The instinctual roots of "Leftism" are more like resentment of anyone-else having more than me, than any positive desire for equality

Since Leftism is the dominant ideology in the world today, and Leftism often appeals to some principle of "equality" (however vague or incoherent) as the rationale for its actions; the instinctual basis for "equality" is a subject that warrants closer examination. 

This examination is something I attempted, from the perspective of evolution by natural selection, in an oft-cited theoretical paper I wrote many years ago.

[The inequity of inequality: egalitarian instincts and evolutionary psychology. BG Charlton Journal of Health Psychology. 1997; 2: 413-425.] 

My conclusion was that evidence from anthropological studies of "simple", nomadic hunter-gatherer societies - i.e. the most economically-equal societies ever known - was that their culture of equal-sharing (among those of equivalent sex and age) is not due to a positive valuation of "equality". 

Instead, the sharing was a consequence of what I would now term a double-negative ethical reasoning - for which I used the term "counter-dominance":  

...Equal sharing is enforced upon high status individuals by spontaneously-arising counter-dominant coalitions of lower status individuals (Boehm, 1991; Erdal & Whiten, 1994). Sharing may be a way of encouraging co-operation and preventing conflict (Franks, 1988); it would compensate low status males for their reduced access to females of high reproductive potential and can be seen as a way of "buying off" potentially hostile rivals who might otherwise refuse to cooperate or take hostile action...

"Counter-dominant" instincts (Erdal and Whiten, 1994 and in the press) operate in two ways: firstly to enforce equal sharing of resources, and secondly to be satisfied with an equal distribution of resources. 

In support of this idea, primatologists such as Byrne (1995), Kummer (1995) and De Waal (1996) have traced the evolutionary history of food sharing (and of other counter-dominant - and proto-moral - behaviours) through monkeys and apes to reach the highest (non-human) intensity and sophistication among the chimpanzees. 

Egalitarian human societies are therefore not without their social conflicts: their harmony is of the nature of a dynamic equilibrium between dominance and counter-dominance, both of which sets of instincts continue to operate, the equilibrium between which can be altered by a change of circumstance. 

In all human societies, even in egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies, the persistence of dominance instincts leads to recurrent attempts by high status individuals to dominate, take more than an equal share of resources, or hoard (Knauft, 1991; Erdal & Whiten, in the press). 

However, in immediate-return economies attempts by high status individuals to breach the egalitarian distribution and attain coercive power will readily be detected, and can be met by counter-dominant community alliances of lower status individuals (Woodburn, 1982; Boehm, 1993). 

Counter-dominant alliances may employ a wide range of tactics for mobilizing concerted opposition from the rest of the community in such forms as public complaint, ridicule, threat, ignoring the would-be dominant individual"s orders, or actual group violence against dominant individuals. 

Homicide is not uncommon (and difficult to prevent) in hunter-gatherer societies. Other alternatives include expulsion of recalcitrant individuals, or mass emigration to another band to escape domination. 

Such strategies are possible due to the lack of sustained power differentials underwritten by resource differentials - in immediate-return economies no one person can become so powerful as to be immune to counter-dominant strategies. 

But when - as in delayed-return economies - high status individuals can appropriate a greater than equal share of resources, they are able to sustain this inequality by building alliances among high status individuals; and by enlisting supporters (eg. a "gang" or "bodyguard") to create larger and more powerful alliances, trading the stored resources as payment for cooperation (Barkow, 1992; Gellner, 1988).

In sum - the distribution of valued resources, such as food, tends to be equal, not because equality-of-everybody is positively valued; but instead because me-having-less than anyone-else is negatively valued. And those who have less, immediately gang-up on anyone who has more then them; and compel him to share it out.  

If counter-dominance is an approximately-correct explanation of the instinctual basis for "equality"; then it readily explains the observed structure and behaviour of modern Leftist ideology.

A close synonym for counter-dominance could be a spontaneous resentment at others having more than oneself; coupled with a tendency to form alliances with others having similar grievances against those who have more. 

Insofar as this is instinctual, it operates on people and situations in a person's perceived environment - which nowadays includes (and is perhaps dominated by) the "virtual" environment of mass and social media - reinforced by the "real life" social world of gossip and interaction, that so often takes up and amplifies themes from mass/ social media. 

For me, this idea of a double-negative, and resentment-based instinct helps explain the incoherence of Leftism - in that "The Left" is a collection of people with a collection of grievances, each rooted in the belief that anyone else having anything more of what I want is an "unjust" state of affairs. 

It is this instinct which leads to the supposed ethical principle of "egalitarianism" - that is manipulated by political leaders, in order to control (and weaken) the masses. 

Because, in a mass modern society, with multiple valued resources, there are many overlapping (hence incompatible) demands for equal sharing among many overlapping groups. There is never any greater equality in modern societies, and indeed this state is logically impossible because incoherent; but a there is instead a continual state of resentful complaint about inequality - as predicted by counter-dominance being at the root of it. 

And this continual state of resentful complaint is positively encouraged and reinforced by (and as) the value-system of Leftism.  

From a Christian perspective, we can see that resentment is a sin, indeed the master sin of modernity; and therefore that (insofar as the basis of equality really is counter-dominance) Leftism is rooted in evil motivation.

An evil motivation that is spontaneous and instinctive, hence powerful... 

Nonetheless, no matter how natural it may be (all sins are "natural", after all!); resentment is an evil that ought to be repented and minimized - not celebrated and encouraged. 

  

What's wrong, and right, about "collective" values as the bottom-line validation for our life?

It strikes me that most kinds of atheism have some kind of psychology or sociology as the bottom-line explanation and justification for judgments of value. Purpose and meaning are regarded as products of humans; and particular judgments regarding values such as truth, beauty and ethics reach their final explanation in terms of psychological concepts such as the human mind, human instinct; and in terms of collectives or groups of people and their psychology. 

In other words; when individual psychology seems too diverse and conflicted to rationalise values - for many generations people have reached for collective values to make their bottom-line judgements. 

For instance; when it seems obviously inadequate to relate a prohibition on murder to what is best for or wanted by a single person; it seems natural that when the problem is restated collectively - as what is best for or wanted by some large (or universal) conceptualized of many-people (some community) - that this is a more "objective" explanation and justification. 

Consequently, many of the most influential kinds of atheism have some collective value as their bottom line. Utilitarian philosophy is stated as aiming at the greatest happiness (or "utility") of the greatest number. This usually led to economic conceptualizations of society (as with communism and other types of socialism) - since the group utility was described and manipulated in terms of statistics about income, wealth, working-hours and the like. 

Nationalism regards the well-being of the collective nation as primary; and the value of individuals of that nation as derivative of the national "spirit"; so that the individual may be (and should be, when required by the collective nation) sacrificed to the imputed nation - potentially even to the point of near extinction of the individuals of the nation. 

The kind of public health thinking that (for instance) underpinned the Birdemic-response was rationalized on the basis of what was best for the health of the collective - in which health was analyzed and expressed statistically; in terms of measures such as disease numbers and rates, and death numbers and rates. 

Another example is Jung's collective unconscious - which was conceptualized as a universal group mind; so that what might have been individual, experiences, instincts, needs etc. were restated as deriving from a shared, group reality. 

This was regarded as more spiritual, because such things were not detectable or measurable by perceptual means, nor were there measurements; but instead via qualitative phenomena such as archetypes, and evidence came from inter-personal communications of dreams, myths, artistic productions and the like.  

But although often regarded as "spiritual", the collective unconscious seems to be - in reality - a quasi-biological entity. 

I wonder why it is seen as too subjective to have individuals as bottom-line, whereas it is more objective to have a collective bottom line - despite that the collective is dependant (ultimately) on the individual? 

