Sogmire, Quagmire, Bogmire; and Epidermafrost, Dermafrost and Permafrost - a scale of severity for marshiness and ground-freezing

I would like to share a couple of scales - one old, the other recent, which my wife and I devised for describing the conditions one encounters on a country walk...

Up in the Cheviot Hills, especially; the ground is often damp - but how damp?

Sogmire - is when the ground looks dry, but the weight of a foot squeezes-out some water.

Quagmire - is when it is wet and muddy underfoot.

Bogmire - is when the ground is over-saturated - with standing water - a bog.

Bogmire (with white Bog Cotton plants) on the Cheviot Hills...

And just recently we came up the the following stages, leading up to our adaptation of the established term 'permafrost':

An Epidermafrost edging on grass

Epidermafrost - is a surface crusting of frost that affects only the leaves of grass, and makes a skim of ice on standing water. 

Dermafrost - is when the cold has penetrated into the soil, making mud firm underfoot; and lending a thick layer of ice to standing water. 

Permafrost - is when the whole ground is deeply frozen, feeling rock hard underfoot; and standing water in puddles is frozen solid.

 

Notes: The original meaning of 'permafrost' refers to a situation when the deeper ground never thaws from one year to the next - not even in the summer. 

The names for lesser degrees of frost come from the biological terms relating to skin - the epidermis is the visible surface layer of dead skin; whereas the dermis is the living skin below this - which contains appendages such as hair and nail roots, and sweat glands.   

 

The false choice of a fake objectivity versus honest subjectivity

The false choice with which our society (and, as of 2020, this is now a Global System) confronts us; is now between, on the one hand:

A public, thus 'objective' world, that is 'virtual', fake, lies and purposively-evil; 

and on the other hand

A Good world - derived from truth seeking, truth speaking and respect for reality; but which is private and 'subjective'. 

 

To put matters the other way around: if we want to share our world with many/ most other people - then we must agree to accept (internally) a world of falsehood: we must take the side of purposive evil. 

But if we want to be on the side of God and of Good; and to align with divine creation - if, that is, we insist on believing the world in an honest and realistic way - then we will be consigned to isolation. 

 

This is a reversal of the normal situation! It is a core instance of that inversion of values that is characteristic of evil, when its agenda is most fully-developed. 

In the past; a madman was somebody who: 1. had an incoherent and false world view, and 2. this world view was private and personal. Pure subjectivity of belief was characteristic (although not definitive) of insanity.

But now it is a person whose world view is coherent and true, that is treated as a madman! The honest and sane Man finds himself isolated in a world of mandatory psychotic nonsense!

But the truth is that real-reality is God's creation; and this is (in principle) accessible to anyone who trusts God. The prime choice of mortal life is whether to align with, or against, God's creation (This is Good, and evil).

God's creation is the real-reality; which is objective in the sense that all can share it. However, sharing that real-reality requires the active, conscious choice to be Christian; including to embrace 'spiritual' assumptions about reality.   

If, on the other hand, we remain materialist-atheist in our assumptions, thinking, and lived-perspective, then holding 'Christian beliefs' will do us very little good.

(As we can see from the abject capitulation of Christian churches to the values and imperatives of secular, materialist Leftism; through 2020.)

 

If we remain (like almost everybody) un-conscious of God and the spiritual'; if (that is) we continue passively to absorb reality from The System, and to reason 'materially' and abstractly - then we will 'naturally' choose the Global Establishment world of evil lies; so that we may participate in a public, general, shared world-view. 

That is the only expedient choice (when expediency is defined this-wordly, 'materially'). This is the only way we can avoid exclusion and danger of psycho-social aloneness. To do otherwise is to become a pariah - in this mortal world.

 

Yet to affiliate with divine creation is the only objective truth. 

But actually, in-practice to do this; Christians must now accept the same kind of minority, despised and feared, status that was previously accorded to the insane.

For affiliation-to-creation to become a viable and sustainable way of life; it seems to me that 'ordinary' Christians need to develop the kind of direct and personal knowledge of God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost that was previously the provenance only of exceptional mystics.

Hence Romantic Christianity. 

 

We are already in the Brezhnev era of the birdemic...

The equivalent of the Bolshevik revolution happened in early 2020; and began immediately to implement its multi-pronged agenda of economic and social destruction; combined with a disintegrative PSYOPS that compelled the masses to treat each other as rabid-leper-zombies.

At first; all this was done with a Lenin/ Trotsky-like ideological idealism. 

This 'heroic' self-sacrifice was going to lead us, Very Soon, to a birdemic-free world, a better world; one newly united by the unprecedented threat of an international deadly plague. 

Plenty of people bought into this. Here in the UK the situation was compared to Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain and the Blitz combined... Millions of shining-eyed zealots would gather on their doorsteps (at an allowed hour, for an allowed period of time) to applaud the NHS and exchange shouted encouragement with their neighbours (from a 'safe' distance). 

 

But by the summer we were already in the Stalin era of paranoid oppression; with widening social division, secret police spies, and a program of exclusion and repression of alternative viewpoints. 

There were some massive rallies to protest totalitarian  - so instant 'laws' were passed to impose massive fines, the leaders were arrested and subjected to sustained harrassment. 

The army was mobilised - but was not needed, since the counter revolution fizzled-out (as was inevitable without a prior spiritual awakening). 

 

But now, before even a year has passed; we are in the cynical and corrupt Brezhnev era; charecterised by terminal decline, rampant inefficiency: the toadying Commisar is triumphant. 

The Establishment lies come thicker and faster than ever; but nobody really believes them any more - especially not the Establishment; whose hypocritical, bribed and blackmailed spokesmen increasingly display the puffy-eyed, bloated, weary and worn demeanor of the 1970s Politburo - as they continue to mouth the same-old stale revolutionary slogans from the mists of April 2020. 

The lies, the false hopes, the pretence of compassion and concern... It has all become an unutterably dreary routine. 

 

Of course things will collapse, like the USSR did; because The System does not even want to continue, everybody is tired, miserable and demotivated - but this time, everywhere in the world is in the same boat.

Only that massive prevalence of fear, cowardice, resentment and despair; which is inevitable as a late consequence of the atheist-materialist-leftist assumptions that have for decades been rotting minds and communities. 

 

But, if you don't want to be a part of it; you don't have to be... You know what you need to do.

However, it will be... 'challenging' - as the managerial drones call it - to retain our Christian hope in such as world as this. 

Challenging, indeed; but within reach of each and every Man - if he will but reach-out and grasp it; over and again - on a daily basis.

 

"Faith" is a red herring

The discussions about "proof" versus "faith" - or science versus religion; are essentially nonsense. 

In such discussions, 'faith' is pejoratively defined in terms that regard it as unfounded - but it is better to consider faith as more like 'trust', but trust being regarded in a personal way; we trust someone that we regard as having our best interests at heart. 

 

The differences between so-called proof and faith are in truth a matter of assumptions, 'metaphysical' assumptions regarding the fundamental nature of reality; and our task is to bring these assumptions to awareness - so that they can be considered and evaluated. 

 

'Proof' is always understood in terms of assumptions; 'scientific proof' is built on a large number of assumptions about what is science; also that 'scientists' are being honest in truth-seeking and expression; plus a technical understanding of what kind of thing counts as evidence - and what is implied by some purported piece of  evidence. 

 

In sum; all of science is built-upon assumptions that are at root always human judgments - and making these human judgments compulsory and exclusive is just another human judgment. 

So that when somebody (or, more likely some committee) declares that 'Science is X" or "This is (or This is not) real science" then this statement itself is, of course, consequence of a human judgment. 

The greatest fallacy about science is that it has somehow eluded the need for human judgment; that science has no assumptions - but is somehow entirely made of 'facts', of 'evidence' (...these facts and evidences being objectively known as such, and with objectively-fixed implications). 

But, because this fallacy has become accepted (mainly in response to the takever of real science by bureaucratic financial and power structures of Big Science that have developed since World War II); science (so called) has become a prime mechanism for social and psychological manipulation.  

Real science is by 2020 all but extinct; and certainly cannot be found among those who owe their position, status, and influence to their selection and support by Power. Such individuals (or, more likely, committees) speak on behalf of power - not truth.

 

This happens because the reality of science being built upon human judgments is dishonestly concealed and untruthfully denied; and instead the lie is propagated that 'what scientists say' is objective fact about the world.

Of course, public science is in fact even further removed; being what the media-politicians tell-us that scientists say.

The manipulation is that those with power who claim to be speaking in the name of science to present themselves as neutral reporters on reality; are actuality using the name of science as a rationalisation for the tyrannical imposition of their ideology. 

The scientific bureaucracy dutifully constructs whatever 'objective evidence' is required to rationalise whatever The Establishment want people to do; or to be prevented from doing.

 

And all this is - in 2020 - so blazingly obvious that it requires complicit evil on the part of any adult who fails to notice what is happening on a daily basis!

