Why I am so Sure that "AI" is a dysfunctional and destructive fake

I seem to be more solidly confident that so-called (post November 2022) AI is a dishonest and incompetent fake, than are most people.

Partly, this is because most people are on an AI-payroll (and I am not!) - but that doesn't explain my sureness.

The reason is I know that real science is dead in professional Big Science - and this has been the case for some decades. 

What small functional progress we are seeing, is long-since Not real science, but engineering extrapolations of pre-existing science; plus a great deal of fakes and lies. 

Real AI is impossible by my metaphysical assumptions (because real intelligence must be an attribute of a living Being. All the rest is tools, functional extensions, of Beings.)

But real AI is also impossible on the basis of actually-existing real science (which is now some decades old). 

What has recently been touted as AI is (by its own admission) merely vastly-inefficient and -expensive, and top-down propagandized and coerced, engineering. 

Which, to repeat, cannot be genuine AI. 

And that is why I am so sure. 

Western national (and corporate) leaders are analogous to TV Newsreaders

A recent convention of European Newsreaders

When you read about a summit meeting between the Presidents and other nominal leaders of the Western nations; try thinking of it as a staged meeting of TV Newsreaders. 

For instance; POTUS is, in essence, Newsreader-in-chief for national politics. 

When you vote for a politician, you are choosing who shall be the dominant Newsreader, for the next few years. 

When a President (or CEO) gives a speech about some new strategy or policy, she is operating as a Newsreader. 

A Newsreader is not altogether powerless, because she can inflect the words with (e.g.) sarcasm or enthusiasm, and can interject a few ad libs. 

But whatever the spoken words, her power over events is so very tightly-constrained by her puppet-masters as to be ignorable. If she says anything that interferes with strategy in a significant way; she will be removed. 

And, typically, we don't know their identity. 

What we see, what we are allowed to see and encouraged to regard as primary, is nothing more than the interactions of Newsreaders.   

The European Newsreaders convention enjoying a scripted joke! 

Question Time

If any commenters want to ask a question - this is an invitation. 

(Except for trolls!) I intend to respond with... something or another.

(Even if my response isn't exactly an "answer"!) 

The middle nineteen-sixties was the inflexion point of a vast and strategic psychic attack on Western Civilization

The style and persons included in this image are significant - 

particularly the gratuitous presence of black magician and British intelligence operative Alisteir Crowley - back row second from left. 

The cultural changes in the West that happened in the middle 1960s - especially in the UK and USA - were stark; and shocking at the time. 

Although still at a rural English Primary School; I was very aware of these changes, they impinged upon me. 

I now regard the middle 'sixties as the inflexion point of a vast and strategic psychic attack on Western Civilization, mounted (mainly) by means of the mass media. 

Up to the middle 60s the mass culture was very positive in tone; all about people opening their minds; about embracing everything with discrimination, welcoming the new, looking forward to the future...

Change happened suddenly; beginning in summer 1967. 

For me it was marked by the surprising change in our cultural leaders The Beatles with their Sgt. Pepper album - the change in their fashion, behaviour, style of music, beginning to espouse of "radical" politics and alien spiritual stuff.

Things very quickly began to go sour, to lose innocence and optimism...

From the cheerful primary colours and plastic miniskirts and bobbed haircuts and Union Jacks of "I'm Backing Britain; then suddenly it was all about dirt, long-hair, drugs, violent "protest", Indian gurus, the Vietnam War etc. 

From light to darkness; from us to them, from hedonic materialism to satanic spirituality. 

In retrospect; I think the whole thing was a strategic psychic attack. That is, an evil-motivated attack on a person's soul. 

People were first encouraged to open themselves and welcome the future; then when this was achieved - all kinds of sickly stuff was poured-in. 

From shallow relentless cheerfulness; suddenly it was about fear and resentment, the pseudo-seriousness of ignorant philosophizing about remote matters; and the hedonism took on a self-destructive quality as it styled itself as a revolutionary activity.   

This is a pattern: first encourage open and uncritical acceptance and positivity; then when this achieved take rapid and powerful advantage of it to attack with demoralizing despair. 

And the pattern has recurred in culture, or at least this has been attempted, several times since. 

For instance the UK Blair government in 1997 explicitly tried to replicate the sixties optimism and openness and fun ("Cool Britannia" - pass the sick-bag please....); before suddenly transitioning to massive bureaucracy, pervasive corruption, globalism and wars. 

...Which had always been the whole point and purpose of the exercise. 

Again: this can be understood as a psychic attack. 

And, as well as at the mass and cultural level; the same sequence happens in individual persons:

First get them to open-up, and drop their guard, and welcome everything because all-is-one, all-is-good...

Then pour-in the nasty stuff - which they will at first welcome (i.e. they will invite evil into their hearts...); and try to overwhelm and dominate - before they can understand what is going-on.  

This can be understood using Owen Barfield's categories of the child's and tribal Man's enchanted state of Original Participation - which is what gets aimed-at by the phase of open acceptance...

Contrasted with the modern condition; which is the alienated Consciousness Soul - cut-off from its earlier immersion in the spiritual and communal. 

The effect of the civilization and personal psychic attacks is either that the person remains open and gets overwhelmed by the torrent of dark influences - like the casualties of the 1960s. 

Or else, when the individual experiences the torrential inrush of dark side: the barriers of alienation are re-erected and strengthened.

This large increase of psychological-and social alienation is what actually happened overall in Britain post 1960s and after the Blair-era attempted replication. 

In a crude form of emergency psychic self-defence; people became more less spiritual, more materialist - and bureaucracy grew and continued to grow. 

The naïve and brief utopian optimism about a wonderful future was replaced by dystopian fantasies ad the negative-fleeing escapisms of intoxication, the distractions of virtuality, fantasies of death as peaceful annihilation...

And as optimism became impossible (and spiritual hope was ruled out by atheistic materialism) the prevalent aspirations became and remained oppositional, negative: anti-men, anti-racism, anti-CO2 etc - a psychic world dominated by fear, resentment and despair. 

Part of the PSYOPS is to restrict options to these two - going back into a spiritual state of open-immersive passivity and oneness, like the early 60s; or going forward into a cut-off, impersonal, anti-spiritual, anti-human, anti-life-itself world - as with the current global totalitarian "AI" project. 

These psychic attacks continue...

Unless you personally are happy to pick and live-by one of these available and "approved" options - then you might to well to reflect on your underlying metaphysical assumptions that appear to make these two possibilities inevitable and exclusive.

You might do well to explore the only coherent alternative of which I am aware: which is something on the lines of Owen Barfield's Final Participation. 

Who is on the spooks' "AI" payroll?

I am increasingly aware of the extent of "intelligence" activity in some of the most unexpected areas of life - such as the esoteric/ new age and religious domains - ("spook spirituality", as I recently termed it - spook here meaning intelligence agent or operative). 

I also recall that many who were funded by the USSR intelligence services before 1980 did not know that this was the ultimate source of their grants, and subsidies necessary for their survival - until after the fall of the Soviet Union; when their organizations suddenly went-under.  

My inference is that something analogous but much bigger, is going-on with respect to current so-called AI. 

Anyone who spends five minutes on understanding how the post-November-2022 top-down, totalitarian, global phenomenon of "AI" actually works; will know For Sure that such "AI" cannot possibly, ever, under any circumstances perform those core socially-functional activities that it is being touted to do.  

So how come So Many people, including many self-styled Christians, fail this easy-peasy Litmus Test, and end-up supporting what is currently and by-far the globalist totalitarian's major strategic programme? 

At some level; these AI-apologist people know they are spouting evil poison.

So why do they do it? 

