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. 

"I must create a system", said William Blake... But systems are never Good - and yet...

"I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's." 

So said William Blake - and he did; he created an idiosyncratic and incomprehensible system of assumptions, archetypes, and analogies; as expounded in the very long and obscure "prophetic" books.  

William Blake - 1757-1827 - lived at the very beginning of the first Romantic era; so he was among the first to experience and express the inner need to escape from the toils of the already-existing systems of knowledge. 

And surely he was right? Surely there is no tyranny more complete than that of a system of thinking, a religion, an ideology? 

But it is apparent that creating one's own system is not an answer - not even to oneself. 

The creating of a new system is, indeed, a creative activity; but once the system has-been made... Well, then it really is just another system.

What happened with Blake has happened innumerable times since. Nowadays, almost everybody experiences the oppression of the system; yet among those who desire and are determined to escape it, and make their won system - the process ends in... just-another system. 

It happens even to creative geniuses such as Joseph Smith, HP Blavatsky, Rudolf Steiner... They start out with exciting and apparently liberating spiritual experiences and insights; but end-up with ludicrously-complicated and vast systems. Systems that their followers are supposed to learn and obey; in a way that never applied to the originators of those systems, while they were originating them. 

In sum; those who themselves successfully follow Blake's advice and create a system to avoid enslavement by another-man's system; have merely created another system. And the new system them process to enslave first of all its originator; so we see the creative genius struggling to impose his system on himself! And then... anyone else who chooses to follow the founder. 

So that the creative genius becomes merely a leader -  a bureaucrat of the new system; and his followers merely functionaries of the new system; and/or corrupt and/ or careerist manipulators, who try to use the system for their own this-worldly benefit.   

The same trajectory applies to movements of renewal and awakening within the stale and empty forms of established religions. 

At first the founder of the movement is creative, and the process of making a system is exciting, enlivening... 

But to the extent that this is successful, the system crystallizes; and presses upon any individual; crushing, and incrementally killing, the soul. 

It seems that we follow the same loop over and again. We recurrently hope, and may believe, that Goodness can be captured in a system: Goodness can be made-into a system.

And either that the latest system has finally succeeded in capturing Goodness; or else that some old system has never yet been properly tried, but would capture Goodness is properly implemented. 

People are temporarily energized and motivated; by trying to develop and impose their system - believing that This Time they have got-it-right...

That this time, this system really will made this world a better place, if only people would do it. 

But it never happens; and it never can happen - because systems are the problem. 

And yet (as Blake saw, so long ago), we must have a system; we can't avoid them. There is no alternative in this life and world as it actually is - which is why creative pioneers always end-up with just another system. 

The situation is that what we most-want and most-need - is not possible in this mortal life and on earth. 

Is life, therefore, forever and inevitably a tragic paradox? 

Or; is what we want and need possible to all of us who understand the problem - but someplace else: maybe after death, and in Heaven?

This seems to be a problem well-worth solving; seeking the answer to which is an activity well-worth our best and most serious effort. 

From Birdemic to "AI": Strategic sequencing in the grand strategy for global totalitarianism

There is a grand strategy for global totalitarianism than can be inferred or "reverse engineered" from linking-up the primary Litmus test issues. Also; the totalitarian objectives have been described variously and explicitly - for example The Great Reset, and Agenda 2030, writings on the need for mass depopulation, and "15 minute cities".

The origins go back many decades; but we can see the way that things work by looking at the past few years - beginning with the Birdemic lockdown.  

This can serve as an example of the strategic sequencing we see all over the place. 

1. c. March 2020. The Birdemic was the rationale for a global lockdown and "social distancing. 

2. When people were confined to their houses, and workplaces were shut during the enforced lockdowns -- employers were compelled to summarize their functioning in terms of online work programs; and employees were compelled to reduce their skills to protocols. 

3. c. November 2022. The introduction of novel kinds of "AI" began the process of replacing as much as possible of the human element in the economy. So; the work programs and protocols prepared during the enforced workplace closures were then handed-over to computers, fulfilling the plan to replace humans. 

In retrospect it seems that one of the reasons why the totalitarian overlords decided to lockdown the world (on the excuse of the Birdemic); was to accelerate their plans to replace people with machines. 

And this was successful: to the extent that many of those who saw-through and opposed the Birdemic lockdowns etc., now embrace and promote "AI"!  