Which is why the eyes above the masks we see in daily life, are increasingly resemble those of zombies, or snakes. 

 

Bureaucratic virtuality synergizes with the mass media

I think it is pretty well understood by now that the mass media can and do manufacture a virtual reality (i.e. virtuality); and that as the media have increased in quantity and addictiveness (especially since the invention of 'smartphones' and social media) - this has de facto replaced reality for most people. 

In particular, the mass media virtuality effectively imposes a scale of priorities about life: what things are most important, that has absolutely Nothing to do with our actual individual lives of personal experience and common sense. 

Thus, here and now, the major global priority is a birdemic which would be invisible if it were not for the 'response' to it; warming climate change which would be imperceptible (if it even exists to a significant degree) if it were not drip-fed by propaganda, an antiracist agenda which is the inversion of reality, and a sexual revolution that claims 'equality' (in practice, superiority of esteem) for practices that everyone knows are not qualitatively 'the same as' biological sex and sexuality. 

But while the mass media role in creating a Matrix-world is fairly well appreciated; the role of the bureaucracy in doing the same is probably more important - and much less noticed and understood. Yet bureaucracy and the mass media, together, are the dominant (and growing) fact about modern life.

 

By The bureaucracy, singular, I refer to the fact that the bureaucracies of individual social-systems - government, law, the military and police, health, education, religion, science etc) are now all horizontally cross-linked to make a single bureaucracy - which indeed extends across the world. 

This is how it was possible to implement a global coup in early 2020. 

And the fact that the mass media is itself a part of this single bureaucracy is how the coup was concealed.

The way in which a bureaucracy creates a virtual reality was first made clear to me in 1994, when I was a lecturer in Epidemiology and Public Health, and worked in the Regional Health Authority as a research assistant to the man who went on to become the Chief Medical Officer for the UK. 

As part of my duties; I organised a conference on 'inequality' in health; and my public health boss gave a talk which stuck in my mind. The subject was how a subject like equality could (and should) be pursued through the bureaucracy. 

He described (as I remember it - I don't have notes) how the general conceptual area of 'equality' was first made into a strategic priority, by securing the necessary votes. But at that point approving of 'equality' was just a platitude without content. 

At first, he said - the subject of equality was made a recurring agenda item; which meant that every meeting would include some discussion of how 'equality' might be pursued - and this was a formal, mandatory discussion. I suppose this was the phase of raising 'awareness'.  

 

By this point, the strategic 'desirability' of 'increasing equality' has already been established as 'settled'. Yet at no point has there necessarily (or probably) been any broad, philosophical or moral discussion of 'Why' equality, what 'equality' means... whether the concept is even coherent?

Therefore 'equality' has already been made a strategic imperative before most people will even have noticed, and before the 'in practice' meaning of equality has been established

From this point onwards, all discussion is at the lower level of How? to increase equality; there is no longer any place for revisiting whether equality really is always a Good Thing, or 'how much?' equality is wanted, or how equality should be balanced against other strategic Goods*... 

From this point onwards the bureaucratic process is just a matter of defining operational measures and imposing them.

The next step in the bureaucratic process was therefore to operationalise the concept of equality - preferably in terms of specific, numerical measures that could be monitored, made the subject of 'targets'; and implemented in rules and laws. 

 

Thus is constructed the bureaucratic virtual reality - which we could formally consider a conjectural model of reality, created in terms of definitions and procedures that fit within bureaucratic imperatives; and we can see how exactly this has spread across the world over the past quarter century - but with a variety of strategic priorities. There is a virtuality of equality, others of human rights, climate change, QERTY sexual liberation (of various, often incompatible, kinds). 

There are many many such... 

And of course in 2020 we have seen the real-time development of a global bureaucratic birdemic virtual reality; which, like the others, has almost no relationship to real life; and where it does, this relationship has itself been manufactured by the virtuality. 

In other words, any apparent relationship between birdemic and experience (such as personally observable diseases and deaths) is mediated and constructed by the 'response' to the birdemic - by the definitions and classifications generated by the various bureaucracies; which in fact came-before, and and were only conjecturally related-to, any actual biological/ medical effects** of the birdemic.

 

What was never discussed in this lecture - and is outwith the scope of the bureaucratic perspective - is the Truth of bureaucratic reality. Because 'bureaucratic reality' is a selective, simplifed 'model' of reality, and all models (being selective and simplified) are necessarily incomplete, often biased, and may be almost-wholly false...

Hence, when bureaucratic-reality is enforced as real-reality - we have a 'virtuality' that is at least misleading, but in practice is manipulative. As can be seen all around us, now. 

And because the System controls production, validation and dissemination of information; we are not permitted to ask (in mainstream public discourse) whether what The System ends-up doing after all this bureaucratic development is good overall; or whether the operational definitions of 'equality' actually reflect the original common sense idea of equality. 

And 25 years later we know the answers - that there is no relationship between bureaucratic measures of equality, and real-life equality; and that bureaucratic equality is pursued without any regard at all for whether 'things overall', in real experience, are improved by it.  

 

The bureaucratic virtuality is indeed a demonic recipe for corruption and destruction; and when you add its synergy with the mass media - the process of evil is greatly accelerated. 

This is our world - now. 

* For example - research into 'health inequalities' was entirely focused upon (e.g.) health measures/ lifespan/ mortality differentials (i.e ratios) between social classes, sexes, races etc. The research took essentially zero account of (often) massive improvements in absolute levels of health/ lifespan/ mortality through time. This is important because many effective measures that improve health tend also to 'worsen' 'inequality' - as does mass immigration. As usual, leftism tends towards levelling down, on the one hand; and on the other, it perpetuates the same (supposed-) injustices upon which it then feeds as grounds for group resentment.

** In so far as there are any real effects - e.g. some places like Taiwan have been shut-down despite/ because-of zero detectable biological/ medical effects. Thus we see the single, global bureaucracy at work.  

Who is to blame for the abusive evil of 2020? Is anyone innocent?

First we need to acknowledge that the evil of 2020 has indeed been an abusive evil; which has had essentially zero to do with 'real life' biology and medicine. 

The evil of 2020 is what persons chose to do to other persons. 

We might therefore think of 2020 as an archetypal abusive 'family'; consisting of:

1. Abusive parent 

2. Enabling parent

3. Innocent children. 

 

First the innocents. There are genuinely-innocent people, especially young children. 

The only innocents of 2020 are indeed actual children; and also those whose mental development, knowledge, cognition etc. is 'young-child like' - such that they are not even aware of the fact of their innocence. 

(Conversely, anybody who claims to be innocent, is not.)

The innocents are free from all blame for 2020.

 

The person primarily to blame for abusive evil is the abusing parent. 

In fairytales this is often a step-mother, in modern times an abusive step-father or 'boyfriend' - the natural, biological mother's sexual partner. 

(These archetypes recognise that (non-insane) abusers of young children are nearly always those without a long term (and biological) relationship with the abused children. This, because biological relatedness and long-term relationship are the strongest known motivators of genuine altruism and support.)

The abusing parent corresponds with the Global Establishment - that covert, totalitarian world government who successfully launched an international coup early in 2020. 

It is the Global Establishment who devised, inflicted and rationalised permanent prison-lockdowns nearly everywhere; then implemented the mandatory regimes of socially-disintegrating, psychologically-destructive 'distancing' and 'masking'.

They also banned, suppressed or actively-ruined the world economy, trade and travel; almost the entirety of culture (religion, arts, sports, and human conviviality) and crippled everything else that was 'allowed' to continue.

Clearly; the Global Establishment are the primary abusers - and are most to blame for 2020.

But what of the masses of the world? 

The masses would like to claim innocence - and indeed do claim innocence at the drop of a hat. 

"Don't blame me! I'm just following advice, science, the law, the experts. I'm just obeying orders. How can I know, how can I judge? It's not My fault!"

But the masses are the enablers of abuse. 

They are those pathologically-dependent natural parents who accept their own abuse, 'do not notice' the abuse of their children, lie to conceal the real causes of misery, wounds and deaths - and always make excuses for the abuser and continuing abuse.

Thus; the masses are complicit in the evil of 2020; the masses have been essential to enabling the introduction, increase and continuation of global, systemic evil.  

A suspended moment, or tuning-into ongoing-being?

Perhaps over the Christmas season, you have had a joyful 'moment' (a 'peak experience') when you became aware of the situation you were in - let's say with other people, other people with whom you share love - or at least a warm, positive affection and common purpose... 

It seems to me that the first thing to note about this, is becoming aware of the situation. It is possible, indeed usual, Not to notice such times. Eiether they pass unmarked, or are seen for what they are, only in memory - with nostaligia (as with my memories of Christmas at age three). 

Having become aware of the 'moment' as it is happening; then it seems to me that my mind can go in two different ways...

 

One way, is to take that moment and suspend it; consider it as a timeless and eternal moment. 

It is as if I distilled the essence of that moment - and then it becomes, in aspiration, a moment that always has-been and always will-be. The moment becomes crystallised, perfect, unchanging... And I hope to be able to attune-to that moment... forever. 

