What we have Now is Not 'fascism' (not even 'neo'-fascism) - what is it?

Some people have noticed that the current global totalitarian system is more like fascism than communism, specifically in terms of its relationship between the state and the corporations. (In the sense that communism has every-thing nationalized, and included in the state system, while in fascism the state and corporations are aligned by a single, compulsorily-enforced ideology, but not ownership...)

On this basis, it is being said that we live in a fascist system; here-and-now, in 2021... 

Well, I am tempted to say "I wish!" - because what we actually have is far, far more evil than any of the fascisms. 

A form of economic ownership and state-corporate relationships was hardly the defining feature of real-life fascism, as it briefly existed in mid-twentieth century Italy and Germany! 

Fascism was characterized ideologically by being a secular, explicitly-leftist movement that was also strongly anti-communist (which meant, mostly, anti-nationalization). But hardly anybody notice that aspect of fascism (except for the owners of corporations, hence their support for fascism when it was the most viable alternative to communism) 

Positively fascism was a dictatorship motivated by militaristic nationalistic pride. 

The country was to be run on military lines, and the country was to be celebrated and glorified. That was was people saw, and liked, about fascism - and where it scored so heavily over communism. 

The motivations of fascism were comprehensible, human, and non-paradoxical - whereas communism was - like mainstream modern leftism - negatively, oppositionally, motivated. The communist atrocities and purges were all 'against' something (the bourgeois, the Kulaks, the Jews, reactionary saboteurs...); whereas fascism was motivated by nation-building. 

Of course, communists have since tried to reframe fascism as mainly 'about' racism. That clearly was not the case - but it is a telling projection; because if the communists had been running fascism, then it certainly would have been about racism!

In other words, to the communist-leftist mind, the only way to motivate people is in opposition; thus they cannot even imagine the kind of positive national pride that was crucial to the (brief) success of fascism. Communistic leftists can only suppose that nationalism was a mask for oppositional racism directed against some particular groups or groups.

Nationalism, including fascism, offered a kind of halfway house - a positive (but temporary) alternative to religion; briefly uniting the country around its positive celebration. 

Nationalism/ Fascism still used habits of thinking and motivations derived from the Christian era - but as a secular society, it had no way of renewing these resources - so all nationalisms, everywhere, weakened and declined - and it has not proved possible to revive an effective nationalism anywhere in the world for several decades.

By this analysis, in 2021 we have something new and unprecedented.

What we have is nothing like fascism - except in the double-negative way that it has enlisted the mega-private corporations by Not nationalizing them; and by (for mow...) coopting their interests in the totalitarian world government (public-private partnership).

What we have is much more like communism than fascism - especially The Establishment's uncritical/ warm feelings towards the communist dictatorships of past and present. But this 21st century leftism is post-communist; and has shed the economic focus of Marxism.

(No more nationalization of banks, media and corporations! Come and sit at the high table! So the billionaires are kept wealthy, and 'happy'...). 

Gone, too, now - are any positive notions of building a utopia; indeed, any attempt to represent a positive vision of the future sound like one of the fictional nightmare dystopias. We now have the implementation of post-1960s New Left oppositional-identity politics, which grew in the USA and is anti-nationalist, anti-military, anti-white, anti-men, anti-working class (aka. 'white nationalists') etc.  

Consequently, They keep the masses focused on rotating negative, oppositional scares and crusades; without mentioning where all this is supposed to be going... 

Anyway; the main point here is that what we have now is not fascism, neither is it communism - but is something new and different. 

We have a regime built almost entirely on negative and oppositional motivations. We have a populace who do not require heavy-handed violent and physical coercion; because they are so profoundly demotivated, passive and short-termist; that they will believe and go-along-with almost anything that is suggested by their state-media-corporate rulers. 

We have a world government of state-media-corporate rulers, we have a world ruled in conformity and global masses who are acquiescent to this totalitarianism ... yet there is no clear, simple, comprehensible positive ideology in which they are ruling. 

We are not going-towards any-particular-thing - or maybe, we are pretending to go-towards dozens of particular but incompatible things, each pretense being maintained for a few hours, days or weeks... Then swapped-out for something else equally temporary and insincere. 

The obvious but ignored fact is that we now (obvious since early 2020) have a world government for the first time, with an international scope for action...

But that government is not aiming to build anything in particular; instead it is being used* to destroy itself - partly by setting each against all; and partly by Just Plain Destruction... Stopping great swathes of the economy, stopping human interaction, stopping... almost everything. 

Just Plain Destruction. 

Not-doing, Stopping, Preventing... these are the huge facts of these times; and these times are fundamentally un-like any time or place before, ever. 

*'Used' by whom? By the evil supernatural forces of evil - Satan, and the demons of destruction.

The ongoing collapse of brain-thinking

It is a very striking aspect of the 2020-21 situation that has become blazingly obvious to those capable of discernment; is that 'brain-thinking', reason, logically-coherent thought - the kind of processing typically associated with Science (in its largest conception as procedural systematic knowledge) - has all-but collapsed, very nearly disappeared; almost everywhere - and at every level of society from top to bottom. 

From the tiny minority of globalist planners in their invisible but totalitarian planetary government, down to the increasingly ignorant and credulous masses; and through the supposedly expert class in-between - all are unable to think coherently or in a sustained fashion.

All that happens now is an ignorant 'parroting' of the superficial forms of brain-thinking - such as managerialist flow-charts and checklists - whose application is rigid but whose content is increasingly arbitrary and incoherent. More exactly, people can do single-step thinking - "if we do this, then that should happen; If A then B" - but they cannot continue their thinking beyond a single step to address what will happen next, what will be C after B. 

People cannot connect or relate even as few as two facts when they occur in separate one-step sequences; so that 'knowledge' now consists of isolated, atomic 'facts' which have no discernible relationship or pattern (and any suggested pattern that relies upon two-step - or more than two-step logic, is regarded as crazy/ wild/ speculative 'conspiracy theorizing'). 

Life seems impossibly complex to nearly-everyone; because they have rejected the heart thinking/ intuition which is the only thing that can make sense of it. 

Even if you can guide somebody through thinking, in a one-step-at-a-time fashion, from A to be and beyond to C and perhaps D; reminding them continually of the validity of each step... by the time they have reached the conclusion, they have long-since lost their grip on the process. They (accurately) no longer trust their own capacity to reason. 

So, after the detailed explanation, they simply reset to... whatever was their prior assumption. 

Thus - once established - error is intractable. 

I say unable to think, because that is the problem. It is not that they can think but are too lazy, or too distracted, or are prevented by their ideology; nor am I talking about a quantitative decline in thinking ability (due to reduced intelligence and increased mutational accumulation) - I am talking about an actual incapacity to think. 

Why? Well, at the deepest explanatory level I believe this is because Mankind has rejected destiny, has rejected final participation, heart thinking and the primacy of intuition - has rejected a life based upon the reality of God and the spiritual realm. 

Instead, Man has chosen to remain in what was supposed to be a transitional 'adolescent' phase of the 'consciousness soul' - which state is innately self-destroying. 

When proper development is rejected; we cannot just choose to stay as we are - because what we are is non-viable. 

Insightful individuals foresaw that if we did not move onwards from the alienated state of positivistic, reductionist, scientistic, materialistic thinking, then we would cease to be able to do even that. 

This has come to pass, and is all around us. 

People have given-up on understanding because they have rejected meaning and purpose in life; without which there can be no understanding. 

Thinking can only be purposive, and without purpose thinking will wither and die. Has died. 

So, although many of the Global Establishment envisage a single international society of monolithic ideology and socio-economic control; they cannot achieve this, because their inability to think (compounded by their compulsion to lie), is continually sabotaging their own desires. 

The same inability of the expert class and the masses, then further ensures that any System will be incoherent and ineffective, continually self-corrupting, collapsing faster than it can be built.

On top of which there are now increasingly powerful and influential 'Sorathic' Beings (whether human or demonic) whose purpose is almost-wholly negative and destructive; and who delight in corruption, collapse, fear and suffering - and who add a positive purpose to the down-trend established by negative incapacity.   

But even as the corruption and collapse happen as a matter of daily experience; the capacity to recognize it has declined even faster. As individuals are submerged beneath the tsunami of accumulating chaos, they will remain utterly puzzled and clueless about what is happening to them, and why. The just cannot think it through...

The evolution of consciousness is about a significant loss of abilities, as well as the gain of freedom

The developmental evolution of consciousness through human history has made modern Man more of a free agent than was ever before possible (at least for the mass of Men) in history. 

We can observe that this freedom has mostly been abused to reject God and the spiritual; and embrace an ideology of meaninglessness, purposelessness and ultimate isolation and spiritual death. Yet that is not the whole story. 

Some people of a New Age cast of mind, make a great deal of the positive benefits of the change in consciousness; and indeed it is potentially positive - being the consequence of divine destiny, part of the plan of creation. 

