So far as I know from personal experience - people I have known before and after they attained 'power' - high position, high status, fame, influence etc - this generalisation is true: perhaps 100% true (although there may be exceptions that have slipped my mind.
The main corruption I have observed is pervasive, habitual, systematic dishonesty - with the self and with others.
Of course there is a confounding element; which is that those who seek power, who do-what-it-takes to attain power - are usually partly, or at least latently, corrupt already. And there is the factor that uncorrupt (and probably-incorruptible, people would be excluded from power - unless by some error they happened on it, when they would normally be purged from the institution. But there is not much doubt that the environment of power is itself rapidly and pervasively corrupt-ing.
I do not think that this was always the case - indeed I'm confident that it was not always the case. In my fields of professional activity - medicine, science and academic generally - there used to be (as recently a couple of generations ago) quite a lot of people who attained power and influence and who were not corrupt. Quite a few of these survived until 25 years ago; but now there are, well, none who have power. (Only a few, and all marginalised.)
(In the past - even a few politicians remained basically honest!)
One thing observation reveals is that mainstream modern people - secular people, materialists, atheists - who are known for alternative, off-beat, dissenting, cynical views; nowadays always sell-out; indeed, my impression is that they actually live in-order-to sell-out. They develop their alternative careers until they have made just enough of a nuisance that they are worth bribing to conform - and they grab the opportunity with both hands.
Hence all the 'red hot radicals', the edgy nonconformists, the avant garde, the socialists, the men/ women of-the-people... with knighthoods, peerages, awards, prizes, and Establishment pulpits.
And I have not the slightest doubt that if any of the current crop of non-Christian 'Right Wingers' or 'Libertarian's' or Free marketeers, or Nationalists in the public sphere ever get a sniff of power, they will sell-out so fast that the transitional phase will be invisible - especially when they are kept-on as pretend-conservatives or pseudo-reactionaries; as fake evidence of the broad minded tolerance of the modern Establishment.
What I am saying is that - here and now - power and integrity are incompatible; and possession of power is sufficient evidence of achieved-corruption; and desire for power is sufficient evidence of willing corruptibility.
Saturday, 5 May 2018
Consequences of materialism and atheism - JW Dunne writing in 1938
Up to about fifty years ago nobody minded admitting that life was a disappointing thing which opened with high hopes and sounding trumpets, moved on to frustration after frustration, and terminated in a disillusioned crawling to the grave.
Nobody minded, because everybody supposed that all this was merely the prelude to another life in which they would be promoted to some kind of unimaginable bliss.
But, fifty years ago, exponents of popular science began to hammer it into these optimists that the notion of a hereafter in which everything would be put right was utter nonsense.
There was, they pointed out, no future life for any of us; and our world, in sober truth, amounted to nothing more than an execution chamber – dealing as expeditiously as possible with a continuous procession of new victims.
It would be foolish to revile God for this, because there was no God to revile.
That picture, it seems, was too grim for the human mind to face fairly and squarely. People in general believed it, but they turned their backs on it.
Then someone arose to point-out that gilding the walls of the cell - making the room bright for the next batch of condemned prisoners - would be, in these circumstances, a truly unselfish occupation; and the intelligentsia jumped at this distraction...
They concentrated upon decoration; and soon they were all shouting to one another: 'See what a beautiful place we shall make of it someday'.
A handsome antechanber to eternal extinction! That had become the highest hope in which humanity might indulge...
The old-stagers among our materialists have been disturbed very greatly by the discovery that, beneath to-day's flood tide of almost universal intolerance; there is running, as a more evil undercurrent, a definitely malicious contempt for all human life.
They had assumed that the first step towards rendering any man good tempered and companionable would be to convince him of his own complete insignificance in an entirely senseless world, and to promise him a rapidly approaching end.
That the victims of this delightful teaching should, thereafter, start snapping at their fellows like any other lot of trapped animals has puzzled beyond measure these naively optimistic sociologists.
Many of the latter had taken it for granted that a creature with only one fleeting life to lose would regard this as too precious to be risked in any conflict, so that the triumph of materialism would herald universal peace.
But Man has taken a different line. He is sensible enough to realise that a life which is to be poisoned at every instant by the knowledge that it is a mere scurrying to extinction is a life which cannot be worth any one's preserving.
He is consistent enough to perceive that the termination of all human existence in a general holocaust would be a happening of no great moment.
...The foregoing is written as a warning addressed to those overworked scribes to whom truth per se means nothing at all, but who take it for granted that materialism, right or wrong, is to be supported at all costs because it will assist progress and assure peace.
Edited from JW Dunne. The New Immortality. 1938.
The above passage (from 1938) is a lucid and striking account of the psychological and social effects of what has now become mainstream, official, mandatory public discourse and the basis of all public policy throughout the entire Western world.
Dunne interprets this as an unintended consequence of intellectuals who lack adequate understanding of human nature. He assumes that the advocates of materialism and atheism are well-meaning fools, who will back-off from their activities once hey can be convinced of their malign consequences.
However, eighty years downstream, and with the entirety of the global ruling establishment not only doubling down on their incoherent ideology of materialist progress and utilitarian social engineering - but actively enforcing lies, nonsense, and sin while persecuting virtue, beauty and truth; I regard things quite otherwise.
Materialism was deliberately made the public norm is clear understanding of its destructive, demotivating, despair-inducing and insanity creating consequences. And for those demonic powers behind materialism; things are working our just fine - pretty much exactly as they had hoped-for.
The mass of people apparently now actually want materialism to be true, and for their lives to be an antechamber to extinction; they will refuse to consider otherwise, and indeed will actively attack anyone putting forward an analysis of the incoherence of the arbitrary assumptions leading to such bleak conclusions.
Hostility is now directed at those who try to practice goodness; and official admiration (awards, medals, status, fame, money, jobs and promotions) are showered-upon those who advocate and cooperate-with the agenda of materialism, atheism and value-inversion.
Dunne's world was one in which ordinary people felt sadly compelled (by 'science') to believe that Christianity was un-true; but three generations on, we live in a world in which ordinary people regard Christianity as wicked; and they would not want it, even if it was true...
For many modern people; the idea of this world as a handsome antechamber to eternal extinction is preferable to a created world of purpose, meaning, permanent relationships and creativity - but in which they would be required to acknowledge and repudiate their pet sin (often sexual in nature).
So the intelligentsia were correct, after all...
Nobody minded, because everybody supposed that all this was merely the prelude to another life in which they would be promoted to some kind of unimaginable bliss.
But, fifty years ago, exponents of popular science began to hammer it into these optimists that the notion of a hereafter in which everything would be put right was utter nonsense.
There was, they pointed out, no future life for any of us; and our world, in sober truth, amounted to nothing more than an execution chamber – dealing as expeditiously as possible with a continuous procession of new victims.
It would be foolish to revile God for this, because there was no God to revile.
That picture, it seems, was too grim for the human mind to face fairly and squarely. People in general believed it, but they turned their backs on it.
Then someone arose to point-out that gilding the walls of the cell - making the room bright for the next batch of condemned prisoners - would be, in these circumstances, a truly unselfish occupation; and the intelligentsia jumped at this distraction...
They concentrated upon decoration; and soon they were all shouting to one another: 'See what a beautiful place we shall make of it someday'.
A handsome antechanber to eternal extinction! That had become the highest hope in which humanity might indulge...
The old-stagers among our materialists have been disturbed very greatly by the discovery that, beneath to-day's flood tide of almost universal intolerance; there is running, as a more evil undercurrent, a definitely malicious contempt for all human life.
They had assumed that the first step towards rendering any man good tempered and companionable would be to convince him of his own complete insignificance in an entirely senseless world, and to promise him a rapidly approaching end.
That the victims of this delightful teaching should, thereafter, start snapping at their fellows like any other lot of trapped animals has puzzled beyond measure these naively optimistic sociologists.
