The totalitarian state notched up another ratchet in Britain this week. Terrorism is now proposed and accepted as normal. Increasingly-complete mass surveillance - excused by, but not actually preventing, terrorism - is normal. Recurrent lockdown emergencies are normal. Armed police and troops in swarms are normal.
In institutional life micro-management, pervasive propaganda, constant monitoring and thought-control are now normal
The problems must continue, we are told - but in actual practice we are also told that we must adapt to them: and, it turns out, we must adapt by more totalitarianism.
The message is being hammered home by word, picture, deed and - most powerfully - by no change... except more totalitarianism.
(Totalitarianism doesn't work at preventing the problems - but that's okay, in fact that is the point! - because the problems are created as excuses for more totalitarianism, and therefore the solutions aren't supposed to prevent them!)
Modern people put up with all this because we are hollow men, stuffed with straw; men without chests; lacking any religion hence lacking any motivation to do anything inexpedient.
To take effective action would be to invite reprisals. And to endure short term suffering en route to long term good... but for us there is No long term good. (For us, death is the end of everything; a comfortable life is the ultimate we can hope for.)
We are cowards. Because atheism doth make cowards of us all. Because not to be a coward requires a goal beyond the immediate; and for a population not to be cowardly requires some clear social goal which would be thwarted by totalitarianism. People can only be brave when they have something to be brave about.
To resist totalitarianism requires courage and a reason; courage requires being able to imagine and believe a better goal that what totalitarianism promises; a reason requires being able to imagine and believe that we, personally and now ought-to work for that better goal.
(Courage cannot be conjured from nihilism. And we modern Britons/ Westerners believe in nothing. The frenzy of a cornered rat is not courage; and is anyway utterly ineffectual against a vast totalitarian system. What is needed to escape totalitarianism is cold courage - the hardest courage of all to attain, because it is a consequence of high and firmly-held impersonal ideals.)
Atheist societies are utilitarian - in their explicit aims at least - everything done justified by making people (some people) feel better. But when/ if people's feelings are the end-point of justification, then government becomes a matter of manipulating people's feelings - which is exactly what totalitarian systems are aimed-at; which is exactly what we now have.
But what is in it for those in the leadership who deliberately create the situations that create terrorism? Those who claim it is impossible to change what they have created (because effective change is unthinkable, unsayable); so we therefore must just-accept more-of-the-same causes, so we must therefore just-accept more-of-the-same consequences: accept this as normal.
(Even as 'normal' is very obviously and very quickly getting worse: getting more totalitarian.)
What they are actually doing - on purpose, planned, with deliberation - is to create an ever-more totalitarian state. Why is this strategy so hard for people to recognise?
They aren't incompetent, they aren't well-meaning fools, they aren't self-enriching hypocrites: they are doing what they want to do, and doing it more and better every month: they are implementing totalitarianism step-by-step and they are winning!
Why? Simple. The aim of totalitarianism, from a Christian's perspective, is not to kill us nor to make us miserable, but to get us damned. That is why they do it.
Thought control is desired in order that we will choose damnation over salvation - our thoughts will be policed, minds filled, actions directed, feelings manipulated towards sins: sins such as fear, resentment and despair.
That's it - in a nutshell: infuse fear, resentment and despair - all sins, all leading to self-chosen damnation. That is, to the active rejection of Good because Good is now considered to be evil.
This is a spiritual war. A Christian war.
We cannot conjure courage from cowards - and the Western population just are cowards - lacking cold courage. Because lacking ideals - indeed modern people cannot even imagine anything better than pleasure and comfort: that is the summit of fantasy.
First we need a basis for courage. What is needed are love and hope, based on faith in God (not feelings); and aimed at eternal joy (not comfort and convenience, amusement and the avoidance of suffering).
If totalitarian mind-control becomes complete; it will be because ultimately we did not want anything better.
2 comments:
An inspired post, Bruce. Thanks.
"That's it - in a nutshell: infuse fear, resentment and despair - all sins, all leading to self-chosen damnation. That is, to the active rejection of Good because Good is now considered to be evil. "
Thank you for reminding me of this. Where I am, it is very hard not to give into this. But it is at that point that you are defeated (at a particular battle that is).
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