 'in a place' - because he is resurrected; but the Holy Ghost is everywhere.
So, the Holy Ghost is Jesus, as he is directly accessible to us, knowable by us, in this mortal life. Meanwhile the body of Jesus is elsewhere, in Heaven (which is A Place).
I put 'project' into scare quotes, because the real process is the opposite. We all began as immaterial spirits; and to become incarnated (embodied) is a kind of condensation of spirit - in a two stage process: first the current mortal incarnation, then via death to a potentially eternal incarnation: i.e. resurrection. So the ability of Jesus to exist as spirit is original to himself and to all of us; and it is incarnation that is a progression. The fact that Jesus is (now) both embodied locally and also is a universal spirit should not be surprising - in a sense we all are this already, but without only mortal and partial stature and power.
The Holy Ghost is essentially Jesus - as is made clear from the fact that the Holy Ghost could not be present on earth and operate until after Jesus had first resurrected, then completed his divinisation by ascending to Heaven.
The resurrected Jesus has an indestructible and eternal body; that is to say he is solid and located. Therefore to operate across the whole world, in all people's hearts, to lead as all to life eternal after our deaths; then Jesus must 'project' an immaterial and universal spirit. That is the Holy Ghost.
Jesus is 'in a place' - because he is resurrected; but the Holy Ghost is everywhere.
So, the Holy Ghost is Jesus, as he is directly accessible to us, knowable by us, in this mortal life. Meanwhile the body of Jesus is elsewhere, in Heaven (which is A Place).
I put 'project' into scare quotes, because the real process is the opposite. We all began as immaterial spirits; and to become incarnated (embodied) is a kind of condensation of spirit - in a two stage process: first the current mortal incarnation, then via death to a potentially eternal incarnation: i.e. resurrection. So the ability of Jesus to exist as spirit is original to himself and to all of us; and it is incarnation that is a progression. The fact that Jesus is (now) both embodied locally and also is a universal spirit should not be surprising - in a sense we all are this already, but without only mortal and partial stature and power.
Saturday, 16 November 2019
The first thing you need to know
What do you want to happen when you die? Really, deep down, what?
Because, until you know what you want, you can't know how to lead this mortal life.
Do you want to become extinct at death - for consciousness to cease, and there be nothing left of your mind.
Do you want, above all, an end to suffering of all kinds - do you want to be around when that happens?
Do you want to live in the constant present moment of bliss? If so, then do you want to be a part of deity, alone, or in a communal bliss?
Do you want to come back and incarnate as another person, or some other entity?
Do you want to experience your fantasies? Live in a sensuous paradise? Do you want all your wishes to come true - with other people willing and obedient to them? Do you want to be so powerful that everything shall be arranged to your personal satisfaction?
Do you want to be resurrected to eternal life, and go to the Heaven of loving persons and dwell with God the creator, and with the Christ? If so, what will you actually do in Heaven? (Because that may make a difference to how you lead this mortal life.)
First, you need to know what you most want; then whether you can actually have it (i.e. what kind of reality this is); then (if it is possible) what to do in order to get it.
But first you need to know what You want; because not everybody will necessarily have exactly the same destination after death: there may well be some choice in these matters...
Because, until you know what you want, you can't know how to lead this mortal life.
Do you want to become extinct at death - for consciousness to cease, and there be nothing left of your mind.
Do you want, above all, an end to suffering of all kinds - do you want to be around when that happens?
Do you want to live in the constant present moment of bliss? If so, then do you want to be a part of deity, alone, or in a communal bliss?
Do you want to come back and incarnate as another person, or some other entity?
Do you want to experience your fantasies? Live in a sensuous paradise? Do you want all your wishes to come true - with other people willing and obedient to them? Do you want to be so powerful that everything shall be arranged to your personal satisfaction?
Do you want to be resurrected to eternal life, and go to the Heaven of loving persons and dwell with God the creator, and with the Christ? If so, what will you actually do in Heaven? (Because that may make a difference to how you lead this mortal life.)
First, you need to know what you most want; then whether you can actually have it (i.e. what kind of reality this is); then (if it is possible) what to do in order to get it.
But first you need to know what You want; because not everybody will necessarily have exactly the same destination after death: there may well be some choice in these matters...
'Green' consumerism increases pollution - this 'mental' world
By libelling as the worst pollutant a non-pollutant - i.e. carbon dioxide (in truth, The Gas of Life); Big Industry is enabled to continue increasing pollution - polluting to provide all the new (compulsory, subsidised, fashionable, high status) replacement technology that claims to reduce CO2 'emissions'...
And there are always new mandatory replacement technologies, every few years; so the consumerism never stops. Buy, buy, buy!
Noise (especially), fumes, poisons, food contaminants, steam, smoke, stench... all increase and pass unnoticed; while the food of green plants and the by-product of animal respiration has been demonised.
Even at the level of moving a few hundred yards; 'Green' consumerism favours the expensive, resource-consuming and dangerous nuisance bicycles over pedestrians.
A 'mental' world...
And there are always new mandatory replacement technologies, every few years; so the consumerism never stops. Buy, buy, buy!
Noise (especially), fumes, poisons, food contaminants, steam, smoke, stench... all increase and pass unnoticed; while the food of green plants and the by-product of animal respiration has been demonised.
Even at the level of moving a few hundred yards; 'Green' consumerism favours the expensive, resource-consuming and dangerous nuisance bicycles over pedestrians.
A 'mental' world...
Friday, 15 November 2019
An egregiously bad "Christmas" song...
I am fortunate to have got through my life so far unscathed by this dire diatribe Happy Holiday, which I heard as background music in a cafe the other day. Presumably it is - in part - the origin of the gratuitously anti-Christian* expression for Christmas.
What makes this song particularly bad is that it is performed by someone who was - supposedly, can't see it meself - a great singer: Peggy Lee; and by a - genuinely, truly - great songwriter: Irving Berlin.
I can only presume that this one was salvaged from his reject bin, pieced together, and issued while he was held at gunpoint.
Then again, there's no particular reason why we should expect a lapsed Jew to produce a genuinely good Christmas song. Becoming ridiculously popular for his subversive duds rather than his romantic marvels is hardly Berlin's fault!
Indeed, Berlin was, of course, responsible for White Christmas which was, allegedly, the most frequently-sung song in the world after Happy Birthday To You (from which much can be inferred concerning the human race); about which the only positive thing that can be said, is that it is considerably better than Happy Holiday.
Anyway... 'enjoy'...
* We celebrate Christmas because it is a Christian celebration - so to refuse to call Christmas Christmas is simply looking for any excuse to express hatred. Like using CE (Common Era) instead of AD (Anno Domini). The calendar system just is based on the (assumed) birth of Christ, but renaming it to pretend it isn't is exactly the kind of deniable, passive-aggressive, girly-slap-fight wimpishness that we can reliably expect from politically correct academics.
Note: Let's remind ourselves that Berlin could write a lovely song, performed here by the late and (by me) lamented Peter Skellern:
What makes this song particularly bad is that it is performed by someone who was - supposedly, can't see it meself - a great singer: Peggy Lee; and by a - genuinely, truly - great songwriter: Irving Berlin.
I can only presume that this one was salvaged from his reject bin, pieced together, and issued while he was held at gunpoint.
Then again, there's no particular reason why we should expect a lapsed Jew to produce a genuinely good Christmas song. Becoming ridiculously popular for his subversive duds rather than his romantic marvels is hardly Berlin's fault!
Indeed, Berlin was, of course, responsible for White Christmas which was, allegedly, the most frequently-sung song in the world after Happy Birthday To You (from which much can be inferred concerning the human race); about which the only positive thing that can be said, is that it is considerably better than Happy Holiday.
Anyway... 'enjoy'...
* We celebrate Christmas because it is a Christian celebration - so to refuse to call Christmas Christmas is simply looking for any excuse to express hatred. Like using CE (Common Era) instead of AD (Anno Domini). The calendar system just is based on the (assumed) birth of Christ, but renaming it to pretend it isn't is exactly the kind of deniable, passive-aggressive, girly-slap-fight wimpishness that we can reliably expect from politically correct academics.
Note: Let's remind ourselves that Berlin could write a lovely song, performed here by the late and (by me) lamented Peter Skellern:
Thursday, 14 November 2019
What we are supposed to learn from modernity, is that all systems are untrue - and that there is an alternative
If we are honest, and if we regard reality as having the coherence of being the creation of a loving God; we can learn from this modern condition, something that no previous generations have known.
All systems, all models (including those of science, philosophy and theology) - ALL systems and models - are false because finite simplifications of open-endedly ('infinitely') complex and interconnected realities.
In 'traditional times' (let's use the Old Testament times, or the Middle Ages as an example) there was a belief that The Law was primary - morality was governed by the system of law, science was governed by laws etc. The problems and simplifications were covered over by the large amount of unconscious 'common sense', based on instinct and habit.
When modernity arose the instincts weakened, and the habits too - and the limitations of all kinds of systems - especially of moral 'laws', but later of scientific laws - became evident. The unacceptable consequences of rigorous application that used to be covered by unconscious methods (eg. a king's or judge's 'discretion', the 'intuition' of a scientist) came to seem merely prejudice and dishonesty: merely a mask for selfishness.
All systems, and all institutions based upon systems, began inexorably to collapse - and this continues.
But system was not replaced - instead it was made more and more complex and abstract.
Systems were introduced to cover that which the old systems had left out - but the new systems were equally limited by their finite simplifications faced with an 'infinitely' complex reality. A complex model is just as wrong as a simple model (indeed, it generates more wrongness, quantitatively) - but that wrongness is less obvious...
So modernity tried to elude the known wrongness of systems by psychological manipulations. For example, all committees and voting - all methods of creating 'consensus' are dishonest psychological manipulations that disguise the arbitrary nature of their decisions under a sufficient degree of abstractness and complexity that most people are too daunted (or too lazy, or too dishonest) to perceive the situation.