Yet higher consciousness only has a higher outcome when Good choices are made; otherwise freedom amplifies evil. 

When a Being of higher consciousness chooses evil, this has been more-fully his own choice; less influenced by heredity, upbringing and environment. His responsibility for affiliating with the powers of evil is therefore greater - his chances of repentance are therefore less. 

And it is important to recognize that the development of consciousness is associated with loss as well as gain. 

There is a precise analogy with the development of a child through adolescence to adulthood. modern Man has become an adolescent - and who could deny that there is great loss from the transition between childhood and adolescence; although adolescence is necessary en route to adulthood. 

Yet it is also undeniable that the adolescent is more free than the child, in the sense of being free to reject the influence, and even the love, of his parents. He is free to make his own life a misery; free even to choose suicide and eternal death. 

But spiritually, modern Man has (mostly) chosen to use his freedom to reject the love of Jesus Christ; and to make his life a misery and embrace eternal death. He has refused to complete his development as a spiritual Man; has (in other words) chosen to remain an alienated, disaffected, permanently-rebellious adolescent.

As modern Man developed; his freedom was attained by the loss of the ability, indeed the intrinsic necessity, to perceive spontaneous meaning in the world, to perceive the spirit world, to know the reality of the divine. 

Ancient Man could not be evil in the way that modern Man is evil -  he could not; because he was immersed in the natural world, was substantially passively driven by this environment; did not even regard himself as fully separate from the world and other Men. 

He was not alienated because he could not be alienated (much as a young child even today cannot be alienated.) 

Our freedom was attained at a cost - apparently a truly enormous cost (assuming hell is the outcome of freedom). And, unlike biological development, this cost was chosen. 

how can we make sense of this? What could possibly justify proving a freedom that seems (nowadays, anyway) mostly to be misused with a terrible outcome. Surely no freedom would be better than freedom and then (mostly) hell? 

Yet we are among those pre-mortal spirits who wanted to attempt this transition; who chose or consented to be incarnated as mortal on this earth (and at this time). 

If indeed very few people in the modern world seem successfully to make the transition through spiritual adolescence and out the other side; if most choose to reject God and Heaven - then I think the explanation may be that this is a consequence of the nature of their pre-mortal souls.  

Apparently, some of God's children quickly chose the side of evil. 

That is; they chose to oppose God and his creation even in the pre-mortal spirit realm - their number includes Satan and all the other demons, who were thereby cast-out of Heaven (cast themselves out, indeed; since the condition of eternal commitment to that loving creation which is Heaven, is precisely what they reject). 

Other pre-mortal souls were (I assume) mostly inclined to evil, but maybe less committed in their rejection of God. Perhaps they (we?) wanted more time, in mortal-earthly conditions, before making a final choice between resurrected life everlasting in Heaven - or to reject that?

After all, to live in Heaven as a resurrected eternal Man is only possible to those who have been through death. So incarnation as a mortal is necessary. Yet; that minimum can be attained by a life that did not continue as far as birth, or as far as adolescence - or in more ancient societies where the rejection of Jesus's offer of Heaven was much less common. 

Yet these times of our world may be well-suited to the needs of some evil-inclined but undecided souls; souls such as, perhaps, you and me? 

Here-and-now we can see an unprecedentedly clear and sharp discrimination between the nature and implications of evil... and of the Good (in alignment with creation and God's will - which are always known, and always a present possibility). 

We tend to assume it is easier to choose evil in a deeply corrupted - evil dominated - society such as we live in now. Yet the opposite may be the case, when it comes to undecided souls. 

Modern life shows us very clearly the implications of evil; surely more explicitly and extremely than ever before. We celebrate meaninglessness, purposelessness, death as total-annihilation, the death of God, and the inversion of natural law. Nobody could say we have not been 'warned'!

Anyone who chooses evil nowadays has a very thorough understanding of what that evil means; and has made the choice from a very detached, independent state of free agency. 

Surely then; only those who really want evil, and have knowingly accepted the consequences, will choose evil in the world as it is today?

The Chosen - a life of Jesus (2019-20)

Just a notice of The Chosen - a series of (so far - more to come) eight 50-minute (independently/ crowd-funded) TV-movies about the ministry of Jesus (structured around the last three years of his life) from the perspective of those around him. 

This is an outstanding achievement, which I recommend highly.  

The series builds slowly; by establishing the society and (essentially fictional) characters of people such as Mary Magdalene, Nicodemus, Simon and Andrew, and Matthew - and Jesus is introduced slowly (he hardly appears in the first couple of episodes). 

There is a (successful) attempt to portray the fine texture of daily life. The interesting decision was made that everyone speaks with a 'Middle Eastern accent', and to use a few untranslated Hebrew words - which results in an enhancement of the strangeness and differentness of the world. 

Production values are very high; and the quality of acting very good - indeed Nicodemus and Matthew, in particular, are superb performances. 

As the series progresses, it becomes much more scriptural in content, with episodes built around particular events (usually, specific miracles or encounters), and gets better and better - deepened by the developing interpersonal relationships and crises caused by Jesus's emergence. 

I found it extremely moving at times - spiritually moving; there were parts when I was streaming with tears! 

Anyway - The Chosen can be found free on YouTube and Vimeo. 

The secret art of self-justification

There are a lot of people in the world whose life is primarily, and consistently, dedicated to their own self-justification; to explain to themselves and to others, that everything they are and have done, all their choices and experiences, were justified. 

Secretly, they assume (more than 'believe' - they assume) that they never made a mistake, that everything which went wrong was somebody else's fault (or sheer bad luck). 

Sometimes they are boastful, sometimes self-obsessed, sometimes (and this is especially common) they have mastered passive-aggressive rhetoric, so that their continual self-aggrandizement is disguised by a fake humility. 

The passive aggressive self-justifiers regard and promote themselves as humanitarians, altruistic, charitable, activists on behalf of others, 'passionately' 'concerned' with 'justice'... or some such abstraction.   

Often enough, self-justification is self-justified as a necessary response to the attempts of The System and of powerful people within it - to dictate our attitudes and behaviours. 

That was the trap I personally fell into - continually justifying myself on the excuse that otherwise I would be subordinated to someone else's justification. A better known example would be Thoreau in Walden; which book is impaired by Thoreau's frequent self-justifications; his boastful but insecure assertions, his denigrations of others - to make more space for himself.

I call self-justification a secret art, because - although it is extremely common - it is secret from the practitioners, and seldom explicitly identified by those around them. 

Perhaps because so secret and so seldom identified; it can have a terrible effect on a person; feeding upon itself. It is, indeed, a species of the sin of resentment (which I find a better description than the more usual 'pride'); a particularly insatiable and destructive sin. 

Self-justification can and does lead to hell. I can easily imagine that even when all other sins were repented; someone would cling to their own self-justification - as a thing so precious to their self-regard that they would give-up Heaven itself in order to keep hold upon it. 

Defining high fantasy as an intrinsically Christian form: animism and providence

I have been pondering what it is that I most value in my favourite books of the 'fantasy' genre - or indeed in other media such as movies and TV. And I think it is a particular 'enchanted' feel, which could be described as including both animism and providence. 

Animism is the conviction that the natural world is alive and conscious - such that living beings (animals, trees) are also conscious; but most specifically those things that are usually considered to be not-alive ('dead') such as mountains, rivers, the sea - are also considered to be alive, aware, purposive to some significant degree. 

Thus, when the protagonists of a high fantasy are on a journey, then the landscape through which they move is a 'character' (or series of characters) in the story. 

Whereas in a low fantasy (sword and sorcery etc.) the landscape is just an environment: background scenery, or a series of challenges. 

Providence in high fantasy refers to the fact (or sense) that there is someone in the background influencing the course of events; more generally that there is a purpose or destiny (direction or teleology) influencing events. 

In high fantasy there is a 'macro' level of meaning, above or behind the plot. 

By contrast; low fantasy may be set in the context of a 'micro', close-up reality that is not going anywhere in particular - and success and failure tend to be defined in terms of happiness versus misery, attaining personal goals versus being thwarted or killed.  

From a Christian perspective, both animism and providence could be seen as referencing divine creation - a reality of meaning, purpose and personal relatedness; or even as a foretaste of the condition of Heaven. 

In this sense, high fantasy is an intrinsically Christian genre - since the personal-divine basis of reality is pretty-much specific to Christianity. 

Note added: The original English 'definition' of Romanticism comes from Wordsworth and Coleridge Lyrical Ballads (1798); in relation to which it was said that Wordsworth was writing about (implicitly animistic) nature, and Coleridge was dealing with the supernatural (with reference to some kind of providence).

Premortal life and prophecy

I believe that we lived before this incarnated mortal life, that we each had a premortal life as a spirit. 

