The failed mission of Colin Wilson: why Non-Christian romanticism failed to persuade people to adopt more optimistic and positive metaphysical assumptions

From 1956 onwards; Colin Wilson identified the prevailing pessimism of the Western intellectual class - writers, visual artists, philosophers etc - and concluded it was rooted in negative basic assumptions concerning the nature of reality. 

Wilson went on to argue - I think convincingly - that if more positive and optimistic assumptions were instead adopted, then human life would be more enjoyable and worthwhile. Some other more or less influential writers said much the same - such as Abraham Maslow. 

This is a pragmatic argument - in the sense that it is not based upon the truth about the world (neither Wilson nor Maslow believed in the reality of God) but based on the assertion that life will be better if you believe so. The same type of argument was used by William James around 1900, Robert M Pirsig in 1974, or Richard Rorty.

But this did not happen. Pessimism prevailed. Mainstream basic metaphysical assumptions asserted (inter alia) that the universe, life and consciousness all happened by accident - and were not headed in any particular direction; the spiritual realm is a fiction, there is no soul, and death is annihilation.  

In the context of the already-existing Western culture; pragmatic arguments made no significant difference because believing and acting upon them they carried a penalty. First condescension and disdain - i.e. low status). Then material disadvantage; because professional success was optimized by conforming to the prevailing ideology, artistic and philosophical success to extending the successful trends. 

In a twentieth century context, when confronted with tough decisions - when long term possible benefit was blocked by immediate term disadvantage - pragmatic, un-rooted optimism was just too weak.

In other terms we can observe that the demonic powers were getting a grip on Western culture from even as early as the 19th century; and increasingly 'rigged' things such that pragmatic optimism was discouraged, yet unthinking, habitual pessimism prevailed. 

Pessimism was simply assumed and adopted spontaneously, while the onus of proof was on optimism. When the justification for optimism was merely pragmatic, then this was regarded as equivalent to admitting it was "made-up because I am too weak to face the bleakness of reality". 

Colin Wilson was cheerful by nature and largely immune to cultural trends, however this applies to few people. Most people will only be optimistic when they believe it is based on truth - on reality. 

Which means that when culture is more and more against us, we can only be optimistic when we believe in the reality of a loving personal God, and that joy and fulfillment are possible (and can be ours) outside of this mortal life and finite planet. 

All Hallows Eve - All Saints Day

I have come to appreciate these 'cross-quarter-days' of the astronomical year (called 'days' - but actually a more generalized period of a few days): i.e. those periods about half-way between the 'quarter-day' equinoxes and the solstices. While they have little astronomical significance, they do divide up the 'lived' year - especially the seasons - much more coherently than the quarter-days. 

Living at such a high latitude (55 degrees north) the light and dark portions of the years are sharply distinguished - and with All Saints Day (Celtic Samhain, supposedly) we are now entering a three month period of the greatest darkness - leading up to 'Candlemass' (or Imbolc). 

This period of the year is, of course, winter; with all the characteristics of that season - including the tendency to Seasonal Affective Disorder! But spiritually (for me) it is a time of contemplation, of solid brooding - often of a greater clarity than at other times. 

As always, at present, there is a sense of trepidation concerning what may come in the physical realm - because They are focused on the Northern hemisphere, and We are more physically vulnerable to what They plan for us during this season - and that will have been taken into account, I don't doubt.

But I am somewhat hopeful about the spiritual war - because I approach the time with a better understanding than last year; and such understanding itself seems to have a positive effect (or, perhaps, be a consequence of positive spiritual tends). 

In particular, I think I better appreciate the relationship between the material and the spiritual realms - and this will be of value.  

Or, perhaps 'trusting' is a better word for it than hopeful. 

The tough truth - doing the right thing will probably make this mortal life harder, sooner

When the demonic powers rule - and not only do not care about the destruction of civilization - but are pleased by it - then the tough truth is that most of the most-effective forms of Christian awakening and principled behaviour will make this mortal life harder - sooner that it otherwise would happen. 

The official and explicit Establishment Plan is that - by 2030 - life for everyone on earth will become an exceptionally immoderate form of slavery; leading on to a giga-death scenario when most of the world's seven-billion-plus population will be eliminated by various means. 

Ultimately, since this is a demonic strategy - the goal is to damn as many people as possible; and this generally takes the form of convincing people to reject Jesus Christ's offer of salvation and/or to embrace one of the various 'deals' offered by Satan.  

That is The Plan; but in the short term They have designed the System of sticks and carrots such that it is nearly-always likely to be more expedient to comply with The Plan than it is to resist it in any way. 

For instance; if any individual, group or institution stands against the global leftist programme - especially the Litmus Test issues of birdemic-peck, antiracism, climate change and sexual revolution - then they will be made to suffer. And if significant numbers of people stand against what The System wants; then The System will ensure that things-in-general will get worse - over the short term.  

What this amounts to is that we can - for a while - delay suffering and death by conformity; and dissent will bring a swift punishment. There is also the possibility of having suffering delayed by active and enthusiastic service to evil. 

But - whether we resist or comply, and whether we are slave-masters or slaves - in the end we will all be immiserated, punished and damned. 

This is why belief in Heaven and following Jesus are so important - because if we believe-in and want only to optimize this mortal life, it is very difficult (and perhaps irrational) Not to comply with evil.

To dissent, resist, and adhere to Good in the coming days, weeks, months and (few) years - we need to look beyond our mortal state - look forward to something better. 

  

Earth is a school: William Wildblood's latest book is now published

Details can be found at his blog. 

There is a video interview with William discussing the new book:

I read the book before publication and provided a "blurb": 

After the stunning events of 2020, Western Christians face their toughest ever challenge. How can the lone individual survive spiritually, when confronted by a worldwide materialistic bureaucracy determined to impose a system of inverted values? William Wildblood has confronted this question head-on; and written a book of urgent, and potentially soul-saving, importance. Earth is a School puts our continuing, worsening crisis into the cosmic perspective of God's plans for mortal men on this earth. And by the end, Wildblood leaves the reader both encouraged and energised for the task ahead. 

The fingerprints of strategic demonic leadership are all-over the globalist totalitarian plans

It is an inference that clearly does not occur to most people, or is ruled-out by assumption; but I perceive the fingerprints of overall and ultimate demonic leadership all through the world (and Western) history of the past couple of hundred years. 

Whenever we try to understand the roots of currently evil phenomena, we seem always to find them extending back and back across at least several human generations. 

That is, we find that there have been many decades over which there was a steady pressure - and incremental 'progress' towards the current evil; which implies a continuing motivation towards evil at the highest levels.  

To take a topical example; the current frenzied push to peck the entire world population (old and young; man, woman and child) with lifelong, multiple injections of... something. 

A system of compulsory and frequently-repeated bodily introduction of a conjectural, neither known nor understood, class of substances; the actual contents of which are and will be changed in an open-ended fashion. 

The Plan for this to happen every-where and to every-body regardless of effect - despite whatever effect - in a managed interpretative context where all possible harm is deniable and denied. 

And the process of development, pecking and (non-)follow-up has been exempted from all personal, political and legal responsibility. 

On the one hand, there is an enforced global unanimity of official 'fact's that this literally-incredible business is necessary and beneficial; on the other hand, there has been massive compliance and aggressive enthusiasm from much of the populace. 

(But especially the professional and managerial classes - who seem to perceive their societal role only in terms of how most rapidly and completely to get the Establishment Plan implemented.)  

Knowing such obvious evil as evil ought to require no argument - yet such is the value-system in-place in the world today, that this unprecedented evil is seen as a great and necessary Good (or, just as malignantly, as 'morally-neutral' - as if there was such a thing!). 

Therefore, before the Peck Plan could become even a vague possibility; there has needed to be a comprehensive, thorough and multi-pronged inversion of human values - so that what is true, beautiful and virtuous become substantially the opposite of what they are; in terms both of natural and spontaneous, universal human morality; and also by inversion of the (additional) value elements of traditional Christian morality. 

But such an astonishing situation needed to have been carefully prepared over a long period of time. 

It had to be - because ordinary humans do- (or did-) not change their fundamental convictions overnight - or just because they were told to. 

In the past, many people would work, suffer, fight and die in defense of their values - and would retain core values across many generations. 

But not any more. 

Indeed, when it is considered how the ground was prepared for this 'moment' we confront a degree of relentless purpose that is utterly alien to what we know of human beings - especially to evil humans. 

It surely ought to be obvious (from experience of others, and in ourselves) that evil humans are mostly selfish and short-termist - from a secular perspective, that is what makes them evil. 

However, to execute any long-term plan means eschewing maximizing short-term benefit; and it also means considerable subordination of selfish pleasures and satisfactions to the needs of the plan. Why should someone who primarily wants his own pleasures and Now, be prepared to sacrifice these desires to some 'plan'? 

To get selfish and short-termist humans to cooperate through many decades requires extraordinary levels of self-sacrifice from those who lead the process - most of whom would themselves be required to live and die without much personal gratification on a mortal timescale.

