An anti-topical post on the UK General Election - and my optimism for a spiritual rebirth of England

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US readers would hardly be able to comprehend the lack of interest-in and coverage-of the UK General election - the first since 2010. Indeed, I just had to look-up the date, and was astonished to find it was only three weeks away.

Of course, I strategically try to cut myself off from the mass media; but, naturally, really big events - such as the Soccer World Cup or the Olympics - do impinge; however I am barely aware of the impending election.

The only sign of its approach has been a stand set-up in the university library to register students to vote, which I can never recall seeing before - presumably this scheme was implemented on the basis that the students will reliably vote for the most radically-destructive Left parties (because in British politics, all parties are on the Left) of which the academic leadership most approve.

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So, the political picture is one of disillusion, uninterest and pessimism; but I do not regard this as hopeful since the English remain enslaved to media addiction, their materialistic hedonism (drunkenness, drugs, sexual license), and periodic outbursts of petty hatred. Worst of all, we have become an habitually and comprehensively dishonest people in public discourse - a situation that would have been scarcely credible even thirty years ago.

The characteristics of the English as described accurately by George Orwell sixty years ago are absent from public life - although still a factor in small scale interactions and behind closed doors. However, fear of being denounced y the thought police means that virtue, indeed common sense, has become secretive.

http://orwell.ru/library/essays/lion/english/e_eye

In sum, people are increasingly dominated by false selves, and increasingly lead false lives - the false self being constructed and reinforced by pandering to the demands of the body and the mind, physical satisfactions and mental stimulations.

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But although I am politically pessimistic I am spiritually hopeful.

In the first place, under constant encroaching aggression from the bureaucracy and media, the British are (for the first time in several centuries) learning to separate and secrete their 'real' and free lives from the crushing psychological oppressions of the 'official' world.

The more that secular Leftist media/ political/ legal/ workplace persecution extends its tentacles, the more that sheer vitality will spontaneously resist and create its own environment. (See Vaclav Havel - The Power of the Powerless.)

This is not a resurgence of religion - but creates a fertile seedbed for religion's rapid, irresistible growth.

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And in the second place, powerful, inspiring resources for true knowledge and en-couragement are widely, rapidly and cheaply available for those who want them.

In the third place, the official world of politics, government, law, the mass media, corporations and so on is not the only world - above and beyond and within there is an utterly autonomous and separate vast, universal, interconnected divine world; where everything (I mean every single thought, choice, and action) counts for something and influences everything from an eternal perspective.

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So the positive possibilities in relation to the religious perspective are vast in power and scope - especially if we recognise that the current baseline is (by world historical standards) so very, very low.

We should recognise that the current situation is not one in which a strongly Christian culture is being eroded by rampant Leftism; but one in which the mainstream culture has for many decades been as un-religious, as un-Christian, as shallow and false and dishonest as any in the entire history of the world.

From a divine perspective our culture, our civilisation has already and for many years pretty much bottomed-out - this being especially evident since the advent of smart phones and social/ mass media and near-universal 24/7 mainlining with attention-grabbing distractions.

From this degraded position, it is not at all unlikely that there will be a spiritual recovery in England, and in the British Isles generally - so long as people actually want it, and so long as their souls rebel against lifelong confinement and torture...

(Albeit that this spiritual recovery certainly will not be apparent in those mass media which have so comprehensively walled-off and crushed our immortal souls inside fake personae. It is something we must notice for ourselves in our individual lives - or we will not notice it at all.)

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