And the assumption is that all such moments are actually windows upon a single moment; which is the one-ness of unchanging, perfect, divine reality.

In other words, the suspended moment is an epiphany, a showing-forth; and that which is shown is single, undivided, divine, impersonal. 

The second, which is my current way; is to think of my awareness of this moment as me tuning-into ongoing-being. 

Becoming aware that the reality of Life is creation; and creation is create-ing; so I am, for a time, aware of the here-and-now-happening, real-time, multiplicity of living, developing, unfolding, growing...

To put it abstractly - awareness of a 'process'; but which the experience isn't like a 'process' - but like being-part-of something alive, conscious, cohering by relationships.  

By this understanding; each such moment is unique and unrepeatable. It is me temporarily (perhaps incompletely) waking-up to the divine reality of creation as being-in-time; becoming conscious (for a while) of the reality of a living, knowing, itself-conscious universe. 

The joyous 'moment' is a revelation of harmony in creation, typically rooted in love; and with a shared purpose.

 

So, the coming-to-awareness of a special moment is the basic experience; but what I make of that experience, what it tells me, differs according to my understanding of the basic nature of reality. 

(My understanding of the basic nature of reality = my metaphysical assumptions.)

Because, of course, to a mainstream modern materialist - an ordinary modern person - such a joyful moment is regarded as a subjective emotion, merely.

Perhaps a random coincidence of neural and hormonal states; or perhaps a behaviour influenced by the organism's set-up, as a consequence of its evolutionary history (making us susceptible to evolutionarily-significant combinations of relations, allies, social cohesion etc)... 

Or it may be that this joy is seen in terms of societal structures; a socially-contructed joy; a reward for assimilation into norms and approved attitudes. 

How to decide? 

Well, there is no 'neutral' authority' than can universally be trusted to tell us which of these interpretations (or some other) is correct. Because all 'authority' requires prior assumptions regarding (for example) who knows, who will be truthful, who cares about the well-being of our-selves... 

And these assumptions of what constitutes 'authority' are themselves down-stream consequences of our fundamental metaphysical assumptions concerning the basic nature of reality...

So, to decide; we each would need to bring our metaphysical assumptions to awareness, and to hold these 'explanations' of joyful moments in context of our assumptions, and intuitively discern which (if any) explanation chimes with our convictions and experience. 

And to be honest about it all! Truth-seeking and truth-speaking! Patiently to continue until steady conviction is reached.

 

Such is philosophy - when done as it should be!

Berger Back Blogging!

It is pleasing to announce that Francis Berger has resumed blogging; since I find his blog one of the most stimulating on the web. That it, I often find that his posts spark ideas and clarifications. 

So, if you don't already know his work - why not take a look? 

His current post is a very insightful piece on one of the most sinister aspects of this year of triumphant evil: I mean the global imposition of mandatory masking, or more accurately - compelling people to cover the lower half of their faces.

 
Masking has inimically inverted the very sight of an unmasked face in public. Rather than perceiving the life of a soul in the human face, many now regard the sight of the mask-less human face with trepidation and terror. 

The unmasked face is now viewed as source of potential harm and danger. Many go out of their way to avoid encountering it all costs, and in situations where they are forced to confront it, they react to it with fear and scorn. 

Nowhere is this more true than within the walls of Christian churches, where the very act of mandating face masking during services borders on outright blasphemy.

 

Read the whole thing...

Suppose that Mankind crossed a threshold of consciousness from around the millennium... (Steiner and Barfield)

Rudolf Steiner and his 'disciple' Owen Barfield wrote about their conviction that - from around the year 2000 - Mankind would inevitably go-through a progressive process of transformation of consciousness. This had two aspects: 

First the inevitable transformation of consciousness, which meant that Men would create their own 'reality'. 

Second, the open question (which neither Steiner nor Barfield lived to see answered) of whether this transformation would merely happen-to Men - who would remain passively unconscious of it; or else whether Men would consciously and by choice participate in the co-creation of 'reality'. 

This transition is desirable (and part of God's plan) because it brings Men closer to the divine - as free agents who can potentially contrinute to the ongoing of creation. But such a more-divine consciousness could either be angelic (true, and working with God) or demonic (untruthful, and in opposition to the reality of divine creation) 

 

To recapitulate, this approximately-millennial transformation of consciousness would represent the culmination of a centuries-long transition from a time (back in the middle ages) when Men understood objective reality to be 'out there' - something which was perceived by the senses...

To a situation where Men would no longer find objective reality 'out there' and would need to take up the job of consciously being co-creators of reality; by means of their own thinking. 

A transition, that is, between reality being present in The World, and being present in thinking. 

 

It is vital to recognise that while the transformation of consciousness is inevitable - something that just 'unfolds' as part of the development of the species (according to divine destiny); what situation this threshold-crossing leads-us-to; is a contingency that hinges-upon whether the transition is conscious and chosen, or whether it is unconscious and passive. Whether we 'make it happen, or whether it just happens-to-us. 

Both Steiner and Barfield prophesied what kind of thing lay in store for Mankind if Man did not consciously and voluntarily embrace the trasition, through the choice of developing our spiritual knowledge (based on a kind of intuitive thinking, or direct knowing). 

Steiner (for instance) set out the consequences in a 1918 lecture The Work of the Angels in Man's Astral Body; while Barfield wrote about it philosophically in Saving the Appearances and in a more explicit, science-fiction sexual dystopian form in Night Operation. 

 

Let us assume (as I believe is true) that Mankind did indeed cross just such a threshold of consciousness gradually and over the past several decades - then we can see that the Steiner/ Barfield model can make sense of where we are now; and what we ought to do about it. 

We can easily see that modern Man in 2020 is living in a self-contructed reality; a 'virtuality' in which the masses passively imbibe Man-made lies and inverted-values from The System - emanating from a global bureaucracy including governments, the mass-media and official sources such as the legal, health and educational sub-systems. 

And Christians can easily see that this 2020 virtuality is demonic in nature: such that, in choosing to remain unconscious and passive, Mankind as taken the demonic path described prophetically by Stainer and Barfield. 

 

So Men no longer root their knowledge in personal experience and common sense. Due to the development of consciousness, these have become regarded as merely subjective, too labile; and are therefore too weak and unmotivating to overcome the imposed virtual world. 

Modern Man in 2020 instead passively and unconsciously accepts a 'made'-reality which is imposed-upon him, top-down. 

Indeed, so far has this process reached - that in here-and-now we can see that the masses do not even check the claims of The System - but will accept, internalise and defend blatant falsehoods and contradictions asif reality. 

And, because Men remain unconscious and passive and rejecting of the spiritual; we remain also spiritually-isolated and alienated from a world which we perceive as dead, meaningless and without purpose. 

A world of inverted values, compulsory falsehoods, crushing inhumanity; and the near universal prevalence and increasing dominance of fear, denial, resentment and despair - is the natural, inevitable, consequence. 

 

The answer to the current horrors of our post-threshold-crossing virtual world is also provided by Steiner and Barfield; which is that Men need consciously to accept their active role in the co-creation of reality with God. 

(In other words, what I have termed Romantic Christianity, based upon intuitive direct knowing.)

This can, in principle, be begun by anybody at any time - however, the fact that this active, conscious, Christian spirituality has been so delayed (since it first became possible in the late 1700s) means that in the first place Men are living under a weight of false metaphysical assumptions that have been uncosnciously absorbed and passively accepted. 

Also that there has been a tremendous amount of accumulated societal damage over 250 years; which must be overcome but cannot be fully reversed - and which will lead to severely sub-optimal outcomes, compared with what 'might have been'. 

 

Nonetheless, what we need to do is clear - and the rewards for doing it are immediate...

We can experience participation in God's ongoing creation - that is, we can experience the universe as alive, conscious and purposive; and ourselves as unique individuals with a special destiny even in this mortal life* 

And who may also (if we accept the offer of Jesus Christ) lead to an harmonious world of relationships with those who also accepted Christ's offer (i.e. Heaven). 

 

*Albeit the rewards and accomplishments will be, like everything in mortal life, incomplete and temporary - needing to be done and redone, over and again, as long as our mortal lives continue.  

Jesus as a divine person

Something that comes to me with increasing force, is that plenty of people - including self-identified Christians - don't really want what Jesus offers; at least not what he offers in the Fourth Gospel, as I understand it. 

I have concluded that theism (belief in the reality of god/s - whether explicit or implicit) is just essential to be a functional human being; it is almost a biological requirement. Because, since humans have evolved in a religious context, to subtract religion from a life is for that life to be in a pathological state. 

Biologically, this is most often seen in the chosen sub-fertility of aethists in atheist societies, and the adoption of values that reject family - even as an ideal; both of which are covert forms of personal and species suicide. 

(I am, of course, generalising - there are exceptions; but these exceptions are exceptional, i.e. rare.)