In other words; when we contemplate strategic evil, plans pursued over several or many generations; we must account for the fact of a leadership that is capable of such a thing. And, furthermore, a leadership that is also sufficiently powerful to impose their plan on a mass of humans who are dominantly-motivated by their own short-term gratifications. 

When the plan is global and crosses many generations - there must have been a leadership of immense power, who are themselves immune to the normal constraints of human time - and a leadership for whom, personally, a decade is 'the short-term'. 

We are talking, in other words, of evil spirits, fallen angels, demons - those who are immortal spirits (i.e. without bodies, whose spirits persist forever); and therefore live on a timescale far greater than evil mere-mortal humans.  

The many incredible and astonishing global policies and trends we perceive as of 2021 - the need for steady strategies toward evil ends that span multiple human lifespans - become instantly comprehensible if we assume that the leadership was demonic. 

Once this perspective has been assimilated; clear demonic fingerprints can be seen all-over the plans of the Global Totalitarian Establishment. 

...Which observation tells us all that we need to know in order to respond in a Good, Godly and Christian way. 

When "get woke, go broke" is The Plan: Self-correcting, 'negative feedback' systems don't apply when demons are running the world

We are all finding it difficult to get to grips with this new post-global totalitarian world administered (ultimately) by demonic powers (and their mindless human hosts, servants and slaves); because it operates on the basis of an inverted value system which is not a natural way for us humans to think. 

The difference is that (unlike Men) demonic powers are motivated by the desire to destroy whatever is Good, whatever is God's creation. 

For example, the birdemic-response, including the mandatory peck program, has led to major sectors of the economy, of national functioning, of essential provisions, being in increased danger of being rendered useless or even destroyed. 

This makes the nations weak, impoverished, increasingly chaotic. This is negative feedback, indicating that what is being done is doing harm - and that we need to stop doing it. 

Normally, negative feedback would lead national rulers to stop doing it. But these times are not normal. 

When the global rulership is under demonic control, such negative consequences are regarded as A Good Thing. Since the demonic powers desire to destroy God's creation and every-thing Good - they are delighted by evidence of increasing national weakness, and by the increased sufferings and death of human beings. 

For demons; what we humans regard as Negatives are, in fact, The Plan.  

The 'climate change' agenda likewise. The in-place, anti-Good global strategy against carbon - the chemical of life, and CO2 - the gas of life - makes perfect sense from the (to us humans, inverted) anti-life perspective of demons whose existence is as unembodied spirits. 

The phrase "go woke, go broke" will be true in the long-term. Wokeness (aka. political correctness, convergence) is anti-functional, destructive of its nature. So, even though explicit corporate wokeness is expedient for those managers who implement it - expedient by a short timescale of weeks or months (which is why convergence happens, everywhere); nonetheless accelerating wokeness always and necessarily leads to destruction of institutions.

So, all institutions are going woke, getting dysfunctional, going broke... And any human being who values that 'broken' function (whether the function be science or sports, profit or pleasure, education or entertainment) will regard this collapse of functionality as a disadvantage. However, such outcomes are 'good' from the destructive perspective of the demonic mind.  

The utterly ineffectual pseudo-attempts to control supposedly-rising global temperature (when global temperature cannot be predicted, cannot be controlled - and should not be controlled) have (like the birdemic) created and sustained global totalitarianism, and are destroying the world economy.

This predictably and inevitably leading to starvation, disease, violence and giga-death (i.e the death of billions of humans - a situation not possible until the colossal population growth of the twentieth century and continuing). 

But what seems like, pretty obviously, negative feedback from our human perspective, i.e. the death of billions; is regarded as positive and desirable from the demonic standpoint. The demonic agenda explicitly includes the ideal aim for billions of Men to die - what they don't say is that they intend that these billions should die in a condition of resentment, fear and despair - die denying the spiritual realm including the reality of their souls, cursing God, and rejecting the eternal life offered by Jesus Christ.

(It is because the billions 'need' to die in a state of spiritual sin that the agenda for evil proceeds incrementally, along with massive and sustained attempts to manipulate and invert public values via the mass media and all other communications systems such as education, Human Resources, and the arts.)  

'Positive feedback' is the situation when deviation from the desired situation causes yet further deviation; e.g. when harm leads to more harm, when destruction leads to more destruction, when evil leads to more evil. 

It seems that the demons - having created a single, inter-dependent world System (administered by an hierarchical and cross-linked bureaucracy and mass-social media) - are now stressing that System with more-and-more inefficiency, more inter-system conflict, more sub-system and functional destruction.

They are ignoring (where possible) the negative feedback (often spinning it as benefit!) - and They intend continuing stressing The System until the point where even the possibility of self-correction becomes unachievable. 

The aim seems to be inducing positive feedback in a single System, when increased dysfunction in one domain of that System leads to dysfunction in several other domains - and then the same again; until these accelerating and spreading dysfunction all add-together to make a 'System' that ever more rapidly and irreversibly destroys itself. 

In other words, when "get woke, go broke' is accelerated by a positive feedback system in the short-term; and when consequently organizations are going "broke" all through The System; then going-broke also becomes a positive feedback process - until The System as a whole is irreparably broke-en. 

None of this makes sense from a long-term human perspective - although it can be (is being) dressed-up as expedient in the immediate short term. 

For example, any deviation from total compliance with The System (e.g. refusal of the peck, refusal to comply with antiracist rituals, refusal to celebrate ever more extreme sexual delusion, sterility and perversity) may be punished; and punished by ever more rapidly increasing sanctions. 

Any refusal to engage in destruction is disallowed and may be inexpedient - but compliance with the work of destruction is allowed and may be rewarded.  

Yet it is certain that any and all of these demanded compliances are only a prelude to further (in the pipeline) demands for greater and more extreme compliances - with greater and more extreme sanctions. Thus destruction accelerates. 

Human rulers might eventually be appalled at the emerging dystopia; might eventually 'have mercy' or at least 'see sense'. But when The System is administered by demons they will laugh at the idea of mercy, delight in human torment; and their idea of what makes 'sense' is the opposite of Mankind's.  

The conclusion is that we need to adjust our expectations to the new realities. We need to stop judging demons by human criteria. We need to stop expecting our current rulers to behave as did rulers of the past. 

Because this time, and for the first time, we are all up-against a world ruled by immortal spirits of evil. 

Goodness is merely used as a bait in modern mainstream culture

It is still possible, although not easy, to find Goodness (that is truth, beauty and moral virtue) in the products of modern mainstream culture; but it is ever-more obvious that it is being used merely as a bait - and with obviously evil intent behind it. 

To survey the bulk of the news of the day, advertising, official public relations and propaganda, mass entertainments and (not divisible from these) the supposedly 'high culture' of the arts, literature, sciences, philosophy etc... is to be subjected to a world of increasingly explicit evil. 

Since the successful global totalitarian coup of early 2020; new culture has become homogenous with respect to its message; whether explicit or - blatantly - implied. And this message is in service to the agenda of purposive supernatural evil. 

It has therefore become something of a trial for anyone with spiritual discernment to expose oneself to modern mainstream culture - and I do so only relatively briefly, infrequently, selectively and with 'filters' in place. 

This selectivity is not difficult, since the quality of our culture has become so poor. But it is dismaying to perceive the way that skill and effort are so misplaced in service of value-inversion. I am not talking of real high culture - but stylish production values, clever and well-paced writing, impressive visuals, emotionally powerful music and the like. 

I have noticed that any-thing spontaneously appealing and also widely-available - for example in a news story, advert, magazine, movie, sit com, sports event... is now being very deliberately used as bait on an ideological hook for pushing the Establishment line on the usual Litmus Test issues such as the birdemic-peck, climate emergency, antiracism or the latest and nastiest development of the sexual revolution. 

For example, what was once my favourite leisure activity of watching cricket on TV has become bait for in-your-face ideological propaganda - such that I watch it less, and when I do with the sound turned-off and recorded - so that I can skip the lectures, 'woke' advertisements, and orchestrated and scripted displays of virtue signaling from players and commenters. 

Any limited enjoyableness allowed and on offer in the mainstream media is apparently intended mainly to get us to lower our guards and open our minds to the poison. 

Thus the double whammy suicide of Western culture. On the one hand, the dominant atheist, materialist Satanic West is actively destroying itself in line with the demonic strategy; and on the other hand, the West has become a thing that abundantly needs and deserves to die - from a Christian perspective - as an agent of evil. 

Still, there remain yet some-things to enjoy, appreciate and be learned from our dwindling culture - but only if the doses are taken with due care and attention. It is asking for trouble to let down our guards. 

Man and woman is primary - masculine and feminine are secondary abstractions

We live in an age of compulsive abstraction. Because of our 'materialism', our denial of the spirit - we cannot recognize primary reality which is specific Beings. 

Thus we ignore actual men and women and classify them instead under masculine and feminine attributes. 

At a metaphysical level of understanding (i.e. the primary assumptions concerning reality) - if we choose to define men in terms of the masculine, and women in terms of feminine; then we are implicitly asserting that the abstracts are a more fundamental reality than the actual Beings of men and women. I believe the opposite. 

