The "concentration camp guard" argument

In relation to today's earlier posts, the following may help concretize and clarify the nature of the argument. It picks up on the pub discussion about whether you or I would refuse to work as a guard in a concentration camp. 

The "concentration camp guard" argument is usually framed as a matter of principles and courage; 

First; whether you or I would recognize the moral principles we currently uphold despite living in a society that propagated the opposite; and 

Secondly whether we would then have the courage to resist coercive social pressure and refuse to do something that we regarded as evil.

  

Leaving-aside the observation that Of Course the person raising the "concentration camp guard" argument would go along with social majority opinion, and would not resist even the mildest of social coercion... 

But would instead enthusiastically embrace and pursue a new career, in what would probably be re-framed as "public-protection and offender-rehabilitation". 

(This, because such is what that kind of person (i.e. people who raise moral dilemma questions of the "concentration camp guard" type) invariably actually does. (e.g. as was/is seen in every Litmus Test issue, but especially the Birdemic-Peck business of 2020.)

But leaving-aside such practical and behavioural considerations, and acknowledging that extremely few people can (or perhaps should) resist extreme social coercion; especially when, as usual, these include sanctions against family and dependents...

The proper question would Not link recognition of true moral values with the capacity to act upon them.  

By linking principles to the need for courageous action - all that we do is to ensure people will modify their principles in order to accommodate the strength of their moral courage.  

As St Paul bitterly complained; there will always be dissonance between a Man's moral principles and his moral behaviour. That is inescapable; because the nature of human beings and mortal life on earth. But it is wicked to seek consistency by adjusting our principles to the reality of our actions.     

What can and should be required of a moral person is simply that he recognize and affirm true principles; that he acknowledge what is evil, and inwardly reject it. 

That recognition, acknowledgement, inner-rejection is what is necessary; and that is what is always possible. (This is what Christians term repentance.)

So; no matter what their own behaviour, or career choices, or social compulsions may be; people should always be able to know that (for instance) concentration camps are evil, and that personally profiting from such an evil is wrong. 

Anything "AI" can do, is, fundamentally, Not Worth Doing or Better Not Done: A potentially valuable lesson of this Litmus Test

One thing about the Litmus Tests of our era is that they are learning opportunities: but more emphatically they are opportunities to learn something important and especially relevant to ourselves and this era of human history. 

This is because the very success of Litmus Test issues - the large degree of (often passionate) public support they attract - makes it evident that the "tasks" of recognizing their fundamentally evil falseness is one of especially great value.  

Even when we personally happen to be largely immune to the appeal of a specific Test, we can learn valuable lessons from considering the nature of their appeal - from considering what particular (maybe distinctive) modern weakness they are probing and exploiting. 

The current dominating Litmus Test is probably the (post-November 2022) "AI" project; and the lesson comes from observing and analysing the nature of its appeal - from studying what it is about "AI" that AI-advocates focus upon or enthuse about - including both its actual capabilities, claims of capabilities, and hoped-for effects and consequences.

Each of these have different causes; but I have noticed that when it comes to the actual capabilities of post-2022 "AI"; it is apparent that:

Whatever "AI" can do, ought Not to be done. 

Either because it is not worth doing, which covers a good deal. 

Or because it is actively harmful to the human spirit that this task be automated. 

To recognize this requires that we be able to detach our-selves from the here-and-now worldly imperatives, such as making a living while dwelling in a totalitarian System that has (increasingly strongly) net-evil aims, values, and methods.  

If this can be achieved, then we notice that "AI" is actually being-used for anti-loving and anti-creative purposes. 

(And for a Christian anti-loving and anti-creative means evil: it means an opposition to the nature of divine creation.) 

I mean that "AI"-systems are being used to reduce and ("ideally") eliminate human to human, and therefore any potential for genuine inter-personal relationships. 

Instead we get automated simulation. 

And "AI" is being used to reduce and ("ideally") eliminate from tasks any potential for genuine human creativity.   

Instead we get automated simulation. 

This is the actual effect of actually-existing "AI" systems. 

And on the flip-side there is the situation that anything "AI" genuinely does do, which is not a simulation - should not be done. 

This insight can be helpful because there are many aspects of modern life that are (whether in practice, or fundamentally) unavoidable and pervasive; but which we should spiritually recognize as intrinsically un-Good, evil. 

As so often, it is the clear spiritual recognition of a reality that is necessary - and that is the proper task of a Christian; and not our personal ability practically to eliminate that which is a necessity. 

Because, often there is nothing we can do to alleviate an evil necessity. 

But we can always recognize and acknowledge that a necessity is evil - and that is our proper task. 

The important (vital?) insight that "inevitable" does Not mean Good

One of the deepest and (it seems to me) most important insights from Jesus, is that what is inevitable in this mortal life, is not for that reason Good.

Many things in this life may be unavoidable - including our own natures, work, and taxes, but also many others - and therefore we should make the best of them; but these same things may nonetheless be evils, or indeed sins.

My impression is that few people are prepared to acknowledge this reality; and instead they tend to assume that that which is unavoidable, or that which has always been an aspect of life throughout known history - are therefore either positively Good, or else neutral. 

Yet this point seems to be fundamental to Christianity (at least, as I understand Christianity); because if it were otherwise, then there would be no necessity for salvation, and Jesus would be optional at best.   

Or, to say the same thing in an opposite way: Jesus is necessary and our hope lies in salvation exactly because much that is universal, pervasive, inescapable in our own (or any other) mortal life is fundamentally wrong and/or adverse.

In a word, mortal life does not, cannot, and never shall, suffice. 

And this is why salvation (with resurrection into Heaven coming after this mortal life) is the only true hope. 

This divine creation - the primary creation of this mortal life, world, universe - is not good enough. 

