The Litmus Tests revisited - or, what do we need to know about some-one/ some-institution?

The Litmus Tests* may seem crude and formulaic as a way of discernment applied to a person or institutions; but in reality they are almost the opposite. 

The Litmus Tests include the birdemic-peck 'healthism' agenda; support of the opponents of the Fire Nation in the ongoing war; antiracism; pro-sexual revolution; CO2 Climate-change/ warming; and any other form of leftism such as socialism, environmentalism, equality, diversity, libertarianism etc. 

The Litmus Tests refer not so much to specific beliefs, but to the core agenda items of the global totalitarian System, which - properly understood, from a Christian perspective - is evil in its intent -- i.e. the dominant System ultimately seeks the damnation of souls; which requires that (in the end) each soul desires and chooses to be damned. 

Therefore, to fail a Litmus Test means to be subordinated - in at least one major aspect, although typically many or most of the tests are failed - to the external ideology of evil. 

When somebody, or some institution, supports one of the Litmus test agenda items; this is evidence of value-inversion; which is evidence that they are self-subordinated to the dominant external agenda. 

In a sense, from the perspective of making an overall evaluation of somebody's (or some organization's) affiliation in the spiritual war of this world; this affiliation tells us all we need to know: Are they on the side of God/ divine creation/ The Good -- or are they opposed? 

Anyone who accepts, defends, follows, actively advances any of the Litmus Tests - has placed his motivations, thinking and actions under external control from those powers who oppose The Good.

This matter of external control is very significant. 

Because the world (here, now) is so pervasively and top-down corrupted by evil; all powerful external influences are evil. 

Therefore; to be externally-motivated - including by any large or mainstream church, of any denomination) is to be a part of the agenda of evil.  

(This is evil. Evil is Not about niceness or good works or devoutness... Evil is about taking the side of Satan against God. Simple as that. One on-the-side-of Good is Good; no matter what his personal sins - because anyone on the side of Good will/ must have repented his sins; will know, acknowledge, and reject his sins. That is what it means to "be Good".)

Such is the nature of Litmus Tests: they function as an index of whether some person or group has chosen subordination to fundamental, ultimate, external control. 

As of here-and-now; only one who seriously seeks to detach himself from external control can be on the side of God, divine creation and The Good. 

Such a detached person may Not be on the Good side - because he might choose evil from his own inner motivations; but only a detached person can affiliate to Good. 

In our totalitarian and media-saturated world; only inner evaluation and motivation can be a source of commitment to the motivation of Goodness. 

We are Good as individuals - from our inner choices - or not-at-all. 

Affiliation to any external authority is to subscribe to one, more, or many of the negative, incoherent, and oppositional Litmus Tests; and this represents a decisive affiliation to the work of Satan. 

Note added: It should not really be necessary to say so; but maybe it needs saying anyway: that the state of someone's soul now - e.g. affiliation to the Satanic agenda, as evidenced by Litmus Test failure - does not mean that they will choose damnation at the last. Indeed; I think it almost certain that an individual person is only sustained alive for as long as he is judged capable of repentance; which means that where there is life there is hope. However; the same does not necessarily apply to institutions/ groups/ corporations - including churches. Whereas there are many (including recent) examples of individual persons (and, presumably, other Beings) who seem very likely to have repented and chosen salvation despite previous servitude to evil - and done so very late, very near to death; there seem to be none among recent institutions. This may be because the kind of corruption that afflicts most modern institutions is one that excludes the ultimacy of the kind of "presiding spiritual Being" that used-to stand-behind traditional institutions (variously conceptualized as patron saints, angels, and the like). I would guess that so long as there is a presiding spiritual Being, then repentance is possible. But when there has been a hollowing-out, bureaucritization, self-subordination of an institution to external influences, then there can be no basis for repentance. 

Those on-side with the Establishment-woke-totalitarian agenda have utterly lost the capacity to evaluate even minimal standards of competence and functionality

Most people, probably nearly everybody who contributes to mainstream public discourse, are on-board with the Establishment-woke-totalitarian agenda - especially when it comes to the sexual revolution, antiracism, carbon-climate and the other Litmus Test issues that provide the means for top-down strategic socio-political implementation. 

Precisely because they put The Agenda first and central in their value systems, these people - who are, I stress, most people: "normal people", Nice people - as well as those with managerial roles and leadership responsibilities - are unable to judge quality. 

Not just un-willing, but un-able. The ability is gone, drowned, dead. 

They cannot see when people or institutions have failed to reach even the bare minimum of (what should be) acceptable standards of functionality or ability.

They cannot see when some venture (project, movie, war, policy...) has been a catastrophic failure - and are very likely to celebrate it's exemplary success.  

They cannot see when someone is a bad actor, a not-scientists or hopeless engineer, a rubbish artist or mediocre musician; they cannot tell when a corporation is not just failing to be be good but actively becoming bad; they cannot even notice when political parties or managers are actively (and by many devices) engage the in destruction of nations, organizations, institutions over which they have power. 

It is futile to argue to with such people, or to try and convince them. We need to understand that this is a case of cannot: they cannot discern good from evil, truth seeking from gross lies, they regard deliberate ugliness as a higher form of beauty; they regard whatever is most fully leftist as intrinsically high in quality. 

The totalitarian-woke agenda is at the root of their sense of being, their motivations, their world view - and anyone who tries to discuss values as realities will be regarded as vile, loathsome, and so stupid that they ought never to be listened to. 

If or when anyone attempts to apply discernment of quality, or to seek the true, virtuous or lovely - and gains the slightest rational or emotional traction - they will feel a kind of slippage of the mind, will become overwhelmed by a suffocating sensation, convulsed by visceral disgust, nausea and loathing, such that the urgent and absolute need is to stop the assault, silence the perpetrator, slander and destroy. 

It is impossible to overestimate the severity of this condition. Utterly useless, embarrassingly incompetent people, groups and companies can and shall be praised to the skies as paragons of brilliance and originality - and every expression of this crazed ridiculousness will be carried on a tide of warm, fuzzy, floaty, feel-good peer-solidarity -- the more inverted the expression, the more wonderful the feelings. 

Welcome to mass and social media - and the mass human intercourse so completely enslaved to it - of  2023! 

This is what it means to be in thrall to Satanic values, inverted-values; an anti-system of valuations that are motivated by opposition to God, divine creation, and The Good. 

Why did the sixties/ seventies counter-culture makes things worse instead of better?

At the time of the late sixties and early 1970s; there was a general feeling that - even if the specific content of the counter-culture (e.g. mysticism, radical politics, 'mind-expanding' drugs, astrology, tarot, magic, neopaganism andwitchcraft, crystals, geomancy, flying saucers etc.) was not valid, and was risky to health and sanity; such activities might well serve as a first step towards a genuine answer to the problem of alienation and totalitarian bureaucracy (The System).   

But this did not happen, and instead the counter-culture became the New Age, and converged with mainstream-leftist socio-politics; usually by embracing the sexual revolution through its continual mutations, and then picking the wrong side with later Litmus Test issues that were being used strategically towards the totalitarian world government that eventually emerged into the open in early 2020. 

There were what, at the time, sounded-like reasonable and plausible arguments as to why the negative critique of The System, and the attempt to achieve an integrated wholeness of personality, were beneficial in themselves and would tend towards even better things. Experience, however, showed that in general this was not happen, is not happening. 

The reason is quite simple, which is that socio-political movements such as the counter-culture are operating at a relatively superficial level, beneath which are metaphysical assumptions concerning the nature of reality. 

