Why do nearly-all modern people regard themselves as ethically superior to everybody in the past?

Ancient societies were all religious, which meant that morality was taught with a divine and cosmic basis. 

Whatever the specifics of moral socialization between different religions, places, and times; morals would be related back to an underpinning of spirits, god/s, creation, afterlife etc. 

Modern societies are not religious; and whether or not a particular society professes or practices a specific (or several) religion makes no qualitative difference.

(In modern societies; religion is functionally nothing more than a lifestyle-choice.)  

Consequently, the actual moral socialization of modernity is underpinned by psychology; not by theology or cosmology. 

Although modern morality varies over time and between places; morality is related back to altruism and utilitarianism. 

That is to say, modern morality is "about" such principles as unselfishness, helping-others; and making a "better world" - i.e. a world where people (or at least the people that most matter) suffer less, and are more fulfilled. 

Much of everyday and official moral discourse is at a more superficial or secondary level than described above - a level that could be termed "ethical". 

For example in ancient societies there is usually an ethical emphasis on loyalty and duty; but in the modern West, there are dominant concepts such as social justice, equality, democracy, inclusivity etc... 

But these everyday "issues" operate on the assumptions of fundamental moral assumptions; and in this ultimate aspect; modern society is qualitatively distinct from ancient societies. 

Consequently, most modern people - esepcially in the most deeply and extensively modern societies of the West - simply cannot comprehend the morality and ethics of ancient (and less-modern) societies. We "project" our distinctively modern moral assumptions back onto the past and onto non-modern societies; and find the past wanting. 

Modern societies are inevitably regarded as morally superior in the light of modern morality. 

Differences between ancient and modern are therefore put down to the ignorance or evil of people in the past. 

But whether caused by ignorance or evil, either way, it is the self-experienced ethical duty of modern societies to eliminate any existing effects of the necessarily-wrong morality of the past. 

Hence modern societies' zealous, purposive, incremental, accelerating obliteration of the past - by bowdlerization, censorship, removal, destruction... 

If moral ignorance is assumed to be the cause of inferiority among currently-existing societies or social groups, then it is the ethical duty of mortally-superior modern people to instruct and/or regulate the ignorant. 

And to eliminate those judged to be evil.

This is what modern societies do to "less developed" societies - i.e. to societies in which the ancient morality of religion (any religion) still has significant influence.  

It is on this basis that modern people regard everybody in the past, and everybody not in the modernized Western world; as ethically and morally inferior - and in need of instruction, control, or elimination.

Such a process of incentivized or coercive imposition of Western values upon any and all religion-based values is regarded an absolute ethical duty; an imperative underpinned by morality rooted in psychology; and structured by the metaphysical assumptions of atheistic materialism. 

Such forms the core ethical justification for the most of contemporary geopolitics; including its burgeoning international (undeclared and proxy) wars, sanctions and "aid"; covertly initiated and sponsored revolutions/ democratic procedures/ mass media - and the rest of it. 

All these are ultimately a strategy of the Agents of Chaos which is why Western interventions invariably result in generalized destruction (at home, as well as abroad), and such supernaturally-motivated actions have recurred, again and again, over many decades and generations. 

But in order to elicit co-operation from the totalitarian bureaucracies of the West (whether Left, Right, or Centre), a proximate ethical rationalization is needed; and this is provided by the basic structure of modern morality. 

Creating is active - but more like choosing, than a willed-striving (a comment on Laeth's comment)

I had missed Laeth's comment on an earlier post of mine about creativity. here is my comment on his comment.

L & I may or may not have the same underlying understanding of creativity; but perhaps I should clarify my meaning when I said that creativity is Not a matter of striving. 

I wanted to clarify that being creative is Not a matter of "will-power" as that is generally understood; which is a conscious willing rooted in the mundane self, the everyday personality and based upon our understanding of things. 

I believe that creativity is much deeper than that; because it comes from the soul, or divine self. 

Creating could be characterized as first the decision to act and live from the soul, rather than from anything more superficial; and secondly that creativity happens "in a context of" love of God and divine creation. 

We cannot be creative unless we are tapping-into our real self, and we also cannot be creative by deciding to do in so accordance with our conscious understanding of what God wants and does. 

Creativity must come from an actuality that the individual just-is acting from the soul; and just-is operating from the reality of loving and despiring to participate in God's creative project. 

This is always a matter of free choice - creativity does "not just" happen as a consequence of our nature and environment.* 

Mere nature and environment can lead to an individual being harmoniously but passively going-along-with divine creation - however, he will not be adding to it. 

To add to divine creation - to be creative - entails the above two things (at least): choice of soul, and living from love. 

Such creating is, of course, an active thing - but activity is a property of being - activity is part of being-alive. 

So, in this sense, activity is not something we need to will, or to worry about: it will happen anyway!  

*(Indeed the spontaneous default of beings in this creation is probably close to being hedonistic by motive, and selfish in terms of scope. And that is what changes after the willed-choice of resurrection into the second creation of Heaven; when individual beings are enabled to make a permanent commitment. The change to positive-cooperation in having their natures made wholly-good {purged of evil and the tendency to revert to chaos: i.e. entropy}; and then living always from love of divine creation. Once resurrected, all beings are spontaneously creative, because each is unique and each is living in harmony with the divine.) 

What are the demands and disadvantages of Christianity?

What Jesus Christ did was to offer everyone (who wanted it) the possibility of resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 

Such was the Simple Positive Good News... Albeit this seems very quickly to have become hedged about with negations and threats, and distorted in many ways... 

Such as the idea that the system of salvation was one of tests, presided over by a divine judge, and conducted like a legal trial. 

And demands for obedient submission to this-world persons and institutions who claimed to control  access to Heaven. 

And the threat of everlasting deliberate ultimate torture (i.e. the novel invention of "Hell") for those who failed the tests, refused obedience, and did not qualify-for Heaven.

Such is human nature when offered simple positive good news; the message swiftly gets complexified, distorted: recast into the already-existing shapes of this mortal life and world.  

But, even setting aside such worldly intrusions and distortions; Christianity is still not the best of news for everybody; because there are both demands and there are disadvantages to accepting Jesus's offer of salvation.

Although available to any who desires it; salvation is not for everybody; because not everybody desires it as first priority; and for many possible reasons. 

