Family is the "master metaphor" for divine creation - William Arkle revisited

I was re-reading the Introduction I wrote for the second edition of William Arkle's A Geography of Consciousness (2019). 

In this writing I am explaining Arkle's spiritual philosophy, to the best of my ability - and Arkle has been a significant influence on my own understanding over the past fifteen or so years. 

Despite these large debts; to avoid reader-confusion (!) I should point out that my own understanding differs from that of Arkle in several significant ways. 

Nonetheless, it was helpful to revisit one of the main things that I learned from Arkle, which was that "The Family" is the best metaphor for divine creation... 

Indeed, Family is not just a metaphor, but describes the deep reality of what God aspires to in the work of Creating. 

Because ultimate reality consist of living Beings, and creation "works" by means of loving relationships between Beings; therefore an ideal Family-type relationship between Beings (an extended ideal Family, as it were - related by the commitment of marriage as well as by heredity, on the assumption that such commitments can be mutually-eternal in Heaven) may be recognized as the aim of divine creation. 

Since writing the Arkle essay in 2019; I have more recently reached an understanding of Jesus as having made possible a Second Creation which is resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 

And this can be understood as the possibility of Beings opting-in to join a fully-loving, therefore actually ideal, Family of Heaven.  

I mean that the relationship between the Beings of Heaven can helpfully be conceptualized as that of an ideal Family; and part of this is that all members have actively and consciously chosen to join this Family...

Chosen also to be remade (in resurrection) such that they will always be motivated by Love* for all other members of this Heavenly Family. 

*(I will capitalize the word Love to emphasize that I am using it in the distinctive sense described below.) 

One point of talking in this way, is to try and enable us to grasp that Love is not only an emotion, but can be regarded as structural. 

...Almost as we might thing of an attractive "force", but Love is always personal, always the attribute of a living Being, always voluntary, necessarily mutual and between individual Beings.

It is Love by which creation began and by-which creation coheres, and it is Love that (combined with our innate and unique selves) provides the energetic-dynamism for further and open-ended creating.  

So, although Heaven is ideal, and although I talk of an ideal Family - those ideals must not be regarded as a static state of perfection. 

The ideal Family life is not a stasis, not even a blissful stasis - it is instead always developing. 

In this mortal world, we do not Love always nor fully; therefore in this-life dynamism is infected by selfishness, manipulation, and evil. 

But an ideally loving Family would always cohere, because the mutuality of Love would spontaneously ensure that everything which happened in Heaven came from Love and was aimed-at Love. 

Everything that everybody wanted to do would arise and operate in the context of Loving relationships. 

And the Heavenly Family will, because its mutual Love is everlasting; therefore both eternally cohere and eternally develop. 

I find it quite easy to imagine this in an ideal Family. I can imagine that such a Family would always stick-together from Love; and also that Family members would each always be pursuing personal projects of many kinds. Things would always be changing, and the loving commitments would always remain strong. Members would only desire to pursue loving projects; and not (as in this-life) often merely-selfish or coldly-manipulative projects! 

Many people imagine Heaven in such a way that it is boring, or even demeaning. But when The Family is a concept which includes all Beings - and when Beings are understood to be of many kinds (e.g. human, animal, vegetable, "mineral" etc) and each Being as unique - then Heaven represents an ideal situation for an everlastingly creative, hence interesting, living. 

Yet, no matter how appealing is this vision of Heaven for me; I must acknowledge it does not appeal to everybody - some people don't want that kind of thing - they want something else. 

Some even loathe Heaven to the extent that they want to discredit Heaven, and to persuade as many Beings as possible to reject Heaven. 

This is why following Jesus has never been for everybody, not when Jesus was alive as a mortal nor after his resurrection, and not since. 

"Christianity" probably never will be for everybody; but only for those who want... what Jesus offers. And that may be a minority, even a small minority. 

However, we should not reject the offer of Heaven until we know what it means. 

And Arkle's work provided me with vital clues to how Heaven can be understood in a way that I find to be ideal. 

And he does so by means of using The Family as his master explanatory metaphor. 

So Western Civilization is ending for sure. But is this part of a predictable historical cycle or pendulum swing, with recovery inevitable?

There is some kind of a consensus - especially among Christians - that Western Civilization is ending, and that this multi-stage collapse is substantially self-inflicted - partly suicidal due to hedonic materialism and cowardice of the unreligious-aspiritual masses; and partly the outcome of deliberate contrivance among the Western/ Globalist leadership class. 

Where opinions differ, is related to what happens afterwards. 

Many people apparently have the assumption that human history is either cyclical, or like a pendulum; and that Western Civilization is therefore destined to dwindle but (sooner or later) recover and be "reborn". 

And such people take hope from this - or at least they claim to.  

This cyclical/ pendulum assumption is popular even among Christians, which I find quite strange - given that pretty much everything that the New Testament says about human history states explicitly that it is destined to be linear, unidirectional, ending with the End Times. 

Some of the New Testament links the End Times with a "second coming", a return of Jesus Christ;  although the premier authority, and earliest secondhand, Gospels sources do not describe a second coming of Jesus.

I mean the Gospel called "John", which is an eyewitness account from a beloved disciple and (Chapters 1-20) was composed shortly after the events described; ; and "Mark" which is the first recorded of the second-hand, post-ascension Gospels). 

However, whether or not the End Times are also regarded as a Second Coming; the point is that for the New Testament the path of human history is linear. 

Linear and not repetitive. 

The Christian conception of history is therefore not primarily cyclical, nor a matter of pendulum swings - and if apparent recurrences do occur, then these can only be approximate; because they are  subordinate to an overall and basic linearity. 

And this, of course, fits with the pattern of human history as it appears spontaneously to the simple observer. 

My conclusion is that when (not if) Western Civilization begins to collapse quickly and undeniably; there will be no coherent "Christian" reason to expect that Western Civilization will ever re-develop. 

But even if there was, I find it very hard to believe that people who take consolation and derive hope from cyclical/ pendulum theories of history are being sincere! 

I mean: I find it hard to believe that they really do derive genuine consolation and real hope from their assumption that - although we shall collapse soon; nonetheless some future, unknown and unrelated, persons shall experience a return of something-like Western Civ.  

This is so feeble and remote an expectation that I strongly suspect it serves merely as an excuse for here-and-now mental laziness and cowardice; for current dishonesty and evasiveness. 

Anyway; that's how the stuff about cycles and pendulum swings strikes me; as yet another instance of clutching at fake straws. 

Taking sides: For, or against, divine creation? From love, or not?

Our creator is a loving God, and the divine creation is "built" with love; so to be on the side* of Good is to live from love. 

A person motivated by love, thinks and does things for other people (and other beings), because of love. 

This means that the Good person will often do something that sacrifices his own immediate pleasure, or causes himself to experience some degree of immediate suffering, or sub-optimality of feelings. 

This kind of thing is inevitable, when love motivates.  

Those who operate from other motivations that are not love, those on the side not-supporting or actively-against divine creation; see all this very differently. 

For them; love looks pathetic, pitiful, despicable. 

A life led, acts done, from love; look instead like foolishness, like being a dupe; love looks like weakness, subordination of my will to another's, service of somebody else's agenda, voluntary slavery... 

Those who are not taking the side of Good, i.e. not living by love - generally regard those who do thus live, as pathetic and despicable. 