When these assumptions (which are usually unconscious, and/or regarded as being empirically-derived - e.g. from 'science' - rather than the assumptions they actually are) are such as to sustain the totalitarian-System, then that is what will emerge; no matter how seemingly radical may be a person's surface opinions and lifestyle.   

That, I believe, is why the sixties radicals became the bureaucrats of the 80s, 90s and into the millennium. And why this process continues. 

 

What makes a successful pilgrimage, and why?

View of Glastonbury Tor from Wearyall Hill (where boats would arrive when Avalon was an island) 

In relation to my post from earlier today, which emphasized the role of individual, autonomous thinking in the world; a recent visit to Glastonbury seems relevant. Glastonbury has unsurpassed importance in the deep (and mythical, as well as historical) nature of Christianity in the British Isles. 

Yet since the 1970s, it has become a magnet for a New Age neo-paganism that is "anything-but-Christianity" in its basic stance. 

This -- even when New Age neo-paganism weaves-in versions of Christian legends about Jesus visiting Somerset as a child; the site of the first Christian church in Britain (and perhaps the first outside Palestine); a foundational role of Joseph of Arimathea; and the influences of the Holy Grail (also, perhaps, the Spear of Destiny). 

Thus, many of the people encountered in and around Glastonbury are on the anti-Christian side in the spiritual war of this world. 

On the other hand, Glastonbury was the chosen residence (and spiritual focus) of the recently deceased writer Geoffrey Ashe - which counts for something positive in my book. 

So, the situation is that the surface and social aspects of Glastonbury are mostly hostile and aversive to my kind of Christian spirituality; while the depths and resonances are tremendous. 

A visit therefore depends (even more than visits usually do) on the attitude we bring to the place. I think this is the case now days, with our autonomous consciousness, than it was in the past. For example, in ancient times and into the middle ages, it seems that a place of Holy pilgrimage would have an objective and essentially-irresistible beneficial effect on the pilgrim. 

But, even if so, that is certainly not the case anymore: to physically move oneself to what was called the Holyest Erthe in England is no longer beneficial unless one brings the right frame of mind. So much is clear from observing modern 'pilgrims', or hearing them talking about their experiences. 

This recent visit was with my brother; and focused on the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey, seeking books by Dion Fortune and Gareth Knight in the esoteric bookshops, the Chalice Well, and the Holy Thorn on Wearyall Hill. 

For, no doubt, a combination of reasons; our visit to Glastonbury was successful in terms of pilgrimage. We were able to see through whatever was aversive about the surface and many of the people; and experience what lay deeper. 

The question that comes to me now, is whether this benefit was wholly explicable in terms of perceiving the past shining through the present. And I think not. 

I think that the past as such has not this power; and what we are actually experiencing in such situations is the effect of living thinking of the alive (and the so-called dead) people for whom Glastonbury is a living spiritual resource. 

In other words; perhaps we are dealing with something much like what ritual magicians term 'thought-forms', or something like Jung implied by Archetypes. The positive, holy, creative thoughts of Christians have made a living, always-present spiritual resource that may be tapped-into by those who share such motivations. 

To tap-into such thought-forms does not require geographical proximity; yet the complex of attitudes and actions required to place oneself in Glastonbury, and to move around it in an attitude of expectation, can shape the mind to become especially receptive.

And, not only receptive. Having linked to a thought-form, our own thinking will (to some extent) modify, add-to, enhance that thought-form; and it is our experience of this participation that is exactly what makes a pilgrimage special and beneficial. 

The primary and essential role of personal understanding in these times of seismic change

How is it that we can live in a world where people's ideas are so very wrong, where their aspirations are so distorted and trivial (when not actually evil - which is common enough); where there is not even the most basic awareness of these times as ones of seismic spiritual and geopolitical change - and insofar as there is awareness is is a kind-of value inversion, leading to the opposite of virtue, truth and beauty...

How come all this can be true; and yet there be so much virtue in the world, beauty in our surroundings, decent truthfulness between people - even strangers; enough people doing a good job that things continue? 

How can this be, when the entirety of public discourse, officialdom, the mass media, gossip and chit-chat... is so utterly wrong?

What is the origin of the undoubted but invisible good that is implied by so much of our world; when there is no much - so much more obvious - evil?    

These times of Western civilizational collapse are Not, in any deep or significant way, a recapitulation of any earlier civilizational collapse - and, indeed, I think it is probable that each earlier collapse was at heart unique, with only superficial similarities. 

Here and now; I feel that the role of individual understanding is primary: it is what we ought to be doing. And, insofar as there are good things in life now, it is because of understanding (rather than, for instance, because of 'actions'). 

What I mean is that human consciousness is currently operating in uncharted territory. By adulthood we each have, all-but, lost that spontaneous and immersive groupishness that our ancestors experienced (the further back in time, the more groupish, and the less individually autonomous).

There are many consequences. One is that the traditional forms of groupishness (e.g. extended familie/ clans, guilds and unions, professions, villages, occupations) are either absent (destroyed or neglected to death), or weak, and/or assimilated to totalitarian bureaucracy. 

(In other words, spontaneous groupisness has been displaced and replaced by top-down bureaucracy - and there is no other form of effective groupishness.) 

Ultimately; this is because people do not now spontaneously and inevitable fall-into groupishness as they once did; and people have chosen instead to grasp-at whatever groupishness is most easily on offer. And what is on offer her-and-now is... the groups created and sustained by the totalitarian Establishment.     

So, we find-ourselves as natural/ inevitable individualists; we don't fall into groups naturally; and the overwhelming response in the West has been a choice to ally with... whatever non-spontaneous groups are in our environment. 

And all of these groups are already, and increasingly, part of the global System. 

However; if we regard the waxing individualism and autonomy of Men through known-history as part of divine destiny; then in the first place we see that individual freedom and choice - and therefore personal responsibility - has become unavoidable; and secondly that it is of essential significance how we choose. 

Since we now just-are individuals, and because God makes this world; then individuals have (thrust upon them!) a much greater significance than in the past. 

The actual nature of the 2023 world can be seen as directing-us (herding-us, channeling-us...) each towards what we ought to be doing; while of course, the decision of what specifically to do (which way to jump!) necessarily remains our own. 

(The world brings us to the point of choice; and then we each choose. God has a definite preference how we should choose, but God cannot compel us to make that choice - and would not wish to compel us.) 

So we find-ourselves in a world where any group we might decide to join is either too weak to make a physical difference, or else a part of the problem. Any effective action we might take, has been pre-emptively neutralized, or indeed weaponized against us. 

This sounds bad; but if we simply accept this reality, and start from where we actually-are; then we can see that other possibilities have opened-up, even as the old groupish ones have closed. 

If only we become aware of, then reject, the assumption (so widely held) that our thoughts do not matter, and do not affect the world; then we may realize that individual autonomy enables each person to affect the world by his own thinking, in ways that were never possible before - because thinking was never previously so individual, was always previously (to a significant extent, increasing as we move further back into the past) a part of groupishness. 

In the past; people could not, and did not want to (could not even conceptualize), thinking as individuals. But now we can hardly avoid doing so. 

We now (for the first time, in a widespread fashion) have the ability to understand as individuals, evaluate as individuals, and personally decide upon what we want and where our allegiance is allocated. 

