Can Christianity escape from the authority of "History"?

The question of "History" - that there is an objectively-true, evidenced account of the past: of how things came to be the way they are now - is one that has been very strong since the subject of History began to emerge as a distinctive discipline, detached (supposedly!) from religious (later ideological) justifications and dishonesties. 

But the idea that true history emerges from "the evidence" turns-out to be as false as the analogous argument for the natural sciences; in both cases coherence and proof is provided by theory, and theory is an must come prior to evidence.

(Because without a prior theory; how would anyone what what counted as evidence, its relative value compared with other evidence, or what a piece or collection of evidence meant?). 

In mainstream culture this has left us with two false and incoherent alternatives. 

On the one hand, multiple rival blustering and categorical assertions that This is The Truth about history - assertions that ignore the dependence on prior theory. 

And on the other side the supposedly radical "relativist" subversion that states "everything is ideology" so that objective truth has no meaning, so that truth cannot be known and is just a consequence of power - assertions that ignore their blatant self-subversion. 

For these folk; History is just a story made-up by the winners, and the discipline of History something created to reach the conclusions they have already-decided - and any other story can have equal validity.  

And that is pretty much how things stand. 

The traditionalist, orthodox, religious reactionary side wrongly assert that the evidence for their assertions is objective; and the radical, liberal, "reforming" side of religion asserts that their own take on the world is better than that of the conservatives; despite that they have previously asserted that "better" has no objective meaning and is merely a consequence of power.

Usually, people "pick a side" because they can see no alternative, and in order to join a gang; and stoutly continue to ignore the fatal weakness, the non-objectivity of their own position, its dependence on theoretical assumptions; by relentlessly focusing on the fatal weakness and non-objectivity of their opponents position. 

The choice that culture forces upon us is between "truth is what I say" and "there is no truth" - both based on circular and incoherent arguments!

What should we do when faced with two false alternatives? 

Should we do what most people do when confronted by mainstream electoral politics, or rival sports teams located in your home city: just pick a side then support it fanatically - while demonizing the opposition.

Is that really the best we can do when confronted by the most fundamental problems of our human existence? 

  

People need to recognize that the dilemma is one of our own creation, and rooted in an unexamined assumption that the truth about reality is and must-be public and shared information.

The false modern dilemma of choosing between two falsehoods, arises from our own built-in assumption that truth is either located externally and communally and has nothing to do with me - my job being only to choose to submit to it; or else "truth" is nothing-but inside my head... whatever my brain happens to be telling me at this instant. 

What we need is obvious enough - we need to understand how truth both depends on me and my assumptions and thinking; and truth also is about reality, about things (entities) other than myself.

I think the distinction we need is between things existing, and knowledge about them. We must assume - and indeed are born assuming - that other entities exist. 

Doubt about the reality of reality emerge later, and indeed are large distinctive to relatively modern times (the past few centuries). These doubts are reinforced by the impossibility of finding "evidence" that other entities exist outside of our own thoughts about them. 

On the other side; the blustering assertions of the reality of reality are nearly-always actually assertions about our knowledge of reality. 

For instance, religious people are not content to assume the objective reality of God as another entity from "me"; but combine this with asserting the objectivity of their own claim for knowledge of God's attributes.

Thereby re-entering the false-dilemma debate that undermines all such claims; after which the conservative religious will bluster and shout his knowledge-assertions, while the radical religious will adopt a passive aggressive strategy of undermining possibility of any knowledge about reality - to distract from the fact he is making his own assertions concerning reality, and assuming these assertions are more-true than the conservative's. 

To loop back - how can we take account of History in such a situation; when we assume that there was a real history that led up to the present, but all our specific knowledge of that history is undermined by the subjective-objective distinction!

When History has become Impossible!

Especially this is a problem in that Christianity is located in History; and takes place at a particular past time and place. 

When History has become impossible in the mainstream of public discourse - this must (and does) have a profoundly subversive effect on Christianity.     

Christians can neither depend on "objective History" nor can they allow History to be wholly personal and subjective. 

The answer? Well, because the insoluble problem is located in the domain of public discourse, and the phenomenon of consensus; then the Christian cannot root his religion in public discourse. 

And cannot means cannot - because insofar as he does root religion in public discourse, his religion Will Be subverted - as we see all around us. 

And public discourse includes all churches. 

My conclusion is that the historical religion of Christianity now cannot be rooted-in churches, cannot derive-from churches, cannot be "what a church says". 

And that "cannot" means cannot. 

Hell - Where did it come from, where did it go?

I was reading a biography of Stevie Smith by Frances Spalding, and a chapter concerning her relationship to Christianity - by which was largely meant the Church of England. 

At one point it quoted a passage to the effect that the one thing SS found most repellent was the idea of Hell. In particular, to summarize, Stevie rejected:

Hell regarded as a place of eternal torment, to which people were sent by default, on the basis of divine judgment. 

In rejecting this idea of Hell, as well in her response to this rejection - i.e. ceasing to be what she regarded as a Christian - I suppose Stevie Smith was representative of her era.

Certainly I have often seen or heard the same kind of thing said by others. 

It seems that (in some broad sense) Hell came-in with "Christianity" around or after the time of Jesus - and disappeared with Christianity through the 19th and 20th centuries. 

And, at about the same time as Hell was disappearing - people began finding the idea repellent; because those who rejected Hell also assumed that Hell was not true: assumed that the Hell concept is ,and always had been, false. 

And therefore the Hell-rejecters infer that the primary nature of the Hell concept was as a psychological manipulation used to terrorize people into joining and obeying the Christian church. 

In other words, the Stevie-Smith-esque moral critique of Hell, already rejects the reality of Hell: it already assumed that Hell is not and never was real. 

The question I address about Hell is: Where did it come from, where did it go*? 

What has apparently happened; is that the modern human mind has become unreceptive to the reality of Hell. What once seemed real, possible, almost inevitable - has come to seem an obvious deception. A cruel, because manufactured, mass manipulation. 

To summarize: Hell used-to "work" very effectively as a mechanism of population control; but it does not work anymore. 

This historical change towards Hell-incredulity is usually interpreted sociologically; meaning in essence that the change in Men's minds was caused by changes in society. 

If the sociological explanation is true this would imply that if modern society was changed then Hell could again become an effective motivator; and this change would happen whether Hell is regarded as a reality that is now being denied, or if Hell is regarded as a not-real tool of social control.  

But I believe that sociological change to restore Hell could not and therefore would not happen. 

I suggest instead that Hell first came, and then went, because of changes in human consciousness. 

In other words; I am saying that Hell arose because Men's minds became receptive to the idea; and this change led to sociological change; and then Hell dwindled because Men's minds changed further - and then society changed to reflect this. 

The idea is that Hell is a product of a particular phase of Mankind's consciousness - and that phase has now passed. 

On this view; because Hell is primarily a product of Man's consciousness; then it would not be possible to restore the ancient idea of Hell. 

And if Hell is a product of consciousness at a particular phase of development; then a modern-day religious society could not motivate people with such an idea of Hell, even if it is true; and for the same reason; a tyranny could no longer effectively control society with the false-but-believed threat of Hell. 

What was this phase of consciousness that was so receptive to Hell? I would term it a semi-alienated state of partial group-mind. 

My idea is that in ancient (pre-Christian) times; Men were not alienated but were (mostly) immersed in their society, and actually lived as a part of the group-mind. The after-death experience was then regarded in a groupish way - whatever happened beyond death, happened to the members of the group. 

Men were not then afraid of becoming an "existential outcast" in the manner of Hell. 

Hell emerged when Men each began to separate their personal consciousness from the group-mind; and Hell was (I suggest) a consequence of this state of being semi-alienated. 