Including that:  

1. Many or most people would prefer an ideal, perfect (or at least much better) life in this world and before death; and this is their actual life-priority. 

This could be for many possible reasons, including that they believe that this mortal life is all that is real.  

And, after all; everybody has some tendency (perhaps overwhelming) towards seeking to optimize the "certainties" of short-termism, above prioritizing the contingencies of the long-term. 

Yet (leaving aside the satisfactions of this temporary mortal life) there are plenty of people who express complete uninterest in even the question of their own post-mortality, and total indifference to the nature of their condition and situation after death. Clearly, such people will ignore Jesus's offer of salvation as irrelevant. 

2. Some people do not wish to be resurrected after death. 

Because they would prefer something else to happen. Maybe some type of reincarnation, or to become a pure spirit - perhaps living is a continual state of bliss? Or perhaps they would prefer annihilation - whether total destruction of the self, or dissolution of self-awareness.  

3. Not everybody agrees with Jesus that love is, and ought to be, the primary value of creation. 

And probably this is the main reason for refusing Jesus's offer of resurrection into a Heaven rooted in love. 

People often prefer... something else... Such as maximizing their own pleasure, power, status. 

For them; a paradise of ecstasy, prestige and total domination; is much more appealing, than attainment of what Jesus made possible.  

Others are focused on the primacy of a negation towards specific entities. For example it appears that plenty of people are mostly concerned with destruction of some person, group, place; or some other revenge against these. Perhaps there is a dominating desire actively to inflict torment on somebody or something.

(Ultimately, perhaps; there is the rejection of God's whole project of divine creation - a preference for chaos over creation.)

In a nutshell; there are multiple types of reason why Jesus's offer of salvation is not of interest to many (most?) people. 

And this despite that salvation is available to everybody who wants it; the fact is that lots of people do Not want it. 

They prefer... something else; and that remains the case even when threats of punishment and torture for disobedience - whether in this-world, or the next - are factored-out. 

Many small and useless triangles: the anti-human dysfunctionality of recent modern architecture

It would be hard for me to have a lower opinion than I do about architects since WWII; and they seem to get worse. 

The bad architecture of the 1950s-70s was boxy and nasty - but cheap and broadly functional. Since the 1990s, however, buildings are boxy, nasty, expensive and grossly dysfunctional. 

The above is an ariel picture of the new primary school, built in the latter 2000s, to replace a reasonably attractive but very badly neglected Victorian school. 

(e.g. The old buildings had had more than one self-seeded sapling sycamore tree, each several feet long, growing from between the upper brickwork. Nobody had even bothered to remove these - the work of maybe 10 minutes.) 

Both my kids attended, across years spanning before, during, and after the rebuild.  

To replace the crumbling old school; the education authority sanctioned construction of an ugly, expensive, and badly dysfunctional design.

The major dysfunctionality of this school was related to the large population of the school - 700 kids - and a small site; such that there was never much space for the children to do things outside. 

However, as can be seen from the ariel view; the site had the advantage of being almost square; so that a-designed-from-scratch school could - in principle - make-useful nearly-all of the available space; most obviously by building close-to and parallel-with the edges of the site. 

Instread, the architects (and education authority) squandered this advantage; by building much of the school at about 45-degrees angle with the boundaries; thereby reducing much of the precious outdoor space to small and useless triangles (plus other small and useless "corridors" where buildings are set needlessly far back from boundaries). 

So, generations of children have-had, and will-have, their already restricted outdoor space gratuitously reduced even further...

And all for no good reason at all - except the whim of architects in thrall to their idiotic "fashions", and presumably the dumb gullibility/ bribability of local government officials.  

The poor are always with us? Why Jesus never made anybody fundamentally a Good person by a miracle

There are two usual (but wrong) attitudes towards this life on earth:

1. To finesse the presence of evil and entropy (death), such that life is asserted to be basically good - evil is merely mistaken or unfortunate; decline and death are to be welcomed. Life is "good enough" as is - if only people would recognize the fact. 

For example; poverty either is not-really bad, maybe because of its potential compensations; or else poverty is the fault of the poor who have chosen their life, and could unchoose it. Anyway, poverty is part of the scheme and plan, and should be appreciated and made-the-best-of. 

2. To acknowledge the reality, and unacceptability, of evil and entropy - to conclude that this actual life on earth is fundamentally a problem, and "not good-enough". And to believe that we can and should work ("work together") to make this world a better place: and indeed so much better, that our actual lives on the planet earth will become good-enough to satisfy everybody's needs and wants.

For example poverty is recognized as a bad thing, but poverty is believed to be preventable and curable by directed and coordinated human action. 

Jesus had a different attitude. 

For Jesus "the poor" are always with us: meaning that poverty is both real and bad; but the situation of this actual world is that "poverty" is incurable in this mortal life. 

There will always be poor; there will always be evil and degeneration and death - in this mortal life. But also that despite being incurable this situation is "not good enough". 

Any attempted alleviation of poverty here, will miss or exacerbate the problem elsewhere. And anyway; there is no strong and general human desire to eliminate poverty, nor (even if there was such a desire) is there any mechanism by which the world can be fundamentally improved. 

For Jesus: Poverty cannot be overcome; And poverty is intolerable. 

But Jesus did not despair! Far from it. His life and message are of hope; because "poverty", evil, entropy this can and shall be cured and utterly abolished... 

We can look-forward to this (and many other) qualitative enhancements of human life with complete confidence. 

Yet not in this life and world, but after our death - and for all those who fundamentally desire to live by love. 

What is less often noticed is that for Jesus this applies not just to the world but to the people of the world. 

This is why Jesus was content to live among such manifestly "inadequate" people as his disciples, why he joyfully consorted with tax-collectors, publicans and the like.

Why he pointed-out personal sins and deficiencies (often with irritability and anger) and demanded that they be acknowledged; but also why Jesus neither expected nor promised that other people would fundamentally reform and become Good.  

For Jesus; we are all and everybody fundamentally inadequate people, and nothing substantive can be done about this - this side of death. 

If we are to live and love, it can only be - it shall be - a matter of sinful and damaged and fundamentally inadequate people loving each other.  

The situation is intractable: Jesus consorted with and loved many bad and ineffective people; because that is what people are. 

And nothing - not even Jesus* - could make things otherwise.

Jesus knew the deficits and wickedness of those whom he particularly loved, of those with whom he lived; and he wanted not merely that they became just a bit better - for a while... 