The opportunity to follow Jesus is needed if we want better; and the Second Creation of Heaven is our only genuine possibility of attaining that better life and world. 

Dead Goggles, Social Spectacles, and the "animistic/ anthropomorphic" world-view

A baby after his Dead Goggles were installed, and before they became invisible

The animistic world view is a consequence of the evolved nature of human intelligence. Human intelligence is substantially social intelligence, a set of psychological adaptations which evolved as an adaptation to the problems of social living. Humans see the world through social spectacles. Consequently, hunter gatherers (and children) spontaneously anthropomorphise the natural world.

Thus I wrote in 2002, and in other pieces around the millennium. Back then, I was writing from the assumptions of science generally, and biological in particular - and was (and for another half decade or so) metaphysically an atheist-materialist. 

In other words, I assumed reality was the world described by "science"; and, more importantly, by bureaucracy, the mass media, law and all the other mandatory-enforced social institutions. 

And also the same world is assumed by religion, including Christianity in its churches, in all its public and regarded-as-essential manifestations. 

Yes! The Christian churches, Christian people, all assume the same abstract models of reality as do science and government; because they believe that most of the world is dead (or rather unalive) and ultimate reality is divided-into and consists of abstractions such as time and infinity. 

They assume that physics (and mathematics) describes ultimate reality, to which life, consciousness, humanity are added-on sometime later.  

Indeed; it has long been the contention of sophisticated Christians theologians that God is dead; in effect! Dead either because God can only be described "negatively", by what God is not - or because God is only knowable in terms of attributes described in terms of philosophical abstractions.   

To circle back to my metaphor that "humans see the world through social spectacles" - it is evident that my social interpretation of reality was then being regarded as due to a focusing and filtering scheme that was interposed between a dead reality and the livingness of human beings. 

Now I have an opposite metaphysics: I assume that creation (and God) consists of beings in relationships - Reality is Anthropomorphic.  

The Social Spectacles were not so much installed into us by natural selection, nor helpfully provided even by God; as being our innate and primordial knowledge of the nature of reality. 

Not "spectacles" at all - but a proper apprehension of truth. 

And it is life-filtering Dead Goggles that get installed onto us in childhood; Dead Goggles that interpose an un-natural, abstract, mediated and modelled, conceptualization of reality. 

It is Dead Goggles that generate modernity and Modern men; obscuring our innate, spontaneous, and natural apprehension of the living beings and purposive nature of this divine creation we inhabit. 

  

Once properly installed, Dead Goggles can be difficult to remove

Positive Greatness is non-transmissible. Religions, Ideologies, Systems are useless - when it comes to yielding Good consequences

I find it recurrently very striking that although I may admire, study, reflect upon individual persons (my "mentors"*) - my strongly positive feelings about such people almost-never extend beyond that specific person; almost-never includes even their close associates, disciples, heirs... and almost-never include the religion, ideology or (generically) the "system" that the admired individuals propagate. 

(Negative harm and evil can indeed be encouraged and propagated, as we see all around us; but this does not seem to apply to the positive and Good.) 

In one sense this is obvious and to be expected - and yet it is not what most people, including myself, tend to assume. 

On the contrary, we assume that there is something transmissible about positive goodness and greatness: that the idea of a Great and Good Man will tend to promote greatness, that the associates, disciples, followers, heirs of a GG Man will share - or at least significantly-encourage - the same positive greatness. 

Again and again I find that The Great and Good Man's positive-greatness may be real and strong; and yet the people associated are either mediocre and ineffectual; or else overall malign and negative in their nature and tendency. 

Furthermore, and something harder to grasp: The GG Man's own account of what is necessary and desirable for Goodness and positive change is also wrong!

The Great and Good Man's religion/ ideology/ System of understanding and explanation, his System for working to generate positive change - also shares this quality of being - in actual practice - ineffectual and useless at best; but often and with apparent ease readily made into a mechanism for the pursuit of evil. 

The people who are supposed to continue the work of the GG Man do not do so: they either degenerate into a relatively harmless but ultimately useless-for-Good pastime/ hobby/ club/ lifestyle choice...

Or else they become actually negative and harmful in their intent and outcomes; a vehicle for the pursuit (whether directly, or by lending support) of evil ends. 

Examples of the futility and/or malignity of Systems associated with those I regard as my mentors and Great and Positive persons abound, indeed it is exceptions that are hard to find. 

Most significantly, I have come to believe that this is true even of that greatest of men: Jesus Christ. 

With the single exception of the author of the Fourth Gospel; I do not find the same greatness in any of those who were associated with Jesus, or who propagated what they believed to be The System that Jesus seemed to be recommending/ commanding. 

And I find the usual mixture of ineffectuality and tool-for-net-malignity in The Systems attributed to Jesus, and allegedly associated with Jesus. 

What does this mean? 

The conclusion would seem to be that Institution and System are intrinsically useless at best, but actually net-harmful in practice. 

Perhaps we can only get benefit by direct inner-contact with the spirit of the Great and Good Man himself - because we ourselves are unlikely to do good by attempting to propagate this Greatness. 

When it comes to the good and the positive in this life; maybe we can actually do little more than point at a Great and Good Man, with a personal recommendation; and maybe also give an account of our own experience of such contact? 

*Some of these recent mentors who are writers, who have had a positive impact (as I judge), and who I have often blogged about are ST Coleridge, Rudolf Steiner, Dion Fortune, JRR Tolkien, Owen Barfield, William Arkle, Gareth Knight. Several of these taught a System - and all of these came to seem wrong and net-harmful. They had associates, followers, disciples etc - and unless the individuals were independently Great and Good themselves; such persons have always proved disappointing, exerted a net-negative influence, and often (I judge) were/are of bad intent. 

wrt Tolkien and Barfield - see the comment by AnteB, and my reply. It should be noted that a GG Man may have other GGMs in his circle - but their greatness is, essentially, independently achieved rather than derivative. For instance, and contrary to what he himself asserted and probably believed; Barfield's greatness was essentially independent from that of Steiner. GGMs are not reliable witnesses when it comes to their own special qualities.    