It seems, on the face of it, irrational that people seem ready to reject the significance of the individual experience or evaluation, as "merely" personal and subjective; whereas the same people seem not just willing but more highly motivated to suppose that there is an objective reality - and an imperative value, that we should be guided by it - about the collective. 

This would hardly be likely if the collective was nothing-more than the collecting-together and combining of many individuals.  

Yet this is so; and (apparently spontaneously) we actually do regard group phenomena as (at least potentially, ideally) in some way more objective, more binding on our values. 

My interpretation is that there is a fundamental underlying truth behind this "collective" way of thinking - even for those (like communism or "healthism") badly distorted by abstraction, which is what lends such systems a degree of motivational effectiveness. 

There is also an untruth - which is why none of the atheisms have proved sufficiently effective social motivators - none have come close to replacing religion, none have been able strongly to motivate men to acts of courage and self-sacrifice for long-term goals. The consequences we see all around us, in mainstream hedonic nihilism, and the prevalent self-loathing and covert suicidality of Western civilization.

In sum - the collective is, in practice, as well as theory - not just a collection of individuals; but what exactly it is (or could be) is distortedly and incompletely formulated by the most influential kind of atheism. 

Conclusions? I think we have a vague but true sense that we are justified in some kind of groupish and collective way. 

To some extent this is a mistaken attempt to overcome the nihilistic meaninglessness of atheism - partly by a sleight of hand, and also by a kind of averaging process in the group. Individuals generally change more rapidly than do groups, and individuals usually have a shorter lifespan than groups - so that the sheer lability and instability of individual life is ameliorated by immersing individuals into a conceptualized group. 

In other words; while collectives are not more objective than individuals; groups seem somewhat more objective: quantitatively, not qualitatively. Compared with a single person; groups are bigg-er, strong-er, wealthi-er, more powerful, long-er-lasting... In a sense, this makes groups feel "more real". 

But deeper than this lies the potential of a profound truth about "the collective". 

If the true collective is the totality of divine creation - rather than merely some group of humans - then it would seem that there is a valid and ultimate sense in which a big question about life is whether or not we affiliate our-selves to the collective that is creation: whether we join our individual person to God's creation and God's creative will. 

By the decision and act that Christians term "love"; we can choose to put "creation" above our individual selves; and to derive our values from the totality of our-selves in loving-alliance with creation - in a mutual relationship. (Mutual because we love God, God loves us.)

Instead of the relatively great-er objectivity of human collectives compared with the individual person, there may be an everlasting and qualitative objectivity of the resurrected individual Man, in the wholly divine reality of Heaven.  

The Birdemic-Peck as a case study in how the-agenda-of-destruction manipulates totalitarian-evil into implementing its plans

What follows can be considered a small exemplar of the destructive programme of the globalist and Western top-leadership class; and how they get the world's "middle managers" to go along with it. 

By the world's middle managers, I mean those who most people regard as the ultimate leaders: e.g. national political and governmental leaders, large corporation leaders, mass media moguls, the executives of all large institutions such as the military and police, science, education, law, the arts, and churches. 

What these globalist-middle-managers instruct, in obedience to the real world-leadership class, is then obediently implemented by the administrative myrmidons - that vast class of the professional and managerial middle class who dominate everyday life. 

So when it comes to global implementation of the Peck, as a supposed response to the Birdemic; we can see how this played-out. 

At the low level of implementation which most people perceive; we saw a united-front from public health professionals, doctors and researchers; being referenced as conclusive evidence by politicians, managers and the mass media. 

Yet there was zero rational case for using The Peck at all, at any level - let alone a multi-billion global level. 

Why? Because the Peck was unnecessary, ineffective and harmful. 

In other words, mass pecking should not even have been considered. But if it had been considered honestly; it totally failed to satisfy standard, consensus epidemiological benefit-risk criteria (which I was taught as a public health medic in the early 1990s). 

So the consensus that global mass pecking was necessary and good was clear evidence that the visible leadership class and their "justifiers" and "implementers" was simply "obeying orders". 

Orders which I infer were emanating from the invisible world real-leadership class. 

We need to ask why these personages regarded it as the single major global priority to peck everybody in the world with an agent that could only do net harm? 

And then a rigorous consideration will lead to the answer that this imperative was destructive in its aim: it could not be otherwise? 

Whatever the actual outcome of Giga-pecking (and given the gross corruption of data collection and science and the media - I don't believe this can accurately be known), the destructive motivation is evident. 

My point here is that we can understand the global peck campaign as motivated by Sorathic-destructive evil; but implemented by the Ahrimanic-totalitarian believers in a global Matrix-System of micro-surveillance and omni-control. 

Thus, the motivators and the implementers of mass-pecking each have a different agenda. 

Therefore; both hyper-organization and general-destruction are simultaneously being-pursued. 

Which prevails? 

At first glance the totalitarians are far more numerous and known, and seem likely to prevail; but that is not the case.

Because 1. destruction and disorder is so much easier than construction and order; and 2. the globalist totalitarians are obedient to the top-level Sorathic beings. 

In practice - as with the Peck - the vast apparatus of totalitarianism, merely serves to rationalize and implement the agenda of destruction. The totalitarians do what they are told; which includes dishonestly "explaining" why the Peck is not just necessary but safe, not just safe but beneficial. 

This is how the agenda of destruction is pursued. 

It applies to the Birdemic itself, and the Peck. It applies to the Climate stuff, the antiracism stuff, the feminism and transagenda, to the Fire Nation and Arrakis wars, indeed to all of the major and long-term policies of the real rulers of this mortal world that I have termed the Litmus Tests. 

 

1. Destruction really is much easier than creation. 2. Destruction is what "They" are aiming at.

I know, I know - I've said it all before; but people really need to grasp what is going-on in the world of Geopolitics and Global Strategy... 

People need to grasp what is the core aim of the top-level leadership of those who control the major Western nations and the international/ multinational groups such as the UN (WHO etc), EU, and NATO. 

That aim is destruction. 

But that isn't enough: People need to grasp that destruction is easy - much, much easier than positive creation. 

I regard this as a profound insight into our reality. 

As mortal Men; we live in a material world where entropy is at work everywhere, and death has the last word. In this world, order must be continually rebuilt against the tendency towards chaos; creation is continually being dismantled, even while it is being created. 

Those who seek to destroy have innumerable options; while those who wish to create do not. 

Only a minority of trained and competent people, with much time and effort, can make a piece of complex machinery - but any destructive-fool can wreck it.

Indeed, the destructive-fool can (and does) use complex and intricate technical creations to wreck each other - thereby increasing the rate of destruction - as happens in war.

Actually, because entropy never sleeps; complex and functional stuff (including humans, animals, plants) - needs constant and appropriate maintenance; so that creation can be destroyed without effort - simply by neglect.   

So when we analyse the two sides in war, or politics, or anywhere... 

And when these two sides correspond to good and evil: to creative and destructive strategies...

Then we will find that the good side wil move relatively slowly and is often forced into a reactive stance, across a wide range. In contrast, the side of evil has so many options and such an easy job because They are working-with entropy and chaos.

The people (the "beings" I should say) who are trying to destroy England; are have scores of lines of simultaneous attack, that are pursued 24/7 - and via multi-national and national politics, the mass media, and all the major institutions. 

Internationally, wars are provoked, sustained and escalated by bribing and blackmailing the leadership class - meanwhile these same nations are being internally destroyed.

Because destruction is the aim and destruction is easy; They are (in effect) simultaneously crippling and poisoning the people of the world - while getting them to fight each other to the death.   

