The fact that Christianity is chosen, and an opt-in religion, based upon love that cannot be coerced; is something which most Christians find it tempting to ignore.
It is tempting to make arguments that Christianity is a rational/ logical necessity, that 'show' it is irrational Not to become a Christian. To try and state that anyone who understands the situation ought to realise that Christianity is necessary. And so on.
I associate this style of evangelism with Roman Catholics, especially;
and particularly with the Thomistic/ Scholastic tradition. But this is a mistake. Christianity always must be chosen.
This fact also entails that nobody can choose to be a Christian unless they have consciously done so, have actually made this choice - so a child whose upbringing was unconsciously, immersively Christian, and who simply accepted this without conscious choice, would Not be a Christian.
This fact is captured by the Protestant Evangelical requirement that all Christians must be 'born again' (although I regard that phrase as based on a wrong interpretation of John Chapter 3); and that following doctrines, rituals and rules - behaving like a Christian - is never sufficient (is, indeed, in a deep sense, irrelevant).
Christianity is probably the only religion truly based upon freedom; because love can only be free else it is not love (not in the sense intended, at any rate).
Of course, Christianity also depends upon the conviction that a choice may be permanent and final - the idea that freedom includes the freedom to make commitments; and modern people have fallen into the error that the only freedom is one where every choice is contingent and can be revoked.
Because if freedom is to be a part of eternal life, and if eternal life is to be cumulative, creative, purposive, then it must be possible that some choices are also eternal in their effect.
Christianity is essentially about choosing to join that eternal world of permanent love, in which eternal life is to be cumulative, creative, purposive.
This happens because we love that world, and the people in it. According to my understanding of the Fourth Gospel; Lazarus was the first Man to be resurrected, and this happened because he was the first Man to die in a condition of loving Jesus. It was his love of Jesus (and his love of Jesus as the divine Son of God, knowing that Jesus was this) which enabled Lazarus to be resurrected.
We should notice that Lazarus and Jesus loved each other in a way that was personal. In the Fourth Gospel; Jesus is never described as loving everybody in an indiscriminate or universal fashion - he is described as loving specific people (the disciple who wrote the gospel, Mary, Martha etc). This is how the Kingdom of Heaven is, apparently, to be built - as a network of specific and personal loves.
The Gift of Jesus is that he made it possible for us to love him, specifically, in many ways and in many aspects - via the Holy Ghost who is knowable by everyone. So long as we are linked to Jesus by love, and so long as we choose to join the family of Heaven; anyone who wants the Heavenly life may have it (in that way, on those 'terms').
But the flipside is that there will presumably people who do not want to join this. Espeically those who do not love anybody. Such people will not be Christians, will not want to be Christians, will Choose Not to be Christians.
This negative choice will have consequences, many of these consequences will be adverse; and not to be a Christian is - relatively - a miserable state. But misery does not make it irrational.
Paradoxically, I think it is better for people to know that they do not 'have to' become Christians, that people should feel the weight of choice - rather than us trying (and usually failing) to convince people that they 'must' become Christians...
Because there is no 'must' about it - except in terms of achieving certain goals, which goals must be wanted.
Tuesday, 30 April 2019
Monday, 29 April 2019
My 21 years of qualitative orginality
From approximately age 35 to 56 I was intensely engaged by the subject matter of my work; and at such a depth that I was working creatively, with considerable originality.
I was perfectly aware of this transformation in my life, and indeed can date it to a specific moment, on a specific spring day - sitting in the garden! Halfway through a Biblical lifespan; I at last found my subject, and I switched-on.
What characterised this era is that I gave my best efforts to the matters I was considering; this amounted not just to reading-about them - but reading with a genuine, seeking attitude. And, most especially, thinking-about the current problems - thinking intensely for considerable stretches of time - from half an hour up to a few hours (which was all I could manage), and also returning to the problem day after day, month after month - sometimes over several years.
I had not really done this before. From schooldays, through being a student and my early years of academic work; I was pretty successful. But I had never given my best efforts to it; since I was always more interested by other things - and regarded myself as primarily an 'all rounder' or Renaissance man who had significant interests in literature, music and drama - as well as medicine and science; in journalism as well as academia. Always I was working 'part time', semi-engaged...
It took me until age 35 to develop my own knowledge and abilities sufficiently to do original work; and also to bring them to bear upon a series of subjects which genuinely motivated me - which triggered spontaneous inner motivation. These subjects included evolutionary biology, psychiatry and psychopharmacology, some epidemiological/ statistical issues to do with randomisation and averageing, complex systems theory, intelligence and creativity, and the metaphysical assumptions of biology.
The work I did during those 21 years included things that were qualitatively superior to anything done before: more personal, distinctive, original. The work was different from the mainstream - was not simply filling in gaps in existing work, nor extrapolating from existing work using standard methods. At times, I felt I got significantly deeper than the mainstream; and I made discoveries that were not simply variants of previous discoveries.
I suppose it goes without saying that the work I did during those 21 tears was less successful than the work I did before I became creative and original; but that didn't really matter to me because creative and original work is its own reward; and the reward comes immediately, while you are actually doing it.
I don't get any particular 'satisfaction' looking back; I am not terribly interested by the work I was doing a quarter century ago. Not that I regard it as wrong or poor; but simply that the satisfaction came at the time. Not many people were interested then, and even fewer are interested now - so it goes.
Although life is cumulative, and that which is good and true and beautiful is permanent and cumulative - satisfaction is not, I find, a thing that can be stored for very long. It seems we are made to be-living, to look forward - and I suppose that this will continue beyond the portals of death. Creat-ing (present tense) is always more satisfying than past creat-ion.
I was perfectly aware of this transformation in my life, and indeed can date it to a specific moment, on a specific spring day - sitting in the garden! Halfway through a Biblical lifespan; I at last found my subject, and I switched-on.
What characterised this era is that I gave my best efforts to the matters I was considering; this amounted not just to reading-about them - but reading with a genuine, seeking attitude. And, most especially, thinking-about the current problems - thinking intensely for considerable stretches of time - from half an hour up to a few hours (which was all I could manage), and also returning to the problem day after day, month after month - sometimes over several years.
I had not really done this before. From schooldays, through being a student and my early years of academic work; I was pretty successful. But I had never given my best efforts to it; since I was always more interested by other things - and regarded myself as primarily an 'all rounder' or Renaissance man who had significant interests in literature, music and drama - as well as medicine and science; in journalism as well as academia. Always I was working 'part time', semi-engaged...
It took me until age 35 to develop my own knowledge and abilities sufficiently to do original work; and also to bring them to bear upon a series of subjects which genuinely motivated me - which triggered spontaneous inner motivation. These subjects included evolutionary biology, psychiatry and psychopharmacology, some epidemiological/ statistical issues to do with randomisation and averageing, complex systems theory, intelligence and creativity, and the metaphysical assumptions of biology.
The work I did during those 21 years included things that were qualitatively superior to anything done before: more personal, distinctive, original. The work was different from the mainstream - was not simply filling in gaps in existing work, nor extrapolating from existing work using standard methods. At times, I felt I got significantly deeper than the mainstream; and I made discoveries that were not simply variants of previous discoveries.
I suppose it goes without saying that the work I did during those 21 tears was less successful than the work I did before I became creative and original; but that didn't really matter to me because creative and original work is its own reward; and the reward comes immediately, while you are actually doing it.
I don't get any particular 'satisfaction' looking back; I am not terribly interested by the work I was doing a quarter century ago. Not that I regard it as wrong or poor; but simply that the satisfaction came at the time. Not many people were interested then, and even fewer are interested now - so it goes.
Although life is cumulative, and that which is good and true and beautiful is permanent and cumulative - satisfaction is not, I find, a thing that can be stored for very long. It seems we are made to be-living, to look forward - and I suppose that this will continue beyond the portals of death. Creat-ing (present tense) is always more satisfying than past creat-ion.
Is the vastness of the mass media a risk to the strategy of the Global Establishment?
One might have supposed that the sheer quantity of material that is in the mass media would pose a risk to the aims of the Global Establishment. One might have supposed that it was very risky to allow such a lot of 'stuff' to come to the attention of so many people - that this situation represents a lack of control.
Of course there is - and increasingly - as censorship of the mass media; yet with such as 'mass' it can never be a very complete mechanism of control.
Past tyrannies have tended to go down a path of aiming at total control of information; with the consequence that the mass media was kept very small. In other words, communication was controlled by trying to prevent all but a small volume of prescribed communication.
For example, under Communism at some point, apparently Romania had about an hour of national television per day, which consisted of little more than someone reading the scripts of official speeches given by government ministers. That system of complete control makes sense from the perspective of aiming at total control of information.
So it it seems that the current totalitarianism on the one hand wants control (since there is centralised creation and dissemination of 'stories', and sanctions against contradictions); yet allows a system that is so large that control will always be very incomplete.
These are the facts of modern-day Life - how can we make sense of them?
I think the answer is that the Establishment aim at near-complete control of the interpretative framework - but have a relaxed attitude about the content. Indeed, the more diverse and even contradictory are the specific details, the more this reinforces the power of the interpretative framework.
No specific detail can ever contradict the ideology - because The System is a theory that is proof against any possible 'fact'.
This is why evidence has become ineffectual. Whatever happens, The System can explain it. Whatever problem arises - even when caused by The System, the answer is always more System.
Threats to the System are not from any facts, or any possible evidence; but from rival 'systems', rival 'ideologies', rival interpretative frameworks.
In sum The System is a Theory of Life; and as such it permits, indeed encourages, an almost unlimited volume of data - but excludes any rival System.
And since The System includes all possible this-worldly, secular and materialist ideologies - this means, in practice, that only Religions are a threat to The System.
And the only Religions the are a threat are those that expand the scope of Reality to include more-than-the-material, and more-than-mortal-life - those that repurpose Life from The System's focus on gratification within our lifespans, and men conceived as annihilated by biological death - to Life in a context of divine goals.
This means that the Global Establishment can get all the many advantages of a population addicted to an ever expanding mass media; but can avoid the problems of dissonant information - so long as information is supplied in an atomised, specialised, unintegrated fashion; so long as a genuinely Religious perspective is excluded.
An appearance of freedom, a kind of excitement, can be allowed when it comes to secular ideologies - because these are all contained-within The System: so we get the various Punch and Judy fights of Left and Right, Socialism and Capitalism, Equality and Freedom, prevention of suffering versus enhancement of wealth, Global versus National etc. etc.
This is all just Office Politics, sub-theories: None of it matters.
Because all of it is contained by the theoretical imperative that only the material matters, and only the scope of a biological lifespan is real.
The one 'thing' The System cannot tolerate, is another System.
Of course there is - and increasingly - as censorship of the mass media; yet with such as 'mass' it can never be a very complete mechanism of control.
Past tyrannies have tended to go down a path of aiming at total control of information; with the consequence that the mass media was kept very small. In other words, communication was controlled by trying to prevent all but a small volume of prescribed communication.
For example, under Communism at some point, apparently Romania had about an hour of national television per day, which consisted of little more than someone reading the scripts of official speeches given by government ministers. That system of complete control makes sense from the perspective of aiming at total control of information.
So it it seems that the current totalitarianism on the one hand wants control (since there is centralised creation and dissemination of 'stories', and sanctions against contradictions); yet allows a system that is so large that control will always be very incomplete.
These are the facts of modern-day Life - how can we make sense of them?
I think the answer is that the Establishment aim at near-complete control of the interpretative framework - but have a relaxed attitude about the content. Indeed, the more diverse and even contradictory are the specific details, the more this reinforces the power of the interpretative framework.
No specific detail can ever contradict the ideology - because The System is a theory that is proof against any possible 'fact'.
This is why evidence has become ineffectual. Whatever happens, The System can explain it. Whatever problem arises - even when caused by The System, the answer is always more System.
Threats to the System are not from any facts, or any possible evidence; but from rival 'systems', rival 'ideologies', rival interpretative frameworks.
In sum The System is a Theory of Life; and as such it permits, indeed encourages, an almost unlimited volume of data - but excludes any rival System.
And since The System includes all possible this-worldly, secular and materialist ideologies - this means, in practice, that only Religions are a threat to The System.
And the only Religions the are a threat are those that expand the scope of Reality to include more-than-the-material, and more-than-mortal-life - those that repurpose Life from The System's focus on gratification within our lifespans, and men conceived as annihilated by biological death - to Life in a context of divine goals.
This means that the Global Establishment can get all the many advantages of a population addicted to an ever expanding mass media; but can avoid the problems of dissonant information - so long as information is supplied in an atomised, specialised, unintegrated fashion; so long as a genuinely Religious perspective is excluded.
An appearance of freedom, a kind of excitement, can be allowed when it comes to secular ideologies - because these are all contained-within The System: so we get the various Punch and Judy fights of Left and Right, Socialism and Capitalism, Equality and Freedom, prevention of suffering versus enhancement of wealth, Global versus National etc. etc.
This is all just Office Politics, sub-theories: None of it matters.
Because all of it is contained by the theoretical imperative that only the material matters, and only the scope of a biological lifespan is real.
The one 'thing' The System cannot tolerate, is another System.
Sunday, 28 April 2019
You can't save an institution that does not want to be saved
Which is why I, eventually, gave-up 'activism'. I used to expend time and energy on trying to save institutions that I valued - my university and the university system, science, medicine, psychiatry - and later the Church of England.
But with all, at a certain point, I realised that they did not want to be saved. In other words, the institutions had a leadership and majority who actively-wanted that which was killing them.
The fact is obscured by what happens to a dead institution; which is often that it becomes a part of The One Bureaucracy. So there are still institutions called universities, still people who call themselves 'scientists and what they do science; but the institutions and people are in reality simply sub-divisions, components of the one bureaucracy.
When an institution becomes primarily orientated-towards satisfying bureaucratic requirements, when the satisfaction of such requirements is the prime factor in the institutions survival and growth - then people may 'keep their Jobs', but they are different Jobs; because the original function and distinct identity has gone.