Jesus wanted that "other people" be enabled to become wholly-good and eternal - if they themselves also wanted it. 

Jesus recognized that adequate people living in an adequate world was not possible to achieve in this mortal life: however; Jesus made this possible and achievable post-mortally: by resurrection to everlasting life in Heaven. 

*NOTE: Jesus could not and did not ever make anybody Good by a miracle. This is very important for us to notice. 

Why did God create a sterile, lifeless universe?

It is very strange that nearly all modern Christians believe that God created an almost-completely sterile, lifeless universe. 

If true; this would surely be very strange indeed...

So very strange; that most modern people have - reasonably enough - concluded that if the universe is indeed very-nearly completely dead; then God can't be real. 

But the proper answer is that God Did Not create a lifeless universe - entirely dead, but for a sub-micro-mini-smattering of "life" - but that instead the universe is Made-Of living beings. 

Everything in God's reality is alive.

Exactly as would be expected in a divine creation. 

Cats with thumbs (2011) - a great TV advert

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdA_fLC7WIQ

The forty second, 2011 TV advert "cats with thumbs" is an example of the kind of perfect miniature at which British film-making used-to excel.

For such a masterpiece, every element must be superb; and here it is. 

The script must set the situation, develop it, and provide a pay-off/ punch-line - while maintaining deadpan seriousness; the narrator must have exact timing and intonation - and with Tim Curry doing the job that is all-but guaranteed; the actor is required to get the nuances of expression and movement just right (and be directed to do so). 

The animation very good; and the contrast of surreal action with an everyday-normal mise en scene is just right. 

And the whole must be edited to perfection of pacing and timing. 

Consequently; this advert makes an immediate impact; but also rewards (indeed demands) re-watching; because you cannot possibly take in all that happens in one viewing. 

Indeed; I needed to slow down to 50% speed, and freeze-frame to catch all the jokes. 

The ad was very popular at the time, and seems to have spawned several meme images. 

What the creature in the block of ice wants you to think...

Satan, from Dante's Inferno

[Gareth Knight] steadfastly remained true to his contacts, which took him down a long line of different magical experiences, firmly based on Christian magic. 

When I met him in the 1990s at a workshop he had a very interesting take on science which had become too complex for modern magicians to touch its hem. 

In a Manchester workshop in 1995 which referenced Dante’s inferno, he pointed out that for thousands of years humanity had believed in an earth centred universe and from the perspective of a human living on earth still worked that way. 

I asked: “So modern science’s concept that we are worthless, semi-intelligent fluff, attached to a tiny spec of dust floating in an infinite ocean of emptiness is a dead end?” 

“It is more than that, it is what the creature in the block of ice wants you to think,” Knight replied.

Quoted by Nick Farrell

There are many generally-accepted and supposeldly-established facts and theories that "the creature in the block of ice" wants us to think; but which we believe are true on the basis that external authority is the best (or only) source for truth and goodness. 

Typically, we believe them on the basis of fundamental assumptions regarding the nature of reality of which we are hardly aware, or which seem to "obvious" that it would be insane to question them...

Such as; that the universe was made by physics from dead-stuff. 

And "therefore" that the only difference between (on the one hand) living, conscious, purposive, intelligent, self-reproducing beings such as ourselves...

And (on the other hand) assumed-unalive entities such as quarks, hadrons and electrons; strong/weak nuclear forces, electromagnetism, and gravity; robots, computers, and "AI"...

Is a different arrangement of things. 

"Therefore", ultimately, we are worthless, semi-intelligent fluff, attached to a tiny spec of dust floating in an infinite ocean of emptiness; going nowhere in particular and for no reason. 

Well that is what the creature in the block of ice wants us to believe; and if you believe it, then you are doing exactly what that creature wishes. 

Or else, you could believe that we are purposive living-beings inhabiting a living-universe of other living-beings [details to be agreed later...].

There are no other coherent choices: Ultimately; either All is dead, or All is alive.

  

 

Spiritual contact: then and now (from willed control and external authority, to soul and love)

Spiritual contact in the past - for example the forms of monasticism, or the various formal magical systems - desired to re-establish contact with spirits (and perhaps the divine). But nearly-always the practices recognized the pitfalls and dangers of adults reverting to fully immersive and spontaneous Original Participation. 

Indeed, if fully established, OP would be a form of psychosis.  

Yet until the modern era, during which adults increasingly became alienated from the spiritual (and the divine); Original Participation remained intermittently strong. Therefore, the dangers were pretty effectively averted by a combination of training conscious will-power, under control by a structured external system of authority. 

For instance; spiritual exercises (e.g. of St Ignatius of Loyola, but other monastic traditions can often be interpreted analogously) developed willed-control and direction of the imagination; and also the process was undertaken in obedience to an explicit and structured hierarchy of external authority.   

But as Original Participation weakened over the generations, the imposition of control and authority largely extinguished and replaced spiritual contact - leaving merely everyday conscientiousness and obedience operating in a mundane bureaucracy.  

Now that OP has all-but disappeared for most people, most of the time (except in dreaming sleep, intoxication, mental illness etc - i.e. impaired consciousness); those who desire to establish and experience spiritual contact need to develop new practices that are both effective, and also tend to avoid the pitfalls resulting from spiritual passivity and open-receptiveness. 

Instead of developing a focused and conscious will-power to direct spiritual practice from the level of mundane personality; the aim could be to locate and work-from the real-self: the immortal and eternal soul which is in contact with the world of spirit. 

And instead of external authority structures; spiritual processes need to come from within love; on a Christian understanding of love as personal affiliation and commitment deriving from the choice of harmony with divine creation. 

(And not abstract/ universal/ generic/ willed love, nor the mere emotion of love; but from a soul-level endorsement and priority of actually-existing inter-personal, and inter-"Being", love.) 

NOTE ADDED: To be more explicit than in the post; the "safety" features of the above recommendation, are mainly related to its being a personal practice; done by each for himself; and with each person accepting responsibility for the practice and its consequences. Therefore, if a person is self-deceiving about the reality and nature of spiritual contacts; then he deludes himself, and probably harms himself: and it is his own fault. This is the incentive for him to get it right, and to identify and correct his errors over time. In the conditions of our actual life, I don't think we can do better than that. 

