The Western powers standard procedure for doing evil dirty-work is via proxies.
In international politics, this means via bribing/ blackmailing national leaders - or 'opposition' leaders, bribing/ blackmailing 'terrorist' and 'protest' groups...
Bribing/ blackmailing other-people to do whatever evil we want done.
In within-nation politics it means buying/ blackmailing proxies such as Corporations, Trades Unions, NGOs, charities, think tanks, 'opposition' parties, mass media controllers - and indeed the leadership of any and every significant institution - from lawyers and doctors, teachers and researchers, priests and pastors, police and military.
Such indirect action via proxies is slower, less reliable, uncertain in outcome - but highly effective when the work is primarily destructive - and the most 'advanced' form of evil (what I term 'Sorathic' evil) is, indeed, very 'purely' destructive in its motivation.
As Sorathic evil increasingly takes-over dominance from the previously hegemonic Ahrimanic evil (i.e. an evil aiming primarily at control, rather than directly at destruction; the evil of bureaucratic totalitarianism); we can see more and more acts of purposive destruction; performed by increasingly numerous, remote and distanced proxies.
The effects are unpredictable - but that does not matter to the Sorathic spirit, since increasing destruction is easy to accomplish, and can be attained by many routes and methods.
Whoever is behind the evil acts, whoever was motivated to do them and made the decision - is, in practice, nearly always separated from the 'implementation' by several removes.
More often than not - this person or group is unknown, and unknowable - they 'get away with it'; and the official blame (if any) always lands elsewhere: usually on the proxy minion/ hit man who did the dirty-work; sometimes on the proxy boss who was bribed/ blackmailed to arrange the 'hit'.
Thus those with greatest power are distanced from the action, and from the consequences of their decisions; and are always able publicly to deny and avoid responsibility for them - and even to deny that they have any significant power.
Such is the way that the world operates. It is totalitarian, but a very different totalitarianism from that of a century ago; where the Dictators were famous/ notorious - known to all; and operated via a personal cult.
Dictators often made a point of claiming power and responsibility even beyond that they really possessed.
Such a leader presented himself as embodying the nation and its spirit - and this justified his (claimed) absolute power.
Matters are very different now: Evil has evolved - is now impersonal, indeed anonymous; covert and diffuse, and works by contrived confusion and self-contradiction (PSYOPS).
Modern evil is proxy evil - and proxy evil is even-worse than direct evil; in the sense that proxy evil is always deliberated, contrived, planned... whereas direct evil may be impulsive and due to a temporary failure to resist strong temptation.
In sum: the motivation of proxy evil is always actively-evil and evidence of a strategic commitment to evil-purpose; whereas the motivation of direct evil may be negative, passive; due to weakness rather than a person confirmed in evil purpose.
By analogy; a murderer (or saboteur...) is often less culpable than someone who arranges an assassination or a 'hit' (or act of destruction, intended to cause suffering and death...) via several proxies - even, or especially, because the instigator of a cleverly-contrived proxy killing (or act of sabotage...) may escape scot free, unnoticed, and unpunished by Law.
Evil has evolved... And yet the essence of matters are still the same!
The purpose of evil in this world remains as it always was: to oppose God and divine creation, to seek the damnation of Men.
We do not need to know the specific human sources of evil in order to recognize and oppose evil - which is just as well, because we almost-never shall.
The key is that we personally, as individuals, need to be able and willing to recognize and oppose evil for ourselves - not, therefore, relying-upon any external source (purporting to provide us with knowledge and evaluation) in order to identify and interpret the reality or source of evil.
We should not be striving to out-source our moral discernment - not even to the (increasingly corrupt and evil-allied) Christian churches; just as we cannot out-source our personal salvation.
We should also refrain from futile attempts to pin-down 'responsibility' for evil acts in a world which has been elaborately structured to conceal responsibility.
What can be observed now is the Sorathic spirit of pure destructive evil using the (already existing) vast and elaborate Ahrimanic System of bureaucratic-totalitarian surveillance and control... simply to destroy!
Simply to smash, kill, maim, immiserate - on the biggest scale possible!
By war, famine, plague, poison, sabotage; and any other means that presents itself.
And spiritually - which is most important - Sorathic evil seeks to generate ever more fear, resentment, and despair.
It is probably impossible to prevent massive physical destruction - with the world structured as it is, and when most Men have rejected God.
