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God is not destroying us - we are being allowed to destroy ourselves.
In the past few years I have written three books: Thought Prison on Political Correctness or New Leftism; Not Even Trying on the corruption
and collapse of (real) science; and Addicted to Distraction about the mass media.
The themes are linked by a common cause - which is that, as a society, The West is being given what it wants.
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Leftism was rooted in apostasy and atheism - the rejection of God, Christianity, the Church. Instead of a life devoted to the pursuit of holiness we wanted a secular society based on the pursuit of happiness - now we've got it.
Science was the basis of the industrial revolution, it unleashed unprecedented power. Science was the product of a small number of self-motivated truth seekers; instead we wanted to make science a measurable and manageable industrial process - and we got what we wanted - a vast and expensive bureaucracy; but there is no science in it. No more science, no new power.
We wanted the entertainment, and distraction of the mass media. We chose to be connected with the mass media in preference to human society or solitude - we got it. We want to reject common sense and believe that life is however we choose to define it - and the mass media provided a world that made this happen.
We want to believe-in that world of the mass media - instead of believing what we know from experience - and we have been allowed to believe that the mass media is reality, and that reality is whatever we want.
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Western society has become routinely dishonest, corruption is accepted. Virtual reality, propaganda and lies are preferred to truth - and we are being allowed our world of hype and spin and disinformation.
Education was regarded by radicals as a scam - they have made it one. Positions, jobs, prizes and qualifications are doled-out out to to those radicals favour; content is eluted. The old radicals said that school was glorified child-minding - modern radicals have extended this to college - we now have adult-minding... for ever more of the population at ever greater cost, stretching ever further into what used to be maturity.
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Alienation, isolation and daydreams are preferred to the solid realities of family: we've now got alienation in spades. What used to be the preserve of a few rich bohemians is now mass produced, and democratically available to all.
We like to argue that life is meaningless and purposeless, to convince ourselves and others that this is true; that God is (long since) dead, that morality is an invention, that beauty is relative and subjective, that truth is whatever people can be made to believe - well, we have been granted our wishes: nihilism used to be confined to a handful of radical philosophers and artists - now nihilism is normal.
Marriage and the family are seen as evil, and incrementally subverted and eroded - expanding promiscuity and social media are instead preferred - it's here!
We wanted to be able to have sex without babies, sex without marriage, sex with anybody we fancied - we got it; plus universal depictions, discussions, dramatizations of this. The sexual revolution has moved beyond 'liberation' into a psychosis - the promotion of sexual virtue is prohibited and punished - the promotion of sexual delusion is mainstream and mandatory; because we are being allowed to believe and enforce whatever we want.
We made choices, they have consequences which we see, experience, live - and still we stick-by the choices.
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The fact is, we need to be destroyed. And we have decided to do the job ourselves. And we are being allowed to do it.
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Even after decades of self-inflicted decline, modern Man is too powerful - because we consistently abuse all the power we have, and every new power.
Supposing the world was still full of scientific geniuses, and that people were still as intelligent, educated and self-motivated as they used-to be? - Supposing we still made major technical breakthroughs? - What would we use them for? - Supposing there were still great composers, writers, philosophers? - What kind of beliefs would they be inspiring in us?
No, we cannot be trusted with power, therefore power is being stripped from us - but not by the direct action of God, simply by allowing us to have what we so persistently ask for.
And the whole process is concealed by our rooted cultural preference for dishonesty and delusion. Another choice with consequences.
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In giving us what we have asked for and allowing the consequences to unfold, I think God has a very simple plan - to strip-us down to the basics, which are very hard to deny. And start again.
Since we have rejected Christianity, we are now a sub-Christian society - because we are not pagan. In our active moral inversion and purposive promotion of evil and insanity, we have become sub-pagan, worse than pagan.
(Paganism was good but incomplete, hence distorted - we are not incomplete but inverted. For pagans good was good but lacked Christian balance and completeness; for us most goods are relabelled evil.)