Man's hope was to retain the state of being in this group-mind after death; but Hell came from the terror that - after death - the group may choose to cast-out the individual because of that individual's transgression of the group-norms, and consign him to the eternal torment of being existentially-alone. 

The sociological phenomenon of Hell was therefore a consequence of Men's innate angst concerning emergent alienation from the group mind; which is why Men became receptive to the idea of Hell. 

But in the development of human consciousness, Men continued to detach from the group-mind; until for recent generations Men have ceased to experience the primacy of the group-mind - to the point of being unaware of it, and even denying its reality. 

Modern Men regard themselves as almost-wholly alienated; and therefore tend spontaneously to regard death as an inevitable and universal annihilation. 

In the officially (and inwardly-perceived) modern secular-mainstream understanding of each Man dwelling in a purposeless and meaningless universe - there can be no divine judgment. 

And the idea that mortal life death might lead to a default-inevitable state of being tormented cannot for a modern Man) be true - because for modern Men, after death there is nothing.    

For modern Christians (with the alienated consciousness we share with other modern Men); Salvation and Hell are alike consequences of personal choice in relation to the divine; not a judgment. 

And as this alienated consciousness continues to develop; these personal choices of post-mortal situation become more individual, bespoke, unique - and reciprocally less and less group-defined, less and less categorical in nature. 

Modern Christians now understand Hell (insofar as they have thought about it seriously) more as a positive choice - Hell is a choice made by those who have decisively-rejected (for whatever reason) the desirability and chance of resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 

Hence, for the consciousness of modern Christians; "Hell" is real but differently-understood than 1-2000 years ago. 

The modern concept of Hell is nowadays negatively-defined as "everything but" Heaven. 

For modern consciousness; Hell is therefore an open-ended variety of possibilities - and insofar as Hell is for some individuals experienced as a situation of eternal torment - then this is what has been asked-for, and from-which they do not repent.  

*NOTE: The title of this post references an amusing and enjoyable novelty song that my kids used to dance-to; mainly from a Wii Just Dance compilation. 

Untranslated-foreign is a defect

I have just finished reading Stevie Smith's "The Novel on Yellow Paper" - which ended badly in a narrative sense - but also because she kept inserting chunks of untranslated German. 

A couple of weeks ago I was reading Owen Barfield's "Saving the Appearances" and he peppered the text with bits of untranslated Latin, and even several passages in Classical Greek (with the Greek letters, and all).

Both books were mid-20th Century, by authors born around 1900; and both authors will have known perfectly well that very few (and a tiny percentage) of their readers will have been able to understand these foreign bits - so what good reason could they have for including them?  

The answer is (to quote Nigel Tufnel in Spinal Tap) none good reason. 

There are plenty of bad reasons for deliberately using language that you know most other people will-not and (esp. before Google translate) can-not understand, but none are good. 

Back in the day when I wrote in the mass media for a general audience, I knew better than to include sheets of technical language from psychiatry, biochemistry, or statistics - even if incomprehensible jargon might impress some people. 

Plus; it's not as if knowing one or a few foreign languages out of the thousands of them, is even intelligence correlated - there are shoals of fluent tri-lingual people (even in Britain, in this city, here and now) of significantly below-average IQ and without educational attainments. 

I'm afraid usage of untranslated-foreign is an unintentionally-revealing personality flaw; so I suppose I ought to try and be sympathetic; instead of becoming overwhelmed with irritation and hurling the book across the room.

Warning: Proceed With Caution. Joining a Christian church is joining The Totalitarian System

Someone who is on the side of God the Creator, and who desires to attain the salvation of Jesus Christ, must Proceed With Caution when it comes to joining any formal organization. 

This is because we inhabit a totalitarian system; meaning that all formal institutions in our society are connected by a multitude of bureaucratic linkages - as was evident in 2020. 

Both totalitarianism and bureaucracy are intrinsically evil - which means that all formal institutions (politics, government service, law, medicine, corporations, charities, mass media, police, military, science, the arts, teaching etc... all of the social institutions) are (and must be) overall-aligned with the purposes of evil. 

  

This situation is a real and present danger: a spiritual hazard. 

The unwary shall be led-astray. 

And the warning applies as much to religions, churches, and specifically-Christian churches - as to all the other institutions; so that a Christian who joins a church is in spiritual Danger, and needs to Proceed With Caution. 

This does not mean that a Christian ought to avoid all churches - far from it*. 

For many people, a church is necessary; and for others a particular church (when available and accessible) is positively beneficial to sustaining faith.  

But it does mean that - just as a Christian chooses his church with discernment; he must not set-aside that discernment after joining that church. 

In a totalitarian world, no institution should be trusted; because none are worthy of trust. 

"Christian" must not, therefore, be striving to serve and obey any actually-existing church, nor even that particular sub-section of a church which Christian has chosen from the contending factions. 

(Service and obedience to any totalitarian-aligned organization will lead the individual towards evil - later if not sooner.) 

Instead; he ought to be ready and willing to continue evaluating all aspects of the church; including whatever the church teaches, instructs, or demands.  And proceeding (to the best of his ability) on the basis of these evaluations. 

It is a matter not so much of every Christian "taking responsibility" for selecting and implementing his faith - everybody already does that - but of acknowledging the fact that he is responsible: like it, or like it not.  

*After all, many people must work therefore have a job, and will mostly work for an organization or several; everyone will have multiple dealings with government and large corporations; indeed people must join all sorts of institutions. We must join the totalitarian system. Opting-out of The System is not an option. You may try to ignore The Matrix, but The Matrix will not ignore you. 

So what's the special problem with a church? None unless you forget that the church is a part of The System, and think of it as something qualitatively apart. 

Yes, I know about the "Spiritual Church" within the "institutional church", and the SC is - of course - what you want, as a Christian. 

The trouble is that the church will try to insist upon the institution, while leaving the spiritual stuff as... well, nice but optional. Spiritual disobedience is tolerated, even encouraged (plenty of bishops and archbishops who don't believe that Jesus was divine, or don't believe in Satan or hell) - but institutional disobedience? That is what gets priests defrocked and laity excommunicated.   

Romantic mass manipulation

Romanticism is A Fact of modern Man; such a powerful factor in the makeup of modern Man, that those who exclude or ignore the romantic in their ideology (whether that be Christian or Secular Right, or anything else) consign themselves to feeble motivation, feeble courage; and the inevitability of their own corruption by selfish or worldly pressures. 

Romanticism in public discourse has been (over a span of a couple of centuries and more) almost monopolized by The Left - who have made "idealism" and "hope" this-worldly, dishonest, and incoherent. 

The situation is that people cannot live, cannot avoid despondent despair, without hope - and their hopes are channelled into delusions that are manipulated for the agendas of the Establishment. 

Our Romanticism is deliberately stirred-up and encouraged from all directions and in many manifestations - especially via the mass media and in the arts and entertainments: evoked and amplified... then re-directed into channels that benefit the agendas of those with most influence, wealth and power. 

This is normal and routine: some idealistic aspiration, some enchanted daydream - gets colonized, politicized, materialized - and looped-back to feed-into The System. 

 

So, "revolution", the "counter-culture", "radical dissent" and the rest of that species of this-worldly romanticism - all the famous and influential, mainstream or alternative personnel and communication/ institutional manifestations -- are just competing factions among the Establishment: office politics among the rulers. 

We are all Romantics, by nature - don't fight it: use it!

Romanticism is non-optional, at least if we are to avoid futile passivity; and the ultimate challenge is to own our romanticism - make it fully-spiritual not partial and material; and to locate our romantic ideals in a timespan that is eternal in both directions.  