When confronted with the fact that modern complex and abstract systems are every bit as arbitrary and wrong as the older traditions of simpler and personally-administered systems; modernity retreated into an asserted nihilism of 'relativism'.
Hence, traditional morality (e.g. the ten commandments, the catechisms) had an overall intuitive plausibility, but were gross simplifications that led to conclusions which felt wrong and left out many things that seemed important.
Each was discredited, subverted, destroyed; rejected and replaced with an inverted modern morality which avoids some of the irksome aspects of tradition by means of inversion of values.
The modern morality is worse 'overall' (also less efficient; less and often utterly ineffective) - if such a perspective were allowed, which it is not. System is only judged by system; individual persons have no permitted role other than to submit to system...
Modern morality has no foundation in overall intuition of Life - indeed is designed to overthrow the natural, traditional, spontaneous (because the limitations of such have been exhaustively documented), and modern morality changes all the time.
But it is abstractly and complexly formulated, and created and implemented by committees and teams of bureaucrats; all of whom claim to be value-neutrally implementing something which if Good because it is inhumanly abstract and was created by process not people.
(People being necessarily bad because prejudiced and corrupt - process being necessarily good because pure and abstract.)
At bottom, when confronted with all this - the Modern System will acknowledge its own arbitrariness and meaningless simplification - but assert its own power and physical/ psychological domination - and will bribe and threaten any dissent into compliance.
Thus our totalitarian world - a world based on self-consciously arbitrary systems, which claims moral authority simply on the basis of its power - including, especially, its psychological power to manipulate minds.
The weakness of modern system is its claim that Everything Is System - that when everything is just-another-system, then one or another system must (for reasons of expedience, such as stability, peace, growth) - and as The System is 'in possession' of the world (being vastly larger and more powerful than any other - having linked all the nations under global institutions, and all the major institutions within these nations) that its authority is simply a matter of pragmatic reality.
Others may try to displace The System - but, it is claimed, any possible system will have exactly the same basis flaws as The System - and the revolutionary process will cause so much suffering and death, that it is not worthwhile even to try. We should, instead, learn to love The System - to love Big Brother.
If it were true that everything were system, they would be right. All possible systems will indeed converge on The System - so it is not worth the trauma of overthrowing The System just to replace it with another version of the same.
And they are correct that all institutions are indeed systems.
Indeed, all theories, religions and ideologies are systems.
And, as such, all are fundamentally wrong, all are infinite over-simplifications that are justified only expediently, hence temporarily.
But not everything is system: is abstract and law-governed. There is, always has been, another reality - which could be termed Marriage and Family.
Although Marriage and Family have been (many, many times) redescribed as Systems, treated as Systems and hence subordinated to The System... But this is a dishonest trick.
Marriage and Family fundamentally are not systems - they precede all systems. Their basis is outwith all systems - because they are based on Love.
Love is not abstract, nor is it the product of a model. Love is something real only between Beings; and Beings are not abstract, nor are they systems.
(Indeed, any System could be described as an abstract model of a Being...)
Marriage and family involve Beings (in reality, not in the system-induced subversions and distortions that we see in politics and law and the mass media - where they are reduced to abstract definitions). beings (such as you and me) are eternal entities; and Love - which is the primal relation, the primal cohesion, before system.
When God created, it was Love that made possible creation - it is Love that distinguished creation from chaos.
So there is an alternative to The System - and it is based on Beings in Loving relationships.
In a sense, modernity can be seen as a vast apparatus of experience that is intended to lead us towards this insight.
Modernity is a vast exercise in lies and over-reach; which gets more and more extreme until (it is hoped) anybody can see the falsity and arbitrariness of its claims. having seen the falsity of all possible abstraction and system - we may be more likely to return to the truth of Love.
The hope of modernity is that we will thus become free from the millennial delusion that reality is systematic. Only then, will we be able to know that reality is relational.
Christianity may then be seen as based on our relationships with God, with Jesus, with each other - and Not based on abstract sets of necessarily wrong statements and laws.
Only then will we have the religion, the belief, that Jesus himself had - and wanted for us.
All systems, all models (including those of science, philosophy and theology) - ALL systems and models - are false because finite simplifications of open-endedly ('infinitely') complex and interconnected realities.
In 'traditional times' (let's use the Old Testament times, or the Middle Ages as an example) there was a belief that The Law was primary - morality was governed by the system of law, science was governed by laws etc. The problems and simplifications were covered over by the large amount of unconscious 'common sense', based on instinct and habit.
When modernity arose the instincts weakened, and the habits too - and the limitations of all kinds of systems - especially of moral 'laws', but later of scientific laws - became evident. The unacceptable consequences of rigorous application that used to be covered by unconscious methods (eg. a king's or judge's 'discretion', the 'intuition' of a scientist) came to seem merely prejudice and dishonesty: merely a mask for selfishness.
All systems, and all institutions based upon systems, began inexorably to collapse - and this continues.
But system was not replaced - instead it was made more and more complex and abstract.
Systems were introduced to cover that which the old systems had left out - but the new systems were equally limited by their finite simplifications faced with an 'infinitely' complex reality. A complex model is just as wrong as a simple model (indeed, it generates more wrongness, quantitatively) - but that wrongness is less obvious...
So modernity tried to elude the known wrongness of systems by psychological manipulations. For example, all committees and voting - all methods of creating 'consensus' are dishonest psychological manipulations that disguise the arbitrary nature of their decisions under a sufficient degree of abstractness and complexity that most people are too daunted (or too lazy, or too dishonest) to perceive the situation.
When confronted with the fact that modern complex and abstract systems are every bit as arbitrary and wrong as the older traditions of simpler and personally-administered systems; modernity retreated into an asserted nihilism of 'relativism'.
Hence, traditional morality (e.g. the ten commandments, the catechisms) had an overall intuitive plausibility, but were gross simplifications that led to conclusions which felt wrong and left out many things that seemed important.
Each was discredited, subverted, destroyed; rejected and replaced with an inverted modern morality which avoids some of the irksome aspects of tradition by means of inversion of values.
The modern morality is worse 'overall' (also less efficient; less and often utterly ineffective) - if such a perspective were allowed, which it is not. System is only judged by system; individual persons have no permitted role other than to submit to system...
Modern morality has no foundation in overall intuition of Life - indeed is designed to overthrow the natural, traditional, spontaneous (because the limitations of such have been exhaustively documented), and modern morality changes all the time.
But it is abstractly and complexly formulated, and created and implemented by committees and teams of bureaucrats; all of whom claim to be value-neutrally implementing something which if Good because it is inhumanly abstract and was created by process not people.
(People being necessarily bad because prejudiced and corrupt - process being necessarily good because pure and abstract.)
At bottom, when confronted with all this - the Modern System will acknowledge its own arbitrariness and meaningless simplification - but assert its own power and physical/ psychological domination - and will bribe and threaten any dissent into compliance.
Thus our totalitarian world - a world based on self-consciously arbitrary systems, which claims moral authority simply on the basis of its power - including, especially, its psychological power to manipulate minds.
The weakness of modern system is its claim that Everything Is System - that when everything is just-another-system, then one or another system must (for reasons of expedience, such as stability, peace, growth) - and as The System is 'in possession' of the world (being vastly larger and more powerful than any other - having linked all the nations under global institutions, and all the major institutions within these nations) that its authority is simply a matter of pragmatic reality.
Others may try to displace The System - but, it is claimed, any possible system will have exactly the same basis flaws as The System - and the revolutionary process will cause so much suffering and death, that it is not worthwhile even to try. We should, instead, learn to love The System - to love Big Brother.
If it were true that everything were system, they would be right. All possible systems will indeed converge on The System - so it is not worth the trauma of overthrowing The System just to replace it with another version of the same.
And they are correct that all institutions are indeed systems.
Indeed, all theories, religions and ideologies are systems.
And, as such, all are fundamentally wrong, all are infinite over-simplifications that are justified only expediently, hence temporarily.
But not everything is system: is abstract and law-governed. There is, always has been, another reality - which could be termed Marriage and Family.
Although Marriage and Family have been (many, many times) redescribed as Systems, treated as Systems and hence subordinated to The System... But this is a dishonest trick.
Marriage and Family fundamentally are not systems - they precede all systems. Their basis is outwith all systems - because they are based on Love.
Love is not abstract, nor is it the product of a model. Love is something real only between Beings; and Beings are not abstract, nor are they systems.
(Indeed, any System could be described as an abstract model of a Being...)
Marriage and family involve Beings (in reality, not in the system-induced subversions and distortions that we see in politics and law and the mass media - where they are reduced to abstract definitions). beings (such as you and me) are eternal entities; and Love - which is the primal relation, the primal cohesion, before system.
When God created, it was Love that made possible creation - it is Love that distinguished creation from chaos.
So there is an alternative to The System - and it is based on Beings in Loving relationships.
In a sense, modernity can be seen as a vast apparatus of experience that is intended to lead us towards this insight.
Modernity is a vast exercise in lies and over-reach; which gets more and more extreme until (it is hoped) anybody can see the falsity and arbitrariness of its claims. having seen the falsity of all possible abstraction and system - we may be more likely to return to the truth of Love.
The hope of modernity is that we will thus become free from the millennial delusion that reality is systematic. Only then, will we be able to know that reality is relational.
Christianity may then be seen as based on our relationships with God, with Jesus, with each other - and Not based on abstract sets of necessarily wrong statements and laws.
Only then will we have the religion, the belief, that Jesus himself had - and wanted for us.
Wednesday, 13 November 2019
Just One More Vote: It is always the Most Important Election Ever...
Voting is an evil and voting is a drug.
Those who recognise this fact are always being manipulated by some version of Just One More Vote.
Yes, thinking people may recognise that voting (as such) is intrinsically an evil nonsense, being a method of denying responsibility and prone to decisions that no single person would endorse.