 

But most theists are not Christians, the motivations associated with theism are various - and only some (few?) theists are Christians.

To be a Christian is both personal - about Jesus as a person; and associated with a positive attitude to The Body - regarding incarnation or embodiment as the ideal state to be, forever. 

 

Jesus in mortal life was a person, an embodied Man; and in eternal life he remains a person and an embodied Man. 

Jesus's offer is aimed at those people who want for themselves (and hope for those they love) eternity as embodied persons: that is what resurrection means. 

 

So, although Jesus is here-and-now as a spirit (i.e. the Holy Ghost) - this is not Jesus's full nature nor his offer for life everlasting. 

Jesus is not a spirit, nor an abstraction; not a force, nor a field; not a vibrational-level, nor a frequency. Jesus the person is not everywhere equally at all times - not present in all things...

Instead Jesus is actually a physically embodied divine Man, actually present in some place at a particular time - no matter that his spirit is everywhere available: a person who is also a fully-creative god. And Jesus's offer is for those who want to join him in such a life.

 

Therefore, it does not surprise me when not everybody wishes to be a Christian. Because it seems clear that not everybody wants what Jesus offers. 

But plenty of people do not know what Jesus is offering. Plenty!

Some people have changed their concept of Jesus to correspond with what they do want. But this is not to be a Christian, but to be something else that does require God but does not require Jesus. Such people are, in effect, re-naming their deity as Jesus. 

 

This is a mistake in naming, but it may not be a mistake in terms of what they want. I think many self-styled Christians - now and in the past - do not like mortal incarnate life, and they regard it as a mistake, a misfortune, merely a time of trial...

And they want to live as bodiless spirits in an eternal, unchanging, bliss - without any awareness of the self - ceasing to be a person. In effect they want to be re-absorbed back-into God. As if incarnate mortal life had never been...

 

But the real offer of Jesus was simple and child-like: Jesus (the person, the divine person) says 'follow me' (and to follow him requires trust, faith, love)... Follow me and I will lead you to resurrected life in Heaven. 

And this Heaven will consist of other people who also want this. 

It is an offer so simple, child-like and clear that it is almost incomprehensible! 

But an offer that does not appeal to all - and perhaps does not appeal to many... 

But there it is. 

The courage of Christians - with and without church

Christians, and those of some other religions, have been (in some times and places) a byword of courage. 

Christians have given not just time and effort, but sacrificed their livelihood, their lives, to their religion. 

Risked and indeed suffered a lifetime of threat - indeed terror, oppression, subordination, humiliation, torment and torture - rather than give-up what they regarded as essential practices of their faith. 

 

Those days are gone, and nearly-all self-identified Christians now embrace worldly values as primary; and welcome the closure of churches, and cessation of (what were until last years) essential practices. 

Why? 

Well one reason is that the courage of past Christians was embedded in a community, a church. A courageous Christian did not feel himself alone but was aware of a solid group of co-religionists behind him, backing him up with prayers, thoughts and practical help. 

All that has gone, and a courageous Christian is now On His Own; with supposed-coreligionists standing behind him to stab his back, mock his motives and intelligence, spy and inform-on his Christian resistance.   

So modern Christian courage is a solo business; hence much less prevalent - less recognised, less known as such.

 

But why has the group and community disappeared (as an effective factor in Christian life)? Partly because Men have changed; and such things no longer have the power to motivate. 

I mean that the decline of groupishness, community, social cohesion all have roots in a change of consciousness. We became first insensitive, then immune, to the power of symbol, ritual and the sacred. 

From where we are, we cannot return to what we were - because that kind of objectivity of Faith simply does not work anymore. 

That is the depth of our crisis. 

 

From where-we-are we can only go forward-and-through, out the other side of isolated subjectivity. 

 

Christians - here-and-now - can only be motivated by that which actually motivates Christians.

It is therefore the task of each Christian to find that Christian motivation for himself, and (partly) from-himself. 

Because nowadays we need to go out and meet God halfway, to work-with the divine - rather than (as in the past) trying to be subordinate- and obedient-to the divine.  

 

And for this to happen; we need to overcome fear, resentment and despair - need to have trust that when we personally are motivated actually to do what needs to be done and for the right reasons; God will makes things right* for us as individuals.

And insofar as many people do this: we need faith that God will also make things right for us as groups -- even though we are currently in no position to be able to see what 'right' might be, nor how right might be accomplished... 

This requires a very high level of Trust in God, and hope for eternal resurrected life; requires this from each Christian As An Individual.

That is what is demanded. 

*Right, that is, in an eternal context.

Clutching at straws...

It is a pathetic sight, in both main meanings of 'pathetic', to see the British people clutching at the straws tossed-out every month or two by the government/-mass media regarding the birdemic. 

One after another, every couple of months. The straws are version of: If you just quietly submit to tyranny for a limited time, then we can all return to normal. An incomplete lits would include such straws as 'flatten the curve of mortality', 'save the NHS, stop the 'increase' in 'cases', prevent the second wave, 'save Christmas', limit the new mutation, take the 'preventive peck' of experimental/ untested genetic engineering...

All will save us from the Iron Cage response to the birdemic - yet none actually do save us...

 

Somehow the totalitarian system remains, strengthens, becomes the New Normal... almost as if that was the real reason behind the elaborate fraudulent charade!

If only we really, firmly, obediently grasp this latest straw - then we can be allowed to live like human beings instead of battery farm animals... 

Stupidity on this level is something new. It is purposive stupidity - and why? 

 

Simply because the alternative is Un-Thinkable. 

That They (i.e. those who control all the national governments and the global media) really want to do... exactly what they have been doing for the past nine months, and are only manufacturing excuses to do it...

That Their motives are not just selfish but actively evil... 

All this kind of stuff is literally un-thinkable, meaning it cannot be-thought - therefore it Will Not be-thought...

 

Because If So; Then materialistic Godless modern life has Nothing to offer. 

Nothing at all. 

Therefore it cannot be; and the serial straw-clutching must continue, forevermore... 

What about people who regard suffering as a 'punishment' for sin? Or who do not repent sin and blame 'others' for the consequences?

An earlier stage of human consciousness - which we often see in the Old Testament, and many other places - is similar to the way that naughty children of a certain age (about 5?) tend to understand morality. 

But when a Christian has faith and trust in God as a good parent, he can see thyings in a context of how good parents behave to their beloved children. 

 

Sin is then understood as turning away from God (and our divine selves), and of thinking and behaving against God's loving creation; and this brings adverse consequences. 

Why? Because sin pits the sinner's will against creation. 

It's like a child who ignores his loving parents' advice and stuffs himself with sweets until he vomits and feels terrible... 

Properly understood, the vomiting is a consequence of wrongdoing, not a punishment for it. The child sets his will, impulse, short-term gratification against nature (i.e. against divine creation; which is also against God - as represented in mortal life by his genuinely-loving parents)... and this turning-away-from/ pushing-against real-reality leads to consequences, which are adverse.

 

Loving parents make these adverse consequences of sinning more proximate. For instance; by making the child feel bad, i.e. suffer adverse consequences, immediately after wrongdoing; and therefore making it easier for the child to learn.

But this carries the risk of the child forgetting, or refusing to acknowledge, that the loving parent is acting for the child's best interests - when those best interests are undertsood in a divine and ultimate context. 

So proximate punishment from wrongdoing (harsh words, restrictions, a slap) carry the risk of being regarded as engaging in retribution (i.e the child does not make the moral connection) - or (childishly) as sin being 'corrected' by punishment... 

And this attitude creates a potential (but incorrect) disconnection between sin and punishment - a false consequentionalist morality; as if a sin ceases to be a sin when it is not 'punished'...

 

An unrepentant child will refuse to admit he has done wrong (sinned, turned away from harmony with divine creation) and therefore regards anybody who thwarts his wishes as The Problem. 

At an extreme, the greedy child will (like modern, resentment-fuelled, identity groups) emotionally regard the parents as having (somehow) Made him vomit... This is a quasi magical attribution, that seeks covert materialist explanation (e.g. 'implicit racism'.)

Even a mostly-good child may forget, or fail to connect, the adverse consequences with what he did, and 'feel' a punishment as a simple act of inflicting suffering by those with greatest power; and due to a mere difference of opinion. The child may then assume his parents 'must be' acting from malice, or from pleasure in inflicting suffering. 

(Note: I am assuming here that the parents, like God, are indeed really acting from love.)

 

At the extreme of unrepentant sinning (as nowadays), nature itself may be regarded as evil! 

As when nature stops a man from really-transforming into a real-woman; and this leads to a sense of resentment, greivance, hostility against a society and civilization perceived to thwart 'my' fixed desire - from what 'must be' malicious reasons.

And we get an anti-morality of value-inversion characteristic of mainstream, mandatory, leftist ideology;  where reality is contradicted (by diktat). 

And what is perceived to be a malicious, punishing God/ Christians/ ideological opponents generally - will get blamed for the consequences of Men's sinful actions and attitudes. 