I am not, however, clear about the details of this life; but there are important general implications if we knew many things before this life, things we did not learn from experience, things that may include divine intentions and plans for human life on earth. 

Foreknowledge of such things might well include what would usually be regarded as prophecy.  

Perhaps most importantly, because of premortal experience, it follows that everybody would be in a position to know about Jesus, to know what Jesus did; and even to know and recognize Jesus. 

If this is the case, then it makes easy sense of the requirement that all Men need to 'follow' Jesus in order to attain eternal resurrected life. 

If it was supposed that we need to learn about Jesus during our mortal lives - this sounds an unreasonable requirement; because people might not have correct information about Jesus - indeed they might have no information at all. 

Yet if everybody already-knows about Jesus, and would recognize Jesus if they met him; then the requirement to know and follow him if we want eternal life becomes a simple choice. 

Crossing the threshold at the millennium into a New Age

In the years approaching 2000 there was a great deal of expectation in New Age circles that this time was to be a spiritual threshold crossing; and I myself first became interested in such matters at this time - initially focused on hunter gatherer beliefs. 

Yet, the first impression as we went into the early 2000s was that 'nothing had happened' - certainly there was no significant spiritual revival: there was no clear raising of human consciousness to a higher level. The New Age movement continued - but as an increasingly commercial, psychological, 'self-help' activity. 

Meanwhile, materialism began to take-off with an accelerating expansion of bureaucracy and managerialism - and the solid domination of increasing-leftism through the entirety of mainstream politics, law, churches, the media, academia, arts, science, health services - and then into the police and military. 

There was not the expected re-enchantment of life; but instead more and more dis-enchantment.  

So - did anything happen? Was a threshold of human consciousness crossed?

I now think that yes, something happened: something Big; and yes there was a change in human consciousness. And that change was (approximately): more and more people began to live in a world of their own creation. 

This was, in its form, exactly the consciousness transition that had been foreseen several decades earlier by Rudolf Steiner and then Owen Barfield. They foresaw that Men were going to become so detached from 'nature' that they would 'make their own reality'. 

But, the reality that Men chose to make was not the one hoped for by 'spiritual people' - it was instead the made-reality of the mass media and the pervasive, extensive, unifying bureaucracy (which was  linked-up globally by early 2020 - as was first evident from the birdemic-response). 

From 2000; Men came to inhabit a willed world (a virtual world) - yet this was not the 'spiritual' world of high consciousness that had been hoped-for, nor was it a world that individual Men had personally discerned and chosen. It was instead a matter of millennial New Man passively-absorbing a dominant, mainstream 'official world' - devised and propagated by those with the greatest power and influence.  

The millennial change in consciousness was 'about' Men having a new capacity to create their own reality; in other words to 'choose what was true'. It was hoped by some that Men would use this new power to choose to live in a world of meaning, purpose and personal involvement with nature and the divine spirit world - and that Men would therefore create such a reality. 

Because Men could now choose what to believe, and could make these beliefs real; they might have chosen to acknowledge the reality of God, creation and Heaven. Of course, as a Christian, I know these to be really-real - but since the millennial transition the really-real needs to be chosen and self-created in the same way as the false and evil.

Since the millennium; Men have overwhelmingly chosen to co-create a reality without meaning, purpose or humanity; a reality based on fear, resentment and despair; a reality which denies their own capacity (and right!) to choose. 

In effect men have chosen a world of alienation, futility, and inescapable death; and then chosen to deny that they have chosen!

And they have chosen to regard their choice as inevitable, the only possibility that ever-was real. 

Why have so many Men made this choice? A choice which had led directly to the current (and unprecedented) world government of evil and systematic destruction based on fear, resentment and despair?  

Why, to put it differently, have so very few Men chosen to co-create (as they could have) a world of faith, hope and love? 

...Rejecting the chance of a world where reality really-was enchanted. 

The reasons are many - but I focus on two. 

The first was leftism - which by 2000 had infected and become established in almost everyone; and leftism is intrinsically evil; being anti-Christian and metaphysically materialist, built-on and incorporating many Big Lies. 

The entire spectrum of mainstream opinion was, by 2000, merely variations on leftism. All significant political parties and movements - left and 'right' were leftist. All New Agers were leftist, in one or other respect - and many were very leftist. 

Leftism was assumed to be the bottom line of any 'good' morality - anything else than leftism was rejected as abhorrent. Reality was fitted-into leftism...

The second was passivity. New Age expectations of the millennium were that something would happen-to people. There would be some kind of shift - which was conceptualized in terms of raised frequency, vibration, energies or the like - and this external change would would raise humanity. 

Humanity, consciousness, would be lifted by external forces; and the primary act of choice was consenting to be thus raised. 

Yet, the truth was that Men needed to make an active choice to benefit from the millennial transformation. All the good options (God, Creation, Jesus Christ, a living conscious and personal universe...) required positive, active choice. 

By remaining passive, and by regarding leftism as the fundamental truth; when the millennial threshold was crossed; Men made the world that was all around them, the world that was easiest. The world that was everywhere, powerful, persuasive, fun, socially-high-status. The world view that brought in money and led to most pleasure - that is, the world of the media, or leftist socio-politics, of materialism...

So Man did cross the threshold at the millennium, and with new powers of consciousness to create his own reality...

And then Man chose to use these new powers to make the whole world a locked-down, hope-less, dead prison - for himself and everybody else. 

How does a Big Lie work So Well?

A superb (and, for me, very valuable) account is given by JM Smith over at the Orthosphere. It begins...

Big lies are designed to hoodwink little liars. Big lies work because little liars wrongly suppose that all lies are like their own picayune fibs, and because little liars lack the imagination to conceive of falsehood on a grand scale. Big lies work equally well on most honest men and women, since the lies these honest men and women pride themselves on not telling are, in most cases, picayune little lies.

But - Read The Whole Thing.

"Clear the decks of seamen!" - more smut in the tradition of a Scheidt Christmas*

The opera Billy Budd, in a not-at-all camp production, apparently starring Brian Blessed centre right...

John Amis reports:

When Benjamin Britten announced that he was going to write an all-male opera [set on board ship] we thought he was barking mad... Britten sent Michael Tippett a copy of the libretto, asking for comments. 

Tippett replied saying what a good libretto Eric Crozier and E.M.Forster had written. 

But he suggested that a line in act one might be misconstrued: Claggart at one point sings "Clear the decks of seamen". 

Britten wrote back saying what a filthy mind Michael had. 

But he cut the line.

* See earlier posts...

Heart thinking or entropic thinking: How and why we are (literally) destroying reality

The great lesson I got from Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield, is that reality is co-created by consciousness - that is, by thinking. We make the world by our thinking - and the kind of world we make - or unmake, depends on the kind of thinking. 

The only thing out-there and independent of us is formless chaos - all that can be known has been created; and creation formed by consciousness, and all consciousness has this property of creative formation. 

The primary creation that we inhabit was formed by God's consciousness (God is the prime creator); but our own consciousness affects divine creation - either positively or negatively. 

As our consciousness has become detached from God - we must now choose whether again to affiliate with the living reality of primary creation through love and heart thinking; or to remain alienated, to regard reality as consisting of dead things affected by material processes - and thereby to affiliate with the entropic, parasitic, destructive cognitive processing of mainstream modern life. 

It has become very obvious that humanity is splitting into Christians and anti-Christians; into those who affiliate with God, The Good and Divine Creation - and those who oppose these. 

This split can also be seen as between heart thinking and entropic thinking. We are being compelled to choose between these. 

It is the choice between loving creation; or the subversion, deconstruction and destruction of creation. 

Entropic thinking is normal, abstract, mainstream, 'materialist' thinking - it is 'brain thinking', which is increasingly conformed to machine or computer thinking. 

Entropic describes how you are (almost certainly) thinking now; and how nearly everybody (or everybody) around you is thinking - it is how everybody in societal authority and institutional leadership are thinking. It is the processing embodied in public discourse, bureaucracy, computers, management, media, laws, regulations, procedures...  

This entropic thinking assumes the world is made of dead things, and these dead things are subject to life-less processes, energies and forces. Built-into this is the assumption that entropy rules the world - rules reality - entropy in one place can only be reversed or delayed by increasing entropy elsewhere - thus 'creation' is actually the predatory consumption of one source of order by another - and (because entropy is relentless) this predation (or parasitism) must continue until all order is consumed and formless chaos remains.

Thus, entropic thinking is the world view of the self-damned, the demonic; those who believe in Satan's conceptualization of reality: the sin-motivated war of each against all (only expediently delayed by transient mutually-exploitative demonic alliances directed against God and creation).

Heart thinking is in complete contrast and opposition to the entropic in its nature, origin and motivation. 

Heart thinking is based in love and life; it assumes a living universe of beings - and God's creation gets its origin, form, order and coherence from love. 