Any questions? Readers are invited to ask

Despite that this is a selfish blog, consisting of me thinking-in-writing some of the notions I get in the early morning; from time to time I do invite questions from readers, and this is one of those times. 

The Northumbrian church project: Anglo-Saxon churches

St Andrew's Church*, Bywell

We have recently begun a project to visit old churches in Northumbria; starting by getting suggestions from a little book by the legend that was Stan Beckesall ; backed-up by a copy of "Pevsner" for Northumberland; plus whatever booklets or leaflets we find in the churches we visit.  

Several of these churches, I have visited before; but they are well worth seeing again! This time we are spending about an hour per church on locating - and trying to understand - the architectural features. 

We began with several churches that contain Anglo-Saxon features; and Bywell St Andrew's (illustrated above) has an exceptionally well preserved tower from that era. 

I am, for the first time, beginning to learn and recognize the distinctions - and gradations - between Anglo-Saxon, Norman (c1066 to middle-late 1100s) and Early English (late 1100s to late 1200s). 

Naturally, there is a technological trajectory; with older churches being simpler in construction, visibly cruder in shaping and selection of the stones, and later churches having innovations such as buttresses to stop the walls bulging/ collapsing, multi-stone round arches instead of single stone lintels over doors; then (with Early English) pointed arches (enabling greater height for the same width of supports). 

The evil Normans must be acknowledged as great builders; and their rapid impact on architecture is very evident. I now recognize at a glance the typical EE "lancet" windows - tall and narrow, often paired, usually deep set on the inside.

However, there is always a special excitement of finding Anglo-Saxon features, maybe a font for baptisms - chiselled from a single block, a lintel shaped into a slight arch, or even just a few irregular stones at the corners ("long and short" quoins):

* My new knowledge of church architecture would lead me to recognize that the lowest window in the tower - the long thin, "lancet" with a pointed top - was inserted later. This is because such windows were not done in A-S times, and are usually a feature of the Early English style; also the disturbance to the horizontal lines of the stonework can be seen. However, the window is not genuine Early English, but a later pastiche - as seems indicated by its being "splayed" or recessed - which is a feature of the inside of EE lancets, helping to spread light from the window when the walls are thick. But splaying makes no sense on the exterior, since it would cut-down the light entering.

+++

Today we visited St Mary's, Corbridge which is mostly Early English, filled (it seems) with aisles of pointed arches; 

...and with an actual Roman (not Roman-esque) arch, later inserted into the A-S tower; having been scavenged by the medieval masons from the nearby Roman town of Corstopitum/ Coria.  

  

Two reasons why evil is so difficult to explain - the primacy of perspective and motivation

Considering that our life and world - and much of our social interaction - is underpinned and permeated with moral evaluations; we have a terrible problem about discussing the nature and presence of evil!

The difficulty about discussing evil is so lasting and intractable that there are plenty of people, including plenty of rich, powerful, famous and influential people - who will deny the reality of evil, in many and various ways! 

But even those insightful and honest enough to admit that they regard evil as real, have a terrible problem with explaining themselves - at least, they seldom succeed in explaining the nature and presence of evil. 

There are multiple reasons, many psychological and some spiritual, for the difficulty of explaining evil; here I am focusing on two important reasons: perspective and motivation. 

Both problems arise because people are trying to find a way of explaining the reality of evil, and they do this by seeking a way of generating an objective consensus about what is evil. 

In other words, they try to frame evil such that what-is-evil is defined in a way that "everyone" can agree upon (i.e. consensus) - and they seek criteria for evil that are, in principle, externally detectable and measurable (i.e. objective).  

They want evil to be something like a "scientific fact"; as they imagine science actually to be! Or perhaps something more like an engineering principle - something that elicits general agreement among the competent, and that reliably works when properly comprehended and executed. Something pragmatically-true.  

People therefore nearly-always try to explain evil in term of evil actions; and evil actions that are acknowledged to be evil by "everybody" - indifferent to the person's "perspective" . 

This immediately means that the examples of evil up-for-discussion are going to be second-hand and remote - often historical, and concerning other-people, elsewhere. Things like a particular group killing done on the basis of an ethnic or religious identity. Such are what people usually try to understand and explain. 

But in real life we find that we never actually do eliminate the effect of perspective! This is seen in evaluating current events. We find that from one perspective; perhaps a great and historical evil has been, or is actively being perpetrated, yet from another perspective this is not so. 

What appears as an objective and massive evil is denied, explained away, or regarded as compelled. One perspectives great evil is seen by its perpetrators and defenders as merely a lesser and necessary evil, the sort of practical action that is needed to survive in this world. 

I conclude that perspective never can, in practice be eliminated. To put it bluntly, evil people will have Good reasons for performing their "evil" acts. 

Perspective changes everything! And this is one of the arguments used to argue (what nobody truly believes) that evil is "relative" and therefore not really real. 

There are philosophical (or theological) arguments by which an objective model of reality is posited, within-which evil is objective; but these arguments are never universally accepted or believed. 

All philosophical arguments require assumptions, and these assumptions are not universal - so that philosophical analysis does not solve the difficulty of explaining evil, but merely leads to the difficulty being shifted to another arena. 

The other difficulty is that while evil is explained in terms of acts, or events, or phenomena - of a kind that can be defined, isolated and measured. 

For instance murder is first assumed necessarily to be evil; then the discussion moves onto a definition of murder, the detections of particular murders, the number of people murdered...

Yet the whole process is undercut by the fact that "murder" is an abstraction intended to cover a wide range of very specific events; and when it gets down to specifics we find that - in order to accord with innate and general morality - the action itself needs to be evaluated in terms of its motivation. 

In other words the objective aspect of murder turns-out to be underpinned by personal motivation which must be inferred.  

In short, when it comes to explaining evil; we cannot escape the importance of perceptive and motivation; and both of these are substantially subjective, inner-states.  

This is one reason why so many modern people in leadership roles try to assert that evil is unreal: i.e. because they do not wish to acknowledge the primacy of subjective, inner states; when it comes to the most important aspects of life. 

Or else they claim to be able objectively to infer inner and subjective states, using objective criteria...

Given the primacy of morality in so much of life; and that authority will therefore always justify itself in moral terms (even if that morality is an inversion of common sense or intuition) - one can see the necessity of somehow excluding the necessity of perspective and motivation in explaining evil. 

The outcome of which is that evil is not - cannot be - satisfactorily explained - which is where we came-in! 

Since morality is inescapable and permeates our world; it seems obviously important that the nature of evil, and its presence and degrees, be explainable, and that these explanations be understandable. 

The current state of incoherent confusion about evil is surely - and for reasons that I would suppose are obvious - an undesirable state of affairs. 

Therefore, I suggest that when we ourselves find it necessary to discuss or explain evil in this world; we start with an acknowledgment that, for such discussion to proceed with any chance of being useful; it requires achieving mutual clarity about perspective and motivation. 

Presumably (if the discussion is honest and sincere) - an up-front and two-sided declaration of where we personally stand on these matters.

In most instances; these will be found to differ - in which case there is no point in proceeding in the direction of arguing about whether such and such is evil. Instead, the discussion ought to go deeper, to consider the whys-and-hows of our assumed-perspective, and our assumptions concerning inferred motivations.   

Yes, post-mortal Heaven... But what should we Do Here and Now?

Christian faith is - or should be - focused on resurrected eternal life in post-mortal Heaven... So, not this moral life, not this earth and universe. 

But what should we Do Here and Now? 

The answer could be - Do what you evaluate as best: and start now. 

...BUT - don't expect to make a system from it. 

Do not try to create a formula for world-saving, nor even for world-improvement. 

Your answer as to what to do, now; the best answer you can diligently and honestly discover and devise; is something about which you cannot persuade others - therefore you should not try. 