Synchronicity and "signs-following"

In reading Gareth Knight; I came across the concept of "signs-following" (S-F); which he used to describe the confirming effect of synchronicities that may follow after a significant life-experience, insight, or decision.  

As an example of signs-following; a new life-project might be decided upon, and this is followed by a series of synchronicities in our subsequent life, that (apparently) conform the validity of the new plan. 

Perhaps a phone call from a thematically-linked person out of the blue, a highly relevant book is found in an unexpected place - or falls from a shelf, a job-opportunity opens in exactly the right place... that kind of thing. 

It strikes me that this is a formal conceptualization of a common - perhaps unconscious - way that many people have of checking that they are on the right lines, have make the correct choice. 

Certainly; in my own life, important and correct decisions have always been confirmed by "signs-following". 

And this is, indeed, pretty much how I would expect divine providence to make itself known; and S-F is therefore potentially a very important matter! 

However, it would be a mistake to make a formal, explicit dogma of this way of checking; since if S-F is made into a system then it can be manipulated. 

In the first place, we may fool ourselves; by interpreting genuine coincidence as purposive, or my misinterpreting a negative sign - a warning - as if it was positive confirmation. 

And secondly the natural tendency can be exploited by external and malign powers; especially nowadays when launching a major Litmus Test strategy. 

It can be seen that top-down totalitarian strategies simulate "signs-following" - for example in the 2020 Birdemic scam, where the initial statements were followed by apparently confirmatory events of the dangers - which were either cherry-picked, semi-staged, or misinterpreted; and the pre-selected conclusions were mega-amplified by officialdom and media. 

Similarly, the "AI Revolution" almost exactly four years ago; was a top-down launched and sequenced strategy; whereby it seemed as if one after another "breakthrough" just happened to come along on cue - to confirm the impression of a qualitative advance in civilizationally-valuable technological functional capability. 

At an inter-personal level; planned sexual seduction often tries one-sidedly to exploit the innate human tendency to regard S-F as evidence of a special relationship. 

My conclusion is that signs-following are, on the one side, an essential aspect of a Romantic Christian life; and, on the other side, there must be discernment concerning the possibility of self-deception and external manipulation. 

 

How to be more creative

If creativity is understood as I described recently; then we can see why it is that in practice creativity is so rare, and also why the usual notion of "creativity" is almost the opposite of reality. 

Creativity is only natural and spontaneous if and when a person is motivated by his "soul" - his ultimate and eternal inner self. Furthermore, the soul must be motivated from love of God, and to participate in divine creation. 

But that is very seldom what motivates people. 

Instead, people are motivated by this-worldly expediency; by the desire for money, status, security, sex and all the rest of it. Now of course there must be some such motivation, or else we would not even survive, and would soon become dysfunctional. 

Nonetheless, to orientate towards, be-motivated-by, live-in-terms-of, this-worldly expediency is Not creative. 

 

Real, ultimate creativity comes from the soul and is orientated towards divine creation; creativity does not come from the personality, and creativity is not orientated towards our situation in this mortal world. 

It is not creative when our "personality" is in charge - especially when we are trying to manufacture and shape our personality to enhance our this-worldly success; e.g. when we are trying to behave as other-people (or we ourselves!) expect "a creative person" (e.g. a poet, musician, scientist etc.) to behave. 

It is not creative when our thinking, speaking and, actions are orientated towards trying to get the external world to acknowledge us as "creative" - nor when we are trying to achieve status, money, sex (or whatever) as a consequence of our publicly-acknowledged "creativity" (e.g. to be a "recognized", or "successful" poet, musician, scientist - or whatever). 

In the end; such is the pressure of this-worldly expediency that it seems is if - although every person, indeed every Being, is innately creative - extremely-few people actually are-creative at any time. 

And those who sometimes are genuinely being-creative, find it impossible to sustain for very long. 

This is because of the unrelenting pressure to survive in this mortal life, as well as the temptation to succeed. By "succeed" I mean optimizing our benefits in this-worldly terms; aiming to reap the many and various potential benefits of impressing or manipulating other people, or The System.

Indeed, it is not merely incapacity and other-priorities that suppress creativity; genuine creativity is actively suppressed by in-themselves by people-themselves; and it is also actively suppressed by some-people in other-people.

This active suppression of creativity can happen (or be justified) by "practicality" backed by a moralizing zeal that we, and others, ought to be this-worldly; that people ought to work for their own survival and success, ought to help themselves, their families, their employers, the country etc. 

Such considerations of our Duty are necessary and valid requirements for our survival and thriving in the mortal life and world... 

And yet; if these considerations of Duty are made everything, and all the time and receive all our best efforts; then we shall never be truly creative, and shall fail even to try to fulfil our God-given positive reason for experiencing this mortal life on earth.  

The spiritual-magic of the rulers: narrowing, hardening, and concentration of the will

One of the themes that goes back to the start of this blog is that demotivation is a profound problem in modern Western civilization; and that this relates to our alienation - our lack of participation in the world outside of our-selves. 

To this could be allied a feeling of lacking energy, which is partly a consequence of lacking strong motivation. 

However, the methods by which a depleted and demotivated person can attain greater vitality and purpose have their hazards - because most of these either increase our dependence on external sources, rendering us open to manipulation; and/or they have a tendency to narrow and harden the whole person. 

This trned has been culturally observable for many centuries or millennia, if one is open to the possibility; the conquering Roman and Normans discovered strong energy and purpose via a culture based on architecture and legalism. 

But there were significant human costs, or rather de-humanizing, anti-spiritual costs; whereby religion became more concentrated and single-pointed - more like a magic system of achieving willed objectives, and thereby became more alienating and isolating from relationships with God, the world of spirit, and indeed relationships with other people at a profound level. 

This is seen nowadays in the prevalent Careerism of the ruling classes, combined with intrinsically-invasive bureaucracy - and their consequent extreme hardness, narrowness, materialism, greed; and a dependence on external direction that is both habitual and ideological.

My point is that there are short-medium term and effective methods of achieving purpose and a kind of meaning in life; that are profoundly dehumanizing in the long term. 

These amount to their adherents incrementally painting themselves into a corner of emptiness, desperation, and despair; from which they can only escape by annihilation of self-awareness, and ultimately willed self-destruction. 

This extremely brittle form of adaptation to life then forms the basis for that de facto embrace of spitefulness and induced chaos as a crude and negative reaction against the narrowing and hardening which caused the situation in the first place. 