And, so long as we recognize that thinking just-is effectual in changing the world: that thinking changes that world: that every choice has real-life outcomes; this automatically and inevitably means that when we understand some-thing and, after evaluating it, make a choice as to whether we personally endorse or oppose it -- we are making a difference. 

That process of thinking, that sequence of thinking, makes a difference to reality; and in the direction we choose.

Each individual has immense power located in his thinking... But, that power is only individual - only our power - when thinking is individual, when we take responsibility for our thinking and our choices!

The vast changes of society towards individualism can therefore be understood as putting each of us into a position where we are confronted by choices which we can either embrace and learn-from; or else deny and hide-from. 

It hinges on understanding. Do we recognize that understanding is the most important (and necessary) think we can do, when confronted by Life? The pre-requisite of any possibility of Good? 

Or do we accept the Establishment line that thoughts are just in-the-head and it is only by effective physical action (and therefore by action in groups) that we may live well?

To be overwhelmed by the evil, pain, and suffering of this mortal world; is a demonic temptation

It happens sometimes - whether from something in one's own life; or (more often, nowadays) a depiction in the mass media, a novel, movie or TV show; or maybe after wakening from a nightmare... We become acutely, or chronically - obsessively; preoccupied with the evil, pain and suffering of this mortal world. 

For the past two or three centuries, such a conviction or obsession in a person (or institution) has generally been regarded as a sign of admirable moral sensitivity, and perhaps of actual ethical superiority. 

The belief could be summarized as: this is the ultimate reality of our world, it is intolerable; and something must urgently and as the number-one priority, be done to reform the situation with a view to eliminating the problem. 

Such a conviction has become the focus and bedrock of a wide range of 'reformist'/ leftist socio-political movements (abolition, pacifism, socialism, feminism, antiracism, healthism, environmentalism, and the sexual revolution for instance). Such a conviction has, indeed, become universal in all mainstream politics, the media, large corporations of all sorts; and among the ultra-rich-and-most-powerful. 

Such a conviction has also become the focus and bedrock of Christianity, for large numbers of self-identified Christians of all denominations and none - including most of the most influential Christian leaders. 

Theology, scripture, Christian history and everything else has been re-interpreted in this light, such that it is increasingly difficult to find anything else in the mainstream of churches.  

Jesus Christ Himself is usually regarded as having done something (what exactly he did, varies widely) towards remedying, or at least reducing, this vast weight of evil/ pain/ suffering.  

Yet, it strikes me with considerable force, that this line of thinking is a vast demonic temptation. 

This kind of insight and awareness is of-the-devil, not of-God. 

This provenance in-evil would be well worth bearing in mind, when such considerations seem compelling, and especially when we realize that the powers of propaganda and persuasion are trying to overwhelm us with exactly such a conviction.  

Death is a type of evil, and the only path to pure Good

Entropy (the tendency to decay, the inevitability of death) is dominant in this mortal world and the known universe. 

Entropy is a type of evil: because so long as entropy is, then whatever is Good will decay, will die. 

Thus decay and death are an evil. 

And yet, since Jesus Christ; death is also potentially a path to everlasting life in Heaven... In other words, to a mode of existence without entropy, without decay or death.

(Because all evil - including entropy - has been left-behind.) 

Indeed, death is the only path to eternal, sinless life. 

Therefore; while death is an evil, for a Christian death of the mortal body it is also the death of evil: the one and only path to Good. 

Exactly such is the Christian's experience of the fact of death: 

For us; death is a terrible and unavoidable evil. 

And death is our necessary path to an otherwise unattainable everlasting, wholly-Good, way of being. 

Secret personal resistance probably works better than politics

Organized politics is an energy-trap. 

The Establishment do what they want, without regard to law or rules; but sometimes they declare a law which confirms what they are already doing - and those who oppose are thereby "invited" to organize and oppose it. 

But such campaigns against evil rules are an energy-trap for those who try to oppose them. It takes a great deal of effort from lots of people to stop a law, and if if this "succeeds" then it will make no discernable improvement on what we currently have. 

This is what happened with Brexit. It took vast and exhausting effort for the UK to "leave" the EU - and now that it has supposedly happened, we find that it makes zero difference! We have had a Brexit-in-name-only (BRINO) - and the proponents of Brexit are demoralized. Probably this was always planned.

Or Trump versus Biden. From the perspective of those who oppose global totalitarianism, Trump was supposedly a better president than Biden... Yet the fact is that with Trump as President, and after three years in power, we got 2020: with the international coup, the bidemic-peck, and "MLB". 2020 was the worst period of time since WWII. 

Politics here and now is full of energy-traps; which depend on people believing subtle and speculative calculations; such as that the UK post-BRINO is even-worse than it would have been without Brexit; or that Trump staying President would have led to things being significantly better than they are now. 

And yet, and yet...

I think a significant number of British people must be resisting in various quiet ways, because things have not been getting worse as quickly as I expected they would be, back in 2020. 

If one judged by the public discourse, there is zero perceptible resistance to the totalitarian agenda. However, a good deal of the surveillance and control apparatus from the 2020 era has been removed; whereas I fully expected it would be permanent, and increased. (As was explicitly and frequently announced.) 

Such a minor reversal is nonetheless a reversal. 

Why did it happen? 

It was clearly not due to the leadership class having become better people, or abandoning the totalitarian agenda! - So, I suppose there must be significant invisible, unreported, maybe secret resistance.

That seems to be what They assume, and what They are trying to stamp-out. 

My message here is not one of optimism: I remain very pessimistic. 

But realistically, it seems that British "people" in 2023 are not quite as beaten as they were (or seemed to be) in 2020. 

Why this is so, I don't understand - not least because the whole thing seems very secret because unorganized and individual. 

At any rate, it seems that secret personal resistance works better than politics.  

Distinguish but don't Divide: The problem of abstracting (the example of Time)

Owen Barfield, in What Coleridge Thought, provided a useful terminology that can be used to help define legitimate from illegitimate abstraction. 

It is always permissible and sometimes useful (or even necessary) to distinguish, that is to 'analyze' and discuss; but when we 'divide' along the lines distinguished, we have done something that may lead to immediate error, and will always lead to problems if pushed far enough. 

Negatively expressed: Just because a distinction is 'valid' (i.e. useful in 'real life') does Not mean that it is valid to divide (abstract) along the lines of that distinction. 

Positively expressed: Reality can be distinguished and analyzed in open-endedly many ways. But dividing along the lines of such distinctions is always ultimately wrong, when that division is made in a way that violates reality.  

This is the problem of abstraction; indeed distinguish versus divide could be used as a way of separating good-abstracting from bad-abstracting. 

An example I've already discussed on this blog is Time. 

The nature of Time depends, ultimately, on our ultimate metaphysical assumptions concerning the nature of reality. My assumption is that ultimate reality is Beings - that reality consists of living, conscious, purposive Beings (such as humans, animals, plants, and including entities that are nowadays regarded as non-living such as - probably - stars, perhaps planets. The assumption I make is that every-thing is either a Being in its own right, or part of a Being.  

If this is reality, then Time must be an aspect of a Being. Time must be something to do with the livingness and consciousness of a purposive Being.

This means that it is OK (in principle) to discuss and analyze Time in relation to a Being or some Beings; but that if we divide Time off from any reference to Beings - then we have committed an abstraction, and are no longer dealing with reality. 

In other words, when we treat Time abstractly, and divided from Beings; we have made a model. It is not necessarily wrong to make a model, and of course models of reality may be useful in many ways - after all, that's what science and engineering are all about. 

