You would have thought that anybody who worked in any kind of job in (or interacting-with) any kind of bureaucratic large institution, organisation, corporation... would recognise the pervasive - daily, hourly - corruption.
And would therefore adjust their expectations of corruption when it came to... oh, I don't know... elections?
Yet people continue to assume the null hypothesis of No Corruption, of Systematic Honesty. Truthfulness until otherwise 'proven' (and each item of proof treated the same - if there is any other explanation than dishonesty (and of course there always is) then it should be preferred.
How are so many people missing such a vast Fact about our civilization, that it been becoming more corrupt for decades, and that the corruption is accelerating month by month in the year of 2020?
(2020! - the Year of the Lie! - the Year of the Biggest Lie in the history of the world!)
How can they miss this corruption, exclude it by assumption and by argument?
Well, they do miss it, because the corruption is itself concealed by pervasive, systematic, compulsory dishonesty - which affects almost everybody, and everybody at high and middling levels in all large bureaucracies/ organisations.
Generalised, severe, pervasive corruption naturally conceals specific instances. And when (as now) there is enough corruption; specific instances become un-proveable...
When everybody is lying all the time; why pick on a particular person, time, place for special attention?
People have become so used-to public relations, advertsing, hype, spin, selection, distortion; to manipulation and propaganda... that nearly-all people are adapted to dishonesty in its multitude of manifestations. They have long since ceased to notice it.
Dishonesty can become such an ingrained habit that awareness of lying gets buried very deep; that the slightest insinuation of the plain fact that most people are dishonest for their own advantage nearly all the time (especially during their working hours and social interactions), is met by outraged, indignant incredulity.
The point is that dishonesty is so normal that people are not even trying to be truthful - and operate on a mixture of obedience and expediency.
After all - who is responsible for societal honesty?
At what level is honesty regarded as normal, necessary, mandatory? Obviously national leaders and corporate bosses are the biggest liars of all. And the people at the bottom are expected to obey, or be sacked. But nobody at any point of the unified global bureaucracy and hierarchy of the linked social institutions is expected or allowed to be wholly honest in intention and expression.
Not 'scientists', not scholars nor academics - not anybody At All.
Everybody (here, now, 2020) is pursuing some other primary agenda than it says on the tin - every institution is thus, in itself, A Lie.
Organisations pretend to focus on health services, educaton, policing, religion, whatever... but the bottom line is always and everywhere leftist socio-politics: that is, all institutions are converged onto the mainstream Global Establishment line as expressed by mainstream media, international bureaucracy and the dominant nations; whatever that line is on any particular day.
Since the Global Establishment is purposively-evil (strategically working against God and creation); then it means that as many as possible of the assumptions of the mainstream are designed to pursue and cover the workings of evil. As of 2020 this domination of assumptions by purposive evil is itself an established fact.
And this means that truth telling is no longer about facts, but must be about assumptions.
Have you ever tried even rasining and questioning assumptions in a bureaucratic setting? You will be treated as devious and evasive not honest. (Or else as childish, or else as insane.)
And when one of those assumptions you expose and challenge is that of the honesty of the bureaucracy?...
It is the world-blanketing culture of pervasive, insensible, denied dishonesty that serves as cover for all the many other major, systemic evils; it serves as a cover for the entire web of Big Lies that makes up the world of public discourse.
There is apparently no limit to the power of Big Lies in such as world as we inhabit. The whole world can be bankrupted over a total fabrication such as the Climate Agenda; can be shut down ad incrementally destroyed over a trivial infection to be managed by unconnected, false and human-destructive policies; can operate on the basis of official personal, sexual and racial assumptions and procedures that are an inversion of truth and reality...
And so on.
Yet people, official people, worldly people, people who would know from experience, if they were capable of learning from experience... such people persist in regarding honesty as the norm - and demand literally-impossible levels of 'proof' for the blatantly obvious.
In 2020 there is nothing more false than a fact-checked 'fact'; nothing closer to reality than officially-labelled 'fake' news; nothing more arbitrary than authoritative sources; nothing quite so distorted and agenda-driven as objective statistics...
Dishonesty is - surely - the biggest and baddest sin in this modern world: it is the Master Sin - the sin that hides and encourages all other sins.
And precisely because dishonesty so big, so integral The System, and as-of 2020 The System is everywhere: dishonesty is (all-but) invisible.
It is not in vain that much is said of the devil as being a liar, the father of lies, as having no truth within him. Other things are said of him, but this characteristic is perhaps the most salient of them all.
ReplyDeleteThe main modus operandi of the devil is indeed fakery, because truthfulness would lead us to God, would cause us to love Christ and desire to follow Him. This, by necessity... a man who sees the truth... who comprehends the truth with his heart cannot but wish to follow Christ. Those who want "other things" are those that still have a "blocked heart" on some speficic level... as you have said in other writings, God may well give these people what they want after dying, but that will always be lesser than what could´ve been.
