Author: Commenter Serhei; aka Arakawa
Bruce Charlton has often lamented how modern people seem to have 'lost' the ability to act as 'Christian slaves' i.e. to acquiesce in some policy (because 'forced') while repenting it inwardly. Physical-acquiescence is almost-always paired with subsequent utter spiritual submission.
A tongue-in-cheek thought came to me that we may be getting the causation entirely-backwards.
Supposing that consciousness has evolved to the extent that people are more-able to choose their state of being and unrelentingly translate their Desires into Reality... it would follow that nowadays a Christian-slave who genuinely does not wish to be a slave, who genuinely-Desires to be free... will almost-always find a way to act on that desire and smash his chains with the cooperation of other Beings that share his desire for freedom. This is unlike past eras where a Christian-slave may be stuck in this suboptimal state for a much longer time. Now, attaining freedom may not be a pleasant process -- but by undergoing moderate or intense hardship the Christian-slave proves that his desire is stronger than mere 'incentives'.
Those who are left-behind in chains are increasingly, not always, but ever-more, those who chose and continue to choose their chains, which makes it seem like physical- and spiritual-submission beget one another.
This seems, in some ways, like a cruel doctrine ("you are only oppressed because you chose to be").
In other ways, it seems like a sign of increased responsibility and power of choice in the modern era. Any coercive-tactic that meets with spiritual-rejection will fail, which is why the recent persecutions are remarkable for their 'voluntary' character, why there is so much emphasis on demanding gestures of obedience, apology, etc., and so much hatred when those gestures are not offered. Why the System feels so much more need for mind-control, and puts more emphasis on totalitarian (we dictate what you may think) rather than authoritarian (we dictate what you may do) ideologies. It is increasingly not possible to enforce measures on people who do not agree to them. Which is why the birdemic measures reversed so rapidly and every authority went looking for a new, not-yet-worn-out fear for people to enslave themselves to.
Perhaps that’s a reason why things have not yet collapsed to-the-extent that they 'ought' to? Plenty of people want to drown-in-destruction, but not enough; the public is still being sold on the idea. It occurs to me that even things like "weather-pattern-change" are sold primarily on the paradoxical idea that people ought to simultaneously hate and consciously wish-for and desire a "weather-pattern-catastrophe" to manifest itself to, I don't know, spite the hypocrisy of civilization or something...
Rather than judging how this may apply to others:
Makes me wonder what other forms of Ahrimanic obeisance I have been acquiescing to, am still acquiescing to, where there is no real consequence to defiance, where I could just stop...
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Note from Bruce G Charlton:
The above post strikes me as a very important and exciting insight - which is why I asked Serhei if I could publish it as a guest essay.
If you didn't catch the full impact at first shot; I recommend re-reading and pondering its implications.
5 comments:
My inspirations behind this post:
(1) Prior blog posts by Francis Berger such as 'they will do everything in their power to ensure the choice is yours' and 'freedom is alignment, not submission'. In the latter post, there is a very important reference to Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor, who accuses Christ of being cruel in offering His tremendous gift of responsibility and freedom.
(2) A personal thought-experiment I embarked on based on Wm. Blake's "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell", probably not-to-be-finished or -published for years, in which I constructed a fictional civilization of 'Immortals of Desire' whose consistently-held Desires will, over long-enough timescales, unrelentingly translate themselves into Reality, though the exact method and timescale varies by individual. I found that, far from being an anarchic chaos, such a Civilization would easily develop a government, even an oppressive one, that controls its subjects with the forces of Fashion and Conventional Thinking rather than Coercion and Violence. Ultimately, the immortals would still need to make sense of Christ's sacrifice to rise above their own desires and Fashion (and the rebellion against Fashion) and achieve proper Freedom. The fictional situation struck me as analogous, in distant but important ways, to our present era of consciousness.
(3) And, of course, the recent and not-so-recent discussions of how the System's mind-control actually works. However the mind-control works, it's certainly become clear to me that the System has increasing need of mind-control with each passing year.
Thank you for this fruitful insight, Serhei. It is heartening to see others such as Francis Berger and you assisting Dr. Charlton with some of the "heavy lifting". You've added to the wealth of insight found on this web site. I discern the divine will at work (i.e., you are His instrument), as with so much of what Dr. Charlton himself contributes.
Thank you for this, Serhei. I will certainly be chewing on this for a bit. And regarding your thought-experiment, I saw your previous comment about it (assuming it was the same experiment - it was worded differently, and more personally) and was intrigued. I have the sense that I would benefit from a similar exploration.
From commenter 'G':
This is an astonishing insight. When I decided not to take the [peck] I was very afraid. My job and my government had both breathed out all kinds of menaces and threats. And then . . . nothing happened. Nothing at all. I experienced no consequences of any kind whatsoever, barely even the tiniest bit of social awkwardness.
@John Goes
Correct, that is the same experiment in the earlier comment and in the inspiration to this blog. It has a deeply personal dimension, and the potential for a more public dimension, but the latter requires exponentially more planning and discernment, and therefore time. It is one thing to sort through fantasies in my own mind and resolve contradictions and sort the higher goods over the lower, as a spiritual exercise, and it is another thing to produce something worthy of being shown to other people.
I do wonder how many readers will get not just the surface (reassuring) point but also the deeper (ennobling yet frightening) point, because my insight applies to desires that are insufficiently understood and for which a person has not separated good from evil. This is related to William Blake’s maxim that “Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires” and (I suspect, not having firsthand experience, but having read relevant portions of the Philokalia) to more traditional practices of confessing one’s inner thoughts in a monastic environment, leaving no stone unturned — with the difference that monks have the luxury of a life focused on labour and prayer, and the desires that are valid relative to that are extremely simple. But the monastic system, I fear, developed in an era where desires are more docile and less powerful in their ability to influence reality rather than one’s own behaviour.
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