But they are only useful when we know that they are models; and in our modern Godless society, where most people believe (mostly on the basis of abstract physics models and biological models, that are assumed to be reality) that ultimate reality is a purposeless accident; it is clear that people believe models, and only models!

What I am saying here; is that the deep reason that so many abstractions (including models, and - importantly - including a great deal of Christian theology) are wrong and harmful (in so many ways!); is that they are not just distinguished as sub-aspects of reality - but in conceptualization and practice, these abstractions have-been divided from their ultimate and real basis in Beings.   

Why do so many people talk so much about Psychopaths nowadays?

I notice that the term "psychopath" is being used a lot more frequently now than in the past*; and I think the underlying reason is that the mainstream modern 'materialistic' ideology has no way of defining or explaining evil - and psychopathy is being used as a secular substitute. 

Why? At one level, probably because, as a diagnosis, psychopathy has pretty solid pragmatic value (the term dates back into the 19th century when it was 'moral insanity') in terms of having some hereditary basis, and predictive value. Most observant people recognize the type when it is described, and can confirm its validity from personal experience. 

Also (perhaps) because although all societies in the past seem to have had psychopaths, at a low level of prevalence - psychopaths have almost certainly become more common and much more successful all-round in modern societies.

This because of several factors. One is that psychopaths have considerably more offspring than average. More offspring in modern societies - but not traditional/ tribal societies. There are more niches in modern societies where psychopaths can thrive, and which perhaps encourage mild psychopaths to become more extreme. 

The rate of psychopathy was kept low in the past because they would be killed by the societies upon-whom they preyed - killed one way or another (by execution, or ostracism and exile - which would usually do the same only more slowly). 

Without paternal support (which psychopaths never provide) the offspring of psychopaths would seldom survive. Since the condition is significantly hereditary, such culling of psychopaths and their offspring would keep the prevalence low. 

Psychopathy is something that the majority of people can agree is A Bad Thing, at least at the superficial level of public discourse and gossip; because it is selfish rather than altruistic, and seeks immediate gratification rather than long term benefit... 

On the other hand; this also gives the idea of being a psychopath some appeal - and there exists a kind of envy of someone who can operate successfully in such a fashion - successfully exploiting other people to satisfy their own wants. 

Such characters are quite often an archetypal anti-hero in modern media and society (e.g. a life dedicated to "sex and drugs and rock and roll" - so popular an aspiration for adolescents and young adults - is basically validating a psychopathic life). 

Therefore, psychopath is a term that performs an up-front function of coordinating the majority of cooperative (and perhaps pathologically-altruistic) people against a minority of parasites - without solving the problem itself, because modern society encourages psychopathy. Such are the favourite kind of strategies of totalitarian bureaucrats and the mass media: to encourage hand-wringing concern over a problem while actually making it worse. 

And then there is the covert agenda, of encouraging psychopath-envy and -emulation by a soft-sell of the psychopath lifestyle as fun and cool - which appeals to the increasingly Sorathic mindset of the Western ruling class. 

But psychopathy does not really solve the problem of evil, because it just kicks the can a bit further down the road. 

After all, why - from a mainstream secular materialist perspective - is psychopathy regarded as a Bad Thing? 

Because it is selfish and short-termist - yes; but then why is selfishness a bad thing (if you can get away with it)? 

And why is long-termism better - when nobody really knows what will happen in the future, and in the long term we will all be dead? 

If psychopathy is supposed to be bad because it cares nothing for the group - then why is the group supposed to be more important than the individual? And who decides what is best for the group?... Well, we know the answer in practice: the Establishment (governments, media, bureaucrats, corporations) are the ones who decides what matters to the group - as everyone saw in 2020. 

The Establishment are very keen on a morality that places the group above the individual, since in practice They get to dictate which group matters most, and what counts as being for that group's benefit of harm. 

(e.g. According to Them; the supposed prevention of even just one death attributed to the Birdemic, was worth sacrificing the entirety of the economy, freedom, well--being, and all deaths from other causes to achieve. Disability, disease and deaths from the Peck were deemed not to exist, and not to matter if they did.) 

My point is that the concept of the psychopath cannot replace the need for an understanding of evil. 

When psychopathy is used for that purpose, then the concept is readily adaptable to advancing the totalitarian/ globalist/ Establishment agenda - which is itself innately evil.

In other words, when psychopathy is used to replace evil; we get more evil. 

Which is, I assume, exactly why so many people are talking about psychopaths so much, nowadays. 

*A sharp increase increase in usage was broadly coincident with the publication and media splash of "The Psychopath Test" by Jon Ronson in 2011. Since the author seems to be a professional "mouthpiece" for the mainstream ideology, and the book was made a Bestseller, I presume that this terminological seeding and growth was Establishment engineered.  

From perception-dominated thinking, to thinking-dominated perception

It seems that Men mostly still hanker after the past era when perception dominated our thinking, when thinking was passively 'imposed' on us by the environment; and there is a great reluctance to come to terms with the reality that nowadays perceptions are dominated by thinking. 

In a nutshell: for Modern Man subjective and inner concepts dominate perceptions... 

Yet we Modern Men recurrently and persistently refuse to take personal responsibility for the metaphysical assumptions that dictate our interpretations - meanwhile continually asserting and pretending that the external (perceptions: 'environment', 'facts', 'evidence', the 'objective' world 'out-there' etc.) is the primary reality. 

Partly the failure is sheer habit, partly a kind of laziness, partly it is due to sins such as (in particular) fear and resentment - and in general it is because we have trapped-ourselves in a self-stoking cycle of mutually-reinforcing errors, from which perspective it seems impossible to break-out.

But for whatever reason, it is evident that Modern Men will expend weeks, months or even years of time - and massive monetary resources - moving their bodies into situations in which they hope that the surrounding inputs will solve their ultimate problems...

While declining to spend even ten minutes of serious and consecutive thought about their core assumptions concerning reality. 

What do "the people" want in Western Nations?

Something that comes-up again and again in all the media (mainstream and not) and in conversations; is the question of what "the people" want, in any particular situation. 

And the true answer is that We Just Don't Know; and, in a world permeated and dominated by lies and corruption, reinforced by massive censorship and punishment of thought-crimes and other dissent: there is no way of finding-out. 

We in the West are by-now so used to the idea that "public opinion" is, or at any rate ought-to-be, the basis of all good policies, that this blind spot is very unsettling to those who are honest about such matters.

We don't know what 'people' in war areas, or what they think about their wars, nor do we know what they 'want' to happen; we don't know what 'people' in our own countries think about our own governments, our politicians and the choice of parties. Typically, the majority of people who work for large bureaucracies and corporations don't even know the real views of people in our workplaces. 

What, then, should we do about it?

In the first place: we ought to give-up the idea that what people want is what ought to happen. 

This was always anti-moral nonsense; but especially now that it turns-out that 'what people think' is not worth a penny in modern societies; since opinion is so easily manipulated; and can undergo 180 degree turns in the space of days, or even hours - and without any acknowledgment that this have even happened!  

Also, many people want several or many incompatible things.  

And even when 'the people' hold opinions that are very much opposed to actual policies (e.g about the death penalty, to quote a famous example); that doesn't matter either -- since we know for sure that the leadership class can and does... whatever it is instructed to do by its totalitarian masters; utterly regardless of public opinion and in the teeth of long-term and solid opposition.

(Long-term and solid opposition at most slows an Establishment-driven trend; but has never yet reversed it.)