But if love really is the real motivation for behaviour; then everything is different...

All that is done from love - no matter how small a thing that may seem - is an enhancement of divine creation. 

And that which is done from any-reason-not-love, will tend to diminish divine creation. 

Therefore, as examples: 

Things done to serve an agenda of "altruism" will diminish divine creation; same with things done for "my" power and/or wealth or that of others.

And things done for comfort, convenience or pleasure of myself or of others; shall likewise diminish creation.

(that is: Anything other-than love diminishes...)

And things done from resentment, fear or despair (and the like) are actually an attack on divine creation.   

+++

*"The side" references which of the two sides in the spiritual way of this world is chosen: either the side affiliated with God the creator; or else the side that is not thus affiliated. There are many ways of not being on the side of divine creation.

Note: almost all writing on the subject of relationships between the sexes, analysis and purported advice (all the "Manosphere" stuff, including that purportedly "Christian") is done from the perspective that love is not really real, not present, or is secondary in importance. Such speaking and writing is inevitably on the other side from God and divine creation. 

Because Men are free agents, it is Wrong to pretend otherwise

If you really believe that you personally are free, and you are a Christian; it follows that You Are Responsible. 

You are not a communal being; you cannot evade your ultimate responsibility by claiming unawareness, or automatic habits; because such a claim gives-away the lie. 

If you are responsible, then it is wrong to pretend otherwise. 

It is wrong to pretend that you are not responsible because it is a lie: it is false, untrue.

And that's bad; because to assert untruth about reality is in an ultimate sense bad: i.e. self-damning.

To evade your actual responsibility is a denial of that responsibility. You are pretending to be unfree.  

You are pretending that someone or some-thing else, outside you, is responsible for some-thing for which you are responsible. 

You are falsely blaming. 

Your freedom Just Is: its reality is not a valid subject for debate.

Although you might reasonably debate how it is that you are free, failure of a discussion to answer "how" freedom works, does not excuse you from the actual responsibility that the fact of your freedom carries.

To ask where your freedom comes-from, to ask who are what has "given" you freedom, is strictly nonsense. 

(And we know it is nonsense, because we must each first choose to believe that our personal freedom was given us by X; and if we must first choose to believe...)

You can only be free because freedom is not given; you are only free because freedom is innate.

Because freedom is innate, then it is a fact, and it always-was and always-is a fact; even when freedom is not being used, even when actively being denied.  

And we know freedom is real because nothing else can make sense. 

The fact of our freedom - my freedom, yours, and every being's freedom - is built-into reality. 

Since your freedom Just Is; it cannot be evaded by claiming that you must obey something external; because you have chosen that obedience. 

To claim you must obey e.g. Society, God, or The Church does not absolve you of responsibility; because in claiming suchlike; you have, from your actual freedom, asserted some kind of obedience as superior to your freedom.

This is not just wrong (e.g. for the reasons above) but also incoherent. 

It is simply a contradiction, not-sense, for a free being to deny his own freedom by asserting the superior authority of obedience to X; when the authority of X has been awarded and must continually be sustained by the freedom!  

To pretend that you personally are not ultimately responsible is spiritually lethal, because it keeps your relationship with the divine at a distance. 

You are choosing to interpose... Something Else - between yourself and the divine...

Consider - what Good reason could you have for doing that? 

No Good reasons for choosing to separate your-self from God, but a variety of bad ones...

You may be denying the reality of God the loving creator - and pretending that this is a fact of necessary objective reality, when the necessary objectivity of that reality is your own choice. You chose to make that fact factual - how then can you validly give that fact your responsibility? 

You may be pushing God away, pushing Jesus Christ away - interposing some-thing, and then pretending that you must just obeying this some-thing - when the authority of that thing comes from you, from yourself.

You can, of course, choose to carry on denying, evading, pretending you are not responsible. 

And nobody can stop you! - because you are free and have thus chosen...

And have chosen to lie about it.  

The answer to anything is... Metaphysics

The main reason why most would-be deep discussion (as well as superficial argument) is a waste is... Metaphysics. 

Metaphysics is our fundamental assumptions concerning the nature of reality; and when these assumptions are wrong, all answers will be wrong - even if they are superficially correct. 

All answers will be wrong because they all trend to wrongness; they will be wrong because all the answers will constellate around the wrong assumptions, making it appear that the wong assumption is true (when, in fact, the facts are all built around the wrong assumptions). 

The constellation of wrong facts, the patterns they make, will make us that they are true; when they are actually all wrong, but all wrong in the same kind of way - because rooted in the same false assumptions.

And none of this will ever change, or can ever change, for so long as people are unwilling to expose and acknowledge their own basic assumptions.  

Nobody else will do this for us! If we don't do it ourselves, it won't be done. 

Anybody can do it for themselves, simply by asking why, and then why and why again, we believe X - and sincerely answering their own query. 

But you have to want to do it. 

 

The ebbing of music in my life

While I still get intermittent great pleasure from music (as evidenced by my occasional postings here) there has certainly been a tremendous decline from the days of my teens and early early twenties, when music was probably second only to literature and ideas in its importance for my life. 

By music, I mostly mean "classical" music; but folk music and various types of popular music and jazz were also of considerable importance. 

For instance; in terms of performance, I sang classical music; but instrumentally I played mainly folk music; and for a couple of years, the rhythm and blues or soul type of pop. I also composed a few short tunes or songs in these genres. 

For this decade (approximately) I would think about music A Great Deal, would make great efforts to listen (whether to recordings; or live concerts, and especially operas); and when I listened - I would sit and do nothing else; giving the music my whole attention (sometimes - especially with opera - I would read a musical score while listening). 

I was continually expanding my musical experience, wider and deeper; and by experiencing different performers of the same music. I studied the theory and history of music; and engaged in many analytic and critical discussions with people more technically-expert than myself. 

At peak (aged around twenty) I would be singing-acting solo roles in Gilbert and Sullivan, singing in two classical music choirs - one small "chamber" choir, of which I was co-founder and still exists; and the other other a large and well-regarded city choir; and playing in folk clubs.

As well as listening to tens of hours of music per week, and reading books on the subject - all this in my spare time from being a medical student. 

Indeed; it was mainly my own many technical deficiencies that blocked me from an even greater engagement with music.  

But - as it was - I was looking to music for something much more than entertainment; something that could justly be termed "spiritual". 

I sought, and sometimes experienced, a very profound sense of aesthetic and mystical consciousness. 

However, over the past few decades, this interest and engagement has ebbed substantially: both fading and narrowing. 

I am now compelled to acknowledge that I have for years been living off the musical capital of my early life; although I have greatly enriched my appreciation of a few aspects. 

In some ways I regret this ebbing; but mostly not - because the value of music was related to its being an inner and spontaneous drive. 

And also because it was not so much a decline in music; as that music was displaced as a focus.

Music first began to be displaced as my focus by its other and greater rival - literature, also dating from early teens. As a young man; if there was anything I spent more time upon than music, it was literature. 

And when I myself began active and practical "literary" work - when I began to write and publish (mostly "essays" - i.e. non-fiction of many kinds), in my late twenties; then this increased engagement with the written word naturally expanded to take-up a good deal of what mental focus had been occupied by music.  

Later on, the "spiritual" role of music in my life also began to be replaced; as I got more and more motivated to think and write about spiritual, philosophical, and eventually religious matters. 