Many of the latter had taken it for granted that a creature with only one fleeting life to lose would regard this as too precious to be risked in any conflict, so that the triumph of materialism would herald universal peace.
But Man has taken a different line. He is sensible enough to realise that a life which is to be poisoned at every instant by the knowledge that it is a mere scurrying to extinction is a life which cannot be worth any one's preserving.
He is consistent enough to perceive that the termination of all human existence in a general holocaust would be a happening of no great moment.
...The foregoing is written as a warning addressed to those overworked scribes to whom truth per se means nothing at all, but who take it for granted that materialism, right or wrong, is to be supported at all costs because it will assist progress and assure peace.
Edited from JW Dunne. The New Immortality. 1938.
The above passage (from 1938) is a lucid and striking account of the psychological and social effects of what has now become mainstream, official, mandatory public discourse and the basis of all public policy throughout the entire Western world.
Dunne interprets this as an unintended consequence of intellectuals who lack adequate understanding of human nature. He assumes that the advocates of materialism and atheism are well-meaning fools, who will back-off from their activities once hey can be convinced of their malign consequences.
However, eighty years downstream, and with the entirety of the global ruling establishment not only doubling down on their incoherent ideology of materialist progress and utilitarian social engineering - but actively enforcing lies, nonsense, and sin while persecuting virtue, beauty and truth; I regard things quite otherwise.
Materialism was deliberately made the public norm is clear understanding of its destructive, demotivating, despair-inducing and insanity creating consequences. And for those demonic powers behind materialism; things are working our just fine - pretty much exactly as they had hoped-for.
The mass of people apparently now actually want materialism to be true, and for their lives to be an antechamber to extinction; they will refuse to consider otherwise, and indeed will actively attack anyone putting forward an analysis of the incoherence of the arbitrary assumptions leading to such bleak conclusions.
Hostility is now directed at those who try to practice goodness; and official admiration (awards, medals, status, fame, money, jobs and promotions) are showered-upon those who advocate and cooperate-with the agenda of materialism, atheism and value-inversion.
Dunne's world was one in which ordinary people felt sadly compelled (by 'science') to believe that Christianity was un-true; but three generations on, we live in a world in which ordinary people regard Christianity as wicked; and they would not want it, even if it was true...
For many modern people; the idea of this world as a handsome antechamber to eternal extinction is preferable to a created world of purpose, meaning, permanent relationships and creativity - but in which they would be required to acknowledge and repudiate their pet sin (often sexual in nature).
So the intelligentsia were correct, after all...
Friday, 4 May 2018
The Wisdom of Wildblood
I regard William Wildblood, one of my co-bloggers on Albion Awakening, as one of the wisest people I have ever come across - and wisdom is an extremely rare thing in my personal experience. Today's post is a typical example - it is a relaxed meditation on the subject of Awakening from Illusion; but has a depth, calmness and sweetness that is highly satisfying. It leaves me better than it found me.
Precognition - an explanation
It used to be universally accepted that precognition was possible, and indeed surveys of modern people in developed countries have shown that even now a large proportion of the population believe in precognitive dreams - dreams that foretell the future.
Given that most people have always believed that this this happens; the question of how it is possible has been a subject for speculation. It is a matter of particular concern to Christians - since our religion assumes that we have 'free will' or individual agency: because we must choose to believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, if we are to receive the gifts he promises. And if there is real choice, then how can the future be known in advance?
The way that I personally explain this, and which seems perfectly clear and comprehensible to me! - is yet apparently so unusual that I have never found it articulated by anyone else; so I plank it down here, for what it's worth.
Everything has meaning and purpose - nothing is random, and nothing is merely passively, 'mechanically' determined.
(Not every 'unit' of occurrence has individual meaning/ purpose; not every distinguishable thing nor every distinguishable time-slice; but every-thing and time-slice is part-of divine meanings and purposes.)
Therefore, God is 'behind' everything that happens - and at the same time, how we personally respond, think-about and act after these happenings, can be our-own, comes-from our-selves.
So the totality of happenings is a combination of God's will and the multitude of interacting wills of people (and other entities with will).
How then does God pursue his plans? Well, the situation is always 'in flux' but God is continually acting-upon that flux. God is shaping the flux in his desired direction... this is sometimes termed Divine Providence.
I envisage it as God working behind the scenes to set-up the scenes; but how each scene plays-out is not under God's control. Yet he can and will continue setting-up scenes in hope that they will, sooner or later, play-out as desired.
Mortal life is (in brief) about experiences and learning from them; so God is always working to provide each person with the experiences that they need - but whether or not we learn from them what God wishes us to learn is not under God's control. Therefore, he will often repeatedly set-up experiences in order to give us the type of experience we most need, and these experiences will be repeated until we have learned.
For example, we may need to learn that pride is a sin, and will repeatedly get experiences from-which we ought-to infer that pride is a sin - but it may take many such experiences before 'the penny drops' - and indeed, we may never learn that pride is a sin; no matter how frequent and harsh the lessons we are given.
So precognition is possible because God is trying to accomplish certain things, and provide us with the kind of experiences - indeed specific experiences - that are potentially useful experiences.
But the well-validated, convincing precognitive experiences (including prophecies) are (almost always) only partial, often distorted, and are not given exact timings... Actual precognition does not give a complete, exact and exactly-timed prediction.
This is because God is working via human free will. God can make an exact thing happen - but not at an exact time if it is subject to free will; or, God can make 'something' happen at an exact time in the future, but what exactly happens is is not predictable insofar as it is subject to free will.
So precognitions are either: exactly-X will happen - sooner or later; or 'something' will happen on the exact time/date of X; or some combination of the two.
This also explains why - although everything is, in-principle, meaningful and purposive, we only very seldom understand actual things.
The world operates to provide experiences and opportunities for learning, for everybody alive (and indeed all living things - which is every-thing). But we do not know the experiences that every-body else and every-thing else needs; nor whether they have learned what they need - therefore, we do not understand most things, most of the time.
(We can, in principle, learn and know what we personally need; and therefore we can understand our own lives in terms of Divine Providence. We can ultimately understand and can know everything that is understandable and knowable - however, this will be a cumulative process, happening in time; and will be from our personal perspective, 'seen' from our 'point-of-view'.)
Given that most people have always believed that this this happens; the question of how it is possible has been a subject for speculation. It is a matter of particular concern to Christians - since our religion assumes that we have 'free will' or individual agency: because we must choose to believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, if we are to receive the gifts he promises. And if there is real choice, then how can the future be known in advance?
The way that I personally explain this, and which seems perfectly clear and comprehensible to me! - is yet apparently so unusual that I have never found it articulated by anyone else; so I plank it down here, for what it's worth.
Everything has meaning and purpose - nothing is random, and nothing is merely passively, 'mechanically' determined.
(Not every 'unit' of occurrence has individual meaning/ purpose; not every distinguishable thing nor every distinguishable time-slice; but every-thing and time-slice is part-of divine meanings and purposes.)
Therefore, God is 'behind' everything that happens - and at the same time, how we personally respond, think-about and act after these happenings, can be our-own, comes-from our-selves.
So the totality of happenings is a combination of God's will and the multitude of interacting wills of people (and other entities with will).
How then does God pursue his plans? Well, the situation is always 'in flux' but God is continually acting-upon that flux. God is shaping the flux in his desired direction... this is sometimes termed Divine Providence.
I envisage it as God working behind the scenes to set-up the scenes; but how each scene plays-out is not under God's control. Yet he can and will continue setting-up scenes in hope that they will, sooner or later, play-out as desired.
Mortal life is (in brief) about experiences and learning from them; so God is always working to provide each person with the experiences that they need - but whether or not we learn from them what God wishes us to learn is not under God's control. Therefore, he will often repeatedly set-up experiences in order to give us the type of experience we most need, and these experiences will be repeated until we have learned.