 

One sees this all the time! - perhaps especially in the mass media, which nowadays operates like an advanced degree in unrepented sinning... 

The Global Establishment, indeed, encourages the masses in first defying and attacking the goodness of God's creation - and then resentfully projecting blame, for the intrinsically-adverse consequences of sin! 

A Happy Christmas to my readers and commenters

 Something that seems exactly suitable and beautiful...

I have had some excellent presents, including a navy blue Gondor hoodie for lounging around the house - with a white tree and seven stars logo, exactly the same style as worn by Denethor. And a thick navy blue cotton dressing gown.

A suitably rugged, lightweight outdoor jacket for the summer (again in navy blue - is this a theme?...). 

Books include a collection of Celtic mythology, a paper copy of Tolkien's best long poem (?) Aotrou and Itroun, and Adey's analysis of CS Lewis and Owen Barfield's Great War letters... 

And an art book of John Everett Millais. 

 Christ in the house of his parents

 

Alternative 2020

2020 was the year in which things stopped 'coming to a point' and actually arrived at the point. Life became a binary choice: the primacy of the spiritual, or the monopoly of the material; God on one side, Satan on the other.  

The actual 2020 was all about the spiritual war; but its true nature was disguised mostly as a fake-war against the fraudulent-birdemic, plus a period of war against 'racism'; and - throughout - wars against a supposed 'climate emergency', and in favour of sexual revolution. 

It was a war that Satan won almost completely - in the public sphere of the institutions and their communication; and therefore that the side of God and The Good lost almost completely. 

 

Indeed 2020 was by far the most catastrophic year ever for the Christian churches (so far as we know); with all shut for extended periods, with abolition of mass, sacraments, assembly, singing, visiting and the other genuine church activities.

(Obviously; Watching Stuff Online is Not a genuine church activity). 

What was much worse: all this was implemented with enthusiastic zeal by church authorities.

What was much worse: there was extremely-little evidence of 'compensatory' individual faith or hope on view.

 

So, the Alternative 2020 was one in which Christians (without even needing to think about it - because it was so clear and obvious to them) reacted to the birdemic with an uncompromising assertion of the primacy of the spiritual.

If the churches were (nonetheless) forcibly closed, and essential activities were suspended; the clergy and laity would have been continually stating that this was unacceptable. 

Frequent notices to this effect would be read-out in church, posted on the doors, distributed by media, shared and endorsed widely, made the subject of prayer - And whenever and however meetings could be arranged; this would be reinforced. 

So, as 2020 comes to its close; instead of a world in which all public institutions are on-side (on the one-side) with the Global Establishment totalitarian agenda of social and civilizational destruction and mandatory materialism...

Instead of this there would be two sides. 

On one side would be the Global Establishment; and on the other side, and the only significant institution to be on the other side - would be the Christian churches and a great mass of self-identified Christians. 

That is the Alternative 2020: a world where things came to a point and the choice became binary - but in this Alternative world, Christians and their churches (en masse) chose the side of God!

Rather than what actually happened In Real Life, where they joined-with Satan. 

 

 

No Longer Reading - a new blog from Kevin McCall

I recommend a new blog called No Longer Reading, written by Kevin McCall - who has commented and guested at my Notion Club Papers blog (and has contributed at WmJas Tychonievich's blog, From the Narrow Desert). 

I'm pretty sure most readers from here will find something to enjoy and enlighten over there.  

Why not go take a look, and help get things going by commenting?

Are people insane because they are evil, or evil because they are insane? The explanation is atheism

Are They insane - or are They evil?...

Readers of this blog must have asked themselves this question with increasing frequency throughout 2020; but it has been looming ever larger over the past half-century. 

 

For instance; the trans-agenda activists are certainly insane; but in psychologically abusing, poisoning and mutilating children by official diktat, they have also attained a world-historical level of evil. 

And much the same applies to the other litmus test issues - bizarre insanity and purposive evil are at the same time extreme and interwoven. 

Why? What is the causality here? 

 

The root is atheism*.

Rudolf Steiner made some wise and deep comments to the effect that atheism (not to believe in a god) was in fact an actual sickness, which takes the form of insanity. 

In the past, all through human prehistory and history up until the past few generations in TheWest; society was structurally religious, and everyone (including atheists) was brought-up in a religion.

In the past, atheists were individuals, living in a religious society - so although they were insane, they could nonetheless be good. 

But now we live a world where insane atheists are ubiquitous, and insane atheist values are everywhere. For the first time ever we have atheists who were raised by atheists (who were raised by atheists) and living in a public discourse that assumes the validity of atheism. 

In these current conditions, atheists are not only insane, but also evil - because... why not? 

Atheism is rootless relativism; which reduces to a 'morality' of expediency; dictated by an un-moored society that is ripe for demonic manipulation, and helpless against demonic inversion of values.  Hence the trans-agenda etc.

The atheists do not originate societal evil - that comes from the powers of purposive evil working upon sinful Men. But atheists have no reason Not to go along with the strategies of Satan (who is not real to them). 

In an evil world, atheists will be evil. 

 

So, generalised atheism is the reason for co-occurrence of insanity with evil in modern societies. 

 

*It is my assumption is that a large majority of self-identified Christians, and Christian churches, are in truth atheist - since they accept in practice all the core atheist assumptions, and follow all the mainstream atheist ideologies. 

Colin Wilson's The Outsider, and the question: "Is everybody's life a failure?"

I remember reading The Outsider in the summer of 1978, and realising that all of the 'Great Men' surveyed in that book were - at least according to Colin Wilson's exacting criteria - A Failure. 

That is, Wilson argued that their lives - when viewed overall and by the highest standards - had failed to a greater or lesser degree. 

I vacillated about this matter, through the years. Sometimes I felt that most people had a successful life when judged by appropriate criteria, sometimes I felt that very few did; and nowadays I would say that hardly anybody does. 

In essence: everybody is a failure, every life is a failure. 

 

This has been perhaps more evident to me than to most people; since a pretty large number of people I have known or worked with have been very successful - by the usual, mainstream standards with which such things are measured. 

I, on the other hand, have not! - although I have been fairly-widely notorious from time to time, in my professional circles (which is, for example, presumably why I have a Wikipedia page). At times I too sought mainstream success, and got some way up the slippery pole; but I was always sabotaged either by my scruples or my defects, or both. Mostly I tried to plough my own unique furrow, sui generis; and again succeeded for periods of time.  

But I have seen success from both sides in my own life, and in the lives of friends and colleagues - and have felt compelled to make evaluations on the subject.

It has, in fact, been one of the most painful experiences of my life to observe the corruption of so many people I have known. (This has, indeed, accelerated in 2020.)

Sometimes people were like that from the beginning - and were strategic in their esteem-seeking; sometimes they sold-out at a specific point, over a specific issue -- But mostly the process seems to have occured smoothly and seamlessly (with no discernible struggle) as a consequence of doing what was needed for jobs, promotions, money, status etc - or just through hard-work combined with obedience to authority.

One of the most startling observations is that all, and I mean all, of the people who I knew as a young man that were notably cynical or radical (in a leftish way) about class, money, status, professionalism, croneyism, careerism, honours or The Establishment - have ended up as high-level bureaucrats: as managers. 

 

This seems an interesting and significant phenomenon; although I have not properly analysed it. 

The only reference to this I have come across was in a book (Critique of Cynical Reason, 1983) by the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk; when he termed this mind-set enlightened false consciousness - which I take to mean something like being cynical about being cynical, in such a way as to retain self-esteem while selling-out.

Or perhaps it is adopting a false careerist persona while acknowledging its falseness, while also regarding the whole thing as somehow inevitable. This strikes me as typical of the most successful Establishment characters.

Certainly, once a person has got-into this mind-set, it is rare from them ever to get out from it; since he is cynical about anything that might disturb his selfish well being, while feeling morally superior for explicitly acknowledging his own selfishness. 

A wry smile and a shrug of the shoulders restores the sealed-off equilibrium in the face of any challenge.

 

When I was a young adult, it was my firm intention to buck the trend of Wilson's Outsiders; and to be one of the tiny minority who really succeeded in having a genuinely successful Life. 

I would have to regard this as a fundamental error. Because I now regard mortal human life as just not being designed to be 'a success' (whatever that might mean). Life is not aimed at some end-state of success. 

Especially since it seems very obvious that we as individual people, and the world itself, are not susceptible of perfection (whatever that might mean). For a start, once I get to know people, no two are alike - indeed no two people are genuinely similar! 

Similarity is an illusion of ignorance. 

So, if we are all one-off, then the concept of 'success' already seems dubious; since there seems no objective way of measuring it. Yet, we can objectively fail - and I regard corruption of the kind I described earlier as genuine failure. 

Corruption is a failure - not because of what is is, some much as because of where it leads-to. 

The real success or failure of life seems to be related to what happens after death, and to what we learn through living. 