On top of this, all actual election votes are nowadays rigged, and many are corrupt (false voters, counts), nowadays all electable candidates are evil and/or stupid in motivation and nature; and even if a good result gets through all this, all results that go against the Establishment are ignored or undone.
Despite all this; whatever is the current election, for instance, is always the most important ever. We are told to stifle our objections to the system, hold our noses, and just vote this one last time - or else disaster will ensue.
Yet disaster ensues anyway. Each election the possibilities are more dire; the bad side is worse than ever (and the less-bad side not much better).
Experience suggests that so long as the current system of 'democracy' prevails, then we are in an inexorable down-slide which voting cannot arrest, but on the contrary exacerbates.
If we stop taking the voting drug we will feel a lot worse over the short term - but abstention is the only route to anything better.
But ultimately and eventually it is minds that matter, not votes.
I would most like to see the lowest percentage voter turnout ever. That might be a sign of hope.
It might signal a total loss of belief in The System. It might indicate that people have ceased to look to politicians and parties and voting in order to change things for the better.
What would then need to happen is not a demoralisation but a a switch mass direct personal action by tens of millions.
Anything less is not worth having.
But that would not be worth having (and will not happen) without a Christian awakening coming first. If it happened, a low voter turnout could be one sign - along with a collapse in consumerism, a decline in everything to do with fashion - and other signs of reduced materialism.
Those who recognise this fact are always being manipulated by some version of Just One More Vote.
Yes, thinking people may recognise that voting (as such) is intrinsically an evil nonsense, being a method of denying responsibility and prone to decisions that no single person would endorse.
On top of this, all actual election votes are nowadays rigged, and many are corrupt (false voters, counts), nowadays all electable candidates are evil and/or stupid in motivation and nature; and even if a good result gets through all this, all results that go against the Establishment are ignored or undone.
Despite all this; whatever is the current election, for instance, is always the most important ever. We are told to stifle our objections to the system, hold our noses, and just vote this one last time - or else disaster will ensue.
Yet disaster ensues anyway. Each election the possibilities are more dire; the bad side is worse than ever (and the less-bad side not much better).
Experience suggests that so long as the current system of 'democracy' prevails, then we are in an inexorable down-slide which voting cannot arrest, but on the contrary exacerbates.
If we stop taking the voting drug we will feel a lot worse over the short term - but abstention is the only route to anything better.
But ultimately and eventually it is minds that matter, not votes.
I would most like to see the lowest percentage voter turnout ever. That might be a sign of hope.
It might signal a total loss of belief in The System. It might indicate that people have ceased to look to politicians and parties and voting in order to change things for the better.
What would then need to happen is not a demoralisation but a a switch mass direct personal action by tens of millions.
Anything less is not worth having.
But that would not be worth having (and will not happen) without a Christian awakening coming first. If it happened, a low voter turnout could be one sign - along with a collapse in consumerism, a decline in everything to do with fashion - and other signs of reduced materialism.
Why are so many mainstream media concerning with the danger of takeover by evil A.I.s (artificial intelligences)?
I was watching the most recent 'Terminator' movie and I wondered - not for the first time - why 'Hollywood' has been so keen on 'warning' us about the perils of takeover by evil AIs (Artificial Intelligences). Probably my first recollection of this theme was the computer HAL in 2001 A Space Odyssey; and there have been many examples since.
These cannot really be intended as serious warnings, since the same Establishment that funds major media is also engaged in a massive, unrelenting programme to introduce AI (e.g. the interlinked 'internet of things' aka. smart devices) - whether we like it or not. So what is going on?
The first idea might be along the lines of that apparent 'law' by which evil is 'required' to tell us what it is going to do to us, before it does it - as if our tacit consent is necessary.
I suppose this is the origin of the 'monologuing' of all the villains of stage and screen, who almost invariably do this to the hero before attempting to kill him (So, Mr Bond; after I have rushed off to deal with some urgent problem elsewhere, you will be cut in two by this slowly-moving laser beam which I have linked to...); and are then (notoriously) thwarted as a consequence of the delay.
But I think there must be more to it than that, particularly since AI is 'not a real thing'. Computers cannot think, have no will nor personality - and are never under any circumstances going to become living, conscious Beings...
So what is it all about?
My understanding is that the triumph of AI will not be when it becomes sentient, but when people believe it is sentient.
This is the crucial step in mass populations consenting to their own thought-control; which is the ultimate aim of the vast totalitarian bureaucratic System that already covers the world, and is continuously narrowing the mesh of its net to embrace as much of Life as possible.
Therefore my theory is that the evil AI is simply a plausible 'soft sell' of the core idea that there is such-a-real-thing as AI.
Given that it would be nigh impossible to convince modern people into believing that an AI could be the benign controller of a Utopian, it may be that dystopian movies about evil AIs are an indirect and more-plausible way of brainwashing the populace into believing that machines can become alive and conscious and potentially do nearly all of the things that humans currently do.
Once that crucial point has been got-across, then the next stage would be to get people to accept that things-called-AIs could be trusted to do things like drive cars and trains, pilot delivery drones, fight enemies, do police and government surveillance etc. - so long as there is some kind of human 'supervision'.
Which would - inevitably, nowadays - be bureaucratic surveillance; since demon-serving Establishment seeks - ASAP and as a matter of urgent priority - to monitor and control everybody in the world by one single linked bureaucracy.
In a nutshell - the intent is that things-called-AIs would-be/ will-continue-to-be integrated int The Bureaucracy.
Then things would be set-up for the AIs to be blamed for whatever nasty things the world government bureaucracy has in store for us.
AI: the ultimate fall-guy! (i.e. one who is utterly obedient and who never answers back)
Note: This post is not arguing that AI is impossible. It assume it is impossible and I believe it is impossible; but I am not arguing the case here. The argument is a deep one, to do with the fundamental nature of life and consciousness - and it is not a matter of science; because scientific proof or demonstration depends on prior assumptions as to the nature of life and consciousness. We can't prove or disprove AI with 'evidence' until after we know what counts as evidence and how to interpret it.
These cannot really be intended as serious warnings, since the same Establishment that funds major media is also engaged in a massive, unrelenting programme to introduce AI (e.g. the interlinked 'internet of things' aka. smart devices) - whether we like it or not. So what is going on?
The first idea might be along the lines of that apparent 'law' by which evil is 'required' to tell us what it is going to do to us, before it does it - as if our tacit consent is necessary.
I suppose this is the origin of the 'monologuing' of all the villains of stage and screen, who almost invariably do this to the hero before attempting to kill him (So, Mr Bond; after I have rushed off to deal with some urgent problem elsewhere, you will be cut in two by this slowly-moving laser beam which I have linked to...); and are then (notoriously) thwarted as a consequence of the delay.
But I think there must be more to it than that, particularly since AI is 'not a real thing'. Computers cannot think, have no will nor personality - and are never under any circumstances going to become living, conscious Beings...
So what is it all about?
My understanding is that the triumph of AI will not be when it becomes sentient, but when people believe it is sentient.
This is the crucial step in mass populations consenting to their own thought-control; which is the ultimate aim of the vast totalitarian bureaucratic System that already covers the world, and is continuously narrowing the mesh of its net to embrace as much of Life as possible.
Therefore my theory is that the evil AI is simply a plausible 'soft sell' of the core idea that there is such-a-real-thing as AI.
Given that it would be nigh impossible to convince modern people into believing that an AI could be the benign controller of a Utopian, it may be that dystopian movies about evil AIs are an indirect and more-plausible way of brainwashing the populace into believing that machines can become alive and conscious and potentially do nearly all of the things that humans currently do.
Once that crucial point has been got-across, then the next stage would be to get people to accept that things-called-AIs could be trusted to do things like drive cars and trains, pilot delivery drones, fight enemies, do police and government surveillance etc. - so long as there is some kind of human 'supervision'.
Which would - inevitably, nowadays - be bureaucratic surveillance; since demon-serving Establishment seeks - ASAP and as a matter of urgent priority - to monitor and control everybody in the world by one single linked bureaucracy.
In a nutshell - the intent is that things-called-AIs would-be/ will-continue-to-be integrated int The Bureaucracy.
Then things would be set-up for the AIs to be blamed for whatever nasty things the world government bureaucracy has in store for us.
AI: the ultimate fall-guy! (i.e. one who is utterly obedient and who never answers back)
Note: This post is not arguing that AI is impossible. It assume it is impossible and I believe it is impossible; but I am not arguing the case here. The argument is a deep one, to do with the fundamental nature of life and consciousness - and it is not a matter of science; because scientific proof or demonstration depends on prior assumptions as to the nature of life and consciousness. We can't prove or disprove AI with 'evidence' until after we know what counts as evidence and how to interpret it.
Tuesday, 12 November 2019
What is the meaning of Life in general - and of My Life in particular?
The key to the meaning of Life is purpose - to know what Life is For.
Most discussions of the meaning of life (including most Christian discussions) ignore as unimportant the truly vast diversity of actual human lives. Yet these are extremely variable - even from a purely biological and socio-political 'materialist' perspective.
Some people die immediately after the fertilised egg is formed; others die in the womb as embryos or as a more developed foetus; some die at the time of birth, or as infants; others die in childhood or as adolescents. Taken together - these 'premature' deaths account for a large majority of humans throughout history.
Then among the adults, there is a wide range of life expectancy. Then there is the variety of societies - hunter-gatherers, farmers or post-industrial revolution. There are widely different climates - between the Arctic and the Deserts, with all kinds of temperate and tropical environments in between.
There have been huge differences in human life through history, illiterate and literate, small scale and very large organisation. There are differences between political systems and regimes. And even when all such distinctions have been noticed, there are massive differences between classes, races, degrees of health and types of disability and illness.
Finally there is the specific family situation - parent/s or some other form of care, sibling/s or not, extended family or not, neighbours...
