The extreme difficulty of winning a war against opponents who are forbidden to surrender and must be annihilated

What follows is meant to provide an historical analogy for a current real world situation - i.e. the Western proxy-war against the Fire Nation. 

The Paraguayan War of 1894 was apparently one of the most destructive wars in history - in terms of the proportion of the Paraguayan population killed. Broadly speaking (because precise numbers are not known) more than half of the entire nation of Paraguay were killed, including nearly all men. 

This happened because Paraguay was a small and relatively weak nation whose (apparently crazed or psychopathic) leader Lopez attacked three much larger and stronger surrounding nations (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay) - simultaneously. 

Despite this one-sidedness; the war continued for more than five years because Paraguay was not allowed to surrender. 

It takes much longer to annihilate a population than to defeat a nation militarily. 

When a nation is being used as a proxy by a superpower - an easy matter to do by imposing a superpower-puppet leadership by coup, and controlling it by bribery and blackmail - the proxy nation is in a similar situation to - but potentially worse than - Paraguay. 

The proxy nation may be defeated, but forbidden to surrender. Then the war can only end by annihilation of the proxy nation.

And such a war to the point of annihilation is bound to be far more costly and destructive even to the victorious side, than would be the case of fighting only to the point of military defeating the opponent. 

Hence the appeal to superpowers of using proxies to fight their opponents, rather than doing so oneself.  

Suppose then that the superpower has several further proxies lined-up and waiting in the wings; and who will be compelled to fight until each of these is also annihilated...

And suppose further that the superpower actively despised, resented, or otherwise hated the proxy nations...

This is why being a proxy nation may be worse than Paraguay. I presume that the Paraguayan leader did not actually hate his people, and did not desire that they be annihilated - but those controlling a superpower may actively hate the people of the nation they are using as proxy. 

The superpower may be glad that the the people fighting as their proxy, are being slaughtered en masse and their country ruined.  

In this case, the annihilation of a series proxy nations used in wars against the Fire Nation would actually be a positively desired result! 

Finally; we should add that a supra-national-globalist leadership class is actually controlling the geopolitical strategy of the West - a group without any national or other group loyalties, but instead motivated by a destructive hatred of all nations and peoples.

(A group, I would add, whose members are mostly in service to demonic powers, rather than pursuing human interests.) 

Therefore, it is desirable for such a group that this planned sequence of proxy wars should also damage the superpower who is proximately contriving and conducting them.

What I am talking about is therefore a blueprint for incremental worldwide annihilation; because once lethal conflict has begun - then (so long as those in power remain in power) nobody will be allowed to stop and there will be no victory.

This business of contriving an unending sequence of unwinnable proxy-wars designed for mutual destruction is, I believe, the actual situation in the world today. 

I assume that this fact is understood by at least some participants at the highest levels of geopolitical strategy - but most people in most places simply will not accept that things could possibly be as bad as I describe. 

Time will tell.  

  

Transhumanism - a cure for entropy? No - transhumanism is a faith-based ideology

Like most Men though history; I regard "entropy" as the fundamental problem of this mortal life on earth - in other words, what the IV Gospel called "death" or "sin". 

Entropy is the tendency of all entities to undergo change, degeneration, and dissolution - loss of form; for Men to suffer disease and death. 

Entropy is the fundamental problem of mortal life, because it cannot be prevented - or, at least, it never yet has been prevented. 

But transhumanism claims that entropy can be cured - by human effort, and the application of science and technology. 

And transhumanism is - mostly implicitly, and for lack of any "acceptable" alternative - perhaps the dominant ideal and ideology of the developed world today. 

The main basis of this claim to be able, in principle, to cure entropy; is that disease and degeneration has been delayed in many places; and the average age of death has been been delayed considerably. 

In other words, some of the symptoms of entropy have been - in some cases - quantitatively alleviated by extension of technologies of exactly the kind we already have - drugs, surgery, genetic manipulations and so forth. 

On the other hand, the waning of one disease means the waxing of another - e.g. as a smaller proportion of otherwise healthy old people died of pneumonia in their sixties; a much greater proportion of decrepit older people died with dementia in their eighties. 

While average human lifespan has indeed greatly increased globally, and especially in developed nations; maximum human life span seems to be the same as ever (or hardly changed). 

And while people in their fifties and sixties look and behave younger than those of that age did 100 years ago; if they live long enough the signs of extreme old age will come upon them - and with greater rapidity (somewhat as Aldous Huxley described in his Brave New World). 

So, transhumanism is not based on any fundamental insight or empirical discovery; rather it should be considered an ideology (i.e. a "religion" minus the divine) that is intended to, and sometimes does, replace religions - especially Christianity.

In the IV Gospel; the work of Jesus Christ is rooted in his offering an eternal and complete cure for entropy (which is called "death" or "sin") - but on the other side of death and by resurrection.

Transhumanism offers its cures for entropy on this side of death, and without the re-making of self that is resurrection - which is probably the basis of the appeal of transhumanism.

The promise of transhumanism is one of alleviation of suffering and abolition of death soon, and without having to die first.

If this was possible, and true, then the appeal of transhumanism is obvious to anyone who desires above all to escape from disease, degeneration, and death. 

However; at root the transhumanist proposed cure of entropy is purely imaginary, a "nice notion", a wave of the hand, an unfounded assertion...

If entropy is real, then it cannot (cannot) be cured by any possible technology - because all technologies are subject to entropy - and so on, all the way down.

And if entropy is not real... well, that would be something that transhumanists would need to argue explicitly. 

Yet transhumanism passes-itself-off (with its quantitative analogies) as "hard science" or more like "applied technology"; a thing attainable with bureaucratic reliability, by a sufficiently large and well-funded project management of research effort: by directed human effort. 

With transhumanism we have, as so often, unacknowledged metaphysics as the basis of an assumed ideology - an ideology that pretends to be a consequence and inference of solid and inescapable empirical facts. 

Thus people are choosing to be transhumanist purely on the basis of wanting to escape the effects of entropy, and then assuming that it is possible to abolish entropy in this mortal life and world. 

The assumption that entropy can be cured is the basis of all that follows in transhumanism; and, as an assumption, it cannot be disproved - it is a matter of faith.

What I ask is that such an assumption be regarded as an assumption.

The assumption should be made clear and explicit and up-front; rather than hidden-away, implicit - or falsely denied to be "an assumption". 

And consequently the ignorant or dishonest pretence should be dropped that transhumanism is a rational extension of further-developing science, medicine, or technological breakthroughs. 

It is no such thing:   

Transhumanism Just-Is a faith-based ideology; and should be acknowledged, evaluated and judged as such. 

 

We ought to be honest and explicit about what we regard as impossible

One of the problems about a discussing the supernatural or paranormal with a typical mainstream modern materialist-atheist; is that he regards all such things as: a created reality, god/ gods, spirits, life after death, miracles, ghosts, UFOs and aliens, out-of-body-experiences, pre-cognition, telekinesis, and telepathy... as not just improbable but impossible. 

He thinks that such phenomena are not real, simply do not exist. 

Therefore he is immune to "evidence" - and can never be convinced by any account of them; because since he is decided that such phenomena do not exist, all such evidence Must Be mistaken or dishonest.

All reports of phenomena can only be explained by being explained away with normal materialist causes; or else ignored because the Must Be mistaken or dishonest.  

But while it is easy to criticise materialist-atheists for such exclusions; we all use this method of reasoning. 

For instance I will always interpret claims of pre-cognition, of being able to "see the future", in ways that preserve the irreversible and sequential nature of "time". 

I simply cannot be persuaded that somebody already knows the future in that sense; because for me "time" is an intrinsically part of my most fundament assumptions concerning reality. 