You should not wait until after persuading enough others, and launching a movement before you do it. 

It is (nearly-) all about your discernment, your insight, your actions in your life. 

And what happens to most people, or even the few people that surround you; is something you cannot control. 

And it is actually "control" of others that motivates most supposed world-bettering and evangelism. 

Give-up control fantasies, if you can. 

Work from love, not from systems - and where there is no love from you; there you can do no Good. 

"Elite" survivalism

I have written before about the corrupting spiritual vortex that is prepper survivalism; where low-level people (such as you and me) engage in preparing to escape survive catastrophes, to become the nucleus and leadership of future human civilization... or something. 

I have also discussed "elite" survivalism, of the super-preppers and the mega-rich multi-billionaire class - who openly discuss vastly expensive schemes of many kinds to ensure their own survival of some kind of civilizational or planetary collapse...

While mocking and excluding as "conspiracy theorists" anyone who actually joins the dots to notice what They are doing!

Why does the collapse and dystopia scenario have such a fascination for modern people, and over so many decades? 

Why do people so much enjoy reading and viewing such fictions? 

I think one answer is that it is mostly a yearning for simplification of life and reversion to an imagined earlier stage of consciousness. 

The notion seems to be that a collapse into dystopia will strip-away all our "first world problems", anxieties and scruples; by an enforced focus of attention on immediate survival. 

And that this survival imperative will also simplify morality - so that we can become completely selfish and pleasure seeking - with (what seems like) the perfect excuse that we had "no alternative". 

Survivalism also carries the double incentive of indulging our spiteful natures. 

This shows-through the survivalist fantasies - peeping through the screen of rationalizations - I mean the pleasure taken in the imagined miseries, suffering and death of "other people"; while simultaneously blaming them for their situation and congratulating "ourselves" for our superiority in avoiding it! 

The fantasy is of the survivalist looking down upon the desperate situation of the masses, or perhaps the destruction of earth itself; with a combination of noble regret and smugness - while fortified by the conviction of having been "chosen" for the responsibility to continue the legacy of the human race. 

Oh yes - the spitefulness behind all this stuff is very evident!  

The bizarre incoherence of mainstream modern life is such that this desperate personal survivalism at any price, alternates with a cultural obsession with euthanasia; painless annihilation on demand. 

I regard this as evidence of demonic capture; that people have (willingly) surrendered their fundamental life-aims to purposively evil spirits; who are sadistically "playing with" human souls, and enjoying their power to seduce and manipulate human aspirations and behaviour. 

Just as the Elite survivalists enjoy their ability to manipulate public opinions and behaviours in all kinds of self-destructive but contradictory ways - to manufacture a delusional bubble and induce the masses to to choose to inhabit it - so, in Their turn, these credulous and foolish elites are themselves being manipulated by demonic lies. 

The elite survivalists are plotting to destroy a "doomed" world and most of its "useless" people (or sometimes planning to escape from a possible or impending catastrophic natural disaster); but in practice all this survivalism will amount to wrecking the world in order to build their own spiritual prisons, soul-torture chambers, and self-execution rooms. 

Such is Modern Mankind sans God and Jesus, excluding the soul and spirits; when the highest ideology is utilitarian altruistic hedonism, in this-world. 

When human life is bounded by birth and death, and is "about" nothing more than our state of happiness (and official ethics are merely justified by supposedly enhancing alleged happiness). 

We have committed our-selves to metaphysical assumptions that have left people with nothing-but the hope of optimizing their current state of pleasure, minimizing their risks of suffering. 

Then we have refused to acknowledge this is what we have-done. 

We made ourselves a gaol, walked into it; and then forgot we built it, blinded ourselves to the open doors, and cried that we cannot possibly escape. 

 

And the outcome is that we are wide-open, credulous, and willing to embrace our own destructive manipulation by those who are more selfish and powerful than ourselves - whether these others are incarnated humans, or demonic spirits. 

Fantasies of selfish escape and survivalism - at whatever level - are just one of these many destructive and corrupting manipulations. 

Everything always changes, and yet everything stays the same?

Is it true that everything changes, and yet everything stays the same? 

It does seem to have a general truth, especially over the long term, and in one-direction - when the first "everything" is taken to mean the superficial aspects of daily life and things, which are always changing; but the second "everything" means the fundamental and overall goodness of daily life.

For instance, the design of an entity - whether a car or a constitution, fashions or laws - tends frequently and always to be changing (especially in this age of left-totalitarian bureaucracy), and these changes can be "sold" as improvements; however, these changes do not add-up; they fail to lead to any fundamental improvement in things-in-general (e.g. the totalitarian society of left-totalitarian bureaucracy continues, and indeed solidifies). 

What I mean by "one-direction", is that while it is common and easy for surface changes to make life overall and in the long-term worse; this seldom works in the inverse. 

It seems difficult and rare for a multitude of superficialities to improve life in a lasting and qualitative fashion. 

This is related to the observation that while it is relatively quick, easy and cheap to corrupt people and make them worse (It happens All The Time; and I have seen this qualitative corruption of people more often than not over the past decades; e.g. in relation to my class of people in medicine, science and academia). 

On the other side; it is so slow, difficult, and costly of effort to improve people; that I think it fair to say that there is no known method by which it can be done. 

To put it differently; people can be made worse passively and unconsciously, simply by their going-along-with the changes of life, passively responding to the incentives towards evil...

But for people to improve, to become better-people; requires in inner, active and conscious change in their attitudes and motivations. 

Since getting-worse is unconscious and passive and energy-absorbing; while getting-better is conscious and active and energy-consuming - getting-worse naturally happens more often and more widely. 

This, I think, is a reason why well-meaning people so often err in their optimism. 

After considerable investment of times and effort, they have been able to reform some evil or injustice, or to introduce some improvement; and the tendency is to regard all such positive steps as accumulating towards a hoped-for positive and general transformation. 

For instance; institutions, including churches, may have achieved many little-but-surface improvements - in some objectively-measurable area; such fund-raising, attendance, missionary/ evangelical activity, implementation of one or another scheme... 

And these several or many surface changes are mistakenly summated into the optimistic expectation that things are going their way. 

The model they believe is that any step in the right direction is of-positive-value; and so long as there are such steps, then things are optimistic. 

But, after a while, a step-back and an objective eye reveals that although "everything" changes in the desired directions over the short-medium term; over the medium-long term, fundamental decline continues... 

Christian apostasy continues, churches continue to shrink in seriousness and size; faith is rarer and weaker; assimilation to the values of secular-left totalitarianism is increasingly dominant. 

However, such is our addiction to institutional optimism, that an objective retrospect seldom happens, and lessons are never learned. 

Instead, over and again, some novel strategy is embraced, some new set of optimistic "initiatives" becomes the centre of attention and efforts, and some of these are achieved with superficial success...

And the cycle repeats. 

 

This is how it is with The World, and apparently how it always has been. Even when (perhaps stimulated by a religious revival, or a Good Monarch) there is a genuine positive transformation at the large scale - this cannot be made into a system, and the attempt to so so reveals flaws in the original basis for positive change. 

Such that new kinds of corruption emerge, and the benefits are soon dissipated then overwhelmed. 

Everything changes, yet everything stays the same? 

This is why Jesus Christ did not promise a better world, and did not construct a system for attaining a better world. 

He knew that such is impossible in this mortal life, by the very nature of this-world. 

But instead Jesus promised something genuinely attainable (thanks to His work): that individual people might, after death, have resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 

Is the Barrow Wight episode of Lord of the Rings a gratuitous plot-loop?

I have always found "Fog on the Barrow Downs" the least satisfying chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring. 

Over at my Notion Club Papers blog, I analyse the structural reasons why. 