The major (deliberately induced) cultural trend of recent generations is to privilege 'the feminine' - and to get women to identify with that abstraction; which, like all abstractions, is intrinsically imprecise, manipulate-able and unreal. 

Thus the feminine has been accorded many and contradictory attributes against which actual women are measured. This can be seen with clarity with the trans agenda - when imposed abstractions are so dominant as to erase all Being (as well as all biology). And society is being re-made (and destroyed) on that 'feminist' basis (along with other leftist 'isms'). 

And the backlash (including among traditionalist Christians, and I have mistakenly done this myself in the past) is to restore 'masculinity' as primary; and to measure actual men against this abstract set of properties. For instance actual men are supposed to 'shape-up' and match certain abstract attributes termed masculine. 

But/ and we need to be aware that biology and psychology are also abstractions! So we are not merely trying to replace ideological abstractions with scientific ones. To get to the root of matters, we need to get down to the level of primary metaphysical assumptions - which underlie all types of abstraction. 

So, I assume and believe that Beings are metaphysically primary; and that sex is real - the distinction between man and woman is real and primary. 

What I mean by this is that the soul of a Man is either a man's or a woman's soul. This is a fact that carries-through whatever happens in mortal life - which carries through attributes, biology, psychology and social roles. 

Further, that this fact is rooted in God; and that God is man and woman. Nit in terms of any abstractions of masculine and feminine tendencies or attributes; but that actual God is an actual man and woman: the dyad of Heavenly Father and Mother. 

And here I identify a serious deficit in my own thinking; which is that I do not take account of Heavenly Mother - and the implications for my own life and the world. 

There are numerous discussions of the 'feminine aspect' of Christianity - for example how it was traditionally lacking, of how it has been provided by the Blessed Virgin Mary. This in crucial ways - such that the actual lived Catholic (both Roman and Orthodox) Christian religion of people in significant times and places - its daily practice and motivating vitality - has sometimes (quite often) been driven primarily by Mary; despite what seem like the lack of theological and scriptural grounds for this.

The phenomenon of Mary has often been analyzed in terms of psychology, or even of societal balance - but my contention is that it is an abstract derivation of the primary fact of Heavenly Mother - co-creator of reality.

To give proper status to Heavenly Mother must therefore be rooted in going back to ultimate questions of metaphysics; of the beginning of things, of creation, of  the nature of mortal men and women. Only then can we begin to address secondary matters such as rituals and sacraments, who is prayed-to and how, the aims of meditation and mysticism - and the roles of men and women in the world today. 

I am suggesting that I (and 'we') set-aside our broodings over the abstractions of masculinity and femininity; and perhaps start by the recognition that we are all men or women at the level of our souls - we always were since we were Men and always will be through eternity; whether that eternity be in Heaven, or in some other state or place. 

'Human beings' are thus of two kinds of Being: men and women; and that applies to (originates in) God; and also in angels. Procreation is therefore as an aspect of divine creation - and indeed the prime purpose of divine creation - since creation is for the making of men and women who are (it is divinely intended) rise to become gods. And it was to make this possible that Jesus Christ was. 

It is at this deepest of levels that we (or at least I) need to address this burning and unavoidable societal discourse of 'masculinity' and 'femininity' - and the psychological/ biological definitions of men ad women in this mortal life.   

Life as a mundane epic

It is our fate to be living in epic times; yet where the epic scale of evil is submerged beneath dreary lies and shallow incomprehension. 

We all inhabit an evil global empire that demonstrates its evil on a daily basis; even going so far as to declare its intention to eliminate most of the people of the world. Its morality, aesthetic and idea of truth is inverted from that of common sense and all traditional religion. 

There have never been so many or bigger public lies than in the recent past - and never have these lies been so uniformly endorsed and enforced by those with power, status, influence or fame. 

The evil empire monitors and controls ever more and more of everyday life and (since early 2020) does this on a global scale. 

It has already confined, separated, dehumanized much of the world population for much of the past year and a half - and is keen to do more - and forever. 

On a daily basis its officials and media propagate resentment between the sexes, classes, races and political groups; fear of the birdemic and climate. The obvious aim is that each person be isolated, and terrified into desperate and propitiatory compliance. The apparent choice is 'enthusiastically' to join the world of evil - or else dwell alone, demonized, starved of society and necessities

So, from a Christian perspective, there can be no reasonable doubt of the evil nature and intention of the powers of this world; and that these powers are waging both material and spiritual war upon the mass of people. 

These are Epic Times in which the war of evil against good has never been more extreme. 

The set-up is similar to, but more extreme than, that of any fiction. There is an evil empire that dominates everywhere, and most (nearly-all?) of the masses are either brainwashed servants or terrorized collaborators with the evil agenda. 

For anyone who opposes evil - this could hardly be more epic. Seldom can there have been more scope for genuine heroism. 

Yet, of course. that is not how it seems...

Because the evil is so mundane and the people are so corrupted, that there is a gross and stunning failure to recognize evil as evil.

Or, this failure would be stunning if the failure to recognize evil were not a predictable and rational consequence of the materialistic quasi-utilitarian ideology that prevails everywhere. 

Our experience of historical and fictional epic has led people to expect that an evil empire will focus upon physical aggression; with thugs torturing and violently killing. Clubs, knives, guns, gas and the like. 

It has led people to expect that there are a minority of baddies and a large majority who know the nature and identity of their oppressors, and are secretly desperate to support the 'goody heroes' in their fight for 'freedom'.

But here and now; the evils imposed are mostly staggeringly dull and mundane; because evils are done by subtle sabotage; at arms length, by omission, and by proxies. 

Modern mundane evil is not labelled as such, but expertly disguised, spun and buffed by public relations, advertising and the mass media. 

Modern mundane evil is designed to be deniable - indeed it is embedded in an inverted moral system that is supported by the coordinated activities of international governance, the linked corporate bureaucracies, and the media. 

So modern evil is 'officially' able to claim that it is Good - and that claim will be echoed by all major players in the public domain. 

Thus these epic times, these times of open war between Good and evil powers - whose goodness and evil are ever more clearly distinguished and further apart - are mostly experienced as dull, dreary, boring. The genuine acts of heroism are invisible, forgotten or inverted. 

But our task as Christians is see through the mundane materialistic epic to the exciting spiritual adventure beneath... 

To see-through the dull, grey clouds of lies and deceptions; and reveal the heroic exemplars of Goodness: of virtue, beauty and truth-full-ness. 

But we need to do this for ourselves, and by our-selves - because we will not (as we should) be helped by the run of poets and thinkers, artists and makers - because they have themselves (in their service to evil) become as dull, devious and mundane as the politicians, financiers, bureaucrats and journalists. 

Discerning those who serve or collaborate-with the side of Evil - it is not just what they say, it is what they don't say

It really is very striking how those - including famous/ powerful/ devout, learned 'Christians' - who have (perhaps unwittingly, but I suspect not entirely so) joined with the side of Satan, betray their true allegiances not only by failing one or more of the Litmus Tests; but also with their mode of discourse, their style of English and of argument, the incoherence of their reasoning, the value-inversions of their assumptions. 

Unless these Satan-allied fake-Christians avoid the key subject matter entirely, they betray themselves with every paragraph spoken or written. The polarization between the large majority who sustain the side of evil and that minority who are on the side of God and creation, has become so extreme that it takes very little time to know who is who.  

Even avoidance of hot button subjects is a kind of Litmus Test. That the world experienced a global totalitarian coup in early 2020, and that all the governments and major institutions are now aligned-with the Satanic globalist agenda - thus actively hostile to Christians; is one of the largest and most significant events in the history of the world. 

Knowingly to live-through and -with the consequences of, this gross change for the worst - and not to comment upon it, is inconceivable for most people, in most situations - such avoidance is either a consequence of gross spiritual insensibility, or of covert allegiance to the dominant powers. 

Modern Man cannot be converted to Christianity - but maybe his mind can be opened to the possibility of what he most wants to be true?

'The statistics' seem to be unanimous that it has become ever more difficult to gain Christian converts among Western populations. None of the denominations are succeeding - not even those that were until the past few decades successful and growing - and all are losing more people than they gain, all are shrinking and some rapidly.

[This shrinkage may be disguised by the recruitment of recent immigrants - but this is not the point at issue which is about The West, immigrants do not replace natives in structural terms, and anyway such apparent gains are usually very temporary.] 

This decline in the effects of conversion efforts is confirmed by my social interactions and personal observations since I belatedly became a Christian (one of the exceptions!) some 13 years ago. Nowadays, people cannot or will-not believe in God, Creation or the promises of Jesus Christ.  

What can we do? We can continue flogging a dead horse - like Western missionaries and the evangelically-minded have been doing for the past generation. Using the same arguments and tactics with less and less effect...

Well, since I believe that we finally decide upon salvation only after our biological-death; we could work on that post-mortal decision, rather than on what people can or will do here-and-now? 