In other words; from middle age I became consciously and specifically motivated to engage directly with ultimate "existential" matters; matters that I had previously (in adolescence and my twenties) engaged with mainly secondarily - and mainly via music. 

I think this explains why I am no longer driven to the kind of intense and serious engagement with music that characterized my early life. 

I still respond strongly to some music, albeit much less frequently; and I do not seek out such experiences with hard efforts. 

But music doesn't have the spiritual-primacy it once did. 

Alan Garner versus JRR Tolkien - the "Anxiety of Influence"

The book in which Garner decisively began to react-against Tolkien

I discuss Alan Garner's work in term of his Anxiety of Influence with respect to JRR Tolkien, over at my Notion Club Papers blog. 

The "AI" dupes: Thumbs in the scales

One of the difficult lessons, particularly emphasized by Owen Barfield, is that in every way the spiritual is prior to, and encompasses, the material. 

The spiritual world existed first - material and incarnation came later, and locally. Reality is spiritual - with some parts of it also material. The material is always spiritual, but the spiritual is not always material. 

Therefore, necessarily, the post-November 2022 "AI" phenomenon is spiritual... But that platitude does not tell you in what way any particular asserted-AI is spiritual.  

One deep problem with "AI" is that almost everything we are told about it (what it is, what it can and should do) is asserted by corrupted, lying, manipulative and evil-motivated sources (i.e. the leadership class in the major social institutions) - or by those who are on the payroll. 

This nearly-always means that our knowledge can only be negative and general - because, in a domain of untruthfulness, we cannot have valid positive and specific information.  

(One honest Man dwelling in a world of liars cannot rely on other-Men for valid knowledge.) 

We should therefore assume the problem of discovering the nature and capability of actually-in-place "AI", and even more its assumed future possibilities, this problem goes much deeper than recognized. 

It is obvious that people who interact with "AI" assume that everything it does is done by computers. 

But there is no reason to assume this is true - especially not in situations where it is advantageous to the "AI" agenda that human thumbs should be pressing down the scales in the desired direction, whenever that is useful. 

Of course, even the acknowledged mechanisms of "AI" rely on humans for all the heavy-lifting - the fundamental categorizations of phenomena that form the basis of all subsequent processing, the "AI" learning feedback etc. 

But there is every reason why human beings would actively, in real-time, be involved in so-called "AI" processing; when it is important enough to make the effort. 

After all, the funding and resourcing of "AI" is incomprehensibly vast - so paying people to add a human touch to "AI" processing is perfectly feasable! 

Human boosting of "AI" can be (and is) even explained-away - so that the actual people who are actually paid to do it, apparently do not necessarily realize (most often do not care) why they are providing human tweaks to the algorithms, nor what are the top-level planned consequences of their human-assists. 

There is a definite precedent with Search Engines; in which processes of ranking results that were advertised as objective and algorithmic, were in fact subjective and ideologically-driven. 

Big Tech is prepared to pay its myriad minions to subvert or distort its algorithms, when this is in aid of an agenda that they consider to be more important. 

And currently it is supremely important that as many people as possible be persuaded of the nigh-miraculous powers and capabilities of "AI", including ideas that "AI" has intrinsic functional capability, sentience, agency, and superior intelligence to human beings - and therefore that "AI" not only will but ought-to replace human beings. 

The PSYOP includes a strategy of convincing humans of their own inferiority to that mixed package of people and computers called "AI"; and therefore that this self-styled "AI" should replace the humans...

And in practice, therefore, to manufacture consent for the a centralized totalitarian System; in which those who own/ operate/ control the truly-colossal "AI"-enterprise are voluntarily accorded an objective right to rule the rest of Mankind... in whatever ways They "know" to be just and good.  

So we should expect human inputs and enhancements - a human thumb in the computerized scales - to be normal and routine whenever this is expedient for the success of the "AI" agenda.  

I Very seldom think about it, but I've always hated the "sport" of Curling

Ever since, as a young child, I saw a Scottish Curling game on TV (something like this), I have strongly disliked it - for one simple reason. 

Because of the characters running along with brooms, sweeping their brushes in front of the stone. 

If it was not for these sweeping guys, I would feel as cheerfully benign towards curling as I do towards lawn bowling. 

If the chaps that slid the stone across the ice did just that, and that was the game; if the stone was left to its own devices like in any other accuracy game - like a ball in bowls, the arrow in archery, or the dart in darts... 

That might be an elegant, aesthetically-pleasing thing to watch. 

But no. 

Those sweepers are fussing, pestering, and interfering-with the distance and the direction of the rock, creating a stupidly-frantic atmosphere. 

Worse; the very existence of sweepers creates create in my imagination a depressing picture of aristocratic oppression; much like the blokes who "beat" game birds directly into the shooting arc of a line of toffs with guns - who just stand there blasting-away at the pheasant or grouse - or the beaters... or whatever. 

Sport? 

I don't blame the sweepers... they are just servile lackeys, out for an extra shilling. 

After all; the Laird and his mates gets the fun of chucking the rock; then (I guess, at some point in the history of the pastime) some idle, devious gent got the idea of paying a couple of downtrodden crofters to make a pittance running around harassing his stone en route; making sure it went where he wasn't skilled enough to bung it - and then Sir Smug Git takes the credit for whatever happens at the target... 

Curling? Bah, Humbug. 

What's the difference between a fantasist and a liar? Self-deprecating versus self-aggrandizing.

Michael Green: self-deprecating comic fantasist - 1927-2018

People who are untruthful in a character-driven way, whose discourse (spoken or written, or perhaps visual) is not aimed-at correspondence with reality - seem to fall into two categories: fantasist and liar. 

A fantasist is not truthful because he is not aiming at truth, but at something else - perhaps entertainment, humour, or even art. 

Humour is a good example - a good "raconteur" tells anecdotes of his life; but these stories do not attempt to describe accurately the individual's past experience. 

Instead, some aspects or fragments of past experience are used as the basis for elaborating a fantasy - and the aim may be humour, or to thrill, to horrify - or otherwise engage with his audience.  

The liar, on the other hand, is untruthful for his own benefit. 

If a liar tells an entertaining story, its subtext is intentionally (whether by conscious intent, or by sheer habit) self-aggrandisement. 

The liar's untruthfulness is motivated by self-interest: the lie is to serve a selfish agenda. 

When there is anecdote, when the liar spins something that seems like a fantasy; the underlying objective is always to impress the audience with a conviction of "Nonetheless... What a fine fellow he is!"

The true fantasist can be distinguished by the self-deprecating nature of his stories.

I used to know a vastly entertaining Welsh chap, who spontaneously extemporized hilarious stories of his own experiences (to the extent of making me cry with helpless laughter) - and always with the assumption of himself as a hapless character, his own worst enemy. 

Of course these stories were 95% untrue in a literal sense - yet, they always had some actual observation or event as a trigger, and evoked a surreal sense of reality that made them compelling, and almost wise. 

Of course, to be able to tell funny stories against oneself requires a deep self-confidence, which is attractive. 

And in a deeper sense, the successful fantasist does project a positive image; at least some of the audience will assume that anybody who is so confident that he can afford to run himself down continually, must underneath it all be pretty confident after all. 