Choosing our Ultimate choices - the necessity goes all the way down

The world provides choices. 

We must choose - and we can personally choose; or else we can accept external (societal, institutional) choices. 

That is to say: some things we choose to accept, others we choose to make a personal choice. 

Therefore, we choose what to choose.   

In some cases our situation provides a menu of choices; and the expectation (or instance) that, in our personal choosing, we choose from the menu. 

But we may choose Not to choose from the menu! 

Because it may be that we (choose to) assume that the menu provided by "society" does not include all the possible or best options!

In sum: sometimes we choose to choose from the menu of choices; but other times we choose our choices. 

 

If we decide to choose from the menu; then we have already-chosen to immerse ourselves into society as it actually-is. 

This is important: choose only from the menu; and you are in-effect endorsing society. 

When you choose from the menu; you are implicitly endorsing the values of those who have provided the menu. 

The question arises: Can we, should we, choose to go outwith the menu of choices? 

This model of choosing applies to Christianity: the the fundamental way in which we conceptualize and understand Jesus; it applies to the choice of denominations and churches - their doctrines and authority - it applies to dealing with differences and disagreements within churches; it applies to choosing how we read the Bible...

Always, there is choosing of choices; always the choosing of choices goes All The Way Down. 

 

Your don't need to find and marry "a girl" but a particular person: The false aim of the generic instead of the particular

I see a very general problem; that is of people seeking generic experience, rather than particular and specific experience. 

Consider the vast edifice of advice and aspiration for men concerning "marriage"; the question of the "how to get a girl" type - including all that "manosphere" stuff. 

The problem is in the generic "a girl" - and that problem is not solved by narrowing the search to a particular sub-type of woman: the problem is that people are encouraged to seek a type, not a person. 

And the problem is not that such advice does not work, the problem is that so many people actually agree with the quest for a category - internalize it, believe it, defend it. The problem is when this kind of thinking leads to people getting what they want. 

If you want "a girl", the deepest problem is that you may get exactly that: a relationship with someone who is regarded as a member of a generic category. 

The problem is that - like the arranged marriage of a monarch - you (as member of the category King) will marry a representative of the generic category of "young beautiful princess" - rather than any specific and actual human Being. 

And the worst is when you are so shallow or corrupted as to be satisfied that this is indeed the ideal of your life!

Of course there is some truth in some generic categorizations; and it may be that marrying a woman of a certain category is better than not being married. But that is a "lesser of evils" argument, which can be used to justify anything (even voting in elections!) - not the basis of your life quest. 

"A girl" is not what is needed - "a girl" (not even a particular sub-category of woman, tailored to your personal preference) will not and cannot satisfy our profound and inescapable spiritual aspirations and hopes and needs. 

What is needed for marriage, and what ought therefore to be aimed-at, is not a girl but "the girl" - a particular person. 

Now; this idea of "the one", or "the soulmate" has been much abused and is often ridiculed - often rightly so. 

Because like all the highest of human aspirations - including the search for God - it may be corrupted into an excuse for selfishness, hedonism, spite, status-seeking, money-seeking, cowardice; or any other of the sins to which Men are prone. 

Yet, when all has been said, and rightly said; in this world, if we do not seek the right goal, if we do not rightly direct our intentions and efforts; we are very unlikely to attain what we most deeply need (or anything like that) given our own weaknesses, and this world of so many and such adverse possibilities. 

My point is that what we most need (and rightly need) as individual and unique human Beings in this mortal life, is specific and typically unique; not generic. 

This applies to many thing - generically, one might say! 

For instance; we don't need "a religion" (such as King Chas. III has so often recommended). Different religions offer very different things. 

If we want what Jesus offers us (resurrected eternal life in Heaven) then we need "Christianity": we need to follow Jesus.

Or if, as Christians, we desire direct spiritual experience; then we ought not to seek this generically. 

For instance, it is a mistake to seek to speak with angels - because angels are a category. 

The proper aim is to have an experience of "an angel"; but a relationship with some particular spirit-Being. And, as such - as with Human Beings, from a motive rooted-in love of that Being... not in order to get something from an angel; such as help or advice.

(And the same with Saints - who I take to be resurrected Men.) 

This is one aspect of the reality that creation is rooted in love, and love is (contrary to so many common and false conceptualizations) between particular Beings; and our highest and deepest life as loving (and creating) Beings is about actual, particular other-persons.

Any good and real marriage that fulfils our deepest yearnings and is a fundamental basis for our mortal life will be unique, as a fact; rooted in an unique and loving relationship between two absolutely specific human Beings. 

The more generic the marriage, the more it conforms to an institution relating to categories of persons; the less it will satisfy our fundamental needs and hopes. 

Because when we regard our-selves as primarily members of a category, and seek for a relationship with another person on the basis of their categorical membership - then we have certainly subordinated the status of love in our life, and we may have excluded love altogether. 

So, we should be careful what we want and seek for. When we need some-thing specific, we err if we seek something generic. Especially because we may then get what we want: get that and nothing more. 

Electricity as the medium of techno-spiritual enlightenment

Because spirit is primary: the material, the embodied, that which is perceived by the senses - is a kind of spirit. 

Incarnation is indeed a developed form of the spirit - which is why the timeline of creation manifested as physical beings, such as ourselves. 

And why the pre-mortal spirit of Jesus manifested as a mortal incarnated Man, and why Jesus resurrected as an eternal incarnated Man (rather than returning to the realm of immaterial spirits). 

The spirit is therefore inescapable, especially when it is being most vehemently denied; because the exclusion of the reality of the spiritual is actually a malign form of spiritual manipulation. 

The globalist-totalitarian overlords are engaged in a spiritual strategy aimed at inducing humans into spiritualizing the material. 

The mainstream and dominating materialist agenda; vast projects such as "AI", climate, Birdemic-peck-type healthism, the sexual revolution and many others - are "sold" as material mechanisms for "making this world a better place" and for "saving" lives, the "environment" - even the planet; but this agenda is continually being spiritualized under another name. 

My class of people - middle class "intelligentsia (the managers, professionals, artists, scientists, educators, lawyers etc) are deeply spiritualized now; believers in a complex and mutually-reinforcing ideology that they regard as ethically-imperative and factually-obvious. 

Whether such people regard themselves as Christians, or members/ adherents of any other religion or spirituality, is ever-less relevant. The actuality is a spiritual materialism in which approved themes and plans are regarded as spiritually-good. 

Their lives have an obvious public facet of adopting and advocating particular themes relating to carbon-climatism, the Fire Nation war, the Birdemic-Peck etc. But my point is that this now goes very deep, and has a primarily spiritual dimension. 

There is far more to electric vehicles, as an apparently trivial instance, than the matter of subsidized virtue-signalling - which has been abundantly critiqued. 

I mean the (to me) familiar phenomenon of a married couple with three cars - two internal combustion powered and the other an EV - is being superseded by a couple with a single (large, expensive) EV; whose wide-ranging (and strictly inessential) travel revolves around the location and timing of EV charging points. 

The more inconvenience suffered, the more spiritual they feel - to the point of ceasing to feel, and therefore denying, the inconvenience. 

Likewise; complicated and time-consuming rituals of "recycling" are not merely a pointless waste of time, not just a drag on the economy; nor merely a resource-consuming hypocrisy - nor are they strongly linked to a belief - or even the ideal - of their actions having any effect At All upon the environment... 

The reality of the problem ("climate change"), and the effectiveness of their approved answer, has long-since ceased to be the point. 

Just as we saw with the Birdemic; when people were indifferent to the actual effect of "face-coverings" on a supposed disease. The masking business rapidly took-on a spiritual dimension; in which the ritual humiliation and public abasement became a positive and personal spiritual action - akin to the simultaneous "taking-of-the-knee". 

