This equation expresses the problem. Western Civilization has been largely (but not wholly) replaced with bureaucracy and the mass media.
Bureaucracy because all institutions, organisations, corprations, professions of significant size and power have become primarily bureaucracies of a generic type - linked-with other bureacracies to make The System.
Now almost everybody depends on The System for their livelihood, to keep them alive - yet The System is an Evil Liar.
And culture has become assimilated to the Mass Media; Media values have displaced others. Wherever we look, from fiction to science, from medicine to fine arts; we see the same, inverted, value system emanating-from the Mass Media, policed and enforced by the mass media (i.e. 'convergence').
The System and the Media are in synergy; the Media embodies the morality that the System implements (albeit that the morality is one of opposition - a negative morality). The Media provides the evolving and fluctuating goals and motivations (feminism, antiracism, sexual revolution etc) which the System embodies.
Media and Bureaucracy are Good Cop; Bad Cop - frenemies working-together to pursue the aganda of Evil Lies.
The System always and intrinsically lags-behind the Media. So, the Media - using instant mobs (whether virtual or physical) - constantly harangues and 'attacks' the System for being reactionary. The System responds by constantly evolving-towards the 'ideals' expressed in the Media.
The real Western Civilization has been substantially colonised and displaced by the System and the Media. It exists mostly under the radar, among individuals in spoken and personal contact (since even clubs and hobbies have become largely assimilated and repurposed).
Western Civilzation cannot truly be defended in public discourse, in the public realm - exactly because it has been assimilated to The System.
Typically, an attempt at defence merely amounts to defending The System against The Media (and its instant mobs); when The System does not even want to be defended - since System legitimacy and purpose derive from the Media.
The System does not want to be defended against the Media; it merely wants to be helped (especially funded) towards meeting the latest, always-changing, never satisfied demands of the Media.
Thus the System grows in size and power.
Christians cannot publicly defend Western Civilization without supporting that which is anti-Christian (not wholly, but Root and Branch Antichristian).
Since we cannot defend WC, without (sooner or later) ceasing to be Christian; we should not even try to do it.
We should resist the temptation...
I agree with this insight, which is that we should not try to "defend Western Civ", because in practice that will invariably mean defending the System, because Western Civ and the System/Interlinked Bureaucracy have become converged. And since the system is evil, defending Western Civ is defending evil.
ReplyDeleteThe implication seems to be that we should divert the time, energy and attention spent on defending Western Civ, to building a relationship with God, through Jesus, and guided and supported by the Holy Ghost.
Now, if Western civ has become colonised by an evil system, then the Holy Ghost will not lead us towards a stronger participation in the system, but will guide us towards a reduction in involvement with it. And since the system is interlinked, reduction of involvement in one part will tend to undermine our involvement completely. For example, if you stop watching or reading the news, you will cease to care about what is occupying what should be the "higher mind" of most people, and will care about something probably very competely different. This will shift your priorities and before you know it, you´ll be become something like what "beatniks" thought they should be, but getting it much righter this time around.
This reduction in involvement with the system implies, I believe, that we will participate in the birthing of something quite new... never seen before. Because we cannot (and shouldn´t even desire to) go back in time, and obviously the present is what we are moving away from.
This is, to me, very interesting and I even feel honoured to have been born in this time and place. Who knows what amazing consequences the works and thoughts we will birth will bring about!
@Gary "This is, to me, very interesting and I even feel honoured to have been born in this time and place. "
ReplyDeleteI quite often feel that way too - and it seems to be the best attitude to aim for.
@Gary & Bruce
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting that this is happening within the lifetimes of people who can remember the 'American High' of the 1950s and early '60s.
I used to call the Alt-Right the "Boromirsphere."
ReplyDeleteIt is much worse now. They are the "Denethorsphere." At least Boromir repented.
Ah yes: https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-boromir-strategy-as-advocated-by.html - You may recall you said that it was a Boromir *strategy*: "Hey lads, let's use the One Ring to fight Sauron!"
ReplyDeleteDenethor didn't really have a strategy; it was despair and suicide from losing hope; and he lost hope because he was living according to speculative models. Which is exactly the birdemic response crisis: the whole world living according to a speculative models of the birdemic pandemic deaths, to be prevented by the speculative model of lock-down-social-distancing.
Or the specualtive model of CO2 climate change - also to be cured by a variant of LDSC (or 're-set as They are calling it at present - a specualtive model again).
But as William Briggs keeps pointing out - a model only tells you what you put-into it (and, in the case of the UK 'experts' it doesn't even tell you that, because the birdemic model was apparently full of software bugs).