Saturday 29 August 2020

Why people stay in Leftism after the fun stops

Leftism gets individuals, and got our civilization, by being more fun than Christianity. 1966 and 1967 were fun years... Swinging London, the summer of love.

It retrospect it was superficial, pretentious... Sex, drugs rock and roll... It was at root a promise of hedonism, a world of guilt-free pleasure. But it was fun...

But very quickly, by 1968; Leftism took a different turn, towards angry, violent demands for pacifism, feminism, antiracism and the rest of it. Instead of "freedom" there was a growing bureaucracy of Human Rights.

The process, the bait and switch, has continued person by person ever since; liberation, followed by assimilation into The System. The System growing ever stronger, the hedonism dwindling to its recent rock bottom of lockdownsocialdistancing...

Yet, once grabbed by the hedonic promises of Leftism, it is a rare individual who steps away. And no society, no Nation has stepped away... We live in a Leftist world.

Hardly anybody seems to notice that what began as fun has ended in dullness, fear and mutual resentment.

Why? Because the process, at root, is a positive feedback cycle of leaving God, of rejecting God, of living without God - each decision a step further away; each step reinforcing the previous.

Why no learning, no noticing, no negative feedback, no rebellion against the lies and fakery? Because each step is a removal of the heart, the core, the very capacity for judgement and learning.

By now we are less than a civilization, less than Men..and each individual has walked this path, step by step, by many choices.

9 comments:

Gary said...

I think the reason for this (very interesting, key, yet almost unremarked upon) phenomenon, is that a very large number (probably the majority) of mankind, do not have the traits of self-reliance, courage, DIVINE IMAGINATION and independent thought (and these 4 are deeply related) developed to a high enough level, to be able to achieve escape velocity and act against the herd consistently, positively and over the long-term.

And when the herd, over a centuries-long and purposive process, has been finally put in a complete Pen (which was, as you say, once promised to be a playground), where the historically available channels by which the masses achieved some degree of access to the divine light (family, church, schools, universities, free-flowing-in-person-conversation (NOT social media!)) have been dismantled and put together again in a way which makes them agents of the Pen... then, they really don´t stand a chance.

Now, when a situation arises where the masses have been put in such a situation, then that is indeed apocalyptic. Because for all their faults and all their "lacks", the masses ARE, through sheer number, the ultimate arbiters of what flies and what doesn´t, in the grand scheme of things.

So, people stay in leftism after the fun stops, because they have been led there by those who have hijacked the trappings of authority and truth, thus using the quirks of their own human nature against them. And they, the masses, have allowed this to happen to themselves, because the usual safeguards against this type of violent oppression, have also been carefully subverted and inverted. And the vast swathes are not, as you yourself call them, Dr, Endogenous... They never stood a chance.

This is almost Spiritual Darwinsim (if I may say so) happening in real-time, a REAL sorting, ruthlessly.

I am, however, not despairing, neither temporally neither spiritually. This apocalypsis is probably in a sense a necessary thing, because the way we were going was unsustainable - something had to give, as indeed it is. We will get a great reset, but it won´t be that which the WEF is banking on, and I am not hope-less that a life of honour, strength, full human flourishing will still be available to those who want it strongly enough.

Doktor Jeep said...

One must have an inner dialog to notice things.

Bruce Charlton said...

@Gary I dont accept that people never had a chance. From the individuals I know, everybody has many chances.But after many bad choices each becomes a tougher decision - I mean the cost of choosing right escalates.

@DJ Yes, but that isnt enough if one has no core of theism.

Gary said...

Yes, they certainly had chances... My chosen expression was not precise.
To be clearer,in my experience many people seem to be lacking the ability to join the dots effectively, and trying to get them to "see" the sort of of things discussed in this blog is
Akin to trying to teach algebra to a dog.
They have choice, and agency, but I think there are "elect" (those who are quicker to see evil and will good) and there are the rest, who are less endowed ... I understand Jesus even mentions this reality in the gospels.
We are in a period where the old shepherds/institutions, upon which the masses depend upon to have their worldview created for them, are all corrupted. So therefore their dependents also get corrupted in turn.
I struggle to think that people who are constitutionally incapable of strong autonomy, could but get destroyed in a situation like this. This has also been prophesied about.
They can only obey , but they are not hearing the voice of the shepherd, because His voice has been crowded out of the World (only hearable to those with the ability to do so in thhe first place, against extremely intense systemic pressure). The spiritually weak will be destroyed (damned) in these latter days. I think this is not contrary to God's plan.

But I may be wrong about all this. And
that indeed the masses have actively and consciously chosen their own damnation, because they know about immortality and eternal life and do not want it. That it was not a mere consequence of lack of spiritual development which destroyed them.
I'll pray about it, because it is a very important matter to get right.

Bruce Charlton said...

@Gary I suppose that we should generalise from the specific people we know best, rather than by regarding the masses as a cohesive entity.

By this, I would infer that everybody knows, for example, that he *should* spend less time immersed in mass and social media, and is badly addicted; but chooses to ignore this knowledge and do nothing, and therebye guarantees his own chronic confusion.

Similar decisions ensure that few people get to the point of perceiving their situation until they are brought low and everything simplified - perhaps by disease or degeneration. Of course they may still choose against God, but the choice is clear.

Avro G said...

“Why? Because the process, at root, is a positive feedback cycle of leaving God, of rejecting God, of living without God - each decision a step further away; each step reinforcing the previous.

Why no learning, no noticing, no negative feedback, no rebellion against the lies and fakery? Because each step is a removal of the heart, the core, the very capacity for judgement and learning.”

Exactly. Each abdication leaves less substance, less godliness with which to answer back to the divine call.

Owen said...

People trust the System. They have complete religious-level trust that the system is ultimately Good, the one and only hope. It's no good bringing up counter-evidence or even arguing about it, that's what I'm discovering in personal conversation. That single metaphysical belief is primary. Without belief in God, belief in the System is the last bulwark against total nihilistic darkness and despair. People are clinging to the System, and the abyss yawns below them. Or so they think.

Hatcher said...

Could we see this as a Luciferic lure leading to an Ahrimanic trap?

lgude said...

Further to Owen's points perhaps as God fades away as a real possibility for many and they shift their hopes to the System they simply project their now submerged knowledge of the Good, ie God's Love, on the state and more generally the System. And because they are equally unconscious that they themselves also have evil in them they project that out onto whoever they identify as the villain - or as Orwell put it. "We have always been at war with Eastasia".