So, there are two aspects to life - the generic and the specific; the aspects that we all share and those which are partially or wholly distinctive to our own situation. Any satisfactory description of the meaning of life either needs to encompass both - or else to explain why one universal meaning of Life comes to be associated with such a vast range of individual variety.
My understanding is therefore that there are (at least) two different meanings of life:
1. Life. A single and universal meaning of 'human life' that applies to everyone who ever lived or will live.
2. My Life. An unique meaning of specific lives, that applies only to each individual person and their unique nature and circumstances.
My further understanding is that the meaning of Life is related to incarnation - to 'getting a body'. In brief - we all live this mortal life because we need to have a mortal (temporary) body, in order that after this life we are able to choose to accept the gift of resurrected eternal life, that Jesus brought.
In other words, we need a mortal body in order to be able to have a resurrected and eternal body. This meaning is universal: there is one meaning for all.
In sum the purpose of Life is incarnation, and the meaning of Life is to make possible resurrection into Heaven (for those who choose it, who choose to follow Jesus - i.e. those who choose the path of salvation).
The meaning of My Life - by contrast - is unique; just as my life situation is unique. I need to add a further assumption at this point: that each incarnated soul is already unique. Therefore, the uniqueness of our nature and life situation is a consequence of our uniqueness as newly incarnated souls.
So, I am assuming that we existed pre-mortally, as a wide range of unique not-incarnated spirits. This uniqueness is partly from distinctive experiences in pre-mortal life; but is ultimately founded on our origins as unique primordial Beings, potential-Men, present before creation and before we were made children of God.
In sum, the uniqueness of our mortal natures and lives derives from our original uniqueness. To put it another way; humans were never the same, at any point. We began as different from each other, we remain different from each other and our future is one in which each resurrected Man is unique.
The Self is therefore primary, and A Good Thing. God's plan for creation entails that we each are and remain unique. One consequence is that - overall - the experiences of this mortal life are intended to make us more distinctively unique.
If there was nothing else to it; the encouragement of human distinctiveness would tend to lead to disintegration of creation - everybody pursuing his or her own unique goals... But the primary reality of Christians is Love; and it is Love that enables unique individuals to live in harmony, to create in harmony.
My particular nature and circumstances in My Life are related to the particular needs of my soul. Each life offers experience; and my assumption is that (since this is a God-created world, and we are each a beloved child of God) the actual experience of My Life is intended for that learning from which I would most benefit.
This specific mortal life is therefore for learning - at one extreme some need to learn a lot (i.e. would benefit from significant learning) and may have long and complex lives. At the other extreme, other individuals do not need to learn anything specific beyond the bare facts of physical incarnation, and perhaps certain simple realities to do with being alive, dependence, basic sensation... and these would include some of those who die in very early, perhaps as zygotes, embryos or a foetus - even without the womb.
In sum, the purpose of My Life is to provide the experiences necessary for me to learn what I most need to learn in taking up my post-mortal life in Heaven.
This further means that My Life, this actual mortal life, does not have any meaning for those who reject salvation.
In other words, when mainstream atheistic, God, rejecting, Christ rejecting, people often express a belief that 'life has no meaning' - they are correct. From their point of view, their specific lives do not have any specific meaning.
The specific details of actual human lives are only necessary for that specific person, and only in relation to the destination of resurrected eternal life. If that is not going to happen; then life truly is pointless.
Bluntly: if you don't want resurrection, if you don't want to dwell in Heaven, if you don't want to follow Jesus... then actual mortal life is indeed a waste of your time, as you probably suspect already.
Most discussions of the meaning of life (including most Christian discussions) ignore as unimportant the truly vast diversity of actual human lives. Yet these are extremely variable - even from a purely biological and socio-political 'materialist' perspective.
Some people die immediately after the fertilised egg is formed; others die in the womb as embryos or as a more developed foetus; some die at the time of birth, or as infants; others die in childhood or as adolescents. Taken together - these 'premature' deaths account for a large majority of humans throughout history.
Then among the adults, there is a wide range of life expectancy. Then there is the variety of societies - hunter-gatherers, farmers or post-industrial revolution. There are widely different climates - between the Arctic and the Deserts, with all kinds of temperate and tropical environments in between.
There have been huge differences in human life through history, illiterate and literate, small scale and very large organisation. There are differences between political systems and regimes. And even when all such distinctions have been noticed, there are massive differences between classes, races, degrees of health and types of disability and illness.
Finally there is the specific family situation - parent/s or some other form of care, sibling/s or not, extended family or not, neighbours...
So, there are two aspects to life - the generic and the specific; the aspects that we all share and those which are partially or wholly distinctive to our own situation. Any satisfactory description of the meaning of life either needs to encompass both - or else to explain why one universal meaning of Life comes to be associated with such a vast range of individual variety.
My understanding is therefore that there are (at least) two different meanings of life:
1. Life. A single and universal meaning of 'human life' that applies to everyone who ever lived or will live.
2. My Life. An unique meaning of specific lives, that applies only to each individual person and their unique nature and circumstances.
My further understanding is that the meaning of Life is related to incarnation - to 'getting a body'. In brief - we all live this mortal life because we need to have a mortal (temporary) body, in order that after this life we are able to choose to accept the gift of resurrected eternal life, that Jesus brought.
In other words, we need a mortal body in order to be able to have a resurrected and eternal body. This meaning is universal: there is one meaning for all.
In sum the purpose of Life is incarnation, and the meaning of Life is to make possible resurrection into Heaven (for those who choose it, who choose to follow Jesus - i.e. those who choose the path of salvation).
The meaning of My Life - by contrast - is unique; just as my life situation is unique. I need to add a further assumption at this point: that each incarnated soul is already unique. Therefore, the uniqueness of our nature and life situation is a consequence of our uniqueness as newly incarnated souls.
So, I am assuming that we existed pre-mortally, as a wide range of unique not-incarnated spirits. This uniqueness is partly from distinctive experiences in pre-mortal life; but is ultimately founded on our origins as unique primordial Beings, potential-Men, present before creation and before we were made children of God.
In sum, the uniqueness of our mortal natures and lives derives from our original uniqueness. To put it another way; humans were never the same, at any point. We began as different from each other, we remain different from each other and our future is one in which each resurrected Man is unique.
The Self is therefore primary, and A Good Thing. God's plan for creation entails that we each are and remain unique. One consequence is that - overall - the experiences of this mortal life are intended to make us more distinctively unique.
If there was nothing else to it; the encouragement of human distinctiveness would tend to lead to disintegration of creation - everybody pursuing his or her own unique goals... But the primary reality of Christians is Love; and it is Love that enables unique individuals to live in harmony, to create in harmony.
My particular nature and circumstances in My Life are related to the particular needs of my soul. Each life offers experience; and my assumption is that (since this is a God-created world, and we are each a beloved child of God) the actual experience of My Life is intended for that learning from which I would most benefit.
This specific mortal life is therefore for learning - at one extreme some need to learn a lot (i.e. would benefit from significant learning) and may have long and complex lives. At the other extreme, other individuals do not need to learn anything specific beyond the bare facts of physical incarnation, and perhaps certain simple realities to do with being alive, dependence, basic sensation... and these would include some of those who die in very early, perhaps as zygotes, embryos or a foetus - even without the womb.
In sum, the purpose of My Life is to provide the experiences necessary for me to learn what I most need to learn in taking up my post-mortal life in Heaven.
This further means that My Life, this actual mortal life, does not have any meaning for those who reject salvation.
In other words, when mainstream atheistic, God, rejecting, Christ rejecting, people often express a belief that 'life has no meaning' - they are correct. From their point of view, their specific lives do not have any specific meaning.
The specific details of actual human lives are only necessary for that specific person, and only in relation to the destination of resurrected eternal life. If that is not going to happen; then life truly is pointless.
Bluntly: if you don't want resurrection, if you don't want to dwell in Heaven, if you don't want to follow Jesus... then actual mortal life is indeed a waste of your time, as you probably suspect already.
What future: New Culture, Benedict Option, or Final Participation
Not many people believe (as I do) in the evolutionary-development of human consciousness. If this is true, our current situation is unique and unprecedented, and we can only move forward to something fundamentally new (i.e. Final Participation).
I would like to contrast this with two other alternatives being put forward: New Culture and Benedict Option.
New Culture is a term I am coining here to describe an archetypal 'American' kind of positive thinking, can-do, we-will-win attitude; which is that we need to tackle the evils of Establishment Leftism by building a new culture, politics, economy...
This involves detaching ourselves from the mainstream (so as to cease supporting them with our money and life efforts) and instead to build a new Western Christian culture. This involves creating and expanding alternative mass media, re-booting the arts and sciences, distinctive financial institutions, new political parties and alliances, new forms of employment and community...
Rebuilding the Whole Thing on a new basis.
What is distinctive is that that this is a positive and creative programme - and that it intends to be a money-making, powerful culture: more profitable, more technologically capable, more militarily formidable etc.
What are the problems? The first is practical.
Since New Culture is a head-on attack on the Establishment, and since the Establishment is much more powerful at present - it is hard to believe that the Establishment would not be able to nip it in the bud - by expansion of what is already happening: media censorship and propaganda, lawfare and bureaucratic harassment, economic attacks from deplatforming, blocking the use of finance and software, deniable/ official physical attacks on persons and destruction of property etc. Just more of what we already have.
But these may be overcome - especially as the Mainstream is incrementally destroying its own efficiency and capability, and this suicide is not easily reversible.
The bigger problem is that the New Culture is a materialist plan of reform and reconstruction; it is positivism, reductionism, scientism - it is just another version of this-worldly utilitarianism; whose appeal is primarily a promise to enhance the health and happiness of the population, to minimise suffering and misery.
New Culture is essentially a type of Modernity - one that claims to be more sustainable because more efficient and effective. New Culture requires the vast apparatus of division of labour, specialisation and coordination of function; it requires the way of thinking that goes with such a world view: it entails a preservation of the global trade, managerialism and bureaucracy which go with the industrial society.