1. Do we choose Heaven after death?

2. Do we learn from our experiences in ways that are relevant to eternal resurrected life? 

 

The corruption that has so dismayed me does so because, by my judgment, it is associated with a refusal to learn from living; and with what seems to be an anti-salvation attitude; an attitude of rooted and vehement hostility towards, and therefore rejection of, the possibility of resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 

While I know that repentance is possible to anyone at any time, in the sense that it is allowed and effective; I cannot ignore that most people do not want repentance. 

In fact, 'not want' is misrepresenting a visceral and invincible opposition to the very idea of repentance and salvation.   

My conclusion is that every 'mortal life' is a failure, when judged by the standards of mortal life. 

But any life may potentially be a real success - in an eternal perspective. 

And that (as of recent decades) there has been an extreme, albeit not complete, opposition between the attempt to succeed in This Life, and the attempt to live well in context of the Life to Come.  

Approaching this new astronomical year - are there realistic grounds for optimism?

As I have blogged before - there are various justifiable candidates for the start of a New Year - of which the weakest is January 1st!

One of the strongest candidates for New Year is surely the winter solstice; and that has now passed, and therefore we are already in the new astronomical year. 

So, how do I regard the prospect? To answer, I need to divide the spiritual from the material.

 

Materially speaking I have near-total pessimism about the coming year. I don't know in what specific material ways 2021 will be even worse than 2020 (which I regard as the worst year for many decades) - but I don't perceive any significant movement towards an overall-better material world.

 

Spiritually; I regard 2020 as probably the worst year in the history of the world, so far as I know. 

The only question about this is: how much of 2020 was a mass movement of people becoming evil (joining-with the side of Satan, the side against-God, creation and The Good)? --- And how much of 2020 was 'merely' a revealing of evil in people that was already there, but until 2020 was occult, hidden?

How much of 2020 was wholesale corruption into evil, and how much was merely a vast unmasking of already-present evil? 

 

On the whole, I am inclined to belive that 2020 took a very large number of (often nice, decent, kind) people who were only just on the side of evil, but in a condition that repentance would not have been unlikely; and has led them deeper and deeper into evil choices, each new wrong choice building-upon the previous one; with a greater and greater surrender of their souls to evil; and the abrogation of responsibility to evil external sources. 

(For example, those who accepted the validity of the birdemic and the Establishment's global-coup 'response'; then supported in-your-face lying-evil of MLB-antiracism; and then went to to deny the stunningly-obvious fraud of the presidential election... By which time they were deeply on-side with the Father of Lies. Each wrong choice makes more-likely the next, and builds-upon the previous.) 

By now, the masses of the world seem to have chosen to become Hollow Men, willingly open vessels to receive the purposive evil that dominates public discourse; vehement, agngry, self-righteous in their rejection of honesty and truth. 

And therefore their condition worsens, resistance-drains away, repentance is less likely, with every passing day.

That is my evaluation of the Big Picture ,and the mass majority. 

That damage has been done, and I see little chance that it will be undone. Those who are bad will presumably continue to get worse. 

We now have a mass world who hold fast to the value-inversions of the demonic perspective, who have chosen to live-by untruthfulness, fear, resentment, and despair. 

But - starting from that very low ebb - I do have a relative degree of spiritual optimism about 2021...

 

It seems that there is a significant, albeit small, minority who have begun to wake-up over the past few months. 

At present, this is mainly negative - an awakening awareness of the evil nature and intentions of the Global Establishment. More people realise more of the Big Lies. More people notice that government and the mass media, and the leadership of all major institutions, are strategically and purposively evil. 

For some, the trigger was the contradictions of the birdemic, for some it was the antracism exacerbation of MLB - with its lies, riots, arson and murders being excused, funded and indeed mandatorily celebrated by what seemed like every corporation and organisation and agency. For others it was the US election, and the genuinely brave response of the President; contrasted with the stunning, monolithic, bare-faced dishonesty of the media and global officialdom.   

At any rate, my perception is that this awakening to lies, especially, is happening; and this is a Good Thing... 

However, it is Not Enough, and will not amount to anything substantive unless it becomes a positive, that is a Christian, thing - and given the annihilation and suicide of the churches, that Christianity would have to be Romantic. 

 

In other words, 2020 has seen a great deal of the worst people getting more evil; and of middling-wavering people choosing the side of evil (e.g. failing a Litmus Test) - then moving deeper into that state... 

But only recently have we seen the other side of this 'End Times' phenomenon of 'things coming to a point'; the polarisation and separation of sheep and goats* - with some people beginning to see reality more clearly, taking courage, and being strengthened in their conviction of supporting the God and The Good. 

 

Whather this awakening will actually happen to many people is something I don't know and nobody knows - but I am more optimistic that it will happen to significant numbers of folk, than I was four months ago. 

(And every single, individual soul who chooses to accept Jesus's offer of resurrected life in Heaven is of eternal, hence incalculable, benefit!) 

So, 2021 may well prove to be better than 2020; better spiritually, even though (almost certainly) worse materially.  

*By my understanding, the best thing to be nowadays is a goat-like sheep! We want to be a sheep in the sense of following the Good Shepherd, but goat-like in terms of that species' characteristic individualism, courage and sheer bloody-mindedness. To be sheep-like nowadays is suicidally damning; I mean 'sheep-like' in terms of passively following the flock, being led by just anybody who waves a stick at us, or fleeing in blind panic from the slightest perceived danger. 

Luciferic, Ahrimanic and Sorathic evil reflect the societal hierarchy

If we take the three types of evil - Luciferic, Ahrimanic and Sorathic  (lustful-tormenting, systemic-bureaucratic, and negative-destructive) - we can see that this ordering is reflected in several ways, which are related. 

First it describes the ordering of dominance in history, secondly the degree of evil-ness, and thirdly it reflects the societal hierarchy of The Masses, The Establishment, and The Satanic powers. 

By societal hierarchy I mean that Luciferic evil dominates the Masses - who are evil in impulsive, short-termist ways; Ahrimanic evil is typical of the Global Establishment and its managerial-class servants - who regard Men as merely human resources towards abstract goals; and the Sorathic evil of negation, value-inversion and destruction of The Good is characteristic of the demonic overlords.

 

This leads to considerable mutual incomprehension looking upwards. 

The evil Masses simply cannot recognise the evilness of the Establishment-managerial class; they cannot comprehend that the Establishement's vast and comprehensive agendas, plans, schemes are a kind of evil. 

The Masses cannot see this as evil because it is so abstract, so impersonal. Ahrimanic evil has very little 'fun'; it is dull drudgery - meetings, tick-boxes and flow charts. 

 

And when the Global Establishment look upwards to their demonic overlords; they too fail to see that demonic evil is of a very different nature from the complex Ahrimanic, international, bureaucratic systems that are so laboriously, so tediously, being constructed at present. 

The abstract system-builders do not recognise that the demons are sabotaging cherished Ahrimanic goals of a transhumanist technocratic society of total surveillance and micro-control; by, on the one hand, encouraging Luciferic destructiveness among the Masses (riots, arson, beatings, murder); while on the other hand degrading efficiency and capability faster than the systems can be built. 

The cause of this Ahrimanic misunderstanding is always-increasing dishonesty. 

 

Ahrimanic systems depend on real information, and real information depends on honesty. Yet the Ahrimanic Establishment class are continually selecting, hyping, spinning and (where deniable) fabricating the 'data' upon which their own power depends. 

Claims increasingly outstrip attainment - decline is re-analysed into growth, failure is redefined as success. 

Thus the Establishment always overestimate the degree to which their plans are succeeding. 

 

Put bluntly, the Establishment do not know what is happening; they do not know because nobody in their systems is seeking the truth or speaking with honesty. 

Consequently, the Establishment suppose they have done well in 2020! 

They know they are richer; They believe they are more powerful; and They are confident that everything is going pretty-much according to plan - and infer that Their prospects are bright...

But such evaluations are based upon a tissue of falsehoods. 

 

They do not know - consequently they do not realise that they are in truth (and very obviously, to anyoneone outside of the System's deceptions) elaborately rubbing their hands and cackling with glee at fouling their own nests!

The Establishment suppose they are creating a global totalitarian society of law and order with Themselves at the top and outside, pulling the strings and collecting the rents. 

In fact, they have created (and are actively worsening) global spiritual chaos, collapse of morale and motivation, and a conflagration of fear and despair; which will surely accelerate, spread and consume the Establishment uncontrollably; like a wild-fire.   

 

They began by lying to the Masses while sharing reality with each other in secret 'elite' meetings and conspiracies; but this Ahrimanic 'Iron Cage' very swiftly evolved to a pseudo-system of universal and mutual propaganda and manipulation, in which the Establishment were themselves enmeshed. 

Now, everybody is lying to everybody else, 24/7. 

And then - the biggest lie - making confident assertions about what is going-on and what will happen. 

(And then lying about that.)

 

The only real winners of 2020 are the Sorathic demons whose agenda is merely negative, destructive, and aimed-at universal human self-damnation. 