Electricity has itself become the material manifestation of a spiritual ideal. 

These material-spiritual types love electricity to the point that it is the medium of enlightenment. 

The colossal electricity consumption of "AI" centres is felt as a form of spiritual power - analogous to the building of large, expensive temples and cathedrals - Good In Itself.  

Even internal combustion-engined vehicles have suddenly (in less than five years) become primarily and necessarily electrical in operation - such that for the only time in half a century, I cannot get into a car and drive it; but first must laboriously learn to serve the (continually changing) electric-computerized demon that has taken it over. 

Furthermore that great fetish vehicle the bicycle, except for weekend leisure/ sports activities, has (in the space of a handful of years!) been all-but replaced by (de facto) electric motorcycles of multiple types: which EVs now use the vast network of "cycle tracks" - originally advertised as facilitating the replace internal combustion cars and buses. 

In other words; because IRL bikes almost-never substituted for cars, but in practice replaced walking or were used by hobbyists; in practice now electricity-powered bikes have replaced leg-powered vehicles - or are used as motorbikes but with additional access to footpaths and cycle lanes. 

Yet, in the eyes of their class-advocates; electricity-consuming bikes retain the spiritual mantle of the intrinsically-good bicyclist.     

This is the tip of a very large iceberg that is sweeping through Western civilization, which is itself becoming Western civilization - not merely in practice, but as a spiritual goal. 

It is inside people's head, it is in their thoughts, it is the subject of their day-dreams. 

Something is afoot that is larger than the conventional modes of analysis and explanation. I feel that I am dwelling in a far less human, far more alien and abstract, world than anything experienced in human history thus far. 

For them, for its millions of enthusiastic and fanatical adherents; this is all of-a-piece; and none of the institutions, none of the churches, have even begun to understand - let alone resist! - what is going on. On the contrary they are all a part of it - even or especially when they pick on some tiny aspect for discussion or even resistance. 

More than ever those who desire the salvation of Jesus Christ need to be not of the world, even though we cannot escape living in the world. 

Which entails seeing the world as it is: that its very materialism is spiritual. That we ourselves and our neighbours are complicit - and some of them are not just consenting, nor merely willingly complicit - but are deeply affirming of an alien, un-biological, anti-life "techno-spirituality". 

It entails understanding that the spirituality of this world has already become inhuman/ antihuman and anti-Christian to an unprecedented degree; and in the most profound way. 

  

Electro-swing dancing

A while back, there was a very enjoyable musical style called electro swing; which led to a style of solo dancing (mainly for men) which is just about the most enjoyable I have ever seen. 

As an intro, with snippets of the style; there was a German TV advert 

featuring the dancer JustSomeMotion. 

But, so far as I can tell, the best dancing stuff is in these dancers' home made videos. 

This is because professional directors and editors want to make cuts, and show the dancers from different angles and doing different things. 

Whereas what is wanted by dancers is that there should be full length shots of the whole body, from in-front, and with long un-cut sequences.

Such as you get in a Fred Astaire-directed movie (where, presumably, FA had the authority to enforce this) - That's how you can really see the dancing. 

Even better than JSM, to my eye, is tSM - takeSomeCrime: This is wonderful stuff. The guy is just so fluid and rhythmic in his movements, the dance moves are continuously interesting and inventive. 

When it comes to dancing I am definitely a case of "I don't know much about it, but I know what I like". 

And what I like is exactly this fluidity - a dancer who is naturally loose-limbed, "puppetlike" - as if invisibly suspended from above, with a rubber-hose flexibility: e.g. my preference is Fred Astaire rather than the athleticism of Gene Kelly. 

Among women dancers; fluidity is also essential, but also a decent degree of attractiveness is required, and probably a graceful quality. Cyd Charisse had all this in abundance, and was my favourite woman dancer of Hollywood. 

But, my emphasis on beauty in female dancers shows I am not a deep appreciator of dancing; as does the fact that I must like the music. I can't really enjoy dancing unless I am enjoying the music.  

Note: I was an okay but mediocre dancer (mostly done in amateur musicals and ceilidhs), even before arthritis kicked-in. But both my parents were very good, my brother is a fine comic dancer, and my daughter was exceptionally gifted - evident from age two. I'm glad to say that none of them took dancing too seriously, however; since serious dance training (and, especially professional dancing) seems to be bad for psychological health! 

Tech start-up launches "95% accurate" trainable AI-Witch-Pricker

Inspired by reading the inspiring tale of the 1650 Newcastle Witch Trials - a covertly-funded Tech start-up company have harnessed the burgeoning wonder that is AI, to develop a solar-powered, computerized, retractable witch-pricker. 

Primitive mechanical witch-prickers have, of course, been around for hundreds of years; but these were notoriously unreliable - sometimes leading to the death by execution of innocent witch-finders. 

The new device overcomes all the old problems of inconvenient bulk, infected points, bending, jamming, and snapping. 

Small enough to be concealed under a shirt or between the buttocks, sharp enough to penetrate even the toughest witch's undergarments; this state-of-the art investigative tool can be assembled anywhere by 3-D printing - and is guaranteed completely harmless to middle managers and accredited government officials.  

The soon-to-be launched apparatus has already achieved "95% accuracy" in extensive trails (performed under condition of extreme secrecy, to exclude East-Asian industrial espionage); but these numbers will surely improve with repeated usage due to an inbuilt self-learning neural network. 

Even the notorious problem of false positive results has become "a thing of the past": 

"Ancient witch-prickers tended to become quickly obsolete due to changes in religious mores and government policies; but utilizing the literally-infinite expansion of "AI" capability, users are assured that the old problem of false positives has been vanquished. 

"Our AI-WP is constantly-updating to operate in full conformity with the vacillations of dominant fashions, laws, and hostile mass media. 

"Even better, the power is cleanly and sustainably generated by renewables; either from a micro-windmill activated by large gestures of the arms; an almost-invisible-yet-ultra-sensitive photovoltaic panel responsive to bright moonlight; or, for emergencies, it can conveniently be plugged-into your EV rapid-charger for a few seconds."  

The makers have disseminated and funded an international press release; in which they describe "pre-orders of 100 million dollars, already!" 

Numbers that indicate merely the tip of an iceberg of demand.  

In order to avoid disappointment; potential purchasers are recommended to e-mail or message their bank details "while stocks last" to: prince.abudlsalami@AI.not.nigeria.  

Why Christians used to regard mass baptism (e.g. by order of the King) as A Good Thing

The above beautiful pool is at Holystone in Coquetdale, Northumberland; and the legend has it that three thousand Northumbrians were baptized there by St Paulinus (died 644AD), following Edwin their King's conversion to Christianity. 

However accurate to historical fact, this legend makes it evident that such mass baptism by order of the monarch was regarded as A Good Thing by Christians of that era. 

Whereas nowadays such an event would probably be regarded as at best meaningless (a result of coercion), and at worst a kind of blasphemy.  

Why the difference? 

My understanding is that back in the 600s; Men were much less individuated and alienated; less self-conscious and more group-minded. 

A good King, such as Edwin, would both love his subjects, and be loved-by them; and a real and strong spiritual connection existed between them in a way we might nowadays term "telepathic". 

Therefore; the King knew and felt what was good for his subjects and sought it (within the constraints of his character and circumstances), and his subjects (overall) implicitly granted the King a paternal authority - including over their souls. 

Such that King Edwin would not have become a Christian unless he "knew" that this was best for his people; and equally the people trusted the King's judgment and endorsed it. 

So when King Edwin became a Christian this was because his people wanted him to become a Christian, then by that same act King Edwin's people also wanted to become Christians. 