OK - but it should be asked - if evil is aimed-at and easy then why hasn't the world already collapsed and everybody died?

The short is that until recently the ruling classes were Not aiming at destruction. They were aiming at various things - some relatively few had good and creative aims. Others wanted evil - yet not primarily destructive - things; such as conquest, wealth, personal power and so forth. 

Until recently those with most power and wealth were not intending generalized destruction. 

But they are now...  

If not all of them - but mainly those in the West and multi-national institutions - yet given the relative easiness of destruction; They will "win".

If only because for them everyone losing is what They regard as "winning".  

Therefore; even though led by the one genius among the global leadership class, and with a far more strongly motivated - because genuinely Christian - country; the Fire Nation cannot truly win the current war so long as the Sorathic Western Leadership class ("They") remain in power. For Them; every defeat of anybody is a victory, all destruction is a triumph. 

And They can and will keep-it-going for as long as they are in a position to do so; which is, until they are physically removed, and the epidemic spiritual infection of totalitarian-secular-leftism that They have released and promoted - has been decisively rejected.   

Since They are so powerful, dedicated to destruction, and destruction is easy; the only way they can be held-back and defeated (temporarily), would be if their evil-destructiveness was opposed by sufficient positive-creation; such that They were substantially removed from power. 

I see no sign of this At All. The masses are not as bad as their Leadership class; but the mass of Men utterly lack the motivations needed for positive creative Good. 

Therefore, as things stand, as the odds are stacked: the powers of destruction will prevail in this mortal world. 

 

To recapitulate: 1. Those with greatest power in the world, now, have the aim of destruction; 2. Destruction is easy. 

Hence; I regard these as the End Times; a qualitative end to this era of the world, of civilization, happening already and unrolling every year/ month, week - even despite local (and hard won) roll-backs of the power of destructive evil and beginnings of new creation.

Destructive evil can only be held back by constructive (creative) Good; and there just isn't enough of it, or strongly-enough of it, to overcome the advantages of destruction - at the large scale.  

As usual (as always?) we are thrown-back onto The Personal and The Spiritual: which is not only the best option, but increasingly the only realistic option. 

Cutting-edge fashion items in La Gomera (Canary Islands) c.2016

From a display stand in a toy shop - eight years ago... 

FSAHION 

GIRLS 

SERIES!

MYTH 

THE FAIRY 

STORY! 

COMLLECT 

US ALL!

the beautiful 

girl brings about

infini

te happy have

given away

to you happy childhood

for you

***ncinnity

This is the best

gift that gives children!

the beautiful girls!

favourite fashion

lovely

"Depth" in life doesn't come from regarding it as symbolic of something else; but from conviction of purpose and resurrection

I believe that the symbols through-which people used to relate to Christian reality have all-but lost their power; but, whether or not you agree, the public and shared world of symbols has now been taken-over - trivialized, subverted and inverted - by the totalitarian mainstream of government, media and institutions. 

If we are not to life consciously futile lives - then we need to know life as deeper than the mundane surfaces with which we are bombarded 24/7. 

The depth of life goes "deeper" than perceptions and emotional responses; because it entails knowing (believing) that there is purpose to life - which which knowing there is purpose to "the universe", to "reality". 

And, of course, this purpose must be something we regard as Good, to which we personally which to affiliate our best efforts. 

But beyond purpose - if the depth of life is to be robust to its ills - we also need to know that we (ourselves) will continue eternally beyond death. 

If not for this personal and everlasting life; then the evils and entropy of the world will - sooner or later - destroy everything we value: everything that gives present life its purpose. We will get sick and ill and die; so will those we love; and all that we most value in our societies and communities and nature itself will change, degenerate, dissolve...

We therefore need a purpose which we personally endorse and that extends into forever. 

Such is the basis that may underpin a solid sense of depth in life. 

    

 

Daydreaming of paradise: for it to be real, we would need to change ourselves, as well as our environment

I suppose many people daydream about some idyllic, pastoral kind of Paradise - and when we are young, perhaps we believe it may potentially be attainable on this earth and during mortal life?

Over the years I have had several such daydreams - including The Shire, and Lothlorien from Middle Earth; being a married writer with kids in a rural retreat among friends; and a particular era in Concord, New England at the time of Emerson and Thoreau.   

Such daydreams have a fuzzy quality, are often little more than a snapshot - or a particular mood state; and are utterly detached from the practicalities and realities of the situation - such as how it might arise, and how it could be sustained. 

As I have said before; paradise implies not only an ideal place, but our-selves changed such that we would be able to enjoy it. I could not experience The Shire as in my daydream unless I was also a hobbit; nor Lothlorien unless an elf; not Concord c1840 unless I was a man of that time, place and class.  

In another sense, we would have to become a better person (better in the sense of better-fitted to the daydream); and when young we tend to assume that this can and will happen. But anyone who is realistic and honest soon realizes that this doesn't happen. 

We change, yes; but we don't really get better overall. 

Even when we eliminate some besetting sin, or some horrible antisocial trait; this always comes at a negative cost. 

That cost may be necessary, and worth paying - but there will always be a significant cost...

In his Exegesis: After listing 24 ways in which he has been changed and improved by his religious experiences of February and March 1974 - and writing some year and a half later - Philip K Dick concluded [from page 226 onward]: 

The only problem is, I am in no customary sense - maybe in no sense whatsoever - spiritualized or exalted. 

In fact I seem even more mean and irascible than before.  

True, I do not hit anybody, but my language remains gungy and I am crabby and domineering; my personality defects are unaltered. 

In the accepted sense I am not a better person. 

I may be healthier (maybe not that; vide the blood pressure). But I am not a good person, even though my emotions and moods are better under control. 

Maybe I just have a long way to go... 

In the end, if we pursue this to its conclusion; we will realize that paradise can only be post-mortal; and that any "paradise" that does not entail the retention of our-ultimate-selves is not a paradise at all (because it would be somebody else enjoying it) - yet the ultimate selves must positively and qualitatively be transformed, in a way that never truly happens in our experience or knowledge of this world. 

 

A conjectural, detailed map of the The Shire - and beyond its borders

 

By Tom Maringer, in 1991 - apparently used for a kind of postal "game" in which participants exchanged letters. Can be found here and here. 

"Charity" = strategic evil; and this applies to All charities, whatever they call themselves

Nowhere has the "convergence" of institutions into a single strategic programme of totalitarian, bureaucratic evil, been more evident than among "Charities". 

I've just had inflicted on me (by YouTube) an advertisment for the organization that calls itself "christian AID" - the "c word" is nowadays in lower case and forced into the background of the logo. 

Their globalist totalitarian perspective is encompassed by their mission statement: Christian Aid exists to create a world where everyone can live a full life, free from poverty. 

(Which was, after all, Christ's main message... Errr, well, maybe...)

And their number one current campaign (linked with the Satanic-themed Paris Olympics, is "Join the race to beat the climate crisis"... 

You get the pun on "race"? And the in-built assumption that there actually exists a thing called the "climate crisis" which is the number one threat to the world today - and is specifically the primary cause of poverty. 

And that climate is a thing that can, and should, be "beaten". 

But my point is that all charities (of any size - increasingly even very small and local ones) are the same in this regard. 

It does not matter what their name is, what they were founded to do, or what they pretend is their core concern. 

The bottom line is that all charities really do is global totalitarian leftism; and therefore, there are no Christian charities. 

Whatever may be claimed otherwise: all charities have Satan as both patron and chief executive. 

Folco Boffin: NPC or lacking an Equity Card? A Loose End in Lord of the Rings

Peter Jackson claims that this image is of Folco Boffin - Personally, I doubt it...