Having lived the bulk of my life in South America, outside of a decade in my 20's living in the UK (during the 2010's), I´ve have a lot of experience living in cultures of dishonesty - cultures where people really don´t care about honesty, where honesty is seen as a fool's errand, and where this has always been the case and where everybody knows it and nacknowledges it. Even though I am referring to South America, the UK I experienced was quickly on its way in the that direction. I am well aware that it hadn´t always been that way, because I was raised, both at home and at school, under the old-school British standards of education, and honesty was still a very big deal...
A real moral, bottom-line, matter.
What we are seeing now is that these "pockets of honesty" (As far as I´m aware, anglo culture mainly, probably some others which I'm not familiar with, in any case, not the rule) are gone, and all countries are now "banana republics". The consequences of this will be monumentous and catastrophic, no doubt, on a global scale. Because, truthfully, the only reason Banana republics are even republics in the first place (as opposed to something much less sophisticated), is because they have attached themselves to cultures of honesty, and depend upon these for sustenance, especially economic and technological sustenance.
The main difference between historically dishonest societies, and newly dishonest societies, is that the newly dishonest societies still hold on to the vestigial shame of being accused of dishonesty. This makes the dishonesty even harder to root out once it has set in, because as you have mentioend in your post, people are extremely dishonest but have still a need to be felt as being honest. Thus they lie to themselves as much as to others, and will doggedly refuse to accept that they are lying through their teeth, both outwardly and inwardly, almost the whole time, out of shame.
When people who used to be honest, become dishonest, their dishonesty becomes harder to root out, and more dogged, because they still feel shame at accusations of dihonesty without the "interior drive" to actually be honest. This, ironically, makes these people(s) enter into a deeper sin.
"For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required". In this case, if you have previously had the privilige of belonging to a culture of honesty, with the great fruits that that brings forth, when you finally decide you're tired of it and can´t be bothered to care, your fall will be even greater.
In conclusion, I agree that the holding up of Honesty as a key, bottom-line virtue is something which is a necessary precondition for Godliness, rightousness and salvation... perhaps more than any other. And for this to flourish among the people, this needs to be seen with the eyes of the spirit, then needs to be enforced seriously, firstly by and within the ruling classes and then, by example, by the rest of the population. If it isn´t, then it won´t happen, because the costs of honesty will be too big for most people, and the (percieved) advantages of lying, too tempting and "obvious".
@Gary - Excellent comment!
ReplyDeleteI've found it interesting that both with the current election, and in general the pandemic response / "Great Reset" / 2020 - all the plans were public and in the open before the incidents occurred. Anyone who wants may see all the plans.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.judicialwatch.org/documents/transition-integrity-project-report/
The Left was very clearly, and stated vocally before the election, that they would not concede and would not be defeated no matter what, and then laid bare their plans - including and up to using violent force to remove the President.
This seems to make the most sense from the understanding that this is part of the process of damnation. If even if the demonic forces loudly proclaim their plans, and you acquiesce, it implies damnation. A little obfuscation, the salesman's lie, but you still chose evil with full knowledge.
I suspect America may have been the last piece of the puzzle before the full "Great Reset" plans are laid bare. The fraudulent candidate openly promises a "dark winter", and stated "America is dead." This will begin with the stated plan of forcibly shutting everything down again, and indefinitely beginning in early 2021.
ReplyDeleteThis would, of course, result in the expected food shortages and general collapse, while permanently enforcing the virtual reality on all citizens.
@Andrew - Well said - and this is very important indeed:
ReplyDelete"This seems to make the most sense from the understanding that this is part of the process of damnation. If even if the demonic forces loudly proclaim their plans, and you acquiesce, it implies damnation. A little obfuscation, the salesman's lie, but you still chose evil with full knowledge."
We are, indeed, being told what They will do. If we *then* deny that They are indeed doing it (or have-done it) then we are complicit; and just-are on the same side.
Comment from CM:
ReplyDelete"How do you make business decisions based on truth (and a necessary regard for the bottom line) in an environment where the external parameters are changed frequently by the government with massive financial consequences. Based on lies?
Government has changed the rules of business and is reconfiguring the financial incentives that form business decisions in an unprecedented way. Based on lies and huge arbitrary policies and complex rules.
It is not easy to intuit truth and good action amidst."
If the government has decided that your kind of business is 'inessential' to he Great Resent world; then I suppose Their plan is that some combination of birdemic rules, affirmative action, carbon tax or sheer bureaucracy will drive you out of business as a matter of strategy. But deniably.
I can't see how we can behave with integrity in this world. But we can repent our failures, and luckily that will suffice.
I sometimes find it helpful to imagine being a slave. As a slave, it may be that one's actions (including speech) are compelled - the choice is obedience or death. But so long as the slave knows truth and virtue, and repents his lies and other compelled sins, this situation is not a problem for salvation. Our situation is not so different, except in degree.
The main temptation to avoid is encouraging sins in others - the specialty of intellectuals. To be an apologist for sin (like a journalist, author or movie maker who glamourises or encourages sin - or inversion of values) is, I'm pretty sure, morally worse than doing the sin itself.
Thankyou Bruce. A very helpful and enlivening response. For your reminder of repentance. And your final paragraph about not encouraging sin in others. Most important of all. Priests and businessmen.
ReplyDelete