My point here is that the "will-power"-driven careerism - narrowing and hardenening of personality and institutional policy; the linkage of energy, will and direction to external authority; are very powerful on their own ground.

Those who desire to resist and oppose the dehumanizing and alienating tendency of our civilization are therefore doomed to fail if they meet the Romans, Normans, or their successors on their own ground. 

Their own ground includes the primacy of legalistic thinking, bureaucracy - including its assumptions of virtue as including obedience to external (invariably systemic) authority. 

An ancient example of this fatal self-weakening is my interpretation of why the more creative and mystical Anglo-Saxon "Celtic" Christianity (from Ireland via Iona and Lindisfarne) was overcome by the later Roman mission initiated by St Augustine of Canterbury and St Wilfrid (variously Abbot of Ripon, Bishop of Hexham, Archbishop of Canterbury) - at the Synod of Whitby.  

Celtic capacity for resistance to Roman takeover was fatally undermined and weakened because the Celtic church shared the fundamental bureaucratic and legalistic assumptions - the structured hierarchy rooted in obedience - of the Roman Church - and the Romans did bureaucracy much, much better than the Celts! 

Apparently the debate was won by the gelaitstic argument of forcing the Celts to agree that the Pope of Rome was the ultimate Christian authority, and that "therefore" all Christians must obey everything that the Pope (via his representative Wilfred) told them to do. 

I would link the Roman, and later Norman, triumphs to their architecture, to their stone temples/ monasteries, cathedrals, and churches - as well as their stone forts and castles. 

The very structure of these stone buildings, plus the highly formal and single-pointed-purpose rituals enacted within them; was a cause as well as an effect of the narrower and more concentrated form of cosnciousness that began its long and to triumphant march to domination in The West.  

Such combination of authority and obedience, systemic organization, buildings, and rituals; constitute a kind of magical activity (a method, a science indeed, for focusing conscious will power to affect people's consciousness, and shape the world) that continues, and it continues to be effective, even now.  

This magical system of domination is not essentially Christian, and has indeed become anti-Christian. But its domination will continue - including among Christians - for as long as those who oppose it in their hearts, continue to share its assumptions in their heads, and by habit and expediency.

"We" cannot stop or defeat "Them" so long as we meet Them on their own ground of systemic discourse (politics, government, law, mass media, etc); and so long as We defer to Their core assumptions regarding the ultimate value and rightness of external authority.

Unless we rid ourselves of these ultimate assumptions as to what is proper and right, and replace them with other and more powerful, motivating assumptions; We shall succumb to Their will...

We shall continue to be overcome by Their narrow and concentrated spiritual-magic, as much or more than by their material power. 

What is creativity?

Creativity is a positive personal contribution to divine creation - an addition to divine creation.  

Creativity is possible because each Being is unique (ultimately; none other is the same) and therefore each Being has something unique to add to divine creation. 

Indeed; creativity is an inevitable consequence of any Being living 

1. From its uniqueness; and 

2. In-harmony-with divine creation. 

Creation is not something we strive for!

Simply by thinking, acting, living harmoniously with divine creation; the uniqueness of each Being ensures that something "original" is always and inevitably being added to creation.

That which enables us to live in harmony with divine creation is Love: Love of God, and of Divine Creation itself.  

And this is what God wants from us: God wants us to expand divine creation in ways that God cannot.  

Note added, for clarification: Creativity requires both uniqueness and harmony with creation. Uniqueness on its own is selfishness, hence a kind of evil. If all Beings lived only from their uniqueness there would be chaos. On the other side; harmony with divine creation on its own is merely passive and ultimately futile. If all Beings lived merely in passive harmony with divine creation, there would be no point in their existing; since nothing at all would be added to God's work. 

A core purpose is to learn from life, not try to make a better world

A core purpose is that we should learn from life; that is, should spiritually learn from our actually-existing life. 

Learning is validly "core" because it can always be accomplished, by every person, in all possible circumstances.

Conversely; it is not our purpose to strive for "a better world". 

People who strive for a better world have - at root - only one suggestion, a single way of working; which is to adopt a set of rules, a "system", and to incentivize compliance. 

This Does Not Work, and trying does harm; but the opposite - ignoring rules, and lax enforcement, does not work either... 

Neither option is valid: Legalism is bad, anti-legalism is bad. 

The proper inference is that making the world better is not a proper activity, in essence it is not what we ought to be doing - plus, of course, hardly anybody is in a position to do it.

What we can and should be doing is to learn from our situation; and one thing we should learn is the futility of trying to make the world better. 

Of course, that is a negative message - but when it is learned it clears the ground for something better - for understanding what we can do and should do about "life".

We can realize, recognize, learn: 

1. What is needed, and 

2. That we cannot make it happen. 

1. What is needed is that the world be governed by love (not by rules, nor by rule-breaking or chaos).

2. We cannot, by any means, make a world governed by love.

Therefore; if we personally want a world governed by love despite that this is impossible in this world; we should seek, evaluate, and (if true) follow - one could claims that he can make a world governed by love, and can give us access to that world.  

Nothing else will suffice - if it is agreed that a world governed by love is the only answer to our deepest yearning, and that such a world cannot be this world. 

The world as it actually is, and is actually experienced, by everybody; can teach us exactly this - and teach it very clearly and forcibly... 

If we are open to spiritual learning, and recognize that as a core task of this our mortal life.

 

Saint Aidan's forked timber - Bamburgh church

Saint Aidan's church in Bamburgh is an exceptionally beautiful and interesting building; dedicated to one of the most significant of British Saints: Aidan; who came from Iona in the middle 600s to found the monastery on Lindisfarne, the Holy Island. 

This stimulated the Golden Age of Northumbria; during which the kingdom dominated Anglo Saxon England and was the centre of sanctity (especially Saint Cuthbert) learning (especially Saint Bede) and arts (especially the Lindisfarne Gospels). 

At this time, what is now the village and castle of Bamburgh was the capital of Northumbria and Anglo-Saxon civilization, it has since become mostly prized for its picturesque seaside setting, and the tourist attraction of the (much later built, and enormous) castle - regarded as being the site of Sir Lancelot's Joyous Garde in Le Morte d'Arthur. 