Rather than working-on what 'is'; we might instead discuss what someone would ideally want for himself, if it turned-out to be true. 

Something like: "Supposing Resurrection into Heaven turned-out to be true, and you discovered that it was true after you died; then would you want it?"

In other words, the person might be invited to 'rehearse' the decision he will have to make - and to think about what he might ultimately and ideally want for himself and/or those he loves (even if, at present, he regards it as false). 

More generally; he might be invited to imagine what it would be like if some Christian claims we in fact correct - how would he think about it? If there was a personal God who created this universe and loved us each as his child? 

Would such a situation of meaningfulness and purpose and eternal relationships be preferable (or not) to the prevalent idea of all reality - and our-selves - being accidental, pointless; going-nowhere but oblivion; signifying nothing and all our deepest relationships as merely an instinctive blip coming from and disappearing into a void?  

Perhaps by asking what people want, and which possibilities they would prefer to be real, minds may be opened to that ultimate and unavoidable decision for which we are all and each responsible. 

Our decades-deep problems of incoherence

Yesterday I was re-reading Owen Barfield's Saving the Appearances; which was published in 1957, more than 60 years ago. This book is not an easy read (and most readers seem not to have understood it - including most Barfield scholars), but it is tremendously rigorous and incisive to the point of being life-changing. 

Barfield reaches the conclusion - which I cannot fault - that the way of thinking and reasoning, the mainstream philosophy and ideology, of the 'modern world' of the 1950s, is utterly incoherent. In his analysis, I think Barfield goes deeper than almost anyone else I have encountered. 

[I will not engage in the futile attempt to 'summarize' StP - the 'point' of the book is to work-though the argument. But, anyway, the purpose here is simply to accept the main thrust of the book's reasoning and conclusions, and consider the implications.]

This is my first point: that by the 1950s it was already clear to any thoughtful person that mainstream and ruling ideas in the major areas of culture did not make sense. Barfield analyzed this fundamental incoherence better than anyone perhaps; but the insight was pretty general. 

At any rate, I am sure he was correct - and he was correct that the set of ideas that are foundational to the whole functioning of the modern world as it was in the 1950s was so absolutely, fundamentally, self-contradictory that... Well what? 

In 1957 Barfield assumed that such a degree and depth of incoherence could not possibly survive, and that therefore it must change. Barfield, at points, warned what kind of consequences there must be if the world view did Not change; but he clearly assumed that things would change - and that the prevailing philosophy-ideology would move decisively in the direction of recognizing the primary of the spiritual over (and before, in terms of existence in time) the material; the guideingness of 'evolution' of consciousness in the history of reality; the way that reality is necessarily co-created and shaped by the presence and interpreting consciousness... and so forth. 

But it did not happen. Although there have been intermittent recognitions of the unsatisfactory nature of mainstream 'reality', these have taken the form of attempts to return to the instinctive and unconscious; as with the 1960s counter-culture, or the 1980s New Age - both of which have remained culturally-active; in private subjectivity and in mass culture. Or else less influential attempts to return the world to the lesser, but still fundamental, incoherences of 'the past'. 

[Barfield, following Steiner, was guilty of this; insofar as both attempted to fight the incoherences of system with alternative - somewhat less-incoherent - systems; a venture that began with Goethe's attempt to make biology into a differently-systematic science incorporating a systematized version of imagination. Steiner's ideas for agriculture, education, medicine, threefold societies etc, and Barfield's advocacy (in StA) of a new 'system of imagination', are both examples of laying this false trail. Imagination just is Not systematic, and a new world view based on intuitive direct-knowing or heart-thinking cannot be systematized. Cannot means can not.)   

The incoherent world-view of public discourse did Not change; but, necessarily, continued to worsen since it developed from the same incoherent assumptions.

What happened was that instead of becoming coherent; over the past decades more-and-more cultural ways evolved (and were successfully imposed) to make that incoherence not-apparent, or to deny its significance. 

Until we reach The World Now - where incoherence is extreme, global and mandatory - but is almost completely occult; hidden by the universality of bureaucracy, micro-specialization and dishonesty - fueled by mass emotional manipulation via the mass/ social media. 

We now experience a world of astonishingly vast and increasing chaos of incoherence; in which the monolithic nature of global totalitarianism is itself regarded as The Objective Reality (objective because there is nothing else in official public discourse, and only this reality is 'shared'); and where any individuals who recognize its incoherence and strategic evil are already and increasingly labelled as merely isolated instances of cut-off (insane, idiotic and/or wicked) pure-subjectivity.

[The official consensus of world experts versus... just your personal opinion.] 

Steiner and Barfield did indeed foresee these consequences - and wrote prophetically of the nature of our current world 'if' we failed to awaken to their insights. A Steiner lecture of 1918 and remarks by Barfield in StA and his (1984 published) novella Night Operation, are instances. 

But neither Steiner nor Barfield emphasized such 'if not, then...' prophecies; because both expected that culture would correct itself - because the problems were so obvious, and were getting worse.  

I think the actual state of the world now was (and is) missed, because modern people focus upon abstract and specialized matters such as politics, science and philosophy - and the impulses which drives these; whereas the dominant impulse throughout has been purposive evil - the agenda of the devil/ Satan and the demonic spirits. Steiner and Barfield were both guilty of this - seldom discussing God and never (I think) framing their arguments in terms of God and his creative aims. 

When we are up-against supernatural evil; no amount of reform within the domains of politics/ science/ philosophy - nor any other social system such as law, education, medicine, the military or churches - can effectively oppose it. Any local improvement in a specific area of discourse is quickly outflanked by continued degeneration in many or most others. 

It is akin to trying to correct the dishonesty of the global establishment. If an official statement or line-of-argument is revealed as a gross and deliberate lie (that is a lie-rooted discourse such as the birdemic-peck, climate change, antiracism, feminism or the trans-agenda - or any of the multiple sublies within these discourses); then the lie is still operating and indeed accelerating in all the other social systems - media, corporate, legal and so forth. 

The societal assumption is that any number of proven Establishment lies are specific and encapsulated; while the validity of the total system is unchallenged because assumed. 

In other words, the actual root and motivation of that expanding incoherence which Steiner and Barfield exposed was undying evil spirits operating across many human generations; whose agenda is the destruction of God, the good and divine creation. 

The problem of incoherence was Not based in philosophical error, nor the limitations of science; nor the aims of politicians, bureaucrats or judges. 

We have - all along - been dealing-with the war between, on the one hand, God and Jesus Christ - with their aim of saving mortal Men to a resurrected life of growing more divine; and on the other hand, the many-fold powers of evil that oppose all this.

Evil is not trying to sustain any particular alternative evil reality; but to oppose The Good by whatever means seem to be effective at any particular time or place. Hence evil is protean, mutating, and cannot positively be defined in terms of what it 'wants'. 

For evil, incoherence is a feature, not a bug; and the more that actually-existing incoherence is accepted, embraced, and defended as real, true, necessary and Good - the greater is the triumph of evil. 

So here we are Now! The most extreme adverse prophecies of Steiner and Barfield have come true; evil is globally officially endorsed and imposed - and yet so extreme and pervasive is Man's corruption that he (mostly) does not even notice (and strenuously denies) that ruling-evil, and its explicit and implicit tendency.

And/but insofar as Modern Man can perceive evils - he sees No Alternative. 

After so many decades; Modern Man has incoherence baked-into his world view - which is a measure of his evil nature; and therefore sustains the only 'unity' and possibility of public that he can believe-in - which is that ever-shifting consensus of demonically-controlled, monolithic global totalitarianism.

 

Fighting the fear - a video

Commenter Islanti, who provides the New World Island blog aggregator, has done a short video of one of my recent blog posts; which is worth a look and listen. 

 

EF Schumacher - an uncompleted trajectory towards Romantic Christianity

I was very much affected by EF Schumacher's Small is Beautiful - which I bought a year or two after its publication in 1973 having seen a documentary about it on TV. I have been reviewing Schumacher recently, including the biography by his daughter (Alias Papa) and his final book Guide for the Perplexed published just before he died in 1977. 

Through his life Schumacher described a trajectory from Marxism, through socialism, then a 1960s style Buddhistic 'environmentalism' to become a traditionalist (and Thomistic) Roman Catholic in 1971. 

None of his Roman Catholicism, or even Christianity, was evident to my young self until I read Guide for the Perplexed (GftP); so I was pretty stunned by it. (I had been an atheist since about age six, and was hostile to Christianity.)

I now find Small is Beautiful to be obsolete and obviously wrong in its positive economic prescriptions. But reviewing GftP last week brought back my strongly-mixed response from 1977. 

As so often in my life; I was convinced by Schumacher's 'negative critique' of modern materialism, scientism, the shallowness, meaninglessness and purposeless of life since the industrial revolution. I strongly felt the same way. 

But I was unconvinced then, and still am, by his positive 'solution' in the form of a return to a traditional form of Christianity - one that is rooted in a categorical division of reality into four levels of the in-animate mineral, plant, animal and man (the same scheme as used by Rudolf Steiner). The whole style of Schumacher's positive argument strikes me as 'dead' and uninspiring; too systematic, too bureaucratic, too external. 