Is Substack corrupting?

Is Substack corrupting? *

Corrupting towards psycho-spiritual assimilation into, and support of, the global totalitarian-materialist ideology? 

Yes; it does seem to be. 

And the reason is obvious: Substack exists and is configured to extract payment, and (as of 2026, in this world as-is - it was not always thus) writing for money (even desultory sum of money that most Subtackers collect!*) is corrupting. 

(The Economy is corrupt; already, and ever more so.)

Most Substack outputs are very obviously money collecting operations, e.g. those by ex-journalists, those with clickbait extracts (pay-up if you want to read more!) - and evident readership-pandering (that increases the longer the Substack continues). 

When I say that Substack is corrupting, then I mean that is its tendency - it tends to draw people into the mind-set of writing for money. 

I don't mean that all Substackers yield to the temptation! I don't mean, either, that the corruption is irresistible. I mean that is its tendency: a toehold of instrumentality is yielded, and that mental colonization usually seems to expand. 

We live in an age when the amateur - the non-professional, the not-career - is best. 

Of course, we must make a living - I am just suggesting that if you are serious about your writing, about what you write, what you think; then it is very much preferable Not to make your serious writing the means of making a living. 

Or else to separate your "making a living" type of writing; from that writing where you really are doing your very best.

Someone doing his very best with his writing, best by the highest standards he knows, someone for whom the writing is a significant spiritual activity; does Not make reading that writing contingent upon paying, or even psychologically-associated with paying to read it: not if he can help it.   

+++

* Of course Substack is not unique in its tendency to corrupt - and the criticisms that follow are intended to apply wherever applicable! But S. has been The Platform in my corner of the internet for the past several years; after the mass sackings of journalists began, and more widely since the lockdown era. 

** It is wanting money from the writing that is corrupting; not the amount actually received, not the success of the money-making operation. 

Note added: For context, as well as being a professional medical journal editor for about seven years; I wrote quite a bit of freelance paid journalism from the late 1980s and for more than a decade: fairly regularly for New Scientist, The Times (of London), Times Higher Education Supplement, and various commercial medical magazines - and odd pieces for The Independent and once for The Guardian.   

The puzzle of Gandalf the White in Fangorn Forest - a lesson in narrative

By Ted Nasmith

It was only on my current read-through of The Lord of the Rings that I noticed, and was puzzled by, the question of what Gandalf the White was doing hanging-around a particular part of Fangorn Forest for at least four days before meeting Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli. 

I explore this question over at my Notion Club Papers Blog. 

Whatever happened to Real Science?

The activity of mainstream modern Big Science is most reminiscent of a Soviet Union era organization – such as the grossly unprofitable Polish glass factory I saw on TV being inspected by John Harvey Jones in his TV show Troubleshooter. 

The factory was producing vast quantities of defective drinking glasses which nobody wanted. Nobody wanted to buy them nor even to use them. So the glasses were simply piling-up in gigantic stacks around the factory building – using-up resources, getting in everybody’s way, and taking-up all the useful space. 

When Harvey Jones was asked what to do, how to make the business profitable, he said the first essential step was stop making the glasses. 

Stop Now: this very minute, he said. Go out of this office and switch-off the production line, send all the factory workers home (on full pay) for a few weeks, and begin sorting it out. 

But so long as the workers were attending daily, beavering-away, filling-in paperwork, with raw materials pouring-in on thundering lorries; the masses of defective glasses were being churned-out, stacked until they were blocking the aisles and preventing anything useful being done... there was no hope. 

Better to pay people for doing nothing than this! 

 

Same with professional science – stop it now, for goodness sake! 

Switch-off the assembly line - please! 

Stop wasting vast human and physical resources in piling-up useless stuff that nobody wants. Better to pay researchers to do nothing than this... 

(Obviously it would be better if people did something useful than nothing – so maybe ex-professional researchers could be dressed warmly and paid to lie across the threshold of closed doors to function as draught-excluders?) 

So, here we have the problem of professional science today – it has been bloated by decades of exponential growth into a bureaucratically-dominated heavy industry Soviet factory, characterized by vastly inefficient mass production of shoddy goods that nobody wants. 

And professional science is trundling along, hour by hour, day by day; masses of people going to work, doing things, saying things, writing things, getting funding, spending money, advertising themselves, engaging in petty gossip, intrigues and back-stabbing… 

Science is hopelessly and utterly un-reformable while it continues to be so big, continues to grow-and-grow, and continues uselessly to churn out ever-more of its sub-standard and unwanted goods. 

Switch It Off: stop making the defective glasses: now... 

**

Note: The above is a chapter from my 2012 book Not even trying: the corruption of Real Science. I stumbled across this yesterday, and it made me laugh; so I thought it worth sharing for new readers of this blog, and the (many!) who neither read nor will read the book. 

Christianity remade as a religion of power, or of escape

It often seems that there have never been very many Christians in the world; because so very few people - even among the religious - seem even to want what Jesus offered: i.e. resurrected eternal life in Heaven, attainable by following him.

What the mass of religious people want most, is apparently a deity of power.

God/s whose own power is so great and irresistible, that service to the God/s can guarantee that those who serve him/them will win (eventually). 

Naturally, when such people call themselves Christian, they make "Christianity" into an instrument of power, serving a God defined in terms of power in this mortal life and world. 

An influential minority find "winning" to be no more than a temporary palliative; because these people are irresistibly-aware that evil pervades all Men, winners as well as losers; and because disease, degeneration and death make our mortal life a tragedy. 

What such people desire most deeply is escape from the tragedy that is mortal life on earth. 