The demons despise all humans, but especially those arrogant and foolish Men who believe they have outwitted, and are controlling, the demons. 

Fairy stories and legends are full of warnings against dealing with demons; but the Establishment made the Faustian bargain nonetheless. 

They invited evil into their hearts (which is the only way it can enter); made a 'bargain' with the Father of Lies, were (apparently) 'rewarded' by power and gratification in the short term; but in truth they were actually selling their souls literally, surrendering their wills - and this (sooner or later) becomes de facto irrevocable.

 

This is a spiritual war, and the stakes are salvation and damnation. 

There used to be several 'sides' in the spiritual war, but in 2020 the middle ground has all-but gone: there are only two sides. 

One side asks that we consciously choose to acknowledge God our Father and the Creator as Lord, if we wish to follow Jesus Christ to our 'reward' of resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 

That is one choice.

 

The other side offers some (more-or-less brief) up-front gratification in mortal life, as reward for being invited-into the heart. And for which it enforces a payment which is always the same, and is always exacted sooner than expected: enslavement, fear, resentment, despair and eternal misery. 

That is the other choice.  

Two choices only: either to have the next world as our chosen priority; or this world - but not both. 

"Christianity is about what happens after you die" - My version of Christianity's USP

A couple of days ago, I invited suggestions from reader about a phrase that might be used as Christianty's USP - meaning Unique Selling Point. The response was very worthwhile, with a couple of dozen suggestions, mostly very different from each other. I read and pondered them carefully.

However, in the end I found fault with all! - suggesting that summarising what was unique (and good!) about Christianity was a much more difficult thing than might be imagined --- at least when the requirement is that the answer be expressed both concisely and clearly (i.e. clearly to ignorant non-Christians). 

 

But that still leaves the problem of how to respond to a question from someone sincere, but with a typically brief modern attention span, who asks some version of the question: What is Christianity? Or: Why should I care about Christianity? 

This kind of situation represents a 'window of opportunity' - but probably only a narrow window, and one that will close very quickly. 

If there is no suitably clear and concise summary possible - then perhaps the best that can be done is to say something sufficiently interesting and intriguing to invite further questioning. 

 

Thus my suggestion of "Christianity is about what happens after you die". 

I put this forward as a suggestion of something that might be said, for lack of anything better that may occur on the spur of the moment and tailrored to the asker and situation.

Such a response might provoke further interest; might stimulate further questions of a kind potentially liable to lead to the heart of the matter; and elicit enough attention to allow the answerer to get-across something substantive and potentially helpful about Christianity.

After which you can take from there; as personal understanding and specific circumstances dictate...

Common Sense Auditing the virtual world - why doesn't it happen?

A few days ago I gave the name of Common Sense Auditing to the idea of cross-checking ordinary experience for consistency: a fancy name for something all children do, and which people in the past did spontaneously and without theorising...

Well, people seem to do this in real life; so that if a member of your family or a neighbour said that it would be inhuman and abhorrent to prevent you from celebrating Christmas ; and then just a few days later told you that they had personally decided to cancel your Christmas celebrations or else you would suffer police arrest and savage fines - you were be highly likely to recognise... lets call it an inconsistency. 

If this kind of thing was hanitual in a colleague, you would be highly likely to regard him as dishonest, incompetent, insane, evil - or perhaps all of these?

 

Most modern man does not take much notice of Real Life. 

For modern Men, real life is something with only personal, subjective importance. Personal experience and observations are just 'anecdotes' which ought to be ignored. 

For 'reality' - for serious, general, objective validity - one must turn to the remote world of 'science' and 'research', of law, economics and all the rest of it. 

But this public, objective world is known to 'the public' only indirectly via the mass media, teachers, government spokesmen... 

Thus 'objective reality' is always elsewhere - but we are only informed of it via the communications institutions.

 

In the virtual world of the mass media, politics, and public discourse generally - people are not disturbed by even such gross incoherence - indeed they not only expect it but will make elaborate excuses for it in order to retain their assumption that their preferred sub-office of The Establishment (which they aspire to serve, if not join) is essentially benign and caring in its motivation. 

In fact, I am not sure whether people even notice incoherence any more. 

They hear leaders and spokesmen say one thing... and then these same leaders say another and opposite thing; and people both expect and experience zero relationship between these two things. 

 

For the mass of Men in modernity; Life is just one damned thing after another. 

And this reflects their deepest most ultimate assumptions; which are that reality is some kind of product of mindless physical causality (the 'laws of science' stuff) and sheer randomness. 

'Real' life is just stuff that happens - so it would be childish and foolish to expect life to make sense...

 

So people don't expect life to make sense - and it doesn't make sense - and so their expectations are confirmed. 

Why bother with 'auditing' a reality that is already believed to be incoherent? You will only discover what you already knew - that nothing adds-up. 

And all this 'deterministic/ randomness' is not a 'belief' that is taught or leaned; it works at a much deeper level of primary, metaphysical assumptions concerning the nature of reality. 

These 'materialist/ scientist/ positivist' assumptions lie behind the specific statements of public discourse; and indeed structure public discourse. 

All of public discourse operates within these assumptions. 

And anything which does Not conform to these assumptions, does not make sense in public discourse - does not engage with it, and does not affect it. 

  

Modern public life is trapped-inside its own assumptions that nothing makes sense, and life is going nowhere. 

And the consequence is that modern life is ruled by sheer power - force, propaganda, money - and modern morality is merely expedience; merely a business of making the most for oneself out of what is being imposed.

And if what is being imposed on Saturday is different from what was being imposed on Wednesday - well, our job is merely to obey, so that U-turn is none of our business... 

Thus this merely-expedient pseudo-morality gets shorter and shorter in its time horizons.

 

Therefore; when the Prime Minister starkly contradicts himself - such that what he says is inhuman on one day becomes mandatory national policy just a few days later (yet, somehow, this does not make him inhuman!)... Then all this is unremarkable; because all we need to do is obey today's diktat; obey in whatever fashion most enhances our short term gratifications...

Indeed it would be dangerously naive (or covertly evil) to expect otherwise, to demand consistency; it would be wicked to require honesty!*

 

*Those who have worked inside a bureaucracy know that this is precisely the case. An honest employee is regarded as a dangerous fanatic. 

Why meditation focused on control of attention doesn't make us wiser

Many - probably most - of the methods of meditation I have encountered, are focused on learning the skill of controlling attention. 

 

The basic idea is that normally our attention is drawn to unhelpful things, trivialities and worries, and we need to learn to direct this attention where We want it. 

Techniques like the use of a mantra are attempting to prevent attention being 'caught' by the normal, routine, superficialities of everyday life...

 

However - if meditation is instead an attempt to be intuitive, to re-connect with our real self (which is divine - 'god within us') then any attempt to control attention is met with a block. 

The problem is: that which controls attention is not itself the real self.   

 

The problem for 'modern Man' is that the thoughts from the real self are overwhelmed and lost by superficial thought, coming from 'false selves'; outside, from memories, or instincts... and none of these are the real self. 

And that-which-controls-attention starts-out from a situation of not knowing where to look-for the intuitions of the real self. 

 

This situation is exacerbated when the aim is to control attention. Yes, we can learn to control attention, it can even become a habit - but we cannot learn to direct attention at the real self, because that is just another attempt to exert mastery over the real self. Which is exactly what we want to avoid.

The proper attitude with respect to attention is more like a sensitive listening, an opening of attention, than any attempt at 'control' of attention. 

 

The intention and hope is that by becoming calm and attuned, our attention might be 'caught' by the thinking of the real self. And then - once that thinking has been identified - but only then - could attention be directed to that particular stream of thinking, from among all the other (louder, more demanding) thoughts.

The same criticism applies to the attempt to stop thinking, let it slide, allow thoughts to pass-through and out-from the mind etc. Such a method will allow the subtle thoughts of the real self to escape notice, while it is tuning-out the bad kind of thoughts. 

 

In the end, everything hinges on being able to know the provenance of our thinking, so that we can know when thoughts are from the real self.  

Knowing when we know... 

That' should be our aim in the most important kind of 'meditation' - one directed at becoming wider, at knowing reality - although there is no 'technique' for doing it. 

 

Why were there High, Grey and Wood elves? - What was the mechanism by which they diverged?

 The separating-out of the elves

Readers of The Lord of the Rings (LotR) narrative may be aware of two kind of elves: wise and magical High Elves, such as Gildor, Glorfindel and Galadriel; and ordinary Silvan ('Wood') Elves such as those majority of Mirkwood and Lothlorien elves (of whom we 'meet' Haldir and his brothers) . 

But it is only in the Appendices that there is any inkling of an explanation that there are also Sindar or 'Grey' elves, such as Cirdan, Thranduil and Celeborn - apparently 'in-between' the High and Silvan.  

With the Simarillion, it became apparent that there was a very complex 'family tree' of elves - and that this has been extremely important in the history of Tolkien's world ('Arda'), including Middle Earth. 