This applies even when a self-deprecating fantasist really is a kind of walking disaster zone IRL; as seems to have been the case with Michael Green, author of "The Art of Coarse..." series of books (e.g. Coarse Rugby, Acting, Sailing, Drinking etc) and his two excellent autobiographies*.

By all accounts, Michael Green really was a kind of walking disaster area, a bit of a "dope"; and continually self-sabotaging. He was, therefore, just the kind of well-meaning but hapless innocent that he described himself to be. His fantasies seem to have had a higher-than-usual percentage of literal factuality!

Yet of course Green was also a successful and much-loved humourist over several decades - therefore clearly an unusually competent kind of "fool".

When you laugh at Michael Green's crazy exploits, it is Michael Green who is making you laugh. 

By contrast, the liar's aim is to manipulate his audience in ways that benefit himself. 

Sometimes this is crudely done, a Hard Sell, that brow-beats and wearies his audience. 

(As when the liar is so insecure that he cannot bear, even for a moment, to threaten his own precious self-image.) 

Or sometimes the liar may seek to emulate the self-deprecation of a fantasist - taking the long-termist and Soft Sell approach to marketing. 

But whether Hard of Soft, the Liar is always selling himself -  because, at root, "himself" is the only thing he really cares about.

**

*The boy who shot down an airship (1988), and Nobody hurt in small earthquake (1990).  

Files don't prove... anything - and anyway, we should by-now Already Know what is needed

The Alt Media is abuzz about some "files" that have supposedly been released by the Establishment that "prove" the Establishment actively serves the agenda of purposive demonic evil.

And that the Western-Globalist Establishment leadership class are, personally, extremely corrupt.  

Let's be clear. Files, and especially officially-disseminated files, and especially files that are the product of evil; do not and cannot ever prove anything in the ultimate and spiritual sense that is necessary. 

But for Heaven's sake! 

We really, by now (and for at least fifteen years), ought not only to know that the globalist totalitarian Establishment is purposively-evil and personally corrupt; but this ought to have been absorbed into our world-view; and this reality ought already to form the basis of understanding socio-political actuality and events. 

Especially after the Birdemic-related events of early 2020 and subsequently. 

Files are, after all, merely data; and the provenance and accuracy of data is always contestable; and the interpretation of data is always contestable; and both accuracy and interpretation are a product of metaphysical assumptions concerning the nature of reality. 

Therefore; anyone whose fundamental assumptions disallow (or regard as impossible) the literal evil and actual corruption of the Western and Globalist Establishment (and especially the leadership class) - cannot and will not be persuaded of their evil and corruption by any data of any kind in any amount.  

(As will very soon become apparent.) 

Those who suggest that The Files are (i.e. should be, they believe) a watershed in the history of Western politics; are engaged in their own kind of attempted political (and geopolitical) manipulations... Usually concerned with trying to enlist active support for some ideology or party or program of some kind (some ideology/ party/ program that the writer or speaker serves or desires to dominate). Advice which purportedly leads back, in a loop, to the kind of society of some decades (or centuries!) ago: a "movement" which is not even going to be attempted (because of how people actually are), but would not work if it was (because people are not what they were). 

If not, then what? 

I see zero need to engage with the content of purported Files; and many probable pitfalls in doing so; the most likely of which is to be encouraged into an attitude of resentful spite and/or despair. 

We should already know what we need to know (i.e. what we personally know suffices without Establishment-supplied "evidence"); and if we don't know it by now, then it is not the problem of lack of evidence that blocks our understanding.

 

To engage-with The Files would merely be to participate spiritually with a staged media-political event; thereby voluntarily to open our hearts to that evil; and to engage in Yet Another example of double-negative values; values that are lethally-characteristic-of and foundational-to the atheist-materialist Western mainstream. 

What we need to do instead; is accept as true the reality of the evil of The Establishment, and the extremity of personal corruption of the human leadership...

And (less spectacularly) the facilitation of evil and spiritual corruption of their servant class such as bureaucrats, media people, managers, intellectuals, professionals etc. 

Accept that this is the way that our civilizations actually-is; here and now. 

Such knowledge not a trigger for action; but is a basis for understanding primarily - and understanding ought to serve a spiritual agenda; which is, for me - by my free choice, the life of a Christian. 

Only after that understanding is assimilated will we personally know what is right and good; and only after we know that, can we know what we personally ought to do. 

Good action lies on the other side of spiritual understanding and personal commitment in the spiritual war of this world. 

But anyone who tells us what we ought to do ("because of" the Files) when they themselves have not assimilated that understanding to their own personal and Christian life, and/or when we ourselves have not done so -- is necessarily trying to manipulate us to believe and serve some external, pre-existing, and anti-spiritual (and anti-Christian) agenda...  

In sum: Good comes only from Good, and Good is a spiritual (not material) value. 

No combination of oppositional agendas can lead to Good in the absence of actual positive and spiritual motivation for Good.  

To be guided primarily by any secondhand "data" or any other form of externally located "evidence"; or to serve the agenda of any external ideology or grouping - is to be assimilated more deeply into the evils of the Establishment agenda of evil.  

We personally can only do Good from the basis of our own personal motivations rooted in our own actual understanding. 

Insofar as we our-selves attain understanding and choose to take the side of divine creation in the spiritual war of this world; we will know what Good we can do, and doing that Good will surely affect "the world" for the better. 

And this is a necessary faith; it is the faith that lets us know what to do, that doing it will work; and this faith is also necessary in order that our choices can do Good, because without such faith we will not be aligned with God' intentions. 

In a nutshell: we do Good in this world only spiritually; by personal alignment on the side of God, and by our active and conscious participation in ongoing divine creation. 

An auspicious Candlemass?

Yesterday could be considered Candlemass (nowadays equated with the Celtic cross-quarter day of Imbolc - coming about halfway between the winter solstice and the vernal equinox); which is a festival of burgeoning light (here, about an extra hour and a half per day, since the depths). 

Symbolised by harbingers of spring, if not spring itself - such as Hazel catkins and the Snowdrop flower - who first put-in an appearance a couple of weeks ago, but is now making its presence felt (at least in the city; it will not begin to peak in the countryside for a couple more weeks). 

It happened to be a rare day of mostly-clear skies; very welcome after a few weeks of cloud-cover and sharp showers. 

It was also the second full moon since the Solstice - and in the late evening she was almost dazzling, and cast a tremendous silver light. 

Nearby was Jupiter which is currently exceptionally vivid: as bright as I have ever seen him, blazing almost as brightly as Venus usually does. 

Candlemass is also associated with Ireland (and Glastonbury's) premier woman Saint: Brigid; who is regarded by many as having absorbed the character of a Celtic goddess of the same name. 

My "chore" for the day was a bit of a clear-out; which included sorting through a mass of photographs taken in my twenties and before I got married - which was a mostly pleasant and nostalgic activity; being reminded of my former self, family, old friends, girlfriends (linking, perhaps - implicitly, with the Brigid theme), places, events...

And a phase of my young adult development during which I was taking (and printing for myself) pretentious soi disant artsy monochrome pix; accurately reflecting my own self-aggrandizing self-consciousness and underlying alienation.

But I was in a broadly forgiving mood; and my present nature therefore (graciously) forgave the rather obvious conceit and self-dramatizing qualities of my earlier personhood.   