Naturally, when such people call themselves Christian; they make Christianity into a religion of escape; a religion of palliation in this temporary and illusory mortal life and world; escape into complete absence of all suffering (perhaps bliss) in the next, and real, world. 

It is natural, and probably inevitable, that people will make their religion into a vehicle of what they most want; but it is confusing for those who instead want what Jesus offered.

When the overwhelming mass of Christianity actually is about power; and its "advanced" practitioners primarily desire escape - and when power or escape fill most of Christian discourse - it becomes difficult, or perhaps in practice impossible, for someone who innately wants what Jesus actually offers to recognize "Christianity" as the place he can find what he desires. 

This is why I think we are compelled to seek fundamental knowledge concerning our deepest wants in a manner that is direct and personal, intuitive and simple. 

If we do not, or cannot, find the necessary knowledge for-ourselves and validated by-ourselves - in faith that the true deity will guide the sincere searcher sufficiently for the purpose; then I see zero possibility of actually finding Jesus's offer by a process of sifting through the colossal and growing archives of public religious discourse. 

 

Note Added: The above analysis suggests why Christianity has declined, and is declining. 

If you are religious, and it is power you really want in the 21st century; then Christianity is not the place that somebody would seek a share of power. The obvious power religions are not in Christianity but in the plainly-monotheistic world religions. 

Affiliation with power might be sought by supporting or converting-to the global monotheism which has been growing so rapidly in zeal, numbers, and nations over the past century. Or else a power-seeker might seek affiliation with to the global racial monotheism that has such a disproportionately large share of world power, wealth, and influence. 

As for religions of escape: a much purer and simpler and more escape-orientated religion than Christianity can be found among the Western philosophical (and Theosophy-derived, "perennialist") versions of Buddhism, Hinduism, Sufism. And (overlapping with these) there is a large, growing (and socially-acceptable, Establishment-supported) Oneness spirituality of the New Age. 

In sum; both for those who seek power, and those who seek escape; there are more straightforward and "effective" alternatives to be found outwith Christianity.

What can replace "The" church for Christians?

For most Christians in recorded history (although not in the Gospels) being-a-Christian is the same thing as being an observant member of "The" church. 

But, of course, the identity of that The as it is applied to church; has varied in often incompatible and hostile - even lethal, and frequently evil - ways; since very early in recorded church history. 

Since the minds of Men and (therefore) society have both changed, Christians now choose The church for themselves, and choose which faction within that The which they are to be observant to. 

However; Christians then typically forget or deny that their own choices are rooted in personal assumptions - and usually pretend (for they are being untruthful) that their-"The" church is objectively, and evidentially, the-"The" church. 

So; for Men here-and-now churches cannot be, therefore they are not, what they were. 

Churches cannot be "The"; and cannot provide what they once (often) provided - and especially no church can be regarded as The in that way which was natural and spontaneous for so many centuries.  

What, then, can - or should - replace what The church once used to be? 

The first answer is nothing, there can be no replacement; because churches are all institutions, and all institutions are changed. 

All institutions are substantially and motivationally totalitarian-bureaucracy-assimilated; and have lost their distinctive purposes and the life-meanings that flowed from them - churches are now fundamentally, as well as in-practice, this-worldly. 

But perhaps what the churches used-to provide can be divided between spiritual and social? 

If so, the spiritual provision used to be external; mediated by symbolic, language and ritual; quasi-objective; and to-be-obeyed. 

This is exactly what has gone, and therefore this cannot be replaced for modern minds. At least; it cannot be replaced effectively and with sufficient motivational power. 

Churches as spiritual sources are self-subverted, hence relatively ineffectual - and so are church people. 

Instead, spiritual sustenance needs to come from direct participation with the divine - and all Christians therefore need to become mystics, in a certain sense. All Christians need themselves to communicate with (of know) the divine and the Beings of this world. All Christians need to be clear that their ultimate evaluations Just Are individual - and should work on making these as valid as possible. 

What of the social aspects of church? 

The social side of what churches once were cannot be replaced either; because society has transformed in its structures, laws, traditions, evaluations - and so forth. There is no longer an old-style church niche. 

Furthermore, with people as they now are; social support, inspiration etc is not, and cannot be, generically prescribed. First because generic provision is not wanted, not needed, and indeed actively abhorrent. 

But also because social provision (by whatever is The chosen-church) is so scanty, incomplete, crude, intermittent, insufficiently-sustaining... and basically unsatisfactory. 

We are long-since at a point (and this can, surely, only increase) where each individual Christian needs to seek for the social support he needs - search for wherever he can find it; in whatever form he can tolerate; and social support provides what he most needs; and in whatever way works-best for himself.

(Although that "best" is itself almost sure to be both short-term and insufficient.)

My conclusion is that the model of "Christianity" based upon The church is either dead and gone, or already-feeble, mis-matched, and dying.  

The alternatives to The church are not replacements but substitutes; and all substitutes rely upon an acknowledgement of the validity (as well as the necessity) of individual discernment, choice and validation. 

As see this as a plain fact - and IMO Christians ought to be honest enough to acknowledge plain facts. 

"My way or the Highway?" - Christian "exclusivism"; in relation to Christian claims of the Necessity of Jesus Christ

A lot of modern people are(or claim to be) averse to the exclusivism of "Christianity".

By "exclusivism" they usually refer to some particular self-identified Christian church, or denomination, or a selection of such churches. 

And by exclusivism is meant a collection of various ideas that limit salvation: for examples that Christianity is the only true religion; that church instructions and/or sacraments provide the only valid path to salvation; that those who are not Christian are doomed to eternal torment, and so forth. 

Various alternatives may then be proposed for these and other various exclusivisms (for instance; that all religions are true, or equally-true; that Heaven is for everyone, eventually; that Heaven is for good people, and others). 