The Benedict Option came from the traditionalist Roman Catholic philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue, 1981) and from an idea in the sci-fi novel A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M Miller (1959) - and is based on an analogy between the current situation and that prevailing in the collapsing Western Roman Empire from the early 400s AD.
The argument is that Western Civilisation was preserved mainly in remote, cut-off monasteries and among hermits. The intention is that traditional forms of Christianity might cut themselves off from modern, Western culture - in small scale, minority societies - and survive until such a time that they can prove seedbeds for a re-birth of Western civilisation at some point in the future.
Thus, while the New Culture is positive, constructive and creative in intent; the Benedict Option is negative, preservative and defensive in intent. The idea is that there is an irreplaceable body of culture (based mainly on a fixed corpus of divine revelation) that must be kept intact and pure; and from which future societies may draw.
There are, again, practical difficulties - in that modern Leftism is demonically motivated in a way that post-Roman paganism was not; so that Leftism seeks-out and destroys its enemies. It would be presumed that no monastery, no hermit, would be allowed to exists in defiance of the Mainstream Establishment - but would be (one way or another) subverted, destroyed or inverted by the dominant power and propaganda structures.
But assuming these problems could be overcome; even as an ideal, there are problems with the Benedict Option. One is that the desirability of a reversion to traditionalist religion is not generally acknowledged.
Another is that it may prove impossible. The Benedict Option is based on a cyclical model of history; but if history is linear (as I believe) then there is no reason to believe that we can ever revert to an earlier stage.
If the modern post-industrial-revolution growth-orientated societies really are something new and unprecedented; if the problems of modernity (i.e. endemic and growing suicidal self-hatred; manifested by chosen anti-natalism and sub-fertility, and an active, subsidised program of native/ white/ Western population self-replacement) - then our main problems are likewise unprecedented, and there is no reason to suppose that what worked 1600 years ago will work again now.
So, I find myself left with the third alternative of Final Participation by means of Romantic Christianity - which is a positive and creative programme (like New Culture) - but a minority and social-transforming intention like the Benedict Option.
And unlike both: it is non-abstract and instead personal, being based on love; which I take to be a phenomenon that is real and strong mainly in families and marriages.
Romantic Christianity implies a bottom-up, family-clan basis for social organisation - such as I believe is the situation in Heaven. That is why it is called 'Final' Participation - it is the mortal, temporary, partial, corruptible attempt to live on earth the the same loving and creative participation with God that Christians hope to live in Heaven.
At any rate, FP requires that we set-aside generalised plans, programmes and blueprints for the future.
We need to start with a person-by-person Christian awakening, work on developing our own faith and consciousness; and... well... see what emerges from that on a small scale (at a personal, loving and familial level).
I think if we can develop anything Good, as 'raw material'; then we can rely upon God to ensure that this is amplified and disseminated as widely as necessary. After all, word of mouth is potentially an exponentially accelerating process of amplification (one person tells two, who tell four etc.).
Therefore we do not need the mass media and propaganda systems of the modern state; nor do we need the formal, hierarchical, sub-specialised institutions of tradition. We do not need a New Culture or the defence and preservation of Monastic preserves.
We just need each other - God Within and the Holy Ghost.
I would like to contrast this with two other alternatives being put forward: New Culture and Benedict Option.
New Culture is a term I am coining here to describe an archetypal 'American' kind of positive thinking, can-do, we-will-win attitude; which is that we need to tackle the evils of Establishment Leftism by building a new culture, politics, economy...
This involves detaching ourselves from the mainstream (so as to cease supporting them with our money and life efforts) and instead to build a new Western Christian culture. This involves creating and expanding alternative mass media, re-booting the arts and sciences, distinctive financial institutions, new political parties and alliances, new forms of employment and community...
Rebuilding the Whole Thing on a new basis.
What is distinctive is that that this is a positive and creative programme - and that it intends to be a money-making, powerful culture: more profitable, more technologically capable, more militarily formidable etc.
What are the problems? The first is practical.
Since New Culture is a head-on attack on the Establishment, and since the Establishment is much more powerful at present - it is hard to believe that the Establishment would not be able to nip it in the bud - by expansion of what is already happening: media censorship and propaganda, lawfare and bureaucratic harassment, economic attacks from deplatforming, blocking the use of finance and software, deniable/ official physical attacks on persons and destruction of property etc. Just more of what we already have.
But these may be overcome - especially as the Mainstream is incrementally destroying its own efficiency and capability, and this suicide is not easily reversible.
The bigger problem is that the New Culture is a materialist plan of reform and reconstruction; it is positivism, reductionism, scientism - it is just another version of this-worldly utilitarianism; whose appeal is primarily a promise to enhance the health and happiness of the population, to minimise suffering and misery.
New Culture is essentially a type of Modernity - one that claims to be more sustainable because more efficient and effective. New Culture requires the vast apparatus of division of labour, specialisation and coordination of function; it requires the way of thinking that goes with such a world view: it entails a preservation of the global trade, managerialism and bureaucracy which go with the industrial society.
The Benedict Option came from the traditionalist Roman Catholic philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue, 1981) and from an idea in the sci-fi novel A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M Miller (1959) - and is based on an analogy between the current situation and that prevailing in the collapsing Western Roman Empire from the early 400s AD.
The argument is that Western Civilisation was preserved mainly in remote, cut-off monasteries and among hermits. The intention is that traditional forms of Christianity might cut themselves off from modern, Western culture - in small scale, minority societies - and survive until such a time that they can prove seedbeds for a re-birth of Western civilisation at some point in the future.
Thus, while the New Culture is positive, constructive and creative in intent; the Benedict Option is negative, preservative and defensive in intent. The idea is that there is an irreplaceable body of culture (based mainly on a fixed corpus of divine revelation) that must be kept intact and pure; and from which future societies may draw.
There are, again, practical difficulties - in that modern Leftism is demonically motivated in a way that post-Roman paganism was not; so that Leftism seeks-out and destroys its enemies. It would be presumed that no monastery, no hermit, would be allowed to exists in defiance of the Mainstream Establishment - but would be (one way or another) subverted, destroyed or inverted by the dominant power and propaganda structures.
But assuming these problems could be overcome; even as an ideal, there are problems with the Benedict Option. One is that the desirability of a reversion to traditionalist religion is not generally acknowledged.
Another is that it may prove impossible. The Benedict Option is based on a cyclical model of history; but if history is linear (as I believe) then there is no reason to believe that we can ever revert to an earlier stage.
If the modern post-industrial-revolution growth-orientated societies really are something new and unprecedented; if the problems of modernity (i.e. endemic and growing suicidal self-hatred; manifested by chosen anti-natalism and sub-fertility, and an active, subsidised program of native/ white/ Western population self-replacement) - then our main problems are likewise unprecedented, and there is no reason to suppose that what worked 1600 years ago will work again now.
So, I find myself left with the third alternative of Final Participation by means of Romantic Christianity - which is a positive and creative programme (like New Culture) - but a minority and social-transforming intention like the Benedict Option.
And unlike both: it is non-abstract and instead personal, being based on love; which I take to be a phenomenon that is real and strong mainly in families and marriages.
Romantic Christianity implies a bottom-up, family-clan basis for social organisation - such as I believe is the situation in Heaven. That is why it is called 'Final' Participation - it is the mortal, temporary, partial, corruptible attempt to live on earth the the same loving and creative participation with God that Christians hope to live in Heaven.
At any rate, FP requires that we set-aside generalised plans, programmes and blueprints for the future.
We need to start with a person-by-person Christian awakening, work on developing our own faith and consciousness; and... well... see what emerges from that on a small scale (at a personal, loving and familial level).
I think if we can develop anything Good, as 'raw material'; then we can rely upon God to ensure that this is amplified and disseminated as widely as necessary. After all, word of mouth is potentially an exponentially accelerating process of amplification (one person tells two, who tell four etc.).
Therefore we do not need the mass media and propaganda systems of the modern state; nor do we need the formal, hierarchical, sub-specialised institutions of tradition. We do not need a New Culture or the defence and preservation of Monastic preserves.
We just need each other - God Within and the Holy Ghost.
Monday, 11 November 2019
More on the false concept of 'Holiness Spirals'
Not only do Leftists Not engage in Holiness Spirals - HSs don't exist as a phenomenon; assuming (as Christians do) there is a such a real-thing as spiritual Holiness.
There is no tendency (or, at least, it is extremely rare) for Holiness to spiral out of control. Holiness is too difficult to spiral!
The tendency goes in the opposite direction - to spiral into worldliness, not Holiness.
Of course, if Holiness is equated with hypocrisy; i.e. if all possible examples of Holiness are interpreted as being necessarily hypocritical 'virtue signalling' - then that does indeed spiral out of control, in order to cover for itself.
But if Holiness is a real and spiritual thing; then this is not so.
'Spiral' implies an innate tendency towards positive feedback; the idea that when once something has started, it will not tend to revert to the starting point (negative feedback) nor will it go to the opposite extreme (like a pendulum swing) - but will instead become more extreme with accelerating rapidity.
And indeed there is this quality about Leftism: it feeds-off-itself until...
Well what exactly?
Positive feedback mechanisms can only end by destroying themselves. Does Leftism destroy itself? In a material sense - yes; but for a Christian, the essence is spiritual. And in this spiritual sense, Leftism is a type of evil; indeed the dominant mode of evil in the modern world.
In this spiritual sense, Leftism leads to more Leftism without any necessary end-point - just as evil can always become more evil.
Neither Leftism nor evil more generally can continue to completion - because evil is purposive, and purpose has an ineradicable element of divine creation. A parasite kills itself when it consumes its host - but in the case of evil, the parasite is part of the same creation as the host. But evil can always become more evil, like an asymptotic curve.
So, Leftism may well (almost certainly will) destroy our civilisation, with the death of many billions worldwide who depend on this civilisation to sustain the seven-fold global population growth since the industrial revolution.