Thus, love and creation are polarities of the same essence - loving-creation and creative-love.  

This love - which made creation, and holds-together creation - and which is self-sustaining - is between beings. Beings are living and conscious entities - all beings are alive and conscious, but there are different degrees of aliveness and forms of consciousness.  

Heart thinking is of those beings who have first become modern and alienated; who have first assimilated into entropic thinking - where the reality of God is not entailed. Those who from that position of detached freedom have consciously chosen to recognize, embrace and align-with the reality of God and of a 'universe' consisting of beings living in a divine creation. 

Those who choose heart thinking will find that they need to recognize the greater authority, depth and truth of a thinking based in love, and operating with love - in order to reject the otherwise overwhelming powers and persuasion of entropic thinking. 

It is the terrible choice of modern Man to choose - and his choice lies between the divine work of co-creating the world, or else the demonic project of destroying creation. 

Those who think entropically will do entropy. 

By the way they conceptualize the world, they project deadness onto the living world, they project abstract forces and energies onto a creation that is actually sustained by love; and by these projections these remake their world in the image they have chosen. 

Despite the opposition (implicit and explicit) of The World; heart thinking will need to be accorded primacy again and again, as it conflicts in method and motivation with the dominant, prevalent this-worldly entropic thinking - which asserts its monopoly of objectivity and that heart thinking is childish, foolish or insane.

Entropic thinking labels heart thinking as wishful thinking; yet the truth is both heart and entropic are wishful - and the wishes become reality.  

The entropic thinker wishes entropy onto divine creation - converting that which is alive and conscious through love into a meaningless, purposeless dead universe. 

It is entropic thinking that is destroying our civilization, our humanity - and beyond that it destroys the possibility of eternal resurrected life in Heaven. Because the entropic thinker (and he is apparently most people in the world, including most self-identified Christians) is co-engaged in the progressive killing of beings, the elimination of love, the reduction of life and consciousness into 'people' who self-identify as Dead Things. 

The heart thinker instead works from the love in his heart, from actual interpersonal and inter-being love (not abstract love); he recognizes and affirms that love, and makes it the motivation for knowing reality. He regards reality as that which known by this loving thinking. 

The heart thinker regards the world from his heart - it is his love of particular beings which connects him with reality; it is his love that motivates the connection-with and knowledge-of reality. 

That which is outwith his love is not truly known - but merely hypothesized, modelled from simplified and incomplete variables, and therefore certainly false. 

Thus the primacy of the two great commandments: love of God and neighbour. In heart thinking; modern Man chooses to participate in co-creating his own reality (and potentially the reality of other heart thinkers) by rooting his knowledge in love of God. And the scope of this knowledge is defined by the scope of those other beings ('neighbours') whom he also loves. And if he wishes this active joining-with loving creation to be an eternal state - this is attained by loving and following Jesus Christ to resurrected life in Heaven. 

Note: The above analysis is indebted to a section of a lecture on Crop Circles from Stanley Messenger to the Wessex Research Group, delivered in the middle 1990s. Stanley Messenger was an expert on Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy, having been a Waldorf teacher. He was also involved in, and approving of (in what I regard as an uncritical and credulous way) pretty much all of the New Age crazes of his era; and was also a proponent of the sexual revolution. He was highly intelligent and knowledgeable, and a gifted improvisatory lecturer (having been a professional actor). My eveluation is that Stanley Messenger was (much like his Master, Steiner) someone who sporadically generated some superb and vitally-important insights, which are scattered among a great deal else that I must set aside as mistaken and wrongly-motivated. Anyway; my above post was inspired by re-listening to a genuinely-intuitive, superbly truth-full section of the linked lecture which runs from about 23 minutes to 42 minutes. This section strikes me as more vivid, comprehensible, exciting and motivating than anything Steiner ever expressed (that I have come across) - while being deeply and explicitly indebted to Steiner. 

Surprising beauty: Hildegard von Blingin's Bardcore cover-version of Creep, by Radiohead

Music is a surprising art form... 

Here we have a song with an extraordinary provenance that - somehow - works superbly. I find it very beautiful, tender, sweet; indeed listening often moves me to tears from a mixture of nostalgia, emotional resonance and sheer aptness. 

Yet who would have guess it could do such a thing! The song Creep was the one-hit of a one-hit wonder pop group called Radiohead; and this parodic cover-version was done by an anonymous Canadian young woman with a joke-name (albeit possessed of a voice of crystalline clarity, lovely tone, and perfect intonation), from her bedroom at home with the help of her brother - using sampled sounds of 'medieval' instruments. 

('Bardcore' is the name of this recent genre: intentionally amusing pseudo-medieval arrangements of modern pop and rock classics.)

The song itself was, apparently by chance - since it was never replicated by the band - built on a repeating sequence of four chords Cmaj, Emaj, Fmaj, Fmin - which has for me an extraordinary wistful, suggestive, yearning quality. 

This was a common early-baroque means of composition - termed a chaconne and found in the lies of Buxtehude, Purcell, Bach; but uncommon in pop music!

In the original Radiohead version, the song is rather messed-up and obscured by its arrangement - or, at least, it fails to reveal the extraordinary, burning intensity which Hildegard v B extracts from it.  

The lyrics (with their archaic modifications by HvB) are exactly expressive of the real experience of being helplessly, hopelessly, love-struck; for an idealistic and romantically-inclined young man (such as I once was - and, apparently, still am; apart from the 'hopeless' bit). 

Anyway, from these rather unlikely ingredients we get a perfect lyrical gem. Everything comes together; everything works. Who would have thought it possible! 

The advantages of Pluralist Christianity

I used to write a fair bit about pluralism; but have not done so recently. I continue to regard it as absolutely vital to my Christian thinking. 

Yet nearly all Christians, who expressed a preference, seem to have regarded themselves as monists: that is, they assume that originally there is just 'one thing' and that is God - and every-thing that exists comes from God, and everything is, therefore, ultimately part-of-God.

This assumption creates terrible - I would say insoluble - problems of contradiction for Christians particularly; because it is vital for Christians to be able to explain evil and free will, but monism leaves no 'space' for these. 

The Problem of Evil is simple and obvious. If God is everything and made everything, then he must have made evil things too; yet the Christian God is known to be wholly Good. 

But where does the evil in this world come-from if God is wholly Good? 

If everything is God, and God is Good - there cannot be any real evil. 

Most monist Christians usually end-up asserting exactly this - that there is no real evil; that evil is just a temporary or illusory appearance of Good; and everything that is, or that happens, is ultimately Good. 

However, while such a view is coherent for a Hindu or Buddhist, it is not compatible with being a Christian - where evil needs to be real. 

Thus the problem of trying to be monist and Christian is the problem of trying to explain What Real Evil Is, without violating the assumption that God made/is every-thing.

In a nutshell - if you really want to be explain why evil is real - you need to be a pluralist. 

The Free Will (human agency) problem is similar in form, but the problem comes from the fact that Christianity (but not all other religions) is based on love of God (and Jesus Christ); and that love must be freely chosen (or else it is not love). 

Indeed each Christian must be able to choose to become a Christian; to follow Jesus by a genuine act of agency. 

To put it the other way around; it is not possible (is not coherent) to be able to compel somebody to really-be a real-Christian. 

So free will is essential to Christianity; which means we need to be able to explain where free will comes-from... Yet the monist has assumed that everything comes from God, and is God: everything.

Where could free will come-from if everything comes from God? 

How can a total system create something like free will that is supposed to be independent of its creator? 

There is no basis for free will in monism, because it is already assumed that every possible 'basis' has been made by God.  

If God is everything; where is free will (to choose or reject God, to love God or not?) supposed to come-from?   

Thoughtful monist Christians usually acknowledge that their metaphysical assumptions cannot explain free will; but state some version of the assertion that 'free will of Men was created by God by some mystical divine act beyond human comprehension'. 

But this inability to explain free will in a monist reality is a problem, given that agency is so vital for Christians. (Not for Muslims perhaps - but for Christians, yes.)

And because monists cannot explain free will, there is a tendency to downplay free will, to ignore it; not to talk about it. Or simply to get confused about it.

At an rate, it is a chromic weakness, and indeed something of an embarrassment, that mainstream Christians are unable to give a clear and coherent explanation of free will in relation to God the creator.  

The above are only two of the intractable problems that Christians encounter in being a monist; yet nearly all Christians are monists. 

Intellectual Christians are, indeed, more serious about their monism than about Christianity - more concerned to maintain their monist assumptions than to be able to explain their faith clearly and simply. If any sacrifices need to be made in squaring Christianity with monism - it is Christianity that makes the sacrifices. 

(In some times and places, Christianity has seemed to forget or suppress free will; and converged with pure monotheism in engaging in compelled conversion and demanding obedience to the uncomprehended will of a God, who is not 'loving' by any human discernment of love - but rather by definition (i.e. love is God, rather than God is love).) 