The institution may well continue on paper, in buildings, as a name... but that makes no substantive difference to the fact that the original institution is just as dead as if it had been abolished or gone bust.
Once an institution has become part of The One Bureaucracy, then it could only escape by an act of concerted will, and could only escape into non-institutional social space - but this is very rare indeed; and it requires exactly that will, that is so conspicuously lacking.
Most likely, the best way forward is to annihilate the corrupted and fake bureaucracy; and start a new functional and autonomous institution. But when, as now, there is no will to do that - then we are in a post-institutional society.
Or, if you prefer, we are (here, now) in a society with a single institution, The System - that Global complex of the state/ media/ and all formerly-functional institutions including 'churches'; which was earlier approximated by the mid-twentieth century totalitarian socialist societies such as the Soviet Union, National Socialism and Maoist China.
This Global Bureaucracy is not all-powerful, and still must work substantially by persuasion/ propaganda and consent/ passive compliance; nonetheless, lacking any genuine religion, opposition to The System has no will (a merely feeble motivation to resist or replace) - and the opposition is therefore utterly ineffectual.
And that is our situation: The individual confronts The Global System.
The individual can win, in an ultimate and eternal sense; but not in a proximate and worldly sense.
So, it is as well to expend your time and energy on a hopeful, rather than futile, project.
But with all, at a certain point, I realised that they did not want to be saved. In other words, the institutions had a leadership and majority who actively-wanted that which was killing them.
The fact is obscured by what happens to a dead institution; which is often that it becomes a part of The One Bureaucracy. So there are still institutions called universities, still people who call themselves 'scientists and what they do science; but the institutions and people are in reality simply sub-divisions, components of the one bureaucracy.
When an institution becomes primarily orientated-towards satisfying bureaucratic requirements, when the satisfaction of such requirements is the prime factor in the institutions survival and growth - then people may 'keep their Jobs', but they are different Jobs; because the original function and distinct identity has gone.
The institution may well continue on paper, in buildings, as a name... but that makes no substantive difference to the fact that the original institution is just as dead as if it had been abolished or gone bust.
Once an institution has become part of The One Bureaucracy, then it could only escape by an act of concerted will, and could only escape into non-institutional social space - but this is very rare indeed; and it requires exactly that will, that is so conspicuously lacking.
Most likely, the best way forward is to annihilate the corrupted and fake bureaucracy; and start a new functional and autonomous institution. But when, as now, there is no will to do that - then we are in a post-institutional society.
Or, if you prefer, we are (here, now) in a society with a single institution, The System - that Global complex of the state/ media/ and all formerly-functional institutions including 'churches'; which was earlier approximated by the mid-twentieth century totalitarian socialist societies such as the Soviet Union, National Socialism and Maoist China.
This Global Bureaucracy is not all-powerful, and still must work substantially by persuasion/ propaganda and consent/ passive compliance; nonetheless, lacking any genuine religion, opposition to The System has no will (a merely feeble motivation to resist or replace) - and the opposition is therefore utterly ineffectual.
And that is our situation: The individual confronts The Global System.
The individual can win, in an ultimate and eternal sense; but not in a proximate and worldly sense.
So, it is as well to expend your time and energy on a hopeful, rather than futile, project.
Saturday, 27 April 2019
Evil is complicated because fake - but (real) Christianity is simple
But the trouble is that we have (through our lives, via our culture) been so thoroughly inculcated with the perspective of evil, that the assumptions of evil seem natural and spontaneous, and we cannot comprehend simplicity.
We are so used-to evil and the complicated, abstract discourse of evil; that we assume simplicity must be false, erroneous, insufficient.
When faced with simple truth and virtue; we demand explanation - when we get the explanation it conflicts with our evil assumptions so that Good starts itself to seem complex.
And there are many who advertise or regard themselves as Christians and on the side of Good; who perpetuate the idea of Christian complexity for various reasons. They have an inverted concept of reality such that they make-out Good to be terribly complicated and hard to understand, while evil is seem as perfectly elementary.
Good is simple because it dwells in alignment with God's creation; evil must be complex because it is constructing an alternative and fake reality.
Good is simple because it rests-upon the simple intuitive affirmation and confirmation of reality; evil must be complex because it need to manufacture a false convergence of lies in order to simulate reality.
Evil is, and must be, a pan-conspiracy; evil must monitor, censor and control - because otherwise its true nature would be obvious.
Good, on the other hands, in in the divine heart of every Man, is universally knowable by the Holy Ghost; and is potentially graspable by all Men in all situations (with the assistance of God).
We must be told of evil; taught, persuaded and convinced-of evil - self-blinded to its reality. By contrast; knowing the Good 'just happens' - if allowed: it is choosing the Good that is (usually) difficult.
We are so used-to evil and the complicated, abstract discourse of evil; that we assume simplicity must be false, erroneous, insufficient.
When faced with simple truth and virtue; we demand explanation - when we get the explanation it conflicts with our evil assumptions so that Good starts itself to seem complex.
And there are many who advertise or regard themselves as Christians and on the side of Good; who perpetuate the idea of Christian complexity for various reasons. They have an inverted concept of reality such that they make-out Good to be terribly complicated and hard to understand, while evil is seem as perfectly elementary.
Good is simple because it dwells in alignment with God's creation; evil must be complex because it is constructing an alternative and fake reality.
Good is simple because it rests-upon the simple intuitive affirmation and confirmation of reality; evil must be complex because it need to manufacture a false convergence of lies in order to simulate reality.
Evil is, and must be, a pan-conspiracy; evil must monitor, censor and control - because otherwise its true nature would be obvious.
Good, on the other hands, in in the divine heart of every Man, is universally knowable by the Holy Ghost; and is potentially graspable by all Men in all situations (with the assistance of God).
We must be told of evil; taught, persuaded and convinced-of evil - self-blinded to its reality. By contrast; knowing the Good 'just happens' - if allowed: it is choosing the Good that is (usually) difficult.
Can The Past be changed?
Obviously Not!
But is an interesting matter to speculate why it has been claimed so often through history that The Past is not fixed, can be changed. It is presented as a deep, sophisticated, spiritual kind of thing to say.
It is easy to say, to assert, to say the words that The Past can - even should - be changed - and this may itself slip past our error detectors. Partly because it is so outrageous that we assume we are missing-something; partly because there is often a confusion between The Past and our memories; and of course memories can be mistaken, can changed, can disappear. So (it goes) if memories change, then why not The Past as well?
Then again there may be - perhaps indeed ought to be - powerful negative feelings such as shame or guilt in people about aspects of The Past. It is psychologically understandable that someone would want to escape from these negative feelings by undoing the past acts that led to them. "I wish I had not done that" literalised into "It never happened".
There is also a strain of yearning or manipulation among humans that wants life to be a matter of indifference - that wants to be able to say that neither what we choose, nor what we do, Matters. This 'liberation' strain is currently very powerful - although perhaps it reached its peak of intensity in the late 1960s; with an explicit doctrine of Anything Goes.
The idea was that there were no mistakes, no sins; and everything will always work out for the best - in the end. This is, in its crude way, asserting that the enlightened Man (the Good Man) lives outside of the petty changes of this-life, lives indeed outside of Time; sees past-present-future as one. It - by-the-way - eludes all personal responsibility by asserting that there is no such thing.
So, the idea that The Past can be changed is part of a complex of ideas that - in a nutshell - eliminate the significance of this mortal life: This life.
...Anything and Everything can be changed or eliminated, therefore nothing has any significance - one consequence of which is that 'I' can do whatever I happen to want to do, because 'ultimately' it doesn't matter.
The price of this licence of hedonism/ selfishness/ short-termism is meaninglessness and purposelessness - we can do anything we like, but nothing matters (because nothing matters).
Nothing we ever experience will ever stand. Anything might/ can/ will/ should be eliminated - at some point. We eliminate the weight of mortal life, at the cost of eliminating all possibility of any kind of significant life.
We eliminate any possibility of decline or corruption, by ensuring that there can be no progression of any kind.
When The Past can be changed, the individual self goes too - since you or I may be fundamentally changed or unmade - we may be made such that we Never Were...
It is indeed a terrible, demonic doctrine - to say that The Past can be changed!
But is an interesting matter to speculate why it has been claimed so often through history that The Past is not fixed, can be changed. It is presented as a deep, sophisticated, spiritual kind of thing to say.
It is easy to say, to assert, to say the words that The Past can - even should - be changed - and this may itself slip past our error detectors. Partly because it is so outrageous that we assume we are missing-something; partly because there is often a confusion between The Past and our memories; and of course memories can be mistaken, can changed, can disappear. So (it goes) if memories change, then why not The Past as well?
Then again there may be - perhaps indeed ought to be - powerful negative feelings such as shame or guilt in people about aspects of The Past. It is psychologically understandable that someone would want to escape from these negative feelings by undoing the past acts that led to them. "I wish I had not done that" literalised into "It never happened".
There is also a strain of yearning or manipulation among humans that wants life to be a matter of indifference - that wants to be able to say that neither what we choose, nor what we do, Matters. This 'liberation' strain is currently very powerful - although perhaps it reached its peak of intensity in the late 1960s; with an explicit doctrine of Anything Goes.
The idea was that there were no mistakes, no sins; and everything will always work out for the best - in the end. This is, in its crude way, asserting that the enlightened Man (the Good Man) lives outside of the petty changes of this-life, lives indeed outside of Time; sees past-present-future as one. It - by-the-way - eludes all personal responsibility by asserting that there is no such thing.
So, the idea that The Past can be changed is part of a complex of ideas that - in a nutshell - eliminate the significance of this mortal life: This life.
...Anything and Everything can be changed or eliminated, therefore nothing has any significance - one consequence of which is that 'I' can do whatever I happen to want to do, because 'ultimately' it doesn't matter.
The price of this licence of hedonism/ selfishness/ short-termism is meaninglessness and purposelessness - we can do anything we like, but nothing matters (because nothing matters).
Nothing we ever experience will ever stand. Anything might/ can/ will/ should be eliminated - at some point. We eliminate the weight of mortal life, at the cost of eliminating all possibility of any kind of significant life.
We eliminate any possibility of decline or corruption, by ensuring that there can be no progression of any kind.
When The Past can be changed, the individual self goes too - since you or I may be fundamentally changed or unmade - we may be made such that we Never Were...
It is indeed a terrible, demonic doctrine - to say that The Past can be changed!
Friday, 26 April 2019
I don't believe the detailed accounts of dreams that abound in psychoanalysis and spirituality
I have rather suddenly realised that, for decades, I have been not-believing the detailed accounts of dreams that I read all over the place.
I suppose I must have read many tens of thousands of words of detailed dreams in the books of Freud, Jung and their descendants; and in all manner of non-fiction on spiritual and paranormal themes... And I have been quietly not-believing them all along.
This was triggered by hearing a lecture (by a Rudolf Steiner followers - and Steiner gave detailed accounts of dreams) - in which he described in detail a dream he supposedly had, with various spiritual symbolisms and implications; exciting, weird, moving... and realising that I Didn't Believe It. No Way!
I am very interested by dreams - much more so than most people, and for more than forty years - and I have of course had many thousands of dreams... several per night. But never have I had a dream that could accurately and honestly have been described in the detailed and descriptive way used in so many published accounts.
What I recall from dreams is much more like images, or short segments - I cannot remember the stages and transitions - and I beyond such snatches, I would not find it possible to verbally-describe or to write-up the dream in a satisfactory 'public' way - a way that really captured its actual quality. The dream falls-to-pieces in my hands when I attempt to communicate it.
Furthermore, I have never (in real life) met anyone who was convincingly able to do any better or more than myself.
And yet - I am asked to believe that all over the place, in all kinds of situations, are a majority of people who can recall their dreams in detail and describe them satisfactorily - rather like short stories by Henry James! - to the extent that entire edifices of insight and knowledge have been built upon this foundation. (Yes, I'm talking about you, Sigmund...)
As I say - I Don't Believe It. I believe, instead, that the meaningful and sequential dreams, the exciting and moving dreams - as they appear in the spoken and written accounts - are fabricated; consciously or unconsciously; wittingly or unwittingly; whether from from joining-up genuine fragments or from whole-cloth; whether from wishful thinking or simply with degrees of dishonesty ranging from casual self-deception to calculated manipulation.
The thing about real/ actual dreams is that they are not meant to be remembered. They surely have a function - or at least represent the workings of a process, albeit one that remains mysterious; but they are not created to be remembered, or else people would be able to remember them - whereas many people I have spoken with claim not to dream, at least not usually.
I am not saying that dreams are meant not-to-be-remembered - but that clearly there is not a functional mechanism or instinct by which they are remembered. As soon as we wake, we can feel the dream sliding through our grasping memory, leaking away even over just a few seconds - and much too rapidly to capture.
There are some specific dreams that I do remember in greater detail (although still aware that much has gone). These dreams probably do have some kind of different or additional function, I can probably lean something from them. But even these rare, clear, significant-feeling dreams lack the kind of clear, sequential, recall-ability that we take for granted in waking life.
Dreaming is a qualitatively different state from awake consciousness - in particular time passes at an extremely different rate, and the dreaming consciousness is a different person than the waking consciousness.
And that difference is exactly why I am convinced that people don't remember dream content in the ways claimed. After all, if one dreams many hours in a few seconds (as I often have done, and others have reported); it is not surprising that this cannot be expressed in terms of waking life - writing-up a dream is like trying to describe in words a piece of music, a sculpture or a smell!
I suppose I must have read many tens of thousands of words of detailed dreams in the books of Freud, Jung and their descendants; and in all manner of non-fiction on spiritual and paranormal themes... And I have been quietly not-believing them all along.
This was triggered by hearing a lecture (by a Rudolf Steiner followers - and Steiner gave detailed accounts of dreams) - in which he described in detail a dream he supposedly had, with various spiritual symbolisms and implications; exciting, weird, moving... and realising that I Didn't Believe It. No Way!