However, the spiritual harm of Leftism - the value inversion, the self-chosen damnation - could in principle just keep increasing and increasing: as evil feeds upon evil.
In sum, from a Christian (hence spiritual) perspective; Holiness is the wrong term, Spiral is actually a negative attribute; and the common assumption that Holiness Spirals are self-limiting is not necessarily true.
If there is a spiritual limit to the harm of Leftism, it comes not from intrinsic properties of Leftism; but from that which is Not Leftism: that which is Good.
God is the only antidote to Leftism.
There is no tendency (or, at least, it is extremely rare) for Holiness to spiral out of control. Holiness is too difficult to spiral!
The tendency goes in the opposite direction - to spiral into worldliness, not Holiness.
Of course, if Holiness is equated with hypocrisy; i.e. if all possible examples of Holiness are interpreted as being necessarily hypocritical 'virtue signalling' - then that does indeed spiral out of control, in order to cover for itself.
But if Holiness is a real and spiritual thing; then this is not so.
'Spiral' implies an innate tendency towards positive feedback; the idea that when once something has started, it will not tend to revert to the starting point (negative feedback) nor will it go to the opposite extreme (like a pendulum swing) - but will instead become more extreme with accelerating rapidity.
And indeed there is this quality about Leftism: it feeds-off-itself until...
Well what exactly?
Positive feedback mechanisms can only end by destroying themselves. Does Leftism destroy itself? In a material sense - yes; but for a Christian, the essence is spiritual. And in this spiritual sense, Leftism is a type of evil; indeed the dominant mode of evil in the modern world.
In this spiritual sense, Leftism leads to more Leftism without any necessary end-point - just as evil can always become more evil.
Neither Leftism nor evil more generally can continue to completion - because evil is purposive, and purpose has an ineradicable element of divine creation. A parasite kills itself when it consumes its host - but in the case of evil, the parasite is part of the same creation as the host. But evil can always become more evil, like an asymptotic curve.
So, Leftism may well (almost certainly will) destroy our civilisation, with the death of many billions worldwide who depend on this civilisation to sustain the seven-fold global population growth since the industrial revolution.
However, the spiritual harm of Leftism - the value inversion, the self-chosen damnation - could in principle just keep increasing and increasing: as evil feeds upon evil.
In sum, from a Christian (hence spiritual) perspective; Holiness is the wrong term, Spiral is actually a negative attribute; and the common assumption that Holiness Spirals are self-limiting is not necessarily true.
If there is a spiritual limit to the harm of Leftism, it comes not from intrinsic properties of Leftism; but from that which is Not Leftism: that which is Good.
God is the only antidote to Leftism.
The extinction of Cognitive Dissonance in The West
From Berger Ferenc (aka Francis Berger) - an acute insight:
The West has become biggest and most effective reality-denying system the world has ever known. Acknowledging reality is not only frowned upon, but punished, whereas embracing unreality is celebrated and rewarded.
In other words, the most successful, praised, and celebrated people in the West are those who hold the uncanny ability believe in nothing but that which contradicts reality.
But do such people truly feel any sense of cognitive dissonance? Do they feel any mental discomfort or psychological stress or does that disappear when one abandons reality in favor of unreality?
If so, then cognitive dissonance might be going the way of the dodo; hand-in-hand with the West.
Read the whole thing...
The West has become biggest and most effective reality-denying system the world has ever known. Acknowledging reality is not only frowned upon, but punished, whereas embracing unreality is celebrated and rewarded.
In other words, the most successful, praised, and celebrated people in the West are those who hold the uncanny ability believe in nothing but that which contradicts reality.
But do such people truly feel any sense of cognitive dissonance? Do they feel any mental discomfort or psychological stress or does that disappear when one abandons reality in favor of unreality?
If so, then cognitive dissonance might be going the way of the dodo; hand-in-hand with the West.
Read the whole thing...
Why are the views of decent, sensible Men so counter-productive?
There is an alluring phenomenon, whereby some person who seems clearly decent and sensible gets regarded as a wise counsellor; yet their counsel is actually sustaining and strengthening of evil.
This happens because such people (being sensible, being decent) make small and specific arguments against egregious abuses and injustices; and do so by starting-from assumptions that are widely shared. By doing so, they uphold and reinforce those assumptions; they buttress the moral framework that is already in place.
When that moral framework is - as now - evil in motivation and insane in operation; sensible, decent men do evil; and they do it in an especially insidious - because indirect and implicit - fashion.
Sensible and decent Men are soft-sell propagandists for the demonic agenda.
In essence, SD Men lend their moral authority to The System, by upholding its premises and purposes.
When, as now, The System is intrinsically evil and directed at greater evil; sensible, decent men have become servants of evil; and are fighting the spiritual war on the side of the Enemy.
These charming and judicious speakers of ethical platitudes may be more valuable to the devil than his own enslaved demons.
If we want to be on God's side, instead of being the dupe of Satan, we must all reject The System; and this means that we will be regarded as wicked and/or foolish. And, of course - since we inhabit a world of value inversion - we will surely be regarded as objectionable, nasty, dangerous.
Therefore, beware those who appeal to a broad base of sensible and decent folk; especially when our knowledge of such figureheads comes to us via the mass media or large institutions. But even in private life (in the workplace, in committees, in casual socialisation) - we need to learn to recognise the dark-intoxication drawing us towards common consensus.
Given that our attention and energies are finite, we should shun these pseudo-sages; these Sarumans in Gandalf's clothing...
Sunday, 10 November 2019
Cantilevered over the abyss
We live in an evil civilisation. On the one hand, it is destroying itself strategically and ever more rapidly; led by a global Establishment in service to Satan.
These are not-even-trying to sustain things - and are instead making an insane world of value inversion, where Good is illegal and ugliness, sin and lies are mandatory and celebrated.
The colossal and multi-inter-dependent superstructure of production, provision, distribution has had its foundations undermined until it hangs-out above a plummeting drop with no visible means of support...
On the other hand, this same corrupt and corrupting materialist and God-denying culture is the only thing capable keeping more than seven billion people alive and functioning.
And this is personal and unavoidable.
It is reality for everyone; because even if you personally happen to be one of the small minority who do not depend very directly and immediately on this vast, complex, coordinated, internationally trading, technologically micro-specialised System to keep you alive and healthy over the short term; plenty of those people whom you most love and value are exquisitely-dependent.
And everyone is vulnerable in the medium- to long-term. When epidemics, famine and warfare are universal; when psychopaths, gangsters, rogue military and feral states run amok; when giga-deaths accumulate - the environment everywhere and for everybody will become unpredictably, massively disrupted.
Then will be a great test. Those who do not know what this mortal life is truly about, what his or her own actual life is about; will quite likely be drawn rapidly into spiralling depths of depravity and damnation. The demons will have their day.
Those whose priority is to follow Jesus through death into resurrected life eternal - who know that their experiences are divinely ordained for their learning, and such learning is directed towards greater spiritual development towards divinity...
Well, any such people will surely make the best of whatever happens to them-selves, specifically.
What should we Do about X?
Various dilemmas of modern life are described and discussed at Junior Ganymede - but also with relevance to Christians outwith the CJCLDS.
It strikes me that it is (or should be!) easy for Christians to know for themselves what is right and wrong nowadays - because evil is becomes so extreme and insane as to unmask itself.
The problem then becomes 'what to do about it' or 'what to say to people' - and to this there is no general answer: we should not be looking for rules.
The characteristic of these times is that - when corruption is all around, and all institutions (including all and even the best Christian churches) are corrupted to a significant extent; we must learn to rely more than ever before upon personal discernment.
Obedience (which was a virtue when the best institutions and people were highly pure in their motivations) is counter-productive when obedience is directed at those who (overall) serve a demonic agenda (i.e. those who ally with the totalitarian bureaucratic transhumanist globalist agenda - in its various manifestations) - whether knowingly or unconsciously.
But the demonic agenda is itself easy to detect - indeed almost stereotyped in its manifestations; if we allow our intuitions and common sense (grounded in God) a proper role.
If - on the other hand - we try to defend institutions and people that are corrupting; if we 'rationalise' and explain-away corrupt secular leftist behaviours among leaders and colleagues - instead of identifying and rejecting their true motivations - then we ourselves will soon be drawn into the downward spiral, one way or another.
It is much less important what we do than how we think. Behaviour is always constrained by circumstance, and can be compelled. By contrast, thought is free - assuming we are real Christians.
But we must not allow our compelled behaviours to affect our understanding and knowledge of what is virtuous, beautiful and true. Temptations to rationalising and explaining-away must be shunned.
If we are compelled to be hypocrites (or too weak to resist), then we need to admit we are hypocrites (to ourselves and those we love and respect) - acknowledge that our behaviour fails to match our ideals, and repent of our behaviour.
(Even when we cannot, or will not, do anything about it - if we will persist in our sins - still wemust acknowledge and repent.)
There needs to be a clear demarcation between thought and action, in order to preserve the integrity of thought.
But behavioural perfection is always difficult and usually impossible, and getting harder every month; so we need to distinguish what we do from what we know; and give priority to what we know.
It strikes me that it is (or should be!) easy for Christians to know for themselves what is right and wrong nowadays - because evil is becomes so extreme and insane as to unmask itself.
The problem then becomes 'what to do about it' or 'what to say to people' - and to this there is no general answer: we should not be looking for rules.
The characteristic of these times is that - when corruption is all around, and all institutions (including all and even the best Christian churches) are corrupted to a significant extent; we must learn to rely more than ever before upon personal discernment.
Obedience (which was a virtue when the best institutions and people were highly pure in their motivations) is counter-productive when obedience is directed at those who (overall) serve a demonic agenda (i.e. those who ally with the totalitarian bureaucratic transhumanist globalist agenda - in its various manifestations) - whether knowingly or unconsciously.
