All systems lead (whether fast and direct, or more slowly and via loops) to the same end-point.
All systems treat individuals as components, less-than-fully human, less-than-divine - hence all systems are alienating and coercive: all systems are un-free (since system has priority, and unless coercive and un-free the system will not function).
From this perspective, literally-ALL organisations, institutions, ideologies and religions - all laws and rules and principles and procedures - all mathematics and science - are merely-systems.
Yet (of course) this world is made and sustained by systems - that is by abstract, incomplete, biased mere-models. Even our criteria of what works, what is wanted, are expressed in terms of systems...! Man creates system, and then is enslaved by it.
Confronted by apparently hopeless odds, we first become resigned to system - then we try to love what cannot be avoided: we try to love our submission, our dehumanisation - we count-our-blessings and ignore the rest; we 'focus on the positives'... we seek distraction, displacement, some combination of rationalisation and intoxication.
That is, we try to suppress consciousness, one way or another. Which happens to be the very worst thing we could do - the only certain road to self-damnation (self-damnation being the only damnation).
We strive to be happy and willing servants of evil, actively working for the imposition of greater evil - because we see no other option; yet this cannot be done, since under-all we know what we are really doing. Hence the modern malaise, hopelessness, despair - self-hatred, slow suicide, a desperate self-damnation.
Read the rest at Albion Awakening
This is the beauty of Christianity, it was never about a system, but a person. And the person is the message!
ReplyDelete@Ted - Absolutely! And in the gospels, that fact is staring us in the face.
ReplyDeleteNonetheless it is so easy - in responding to questions or attacks, or even just in trying to communicate or convince, or for reasons of social expediency - to fall-into systematisation; and then for that abstract/ simplified/ false model to become primary.
I'm trying to recall a quote I read somewhere, it goes "We all live by a system, the question is whether we will live by our own or someone else's", and I think that is an apt response to this type of reasoning.
ReplyDelete@Simon - That's a near (partial) quote from William Blake:
ReplyDelete"I must create a system or be enslaved by another mans..."
But, properly understood (ie. from Blake's own metaphysical assumptions - and Not using this fragment as a proof-text), Blake did Not create a system. At least not one that he endorsed or lived by; not one that captured him; but only a sort-of system (a collection of described-visions, joined edge to edge in a pseudo-narrative, that he used as a pointer - but then intended to be discarded).
Thanks for the quote source and correction, Dr Charlton.
ReplyDeleteAs far as I can tell, however, it is part of our condition to live within systems. Reality cannot be understood any other way. The most rudimentary decision-making involves value-judgements, which imply a system.
It seems to me that the trick is to understand where and how systems can be used. For instance, as seems to be suggested by Blake, the systemisation of Christianity was an unmitigated disaster - it reduced Christ's existence, which is and was the entirety of Christianity, to a mere set of rules to be followed, rather than a pattern of existence to be embodied, and set Christianity on it's course of collapse.
@Simon - Well it *has-been* our condition to live within systems, but (according to Barfield/ Steiner and accepted by me) that has not been the case since the era of the Romantics (Blake and Coleridge specifically, for the English).
ReplyDeleteThe idea is that human history is a developmental ('evolutionary' in the old sense of the word) process, under divine destiny; and that the advent of Romanticism was supposed to be the beginning of a new (and post-systematic) phase.
However, Romanticism has been continually attacked and misrepresented, and its various effusions have been undercut by Christian apostasy and hijacked by various partial-materialist-systemising movements of the political Left.
200 years down the line, we are further back from where we ought to be - but, potentially, the reality of our situation is getting clearer and clearer for those few who are not inside the single-linked-bureaucratic-media system...
Different individuals will eventually be forced to a clear sight of the true situation at various times (everybody, sooner or later, perhaps beyond death - because God can ensure that this happens) - but how they will each decide (accept divine destiny, or opt-out/ oppose it) is something that cannot be predicted and remains to be seen.
I cannot comprehend how we are to move beyond living within certain systems. This implies we will eventually dispense with thought because it is inextricable with words, and words are abstractions, a systemisation of reality.
ReplyDeleteYou'll just have to read some more of this blog! - especially over the past year - e.g. You might word search Primary Thinking
ReplyDeleteDr Charlton, I have been reading your blog(s) for the past seven years! I suppose all I have to say is I remain unconvinced.
ReplyDeleteFair enough! -
ReplyDeleteAll I can say is to quote Kingsley Amis - People who like this sort of thing, may find this the sort of thing they like.
(Otherwise not.)