Best guess: They are on the payroll!

They are benefitting, or hoping or expect to benefit (maybe directly, probably indirectly; perhaps via one of the numerous multiple intelligence fronts); from the multi-trillion dollar program - benefitting in some way that is important to them. 

Going forward, this is going to be my assumption.

Consequently I shall do my best to shun such folk; because, (obviously!) spooks, spook-servants, and spook-dupes are Not open to persuasion otherwise.

Nor to an appeal to their "better judgement".  

Thus: argument with such agents is futile.

Futile for me that is; although it is exactly what they want; which is... 

To waste my attention, effort, and time. 

A neglected form of dishonest argument

Hell hath no fury like someone accused of dishonest argument - when they actually are arguing dishonestly!

The self-righteous indignation at what seems a false accusation derives from the fact they are not consciously trying to deceive (i.e. to "lie") - the conscience is clear on that point!

But this depends on the assumption that intentional lying is the only dishonest form of argument. 

However; although deliberate deception is very common indeed, and indeed compulsory in managerial positions of bureaucracies - it is not the only form of dishonest argument.

One dishonesty in argument that I have encountered many times - especially over the past three decades - is people who will not address the point at issue, but persist in changing the subject to something else. 

Instead of winning an argument against what I am saying, the others refuse to engage in my argument and instead discuss... something else. 

There may be many reasons for this - the others may not understand my argument, they may regard it as trivial; but the dishonesty is that 

1. they will not engage with it, and 

2. they dishonestly refuse to admit that they are not-engaging. 

The dishonesty is in asserting that they are arguing about the same thing as me, when they are not doing so!

  

This is extremely common. 

I encounter it a lot online, I used to encounter it frequently in my professional life. 

I have encountered it whenever my arguments became public and got into the professional literature and mainstream media...

The Big Problem then, was that the journalists refused to describe, engage-in or discuss what it was that I was actually saying; and instead used it as a hook upon-which to hang a pre-defined agenda that they did wanted to promote. 

This relates to a further dishonesty of argument; which is:

The pretence that one is interested in discovering truth by argument; when one is actually wanting to show that the other person is wrong!

For instance; the other party may want to prove me wrong for many reasons, and some of these reasons may be good! - but the point at issue here is that they are arguing dishonestly. 

They are not trying to refute my argument, because that would require engagement wit hwhat I actually have said. 

Indeed, often they don't even know what I am actually saying!

They are arguing instead to demonstrate my wrongness - and that, therefore, I can and should be ignored. 

There is a world of difference; and to pretend one while doing the other - just is dishonest.

I hate the term "unelected"

I hate the term "unelected" when used to criticize particular persons in leadership positions, and supra-national institutions - such as the United Nations, the European Union, or NGOs. 

The reason I hate "unelected" used thus; is that it implies persons and institutions who have-been elected - presumably by mass voting - are better than those who aren't. 

When in reality voting is intrinsically evil...

And in our totalitarian world; we ought to know that large, wealthy, powerful people, organizations, corporations, governments -  are qualitatively all on the same side and as bad as each other. 

A shock for Bully Brown... Anti-smoking ad in 1960s comics

This advert about Bully Brown featured in many kid's comics throughout the 1960s; and was eventually so well known in the UK that it was successfully parodied by a teacher who was author of a school revue in my VI form years (he probably pinched it from Benny Hill); then further twice plagiarized by me for a medical revue and a hospital Christmas show. 

The parody version consisted simply of enacting the advert on stage, up to the penultimate line:

"I gave up smoking when I saw what it did to my Dad's chest."

After which the triumphant hero Jim turns to the curvaceous girl and says:

"Come along Dad."

Never fails. 

When I was a silly boy - my inability to stop laughing, no matter the situation

My main characteristic during mid-teens was perhaps the tendency to giggle, or more accurately laugh-hysterically - regardless of the situation... 

More accurately still; the more important it was that I did not laugh, then more likely it was that I would be uncontrollably afflicted. 

This got me into considerable trouble at high school. My kids accumulated only one detention between them in a combined 14 years - but I had so many lunchtime detentions that I lost count; and they were always* for laughing inappropriately and continuously - for example, into the Deputy Headmaster's face from point blank range. 

Another instance was when the Physics class was stood up silently because we had been rowdy, and the teacher said - "I don't want to hear a peep out of you for five minutes". 

At which point I and my small gang of similar characters (boys of "low moral fibre", as we were described in one of my school reports) instantly became rigid with expectation at what was inevitably just about to happen. 

There was a rigid, dense silence lasting for ten, twenty, maybe even thirty seconds - until the teacher turned away; at which point Trefor Roberts (it had to be him, of course) articulated in a high voice the quiet but distinct word: "Peep".   

That was it, that was more than enough. 

The whole place - or more exactly the half dozen silly boys with whom I associated - erupted into literally-uncontrollable laughter; which was effectively quelled in a few seconds by harsh threats from the teacher...

Quelled in everyone except me. 

I just could not stop laughing - whatever the threats from the teacher standing in front of me. 

So I was the only one who was punished.  

Clearly this problem was an attribute of adolescence, and it was prone to recur - with decreasing frequency - until I eventually left this behind. 

But it continued up to age 22; which was the last major incident. 

I was a medical student singing tenor in the (quite famous) Newcastle Bach Choir, sitting next to my best friend Jack - a music student. But most of the choir were proper grown-ups, some of rather advanced years - serious about their singing (and all much better at it than I was - I only scraped the audition because all choirs are chronically short of tenors). 

In one of the informal breaks that occur during choir rehearsals; Jack whispered a story about a famous string quartet who were playing a well known work by Mozart that ended with a resounding and long-sustained major chord in C-major; but the cellist suffered a momentary lapse of attention and accidentally ended by playing the note B, a semi-tone flat of the proper destination - creating a sudden and startling dissonance!

The cellist, who had reported the story, said that he was amazed and confused for a split second; before making the bold decision to hold onto the wrong note for a couple of beats, stunning the other players of the quartet into paralyzed panic... 

Before calmly sliding up a semi-tone to join his colleagues in the proper C-Major chord. 

In other words, the cellist made the snap choice to pretend he had meant to hit the dissonant note as part of the cadence. In the brief but vain hope that - by his behaving confidently - the audience would assume the weirdly dissonant cadence was part of the real music, as written by Mozart.  

This then began to strike the two of us as so funny that we could not stop laughing, more and more, until we were crying. 

All which meant the choir rehearsal could not proceed, and about seventy people were held-up by two giggling fools. 

After which I decided that maybe it was time for me to leave this choir, as being clearly unworthy. 

Such reflections were revived by re-reading Michael Green's excellent 1988 autobiography The Boy Who Shot Down An Airship. 

Green was a much loved English humorist whose The Art of Coarse Acting is a perennial favourite of amateur thespians. This was part of to a whole series of books of "Coarse" this and that - mostly sports and pastimes.  

By all accounts, including his own; Green was afflicted/ blessed by the kind of giggling silliness of my adolescence to a transcendental level and lasting well into middle age. 

A kind of feckless daftness repeatedly sabotaged his career as journalist and in the Army - but he eventually turned this to advantage as an author of many volumes of light humour.   

Strangely, even the expert professionals sometimes retain the mind-set of a Coarse practitioner - part of which is the unshakeable conviction that "nobody will notice " their mistakes. 

That quartet cellist - whatever his usual level of musical accomplishment - clearly had the heart of a Coarse Musician.  

**

*Once it was for being part of a fountain pen ink fight in the boy's toilet; which I had started. 