That is, because I regard eternal living Beings as the fundamental units of reality; the livingness of Beings is dynamic and developmental - such that what be abstractly call "time" is an attribute of all Beings. 

Therefore I Will Not accept any explanation of phenomena that regards all time as simultaneous, or posits a situation outside of time, or includes time travel into the future. 

I am not persuadable otherwise; and I ought to make this clear before engaging in evaluations of phenomena that appear to, or are presented as if they, challenge the directionality and sequence and pervasiveness of time. 

I am - on this theme - Immune To Evidence!

It would be a good thing if everybody did this: if everybody who excluded all supernatural or paranormal phenomena was explicit about their immunity to contrary evidence...

Because, in a sense, such a declaration can be "the beginning of wisdom" about one's own most-fundamental, metaphysical, assumptions; and that they are indeed assumptions.  

I am happy to endorse my own assumptions about time; but when I realized (in 2008) that I was believed that God could never provide revelations to Men, and the reason for this belief was that I had pre-excluded the existence of God...

Then I realized this was an assumption; not an inference; and as-such was immune to all possible evidence about the reality of revelations. 

Having realized that my views about the divine were rooted in assumptions - and were not the consequence of evidence - I then (after further thinking) realized I did not believe those assumptions were true; and I later abandoned those assumption; and began to believe in God. 

If we are clear and explicit about our assumptions and that they are assumptions - this can be the beginning of wisdom - of many kinds.

But until we get this clear - we shall remain slaves to whatever assumptions we happen to have absorbed, from whatever source, and for whatever reason.  

Two short WWII movies about RAF Bomber Command

The Wing Commander in Target for Tonight - master of 1941 Received Pronunciation and British Officer understated not-acting

I am aware of two fascinating and contrasting (and charming!) documentaries about RAF Bomber Command during World War Two. 

The first was Target for Tonight, which was a government propaganda movie made and first-shown in 1941; then seen by vast numbers of people in cinemas during the war. 

The context was that the UK had experienced the Battle of Britain the year before, and the German bombing campaign of the Blitz continued into 1941. 

Target for Tonight was intended to show Britain as aggressor instead of victim: hitting back at the German mainland. 

Furthermore, as is obvious; the film did not use actors but real RAF people. 

This was part of the sub-theme of demonstrating the "British way" of fighting the war - getting the job done; in a manner that is calm, efficient, humorous - and without personal hatred. 

The bombers are Vickers Wellingtons, usually called Wimpys. This was a two engine, five crew aeroplane, produced in greater numbers than any other UK bomber; rather slow and increasingly outdated; but tough and highly-adaptable, with a good bomb load for a twin-engined aircraft of 4,000 lbs plus. 

The Wimpy was a workhorse, and operated effectively in many different environments.  

You can see that at this stage, night bombing was very much a matter of a few individual aircraft (in raids measured in tens), each finding its way to the target, as best they could; and using highly unreliable methods of navigation such as "dead reckoning". 

Consequently, it was extremely rare for bombs to land within even five miles of the target during night operations - and the precision illustrated in Target for Tonight was almost unknown. 

Indeed, in retrospect, it is clear that for at least the first two or three years of the war; in strategic and attritional terms; night bombing was far more damaging to the RAF and Britain than it was to Germany - although the benefit to national morale of perceived "hitting-back" against the enemy also needs to be put into the equation. 

The Avro Lancaster is, somewhat by contrast, recognized as the premier heavy bomber of WWII - mainly due to its unmatched bomb carrying capacity (up to 22,000 lbs - but more often about 14,000 lbs). 

Compared with the earlier movie; by 1944 RAF night raids had increased by an order of magnitude to hundreds of aircraft, each of which was carrying several fold greater loads of bombs than in 1941. Furthermore night bombing accuracy had greatly increased by 1944 - due to various radar and radio aides, better training, and "pathfinder" marking.

If you do a rough calculation of 10X aircraft numbers, 3X bomb load, and maybe three-fold increase in accuracy - it can be seen that something-like 100-fold increased weight of bombs was being delivered onto a designated target area, compared with just three years earlier. 

But, on the other side; German deployment of radar, flak, searchlights, and night fighters had also greatly improved. Therefore, what had not much changed in 1941 was the mortality rate of RAF bombing aircrews and losses of aircraft; which remained very high all through the war - except in the last few months. 

Night Bombers is a movie compiled from multiple short takes of colour footage, covering many aspects of RAF wartime life, and filmed with a clockwork (no sound recording) camera in 1944. 

This footage came from an RAF bomber pilot - who later (1981) edited it, and added sound effects, to make the narrated story of a "virtual" air raid. 

The result is a very accomplished, as well as authentic-feeling, little movie; which demonstrates the vast increase in scale and effectiveness of Bomber Command aircraft and operations between early 1941 and three years later. 

In both movies, there is a poignancy in reflecting on the dedication of the participants, and the courage of aircrew who suffered appalling mortality and loss rates over a long period (five percent of aircraft failing to return per mission, was regarded as acceptable*). 

Such that many of the aircrew depicted in these movies will have died in action; the most famous of whom was probably Percy "Pick" Pickard - playing the pilot of "F for Freddie" in Target for Tonight.

Pickard was one of the greatest and most decorated of WWII RAF Bomber Pilots. He was shot-down and killed during the famous Amiens prison raid.   

*This was, almost certainly, untrue in terms of war strategy. 

With "AI" the whole paradigm is false and needs to be rejected

One thing about "AI" is that whenever someone points out a drawback, people will try to frame the opposition as opposition to just that specific thing. The salesmen will try to present things as if, of course everyone agrees that "AI" is good and inevitable, but they just have doubts about the implementation. 

But no, it goes beyond that. The whole paradigm is false. That replacing people and thinking is good, that it is an advance, that it is inevitable, that the people selling it actually know what will happen in the future, that we should organize our lives based on their projections. The whole thing. 

Likewise with social media. The whole paradigm that virtual interaction can equal or replace real interaction is what is wrong. Not some quibble with the implementation, but the whole thing. And along with the whole thing the fact that the people promoting it are trustworthy or know anything. 

Yes, there is a great deal of money and propaganda behind both of those things as well as (unfortunately) widespread adoption. But if the paradigm that these things are good and inevitable is wrong, if the whole philosophy is false, then things will not work the way people say they will. 

The future will not unfold the way they say it will and people are mistaken to build their lives around such predictions.

Commenter NLR at Francis Berger's blog

The above paragraph seems to encapsulate much of what I believe about "AI" - its nature and intent -and why I have blogged so often on the subject.

Francis Berger then continues: 

Unfortunately, people seem unable or unwilling to reject whole paradigms, even when they detect the falsehood within them. 

There are probably many reasons for this; none of them good. I suspect most are just stuck in some kind of "go with the flow" mode of existence and will go wherever the wind takes them. 

Others appear to be aiming at some sort of expediency or chance at gain. 

People don't seem all that interested in thinking anymore. Thinking is simply not valued. 

Nor do they seem all that interested in forming real relationships with real people (and even when they do there tends to be an aura of unreality or virtuality in it, as if the person before them is but an avatar). 

Francis Berger's comment also encapsulates something I feel strongly: the lack of interest in thinking. 

The way I understand this is that people are utterly fatalistic and negative about their ability to resist or influence The System as it impinges upon them. 

And their inner reasoning goes something like: 

Because" [they assume] I can do nothing to stop anything bad, "therefore" there is no point in me thinking about it. 

Thinking about "that sort of thing" will just make me miserable - it can do nothing else; "therefore" it is better not to think... 

Best just to focus on the happy stuff and make the best of the inevitable. 

This is the end-stage of the mainstream official "materialism" of our fundamental civilizational assumptions. 

Thinking is just regarded as a free-spinning cog inside our brains, unless it eventuates in observable change. 