The unsolved mystery of Folco Boffin is described over at my Notion Club Papers blog. 

Was his fate too sinister to be mentioned, or did Tolkien "nod"? 

Never say no to a panda...

This is one of the funniest TV advert sequences I've seen - seven shorts, each about thirty seconds; made in Egypt for Panda brand cheese. 

What makes them, is the comic timing; and the panda himself. 

Enjoy.

A Fresh Spate of Laeth's Aphorisms

Selected from the current iteration of Laeth's "blog": Trees and Triads 

the ease with which those of above average intelligence are manipulated into unfounded and dumbfounded optimism is a confirmation of my pessimism. and there isn't even pleasure, or pride, or fun in being right when the ruse is so obvious. 

any sufficiently serious optimism is indistinguishable from brain damage. 

never trust a man who proudly owns a 'smart' car 

hoping for the best is the primary sign that one is in fact a pessimist. otherwise, what need does one have of hope. 

many cannot fathom that there is such a thing as supernatural evil and that it has no master plan beyond defilement and destruction. a willful blindness. 

love is when every single one of your particles becomes quantum entangled with her particles. do you want to be quantum entangled with me, this is how i proposed to my wife.

"Spiritual activism" versus Lifestyle Hacks

I think there is too often a self-gratifying conflation at work when individuals are (implicitly) bragging about their "lifestyle hacks" that are (after all is said and done) ultimately rooted in the same value system as the  mainstream leftist ideology; in other words, hedonic utilitarianism. 

The conflation occurs when it is stated or implied that such activities constitute a programme of resistance and reform directed against the evil System of our Western world and towards the positive construction of a better alternative world. 

My criticism is that (while pretending to spiritual Christian significance) such discourse is actually being held at the level of selfish, worldly, goals  - tips for living a safer and more comfortable life for "me and mine" (with the political spectrum mostly being about who qualifies as "mine").

People naturally seek ways to combine "what is good for my personal enjoyment" with "what is good for civilization" - but I believe that there is a near-zero link between these when it comes to positive good. 

(I mean by the limitation on "positive good" that our personal material lifestyle choices can much more powerfully make things worse at a large scale; than they can have a positive benefit. We are more likely to do general harm than net-good, and that harm is likely to be greater. This is probably due to a combination of the entropic nature of this world, and the current - unprecedented - degree of dominance by demonic evil.)

When I come across people expounding the "worldly-wisdom" of lifestyle hacks as if these were a programme for The Good Christian; it is my strong impression that this confusion and false-connection is a consequence of failing to realize the depth and breadth of The Problem, especially as it affects The West. 

Anyone who thinks that their hacks, tips, and social or business schemes are addressing The Problem is living in a state of self-gratifying delusion  (or maybe trying to manipulate and exploit us for their own goals - whether consciously, or not). 

Therefore; while I don't think we ought always to be harping-on about The Problem - i.e. the scale, scope, breadth and depth of pervasive evil in our world - and neither should we be brooding upon it continually; it nonetheless seems obvious that this awareness must be our starting-point. 

A Christian can only orientate himself correctly in the world, from a situation in which he recognizes the pervasive "normalization" of extreme evil. 

This recognition reveals that our personal-level material lifestyle choices are all-but powerless to have a positive effect on things-in-general. 

More to the point, lifestyle discourse displace attention from where it properly lies - which is the spiritual, not the material. 

The delusional futility of seeking material solutions to The Problem ought to provoke an attempt to shift from material life-hacks to "spiritual activism" at the individual level. 

An honest recognition of the the hope-less-ness of incremental lifestyle fixes, can point at our best (and only) realistic source of hope; which is in addressing our own spiritual motivations and aims: starting now. 

No Man is an island - Not Even if he uses Linux on his home computer! ("Prepping" as psychotherapy.).

The smug-to-the-point-of-self-blinded idiocy of the dissident "right" was on display in spades last week, with respect to the global computer shut-down. 

We, especially in The West, live in the most interconnected and outsourced society the world has ever known By Far. 

What happens to The System therefore happens to everyone - sooner or not-very-much later. 

The notion that individuals or small groups can separate themselves from any general collapse is risible. 

Therefore; the fact that someone, or some company or institution, was able to avoid direct harm when the world computer system shut down for several hours is irrelevant.

What is on view here is that the ideal of "prepping" is no more significant than any other form of self-psychotherapy. 

It may make you feel safe and smug and superior for a few hours or days; but that is its only significance.

Outsourcing understanding: What explains mass devotion to ethical abstractions such as economic equality or "the environment"?

It has been statistically normal for so many generations that the mass of people have some kind of principled, ethical devotion to an abstraction - that the extreme strangeness of it gets unnoticed. 

An early form was Marxism/ Communism, which asked people to devote their lives - even sacrifice their lives - to the almost mathematical abstraction of global economic equality. And, in vast numbers they did!

Yet how very weird it is that modern people - people who naturally and firmly believe that the universe has no purpose or meaning but happened by accidents, and that life and Men evolved by the blind workings of natural selection - should care strongly about the abstraction of economic equality, or justice. 

Something that can only be measured by research and which concerns remote strangers, of whose existence they know only vaguely by unreliable report.

The particular abstraction about which the masses (mostly) care varies through time, almost arbitrarily; and indeed people and institutions may profess several or many abstract principles, regardless of whether these cohere or contradict. 

Nowadays, the analogous ethical concern to Marxism is with that abstraction called "the environment", and in particular with abstractions to do with supposed concentrations of carbon dioxide, and theories and data to do with its generation and effect on the abstraction of global climate. 

So we have the phenomenon of people who argue strenuously that they are themselves merely higher animals or naked apes, whose lives have no relevance or relation to the universe - and that everything which exists does so because of "physics"... 

And yet these same people regard it as an urgent moral imperative that they themselves, and everybody else, and indeed every living being on the planet! - be organized and regulated in order to maintain a certain average global temperature - because that is best for "the earth"! 

The Big unasked question is: From whence cometh this moral imperative? 

Why should creature of the kind modern people assume themselves to be, and living in such a pointless and indifferent reality as modern people assume the universe to be; express (and sometimes live-by) the conviction that we have a moral duty towards abstractions as Communism or 21st Century Environmentalism? 

This is surely a bizarre combination. In the first place, why do people feel a binding morality for anything at all? But secondly: why for such remote abstractions? 

(It has often been observed that many of those who care for "the people" are indifferent or actively cruel to actual human beings around them; and that a "passionate" devotion to "the environment" has led to gross destruction of nature - and its replacement with technology, in and around the same people's actual homes and work-places.)

There is no explicit and coherent answer, and there can be none. 

This bizarre situation must arise from unacknowledged and implicit causes; not from acknowledged fundamental beliefs.

The fact that people regard themselves as moral, and live in pursuit of these abstract moral abstractions; suggests that there is a deep but denied basis for "morality" at work unconsciously and invisibly. 

My best guess is that it is exactly because the basis for our actual mass morality is inexplicit, unconscious and denied. 

And this secondhand nature of values also explains the fact that the actual mass morality is highly arbitrary and unstable, and reactive rather than innate. Public morality changes in line with the perceived needs of the ruling authorities; and when these needs change, morality changes. 

The mass of people have simply got used to living with the mismatch between mandatory and aggressive superficial abstract moral beliefs on one hand; and on the other, an explicit and supposedly science-based rejection of any basis for such beliefs.

To assert that one can have a meaningful and purposive personal life in a random and undirected universe of determined or selfish entities; is something that is so general as to seem like common sense.   

This situation has been building-up for a couple of centuries - and the tacit assumption is that therefore it doesn't really matter. Even though people don't understand why they should care about the survival and equality of the human species; or the survival and temperature of the planet. 