For example, we may need to learn that pride is a sin, and will repeatedly get experiences from-which we ought-to infer that pride is a sin - but it may take many such experiences before 'the penny drops' - and indeed, we may never learn that pride is a sin; no matter how frequent and harsh the lessons we are given.
So precognition is possible because God is trying to accomplish certain things, and provide us with the kind of experiences - indeed specific experiences - that are potentially useful experiences.
But the well-validated, convincing precognitive experiences (including prophecies) are (almost always) only partial, often distorted, and are not given exact timings... Actual precognition does not give a complete, exact and exactly-timed prediction.
This is because God is working via human free will. God can make an exact thing happen - but not at an exact time if it is subject to free will; or, God can make 'something' happen at an exact time in the future, but what exactly happens is is not predictable insofar as it is subject to free will.
So precognitions are either: exactly-X will happen - sooner or later; or 'something' will happen on the exact time/date of X; or some combination of the two.
This also explains why - although everything is, in-principle, meaningful and purposive, we only very seldom understand actual things.
The world operates to provide experiences and opportunities for learning, for everybody alive (and indeed all living things - which is every-thing). But we do not know the experiences that every-body else and every-thing else needs; nor whether they have learned what they need - therefore, we do not understand most things, most of the time.
(We can, in principle, learn and know what we personally need; and therefore we can understand our own lives in terms of Divine Providence. We can ultimately understand and can know everything that is understandable and knowable - however, this will be a cumulative process, happening in time; and will be from our personal perspective, 'seen' from our 'point-of-view'.)
Thursday, 3 May 2018
Why is it necessary that Christian awakening be spiritual? What does 'spiritual' mean in this sense?
Spiritual is a dirty word among many serious Christians; yet it is necessary that the Christian revival I so much hope and work for be a spiritual Christian revival - or what I have termed 'Direct Christianity'.
The meaning of 'spiritual' as I use it here is not a matter of surface beliefs of a spiritual type; it is about metaphysical assumptions. I believe that mainstream Christianity, indeed official Christianity through much of its history, has shown a tendency towards abstraction that has been a factor in its demise - this needs changing, indeed such change is more than two centuries overdue.
(By needs I mean that this is the path of divine destiny, this change - which is a theosis - is what God wants from us; a vital part of what Jesus came to bring us.)
'The opposite of abstraction' (and what we need) has no generally-accepted or respectable name - it is something-like 'animism combined with anthropomorphism'... I mean the understanding that reality is alive, that nothing is 'dead' and everything is conscious (to some, usually limited, degree) - and also that everything is purposive; either having its own purpose (as Men do) or else a part-of something that is purposive (as a grain of sand, or a leaf of grass).
So to be spiritual is not to have certain specific beliefs about, say, spirits, ghosts, telepathy, meditative trances, communication with the dead or whatever; rather it is (or should be) the baseline and permeating conviction and (ideally) experience of Life, the Universe and Everything as alive, conscious, purposive and with everything in relationship with everything else.
The 'metaphysics' is our explicit description of such a reality - and in modernity we must have expicit descriptions, it is a necessity of our phase in order to move towards maturity of thinking - then the task is to make this metaphysics the baseline and permeation of our lives...
The work of Owen Barfield has made me aware of this matter; and how this correct understanding is blocked by unexamined metaphysical assumptions that are all-but universal in modernity; including among Christians - and it is this, as much as anything, which blocks the Christian awakening we so much need (as individuals - and by individuals as a society).
I mean that modernity assumes (without explicit awareness that this is an assumption, and could be changed) that everything is naturally dead - assumes the universe began as lifeless and devoid of consciousness; assumes that everything is essentially random or deterministically caused (hence has no purpose); assumes that isolation of consciousness is primary and that all relationships are a later development, and must be generated and sustained by communications...
Our modern mainstream Christian understanding of Genesis seems to validate this materialism - with God creating the dead stuff, plants and animals and with the first sign of consciousness (Men) coming at the end... Taken this way it is not all that different from the Big Bang cosmology and evolution by natural selection.
Yet before the making of the earth - there was spiritual awareness, consciousness, purposiveness, being... As pre-mortal spirits we inhabited a world of universal communication, universal relationships, universal meaning and purpose... And (as Barfield tells us) the movement was from this, and towards separation-off of individual consciousnesses (such as you and me) in order that our free will, our agency, be developed.
The new thing, the later thing, is free will and agency - communication and relation were the backdrop, taken for granted...
It is this baseline, background, implicit-in-everything animistic/ anthropomorphic understanding that is spiritual - and which we need to restore. 'Restore' because it is spontaneous and natural to us as young children, and seems to be the 'religion' of all the simplest nomadic tribal societies - but unconsicous, naive, unarticulated. But this time restore voluntarily, with explicit understanding, chosen because it is true.
Christianity ought not to be seen in opposition to this; but for much of history the developmental focus was on individual freedom; and the animistic aspect was neglected. Only from the late 1700s with the advent of Romanticism were we ready for the balance to swing back - but it did not happen. Instead we got a pagan or atheistic spirituality and a Christianity based on impersonal abstractions that saw most of reality as 'dead', determined, random...
It needs to happen from now - Christianity needs to build on a different and animistic metaphysics. It is that which is intended by the term 'Spiritual' Christianity.
The meaning of 'spiritual' as I use it here is not a matter of surface beliefs of a spiritual type; it is about metaphysical assumptions. I believe that mainstream Christianity, indeed official Christianity through much of its history, has shown a tendency towards abstraction that has been a factor in its demise - this needs changing, indeed such change is more than two centuries overdue.
(By needs I mean that this is the path of divine destiny, this change - which is a theosis - is what God wants from us; a vital part of what Jesus came to bring us.)
'The opposite of abstraction' (and what we need) has no generally-accepted or respectable name - it is something-like 'animism combined with anthropomorphism'... I mean the understanding that reality is alive, that nothing is 'dead' and everything is conscious (to some, usually limited, degree) - and also that everything is purposive; either having its own purpose (as Men do) or else a part-of something that is purposive (as a grain of sand, or a leaf of grass).
So to be spiritual is not to have certain specific beliefs about, say, spirits, ghosts, telepathy, meditative trances, communication with the dead or whatever; rather it is (or should be) the baseline and permeating conviction and (ideally) experience of Life, the Universe and Everything as alive, conscious, purposive and with everything in relationship with everything else.
The 'metaphysics' is our explicit description of such a reality - and in modernity we must have expicit descriptions, it is a necessity of our phase in order to move towards maturity of thinking - then the task is to make this metaphysics the baseline and permeation of our lives...
The work of Owen Barfield has made me aware of this matter; and how this correct understanding is blocked by unexamined metaphysical assumptions that are all-but universal in modernity; including among Christians - and it is this, as much as anything, which blocks the Christian awakening we so much need (as individuals - and by individuals as a society).
I mean that modernity assumes (without explicit awareness that this is an assumption, and could be changed) that everything is naturally dead - assumes the universe began as lifeless and devoid of consciousness; assumes that everything is essentially random or deterministically caused (hence has no purpose); assumes that isolation of consciousness is primary and that all relationships are a later development, and must be generated and sustained by communications...
Our modern mainstream Christian understanding of Genesis seems to validate this materialism - with God creating the dead stuff, plants and animals and with the first sign of consciousness (Men) coming at the end... Taken this way it is not all that different from the Big Bang cosmology and evolution by natural selection.
Yet before the making of the earth - there was spiritual awareness, consciousness, purposiveness, being... As pre-mortal spirits we inhabited a world of universal communication, universal relationships, universal meaning and purpose... And (as Barfield tells us) the movement was from this, and towards separation-off of individual consciousnesses (such as you and me) in order that our free will, our agency, be developed.
The new thing, the later thing, is free will and agency - communication and relation were the backdrop, taken for granted...