This has been a problem since very early in the Christian Church, and has remained so. 

The strange thing is that it seems likely that all humans begin as pluralists when explaining the world, and the Bible (including the Gospels) makes the easiest 'common sense' when read from a pluralist perspective. Yet nearly-all the Christian denominations and churches insist on monism as an article of faith - sustaining this ancient and intractable problem and confusion. 

Mormons are the major exception - since Joseph Smith 'discovered' pluralism as a principle of Christian theology; and it was in Mormon theology, as well as the philosophy of William James, that I discovered explicit pluralism and realized it worked much better than monism in explaining those things that most need to be explained for a Christian. 

Or, to put matters more accurately; the problem is monism more obviously than the solution is pluralism!

Monism is an alien philosophy wrongly-applied to Christianity; and, unsurprisingly, therefore it creates all sorts of insoluble difficulties. 

However, monism will not be abandoned until there is an alternative; and almost nobody knows that there is indeed an alternative. That is the role of explicit pluralism. 

Yet of those who know this alternative, extremely few bother to make the intellectual effort to understand things differently, to think them through; despite that it is so easy to do so - literally child's play!

An Englishman's discernment is his castle

That, at least, is what should be his castle.

It always was a vain boast to say an Englishman's home is his castle - but it was so to a much greater extent in the past than it has been over recent decades - and especially in the past year. 

What this unpacks to mean is that the free Englishman can do what he wants within his house - implicitly, so long as this is not illegal or immoral. Maybe this remains true in a legalistic sense; but now everything/anything is potentially illegal and the morality is inverted so that what was immoral is currently valorized while many virtues are redefined as wicked. 

Consequently, we are all - to a considerable and increasing extent - slaves; in that we do not 'own' our-selves. Like serfs we are not permitted to travel. Like slaves we must do as our Masters say; and must not even speak anything against our Masters - on pain of punishments that escalate by the month.

Yet what we can and must do is retain our discernment; that is, our independent evaluation of what is good and evil, right and wrong. 

Our thoughts Just Are Free, and (for a Christian), ultimately (i.e. over the long-term of eternity), our thoughts matter more than our actions: how we choose to judge, what we choose to think, is of greater consequences than what we are compelled to do physically. 

This is a heavy responsibility and a difficult challenge; since we tend to align our discernment and thinking with our actions; in order to 'justify' what we have-done. 

This has to stop! For the sake of our immortal souls. 

We need to stop justifying what we do, and be ready to discern and repent the many wrong actions we will, inevitably, make.  

The Good News is that this will suffice, it is enough for salvation, and resurrection into Heavenly Life Eternal - and that should be sufficient inducement. 

In many ways we (here and now) have it easy! We are not expected to attain the heroic activities of the great saints; 'merely' to see though to the reality, and acknowledge its true validity. 

But it turns-out to be difficult even to do this, for most people. Yet that is what they absolutely need to do: it is the Task of These Times. 

It is why we are here. 

CS Lewis's conversion is not a valid model for modern Man - indeed almost the opposite

For reasons I described earlier; the most famous Christian conversion of the twentieth century - i.e. that of CS Lewis - is not valid for modern Man. 

Modern Man must choose to become a Christian - and that choice typically comes from a context of disbelief not only in God, but the objectivity of Good, the existence of spirit and the soul; and indeed disbelief in any purpose or meaning in the universe. 

Contrast this mainstream, normal modern nihilism with Lewis's well-known account of how he came to believe in God (the belief in the necessity of Jesus came later). From Surprised by Joy: 

You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words compelle intrare, compel them to come in, have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.

I fully accept the truth of Lewis's account - I am sure that is how it was for him. But Lewis was born in 1898 in a socially-enforced, strictly Christian-church part of Ireland; where people then and later would suffer, risk and die for their church - and for Lewis conversion involved return. 

Furthermore, in Lewis's Godless youth and younger-adulthood, atheists retained (unconsciously) most of the metaphysical assumptions of theism and the ethical assumptions of traditional Christianity. They were a long way from the generations-deep nihilism that is mainstream and normal nowadays. 

Nowadays; I would say that the experience of being hunted-down by a relentless God, out to reclaim his own; a God that must actively be resisted! - must be very rare indeed. 

In such a world as this, the idea that we convert when we can no longer resist God is probably counter-productive. It was for me. 

I read Surprised By Joy in about 1985, when I was exploring Christianity quite actively (Note: I did not actually become a Christian until 2008). I enjoyed the book, but took away the idea that the time to believe in God was when that belief could not be resisted - when one was overwhelmed by God. So I was - to an extent - waiting for that to happen.  

I did not take personal responsibility for my belief - but equated truth with being-overwhelmed; and of course what one is overwhelmed by in modern life is not God but the ideology of secular leftism as it impinges from all-directions. 

So, if our assumption is that belief is dictated by a sense of being hunted-down and compelled by external ideas; this now leads to mainstream, secular, leftist nihilism - not to God*. 

Ironically; all this was fully and deeply understood by CS Lewis's best friend Owen Barfield; whose 'conversion story' is so lacking in drama that it has no real beginning or end. He simply, gradually, chose to believe in God and the necessity of Jesus; and (in middle age) joined the Church of England (without strictly subordinating himself to its rules - e.g. he remained an Anthroposophist and believed in that type of reincarnation). 

Barfield realised (and wrote - in essays and books that CS Lewis read and, apparently, liked!) that modern Man's consciousness experiences the world in an alienated fashion and from-this chooses to believe what it believes. 

But Barfield was Not any kind of relativist or post-modernist: he believed in a real-reality, a really-real God, that Christ was the single most important 'event' in the history of the universe etc. But he also recognized that these 'objective' truths do not force-themselves upon modern Man from outside; but must be recognized by modern Man with a free act of choice and from a state of alienation, from a detached consciousness.

(Modern Man chooses God or Not-God, from a state beyond even that 'solipsism' in which the reality of other people is doubted. Modern Man has reached a nihilism in which even the reality of one's own thinking consciousness is doubted! It is now quite normal and mainstream for Men to (choose to) believe that their own consciousness is an epiphenomenon, an inessential and non-functional artifact of brain electrical activity. People even discuss - with bland unconcern - that they themselves might be no more than software simulations in some kind of Matrix...) 

Barfield also made clear that this situation led to the opposite possibilities of either the first freely-chosen Christianity in history; or else to types of moral and aesthetic inversion and depravity never before seen in history (which is what has actually happened).  

At any rate; my advice to modern people who are interested in the possibility of becoming a Christian would be very different from what Lewis described. 

I would emphasize that anyone who relies on being overwhelmed by the strength of external persuasion or compulsion will almost certainly accept the dominant nihilism and evil; whereas God, truth, beauty and virtue must be chosen, and by a responsible inner act deriving from absolutely free agency. 

In brief; Truth is real but must be chosen; and then we get what we want. 

So we need to be sure that we really (from our true-selves, by full acceptance of responsibility) actually-want, what we suppose-we-want.  

*I am thinking of those evangelists who make the error of assuming that anyone not a Christian must actively be resisting the obvious dictates of reason and the promptings of their deepest and most spontaneous emotions. Yet, such is the depth of skepticism, cynicism, nihilism; that modern people reflexively doubt all their good impulses, all logic and reason, all choices that lead to life eternal, happiness, love, creativity! Increasingly, as of 2021; we see that 'belief' is just for here and now and today; passively adopted for reasons of expediency - especially from fear and despair (fear of being exiled-from and scapegoated-by the 'community' - which is now obviously controlled top-down by the Establishment; and despair of a materialist life without the 'optimism' offered as carrot for obedience to the Establishment).  

Satan knows that modern Man can believe whatever he wants to believe; modern Man uses this capacity to believe only Satan (and then denies he has chosen)

It is a novel feature of the modern consciousness that Men can believe what they want to believe - and disbelieve likewise. In itself this can either be godlike or devilish - according to what Men choose to believe and what they choose to reject. 

We are each responsible for what we each believe, including who or what we believe: each person has this capacity, each uses this capacity. 

Each of us will take the spiritual consequences (as well as the material consequences) of our choices. 

To put the matter differently: adult modern Man does not spontaneously believe in God and the spiritual; because he does not perceive the divine and spiritual realm all around him, as did Men of the past. 

Modern Men are not spontaneously religious, do not passively follow tradition - are not socially conditioned into goodness and sociability. Modern Man is not 'naturally' good...

Modern Man therefore has the ability (and it is an ability) Not to believe in God and the spiritual - and thus for the first time both can and must make the fully free choice to believe-in and to know God, to acknowledge the spiritual, to embrace The Good.