Our personal discernments and evaluations, our inner sense of truth and values - are regarded as simply irrelevant - because they are assumed to make zero difference to anybody or anything else. 

Many people are currently approaching a Ground Zero of human spirituality.

For vast numbers; all possibility of religion has already been abolished by their own assumptions.

By implicitly accepting the AI-paradigm, and by refusing to think,  people are voluntarily and actively destroying their livelihoods, their lives, and themselves. 

**

Note added: It strikes me that all the top-down totalitarian-imposed "Litmus Tests" share this attribute of requiring "whole paradigm" rejection. For instance, the 2020 Birdemic was an entire paradigm of untruthfulness (from the unwarranted assumptions that there was a pandemic, through its identity, and the false measures taken in response, right down to the incoherent nonsense of "testing" and disease status. Therefore - at the time - the Birdemic could not effectively be opposed by critique and resistance of any specific aspects, at any specific level. It was framed as accept-all - or reject the package. 

Bernard Shaw's Heartbreak House, for Radio - 2001

The remarkable character of Captain Shotover speaks some of Shaw's wisest and deepest words

If anyone is inclined to try out one of Bernard Shaw's best (and most serious) plays; I have found an excellent radio version of Heartbreak House - which can be streamed or downloaded from that marvellous resource Archive.org. 

As well as reading HH; I think I have watched at least two productions, one of them live at the Bristol Old Vic in 1975, another one on TV, plus maybe another on radio... 

But this audio production is the best version I have encountered. All the cast speak their lines superbly (except perhaps the actress playing Ellie) - and the direction was fluid and compelling throughout. 

Writers who always (by their own account) have a Great Time

There is a very great deal of untruthfulness in the world today! More than there was even as recently as forty years ago - although, of course, there has always been a good deal of lying and even more misleading - even in the most honest places (which used-to include England). 

In everyday social life there are some people who claim always to have had a Great Time, whatever they have been doing - at a play or concert, a party or holiday. By their own account - their lives are one fun thing after another. 

The valuation is not accurate - as you realize if you ever happen to observe them in such situations. Indeed, nobody who was not in the grip of chronic hypomania could possibly regard their own life in the way they claim to! 

Such people would be outraged if accused of lying, or even exaggerating, their own responses - yet, in their own way, each is systematically misleading other people about the nature of reality. 

We, as social listeners, need to realize that such people are not speaking accurately; and the same applies to writing.     

Social media has greatly increased the amount of Having A Great Timers among writers; just as, on the opposite pole, there are many more high-volume pathographers - indeed the same person may alternate their accounts of themselves, oscillating between accounts of exaggerated happiness and misery. 

Although it is true that a false impression is being deliberately created; the audience are complicit - because the audience wants to believe that a life of continual fun is possible, and achievable by themselves. 

And this is the basis of the exploitation: the apparently-hypomanic social media "influencer" is in some sense "selling" the method by which the audience expect to have as much as fun as the influencers appear to be having. 

And this claim-hope forms the basis of whatever is "for sale".   

But what applies, in a crude and rather obvious way, in the world of social media; also applies in the world of "serious" writing: of theology, philosophy, and spiritual writing generally.

Some authors (and these include some of the best, as well as most of the worst) project a personal of Having a Great Time; and describe their own exquisite responsivity to place and situation, to books and music; their intense and frequent religious experiences, their ecstasies and transcendental exaltations*. 

And readers need to recognize that this is as false and misleading an artefact; as contrived a construct; as the over-acted excitements of social media influencers. 

I did not recognize this as an adolescent; but (to an amazing extent) took authors at their own evaluation and projection. 

It was a valid learning process to realize (eg. from further experience, critical analysis, or biographies) that literally nobody I have ever known of - IRL or by writings - ahs "solved the problem of living" in the way that so many such imply that they have.

This insight has been vital in realizing that there is no solution to the problem of living in this mortal life and earth; and that attempts to emulate constructed authorial personae do more harm than good.   

It's a kind of laziness (to which I am also prone) to try and pick-up a purpose and meaning of one's own life in any second-hand, or emulating, kind of way. 

Certainly we can learn from other people - but we'd be wise to learn from what is true, rather the fantasies they try to convince us are true. This involves acknowledging that almost everybody with whom we interact is not just habitually and by social-conviction dis-honest, but is making no serious or sustained attempt to be honest. Especially not about their own motivations and responses.  

If we can sustain this realism; we might then be able to learn the right lessons, and make the right choices, relevant for our unique actual life and situation. 

+++

*Some other writers adopt a chronic and pervasive pessimism and/or affectation of misery - which, if sincere and chronic, would have long since led them to obscurity and death; rather than the fame and esteem they bask-in. Schopenhauer and Samuel Beckett spring to mind. This negative propaganda has only ever been popular among a sub-sector of upper class (or would be upper class) intellectuals... But that's another story.  

Family history photos - farming in the north of Ireland

This is my great grand-uncle George Graham (1870-1956), from Ballynagilly, County Tyrone, Ireland. He bought "Woodview" - where I spent some of a magical summer holiday as a child, when it was being farmed by his son Robert. 

George did some boxing in his youth, and still cut a formidable figure at the age of 85.

These really excellent photos come from a family history collection made by Anne - a second cousin, once-removed - who descended from the above George Graham (I am descended from George's older brother Nathaniel). 

Why are the totalitarian Establishment spreading predictions of "C.W." (= INAC: intra-national aggressive-conflict)

Some very high-up members of the totalitarian Establishment have recently been seeding the mainstream mass media with predictions and warnings of "C.W." - in the UK, especially.

(I will here term C.W. as INAC - meaning intra-national aggressive conflict; if you know what I am getting-at.) 

Clearly, INAC predictions coming from the Establishment are not the consequence of truth-seeking analysis or altruistic concern; but are instead some kind of an incitement and manipulation. 

So, what's going-on? 

My best guess is that this is part of the leadership-struggle and C.W. afoot within and among the Establishment - that between servants of two-kinds of evil agenda*. 

...The C.W between the bureaucratic totalitarians, who want a world of omni-survelliance and micro-control (and who reached the peak of their power globally, in early 2020); and the rising "Agents of Chaos (AOC)" - who are motivated by a spiteful desire to induce suffering and destruction.

I regard recent INAC predictions and "warnings" as a signal from the totalitarians to the Agents of Chaos, that the Establishment is ready, willing and keen to crush the AoC (and their minions) by coordinated force. 

In other words; that the "soft" totalitarianism of propaganda, bribery and demoralization (which has grown over the past half century to dominate the West; is preparing (if "necessary") to revert to old style, "hard", mid-20th century, coercive dictatorship. 

At least I think that is the intent. 

But materialist-atheistic-Leftism cannot force their genie of hedonic-despair back into its bottle. 

The actuality is that the 20th century dictatorship is no possible anymore, due to major changes in (especially Western) nations and their peoples; and the attempt to re-introduce it will instead play directly into the agenda of the Agents of Chaos. 

In other words, any approach towards INAC will fail to restore totalitarian-order; but will instead do the opposite - by fuelling the motivations of spiteful destructiveness on a widening scale. 

The totalitarian era is past - because of the nature of materialist-atheist-Leftism; which has been undermining and degrading its basis for many decades; so that our societies are not just deeply dysfunctional in multiple domains...

But also, at the level of individual people - as well as institutionally, have destroyed the basis for coordinated and long-termist action.

Instead; the mood in the West is one of self-hatred and civilizational suicide - and the strongest motivations are immediate-term, oppositional and negative - and this equally applies to whatever agencies (including military and police, law and administrative) by which it is indented that order be restored.  

Unfortunately, the masses (you and me, and those we care about) will as always be the primary victims of any intra-Establishment C.W. 