But we personally can work to prevent spiritual destruction - in ourselves; and can seek universal and eternal spiritual creation by our own attainment of Primary Thinking (no matter how partially or briefly this is attained).
And this, of itself, opposes Sorathic evil, because it breaks the link between imposed physical destruction and the outcome of spiritual damnation.
Insofar as we can overcome in ourselves the intended fear, resentment or despair - by the Christian virtues of Faith, Hope and Love: then we have (at that moment) won the spiritual battle of this world in our-selves, and to an extent among those whom we love.
And such victories are permanent in their consequences.
Well, good old Rudolf Steiner predicted it all a century ago:
ReplyDelete"The Anglo-American world may gain world dominion; but without the Threefold Social Order it will, through this dominion, pour out cultural death and cultural illness over the whole earth; for these are just as much a gift of the Azuras as lies are a gift of Ahriman, and self-seeking, of Lucifer. So the third, a worthy companion of the other two, is a gift of the Azuric powers!"
https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA194/English/AP1945/19191215p01.html
N.B. According to Rudolf Steiner, Sorath is the leader of the Azuras
https://anthroposophy.eu/Sorat
https://anthroposophy.eu/Asuras
https://anthroposophy.eu/Rakshasas
Such is the way that the world operates. It is totalitarian, but a very different totalitarianism from that of a century ago; where the Dictators were famous/ notorious - known to all; and operated via a personal cult. ...
ReplyDeleteMatters are very different now: Evil has evolved - is now impersonal, indeed anonymous; covert and diffuse, and works by contrived confusion and self-contradiction (PSYOPS).
Curtis Yarvin has made this point as well: democracy does not, in fact, diffuse power. Rather, power is subdivided but still "adds up." Worse, it is now legitimized as the "will of the people" in a way that an unapologetic authoritarian like Salazar or Pinochet would never claim. Democracies really are more totalitarian than single autocrats.
@P - Errr, yaas. The Steiner derivation is indeed thoroughly described in the links.
ReplyDeleteBut I have modified the meanings of Lucifer and Ahriman (especially) as well as Sorath, compared with RS; so it can be misleading to assume I mean exactly the same.
@AG - I think Curtis Yarvin's basic understanding is wrong.
ReplyDeleteHe is (always has been) basically just a mainstream commentator... Pretty good of the type; but working within the normal - grossly inadequate and distorted - secular-materialist-leftist framework.
'Democracy' isn't really a thing - except insofar as it is a system that relies on *voting* as the highest valued decision making process. But voting is evil:
https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/search?q=voting
'nuff said.
I don't think you would be likely to recognize the author of the following passage as an ally, but a rather controversial lady wrote something in a similar vein more than 70 years ago. Feel free to not publish this if you feel it is too spicy to put on your website. I won't be offended, but I hope you find it interesting:
ReplyDeleteUntil [the next Age of Truth], violence, under one form or another, is unavoidable. It is the very law of Life in a fallen world. The choice given us is not between violence and non-violence, but between open, unashamed violence, in broad daylight, and sneaking, subtle violence -- blackmail; between open violence and inconspicuous, slow, yet implacable persecution, both economic and cultural: the systematic suppression of all possibilities for the vanquished, without it "showing"; the merciless "conditioning" of children, all the more horrible that it is more impersonal, more indirect, more outwardly "gentle"; the clever diffusion of soul-killing lies (and half-lies); violence under the cover of non-violence. The choice is also between selfless ruthlessness put to the service of the very Cause of Truth; violence without cruelty, applied in view of bringing upon this earth an order based on everlasting principles that transcend man; violence in view of creating, or maintaining, a human State in harmony with Life's highest purpose, and violence applied to selfish ends.
The two parallel alternatives are indeed one and the same. For it is a fact that, the more disinterested its aims and the more selfless its application, the more frank and straightforward violence is; while, on the other hand, the more sordid be the motives for which it is in reality used, the more it is itself hidden, nay, denied; the more men who resort to it boast of being admirers of non-violence, thus bluffing others and sometimes also themselves; acting as deceivers and being deceived -- caught in the network of their own lies.
As time goes on and as decay sets in, the keynote of human history is not less and less violence; it is less and less honesty about violence.
@MB - A valid but limited observation - crucially needs clarity over the actual nature of the "Life's highest purpose" which is taken as justification.
ReplyDeleteWhy so coy about the 'lady' author? Ayn Rand, maybe?