I am very interested by dreams - much more so than most people, and for more than forty years - and I have of course had many thousands of dreams... several per night. But never have I had a dream that could accurately and honestly have been described in the detailed and descriptive way used in so many published accounts.
What I recall from dreams is much more like images, or short segments - I cannot remember the stages and transitions - and I beyond such snatches, I would not find it possible to verbally-describe or to write-up the dream in a satisfactory 'public' way - a way that really captured its actual quality. The dream falls-to-pieces in my hands when I attempt to communicate it.
Furthermore, I have never (in real life) met anyone who was convincingly able to do any better or more than myself.
And yet - I am asked to believe that all over the place, in all kinds of situations, are a majority of people who can recall their dreams in detail and describe them satisfactorily - rather like short stories by Henry James! - to the extent that entire edifices of insight and knowledge have been built upon this foundation. (Yes, I'm talking about you, Sigmund...)
As I say - I Don't Believe It. I believe, instead, that the meaningful and sequential dreams, the exciting and moving dreams - as they appear in the spoken and written accounts - are fabricated; consciously or unconsciously; wittingly or unwittingly; whether from from joining-up genuine fragments or from whole-cloth; whether from wishful thinking or simply with degrees of dishonesty ranging from casual self-deception to calculated manipulation.
The thing about real/ actual dreams is that they are not meant to be remembered. They surely have a function - or at least represent the workings of a process, albeit one that remains mysterious; but they are not created to be remembered, or else people would be able to remember them - whereas many people I have spoken with claim not to dream, at least not usually.
I am not saying that dreams are meant not-to-be-remembered - but that clearly there is not a functional mechanism or instinct by which they are remembered. As soon as we wake, we can feel the dream sliding through our grasping memory, leaking away even over just a few seconds - and much too rapidly to capture.
There are some specific dreams that I do remember in greater detail (although still aware that much has gone). These dreams probably do have some kind of different or additional function, I can probably lean something from them. But even these rare, clear, significant-feeling dreams lack the kind of clear, sequential, recall-ability that we take for granted in waking life.
Dreaming is a qualitatively different state from awake consciousness - in particular time passes at an extremely different rate, and the dreaming consciousness is a different person than the waking consciousness.
And that difference is exactly why I am convinced that people don't remember dream content in the ways claimed. After all, if one dreams many hours in a few seconds (as I often have done, and others have reported); it is not surprising that this cannot be expressed in terms of waking life - writing-up a dream is like trying to describe in words a piece of music, a sculpture or a smell!
Tolkien and self-censorship?
Thanks to the detective work of Inklings scholar David Llewellyn Dodds in locating a key sentence in a draft of On Fairy Stories, I focus on the way that Tolkien seems to have deliberately hidden the meaning of his words with obsolete and obscure terminology - perhaps in order to self-censor beliefs about the subcreation of Fantasy that might well have been regarded as heretical.
The spoiling of Rudolf Steiner
"There slumber in every human being faculties by means of which he can acquire for himself a knowledge of higher worlds."
Thus wrote Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Anthroposophy. In The Philosophy of Freedom he demonstrated that thinking was the power that allowed modern human beings direct access to the spiritual worlds, an access that had once been the privilege of only a handful of mystics.
No longer was it necessary for average human beings to depend on scripture and other forms of religious authority, for they could discover spiritual truth directly through strengthened thinking. This direct knowledge, he argued, was the only foundation for true moral freedom. He went on to develop and teach practical methods by which it could be achieved.
A century later, the Society he founded seems dedicated mainly to preserving and disseminating his nearly 60,000 transcribed lectures [Note: this number seems considerably too large an estimate, since Steiner only lectured actively for about 25 years, which is about 9,000 days - and he did not deliver six lectures every day].
The result of his own spiritual research, these lectures cover everything from gnomes to seraphim, from the history of Atlantis to recipes for compost. "Steiner says" is the constant refrain of anthroposophists, who seem to prefer citations from these lectures to direct knowledge of anything. While Steiner's initiatives in education, biodynamic agriculture, homeopathic medicine and care of the mentally retarded have been lovingly preserved, anthroposophy has, since his death, produced little in the way of social innovation.
Anthroposophists, when they can be understood at all, express superstitions and prejudices that would embarrass a redneck. Fearing injury by everything from rock music to microchips to Jesuits, they have become a society of esoteric hypochondriacs, in neo-Amish withdrawal from modern political and economic life.
How is it that a movement dedicated to strengthened thinking produces so many goofy and morally useless ideas?
How did the author of The Philosophy of Freedom become this ghost to whom his readers so idolatrously surrender their independence of judgement?
That sound and stirring concepts give rise to corrupt and neurotic human organizations is pretty much a summary of the history of all spiritual movements...
I have been again engaging with Rudolf Steiner - because I regard him as one of the most significant thinkers of all time, and because he is a vital contributor to my deepest understanding of reality. Steiner is essential, but...
Yet again I find myself up against the phenomenon of which MacCoun speaks above. When I read or listen to Steiner's own lectures, or to the best of his followers expounding, I am overwhelmed by a sense of suffocation under such a mass of wrongness that I find it hard to continue.
But I disagree with MacCoun in her specific diagnosis that this is due to the Anthroposophical Society (AS), and the way it dealt with Steiner's legacy. I also disagree with her belief that the AS could - in principle - be reformed... I regard the AS as a symptom of Steiner's deep mistakes, and therefore it is unreformable
The problems lay with Steiner himself, and with his decision to become a spiritual leader of an organised movement. But I repeat myself...
The problems are deep, because Steiner made the serious error of developing a meditative technique that he regarded as intrinsically scientifically valid; and spent two and a half decades, day after day, putting himself into this trance-state and spouting forth in lectures whatever came to him in this state.
Steiner did not live up to his own best understanding - indeed as a matter of daily routine he fell below the standards he himself had understood and explained. Steiner distinguished the Luciferic and Ahrimanic types of spiritual evil - and he fell into both in his late work of lecturing and organising the Theosophical then Anthroposophical societies.
Steiner's focus on meditative technique - and training in this method - was Ahrimanic, materialistic. But (contrary to his own assertion that meditation should be in clear, alert consciousness) the actual meditative method he used was Luciferic - it was (according to multiple descriptions) a dissociated trance state of lowered consciousness, including lucid dreaming. He then took this unconsciously-generated, 'altered state', 'atavistic' material and systematised and taught it as fact - Ahrimanic again.
For many years, Steiner had this working like a machine. Ask him a question, he would go into a trance, and from his unconscious would generate vast masses of material on the subject - and by Steiner's unique intellectual brilliance (he was a genius) this dream-material would be systemised and rationalised even as it emerged in his speech.
The vast bulk of Steiner's work from about 1900 was, then, an exemplification of exactly those errors and evils that he himself first diagnosed as spiritual problems of our time: the backward looking Luciferic trances, and the modern bureaucratic organisation he founded, led and left-behind: the Ahrimanic Anthroposophical Society.
Thus wrote Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Anthroposophy. In The Philosophy of Freedom he demonstrated that thinking was the power that allowed modern human beings direct access to the spiritual worlds, an access that had once been the privilege of only a handful of mystics.
No longer was it necessary for average human beings to depend on scripture and other forms of religious authority, for they could discover spiritual truth directly through strengthened thinking. This direct knowledge, he argued, was the only foundation for true moral freedom. He went on to develop and teach practical methods by which it could be achieved.
A century later, the Society he founded seems dedicated mainly to preserving and disseminating his nearly 60,000 transcribed lectures [Note: this number seems considerably too large an estimate, since Steiner only lectured actively for about 25 years, which is about 9,000 days - and he did not deliver six lectures every day].
The result of his own spiritual research, these lectures cover everything from gnomes to seraphim, from the history of Atlantis to recipes for compost. "Steiner says" is the constant refrain of anthroposophists, who seem to prefer citations from these lectures to direct knowledge of anything. While Steiner's initiatives in education, biodynamic agriculture, homeopathic medicine and care of the mentally retarded have been lovingly preserved, anthroposophy has, since his death, produced little in the way of social innovation.
Anthroposophists, when they can be understood at all, express superstitions and prejudices that would embarrass a redneck. Fearing injury by everything from rock music to microchips to Jesuits, they have become a society of esoteric hypochondriacs, in neo-Amish withdrawal from modern political and economic life.
How is it that a movement dedicated to strengthened thinking produces so many goofy and morally useless ideas?
How did the author of The Philosophy of Freedom become this ghost to whom his readers so idolatrously surrender their independence of judgement?
That sound and stirring concepts give rise to corrupt and neurotic human organizations is pretty much a summary of the history of all spiritual movements...
From the introduction to Work on what has been spoiled by Catherine MacCoun.
I have been again engaging with Rudolf Steiner - because I regard him as one of the most significant thinkers of all time, and because he is a vital contributor to my deepest understanding of reality. Steiner is essential, but...
Yet again I find myself up against the phenomenon of which MacCoun speaks above. When I read or listen to Steiner's own lectures, or to the best of his followers expounding, I am overwhelmed by a sense of suffocation under such a mass of wrongness that I find it hard to continue.
But I disagree with MacCoun in her specific diagnosis that this is due to the Anthroposophical Society (AS), and the way it dealt with Steiner's legacy. I also disagree with her belief that the AS could - in principle - be reformed... I regard the AS as a symptom of Steiner's deep mistakes, and therefore it is unreformable
The problems lay with Steiner himself, and with his decision to become a spiritual leader of an organised movement. But I repeat myself...
The problems are deep, because Steiner made the serious error of developing a meditative technique that he regarded as intrinsically scientifically valid; and spent two and a half decades, day after day, putting himself into this trance-state and spouting forth in lectures whatever came to him in this state.
Steiner did not live up to his own best understanding - indeed as a matter of daily routine he fell below the standards he himself had understood and explained. Steiner distinguished the Luciferic and Ahrimanic types of spiritual evil - and he fell into both in his late work of lecturing and organising the Theosophical then Anthroposophical societies.
Steiner's focus on meditative technique - and training in this method - was Ahrimanic, materialistic. But (contrary to his own assertion that meditation should be in clear, alert consciousness) the actual meditative method he used was Luciferic - it was (according to multiple descriptions) a dissociated trance state of lowered consciousness, including lucid dreaming. He then took this unconsciously-generated, 'altered state', 'atavistic' material and systematised and taught it as fact - Ahrimanic again.
For many years, Steiner had this working like a machine. Ask him a question, he would go into a trance, and from his unconscious would generate vast masses of material on the subject - and by Steiner's unique intellectual brilliance (he was a genius) this dream-material would be systemised and rationalised even as it emerged in his speech.
The vast bulk of Steiner's work from about 1900 was, then, an exemplification of exactly those errors and evils that he himself first diagnosed as spiritual problems of our time: the backward looking Luciferic trances, and the modern bureaucratic organisation he founded, led and left-behind: the Ahrimanic Anthroposophical Society.
Thursday, 25 April 2019
What is the purpose of Old Age? A Romantic Christian answer
Since retiring from my job I have been revisiting the important topic of Old Age - which is of core importance in the oldest society the world has ever known. The median age of native populations in developed nations is in the middle forties and increasing: half the population are late middle-aged or older.
As I have often said, the best that modern society has to say about an old person is that they look and behave as if they were young. There is literally nothing positive to be said about the inescapable biological fact of growing old, by the hedonic and materialist standards of modernity.
Since ageing is entirely A Bad Thing; the modern strategy is to delay ageing at the level of public appearance, and to deny ageing at the level of self-knowledge. This is, for many people, a moral imperative - and I have heard venomous comments directed against those who 'failed' to 'make the best of themselves', who 'let themselves go': who revealed and acknowledged the fact of their ageing.
(When you are maintaining a self-delusion, awareness of others who contradict it can be experienced almost as a personal attack.)
This is understandable and inevitable given that - if the world really was as mainstream materialism depicts it to be - then there really is no function to ageing. It really is a wholly Bad Thing; and therefore delaying its appearance, and keeping it out of awareness, would be a rational strategy.
But if we try to understand ageing from a Romantic Christian perspective, then we start by assuming that ageing is not purely a disease but instead has a purpose and meaning; and that this purpose-meaning is tailored to the needs of the specific situation of a specific individual.
Thus each of us has a personal destiny which does not necessarily conform to general categories - nonetheless, the purpose can hardly be to try and pretend that ageing is not real, or makes no difference.
The positive value of ageing in general should be pretty obvious to a Romantic Christian, and that is that old age is a primarily spiritual time, during which the proximity to death ought to induce an increasingly next-worldly perspective and attitude.
The many difficulties of ageing are related to this - they are not merely supposed to be regarded as patholgies to be fought and (hopefully) overcome; but should be regarded as potentially valuable experiences from which we are supposed to learn.
So long as we are yet alive, so long we still have important things to learn - and that is the same in old age as any other phase of life - but perhaps the urgency and importance are even greater.
Any old person has therefore at least one extremely important task yet to accomplish, which is why he remains alive.
(Probably, this task is extremely obvious, yet being ignored.)
The take home message is that life is not over in old age, the stakes are indeed higher than ever.
The common attitude of trying to 'stay young' and trying not to think about approaching the portal of death and entering the life to come thereafter, is therefore a bad strategy for accomplishing what most needs doing.
As I have often said, the best that modern society has to say about an old person is that they look and behave as if they were young. There is literally nothing positive to be said about the inescapable biological fact of growing old, by the hedonic and materialist standards of modernity.
Since ageing is entirely A Bad Thing; the modern strategy is to delay ageing at the level of public appearance, and to deny ageing at the level of self-knowledge. This is, for many people, a moral imperative - and I have heard venomous comments directed against those who 'failed' to 'make the best of themselves', who 'let themselves go': who revealed and acknowledged the fact of their ageing.
(When you are maintaining a self-delusion, awareness of others who contradict it can be experienced almost as a personal attack.)
This is understandable and inevitable given that - if the world really was as mainstream materialism depicts it to be - then there really is no function to ageing. It really is a wholly Bad Thing; and therefore delaying its appearance, and keeping it out of awareness, would be a rational strategy.