It is this baseline, background, implicit-in-everything animistic/ anthropomorphic understanding that is spiritual - and which we need to restore. 'Restore' because it is spontaneous and natural to us as young children, and seems to be the 'religion' of all the simplest nomadic tribal societies - but unconsicous, naive, unarticulated. But this time restore voluntarily, with explicit understanding, chosen because it is true.
Christianity ought not to be seen in opposition to this; but for much of history the developmental focus was on individual freedom; and the animistic aspect was neglected. Only from the late 1700s with the advent of Romanticism were we ready for the balance to swing back - but it did not happen. Instead we got a pagan or atheistic spirituality and a Christianity based on impersonal abstractions that saw most of reality as 'dead', determined, random...
It needs to happen from now - Christianity needs to build on a different and animistic metaphysics. It is that which is intended by the term 'Spiritual' Christianity.
Wednesday, 2 May 2018
Some people really don't want what Jesus offers them...
I cannot allow myself to be downcast by those (a majority, perhaps; certainly a majority of the powerful, rich, influential...) who are determined to embrace damnation...
Just as Jesus (and the Beloved Disciple) were realistic about those who actually saw Jesus, heard him speak, observed his work; yet rejected him, hated him: the light 'shone in the darkness' but 'the darkness comprehended it not'; 'the world knew him not'...
Yet although this was and is a cause for regret, it was entirely what Jesus expected. The fact that it happened did not deter him.
There is no compulsion with Jesus. Free will and personal agency are necessary, real and good - and they have implications that Jesus did not deny, nor did he wish to deny them.
Jesus did what he did for those who wanted what - by his life, death and resurrection - he offered.
Here and now, you and I can do no more than did Jesus. We should do that: we should bear witness as, when and how our intuition and the Holy Ghost prompt us; but we should not be surprised at our limited degree of success...
Posted in full at Albion Awakening...
Just as Jesus (and the Beloved Disciple) were realistic about those who actually saw Jesus, heard him speak, observed his work; yet rejected him, hated him: the light 'shone in the darkness' but 'the darkness comprehended it not'; 'the world knew him not'...
Yet although this was and is a cause for regret, it was entirely what Jesus expected. The fact that it happened did not deter him.
There is no compulsion with Jesus. Free will and personal agency are necessary, real and good - and they have implications that Jesus did not deny, nor did he wish to deny them.
Jesus did what he did for those who wanted what - by his life, death and resurrection - he offered.
Here and now, you and I can do no more than did Jesus. We should do that: we should bear witness as, when and how our intuition and the Holy Ghost prompt us; but we should not be surprised at our limited degree of success...
Posted in full at Albion Awakening...
Jesus began as Son of God, but was resurrected and ascended as Son of man (more inferences from the Fourth Gospel)
In the New Testament; Jesus is sometimes referred to as the Son of God, other times as the Son of man - and the meaning and difference has been hard to define.
However, if the Fourth ('John's') Gospel is taken as the primary and authoritative Gospel and source of knowledge about Jesus, and if we consider Jesus as living in linear-sequential Time (so that 'before' and 'after' make a real difference in ultimate reality); then the usage of 'God' and 'man' is seen to be consistent - and potentially enlightening.
In sum, Jesus was born as a Son of God, but became the Son of man after he was resurrected - and it was the Son of man who ascended to Heaven.
The Chapter and Verse references (according to my Kindle search facility for the Gospel of John in the King James Bible) are as follows:
'Son of God': 1:3; 1:49; 3:18; 5:25; 9:35; 10:36; 11:4; 11:27; 19:7; 20:31.
These all refer to the mortal Jesus, during his earthly ministry and before his resurrection - but seem to include the period after his death and before his resurrection when, in 5:25 it says 'The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live.' Presumably this refers to 'the harrowing of Hell' - or more accurately (since Hell did not exist until after the ascension) the ministry of Christ to the souls in Sheol.
The references for 'Son of man' are: 2:11; 3:13-14; 5:27; 6:27; 6:53; 6:62; 8:28; 12:23; 12:34; 13:31.
These refer to the resurrected and, especially, to the resurrected-ascending Christ.
The 'switch' from naming Jesus the Son of God to the Son of man, gives us important knowledge of Christ's mission - why it was necessary for him to be incarnated, die and be resurrected. Before incarnation, Jesus was already a Son of God, and was 'maker' of everything that-had-been-made (which, I take it, does not include Men).
But the Son of God could not save Men, could not offer us life everlasting; that entailed Jesus becoming the Son of man - that state of having-died as a Man, and then been resurrected to eternal life.
Jesus as Son of man was a higher being than when he was referred to as the Son of God: it is the Son of man who is our Saviour.
However, if the Fourth ('John's') Gospel is taken as the primary and authoritative Gospel and source of knowledge about Jesus, and if we consider Jesus as living in linear-sequential Time (so that 'before' and 'after' make a real difference in ultimate reality); then the usage of 'God' and 'man' is seen to be consistent - and potentially enlightening.
In sum, Jesus was born as a Son of God, but became the Son of man after he was resurrected - and it was the Son of man who ascended to Heaven.
The Chapter and Verse references (according to my Kindle search facility for the Gospel of John in the King James Bible) are as follows:
'Son of God': 1:3; 1:49; 3:18; 5:25; 9:35; 10:36; 11:4; 11:27; 19:7; 20:31.
These all refer to the mortal Jesus, during his earthly ministry and before his resurrection - but seem to include the period after his death and before his resurrection when, in 5:25 it says 'The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live.' Presumably this refers to 'the harrowing of Hell' - or more accurately (since Hell did not exist until after the ascension) the ministry of Christ to the souls in Sheol.
The references for 'Son of man' are: 2:11; 3:13-14; 5:27; 6:27; 6:53; 6:62; 8:28; 12:23; 12:34; 13:31.
These refer to the resurrected and, especially, to the resurrected-ascending Christ.
The 'switch' from naming Jesus the Son of God to the Son of man, gives us important knowledge of Christ's mission - why it was necessary for him to be incarnated, die and be resurrected. Before incarnation, Jesus was already a Son of God, and was 'maker' of everything that-had-been-made (which, I take it, does not include Men).
But the Son of God could not save Men, could not offer us life everlasting; that entailed Jesus becoming the Son of man - that state of having-died as a Man, and then been resurrected to eternal life.
Jesus as Son of man was a higher being than when he was referred to as the Son of God: it is the Son of man who is our Saviour.
Tuesday, 1 May 2018
Christians should pray to Jesus directly (not to God the Father with Christ as a mediator) - according to the Fourth Gospel
This conviction has been building on me since I began to immerse myself in the Fourth Gospel ('John's' Gospel) - which I take to be the most authoritative book of the Bible.
Again and again we are told that the essence of the Christian life is belief (i.e. faith, trust) in Jesus, in (or on) the name of Jesus; and that Jesus was the creator (co-creator) of this world - and that we know the Father by knowing Jesus, and that (in effect) this knowledge supersedes, makes unnecessary, the old religion of the Jews focused on the Father.
It sees like a plain, one-step, inference (if we are using the Fourth Gospel as our source) that we should pray directly to Jesus. (And not therefore, as is usual, to The Father, 'in the name of'/ mediated by Jesus).
The Eastern Orthodox do this already, in The Jesus Prayer (one version of which would be: 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Have mercy upon me.') - so this is not a new-fangled innovation. Plus of course many/ most 'simple' Christians have always prayed to Jesus - whatever their priests or pastors might say.
It is, indeed, common sense and obvious - so much so that I wonder at the motivation behind the prohibition among most Christians against praying direct to Jesus. To me, this looks like an attempt to prevent the fullness of the new dispensation from taking effect - a pushing of Jesus away from us, to one remove; and an implicit denial of his sufficiency.
Anyway, it is worth the experiment - pray to Jesus; our eldest brother - the very act of doing which is salvation because it is an act of belief.