I had washed-out then re-filled a pen with water (well, more exactly it was then very diluted ink - it still retained a greyish hue) so that I could pretend to spray a friend on the face, and he would think from the feel of it that he was ink spattered, while the stuff could actually just wipe away (well... almost). 

However, this backfired, and he immediately retaliated by drawing his own pen, filled with real ink, and slashing it across in front of my face and white shirt, to mark them with a machine-gun trail of concentrated-ink splats.  

Naturally, this led to collateral damage among the other boys standing around, and they naturally retaliated; such that within seconds the everybody and the whole room was covered in black or blue spots. 

At which point, by some extraordinary chance (maybe we were making a lot of noise?) the Deputy Headmaster walked into this scene of chaos and carnage.  

Consequently we were (justly) punished by a lunchtime group detention devoted to cleansing the walls, ceiling, floors...

It was left up to our mothers to get the ink out of our clothes.   

It turns-out that reality is a connection - not a blueprint

We are none of us spontaneously reality-based nowadays; partly due to inhabiting the virtuality, partly due to everybody* being psychologically (if not physically) ill and/or impaired.  

Since health and normality are unattainable, and because all external sources of guidance are tainted and corrupted by the inescapable totalitarianism of all institutions (including religions and churches); reality is now something we can achieve only intermittently and briefly. 

Reality - truth - is therefore something we can sometimes know, but cannot consistently achieve. 

An extra problem is that our idea is reality is misconceived as some kind of blueprint - whether ideological or religious: something like a set of principles or laws, an instruction manual, or utopian map. 

After the comprehensive and extreme failure of this model, it turns-out that reality is not like that!

But neither is reality nothing at all, nor whatever we want, nor whatever those with power say it is - these notions too have been tried and catastrophically failed to inspire or motivate. 

It turns-out that reality is a kind of connection instead of some sort of blueprint. 

In other words, reality impinges when the mass of surface-stuff in our emotions, thoughts, behaviours; discovers and attends to a connection with our true-self, and via this with that-which-is-divine.  

When we become aware, by this connection; with the reality of truth, beauty and virtue as it exists dynamically, livingly, actively - in actual divine beings...

Such as the divine in ourselves, God the Creator, Jesus Christ and other beings; these connections are what provide knowledge of reality. 

All of which may strike us as very difficult to attain; and we may then ask: Is this really the best that God could contrive for our guidance?   

Why is mortal life set-up in such a fashion?

My understanding is that this reality-by-connection has the great advantage of being potentially available to everybody under all circumstances - whatever our personality, whatever our social situation. 

But ultimately the answer to "is this really the best that can be managed" for mortal life is: Yes. 

It is the best that God can contrive for an entropic universe, that also contains a good deal of evil. 

Which is why Jesus's offer of Heaven refers - not to mortal life nor this earth and universe - but to our post-mortal life in Heaven. 

*I say "everybody" because that is what I observe - obviously including myself! I recognize that there are plenty of people who present-themselves as bastions of normality, common sense, health and strength. But all of these I have encountered, strike me as very obviously and strongly pathological characters - who are deceptively attempting to displace attention (their own attention, as well as that of other people) to the deficits of others.

Are traditionalist-orthodox Christians contented Not To Know how salvation works for the massive majority of (outside of the church) foetuses, children, non-Christians?

I am much more confident of the goodness of God the Creator; than I am of any theology; such that it seems obvious that Christians ought to fit theology around the goodness of God, and not vice versa. 

I am also much more confident that Jesus was the Son of God, God was his Father, spoke with God person to person; and taught that we can and do know God by knowing Jesus - than I am confident about metaphysical assumptions regarding the nature and operations of "the Trinity". 

Put together: I am much more confident that God the Creator's goodness is fundamentally like Jesus's goodness, and like the goodness of Men (when we are good) - much more confident of this recognition and knowledge of God's goodness; than I am confident of the theological explanations that posit a God whose "goodness" is alien and incomprehensible to me, and therefore a God whose "goodness" has the human appearances of evil. 

(Thus I solidly believe that God is good; not that good is God.) 

From this perspective I perceive that most Christian theologians have always seen things the other way around to myself. 

They insist on trying (and failing) to explain the goodness of God in terms of (what seem to be prior and extra-Christian concepts of) monotheistic oneness, and dogmas concerning the "omni" attributes of the Creator.  

And consequently, they insist upon their inference of the utter unbridgeable difference between God and Men, and the unknowable nature of so infinitely-different a being as their God is from ourselves. 

This, I believe, lies behind the problem of the possibility of salvation "outside of the church" - which has apparently plagued thoughtful orthodox Christians as far back as there are records, and still does. 

On the one hand; strict orthodox-mainstream Christian church theology typically excludes the possibility of salvation from those outside of the church, and/or those who die unrepentant (e.g. the Protestant idea of "as the tree falls, there it shall lie" - meaning it is the state of mind at the moment of death that determines our eternal future).  

Both of these ideas seem to imply that the mass majority of humankind through history and still today are doomed to damnation. 

Yet those who assert salvation-for-all ("universalists") deny the reality of freedom, of agency, of choice* - and/or make this mortal life a needless hazard to salvation. 

Caught between the monstrous idea that most of humankind are doomed to damnation by an inscrutable God (He must be inscrutable, because he is Not  understandably good and loving) - and the robotic- determinism of universal salvation - most Christians will affect ignorance.  

They will say some version of "we do not know, because we have not been told" (meaning told dogmatically by their church, or the Bible as interpreted by their church) what happens to that (I say it again!) massive majority of Men throughout history who died in the womb, or as young children, or in places and times when there was no Christian church. 

This affectation of ignorance concerning such a colossal question strikes me a grotesque if sincere, and wicked if insincere. 

How could so many self-identified Christians be contented Not to know what happens to most people alive or who ever have lived?

Are they really only concerned about the magic circle of people within their own chosen church or denomination? 

My point is that this is an extremely important matter, and Christians ought not to allow themselves to profess ignorance on such a vital matter. 

They need (are duty-bound) to find a coherent answer that accords with their fundamental understanding God, Jesus and what it is to be saved. 

And this further means, that they ought carefully to examine whatever answer they come-up-with and commit-to; to ensure that their answer is essentially coherent with what needs to be affirmed for Christians.

Because... most of what most churches/ denominations say on this extremely important subject is very obviously incoherent. 

* Salvation must freely be chosen, it is opt-in. This means that the Mormon idea that all children before eight years old, the year from which they regard baptism as valid, will be saved - is also incoherent. 

When I were a lad... Telephones

The rarity of British telephones in the 1960s and 70s is evident from their four digit numbers

The strangest thing about British life about fifty years ago, as it strikes present day teens and young adults, and also people of even my own age from the USA; was that we hardly ever used telephones. 

Although phones had been invented in Victorian times, and there was a UK national network from 1870 - a century-plus later in the 1970s and early 80s, they were still uncommon and rarely used. 

Through my childhood we had a phone, necessary for my Father's work (although my wife's family did not have one), but the line (although not the number) was shared with a neighbour. 

After leaving home and going to medical school, I could only use one of the rare coin-operated pay-phones provided (at a frequency of something like one instrument per two or three hundred students); or on the streets. 

These needed to be queued for, and were very expensive - such that a maximum three minute call home, once a week, was normal. 

I was 22 years old before I had a telephone in the student rented flat; and even then it was seldom used because of the cost. 

Yet I was stunned during my 1980 two month student elective in the USA and Canada, to find people chatting for hours on the phones - which had incredibly long electric cords so they could be moved around the house in use. 

At home, by contrast, we had to stand-up beside a shelf in the hallway to use the instrument.  