Instead, we should focus on what is right; regardless of what people may, or may not, think or want. 

Of course; those who are genuinely concerned about virtue do not have the power to manifest this into policies, nor to induce 'the people' to do what is right. But we ought to be clear about what is right, regardless of whether we think it makes any difference. 

I personally am sure that when someone, anyone, gets clear in his mind what is right and why; then this does have some kind of general effect - even though this effect is incalculable, and not measurable. 

I believe this on the basis that it is innate common sense - throughout history, and still in much of the world - that our conscious thoughts and whether we endorse or oppose these thoughts, is something that necessarily affects 'the world' - including 'other people'. 

So, I personally am going to try and disregard, and decline to join-in, conversations about 'what people want'; and focus instead on clarifying the specifics of what is right. 

Note added: Another reason why it is bad to give people what they want; is that so many people's desires are evil; and this especially applies here-and-now in Western nations: where the level and extremity of corrupted desire (corrupted to the point of inversion) has reached world-historical heights.

What happened when the pagan Roman-Britons converted to Christianity?

A favourite theme of the late, great Geoffrey Ashe was that the transition between paganism and Christianity went smoothly and peacefully in Britain. 

Unlike on the European continent; the British pagans (whether Druidic or Roman in their religion) did not seem to persecute the new Christian religion; and later-on the Christians did not persecute the pagans when they got the upper hand. 

What seems to have happened is that the Christians took-over the sacred pagan sites, and 'repurposed' or rebuilt them as churches; while the pagan Gods were replaced with Jesus, Mary, and the Saints on the basis of analogous religious functions.

(Most famously; the pagan British goddess Brigid, was replaced by the Irish Saint Brigid.) 

As well as its socio-political significance; this is theologically interesting; because it suggests that there is no fundamental conflict between paganism and Christianity; that - somehow or another - people could move from pagan to Christian without major spiritual or societal upheaval. 

I think this gives us a clue to the essence of Christianity; or, more exactly, what distinguishes it from paganism. 

What the smooth-transition tells us on the one side, is that (despite what so many people have said, and what is still asserted) there was not much to distinguish paganism and Christianity in terms of morality and lifestyle. 

The everyday and societal practice of paganism and Christianity don't seem to have been very different. 

What is very different between paganism and Christianity, is what happens after death! 

It seems to me that the Big Message of Christian missionaries; the "unique selling point' that Christians had to offer over and above anything the pagans said; was the prospect of resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 

Whereas the pagan religions could point at either some kind of afterlife life as depersonalized spirits - in an underworld or maybe as ghosts lurking in this world; or else some kind of reincarnation into the same kind of life all-over-again but as a different person...

Christians came along with their account of Jesus Christ who died and rose again and ascended to Heaven; and who offered the same possibility to those who would follow him. 

And this prospect apparently appealed greatly as a possibility superior to anything in paganism. 

I think it would have been obvious to ancient Britons, as it was later to the Anglo-Saxons and Norsemen; that what Christians offered was superior if it was true. 

But how could people know it was true - above and beyond trusting the historical stories of the missionaries?

One form of validation was miracles: when the missionaries were Saints who could perform miracles, then this validated their claims, because it proved they had a link to the divine.

But a second, and probably more widespread, form of experiential proof was by participation in the Mass, the Eucharist, Holy Communion.  

Following-up an insight from Philip K Dick; I think we can imagine that Men, at that earlier stage in the development of consciousness, would spontaneously, passively, overwhelmingly experience participation in the Mass as a literal re-living of Jesus's death and resurrection. 

In the Mass; Jesus died and came to life, and was actually-present here-and-now to those participating. 

This (or something spiritually analogous) would surely have been a compelling validation of the actuality of what Jesus offered. 

In sum; I think the conversion from Paganism to Christianity as it was actually experienced by people in the early centuries AD (people, it should be noted, whose consciousness was significantly different from you and me) was essentially very simple, which was why it could be very quick - and why mass-conversions, and even mandatory conversion, made sense at the time. 

It was an expression of the desire for resurrection after death, as preferable-to/ better-than anything paganism could offer. 

And the method of achieving this desired goal, was to be admitted to the community who ritually re-enacted Jesus's death and resurrection, such that he became actually present to the believer.

 

Note added: This post comes after a whole bunch of earlier posts in which - as a result of reading the Fourth Gospel as the primary and most authoritative source about Jesus's teaching - I became increasingly convinced that the core message of Christianity (i.e. the offer of resurrected eternal life in Heaven) had become de-emphasized and somewhat buried throughout the history of the Christian churches. In my opinion; the advent of Mormonism from 1830 was, to a significant extent, made possible by Joseph Smith's "re-discovery" of resurrection as the core promise of Christianity. Mormonism also brought a completely new and fundamentally different set of fundamental metaphysical theological assumptions concerning reality as pluralistic, developmental etc. But I believe that the main appeal of the new type of Christianity in its early decades was its clarity-about, and focus-upon, post-mortal life - treated very 'realistically' and as something that could (with certain conditions) confidently be anticipated - and with potential for continuation of loving mortal relationships.  

"Boomers" are just as bad as their worst critics say; but the following generations are even-worse

I'm afraid I regard the bulk of the "anti-Boomer" genre as strictly delusional; not because I disagree with all the nasty things they say about the post-1945 generation* - indeed in this respect, I don't think most anti-Boomers go anything like far enough, because they focus on physical-material flaws, whereas it is the spiritual sins of the Boomers that are most serious. 

Where I totally disagree with the genre is the inbuilt assumption - sometimes implicit, often explicit - that the later generations are superior to Boomers; including that later generations have learned from Boomer excesses and errors. 

This seems so utterly mistaken and truth-inverted that I must regard it as delusional. The fact is that that, generationally, things have Very Obviously gotten worse and worse; although not in exactly the same ways that Boomers went so wrong. 

Because leftist-materialism is an oppositional ideology, it contains many contradictory and incoherent strands. So, while Boomers were keen on divorce and "heterosexual" promiscuity then feminism; later generations are much keener on other sexual sins and lies. Whereas Boomers were mad for socialism/ communism, later generations are keen on Climate Change and Diversity... Boomers are selfish and cling to life, but later generations are more prone to suicide and despair. 

And so on. 

But - changing the theme of evil is not a move-towards Good!

If later generations really were better than the Boomers, then we would be seeing a pendulum-swing back towards sanity - whereas we are seeing the opposite: the pendulum swings further-and-further away-from common sense and basic decency. 

I think the problem arises from the great sin of our era, which is resentment. While it is fine and factually-correct to hate Boomers and get angry at what they/we have done as a generation; once resentment enters-in, then we are into the realms of the master sin of Christianity: which is Pride. 

Delusional Anti-Boomerism is a form of Pride, which is why it feeds-upon-itself, is so insatiable, and so corrupting to those who hold it. 

Resentment doesn't just oppose, it assumes self-superiority; such that every criticism of Boomers becomes an implied self-aggrandizement. The worse the Boomers are painted - the better (tacitly suggested) seem later generations. 

In other words, resentment-driven Anti-Boomerism becomes just another Poor-Me/ Evil-You leftist victimology; unless contained within a realistic understanding that the worst legacy of the Boomers was the corruption of later generations. Which means that later generations need to accept that they are even-worse than the worst they can say about Boomers.  

