The double-negative morality of Leftism

The actuality of Leftist morality - and that it is inversion of the true, beautiful and virtuous - is revealed by describing the double-negative reality concealed by the pseudo-positive moral 'principles' used to justify Leftist evil. 

Here is the way it works:

To be a 'racist' is = not to be anti-white

To be a sexist = not to be anti-men...

You see the way it works? Leftism is oppositional, being defined as 'against' various 'evils'. Most of the Leftist 'evils' (often expressed as '-ist' or '-phobic') can accurately be described in a similar double-negative fashion:

Not to be anti-native inhabitants of a country...

Not to be opposed to biologically real, reproductively-adaptive sexuality...

Not to be anti-Christian... etc.

The double-negative formulation is a necessity for Leftism, since Leftism is indeed ultimately oppositional (opposing God and divine creation; opposing the true, beautiful and virtuous); thus its 'positive' content (i.e. what Leftists want) is protean and labile, self-contradicting and incoherent. 

After all, there are an 'infinite' number of ways of opposing The Good. 

To be morally excoriated by the Left, all that is required is to be against opposing the Good, in any particular respect.  

Added - Double-negative denialism

For the sake of completeness, and to include two of the biggest recent double-negative global crusades. What do accusations of denialism amount to? 

Climate denialism: Hatred of those people who do not regard carbon as the greatest threat to life on earth

Birdemic denialism: Terror of those who are not afraid of close proximity to human beings

 

Note: This idea was triggered by a post by William Wildblood, where he give a double negative definition of 'racist'. 

The dilution/ abstraction of love by Christians (and by non-Christians)

I regard love as the primary fact of God's creation - it is love that makes creation possible. Love is the opposite of chaos; and it is the love between Beings that is what 'organizes' chaos into creation.

Furthermore, it was another aspect of love that enabled the new dispensation brought-on by Jesus Christ - because Jesus enabled Men - by resurrection - to make a permanent commitment to love; such that each resurrected Man would embrace the goals and methods of God's creation and could then take his place as a Son of God - henceforth living in harmony with all other Men and with God and Jesus Christ. 

So, real (Christian) love is always personal, always directed at a 'person': a Being. There is no such thing as abstract love, and real love cannot be diluted or extended beyond the actual love of actual known Beings. 

Love is inter-personal, and requires at least two Beings - therefore real love is not comparable to a force, a field, a spirit, or any 'thing'. 

Real love is not, cannot be, and should not be universal or equal - it is individual and specific.  

Love is a choice, and cannot be imposed... Love is a choice and not a default state; which is why Heaven is an opt-in situation; and why that opt-in is dependent on love. 

Consequently Heaven cannot be entered by those who cannot, or will not, commit to love of God (this 'cannot' including both those incapable of love, and those who reject love as their over-riding priority). 

And Heaven will not be entered by those who regard love as impersonal, abstract or generalized; because such people will not want Heaven. They will instead want something else... 

Perhaps they want some kind of diffuse, impersonal state ('Nirvana'?) in which there are no persons, no selves, no inter-personality; only a generalized awareness and perhaps the experience of bliss? 

I think these realities need emphasizing because there is a tendency for Christians to abstract and dilute love towards a 'universalism' that makes no distinction between the followers of Jesus and everyone else. 

And this abstraction/ dilution is met by a tendency among non-Christians to misinterpret Christianity in the same impersonal and abstract fashion so that it becomes just one among many possible paths to the same destination. 

But the truth of Christianity - as it may be known from the Fourth Gospel and by intuition - is that Christian love is the basis of the Christian religion; and Christian love is personal/ interpersonal - and it must consciously be chosen. 

Christian salvation is to love and follow Jesus to resurrected life everlasting in Heaven - this happens after biological death. To be a Christian - here and now in this earthly mortal life - is to make a decision to accept Jesus's gift of resurrected life; to make that our highest priority which happens by loving Jesus. 

And, as with all real love; love of Jesus Christ is both a choice and a desire from deep within; it begins with our deepest yearnings and motivations, and is completed by our conscious decision. 

 

There are many other things a Man might want or decide, and many other possible priorities - but these are not Christianity  

Notes on mysticism of thinking

I would describe myself as 'a mystic'; despite that I probably strike other people as mundane in the sense that I don't do anything very noticeably mystical - like meditating in the lotus position, using magical technologies (tarot, astrology etc) - and I don't claim to have had anything that would strike other people as spectacular spiritual or religious experiences (like overwhelming visions, near death experiences or striking paranormal events). 