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Everything depends on our choices - for sure; but the anticipated end of our willed self-destruction probably will not be a recovery of Christianity en masse - because we are too-far-gone in our depravity of chosen belief; but the end will something much lower than that.
The recovery of the West can probably not be anything much better than the mere restoration of natural religion - the acknowledgement of realities such as the soul, good and evil, our involvement in reality, the reality of gods.
From this, in time, Christianity may be rebuilt; indeed this may happen quickly, since the superiority of Christianity is so obvious to pagans.
But even then, no Man can be forced to believe, nor does God wish it - and anyone one, even in desperate extremis of alienation and nihilism with nothing to lose, may still choose to live by lies. There is precedent for such a choice.
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We may not like, we probably will not like, the unfolding consequences of our choices; but the consequences are nonetheless consequences - they are caused by our choices.
If we insist on holding onto bad choices, bad consequences will continue to follow.
And the consequences of The West's choices are clear and predictable - We are walking open-eyed into destruction - having chosen it.
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13 comments:
The West is not yet totally beyond redemption, but any kind of resurrection is going to require, in my opinion, a restoration - on however symbolic or attenuated a level - of the Holy Roman Empire, together with a parallel Byzantine resurgence in the East. The Empires of East and West carry profound archetypal resonance for the European spirit and psyche. There is no doubt in my mind, weighing up the historical record, that Christian Monarchy, with an Emperor as ultimate overseer (like the 'Emperor Beyond the Sea' in the Narnia books) is the ideal template for our society.
Everyone, deep down, knows and feels this, Our intelligentsia, however, possess a visceral hatred of all things Christian and Royal, and are compelled by powers which they neither believe in nor comprehend to rip down and smash all and everything redolent of 'Old Western Man.' It is what Roger Scruton calls the 'refusal to inherit' - a collective, if as yet unacknowledged death wish. 'Roman' authority is rejected, twisting our natural bent towards Divinely-appointed, Sovereign authority into a subconscious desire for any kind of authority, even, and perhaps especially, non-Western forms of authority. This is why, for example, an anti-family culture might be foatered. It weakens and underminines society, setting it up, slowly and steadily, for conquest. It is also why certain non-Western cultures sometimes seem encouraged and approved of. It could be one of them, perhaps, waitng in the wings to apply the coup de grace.
The chattering classes - relieved of the burden of thought, choice and responsibility - will go gladly to the chopping block. They believe in nothing. They're happy to die, and even happier to drag us down with them. There are, however, intelligences at work behind their nihilism. I'm convinced of it. C.S. Lewis in 'That Hideous Strength' had it right, I think, with his ''Macrobes'. Wither, Straik and Frost, for instance, become utterly ruined and desiccated through their willed-for contact with these entities, while the rest of the worker-bees at the NICE, such as the busy-bodies, Cosser and Steele, set about their destructive work blindly and unconsciously, with no idea of the 'thrones and dominations' setting the demonic agenda. But just as 'That Hideous Strength' delineates the nature of the beast so well, so it also suggests steps forward and out too. But they'll have to wait for another post and another day!
Great post,
Happy Friday,
John.
Assuming what you are saying here is true, would we not expect there to be restricted pockets of genius and capacity in religious communities, noticeably above general population levels, as these groups would be living as an exception to the modern world and therefore could be blessed with powers by God which would not be abused and would, paradoxically make the rest of the world 'sit-up-and-take-notice' of the benefits and blessings of living a holy life?
Could we not go further and expect an identifiable correlation between 'holiness' or 'devoutness' and incidence of 'genius' or the other expected fruits of God's blessings?