(In a sense, until modernity; very few Men could be fully Christian; since very few Men were fully agent, fully-free to choose God from a position of Not believing God. Now this is the norm. If you are a Christian in The Modern West - you have-chosen this - and most likely you have chosen from a position of unbelief in God and The Good; a position that even denies the reality of meaning, purpose and relationships in the universe. The position of a brief irrelevant consciousness in a dead universe... Choosing to be a Christian from such a position is free-choice indeed!)

All this Satan knows. Satan knows that God must now be chosen - and that if God is not actively chosen, then people will deny God. And in denying the reality of God, people will soon deny the validity of the Good; and Satan will have won that soul - because that soul not be allied with God/ The Good and divine creation - and if not allied with God, they will intrinsically be against God.

Perhaps the biggest of the many Big Lies in modern life - is that choosing to believe in the reality of the Christian God is mere wishful thinking, cowardly - and unworthy of an intelligent, informed adult...

Yet choosing to believe-in the truth of today's mass media propaganda, and to believe-in the virtue of modern governments, agencies, the media and major social institutions and corporations - to believe that the Establishment is honestly working to improve the health and happiness of the masses... 

All such belief is simply Hard-Headed-Realism, 'science', and anyone who doubts the truthfulness and virtue of Authority Consensus is a fool, madman or an evil latent-terrorist... 

Indeed the biggest Satanic lie, the biggest inversion  is that while belief in the objective reality of God is just an arbitrary subjective choice; to believe today's manipulative untruths from Satanic spokesmen is obvious, mandatory common sense/ rational science. 

The answer is within the capacity of Everyman; simply to use our free-gift/unavoidable-curse of choice - of agency - to choose to believe in the reality of of God/ The Good and divine creation. 

We can - we already-have and we will - choose and keep-choosing either God or Satan, either Good or evil, either to live in divine creation or a meaningless and purposeless universe; we will choose either resurrected life everlasting or death of self and soul. 

To all appearances; nearly everybody has made the choice of Satan; yet denies that it was a choice; and insists it was compelled - and that they cannot choose otherwise. 

This is another lie, and they know it. 

They know - because they continue to reject God every hour of every day - while making excuse after excuse dishonestly to explain why they are not really making this choice. 

The simple truth we all know is that we must choose - therefore we do choose - indeed we already have-chosen. And choices have consequences. 

The Good News (for those who chose Satan) is that we can revisit and revise our choices, at any time. 

But the first step is to recognize honestly to our-selves; that we choose to be for or against God; and that we already have-chosen. 

The Fake Reset: Rhetoric versus reality

There are two problems with The Great Reset - the first is that it is an evil plan, the second is that it is a fake. 

I have reached that conclusion from looking at what is happening in the world over the past year or so, since The Great Reset was brought to general attention. 

I don't doubt that some relatively-low level minions really want The Great Reset, and are working towards it; and are currently profiting richly from their labours. But they are apparently not the people in charge of what actually happens. 

To be clear - The GR is real; but it is a feint, a distraction, a sideshow. The people who are really in charge have apparently put-out and publicized TGR to cover the fact that they are engaged in a process of accelerating civilizational vandalism. 

The Great Reset mind-set wants a totalitarian world of Global omni-surveillance and micro-control. But for this to happen needs power; and power needs resources and a predictable, effective system. 

Instead we have witnessed an open-ended, semi-controlled demolition of the global economy; and of every social institution including those that are necessary for implementing a worldwide totalitarian system. We see just a handful of 'display projects' here and there, to create an impression of crushing totalitarian order; but swamped by the net affect of chaos. 

Not only the economy, but transport and power generation/ distribution are being destroyed; not only the arts and entertainments, but also science and health services are being destroyed; not only Christians and anti-left dissidents but also the police and the military are being destroyed. 

All kinds of disorder and potential chaos are being deliberately seeded and encouraged all over the place - with the approval (positive official statements, positive mass media coverage) of those in power.  

If the Great Reset was going to happen; there would be an exit-strategy from the accelerating chaos; there would be strong countervailing forces in evidence to implement and enforce the surveillance and control; serviced by expert teams of support workers to maintain and improve functionality. 

Instead, every institution and organization is convulsed by self-hatred and self-destruction; staffed by useless and evil objectives; with useless and evil personnel; fuelled by antiracism, diversity, feminism, environmentalism and other disposible and incoherent fads; paralyzed by ineffective (as well as unnecessary) responses to the birdemic. 

We are incrementally making a world where nobody can do anything - including that nobody can implement a Great Reset. 

How much can The System take before its self-correcting, negative-feedback mechanisms are themselves overwhelmed by this cancer of chaos? 

Nobody knows - least of all the demons of chaos who are doing it. 

But it seems nearly-certain that we will all find-out the breaking point; later if not sooner. 

The point is to be spiritually prepared for this; because when once it starts, there will be no hiding place: the conflagration will be global and unstoppable. 

That, indeed, is the intention. 

Is it more accurate to think of The System (as of 2021) as Fake Ahrimanic?

In the early and middle 20th century; there seems to have been a powerful group of leftist intellectuals and power-seekers who were genuinely Ahrimanic - that is, they were idealists about the idea of a world government running a total System which would provide everybody with a decent standard of living, law and order and peace. 

I was very familiar with this ideology via George Bernard Shaw, who was an active leader of the Fabian Society; devoted to this incremental, democratic type of socialism. It was all about organization and control - a descendent of Weber's 'rational bureaucracy'; in which clear, explicit, coherent rules took the place of individual judgment, laissez faire, irrational superstition (such as religions), and tradition. 

Humans themselves were also to be 'improved' by The System; especially by universal education and eugenics; and by the provision of arts, crafts; and a clean, healthy, attractive, managed environment. 

And this, of course, is a genuinely Ahrimanic materialism; in which humans are conceptualized as cogs or units in a System; and the 'good' of the System is pursued by-means-of the people. Humans are means to a systemic end. 

In the end (as with modern Transhumanism) humans were to be eliminated and replaced by something 'better'. 

In terms of Dungeons and Dragons - this had the alignment of Lawful Evil - its goals were evil (by Christian standards: because against God and divine creation); but the methods to attain The System, and the running of The System itself, were intended to be wholly coherent, ordered, lawful... 

Indeed, most scientists and many other intellectuals were attracted to Fabian-type socialism - with rule in the hands of rational managers, experts, scientists, statisticians etc. (people such as themselves) -  precisely because it seemed by far the most rational and coherent socio-political possibility than rule by an hereditary aristocracy, and money-grubbing merchants and manufacturers... 

My point is that - for a while - this kind of managerial society was (although evil in intent) substantially sincere, rigorous and honest movement. There was some genuine (albeit abstract) altruism, and self-sacrifice, among the advocates. 

And the 'world government' (or 'governance') rhetoric of 2020-1 that we associate with the United Nations/ WHO and the Great Reset is very similar to this old Fabianism. 

But the reality is extremely different. The new Systemic ideal is a fake; and disguises its opposite. Lawful evil has actually been replaced by 'Chaotic Evil' - but without dropping its old 'Lawful' forms. 

For a start it is dishonest - from top to bottom; from the Big Strategic Lies to the dozens of dishonesties (selection, distortion, suppression, exaggeration, non sequitur etc.) that are the minute-by-minute staple diet of all modern organizations in their inner (as well as outer) working.

Secondly it does not even try to be rational, coherent and efficient. 

Thirdly, we are still ruled by the same gang of aristocrats and merchants (often their direct genetic descendants) as for the past several hundred years. And the managers, experts, scientists, statisticians - plus the new class of mega-mass media moguls - are merely bought-and-controlled toadies and lickspittles of this ultra-rich, ultra-powerful, ultra-influential elite. 

Consequently; The System (here and now) is irrational, incoherent, inefficient and increasingly ineffective. 

All the major 'reforms' make these System flaws worse.

And those in-charge Know It.  

In sum - we still have a façade of the same Fabian Socialist Ahrimanic System that was standard in the middle 20th century. It is still the rationale for everything. But nobody now really believes it - we are ruled by nihilists and cynics; by selfish, cynical and strategically destructive individuals. 

(Scratch a 'believer' in modern Leftism, and you will find an employee.)

The old leftist ideals are now just disposable, temporary excuses. Socialism/ Communism plus a bunch of more recent excuses manufactured from feminism, antiracism, sexual revolution, environmentalism and now the pseudo-healthism of the birdemic. 

What we actually have Now - is the remnant of an Ahrimanic System, which is being actively and purposively dismantled by Sorathically-motivated individuals (and the demons behind them) for their own pleasure and profit. 

But mass consent for destruction continues to be manufactured on an ad hoc basis, using 'random', rotating, expedient elements of the old Fabian, Ahrimanic rationale - because because, after all, something must be used to justify the destruction. 

It has become obvious that - so corrupt is the mass population, so lacking in discernment, so lacking in courage and goodness - almost any half-boiled, excuse (no matter how ridiculous, how illogical, how sheerly non-sensical) will be accepted by most of the masses (and the bureaucrats and media drones) as a 'reason' for pursuing system-destruction. 