Again and again we are told that the essence of the Christian life is belief (i.e. faith, trust) in Jesus, in (or on) the name of Jesus; and that Jesus was the creator (co-creator) of this world - and that we know the Father by knowing Jesus, and that (in effect) this knowledge supersedes, makes unnecessary, the old religion of the Jews focused on the Father.
It sees like a plain, one-step, inference (if we are using the Fourth Gospel as our source) that we should pray directly to Jesus. (And not therefore, as is usual, to The Father, 'in the name of'/ mediated by Jesus).
The Eastern Orthodox do this already, in The Jesus Prayer (one version of which would be: 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Have mercy upon me.') - so this is not a new-fangled innovation. Plus of course many/ most 'simple' Christians have always prayed to Jesus - whatever their priests or pastors might say.
It is, indeed, common sense and obvious - so much so that I wonder at the motivation behind the prohibition among most Christians against praying direct to Jesus. To me, this looks like an attempt to prevent the fullness of the new dispensation from taking effect - a pushing of Jesus away from us, to one remove; and an implicit denial of his sufficiency.
Anyway, it is worth the experiment - pray to Jesus; our eldest brother - the very act of doing which is salvation because it is an act of belief.
I am neither pro-, nor anti-modern...
From a perspective that sees world history and human history as an unfolding, a developmental-evolution of human consciousness, then the advent of 'modernity' is seen as a necessary stage or phase in the maturation of the human spirit.
Modernity is, indeed, analogous to adolescence in the individual - it is the necessary transitional phase between childhood and adulthood. In this understanding, early human history is the childhood, and modernity is adolescence: we have not reached adult maturity.
The current phase of Western culture, noticeable in the 16th or 17th century (and beginning even earlier) but most obvious with the Industrial Revolution, is therefore a case of arrested adolescence. We were meant (meant by God, that is) to go-through modernity into maturity, but this has not happened.
In that sense, I am 'against' modernity; because it has become a pathologically-prolonged transition - instead of being a transition it is an incoherent and impossible attempt to maintain a half-maturity and to refuse (because ultimately this is a willed decision) adult maturity.
This is A Bad Thing because adolescence perpetuated is self-corrupting. It is incoherent because it is meant to be a temporary transition leading onwards, being incojherent it does not cohere, which means that it inevitably corrupts. To be a perpetual adolescent is necessarily to become incrementally corrupted.
In ultimate spiritual terms, we are talking about the maturation of human society towards the divine state of consciousness. The divine state of consciousness is one in which that which was unconscious, taken-for-granted, in childhood; becomes known consciously. Not just knowing, but knowing that we know, and knowing what we know.
The maturation of consciousness is therefore an increase in freedom. The child is unfree because he is not separate from his environment, he cannot regard himself and his environment separately. The adolescent can do this - but for the adolescent the separation tends to become a severance; because he cannot see the necessary and intrinsic relationship between the person and the environment.
Thus adult maturity is to know and experience that the self and the environment are distinguishable, but not separable - that they are different and also related. This adult insight is also divine, in that it is the way that God knows reality.
But how does culture and the individual relate? What is the relationship between my development, and the development of the culture I inhabit? For example, can I personally move forward through modernity into an adult state of consciousness while the society remains in arrested adolescence?
Yes, this is possible, indeed it is necessary; it is the way in which culture changes - by individuals changing. The development of human consciousness is one in which the step between childhood and adolescence is involuntary - it just happens and cannot be stopped; but the development between adolescence and adult maturity must be chosen consciously. That is, indeed, how arrested adolescence is possible.
The powers of purposive evil in this world, via modern culture, have induced many/ most people to refuse to choose adult maturity of consciousness - indeed, by creating a dichotomy of being either for or against modernity, they have ruled-out the correct attitude by-assumption; they have eliminated The Right Answer even from consideration!
Modernity is, indeed, analogous to adolescence in the individual - it is the necessary transitional phase between childhood and adulthood. In this understanding, early human history is the childhood, and modernity is adolescence: we have not reached adult maturity.
The current phase of Western culture, noticeable in the 16th or 17th century (and beginning even earlier) but most obvious with the Industrial Revolution, is therefore a case of arrested adolescence. We were meant (meant by God, that is) to go-through modernity into maturity, but this has not happened.
In that sense, I am 'against' modernity; because it has become a pathologically-prolonged transition - instead of being a transition it is an incoherent and impossible attempt to maintain a half-maturity and to refuse (because ultimately this is a willed decision) adult maturity.
This is A Bad Thing because adolescence perpetuated is self-corrupting. It is incoherent because it is meant to be a temporary transition leading onwards, being incojherent it does not cohere, which means that it inevitably corrupts. To be a perpetual adolescent is necessarily to become incrementally corrupted.
In ultimate spiritual terms, we are talking about the maturation of human society towards the divine state of consciousness. The divine state of consciousness is one in which that which was unconscious, taken-for-granted, in childhood; becomes known consciously. Not just knowing, but knowing that we know, and knowing what we know.
The maturation of consciousness is therefore an increase in freedom. The child is unfree because he is not separate from his environment, he cannot regard himself and his environment separately. The adolescent can do this - but for the adolescent the separation tends to become a severance; because he cannot see the necessary and intrinsic relationship between the person and the environment.
Thus adult maturity is to know and experience that the self and the environment are distinguishable, but not separable - that they are different and also related. This adult insight is also divine, in that it is the way that God knows reality.
But how does culture and the individual relate? What is the relationship between my development, and the development of the culture I inhabit? For example, can I personally move forward through modernity into an adult state of consciousness while the society remains in arrested adolescence?
Yes, this is possible, indeed it is necessary; it is the way in which culture changes - by individuals changing. The development of human consciousness is one in which the step between childhood and adolescence is involuntary - it just happens and cannot be stopped; but the development between adolescence and adult maturity must be chosen consciously. That is, indeed, how arrested adolescence is possible.
The powers of purposive evil in this world, via modern culture, have induced many/ most people to refuse to choose adult maturity of consciousness - indeed, by creating a dichotomy of being either for or against modernity, they have ruled-out the correct attitude by-assumption; they have eliminated The Right Answer even from consideration!
Monday, 30 April 2018
Can men and women safely be friends?
Alastair Roberts has posted one of his characteristically thoughtful and wide-ranging Christian essays on this theme - full of interesting stuff, such as:
It is important to recognize that much of the push for the ‘why can’t we just be friends?’ position arises from unusual conditions in contemporary society. In particular, the concern for close interactions between the sexes is often advanced in order to protect women’s equal potential for advancement in institutions and workplaces, where more segregated forms of sociality, or exclusion from the closest interactions with superiors, peers, and mentors would advantage men over women.
However, it is imperative that we recognize that the radical integration of the sexes in the workplace and society is a break with most traditional forms of society. New principles of production and social ordering, built around deracinated and de-particularized androgynous individuals, have steadily paved over more traditional and organic forms of sexed society and displaced the old familial and social order.
Although many workplaces still retain some of the organic segregation of the sexes—largely as a residual effect of the differing typical preferences of the sexes—they increasingly involve working closely for sustained periods of time with persons of the other sex who are not members of our families. We really aren’t mindful of just how radical the development of the unisex workplace is and how disruptive of natural sexed ways of life its demands can be.
The paving over of our natural sociality in the workplace requires us neatly to compartmentalize or separate things that aren’t so easily separated. Sex and power must be neatly detached. Sexed forms of sociality must be suppressed. Our private and professional selves must be compartmentalized, our natural affections and characters from our rule-governed behaviours. Professional relations between the sexes must be scoured of all eros. At work we must operate and treat others as neuters, rather than as sexed persons.