But if we try to understand ageing from a Romantic Christian perspective, then we start by assuming that ageing is not purely a disease but instead has a purpose and meaning; and that this purpose-meaning is tailored to the needs of the specific situation of a specific individual.
Thus each of us has a personal destiny which does not necessarily conform to general categories - nonetheless, the purpose can hardly be to try and pretend that ageing is not real, or makes no difference.
The positive value of ageing in general should be pretty obvious to a Romantic Christian, and that is that old age is a primarily spiritual time, during which the proximity to death ought to induce an increasingly next-worldly perspective and attitude.
The many difficulties of ageing are related to this - they are not merely supposed to be regarded as patholgies to be fought and (hopefully) overcome; but should be regarded as potentially valuable experiences from which we are supposed to learn.
So long as we are yet alive, so long we still have important things to learn - and that is the same in old age as any other phase of life - but perhaps the urgency and importance are even greater.
Any old person has therefore at least one extremely important task yet to accomplish, which is why he remains alive.
(Probably, this task is extremely obvious, yet being ignored.)
The take home message is that life is not over in old age, the stakes are indeed higher than ever.
The common attitude of trying to 'stay young' and trying not to think about approaching the portal of death and entering the life to come thereafter, is therefore a bad strategy for accomplishing what most needs doing.
Why Christians Now need to become 'mystics'
I keep stating variations of this assertion - and since it sounds implausible, it is probably necessary that I keep explaining why I believe it.
By 'mystic' (or Romantic, in my preferred nomenclature) - I mean that Christians need to become directly, personally aware of things that previously could be accepted on the basis of church or scriptural authority.
This personal element has become necessary as the effectiveness of external authority has dwindled. In the past people believed that the church knew better then themselves - modern people simply do not believe this, and apparently cannot force themselves to believe it.
Likewise scripture - the whole matter of scriptural translation, scholarship and interpretation has become so complex and confusing, so much a matter of competing assertions - that any simple attitude of 'following' 'clear' Biblical teaching has gone. People can try, they can assert - but the clarity, simplicity, and belief seem to have gone.
When external authority goes, then how can Christians be sustained in face of a demonically-motivated Global Establishment that actively acts to eradicate Christianity?
Sooner or later every Christian will find themselves under extreme pressure to stop being Christian: what then? He will be challenged, repeatedly, to justify himself. He will be pushed-back to seek resources for resistance. What can help?
The answer is that Individual Experience needs to replace External Authority.
That is what I mean by saying that every modern Christian will (sooner or later, when challenged) need to become a mystic.
Each modern Christian needs to know what is right and what to do; and he needs to know this from his own direct, personal, mystical experience.
For this to happen, he has to know that it is 1. possible and 2. a good thing - from God, and then 3. be able to recognise and respond to divine mystical experience as it presents itself for modern people here-and-now - which is very different from the past.
And That is the topic of much of this blog: how to be a modern mystical Christian.
By 'mystic' (or Romantic, in my preferred nomenclature) - I mean that Christians need to become directly, personally aware of things that previously could be accepted on the basis of church or scriptural authority.
This personal element has become necessary as the effectiveness of external authority has dwindled. In the past people believed that the church knew better then themselves - modern people simply do not believe this, and apparently cannot force themselves to believe it.
Likewise scripture - the whole matter of scriptural translation, scholarship and interpretation has become so complex and confusing, so much a matter of competing assertions - that any simple attitude of 'following' 'clear' Biblical teaching has gone. People can try, they can assert - but the clarity, simplicity, and belief seem to have gone.
When external authority goes, then how can Christians be sustained in face of a demonically-motivated Global Establishment that actively acts to eradicate Christianity?
Sooner or later every Christian will find themselves under extreme pressure to stop being Christian: what then? He will be challenged, repeatedly, to justify himself. He will be pushed-back to seek resources for resistance. What can help?
The answer is that Individual Experience needs to replace External Authority.
That is what I mean by saying that every modern Christian will (sooner or later, when challenged) need to become a mystic.
Each modern Christian needs to know what is right and what to do; and he needs to know this from his own direct, personal, mystical experience.
For this to happen, he has to know that it is 1. possible and 2. a good thing - from God, and then 3. be able to recognise and respond to divine mystical experience as it presents itself for modern people here-and-now - which is very different from the past.
And That is the topic of much of this blog: how to be a modern mystical Christian.
Wednesday, 24 April 2019
What's wrong about chatting with God? (e.g. like Don Camillo)
On this blog I often 'fulminate' against regarding God as an abstraction - something I regard as an error by which Christians 'collapse into' pure monotheism; characterised by an emphasis on worship and submission without need for comprehension or (more than minimal) agency.
The historic and continuing success of Islam at displacing Christianity is (I believe) ultimately because it is based-upon the clear authority of an absolute and abstract conceptual God; and so much more coherently than mainstream, traditional Christianity: this purity of monotheistic power being what many (past and current) Christians apparently most want from their deity (rather than what Jesus showed and told and tells us).
At another extreme is the causal, chatty, man-to-man way of relating to God; which I associate with the short stories about the Italian priest Don Camillo, written by Giovannino Guareschi. If you don't know these tales, I'd certainly recommend them as very enjoyable pieces.
One feature is that the parish priest Don Camillo pops-into his church, addresses Jesus on the cross, and has two-way conversations with God (or Jesus on the cross) characterised by a very down-to-earth and humorous tone. In context, these are great fun; but theologically there is a lot wrong with having a chat with God as if he were a cosmic uncle or bishop.
Don Camillo is Roman Catholic, but this a style that may also be associated with 'low church' protestants; who may report an active spiritual life of this 'conversational' type; reporting their prayers in such a way.
What is wrong with such a mode of interaction with God is that it is mundane, worldly, shallow, materialistic. Modern Man craves and needs so much more.
A chatty, friendly relation with God is no different in quality from our relations with other people in this materialistic world. Modern Man is alienated - that is, he finds life shallow, meaningless, purposeless - and adding God as just another 'pal' (albeit a cosmic and powerful pal) to one's collection of friends does not address this deep sense of isolation.
(Alienation is the experience of subjectivity being cut-off from objectivity; the problem of solipsism - regarding the external world as unreal, combined with the problem of regarding our own self as unreal, labile, unreliable...)
I am saying that Don Camillo is absolutely correct that God is indeed a Being, a Person; and that we ought-to relate to him as a person; but relating to God as we relate to other modern people in a mainstream kind of way is grossly inadequate. Don Camillo relates wrongly to God, because he relates wrongly to everybody; if he was real his life would be alienated, his contact at secondhand.
In sum, we do not want merely to communicate with God (or other people) - no matter how comfortably or comfortingly; we want more. We need more - because that is not enough, nothing-like enough...
The 'everyday' does not answer. We want to experience direct contact, to have a direct and shared knowledge of God, and of other persons - bypassing the distance and uncertainty of language, bypassing the problems of intention and understanding - a direct, shared, knowing.
This is not highfalutin, not abstract, not an intellectual process at all; it is as down to earth as Don Camillo - but it is conscious and freely chosen. Many of us have experienced it with love - that wordless and direct and conscious knowing that answer all our craving, and in-which we are (for a while) perfectly satisfied.
Don Camillo is depicted as if perfectly satisfied; but he is like a child or someone from an earlier simpler and much-less-conscious era. In reality he would not be - he is an educated man, trained in abstraction. He cannot be unconscious, spontaneous, genuinely simple.
We are not Shire hobbits, and cannot go-back to that spontaneous rustic instinctive life. If taken as a life plan, that would be a false fantasy, a pretence, an ineffective fake; no matter how enjoyable the fantasy may be to read-about.
But we cannot stay where we are now, stuck in our alienation; because here we despair, here we are existentially isolated and paralysed by doubt; and our societies are are consequently demotivated unto death.
The proper course is to go forward beyond communication to communion, beyond conversation to intuition. To do this requires Love, and to realise that Love is not an emotion but a chosen commitment to shared purpose.
That monotheistic feeling... contrasted with Christian multiplicity of agent Beings
If man wishes to build for himself a world conception, he rightly strives toward harmonizing the individual parts...
One who approaches the world with the expectation that everything must explain itself without contradiction, as if it arose from an undivided foundation of the world, will experience many disappointments when he faces the world and its experiences in an unprejudiced way. It is traditional for the human being to treat all that he perceives in the world according to a pastoral world conception, in which everything is led back to the undivided, divine, primordial foundation; everything stems from God and therefore must be understandable as a unity.
This is not the case now, however. What surrounds us in the world as experience does not stem from the undivided primordial foundation. Rather it stems from spiritual individualities different from one another. Different individualities work together in all that surrounds us in the world as experience. This is how it is above all...
Various individualities work together in influencing these events that are relatively independent of each other. If you do not take this into consideration, if you assume everywhere an undivided foundation of the world, you will never understand these events. Only when you take into consideration what is to a certain degree the ebb and flow of events, the varied individualities who work with or against one another, only then will you understand these things in the right way.
This matter is indeed connected with the deepest mysteries of human evolution. Only the monotheistic feeling has veiled this fact for centuries or millennia, but one must consider it.
If one wishes to progress today, therefore, with questions of a world conception, above all one must not confuse logic with an abstract lack of contradiction. An abstract lack of contradiction cannot exist in a world in which individualities are working together independently of one another.
A striving for conformity will therefore always lead to an impoverishment of concepts; the concepts will no longer be able to encompass the full reality. Only when these concepts are able to take hold of this world full of contradictions, which is the true reality, will they be able to encompass the full reality.
From Individual Spirit Beings and the Undivided Foundation of the World: Part 2 by Rudolf Steiner.
This particular section of a lecture by Rodolf Steiner jumped out at me; because he shares my own understanding that monotheism is an understandable but misguided urge; one that can only be achieved by an 'impoverishment of concepts', an ignoring of primary and intuitively-known realities, that - in the end, and especially at present - plays into sustaining this age of secular materialism.
In other words, a highly abstract monotheism, one that primarily asserts the unity of the world, is hostile to our intuitive knowledge of the multiplicity of agent Beings in reality. This world is Not merely 'aspects' of a primordial unity; it is a Society of Beings.
And this is why, for Christians, Love is the primary necessity; because it is Love which harmonises, and aligns the purposes of Beings into a participation in creation - Beings whose wills otherwise would be chaotically at war.
Christians are One in Love and Purpose - not in monotheistic Being.
There is a qualitative distinction between the false monotheistic harmony of unity, and the true Christian harmony of Love.
This is why it is important for Christians to acknowledge that in deepest truth they are not monotheists, nor are they 'Trinitarian' monotheists - but that Christianity implicitly acknowledges and works-with the genuine autonomy of many, many Beings.
One who approaches the world with the expectation that everything must explain itself without contradiction, as if it arose from an undivided foundation of the world, will experience many disappointments when he faces the world and its experiences in an unprejudiced way. It is traditional for the human being to treat all that he perceives in the world according to a pastoral world conception, in which everything is led back to the undivided, divine, primordial foundation; everything stems from God and therefore must be understandable as a unity.
This is not the case now, however. What surrounds us in the world as experience does not stem from the undivided primordial foundation. Rather it stems from spiritual individualities different from one another. Different individualities work together in all that surrounds us in the world as experience. This is how it is above all...
Various individualities work together in influencing these events that are relatively independent of each other. If you do not take this into consideration, if you assume everywhere an undivided foundation of the world, you will never understand these events. Only when you take into consideration what is to a certain degree the ebb and flow of events, the varied individualities who work with or against one another, only then will you understand these things in the right way.
This matter is indeed connected with the deepest mysteries of human evolution. Only the monotheistic feeling has veiled this fact for centuries or millennia, but one must consider it.
If one wishes to progress today, therefore, with questions of a world conception, above all one must not confuse logic with an abstract lack of contradiction. An abstract lack of contradiction cannot exist in a world in which individualities are working together independently of one another.
A striving for conformity will therefore always lead to an impoverishment of concepts; the concepts will no longer be able to encompass the full reality. Only when these concepts are able to take hold of this world full of contradictions, which is the true reality, will they be able to encompass the full reality.
From Individual Spirit Beings and the Undivided Foundation of the World: Part 2 by Rudolf Steiner.
This particular section of a lecture by Rodolf Steiner jumped out at me; because he shares my own understanding that monotheism is an understandable but misguided urge; one that can only be achieved by an 'impoverishment of concepts', an ignoring of primary and intuitively-known realities, that - in the end, and especially at present - plays into sustaining this age of secular materialism.
In other words, a highly abstract monotheism, one that primarily asserts the unity of the world, is hostile to our intuitive knowledge of the multiplicity of agent Beings in reality. This world is Not merely 'aspects' of a primordial unity; it is a Society of Beings.
And this is why, for Christians, Love is the primary necessity; because it is Love which harmonises, and aligns the purposes of Beings into a participation in creation - Beings whose wills otherwise would be chaotically at war.
Christians are One in Love and Purpose - not in monotheistic Being.
There is a qualitative distinction between the false monotheistic harmony of unity, and the true Christian harmony of Love.
This is why it is important for Christians to acknowledge that in deepest truth they are not monotheists, nor are they 'Trinitarian' monotheists - but that Christianity implicitly acknowledges and works-with the genuine autonomy of many, many Beings.
Tuesday, 23 April 2019
William Wildblood visits a Roman Catholic Church for the Easter service
William - who is a mostly solitary and mystical Christian - describes his experience attending a church service recently; and provokes some interesting comments on what Christian churches maybe 'ought' to be aiming-at in their services...
Why does the Global Left-Materialist Conspiracy (GLMC) Not *explicitly* declare war on Christianity?
The reason is that - being genuinely evil - the GLMC is Not an ideology of conquest, but instead a converting ideology.
If the GLMC wanted to destroy Christianity, it would name the enemy and rally the troops to destroy them. It would - for example - make it clear that Christians are being systematically (by multiple proxies) being persecuted, maimed and killed all over the world, on a daily basis. It would be made clear that this was initiated and sustained by the GLMC - and its results would be specified, measured, specified and celebrated openly... Enemy casualties would be listed.