The reason why this technology was so rare and expensive even a century after its development was not, I think, due to British national characteristics directly - not due to an aversion to such technology or communications. After all; telephones were very quickly adopted and became nigh ubiquitous from the later 1980s when phone usage became cheaper and installation more rapid.

(Margaret Thatcher's doing.)  

But this national trait was, more likely, indirectly caused by the constraints of nationalized provision, and the restrictive practices associated with a strongly corporate and unionized social set-up. 

The same constraints, in other words, that have kept most aspects of UK NHS medical provision so scarce and slow/impossible to access - and chronically-worsening; although nowadays this is due to managerialism rather than trade unionism. The NHS is a residue of the bad-old lifestyle of the British. 

All this meant that human contact in the 60s and 70s was almost wholly face-to-face, or by letter; and for many people there were frequent and long periods without conversational interaction. 

Thus, the hour-by-hour and week-by-week texture and quality of life was very different indeed then; as compared with now - in ways that can hardly be imagined, and have faded from memory even among those who experienced them. 

There are pros as well as cons of more frequent and cheap communicating, of course; yet one advantage of those remote days of the 1970s is that people were almost compelled to think more often than now. 

For us, for the past three or four decades especially, distraction has become a way of life, a continuous-infusion of psychotherapy and stimulus.

And the most powerful form of distraction is (for the "human animal") social distraction. 

All of which explains a great deal that is most unfixably-wrong about our Western civilization; as it sleepwalks into oblivion, or delusionally marches towards annihilation - while avidly-focused on a mixture of trivia and lies. 

Why do long-term great leaders inevitably lose their grip, then need replacing ASAP?

My understanding is that we can perhaps see (currently) an example of the only great national leader of this world era having lost-grip; such that removal and replacement (which will, inevitably, be with someone less great, because greatness is so very rare) is apparently both necessary and indeed inevitable. 

I have observed the same in sport; which is one of the last remaining aspects of Western life in which good, and sometimes great, leadership can be observed. My sport is cricket, especially the England team; and I have seen two outstanding England coaches - Duncan Fletcher and Andy Flower (both, interestingly, born in Rhodesia). 

Both took England to the rare pinnacle of winning the Ashes, and Flower managed this more than once, including in Australia. 

But both "went off" at the end of their tenure; making strange and bad errors of player selection and strategy - strange, because "everybody" could see what needed to be done except for the once-great leader.  

The same kind of thing nearly always happens to great leaders, sooner or later - unless they die or are compelled to retire (e.g. by illness or external removal) before this phase is reached. 

(Leaders of all kinds, including the greatest, very seldom or never seem to recognize their own decline and resign at the optimal time - probably because a personality inclined to such doubts would prevent good leadership in the first place.)  

And the removal of the once-great leader who has "lost it" is usually delayed to a damaging extent - exactly because of their prior greatness, and awareness that any replacement will be lesser in stature. 

This is presumably one reason why the "reign" of a great leader is so often followed by a slump of decline. 

This happens, not just from the lesser quality of men who follow; but also from the damage done to those-led, during this inept and misguided "terminal phase" of leadership.    

Why then do great leaders "always" decline? 

Well, there are of course many specific negative reasons - of which the change in personal character and ability inevitable with advancing age is surely one. 

(This is, after all, fundamentally and unavoidably an entropic world; and eternal life and creation can be found only post-mortally, in Heaven.) 

But I suspect that these are all secondary to the fact that any ability is a positive achievement, and the highest levels of human attainment always require multiple positive attributes to be present at the highest level and in a mutually-sustaining balance. 

Such high level of abilities and their harmonious alignment is extremely rare, and of course vulnerable. 

In other words, we ought to be grateful and delighted when great leadership emerges; but we ought not to be surprised that it cannot be sustained for long periods - and we should expect that sooner or later there will be a significant decline.  

Another example is creative writing, for example novels or dramas; in which there are many instances of an author who produce just one great work, and whose subsequent works never match their earlier pinnacle.

(What is rare, is an great author who produces many great works. So that, among English language dramatists of the past 500 years there is only Shakespeare and Shaw who reside solidly in this category.)  

The proper attitude is to be pleased that everything aligned optimally for long enough that the one great work was produced - but not to feel it necessary to "explain" why further great works did not emerge. 

Great artists are not factory assembly lines, which - once optimised - can churn out more-of-the-same quality of item, unless broken; and the same applies to great leaders.

Instead; with great leaders we may observe that for a while, there is a remarkable confluence of abilities with opportunities - and great leadership eventuates while such conditions prevail. 

But it is the confluence, the synergistic alignment, of all necessities at once which is remarkable - not the fact that such supreme coincidence of qualities cannot last forever; nor indeed (usually) for very long.  

Why some people get so angry at the offer of resurrected eternal life in Heaven

It may seem strange that so many people nowadays get angry at talk about resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 

Why should Heaven talk make them so angry? - even if they believe that resurrection is impossible and Heaven is untrue. 

After all, people don't usually get angry about other-people's day-dreams...

But in truth it is not really so difficult to understand...

In fact I understand this anger from personal experience because I was myself one of those angry people, for most of my life. 

As a kid, a teen, and a young adult - I would be extremely annoyed by people promising eternal life after death.

 

It wasn't just that I did not believe in the possibility of resurrection after death, or even persistence in any way after death; but that it struck me as a loathsomely manipulative bribe. 

The story of resurrection and Heaven struck me as a cynical inducement offered to miserable and desperate human souls; only in return for voluntary slavish subordination to a comprehensive system of life-control.

So; it wasn't really the resurrection and Heaven, which I simply regarded as untrue; but the way it was linked to a demand for unconditional obedience. 

This is one strong reason why I regard it as Absolutely Essential that Christianity dissociate resurrection and Heaven - which is the primary promise of Jesus Christ - from any solid causal linkage with any church. 

We need to be clear and state simply that the path to resurrection is something between our-selves and the living Jesus Christ; whom each of us can know personally. 

Only then can people begin to grasp what is being offered, and whether this is something that we personally desire to happen to us...

And then (but only then) How this can happen. 

The Stark Dichotomy. Not-Christians who pass the Litmus Tests and negatively-discern validly, where Christians are failing en masse

In my readings and explorings, I come across people who understand the totalitarian reality of the West (and Geopolitics, generally) and who pass the Litmus Tests; and are not Christian. 

Indeed, such people may be anti-"Christian" - especially when they define Christianity as a compulsory package necessarily administered by an institutional church - a package that it is not possible or allowable to un-pick and discern-among; but a package that must be swallowed whole...

Or else rejected, which is what they do with it. 

On the flip-side; most self-identified Christians fail one or more of the major Litmus Tests and are substantively on-board-with the globalist totalitarian (hence necessarily leftist-materialist-atheist) socio-political agenda.

This indicates to me that - at least as of 2025 - it is possible to be negatively-correct about the nature of evil in this world; while rejecting Christianity. 

Indeed; some not-Christians are better at the negative-task of discerning evil, than are Christians.

How could this be?

I think the answer is quite simple: which is that both the non-Christian discerners and the church-Christians accept a stark dichotomy. 

The stark dichotomy is as follows: 

Most Christians are first-and-foremost institutionally-led; and they therefore (following institutional teaching and rules) agree with the "not-Christians Litmus Test passers" in assuming and asserting that Christianity really is A Package. 

Therefore it is regarded as a stark choice between either affiliating to a Christian church and supporting totalitarian evil, or else rejecting totalitarian evil and therefore rejecting "Christianity". 

I, of course, do not regard Christianity as a package; and I do not regard churches as the ultimate authority on what it is to follow Jesus; so I reject the stark dichotomy. 