In particular, people don't have any understanding of why they should care more for these remote secondhand abstractions than they care about the people and life around them. 

But a vital part of this modern world-view is that understanding is itself outsourced. 

In other words; people have become used-to the idea that "other people" - experts and the like - will do their understanding for them! 

That, after all, is what churches have mostly told the masses for centuries (millennia?), and that is the basis of the division of labour that underlies modern industrial society.  

To live one's morality and get one's strongest values amidst incomprehension, incoherence and even stark contradiction; is therefore regarded as just another component of the modern human condition. 

Very few are immune to this socially-endorsed habit of outsourcing values; as can be seen by the willingness of so-many Christians to accept incomprehension/ incoherence/ contradiction as articles of faith... 

And thereby not only to take their faith secondhand; and to prize institutional/ social loyalty and obedience as their highest religious value -- but to regard this delegation of responsibility for life-itself as necessary (as well as sufficient) to being-a-Christian. 

The catalogue aria from Don Giovanni: Mozart makes the sordid, sublime

My somewhat unconventional evaluation of Mozart's Don Giovanni is that it does not really work as a whole; and its quality ranges from the superb to the distinctly sub par. 

To focus on the best; I suggest listening to the "Madamina" or "Catalogue" aria sung by Leporello, servant to Don Giovanni; in which he numbers the Don's seductions, describes their variety, and the undiscriminating nature of his taste. 

As is usual with Mozart's librettist Da Ponte, the lyrics are sordid and suggestive in the extreme, with an unpleasant nudge-nudge wheedling quality to the last couple of lines: purché porti la gonnella,

voi sapete quel che fa - "if she wears a petticoat, you know what he does". 

And yet, and yet! Mozart makes of it the most utterly wonderful thing! And, as usual, does so not only with delightful melody, but with the most delicately delicious of orchestral accompaniment. 

I chose this recording mainly because of the characteristic lyricism, sympathy and crisp rhythm of Claudio Abbado's conducting, and because the orchestra comes well forward in the sound balance - so that this aspect can be heard readily. The singing by Bryn Terfel I would regard as only adequate, and much better can be found online - e.g. by Walter Berry. 

So, when listening, I advise focusing on the accompaniment - and right from the beginning when the singer's phrases are punctuated by the little runs-upward of some seven ascending four note phrases from the violins; before these are joined by the woodwinds. 

Despite being an unusually long five-plus minutes, including some repeated words; the aria always remains interesting due to the musical variety - with rapid patter alternating with strong and dramatic sections. 

Astonishingly; the very best of Mozart is saved for those last two seedy and instituting phrases ("if she wears a petticoat, you know what he does"). Listen closely from 4:20 - to the point when Mozart sets the Italian phase voi sapete quel che fa - and he suddenly, but utterly characteristically, launches the whole thing up to a sublime level of transcendent beauty, far beyond the range of almost anybody else. 

This passage is what is utterly distinctive to Mozart at his very best. Who knows how he did it except that it is terribly simple and a whisker from banality. Who knows why his genius flew at just the point when the lyrics seemed least promising. 

***

Lyrics for Madamina, il catalogo è questo... (Madame, this is a list...): 

My dear lady, this is a list of the beauties my master has loved, a list which I have compiled. 

Observe, read along with me. 

In Italy, six hundred and forty; in Germany, two hundred and thirty-one; a hundred in France; in Turkey ninety-one. In Spain already one thousand and three, one thousand and three, one thousand and three. 

Among these are peasant girls, maidservants, city girls, countesses, baronesses, marchionesses, princesses, women of every rank, every shape, every age. 

In Italy six hundred and forty, etc. 

With blondes it is his habit to praise their kindness; in brunettes, their faithfulness; in the very blonde, their sweetness. In winter he likes fat ones, in summer he likes thin ones. He calls the tall ones majestic. The little ones are always charming. 

He seduces the old ones for the pleasure of adding to the list. His greatest favourite is the young beginner. It doesn't matter if she's rich, ugly or beautiful; if she is rich, ugly or beautiful. 

If she wears a petticoat, you know what he does. If she wears a petticoat, you know what he does. 

Christianity is pure choice - with no compulsion

Christianity, properly grasped (and I personally fail in this all-too-often) is pure choice. 

There is no compulsion; because we can affiliate with God only voluntarily; as love must always be voluntary (else it is not love). 

So there is no compulsion to join with God in His creation - only the natural consequences that flow from our choices. 

Many people over the past two-plus centuries have rejected Christianity outright, because they experienced and regarded it as necessarily a package of choices mandatorily backed-by coercive compulsions. 

While this rejection may merely be an excuse for sinning; rejection has been felt most deeply by those of romantic disposition; those who felt and valued their freedom, their creativity, and personal love; and who intuitively opposed any attempt at external compulsion - whether of motivation, thinking, feelings, purpose...

They rejected the reality of the Christian understanding of God as a personal creator; because they could not believe that any loving person would relate to us as an absolute tyrant demanding obedience or else. 

Thus they rejected (variously) the Christian reality of God and creation (choosing instead determinism), the personal nature of God (choosing instead abstraction), or the goodness of God (choosing instead power to satisfy need or pleasure). 

We (here and now) need to ignore centuries of misrepresentation and manipulation; dig-down to the root of reality; and recognize that the essence of Christianity is - and always has been - the opportunity to choose or not to affiliate our-selves with God's creative will - in Heavenly life eternal.  

**

If you don't want it - then just walk away. We Christians ought not to try and stop you. 

What we can and should try to do (especially if we love you) is clarify just what is on offer when Jesus made-possible resurrection. That isn't easy, and is impossible unless you want to know, and will therefore (really) listen.   

But if resurrection and the eternal life of loving creation really is not for you, if your preferences lie elsewhere - then that's that.

It's your decision. That's what you need to grasp. 

You cannot avoid it, you have not avoided it. Either you make this decision your-self; else you instead decide to let someone else (or some-thing else) make the decision for you. 

And if you make the choice on the basis of what I would regard as too little thought or a lazy failure of imagination; then it was your choice to do behave thus. 

From my Christian perspective; the choice is, ultimately, inescapable; because it comes to everyone after death (if not before): the choice of yes or no to joining your purposes with God's. 

Forget about compulsion, if you can - set it aside!

Think of it as pure choice; as purely your choice. 

"4-Dimensional Chess" in politics is a variant of The Boromir Strategy (hence always evil)

Even Spock was limited to Tri-Dimensional Chess...

Recent and forthcoming events in relation to the US "President" elections, have once again filled the mass media and blogosphere with complex, labile, incoherent "4-Dimensional Chess" explanations of what is really going-on...

We know that the official story is never true; nonetheless it's a snare to get drawn into these attempts to discover the real truth. 

Not only because they are necessarily false explanations (although the truth is that we cannot ever know, because some key relevant information is unavailable to outsiders, and the insiders are all evil liars). And not only because even-if the truth was discovered, and the villains and their villainy identified, justice would not be done.   

I fully accept that there are indeed many people playing 4D chess in politics; that is, adopting multi-layered strategies whereby the meaning of a "move" on one level may (or may not) mean the opposite, on another level; and where the overall strategy is only apparent by a multi-level and dynamic awareness.

And, of course, other people (and probably most of them) are merely using 4D chess explanations to cover-up incompetence, ignorance and insanity. 

But complex and long-term 4-Dimensional Chess strategizing is how many of the leadership class operate; as I know from my own experiences working inside large bureaucracies such as the National Health Service, Universities Think Tanks and the like. They discuss and make such plans, and they try to accomplish them.