Instead - what we see is GLMC providing covert/ deniable support; and a cover-up/ concealment of enemy casualties (who are not named as Christians).
The campaign is being conducted more like a secret police activity than a war. In other words, the GLMC works by totalitarian state terrorism not war - that is by inducing uncertainty, encouraging unfocused fear and suspicion - as a permanent state of affairs.
The GLMC have won the war, and are now engaged in the incremental pacification of the world. Christians are permeating the world; and the objective is to convert all Christians to the leftist-materialist ideology.
And, because leftist-materialism is a negative ideology, and ideology aimed at the destruction/ subversion/ inversion of Good - this ideology can be implemented simply by inducing an existential state of resentment, fear or despair - or reactive distraction/ hedonism.
This resembles the way in which totalitarian regimes will 'disappear' people. Someone leaves work, but does not come home - the state denies any knowledge of them. In reality the individual may be imprisoned, tortured, killed - but the family will never know for sure until the individual is either released without explanation - maybe unharmed, maybe almost-dead; or the years pass and all hope is lost.
Something analogous is happening across the world.
How should Christians respond? Well, the first step - which very few Christians seem to have taken, is to know the enemy for what he is. Once that has been achieved, we will know not to believe the enemy, and to regard his acts and communications as strategically orientated towards our self-damnation.
If we fight the war on the Global stage, we have already lost. Because it is a spiritual war, it needs to be fought on the billionfold battleground of each-Man's Heart - and if we each fight it there, every Christian can (each and all) win (who truly wish to win) - and win with ease and certainty!
If the GLMC wanted to destroy Christianity, it would name the enemy and rally the troops to destroy them. It would - for example - make it clear that Christians are being systematically (by multiple proxies) being persecuted, maimed and killed all over the world, on a daily basis. It would be made clear that this was initiated and sustained by the GLMC - and its results would be specified, measured, specified and celebrated openly... Enemy casualties would be listed.
Instead - what we see is GLMC providing covert/ deniable support; and a cover-up/ concealment of enemy casualties (who are not named as Christians).
The campaign is being conducted more like a secret police activity than a war. In other words, the GLMC works by totalitarian state terrorism not war - that is by inducing uncertainty, encouraging unfocused fear and suspicion - as a permanent state of affairs.
The GLMC have won the war, and are now engaged in the incremental pacification of the world. Christians are permeating the world; and the objective is to convert all Christians to the leftist-materialist ideology.
And, because leftist-materialism is a negative ideology, and ideology aimed at the destruction/ subversion/ inversion of Good - this ideology can be implemented simply by inducing an existential state of resentment, fear or despair - or reactive distraction/ hedonism.
This resembles the way in which totalitarian regimes will 'disappear' people. Someone leaves work, but does not come home - the state denies any knowledge of them. In reality the individual may be imprisoned, tortured, killed - but the family will never know for sure until the individual is either released without explanation - maybe unharmed, maybe almost-dead; or the years pass and all hope is lost.
Something analogous is happening across the world.
How should Christians respond? Well, the first step - which very few Christians seem to have taken, is to know the enemy for what he is. Once that has been achieved, we will know not to believe the enemy, and to regard his acts and communications as strategically orientated towards our self-damnation.
If we fight the war on the Global stage, we have already lost. Because it is a spiritual war, it needs to be fought on the billionfold battleground of each-Man's Heart - and if we each fight it there, every Christian can (each and all) win (who truly wish to win) - and win with ease and certainty!
A day for reflection, personal celebration and private resolution?
Happy St George's Day!... Somehow, with the English utterly-failing to rise to the spiritual challenge of the Brexit opportunity; waving or displaying an actual flag for St George's day would seem inappropriate to me. After all, who would respond to such a gesture in the way that I would wish?
So I shall instead be making a personal statement by swapping my usual Northumberland lapel pin (above, below) for a St George's flag on the left side. It is simply a statement that the spirit of England is in my heart; an act of self-encouragement.
The St G mini-flag was purchased from a supplier of patriotic English merchandise called Senlak - an organisation who regard the Anglo-Saxon invasion of AD449 as the defining event in our history.
Monday, 22 April 2019
"Easter Worshippers" proves the global conspiracy
Even as recently as 2014 when I wrote Addicted to Distraction; I doubted the reality of a global conspiracy among the mass media; mainly because I could not conceive of a plausible mechanism that operate over such a vast volume of production...
Well, I have since changed my mind. I still don't know the mechanism, but half a decade of extra observation has clinched it: the evil, secular, materialist, leftist anti-Christian stance of the international media Is A Conspiracy.
If I had any doubts, then yesterday would have quelled them. The Global Mass Media decided that it did not want The World to know that Christians has been targeted, slaughtered and maimed in Sri Lanka; and so they suddenly invented the term Easter Worshippers, as a deliberately-confusing synonym.
This fresh-minted neologism was then used, according to Google, by about 84,000 news stories - i.e. nearly 84K items with the brand-new phrase were published yesterday!
From near-zero to tens-of-thousands of simultaneous phrase-users in a matter of hours!
That shows that it is indeed possible to co-ordinate thousands of news outlets (including dozens of famous Twitter users) so that they walk in lockstep; it shows the kind of world we live in; and it shows us yet again What They Want.
Note added: I read-over and posted this - and then checked the hypertext links; in that time there had been 600 further usages of Easter Worshippers. At this rate, 'Christians' will have been de facto renamed within a few more months...
Well, I have since changed my mind. I still don't know the mechanism, but half a decade of extra observation has clinched it: the evil, secular, materialist, leftist anti-Christian stance of the international media Is A Conspiracy.
If I had any doubts, then yesterday would have quelled them. The Global Mass Media decided that it did not want The World to know that Christians has been targeted, slaughtered and maimed in Sri Lanka; and so they suddenly invented the term Easter Worshippers, as a deliberately-confusing synonym.
This fresh-minted neologism was then used, according to Google, by about 84,000 news stories - i.e. nearly 84K items with the brand-new phrase were published yesterday!
From near-zero to tens-of-thousands of simultaneous phrase-users in a matter of hours!
That shows that it is indeed possible to co-ordinate thousands of news outlets (including dozens of famous Twitter users) so that they walk in lockstep; it shows the kind of world we live in; and it shows us yet again What They Want.
Note added: I read-over and posted this - and then checked the hypertext links; in that time there had been 600 further usages of Easter Worshippers. At this rate, 'Christians' will have been de facto renamed within a few more months...
A world without edges...
The world Now is qualitatively different from how it was a few generations ago. The changes themselves were not hard-edged, but the cumulative consequences are qualitative.
The world used to be one in which there were hard-edges outside of us. The task was to work from within one or other category that was made by the hard edges.
But the edges dissolved, or were-dissolved... Some of this dissolving was done by the forces of evil - but other forces of evil were concerned to introduces new hard-edges; especially, the global totalitarian bureaucratic System is all about hard-edges. But the reason that we experience The System as tyranny is that we recognise its categories are arbitrary, not-true. We only stick by them because we are compelled, and we can only be compelled because we cannot conceive of any better alternative.
To my mind, those who wish to reintroduce the old hard-edges are welcome to try; but I think this simply cannot succeed. All attempts have failed, and I think they have failed because Men's minds have changed, in a fundamental fashion.
We experience the world differently, which is as much as to say that our world is different - really different. The edges have gone because - for us - the edges are no longer present.
In a world where there are no edges, or more exactly, no edges that we spontaneously and whole-heartedly recognise as real and 'objective' - we must either live by (what will be experienced as) passive compliance with some arbitrary external source of edges - or else must develop another way of discernment, that comes from within rather than from without.
Yet it is difficult - sometimes impossible - for Men to imagine and believe any inner source of objective reality. The loss of edges is experienced as a loss of all reality, a world of arbitrary, fluid, subjectivity. Imagination is seen as untruth.
The answer, and perhaps the only imaginable answer, can be described; but to believe it, to regard it as real, to regard it as objectively valid... well, that requires a great deal of metaphysical rebuilding, the making of new foundations - which most people are unwilling even to consider embarking upon (perhaps for fear of losing what they already have, but mostly because they think-they-know that the effort would be futile).
In a world without edges, and where edges are not coming back; then that primary task is to derive discernment each from his own resources; but to know that discernment to be objective, and to reference a single and shared reality.
To put it differently, we seek a world where the imagination is true, and where that truth is universal - for all Men.
This has been sought for more than 200 years - but mostly the first and fatal step has been to discard Jesus Christ. Among the minority of Christians who sought this path, there has been a failure to re-imagine Christianity in the necessary, post-edge-world, personal-objective mode.
The consequence is that few have succeeded - yet succeed we must, because an honest and rigorous analysis tells us that there is no alternative.
More exactly, the consequence of failure is that mortal life will be a Waste of Time, because all our lived experience will come to nought of value, because our frame of understanding will negate experience.
Incarnation and death will become the only positive value of mortal life - and everything in-between At Best only a Waste of Time.
And that, I suppose, will be the end of things.
The world used to be one in which there were hard-edges outside of us. The task was to work from within one or other category that was made by the hard edges.
But the edges dissolved, or were-dissolved... Some of this dissolving was done by the forces of evil - but other forces of evil were concerned to introduces new hard-edges; especially, the global totalitarian bureaucratic System is all about hard-edges. But the reason that we experience The System as tyranny is that we recognise its categories are arbitrary, not-true. We only stick by them because we are compelled, and we can only be compelled because we cannot conceive of any better alternative.
To my mind, those who wish to reintroduce the old hard-edges are welcome to try; but I think this simply cannot succeed. All attempts have failed, and I think they have failed because Men's minds have changed, in a fundamental fashion.
We experience the world differently, which is as much as to say that our world is different - really different. The edges have gone because - for us - the edges are no longer present.
In a world where there are no edges, or more exactly, no edges that we spontaneously and whole-heartedly recognise as real and 'objective' - we must either live by (what will be experienced as) passive compliance with some arbitrary external source of edges - or else must develop another way of discernment, that comes from within rather than from without.
Yet it is difficult - sometimes impossible - for Men to imagine and believe any inner source of objective reality. The loss of edges is experienced as a loss of all reality, a world of arbitrary, fluid, subjectivity. Imagination is seen as untruth.
The answer, and perhaps the only imaginable answer, can be described; but to believe it, to regard it as real, to regard it as objectively valid... well, that requires a great deal of metaphysical rebuilding, the making of new foundations - which most people are unwilling even to consider embarking upon (perhaps for fear of losing what they already have, but mostly because they think-they-know that the effort would be futile).
In a world without edges, and where edges are not coming back; then that primary task is to derive discernment each from his own resources; but to know that discernment to be objective, and to reference a single and shared reality.
To put it differently, we seek a world where the imagination is true, and where that truth is universal - for all Men.
This has been sought for more than 200 years - but mostly the first and fatal step has been to discard Jesus Christ. Among the minority of Christians who sought this path, there has been a failure to re-imagine Christianity in the necessary, post-edge-world, personal-objective mode.
The consequence is that few have succeeded - yet succeed we must, because an honest and rigorous analysis tells us that there is no alternative.
More exactly, the consequence of failure is that mortal life will be a Waste of Time, because all our lived experience will come to nought of value, because our frame of understanding will negate experience.
Incarnation and death will become the only positive value of mortal life - and everything in-between At Best only a Waste of Time.
And that, I suppose, will be the end of things.
Sunday, 21 April 2019
Resurrection day - who is interested, who wants it?
Today, many Christian celebrate the resurrection of Jesus - so that the divine but mortal Man was born again in an everlasting divine body - and the promise that those who want resurrection - who believe and follow Jesus - can have the same gift.
By not thinking, by pretending that beliefs do not have consequences, Modern Man usually does not want Resurrection. Many claim to be 'satisfied' with mortal life; and regard it as childish, selfish and greedy to want 'more'.
But eternal life is not 'more' than mortal life; it is something utterly different.
This qualitative distinction between death and life used to be so obvious as not to require explanation, even to the simplest mind; but Modern Man has so fragmented his thinking that he can deny anything which he doubts - and he can be induced to doubt everything.
There is no possible coherence when thoughts are regarded as detached units, confined to a detached brain. More - there is no self; so Resurrection is incomprehensible; since after the body has died there is nothing to resurrect...
In such a world, the gift of Jesus is not so much denied as incomprehensible; not so much denied as unwanted. When life is experienced as intrinsically meaningless, why should anyone want it to persist eternally? Why should anyone want an everlasting body?
Most would prefer a painless transition from this mortal life to extinction, annihilation - and this is a technological/ managerial problem - not a matter of religion. If they want eternal life, they reject eternal consciousness - so, at most, will be yearning for a painless, preferably blissful, but unconscious eternity of spiritual dissolution or assimilation (it doesn't make any perceptible difference which).
This is the absolute negation of Love - and it is the norm.
Christianity is for those who want what Jesus offers. It is possible, it is perhaps likely, that these will be a minority of Modern Men: and that this minority will be a small one.
We can reflect on some words of the Apostle Paul, inspirationally done into some of the greatest prose to which English has attained.
1 Corinthians. 15
[12] Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? [13] But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: [14] And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. [15] Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. [16] For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: [17] And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. [18] Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.
[19] If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. [20] But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. [21] For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. [22] For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. [23] But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming. [24] Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power.
[25] For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. [26] The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. [27] For he hath put all things under his feet.
[35] But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come? [36] Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die: [37] And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain: [38] But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body.
[42] So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: [43] It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: [44] It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.
[50] Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. [51] Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, [52] In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. [53] For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.
[54] So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. [55] O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? [56] The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. [57] But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ...
By not thinking, by pretending that beliefs do not have consequences, Modern Man usually does not want Resurrection. Many claim to be 'satisfied' with mortal life; and regard it as childish, selfish and greedy to want 'more'.
But eternal life is not 'more' than mortal life; it is something utterly different.
This qualitative distinction between death and life used to be so obvious as not to require explanation, even to the simplest mind; but Modern Man has so fragmented his thinking that he can deny anything which he doubts - and he can be induced to doubt everything.