All of these miss the point. 

Christianity is indeed exclusive; and exclusive in the sense that for those who want salvation  - which is resurrected eternal life in Heaven - there is only one way of attaining this goal. 

And that one way is by following Jesus Christ. 

In other words: Jesus Christ is necessary for salvation - meaning that if Jesus had not existed, and was not still alive and active; then there would be no salvation for any of Mankind. 

Such a brief definition may be true and perhaps acknowledged by many or most Christians; yet it leaves some key terms undefined, in particular what it means to "follow" Jesus Christ. 

But the answer to that should, I believe, be regarded as secondary to the first step: which is: 

To want what Jesus offers; to desire salvation for oneself, and to want it as the priority of life. 

I would say that anyone who wants salvation as the priority Is A Christian: by that commitment is a Christian defined.

The secondary question of what "follow" means in this context; and how, exactly, I personally (here and now) should follow Jesus Christ; well, such matters are surely more the subject for a life quest, than a thing that can be pre-decided by any act of faith and resolution. 

(Even joining a church and obeying it does not decide what "follow" means in practice; since the Church opinion must be learned, acted on; and anyway there is always dispute on such matters within all churches.)

Anyone who sincerely desires to attain eternal resurrected life in Heaven will, presumably, do whatever is necessary for him to attain this goal (as and when this becomes evident); and will do so according to his own best attainable knowledge and understanding... 

"Following Jesus" is a matter about which it would seem foolish to expect unanimous agreement. 

The core of "what Christianity is may, nonetheless, be a matter of shared consensus among Christians of many types - but only among Christians!

Because, it seems that plenty of other people (apparently a large majority) do not want salvation but want... something else instead, and there are many such possibilities...

Therefore; it seems to me that almost all of the people who object to the real exclusivism of Christianity do not themselves want salvation...

But, for instance, they might deny the real possibility of post-mortal life; or prefer some other post-mortal outcome than everlasting life in Heaven Perhaps they want reincarnation? Or not to die at all? Or for death to be annihilation of the self? Or they prefer eternal life as a spirit rather than to be resurrected bodily. Or they want a post-mortal pleasure-paradise of themselves reborn, but not resurrected. 

Many possibilities exist - including the desire to become a ghost, or a demon - common enough wishes nowadays.  

So the exclusivism of Christianity is seldom a real problem! 

Those who themselves do not desire Christ's salvation, or who regard it as an unpleasant, bad or evil thing - can hardly object that such salvation is exclusive!

And, although theoretically a possibility and a genuine problem; whether people actually exist who sincerely desire salvation (i.e. desire for themselves resurrected eternal life in Heaven), and who also deny that Jesus is truly necessary to attain this salvation, is not clear to me. 

I guess that (if they indeed exist) such people would need to believe that:

1. They wanted salvation

2. There is a path to salvation

3. But a path that does not require Men to "follow" Jesus - in any sense of "follow" - i.e. that (contrary to what Christians assert) Jesus is not-really necessary to salvation.  

Only if such people exist, then I can see that such would indeed have a legitimate grievance against the exclusivism of Christianity! 

The Activist Assumption: Can we validly - by making wise lifestyle choices - fight The System, and work incrementally towards a Christian world?

Can we genuinely - by making wise and responsible lifestyle choices - fight The System, and thereby work incrementally towards a Good, a Christian, world? 

The true and ultimate answer, the answer from Jesus Christ, is: No, we cannot. 

(Also; even if we could truly make a better this-world by our choices; that would never be enough - that could never suffice.)

The situation of This-World (as of here-and-now) is much Much worse than the question implies - because the question implicitly assumes there is some way that somebody can "opt out" of the evil of this-world; that somebody can exist outwith The System. 

I mean the very common notion that we essentially affiliate with either good or evil by our material actions, by our lifestyle choices - choosing the best from those available (e.g. by actions such as voting, buying, selling, joining, resigning etc).  

This "Activist Assumption" is absolutely false, because based on false premises. The real question is qualitative - not quantitative - and All available and possible choices are evil-complicit*. 

It was, perhaps, (nearly-) always thus, but we need only consider the situation as of here-and-now.

The global totalitarian system is evil by intent and design, and it is inescapable, and we all (every person, everywhere) depend on it for survival. 

Our actual situation is analogous to that of a chattel slave who lives or dies at the whim of an evil master. The "qualitative" choice is to be compelled to do what the master commands, or die. 

Yet a slave can be a Christian, and plenty have been, because (no matter what he is compelled to do in order to stay alive) the slave can choose to want salvation. 

And That is what matters decisively. 

The slave is only damned if he wants that which his evil Master is telling him to want. 

The war of this world is a spiritual war. Therefore it is ultimately about attitudes, aims, desires, motives and suchlike; it is about what we inwardly affirm and what we inwardly reject. 

When we support an evil agenda, we have chosen to join with evil and its purposes.

Actions may be compelled on pain of death - or suffering too great for our powers of resistance. But whatever the actions; it is that inner act of "wanting" that damns us; not our actions.

In sum: the Activist Assumption is false, because it regards the core problem and task of of life as being some version of "How to make this-world a better place". This is, and perhaps always has been, the commonest understanding of "the purpose of life". But, for one who desires most to follow Jesus to resurrected eternal life; the core problem and task of life is different.     

*The question is actually a sub-set of the Jesus versus Pharisee debates: The Pharisee assumption that sin is quantitative and thus something that can be avoided or usefully diminished by focusing on, and avoiding, a list of special sins. 

But the assumption of Jesus Christ is that qualitatively all Men are "sinners" (ie. all Men fail ultimately and always to align our will with God and divine creation), and all Men sin innumerable times in innumerable ways. 