+++++

*"Boomers" (an American term, never used in Britain until recently) are presumably those born up to about 1970, on the biological basis of the length of a generation being the average date of childbirth. For most of history (among demographers); "one generation" used conventionally to be 25 years (with, therefore, four generations per century) - on the basis that about half the surviving children were born to the average woman before that age, half afterwards. More recent generations in The West/ developed world are therefore more than 30 years, since currently the average date of first child is greater than 30 years.   

Are scientific geniuses dispensable in a way that artistic geniuses are not?

Watson and Crick and the model of DNA - a great image that captures the joy and wonder of real science!

It is a commonplace assertion that because science is a social activity, and (supposedly) objective; scientific geniuses do not leave a personal stamp upon their work in the way that (it is assumed) artistic geniuses do. For instance, it might be said that nobody else but Shakespeare could have written Hamlet, while if Newton had not lived, then everything he accomplished would have been done by others. 

I have come to regard this as profoundly false - on both sides, scientific and artistic! The nature of creative genius is essentially the same, and intensely personal and individual, in whatever the domain it is operating. 

This generalization derives from the fact that - whenever one has sufficient information to understand a major work of genius; then the individuality of the creative contribution is evident. 

What generally happens is that the genius, in making the 'breakthrough' work, is able to 'see' something, to 'know' something, that is very difficult or impossible for him to communicate to others. 

Indeed, this extreme difficulty of communicating that which is qualitatively new is something like a definition of a work of genius. If the genius can find one other person who understands, who follows the chain of reasoning or grasps the way something 'works' - then he is unusual and fortunate. 

Because usually geniuses do their work alone, and if that work is taken-up more widely, then it is often without real understanding - simply by 'applying' some partially-grasped or selective aspect of the whole. 

That a work of genius, like Hamlet, is uniquely linked to its creator turns-out, on closer examination, to be much less straightforward than it seems. After all, what do we mean by Hamlet? 

There are many textual versions, of widely varied lengths, derived from various sources by multiple editors and scholars. And then there is the question of whether the real Hamlet is indeed a text, or a play being-performed by a particular set of actors, on a particular day (or in a particular recorded medium) - and therefore, which of the multi-thousands of performed versions is the real Hamlet? 

My point here is that: yes, of course, Hamlet is an unique work of genius that depended on a specific person for its special quality; but also it shares the same social and collaborative quality that is more evident in scientific creation.   

And on the other hand genuine scientific creativity seems always to be distinctively personal. 

This struck me yesterday when reconsidering Crick and Watson's discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA*; which is a famous example of a major scientific breakthrough that is generally assumed to have been merely an instance of the discoverers "getting there first". That is even how Watson presents the story in his The Double Helix book: as a race against Linus Pauling. 

I have read widely and deeply behind this discovery, and realize that it involved the work of a very large number of people from many countries, plus a particular and focal bringing together of the right people in the right places. So at first it seems like a collaborative effort in which the individuals are dispensable.

Yet, such an assertion is post hoc, after the fact of the discovery; a retrospective judgment that slides-over and mashes-together what were specifically individual and creative insights. 

For instance it is well known that Rosalind Franklin could not perceive the significance of her technical work; not least because she regarded DNA as 'just another' chemical to be analyzed using the best of established procedures, rather than of interest essentially because of having a vital biological function. 

In other words, the DNA structure could only be understood and discovered by someone who was asking the right questions, because thinking "biologically".  

In contrast, Francis Crick had (apparently) developed a (literally) unique ability to understand the relationship between molecular structures and the images from X-Ray crystallography. This gave him (and nobody else!) an ability to perceive what structures could and could-not be inferred from images, and what images would be expected from different types of molecule. This was a vital aspect of the discovery of the DNA double-helix. 

What is interesting is that Crick couldn't explain what he was doing to anybody else, not even to Watson. Or, to put it differently, Watson could not understand what Crick was doing, how he was reasoning, despite many attempts at explaining - nor could anyone else. 

Only later, looking back, was the fact of Crick's ability acknowledged; yet, even that acknowledgement does not mean what Crick was doing was genuinely understood.  

My point is that works of scientific genius seem always to contain such very personal, and seemingly unique, insights and abilities. My conclusion is that without such people, then the qualitative breakthroughs just don't happen.   

Most people simply can-not (plus will-not - i.e. they do not want to) think or work in genuinely new, different, distinctive ways - they cannot-willnot go-it-alone. (They function socially, and are motivated externally - whereas the genius's motivation is substantially endogenous.)  

So far as I can tell (where there is sufficient information) all geniuses of all kinds are in the position of doing some-thing that takes them our and away from social support, social acceptance, social understanding. 

Of course, as such, this is merely a negative attainment - but it is also the inevitable consequence of exceptional individual creativity, successfully at-work. 

The ultimate point of this; is that creativity is the product of an individual, and is indeed a divine attribute; therefore ultimately inexplicable - which is why it cannot ever really be understood by others. Great scientific achievements like the discovery of the DNA structure can be seen necessarily to include such elements of creativity, sometimes more than one such, sometimes from several people. In contrast; the idea that "science" can be set-up and administered and function as a bureaucracy (operating by 'objective' consensus) naturally denies this essential creative reality; and the consequence is that no real science is actually being done. 

+++++

*I recommend that you watch the 1987 BBC Horizon movie drama starring called originally Life Story, later confusingly (because there is a documentary with the same title) re-titled The Race for the Double Helix. 

The drama stars Jeff Goldblum as Watson, Tim Pigott-Smith as Crick, and Juliette Stevenson as Franklin. A superb, all-time-great, musical score was done by Peter Howell of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Life Story is simply The Best drama I have ever seen about real science, and moves me to tears every time I watch it (last time was yesterday).

Thanks very much to commenter furudo.erika for letting me know that a nice crisp copy of Life Story can be found On Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/179934156?login=true#_=_

Why death? (And other taboo questions)

Why are so many people unwilling to ask "why?" In particular why is there death? Why do people die - why will you die? 

But people don't like talking (seriously) about death; but when they do it's all about how to delay death; or how to reduce the suffering of death for the person dying and others. 

(It seems that death 'always' entails suffering; that seems to be a built-in fact of life. At any rate that is how nearly-everybody behaves: how they react to the prospect and actuality of death. Attempts to pretend death is properly-considered Not suffering are common through history - but have near zero traction.) 

And people don't like asking, seriously, "why?" In fact, its a kind of taboo. To ask it is to be revealed and childish, stupid or evil. 

Why is there death? This is a question that spontaneously occurs to most children; and seems to have been asked by almost-every society through history and around the world... 

But not in The West for the past few generations, when we have decided that it is a stupid question; unanswerable because meaningless. 

We are prepared to discuss how death - i.e. processes involved. Or how we might modify such processes - but not "why is there death?". 

 

What does the inevitability of death tell us about reality? In other words: what does death presuppose. 

In other words: how is death possible? 

The answer seems obvious enough when the question is asked: Death is possible because, in the first place, there is life. 

Death can only be inevitable and universal, because there already is life. 

For there to be death: Life must come first. 

It seems obvious, put that way. And putting it that way seems to be valid and necessary - I mean, surely we could not have a universe of death without it first being alive - could we? 

Yet how often is the question put that way? 

Have you ever heard the question put that way? 

Death is inevitable (so far as we know) yet this cannot be a reality built-upon death... 

Which seems to mean that this is a reality built-upon life. 

If so, then this strikes me as something that is very important to make clear and to know. I mean; that we inhabit a reality built upon life!