This is because I take mysticism is be synonymous with regarding intuitive experience as the bottom line, and a conviction that mystical experiences are intended for the person who experiences them - and not for general public consumption. 

I have, like everybody, experienced many everyday miracles, and synchronicities - inspirations and the like. But it is immensely liberating Not to feel I need to convince anybody else that they were spectacular or of general relevance. 

One big difference between the mysticism I practice versus that which has become enshrined in the mainstream - is that I strive-for and value conscious experiences in thinking. I neither seek nor much value the usual (so-called) 'mystical' state of non-thinking, death-of-the-ego; of being blissed-out/ unaware of time/ convinced of being literally transported elsewhere... 

I do not want to be overwhelmed-by something that seems objective and external; nor to have visions that I believe to be real; nor to hear voices speaking to me - telling me things or conversing...

Yet some (most?) definitions of mysticism insist that these are what mysticism is. 

For example, that a mystic is unaware of time - more exactly that the mystic perceives that in reality there is no time ('all time is present'). In total contrast, the mysticism I seek is more like a 'process', it is a situation of things happening, a flow of life. 

In a nutshell, it is a kind of thinking that I regard as a higher state - I have called it primary thinking, heart thinking, and direct knowing - the state of Final Participation; and it simply amounts to a conscious and chosen thinking in the divine way; with and from that which is divine in me; and aligned-with/ in-harmony-with God's divine motivations and purposes.

It is me, my-self, joining-with God in God's work. It is therefore a creative state, and not merely a contemplative state. In it I add-to divine creation (I do not merely become aware of it, nor do I immerse in it.) 

For me, creativity is what we are meant to do, we are meant to active participants in God's creation - that' for me, is what the mission of Jesus was all about.  

Now, it is often said (and by writers I respect) that we ought to be striving to engage in this kind of thinking all the time - and any lapse from it is a failure. The idea is that we are supposed to be primary thinking at every moment, whatever we are doing; and that when we aren't, it is a lapse and a failure. 

But this assumption makes every human life a failure, and a tragedy - since nobody ever has achieved this unbroken continuity of mystical thinking (except for Jesus, in the last three years of his life). 

I cannot believe (I mean this literally - I mean the idea is incoherent) that our loving-parents God (who I know, in this state of mystical thinking) created his mortal children on earth to fail. 

Indeed, for mortal life to make any sense, for it to have a necessary reason for happening, we cannot regard it as being set-up to attain any kind of perfect, continuous state --- since here in mortal earthly life we are ruled by entropy, subject to change/ disease/ degeneration and death. 

Jesus's ministry described by an eye-witness in (only) the Fourth Gospel, is a joyous, not tragic, message - 'Good News' indeed. So we ought to realize that Jesus brought a positive gift - and not merely the negation of a negative situation. (As with the doctrine that Jesus came to save us from original sin: i.e. Jesus came to negate a negative deficit.) 

And indeed Jesus did bring a positive gift - as repeatedly described in that Gospel: the positive gift of resurrected life eternal in Heaven.

That is the essence of Christianity. Clear and simple. 

Therefore I am not supposed to be a full-time and permanent Mystic in this life on earth - the evidence for which is that it is impossible. But I am supposed to value mystical thinking above all else, because that is what is on-offer in Heaven. 

More exactly (since each person has an individual destiny) anyone like me who knows and values mystical states, is meant to strive for them on the permanent and continuous basis offered only by resurrection into life everlasting. 

So - since mystical thinking cannot be done all the time on earth, then we are not meant to do all the time it on earth. But our valuing of mystical thinking is what provides the correct framework for that learning from personal experience that is the main point of continued-living in this mortal life. 

We can see immediately that there is a potential problem here; in that we are essentially intended to learn from personal experience - whereas the mainstream modern world supplies us with a merely secondhand and abstract experience. 

Indeed, as of 2021; The System does not provide genuine experience, but a form of non-experience. 

The System intends that we live abstractly, vicariously, and as guided by The System. This is the opposite and inversion of learning from personal experience.  

One thing I used to worry about (and many others worry about - to the point of paralysis) is the matter of self-deception concerning mysticism. 

The question of 'how can I tell?' when I really am 'doing' mystical thinking - or when instead I might be pretending to myself, or engaging in wishful thinking (merely relabeling ordinary mundane and manipulated thinking as 'mystical'). 