Regular readers will know that I see no valid division between living and non-living; and that regard reality as composed of beings, that are alive and conscious - and this includes the 'mineral'. Without a return to some-such 'animism'; Christians condemn themselves to alienation, and (as the neo-pagans recognized) cut-off a vital element of our human nature. 

Also, and this applied even in my youth, I see no valid division between animals and plants.

In more general terms, I would now regard Schumacher's position, at the time of death, as advocating a return to essentially the Greco-Roman-Medieval form of society; or what Steiner calls the Intellectual Soul phase of human consciousness, which is a gradually-transforming halfway between the 'Original Participation' of simple hunter gatherer societies, and the 'modern' (especially since the 1750s) 'Consciousness Soul' phase when the human mind feels cut-off from the rest of reality, and doubts even its own reality.  

Nowadays, I am sure that Man cannot go back to an earlier stage of consciousness: the project of revived traditionalism has been tried many times and failed many times; very few people truly want it; and it is harmful even to try. 

What we can and must do is 'Romantic Christianity' - and I have a strong feeling that Fritz Schumacher would have taken that further step had he lived longer than his 66 years (and with clear mind). This would have completed the implicit trajectory of his development; and I think that - having made the condensed and lucid statement of GftP he would probably have looked at it critically, tried it thoroughly, and (as he had done before) would have gone beyond it. 

More exactly; Schumacher had experienced the 'romanticism' of the 60s-style counter-culture with its 'eastern', Buddhist-Hindu-Sufi type of personally-experienced spirituality (meditation, yoga etc); he had discarded this and found Jesus Christ, again experientially but in a pre-modern-aspiring and communitarian form; and he would have wanted to combine these two deep impulses and convictions in a romantic, intuitive and experiential, Christianity. 

It did not happen - but all the ingredients were present in Schumacher: including a questing, critical and honest intelligence. 

Choosing to believe - the changing nature of Christian conversion experience

In the pre-modern past, the usual way to become a Christian was unconsciously, by assimilation - through the normal processes of 'socialization'.  

This is nowadays possible only to children and with a particular combination of devout family and some isolation from the anti-Christian cultural mainstream. 

But this kind of Christianity usually washes-out at adolescence, because the adolescent innately becomes detached from socialization, become self-aware, and must choose. But what choice?

As of 2021; apostasy is rewarded in the short-term, and the socialized Christian is vulnerable because his Christian belief has never been an active choice and is bound-up with the unconscious passivity of childhood. His Christian beliefs and justifications are necessarily those of childhood, and unexamined.

Broadly speaking, a reliance upon socialized Christianity is no longer a viable option in the current world; because the secular world is anti-Christian, increasingly dominant, and increasingly aggressive.

It has become almost impossible to create a sufficiently Christian sub-culture that is sufficiently isolated; and sooner or later - adolescence, college, the workplace - the passive and unconscious Christian will be put in a position of absorbing a very different and opposed ideology, and will be short-term rewarded for doing so; because it is more socially functional.   

In a nutshell; when Christianity has been unconscious and passive - it naturally assimilates conscious and active evil; when that evil is prevalent  and dominant - as now.  

In more recent decades; the conversion experience has been reported in terms of an individual being suddenly overwhelmed by conviction of the truth of Christianity; and by having accepted Jesus as Lord. 

This mode of conversion seems to have faded greatly in both frequency and strength - and the results seem to be insufficiently robust in face of the continual and escalating pressure from mainstream culture.

I think this is because the sudden conversion - while ending with a conscious choice to choose Jesus, is still rooted in passivity. It is based upon a primarily receptive state, in which the convert has first been overwhelmed by the divine - before he chooses whether or not to accept this experience as life-changing. 

It seems that very large numbers of such Christians have - often un-consciously - since early 2020 become primarily secular (and Leftist) in their belief and orientation; and have taken the side of the anti-Christian, indeed demonic, global Establishment. 

That is, they have joined the side of Satan in the spiritual war. 

In the context of 2021 - at least in The West; the Christian needs to withstand continual and escalating hostility from multiple directions (including most self-identified Christian churches). 

The evil of secular culture is both implicit (covert, implied), and explicit; and explicit evil usually works by subversion, by discrediting, by attacking all types of Christian assumption. 

My feelings is that the modern Christian needs therefore to be conscious and active to an unprecedented degree. He cannot depend on an unconscious influences - because these nearly-all oppose Christianity; modern culture is pervasive, and is against Christianity, and indeed purposively evil. 

A modern person is far more likely to be 'overwhelmed' by Leftism (which is, now, an instrument of purposive evil) than by Christianity. 

The 2021 Christian cannot, in other words, depend on anything external. More-and-more of the external is in the hands of the Enemy - and this external world is more and more directed against Christianity. 

The motivations of the Christian need to be internal; the Christian needs to be as conscious as possible, and to have made an individual and active choice for all essential aspects of his faith. 

The Christian who retains real faith in 2021 will probably therefore have a faith, and a conversion-experience, of a very different kind than a convert from even a few decades ago.  

A 2021-Christian needs to be able to sustain his faith from within and consciously, and to acknowledge that his faith is his own continuing choice. 

Such a Christian is indomitable - even in 2021; so long as he continues to wish primarily for Resurrection into Heaven, and will follow Jesus.   

But the path to this kind of Christianity - the path to conversion - is extremely different from those of the past. Each individual must take full responsibility for his own spiritual goals and knowledge. 

He needs to find out what he most wants - not just from mortal life, but eternally; and needs to investigate Christianity actively, and guided by intuition.

And the anticipated end-point of conversion is a conscious and personal choice. 

Because; becoming a Christian is a beginning - not the end.  

"Stay with me!" - the stupidest, commonest dramatic cliché in movies or TV

Somebody's is dying, somebody else cradles the head and pleads: "Stay with me!"

It's there in every movie or TV show that shows a hero's death. 

Because, of course, any soldier, doctor or nurse will confirm that a dying person can saved - even at the last moment - by a sufficiently persuasive and emphatic instruction to "Stay..." 

An attempted definition of Romantic Christianity

Romantic Christianity could be considered that Christianity which regards directly-intuited understanding (or heart-thinking) as our primary knowledge... 

By which I mean an experience of understanding which is clear and conscious in the mind; therefore not primarily in words, symbols, concepts, principles, abstractions or any other indirect or representational medium. 

Thus, for a Romantic Christian - the fundamental basis of his Christianity is not in the reports of other people nor any kind of history; not in tradition or words; not in any external authority or person; nor in accounts of theological or philosophical reasoning. 

Instead, the basis is the experience of a positive, affirmative grasp and knowing; and it is this which needs to be applied to the 'secondary' sources of Christian knowledge that are described above. Our true faith, that sustains courage and supplies Hope, is to be derived from that which is primary. 

For example, the primary truth of a passage of scripture (or history, or commandment, or rule...) may be apprehended and known by experience in this primary way - by a process which is distinct both from 'reading the words' and distinct from the words-meanings being imposed-upon the mind by the act of reading. 

And when such a direct apprehension and understanding is lacking, then the scriptural passage (or whatever) should not be regarded as primary. 

In sum; Romantic Christianity is rooted in active and creative thinking; and the passive and absorptive is recognized as secondary. 

It also follows that the expression of Romantic Christianity can only be in the secondary forms; because the primary and intuitive, direct-knowing of the mind cannot wholly be captured or fully-communicated by any expression of it in words or any other medium. This is what makes it primary. 

What is relatively 'new' about Romantic Christianity - that 'Romantic' impulse that seemed to emerge incrementally only from about the middle 1700s in Europe, and later in other places to become dominant now (apparently) everywhere - is that the engagement needs to be both conscious and chosen. 

The possibility and effectiveness of a life passively-guided by true bit unconscious tradition, has dwindled; and has by now essentially disappeared among adults. Unconscious, spontaneous instinct is likewise both enfeebled and corrupted so as to become both impossible and undesirable. 

We are active, conscious, choosing Christians - or we are not Christians. 

Modern Man is in a new and unprecedented situation deriving from both his deficits and his capacities. Either he will choose consciously to base his fundamental (metaphysical) Christianity upon Romantic and experiential foundations; or else he will become assimilated to The World - which is (in 2021) atheistic, materialistic and (most importantly) subject to global demonic strategies. 

The Romantic Christian can thus be of any denomination or none, in his practice of Christianity - according to the guidance of his experiential discernments. 

But the Romantic Christian must always be in a process of rooting his faith in the personal and experiential - and this is the fact which enables him to discern and adhere to the good and Godly among the great mass of evil and Satanic influences that increasingly permeate and dominate the world of public discourse (including all the 'Christian' churches).    