(The 4D strategies are always derailed by endemic dishonesty, incompetence, and corruption. They invariably end by having different outcomes from intended, and by destroying capability and efficiency. Nonetheless, there are many such plans in the pipeline and operative.)

 

What I am saying is that reasoning about politics on the lines of 4D chess, demonstrates that participants in this kind of strategy and analysis are on the side of evil. 

In other words: regarding politics as any kind of four-dimensional chess problem, is an evil-stance on human society; because it derives from a perspective on other people that is deceptive and manipulative. 

Typically, complex schemes of deception and manipulation are presented as being "in a good cause" - e.g. to defeat some evil, or in order that "we" (the supposedly good side) can win, and then do good things...

 

In short, 4-Dimensional Chess is a version of our old friend The Boromir Strategy - which is an ancient demonic temptation to encourage a moral separation between ends and means; to encourage the delusion that we can pursue good ends by evil means. 

By contrast; when good is genuinely being pursued in politics (a rare situation, and currently absent) then means and ends are in obvious, up-front harmony; because both are clear and simple, and fit-together. 

That's the only way that good is ever achieved in a top-down fashion.

Late blooming talent

There does not seem to be any reliable correlation between the degree of talent, flair, specialness exhibited when young; and ultimate achievement. 

Of course there sometimes is. My namesake (but not related) Bobby Charlton was perhaps England's greatest footballer of all time; and his talent was evident from a very early age. Indeed, he was famous for his prowess even in a county obsessed with the sport. 

For instance; at age eleven the local education authority redirected Bobby from the rugby-playing state grammar school he was supposed to attend according to residence, to the soccer-playing school in Bedlington (which had earlier been attended by my father - himself no mean footballer at semi-pro level). 

And when Bobby was old enough to sign professionally it was a national event, and his choice of Manchester United was widely reported in the press. 

Yet there are many exceptions. I have, over the years, known or known-of quite a few young people whose flair and talent seemed destined for greatness; yet the sparkle went flat, or they took the wrong path, or their interests changed - or the world failed to recognize their special gifts. (This bureaucratic era has, indeed, become actively hostile to genuine creativity.)

Exceptions also work the other way: In 1981 went to a superb evening of "Alternative" comedy at a local venue; which boasted a galaxy of fresh talent; such as Rick Mayall - who dominated the show. But there was also a rather lame, embarrassing, and forgettable female double act called French and Saunders... i.e. Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders (then aged about 24 or 25). 

Of all those brilliant comics; it was French and Saunders who (not long afterwards) went on to the best and most illustrious careers - individually and as the same duo. 

Yet, at the time, I could detect nothing of their later brilliance - probably because it wasn't yet there. 

A year or two later; I went to a one-woman revue in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival by someone called Emma Thompson; which was so bad that it ranks as one of my most embarrassing, least enjoyable evenings in the theatre. 

Admittedly, Emma Thompson was barking up the wrong tree; and she was never a good comedian as such - but she became, of course, one of the very best movie actresses of the past several decades. 

Yet I could see nothing of this, back in the early 1980s. At the time; I just wanted to avoid ever watching her again! 

Perhaps the most stark example of late-emerging talent is provided by my English Literature tutor at Durham University: Derek Todd. Derek had earlier been a lecturer at Queen's University, Belfast; where a young undergraduate brought some poems to show him. Derek found them not-good, and gently tried to dissuade the chap from further efforts in that direction. 

That untalented young student poet was Seamus Heaney -  who later won the Nobel Prize for Literature*. 

My assumption is not that Derek missed Heaney's budding talent and ability, but that it was not then evident. 

The point is that sometimes people change - and quite a lot. And sometimes that can happen very late; as when novelists take up writing in middle age or old age, and discover a surprising talent. 

One of my wife's favourite light-comic authors is Jodie Taylor; who began writing and published only after retirement, aged about sixty - which is very old for a humorous author (most of whom cease to be really funny before thirty). From this late standing-start; she has poured-out dozens books-after-books ever since her debut in 2013, at an astonishing rate by any standard. 

This is very unusual, very unlikely - maybe unique. 

But it happened - which just goes to show. 

* I personally don't rate Heaney as a poet. More exactly, I do not regard him as a real poet. But that's another story. 

When Gandalf had no beard

It seems that, when he first arrived in Middle earth and was more youthful in appearance; Gandalf had no beard!

My reasoning is presented over at The Notion Club Papers blog.

What's the point of "average" (and bad) work in the arts (opera, plays, music, poetry etc)

It's an interesting question as to whether it is worth having the mass of average stuff (not to mention bad stuff) in the arts - or whether we only really-need the really-good stuff?

Of course, it may be argued that the really-good stuff could not be produced without the average (and bad) stuff - because people need to learn. And it could also be said that we need to have the bad stuff in order that we learn what makes the really-good really good. 

Well, maybe. But once the really-good stuff has been produced, and once people know it for what it is - what then? Does the average stuff need to hang-around - does it demand attention - is it worthwhile?

It seems to me that there is a strong argument that we don't need anything but the very-good, and that we only really-need the really-good stuff. 

Indeed; it is possible that having so much average-to-poor stuff hanging around is a Bad Thing; it wastes people time, and wasted time is an evil - leaving aside the considerable quantities of the actively bad. 

Consider opera. There are maybe a score of really-good operas - and the rest seem to serve no essential value. They hang around because some people want to listen to (and perform) operas more often than we could tolerate the really-good stuff - so we get a great mass of pretty worthless opera being performed, recorded and watched. 

Yet we could just watch (and perform) the really-good stuff, and simply not go to the opera (or listen to recordings) very often. We could just do other things in the meanwhile. 

In other words, the problem is a kind of addiction. Opera people get addicted to opera, so they end up overdosing on the mediocre stuff, because the alternative is to get habituated to the really-good stuff by taking it too often. 

They consume (and perform) mediocre stuff , because there isn't enough good stuff; and they cannot stop taking the stuff: they cannot stay off the stuff long enough to refresh their palates. 

Classical music in general is the same - only a few really-good composers; although there are quite a lot of very-good pieces individual pieces. Still, so insatiable is the desire for music, that most of what gets recorded, played, listened-to is a kind of filler (and often actively unpleasant, at that !) 

Plays are even more extremely thus. There are (in English) very few good plays; and the vast bulk of plays are just ephemeral ways of passing an evening - keyed into current fashion rather than "the human condition". And the demand for bulk mediocrity is again because there just aren't enough really good things to supply the addiction. 

And poetry! There are very few worthwhile poems (even from the best poets, and there aren't many of them); and the really-good poems are all-but lost in an ocean of average-to-bad poetry - such that most people never seem to find them; and spend their lives paddling in the shallows and swamps.  

 

Blaise Pascal commented that all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone. 

Well, not all of the problems; but the arts confirm what is seen in other domains of life; that much of what is mediocre, time-wasting, and corrupting; is due to our craving for diversion. 

And most diversion comes via novelty - not just the arts, but gossip, "news", critique - is the prime attribute of that which diverts us in the mass and social media - and everyday life. 

Hence the preponderance of so much that is average and bad in the arts and elsewhere.   

The "cosmic perspective" - strictly optional or unavoidable?

Most people seem to regard ultimate questions, metaphysics or "the cosmic perspective" as irrelevant frills (for people with too little to do, too much time on their hands) at best - but more likely as delusional nonsense, and something that ought to be avoided. 

The subject certainly is avoided (except to warn against it) in all of mainstream public life. 

My understanding is that this avoidance is very obvious, is like a veering away from somewhere that people are actively trying not to confront. 