Altogether the day generated a diffuse sense of positive expectation: as if it were an auspicious day in a quasi-astrological sense... 

Although, if so; I am unclear and sceptical about how such things might operate in this world and in real life.    

There are no "good causes" in politics 2026: only effective excuses for an evil agenda

Dear oh dear; but people are so so gullible (and I include myself) when it comes to politics!

Some politician (whether national or international) merely has to present his policy or action as being in "a good cause" - and he will not lack support. 

Support coming from those who persist (in the teeth of everything) in assuming that there are individuals among the actual (or aspiring) leadership class of The West and International Agencies who are genuinely well-motivated, who truly desire to do good things. 

Well the simple truth is that There Are No Good Things. 

There are no policies or actions that are intrinsically Good; it always depends on the motivation behind them, on what the policies and actions are genuinely intended to accomplish. 

If the Good-est policy imaginable is in reality motivated by intent to do some evil, then a Bad Outcome is what will happen for sure in real life. 

When we have, as we do, a leadership class who are without exception servants of demonic evil - because exceptions don't want to become, or get to become, leaders; and/ or get swiftly neutralized or eliminated if (somehow) they do attain power/ influence/ wealth/ status...

When we actually have such a class in control; then all policies - both those that seem helpful (if that was the intent), as well as those more obviously harmful - will actually in real life and for sure...

Be used to do harm, in pursuit of one or another of the strategies of evil.

Note: The "strategies of evil" can be summarized in three ways: the most obvious one of individuals trying to gratify their short-termist personal selfishness (lust, greed, status etc); the bureaucratic imperative aiming at a global totalitarian system of omni-surveillance and micro-control; and the "end-stage" negative or nihilistic evil of the spiteful destruction of divine creation in all its aspects.  

 

Was the Omni-God concept a consequence of the development of human consciousness?

It is interesting to speculate how the incoherent and mass-apostasy-inducing Omni-God concept arose and came to dominate Christian (and some other) theologies and Priesthoods. 

One God who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and created everything from nothing - i.e. the officially mandatory nature of God according to mainstream Christianity; is an idea literally inconceivable to simple people and children. 

And inconceivable to people of the past, and up to the life of Jesus; because I see nothing explicit to suggest that the authors of Old Testament, the Gospels, or Epistles conceptualized God in this way. 

The Omni idea seems to have emerged - off the record - in the generations after the ascension of Jesus and deaths of the Apostles; until we see it behind the Christology schisms and disputes, concerning the divine and/or human nature of Christ; that tore-apart the nascent church in its early centuries. 

Such disputes were (and are) inevitable when Jesus was assumed to have been incarnated into the creation of an Omni-God, since the Omni definition of God excludes the possibility of Jesus being a second creator-deity; and indeed removes any possible reason or purpose for a further manifestation of deity. 

(If God is supposed to be able to do everything, know everything, be everywhere etc - then there is no necessity for Jesus Christ to be incarnated, live, die, be resurrected, ascend to Heaven etc. The Omni-God can - by definition - do everything that is doable, so Jesus is superfluous.) 

Yet if Jesus Christ is not a truly divine creator God; then Jesus is "just" a teacher, prophet etc - and we either assume Jesus was a false teacher and revert to Judaism; or assume Jesus was a valid teacher as with Islam. 

But if Jesus is not divine, he is not unique; and there is no reason to build a religion around following him. 

So how and why did such a strange and destructive idea emerge? 

My best guess of how, is that the Omni-God was synthesized from the ancient Hebrew idea of a single dominating personal God to whom all other Gods were inferior and subservient; and to whom all worship and obedience was due. 

This "monotheism" was combined with Greek philosophical ideas - and religious ideas - probably from  elite and initiatory mystery religions; such as Neo-Platonists and Gnostics); of a universal but impersonal abstract-deity that was everything (pantheism), was the ultimate cause of everything, was perfect hence time-less etc.

(Much like some Hindu and Buddhist philosophical concepts of deity.) 

 

But why did the Omni idea happen at all? 

My understanding is that this was part of the development of human consciousness; and the increasing inner sense of separation of the individual from the group. 

Before the Omni-God concept; human consciousness was naturally, spontaneously, and largely un-consciously very much immersed in the group consciousness - and this group consciousness included the realms of spirits and the divine. 

Because people experienced relationships with so many other Beings (such as animals, trees, landscape, the dead, angels, demons, and gods); there was no subjective "problem" of creation as being incoherent.

There was no need to "explain" how it was that the universe held-together and had purpose - because this coherence was simply a matter of experience. Men knew that things cohered. 

This was, and still is, how young children experience reality even nowadays; and perhaps some tribal peoples as well. 

In other words, in ancient times there was no felt-problem of incoherence that the Omni concept was needed to solve. 

There was no need or reason to explain why all the different aspects of reality held-together and had an overall purpose. 

And no reason to explain why there were real values - a real and universal morality... Since such things were obvious.  

It was when Man's consciousness began (and continued) to become ever more self-aware and separated from the group consciousness; and from awareness of the dead, spirits of many kinds, and the divine - that Men sought an explicit explanation of the "unity" of all things...

That intellectuals came-up with the Omni-God explanation. 

This does not explain why the early Christian church seized upon the Omni-God concept and made it mandatory, despite all the problems it has caused ever since. 

But I think that ultimately such reasons are social rather than philosophical: to do with the church as an institution, rather than Christianity as a theoretical construct.  

The Omni-God concept is popular in all the major monotheisms, I think because it is interpreted to make the specific religion both universal and mandatory; it is used to insert the religion and its church into the ultimate creation and operation of absolutely every-thing. 

Omni-God removes choice from religion; and religion becomes a matter of acknowledging one truth for everything...

Or else the act of rejecting that church and religion gets conceptualized as rejecting... absolutely everything, and all possibility of anything.

So, with Omni-God; not be be a member of the church and religion is therefore conceptualized as a wholly irrational and incoherent act - an embrace of absolute nothingness.  

If it is broadly correct that the Omni-God emerged after Jesus and in the early centuries AD; driven from-within by changes in Mens' consciousness; then we can also see that a genuine, living, motivating belief in Omni-God has become impossible in the modern era.

Shoals of people have left the Christian church, and/or had their faith reduced to the feebleness of a lifestyle-choice, by the insistence of Christian theology on the Omni-God combined with the gross incoherence of the concept - which incoherence has now become spontaneously obvious even to those of low intelligence. 

(The two obvious problems about a Christianity rooted in the Omni-God concept and a Good God; are an inability to explain genuine evil and extreme and undeserved suffering and death; and also an inability to explain human agency or "freedom".)  

In replying to a basic question of "who was Jesus?": mystery-word-spells about Jesus being simultaneously wholly-Man and wholly-God seem like meaningless or devious abstractions; when materialism is built-into the modern perspective. 

In replying to what did Jesus do?": kick-the-can pseudo-explanations about Jesus being necessary to save Mankind from the blame attached to an "original sin" leading to a "fall" that occurred in prehistory; make no sense (and seem grossly unjust)...

When Man's consciousness has become so spontaneously separated from the group/ spirit/ divine that the choices and events of putative ancient ancestors is experienced as utterly irrelevant to me-here-now.

If the Omni-God was not original to Christianity but instead the contingent artefact of a particular stage in Man's historical consciousness and the rhetorical requirements of the ancient church...