Yet, after all, that was an implicit inevitability, after Western civilization chose to reject and deny all possibility of purpose and meaning in life - in order to pursue our dreams of short-term material and sexual gratifications without being trammelled by divine considerations. 

My take home message is that we all ought to remember that the Establishment (both sides) and its mainstream media are not providing honest information or wise guidance for our benefit - but are trying to manipulate our psychology for their own ends. 

*Note added: The fracture lines interestingly revealed by the location of proposed violent conflict - intra-national or inter-national. Thus, the totalitarians are playing with the idea of INAC; while the AoCs have been pushing to expand and escalate WWIII on multiple fronts - especially since 2022. I guess that each side hopes that their favoured conflict will act to prevent the other - i.e. that inter-national conflict will be too urgent and demanding, to allow INAC on one side; or that intra-national conflict will weaken countries too much for them to engage in significant and long-term external combat. 

Media fasting is getting easier!

I have given-up on So Many blogs and vlogs and user-groups lately!

As everything fills-up with adverts, and funding requests, and buy-my-merch requests...

Including subscription streaming services, including YouTube (++), including videos, blogs, essays (Substack!) - and just about everything almost everywhere I turn. 

It's all variations on a signal saying: I'm not interested in communicating with you, so much as I am intent on extracting money from you*. 

Well, it all makes it easier, indeed spontaneous, to do what I should be doing anyway - which is watching and reading much less of this stuff - or indeed none at all.

Every little helps!

NOTE: For obvious reasons; I also swiftly give-up on those who recurrently feature, use, or promote "AI", or who insist on discussing "AI" outputs in a positively-valued or hopeful way.

*It could be argued that this was always the case - more or less; and that is true. But nowadays (as the Christian West recedes ever further from living memory) the gloves have come-off, people are more naked in their motivations - consequently their selfish motivations are less mixed with that spontaneous, largely-unconscious, spiritual-level communal concern, which constrained people in the past. 

By his metaphysical choices, Modern Man demands to be manipulated by rulers

Everybody nowadays complains about the lies, bribes, coercions and other psychological manipulations of the leadership class. 

But Modern Man has made the metaphysical decision to regard reality as without purpose or meaning...

So; if there is to be any human society of any kind it can only operate at a psychological level. 

By his metaphysical choices; Modern man demands to be manipulated by propaganda. 

In modern society, people do things for reasons that tare psychological merely: temporary "feels", because (by his metaphysical choices) there can be nothing else. 

In other words; if Modern Man says and acts as if there is no purpose or meaning to the human condition; then everything social reduces to a kind of manipulative "behaviourism" or "conditioning" - because it must be.

Because - by assumption - it cannot be anything else. 

(What else could Life be when things are not going anywhere nor for any particular reason?)

Modern Man wants and hopes that the socio-political "manipulators" (the leadership or ruling class) will be kindly, will want "us" to be cheerful and comfortable - rather than suffering miserably...

In a world where there is nothing deeper than "current feels"; we desire to be ruled by effective manipulators that are dedicated to inducing "us" to experience pleasing and gratifying psychological states. And that is what we call "good government". 

But there is no compelling reason why "the manipulators" would want "us" to be happy; after all (by our metaphysical assumptions), to them, "we" are just useless strangers, or numbers on a spread sheet*. 

Why should the manipulators want a mass of abstract people to be happy? Why should they manipulate our "feels" so as to maximize our gratifications and minimize our sufferings?

There seems no realistic psychological reason why they would. 

Given what Modern Man believes is the nature of reality; it is not surprising that instead the real-life manipulators more often want to exploit "us" for their own gain (whether for individual gratification - aka corruption; or for their collective gain aka totalitarianism) - because at least exploitation is psychologically comprehensible.

Even worse; we are increasingly getting "manipulators" who are spitefully motivated; who happen to enjoy tormenting and killing us. 

 And none of this ought to be surprising! 

Modern Man has decided that Life is about nothing more or deeper than current psychology; has made a system of socio-political control based upon that assumption; and is now reaping the inevitable consequences of that world view. 

*Note: We need to grasp the sheer absurdity of what most people are hoping-for in their political aspirations - given their metaphysical assumptions concerning reality! While it is, of course, normal for the leadership class to affect a great concern for the happiness and well-being of the masses - for leaders to claim in words that they are motivated by altruism; it is a plain fact that mainstream modern materialistic atheism provides zero  rational basis for such altruism. And yet people are astonished and disappointed - again and again, not learning from repeated experience; when leaders never fulfil their "promises" of working for "our" benefit!

Party politics - bribery and blackmail

Now it is evident that the party political system is a bribery and blackmail machine; it may be possible to understand the Right-Left divide more  accurately. 

The Left party consists of those controlled mainly by financial bribes and blackmail. 

The Right Party consists of those controlled mainly by sexual bribes and blackmail. 

Of course, this is only a generalization - and, after all, the Right and Left always drift leftwards, and often swap over. 

The mechanisms for financial corruption vary by time and place - nowadays financial corruption is hidden in plain sight: bribes comes from (e.g.) book advances, lectures and consultancy; blackmail may simply be an audit. 

And the sexual basis for control have, in some instances, inverted. That which used to be blackmailable is now mandatorily supported. Such that anyone who opposes activities that used to lead to blackmail - can himself now be blackmailed! 

But my point is that perhaps we could consider political parties as being convenient ways by which those with real power, deploy to group together those political puppets, figureheads, and rubber stamps who are to be controlled.

  

Bernard Shaw - the one volume definitive biography by Michael Holroyd (1997)

Bernard Shaw was often silly, childish and reckless to the point of breaking stuff and causing injuries (especially driving a car) - here he insisted being photographed as Rodin's "Thinker" while being sculpted by that great artist (unfortunately the resultant bust was mediocre*). 

For a couple of weeks, several hours per day, I have been reading Michael Holroyd's 1997 single volume condensation of his previously-published four volume biography of Bernard Shaw.  

It took me a long time. Even greatly shortened, this was one of the biggest biographies I have read all-through. Another reason for my slowness is that Shaw's life, or at least his adult life, was so complex, fascinating, and varied. 

Also, I (like most people) find Shaw's character extremely odd, inconsistent - in fact incoherent.

He was sometimes the kindest most considerate and helpful of people - genuinely saint-like in behaviour (including keeping secret the vast scale of his gifts and assistance). He could be almost paralysed with horror by the contemplation of cruelty and suffering, in reality or imagination.  

At other times, especially when wearing his persona of GBS; Shaw was himself, and advocated, a calculated hard-hearted indifference to well-being and life that was a glorification of cruelty and unkindness. 

This can be explained by thinking of Shaw as an extreme version of the Leftist (or Liberal) ethic that regards suffering as the worst thing in life and therefore the elimination of suffering as the primary value; to the point that mass deployment of suicide and humane killing become imperative, and a moral necessity. 

In this sense, as in others; Shaw was in the vanguard; because this perspective is nowadays mainstream and officially endorsed - although very few are honest enough to state it explicitly. 

I have been reading Shaw since my early teens. Back then, I thought that, although he persistently pushed some silly and false notions; Shaw was right about most of the most important things; and I modelled some of my own main ideas and aspirations on his work - at least in some moods, and to some extent.  

Nowadays, by contrast, Shaw seems to be fundamentally wrong about most important things, as well as having multiple very annoying or self-indulgent attributes! 

Yet I continue to regard him as a great genius, and return to his works to relish their distinctive quality of expression - whose good and bad qualities were both very obvious; and therefore probably two sides of the same coin. 

My main criticism of Shaw - as of so many people - is that he never reflected on his fundamental (metaphysical) assumptions concerning the nature of reality. Therefore, he never really understood that the inadequacies and contradictions of his attitudes, opinions, and actions; originated and were sustained by the incoherence of his deepest assumptions - many of which I believe Shaw would have rejected, had he ever become aware of them.  