In the 600s this was simply the nature of that group-mindedness in-which people lived; but in 2026 the situation with respect to Men's consciousnesses is very different. 

We no longer experience this real and spontaneous "telepathic" connection - or, at least, we do not do so above the scale of a loving family.  

So in 2026 mass baptism of three thousand people would (almost certainly) be regarded as a consequence of some combination of top-down compulsion with propaganda. 

Such is just one instance (not a proof, but an illustration) of the difference in Man's consciousness across some fifteen-hundred years; a difference in the experienced-reality of Men of the past, and that of Men of the present. 

It is this change that underlies the decline in spiritual authority, hence what used-to-be, the necessary and intermediary role of Christian churches - and of all other religious institutions. 

(And indeed, also of all state institutions.) 

Leaders - whether spiritual, such as Saints; or temporal, such as monarchs - are no longer in a significant state of reciprocal mental connection with those they rule. 

What was possible then, is not necessarily possible now. 

That natural, indeed unavoidable, groupishness of consciousness which was (e.g. in the early 600s, in Northumbria) both inevitable and (potentially) a cause of good; is no longer our reality. 

AI-dolatry is an Antichrist phenomenon, because the Antichrist is The System

I just stumbled across a post of mine from 2018 on the (now stale) subject of Jordan Peterson; in which I described him as an Antichrist figure. 

The idea of an Antichrist is not really of any general and public use for discernment, because of the mass and institutional breakdown in truthful consensus. 

Nonetheless it is a subject to which I find I recur, because so many individual people remain spiritually wedded to external authority, and in a totalitarian "System-" world, that means that almost all self-identified Christians are following Antichrists. 

The question I ask is: will such people follow their Antichrist to self-chosen damnation, or at what point will they realize what is happening to them?

(Luckily for Mankind, by my understanding; this point of recognition and repentance can be post-mortal.)

The current AI-dolatry (i.e. the positive embrace, and in-practice promotion, of the "AI"-agenda) is evidently motivated by evil-intent when advocated by mainstream left-materialist ideologues; but the phenomenon takes-on an Antichrist role and quality when found among self-identified Christians. 

What I see is Christians who support (and spiritually I am inferring an inner support) an actually overall- and net-evil strategy; on the basis that they see in such a strategy the possibilities for a selective, partial, "if-only" possibility of Good.  

IMO, this rationale is how people justify to themselves an inner subordination to external authority.

Because when all actual external authorities (all formal and public institutions; including all the churches) are actually integrated-within the System of global totalitarianism - then this just-is the Antichrist phenomenon, as I understand it.

I mean; people choose to subordinate themselves spiritually (and therefore psychologically) to a powerful and influential entity (i.e. The System), even when that entity is net-evil; by an argument that there are aspects of The System that may be turned to good... 

Which "may" be good understanding, then gets transformed to an assertion that it "will" be good... in my hands, the way that I will use it...   

So the world is (apparently) full of Christians who support one or more of the primary agenda items of global totalitarianism (such as "AI", a foreign war, the Birdemic-Peck, CO2-climatology, sexual revolution...); because they have convinced themselves that they have nuanced these strategies into specific pro-Christian activities.

From overall-evil intent, they finesse particular Good Works, "Christian" works; of one kind or another. And claim that this particulars are then the main thing: that they personally can nuance the particular Goods, without spiritual-complicity in the overall evils.     

The reason why this kind of reasoning has become so massively-dominant is exactly that The System is everywhere, and inescapable - we are all sustained-by-it and work-for-it.   

Therefore - in this-worldly terms - as a brute fact we are all of us deeply-complicit in strategic evil, in this-world. 

Which means that - to do good works in this world, to be "practical"; we can only work with The System: we can only "make this world a better place" (including better for ourselves, and those about whom we care) by accepting The System in some overall fashion, and despite specific dissent.

This brute fact of a self-identified Christian - in-practice and inescapably - supporting the large-scale demonic agenda; becomes a potentially agonizing "cognitive dissonance" insofar as Christianity is regarded as a this-worldly religion - i.e. a religion that "makes this world a better place". 

It is to avoid this cognitive dissonance, indeed stark contradiction! - that so many Christians end by choosing spiritual-subordination to the the ubiquity of global totalitarianism, while asserting an officially-propagated false and virtual understanding of the world. 

Thus, most Christians - including serious Christians - are engaged in whitewashing the actuality of global totalitarian evil: either they deny its reality as an existing fact, or else they falsely construct a fantasy of the fundamental, coherent, and purposive evil of The System of global totalitarianism - as if it were instead a drama of good versus evil Establishment people and institutions. 

As if minor distinctions between greater and lesser evil purposes somehow included the operations of purposive good; as if a mass of competing negations could eventuate in positive values...  

Things have come to a point; compromise is no longer validly possible; we are compelled to choose between clear and distinct alternatives of evil and Good. 

It is not a matter of what we do but what is our faith. If we base our ultimate faith in-this-world, we shall become of-this-world.  

Either we recognize that Christianity is, and (deep down) always was; a next-worldly and individual religion - i.e. a faith that does not depend on practical obedience to the authority of any specific institution/s - or else we will be following one or another of the many Antichrist phenomena that constitute The System. 

Either we are rooted in this-world, in which case we shall be in truth supporters of "The Antichrist; or else we locate our faith and hope in post-mortal resurrected eternal life, in Heaven. 

Lightning rods are everywhere

A few years ago, I was looking at our local church - which has a tall campanile-style tower; and noticed the lightning rod on the highest point, and traced the copper strip down to earth. It made me wonder why other similarly tall buildings didn't have lightning rods - since it would seem that they would be equally vulnerable. 

But then I took a walk around town, and discovered they they did!

All of the tall buildings I found have lightning rods and copper strips. 

These had (presumably) always been there - presumably this is part of building regulations; but for decades I had never noticed them, except on churches. 

Which all goes to show... something or another. 

Note: Unlike what most people, including my younger self, think; lightning rods are not there either to attract lightning, nor to conduct a lightning strike safely into the ground. They are there to prevent lightning striking in the first place. This works because (in summary, as far as I remember) a tower sticking up from the surface of the earth gets polarized with an opposite electrical charge by the thunder clouds, and this opposite charge then streams up from the tower to make an "electrical path" up to the thunder clouds, down which path the lightning will strike. The purpose of the lightning rod is to conduct this charge from the point of the tower down into earth, before it gets a chance to accumulate and stream up to the clouds. Hope I've got that right.  

Reluctant, grumpy gardener

Red geraniums are my favourite flower to grow

We have a largeish and somewhat feral garden, always an overgrown mess; that I greatly appreciate - but, despite theoretically liking the idea, I need firmly to be pushed into gardening it. 

This pushing my wife does; by buying large numbers of flowers and runner beans, pots of many sizes, and the compost to fill them (she enjoys this kind of shopping. I do not); and then leaving them around until my compassion for the desiccating plants compels me to do the needful. 

Once they have been potted, we arrange them in suitable places; then it is down to me to water them every couple of days for four or five months, and periodically cut-off the dead geranium heads to keep them blooming. 

We both pick, and the family eat, the runner beans - or, what remains after the slugs have done their worst; and my wife freezes any surplus we can't eat. 

So, although these activities are pretty limited compared to what we could and should be doing; for a reluctant gardener, I spend a fair bit of time doing it.

And, although I make a point of grumbling, I enjoy the process - particularly watering the plants on a warm dry evening; which I find to be a highly spiritual and enchanting business. 

This Whitsun (Pentecost) weekend looks to be very dry and warm - and because Monday is a national holiday; the roads will be choked with traffic, and the all the "attractions" (such as stately homes, or pretty villages and seaside places) will be chock-a-block. 