For Christians, therefore, the proper question is not how to avoid sinning, but how to attain salvation (how to join the side of God and divine creation); despite that no Man ever has, or ever will, avoid sinning frequently, and without any possibility of stopping.

Note: This post is edited from my response to a question from commenter "Jack Pixley". 

It is fact, not merely opinion, that supporters of "AI" are supporting global totalitarian materialism's Core Project

It is a simple fact that the supporters of "AI" are thereby supporting global totalitarianism's Core Project - and the project that the totalitarians have-been, and currently are, expending more resources and money upon, than any other of their strategies of evil.  

Supporting "AI" is therefore rational and consistent if you personally share in the goals of materialist totalitarianism - i.e. the goals and methods and understanding of Good represented by the architects and implementers of Agenda 2023 and the Great Reset. 

But otherwise (for example if you identify as Christian, or if you believe you oppose The Establishment or favour freedom) then you personally are engaged in an incoherent, and probably self-serving, delusion. 

You may rationally justify embracing and propagandizing "AI" on the basis that global totalitarianism is a lesser evil than the mainstream alternative of universal mutual destruction favoured by the Agents of Chaos. 

This is (I think) overall true: the selfish power-seeking materialist-bureaucratic evil aimed at omni-surveillance and micro-control of others; is not as bad as a mastering spiteful desire for death and the destruction of divine creation - even when at the cost of self-harm.  

However, if you are honest; then such reasoning requires a frank admission that you are engaged in the Boromir Strategy of trying to fight a greater evil by strengthening a lesser evil. 

In which case (if you regard honesty and coherence to be a necessity); you had better ensure that your own hands and conscience are As Clean As Whistles: ensure that you personally are neither likely, nor hoping, to benefit from the triumph of your preferred brand of evil. 

Or else you are your-self, objectively, One Of Them.  

Notice: The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin - 2026

This is notice of a TV series called The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin that I am currently watching on Amazon Prime - I have seen three episodes. 

It is, by some margin, the best fantasy drama I have seen on TV; very powerful and intriguing, beautiful and moving; very well written and edited. 

And with superb background music that adds to the drama in an analogous way to Howard Shore's music of the Jackson movie Lord of the Rings. 

If it manages to sustain this quality to the end of the series, it will rank among my favourite TV dramas of all time; but even if it does not, it has already done enough to be lastingly memorable. 

Update note added: Episode Four was at a significantly lower level than the previous three. No memorable moments. 

Further Update: So was Episode Five. 

Looking at IMDB it seems that - aside from One and Two, which were both (apparently) done primarily by producer Jeremy Boreing; the different episodes had various different combinations of writer and director. Therefore it is unsurprising that the series is uneven in quality, and tone. If only Boreing had taken responsibility for the whole series, it might have been one of the greats... Something similar was seen in the Peter Jackson movie The Lord of the Rings, where a mediocre job done by the Editor (plus some stupid choices by Jackson and the writers), brought down the overall quality of the second movie from the towering(ahem)-heights of the first and third. 

Final evaluation: although the seven-part series improved a bit for the final two episodes; the overall impression left was an irritated and disappointed meh... Plot-wise, a rather tedious, poorly-paced, self-inflated nothing-burger. 

There was way too much time and emphasis on war; and the war was (in military terms) unconvincingly depicted (e.g. since when do "cavalry" recurrently eschew charging and harrying; and prefer to fight from static horses, or choose to dismount before fighting?). And the gore was both gratuitous and graphic.  

My final recommendation is to watch the first two, extremely impressive and moving, episodes that focus on the bard Taliesin; but skip the rest of the story about his son Merlin.    

Gogol now surpassed by DDG - a microcosm of the twenty-first century technological trajectory

Nikolai Gogol - an irrelevant portrait (apparently channelling his inner Benny Hill)

For those too young to remember; the search engine that also hosts this blog and which I will therefore call Gogol, was launched in the late 1990s; and developed over the next years into one of the great engineering achievements of the millennial period. 

It was so good by 2004, serving up vast numbers of well-ranked and relevant results (up to millions, maybe billions, of them, if you could be bothered to look); including in real time (showing results, additively, tens of seconds after pages were posted onto the web) that other search engines were irrelevant. 

The Gogol incrementally ceased to be optimized for searching, and (which, presumably, had always been the intention); became orientated first to making money, then to surveillance and ideological control. 

Features were stripped-out - such as real-time searching, relevance ranking; then results became filtered. And now it serves up very few pages at all (a few dozen - at most a couple of hundred). 

Nowadays the results are full of stuff like Facebook and Instagram pages - such that the search results do not even lead to the actual results: do not lead to the sampled passages. 

So good had been Gogol that it took a long time before any of the (supposed) rivals to equal or surpass it in the primary function of web searching and ranking. 

But for the past year-plus; the point has been reached when I am convinced that Gogol has so degraded itself that other algorithms (which used to be qualitatively inferior) are now actually much superior in terms of generating relevant results - for instance DDG.

This is a microcosm of the trajectory of Western civilization through the twentieth century. As real science became all-but extinct, technological progress slowed; then (overall) ceased; then went into reverse - as functionality was first sacrificed, then ignored, in pursuit of totalitarian socio-political mass manipulation. 

So-called AI has accelerated the process - is indeed a key element in the process; since its core net-intent was, from the beginning, civilizationally destructive. 

And the widespread welcoming of "AI" is evidence of the success of The Long-term Plan - which was always and ultimately spiritual, not material.  

For the spiritual agenda to succeed, people must want their own spiritual-enslavement, their own value-degradation - people must be induced willingly to blind-themselves to the motivation and consequences of post-millennial technology.  

Job Done. 

What we ought to do is simple, and within the capacity of literally everybody in all circumstances...

And that is to realize and acknowledge the evil intent behind all of the totalitarian-backed technologies (including not just "AI", but professional science and research, institutional "reforms", EVs, sustainable energies, the Birdemic Peck, establishment-backed medical campaigns... the whole caboodle). 