But the demonic agenda is itself easy to detect - indeed almost stereotyped in its manifestations; if we allow our intuitions and common sense (grounded in God) a proper role.
If - on the other hand - we try to defend institutions and people that are corrupting; if we 'rationalise' and explain-away corrupt secular leftist behaviours among leaders and colleagues - instead of identifying and rejecting their true motivations - then we ourselves will soon be drawn into the downward spiral, one way or another.
It is much less important what we do than how we think. Behaviour is always constrained by circumstance, and can be compelled. By contrast, thought is free - assuming we are real Christians.
But we must not allow our compelled behaviours to affect our understanding and knowledge of what is virtuous, beautiful and true. Temptations to rationalising and explaining-away must be shunned.
If we are compelled to be hypocrites (or too weak to resist), then we need to admit we are hypocrites (to ourselves and those we love and respect) - acknowledge that our behaviour fails to match our ideals, and repent of our behaviour.
(Even when we cannot, or will not, do anything about it - if we will persist in our sins - still wemust acknowledge and repent.)
There needs to be a clear demarcation between thought and action, in order to preserve the integrity of thought.
But behavioural perfection is always difficult and usually impossible, and getting harder every month; so we need to distinguish what we do from what we know; and give priority to what we know.
Saturday, 9 November 2019
Aims versus Objectives - or, how They mess with your mind
One aspect of the bureaucratic takeover of British universities I experienced, was the annual demand to revise the course descriptions; and to define both the Aims and Objectives.
The idea was that - suddenly - courses needed 'clear' Aims and Objectives if they were to be good; indeed, the assumption was that good courses derived-from Aims and Objectives...
700 years-worth of counter-examples made no impact on this assumption, precisely because it was an assumption. And the assumption behind this assumption was that universities must be remade as bureaucracies - to be monitored and controlled by managers.
Part of this was that academic courses must be first re-described in bureaucratic language, en route to being re-conceptualised as such - with the destination of becoming bureaucracies in actuality - in which academic subjects were constructed, from bottom-up under top-down supervision, as bureaucratic entities.
...So that they could be managed by managers; and management is generic - not specific. The assumption behind management is that there is such a thing as management and it is necessary.
Anyway, one aspect of this process was that there were Aims and Objectives for each course (and each degree, and the rest), and Aims were distinct from from Objectives. As and Os were distinct in some way that was vital to the 'quality' of the Teaching and Learning (another of the new bureaucratic distinction) but in some way that somehow could neither be articulated nor understood...
There were actually short courses run by The Managers about the difference between Aims and Objectives, and how important was this difference, and how a clear understanding of this distinction would lead to Better Teaching (Managers being, of course, the acknowledged experts on Better Teaching).
Yet the matter somehow remained confused... Honest and diligent academics never could distinguish Aims and Objectives in any coherent and principled way - it became merely a business of filling-in forms, of saying the same thing twice - first as Aims then as Objectives, with two different orderings of synonymous words.
Because, naturally, Os and As had no real world relevance to anything important. No course ever was better for having correctly articulated and complementary Aims and Objectives (unless it was appallingly bad to begin-with) - although plenty were damaged by the process of which As and Os were a part.
...Yet if it was not important, why the insistence upon Aims and Objectives - over many years and academic cycles? Why compel academics to go through this process, when there was no right answer, and no positive value?
The answer is a deep one - and it is an insight into the modus operandi of the demonic forces that themselves lie behind the rise of managerialism and the world-takeover by bureaucracy - which is intrinsically evil in its motivation.
(Bureaucracy is the means by which totalitarianism is implemented - and totalitarianism is the main and increasing form of organised, top-down evil in the past two centuries.)
The fundamental and ineradicable incoherence of Aims and Objectives, combined with the mandatory imposition of the distinction, were one part of a large scale assault on reality.
Evil is unreal. Good, by contrast, is real - although not the totality of reality. Evil is dishonesty (not truth), ugliness (not beauty), and sin (not virtue). And in its small way; Aims and Objectives are institutional lies that are part of the ugly activity of form-filling, and aiming at the evil assimilation into generic, unified bureaucracy of teaching (what used to go-on between specific academics and specific students).
In its small way, to compel academics to define and implement Aims and Objectives, was to make them collude in lies, to lie that there was importance and meaning in such distinctions; to encourage the denial of incoherence... To get people used-to stating solemn nonsense, then doubling-down on the lie that it was meaning-ful and vitally important.
As and Os were a microcosm of the submission of individuals to The System - and an invitation to the academic to deny personal responsibility, and to subordinate himself to The System. It was to induce an assertion that System was primary; and (most important) that System was generic - such that the System for my university course was part of the System for the degree, for the universities, for all the other management Systems of the university; and these Systems themselves brought into one System that was linked to other university Systems, and those of politics, law, finance etc - and these National systems to the European Union, and the United Nations...
Aims and Objectives were a first step, therefore, in integrating my teaching into a single and all-pervasive and micro-divided System of World Government.
And this single-unified-universal bureaucracy is the primary and most effective manifestation of purposive supernatural evil in the world today; the mechanism for implementation of the (demonically driven) agenda for subversion, destruction and inversion of values.
When I first encountered the Aims and Objectives distinction, I certainly could not then have articulated the above interpretation. But my spontaneous intuition did tell me that this was not right, - ought not to be done, should be resisted.
Of course; such is the near total corruption of British people, and especially British academics; such is the habitual cowardice and dishonesty; that almost everybody concerned either grudgingly or (more often) eagerly embraced their own assimilation and subordination.
Note: After simply not filling-in forms for a while; my usual method of push-back (which amused me) was to write a single sentence with the exact same words describing Aims and Objectives. If the Committee requested that I make a distinction I would decline to do so, and invited the Committee to write-in whatever They thought was suitable. I felt this expressed my contempt for the whole business! It is sad to realise that if such non-cooperation has been widespread, in this and all other respects, these Systems could not have been implemented. But that would have required a population capable of intuition, learning and coherent thought - and who had transcendental motivations for their work. But none of this has been the case for many decades, due to the mass apostasy and the triumph of Leftist materialism. And if or until there is a Christian awakening, there is no hope that the universal takeover by Systematic Evil via bureaucracy will even be resisted, let alone reversed.
Note about the above Note: I realise that the above seems pretty smug and self-satisfied... But I firmly believe I was right, and that my sustained solo campaign of non-cooperation and push-back against bureaucracy in the workplace was A Good Thing; and the rarity of such behaviour is an indictment of modernity. My motivations, for most of the time, were not Christian - but were idealistic with respect to proper academic and scientific ethics: these were my highest values and ideals, at that time (truth-seeking, truth-telling, an aesthetic of work, that I should strive to do the best work of which I was capable etc); and I knew that these ought not to be sacrificed for inferior or actively-evil goals. Indeed, it was my search to find coherent and objective justification for these ideals that ultimately led me (as the pressure of bureaucracy on my values ideals increased, year on year; and I needed to articulate them explicitly) first to theism, then to Christianity.
The idea was that - suddenly - courses needed 'clear' Aims and Objectives if they were to be good; indeed, the assumption was that good courses derived-from Aims and Objectives...
700 years-worth of counter-examples made no impact on this assumption, precisely because it was an assumption. And the assumption behind this assumption was that universities must be remade as bureaucracies - to be monitored and controlled by managers.
Part of this was that academic courses must be first re-described in bureaucratic language, en route to being re-conceptualised as such - with the destination of becoming bureaucracies in actuality - in which academic subjects were constructed, from bottom-up under top-down supervision, as bureaucratic entities.
...So that they could be managed by managers; and management is generic - not specific. The assumption behind management is that there is such a thing as management and it is necessary.
Anyway, one aspect of this process was that there were Aims and Objectives for each course (and each degree, and the rest), and Aims were distinct from from Objectives. As and Os were distinct in some way that was vital to the 'quality' of the Teaching and Learning (another of the new bureaucratic distinction) but in some way that somehow could neither be articulated nor understood...
There were actually short courses run by The Managers about the difference between Aims and Objectives, and how important was this difference, and how a clear understanding of this distinction would lead to Better Teaching (Managers being, of course, the acknowledged experts on Better Teaching).
Yet the matter somehow remained confused... Honest and diligent academics never could distinguish Aims and Objectives in any coherent and principled way - it became merely a business of filling-in forms, of saying the same thing twice - first as Aims then as Objectives, with two different orderings of synonymous words.
Because, naturally, Os and As had no real world relevance to anything important. No course ever was better for having correctly articulated and complementary Aims and Objectives (unless it was appallingly bad to begin-with) - although plenty were damaged by the process of which As and Os were a part.
...Yet if it was not important, why the insistence upon Aims and Objectives - over many years and academic cycles? Why compel academics to go through this process, when there was no right answer, and no positive value?
The answer is a deep one - and it is an insight into the modus operandi of the demonic forces that themselves lie behind the rise of managerialism and the world-takeover by bureaucracy - which is intrinsically evil in its motivation.
(Bureaucracy is the means by which totalitarianism is implemented - and totalitarianism is the main and increasing form of organised, top-down evil in the past two centuries.)
The fundamental and ineradicable incoherence of Aims and Objectives, combined with the mandatory imposition of the distinction, were one part of a large scale assault on reality.
Evil is unreal. Good, by contrast, is real - although not the totality of reality. Evil is dishonesty (not truth), ugliness (not beauty), and sin (not virtue). And in its small way; Aims and Objectives are institutional lies that are part of the ugly activity of form-filling, and aiming at the evil assimilation into generic, unified bureaucracy of teaching (what used to go-on between specific academics and specific students).
In its small way, to compel academics to define and implement Aims and Objectives, was to make them collude in lies, to lie that there was importance and meaning in such distinctions; to encourage the denial of incoherence... To get people used-to stating solemn nonsense, then doubling-down on the lie that it was meaning-ful and vitally important.