And this farrago of drivel can later be discarded and something else - almost anything - put in its place. Or it can, at any time, be revived to justify more of the same. Or not... 

Anything goes, in practice. Most people will believe, forget, ignore, or remember anything - to order; so long as a thin top-dressing of Ahrimanic leftism is first applied...

The world, national and major institutional leadership are by-now almost purely selfish and short-termist; are - in truth - almost-wholly-sinfully motivated by pride, resentment, fear, lust and/or despair; but they cynically mask this with the façade of fake Leftism gleaned from communists, socialists, and other radicals of the 20th century. 

The Global Establishment and their servants are (before our very eyes, on a daily basis) purposively dismantling The System for their own profit, pleasure - or mere survival, for a while longer - while tossing-out bits-and-pieces of jumbled, garbled, nonsensical leftism to the masses, under the weary pretense of 'building a better world'. 

The alliance of evil is itself a mere expedient; holding-together loosely for the temporary purpose of looting and sacking the Global System. 

There is constant infighting among them, of course; and this will increase, in a race to the bottom. 

Meanwhile the masses look-on with blank expressions of unthinking stupidity; while their rulers are smashing and stealing The System upon which the lives of seven billion people depend under the tired guise of 'saving the planet', or 'promoting justice and equity', or whatever...

And squabbling over the spoils, under the guise of 'fair redistribution'...

Until the whole thing inevitably comes crashing-down. 

(When exactly? Who knows. But once it starts; it will surely accelerate rapidly and uncontrollably; as failure of the crippled System here causes failures there and there; and so on and so forth.)

Online church is not church

It would seem like an obvious insight to recognize that watching a church service on a screen (whether in real time, or delayed) just is not attending or participating in church. 

For catholics there can be no 'real presence' when there is no real bread or wine; for protestants there is no gathering when people are not gathered. 

A church that is virtual is not a church. When there is no church, the church has ceased. When there is no assurance that it will resume; the church has ended. 

This is - more-or-less, substantially - the situation, all over the world. The Christian churches (along with nearly all other churches) have stopped. 

Of course, the bureaucratic structures remain, the personnel are still there, the buildings are still there; but the churches ended last year. 

The birdemic has almost wiped-out church-Christianity - and replaced it with either nothing; or movies of services and social media chat-rooms. 

Will churches return? Maybe, but when there is no acknowledgement that they substantially have-ended; when the leaders and members seem only mildly concerned at the situation; there seems not much likelihood that the organizations will resume activity as churches. 

Christians live in a post-church world. Here. Now... 

Any Christian who regards his church as essential to salvation is not going to be able to remain a Christian; or else he will need to rebuild his church from the ruins (and with mostly new personnel).    

Yet even such a simple, obvious and (surely?) undeniable fact, seems beyond the capacity for insight and thought of modern people. 

How does Heaven after death transform this mortal life?

It might be said that life after death has nothing to do with life before death - that even if Heaven was real, that fact does not make any positive difference to my-life, here, now. 

And there is validity to this statement; in the sense that mere, generic survival beyond death does not necessarily make a positive difference to mortal life. 

Many/ most concepts of life after death do Not help with life-before-death. 

It is the Christian Heaven specifically that enhances this mortal life.

This mortal life - taken in isolation - is invalidated by its temporary nature; such that every-thing, all that is beautiful, virtuous, true - will be lost, will be destroyed, sooner or later; indeed is always being-destroyed all-the-time. 

In this mortal life, life is shot-through with death. Anything good is evanescent. The newborn baby harbours cancer cells; a youth in bloom carries the marks of degenerative change. All mortal achievement is swept away in time; memory is defective - and all memory is lost. 

So; for this mortal life to have meaning and purpose entails that the afterlife be a place of 'permanence', where good lasts and is eternal, where we last and are eternal.

However; if life after death was merely a continuation of this mortal life; then that would leave all the problems of this mortal life unchanged. 

After all; many people now and through history have found this mortal life to be a vale of tears, it is not uncommon for Men to wish for death. If post-mortal life is just 'more of the same' - then that does not change the nature of mortal life. 

Therefore, merely adding to the duration of mortal life, forever, does not help in living here and now. Indeed, to live with such an expectation - forever - might well be seen as a curse. 

On the other side; if life after death is seen as utterly, qualitatively different from this mortal life and if I my-self am utterly transformed after-death - or lost; then the afterlife has nothing to do with mortal life. 

Some visions of life-after-life have exactly this quality - e.g. we will be spirits instead of having bodies; we will lose all our sense of self/ ego/ I; there will be no passions or yearnings; there will be no Time...

Therefore - if afterlife is completely distinct from thislife, then it cannot help thislife. 

Indeed, if afterlife is utterly different and utterly better - then this life is rendered purposeless and meaningless - why bother with it?  

A qualitatively-different and -superior afterlife abolishes the value of mortal life. 

For life after mortal life to transform-for-the-better mortal life, entails that it be both an eternal prolongation of our mortal lives (or else 'we' will not be there to experience it) and 'yet' also qualitatively different-from our mortal lives (or else it will not be worth having). 

For the afterlife to enhance thislife apparently requires that it be simultaneously the-same-as and different-from mortal life!  

This is exactly what Jesus Christ offered Man. If you read the Fourth Gospel with this 'requirement' in mind; you can see that throughout Jesus is saying exactly this: that the life everlasting is one in which we our-selves are transformed, while still remaining our-selves; and it is one in which all good things are eternal. 

The resurrected Man is still the same Man - Jesus after resurrection was still Jesus - yet he is everlasting. 

But Heaven is qualitatively better than earth; as Jesus describes in many parables and stories about water, food, meat, wine, sight etc... when he makes clear that the Heavenly 'versions' of such entities are qualitatively better than on earth - enhanced and everlasting, yet in essence the same kind-of-thing. 

In Heaven we are fully children of God; and, like Jesus, can participate in creation. 

(Almost every miracle and parable of the Fourth Gospel is about this theme. I have found the best modern way to conceptualize this is the analogy - which is more than just an analogy - of development by continuous transformation. A child becomes an adolescent becomes an adult - both the same identity and qualitatively different; yet the transformation is achieved by continuous, incremental and quantitative changes. This is no paradox, but a simple matter of basic experience. By resurrection we are transformed from our mortal state in the same, developmental way.)

In sum; as I know from experience, the typical atheist response to Jesus's offer of life beyond death is that it 'solves nothing' - but merely kicks the ball further down the road; or else it entails abolishing me and putting somebody (some-thing) else in my place - some entity that is not me. 

(It is no solution to my life for me to be abolished and replaced! Transhumanists please note...!)

But either way; how can this help me, here, now? 

The atheist is correct that afterlife per se does not solve the intrinsic problems of this life; but needs to recognize that the afterlife offered by Jesus Christ is not 'mere' afterlife - but a very specific, indeed unique, afterlife. 

And the afterlife offered by Jesus Does does solve the problems of mortal life, does enhance the meaning and purpose of mortal life; is positively transformative here-and-now. 

Only after this is understood (and understanding the Christian afterlife is clearly very difficult for most people) can someone proceed to try and discover whether it is true; to ask whether it is a real possibility for 'me'.

If you liked The Hobbit, and want to read something similar; why not try The Minnipins (1959)

I provide a short, spoiler-free review at The Notion Club Papers blog. 

Christian evangelism 2021: The single most important thing is to Want Heaven as the outcome after biological death

It may well be that really to want Heaven, to prefer Heaven (as it actually is) to any other possible outcome of biological death; may be sufficient for salvation - at least in these end times. 

Certainly, it seems to be very rare for people to want resurrection, to want to dwell eternally in a situation with God the creator, Jesus Christ, and others who have made this choice; to live as sons and daughters of God and to join in the creation of creation. 

So many people seem actively to desire extinction at death (not to have eternal life); or to live on a spirits (not be resurrected), or to cease to exist as separate selves (not to become sons and daughters of God); or if resurrected to live in a paradise of rest and peace, or passively enjoyment of sensuous pleasure...

If any of these (or other alternatives) are wanted instead of Heaven - I cannot see any possibility that such a person would follow Jesus to attain what Jesus offers. 

Jesus would not be offering any-thing such a person wanted. Conversion would have no point, offer no benefit - and would not happen. 

But if someone wants to live eternally by being resurrected in Heaven - if that is his post-mortal desire; then it may not matter very much whether - in this earthly life - he believes that Heaven is possible, and real. 

It may not matter much even if he thinks Heaven is nothing more than wishful-thinking... 

The facts, the realities, will be discovered after death. Then he will know what is possible. 

And once the hope of Heaven becomes both a reality and a possibility - presumably such a soul would gratefully accept the great gift; and would choose to follow Jesus. 