Anyway; it seems that Aidan was visiting Bamburgh and staying in a wooden hut situated against the church wall where he became ill and died while leaning against a large forked beam. 

His body was returned to the Holy Island for burial, but the beam was preserved as a relic and inserted into the church fabric, from which splinters were often abstracted by pilgrims. 

In 793 AD; the Priory at nearby Lindisfarne was the very first place in England that was sacked by the Vikings. The beam apparently survived at least two church burnings (whether by Vikings or Scots) - and was eventually included into the current fabric of what had become St Aidan's in medieval times...

Where it remains: raised far above the depredations of pilgrims. 

Well, such is the story - more or less. 

As a bizarre relic; St Aidan's Y-shaped beam makes a nice companion to St Kentigern's Holy Stain. 

The foreground is the nave, from the 1300s ("Decorated" Gothic period, with an early and simple version of the typical curving tracery at the tops of windows) - through the arch is the chancel (below) from the 1200s ("Early English" style, with its tall, narrow lancet windows). 

Pictured below from outside, on the west; the nave and transepts are to the left, the chancel (with a steep pitched roof) to the right. 

Later restorations and modifications include the top layer of the tower, the pointed shape over the side door of the chancel - originally to allow monks direct access to the chancel. 

Also from Victorian times is a memorial window and statue of the national heroine Grace Darling holding an oar (it used to be outside, explaining the erosion) - which at our visit had been considerably adorned with many shells, pebbles, and a fishing weight - presumably placed by modern pilgrims.

 

Friendship between adult men and women

I don't like to write much of a personal nature on this blog, and I don't intend to start; so don't ask! 

But it strikes me that friendship between adult men and women is a topic almost wholly neglected; indeed the possibility is sometimes outright denied, or else regarded as of insignificant importance compared with M-F sexual relationships, and male-male friendships. 

And my own contrary experience is relevant evidence; and so it may be worth describing - in general terms, at least - in order to make a point and support an argument. 

In my adult life between late teens and early thirties (when I married), I had several serious, reasonably long-term, women friends who were pretty much distinct from the girlfriends. 

These were all women whom I respected and found attractive, but the relationship was not primarily romantic - and we both typically dated others during the span of friendship.  

What I find interesting in retrospect is that, looking-back, I have more positive memories about my women friends than my ex-girlfriends. Indeed, from here it seems as if the friendships were more wholesome, and probably did me more lasting good, than the relationships with girlfriends! 

[Note: As a general comment, I regard real friendship as self-justifying - as not requiring justification in terms of some other advantage. Friendship is therefore one of the things we are here for.]  

Unsurprisingly; friendships with women seem to occupy a different category than those between men. 

Male friendships are mostly about shared interests and purposes. 

Women friendships require a broadly common interest, in order that activities be shared; but are less "functional"... this needs further explanation. 

I suppose all genuine friendship is voluntary and (therefore) must include mutuality: i.e. benefit on both sides. 

There is a sense that male friendships are more "functional", more focused on the business of living. It could be said that a rewarding aspect of male friendship is the sense that the both men thinks the other is "worth" expending time and effort on. 

In terms of benefit; "worth" in M-M friendship typically has some functional aspect - perhaps in terms of work, status, money, achievement - or at least in terms of the convenience of someone with whom to discuss a serious hobby, watch or attend sports events etc. 

With a female friend, mutuality is also the case, but the "benefit" is less of a functional matter; and the conversation typically less focused. 

I think what is especially rewarding in man-woman friendships is that someone of the opposite sex whom we respect and find attractive, apparently feels much the same about us; such as to spend time in our company. 

So the "benefit" of M-F friendship is perhaps mostly a matter of self-worth as a human being. At best, it is about having a place and a stake in "life", by which we are linked with another person in a chosen and complementary way.  

And maybe that is why such friendships with women have apparently left-behind good memories; despite the relationship largely lacking tangible, explicit, or material "benefits"?    

It might be argued that friendship between a man and woman cannot be stable because of the inevitable sexual tensions and potential for these to change over time, and perhaps each in different directions.

And this is probably true. But then some of these M-F friendships did last for several years, which is significant; and on the other side, male friendships were also often temporary and usually dependent on context and convenience. 

After all, this mortal life is not, and cannot be, stable. It therefore makes sense to value all that is positive and significant; despite that it will ultimately, inevitably, be partial and temporary. 

Conscientious Obedience versus Creativity - the problem of Christianity

For a very long time, in most of the world, Obedience has been prized as a Christian virtue. 

Indeed, in practice, obedience is often the primary virtue; in the sense that obedience to God, the locally-dominant Church, and legitimate secular authority was instilled and enforced as the basis for all else. 

I say "primary" virtue; because the absence of such required obedience was often deemed sufficient sufficient to trump any other virtues or distinctions. Much might be tolerated - but disobedience was not.  

Thus; to become and remain a full-member of most serious Christian churches (i.e. not-liberal-mainstream churches) typically entailed the convert adopting a lifestyle of Conscientious Obedience to complex requirements. 

Such a requirement of Conscientious Obedience is not restricted to Christianity; but on the other hand, Christianity is the only religion that defines itself as rooted in Love, and which aims at the eternal afterlife of a Heaven rooted in Love, and with individual humans retaining (and enhancing) their individuality through resurrection. 

And in the Heavenly state (if the IV Gospel is to be believed); resurrected individuals work with God and Jesus Christ - not as obedient servants, but in a familial participation in a co-creation.

In a nutshell; Jesus want friends, not servants. 

(In a nutshell: God made divine creation, and did so as a consequence divine love; but it is by Jesus that we were each enjoined to live by love as individual persons, and through Jesus that this was made fully and eternally possible by resurrection into Heaven.)

What this means is that Christians are supposed - proximately as well as ultimately - to be creative.

"Creative" in the sense of actively living-from their own selves, in alignment and harmony with God.

This entails that the traditional and long-term emphasis on Obedience as a core virtue of Christianity is mistaken; it is a fundamental misrepresentation of what is required. 

Instead of Obedience; Christians should be striving for Creativity (properly understood). In other words;  Christian ought Not to be merely obeying, not merely to live by following instructions, not merely to subordinate his will to the will of another. 

Indeed; a Christian should not aspire primarily to "serve" anything or anybody; not other individual humans, not human groups, not the church, not humankind; and not (even) God nor Jesus Christ.