As and Os were a microcosm of the submission of individuals to The System - and an invitation to the academic to deny personal responsibility, and to subordinate himself to The System. It was to induce an assertion that System was primary; and (most important) that System was generic - such that the System for my university course was part of the System for the degree, for the universities, for all the other management Systems of the university; and these Systems themselves brought into one System that was linked to other university Systems, and those of politics, law, finance etc - and these National systems to the European Union, and the United Nations...
Aims and Objectives were a first step, therefore, in integrating my teaching into a single and all-pervasive and micro-divided System of World Government.
And this single-unified-universal bureaucracy is the primary and most effective manifestation of purposive supernatural evil in the world today; the mechanism for implementation of the (demonically driven) agenda for subversion, destruction and inversion of values.
When I first encountered the Aims and Objectives distinction, I certainly could not then have articulated the above interpretation. But my spontaneous intuition did tell me that this was not right, - ought not to be done, should be resisted.
Of course; such is the near total corruption of British people, and especially British academics; such is the habitual cowardice and dishonesty; that almost everybody concerned either grudgingly or (more often) eagerly embraced their own assimilation and subordination.
Note: After simply not filling-in forms for a while; my usual method of push-back (which amused me) was to write a single sentence with the exact same words describing Aims and Objectives. If the Committee requested that I make a distinction I would decline to do so, and invited the Committee to write-in whatever They thought was suitable. I felt this expressed my contempt for the whole business! It is sad to realise that if such non-cooperation has been widespread, in this and all other respects, these Systems could not have been implemented. But that would have required a population capable of intuition, learning and coherent thought - and who had transcendental motivations for their work. But none of this has been the case for many decades, due to the mass apostasy and the triumph of Leftist materialism. And if or until there is a Christian awakening, there is no hope that the universal takeover by Systematic Evil via bureaucracy will even be resisted, let alone reversed.
Note about the above Note: I realise that the above seems pretty smug and self-satisfied... But I firmly believe I was right, and that my sustained solo campaign of non-cooperation and push-back against bureaucracy in the workplace was A Good Thing; and the rarity of such behaviour is an indictment of modernity. My motivations, for most of the time, were not Christian - but were idealistic with respect to proper academic and scientific ethics: these were my highest values and ideals, at that time (truth-seeking, truth-telling, an aesthetic of work, that I should strive to do the best work of which I was capable etc); and I knew that these ought not to be sacrificed for inferior or actively-evil goals. Indeed, it was my search to find coherent and objective justification for these ideals that ultimately led me (as the pressure of bureaucracy on my values ideals increased, year on year; and I needed to articulate them explicitly) first to theism, then to Christianity.
Friday, 8 November 2019
Leftists do Not engage in "Holiness Spirals" and Leftism is Not a religion
There is a lot of misleading stuff which tries to say that Leftism is 'a religion' (usually, implicitly meaning that religion is A Bad Thing) - and there are a bunch of political theorists who like to explain the increasingly anti-Good destructiveness and inversion of Leftism in terms of 'Holiness Spirals' - as if Leftism was a religion, in which there was such a thing as Holiness.
(And as if Holiness was a good thing only 'up to a point', beyond which we would be 'too Holy'?... In Christianity, this is nonsense - and the Holier we are, the better, without limit.)
Such rhetoric is either deliberately or ignorantly subversive of Christianity.
Serious Christians would not be keen on trying to prove that the very obviously demonic ideology of modern Western Leftism is 'A Religion'; nor would real Christians want to call the increasing evil of the Left a kind of 'Holiness'.
Christianity and Leftism are in essence opposites; religion and ideology are opposites, increasing-holiness and increasing-evil are opposites.
(This is surely obvious, yes? Not rocket science!)
A real Christian wants society to be organised on Christian principles (everything else fitted-around); but a Leftist wants society organised on political, economic, sexual, racial, environmental or some other Not-Christian principles.
Now, it is trivially-true that there are resemblances between almost any two things or people or groups - but so what? It is by ultimates that we discern: and between Christianity and Leftism there is opposition of metaphysics, motivation, ideals - they are as different as things can be (despite that there is Good and evil in every person and group, and that there is deception and error in all understanding).
They are different because Christianity and Leftism are on opposite sides, because Leftism is demonic.
There is no overlap between the view that God is real, and that of materialism; that Jesus was divine versus that he was an ordinary human (and probably did not exist) (and that there is indeed nothing divine); that death is a transformation versus that death is annihilation; that those who follow Jesus will live eternally and resurrected in Heaven with the divine family versus that everybody who dies will merely burn or rot. And so on...
Why then go to such lengths to use religious terminology, concepts, analogies for what is in essence and reality the ultimate anti-religion?
For the modern Christian; we are in a spiritual war, a war between Heaven and Hell, between God and Satan; and this war is hotting-up by the month. The two sides are becoming more clearly differentiated, and more easily detected. The gloves are coming-off...
The Christian side is in favour of God, Good, and Creation - the demonic side is against all of these and not in favour of anything specifically, except what helps (here-and-now) in the strategy of destroying GG&C.
The evil of Leftism (as it exists here and now in The West) is Not about creating some alternative-Heaven; it is not about making a utopia, a Heaven on Earth. That is a lie.
Instead evil is defined negatively; evil is about the subversion and destruction of Good, and ultimately it is about the inversion of Good.
Consider the sexual revolution. The post-middle-sixties developing agenda of divorce, promiscuity, perversion, homosexuality, trans, paedophilia and whatever comes after... is not aiming-at any specific ultimate alternative form of human sex and sexuality.
There is no Leftist utopia of sex/ ulaity towards-which Leftism is moving us. Instead there is merely a series of dishonest, expediently subversive, incoherent stances: adopted tactically, then set-aside when convenient.
The sexual revolution (like Leftism in general) it is a negative program. Any positive elements are merely expedient, temporary, discarded when the next stage of destruction is ready to proceed; just as 60s style 'free love' (heterosexual extramarital promiscuity) was discarded in favour of feminism; and feminism discarded in favour of trans.
The sexual revolution is directed against Christian Goods such as celibacy, marriage, and family. Leftism in general is directed against real Christianity and real Christians ('real' regardless of denomination, church or no-church).
Leftism is opposed to holiness and real Christian religion. So, to deploy religious language and concepts to analyse Leftism is to serve the agenda of evil; to take the wrong side in the ongoing spiritual war*.
*Of course - we all err and sin, and we can find ourselves fighting on the wrong side. I certainly have found this to be the case, more than once. But then the situation is remediable. Any Christian can repent at any time - it is never too late (this side of death).
(And as if Holiness was a good thing only 'up to a point', beyond which we would be 'too Holy'?... In Christianity, this is nonsense - and the Holier we are, the better, without limit.)
Such rhetoric is either deliberately or ignorantly subversive of Christianity.
Serious Christians would not be keen on trying to prove that the very obviously demonic ideology of modern Western Leftism is 'A Religion'; nor would real Christians want to call the increasing evil of the Left a kind of 'Holiness'.
Christianity and Leftism are in essence opposites; religion and ideology are opposites, increasing-holiness and increasing-evil are opposites.
(This is surely obvious, yes? Not rocket science!)
A real Christian wants society to be organised on Christian principles (everything else fitted-around); but a Leftist wants society organised on political, economic, sexual, racial, environmental or some other Not-Christian principles.
Now, it is trivially-true that there are resemblances between almost any two things or people or groups - but so what? It is by ultimates that we discern: and between Christianity and Leftism there is opposition of metaphysics, motivation, ideals - they are as different as things can be (despite that there is Good and evil in every person and group, and that there is deception and error in all understanding).
They are different because Christianity and Leftism are on opposite sides, because Leftism is demonic.
There is no overlap between the view that God is real, and that of materialism; that Jesus was divine versus that he was an ordinary human (and probably did not exist) (and that there is indeed nothing divine); that death is a transformation versus that death is annihilation; that those who follow Jesus will live eternally and resurrected in Heaven with the divine family versus that everybody who dies will merely burn or rot. And so on...
Why then go to such lengths to use religious terminology, concepts, analogies for what is in essence and reality the ultimate anti-religion?
For the modern Christian; we are in a spiritual war, a war between Heaven and Hell, between God and Satan; and this war is hotting-up by the month. The two sides are becoming more clearly differentiated, and more easily detected. The gloves are coming-off...
The Christian side is in favour of God, Good, and Creation - the demonic side is against all of these and not in favour of anything specifically, except what helps (here-and-now) in the strategy of destroying GG&C.
The evil of Leftism (as it exists here and now in The West) is Not about creating some alternative-Heaven; it is not about making a utopia, a Heaven on Earth. That is a lie.
Instead evil is defined negatively; evil is about the subversion and destruction of Good, and ultimately it is about the inversion of Good.
Consider the sexual revolution. The post-middle-sixties developing agenda of divorce, promiscuity, perversion, homosexuality, trans, paedophilia and whatever comes after... is not aiming-at any specific ultimate alternative form of human sex and sexuality.
There is no Leftist utopia of sex/ ulaity towards-which Leftism is moving us. Instead there is merely a series of dishonest, expediently subversive, incoherent stances: adopted tactically, then set-aside when convenient.
The sexual revolution (like Leftism in general) it is a negative program. Any positive elements are merely expedient, temporary, discarded when the next stage of destruction is ready to proceed; just as 60s style 'free love' (heterosexual extramarital promiscuity) was discarded in favour of feminism; and feminism discarded in favour of trans.
The sexual revolution is directed against Christian Goods such as celibacy, marriage, and family. Leftism in general is directed against real Christianity and real Christians ('real' regardless of denomination, church or no-church).
Leftism is opposed to holiness and real Christian religion. So, to deploy religious language and concepts to analyse Leftism is to serve the agenda of evil; to take the wrong side in the ongoing spiritual war*.
*Of course - we all err and sin, and we can find ourselves fighting on the wrong side. I certainly have found this to be the case, more than once. But then the situation is remediable. Any Christian can repent at any time - it is never too late (this side of death).
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