Note: The above was stimulated by brooding upon a marvelous and inspiring talk by Archbishop Vigano - where the Abp seems strongly to imply the need for individual discernment, yet does not explain or state it explicitly. My belief is that such matters require detailed discussion. In the past - there were internal mechanisms to deal with top-down problems; but now the evil is active, globally applied and enforced (with the coordinated aid of the secular powers: finance, government, corporations, media etc) and the corruption extends through a majority of middle and lower hierarchy and through the 'masses' and the RCC laity. Unless discernment is conscious and consciously regarded as primary, it will not suffice to combat the an onslaught of evil. 

A checklist for spiritual en-couragement in the face of resentment, fear and despair

I have often said that the big sins of these days seem to be resentment, fear and despair. 

But, although fear is the most obvious, it is not usually regarded as a sin. Similarly - resentment is frequently felt as a moral principle (social justice, entitlement), rather than an evil. And despair is mistaken for realism. So, the dominant sins of our times are too seldom noticed as such - even by Christians. 

At any rate; given the fact of accelerating spiritual war, and the global socio-political victory of the side of evil, nowadays a lot of people; undesirable negative emotions are seldom far away - and these need to be combatted.

I say combatted; because these emotions are themselves an element in the spiritual war - and as such we must but Not treat them therapeutically (to be analgesed or tranquillized); but instead need to learn from them and defeat them. 

(Therapy is this-worldly - treating sin with 'healing' is a demonic snare.) 

We need courage not therapy; we need hope not analgesia.

And since The World of Men is now substantially in the hands of the Enemy - we need to take-our-stand outside of this corrupted world. 

Therefore, when assailed by resentment, fear or despair; I find that sometimes I am able to induce myself to a wider and longer perspective; providing a bigger context for present dysphoria, and angst about the future.  

This by reminding myself of certain truths. Sometimes one works, sometimes another - depending upon my current state and mood. Here are some of them, in no particular order, which might perhaps be of value as a kind of 'checklist' when the mind is clouded or oppressed:

1. Reality is ultimately created by God - and continually being-created by God; and I participate in this creation (as a sub-creator) insofar as the world is understandable to me. I look around and remind myself of this. 

2. The world is Not dead, mechanical or random; the world is alive and conscious: this is a world of beings. Every 'thing' is actually a being, or part of a being. (These beings are (by choice) either on the side of God, or against God.) 

3. The so-called dead are actually alive, in some way and in some place; and those of 'the dead' in Heaven remain active in this mortal life: we may help them, and they may help us. This is important work for us. 

4. Sleep is a vital part of our mortal lives. Sleep is an experience from which it is intended we shall learn. It requires our attention. 

5. We need to become consciously aware of much that is currently unconscious - indeed this is a major task of these times. A false non-reality is being imposed on us when we are passive, unconscious and refuse the responsibility of choosing; therefore, we need to be conscious of reality (of truth) and actively-choosing the 'real reality'.  

6. God is the eternal (loving and creating) dyad of heavenly Father and Mother - yet I tend to neglect my Heavenly Mother. She surely deserves my attention, and I would surely be the better for giving it. 

7. There is no fixed limit to my knowledge except my capacity of knowing - and that may be developed by spiritual experience and learning; by right alignment and right choices. Anything I need to know - for salvation or theosis - I can know. If I don't yet know it, then I have not yet asked properly. 

8. My current spiritual task is related to my current situation - including bad things about Now; because my current situation is continually-being fitted to my spiritual needs by God. 

9. Whatever is my current motivation or obsession has some meaning, some lesson to impart (maybe positive, maybe negative) - so is worth attending to. 

10. Think about Heaven and the everlasting resurrected life to come for all those who choose to follow Jesus Christ. This choice is free and cannot be compelled - or excluded. Heaven is awaiting after the end of mortal life - if we want it, if we are prepared to acknowledge our sins and allow ourselves to be cleansed of all that contradicts eternal love. So - assuming we intend to accept the gift of it: think about Heaven.   

My thirty-five year engagement with CS Lewis's Surprised by Joy

I discuss my first and subsequent experiences with this book over at The Notion Club Papers - including why it was that - despite its perfect understanding and diagnosis of my condition - I was Not converted to Christianity by reading it, back in the middle 1980s.

Why my tedious, mundane, materialistic bad-dreams?

I enjoy sleeping, and generally do plenty of it; but I do find myself irritated by the propensity of my subconscious mind to torment me with dreary dreams - so dreary that they are a significant factor in making me an 'early bird' who tends to rise a couple of hours before most people. 

Getting-up before dawn is a lot better than suffering the tedium of such mundane, materialistic and repetitive dreams as I frequently experience - particularly at the beginning and the end of the night. 

(Because, if I do go back to sleep after such a dream, I will almost invariably take up the same dreary dream much at the same point I left-off before surfacing.)

There is a resentment that I am having these experiences when I might instead (perhaps ought instead to) be experiencing magical and ecstatic - or, at least, pleasurable and interesting - dreams. 

(Note: I do sometimes, quite often, have such good dreams - but they don't seem to need explaining.)

What is the purpose of one part of my mind torturing the other part? And torture not with anything spectacular and terrible, but merely with the kind of dreariness of location and events with which CS Lewis depicts Hell in The Great Divorce.

I seemed to be standing in a bus queue by the side of a long, mean street. Evening was just closing in and it was raining. I had been wandering for hours in similar mean streets, always in the rain and always in evening twilight. Time seemed to have paused on that dismal moment when only a few shops have lit up and it is not yet dark enough for their windows to look cheering. And just as the evening never advanced to night, so my walking had never brought me to the better parts of the town. However far I went I found only dingy lodging houses, small tobacconists, hoardings from which posters hung in rags, windowless warehouses, goods stations without trains...

With me it is likely to be seedy rented flats; dirty, leaking, insecure. Loud and intrusive people crowding in. 

Tiring journeys with inevitable repeated delays; cramped, slow disintegrating vehicles; and when I wander in a state of perplexed dementia - forgetting where I am going and why, but insisting that I keeping-going anyway...

And my dream self is no better than the setting - I am peevish, petty, spiteful and dishonest. Altogether as mundane and materialistic as the places I inhabit. 

What is interesting about these dreams is that they are an exaggerated caricature of everything I have always most disliked In Real Life; living in a context where all is trivial, superficial and sordid - and yet where the people around me insist upon keeping things that way; refusing to think or speak deeply, truthfully, from the heart. Where people strive to conform to a world without purpose, meaning or love. 

My general perspective about this mortal life is that its experiences are for us to learn from; and I believe that this applies to our dreams - including those of which we remember nothing. Our dream experiences are an opportunity for us to learn lessons, and to make good choices and benefit spiritually from them - or suffer the consequences of bad choices.  

Overall; it seems likely that these tedious dreams are trying to teach me that we should choose Not to live like that - and when we do live like that should notice and repent the fact. 

These dreams are indeed a negative of Heaven (that is - Hell); and remind me what it is that I so much desire to escape from - forever - by salvation... Noting that Heaven is as much about escaping from the many bad aspects of myself, as from bad environments.  

It really is an educative shock to bemoan the miserableness of the dream that I have just had, and then to reflect that the whole thing was my doing; either coming direct from my own invention, or maybe as a consequence of my inviting dark spirits into the dream.

It is - at any rate - All My Fault. 

And, if I don't like that sort of thing - then I know what I must do.

What is Heaven like?... A place of uniqueness of nature and creativity, harmonized by love

One of the difficulties of describing Heaven in detail is that people are so different. 

Heaven is the resurrection of actual individual people - and since these people remain their original selves (but elevated to the divine) then Heaven cannot be summarized any more easily than people. 

Consider the question: What are people like? Any accurate answer you gave to that question would fail to capture the specifics of actual people, and would necessarily be very generalized indeed - and probably very abstract. 

Because all people are different - so much so, that (except with respect to specific traits - like differences between men and women, younger and older) no two people are alike. 

Consider the people you know best - probably your family. All my grandparents were different characters, each an individual, each distinct from each other - and add-in my mother, father, brother, sister, son and daughter and there is a collection of unique individuals. There are some family and social resemblances of course; but fundamentally and very clearly, each is absolutely unique. 

Add-in those who have been intense or close friends across my life, and consider them as well. Each friend was a distinct person - had an unique 'flavour'; and for none of them could I think of anybody else in the world who he or she was really 'like'. 

Heaven is populated by people - and people who are more themselves in Heaven than on earth - because divinity raises up the real self while discarding the passively absorbed or expediently inculcated social 'personality' aspects. 

And it is only in these 'personality' aspects - the product of socialization, environment, propaganda, fashion etc - that Men appear to be superficially similar. When we get to know somebody, we see past these temporary common traits - and that is the case in Heaven.   

So your Heaven will be different from my Heaven according to our different fundamental nature - just as your life is fundamentally different from mine, here on earth. 

Indeed, I know of nobody, have heard of nobody, who lives as I do (or thinks as I do) - even in this mortal life! How much more this will be the case in Heaven, when the necessities of mortality are gone. 

Heaven differs according to those with whom we are most associated - and/ including those whom we most love; because although Heaven is the place of love - that does not mean 'equality' of love, since love is of its nature unique between persons. 