The elephant in the room is that what people want, do talk about - is pointless. That is an implicit fact; and as such the choice is between pointless "fun" and pointless misery - so it's all about fun. 

And when life feels shallow, then depth is supposed to come from altruism, from fighting against bad things like racism, global warming; or fighting for the rights of officially-oppressed groups and their representatives. 

But if life is indeed pointless?... Or is "meaning and purpose" supposed to arise from striving to make other peoples' pointless existences more fun and more comfortable? I guess this is supposed to be how it works - but, of course, it doesn't work. 

When things are pointless, well they are pointless - and manipulating our temporary emotions or feelings doesn't affect that horrible fact. 

The assumption seems to be that there are no answers, and cannot be any answers to The Big Questions. Philosophy has even defined itself in terms of failing to answer the perennial questions; but just wittering-on about them, anyway!

So we should not waste time on raising the big questions... It can only make us depressed.

What about religion, what about Christianity, what about churches? 

Well, religion is about churches, and churches are about sticking to list of rules (or not sticking to them, but pretending anyway) - which is just more of the same stuff we get plenty of elsewhere; and about "worship". 

Worship is supposedly what God (or the gods) wants us to do. And this is supposed to please (or appease) God, and make us take a better perspective on life... It doesn't, of course; but why should it - even in principle? Worship does not address the question of ultimates, of what it is all about?

From this angle, church is just part of the colossal system of evasion in which we live; just another way of whiling away our pointless, mayfly lives until we crumple and die (and after we die... more of the same worship stuff; but forever). 

If not, then what? What actually would, or at least could, be helpful?

My answer is: reminders of the real cosmic perspective. So that our mundane lives can be seen (albeit only temporarily, but maybe something will last) in their place in the scheme of things.

A reminder of where we are from, where we are going; and what positive relevance our current lives have for all this.

(I say positive relevance, because that is something grossly lacking. Avoiding stuff, self-sacrifice etc is meaningless - unless there are positive and permanent things we ought to be doing.  

It is useful, fundamentally valuable, for us to know our lives in terms of what we personally are positively we are supposed to achieve in them.

A cosmic perspective for the here-and-now and the mundane. 

That would seem like a valid activity for religion - whether in terms of teaching, reading, conversation - or of formal church rituals and the like. 

 

A piece of my childhood: Jackie Charlton visits Ashington, Northumberland, 1971

"Big Jack" Charlton and "wor kid" (i.e. my little brother) Bobby - 1966 Soccer World Cup winners feted in their home town of Ashington

This is a marvellous half-hour 1971 "fly on the wall" TV documentary about the 1966 England football world cup winner Jackie Charlton, visiting his childhood home in Ashington Northumberland. 

I have previously written about the astonishing way that this mining village has - over several generations - produced international sportsmen - first in football, and now in cricket. 

All through my childhood I spent Easter and Summer holidays staying with grandparents in the next-door-to-Ashington villages of Newbiggin, and later Newsham; before, after and during the time this documentary was made. 

So, what is depicted is both familiar and nostalgic. Nostalgic, despite the decidedly un-glamorous nature of these smoky and coaly Northumbrian villages - a stark contrast to the bosky Devonshire and Somerset villages where I grew-up. 

We certainly enjoyed our holidays - much helped by the fact that Newbiggin - unlike Ashington - had a good beach, with rock pools, only a stones-throw from my grandparents house; and did not feel in any way deprived by comparison with our neighbours who were going abroad or to more genteel resorts.  

If you do decide to watch this programme, then you may find it difficult to understand what is being said. The dialect is mid-Northumbrian - sometimes called Pitmatic - and is still (even when the speaker is trying to speak posh) strange, or largely incomprehensible, to those who were not exposed to it as children; but in 1971 it was even more extreme. 

Why are most mass media populated Only by people I dislike and despise: and nobody-at-all with whom I wish to empathize?

For me, much of the mass media output is ruined and made intolerable because populated entirely by dislikeable characters. 

Indeed "dislikeable" is putting it mildly! Most media dramatis personae (whether in TV, movies, songs, plays or novels) are people I regard as actively loathsome individuals!

I used to theorize this on the basis that it was part of the strategy of corruption; for instance that heroes were - over the past decades - replaced by anti-heroes, and virtuous exemplars were replaced by "victims". This is surely correct - so far as it goes...

But I now think the proximate reason may be simpler: 

That the authors of TV, movies, songs, plays and novels are writing about what they know - and they know evil from the inside and by-experience; and know almost nothing of heroism, virtue of Goodness. 

The authors and artists themselves typically lack such virtues to begin with; and to make matters worse have strategically affiliated themselves firmly to the devil's agenda.

I mean, they authors have embraced the anti-God, anti-creation, anti-Good agenda that is pursued by "the global establishment", top-down; and via all possible means...

From direct coercive power (laws and regulations), through subsidy and awards; to multi-pronged ideological propaganda that naturally (and very importantly) includes "the arts". 

Furthermore, the mass media world they have chosen to inhabit and in which they participate is pervasively corrupt: the world of movies and television, directors and actors, publishers and marketing, patrons and "arts administrators", reviews and critics, musicians and production...   

In conclusion; there are (by my judgement) no virtuous characters in the great bulk of mass media, simply because those who produce the mass media are themselves deficient in virtue and live-out their lives among some of the most corrupt and value-inverted human beings the world has ever known. 

And, what is worse, authors depend on the good opinion of these corrupted persons; insofar as the authors desire money, fame and high status. 

With authors being as-they-are and working in the environment they actually do; it is to-be-expected that the modern mass media is replete with actively-evil protagonists (liars, cheats, selfish hedonists, psychopaths); while the truly virtuous are depicted unconvincingly - or most-often not-at-all. 

And when there is any attempt to depict genuine virtue; because authors personally know nothing of such matters; these characters inevitably will be pathetic, miserable, simple-minded, deluded - but inevitably victims. 

It's not that authors are merely representative of the corruptions of this era - things are much worse than that! It is that authors are among the avant garde of evil: they personally are active advocates of, not merely going-along-with, the agenda of evil; and that authors inhabit a social-world of like-minded persons - the society of those who have chosen, professionally, to join the primary servants and implementers of the demonic strategy. 

Memories of the Birdemic-Peck years of 2020-2022...

Does anyone vaguely recall those remote, almost legendary, days of 2020-22? The birdemic and the peck campaign...

(And in the midst of it all, the lying, resentment, and spite of the "MLB" antiracism debacle of later summer 2020, and its permanent sequelae in law and regulations and social practices). 

If you really try, can you remember how most people (and all institutions) behaved? What they said - and what they willingly, and with pleasurable anticipation, approved and anticipated? 

I do. It isn't a subject I think about much; but it is an era that permanently affected my evaluation of people and organizations - especially "Christian" churches. 

It was a time when true-colours were revealed - starkly exposed. The metaphorical gloves were off to reveal the iron fist inside the velvet. Proudly wearing the cloth or paper masks (and displaying selfies of it!), so many people un-masked their real natures.   

It's not so much that I dwell-upon their embrace of the agenda of evil and their reluctance to think, reason, learn - their cowardice and the short-termist hedonism that governed them...

But that - in terms of my system of mental evaluation, 2020-21 established the categories within-which I "place" entities - in terms of their motivations, their aspirations, ultimately the side they have taken in the spiritual war. 

These are the categories from-which I continue to make inferences. 

And this is why I have zero optimism - that is no expectation of things positively improving - emanating from any of the people, institutions, or systems of the public discourse, or the Establishment system. 

And this is why I am saddened and disappointed to observe so many people who are optimistic about the way things are going. So many who imagine that the West (the world?) has bottomed-out, and begun a rise to better times; or done a U-turn and begun to retreat from the strategy of self-annihilation...

