Tuesday 23 June 2015

If a leader emerged who might be a saviour of the West - what kind of person might he be?

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If a leader was to emerge who might save The West (or some significant part of it) from self-hatred and indirect suicide, from the dead-ly combination of alienation and nihilism... what kind of person would he have to be?

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He would, I think need to be a break from the recently-typical type of pseudo-leader - the promoted middle manager, the hysteric and the psychopath - who has so effectively served the interests of New Leftism (the ruling bureaucracy and the mass media) over the past fifty years.

There would need to be something magical, uncanny, unpredictable about him. His focus would - although this may seem paradoxical - be on the aesthetic good and the truth rather than on morality (since Leftism is all about moral outrage as an excuse and justification for lies, ugliness and hatred).

He would, of course, need to be a natural leader, a man of spontaneous authority (not, therefore, an intellectual); and in the background, in the shadows (as it were), there would probably be a grey eminence, a wizardly intellectual and poetic adviser, a Merlin-type magician.

Most likely, this person would be of noble background (although I'm not sure what kind of 'noble' this would be - but a kind which is recognized as such, without need for argument or emphasis).

Of course, this leader would be chosen of God (in that sense 'anointed') and his qualities might well come from what seemed to be a difference in nature - a prophet, reincarnate, suspected angel?...something of that sort.

He would not, of course, be perfect or flawless; but his imperfections and flaws would be of-a-piece with his strengths and leadership qualities. Therefore these defects would not be hidden nor minimized, although they would be repented. In sum, his dark side would indirectly reinforce his status as leader.

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Now, it could well be said that what I have depicted sounds more like an Antichrist, a dark sorcerer (an Adolf Hitler type, in other words) than the Christian leader which would be needed to save us.

But my point is this: from where we are now, after half a century of New Leftism - a fake leader, an evil leader would almost certainly be someone who built upon the evil heritage of New Leftism, political correctness, and social justice: therefore the really dangerous kind of evil leader would not be the kind of person I described above - since that would be to risk losing all the progress-towards universal nihilism and alienation which has been the demonic triumph recent decades.

From where we stand, the Antichrist (and, of course, there may be several or many of these) would be a bureaucrat or a mass media man - and certainly not a real leader of the wartime Winston Churchill type which I have described above.
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7 comments:

John Fitzgerald said...

Catholic prophecies of the 'Grand Monarch and Holy Pope', as I've written elsewhere, are interesting in this respect. The future Pontiff in (as with Merlin and Arthur, and Gandalf and Aragorn) clearly plays the part, as you predict here, of 'eminence grise' to the restored King.

The poet Kathleen Raine believed that Prince Charles has a pivotal role to play in the spiritual reawakening of the West. 'He stands at the heart of the Great Battle', she commented on more than one occasion.

I share her admiration for HRH, but my sense is that such a figure will most likely appear from the margins. He'll be a 'Strider' figure of some kind, I'm sure, currently unheralded if not actively marginalised.

Maybe a war or economic crash will bring him (or her?) to the fore. Who can say? I think the fittest service we can render (at least for the artistically minded) would be to write stories, paint pictures and compose music, for example, that posits and imagines his advent, thereby setting the scene and creating the kind of 're-enchanted' climate that he will undoubtedly need in the future.

An appropriate reflection on the Vigil of the Natvity of St. John the Baptist perhaps.

Alex said...

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geraldwarner/100041471/french-royalists-celebrate-the-birth-of-twin-sons-to-louis-xx-rightful-king-of-france/

Bruce Charlton said...

@JF - I am sure it is *not* Prince Charles. He is very bound-in-with our primary problem of Leftism, and he lacks natural leadership qualities.

Bruce Charlton said...

JP Commented:"Prince Charles is a liberal buffoon who worships Gaia if he worships anything. He dabbles in New Age nonsense like Kabbalah and alternative medicine. He wants to be called Defender of Faith or Defender of the Faiths (plural) "to reflect Britain's multi-cultural society" rather than Defender of the Faith. An Oxford professor says that after Charles' coronation, it is plausible that a second service will be held for other denominations and faiths... "It would be a way of the new King showing their importance in the country."...
In short, don't look to him to save the West, or even England."

AnteB said...

I´m under the impression that Prince Charles is mainly attracted to Eastern Orthodoxy but also influenced by the so called Perennial School, as expounded by people like Frithjof Schuon, Rene Guenon etc. This school´s main view is that there are many paths to the divine, but each should follow a specific orthodox tradition and not try to mix them. This school of thought is quite hostile towards the modern world, as well mindless syncretism, so I´m a bit surprised if Prince Charles really is a liberal buffoon. I had a quite positive view of him.

OP
Dr Charlton, do you know this man or his he talking about another Dr Charlton? He has a quite interesting Youtube-channel, though it is a pity he has such a negative view of religion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbUOeQUlGt8

Bruce Charlton said...

@ANteB - Yes, I know Nikolas Lloyd - although I didn't know I was mentioned in one of his videos; he lives in Newcastle, is a long-term friend/ co-writer of my brother's, and I have often talked with him, especially about evolutionary matters.

Lloyd was actually a relatively early victim of the now mainstream practice of indescribably-absurd, politically correct witch-hunting:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/05/12/newcastle_veggie_site/

J. B. said...

From a friend:

"I was fascinated by what he saw as the coming leader... and I agree with the description... but my interest was mainly because it describes so perfectly the flawed but amazing (now dead) Chogyam Trunpa Rinpoche, who actually did inspire a fairly broad movement towards "enlightened society" in the west - which is not leftist in the Bruce C-understood sense..."