As far as I am aware, this is not what we find, religiously devout people are just as vulnerable to the world as everyone else in terms of illness, risk of being subjected to crime, loss of loved ones, lack of talent or genius, etc. and they don't receive any 'special treatment' compared to secular groups. If they did, one would imagine the case for religion in an atheistic world would be substantial, something that others could observe empirically and then respond positively to the 'hope' generated by 'seeing' the fruits of holiness in the lives of others. I wonder why God is being so neutral if he does, as you say, want to limit power to the less deserving and imbue it to those of obvious merits.
However, having said that, I have met a Mormon missionary who learned fluent Bulgarian, whilst on mission, and with relative ease and ability. He told me that he felt this gift was given to him to do the Lords work. I was impressed but it seems there is a central mystery to life that we can never get passed. Was he just talented genetically and general intelligence to help him learn a difficult second language, from scratch and as an adult, or did God bless him with a skill and capacity later in life to fulfil his mission? We really don't know a lot about how things really work. I think that is why I increasingly favour the position of open - minded agnostic in relation to these kinds of question. The truth is the only way we will get our answers is to die someday and see what happens next. I hope there will be more answers than questions then.
In other words, "you reap what you sow". And, "They that sow the wind, shall reap the whirlwind."
I was born in 1988. Since then, I've watched as all you describe gets worse and worse every passing year. What makes me angry is that I was born into it; I had no choice and never wanted the sexual revolution or mass media. I never asked for a life of alienation from my fellow human beings in an intensely anti-family culture. And yet, I must suffer the collective damnation of the West. It makes me highly hesitant to bring children into such a situation.
I find it interesting you became a Christian in 2008, Dr. Charlton, as that was the same year Christian truth was revealed to me.
Yes. Thank you for this post.
Brandon - You are still free to obey God. The anti-Christian secular world threatens your soul by default, and if you reject that they move to threatening you physically (but your soul is free).
@David - I envisage this working at the level of civilizations. If - for example - some new powerful technology was devised by a genius within a Good religious group, then it would soon leak out into the evil surrounding culture. So, genius and breakthroughs need to be abolished from the world - which is what seems to have happened.
To some extent this is exactly what did happen - the great geniuses of the past few centuries, whose work made the modern world, were almost-all born and brought-up within devout Christian or Jewish circumstances - but their work was deployed - mostly for evil purposes - in increasingly secular, increasingly anti-Good/ pro-evil circumstances.
@Brandon - Gandalf's comment to Frodo is relevant to your situation - “I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
So long as we have courage - then we moderns have the luxurious situation of being able to see clearly the line between right and wrong, good and evil - this was not so easy for Christians at times in the past - for example the Monophysite controversy in the early church, Great Schism, the Reformation, the early days of Mormonism... By contrast it is simple for us to know what we should and should not do, and to repent our sins - which is the first and most important thing.
On the other hand, theosis is difficult for us, there are few people of advanced spirituality and probably none so advanced as there used to be - in an anti-Christian era spiritual progress may primarily involve various types and degrees of martyrdom - i.e. accepting without hatred (and consecrating to Jesus) those bad things that happen to us as punishment for sticking to Good.
"We are walking open-eyed into destruction - having chosen it." I was momentarily reminded of the generation that blundered into August 1914. But then, they were hardly open-eyed. They were tragically blinded in the first flush of mass apostasy – the fruit of a century of relative peace, prosperity and astonishing progress. Compounding this hubris was the belief, by 1914 apparently well ingrained among all who mattered, that Darwin had rendered God and morality quite obsolete. So you could argue that, despite their brilliance, they had an excuse. Their fantasy looked plausible. We, on the other hand, have seen all that has come since. We can watch the collapse in "real time." Our adversary roars his intentions in our faces. And yet, because we are so stupid, it is all lost on us.
I wonder if the idiocy protects souls - "they know not what they do"?
>I envisage this working at the level of civilizations. If - for example - some new powerful technology was devised by a genius within a Good religious group, then it would soon leak out into the evil surrounding culture. So, genius and breakthroughs need to be abolished from the world - which is what seems to have happened.
That reminds me of the legend of the "Swiss M-L Converter".
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