That is exactly why They go to the considerable trouble of strategic sequencing. If the Tera-Billion Dollar top-down project of "AI" had been introduced before 2020; it would have been seen more clearly for what it is. 

But coming after the changes from international lockdown, the (in fact) coercively-enforced/ massively-subsidized totalitarian global "AI" strategy has been regarded as if it were a "natural and inevitable development"; and thereby won many influential hearts and minds...

Thus the globalists achieved the consent of influential people who - at the same time as supporting the single most significant and pervasive intended-instrument of micro-surveillance and centralized control - simultaneously self-identify themselves as radical opponents of the aims of "Clown World"!  

+++

And what next? 

Well, these measures seem to be preparatory to the attempt massive shrinkage of the workforce; with total exclusion of a large majority of people from economic activity and political power. 

At some point; They will decide that the masses are now demonstrably "useless eaters" and "toxic-carbon-emitters"; and the situation will be deemed ripe for mass depopulation - for the sake of sustainability, to save The Planet. 

And no doubt They have prepared a façade of excuses to conceal their purposive intent to kill; just as the strategic intent of mass harm by "The Peck" was hidden behind a faked pretence of promoting health and saving lives.  

Why is eternal incarnation (i.e. resurrection) the highest goal of creation? Because love requires separation of individuals

It seems that the highest goal of divine creation according to Christianity is resurrection - which is eternal incarnation; in other words, the aimed-at completeness ("perfection") is as Jesus was after his resurrection. Which was a state of embodiment, and not the state of a discarnate spirit. 

Why would this be?...

After all; most religions posit either serial mortal incarnations (incarnations with death and a spirit state in-between); or else that the highest goal is for embodied beings such as ourselves to become (or return to) a state of pure unembodied spirit. 

Why does Christianity insist upon resurrection of the body? 

My idea is that the Christian vision is rooted in love; and love separates and distinguishes - even as it also binds. 

Incarnation can then be seen as part-of the development of love. 

Incarnation is (by this account) necessary to the highest love; because to be a pure spirit is to exist in what Laeth has called a "ghost soup" - a state of assimilation or union, but not love. 

Not love because lacking the separation and individuation required for love. 

But in this mortal life; entropic change accumulates to sabotage love; and eventually kills love with death and loss of the body to revert to pure spirit. 

So resurrection to an eternal embodied life is required in order that the highest love can become everlasting. 

This, I think, is why Jesus fulfilled the work of divine creation by enabling Men to choose eternal and resurrected life; instead of the previous alternatives of serial embodied reincarnations, or else eternal existence as a spirit. 

Nothing new, or everything new? How to do theory (or rather, how *I* do theory)

When I began doing theoretical evolutionary biology as my main thing (May 1994); I realized that there were two apparently opposed ways of looking at any problem. 

One was that everything had already been thought and said, and the best way of solving a problem was wide and deep engagement with the already-published literature. So; the way to tackle a problem was to read everything about it, speak to anyone who might know anything relevant - then extract from this "the answer". 

This could be called the scholarly approach. 

The other was that anything I personally might have to say about the problem was new; because my personal background, experience and abilities were unique. If this is right; the way to tackle a problem is to think hard and long about it, and work it out from myself. 

This could be called the philosophical approach. 

(Somebody once said that Heidegger and Wittgenstein represented these extremes within the academic discipline of philosophy: Heidegger had read "everything", Wittgenstein had read "nothing".) 

Of course, these two ways are not separate; but opposite ends of a scale. Nothing worthwhile could emerge from a pure version of either extreme. 

A scholar who did not think was just a stamp collector, a compiler and filer (or an "AI"!). A thinker who did not know the relevant stuff was never going to solve any particular problem. 

But it was obvious that - if I wanted to get anywhere real, then I was motivated and suited to the philosophical approach. That is: mostly-thinking, rather than mostly-studying.  

By this time I was in my middle thirties and had already done a great deal of studying across a wide range of medical, psychological and biological areas - so I knew plenty of stuff; and this would be relevant stuff... so long as I was working on the right kind of problems. 

Anyway, this is what I did. 

Plus an idea I got from Francis Crick, which was that almost everything published on a topic is wrong: the "trick" is to work only using that which is right. 

So; I did my theorizing on the basis - from the basis - of relatively few highly selected facts, theories and assumptions that I judged to be true and of good provenance; produced by honest, relevantly informed and competent persons. 