But nature isn’t so easily subdued to our wishes and our society’s desired outcomes are constantly frustrated as a result. For instance, men continue to act and interact in a virile manner that presents obstacles to women’s advancement. They continue to manifest a different form of affinity to and different tendencies in relationship with other men than to and with women. And women, for their part, continue to exhibit more typically feminine forms of sociality, even when these are in some degree of tension with institutions that have been ordered around masculine tendencies.
In a comment he adds:
We face a deep tension between a society ordered around individual careerists and self-realizers in a system ordered by de-particularizing technique and a society ordered around the organic human structures of the disjunction between male and female, differentiated male and female socialities in socially choreographed interactions, marriage and family, the movement from generation to generation, the gravity of place, the household as the integrating unit, etc. If we are to uphold or establish these organic human structures, or restore them even to the most limited degree, it will definitely present restrictive limits for those who seek to live as autonomous careerists or practitioners of technique. These limits will almost certainly be felt more keenly by some than by others. However, where they are lacking, although we may increase our capacity to gain wealth and enjoy more autonomous power, far more important goods are undermined.
Another matter that comes up in Alastair's essay, reinforced for me the strong rule-of-thumb validity of discerning attitudes to the sexual revolution as a litmus test of Christian seriousness:
Arguments in favour of increased cross-gender friendships should not be dismissed by using ad hominem arguments. However, it is important to register the way in which various of the men who have most prominently advocated for such friendships and encouraged people to be less wary of them have had abusive relations with the other sex, failing to uphold crucial boundaries. They might not be the best examples to follow here.
Hugo Schwyzer, who was once vocal as a highly progressive Christian, wrote a piece in The Atlantic, praising Christians advocating for friendships between men and women. A few years later, we all discovered that he had been sleeping with his students, with porn stars, and with other women whose trust and friendship he had exploited.
John Howard Yoder advanced a bold theory of ‘non-genital affective relationships’ between the sexes. The Church should be a radical new community, where the fact that we are truly brothers and sisters allows for affectionate touching and physical contact between the sexes, contact that would be erotically charged outside of the Church, but which familiarity should enable us to overcome. Yoder’s own ‘experiment’ in non-sexual touching involved him touching or making advances on over fifty different women who came to him as a mentor, authority figure, or friend.
This reminded me of my shock, and disgust, on discovering that (the Inkling) Charles Williams's approval of non-consummative sexual contact among an early Christian sect (described in The Descent of the Dove) rationalised his own (non-Christian) practice of arousing and redirecting sexual energy from (mild but creepy) sado-masochistic riutuals with young women/ disciples, in order to energise his poetry...
Read the whole thing at Alastair's Adversaria.
It is important to recognize that much of the push for the ‘why can’t we just be friends?’ position arises from unusual conditions in contemporary society. In particular, the concern for close interactions between the sexes is often advanced in order to protect women’s equal potential for advancement in institutions and workplaces, where more segregated forms of sociality, or exclusion from the closest interactions with superiors, peers, and mentors would advantage men over women.
However, it is imperative that we recognize that the radical integration of the sexes in the workplace and society is a break with most traditional forms of society. New principles of production and social ordering, built around deracinated and de-particularized androgynous individuals, have steadily paved over more traditional and organic forms of sexed society and displaced the old familial and social order.
Although many workplaces still retain some of the organic segregation of the sexes—largely as a residual effect of the differing typical preferences of the sexes—they increasingly involve working closely for sustained periods of time with persons of the other sex who are not members of our families. We really aren’t mindful of just how radical the development of the unisex workplace is and how disruptive of natural sexed ways of life its demands can be.
The paving over of our natural sociality in the workplace requires us neatly to compartmentalize or separate things that aren’t so easily separated. Sex and power must be neatly detached. Sexed forms of sociality must be suppressed. Our private and professional selves must be compartmentalized, our natural affections and characters from our rule-governed behaviours. Professional relations between the sexes must be scoured of all eros. At work we must operate and treat others as neuters, rather than as sexed persons.
But nature isn’t so easily subdued to our wishes and our society’s desired outcomes are constantly frustrated as a result. For instance, men continue to act and interact in a virile manner that presents obstacles to women’s advancement. They continue to manifest a different form of affinity to and different tendencies in relationship with other men than to and with women. And women, for their part, continue to exhibit more typically feminine forms of sociality, even when these are in some degree of tension with institutions that have been ordered around masculine tendencies.
In a comment he adds:
We face a deep tension between a society ordered around individual careerists and self-realizers in a system ordered by de-particularizing technique and a society ordered around the organic human structures of the disjunction between male and female, differentiated male and female socialities in socially choreographed interactions, marriage and family, the movement from generation to generation, the gravity of place, the household as the integrating unit, etc. If we are to uphold or establish these organic human structures, or restore them even to the most limited degree, it will definitely present restrictive limits for those who seek to live as autonomous careerists or practitioners of technique. These limits will almost certainly be felt more keenly by some than by others. However, where they are lacking, although we may increase our capacity to gain wealth and enjoy more autonomous power, far more important goods are undermined.
Another matter that comes up in Alastair's essay, reinforced for me the strong rule-of-thumb validity of discerning attitudes to the sexual revolution as a litmus test of Christian seriousness:
Arguments in favour of increased cross-gender friendships should not be dismissed by using ad hominem arguments. However, it is important to register the way in which various of the men who have most prominently advocated for such friendships and encouraged people to be less wary of them have had abusive relations with the other sex, failing to uphold crucial boundaries. They might not be the best examples to follow here.
Hugo Schwyzer, who was once vocal as a highly progressive Christian, wrote a piece in The Atlantic, praising Christians advocating for friendships between men and women. A few years later, we all discovered that he had been sleeping with his students, with porn stars, and with other women whose trust and friendship he had exploited.
John Howard Yoder advanced a bold theory of ‘non-genital affective relationships’ between the sexes. The Church should be a radical new community, where the fact that we are truly brothers and sisters allows for affectionate touching and physical contact between the sexes, contact that would be erotically charged outside of the Church, but which familiarity should enable us to overcome. Yoder’s own ‘experiment’ in non-sexual touching involved him touching or making advances on over fifty different women who came to him as a mentor, authority figure, or friend.
This reminded me of my shock, and disgust, on discovering that (the Inkling) Charles Williams's approval of non-consummative sexual contact among an early Christian sect (described in The Descent of the Dove) rationalised his own (non-Christian) practice of arousing and redirecting sexual energy from (mild but creepy) sado-masochistic riutuals with young women/ disciples, in order to energise his poetry...
Read the whole thing at Alastair's Adversaria.
A handful of oddballs on a quest against overwhelming forces
'The Order of the Stick' from the D&D parody comic by Rich Burlew
And decide that this is the exactly the best-possible way to proceed under current circumstances!
How did everything begin? Tolkien's vision...
By William Arkle
John Fitzgerald discusses the special qualities of Tolkien's creation myth, over at Albion Awakening...
Sunday, 29 April 2018
The two great commandments - first love God, then fellow Men (interpreted by William Arkle)
Detail from a painting called the Unknown Watcher by William Arkle - a Heavenly being (upper left, only partially seen in this view) patiently awaits attention from a man absorbed in the trivia of everyday living
The one who loves God also gradually realises that he is loving a real responsive individual with whom he is now a friend, and this experience is confirmed by all the other experiences of love to be different from worship. For worship is a sort of one-sided love which does not allow for a response and therefore cannot move into friendship, because in worship we do not relate to God as a living being but we idealise God in a fixed image that we have in our own understanding and thus we prevent Him coming alive.
We do this, no doubt, out of a diminished sense of our own value and adequacy and out of a sense of modesty. But we only have to look at the nature of love for a moment to realise that the truest form of love does not have to behave in this manner to whatever it finds desirable to love.
In fact we discover that it is most unkind to worship others rather than to love them because it fixes them in a mould they do not wish to be fixed in; in fact by worshipping people we imprison them. But love does not wish to imprison the one it loves, above all, love longs to give expansion and enhanced beingness to the one it loves. Love longs to be in a creative and growing relation- ship with the one it loves. Love is the highest expression of life itself, and life is never static, but always wishes to be aspiring and developing towards new and untried possibilities ties.