We do not love any two people in The Same way, nor to the same degree - because love is two unique divine souls in relationship. Each love is unique in quality, as well as varying in strength. 

Your life and work in Heaven will be even-more-different from others people's lives and works than it is here on earth; because all that generic stuff about jobs, sustaining the body, dealing with bureaucracy, the effects of mass media etc will be gone. 

Presumably; in Heaven my life will be shaped, but even more so than now, by the nature of my creativity - and this is extremely different from the creativity of nearly everybody I have met or heard of (and identical with none). 

By 'my creativity' I mean what I actively want to participate in, and which is a never failing source of satisfaction: the only never failing source of satisfaction in this mortal life. 

Creativity by this meaning is a word for the distinctive engagement of our real selves with God's creation. In this sense: creativity is the only activity that never palls. 

Hence: creativity is the only activity fit for eternity. 

I know enough to see that what absolutely fascinates me in this respect is of near indifference to nearly everybody else (nearly- but not every- body else - which sharing is what makes creativity valuable). Also, what other people find endlessly (eternally) absorbing often leaves me pretty indifferent. 

In other words; in Heaven our lives will be more different from each other than they are on earth - because we will be more different, because our lives will be shaped by those who (most) love; and because we will be expressing our individual creative nature. 

In Heaven there will be no homogeneity at all! 

It is only on earth that cohesion is imposed by making people 'the same'; whereas in Heaven all coheres by love.

So in Heaven we can and shall be as different from each other, and do such different things from each other, as might be imagined to happen in the largest and most (wholly) loving extended family, village, college or workplace. 

"Nae hauf-way hoose" - life at the right extreme

I'll ha'e nae hauf-way hoose, but aye be whaur 

Extremes meet - it's the only way I ken 

To dodge the curst conceit o' bein' richt 

That damns the vast majority o' men.

From A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle (1926) by Hugh MacDiarmid

Translates as: I'll have no half-way house but always be where extremes meet - it's the only way I know to dodge the cursed conceit of "being in the right" that damns the vast majority of men.  

There is indeed a common curst conceit of being in the right, and seen to be so; which leads many people to decry 'extremism' and 'polarization' - and take a moderate half-way-house position on any public issue. 

Unfortunately, it is at one of the extremes - and the most extreme of all extremes (officially) is God, divine creation, following Jesus Christ, truth, beauty and virtue. 

The other extreme - which is that of totalitarian global governance and officialdom, the world mass media, and all large institutions - is the extremity of strategic demonic evil: the world of omni-surveillance and micro-control in pursuit of leftist materialism, comprehensive and mandatory value-inversion. 

And half-way-between these extremes lies the mass of the masses; who passively, unconsciously, self-righteously follow at a cautious and moderate distance the lead of the extremely wealthy and powerful, ultra-influential, highest-status and most-famous dedicated-servants of evil.

So the half-way hoose, that path between both extremes; that route of those sensible, sane, nice people who care-fully navigate the broad, calm waters between what it regards as the crazy, stupid, evil poles; that vast majority of Men are damned by their sensible, conscientious conformity.

Why so? Because: 

1. Half-way-between truth and lies is... lies. 

2. An average of the claims of truth and the claims of lies is... lies. 

3. A blend of lies and the truth is... lies.

The only truth is the-true. Add lies, and it is no longer true. 

Unless you are prepared to own-up (to yourself, as well as in the eyes of your neighbours) as a crazy extremist; you will surely have damned yourself by your own choices. 

But then, of course, you need to pick the right extreme, the extreme at which reality lies.

Because, contrary to Hugh Macdiarmid's assertion of a century ago; as of 2021, the extremes never do meet; but instead diverge further and further apart, faster and faster, for eternity. 

Favourite books to dip-into - but which you never read-through

"Books that I really enjoy dipping-into but never read all the way through" seems to be a definite category in my lifetime. 

I first became aware of this with Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (published from 1621 onwards); which I used to keep by me in my twenties, but never read consecutively, and probably only a modest proportion of its total. Indeed, I would probably have named it as my desert island book for exactly the reason that I would be unlikely ever to finish it, yet enjoyed returning again and again. 

Another, albeit shorter, book of this type I engaged-with for a few years was Hugh MacDiarmid's autobiography Lucky Poet (1943); which I would similarly browse almost randomly in; and stumble across passages that I did not recognize but appreciated - and then could never find again! 

This business of going exploring then getting lost in a book, and stumbling across what seem like new treasures (but which may have been read before, in a less appreciative mood); is one of the pleasures of this kind of reading - and for this reason it is better when the book is both big and dense or complex in arrangement (and when it lacks a good index!). 

Perhaps the earliest example was our family Complete Shakespeare in a WWII economy-paper edition - with woodchips; which had been salvaged by my father from an army library being discarded in occupied Germany circa 1950. As a young child, I used to pick this up and read the titles, and passages here and there - with excited incomprehension. As a result I was far more impressed by The Phoenix and the Turtle, All's Well That Ends Well, or Love's Labours Lost - because of their intriguing names; than the lists of 'King X' plays, or the single word titles like Sonnets, Macbeth or Hamlet. 

Nowadays; my undisputed champion dipper-in and desert island book is The History of Middle Earth (in 12 or 13 volumes according to definition) edited by Christopher Tolkien. I have read-in this book for hundreds of hours; never get sick of it, keep discovering new surprises and pleasure -  yet never seem to get any closer to completing or comprehending it.  

Not finishing favourite books is a much under-rated pastime.

In trying to understand why God 'allows' suffering in this world - try to understand one person at a time

If you are really serious in wanting to understand why a wholly-loving God permits suffering in this mortal world (and are not merely using the questions rhetorically, as an excuse for disbelieving God and thereby enabling some sin which you greatly desire to do); then the first step is obviously to recognize that God's shaping of this mortal world is aimed at the eternal benefit of those who accept the offer of Jesus Christa and choose to become resurrected into Heaven. 

This world is 'for' the encouragement of Men to accept this offer of salvation into Heaven. Life is for the 'education' of men - so that we may learn what will benefit us eternally. 

There is no single cause for suffering - and suffering may be wholly motivated by the spite and sadism of beings (human, demonic) who are committed to evil. 

But suffering is also sometimes some kind of a 'lesson' for someone; an example of God's 'tough love' in trying to teach those who have refused to learn from more gentle lessons. 

But this cannot be known by trying to discover The Cause Of Suffering in some large (often abstract) group or classification of people (such as are beloved by the Left). 

God loves us as individual and unique persons - therefore suffering that derives from God's tough love (when it happens) will be directed at the specific circumstances of a specific person. 

To infer this cause of suffering requires specific knowledge of that person, and it probably requires that we have a genuine personal care for him; because only when we want the best for him is it likely that we can understand the motivations of a God who also wants the best for him - but to an even higher degree and across a longer timescale. 

Most of the people in this world do not seem to want eternal life in Heaven - even if they believed Heaven to be true, they would not want it. And any person is able to make that decision to reject God's will. But God desires that such rejection be a conscious and informed choice. 

A specific person may need to suffer the consequences of his choice to sustain the side against God - i.e. the side of evil; because all choices have consequences - and he may learn from these consequences. 

I seem to see a great deal of suffering nowadays which comes from the choice Not to recognize evil; the choice to go-along-with - and support - the agenda of evil. 

I seem to see many individual people who have made these choices, and who have personally suffered great misery, physical suffering, even death as a consequence... 

And yet I see that many of these people continue Not to recognize the evil motivations that have led to their suffering.

This shows how difficult it is to teach some (most?) people; and how resistant people can be to learning the lessons which life provides. 

I seem to see God providing many people with life lessons - some sweet and delightful, others tough and harsh... and yet people simply Will Not Learn from them; but will explain-away the obvious lessons by more and more convoluted and implausible scenarios that serve to sustain their earlier evil choices. 

For example - someone refuses to recognize the obvious (i.e. incoherent, changing) lies of an obvious liar (incoherent explanations, rapidly changing explanations)... That person chooses to believe the obvious lies of an obvious liar. 

That person then suffers very personally from his choice of evil - the lies lead to harming people he loves, the consequences harm himself. 

Obedience to evil always has outcomes - and a refusal to learn from these outcomes, a refusal to recognize evil, leads to more evil in the 'cover-up' and opens the possibility of greater evils to come (and the failure to recognize and learn from them).     

But there are those who do wake-up to evil when the consequences become so severe or numerous as to be undeniable. 

It can't be predicted exactly what will work for an individual - it may seem trivial, or it may seem like another consequence in a sequence; yet it is the straw that breaks the camel's back. 

So, as the consequences of evil multiply - more people do awaken and recognize the evil. ...Not so may as I would hope, and some of those I most hope-for are among the unawakened. 

And some people are astonishingly resistant to learning (some, apparently, resistant unto death). 

Yet I think I can see what God is doing in some cases. I can sometimes understand - very specifically - why God allows these kinds of suffering. 

 

Salvation and theosis - God's two goals in creation

I think it is necessary to assume that God had at least two goals in creation. 