And ignoring nearly everything else, because I regarded it as wrong wrong for any reason - incompetent, based on false assumptions, dishonest, of dubious provenance etc.  (i.e. nearly everything.)  

When I became a Christian, after a couple of years of increasing torment in which I tried to be obedient to the church-consensus - when there was no consensus, or else an obviously-wrong consensus - I progressively re-adopted the same attitude and approach that I had used in theoretical science. 

Which - no doubt - explains a lot...

Miles Mathis on art forgeries and fakes

After having been well taught artistic discernment (not ability!) by my father - who had been an art teacher and was a decent landscape watercolourist; I have recently learned a great deal from reading Miles W Mathis on the subject of forgeries and fakes in Fine Art, such the B. Awful Not-Leonardo  depicted above. 

Or the much more famous and quite pleasant looking, but modern and mediocre, Not-Vermeer below:

It is well worth reading these articles, and following their references - and looking more widely at MWM's reflections on the almost-unbelievably corrupt and incompetent world of Fine Art auctioneers, academics, critics, and galleries. 

The idiocy and ugliness of Art over the past several generations is so extreme and unrepentant; that it is explicable only on the basis that the activity is not about art any more. 

It is Not Even Trying to do art; nor to teach, display or reward art. 

But instead it's about such anti-artistic activities as managed investment, subsidy-grubbing, money-laundering, political activism, and the exchange of bribes.  

I don't think there is any great art being done nowadays; just as there is no great classical music being composed or poetry being written. 

This is not a golden age for human creativity - nor even a silver one. The major creative geniuses are a thing of the past.  

But there are good paintings and portraits done by serious artists - I have bought some over the years, and been gifted others.

Such violation of quality by a perverse and inverted system of incentives; is yet another symptom of the advanced phase of our civilization's collapse. 

And the way in which this situation is officially rationalized and defended - even more so.   

Tolkien's world is Not a "modern myth"

I have reworked my post on the "fuzziness" of myth, from a couple of days ago - and with reference to JRR Tolkien's work - over at the Notion Club Papers blog. 

The argument is that Tolkien is "literature" rather than myth; tied to his actual writings in a way that myth is (almost by definition) not. 

I also mention that the idea Tolkien is a myth is used as a "justification" for new "versions" of Tolkien, mostly in other media such as movies and TV, that distort, subvert, and invert the spirit and meanings of the original. 

We can see how far this process can go with such characters as Sherlock Holmes; where, nowadays, few read the superb original stories, and most people "know" Holmes only through the lens of recent - and didactically leftist - "re-interpretations". 

Of course; such deliberate desecration and destruction of Tolkien's real greatness cannot be prevented or stopped - those behind the process are too wealthy and powerful for that; but we can recognize and inwardly reject what is going-on. 

  

Midsummer season between the cross-quarter days

Buttercups at Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire. I saw this glorious field a while ago, while my family had a picnic on its edge. We were all fascinated and enchanted by watching a little girl of about three years old in a pretty summer dress, who "waded" all around and across the field through the flowers. Engaged by some very serious business, it seemed.   

The neo-pagans seem to be right about the primary seasonal significance of the "cross-quarter days" - those that come half-way between the Solstices and the Equinoxes - at least in England. 

These days are located around the first days of February, May, August and November; and sometimes correspond to the Christian feasts; so there is Candlemass (Imbolc); May Day (Beltane); Lammas; and Halloween/ All Hallows (All Saints) Day.

We are currently into the Midsummer season that comes between May Day and Lammas; and the change this month has been decisive, because the tress have - suddenly, it seems! - come into full leaf; and already it feels more like summer than spring. 

But May can be the most delightful of months, as everything is still fresh as spring, but with summer's abundance. 

May's special flower, the buttercup, is just beginning to wax dominant in the fields; to climax in a couple of weeks. And buttercups are perhaps, along with snowdrops, my favourite of our wild flowers.  

In particular the daylight never really ceases up-here at 55 degrees North; and the stargazing hobby must go into abeyance; as only the brightest planets and stars are visible (when there are no clouds!) against the always-twilight, never-black, sky. 

And these only from after about 10:30 pm, or even later in a couple of weeks  - at present the likes of Venus (just about, before it sets), Jupiter, Regulus, Arcturus, Vega, and Deneb. 

Unlike the Equinoxes, where the change in day length is at its most rapid; Midsummer Day - when it comes - is just a calendar date, because there is no perceptible difference in sunrise and sunset for some days either side of it. 

