Saturday 18 April 2020

Metaphysical materialism trumps the perception deception

Media analysts have described how people are primarily influenced by their perceptions, how perceptions come to us via the mass media (now amplified by social media); and that this de facto monopoly on our input of information substantially 'controls' the population of modern societies.

We could call is the theory of Perception Deception. The implicit antidote is to make perceptions more truthful... At the mass level, this entails aiming for a truthful mass media; and paying close attention to the biases and censorships of the mass media and propaganda more generally. 

However, the birdemic has demonstrated that this explanation is grossly inadequate - to the point of being mostly-wrong. Inputs are near-irrelevant; and far more important are the basic assumptions about Life by which perceptions are interpreted.


The basic assumptions about Life is what I mean by metaphysics; and for most - nearly all, it turns-out - modern people, these assumptions are materialist.

Therefore, a person's response to the birdemic is a much better guide to someone's metaphysical assumptions than is whether that person professes left- or right-wing views, or whether they profess atheism, New Age or religious beliefs.

To put it bluntly, the only people who see-through the deception of the birdemic are those who have (not just profess) a metaphysical assumption of the primacy of the spiritual in Life.

So far as I can tell, spiritual people recognise the birdemic fake - whereas those who are actually materialist cannot recognise what is really going-on; and they fail utterly to recognise what is going-on even when exposed to vast and powerful evidence of it (such as they get from their own daily personal experience).


What is really going-on is as obvious as anything can be - from the fact of (pretty much) the whole world being under house arrest (including you and me) without end-point - suspension of elections - working only as directed labour in approved activities - control of what you can buy - indefinite forbidding of all real-life church activities - prohibition of all real-life social and extended family life - prohibition of all performing arts - prohibition of travel - multiplication of coercive rules and laws - pervasive police impositions etc., etc., etc...

Do I really need to describe what is visible to everyone and happened over a timescale of days?... Well, yes it seems I do - but description does no good at all when all and any such perceptual inputs are automatically and unconsciously explained-away as being 'therapy'.

Because it turns-out that a global totalitarian, anti-religious, anti-human, anti-individual regime can be imposed - but nobody will notice when it is explained as being necessary for health.

Billions of people have been rendered blind to the obvious. That is a stunning thing - more remarkable a fact than anything I have ever encounted. 

The communist, fascist, national socialist totalitarian societies of the twentieth century have simply been redescribed in terms of medical and therapeutic necessity in relation to a single disease. And nearly-everybody is not merely accepting of this, but clamouring for more of the same - in order to keep people 'safe'.


(The fact that lockdownsocialdistancing cannot keep people safe from a airborne virus, but will instead perpetuate the epidemic and expose more vulnerable people and cause far more deaths by delaying herd immunity is completely irrelevant to the argument - because all facts are irrelevant when one's metaphysics are materialist.) 


Interestingly, most of the 'Alternative media' - or what the Establishment call 'conspiracy theorists' also fail to see through the birdemic fake - fail to see that the birdemic is itself merely an excuse - but have instead been distracted into focusing on health-related red herrings about bioweaps and fie vegee - which (whether true or not, and they may be significantly true) miss the central and obvious point - or even lead to bizarre inversions relating to plans for mass killing (with the virus).

(This is wrong for the plain reason that totalitarian takeover has been based-on the rationale of health, medicine, life-saving and death-counting - which makes little sense if mass killing were intended. But even if it were right; it misses the stunning magnitude and speed of what has actually happened.) 


What we see is that perceptual inputs, information, 'facts' and 'data' - are secondary factors when what is happening is based in the spiritual. Even when people expose themselves to a different set of inputs (eg those who participate mostly in the Alternative media), they fail to see the obvious reality - because they are materialists.

It is significant that David Icke, although perhaps the grandfather of the Alternative media and conspiracy theorists is - unlike most of his followers - one of the rare people who immediately recognised what was really going-on. This because Icke is primarily a spiritual person (not a Christian, more of a deist, but genuinely spiritual),


We can observe that those who are in practice (whatever they may suppose about themselves, whatever their personal self-identification as a 'spiritual' or 'religious' person) are materialists; fail to see the obvious.