Because if Christians are to fulfil God's vision of creation, fulfilled by Jesus; then Christians should be aiming to be more creative; and creativity is first of all "endogenous": it is generated from within.

As well as coming endogenously; for creativity to be genuinely creative, it needs to be in-harmony-with divine creation...

So we could say that the desired creativity is generated from Love: love of-God, and also love of "fellow Men" - which I take to mean love of "divine creation". 

And therefore such individual creativity is from its origins aligned-with divine creation. 

In sum: the traditional and inherited idea of Obedience as central to Christian living is wrong. 

Some kinds of obedience do indeed have a secondary and expedient ("means to an end") role in this mortal life - but obedience is not a primary virtue for Christians; and it is wrong for Christians to aspire to the negative intention to subordinate their "selves" to any external will. 

Instead; Christians ought to aspire to the positive goal of encouraging their inner-generated creativity; an "overflowing" from each individual person's Love of God and of Divine Creation. 

All this happens because true creativity originates in love. It is by love that personal thinking and activity which originates in the uniqueness of each individual; is also, by its nature and origin, harmonious with divine creative intent.       

  

NOTE: The conflict between creativity and obedience can be seen in the life and legacy of Jesus Christ himself - as well as many of the great "genius" Christian innovators who followed over the centuries. 

The recurrent pattern is one of a highly creative, individualistics, and disobedient founder; swiftly having his work reduced to a system of instructions to which obedience is required. The unique and personal gets reformed into just-another variant of institutional, generic-religion. Inner and individual creativity is displaced (and suppressed) by an external social-system demanding conscientious obedience. 

Two of many possible examples are St Francis of Assisi - whose individual and creative innovations were institutionally-incorporated into monastic and university structures - even during his lifetime. And more recently Joseph Smith the Mormon prophet - whose extraordinarily fertile, wild and free, inner-derived personal creativity - crystallized into a prescriptive and obedience-focused, extremely-conscientiousness-demanding, social system. 

What needs to be borne in mind is that conscientiousness (which is, roughly, a personal disposition and aptitude to obey external demands) is reciprocally opposed to the highest forms of publicly-recognized individually-generated creativity as seen in genius. 

The Head Girl is an anti-genius! 

No demography without biology; or, you can't validly predict human reproduction on the basis of maths and stats alone

I keep seeing people online making invalid but would-be reassuring demographic predictions concerning the future of human populations on the basis of purely mathematical criteria. 

I mean optimistic predictions that despite (for instance...) massive sub-fertility, strongly dysgenic reproductive patterns, and a tremendous weakening of natural selection against spontaneous mutations that cumulatively erode functionality (especially behavioural functionality); the world human (or especially Christian", "Western" or "Developed nations") populations will rapidly be able to recover from the ongoing and multi-decade demographic collapse. 

And recover without suffering dysfunctional consequences - is the hopeful assertion. 

The reason for non-validity of predictions is nearly-always the same: trying to explain and predict human reproduction without taking into account human biology; implicitly as if humans were abstract, self-multiplying entities. 

But humans are animals, and subject to biological constraints; and so reproductive explanations and predictions are certain to be wrong when some of the most important and relevant biological factors are unknown, unappreciated - and omitted. 

I am certainly not claiming to have known all of the biologically relevant aspects; but compared to most would-be "things will work-out fine" demographers the range and depth of my knowledge of human biology is truly titanic! And the errors-by-omission that they are making are blazingly obvious. 

But human beings are not just biology, and we are ultimately spiritual in our natures - so even the most ideally-informed human biologist would not be able to understand human reproductive behaviour without taking spiritual and divine aspects into consideration. 

However; when spiritual and divine aspects are included, these then become subject to critique. 

If the reassuring,"don't worry", demographers seriously posit an optimistic future on the basis that "God will save us" (in some fashion or another) then this is an explicit model of divine intervention that itself requires critical examination. 

Such an assumption that God would need, or even want, to step-in and save "us" (whichever "us" is meant) from demographic decline or extinction by some miracle, is certainly not obvious to me!

Indeed, the opposite seems at least equally plausible:

I mean the assumption that the most purposively-evil civilization in human history may deserve, or perhaps need, to be functionally-eliminated; if creation is to continue with good hopes of maximizing human salvation. 

My aversion to the RIP (Rest in Peace) trope - more on its anti-Christian implications

I have mentioned before my personal aversion to the RIP "Rest in Peace" trope; or, more exactly, that I think the wished desire for "peace" is revelatory of the alienated perspective of a modernity of consciousness. 

It is striking how much a desire for "peace" is expressed in The Book of Common Prayer (in origin a product of the 1500s modified in the 1600s, mainly). 

And - while this old usage of the peace word is much broader than the modern one (and while it may also reflect a rather temporally and culturally specific yearning to end the many generations of bitter intra-Christian religious conflict in England) - I nonetheless regard the oft-repeated yearning for peace to be an early indicator of a shift away from the desire for resurrection into post-mortal Heaven, toward the modern desire for post-mortal annihilation. 

Of course, peace is - in context - a Good Thing, and the idea of "resting" in peace is desirable and valuable; yet in a Christian context, peace is not a goal in itself, but essentially a means to an end. 

And while the opposites of peace - such as war, conflict, hassle - are mostly undesirable, especially post-mortally; even this may not be wholly true to human nature. 

For instance; the broad "Valhalla" idea of a warrior paradise of daily fighting and slaying, followed by a diurnal restoration of health is expressive of a desire for something very different from "peace". And if Paradise includes pleasurable sexual activity, this desire likewise opposes a wish for peace.  

Peace is analogous to sleep: where the phase of deep and dreamless sleep is restorative, essential, and culturally undervalued; nonetheless if unconsciousness were to become the core aspiration in mortal life, this aspiration negates any positive reason for mortal life. 

If the nature of our life was that we mostly wanted to escape it and rest in peace; then why bother with living at all?

If it is best to be un-conscious, then why develop and mature towards adulthood? Why even be born? We might as well short-circuit to death; and thereby skip the whole messy and often miserable business of being-alive. 

For the modern consciousness; the notion of Resting in Peace is a covert suicide wish; in which suicide is assumed to lead to a post-mortal destruction of everything that is our-self. 

For the modern mind, peace and death are an escape from life. 

By contrast; what Jesus made possible and offered us is More life and a better life...