And inwardly, with heart-felt motivation: decisively-reject that intent. 

But, apparently, this little and simple action is just too much to ask. 

Knights Templar Woz Ere

The above are marks inscribed on the door jamb of the entrance to the beautiful and fascinating church of St Andrew's, Hartburn, Northumberland. 

The marks may have been left by members of that much-discussed organization The Knights Templar, who were certainly active locally. Three were tried in York on various charges including worshipping "a certain cat" - who would appear to Templars in particular circumstances.  

Another curiosity is a gravestone in the floor just in front of the chancel, where the death of Dorothy, wife of William Aynsley on March 18th of the year (apparently) seventeen-thirty and-a-half! 

What the "half" symbol 

means here, is actually that her year of death was 1732 by the European Gregorian calendar in which the New Year began on January the first; but 1731 according the Julian calendar that was still (happily!) used in Britain, which started the New Year on March 25th - Lady Day. 

Living a Lie: is Your bottom-line reality a social institution?

The way things have been shaping over the past years; I think that the biggest spiritual challenge is related to social institutions; specifically the question of whether or not people (including you and I, as individuals) are going to root our fundamental understanding and support of reality in a social institution?

It has in the past been normal, usual, spontaneous, unconscious - sometimes even mandatory - for people to root their sense of reality in a social institution, such as a church, or perhaps a tribe, or in recent generations a nation. 

The challenge of being an increasingly self-aware Being in an increasingly-obviously evil totalitarian society; is that we are now becoming aware of what this entails - it is no longer spontaneous and unconscious - instead people make a deliberate choice of the social- institution/s in which they will "invest" their sense of reality.   

This immediately introduces a paradox, a contradiction - we choose where we invest "objective reality" - and this choosing of external objectivity is only psychologically effective when this choice can subsequently be hidden from our-selves. 

Hence we find ourselves in a world where almost everybody is dishonest with themselves concerning their most fundamental choices: most people make ultimate choices about the nature of reality, and the authority for that nature... then they pretend to/ deny/ forget that have made these choices. 

People continue to invest their ultimate reality in social institutions, continue to insist that this is where ultimate reality is indeed located - yet this assertion is based on falsehood; and when challenged this falsehood is absolutely insisted-upon in a way that inevitably corrupts an inaccuracy to a lie. 

So "people", that is almost-everybody, is literally Living a Lie - a calculated untruthfulness; when it comes to what they regard as deepest and most important...

And this corruption in action comes through to consciousness more and more obviously, with more and more people, as the months roll by.  

Note added: What lies behind the above; is my continued dismay at the "falling-away" from spiritual commitment to divine creation (and then doubling-down on fallenness) of more and more of the online people whose work I peruse. 

This, because these people stubbornly adhere to the primacy of some social institution - whether that be their (chosen) church; or their (chosen) spirituality, ideology, political affiliation or whatever it might be. 

In particular; I am dismayed that (and this is my interpretation) they find-themselves (although this is denied) supporting the functionality of The System - which is (I believe) intrinsically evil - on the (correct) basis their chosen bottom-line social institution depends on the functional continuation of The System. 

And because these folk are (naturally) afraid of the waxing influence of the Agents of Chaos - which they seem to suppose they can do something personally to stop and reverse, whether locally or globally. 

In other words; they are becoming more and more active spiritual supporters and sustainers of the materialist strategy of Ahriman, because of their fear of - and (pragmatic) desire materially to oppose the ever more destructive Sorathic powers. 

This lapsing into the Boromir Strategy was something I predicted would happen several years ago - and I am sorry that I was so right about it.      

Personal Development - is it a Good Thing? Analogy with development in the arts and literature.

In the early 1970s, it was a standard aesthetic criterion that "development" was a good thing, a necessary thing - and that the developed was better.  

I first came across it in pop music. e.g. The idea that The Beatles were good because their music developed, from album to another the style (and subject matter) changed - and later Beatles was better than earlier. 

Anyone who thought the opposite, and preferred "their early stuff" was shallow, simple-minded, dumb... 

Same in classical music, as I later discovered. The "Great Composers" all (supposedly) developed, and all kept on getting better. 

Critics seemed unanimous that middle period Beethoven was better than early - with which most lay-people agreed; and best of all were his latest works (especially the last string quartets), with which the music-loving public certainly disagreed.  

The same applied across the board really - whether in other arts and literature, or in intellectual pursuits; and even in the spiritual realm. 

CG Jung's most influential concept was perhaps the desirability of "personal development" as the proper goal of human life - through the middle and late twentieth century this ideal became almost a new religion. 

So what was this development that was so good? 

The direction of desirable-development was (nearly-) always towards less-immediate appeal; more serious/ less fun (or funny); longer; more complex - more difficult.   

Those qualities that had initially attracted people to, say, The Beatles or Beethoven and which brought them to notice, popularity, high status; were thereby downgraded. 

In particular that rather indefinable quality of "freshness" that characterizes early work and accounts for its immediacy of appeal; that unselfconscious spontaneity and fluidity; the absence of that striving, effort, and contrivance which typically dominates later (more serious/ complex/ lengthy etc) work...

That naturalness of expression and clarity of achievement was looked-down-upon; together with the responses that went with it - such as laughter (instead of sophisticated "wit"). 

In an overall sense; it was hard for an honest observer to conclude that development meant "better" - because "the developed" was almost a different thing altogether! Indeed; literally so in the case of developments in Modern Art and Architecture, and modern Classical Music - where "the developed" was often unrecognizable in terms of the aims and virtues and appeal of the starting point.  

What about personal development? Well, the analogy seems close. 

The direction of PD was towards self-consciousness, seriousness, effort and control, a balancing and integration of multiple complexities, by means of complex theories and learned-practices.  