And since the O-G concept currently stands in the path of any possibility of explaining (clearly and simply) the nature of Jesus and what he did...

Then Christians really need to go back and re-examine and reject this Omni-God dogma... 

And then we need to replace the obsolete and harmful Omni-God with a conceptualization of God that makes explanatory-sense to us each, here, and now; and which clearly and simply explains the necessity of Jesus Christ for those who desire salvation.  

We can never "know" completely and finally; but can Love wholly and eternally

From Exegesis by Philip K Dick, referring to his novel The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982) 

This is a strange ending [to the novel]. 

The will (of Schopenhauer) turns back on itself and is satisfied not to know: This is the form its cessation takes: that he is content not to know, and so is she. Thus one thing is certain: the restless, striving, irrational will is defeated; it has given up. 

If this is how victory is defined, there has been victory. 

If victory is defined as knowing whether Tim Archer defeats Fate through Christ and immortality—it is not victory. 

The final message seems to be: sublime peace - freedom from the restless striving will - is possible, but knowledge - intellectual knowing - is not. 

The heart can know peace but the mind cannot be satisfied; the drive to know, to possess intellectual certitude is doomed to failure.

Sureness is not factual but relational: but a matter between persons, between beings (in the here and now).

What we can be sure about is not knowledge - which is why epistemology, a philosophical search for surety of factual information -  is a dead end. 

"Knowing about stuff" is not the core of reality; because reality is not naturally divided into units, into "facts". 

We can never ever be "certain" of facts because reality is not pre-divided into facts - not factually-segmented - such divisions are imposed, arbitrary, and selective.

(The idea that "scientific facts" are the only thing we can be certain of - is therefore a dangerous delusion.) 

  

What, then, is the core of reality? 

The fundamental and real divisions are those between individual living beings. 

Ultimate reality is therefore to do with living beings and the relationships between them. 

The heart can know "peace" in the context of love; albeit in this mortal world that peace can only be temporary - because of entropy/ death and evil. 

Yet in resurrected Heavenly life, that peace can be eternal.

And love between living beings is a dynamic thing, because life is dynamic; which is why and how love overflows into creating.  

Even in Heaven (even for God the Creator) we will never know finally, nor wholly and eternally - because creation is ongoing, and other-beings really are "other". 

But we shall love wholly and eternally; and it is that possibility which makes Heaven possible. 

 

A big danger is that we will "find" whatever we "seek"

There seems to be a fundamental problem in life, that while passive, assimilative compliance leads (in our society and world) to disaster and damnation -- on the other hand, there is a very big problem when we consciously and conscientiously seek a specific thing. 

This both in physical material terms (as when people pursue a career plan, or a plan to find a lover or spouse) - and also spiritually. 

It seems that many people (including some of the greatest spiritual exemplars) have deceived themselves and fallen into error by exerting their considerable powers by devising strategies to discover and attain some very particular thing. 

Many people seek specific knowledge - and seek it by long-term efforts: the long monastic training by prayer, liturgy, meditation, labour; years of ascetic striving by desert-dwelling hermits; the prolonged initiation of mystery religions, spiritual science, ritual magic (alchemy, astrology, divinations etc). 

The resulting gross divergence in outcomes, results, beliefs, dogmas, rules and laws, practices and compulsions - is evidence that the process was one originating in the defective wilfulness of fundamentally-incapable beings. 

The big problem of all such spiritual effort; is that people do find what they seek - yet what they seek is something that has been decided by their conscious personality-mind, and implemented by the mundane will-power. 

Such people think they know what they need, and they suppose that they know what is good for "other people" and for "the world"...

And mostly by the transformations of themselves that happen because of their sustained and willed efforts; they find... what they seek, only only what they seek... Find this by various combinations of enhanced abilities, diminished intuitive discernment... of actual-finding with self-deception. 

Ultimately Life (at least for a follower of Jesus) ought to be about loving relationships with other people, other beings, with God and Jesus and others... and the creativity that arises from such loving relationships. 

Life is therefore, ultimately, NOT about changing other people for (what we regard as) the better - that is attempted manipulation - which is a psychopathic and selfish thing, even when justified by altruistic theories. 

Relationships are ultimately NOT about us knowing just what others most need, nor about planning other people's lives (For Their Own Good) - whether materially or spiritually. 

Life is ultimately NOT about making a better world for everybody by knowledge, skill and determination exercised over time... 

Because we really have no idea of what that better world actually is - and the attempt to devise and impose a better world lead to propaganda and coercion - justified by "the common good" (and always by "the end justifies the means" thinking). 

The fact that this stuff is inevitable (and to a significant extent) in our mortal world, is because this is not Heaven; and our world is permeated with evil and undercut by entropy. 

But even if inevitable to a degree, this kind of will-directed strategizing should not be our ideal - yet it is, unfortunately, presented as the ideal by most religions and spiritual systems! 

We cannot know what is good in any degree of specific detail; even less can we know how to act and arrange things to "make" good.

To pretend otherwise leads to great and general harm, including (and primarily) harm to Our-Selves. 

But we do know enough of such matters to be able to live well-enough to develop spiritually and attain salvation - after which, as eternal resurrected beings in Heaven; we can get on with participating in the world of divine creation. 

But not before. 

We cannot have it by wanting it; because:

What we want (in our mortal selves and world) is not really IT.    

Atheist materialism versus Church religion - only one winner, unless...

Atheist materialism - the mainstream ideology of the West, that monopolizes the entirety of public discourse - is a system of reasoning that claims to be wholly based on "evidence"; it claims to make no metaphysical assumptions regarding the ultimate or basic nature of reality. 

Atheist materialism therefore operates wholly at the superficial level of evidence and logic - as defined by its won denied assumptions of what constitutes valid evidence and logic. 

This is achieved by taking its own metaphysics for granted (and denying it exists) and keeping all discourse confined within its own assumptions; and declaring everything else to be meaningless, or merely arbitrary personal opinion (which amounts to the same thing). 

Church religions are deeper than atheistic materialism, because churches declare specifically their own fundamental metaphysical assumptions concerning the nature of reality - and that these assumptions are shared by the religion's adherents.

Church religion is superior to atheistic materialism because it knows and admits that it has metaphysical assumptions, which it then sets-out explicitly - whereas atheistic materialism falsely denies that it makes any metaphysical assumptions.  

However, these fundamental religious assumptions differ between religions.  

Each religion defends its own assumptions by trying to prove them: either prove them from evidence: such as the claimed observable consequences of belief and unbelief in terms of individual psychology, or perhaps societal functioning. 

Or else religions try to prove their fundamental assumptions using rational logic - religions try to prove that their assumptions Must Be as they are, or else things would be incoherent or incomplete. 

However; to the atheist materialist, the variety of Church religions metaphysical assumptions is regarded as conclusive evidence that their assumptions are arbitrary - just made-up.

And the atheist materialist regards attempts by religions to prove that their own particular metaphysical assumptions must be true, whether the attempted proof is by observations or by logic, as being dependent on already accepting the religious assumptions. i.e. Church proofs are seen merely as circular reasoning. 

Atheist materialism has alternative and non-religious explanations for all church attempts to prove all possible systems of religious metaphysics. 

To atheist materialism there is thus "zero evidence" for anything religious; and the assumptions of all religions are seen as arbitrary and just "made-up". 