This is often evident in having de facto socio-political alignments as a prime priority in their lives, into-which spirituality and religion must be fitted) - but we also see that those who live what look-like spiritual or religious lives are also mostly living on the basis of materialist fundamental assumptions - so that their spirituality or religion is, it turns-out, merely a matter of lifestyle.

To recognise today's obvious entails a spiritual perspective, but only to those with a spiritual persepctive is it obvious. To everyone else, the obvious cannot be true; because excluded by (unconscious) assumptions. 


So - the birdemic reveals the difference between, on the one hand, the superficiality of life-style - such that even very dominant life-styles amounting to a full-time occupation (e.g. religious professionals, obsessive New Agers) make no difference to their blindness. They are just as blind to the obvious reality as any professed skeptic, atheist activist, card-carrying humanist, or philosophical materialist.

On the other hand, the reality of a person's experienced 'inner' life is revealed by their capacity to 'notice' the biggest-fastest qualitative change in world history.


It is the inner life (ie. a person's metaphysical assumptions, by which he understands life) that turns-out to matter most; to the point that it is almost as if it is the only thing that matters, in a spiritual sense.

Differences of religion, denomination, theology, ritual, scripture etc are all washed-away as superficial and ineffectual...

Spiritual sensibility is more important at present than ever before; since those who lack it are being stampeded into embracing a world based on the principle of materialistic self-damnation, at a shocking rate.


In conclusion, metaphysics is primary; and especially in a world where the reality and importance of metaphysical awareness is denied.

A world where 'everyone' believes that 'evidence' is the only thing that matters, and believes that perceptions control behaviour is - it turns-out - a world where evidence is irrelevant and behaviour is dictated by prior assumptions of which (almost) everybody is insensible.

The single most important thing that people can do (here, now) is to become aware of their primary assumptions about life.

And that is something every individual person must do for himself, or it will not be done.

7 comments:

William Wildblood said...

That is exactly it. The current situation is a truly excellent way of separating sheep from goats, whatever the professed beliefs of the one or the other. It doesn't just question the mind but the heart and so shows what a person really thinks.

Sean fowler said...

I can’t believe what I’m seeing either Bruce. It seems like there are no more than a handful of people that can see through this illusion. Billions completely taken in by what should be an obvious lie.

Ranger said...

There was a Brazilian writer who once said "only the prophets see the obvious"

I thought it was just one of those paradoxes in which writers delight. Now I know what he meant.

Bruce Charlton said...

@William - Yes, and some of the identifications of sheep and goats have been a surprise, others a disappointment. Certainyl, I have been disappointed by many Christians.

My impression is that there is a distinction between people (and religions, and denominations) that are primarily about practice and participation - as contrasted with those who are inner rooted - between external religion and inner or 'romantic' spirituality. In my cynical moments I think this reveals that external religion is revealed mostly a matter of social conformity - is indeed Driven by social conformity.

Of course, this was described and predicted a century ago and more, but here is the evidence. Perhaps weirdly, the romantic is tougher than the conformist.

@Sean - It is strange when one is put in the position of trying to explain the obvious, and it is not accepted.

@Ranger - Maybe we are each-and-all called upon to be our own prophet now.

Anonymous said...

How odd it is that people have dismissed the existence of the invisible: God, Jesus, miracles (which are hidden in plain sight), and evil. Yet people willingly and gullibly believe in an invisible enemy birdemic that will kill millions instantly.

Early on I thought it was laughable that all the media found a picture of a corvid, enlarged it by 100x, then plastered it on their webpages as if it were reality. This invisible terrifying corvid apparently possesses magical powers to penetrate all barriers and latch onto unsuspecting victims and asymptomatic carriers. For instance, one sees people bicycling and walking in fresh air with masks on, as if a cloud of invisible corvids will suddenly swarm on them, infect, and kill them.


It seems obvious that this corvid is being used as an excuse for fascist power grabs. People in white lab coats give cover for this purpose. This seems similar to World War II when German scientists used eugenics as an excuse to experiment on and eliminate undesirables.

KatM

Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

I don't know. I would never in a million years describe myself as a spiritual person, but the obvious remains obvious. Any idiot should be able to see what's happening, and materialists most of all. I mean, whatever else one might say about them, aren't materialists at least supposed to be cynical?

Bruce Charlton said...

@ Wm. Cynical youths grow into careerist bureaucrats as I know from my cohort.

Not spiritual, eh? Lack of self knowledge evident there...