This can be linked-back to the development of personality in religion; where a similar trajectory was recommended and observed. 

There was little doubt that people could be (usually were) changed by prolonged religious training, increased knowledge, study, and practices; and these differences were of the same sort as seen in the arts. 

But whether that differentness from his starting condition actually made the person "better" in any kind of overall or basic sense was very debateable. Often enough it made them worse! 

This is where we now stand - at the end of an era in which development was the ideal, and its benefits were assumed; to one in which such claims are seen to be a false generalization, and often self-serving. 

But Men cannot live without purpose. And if development is discarded then it must be (indeed, it will be) replaced with some other ideal - even if that ideal is implicit, unconscious, denied. 

If we cannot truly develop in any genuinely religious or spiritual fashion - then what should we be doing, aiming-at, instead? 

(As usual, the necessary first step to finding an answer, is to acknowledge the question.) 

Do I know when somebody is reading my mind?

We are born with secure knowledge that "we are not alone" but inhabit a universe of other beings, some like ourselves, some different. 

This knowledge is built-in, not a product of experience (which might, after all, be misinterpreted or delusional). 

This built-in-ness is why the existence of other minds cannot be proved, and why solipsism cannot be refuted. 

(The same applies to the existence of god/s, spirits, life persisting beyond death etc... All built-in.) 

 

This innate knowledge of the existence of other Beings, other minds, suggests that there is a background and mutual knowledge that we are in-touch with others; on the basis that if we are aware of other minds, then other minds must be aware of us. 

So, it seems likely that we cannot know another Beings thoughts without that Being also "knowing that we know" - but we moderns are only seldom aware (perhaps for some moderns never aware) that we do know of the existence of other minds. 

Awareness of others forms a kind of unconscious background to our lives - something like an ocean of unconscious mutual which we inhabit and largely take-for-granted*. 

This picture would fit with the idea that the direct - i.e. not-mediated by perceptual awareness of other remote persons (i.e. persons beyond sensory contact) is real but unconscious. 

Which implies that  although few (modern) people seem ever to be aware of their minds being read - this is actually happening - but is either not conscious, or our consciousness of this is denied because it "makes no sense" on the basis of modern metaphysical materialist assumptions. 

Therefore the answer to "Do I know when somebody is reading my mind?" is: 

Yes, you do know; but you are (probably) seldom, or never, aware of this knowledge. 

A further implication is that - since our minds actually are being-read, just as we actually-are reading the minds of other human-beings (and other-beings); it is also plausible we might become aware of this innate, direct mutual-contact between our own mind and the minds of others. 

Become aware, that is: if we want to become aware; and if our basic (metaphysical) assumptions concerning ultimate reality allow for the reality of mind-reading. 

*In other words: telepathy is real. 

A lovely medieval window

 

From today's church-hunting at St Michael and All Angels, Felton, in Northumberland. 

What is very unusual is that the whole tracery design at the top, including an eight-pointed flower, was carved from a single piece of sandstone. 

A lovely and architecturally fascinating (surprisingly large, Tardis-like) church in a very quiet corner of the world. 

Too many Mainstream Orthodox Christians are "universalists" when it comes to "the resurrection of damnation"

There is a sentence in the Fourth Gospel that contradicts the argument and multiple statements of the rest of the Gospel, and which I assume was a later and alien addition...

But which (with, perhaps, a terrible and malignant inevitability) became standard orthodox compulsory dogma in many Christian churches (at least among theologians):

John 5: [28] Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, [29] And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.

The alien-ness of this passage is that, through the rest of the Gospel, it is evident that resurrection is A Good Thing, Good News, the great gift that Jesus offers to all Men who "follow" Him.

This is the real Christianity: one that recognizes that Jesus offered a great gift...

A gift that any mortal man (whether he be good or bad, as evaluated by This World, and after all we are all "sinners". Sinners both in the primary sense that we all shall die, and the secondary sense that nobody lives in full harmony with divine creation). 

Thus, a great gift that all may choose to accept - by following Jesus through death into resurrection and Heaven. 

What I regard as True Christianity, takes-up Jesus's many statements in the IV Gospel and its overall argument; that has resurrection linked with Heaven: resurrection is the needful transformation by which we are "born again" in a form suitable for Heaven. 

So; salvation properly means saving us from death, and the default fate of becoming ghostly spirits, barely our-selves.

Saving us into an eternal life in Heaven. 

Yet here, in the above quoted sentence, there is raised the spectre that Jesus's work was to raise the barely-conscious gibbering ghosts of the underworld Sheol into an everlasting incarnated state in which they would suffer the eternal torment of Hell.

Add to this horror; the statements in some other Books of the New Testament that only few - probably the very few who have "done good" to a sufficient degree, can or shall ever attain the resurrection of life.

And we get that truly horrible depiction of Jesus Christ as cosmic sadist that is so vehemently insisted-up and enforced by so many churches...

I mean the common and horribly inverted picture of a "Jesus" whose "great work" as a "saviour" was to implement a system of alleged-salvation, by which the majority of Men (probably a very large majority) were resurrected from death in order that they could be tortured forever. 

By such means, a large number of self-identified Christians - past and present - chose to make themselves into "Universalists". 

But not the kind of Universalist who assert that Jesus's work was to compel everybody to resurrect into Heaven; whether they wanted it or not...

Instead the kind of Universalist who believes that Jesus made things so that everybody gets resurrected, everybody gets brought to consciousness forever; and afterwards, for most of them, their eternal life will be one of inescapable and ultimate misery. 

Both "universalisms" are wrong: Resurrection is a choice and Heaven too is a choice, therefore neither is for everyone. 

Why is that so hard to grasp? 

And why are self-identified Christians so stubborn in refusing to grasp the Good News, or (worse) insisting that they do not even want it?