But the above analysis seems to explain how Christians have, in such large numbers, ended-up on the side of evil; and how anti-Christians have been able consistently to reject this dominant source of evil - albeit they do not support positive Good. 

  

Review of The History of the Hobbit, by John D Rateliff (2007)

Over at The Notion Club Papers blog, I review the two-volume History of the Hobbit by John D Rateliff, from 2007. 

It is highly recommended. 

Unlike their best sitcoms; American comedy sketches Always go on too-long

Just an observation that my brother and I discussed recently - without any exception that I can think of - US comedy sketches always go on for too-long; taking too long to get to the point, hammering it too hard, and/or continuing for too long after they have made their point. 

I was reminded of this after seeing WmJas Tychonievich reference the "classic" More Cowbell sketch from Saturday Night Live on his blog recently - this displays the problem: the basic joke is funny; but to spin-out the joke for five minutes is just dull. 

This is in contrast with British humour, which is often at its best in comedy sketches - which are either short, tighter; or else have more than one joke to fill them. 

American humour is at its best in the Sitcom* (and movies); in which form (at least until recently) they were able to produce scores or hundreds of excellent, tightly edited, beautifully-paced shows; using the team-writing-script-editor system. 

That is, a large team of writers generate a large surplus of comedy ideas; and these are selected and assembled by one or two script editors who maintain the show's distinctive character and continuity.   

My understanding is that this is also the way that sketch-shows like SNL are assembled - in which case, I conclude either that what works for Sitcoms does not work for sketches...

Or else Americans need their jokes to be made very obvious and hammered home relentlessly...

Which latter does not seem true, in that a show such as Seinfeld is about as concise and meaty as 22 minute comedy ever has been, or could be. 

*British Sitcoms are equally good at their best, but can never achieve the quantity of American shows, because they are the product of just one or two writers.  

AI-dolatry among Christians is the flip-side of fundamentally anti-personal metaphysical assumptions

I have commented before about my dismay at AI-dolatry among so many self-identified Christians - specifically their failure to recognise and grasp that the current iteration of "Artificial Intelligence" (which was top-down launched nearly three years ago, at the end of November 2022) is primarily a totalitarian - hence evil - strategy; designed for the accelerating corruption and damnation of Men. 

But vulnerability to AI-dolatry is the other side of a coin which in practice asserts and assumes the abstract impersonality of God and created reality - despite that Christians are supposed to recognize God as a person, as our Father, and we his children. 

That this is "in practice" and almost indifferent to theological theory, is evident from the official Mormon church's positive response to AI, describing it as: "a rapidly developing technology that has significant potential to assist the Church in accomplishing God’s work of salvation and exaltation." 

This despite that the CJCLDS officially regards God as an exalted and embodied Man; indeed as two Men - a Heavenly Father and Mother; which is an explicitly non-abstract primary understanding of the creator and creation that, one might have supposed, should have protected Mormons from AI-dolatry. 

But no. 

The fact is that modern Christians get their fundamental metaphysical assumptions from mainstream society, not from their religion; and our society is bureaucratic hence fundamentally anti-personal, anti-human. 

We have, for many decades, denigrated individuals and their personal judgments and evaluations; and instead given primary moral authority to the impersonal: to system; laws and regulations; process and procedures; voting and committees. 

(And all churches operate internally by these same assumptions; all churches are bureaucratic, procedural, deploy committees and voting at their fundamental levels of decision-making etc. - which of course affects their evaluations.)

It has been a "natural" extension of this abstract-impersonal way of thinking; that the human element ought ideally to be minimized or eliminated - such that computers, robots, "AI" are by their nature potentially superior to humans... 

Supposedly superior because less prone to corruption, error, variation; and (by our false but common mainstream understanding of these terms) more informed, more knowledgeable, more intelligent - hence wiser and authoritative; than any possible human or combination of humans.  

In short: the assertion is that "AI" is potentially superior because (and insofar as) it is not human.      

In theory, Christians ought to be immune to such self-destructive and deluded foolishness - but in practice they are qualitatively as bad as everyone else! (ie. Any measured differences between modern Christians and the mainstream - e.g. in surveys - are merely quantitative, and insufficient to make a qualitative difference.) 

My understanding of this, is that Christians are now reaping the consequences of ancient errors in their metaphysics - in particular of rejecting our spontaneous knowledge that reality is plural and animated: in other words that the ultimate reality includes many living, conscious, purposive and eternal beings - and these are the basis with which divine creation has worked. 

(That is; God created from and by-means-of many pre-existent Beings.)

There was, very early, a capture of the Christianity of Jesus Christ; by a metaphysics of oneness (hence monotheism) - and the adoption of multiple abstract assumptions (which became dogmas) such as: creation from nothing; omnipotence/ omniscience, omnipresence; and the conceptualization of God's creation as including unalive/ non-living aspects such as minerals...

This metaphysics imposed itself upon the simple teachings of Jesus (essentially, the promise of resurrected eternal life in Heaven to those who followed Him) to make a complex systemic religion of this-world and its institutions - in which the essential teaching became obscured, distorted... 

(And indeed all-but denied at times and in some places, such that salvation became so complex and contingent-upon-this-world, as to be regarded as actually impossible for some/ many people.).  

Many centuries downstream; and in the unique and unprecedented actual conditions of our modern society; these have led to underpinning assumptions that dominate (often unconsciously) most Christians - and almost everybody else. 

We see physics or mathematics as the primary reality, and the unalive as existing prior to (what we regard as) living beings - and as life and consciousness as having been made-from and/or added-to dead materials.   

In a nutshell; even those who believe in creation imagine God as starting with non-living materials; then making plants, animal, then Men by adding life, movement, consciousness etc. 

Whereas we ought instead to imagine everything created as alive (and outside it, only incomprehensible chaos); spirit as coming before matter; with matter "condensing" from spirit - so that spiritual life and consciousness are basic, have always-been - and always shall be. 

I think this is how we spontaneously (but mostly unconsciously) come into this world understanding things; and that young children still think this way. And I think the reason for this is that God implanted such knowledge in us, as innate knowledge which we (nearly always) need in order to live well and attain salvation. 

The discarding of our innate animism and pluralism did not matter much when Men spontaneously retained "participation" through into adulthood. 

Because in effect these Men (e.g. in the Classical and Medieval times) continued - but unconsciously and unavoidably - to perceive the world in the same way as young children, or could return to this way of thinking via the methods of religion (ritual, symbol, scripture etc). 

But now we all become alienated through adolescence; becoming cut-off from this innate knowledge and the spontaneous sense of being part of a living world - and from this state of alienation; modern Men therefore consciously need to choose to return to our innate knowledge and understanding. 

And we need to do this conscious act of return for-ourselves, because there are no institutions - not even churches - that will teach or encourage us to do so. 

Not just for-ourselves; but from-ourselves; because it is actually contradicted by many of the actual, here-and-now dominant and mandatory, Christian church teachings. 

And therefore church-orientated Christians (those who regard a church, or any external source, as having primary authority over Christian understanding) are stuck in delusional materialism; including AI-dolatry... 

Which, unless identified and repented at some point, has the potential to lead to their self-chosen damnation.   

My take-home message here, is that anyone who hopes to escape their own self-chosen damnation - which will eventuate for those who follow external "authority" in this actual world, including church authority; would be wise to bring to consciousness, and reflect deeply upon, their most fundamental assumptions concerning the nature of reality. 

 

Homing in on "honing in"

A lot of linguistic change is down to sheer ignorance - like the fact that disinterested (meaning impartial) is nowadays nearly-always used to mean uninterested (meaning having-no-interest-in) - such that to use the correct meaning is to invite misunderstanding. 

Thus a useful word is lost.