Therefore; perhaps the most valuable discussion a Christian evangelist could have with a convinced materialist-atheist would be concerned with what he would most like to happen after death; and an exploration of the various possibilities 'offered' by atheism and various religions. Leaving aside which is true and real - a simple discussion of what is most desired. 

Someone who has their own greatest wish clear in mind may find that this is exactly what Jesus offers; and may then take further steps. 

But without prompting, few will make the effort even to think about post-mortal life; and will be too paralyzed by the dishonest assumptions of pseudo-realism of mainstream materialism, even to think-through what has been said on the subject - through history and around the world. 

In sum; explicit fantasy and imagination concerning life beyond biological death may be the greatest ally in moving someone towards ultimate salvation; with the world as it is now.    

Was it a mistake that the ancient church (compilers of The Bible) decided to subordinate the Fourth Gospel?

I remember the first time I read a summary of the four gospels, back when I was a decade-long and active atheist in my mid-teens. The account was in the preface to the play Androcles and the Lion by George Bernard Shaw (who was also an atheist - albeit writing a play about early Christian martyrs).

I distinctly recall being astonished that this Gospel claimed to be written by one of Jesus's disciples, indeed the disciple who claimed that Jesus most loved him and to whom Jesus gave over the care of his mother. And that none of the other Gospels even claimed to be eye-witness accounts. 

I was surprised to find that there was an actual, contemporary, eye-witness account of Jesus, yet it was not (apparently) regarded any differently from the various other Gospels and Books of the New Testament...

Except, implicitly, it was down-graded and put on the average level; or even lower, because the Fourth Gospel was different from the other three, and was therefore repeatedly 'out-voted' and further down-graded when it disagreed. 

It was only a few years ago, and some time after I became a Christian, that I reached the conclusion that the whole history of Christianity had been shaped by this decision about how to regard the Fourth Gospel. 

A Christianity derived primarily from the Fourth Gospel has many and large differences from one derived from the traditional Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Protestant and other denominations. These all accept the (undisclosed, unexamined) assumptions that all The Bible (or New Testament) should be regarded as equally authoritative and valid (or that in practice the Synoptic Gospels, or particular Pauline Epistles be given primacy to structure the other Books). 

Therefore, in practice, the Fourth Gospel has been implicitly regarded as 'nothing special'; Not the primary and best source. 

The question here is whether this subordination of the Fourth Gospel was an error or deliberate; and if it was deliberate - to what extent this was 1. Necessary, and/or 2. A Good Thing?

Without getting into historical detail (about which extremely little is known, anyway - and assuming the validity of secular history when applied to scripture is itself another kind of error!) I think it unlikely that the subordination of the Fourth Gospel was an error. I think it was deliberate. 

If it occurred to my 14 year old atheist self that surely the Fourth ought to be seen as the most important documentary evidence about Jesus; then I think it would have occurred to the people of the early Christian church who selected and compiled The Bible. 

Not least, by placing this first-written Gospel in fourth place; it must have been intended from the start that the Synoptic Gospels should structure our understanding of Jesus's nature, life and mission. 

There are several major consequences. Probably the most significant is that it is Matthew and Luke, with Paul, who provide the assumption that Christianity is primarily about a church: an institution; whereas this is contradicted when the Fourth Gospel is regarded as primary. Naturally, the church would notice this, and endorse the sources which validated itself. 

A second consequence is the expectation of the second coming of Jesus. This is described in Matthew and Luke (and no whisper of it in Mark or 'John' chapters 1-20, i.e. the original Gospel and the earliest Synoptic); and was apparently of extreme importance to the early church... To the extent that they were prepared to ride-out the apparent anomaly that it had not happened within the (normal, natural) lifespan of the disciples. 

A third consequence is the idea of Jesus as a divine being from his birth, and that his birth and early life - as well as death and resurrection - were in fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies. The Fourth Gospel specifically says Jesus was born in Nazareth not Bethlehem, and strongly assumes that he was a 'normal Man' until the baptism by John; whereas Matthew and Luke regard Jesus as a miraculous child, from before conception; whose life ticked-off prophecies all the way through.

My impression is that in order for there to be a Christian Church as an institution, and for that institution to achieve converts from Jews and Pagans and develop a coherent way of life, it was necessary to subordinate the Fourth Gospel. 

Was this a good or bad thing? My impression is that it was necessary, and 'therefore' Good; because at stage of the development of human consciousness (which Steiner terms the Intellectual Soul - a phase partway between Original Participation and the current stage of the Consciousness Soul), a church was the only form a religion could take. 

The choice those many hundreds of years ago was between Christianity as a church, or not at all. And given that Christianity needed to be a church in order to survive and thrive, that church must be 'about' something; and that 'something' could only be developed by subordinating the Fourth Gospel. 

But now, human consciousness has a very different form in the history and destiny of our development. We are in the Consciousness Soul, and need to be aiming at Final Participation. 

This explains why institutional churches have weakened and weakened, got further and further from being spiritually Christian; and the past year has seen the greatest, fastest and most profound collapse of the church-based Christian religion since it began. 

And this is exactly why the Fourth Gospel has, after nearly 2000 years, come to an acknowledgment of that primacy it always had. Now that churches are either gone or too weak to hold the Christian faith; the individual Christian has become 'Christianity'. 

The elements of the Synoptics and Epistles that necessarily dominated church-rooted Christianity have fallen-away; but can, and should, be replaced by a Christianity that takes its lead from the Fourth Gospel: a Romantic Christianity - which was, indeed, in its essence; the original Christianity as taught by the actual Jesus.

 

From open-world semi-totalitarianism; to closed-world full-totalitarianism. (From addiction to hedonism; to fear and despair)

The strategy - which in of itself reveals the System's freshly-minted totalitarian nature - is somewhat new. Before the 2020 global coup, the System - which was then probably only pseudo-totalitarian or semi-totalitarian - relied on the existence of a great degree of physical freedom to encourage spiritual enslavement and soul damnation. 

Rather than lock people down and terrorize them with fear, the semi-totalitarian System inspired people to run amok in the world and freely indulge in officially-sanctioned sins, mostly via hedonism, lust, greed, and pride.

As is the case with the System's current closed world strategy, the open world strategy sought to instill a denial of the reality of God and replace it with the misguided belief in the sole reality of the System.

The open world strategy sought damnation through misguided pleasure and hope; the closed world strategy seeks to ensure damnation through misery and despair. Both strategies encourage people to become overly preoccupied with their physical, temporal selves; both strategies promote inflated egocentricity and the belief that the purpose of life begins and ends in the physical world of the System and its necessity.

In essence, both strategies work to degrade consciousness by locking people in the objectified world, thereby diminishing people's ability to effectively relate to God and to what is god-like in themselves.

The only way to avoid the slavery consciousness the System foments - regardless of how it is fomented - is to understand that we are not wholly determined by forces external to ourselves - that what is most meaningful and beautiful about us is, in fact, determined by internal forces.

​These forces lie in the recognition of ourselves as primarily spiritual beings. This recognition also affirms the reality of God.

From Francis Berger - read the whole thing. 

Francis Berger is currently doing a great job of putting into words, and thereby clarifying, the nature of what has happened over the past year. 

When I try to put myself into God's place, and understand the broad reason for the nature of changes (and it can only be a broad reason - not one that encompasses the truth of divine purpose as it actually applies to billions of individuals considered - as God considers them - as individuals); I can see that one spiritual purpose the 2020 changes fulfil is precisely to encourage Men to make the distinction between world and spirit that FB describes. 

This is a tough lesson genuinely to learn, in our hearts - even among those of us who believe it theoretically. 

In the past, there were times and places when society was overall-Good, overall God-aligned; and in those situations it was probably easier for Men to suppose that by going-along-with the prevalent and officially-encouraged behaviours, they were also choosing God. 

In fact, they were perhaps merely being socially-conformist and advantage-seeking. 

 

Now that possibility is being closed-off by the closed-world strategy. The contrast between social conformity and God is stark, separated and clear. We cannot (without gross, conscious and self-damning self-deception!) pursue security, wealth, status, wealth and other worldly-Goods under the guise of Godliness - because security, wealth, status, wealth and other worldly-Goods only lead us ever-deeper into the closed-system of purposive evil. 

To be spiritually-free to choose God and to follow Jesus Christ to resurrected life eternal we first need to be free-from The System and its values. And if we are not able to see-through the System lies - we will have accepted the values of Satan, and will cease to want salvation. 

It is by making our options of damnation and salvation so distinct and separate, that God is helping us to learn what most people most need to learn. 

The above, as I said, is only a very broad and approximate statement to account for the broad and approximate change-in-state of the world; when is most-needed is for each of us as individuals to understand our exact situation, and the divine lessons that we personally most-need to apprehend. 

And that is what this day is bringing to you, and me.