Here in Newcastle upon Tyne, Midsummer is dominated by an enormous travelling (gypsy) fun fair The Hoppings; which sets-up on the Town Moor for more than a week, and makes a great deal of (horrible) noise! 

So Midsummer is far from a spiritual environment, except when we get out into the countryside. 

Movie review - Good Fortune (2025)

Good Fortune (2025) works pretty well as a mainstream Hollywood comedy; it is a fairly typical "3 Star" movie (i.e. 3/5 Stars; i.e. worth watching, but not re-watching). 

What makes Good Fortune rather different is that it is very earnest in tone, and tackles the deep subject of "meaning in life"; and, as such I found its assumptions and aspirations interesting and illustrative, and I continued thinking about it for a while after watching. 

I was attracted to the movie because it features an angel as a main character (and I find it interesting to see how this device is used); but the conceptualization of angel is - as usual - a being that "helps people" in very practical ways (almost trivial ways, in the case of our protagonist) in a universe assumed to be wholly materialistic in its nature. 

But the angel comes-up-against a person - endearingly played by the film's auteur Aziz Ansari - whose constantly-working life is on a down-trend of materially deprivation and insecurity, such that it seems to him not worth living. 

The other main character is an ultra-wealthy technology-investor-type of the post 1990s style; whose life is depicted as very pleasant and easy - and a lot happier. 

Magical-life-swaps ensue; and these are used to examine the question of what Makes Life Worth Living, in order to save the "soul" of the despairing protagonist, and undo a plot conundrum. 

These "things" that MLWL, are all depicted as material; except for romantic (and maybe filial) relationships; and, to an extent, casual friendships. For instance, much is made of the Mexican food Tacos, as a symbol of the good life; and a cheap kind of good life... that could/should be accessible to all. 

Because the life worth living is materially-conceptualized, the "answer" to the problem of meaninglessness and despair is a material one; and that which is arrived-at is (implicitly)... mid-twentieth-century, Old Left-style socialism. 

So; Trades Unions are very positively depicted as a way "forward", and redistribution of wealth from the few ultra-rich to the hundred-millions of grindingly poor; is explicitly stated to be the solution to poverty. 

Economic socialism is portrayed as if it were a "radical" notion, but in reality the ideal utopia is almost exactly a reactionary yearning for the 1950s in The West. Something that already has-been; and something which was vehemently rejected at the time, by the exact same class of people who are making this movie!

In other words, Good Fortune implicitly rejects the post 1960s "Civil Rights" New Left focus on race, feminism, and the sexual revolution; and argues for a restoration of the Old Left focus on socialist economics.  

Except, of course, it doesn't! Because the movie has the usual (mandatory) quota-casting and soft-sell idealization of "vibrancy" and the rest of it. 

So what is actually being advocated is to re-impose Old Left economics on top of the actually-existing New Left society... 

Therefore (and for obvious reasons); Good Fortune says nothing-at-all about the decades of colossal immigration; which was exactly the primary cause of the (rightly-) vilified mass life of a "gig-economy" of low-paid, insecure jobs getting worse at one end...

And the tiny minority of ever-fewer, ever-richer and ever more-powerful class of people at the top...

(Who were, of course, the class of people producing, scripting, directing, and acting the movie.)  

It is an historical fact that it was the Old Left who favoured a Trades-Union-dominated, high-minimum wage economy, Characterized by strong top-down regulation of work conditions, enforced exclusion of competition, labour protection, and secure contracts. And these were the group most vehemently against mass immigration and "globalization".

(For instance, as I well remember, it was the Left of the Labour Party who most strongly opposed the UK's entry into the "European Union" in the referendum of 1975.) 

And this was for very obvious reasons (i.e. "obvious" to common sense, if not to the current ruling intellectual class of Hollywood opinion-formers!). 

But my main point is that this morally-earnest movie can come-up with no higher ideal for human existence than reversion to the actually-achieved socialist Old Left, mid-20th century. With its notion of a "decent minimum" level of material provision and security for the masses; in the context of a structurally-secular vision of reality.

Yet even this mundane, low-animal-level, "barnyard ethics" social-utopia of "comfort and convenience for all"; is rendered an impossible "fairytale" - by the insistence on the continuing destructive reality of open-ended massive immigration - with its inevitable consequences!