The first was to create Heaven - which means to create a world ruled by love. I tend to think of Heaven as a place where all relations between beings are loving - love, not coercion, is what gives cohesion to Heaven. 

And I assume that any being can enter Heaven who is prepared to discard everything of himself which contradicts the primacy of love. 

But God wanted more than this.

As William Arkle describes it - God did not want to remain 'alone, but God wanted divine friends. 

God wants not just 'children' (immature, undeveloped sons and daughters of God, like most mortal Men) - but God wants some of these children to grow-up to become like himself: that is a fully creative being - a being able to continue and enhance ongoing divine creation.  

So divine creation makes this growing-up of men to gods a possibility. Everything is provided to enable this to happen for a Man - except the vital ingredient that a Man must want it. 

Overall, God wanted a Heaven in which dwelt other gods. (...As many as possible, each unique.)

That is what God is working-towards, by means of creation.

In other words, to summarize the argument; behind divine creation is God's desire for a loving Heaven that includes (but does not consist entirely of) many other gods, of the same nature and type as God-the-creator. 

To become a god, a Man must want to become a god - that is, a creator on a level with the prime creator, albeit working within God's prime creation... 

(Why must he want it? Because a god must be conscious to be free; God must be conscious to be an autonomous agent of creation. An un-conscious 'god' would simply operate as a tool for creation - he would not be a god.) 

But that is not enough. As well as desiring full divinity; a Man who wants to become a god must also want to enter Heaven. 

That is how God set-up reality. 

One can have Heaven without wanting to be a god - e.g. wanting to remain a child; but one cannot become a god without also wanting Heaven. 

To be a god outside of Heaven is forbidden, it was made impossible. 

Theosis is only made possible to those who want to become a god - i.e. by those who will enter Heaven. 

Salvation to escape sin and dwell forever in Heaven is available only to those who will make an eternal commitment to live by love.

Theosis and salvation are thus bound-together and made one by resurrection. 

It is only by resurrection that a Man is made both eligible to enter Heaven and takes a decisive step towards the eventual goal of becoming A-god, like-unto The-God. 

Therefore, salvation is primary and must come first, before full and permanent theosis is possible. But theosis is the reason for creation, the reason for Jesus Christ, and the highest desire of God. 

Notes: When I write 'God' in the above post, I mean the Christian concept of God. 

The God/s of other religions are differently motivated - and non-Christians do not intend that Man should be raised to the level of full-creator God: i.e. to that level of divinity which Christians believe was seen in Jesus Christ. This elevation of Man to god is the possibility of which Jesus offered to those who believed-on and followed him - an equivalence of status whereby Men are regarded as 'friends' of God, not as 'servants'. 

I have also deliberately left open the structural aspects of the Christian God: I personally believe (with the Mormons) that God is our Heavenly Parents - that God is a dyad of Father and Mother; but the above argument works also for the more common and 'traditional' Christian trinitarian monotheism - where the love of God originates from the triadic love of Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

Also, I believe that the above scheme can be discovered from reading the Fourth Gospel ('John'); when that Gospel is assumed to be the primary and qualitatively most authoritative account of Jesus's life and teachings.  

We need to be able to recognize evil to resist it; but we do not need to understand it

Or, to put it the other way around: We do not need to be able to understand evil, in order to recognize and resist it. 

This is very important to bear in mind in the modern world, because mostly we do not understand much about the evil that is being done to us. 

Even when we know evil is being done in accordance with a plan - we are very unlikely to know for sure all the important aspects of this plan. There may, after all, be more than one locus of evil, and these evil people or groups may be in conflict.

But we do not need correctly to know all the specifics of evil to resist it. 

Therefore; having a false understanding (overall, or in detail) of the motivation behind and evil, or how evil is intended to work out in practice, does not invalidate resistance to that evil. 

In other words: even when an evil is being resisted under the justification of a false theory (a wrong 'conspiracy theory'); and when that false theory can be (somewhat plausibly) refuted by the evil-doers... So what?

The point is that we should recognize and resist evil: That Is What We Need To Do!

Who (who on the side of good...) really cares about the exact accuracy of understanding of evil - especially when everything possible is being done to hide relevant information from the masses, and to confuse everybody with false 'facts', false 'theories' and deliberate contradictions.  

Especially when the evil-doers themselves are not even trying to be honest or truthful - but regard communication as purely a method of manipulation. Mostly, they neither know nor care what is really going-on; but are simply trying to discredit or dispose-of all who resist them, by foul means or worse. 

Who cares precisely what They are really trying to achieve by administering the peck immediately to everybody in the world (excepting the Global Establishment Themselves)? We cannot know - and it does not matter. 

All we need to 'know' is to recognize that the peck is motivated by evil; which motivation we know for certain from its provenance (i.e. from who originated the peck and are pushing it; from those who provide 'evidence'; from their pervasively evil behaviour - their moral inversion, their gross and sustained lying on multiple topics, their support of evil causes, their venom directed against God and the Good... etc.). 

Who cares what exactly is in the minds of the various orcs, wraiths, necromancers and demons who are peck-pushing 24/7 despite that it is obviously unnecessary, ineffective and harmful. If we did not already know for sure that They are evil - this behaviour would of itself be sufficient to let us know...

That is assuming we are capable of recognizing evil At All; which apparently, most people are not. 

 

Harsh life lessons resisted - and yet they might so 'easily' be learned...

What a world! 

Apparently, a Lot of people, all over the world, are Now getting some very harsh and very personal life lessons as a consequence of the birdemic-peck agenda. Yet they continue to believe that whole narrative - its shape and rationalization. 

They do Not recognize the spiritual war, the global coup and that the Global Establishment are evil by their nature and intent: that all public discourse is manipulation and not-even-trying to be truthful. 

Instead these suffering people continue to maintain that this is 'business as usual'; with benign and well-meaning global, national, local and industry rulers - albeit contaminated by rather stupid, short-termist, misguided and selfish people...

It really does not matter what actually happens - because many or most people Will Not recognize evil motivations for shutting down the world, closing the churches, destroying all social institutions and most industries, separating and dehumanizing the masses; and actively harming more and more people. 

All this does not matter At All - because Nothing Has Changed. The world is as it always was. People are as they always have been. 

Or something... The slightest fabricated excuses and rationalizations are grabbed and clasped; and the excuses are used and believed in swift rotation. 

Because the underlying mass motivation is denial, the feeblest and most incoherent excuse will suffice. 

People have already been squeezed by evil in a way which - if it was predicted two years ago - would have seemed literally incredible. We are living in extraordinary times. The squeeze continues, the lies get ever bigger and more frequent, more individual people suffer more and more...

But it makes no difference At All, because the whole thing is reframed and reframed, on a daily/ hourly basis; such as to deny any qualitative implications. 

It is all either reduced to micro-discussions of minor incremental changes - or else swept up into vast and imprecise abstractions about 'freedom', 'democracy', justice' or whatever!

Sometimes it is 'nothing to see, move along' - sometimes it is a case of acknowledging extraordinary times, but attributed to a value-inverted non-cause such birdemic, rampant racism, CO2 climate change, homotransphobiastuff; or (somehow!) all these at once, in a fake-synthesis of falsity. 

All this comes down to individual persons and their experiences; and what each person makes of his own experiences - supplemented by the directly known experience of those in his immediate circle. 

All the 'information' anyone needs to know the truth - and to discern evil - can be found in this direct and personal knowledge. 

But it does require that the individual chooses to take full responsibility for his own conscious understanding of himself and reality. 

If this responsibility is surrendered to any external authority - he is finished. If he refuses to become conscious of reality - he is finished. If he refuses to choose truth - he is finished. 

And yet 'all' that is required is to be honest with himself - in the 'privacy of his own mind'. 

In these times he needs only to be Christian in his own mind, by personal decision and choice - he does not need to make a public declaration or join a church. 

He need only recognize the pervasive spiritual war inwardly - he does not need to emark on a program of political 'action'. 

He need only take the side of God and recognize and reject the devil, by thinking this... He does not need to tell anyone about the embarrassing fact that the devil is real and very active in many places, here and now.

Only these things and he will be saved, and he will find his life transformed for the better, and all kinds of things might and probably will happen as a consequence...

'Only'. It's so easy! 

Only in the privacy of his mind, his heart, his conscious thinking... 

A simple inward act - what could be more facile?

Ah! - but no. That 'only' is fatally difficult for Modern Man

Because 'only in their own heart' is far, far beyond where most people are willing to go. 

Spiritual war is the one kind of war he absolutely refuses to participate in. 

Why? Is it because Modern Man regards 'the spiritual' as not-real, hence trivial - so that he 'cannot be bothered' to think anything which he is not prepared to act-upon? 

Or, is it because of the opposite: because at a deeper level than he is prepared to acknowledge Modern Man knows that the spiritual is objectively real; so that any-thing he thinks will affect reality - will change the world... 

And then he would be known as responsible for what happens!

(i.e. The reality of 'thought-crime'.)

Therefore - better not to think in any direction tending-towards any thought which would go against the mandatory spirit-of-the-age.