There is no possible coherence when thoughts are regarded as detached units, confined to a detached brain. More - there is no self; so Resurrection is incomprehensible; since after the body has died there is nothing to resurrect...
In such a world, the gift of Jesus is not so much denied as incomprehensible; not so much denied as unwanted. When life is experienced as intrinsically meaningless, why should anyone want it to persist eternally? Why should anyone want an everlasting body?
Most would prefer a painless transition from this mortal life to extinction, annihilation - and this is a technological/ managerial problem - not a matter of religion. If they want eternal life, they reject eternal consciousness - so, at most, will be yearning for a painless, preferably blissful, but unconscious eternity of spiritual dissolution or assimilation (it doesn't make any perceptible difference which).
This is the absolute negation of Love - and it is the norm.
Christianity is for those who want what Jesus offers. It is possible, it is perhaps likely, that these will be a minority of Modern Men: and that this minority will be a small one.
We can reflect on some words of the Apostle Paul, inspirationally done into some of the greatest prose to which English has attained.
1 Corinthians. 15
[12] Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? [13] But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: [14] And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. [15] Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. [16] For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: [17] And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. [18] Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.
[19] If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. [20] But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. [21] For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. [22] For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. [23] But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming. [24] Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power.
[25] For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. [26] The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. [27] For he hath put all things under his feet.
[35] But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come? [36] Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die: [37] And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain: [38] But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body.
[42] So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: [43] It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: [44] It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.
[50] Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. [51] Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, [52] In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. [53] For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.
[54] So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. [55] O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? [56] The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. [57] But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ...
Saturday, 20 April 2019
How do I know For Sure that the climate change agenda is fake
While I have written various things on and around this subject: the case that the climate change agenda is a fake can all be boiled down to a single, clear fact:
Nobody can predict climate.
Or, to put it another way; there is No Reason At All to believe anyone who asserts that they can predict what will happen to the earth's climate.
No Reason, because the minimum datum required to take seriously an assertion of knowledge about the future is confirmation of a successful, precise prediction.
Since there have been no successful precise predictions of climate (and, on the contrary, a mass of vague and unsuccessful predictions) we must infer that nobody can predict climate.
Given the complexity of climate this is not surprising. Given that - as well as this complexity - we know that the primary driver of climate is the sun - and we also know that nobody knows what the sun is going to do in the future.
Nobody can predict the climate; and anyone who claims he can predict the climate is dishonest, ignorant, insane - or some combination of the three.
Nobody can predict climate.
Or, to put it another way; there is No Reason At All to believe anyone who asserts that they can predict what will happen to the earth's climate.
No Reason, because the minimum datum required to take seriously an assertion of knowledge about the future is confirmation of a successful, precise prediction.
Since there have been no successful precise predictions of climate (and, on the contrary, a mass of vague and unsuccessful predictions) we must infer that nobody can predict climate.
Given the complexity of climate this is not surprising. Given that - as well as this complexity - we know that the primary driver of climate is the sun - and we also know that nobody knows what the sun is going to do in the future.
Nobody can predict the climate; and anyone who claims he can predict the climate is dishonest, ignorant, insane - or some combination of the three.
How might you become a Christian?
1. Decide whether you want what Jesus Christ offered - which was resurrected, eternal life after biological death, as a Son or Daughter of God, in a loving Heaven, participating in the continuing work of creation.
If you don't want this - then it is not really worth proceeding.
If you do want this:
2. Decide whether you believe Jesus really was divine, the Son of the creator of the universe - and therefore able to deliver what he had offered.
How could you know such a thing? It is unlikely that you will be convinced by any process of research, history, or logic, or the authority of living Christians.
(If you try to get an answer by some kind of investigation of external sources, the statistical probability is that you will encounter fake Christian sources - because these are in a large majority.)
So you should proceed to ask this question directly. That is, ask your-self whether you believe Jesus was and is who he claimed - you should ask this by an act of simple but profound reflection. Ask it of your deepest true self which you might agree has divine authority (because if God is good and we are his children, then our deepest self is divine and authoritative).
Ask it of God the creator; ask it of Jesus - who lives and reigns. Clear you mind and wait in silence for an answer that carries its own authority.
Ask the question simply, and the simple answer may come to you as a direct form of knowing.
If you get the answer Yes - Yes, Jesus was divine and can deliver on his promises (which you want for yourself), then...
3. Look around at the available (self-identified) Christian denominations and churches - and investigate (and question) to judge if there are any accessible that you predict will help you to be a Christian.
If you find one, try it. If the actual, local church helps, then join it - do it, as fully as possible (evaluating, all the while, to check that it really is helping).
But...
4. If there are no satisfactory churches accessible - or none satisfactory to your needs and discernment; then just get-on with being a Christian on your own, as best you can. Don't feel guilty! Take full responsibility for your own faith - no excuses accepted!
*
Note: What I would say Not to do: Don't join a church and then try to change it.
Because insofar as you succeed, it will certainly weaken and probably destroy it. All worthwhile churches are pretty tough about certain things, and if you don't agree with what they are tough about - then don't join them, or leave them. To liberalise and subvert existing Christian churches is to to aid the enemy.
If you join a church and find that it is overall helpful, and that overall you approve of its aims and methods - then support and strengthen that church so that it can makes its distinctive contribution to the work of salvation and theosis.
And if/ when your chosen church becomes corrupted by secular leftist materialism - then cease to support it, leave it.
If you don't want this - then it is not really worth proceeding.
If you do want this:
2. Decide whether you believe Jesus really was divine, the Son of the creator of the universe - and therefore able to deliver what he had offered.
How could you know such a thing? It is unlikely that you will be convinced by any process of research, history, or logic, or the authority of living Christians.
(If you try to get an answer by some kind of investigation of external sources, the statistical probability is that you will encounter fake Christian sources - because these are in a large majority.)
So you should proceed to ask this question directly. That is, ask your-self whether you believe Jesus was and is who he claimed - you should ask this by an act of simple but profound reflection. Ask it of your deepest true self which you might agree has divine authority (because if God is good and we are his children, then our deepest self is divine and authoritative).
Ask it of God the creator; ask it of Jesus - who lives and reigns. Clear you mind and wait in silence for an answer that carries its own authority.
Ask the question simply, and the simple answer may come to you as a direct form of knowing.
If you get the answer Yes - Yes, Jesus was divine and can deliver on his promises (which you want for yourself), then...
3. Look around at the available (self-identified) Christian denominations and churches - and investigate (and question) to judge if there are any accessible that you predict will help you to be a Christian.
If you find one, try it. If the actual, local church helps, then join it - do it, as fully as possible (evaluating, all the while, to check that it really is helping).
But...
4. If there are no satisfactory churches accessible - or none satisfactory to your needs and discernment; then just get-on with being a Christian on your own, as best you can. Don't feel guilty! Take full responsibility for your own faith - no excuses accepted!
*
Note: What I would say Not to do: Don't join a church and then try to change it.
Because insofar as you succeed, it will certainly weaken and probably destroy it. All worthwhile churches are pretty tough about certain things, and if you don't agree with what they are tough about - then don't join them, or leave them. To liberalise and subvert existing Christian churches is to to aid the enemy.
If you join a church and find that it is overall helpful, and that overall you approve of its aims and methods - then support and strengthen that church so that it can makes its distinctive contribution to the work of salvation and theosis.
And if/ when your chosen church becomes corrupted by secular leftist materialism - then cease to support it, leave it.
Things are coming to a point, but there is a distinct lack of exemplary persons - why?
Things are coming to a point, such that Good and evil are becoming more clearly distinguished, and grey areas are fading.
But this may be misunderstood to mean that people are polarising into Good and bad - with Good people more Good and evil people more evil - but this interpretation would be an error.
Certainly we do Not, nowadays, see more Good people, better people on average, more and greater Saints, an increase in morally exemplary persons. No we don't see that.
What is happening with things coming to a point is that the Good side and the evil side are becoming easier to distinguish - with a sharp bright line between them; Good and evil are becoming purer and less-mixed in actual practice.
The Good side are those who support the goals of God's creation, and who hope to join with God in the eternal work of creation - the evil side are those who oppose this.
Things coming to a point mean that it is becoming ever-more clear cut whether we choose the Good side or the evil. There is less blurring, less chance of confusion. Our choices, therefore, cluster - since the Goodness and evil are so clear and separated; when we choose, therefore, we know what we are doing.
Our choices are more conscious, more deliberate - more significant.
So even one evil choice is, in practice, marker of a disposition to choose evil. Since it marks a disposition, one evil choice is evidence of a person that is on the side of evil.
And since things have come to a point - being on the side of evil (even - apparently - on a single issue) is nowadays increasingly likely to be conclusive of a deliberate decision to oppose Good/ God/ creation.
Individuals are always a dynamic and evolving mixture of virtues and vices, good behaviours and bad; and modern fighters on the side of Good may well be notably flawed in terms of feebleness of virtue, proneness to sin, and selfish short-termism of behaviour... yet (thanks to the 'infinite' power of repentance) they may still be on the side of Good.
While, on the other side - the side of evil; individuals may have considerable virtues, and display considerable altruism and steadiness of purpose... yet these positive factors serve, in the end, merely to increase their dangerousness to the cause of Good.
Conscious and conscientious servants to the project of evil are more dangerous - because more effectively anti-Good - than impulsive, self-centred hedonists.
But this may be misunderstood to mean that people are polarising into Good and bad - with Good people more Good and evil people more evil - but this interpretation would be an error.
Certainly we do Not, nowadays, see more Good people, better people on average, more and greater Saints, an increase in morally exemplary persons. No we don't see that.
What is happening with things coming to a point is that the Good side and the evil side are becoming easier to distinguish - with a sharp bright line between them; Good and evil are becoming purer and less-mixed in actual practice.
The Good side are those who support the goals of God's creation, and who hope to join with God in the eternal work of creation - the evil side are those who oppose this.
Things coming to a point mean that it is becoming ever-more clear cut whether we choose the Good side or the evil. There is less blurring, less chance of confusion. Our choices, therefore, cluster - since the Goodness and evil are so clear and separated; when we choose, therefore, we know what we are doing.
Our choices are more conscious, more deliberate - more significant.
So even one evil choice is, in practice, marker of a disposition to choose evil. Since it marks a disposition, one evil choice is evidence of a person that is on the side of evil.
And since things have come to a point - being on the side of evil (even - apparently - on a single issue) is nowadays increasingly likely to be conclusive of a deliberate decision to oppose Good/ God/ creation.
Individuals are always a dynamic and evolving mixture of virtues and vices, good behaviours and bad; and modern fighters on the side of Good may well be notably flawed in terms of feebleness of virtue, proneness to sin, and selfish short-termism of behaviour... yet (thanks to the 'infinite' power of repentance) they may still be on the side of Good.
While, on the other side - the side of evil; individuals may have considerable virtues, and display considerable altruism and steadiness of purpose... yet these positive factors serve, in the end, merely to increase their dangerousness to the cause of Good.
Conscious and conscientious servants to the project of evil are more dangerous - because more effectively anti-Good - than impulsive, self-centred hedonists.
Friday, 19 April 2019
Why modern Western people seem to be more evil than those of the past, or of other places
I have come to believe that a high proportion of modern Western people have been 'born bad' - that is, they were pretty evil from pre-mortal life, and incarnated with an evil-tending disposition.
They are not predestined to choose damnation - they must choose it; but it seem like they really don't need much persuading...
It is just all too easy to get modern people to join the side of spiritual evil; and they are terribly happy about themselves (smug, sanctimonious) when actively working for the promotion and implementation of evil.
I mean to say, as a sufficient example... It is Very Evil Indeed to brainwash young children and their parents into accepting mutilating surgery and permanently harmful hormone derangment, under some transparently feeble pretence that the child 'wants' to change sex; and that radical, prolonged, inescapable and systematic psycho-physical abuse will really enable them to do so...
Well, knowing that this is extreme evil - evil at the Caligula/ Mengele level - is Not Exactly Rocket Science; yet the current ruling Establishment... politicians, civil servants, lawyers, doctors, therapists, school teachers... all these and more in large numbers, are queueing-up to help-out with this vile project.
And all this is not just tolerated (like evils in the past sometimes were), neither is it hidden (like the secret police activities, or death camps); and it is not just advocated: on the contrary this is compulsory - presented as Good and implemented with rewards and sanctions. Worse; everyone involved and around must show-and-express positive and supportive feelings about the project.
Or Else.
And all this multilayered and permeating evil has been introduced with near-zero opposition and very little need for sanctions.
Those are the facts. I find it is hard to explain them to my own satisfaction without invoking a considerably-greater-than-usual tendency to evil among modern Western people.
They are not predestined to choose damnation - they must choose it; but it seem like they really don't need much persuading...
It is just all too easy to get modern people to join the side of spiritual evil; and they are terribly happy about themselves (smug, sanctimonious) when actively working for the promotion and implementation of evil.
I mean to say, as a sufficient example... It is Very Evil Indeed to brainwash young children and their parents into accepting mutilating surgery and permanently harmful hormone derangment, under some transparently feeble pretence that the child 'wants' to change sex; and that radical, prolonged, inescapable and systematic psycho-physical abuse will really enable them to do so...
Well, knowing that this is extreme evil - evil at the Caligula/ Mengele level - is Not Exactly Rocket Science; yet the current ruling Establishment... politicians, civil servants, lawyers, doctors, therapists, school teachers... all these and more in large numbers, are queueing-up to help-out with this vile project.
And all this is not just tolerated (like evils in the past sometimes were), neither is it hidden (like the secret police activities, or death camps); and it is not just advocated: on the contrary this is compulsory - presented as Good and implemented with rewards and sanctions. Worse; everyone involved and around must show-and-express positive and supportive feelings about the project.
Or Else.
And all this multilayered and permeating evil has been introduced with near-zero opposition and very little need for sanctions.
Those are the facts. I find it is hard to explain them to my own satisfaction without invoking a considerably-greater-than-usual tendency to evil among modern Western people.