 

It is the old story. Those who ask for, work for, live for, aspire to have "nothing more" than a comfortable life of minimal decency; will thereby become so alienated, fearful, demotivated, and despairing that they will have even so meagre an existence taken from them. 

Materialism is incoherent - and leads to incoherent understanding and therefore the inability to recognize/ conceptualize/ defend simple-self-interest in the medium/ long-term. 

This; because human beings Just Are by nature religious and spiritual. It is built-in - whether we like it, or like it not. 

Excise religion etc; and we become fundamentally helpless; self-hating drivelling idiot-lunatics. 

In sum; we are creatures who can only function in a (broadly) sensible and realistic way, when we know that this mortal life is not everything...

Subtract all this context; and what remains is not just happy (or miserable) animals; but something less-than an animal. 

The fuzziness of myths

Fuzziness - imprecision - seems to be a characteristic of a myth; such that the specific form in which a myth is expressed - e.g. its exact words - does not seem to matter very much. It is as if the myth has a life of its down, and the words or images by which a myth is presented are not its origin; but serve some secondary purpose, as reminders or pointers. 

The two great myths of England are King Arthur - including Merlin; and Robin Hood and his Merry Men. 

When I think of either of these, no specific version comes to mind; and indeed I find that none of the versions of these myths is very satisfactory. 

For instance, whenever I decide to read one of the Arthur accounts - whether historical (Geoffrey of Monmouth, Layamon, Malory) or a modern description, novel, story, TV programme or movie - I am often overwhelmed with a kind of irritation at their inadequacy; and end-up quitting, bailing-out before I have gone very far. 

The best I can hope for is odd and brief hints, images, phrases, or gestures; that imply rather than depict the mythical - and many versions lack even this. 

I also find the "explanations" of myth to be unsatisfactory - and when a myth gets decoded or unpacked, and its supposed underlying meaning is described - this too always distorts the "reality", and again often evokes a rather strong sense of rejection, or even revulsion. 

So what is the myth? On the one hand it is nebulous, indefinable; on the other hand the particular feeling and expectation that it evokes is quite precise. 

If I am engaging with some version of Arthur I seem to have a pretty clear grasp of what I am looking for and what is valid - even if I could not say just what that is. 

But really, the situation with respect to myth is not really unusual. After all - much the same applies to such everyday and real-life matters as our attitude to a place or nations, or loving a particular someone. 

A real myth is a kind of "miniature" or "model" of something in real life. The situation is just that any specific "model" we make of reality, is really just that: a model; whether it is made of words, pictures, or theories. 

A model is made by leaving-out almost everything, and only including a few things - so it never captures real life, always distorts it; and indeed the relationship between the model and the real is itself indefinable. And the number of ways that any actual model is wrong are innumerably large.    

Unless we have some way of knowing reality directly, and without intermediary communications such as words, images, stories, or other models; then we cannot ever know it At All. 

At bottom, our ability genuinely to live in a relationship with this world depends on the ability to know directly and unmediated; and we need to decide, each for himself, whether or not this direct knowing is actually real and actually happens.

By this account a myth that "works" and is not a fail or fake, works first for one person at a time - no matter how national (or international) it may supposedly be; and secondly by a direct, person-to-person sharing of that myth. 

And this situation is the bottom line "collective" mythic reality, towards which any particular version of a myth may gesture - or not.

Gold *can* stay, but not in this world

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Robert Frost

I first encountered Robert Frost's beautiful and so-memorable miniature some forty-plus years ago, and at this time of the year; via SE Hinton's The Outsiders novel, and then through reading RF's selected poems - in what now seems like a dark and despairing era of my life. 

On that cusp of early, working, adulthood - as the enchanted state of childhood and early adolescence receded fast and very fully under pressure of day and night study and work as a doctor in a psychiatric hospital; the truth that "Nothing gold can stay" was evident and inescapable. 

Inescapable in terms of my fundamental assumptions concerning life. 

So much so, that the only optimistic future was one in which I simply did not think about this truth; in which I was so immersed in the business of living that "living" consumed all of my attention.  

As a means to this end, I sought a "niche" of pleasant living, of relative ease and comfort and stimulus... And this was (always implicitly and sometimes explicitly) my aim from then onward and for a decade, and somewhat more. 

This poem is an indelible insight into the fundamental tragedy of this world, which is death - or, more generally, what I nowadays conceptualize as entropy - a tragedy even more fundamental and all-pervading than evil. 