So; the plan is to spend a lot of time in the garden - where there is plenty to do; indeed still a couple of dozen sadly pot-bound flowers seeking a more permanent home, and a tray of beetroots wanting a few feet of bedding. 

It is rather a pleasing prospect! 

But that won't stop me grumbling. 

  

"Stevie" (1978) - a movie about Stevie Smith

If you have an Amazon Prime subscription, and live in the UK; there are a few days left in which to watch the 1978 movie Stevie - a biography of the writer Stevie Smith; which I have found nigh impossible to get-hold-of otherwise (at an acceptable price). 

Stevie originated as a stage play; and the movie sticks pretty closely to this format - mostly taking place in one room; and mostly consisting of Stevie herself, talking to camera or else to the elderly aunt with whom she lived. Nothing much "happens": this is - necessarily - a talking movie. 

The acting of Glenda Jackson as Stevie, and Mona Washbourne as her "Lion Aunt" is absolutely first class. I have never before seen this kind of deeply loving family relationship portrayed so convincingly, affectionately, humorously, and in such detail! 

And Glenda Jackson's central performance is just superb - so engaging, so varied and consistently interesting with extremes of light and shade, and yet so well-integrated. My only criticism is that - like nearly-all actors - she sometimes doesn't speak the poems as poetry - indeed, they are sometimes spoken so prosaically as to be miss-able. 

But the main thing I took away from the movie was the emotional power with which it focused on "life" - Stevie Smith's unique, witty, bleak, and incisive insights into life... 

And death - which was her great recurrent subject. 

Stevie Smith was very odd, very eccentric, almost fey; inwardly a woman of unstable extremes. 

Superficially she strikes as very old-fashioned and traditional, one who lived a routine, hardly varying, apparently mundane middle class existence. 

And yet, in truth, she was a modern woman - albeit part-time; fundamentally an existentialist - decades before that became a fashionable pose.

Modern, but much more honest and explicit than most moderns. 

By her ultimately anti-religious, anti-spiritual (therefore modern) assumptions; Stevie had - like nearly-all modern people - painted herself into a corner of despair, from which her honesty could perceive no genuine possibility of escape. 

But rather than trying to deny or distract-herself from this terrible vision of life and of death - she confronted it head-on, again and again....

She tormented herself with death, almost; perhaps to test her own strength, or to challenge others with this "reality". Perhaps in hope of finding a flaw in her reasoning, or of being convincingly contradicted.  

Well... This is how the movie encapsulates Stevie, and does so very movingly, in a dramatically satisfying way. Thus, it has her firmly rejecting "the Christian religion" for its covert "cruelty" behind a mask of sweetness. 

The main cruelty being to pretend to offer the delusory hope of Heaven.

Stevie Smith certainly wrote this, at one point, and doubtless felt it on that day and others; and surely believed it at those times and points. 

Also, because she experienced living as hard ("tiring") she sometimes looked-forward to death; perhaps as a long and restful sleep - but other times death was seen as an utter annihilation that apparently rendered life insignificant. 

Yet it is easy to detect, behind the fact of her writing so much and so harshly on the subject, that Stevie Smith was not sure that she was correct in her rejection of all hope after death. 

This comes-out in that extreme inconsistency which is so characteristic, especially in the stream of consciousness of her longer poems and prose. 

Contradictions of opinions, variable moods, extremes of generosity and selfishness, compassion and spitefulness. A good deal of sharp statement - then self-subversion. 

This was her nature. 

Stevie Smith was almost a household name in England from the 1960s and into the 80s, on BBC Radio frequently (when that commanded audiences of many millions) and even on TV; quite widely enjoyed and recognized as strange but significant. 

However, I think her name and reputation are fading into obscurity and neglect. The fact of her being of an earlier generation, as well as her one-off oddness, is unappealing to the current generation. With SS; the average contemporary reader will not find ideological and emotional confirmation of current prejudices and obsessions - which is what so many seem to want from their reading! 

With Stevie Smith, either the reader allows himself to be drawn into her world view, to see things (for a while) in her way - or else you will not find her interesting or enjoyable. 

Which is a great pity! Because there are never many real poets, even fewer women poets, and even fewer poets whose quality is spontaneously unique - absolutely one-off. 

If you value and want what Stevie Smith gave us, then there is nowhere else you can get it; because there was nobody else who did it.   

 And never shall be. 

Stereotyping is a functional necessity in this world - yet an evil, all the same!

Stereotypes - I mean valid ones, which spontaneously stereotypes tend to be - are useful; indeed they are essential to social functioning in this-world. 

Of course in the modern West, several key stereotypes have been inverted; and this is a significant cause of societal dysfunction, and (sooner or later) collapse.  

because of this inversion; reactionaries have been re-affirming the old and functional stereotypes, easily proving by observations that their (on average) validity, usefulness, etc. etc. 

But the radicals do have a point, and the reactionaries are missing it! 

All stereotyping - even when statistically valid and even when the stereotype is overall a positive contribution to worldly functioning and happiness - is an evil. 

This evil is not abolished by the harsh fact that stereotyping is a necessary evil. 

We are, and we know (in our hearts) that we are, each unique individuals - not representative members of a class: not even of the best kind of class.

Therefore when reactionaries, and Christians, talk stereotypically; this is often experienced (to some significant degree) as an external oppression. 

Such a stereotypical categorization of our uniqueness Will Be dysphoric - an adverse inner state experienced in the form of negative emotions such as anxiety over social ostracism, depressive misery, anger, resentment, self-assertion - and guilt...

For instance; an inner perceived (or feared) failure to live up to a dominant or preferred stereotype, and to continue to live up to it year after year - is, maybe, the commonest cause of chronic and pervasive guilt.  

Also, an inner reluctance to conform to the imposed stereotype is probably a major cause of demotivation. As when, at a mass level, people are neither inspired nor energized by any of their actual and possible choice of life stereotypes - and therefore cannot find any strong and sustainable motivation to participate socially - or even to stay alive. 

Even those few individuals who are currently healthy, energetic and conforming enough to be (or, at least, to advertise themselves as being!) exemplars of an approved stereotype; are very obviously insecure. They are always seeking (because needing) repeated affirmations, reassurances, and approval from others. And living in (denied) fear of their hypocrisies, exaggerations and lies being exposed; or that they cannot sustain this endless necessity of proving themselves. 

(But there I am: stereotyping yet again! It just can't be avoided!!)

So; on the one hand it is true that (real, valid) stereotypes are necessary to our own lives and to societal functioning - we simply cannot do without them. 

But on the other hand; stereotypes are ultimately always false, therefore evil; and those who argue for their reality and their imposition - even when the stereotype being proposed is net-good, usually personally positive, socially desirable etc... will be experienced as oppressive and dishonest.

This is one deep and ineradicable reason why there is considerable resistance to those (and I have surely been among them!) who try to rehabilitate valid and necessary stereotypes on the modern West; I mean such distinctions as those relating to sex, race, religion, political affiliations; intelligence and personality differences; and the various ideal "models" of being A Good Christian that are integral to many churches. 

All such stereotypes may indeed be valid and necessary; but if so they are necessary evils; and we cannot be made to believe that these stereotypes are fundamental goods; how much less that they are the highest ideals.

We cannot be convinced and motivated when people say that some version of categorical and stereotyped reality is what we ought to be aiming for: the best that we can hope for. 

If Christians cannot offer something more and better than the prospect of eternal perfect membership of some stereotyped category of type of person and God-approved behaviour - then Heaven will continue to fail to inspire. 

In other words; the Christian "picture" of Heaven - first for ourselves, imaginatively; and then as described to others - absolutely needs to be one that eschews stereotyping, and is instead rooted-in the individuality and uniqueness of all persons.