Another more recent such change is to use "honing-in" when meaning "homing-in": as with a heat-seeking missile homing in on the exhaust jet of a bomber.  

I would have thought that it was obvious that homing in - i.e. seeking its home - would be self-explanatory and the obvious usage; whereas the commonest correct common usage of honing, sharpening the edge of a knife (or, more exactly, giving the final touches to an already sharp edge) - was a little quaint, and probably known only to (mostly male) specialists and hobbyists. 

I infer that those who began to use honing in to meaning homing in, until the mistake had displaced the correct; were doing so from a pretentious form of ignorance; rather than from plain dumb ignorance. 

They were using a more obscure word derived from a verb - hone; instead of a common word derived from a noun - home; and that kind of thing is usually motivated by the desire to impress. 

On the plus side; the incorrect use of honing in has not (or not yet) destroyed the possibility of continuing to use the verb honing for its correct purpose - which is a good thing, because it's a useful term!

Distinguishing Final Participation from Original Participation

It was Owen Barfield who defined  Original Participation - characteristic of young childhood and the early states of Mankind's development of consciousness (roughly, the nomadic Hunter Gatherer stage); and Final Participation - which was the divinely-intended future development of consciousness that was posited to come after the modern alienated consciousness which is cut-off from participation. 

But Barfield perhaps never made it really clear how one might distinguish these types of participation - at any rate, confusion on this matter seems to be rife; and it seems usual, in my experience, for those who have encountered Barfield to list instances of what is actually Original Participation, with the claim that these are Final Participation.  

Here is my understanding of the distinction, as these states occur in modern Man:

Original Participation is experienced as a stillness, dreamlike, a trance-state - as if time is slowed or stopped or the individual has moved out of time into eternal simultaneity. 

As immersion in "the world" or divine consciousness - with loss of boundaries between individuals.

As a blending into "being-ness" - during which the individual "self" dissolves-into the larger or other consciousness. 

Ultimate reality is felt to be a state of oneness, unity; variation is only superficial because the deepest truth is singleness. 

For Original Participation we seem actually to inhabit an ocean of one-consciousness; from-which our individual consciousness sometimes emerges, briefly; rather like a crest among swirling waves that randomly gets shaped into a degree of illusory and temporary distinction and self-awareness - just long enough to realize this, before again dissolving-into the infinite sea. 

Final Participation is a dynamic state of consciousness, associated with directionality and movement of thought. 

The "self" is intensified, thinking is afoot; and consciousness absorbs into itself awareness of "the world", other people, other beings.

Awareness becomes wider and deeper - and this is awareness of other and different consciousnesses.

Ultimate reality is - at its best and highest - a state of friendship, harmony between different beings; between different but allied consciousnesses. 

Final Participation is likely to happen when we are enacting some strong and good inner motivation. When we are propelled by a creativity that is aligned and affiliated with divine creation. Perhaps while we are gathering insights that are being intuitively confirmed; or when actively-engaged in enchanted doing, or making. 

In summary - for us modern people: Original Participation happens in a state of rest or stasis, while Final Participation happens when mentally active; OP includes a loss of the sense of self, while FP includes an intensification of self; OP leads towards a sense of oneness and timelessness, while FP is a dynamic and connected form of "ongoing" consciousness.

Giants and Albion (the British)

Nightmare fuel for kids

I have already posted on the subject of historical Giants in relation to the British Isles - according to some classical authors Giants seem to have been the original (or first recorded) inhabitants of this island. 

I found another piece of evidence that might be taken to support this assumption; in that (according to some notes in John Rateliff's excellent History of The Hobbit) the only two fairy tales that are considered to be probably native to England; are Jack the Giant Killer, and Jack and the Beanstalk (which also has a Giant as the baddie). 

I decided I owed myself a chance to read these stories in their earliest and definitive versions; which I found in Classic Fairy Tales by Iona and Peter Opie. 

My impression of these Jack stories, especially of "the Giant Killer", was of crude and shallow narratives without any detectable trace of that faery enchantment, which is (for me) the only magic really worth reading about.   

The Giants existed only to be stupid, ridiculous, repulsive, and terrifying; their fate only to be tricked, laughed-at, tormented, and slaughtered. 

I conclude that these tales are likely to be exact examples which Tolkien referred as "impoverished chapbook stuff" in one of his letters:

"I was from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved country: it had no stories of its own, not of the quality that I sought, and found in legends of other lands. There was Greek, and Celtic, and Romance, Germanic, Scandinavian, and Finnish, but nothing English, save impoverished chapbook stuff."

The Giant Killer seemed to encourage nothing more virtuous than greed and Schadenfreude; while the Beanstalk Jack larded on some unconvincing moralizing about his later repentance and reform of character.  

All I can say in defence of these un-enchanted and uniquely English Fairy Stories is that I find a similar deficit of enchantment in most other tales from other nations - such a the courtly French stories of Perrault, or the sentimentality of Hans Christian Anderson. 

It is really only the German forest stories of the Brothers' Grimm - such Hansel and Gretel, Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White - where I find enchantment of the kind I like...

A sense of faery; that parallel and uncanny, perilous, eerily-beautiful world of magic; just off the path or waiting outside of the woodland clearing. 

The hierarchy of evil seen in the Birdemic/Peck and current wars

CS Lewis's demonic supervisor Screwtape is depicted as being strategically-motivated by damnation of humans; while the junior demon Wormwood is mostly just a sadist - enjoying the infliction of human suffering. 

There is a hierarchy of evil (or "lowerarchy", as CS Lewis terms it in The Screwtape Letters) - by which I mean there are degrees of evilness. 

This was evident in the Birdemic of 2020 and the (allegedly preventive) Peck which followed later; and is evident in the ongoing West-provoked/ escalated/sustained global wars. 

The three main levels of the hierarchy of evil can be defined in terms of motivation; and are, in ascending order of evilness of motives:

1. Profit and Pleasure

2. Sadism

3. Damnation

1. Profit and Pleasure 

These are those humans (and lower-status demonic beings) whose motives are essentially selfish and short-termist. 

They cause, continue and use events like the Birdemic to get pleasure and to avoid suffering. For instance; they aim to make money, and to get rich/ famous/ powerful/ popular. 

As example: the people who got massively wealthy from manufacturing and distributing "personal protection" products and the Peck during the Birdemic. Or in wars; the corporate types who manufacture and trade armaments, the politicians and journalists who benefit from bribery and other corruptions. 

This kind of evil is widely acknowledged as a real factor in the world; indeed for most modern people selfish short-termism is in the only kind of evil they acknowledge. They will use it to to explain everything that happens and which they dislike.   

2. Sadism

These are those whose motives are sadistic and destructive. Their main gratification is spiteful: to enjoy the suffering of others, especially when they are involved in inflicting it. 

Such a motive isn't rare; and often finds expression in resentment-fantasy, gloating and Schadenfreude. 

It can be recognized as dominant when people will sacrifice their own profit and pleasure in order to try and damage and destroy those people and entities (e.g. religions, institutions, nations) they most dislike. 

In the Birdemic the sadism-motivated were evident in their eager and sustained support of "face-coverings" and the variety of "social distancing" policies. The resulting loneliness, illness, decline and despair of the coercively-isolated was their primary satisfaction.   

In war, they are recognizable by their tenacious support of policies that have (and are, by them, intended to have) the opposite effect to that claimed. Such as "sanctions" that damage everybody, but mainly those doing the sanctioning. Or military "aid" that leads to the progressive annihilation of the people and society being supplied with aid. 

 

3. Damnation

At the highest level of evil (or more exactly, the highest level at which evil-intent coheres, and remains capable of some cooperation and a degree long-termism in aim - there is a level beyond) - the motivation is to work for the damnation of others. 