This is (to my way of thinking) just another way of saying that this Must Be a created reality; if the universe is built on life, then in some essential way we inhabit "a creation"... By which I mean that creation, the 'process' of life, the tendency towards life - needs to come first. And only then, after life is, could death emerge 'everywhere'.

Life is the host, death is the parasite. 

(And you need a host before you can get a parasite.)

One conclusion is that - because life is primary - then it is possible to imagine life without death. Indeed, there must have been a time (however brief) when there was life without death: that must have been how things started. 

And if there was life once without death; then - in principle - there could be again; and life everlasting and eternal is not just conceivable, but - in principle - possible. 

So what Jesus Christ offered (to those who wanted it, and would 'follow' Him) is potentially something that we could imagine being delivered. Not impossible, at any rate. 

The Biggest Question is whether we actually want it! 

We could, and should, ask: is our allegiance to life, or to death? 

We need to ask: Why death? 

How Modern Man's desire for self-annihilation at death has led (via inverted values) to the societal self-destruction of The West

It seems that the ultimate desire of "evil" is that Men should desire their own annihilation. 

In "Medieval" times, the main conceptual understanding of "what Satan wants" was to rule a kind of parallel-but-evil world; broadly of the kind more depicted in Dante's Inferno or CS Lewis's The Screwtape Letters. Instead of God there is Satan; instead of angels, there are demons; instead of a divine hierarchy, there is a "lowerarchy"; instead of the happy resurrected, there are souls-in-torment etc.  

But such a Hell retains much of God's creation about it: there is form, structure, order, obedience, diligence etc - therefore such a Hell has potentially a long way to go in increasing its evil. 

It is possible to look at the "Medieval Hell" as a consequence of what damned souls desired for themselves at that time. People then still wanted eternal life - but not a life in Heaven, instead they wanted to continue to indulge their favoured lusts and sadisms;  which, presumably, is why depictions of Hell showed different fates for different types or classes of unrepentant sinner. 

Perhaps for similar reasons; Christian Medieval Man saw both Heaven and Hell as having broadly the same characteristics as the societies he dwelt-in: ruled by a Monarch and the Catholic Church (each similarly organized) - whether Eastern or Western Catholic ("Throne and Altar", as more recent Roman Catholics call it). 

What I am suggesting here is that the sameness between "real life" and the pictures of Heaven and Hell was derived from Man's consciousness; from what Men understood and wanted.

But Modern Man's understanding and desires are very different from Medieval Man. In particular, Modern Man desires that his death be a complete annihilation - such that nothing be left of body or soul. 

Indeed, Modern Man does not believe that there is any such a thing as a soul - in principle separable from the body; but instead he believes that there is a mind, which is merely an abstraction of ongoing observable brain functioning - and such an 'epiphenomenal' mind must therefore cease with bodily death and dissolution. 

Such matters are usually regarded the other way around than I have stated here; with expectation (if not desire) as a consequence of what Men believe. But I am saying instead that belief is a consequence of what Men want. 

I am saying that the ultimate reason that Modern Men do not believe in life beyond death, is that Men do not want life after death: Modern Men instead want annihilation at death.  

I am saying that in this situation; desire causes belief, not the other way around. 

If we assume that desire causes belief, and belief causes Men's values; and if Men's values cause Men's behaviour; then we may infer that the fundamental nature of Modern Society is ultimately a consequence of Modern Men's desires. 

To put it the other way around: Men's desires shapes society - via Men's values.

Therefore - given that Modern Men desire annihilation, it should not be surprising that Modern Society seeks its own annihilation; nor should it be surprising that this operates via increasingly-explicit value-inversion. 

What is truly astonishing about Modern Society (especially in the West, and where Western values dominate) - and what is apparently unprecedented in world history - is that the fundamentals of human biological life have become officially and systematically denied, destroyed, and inverted. 

Something as biologically natural and spontaneous as eating and drinking are under continual assault, top-down; to dissociate them from anything natural, to delete whatever is instinctive, to reshape and invert preferences. We often get 'idealistic' depictions of a future in which grossly unnatural and distorted foods and drinks are regarded as progress: in which such a situation is regarded as moral progress.

(The globalist totalitarian support and incentives for 'veganism' is a mainstream example; its morphing into propaganda for Westerners eating/ subsisting-on artificial-meat and factory-processed insects/ grubs, is a further inversion.)

Something as biologically natural and spontaneous as sex and reproduction have, of course, long since been atomized into components, and inverted. 

Sex is now dissociated from reproduction; both natural sex and reproduction are regarded negatively and it has become illegal, punishable to advocate them. 

Whatever is non-biological and sterile is aggrandized, propagandized, subsidized - de facto mandatory in particular circles. 

Something as biologically natural and spontaneous as family, is likewise subjected to inversion following decades of successful destruction. Natural and biological family is increasingly depicted as innately evil, oppressive, exploitative; and "anything-else" is deliberately (with upfront financial and status rewards) mass-presented in idealized ways, with an inbuilt assumption of their superiority.  

I regard these mainstream, official, totalitarian-imposed social-aspects of Modern Life; as distal consequences of the proximate desire for self-annihilation that characterizes Modern Man. 

Put differently: the ultimate cause of the inverted values which are destroying Western Society (and probably, to some large extent, the whole world) - is the positive wish of so many individual Western Men to be utterly annihilated (body and mind/ soul/ spirit) when they die. 

Because... When so many people desire their own self-annihilation, of course society will come to reflect and to fulfill those desires! 

Set-aside the business of "Worshipping" God, if you want: What matters is whether or not you Take God's Side

The business of "worshipping" God, and positing a God that demands worship (maybe or-else doing bad things to us) is a thing that many people find an incomprehensible demand; and I tend to agree!

To me, the idea of a God that requires worship is un-Christian both in origin and its perpetuation (un-Christian although not-necessarily anti-Christian). 

It is often a hangover or assimilation from religions where God is not our Father and not Good; and therefore a God that both wants and needs to be propitiated - and, in general, treated like the most ruthless and powerful kind of despot. 

However, I understand that there are many (most?) people whom I regard as real Christians but who do feel that the worship of God is necessary, and perhaps central to their Christian lives. 

That's fine by me! - What matters to me is not whether somebody worships God, but whether he is on God's side in the spiritual war of this mortal world.  

There are plenty of people who worship God, but who - on key issues and overall in life - take the side against God. That is; they may go through all manner of prescribed activities that are traditionally reckoned (in their tradition) to constitute worship - study, prayer, rituals, professed beliefs etc. But at the bottom line - in thought, word and deed - these 'devout' people support Satan's agenda. 

Indeed; this combination of devout worship with Satanic-activism is so common in the Christian churches of 2023 as to be "the new normal" - and in some instances it is compulsory.  

On the other side; there are plenty of people who do Not worship God; but who instead love God, regard him as their Heavenly parent, and do the best to think, speak and live in accordance with God's destiny and the unfolding of divine creation. 

And there are plenty of people who desire above all to follow Jesus Christ to resurrected eternal life in Heaven; but who do not worship in accordance with any explicit group-ideal of exactly what that entails. 

Taking God's side and following Jesus is what matters; not whatever-is-meant-by "worshipping". 

The desire to live in bliss and without suffering is - ultimately - a desire for annihilation

To live always in bliss is a common enough ideal; yet it entails the removal of past and future (adverse past memories, feared possible futures) such that only the present is experienced and real. 

We may have experienced such bliss, briefly; as when it is said that eternity can be found in the moment - and some want it permanently. 