We need to notice that most of the most high status victims of political correctness are - exactly because they are high status - actually on the wrong side in the spiritual war
We need to recognise, to notice, that most of the most famous individuals who become victims of politically correct witch hunts, who get sacked or forced to resign from positions of status/ power/ wealth, are in fact on the other side.
They are nearly always leftists and materialists and atheists; and even when they self-identify as Christians then they are 'liberal' Christians who make their Christianity conform to their socio-political beliefs (which are primary).
This is a fact simply because it has become very difficult at best, and impossible in many instances, to become famous, high status, and career successful if you are serious about Christianity.
And on the other side, a serious Christian would not want to get involved with many of the activities (jobs, roles, positions) that the martyr's to PC are being sacked-from...
Exactly these elite establishment jobs (senior executives, presidents, managers, bosses of most types, communicators etc) are, nowadays, mainly concerned with propagandising, lying about and implementing the materialist, leftist, anti-Christian agenda.
So, what we are actually seeing is de facto leftists being barred from senior leftist positions.
Insofar as the witch hunting process usually involves the less-insane leftists being witch-hunted by more-insane leftists; it is a bad thing and we side with the less insane. We believe that the objectives, processes and rationales by which these things happen is a bad thing.
One has zero sympathy or support for the witch hunters and their aims and their methods.
However...
We, in The West, are in a state of existing and increasing spiritual war. And although the witch hunting badness is on the side of evil; the well known victims of witch hunting badness are almost never on the side of good.
They are in fact on the side of evil; just as their persecutors are on the side of evil. What we are witnessing is office in-fighting among the bureaucracy of hell.
And that is an extremely important fact to recognise.
The important thing is to serve the side of Good.
We are all flawed individuals; we all contain evil as well as good - it is not the mixture or balance of nice versus nasty in us that determines salvation or damnation.
Some on the side of Good are themselves more nasty than nice. Ultimately, that does not matter - so long as they repent; and even the very best people who have ever lived must repent.
It is which side we are on that matters now and ultimately: Are you on the side of God and creation; or are you against?
And if anybody is unsure about their answer to this question... then (as of now) they are certainly on the wrong side.
They are nearly always leftists and materialists and atheists; and even when they self-identify as Christians then they are 'liberal' Christians who make their Christianity conform to their socio-political beliefs (which are primary).
This is a fact simply because it has become very difficult at best, and impossible in many instances, to become famous, high status, and career successful if you are serious about Christianity.
And on the other side, a serious Christian would not want to get involved with many of the activities (jobs, roles, positions) that the martyr's to PC are being sacked-from...
Exactly these elite establishment jobs (senior executives, presidents, managers, bosses of most types, communicators etc) are, nowadays, mainly concerned with propagandising, lying about and implementing the materialist, leftist, anti-Christian agenda.
So, what we are actually seeing is de facto leftists being barred from senior leftist positions.
Insofar as the witch hunting process usually involves the less-insane leftists being witch-hunted by more-insane leftists; it is a bad thing and we side with the less insane. We believe that the objectives, processes and rationales by which these things happen is a bad thing.
One has zero sympathy or support for the witch hunters and their aims and their methods.
However...
We, in The West, are in a state of existing and increasing spiritual war. And although the witch hunting badness is on the side of evil; the well known victims of witch hunting badness are almost never on the side of good.
They are in fact on the side of evil; just as their persecutors are on the side of evil. What we are witnessing is office in-fighting among the bureaucracy of hell.
And that is an extremely important fact to recognise.
The important thing is to serve the side of Good.
We are all flawed individuals; we all contain evil as well as good - it is not the mixture or balance of nice versus nasty in us that determines salvation or damnation.
Some on the side of Good are themselves more nasty than nice. Ultimately, that does not matter - so long as they repent; and even the very best people who have ever lived must repent.
It is which side we are on that matters now and ultimately: Are you on the side of God and creation; or are you against?
And if anybody is unsure about their answer to this question... then (as of now) they are certainly on the wrong side.
Dr Michael O'Donnell has died - the first man to publish something by me
I've just heard that Michael O'Donnell has died; someone whom I liked, knew a little, and who influenced me considerably in my younger years.
He was editor of a marvellous fortnighly journal called World Medicine, which I read from my middle teens (my father, as a dental consultant, received a free copy) into middle twenties; and which attracted me to study (and practice, a little!) medicine.
It also educated me about some other topics; such as opera - I discovered Luciano Pavarroti thanks to a review there. I also first encountered David Horrobin, who later bequeathed me the editorship of Medical Hypotheses. In general, World Medicine was essential reading for me, and its 'spirit' helped to form my general attitude to many things.
After I began Medical School in Newcastle, it was not long before O'Donnell visited and gave an excellent talk at our student society. And in my final year, he published my first ever piece - a short letter about medical education. The response from other students and doctors made me realise the huge impact of World Medicine, since nearly 'everybody' saw this letter and commented to me about it.
Some years later I met O'Donnell several times, exchanged letters, and spoke with him on the phone; and he sent copies of some of his books. On the the first of these meetings he spontaneously recalled publishing that letter and what it was about!
O'Donnell was a lapsed Catholic, and on-the-left politically; but in those days such traits were not (as now) enforced and rewarded by the mainstream establishment - were indeed something of a disadvantage; therefore not invariably (as at present) a mark of corruption and evil intent! According to Wiki, O'Donnell was sufficiently principled to decline the offer of an OBE; which almost never happens among the current crop of tenured radicals and Establishment revolutionaries.
Anyway, I have fond memories of this warmly humorous, humane, lively, decent and enspiriting man; who helped my writing and inspired me by his advice and example when I became an editor myself.
Terminal Demotivation is the problem of The West
From a comment I left at The Politically Incorrect Australian
Nationalism was powerfully motivating, but only for about one generation after the mass apostasy from Christianity began (this happened at different times in different countries).
As of now, nationalism is ineffectual; and it is a waste of time - and diversion from the real problem - to pursue it.
Nationalism is just one of a long series of failed attempts to motivate people after they have abandoned religion - this universal secular demotivation can be seen in the voluntary subfertility (subfertility in spite of material abundance) among all secular Western societies. The only groups in modern society with above replacement fertility are from among the religious, and only among the seriously religious (these seem to be only among Christians, Muslims and Jews - Eastern religions don't seem to work - certainly not outside of the East).
To be clearer, I think a large majority of people in The West are in favour of not being replaced by assorted immigrants; but they are (like all established secular populations) too morally incoherent and hence insufficiently motivated to anything about it - when doing something involves the slightest risk or disadvantage.
This affects everything, which is why totalitarianism is established and increasing its grip - almost nobody will say no, because almost nobody can believe-in any coherent alternative.
No belief, no motivation: Demotivation unto death, and beyond: Terminal demotivation...
Nationalism was powerfully motivating, but only for about one generation after the mass apostasy from Christianity began (this happened at different times in different countries).
As of now, nationalism is ineffectual; and it is a waste of time - and diversion from the real problem - to pursue it.
Nationalism is just one of a long series of failed attempts to motivate people after they have abandoned religion - this universal secular demotivation can be seen in the voluntary subfertility (subfertility in spite of material abundance) among all secular Western societies. The only groups in modern society with above replacement fertility are from among the religious, and only among the seriously religious (these seem to be only among Christians, Muslims and Jews - Eastern religions don't seem to work - certainly not outside of the East).
To be clearer, I think a large majority of people in The West are in favour of not being replaced by assorted immigrants; but they are (like all established secular populations) too morally incoherent and hence insufficiently motivated to anything about it - when doing something involves the slightest risk or disadvantage.
This affects everything, which is why totalitarianism is established and increasing its grip - almost nobody will say no, because almost nobody can believe-in any coherent alternative.
No belief, no motivation: Demotivation unto death, and beyond: Terminal demotivation...
Thursday, 18 April 2019
Tolkien's Subcreation potentially makes an objective difference to the real world
Over at the Notion Club Papers blog, I suggest that JRR Tolkien's term Subcreation was meant to imply that 'fantasy', for example world-building imagination relating to Fairie, could have effects that went beyond changing the content of Men's minds. In other words, that writing the Lord of the Rings (for example) could literally Change The World in a physical sense.
In what sense are we fallen Men in a fallen world?
The term is - I find - misleading or misinterpreted, and I don't use it myself; but there is a sense in which we have 'fallen' from our pre-mortal, spirit state - passively dwelling 'in' the divine presence - into the imperfections and mixed joy and sufferings of incarnated mortality - en route to (if we choose it) incarnated immortality.
It seems that - presumably due to the constraints of reality - it is not possible for pre-mortal spirits to incarnate directly into immortal bodies. In other words, an immortal spirit cannot (certainly does not) become an immortal incarnate Being.
Therefore we must go-through this transitional state, in which we have a body - but this body is mortal, temporary; subject to continual change; subject to malfunction and disease; not fully controlled.
It is in this sense that we are 'fallen'. As pre-mortal spirits we were not subject to such problems; but as mortal we are.
Some individual people have very little experience of mortality; since they die in the womb or shortly after birth - indeed, this probably accounts for the majority of Men who have ever incarnated. But little experience is not none - all Men have experienced the essential nature of mortality.
You and I have a great deal of experience of mortality; and for us this has been a changing world experienced by changing mortal minds and bodies.
It seems that God has made the best and most of our mortal experiences - because in a world of continual change of this kind, we can get the maximum of experience: good and bad, beautiful and ugly, virtuous and sinful - according to the needs of each individual.
We can - if we learn - learn much from our mortal lives in this temporary world; en route to the permanence and much slower and lesser changes of Heavenly life in immortal bodies - bodies become self-regenerating, minds become permanent in memory.
Of course, some - perhaps many, do not choose resurrection and immortality; and for them this world may indeed be truly fallen from primal passive bliss - to which they hope to return. (Perhaps such persons have been mainly incarnated in the East, and follow religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism?)
But for those who follow Jesus, this world is well-designed, fit for purpose - indeed a world (albeit not 'perfectly' so, because such 'perfection' is neither possible nor wanted by God) specifically tailored around our primary personal needs.
It seems that - presumably due to the constraints of reality - it is not possible for pre-mortal spirits to incarnate directly into immortal bodies. In other words, an immortal spirit cannot (certainly does not) become an immortal incarnate Being.
Therefore we must go-through this transitional state, in which we have a body - but this body is mortal, temporary; subject to continual change; subject to malfunction and disease; not fully controlled.
It is in this sense that we are 'fallen'. As pre-mortal spirits we were not subject to such problems; but as mortal we are.
Some individual people have very little experience of mortality; since they die in the womb or shortly after birth - indeed, this probably accounts for the majority of Men who have ever incarnated. But little experience is not none - all Men have experienced the essential nature of mortality.
You and I have a great deal of experience of mortality; and for us this has been a changing world experienced by changing mortal minds and bodies.
It seems that God has made the best and most of our mortal experiences - because in a world of continual change of this kind, we can get the maximum of experience: good and bad, beautiful and ugly, virtuous and sinful - according to the needs of each individual.
We can - if we learn - learn much from our mortal lives in this temporary world; en route to the permanence and much slower and lesser changes of Heavenly life in immortal bodies - bodies become self-regenerating, minds become permanent in memory.
Of course, some - perhaps many, do not choose resurrection and immortality; and for them this world may indeed be truly fallen from primal passive bliss - to which they hope to return. (Perhaps such persons have been mainly incarnated in the East, and follow religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism?)
But for those who follow Jesus, this world is well-designed, fit for purpose - indeed a world (albeit not 'perfectly' so, because such 'perfection' is neither possible nor wanted by God) specifically tailored around our primary personal needs.
Wednesday, 17 April 2019
The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson (2013) reviewed
I have recently finished my fourth or fifth read-of/ listen-to The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson (published in 2013) - which has taken its place as one of a handful of children's fantasy books that I genuinely love (others in this select group being The Hobbit, Narnia, Wind in the Willows, and The Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander).
The Thing about The Rithmatist is that it is technically unfinished; as the book was intended to be the first of a trilogy. And in reality is never can be finished - at least not in the same fresh carefree style of this first volume.
Brandon Sanderson tried to write a second volume, but apparently got blocked by worries/ threats relating to political correctness - he calls them sensitive topics - apparently about writing about a re-imagined history of Native Americans. If there is one thing that absolutely blocks writing in a fresh and carefree way, it is trying to be sensitive about the 'concerns' of evilly-motivated Leftist activists...
So even if the trilogy gets completed in terms of plot and event, it cannot now be done in the style of the first volume (not least due to a seven plus year gap in which Branderson has published a very large number of other works).
Luckily, The Rithmatist works just fine as a stand-alone volume. There is a lot of humour, likeable characters, adventure and peril - set in a 'clockpunk' universe with a highly original yet convincing hard-magic system, based on animated chalk pictures (!).
It has, like Tolkien, a wonderful sense of 'depth' to the story - with all kinds of convincing hints of a deep backstory; including serious religious elements - since, unusually for a modern fantasy - there is a very Christian-like religion at the heart of the story (Sanderson is an active Mormon).
Best of all, The Rithmatist has a Good Heart; it is a warm and humane book - as must be all those books that I really cherish.
Why is it that Modern Man cannot learn from experience?
It might be helpful for me to to explain this in some detail. But that Modern man is, indeed, unable to learn from experience is one of the main discoveries of my life. Nothing that has happened, is nothing that ever could happen, will make any difference to the core beliefs of the normal, average, mainstream person of today. I take that observation as proved.
The reason is Modern man cannot learn frm the experiences of his life is that the basic (metaphysical) assumptions - which are explicitly taught in all social institutions, but - more importantly - are implicit in the entirety of mainstream public discourse (political, governmental, legal, educational, medical, mass media - and even church discourse); are that Things Happen either by material causation or by random chance.
When 'something happens' in Life, therefore, it was either merely something that would be expected from understanding the causal factors that led up to it; or else it was merely random chance.