But spiritually nothing has changed for the better: there has been no large scale repentance - therefore nothing substantive has been learned. 

Therefore (since change is inevitable) we should infer that those who chose the side of evil in 2020-22 have since come to endorse the assumptions of that side more deeply and thoroughly (whatever their self-identification may be). 

I regard this-worldly-optimists as not merely deluded, but as having been seduced from good (if they ever supported it), and made choice of the wrong side. 

What made me "a writer"

When I was a late teenager and young adult; I envisaged being "a writer"; by which I meant some kind of creative writer - if not as a living, as a significant side-line to my job. 

Aside from a few comedy sketches for performance in revues, and scientific articles for journals (which were collaborative) I did not "publish anything much in the way of writing until I was about 28; when something "clicked"; and I suddenly became able to write fluently and quickly (and get published, and quite often paid for) essays and journalistic pieces. 

For the next couple of decades I published a great deal of this kind of stuff - and we have in the past couple of days been sorting through many boxes of such material that had been piled-up in various places for many years. 

I found it amazing, and somewhat appalling, to rediscover the sheer quantity and variety of these outpourings. 

Quite aside from a couple of hundred mainstream "papers" and a few books (which were done in relation to my academic job); it seems I also did a very large number of editorials, book reviews, comments, commentaries and columns, in all kinds of places. 

I must have been publishing something every week or two for many years. These were placed in all sorts of publications: prestigious scientific and medical journals, national newspapers and magazines; and also numerous obscure and small-circulation outputs such as literary and cultural "small magazines", professional and trade journals, and local "in house" magazines and newspapers for places I worked (and places I didn't work - e.g. I published scores of things in the Oxford Magazine).  

So I really did end-up as "a writer" - albeit I found my niche in "non fiction" rather than in the poems, plays, short-stories and novels which I attempted to write - and failed to write well - in the first decade of adulthood.  

From 2010; I all-but ceased to do this kind of paper-work, apart from four books done for Buckingham University Press and a handful of scientific papers - and instead began to blog on a daily (actually about 1.5 pieces per day) basis. This blogging amounts to a broadly similar number of words as I used to publish on-paper. 

And, up to now (who knows what comes next) this continues. 

What is strange is that (as I mentioned) it took a good decade of trying before I was able to write; at least I could not before age 28 write in the way I have found enjoyable and straightforward since. 

Partly this was a matter of psychological maturing, partly a matter of finding the form within-which my writing flows; and partly it was the "training" of writing scientific papers, journal articles - which activity made me unselfconscious and gradually take an objective attitude towards what I had written...

As a young would-be writer, I could not tell whether what I had written was any good; because I judged my own writing from the inside, and could not see how it struck other people. 

Once I learned how to do this self-monitoring: learned how to evaluate what I had written by the same standards I would apply to what other people had written - this seemed to provide the break-though I needed.  

It was writing scientific papers (as first author) and then having them critiqued and corrected by my doctoral supervisor, and other research collaborators; that did the trick for me. 

Which I still find surprising! - but that was what happened: that was what made "a writer" of me (i.e. a writer of the kind I am, and have been).  

Note: The other thing I was good at was teaching. But that was a thing I never needed to learn. I was good at it from the first attempt. This may be hereditary; since there are several good teachers in my family; including father, siblings, and a child. 

A big problem with spiritual interventions such as prayer/ meditation, especially in groups

I have been very un-impressed by what I know of the "results" of group prayer, or meditation - especially when groups are arranged to pray "for" something or another. 

Such things seem recurrently popular - among Christians, and also in the New Age and occult world. Those involved in group prayer/meditation/ ritual almost-invariably seem to be emotionally satisfied by their activities - yet, as so often, anyone outside of the magic circle of participants sees only a kind of self-fulfilling psychology at work. 

In principle, this could be because the change is at an imperceptible spiritual level of things; or it could be that actually nothing valuable has happened - but worse; I suspect that such attempts to do good by prayer or meditation often do actual harm. 

This is because people nearly always seem to be asking for the wrong things. 

Either they are asking for some outcome that is inferred from distorted or false information derived from the mass media-globalist bureaucracy; or else they are asking for something abstract that itself is an evil-motivated concept... 

I mean something like "peace", "justice", "healing", "safety" ;or the triumph of some particular side in some dispute. 

When it comes to matters outside of our direct experience, we are on shaky ground when we engage in attempted spiritual machinations. 

It is more important to pray or meditate for the discernment to know what is needed; than to try and achieve by consciously-willed spiritual-force some particular outcome; concerning situations for which our understanding is derivative and insecure (the significance of which is often externally dictated)... Situations when we personally don't really know what is happening, nor what would be a better thing to happen. 

The problem is not so much that group-prayer meditation does not work as that it does actual harm - because the harm of asking for wrong things is amplified by the "group dynamics" of the situation.  

There is no such thing as value neutrality. When we are not working to sustain the side of God and the good; we will very probably be lending spiritual aid to the side of evil - and/or opening our-selves to demonic influence: inviting it in. 

Note added: As so often, I think this problem is a modern one. In earlier eras of human consciousness, Men were (to a much greater extent than now) spontaneously immersed in both the group consciousness, and the spirit world of the divine. But one aspect of modern consciousness is that this is no longer the case: our freedom and individuality comes with the flip-side that we don't have a natural (and largely unconscious) connection with group, angels or God. We must make a conscious personal choice to attain knowledge of The Good - and positive groupishness tends to be rare and evanescent. 

Philosophy: insane or boring? An apocryphal story about Wittgenstein.

There is an apocryphal story hereabouts (recalled from memory) about Wittgenstein when he was working as a laboratory assistant in the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle upon Tyne during the second world war (lodging in the Jesmond house - illustrated above - that is currently, inhabited by some family friends). 

Apparently he turned up - unannounced, and at first unidentified - at a philosophy department, seminar presumably after his work had finished: I like to imagine he was still wearing his white lab coat. He sat, stony-faced, through the fumbling talk, as the whisper went around that he was present. When it came to the question time, nobody said anything - waiting for W to speak. 

Wittgenstein is supposed to have delivered the following crushing line: "Well, that was very interesting... Now! Shall we do some philosophy?"... And then he, of course, proceeded to take-over the proceedings. 

If there is any truth in this, W was being typically arrogant and cruel; but there is a "moral": he did have a point - In the sense that there are few things more boring and futile than studying and expounding "about" philosophy (as happens in 99-point-something percent of seminars); yet (for those with the taste for the activity) there is little in life more fascinating than actually doing philosophy.  

In other words; I think Wittgenstein may have been making the point that there is a world of difference between talking-about and doing.   

Actually doing philosophy - by oneself or with a few other people - is (like many of the best things) something that can only be done from a genuine motivation; from genuinely wanting to know oneself and for personal reasons.

Wittgenstein himself tried to do philosophy in a formal academic setting, in his "lectures" - but, while he sometimes found an audience of suitable stooges who stimulated him in the ways he required; I don't think he truly succeeded for other people. 

Because W's motivations were not their motivations; and his disciples turned-out every bit as conventionally academic and externally-driven as the adherents of any other "school".     

So perhaps, like all creative work, real philosophy is essentially a solitary activity. 

Note: The "insane" of the title may seem obscure. What I was getting at was that is that when some person, usually an individual, is doing philosophy - he is doing so for personal reasons, that may not be at all widely shared. His work is quite likely to seem incomprehensible, even crazy - especially when seriously pursued, and over a significant timespan. To other people; he seem to be engaged in a trivial pursuit, using idiosyncratic methods, in a thought-world of his own. Insane!...