But most of this is dealt with when one regards the significance of mystical thinking as being personal rather than public. 

Self-deception becomes a problem among actual or would-be spiritual leaders, people trying to get power, make money, gain status, influence people, make-a-better-world, heal people, create or administer a movement/ cult/ institution/ religions (etc) from their own spirituality. 

All such objectification seems to create self-deception. Even great mystical thinkers such as Rudolf Steiner fell (deeply) into this trap of self-deception by striving for objectification, abstraction, generalization... 

But intrinsically, it is not difficult to know when one is, or is not, engaged in mystical thinking. 

The state is self-validating - as must be intuition in general. That is what intuition must be - if it is to serve as the bottom line. 

We need to assume that there is a divine self in us. 

And we must further assume that when our consciousness, our awareness, is motivated by Love; then conscious awareness can know the divine self. 

It is Love that distinguishes divine-thinking from any other kind of thinking. We can therefore consciously know when we are (here and now) thinking mystically, from our divine self; and when we are not. 

That's all there is to it. That is direct knowing.

The fact that it is based in the motivation of love is exactly why mysticism fails when made objective, when the attempt is to harness mystical thinking for 'use' in this mortal world.

We do not love The World; love is not abstract - indeed we love only some, specific beings - sometimes a person loves only one being. 

That defines the scope of mystical thinking. One can think mystically only about that which is loved. 

Love must come first. So we cannot 'use' mystical thinking by a forced application of love to that which we merely wish to know!   

(Lack of real love is where public mystics go badly wrong. The give-away is that they always claim to have a lot of love, for a lot of people. The engage in a lot of promiscuous love-talk... They try to operationalize love, by equating it with some kind of 'altruistic' or sacrificial action. Doing so, they are trying to control love; which manipulation is intrinsically putting second that which must be first. Abstract, generalized loving is a snare - and a lie.) 

The birdemic-peck-plan: is it a strategy for managed giga-death?

There is a fluctuating awareness that the global governments (or its spokesmen) often express-a-desire/ state-a-need for the world population to become some billions fewer than its present level of seven-billion-plus (and growing). 

Since 'giga' is the term meaning 'billions' - we could term this the giga-death-plan (although I previously casually misnamed it 'mega'-death'). 

The most usual current rationale is that giga-death is both necessary and overall A Good Thing because... the Big Lie of CO2-climate-emergency-extinction etc. 

Yet, setting aside such evil nonsense; I believe that giga-death is inevitable because of the collapse of the global System, which is itself inevitable for many reasons - including the large decline in average (and peak) human intelligence, and the genetic degradation of the human species; both of which have already happened, and the effects are working-through.  

On top of this is the Western cultural combination of self-hatred and despair; which is leading to a the long-term, mostly-unconscious, civilizational suicide of Leftism. 

Since early 2020; this ideology is now globally-dominant through a totalitarian (covert) government; and is pursuing civilization suicide with unprecedented single-mindedness of motivation. 

I assume that there is probably a synergy at the high level of world governance between the fools who believe that population giga-death is a good thing because 'Global Warming' - and the realists who know that it is going to happen anyway. 

The death of billions over a medium timescale (months and years) is unprecedented - because there have never before been billions alive to die

Given the beings involved; I suppose They see their role (as evil psychopathic parasites and careerist bureaucrats) being to 'manage' this process of giga-death. 

(Indeed, few things could give such excitement, lust and glee to such beings; as organizing mass death in a 'controlled' fashion - especially when they are not going to be held responsible and can just sit-back and 'enjoy the show'.) 

From their Ahrimanic perspective; the major problem is to have mass deaths but in such a fashion that the System does not break down.

Probably this is best achieved if the Establishment are 'seen' to be 'trying' to prevent and to stop mass death... 

In other words - billions dying, but deniably: Yes, planned giga-death but sufficiently distanced from the decisions of those who make it happen that the link is non-obvious (...at least to the modern mind). 

These, I think, is where the mandatory birdemic peck of genetic engineering comes-in; with its multiple boosters to follow. 

The mass birdemic peck is, of course, not needed in the first place - and serves mainly as part of a sequence of cumulative fake-responses to the global non-problem of the virus. A this level it is designed simply to sustain Big Lies and wrong assumptions fuelling the fake-response to the fake-danger of the disease.