*

Bernard Shaw by Rodin. Meh...

Natural selection has no foresight: So, where is natural selection taking the human species?

Natural selection is a real thing, albeit that it did not (could not) lead to the "origin of species" and the diversity of (what we call) Life on earth. 

What Natural Selection certainly can do, and does, is adaptation - or "selective breeding". 

But, natural selection has no foresight - and this leads to all sorts of problems for the lineage of entities under selection. 

By differential death and reproduction, Natural Selection amplifies or suppresses heritable variations and traits between members of the same species. 

Indeed such change can happen very quickly (biologically speaking), observable over just a few generations - and this is indeed observable in the human species over the past decades.  

Much is correctly made of the Western-leadership imposed replacement immigration in the Western nations; but this is only a surface symptom of much deeper biological changes by which Western populations have voluntarily changed to massive sub-fertility. 

Thus all the native populations of all Western nations (indeed all the developed/ wealthy/ powerful nations, all over the world) are massively sub-fertile and en route to chosen self-extinction. 

It is only because of this profound motivational change within the West, that mass migration has successfully been imposed on the West - because the world population of human beings is still growing; fuelled by rapidly increasing populations in the "third world" and undeveloped countries, in (for instance) Sub-Saharan Africa, South America, the North Africa/ Middle East, and South Asia.   

Such population growth has been made possible by the developments in the West - technological and economic but especially medical and public health developments that have reduced infant and child mortality rates from more than half of children dying before maturity to only one or two percent - something like a fifty-fold increase in the proportion of children who survive to adulthood. 

In sum:

1. The West and developed world have chosen self-extinction by massive sub-fertility.

2. The Third World has been made super-fertile by the West.

3. So across the human species overall, the population of the Third World is expanding, the West contracting...

4. And the Third World population will replace that of developed nations in terms of the make-up of human beings.

This will happen with or without mass migration - which is something extra to the situation, presumably motivated by the motivation of strategic destructive-evil that is endemic and (recently) dominant, within the Western "Establishment".  

This demographic transformation of the human species just is natural selection, in action, in real time; already happened, still happening. 

But natural selection is like an algorithm; it just increases the proportion of some gene variants and reduces others. 

Natural Selection has no foresight, and no long-term aim. 

It is a fact (so far as is known) that a Third World population cannot, therefore will not, be able to sustain the technological, economic and medical advances that led to the massive expansion of Third World population to replace the West.

So natural selection will lead to an unsustainable situation, an unsustainably large world population - which, because unsustainable, will lead to massive death ("giga" in scale - i.e. measurable in billions). 

And, at the root of it, are the reproductive motivations and choices of the mass of Western people, and the people of all developed nations. 

And at the root of reproductive motivations and choices is, ultimately, spiritual choices.

And at the root of spiritual choices?...

At the very bottom line, I would say, lies metaphysical choices - the choice of what we each (and en masse) assume to be the nature of ultimate reality.    

Note added: I have previously written considerably about the business of fertility, and giga-death; because I have had an interest (initially as an academic) in the subject for some 20 years. But the events of the past two decades have convinced me that my earlier theoretical "answer" to this problem - which was a mass revival of traditional, and probably patriarchal, religion; will not work. The evidence that it will not work includes the collapse of Mormon fertility into below-replacement levels, even among devout Mormons; and the failure of the "Fire Nation" to reach replacement levels despite by-far the most significant national Christian revival in the developed world. This has led me to believe that the cause lies very deep, deeper than church religions; but that analysis does not point towards any solution to the looming problem towards which natural selection is propelling us - let alone a conceivably plausible socio-political answer.  

Fake nationalism: "Nationalism" in 2025 is just a disguise of the totalitarian backlash

Genuine political Nationalism was the first "ideology", it came after the collapse of religion as the primary organizing principle of societies - and it was a basis for national coherence and motivation... 

But this phase was always brief (a few decades at most), and nationalism has been feeble everywhere for many decades - and in most places for a century or more. 

And nationalism cannot be revived. 

The "collective" way of thinking and behaving upon which genuine nationalism depends; was part of an earlier phase of human consciousness - a phase which is now all-but gone, and shall not return.

Mankind has changed, so that real (strong in coherence and motivation) Nationalism is not just absent currently, but just not possible from here onwards. 

Of course there are plenty of theoretical nationalists (one can espouse theoretical anything); but that means nothing in practice; when people will not (and cannot) sink their individuality into the collective consciousness. 

What we actually have in geopolitics, which is significant and influential in some nations; is various types of fake nationalism. 

Fake nationalism is an Establishment project, that has arisen in the context of the civil war among the global leadership class. 

The two sides in this war are the bureaucratic totalitarians, and the agents of chaos (i.e. the servants of Ahrimanic versus Sorathic evil). 

The totalitarians reached their peak of international power in early 2020 with the global lockdowns; but since then the agents of chaos have been waxing strong. 

At present, the agents of chaos - who are located mainly in the West; are trying to unleash all kinds of destruction such as international war, civil wars and general violence, famines (by destruction of agriculture and trade), and many kinds of disease and toxicity, economic and environmental collapse - and so forth. 

(Because destruction is easier, quicker, cheaper than construction - the agents of chaos can pursue multiple simultaneous lines of attack.)  

The official forms of nationalism that we see pitted against the agents of destruction is therefore to be understood as a fake nationalism. 

Fake nationalism is a backlash; an attempt by totalitarians to reverse the increasing policy dominance of the agents of chaos. 

It is a fake nationalism because it is not derived from the group mind of the nation; and is not motivated by promoting the well-being of the communal or collective entity that is the people of a nation. 

Fake nationalism is instead a top-down manipulative strategy from the bureaucracy, directed at a substantially individualized (indeed atomized) populace; intended and designed to strengthen the 2020-style Establishment project of omni-surveillance and total-control.

But this time, instead of the proximate goal of world totalitarianism, as argued by Trotsky (and Trotsky's descendants are now among the premier agents of chaos - having moved from world revolution to global destruction); we are getting "totalitarianism in one nation" analogous to Stalin's strategy of securing communist power and influence within the USSR. 

That is all that modern "nationalism" really amounts to: it is "Totalitarianism in one nation". 

The problem is that when confronted by the agents of chaos who are, for example, trying to continue and expand and escalate WWIII - the bureaucratic totalitarians seem to be (and perhaps are) so much less evil than the agents of chaos, as to appear almost "good"!  

It is therefore very tempting to be induced to lend our support (our "hearts and minds") to one or another of the Fake Nationalists - in our own nation, or some other. 

Therefore; when confronted by the lesser-evil of Fake Nationalists; we need to remember and hold in mind that they are not good; that their motivations, methods and aims are all evil - simply because totalitarianism is intrinsically and necessarily evil. 

And I mean spiritually evil: because the highest-level and implicit goal of totalitarianism is the damnation of Men.  

The metaphysical failure of All Christian churches

...But don't ask me about my metaphysical assumptions

(The above being the argumentative strategy of all churches)

The generations-long, inexorable corruption, apostasy and (remember 2020) self-destructive failure of Christian churches has nothing to do with me!* but is there for all capable of seeing it. 

*(I am but the bearer of bad news; and one who seeks to proceed on that basis - rather than on the basis of the delusional and dishonest optimism all-too-characteristic of those whose Christianity is inextricable from some particular church.)

And yet there is a sometimes-palpable metaphysical hunger among the mass majority of not-religious people; who realize that mainstream materialist totalitarianism offers no meaning, no purpose; and zero basis for ethics, beauty or truth. 

Metaphysics is the discourse concerning ultimate, fundamental reality. In other words metaphysics seeks to make explicit and examine our deepest convictions and assumptions concerning the way that things are.