Yet to want permanent bliss is to want not-to-be; because the present moment does not exist: as a time-slice - with nothing before or after - it is infinitely small. 

To have (to experience, to know-of) neither past nor future is not-to-be.  

To want to escape suffering - wholly and forever - entails losing all awareness of every-thing. 

This would be to exist in the present moment without desire and without attachment - which means without sense of self. 

To escape suffering therefore requires not-to-be a distinct-being (or, at least, not to be aware of oneself as a being). One must become subjectively unaware that one exists. 

Not to suffer at-all or ever, is a state indistinguishable from complete and permanent annihilation. 

If this sounds like a reductio ad absurdum, reflect that it is very common - almost normal - to feel thus. 

It is perhaps only a kind of uncertainty about what will happen afterwards (a residual fear that death might not be annihilation), plus cowardice about the physical painfulness (suffering) of actually-doing-it; that stops many modern people from killing themselves...

Which is why so many of them clamour for the 'right' painlessly to be murdered (i.e. 'euthanasia') on demand. 

A rejoinder might be that what most people really want is neither complete nor permanent; but simply greater and more sustained happiness, and an end to severe suffering. This even sounds-like common sense...

But these are not an answer that has satisfied; and we know this because so many people already live that answer, and have done for many decades in the West. 

Many or most modern people already have experienced historically-unprecedented gratification of happiness and elimination of physical suffering; yet they are not satisfied by such quantitative improvements.

Indeed, more than in many times and places of the past (insofar as such things can be compared) modern people have been distinctive for their escalating fear, resentment and despair. They have in fact - whatever the theory - focused on the incompleteness of their bliss; and the unbearability of their residual suffering. 

Hence the apparently widespread (albeit often implicit - since modern Man usually refuses to think consciously and consecutively about fundamental matters) desire for total happiness and the absence of suffering; as the only proper, un-controversially Good goals of life. 

All of which goes to show that ideals which are normal and widespread, common-sensical and regarded as ethically-vital; can nonetheless be incoherent nonsense. 

 

"Anything but Christianity" is rooted in the rejection of resurrection

"Anything but Christianity" is axiomatic for modern mainstream culture. In other words, whatever the attitude towards religion and spirituality (from broad sympathy to total atheistic rejection); there is a special animus directed-against Christianity. 

And few are even explicitly aware of this in themselves. 

I speak from experience. For several decades before I became a Christian, I was a 'spiritual seeker'; and had regarded myself as (in some general way) broadly in favour of some aspects of Christianity; and I had read (and thought about) comparative religion, mythologies of the world, modern spirituality (New Age), and even modern Christian theology. 

Yet, in truth, my was attitude that I was looking for An Answer everywhere except in Christianity. 

When reading Christian material, I was always pleased to see it reinterpreted in the light of other religions or traditions. "If only Christianity were more Buddhist, or New Age spiritual - if only Christianity could admit it is just one of many paths to truth - then I might find a home there" was the sort of idea. 

But at the root of it, as I now see that what I was objecting to was resurrection. I did not want to be resurrected after death; I did not want to stay myself, in an eternal body: I did not want to repent my sins and dwell in a Heaven among other such resurrected Beings. 

Of course I didn't believe resurrection was even possible! I thought the idea was (very obviously!) childish wishful thinking to be found only among the weak-minded; or that nobody really believed it but pretended in order to reassure themselves or manipulate others. 

But believing that resurrection was impossible nonsense was not the root of it: the root of it was that I rejected it. And, because I rejected specifically what Jesus Christ achieved and offered us; naturally I rejected Christianity. 

I think that my own ex-views are not uncommon; I believe that many of those who reject Christianity do so in a specific way (i.e. "Anything but Christianity"); and that many of these people reject Christianity because they personally do not desire resurrection. 

Many desire, instead, some form of self-annihilation: whether the mainstream atheist-materialist view that the subjective-self ceases when the body dies; or the Western-Eastern religious view that our self-awareness dissolves (back) into the universe and a state of blissful Nirvana; or that we persist after death in an immaterial, disembodied form - spirits, ghosts, or whatever. To all of these; the offer of resurrection is unwanted, is rejected.   

A few people desire to reincarnate into mortal bodies on this earth; to come back over and again, and relive this kind of temporary life among in this entropic world; and these do not desire the final answer of resurrection with an eternal-body. 

In other words; the trend for unpopularity, and the increasing scarcity, of Christianity is rooted in what modern people do not want. As things stand, modern people do not want what Christianity has to offer - quite aside from whether they believe that the offer of Christianity is a true and valid one. 

The question is why modern people nowadays do not want and reject that which was, a couple of thousand years ago and for many centuries, regarded as the greatest possible Good News.  

Why is the Western leadership class incapable not only of leadership - but even of reasoning?

It is very striking that the leaders of Western nations and major institutions and corporations are - in the first place - just not actual leaders: they are not capable of leadership, but are instead just over-promoted middle managers, or else selfish psychopaths. 

That has been the situation for several decades: real leaders are not sought, and indeed actively excluded from leadership. 

Perhaps more recently (and most obviously in the USA) the current "leaders" of nations and institutions are becoming cognitively incapable: they cannot reason, and therefore cannot make even simple inferences, or learn simple lessons from experience. 

One top of a generation of appointing followers (or front-men, empty suits) as pseudo-leaders; this more recent deliberate and strategic selection of mentally deficient leaders is conclusive evidence (for those who still need it) that the official leaders are Not Leading At All; but are following orders. 

Yet following orders is not enough anymore; the newer generation of pseudo-leaders must in addition Not be able to understand the relationship between decisions and consequences; they must Fail to learn from observing repeated cause and effect associations. 

Why has this suddenly become necessary? Why is mere managerial obedience to the evil agenda no longer sufficient? 

The reason is that - at the highest most-strategic level of the real world-leadership - i.e. the senior demonic - the plan has changed from the imposition of a bureaucratic-totalitarian global System (which reached its peak in the worldwide coup of early 2020); to the current increasingly "Sorathic" agenda of destruction: destruction of people, animals, plants and the planet (justified via the inversion of all true-values). 

This spiteful agenda has been smashing the world economy, finance and trade; it has started and is escalating WWIII; turned environmentalism against itself; exploded the sexual revolution; imposed the birdemic-peck; and is incrementally ratcheting-through the societally fissile effects of the current diversity-woke stuff. 

In other words; the senior real-leaders are making their servants do the opposite of what they were supposed (even just a few years ago) to be aiming-at. 

Given such dissonance; even the most servile managerial drone would, eventually, be able to work-out that he was being used to destroy himself and everything he valued...

This is a danger to the fulfilment of the top-level evil strategy for earth. 

A servile managerial drone might work-things-out... Unless, that is, he was so deeply defective in reasoning capacity that he was incapable of noticing that almost everything he did, actually had the inverse outcome from its supposed intention. 

And that is exactly what we now have: a Western leadership class who don't even notice that what happens as a result of their policies is the opposite of what these policies are supposed to achieve. 

Get this: They don't even notice! 

In a nutshell: it is necessary that current leaders operate in a perpetual present-moment which they are constitutionally incapable of comprehending, because they cannot relate it either to the past or to the future. 

To be safe; it is now necessary that the Establishment-allocated official-leaders are unable to notice even the grossest and most immediate destructive consequences. 

Thus has functional-dementia and/or deranging intoxication (of various degrees, types and flavours) become a positive requirement and qualification for occupying senior "leadership" positions in the modern West.