Atheist materialism (nearly-)always wins disputes with church religions, because atheist materialism is much more powerful... very-nearly all-powerful, at the Western civilizational level.  

The metaphysical assumptions of atheist materialism are immune to social refutation because they never discussed as being "beliefs" - and are denied to be assumptions at all. 

This rhetoric is effective and "works" because the metaphysics has been built-into every type and level of the functioning of modern society; and inculcated such as to become habitual during socialization. 

Atheist materialism is the default for modern Men. 

Church religion continues to lose this debate with atheist materialism, because the dominant public metaphysics depends on power, and church religion gets weaker and weaker. 

Also because church religion has assimilated more and ever-more of the assumptions of atheistic materialism such that it has conceded all the most fundamental ground in advance of discussion. 

Therefore, attempts to prove any religious metaphysics in publicly acceptable or socially effective ways in our society as it actually is; merely lead-back into atheistic materialism. 

Church religion is consequently stuck and doomed; because insofar as a religion has power, cohesion, effective-influence, wealth, organization etc; that religion is itself a part of the atheist materialist civilization, and its already-existing assumptions.  

From such a society, with such basic and habitual assumptions as we actually have; there can only arise various kinds of atheist materialist conclusions.

 

The way forward is therefore down - down to considering the metaphysical assumptions of religion as what they are - which is as assumptions, not evidence-derived...

And therefore religions need to stop pretending to derive our metaphysical assumptions from consensus definitions evidence and logic - because the modern consensus of what constitutes valid evidence and logic necessarily sustains atheistic materialism. 

If we (you and I) continue to rely-upon societal and consensus (including church society and consensus) definitions and understandings of valid metaphysics; we will be trapped by atheistic materialism.

Only by using our own personal discernment to discover what it is that we really belive about the ultimate and basic nature of reality can we escape atheist materialism. 

Only by coming to know our own personal and deepest metaphysical convictions can we move forward to a positive, sustaining, and motivating, and fundamentally different system of understanding. 

And, only if reality is objectively real - and if that ultimate reality is set-up such that we each, as individuals, can attain to sufficient true understanding of reality - could this be possible. 

That is the necessary faith: the faith that it is indeed possible and achievable for each one of us who desires it and consciously chooses to do it; to gain a sufficient understanding of the fundamental nature of reality for ourselves.

The perspective of psychotherapy is something new and assumed. A gross and harmful distortion of modern biographical writing

I have read and continue to read a lot of biographies; both formal biographies, and more journalistic accounts of people's character, actions, and lives. 

And since the mid-20th century most biographies I have encountered - especially the worst ones, and the worst aspects of even the better biographies - adopt the assumptions of psychotherapy even when writing about older and the pre-modern people. 

Yet; I am confident that people of the past were not motivated therapeutically in the way that modern people are motivated. 

That is, I don't believe that past people lived with the implicit (often explicit) intention of reducing their (more or less severe, more or less long-term) psychological state of dysphoria (i.e. feeling bad/ adverse/ un-pleasant in some way). 

Nor did past people have the over-arching life-purpose of "making themselves feel better"; by their life-choices and behaviours. 

We moderns usually do have such a perspective on life - but it was not always thus. 

Furthermore; the psychotherapy perspective in biography (i.e. in the intent of understanding people) usually traces dysphoria to either past experiences (e.g. childhood or early-life relationships, traumatic events, disappointments etc.); or to disease. 

Whereas it would be more accurate to recognize that much of our character is inherited. 

Yet, heredity was the first-line explanation for human behaviour for (probably) thousands of years - i.e. through most of recorded history. 

I mean: to explain a person's behaviour, the usual thing in earlier times was to discuss what had been inherited from parents and other ancestors - including typical racial characteristics.  

The consequences of these anachronistic distortions is profound; a gross failure to understand what it is to be human. We moderns populate history with versions of our own unusual modern consciousness. 

This has many adverse effects; including eliminating from consideration a whole world of group consciousness, of people who lived embedded-in a psychological world derived from their ancestors. 

Eliminating many centuries in which religion was such a powerful motivator that it was often primary - and overcame considerations of personal happiness or suffering. 

And - because psychology and psychotherapy are products of the atheism and materialism of modernity. 

Past experiences and diseases are typically explained in wholly materialistic terms; and when heredity is considered, it is materialist - only from the modern and narrow perspective of genetics. 

Thereby eliminating a world in which "the spiritual" was pervasive; and relationships naturally and spontaneously extended to include the dead; spiritual beings such as angels, demons, fairies and ghosts; and eliminating, also, what used to be profoundly life-shaping experiences of direct relationships with the divine.    

Thus modern biographical writing is yet another of the many ways in which - by our assumptions - we paint ourselves into a corner of alienation and soullessness; whereby we conceptualize ourselves as nothing more or other than material entities produced-by and acted-upon by material influences... In a world that has always been like this, with the implication that our condition is inescapable. 

Big events are distorted versus micro/ non-events getting inflated - Two kinds of media manipulation

In that seminal year of 2020 we saw example of the two extremes of coordinated global media manipulation. 

At the start of 2020 was the Birdemic (i.e. the international response to the supposed "emic" - the lockdowns etc.) - which was not just a big event, but the biggest event in the history of the world.

The role of the mass media in this instance was to distort a genuinely vast phenomenon in pursuit of The System agenda. 

Then in summer of 2020 was saw a micro-event (or non-event) in a town in the USA, blown-up to an international scale phenomenon for months, everywhere, apparently obsessing the leadership class down through all their managerial, intellectual and professional myrmidons. 

From nearly-nothing, or actually-nothing; The System was able (in an incredibly short timescale) to make a defining global phenomenon - such that socio-political changes were implemented across the entirety of Western-dominated nations.

That is the power of The System - of the Establishment - of the unified and linked totalitarian social institutions. 

The power - via mas and social media, and the mass addiction to them - to focus and sustain much of the attention of hundreds of millions. 

And, reciprocally, the power to get hundreds of millions largely to ignore what They want ignored. 

When the issue is Big, like the the Birdemic, Peck, Fire Nation or "AI" - I assume that They are then engaged in a major attempt fundamentally to re-program human thinking in some way that progresses their agenda of atheist-materialist-bureaucratic self-damnation...

When instead (as today) the global media are focused on an issue that is so micro, so trivial, that it may be literally nothing at all; I think we can be sure that They are doing so partly in order to prevent people noticing something very big.  

But also because such micro/ non-event based frenzies are a big part of Project Chaos: the demonically-driven evil agenda focused on spreading and amplifying mutual hatred, endemic fear, motivating resentment - and existential despair. 

Big event mania promotes totalitarian evil - and plans for System omni-surveillance and micro-control; while non-event frenzies strategically promote civilizational and System breakdown*.

In a nutshell: Big events are intended to unify; inflated micro-events are intended to divide.

*Non-event frenzies have a triple effect. In the short term and long-term they actually promote disorder and breakdown; but they are successfully (and dishonestly) "sold" to the System-totalitarians because they can be "used" to implement increased totalitarianism in the medium term. 

The problem of "reacting" to current affairs - the example of the 2020 Birdemic

Much of the public space is taken up by people "reacting" - especially to news and current affairs; including a wide rage of stuff from celebrity gossip to (what are presented as) Serious Analysis of the Big Issues of our day. 