This was the Sundering of the Elves - and was the way in which an originally unified society of elves (albeit in three tribes) was divided and differentiated. Divided - by being physically separated; and differentiated - because this separation had further consequences in terms of accentuating differences.  

Briefly, and simplified; what happened was that the elves came to exist in Middle Earth, but deep in history the Valar invited all the elves to come to live in the Undying lands due to the threat of Morgoth. 

There was a Great Journey by which some of the elves travelled from east of the Misty Mountains (which were at that time a vast, almost impassable barrier) west across Middle Earth, across the sea, to the Undying Lands. 

At each stage of the journey, some elves either refused the call of the gods, or turned aside, or delayed. 

Therefore the elves could be arrayed along a line between the highest of High Elves, the Vanyar - who obeyed the call and did everything perfectly right - and the Avari who refused the call of the Valar, stayed in Middle Earth, and did not even begin the Great Journey.  

 

But it should be said that the summons by the Valar may itself have been wrong*. It may be that to remove the elves from Middle Earth, where it had pleased Eru Illuvatar (the One) to create them, was misguided; and revealed a lack of trust in God, or an excessive fear of Morgoth. 

It may have been The Divine Plan that - in some way not known, because it was never allowed to happen - the tragic story of the elves would have been averted or ameliorated by Not summoning, and dividing, them.  

Maybe the unwilling, 'wild' Avari elves were correct in remaining, and not even starting the Great Journey? However, the motivation of the Avari for refusing the call may not have been good, and that seems to have been confirmed by their lesser wisdom, powers, and their sad eventual fate; which was to dwindle, fade and become discarnate spirits, indistinguishable from ghosts...

 

So, the major divisions of elves were initially between the Avari - who refused the journay, and the others who began it. Then at the Misty Mountains, another group called the Nandor adandoned the journey - whose remnant at the time of LotR was the Silvan elves. 

Then among those who crossed the Misty Moutains - a further group called the Teleri lagged behind the main group of Noldor and Vanyar. The Teleri split into those who later went on to the undying lands to join the Noldor and Vanyar as the High Elves (those who had lived in the primordial light of the Two Trees) - and the Sindar/ Grey elves who remained on Middle Earth. 

What is interesting, and has been hard for me to understand, is the 'mechanism' by which elves attitudes-to and experience-of the Great Journey became associated with different 'levels' of power and wisdom - that that these differences became hereditary. 

How did the Great Journey lead to permanent differences between High, Sindarin, Silvan and Avari elves? Differences so lasting that the - although later in history the Silvan and Avari became intermingled and indistinguishable in lifestyle - the Silvan elves had a latent desire to Go West, and were allowed to.

 

The main 'explanation' seems to be related to 'light'; to a sense in which the Great Journey was to the West facing the divine light of the Two Trees. Presumably this attitude to light and the light itself combine to make a permanent and hereditary change in the constitution of the elves? 

This is, at least, how I tried to understand it. The key to this explanation is that the sundering was something mostly done-to the elves - the elves were transformed-by 'light'.

They made choices; but and then the light affected-them as a consequence.

 

I personally find this unconvincing and incoherent - but until recently I could do no better. 

While I can immediately see that dwelling in the undying lands, bathed in the light of the Two Trees, could have an ennobling effect on elves - I don't see that light could do this when the elves were still in Middle Earth, and when it relates to what seem like small differences in decisions along a journey. 

In particular, I find it hard to understand how the Sindar were made wiser and more powerful (a 'natural aristocracy' among the Silvan elves) merely by starting-out on the Great Journey, getting across the Misty Mountains... but then deciding to stay in Middle Earth. It is hard to see how this experience could have such a significant and hereditary effect upon the group.  

Why were the Sindar so different from the Silvan elves, when both left the Great Journey - and the difference was only derived from which side of the Misty Mountains this leaving happened. (It seems fanciful to suppose that the tall mountains shielded the Silvans from the remote influence of 'the light' - although I suppose that is one possibility...)

Also, it seems to be unjust, or arbitrary, that later generations of elves should be rewarded or punished for the attitudes of their ancestors. Why should Avari elves be forbidden to take ship to the Undying lands (as I believe was the case), when indistinguishable Silvan Elves have this privilege? 

The idea I developed (in conversation with my son Billy) is that the Great Journey worked on the innate spiritual predispositions of the elves, to separate-out the spiritually various types of elves which were originally mixed. If there had been no call from the Valar; this mixture of 'highly' spiritual, middlingly spiritual, and unspiritual elves would have remained in a single society.

Having made this separation, then the fact that the different innate types lived in different environments (as a consequence of their previous decisions) amplified these differences.  

Think of it as a paper chromatography strip (as in the illustration above - this was Billy's idea!). 

Originally all elves of all types were mixed; but the trials, fears, temptations of the Great Journey from East to West, separated and spread-out the elves across Middle Earth - a bit like the colours on the chromatography paper. 

Those elves who had no interest in change, who feared change, who wanted to remain innocent (and ignorant) hunter gatherers, or who did not have any interest in the gods; simply refused to begin the journey. 

And those with greatest natural affinity for the light - those elves who were already, innately, the most like to the Valar and who, therefore, wanted to become even more like the Valar - were motivated to continue to the end of the Journey.   

 

And some, like the Sindar, had some of the traits of the Valar, and a significant - but not overpowering - desire to develop these traits. They went some way along the journey - but were not 100% committed to the idea. After being delayed (when their Lord - Thingol - went missing) perhaps they liked the new regions in which they found themselves? 

In the end, they changed their minds, and decided to remain in Middle Earth - but now (with the departure of the high-er elves than themselves overseas) they found themselves the 'top elves' in Middle Earth! Perhaps this 'removal of superior competition' was itself a reason to stay? 

After all, the portion of their Teleri kindred who did cross the sea found themselves at the bottom of the status hierarchy in Valinor; and perhaps as a result kept themselves apart from the gods, Vanyar and Noldor - living on the coast beside their ships, and specialising in the natural abilities of lyrical poetry and singing; rather than the higher attainments of being-godlike (Vanyar) or arts and crafts (Noldor).  

By staying in Middle Earth, and developing their own 'middle'/ Grey elvish cultures; the Sindar became (until the Noldor returned) the undisputed masters of the free peoples of Middle Earth; and built some great cities/ civilizations - especially Doriath, ruled by their High King, Thingol Greycloak (who was technically a High Elf, being (I think) the only Teleri elf to return to Middle Earth from Valinor, and stay).

 

In sum, therefore, it seems that the Great Journey's primary function was to sort and separate-out the different types of elves; who had always been present, but previously were mixed together. Having been separated, these differences became accentuated - and the elves become more of what they already were. 

In some cases this may have been harmful. Probably, the Avari were harmed by the removal of their 'higher-motivated', more able brethren. At any rate, by the LotR they seem to have disappeared, or merged with the Silvan elves. An analogous 'cultural stunting' may have affected the left-behind Silvan elves; which may explain why they were willing - indeed keen - to be ruled-by Sindar or Noldor elves. 

The Noldor elves developed their artistic and 'scientific'/ technological talents to a very high degree; but perhaps their concentration, and exclusion of other elvish influences, also led to the pride, possessiveness and desire for power, which afflicted so many of them - notably the greatest: Feanor and some of his sons; and his descendent Celebrimbor, who made the corrupted Dwarven and Men's rings of power; helped by Sauron. 

 

The residue of Silvan elves who began the journey, but were quickly daunted from completing it - became much like Avari - except for a latent desire to cross the sea to the undying lands, and (presumably) the capacity to fit-in when they got there. 

This 'Yearning for The West' trait was, like most traits, inherited down the generations; and, although not strong, it could be awakened (as with Legolas, a Sindar) by seeing the sea, or hearing gulls. Awakening of sea yearning became more likely as Middle Earth grew less appealing - from the tainting by Morgoth and Sauron, the fatigue and fading of the elves in mortal lands, and from the increasing domination of Men (or orcs).

The Sindar experienced this increasing yearning more strongly than the Silvans, from having had it more strongly to begin with; and by the time of Lord of the Rings, there were few of this race remaining. 

Nonetheless, the desire to cross the sea was weaker in the Sindar than in the Noldor, who had lived in Valinor. Thus the Noldor elf Galadriel went West shortly after the death of Sauron; while her Sindar husband, Celeborn, remained in Middle Earth for a while longer; his ties to Middle Earth being stronger and his desire for The West weaker. 

 

*On page 259 of Unfinished Tales, there is a comment that Oropher - father of Thranduil and grandfather of Legolas - arrived in Mirkwood with a few other Sindar (disillusioned and disaffected after the run of Doriath); and despite becoming their Lord; he deliberately adopted the language of the Silvan elves and 'merged' with them culturally. Tolkien says, Oropher and his companions wished 'to become Silvan folk, and to return, as they said, to the simple life natural to elves before the invitation of the Valar had disturbed it.'