So what I feel the term a loving God really means, is that this God is trying to develop us to a stage where we can become His friends in this deeply loving, active, personalised way which allows the creative fruits of a friendship to arise between them which constantly keeps pace with the liveliness and creative aspiration of the living spirit of our common Divine Specieshood.
When we enter this loving friendship with God, which enables Him to be a responsive individual as we are, then we discover that we are also able to befriend one another as well. And thus we find that God becomes our wisest and best friend among many friends. And if we look into the deep heart of love we will see that this is exactly what it has always wished for, and it is the motivation and mainspring behind the whole process that we know of as creation.
Excerpted from an essay called Divine Love, in The Great Gift, by William Arkle; read the whole thing here...
Learning from the failure/ sabotage/ treason of Brexit-in-name-only
As it becomes ever more certain that we we have 'Brexit in name only', it is worth reflecting on what can be learned from the experience of the last couple of years.
One is that the entirety of our ruling elites - no matter what they said - is revealed as corrupt and evil-motivated; and becomes more so with every passing month. We knew this already, but it has been confirmed.
Another is the the British people are spiritually asleep, or rather self-stupefied; and we are unwilling to be awakened. If Brexit, and the 'leave' vote, was a chance to recognise our situation and do something about it - then we now perceive that the situation was not recognised and nothing was done.
I detect not-the-slightest qualitative change for the better in UK public discourse; but public discourse is changing, in that the program of corruption and inversion of Good continues to accelerate - and indeed has taken on a somewhat wild and reckless quality. This may have been the main legacy of the pro-Brexit vote - and may also represent the best (remote) hope for a spiritual awakening.
'Remote' because now Albion's best hope is in the errors and excesses of our enemies - that an increased irritation and anger, increased rapidity of accelerating evil, might prove sufficiently noticeable and provocative to overcome the endemic blindness, insanity, fear, resentment and despair that besets the nation.
Initially, though, I see no way that Good can happen without a significant disengagement - from the mass/ social media and the mass of propaganda and dissipation (include interpersonal timewasting generally).
This would initially be negative - perhaps visible in a collapse of mass media participation, from so-called-work and learning; in people not doing things, not buying things...
Only after some such disengagement could there be search, discovery, awakening; then faith, hope and energy.
As so often, things must (appear to) get worse, before they can (really) get better...
One is that the entirety of our ruling elites - no matter what they said - is revealed as corrupt and evil-motivated; and becomes more so with every passing month. We knew this already, but it has been confirmed.
Another is the the British people are spiritually asleep, or rather self-stupefied; and we are unwilling to be awakened. If Brexit, and the 'leave' vote, was a chance to recognise our situation and do something about it - then we now perceive that the situation was not recognised and nothing was done.
I detect not-the-slightest qualitative change for the better in UK public discourse; but public discourse is changing, in that the program of corruption and inversion of Good continues to accelerate - and indeed has taken on a somewhat wild and reckless quality. This may have been the main legacy of the pro-Brexit vote - and may also represent the best (remote) hope for a spiritual awakening.
'Remote' because now Albion's best hope is in the errors and excesses of our enemies - that an increased irritation and anger, increased rapidity of accelerating evil, might prove sufficiently noticeable and provocative to overcome the endemic blindness, insanity, fear, resentment and despair that besets the nation.
Initially, though, I see no way that Good can happen without a significant disengagement - from the mass/ social media and the mass of propaganda and dissipation (include interpersonal timewasting generally).
This would initially be negative - perhaps visible in a collapse of mass media participation, from so-called-work and learning; in people not doing things, not buying things...
Only after some such disengagement could there be search, discovery, awakening; then faith, hope and energy.
As so often, things must (appear to) get worse, before they can (really) get better...
Saturday, 28 April 2018
'Virtue signalling' is an empty insult
At present the universal, public, background-assumption is of a mechanical-random world;
and therefore 'the question' is simply about our-selves, how we feel - our
happiness, misery etc. For all mainstream discourse the bottom line is psychology: my psychology; especially my feelings. There is nothing deeper.
(What else could it be, in such a reality?)
Other people are - we found, difficult or impossible to deny; they have a big impact on happiness, misery etc; therefore, some account must be taken of them... But 'other people' are ultimately defined in terms of their impact on how-we-personally-feel.
Therefore modern people aspire to social arrangements that gratify them-selves, that which make them feel good, not bad.
Modern people are concerned with 'virtue' insofar as they believe virtue affects their own psychological condition (by assumption, virtue cannot affect ultimate reality, which is indifferent).
Virtue works (or fails) by the attitudes that others have to us - as individuals, and how that makes us feel.
Thus (from these near-universal assumptions) all virtue, all possible virtue, the definition of virtue just-is virtue-signalling.
Virtue is a social communication that (we believe) will encourage other-people to treat us in such ways that we are more happy and suffer less.
There is nothing else that virtue could be, even in theory.
So: to accuse a typical modern person of virtue signalling is an empty insult. A modern person cannot conceptualise anything else that virtue could possibly be than 'signalling'.
(What else could it be, in such a reality?)
Other people are - we found, difficult or impossible to deny; they have a big impact on happiness, misery etc; therefore, some account must be taken of them... But 'other people' are ultimately defined in terms of their impact on how-we-personally-feel.
Therefore modern people aspire to social arrangements that gratify them-selves, that which make them feel good, not bad.
Modern people are concerned with 'virtue' insofar as they believe virtue affects their own psychological condition (by assumption, virtue cannot affect ultimate reality, which is indifferent).
Virtue works (or fails) by the attitudes that others have to us - as individuals, and how that makes us feel.
Thus (from these near-universal assumptions) all virtue, all possible virtue, the definition of virtue just-is virtue-signalling.
Virtue is a social communication that (we believe) will encourage other-people to treat us in such ways that we are more happy and suffer less.
There is nothing else that virtue could be, even in theory.
So: to accuse a typical modern person of virtue signalling is an empty insult. A modern person cannot conceptualise anything else that virtue could possibly be than 'signalling'.
Blog viewership continues to decline...
I have previously commented on a couple of very sudden, 'overnight', declines in this blog's Pageviews - this zig-zag declining continues as can be seen from the graph above - which shows Pageviews per month, peaking at December 2016 with more than 100,000 but now down to less than half of that.
My assumption is that this has nothing much to do with the blog itself - i.e. the content and frequency (except perhaps indirectly) - and everything to do with how it is indexed. I have never been able to establish whether this is/ was targeted specifcially at this blog (or this type of blog), or is a general phenomenon among daily blogs of this 'intermediate' degree of popularity.
Anyway, this is the down-trend, and it seems to be continuing.
Friday, 27 April 2018
The complete Compleat Lecturer essays from the Oxford Magazine
The 4-part The Compleat Lecturer series from the Oxford Magazine (2017) can be found under the following linked subtitles:
1. The first mass medium
2. The special effectiveness of lecturing
3. Lecture theatre size and design
4. Talk-and-chalk
1. The first mass medium
2. The special effectiveness of lecturing
3. Lecture theatre size and design
4. Talk-and-chalk
Was John the Baptist Necessary? Yes; as necessary as Jesus's mother, Mary
This prominence now seems to require a more specific explanation than that the author of the Fourth Gospel was previously JtB's disciple, and that the Baptist was a high status Holy Man and Prophet who could confirm Jesus's identity as the Messiah.
I now believe that John the Baptist was necessary to the ministry of Jesus; by which I mean that it was necessary that Jesus was baptised by John (and not somebody else) in order that Jesus could fully become the Messiah, could fully become both Man and God, could perform miracles (including raising the dead), and could have the self-knowledge to do all this in full awareness of its significance.