My mistake, I thought I put her name at the end of that comment. It's Savitri Devi. It won't take you long to see why she's so controversial
ReplyDeleteBruce, if democracy isn't really a thing, is it just a variant on some other form of government with added window-dressing (voting)? For instance, is it a disguised form of oligarchy?
ReplyDeleteThere's a distinction to be made between self-destruction-motivation and destruction-motivation corruption, with the former being sorathic and the latter luciferic. The characters of the two forms of corruption are almost opposite. If demons are vampiric, and in some way feeding off corruption in humans, then the demons involved in each, will surely be different.
ReplyDeleteAn example is the current situation in a Middle Eastern country; women cutting off their own hair (and seemingly a growing percentage of people practising increasingly severe Western-style evil in a general sense) vs the conventional-style evil of the people manning the system in the country.
From the outside, destruction looks like destruction. But the *character* of the corruption internally, that the demons are feeding on, can be very different.
@J - What is the current form of government? The key idea is that it is *unprecedented*. It's pretty bizarre to try and fit our current global totalitarianism into categories devised by the ancient Greeks!
ReplyDeleteIt is also covert and implicit - unlike earlier forms. This is why we have no name for it - because it denies itself.
Why? Ultimately because it is extremely evil, therefore almost wholly oppositional. Earlier governments had positive goals, which they were pleased to identify with explicitly.
Now, the best that can be managed is dishonestly to pretend that a bunch of incompatible negative, oppositional goals (such as diversity, climate, antiracism, equality, sexual revolution, healthism etc) are positive and coherent. But their only coherence is their opposition to God and The Good.
@ben - I agree there is a distinction.
ReplyDeleteDestruction motivation can be vampiric, or self-aggrandizing.
Self-destructiveness is (I think) more a characteristic of humans, rather than demons; and it probably a disguised form of resentment - directed against particular other people (parents, for instance), or God.
Its a fact provocative of myrthe but a fact nonetheless that at this late date so many folks are still trying to circle squares and the sage of Baltimore said. The debates of how to improve democracy, or the evils of the right or the left are mere distractions on the order of professional wrestling. The power that now holds dominion over the earth is now brazen and its true nature is obvious to anyone with the slightest level of discernment. Trying to determine Why and how this came to be is pointless. Instead accept the current situation, think about it as little as possible, focus on on G-d his guidance and yes primary thinking--even if in dribs and drabs. On a personal level as an elderly person I find that its as if a switch has turned and things, places and people seem much uglier in every way. Its peculiar and more than one other person has shared this view as well. Thoughts?
ReplyDeleteBringing a bit of cross-disciplinary referencing to this topic, I note that Michael Yon observes this very thing, Sorathic evil, playing out in current events. Although his perspective is one of war correspondent, this post is apropos:
ReplyDeletehttps://westernrifleshooters.us/2022/09/29/yon-sends-42/
@JC - Well, I don't think MY is arguing from the same spiritual premises as me, I don't quite agree that the Fire Nation is being used in the way he says - and his advice seems to be: prepping and survivalism.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure that we ought to be responding spiritually (and with urgency) rather than a frenzy of terrified and ill-directed 'activity', and in ways that are individual and need to be discerned: this is Not a situation for generic advice and checklists. ga and c are what have got us to this place (i.e. that way of thinking).
I absolutely agree. I was just struck by his observation of events that he cannot explain rationally but are clearly (from my point of observation) sorathic , or mindless destruction for the sake of destruction. The truth is there for everyone to see. Not all will be able to see it.
ReplyDeleteps
I am not advocating any type of “prepper” approach to modern day life, nor am I advocating a blasé approach to the looming difficulties, I simply note the observation of trends are plainly visible to even those who whose point of view is not obviously spiritual.
@Jeffrey
ReplyDeleteI suppose the peck was by far the biggest example of this
https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2021/07/diagnosing-official-establishment-evil.html
But some recent incidents are more discrete, lack the penumbra of prior propaganda, and even less rationally defensible. These destructions aren't even plausible false flags - except to the already mind-dead, of whom there seem to be astonishingly large numbers among the commentariat.
But if somebody is so deeply corrupted as to believe such nonsense (or, deliberately dishonestly, to propagate such nonsense), then the demons work is already done.
No, it's Not all part of a totalitarian master plan - it is sheerly spiteful destructiveness getting the upper hand (Wormwood escaping the control of Screwtape).