But there is more to it than this. Medically speaking, mass deployment of the genetic pecks goes beyond justification from mere panic or recklessness by such a margin as to qualify as a deliberate, colossal, intentional and open-ended program for killing. 

As such, it is capable of being used to attain a wide range as possible of lethal mechanisms; these spread across a sequence of the many/ lifelong follow-up, compulsory pecks that are being envisaged...

(After all, it is trivially easy to harm and kill people with pharmaceuticals; compared with the extreme difficulty of improving overall health and/or delaying death.) 

The birdemic-peck giga-death-plan is not the only plan to contribute to the desired goal of giga-death. But compared with the main alternatives - such as mass-starvation, -poisoning and -lethal-violence - medically-induced death may be the most likely to escape detection, and be accepted with minimal disruption.

The birdemic peck plan for giga-death - if it works, which it may not (and They are increasingly incompetent; for much the same reasons that seven billions of people cannot be sustained) - is thus the least likely Big Killer to arouse suspicion of malign intent. 

Mass-pecking seems the least likely 'hit' to trigger resistance, and the most likely to maintain mass support for the continued viability of The System and Establishment. 

After all, somebody will be needed to 'manage' the 'human tragedy' of billions of sick, dying and dead. W.H.O. better than those that planned and organized it? 

And finally - what of the spiritual dimension that is driving this whole thing? How does this particular mode of planned giga-death fit with the over-arching motive of mass human damnation? 

I think it fits well. It is continuous with the very successful strategy of the past year - where the world has been put under and evil-orientated system without objection and with considerable support. 

It is the spiritual goal of evil that people must want evil. To be damned; they must ultimately agree to, and in a sense invite, their own torment - and regard their suffering as necessary and 'good'. 

We have a global System of value-inversion and denial of God and creation. That System is a boat, blithely sailing to Hell, which the powers of evil do not wish to rock, or to risk having-capsized...

If giga-death is coming, and if it was violent and chaotic and acute; this might trigger a spiritual awakening. 

People might cry to God de Profundis - 'from the depths' of their existential despair they may look-up and perceive light and hope...

That is what the demons most fear. If that happens, on any scale, all their successes of 2021 would be turned against them.   

Note: Am I sure about the above? No. How could I be? But it does explain the facts as we know them; and I do think it is probable - given what we now (for sure) regarding the motivations of those with most power. 

"Ich baue ganz auf deiner Starke..."The heights of Mozart's artistry revealed by Fritz Wunderlich and Eugen Jochum

Mozart is widely known as one of the greatest of composers, yet there is a sense in which his genius is the most elusive and delicate. His greatest compositions hover very close to the trite and banal - and for much of the 19th century he was regarded as a tuneful, decorative but essentially 'light' composer - rather as moderns might regard Telemann, JC or CPE Bach (sons of JS) or Mendelssohn. 

It was due to the work of several critical champions such as GB Shaw and Alfred (not Albert) Einstein, and the work of some great conductors, that people began to see the lucid depths of Mozart - and for the late 20th century this was nailed-into-place by Peter Schaffer's Amadeus play and movie, which captured exactly this special quality (albeit marred by excessive plot emphasis on the sub-par and not-wholly-Mozartian Requiem). 

Anyway... all this is a prelude to the above tenor aria from Mozart's singspiel opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail (aka 'Seraglio') - The Escape from the Harem. 

To appreciate this requires no knowledge of the opera, nor even of the words being sung - indeed, it is a ludicrously long (over six minutes!) and elaborate solo aria for a comic opera, with a complex orchestral introduction - and is therefore nearly always omitted or severely truncated in performance - and indeed in many recordings. 

I think it best to regard "Ich baue ganz... (IBG)" as a concert aria - a miniature and self-sufficient solo work of pure music.

IBG is also omitted sometimes, because it is extremely difficult to sing: impossible for most tenors. And indeed so various are its demands on tone, smoothness, agility, range and - especially - breath capacity and control; that no tenor can fulfil all of them to the highest degree.  

Tone is especially important for Mozart tenors, as the major roles (and their music) have a special quality of youthful earnestness and purity that should be innate in a singer's vocal quality. 

Fritz Wunderlich is regarded as one of the truly great tenors of the twentieth century, and this reputation is rooted in the tonal quality of his voice. Of course not everybody will like it - certainly it is very different from the most popular of great Italian or Spanish tenors (and their South American descendants) - but most agree it is the best suited to Mozart. 