In other words, when John describes how he knew that Jesus was the Messiah because when he baptised Jesus the divine Spirit came down upon Jesus and stayed upon him - and John had previously been told directly by God that this would be how the Messiah was known - this represents a very significant and direct intervention in reality by God the Father specifically via John.
(Plus, John the Baptist's own miraculous conception and personal history, and its prior linkage to the lineage and life of Jesus, is described in the other Gospels.)
John 1: 29 The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.
30 This is he of whom I said, After me cometh a man which is preferred before me: for he was before me.
31 And I knew him not: but that he should be made manifest to Israel, therefore am I come baptizing with water.
32 And John bare record, saying, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him.
33 And I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost.
This carries the implication that in every other case when John baptised, the Spirit descended from heaven but did not abide - that the baptised person was 'touched' by the divine spirit - but not transformed by it into a qualitatively different being.
(This passage also confirms that the Holy Ghost came only with the ministry of Jesus, and that the many previous examples of divine Spirit intervening in the world - for example in the Old Testament, and before this point of the New, were distinct-from the Holy Ghost. I understand this to mean that the Holy Ghost was/is Jesus.)
This suggests to me that baptism by John was of miraculous nature for everybody - in being touched by the divine; but that this touching and abiding made a decisive transformation for Jesus. After which, Christ's miraculous ministry began.
In other words, John the Baptist's role in the incarnation of Jesus was not merely to help or assist; but was a necessary and decisive part of Jesus becoming what he became.
Now, perhaps if John had failed to do the baptism of Jesus (because John could not be compelled by God, he had to choose to do what he did, and for the right reasons), some other way would have been found - by God - by which the necessary and decisive transformation could be accomplished... This is quite possible, given God's power; just as perhaps God could have found another to bear Jesus had Mary declined.
But as it actually happened; I think we need to acknowledged that John the Baptist was as personally important as Mary - and indeed the analogy is a close one, since John's baptism was Jesus being 'born again' (as indirectly implied by the later discussion with Nicodemus).
Mary was responsible for Jesus being born as Man; John the Baptist for Jesus being born-again as Man and God - that's a measure of how important John was!
The Cognitive Christ
One element in what Christ did for us and taught us relates to making the unconscious conscious; the implicit explicit - to move from custom to knowledge...
Sin is knowledge - by which I mean that the recognition of sin is a kind of knowledge - it entails making-explicit.
The Ancient Hebrew Law was a semi-conscious knowledge - half way to the aware and articulated knowledge that Jesus brought us. To sin was to deviate from The Law - but the Law was custom, given on Authority... and there was little or no understanding of sin. A man did not know why he had sinned - in what respect his sin was sinful...
Jesus brought repentance - and repentance entails knowledge; and Jesus made-possible this knowledge (he was the cognitive Christ). We must know sin before it can be repented - and since repentance is revealed to be necessary, this means we need to know sin... Personal knowing becomes vital to living, to become more like God.
This is linked to the desirability of theosis, or divinisation - it is about the promise that we are children of God with an elevated destiny - thus, God is wholly-conscious of what he knows: nothing is 'implicit' for God. He both knows, and knows he knows.
The incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ included that Men should henceforth begin to know in the same manner that God knows - from Jesus onward, cumulatively, Man became able and also needed to become conscious of his knowledge; what was unexamined custom should become consciously known and chosen.
Thus Christ heralded a Cognitive Revolution, amongst many other things...
Thursday, 26 April 2018
The curse of agriculture
The Indian in his Solitude by NC Wyeth - this is more like the kind of thing...
Since the invention of farming, modern life has become a state of siege, a small gang of family and allies against a mass of hostile strangers, an island of order surrounded by overwhelming forces of chaos - planning is essential, yet most plans will fail. The world is not an unconditionally nurturing parent but must be coerced into producing the necessities of life, survival is a hard bargain, failure an ever present threat. For the farmer, the natural world is neither unchangeable nor ‘giving’ - it is raw material for the production of food and other necessities and luxuries. Production entails prolonged, dull, repetitive tasks to force nature into new and different shapes.
The conditions of [the] archetypal farm are harsh. This is not Eden but the curse of exile: only by the sweat of his brow does the man provide food for his family. Not only the man, of course; the woman, too, must work all and every day. The children are the labourers who will ease the burden of the cursed land.
The same forest that is a nurturing parent for the hunter-gatherer, becomes for the farmer a perpetual threat of savage encroachment. The world consist of objects to be manipulated:
The trees are felled, their root are hauled from the ground, stones are picked from the earth, invading wild plants and shrubs are rooted out again and again.. the soil will grow grass and vegetables only if a great deal else is “kept under control”, which means excluded or destroyed. Not only rival plant life, but also wild creatures that harm seeds, seedlings, buds or fruits, or eat the domestic animals… Weeds and vermin. These are the agents of wild nature that have to be walled out, scared off or killed.
And ‘the farmer’ stands for the modern human condition - the life of modern man is ‘farming’ the whole world. The serious business of survival now depends absolutely on a shift to objectification, control, imposed order. Animism must be denigrated, written-over and suppressed.
The distinction between respect and control is of immense importance to an understanding of how agriculturalists approach hunter-gatherers. The skills of farmers are centred not on their inner relationship to the world but their ability to change it. Technical and intellectual systems are developed to achieve and maintain this as completely as possible. Farmers carry with them systems of control as well as crucial seeds and livestock. These systems constitute ways of thinking as well as bodies of information. .. the achievement of abstraction and the project of control are related.
...The above is from an article I wrote about 15 years ago (and before I was a Christian).
I still feel much the same! And in consequence, I regard the historical situation, language and symbolism as sub-optimal to the degree that it assumes an agricultural (or industrial) society. Agriculture is intrinsically a sub-optimal way of life...
I think we humans are 'meant' (by our natures) to live much less 'planned' lives than we do: less civilized and more natural; less institutional and more familial; less dependent on literacy and science and more spontaneously creative.
In sum, I believe that we are intended/ destined to return to living much more like hunter gatherers - but this time with a full awareness of our situation and from choice (rather than knowing nothing any different, or from necessity)... And if not in this world, then the next.
Wednesday, 25 April 2018
An overview of what is wrong, here and now...
From William Wildblood - over at Albion Awakening.
A snippet:
At one time, I thought of writing a book on the deviations of modernity but lost interest as the whole thing would just have been one long round of negativity.
The more I thought about it, the more I realised I would have ended up including practically everything about the world today in my analysis of what was wrong with it. Its art, its politics, its science, its philosophy, its culture, its education and even its religion.
For nowadays each one of these serves to sidetrack man from his true mission of self-knowledge. None of them really helps to align him with it. Each one is, to some degree, destructive of truth. Most of them are based on lies and reduce humanity to a spiritually shrunken version of itself.
The prospect was too unpleasant to contemplate. I didn't want to appear, even to myself, a miserable moaner with nothing good to say about anything.
That having been said, the negativity is not in me but in the world as it is today and though a book is too much for me to do, a post on this blog will make the point just as well....
Read the whole thing...
A snippet:
At one time, I thought of writing a book on the deviations of modernity but lost interest as the whole thing would just have been one long round of negativity.
The more I thought about it, the more I realised I would have ended up including practically everything about the world today in my analysis of what was wrong with it. Its art, its politics, its science, its philosophy, its culture, its education and even its religion.
For nowadays each one of these serves to sidetrack man from his true mission of self-knowledge. None of them really helps to align him with it. Each one is, to some degree, destructive of truth. Most of them are based on lies and reduce humanity to a spiritually shrunken version of itself.
The prospect was too unpleasant to contemplate. I didn't want to appear, even to myself, a miserable moaner with nothing good to say about anything.
That having been said, the negativity is not in me but in the world as it is today and though a book is too much for me to do, a post on this blog will make the point just as well....
Read the whole thing...
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