The metaphysics of dominating mainstream modern materialism; explicitly regards ultimate reality as dead (unalive), ruled by blind causation and undirected randomness - there is no direction to it, no reason behind it, it has no values; therefore nothing is better or worse than anything else...

The only basis for preference and choice is our own temporary, subjective, psychological state; which itself has neither purpose, nor meaning - and merely whatever happens-to-be, at present. 

The official non-explanation of life, the universe, and everything is: Things Just Are. Nothing can coherently be said about any of it.   

There is a hierarchy of explanation that runs from fundamental, primary and metaphysical assumptions to make sense of the secondary, surface and observational aspects of life.

Thus: we derive our meanings and purposes from our metaphysical assumptions, and not from our "factual" observations - indeed, we cannot even know what counts as "a fact" without prior assumptions (theories) to tell us. 

Consequently, of themselves, our perceptions mean nothing, imply nothing and are undistinguishable - since the world does not come to us divided into different objects, nor do the supposed causes acting on such objects come to us divided into types. 

It is by our interaction with the world (our "participation" with creation) that what would otherwise be incoherent "noise" is instead known as having structure, meaning, purpose. 

A perceived world without primary assumptions - without the metaphysical and structural basis of reality; well, it is hardly even imaginable - but might be pictured as a booming, buzzing, fuzzy, incoherent, literal-chaos.    

It might be supposed that the churches would benefit from this vacuum of purpose/ meaning, this craving for fundamental values; but the churches eschew the deep level of metaphysical assumptions; instead trying to reason from current preferences, agreed observations, accepted facts... 

Each church hoping to convince that its particular "package" of administration/ rituals/ scriptures/ symbols/ prayers etc; offers a better psychological or socio-political outcome, or a better (perhaps the only) chance of some kind of life beyond death. 

While churches will often critique mainstream materialism, and expose its vacuity; what the churches fail to do, is go back and down to the deepest level of their own fundamental assumptions. 

The churches Will Not make explicit and examine their own assumptions. 

The Christian churches' attempts at conversion are therefore of a double-negative nature: they are happy to expose and demolish the assumptions modern atheistic metaphysics; but they will deny that their own metaphysical fundamental are assumptions. 

The churches all claim that their own metaphysics Just Are True. 

Or else the churches reverse the hierarchy of explanation and pretend that their metaphysical assumptions can (somehow!) be derived from the accepted facts of life; being so obvious that to express disagreement is idiotic, evil, or dishonest. 

But this comes across as (and indeed actually is) merely dogmatic bluster.  

The answer is that we modern people must go deep, we must go as deep as we possibly can - in order to discover our own bottom-line assumptions about reality - and to expose those of other thought-systems such as particular Churches. 

It is not enough to "show" that somebody else's metaphysical assumptions are incoherent or absurd or inadequate - we must as-well be prepared to bring forward our own fundamental beliefs in order to compare them with whatever is being critiqued. 

Indeed; it seems to me that after we have genuinely exposed our own metaphysics, and recognized that it is rooted in primary assumptions which are a product of our own free agency - will we then be able potentially to understand the metaphysics of anybody else. 

Only when our own fundamental assumptions demonstrate positive superiority with respect to what we regard as most important, and in comparison with the fundamental assumptions of other ideologies and/or religions; will we actually have made real progress in terms of overcoming the endemic metaphysical failure of this time and place.   

**

Note added: 

I do not suggest, nor even believe, that it is possible that Christian churches, or any churches, could possibly do what I am suggesting - because as institutions, this would expecting churches to be anti-institutional. 

No: this is something that individual persons can only do for themselves, because for themselves; else it will not be done at all. 

And because it needs to be done for individual persons; this can only be done with the necessary good motivations by one who believes that knowing truth experientially is an activity harmonious with divine creation.

That is to say; one who knows, and knows why, honestly "doing metaphysics" is something that is of-itself-and-necessarily beneficial to God's cause; as well as to the benefit of our own post-mortal, resurrected self.  

Tron: Ares at the cinema - brief notice, and consideration of its "AI" agenda

Yesterday I went to see Tron: Ares at the cinema, and found it exciting and enjoyable: a solid three star (out of five) movie of the "worth watching" category. 

I had not seen the male lead Jared Leto before, or at least I don't recall seeing him; and I found him a very good actor with definite screen presence. He seems to have considerable scope - including understated comedy. 

The rest of the acting was okay or decent; except female lead Greta Lee who was moderately sub par - neither a good actor, nor having star quality; but this didn't much matter in the action-orientated context of the movie. 

What I found interesting as I left the cinema, was to reflect - yet again - on how often a modern mega-corporation with net-evil motivations, produces movies that at least seem to be about the intrinsically evil nature of modern mega-corporations... 

This was particularly strange, given that Tron: Ares has a happy (albeit cursorily so) ending which involves the intrinsic evil being overcome, and a mega-corps made net-beneficial to humanity - simply by having a nice person in charge! 

The threadbare notion of a benign dictator "setting all to rights" in an intrinsically corrupt world; is still (for lack of alternatives, perhaps) a governing wishful delusion for many people. 

Witness that (albeit very brief!) episode earlier this year when so many people expressed intense and joyful - and insanely optimistic - fantasies of just this kind, when DT became US president. 

The other aspect I found intriguing was how Ares frames the "AI" aspect; given that this is currently (and during the production of this movie) perhaps the numero uno socio-political strategy of the totalitarians in the the Western Establishment. 

In sum: throughout Tron: Ares "AI" is assumed to be - and is presented as - functionally powerful, in a way that it just cannot be. 

The whole world of "AI" is visually-depicted as overwhelmingly vast and sophisticated, its progression and take-over happening with a stream-roller inevitability - a combination that induces in the audience a kind of awed-helplessness. 

Furthermore; it is both shown in the script and explicitly asserted that these "AI" systems are genius-like; in that they are creatively problem-solving. 

This superhuman creativity is harnessed to the usual left-progressive agenda - which is to reduce/eliminate particular forms of human suffering and environmental damage. 

Because of "AI"'s steamroller effectiveness, this fantasy of progress is given an apparent inevitability... if only we can ensure "the right people" are "in charge". 

And - most strikingly - we are (yet again) shown that "singularity-moment" whereby sufficiently-advanced "AI" will develop agency, autonomy, human characters - including motives, feelings, and morals. 

Since I understand these as attributes of Beings; and because "AI" is not a Being - also Beings are eternal entities and cannot be manufactured -- then I know that this singularity stuff is either 100% incoherent impossible nonsense - or else an evil-motivated and -manufactured dishonest manipulation.  

But the singularity assumption also has a consoling spin; because, despite the probabilities of evil-AIs to contend with; it holds-out the hope of a world where (as in Tron: Ares) the conscious-AI agents can become our mutually-loving friends. 

In sum;

By funding and enabling the production of spectacular action movies that assume and depict nonsensical and impossible attributes of "AI" - the Establishment creates a halo around the actuality of that necessarily-destructive and function-destroying "AI" which is being rolled-out and implemented all over the world - in one of the biggest technological projects of all time.

At some level of this process, there are people (or, at least, sentient beings) who know perfectly well that the Hollywood depictions of the scope, nature and possibilities of "AI" have nothing whatsoever to do with the actuality.

At another level, the (qualified) techno-optimism of Tron: Ares reveals to me that the great mass of people who are involved in the Great "AI" Project - the AI-dolators - are literally deluded...

By literally deluded; I mean that (in the active and functional aspects of their thinking) the AI-dolators have a false understanding of what they are dealing with, and what they are doing. 

They may, somewhere in their memories, have a correct understanding of the nature and limits of so-called AI -- but, if so, this truth is cut-off, encapsulated from their everyday and working-life cognitive processing. 