In other words, the aim is spiritual. It is to oppose God and divine creation in all ways possible, and in particular to deter or prevent people from choosing to accept the gift of Jesus Christ (i.e. resurrection to eternal Heavenly life). 

Since salvation is a matter of spiritual choice (an "opt-in"); this level of evil works on trying to shape and manipulate what people want.-

To ensure damnation of souls; it is not enough to have people Do evil stuff, they must ultimately Want evil stuff. 

In the Birdemic we saw this in the propaganda that tried to make people accept, demand, and celebrate the measures that were designed to harm them spiritually (as well as physically). 

Many people were induced to desire the escalation and permanence of lock-downs, masking, social distancing; and to advertise positively their own compliance with the Peck (IRL as well as in social media). 

It wasn't just that these things harmed them; but that they wanted the harm - they agreed to being harmed, and sought more of the same. 

And we currently see this damnation motivation among those who use untruthfulness (distortion, selection, outright lying) and knowingly-false interpretations; to depicts their actually-evil-intending (anti-Good-motivated) wars as an ideological/ spiritual conflict with the worse side presented as the better. 

Among those (many) who express such sentiments - and we may infer that these such persons have potentially embraced their own damnation as a personal ideal.  

This is the ultimate success of the demonic powers - to induce people not merely to seek their own pleasure and profit; and not only to enjoy the infliction of pain and destruction - but to hate God/ Creation? Jesus and reject the hope of salvation. 

Instead; to adopt and practice value-inversion... understanding and rejecting Good as evil, and adopting evil as the highest Good.

Because value-inversion (commonplace and official in the modern West) is the surest path to damnation - as by it, the divine is mocked, despised and hated, while the demonic is regarded as heroic, fun and "cool".

And, thereby, the people shall positively affiliate themselves with the demonic agenda of damnation - to become active agents for propagating their own miserable fate.

From the highest levels of the hierarchy of evil, such was-and-is the intent and triumph of 2020; and of the subsequent and ongoing global wars.  

Note added: In case the above induces a feeling of helpless and incipient despair in face of the vast power and influence of evil in the world (and especially the West) - it may be worth reminding oneself that this is a spiritual war I am describing. So that explicitly recognizing the relevant evil motivation for oneself, and inwardly rejecting it; counts as a personal spiritual triumph; and this is exactly the kind of spiritual learning-from-experience that is such a vital aspect of our mortal lives - one of the reasons we are here, and now.  

You *Don't* need Faith to be a Christian! (Hope will suffice)

The commonly expressed view that one needs Faith in order to be a Christian, is a problem! 

First, is the Faith-Belief double-bind:

The bind is that unless I am already a Christian, how can I have Faith? 

But if I first need Faith then how can I become a Christian?

It was all very well to root Christianity in Faith, when nearly all adults grew-up automatically (often unconsciously) believing in one of the Christian churches.

Or even when people spontaneously believed nearly-everything needed for Christianity - and salvation could just be added-onto a pre-existing religion. 

But now that almost-everybody grows-up with multiple assumptions that exclude the possibility of Christianity being true, this has caused mass-majority to believe in a de facto atheism. 

It also seriously weakens the faith of professing Christians and their church institutions (as was evident in 2020).  

The second problem is doubts. 

It is nigh impossible to be a Christian in the West in the 21st century without sometimes, often, having doubts about whether it is really true. 

Our whole scientistic-materialistic-bureaucratic-media civilization tells us all-the-time, and from all directions - or, even worse, just assumes - that there is no God, creation, spirits or soul. 

In such a context, doubts are inevitable and may be crippling.

 

On top of which we are aware of multiple and conflicting versions of Christianity and particular churches - many of which assert their own exclusive access to salvation. 

Plus, we are aware of multiple other (not Christian) religions. 

In such circumstances, actually achieving the absolute exclusion of doubt requires a mental state that resembles psychotic fanaticism.

Yet doubt weakens and erodes Faith!

Another double-bind...

Luckily; Christians do not need Faith; so long as they have Hope. 

It is Hope that makes someone a Christian: Hope of his own salvation after death, Hope for everlasting resurrected life in Heaven. 

If you are a Christian currently without Faith, then so long as you remain motivated to want what Jesus offers - i.e. so long as you continue to Hope - then your salvation is secure. 

But if, on the other hand, your wanting what Jesus offers is conditional on the reality of that offer; then you will probably cease to be a Christian if and when you doubt its truth.

Or; if and when you become convinced of the reality of some other account of the universe (e.g scientistic-materialist, or some other religion), then you will cease to be a Christian. 

Or if (for whatever reason) you come to despair of your ability to choose to follow Jesus Christ - then you may well lose your Faith, and stop being a Christian. 

(No wonder - when Faith is regarded as essential; so many people have stopped being Christian or rejected it from the get-go, over the past several generations.) 

Yet there is Hope! 

I can imagine somebody who thinks that the stories of this Jesus person, and of resurrected eternal life, are merely "wishful thinking", or perhaps just a priestly-invention designed to manipulate people - but who, nevertheless, regards what Jesus offers as something he would want for himself - if only it were true. 

I believe that state-of-mind is sufficient for salvation - and that such a person really is "a Christian". 

Whereas, somebody who has Faith and believes in the reality of God, creation, spirits, the soul and Jesus Christ (and who may - if you like - be a devout and observant member of "whatever church you regard as valid") - but who does not want resurrected eternal life for himself, after his death - will not attain salvation, and is not really a Christian - but something else, instead.

In other words: someone may lack Faith and yet be a Christian; while another may have Faith, yet not be a Christian. 

And this is possible because salvation because it is Hope that is primary.  

All of which has practical consequences... 

One is that the single most-important-thing to emphasize about Jesus Christ is an understanding of what it is that he offers us.

And the second-most-important-thing about Jesus; is decide whether we, personally, would want what he offers - assuming this was indeed real and possible? 

Such is the essence of Christianity, and from it much else follows. 

Conversely, many traditional questions can be set-aside. 

We can set-aside questions such as: Is God real, and if so what kind of God? Do we live in a divine creation or does "science" describe the nature of our universe? Did Jesus really exist, and if so was he a divine Son of God (and what does that mean)? 

Instead, the focus should be on understanding the nature of that life everlasting which Jesus offers (whether it is real or not, and whether we believe Jesus could provide it)? 

And - assuming, for the sake of argument, that what he offered really was true and is available to us personally: whether that is what we desire for ourselves after death?

Even if we have crippling doubts; even if Jesus is something we "just can't believe in"; none of this matters! So long as we are sure that - if it were possible - resurrected eternal Heavenly life is what we would want for ourselves as First Choice. 

Participation in Romantic Christianity

I have found Owen Barfield's concept of "participation" - as expounded in Saving the Appearances - to be a deep and fertile insight - a gift that keeps giving, and demanding! 

This affected me so strongly because I had already recognized "alienation" as the distinctive problem of modern Man (and, especially, of me personally); and the driven-need to "cure" (or, in practice, temporarily alleviate or forget) felt-alienation, to be a core and increasing motivator of human life in our current civilization.   

In particular; I have found it necessary repeatedly to explore the relationship between participation and Christianity - having become aware that a great deal of mainstream Christianity is strongly alienating - not just in practice, but also in theory (which makes the defect incurable, without theological change).

It is important to realize that participation is the truth and reality of creation. It is not an optional extra, not merely a psychological feeling; but participation is intrinsic and unavoidable. 

Yet we modern Men are mostly unaware of the actuality of our own participation - and have erected an incoherent pretence of an external objectivity, something that supposedly exists without our consciousness, and to which we must conform - like it or not. 