I have, myself, done a lot of this - over the decades. 

At the trivial end of the spectrum; this kind of reaction material is dealing with obviously (indeed aggressively!) trivial distractions from mundane living - as when YouTubers film themselves acting their emotions on "unboxing" consumer items. 

(Indeed; my YouTube feed shows that "so-and-so Reacts To such-and-such" is a large and popular genre on this platform - and no doubt others.) 

The Trouble Is at the other end; would-be serious analysis of the Big Issues and events of the times; because that is where people are trying to reflect and to work-out their own basic stance on Life and how we ought to lead it.

Take, for instance, the 2020 Birdemic and the subsequent multi-million-person Peck - a subject about which I "reacted" and wrote a great deal at the time, and since. 

The Trouble Is that we don't really know what was going on - even at the most basic level (and never shall). 

We know (at least, I feel that I know, because it is not a secret) that the 2020 global lockdown event in "response" was in some general sense planned. But probably that is all we do know, for sure. 

More exactly the response was definitely planned - including the Peck (which was several or many agents, seemingly), because the Peck had had already been made; but what the Birdemic event itself was is something about which I don't think anybody is at all sure. 

I don't doubt there was a plan, something was launched, and that there was some kind of deliberate "seeding" of the environment with some-thing; some modified-agent that was intended to be highly infectious and highly lethal and lead to a real "emic". 

But if so; it seems that the plan did not work as-planned; because there was no highly-lethal and highly-transmissible agent (or, perhaps, only a very little of it) - and it is possible that the "cases" (including deaths) were nearly-all (or in some times and places literally All) a combination of other agents and no agent. 

The observed and reported data can easily be explained in terms of false attributions of causes to symptoms and death; and false positives from signs and tests that were wrongly and dishonestly deployed and interpreted 

This "nothing-burger" understanding of the Birdemic itself (as distinct from the response it it) is quite possible. 

But so also are many other scenarios, at more and more "superficial" levels; where various parts of the official story, some of the official data, are factually-correct (even when the implications of these facts are false and manipulative).

Maybe there was a real-new-agent that spread around the world infectiously, but it just didn't have a high mortality. 

And (if so) exactly then some possible questions (much discussed!) include: where did this putative new agent come-from; was it natural or contrived; how and why was it released?

How was the media coverage managed? How much reportage was completely fake (did not happen IRL) and was instead enacted; how much did happen but was done deliberately? 

And, on top; how much was indeed spontaneously happening (as reported), but distorted and amplified and misrepresented by reportage? 

Then the questions of actual human pathology - sickness and mortality. 

Aside from how many of the attributions of causality were lies or mistaken; there is the Huge question regarding how much suffering and death was caused by the putative agent (i.e. by "the Birdemic"), and how much by the "response" to the Birdemic (i.e. lockdowns, distancing, masking, swabbing, gross neglect etc). 

The response (which we know was pre-planned) was claimed to be working against suffering and death - but the response certainly must have caused some, much, or perhaps most of the suffering and deaths attributed to the Birdemic-itself. 

And if the response caused most of the suffering and death, then was this s&d an accidental (deluded or incompetent) by-product, or was mass s&d strategically intended as part of "the plan"? 

And if the suffering and death was indeed strategically intended - then did the strategy succeed?... Did the actual amount of extra suffering and death match-up to what was planned?

My point here is to emphasise just some of the uncertainties that surround "reacting" to current affairs; and the implication that some of the reactions that are intended to be sceptical - and intend (or claim to intend) to oppose the Establishment agenda, will instead actually support the Establishment agenda. 

For instance; analysis and scepticism regarding the official story of the origins and mode of spread of the Birdemic; usually accepts (or takes for granted) the reality of the Birdemic: i.e. it implicitly believes the official story that there was indeed a highly lethal and infectious agent whose genetic sequence is known. 

Or; dissent over the nature and effectiveness of lockdowns or distancing, often accepts the assumption that some kind of general government-imposed societal response to the Birdemic was necessary (despite no evidence from official data of unusually-high mortality rates before the lockdown/ distancing).

Whereas, if there was no significant reality to the Birdemic in the first place; then no response was ever necessary in the first place; which means that a response was actively contra-indicated (given that the scale and nature of a social (indeed international) response in terms of major social change; was itself inevitably itself bound to become a significant cause of disease and death. 

So dissent, opposition, analysis - may quite easily end-up supporting and sustaining the very agenda it tries (or appears to try) to oppose.

Especially when the nature or reality of The Problem is not-really-known, and perhaps unknowable. 

In a nutshell; when we react to anything we know of, or think we understand, only or mainly via officialdom and the mass media; we absolutely need to bear in mind that there are a vast range of possible realities, and in reacting to one, we are always assuming another.

And the range of possible realities extends from nothing at all having happened (total fakery), through levels such as the event being real but staged or permitted, to the event being factually (more or less) as-described - but the interpretation of that event being dishonestly manipulative. 

All we can ever know for sure is that (as of 2026) the official story is always false - but we can seldom know in what way false; so our reactions may be being manipulated in ways we do not detect, and may therefore do more harm than good. 

Why do I find so few blogs worth reading? Disengagment and its rationale.

In the past few months, I have begun to limit my reading of blogs more and more - including those I have been reading a long time. This was not a strategy, was not intentional - but something that I realize has crept-up on me. 

If I try to explain or justify this, I think the answer has to do with the continuing phenomenon I have often called "things coming to a point" - which I understand to be something that happens when the world is getting spiritually worse over time. 

When the world is getting worse, then the spontaneous default is for "everything" to get worse; which implies that if we personally do not want to share in the corruption, then we must spiritually detach from more, and yet more, of "the world".

And the process is ongoing, because the world keeps worsening. 

Insofar as we fail to do this, we will join ourselves to the increasing corruption of the world. 

And this corruption will reveal itself - both passively, in terms of what we go along with; but also actively in terms of what we explicitly support. 

I think this latter, for me, is the critical aspect: I mean, what people actively support; and more especially what I infer to be their motives for doing so.

We all differ in our specific tolerances; and I personally have a particularly strong aversion for spitefulness and Schadenfreude - and these seem to be stronger and stronger motivations behind more and more online writing. 

It is this, more than anything, that has driven me away from one after another blog; a sense that the ideas, ideology or religion is in fact serving primarily as an excuse for indulging in the expression and advocacy of spite and sadism. 

Like most sin; once defended and apologized, such a writer gets to enjoy his revenge and retribution fantasies - until they undercut or swamp the good-motivated stuff. 

The ideas - including the expressed Christian beliefs - have become a rationale for negative values; the negative values induce a dominant orientation on enemies and what should or shall happen to them. 

In my experience, people in the grip of such demonic passions are hopeless and unreachable - and indeed are fed by any form of engagement: they thrive on opposition, and they thrive on constructive and empathic approaches. 

(This may also be seen in the extraordinary and escalating levels of braggadocio and self-aggrandisement among far too many bloggers; which provoke in me a mixture of irritation and embarrassment - much as when observing the antics of an kindergarten kid having a tantrum!)   

So disengagement is the proper strategy - as it is with the demon-dominated, psychopath-mediated, world of public policy and discourse. 

Disengagement (with lapses, alas) is therefore exactly what I have been spontaneously engaged-in, actively trying to do; and, to an increasing degree, actually doing.