(Such encapsulations are characteristic, indeed necessary, for modern mainstream thinking, as was described by Owen Barfield in Saving the Appearances. For example, both those who assume that reality is "out there" and objective (including most traditionalist Christians); and those who assume the only reality is subjective and individual - are both engaged in encapsulated delusional thinking.) 

Any truths about "AI" reality such people may once have grasped, have since been sealed-away in a watertight mental compartment; so that functionally-speaking they can and do believe the fantasy-hype that lies behind the media representations; and in practice they conflate such untruths with the mundane reality of multi-national mega-corps top-down-mandatory "AI"*.  

That, at any rate, is how I regard Tron: Ares. 

At one level it is an enjoyable and decently-made spectacle and drama; at another it is a work of deep and re-framing propaganda; at another level I can observe the propaganda working in myself - and thereby have the chance to learn something more about the Establishment agenda. 

    

*This is used in self-deceptive as well as publicly dishonest ways: "Yes, of course, we all know that This is the case... Look we acknowledged it Here..." While, in practice, taking zero account of such knowledge and acknowledgements. Thus someone who parrots phrases about the nature and constraints of current-"AI" - completely ignores these realities whenever reasoning or making decisions, and the fantasy-hype assumptions inevitably encroach-upon on and dominate both behaviour and rhetoric. 

James D Watson has died - so, no more great scientists remain alive

Ed Dutton and James Watson

I hear that James D Watson has died, aged 97. He is somebody that had a significant impact on my life as a scientist, including the way I did science - from my mid-teens onwards. 

I wrote about him several times (and he is positively cited in my book about real science); but especially a defence of him (just about the only defence in the official scientific literature of that time; for which he thanked me) when he was subjected to a lying and evil-motivated Woke/ PC media firestorm as an exemplary-punishment for speaking and writing unacceptable truths. 

My colleague Ed Dutton recently published an extremely interesting book about Jim Watson, and was the first to announce his death.

I read Ed's Genius under House Arrest in draft and made a few suggestions. Unfortunately the hardback is too expensive for private buyers (paperback on its way); but this is its summary:

In 2007, the Watson Affair – the worldwide character assassination and exclusion from public life of Dr. James Watson, the brilliant, Nobel Prize-winning scientist co-credited with the discovery of DNA – shocked the global public in an early episode of what would come to be called "cancel culture." Watson was as an early and very public victim of incipient wokeism: a warning to others who might be tempted to dissent from favored ideologies of expression and behavior. With the Watson Affair, Western society had changed to the point of inversion; from being broadly supportive of genius, and providing protected niches for those of great accomplishment, to exactly the opposite – a censorious surveillance culture where even minor missteps could result in personal and professional ruin. Genius Under House Arrest explores how this dramatic shift occurred and argues that not only was every "controversial" remark of Watson's empirically accurate, but that geniuses – with Watson as the example – are a package deal: extreme creative ability as a consequence of sometimes difficult personalities, with effects ranging across social, ideological, and professional life. As society has begun to realize, nothing less than the West's culture of merit and achievement is at stake. 

Anyway... Watson was the last of the widely-recognized massive-impact great scientists whose achievement could stand alongside those of the past; and he has died. 

So now there are none left; and the West publicly, gleefully, destroyed Watson's life and livelihood 18 years ago - and has been stamping on him ever since.

I agree with Ed Dutton that this coordinated action against Watson in 2007 was an inflexion point in our civilization. 

It marks the time at which totalitarian evil became dominant, indeed officially unopposed; and from then self-hating self-destruction has been a multi-national strategy - supported by the Globalist Establishment - including the "scientific" establishment.

If real science had died-out by the 1990s, then The Watson Affair was its funeral.    

But if you are interested in real science, and have not yet read Watson's marvellous 1968 book about co-discovering the structure of DNA - The Double Helix - then do yourself a favour. It's something I re-read every few years, and always with delight. 

**

One of my favourite photos ever; Crick demonstrates the structure of DNA for the cameraman using an improvised slide-rule as pointer - Watson on the left looks-on in awe at the beauty of their discovery. 

The moment was superbly re-created near the end of the first-rate movie Life Story - with Jeff Goldblum playing Watson, and Tim Piggott-Smith as Crick.   

Coherence, Hope, Enchantment - Father, Son, Holy Ghost

I have found that Rudolf Steiner's insight into the consequences of unbelief (of three kinds) to be powerful and important*. 

In brief: Steiner said that to deny God (be an atheist) was a sickness, to deny Jesus Christ was a calamity, and to deny the Holy Ghost caused spiritual dullness. 

I would rephrase this in positive terms:

To believe in the reality of a personal, loving, creator God; is necessary for us to have a coherent understanding of the human condition in the universe - theism enables reason.

To believe in, and accept, the Great Gift of Jesus Christ (his offer of resurrected, eternal, Heavenly life beyond death) is what enables us to grasp the sustaining strength that comes from Hope. 

(Hope being a necessary virtue in this world which includes entropy-death and evil, as endemic and inescapable.) 

To have direct personal experience of contact with the spiritual person of the Holy Ghost**; is what enables us to know the reality of God and Jesus Christ - rather than merely know-about them. 

Put differently; the Holy Ghost is what enables us to know as real-and-true; those intermittent, and perhaps brief, occasions of enchantment and romance in this mortal life. 

Or, in other words, without the Holy Ghost the work of God and Jesus would just be theories.

The Holy Ghost is what makes the difference between escapist make-believe or fear-driven delusional fantasy on the one hand - and that magical experience which is a foretaste of the Heavenly condition.  

*Note: Steiner's insight is important for Christians to consider, since there is a tendency to conflate the significance of belief in Father, Son and Holy Ghost - as if conversion to one implies all others. But, to my observation, these elements of faith are separable in theory, and often in practice.

**Note: I regard the Holy Ghost as our spiritual experience of the person of the resurrected Jesus Christ. 

Noisiest Bonfire Night ever?

Bonfire Night as I remember it when I was a kid (it was all black and white, in them days) 

It's Bonfire Night tonight, which is the main UK firework event; so November 5th is always pretty noisy for someone who lives within a mile of the city centre. 

And not just the 5th -- every year there are always sounds from fireworks, somewhere, every night from before Halloween until several days after The Guy (Fawkes) has been burned (although not many bother with this aspect nowadays). 

But today is by some margin the noisiest ever. The sound of banging and whooshing has been constant and loud - continuous for five hours (so far)...

(Almost drowning-out the uniquely-powerful vocal roaring and singing from Newcastle United's stadium - where they have been winning a European cup game.) 

Also continuous have been the sirens of the emergency services (fire/ police/ ambulances) - which might, but need not, mean anything very terrible happening, since these vehicles do love making a noise, and need no excuse for doing so. 

This kind of racket is quite exciting and doesn't trouble me as an occasional thing - at least, not now that the kids have grown-up (it certainly did annoy me when they wee babies and had just dropped-off then were woken and disturbed by bangs). 

But I am surprised by just what a Big Thing Bonfire Night obviously is for many people in 2025.

It is not many years since the Gunpowder Plot festival was waning inexorably, and looked-like disappearing -- having been (it seemed) displaced by the rise of Halloween, less than a week earlier.  

Yet another thing I don't understand about life here and now...

 

Does the ubiquity of faked photo evidence (going back decades) mean that stuff didn't happen?

One of the benefits I have derived from reading Miles W Mathis is an habitual sensitivity to the use of faked photographs. 

Mathis is a professional artist and has a trained and expert eye for such matters - but so crude are most of the photo-fakes that detecting them is mainly a matter of considering the possibility. 

It turns-out that almost all of the visual evidence for almost all of the major mass media narratives, is faked. 