So our task, as alienated modern Men, is not really to "seek participation" as such (although that is a shorthand for the process) - because participation Just Is - but to seek consciousness of the reality of our own ongoing participation. 

Mainstream Christianity often encourages participation of certain types, in specified circumstances...

For example, during prayer the person praying is encouraged to participate in a two-way and mutual communication. Something similar applies to participation in Holy Communion; or any other of the sacred rituals. 

On the other hand; the context of prayer is presented as happening in a context of objective and external fact - and something in which participation has no role. Thus; if a prayer is directed at God, then according to mainstream theology this is not a participating relationship, because God is infinitely "other", without any necessary role for human (or other) consciousness. 

The Christian is told the nature of God, creation, reality - how things work; what is appropriate ritual and symbol; what is real scripture and what it means etc... and the Christian's job is first and foremost and mandatorily to accept these "factual" (unparticipated) descriptions. 

Only after A Lot of objective, external and not-participated descriptions have been accepted, is the mainstream Christian supposed to work on participating in them. 

And, of course, such participation carries with it a more-or-less detailed expectation of what is allowed to come-out from the attempt...

In other words; the "mystical" Christian who desires participation, has already been told The Answer! 

The mainstream Christian who seeks conscious participation has been told what he will find in his mystical participation, and what it means - as a matter of objective truth; so that the seeking for participation is regarded as secondary, subjective-essentially; and an "optional extra" to the "realities" of Christianity that are objective, external - and matters about which our personal experience is irrelevant. 

Because I regard participation as necessary and intrinsic to the human condition; I regard this to be a fatal flaw in mainstream Christianity... Because participation is an unavoidable reality, thus our un-consciousness of it (an unconsciousness that is encouraged and enforced by mainstream Christianity) must be an error or an untruth. 

In sum: Seeking conscious participation in reality, including divine realities, is not some kind of optional or esoteric activity for Christians; on the contrary, it is a matter of working towards what Christianity needs to be and must become - if it is to be motivating and truthful. 

 

What is pride? What despair?

Pride and despair are sins - which is to say, all of both must voluntarily be relinquished, if we are to be fitted for Heaven. 

Pride is thinking we are "good enough", as we are - and without resurrection. 

Nobody - as-is - is good enough for Heaven; and there could be no Heaven unless this could be set right; and Jesus Christ would not have needed to die, if the problems of Men-as-is could be set right without passing-through death.

But we are not good enough, and this cannot be set right without passing-through death and re-making. 

Despair is in believing that we are essentially depraved - that is: depraved in our essence. 

Any Man, any Being, capable of love, is capable of choosing an eternal commitment to live by love, to his everlasting ruling motivation... 

No Man can make this happen by himself, from himself; nor can the commitment to live-by-love be made everlasting without passing-through death and being re-made from that which is Good in us. 

(Despair is also an eventual consequence of believing that this re-making after death is not a real possibility; or being convinced that we personally cannot have it; or of deciding that - although it is real and possible - we do not want it.) 

Tolkien dodges nomenclature bullets - but sometimes it's a near thing!

Celeborn reacts to being told his original name...

Over at my Notion Club Papers blog; I discuss how Tolkien's un-matched ability at naming, motivated by his philological perspective, would sometimes lead to silliness or tin-eared consequences in the drafting stage - but caught and corrected during revisions. 

The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren - by Iona and Peter Opie (1959, 1977)

When I first encountered The lore and language of schoolchildren, I was in my early twenties and beginning feel a solidification and increase in that characteristic and unavoidable alienation that is a core feature of the modern human condition. 

The book is a work of anthropological fieldwork by a husband-wife team; and it records the songs, rhymes and games of children of the 5-10 years age, mainly; from primary school playgrounds mostly - across several regions of Britain.

This book made me realize, probably for the first time consciously, that in my young childhood I had participated in an archetypal world - a world that was essentially universal; and in some respects went back across centuries - and perhaps millennia. 

And this world emerged whenever children gathered to play - even in that most tightly-regulated, formal and artificial world of school - where during playtimes we reverted to a mode of consciousness that was primal and spontaneous. 

What I got from this book was that the songs, rhymes and games that I had learned "orally" and by joining-in from other children, constituted a kind of national "underground", a "secret world". Shared by other children we had never met and knew nothing about. 

And not written down, not taught by adults nor approved by teachers (because they were unaware or indifferent); handed on by direct child-to-child contact - it was just there. 

It seemed, too, that this world derived from a common stock - so that children everywhere had their own versions of the same basic themes; although where that stock originally derived from was a mystery, and we weren't interested by that kind of question.

We participated in rituals that had an effect on us, so we wanted to join in and repeat them - and play them well; but whose meaning was unclear and that we did not understand - even at the time, I found this strange and compelling. 

Examples would include such rhyme/ song/ dances as "Oranges and lemons", "The Farmer's in his den", "In and out the dusty windows". 

We played such games - yet we did not know why we did it; and the effect was a kind of nagging almost-awareness of some sort of significance. 

Nowadays, I would term this Original Participation - that spontaneous, unconscious, immersive sense of participation in reality. 

But more exactly, the lore and language were a product of the phase when OP began to emerge into awareness and become systematized. 

This stage of childhood corresponds to the "totemic" era of human developmental history when symbol, ritual, story and song began to crystallize, become relatively fixed, and was preserved and disseminated by interpersonal and oral means.

And stored in memory- such that group rehearsal and repetition became a mechanism for perpetuation; and with such "devices" serving to work as as a transitional means for the incipiently isolated individual to re-enter the paradisal bliss of Original Participation.

 

I would now infer that this was what we were up to, in those playtimes - and following the enforced alienation generated by classroom schoolwork. 

In exchanging and chanting rhymes and songs, in playing ritualistic games; I think we unconsciously-sought to return - for a while - to that phase of being from-which we had so recently emerged; and where we knew ourselves to be part-of our family, a group of kids... the world and universe. 

Hence the mystery, hence the fascination.

The latest and ultimate Apple product

As a long-term serial Apple owner, I could not resist their latest product. 

One problem with being an Apple user is that one's expensive purchase so rapidly becomes obsolete and despised - since there is always another whiter, simpler, cooler and more aesthetic product coming-along to supersede that so recently bought at so much expense. 

First they got rid of the bevel around the screen, then the control buttons, then the earphone ports, then the chargers. 

It became shockproof, and waterproof down to a considerable depth. 

Incrementally eliminating the unnecessary; always in search of the plainer, the purer... 

Yet still there remained the problematic clutter of internal components - circuit boards, battery, speaker - and the screen was a vulnerability - easy to scratch or crack. 

And the fear that - just around the corner, was the next generation product that succeeded in eliminating one of the complications that remained. 

But now the end-run has been achieved; my Apple cannot be superseded because it has reached the Platonic ideal of a plain white rectangle of solid hard plastic. 

Nothing to go wrong, nothing left to eliminate. 

Well worth the vast financial outlay - especially considering the excellent block-maintenance and whiteness-tech support available from my local Apple Store.  

At last Apple have achieved the ultimate...

Or have they? 

There is something I don't completely enjoy about the shape of my homogeneous white plastic block.

And indeed I am not certain that it is in fact completely white... There remains the slightest tinge of cream colouration, perhaps? - in certain lights?

A creeping fear is coming over me that further product devolution remains a possibility; that there may be a plainer and purer and more colourless shape; beyond that of my current slab. 

And when it comes onto the market; I will just have to buy it. 

Acknowledgement to my son, who had the idea behind this post. Also (as might be guessed) neither of us are Apple-owners, IRL.