And if The Thing was materially caused, then it has no meaning - it is just an outcome of preceding causes. But if The Thing was just due to random chance, then it also has no meaning, since it Just Happened.
So, it does not matter what happens because - by our frame of reference, by our assumptions, by our fundamental metaphysical convictions - we Already Know that It (whatever It is) has no meaning.
Ultimately this meaninglessness is because we moderns (in public discourse) regard Reality as accidental, not created.
If Reality is created, then it has whatever purpose and meaning is intended by The Creator. But if Reality Just Happened - by some combination of material causation and random chance - then it has no purpose.
Reality Just Is... Just is, whatever it is...
If Reality has no purpose, is not going anywhere (except where material causality and chance happen to be taking it) then Reality has no meaning. Meaning only derives from purpose. Otherwise it is just a case of Stuff Happens (or does not happen, as the case may be).
It is pretty obvious, therefore, why it is that Modern Man does not learn from experience. The answer is that - according to Modern Man's assumptions - learning from one's life is not possible, therefore experience is irrelevant.
(For a typical Modern...) One's life is a mixture of material causality and accidents, it Just Happens, what is there to learn?
We can't do anything about randomness, and even if we know something about material causality, it happens to us anyway, regardless.
For Modern man, life is essentially passive. The only 'problem' is psychologically adjusting to that 'fact'.
What is the alternative? Well, my alternative is to believe the truth that Reality is created (by a loving God), has a purpose, has meaning - and therefore that my Life, my experiences, are tailored to my needs.
I believe that my experience - here, now, in actual life - are designed so that I may learn that which is important for my eternal well-being. My life is-being tailored, designed, such that I can and should learn from experience.
I even believe that this is the case for those who regard the universe as accidental and experience Life as meaningless! Their lives, like mine, are tailored specifcially to teach them what they most need.
The experience of meaninglessness is the lesson that these people need to learn. They need to ask why, and to keep asking. They need to learn that their daily proximate experience of life as meaningless is directly derived from their prior metaphysical assumption that life is meaningless.
Until they address their fundamental assumptions, they are self-doomed. They must recognise that it is their assumptions that deny meaning, not their experience: it is their theory that denies meaning, not the observed facts.
So, such people (most people) cannot ever find meaning in the experience of life, no matter where they look or how diligently they seek...
MIMO: Meaninglessness-in - meaninglessness-out.
The reason is Modern man cannot learn frm the experiences of his life is that the basic (metaphysical) assumptions - which are explicitly taught in all social institutions, but - more importantly - are implicit in the entirety of mainstream public discourse (political, governmental, legal, educational, medical, mass media - and even church discourse); are that Things Happen either by material causation or by random chance.
When 'something happens' in Life, therefore, it was either merely something that would be expected from understanding the causal factors that led up to it; or else it was merely random chance.
And if The Thing was materially caused, then it has no meaning - it is just an outcome of preceding causes. But if The Thing was just due to random chance, then it also has no meaning, since it Just Happened.
So, it does not matter what happens because - by our frame of reference, by our assumptions, by our fundamental metaphysical convictions - we Already Know that It (whatever It is) has no meaning.
Ultimately this meaninglessness is because we moderns (in public discourse) regard Reality as accidental, not created.
If Reality is created, then it has whatever purpose and meaning is intended by The Creator. But if Reality Just Happened - by some combination of material causation and random chance - then it has no purpose.
Reality Just Is... Just is, whatever it is...
If Reality has no purpose, is not going anywhere (except where material causality and chance happen to be taking it) then Reality has no meaning. Meaning only derives from purpose. Otherwise it is just a case of Stuff Happens (or does not happen, as the case may be).
It is pretty obvious, therefore, why it is that Modern Man does not learn from experience. The answer is that - according to Modern Man's assumptions - learning from one's life is not possible, therefore experience is irrelevant.
(For a typical Modern...) One's life is a mixture of material causality and accidents, it Just Happens, what is there to learn?
We can't do anything about randomness, and even if we know something about material causality, it happens to us anyway, regardless.
For Modern man, life is essentially passive. The only 'problem' is psychologically adjusting to that 'fact'.
What is the alternative? Well, my alternative is to believe the truth that Reality is created (by a loving God), has a purpose, has meaning - and therefore that my Life, my experiences, are tailored to my needs.
I believe that my experience - here, now, in actual life - are designed so that I may learn that which is important for my eternal well-being. My life is-being tailored, designed, such that I can and should learn from experience.
I even believe that this is the case for those who regard the universe as accidental and experience Life as meaningless! Their lives, like mine, are tailored specifcially to teach them what they most need.
The experience of meaninglessness is the lesson that these people need to learn. They need to ask why, and to keep asking. They need to learn that their daily proximate experience of life as meaningless is directly derived from their prior metaphysical assumption that life is meaningless.
Until they address their fundamental assumptions, they are self-doomed. They must recognise that it is their assumptions that deny meaning, not their experience: it is their theory that denies meaning, not the observed facts.
So, such people (most people) cannot ever find meaning in the experience of life, no matter where they look or how diligently they seek...
MIMO: Meaninglessness-in - meaninglessness-out.
How may we combine freedom and harmonious living? (Repentance and Salvation from what?)
The Christian Heaven is a place where we remain our-selves, and therefore retain (indeed enhance) our free will, our agency, our responsibility... Yet at the same time, Heaven must be a place of harmony, in which the wills of many people and of God are all 'working together' harmoniously towards a purpose.
It is, on the surface, hard to explain how multiple free wills can also be necessarily and always harmonious. Heaven can either seem an impossible nonsense - on the basis that strife seems to be a certainty over the long run; or else a dishonest promise - on the basis that it cannot really be a place of freedom, but must be a place where 'good behaviour' is coerced.
The standard demonic rationale for rejecting Heaven as an ideal is 'pride', which, from the demonic perspective, is understood as an admirable refusal to 'submit' to God's will for the sake of Heavenly harmony. This is, pretty much, how modern people see their rejection of Christianity - they see Christianity as a demand for submission, and themselves as heroic individualists who reject this tyranny.
But there is 'a way' in which individual freedom can be compatible with harmony, and that is by Love. We can know this from experience - assuming we are personally capable of love.
Anyone who has experienced a long-term situation of love (in a family situation, usually) will be able to confirm the possibility of Heaven. So long as there is love, there can be genuine free-will and agency in all of the individuals; and at the same time a situation of harmony.
Love is necessary, but is not sufficient; because there needs also to be a shared 'goal'. Love is the glue that holds people together, but people are alive and must Do Something.
In the case of families this goal often to do with the rearing and development of children; in the case of Heaven it is to do with creation. (And, of course, raising children is, indeed, itself a subtype of creation.)
The centrality of creation in Heaven is often missed by Christians; but parts of scripture (notably the Fourth Gospel) tells us that God's hope is for each of us to become fully divine, eternal, resurrected as a Son or Daughter of God.
Since God is creator, and since Jesus is himself Son of God and a co-creator of this world; we can be sure that our 'job', purpose, aim, goal in Heaven will be creation.
In sum, the purpose of Heavenly life is to participate in the ongoing and open-ended work of creation; and what coordinates this is love.
Creation provides the common direction, and love provides the necessary cohesion - and thus our free will is aligned harmoniously with the free will of others.
This Heaven is the gift of Jesus Christ; and to attain it we must First, know and want it.
So Jesus is our Saviour in the sense that he offers salvation from the modern universal fate of annihilation at biological death in a meaningless universe - and the hopelessness and despair this brings.
And the need for Repentance is the need to set aside that which would prevent us taking a place in Heaven, and of adopting Love as our primary principle.
To take-up a dwelling in Heaven therefore requires a change-of-mind, a change in thinking, an affirmation of love and creation - and that is Repentance.
It is, on the surface, hard to explain how multiple free wills can also be necessarily and always harmonious. Heaven can either seem an impossible nonsense - on the basis that strife seems to be a certainty over the long run; or else a dishonest promise - on the basis that it cannot really be a place of freedom, but must be a place where 'good behaviour' is coerced.
The standard demonic rationale for rejecting Heaven as an ideal is 'pride', which, from the demonic perspective, is understood as an admirable refusal to 'submit' to God's will for the sake of Heavenly harmony. This is, pretty much, how modern people see their rejection of Christianity - they see Christianity as a demand for submission, and themselves as heroic individualists who reject this tyranny.
But there is 'a way' in which individual freedom can be compatible with harmony, and that is by Love. We can know this from experience - assuming we are personally capable of love.
Anyone who has experienced a long-term situation of love (in a family situation, usually) will be able to confirm the possibility of Heaven. So long as there is love, there can be genuine free-will and agency in all of the individuals; and at the same time a situation of harmony.
Love is necessary, but is not sufficient; because there needs also to be a shared 'goal'. Love is the glue that holds people together, but people are alive and must Do Something.
In the case of families this goal often to do with the rearing and development of children; in the case of Heaven it is to do with creation. (And, of course, raising children is, indeed, itself a subtype of creation.)
The centrality of creation in Heaven is often missed by Christians; but parts of scripture (notably the Fourth Gospel) tells us that God's hope is for each of us to become fully divine, eternal, resurrected as a Son or Daughter of God.
Since God is creator, and since Jesus is himself Son of God and a co-creator of this world; we can be sure that our 'job', purpose, aim, goal in Heaven will be creation.
In sum, the purpose of Heavenly life is to participate in the ongoing and open-ended work of creation; and what coordinates this is love.
Creation provides the common direction, and love provides the necessary cohesion - and thus our free will is aligned harmoniously with the free will of others.
This Heaven is the gift of Jesus Christ; and to attain it we must First, know and want it.
So Jesus is our Saviour in the sense that he offers salvation from the modern universal fate of annihilation at biological death in a meaningless universe - and the hopelessness and despair this brings.
And the need for Repentance is the need to set aside that which would prevent us taking a place in Heaven, and of adopting Love as our primary principle.
To take-up a dwelling in Heaven therefore requires a change-of-mind, a change in thinking, an affirmation of love and creation - and that is Repentance.
Tuesday, 16 April 2019
More on snake eyes and dead eyes - demonic and zombie people
In the recent Anglican Unscripted above, from timing 3:30, Bishop Gavin Ashenden describes a visit to Canterbury Cathedral in which he realised that this great, ancient, beautiful building was empty of the presence of God, and the people worshipping with him had dead eyes.
He also mentions reptilian, demonic eyes and later the subject of zombies comes-up... all of which links this with my previous blog posts on discerning by the eyes.
This leads Kevin, George and Gavin onto a very interesting discussion on this theme of the absence of the Holy Spirit in so many churches and denominations; and its presence in some others.
This knowledge about the nature and motivations of places, people, institutions is available for any Christian who is able and willing to look and to learn.
Recommended viewing.
Should Notre Dame be 'rebuilt'?
The Whole Point is that rebuilding is not an option. If Notre Dame could be rebuilt, then it would not have been so precious. Does this really need pointing-out?
We can no more 'rebuild' Notre Dame than we can change our sex - but the fact that so many of us believe such nonsense is what we ought to be noticing.
A modern, 21st century, secular materialist Replica of the destroyed parts could, presumably, be constructed. But that which made the cathedral what it was has been destroyed - the Age of Faith love and supreme medieval craftsmanship... all that is gone.
And who would rebuild the Replica?
Perhaps the French State aided by the European Union, could raise the money by coercively extracting a few extra billions worth of taxes from the dwindling numbers of productive workers; then corruptly channelling some into their own pockets and more into political favours for cronies and a sliver into a politically correct version of what (for them) is merely a National Monument, an icon, a tourist attraction...?
Or the Roman Catholic Church - in a spirit of piety, using purely voluntary contributions and labour? Which of these options (or others) makes a difference to the reality of the final result. The real value of a putative Replica depends mainly on such considerations.
And why are we even discussing this before the smoke has cleared? Have we already forgotten that the crucial question of who set the fire, and the circumstance how it came to destroy so much of Notre Dame so quickly, has not 'yet' been answered...
But that this, one would have imagined, rather important matter is already off the agenda is probably answer enough. We already know that there never will be an honest answer. We already know as much of the truth as ever we will; and must each make up his mind on that basis.
Our official job now (according to those guardians of morality, the mass media) is miserably (or rejoicingly?) to accept what has happened, learn nothing from it; and allow it to amplify the already prevalent Western mood of hopelessness and despair.
After all, in a universe that is officially, compulsorily, both purposeless and meaningless - and therefore having nothing to do with human consciousness and desires - what else is there to do?
We can no more 'rebuild' Notre Dame than we can change our sex - but the fact that so many of us believe such nonsense is what we ought to be noticing.
A modern, 21st century, secular materialist Replica of the destroyed parts could, presumably, be constructed. But that which made the cathedral what it was has been destroyed - the Age of Faith love and supreme medieval craftsmanship... all that is gone.
And who would rebuild the Replica?
Perhaps the French State aided by the European Union, could raise the money by coercively extracting a few extra billions worth of taxes from the dwindling numbers of productive workers; then corruptly channelling some into their own pockets and more into political favours for cronies and a sliver into a politically correct version of what (for them) is merely a National Monument, an icon, a tourist attraction...?
Or the Roman Catholic Church - in a spirit of piety, using purely voluntary contributions and labour? Which of these options (or others) makes a difference to the reality of the final result. The real value of a putative Replica depends mainly on such considerations.
And why are we even discussing this before the smoke has cleared? Have we already forgotten that the crucial question of who set the fire, and the circumstance how it came to destroy so much of Notre Dame so quickly, has not 'yet' been answered...
But that this, one would have imagined, rather important matter is already off the agenda is probably answer enough. We already know that there never will be an honest answer. We already know as much of the truth as ever we will; and must each make up his mind on that basis.
Our official job now (according to those guardians of morality, the mass media) is miserably (or rejoicingly?) to accept what has happened, learn nothing from it; and allow it to amplify the already prevalent Western mood of hopelessness and despair.
After all, in a universe that is officially, compulsorily, both purposeless and meaningless - and therefore having nothing to do with human consciousness and desires - what else is there to do?
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