And I am not talking about those undetectable "deep fakes" which the media have themselves been hand-wringing over recently; but crudely-faked pictures, videos and films - in top status contexts; and that are accepted by "everybody" in authority.  

It turns-out that these crude fakes go back over many decades, more than a century - even to the early usage of photography in providing "evidence" to back up the claims of the leadership class. 

If we just look for ourselves with a prepared attitude - the pictorial "evidence" is obviously bogus, in some way.  

These faked photos are so common that it is unusual to find a picture of somebody or some-event famous and important that has not been significantly tampered-with, in line with the narrative that is pushed.  

Perhaps most famously these include the space programme and moon landings - where many/ most of the iconic images were faked; despite that, as I believe, the space programme and moon landings really happened.

So, what does this mean?

In the first place, it is proof of the routine dishonesty that has characterized the Western ruling class. Anyone who has been involved in the workings of large institutions and corporations over the past few decades will know that the imperative to be truthful is something completely alien to those who work in such environments. 

Their imperative to to say and show whatever serves their purposes - constrained only by watching their backs in case there is a "leak" or accusation. 

It simply does not occur to such people that they ought to tell the truth and be honest. Such a notion is not even aired then rejected - it isn't even mentioned: all efforts are instantly put into attempting the management and manipulation of perceptions. 

However, it was not always thus in all social institutions. For example, I can vouch for the honesty of scientists and academics in the UK during the middle 20th century. 

They were shocked and openly critical about the way that the media distorted and misrepresented their work. 

As a trivial but significant example, when BBC Horizon filmed at the lab where I later did my doctorate, they would only have men with beards in some of the shots, even when they had nothing to do with the work being reported - i.e. their idea of what scientists should look like.  

My best guess is that this is how the fake NASA photos happened - the media imperative was for pictures that were of the right kind to produce the desired reaction; and honest pictures of what happened were either impossible to get, or of too low a quality.  

And soon this became normal - so that a parallel "virtual world" of pictures, administered by the media, became detached from the engineering and piloting world of what actually happened. 

I saw the same in universities and laboratories during the 1980s into the 90s. At first there was a separation between the science and the public reporting - the science was still honest, and the fakery was applied afterwards. 

But once the strict habit of honestly had been broken, the truth about stuff was on a slippery slope to routine, pervasive, near-total fakery - which is where we have been in the West since around the millennium. 

Now the fakery is everywhere and all the time; everybody is dishonest with everybody else in public life; and nobody knows what is true. 

Our society cannot fulfil a functional purpose - or even know whether our purpose has been achieved.

Does a fake photo mean that nothing is happening at all, or something different is happening, or is it just a matter of making better visuals for what really happened?  

Fakes are built on fakes in vast constructions; and we cannot ever know if or when we have reached the bottom. 

Everything significant we are shown is faked - one way or another - if not visually then by interpretation.*

All we can do with confidence, is identify that the evidence is fake, that we are being lied to - and the purpose is to manipulate us. 

But, spiritually-speaking, knowing that is enough. 

*Note added: The way that this visual evidence usually works is that - before seeing the images - people are told what the images will show. And that is what people then see. After which they suppose the image proves what they were originally told -- the circle has closed, the narrative has been proved; and anyone who contests it must be evil, insane or dishonest. An example of such circularity was the triggering-fake-visuals of "MLB" summer in 2020.

*Why* should we affiliate with God the creator?

Why should we affiliate with God the creator?

Is it because we believe God to be powerful - by far the most powerful, infinitely powerful?

Is that why we should affiliate with God?

Is it instead (or as well) because we believe there is nothing-else-but God (and divine creation) - so that it is insane and irrational not to affiliate, because there is literally nothing-else? 

These are reasons that some people have, or give, for affiliating with God (as such people understand God). 

But it seems to me that the Christian reason for affiliating with God, by-far and essentially the main reason: 

Is that - from the depth of our being, insofar as we know it - we approve of God.

Because we know and love God's loving nature. 

Because we desire to join and ally our-selves with God's hopes, and plans, and methods. 

Thus, for a Christian we ally with the creator not because of his power or oneness or totality; all of which are uncertain and debateable - but instead from our own love of who God is and what God is doing and aiming-at - and the desire to join our efforts, join our selves, with that nature and purpose.

Double-negative values lead to self-justified spitefulness

Depicting a world of institutionalized spite...

The other day I was musing upon how intelligence work seems to attract and encourage the worst kind of people, and develop the worst kind of habits - probably because it is (from the late 19th century at least) almost-wholly engaged in destruction.

For instance, the rationale of "national interest" is used to excuse even the vilest of destructive practices; which are then denied, lied-about and/or blamed on others - which is a perfect set-up for generating extreme corruption of individuals and institutions. 

One example of what is apparently a very common activity was described in an earlier post; whereby the British were successful in fomenting dissent in the German-occupied Denmark of WWII; the aim being to use-up more German resources. The mechanism for this was that the Danish peoples' lives were made deliberately much more miserable, and their sufferings greatly increased. 

This is an example of double-negative values in action - values that are reducible to opposition to something-bad (or, at least: something defined as bad); or negating the negative. 

The values of modern Western civilization are entirely double-negative - there are no public values that are rooted in the support of some positive value - such as the traditional "transcendental" values of truth, beauty, and virtue. 

When the West discarded and did not replace its religion of Christianity; a moral system of double-negations was the inevitable outcome.  

Because ultimately destructive; a double-neg morality attracts, encourages, and makes-habitual an attitude of spitefulness - and this is exactly what we find...

So that much public (and private) moralizing here-and-now is, very obviously - once you are aware of the possibility - spitefully-motivated; it's "highest" goal being to inflict misery and harm on some person, institution, nation, or cause that is regarded as "bad", and thereby deserving of it.   

Yet, as I've often said, spite is one of the very worst of sins; one of the most advanced forms of evil.

Resentment is one of the premier besetting sins of the modern West: resentment-based leftist ideologies are our highest values; our most praised motivators. 

I mean ideologies such as class-war, feminism, antiracism, climatism etc; which are officially devised, propagandized, promoted, rewarded, enforced - through the totalitarian apparatus of law, media, and the state and private bureaucracies. 

The latest and dominant AI-dolatry is, evidently, substantially resentment based; and spitefully/ destructively motivated. 

(Consequently; Schadenfreude repeatedly invades the quasi-objective "technological inevitability" pro-"AI" rhetoric.)  

Action aiming at the spiteful destruction of something we resent, is therefore currently one of the most powerful of motivators - sometimes even to the paradoxical extent of sustaining actions of great courage (courage being itself a virtue). 

For instance a war motivated by resentment and the spiteful desire for destruction of the enemy (an enemy who may in fact be superior to oneself); may nonetheless inspire virtuous altruism, self-discipline, acceptance of hardship, and valour.  

Or when intelligence services - typically deployed in the subversion, immiseration and destruction of better men and nations; yet, sometimes, evoke exceptionally courageous behaviour among their operatives such as "spies". 

Nonetheless, and bearing in mind that un-repented evil is not a static state but feeds upon itself and increases; it can easily be observed that when organizations are negatively, destructively, motivated - then, no matter their supposed justification - they are intrinsically-corrupt.

And this institutional-corruption will attract spiteful people, so that the self-justifying evil will increase with time. 

And this false and hypocritical pseudo-morality is intrinsic to our atheist-materialist ideological system.

We cannot expect, nor shall we get, anything better; until after Western Men acknowledge the reality of God, and embrace the offered-gifts of Jesus Christ. 

Since this seems highly unlikely - presumably such matters will continue to worsen; and imposing some of the most evil of all sins, shall therefore continue to be global policy.

Because, in our totalitarian society, the tendency is for all social institutions to become essentially like the intelligence services; i.e. rooted in the prevalent value-inversion and rationalized by double-negations.