A post-mortal state in which we remain-ourselves, but immortal, and living-on in a world (Heaven) based-on love between its inhabitants...

A world that is negatively without evil, decay, and death - but therefore positively a world where love and creation are permanent; where memories, relationships and growth are cumulative.

There is surely a place for "peace" in Heaven, but peace is not the point of Heaven. And when peace becomes the major aspiration, we implicitly reject the offer of Jesus and instead aspire either to lose our-self - either by some kind of dissolution back into the divine one-ness; or else in mainstream culture when people reject continued-living and prefer annihilation.  

Who wins, who loses, the game of Idolatry (and AI-dolatry)?

Real relationships are between Beings; and Beings are eternally existent. 

Beings are described in terms of attributes such as life, consciousness, purposiveness, agency etc. But ultimately Beings aren't inferred from observations; but must be known directly, known by intuition; known "by assumption".

(We are born with such innate, "instinctive", intuitions: necessarily so.) 

Therefore there is potential for error, for delusion, for false assumptions; as when a person treats a not-Being as a real Being: and this is called Idolatry. 

Classically; a situation of idolatry might concern something like a carved wooden idol that not a Being but is related-to (by at least some people) as if it were A Being.  

We can imagine how such a situation might arise and work. There are those who know that the idol is not a Being - evil priests, perhaps; and there are those deluded persons who relate to the idol, believe the idol is an agent, and believe the idol is a god. 

These idolators then believe that what "the idol" tells them is true, and will obey what "the idol" tells them they must do. 

Meanwhile, of course, it is the evil priests who are manipulating the situation in order to create and sustain the delusion that the idol is A Being (and a god). 

The evil priests might arrange for the idol apparently to move, speak, eat... That the evil will emit messages that are received and interpreted by the priests. They might even arrange that the idol would seem to kill, or order killings.   

And the evil priests who create and sustain the delusional idolatry might self-consciously and (more or less) sincerely regard themselves as unselfish, and operating the system "for the benefit" of the deluded idolators - at least insofar as the priests themselves judge "benefit". 

In other words; the evil priests may regard themselves as good priests.  

 

In reality, the nature of this situation is that the idol is a tool of those who know that the idol is not a Being. 

The population is divided into "those who know", and "those who are deluded". 

Those idolators who delusionally believe the idol is a Being are controlled by those manipulators who know that the idol is not a Being.

The mass of idolators are at best unwitting, unconscious, objects of manipulation - perhaps manipulated for their own benefit? Or perhaps for their own exploitation and harm. 

But while they remain deluded; idolators are in no position to evaluate benefits or harms. 

*

An idol might be almost anything. 

It might be as simple as a doll, a statue, or a picture; or the idol might be a more complicated device such as a clock-work, an animated simulacrum.

An idol might be something something imperceptible; including something abstract; like a church, ideology, values. 

The idol might be a computer, a robot, or a software programme: as with our currently prevalent AI-dolatry. 

Whatever the idol might be, the basic situation remains identical: Those who know the idol is not a Being are - indirectly, via the idol- in-control-of those who have a delusional-relationship with the idol.

The deluded idolators are controlled; both physically in terms of their actions, and spiritually in terms of their assumptions, convictions, motivations, beliefs, and faith.

In a state of idolatry; the winners are those who know the idol is not a real Being; the losers are those who regard the idol as an agent. 

And those who regard the idol as an agent are losers - even when they believe they are winners! 

Because idolators are incapable of knowing benefits from harms.  

The only way out from this situation; is for the deluded idolators to become aware that their idol is not a Being, not alive/ conscious/ purposive/ intelligent: that the idol is not an agent.

Note: The concept of Idolatry is a core subject of Owen Barfield's profound study Saving the Appearances. 

Magical self-journaling

I have written before of my practice of "journaling", which goes back more than forty years. For a long time now, this has consisted of the (almost) daily, early morning (before 11.00 am) practice of writing in a notebook for an hour or more. 

But this is not at all like writing a normal journal or diary - it is not-at-all meant to form a record of my doings, nor even a record of my thoughts (such as a "commonplace book") - because the notes are ephemeral. 

I do not look at my writings again after they are written, except during the actual process, and sometimes to jog my memory to write a blog post on the themes that arise. 

Indeed, I invariably destroy everything I have written during this process! 

Evidently; my writing of this kind is not for other-people, nor is it for my future self. 

So what is my "journaling" for? 

I have realized that my journaling can be conceptualized as a magical process - directed at what Dion Fortune called (in a much and variously quoted definition) the purposive activity of using techniques of changing human consciousness in accordance with will...

The way I do journaling is self-directed and consumed by itself; it forms a synergy between the processes of writing and thinking: in general terms it is a means to an end. 

The intent is to discover, induce, and sustain; a particular and focused frame of mind directed towards my current concerns.

In specific terms, this magical-self-journaling can have many purposes related to changed consciousness. 

At the most general, it could relate to changing my own emotional state. This could be therapeutic - to improve how I feel when I am in an aversive frame of mind. Or it could be to enhance a mundane habit of thinking into an enchanted mood. 

Or magical self-journaling could be directed at fairly specific problem solving, relating to some dominating concern; such as when I am doing theoretical science, philosophy, or theology. 

Or, it could be about actually finding and clarifying some vague or nagging problem about which I am unclear. 

It could also be about developing an inner "contact"; a direct relationship, with some other person or Being. 

In principle (but I do not do this) this might at one extreme be "automatic writing" when the writer passively channels further writing. 

Or (and I don't do this either) it might be to try and develop some kind of alliance with a contacted Being, to attain some this-worldly goal. 

In my case; this could be to make an inner contact with some (usually deceased) person or Being for friendship's sake, getting to know another; ultimately from a motivation of love.   

In a nutshell; I think of this magical self-journaling is a fairly stereotyped activity that can be directed at many possible ends. 

In principle the aims might be passive and contemplative - a matter of dreamlike attunement to reality, the stimulation of inner imaginings; or might be almost the opposite: active and purposive, including creative. 

And, as with all magic, the method is not intrinsically Good, because magical self-journaling can be directed at either good aims - i.e. in-alignment-with God and creation ("White magic"); or evil ends such as selfish self-gratification working against the divine (that is to say Black magic). 

Which, of these; and whether an episode of magical self-journaling serves the broad intentions of Christian faith, or else opposes this; is a product of my choice, my freedom.