The fact that there is a new spring, and new "gold", each year is good; but (as Tolkien's longaevus elves knew) it also repeats and amplifies the tragedy. 

In this-world, creation does not, and cannot, solve the deep sadness of entropy: that nothing gold can stay. 

Our real and solid and sufficient hope, the only real hope, the only answer; is the Second Creation of Heaven, on the other side of death, for those who choose to follow Jesus there. Thus the tragedy remains but subsumed in a "Comedy" - a happy ending. 

Escaping from the hard-sell/ soft-sell cycle of mainstream ideology

The totalitarian ideology of "this world" works by establishing a cycle of soft-sell assumptions, that are "confirmed" by the hard-sell propaganda of facts and theories, that provide evidence to "prove" the assumptions. 

Assumptions and evidence support each other pre-emptively; in a confirmatory-cycle that encompasses all the "respectable" sources...

Including officialdom, education, science and arts, churches, mainstream mass media - enforced by bureaucratic regulations, law, and economic incentives (subsidies, bribes, fines, jobs etc).

The System is inescapable to one who stays within the cycle of confirmation; because any dissent is both irrational and arbitrary.  

There is only one way out; which is go outside the cycle; which means outside this-world. 

Which seems to imply: the only escape needs to be rooted in "my" direct personal experience of the divine. 

The necessity of Jesus only makes sense if...

Christians say Jesus Christ is necessary. 

The necessity of Jesus only makes sense if God, the creator of this world, is not-wholly responsible for the situation. 

If God is doing His best... But a further factor is needed. 

Jesus Christ - Saviour from what and why? An imaginary conversation

Jesus Christ is our saviour. 

What is he saving us from? And don't say "our sins" because that doesn't make sense to me.

Jesus is saving us from death. 

But everybody dies, including Christians; and when we die we cease to exist...

It is about what happens after we die. Even without Jesus, everybody remains in existence, but not as themselves, just as demented "ghosts". With Jesus, we are restored and resurrected to become a qualitatively superior version of our-selves, the same "you" as here-and-now, still living, learning, doing - but all-good, and forever...

How better? Do you just mean that we will be made completely virtuous, like it or not? Because that doesn't sound particularly appealing.

The decision we need to make, is to live wholly from love. And love means between people (and other living-beings); and this love includes what we think of as creative activity. And it is not done-to us; because resurrection is cooperative: we have to want it, ask for it - and then Jesus is capable of making it happen.  

Sounds great, if it was true.  

You don't need to believe it is true: you do need to believe it is possible, and that you want it. 

But why do we need saving in the first place? I thought you Christians said that God loved us all and was all-knowing, all-powerful, and created everything. If so, your God is by-definition responsible for everything. How come things are such a mess and people are so mixed up, weak, and (often) wicked? 

That is a false understanding of God. The reality is that God is the creator; but creation is made up from all kinds of unique beings - a mixture of good and evil, and some beings are very evil. This world cannot be made wholly-good because the "ingredients" God works-with are not wholly-good. Such is the reason why Jesus Christ is needed to save us - if we want to be saved. And why we are saved in Heaven and on the other side of death; and can't be saved here and now. 

It seems to me that in order to be saved, I need to give up a lot of myself... 

True enough. You need to be prepared to give up everything about yourself that is not motivated by love. Only then can you become an eternal and good being, live in a Heaven of similar beings. You need to want that kind of Heaven.   

Okay... I think I would be prepared to do that, but what would I actually have to do to achieve it? Christianity seems like a package-deal holiday. To get to Heaven I am asked to sign-up to obey a bunch of dodgy bureaucrats; who insist on me believing and doing all sorts of dubious stuff. Frankly, I can't see any relationship between the end and the means. 

I understand, and agree. It is your soul, and your future that is at stake. 

I suggest that you sort things out for yourself, and to your own satisfaction, in whatever way ultimately has the potential to convince you.- 

Perhaps by going direct to source.

  

More on Music - the down-side of the Greatest composers

I am continuing to add to the new compilation blog "Bruce Charlton on Music" - most recently a post that might be useful to those who are setting out to explore the Classical music repertoire. 

I focus on my three favourite composers, and probably the greatest by reputation - Bach, Mozart, Beethoven; and discuss how a good deal of their music is pretty bad; but each is bad in different ways. 

The different quality of badness in the bad-stuff from B,M& B; can throw light on the nature of the greatness.