But Wunderlich had other qualities as a singer. This aria shows the fluidity of his vocal production, the way his tone continued-between the words, as if the words were being shaped-from a continuous production of lovely sound. This is unusual, and often not even sought-after, among the German tradition of operatic tenors. 

Then again his breath control was superb. This is not just a matter of being able to sing long phrases, but of maintaining the quality and control of tone throughout, without diminishment. 

His agility was remarkable for someone with such a size of voice; his voice was middle-sized (i.e. middling loud) among tenors; but most tenors who are more fully able to enunciate the florid runs and arpeggios of the middle section of this aria (i.e. separating the notes*) have small/ quiet voices, and without the heroic 'ringing' tone of Wunderlich. 

As for the aria IBG itself - well it is a superb example of Mozart at his very best, and doing something only he could do. It is light and easy to enjoy, but has such a glorious sense of spirit and joy in its phrases and touches of orchestration as to reach the sublime. 

Pay particular attention to the use of woodwinds in the orchestration, and supporting the voice. Woodwind is regarded as a specialty of Mozart's orchestral work - and here you can see just why. 

*Richard Conrad was one of these: listen from 13:55. Note particularly the astonishing, genuine trill; so rare an accomplishment among tenors. 

The red herring of modern effeminacy - masculinity is a consequence, not a cause

There is a really tremendous amount of rubbish talked about masculinity these days. Its basis is the fact that modern men are much more effeminate than men of the past - and there seem to be many causes of this change: both cultural and biological-medical (and the cultural would not be possible without biological facilitation). 

But masculinity was always known as a consequence not a cause; something that was not sought head-on and for itself; but which arose as a result of other priorities.

Modern men cannot become genuinely masculine by changing diet, drugs and weights; because these are themselves evidence of effeminacy! 

The idea of a real man of the past brooding over such matters, of micro-monitoring and micro-managing his food, health, physique; being motivated by obsessing about his looks, and measures of sports performance (and comparing with other men) is itself extremely effeminate behaviour!  

We live in a world of extreme evil, a world in which there is one thing needful - which is to be a Christian, and as good a Christian as you can... 

From this all else follows, and without it - well, nothing really matters because you will be fighting on the side of evil and yourself being corrupted, week-by-week. Every 'self-improvement' will be harnessed against God and the good.

To focus on masculinity, to try and become more masculine, is corrupting; it elevates an inessential means to the level of an end; it makes a purpose of something which should be a by-product and may not be required.  

There are very few good men now; and of the few that I know - none are obsessing over their masculinity (and those who are, are slipping, perceptibly, week-by-week, away from God and towards The World). 

We all must have courage, but courage is not about masculinity. Each person's required courage is matched to his mind, body and situation - and is not dependent on these being in-place.

Effeminate men need courage just the same; and masculine virtue will be improved only by courage in pursuit of Christian virtue. 

All the rest is just lifestyle, hobbies, addictions, perversion or therapy - it may be 'needed' for such reasons, but should not be allowed to become a culture, or regarded as an end in itself. 

Here-and-now things are very clear and very simple; and what we should be doing is laid out before us. Doing it is very difficult, and everybody will lapse - most will lapse frequently. 

It is understandable that people should seek for easier surrogate activitess - and expend time, energy and resources on what they claim to be proxies for faith, hope and charity - and should get caught-up in groups that encourage each other...

It is understandable; but all sin is 'understandable'. Sin is turning away from God, working against the Good and creation - and in 2021 the System is sin-promoting; there are innumerable, continuous temptations to put The World above Heaven - and (temporary) rewards for doing-so.

It is part of the task of our times that these temptations be recognized and lapses repented. 

But while we cannot avoid sinning (because we are all sinners, by our nature, as Jesus made clear) we have no valid excuse for systematically advocating sin by our voluntary efforts. 

So let's all try our best to avoid advocating plans and schemes and recipes for promoting masculinity, eh? 

 

Our task is to understand and confront evil; but first we must understand it

This whole epoch... has, according to Rudolf Steiner, the task of recognizing and understanding evil. Before we seek to confront evil, we have to understand it... and it is no wonder that we are surrounded by evil as never before in world history. It is not right to say, as many do, that it has always been like this

TH Meyer. The Present Age magazine, 2020: 6; 3/4: 46. 

This striking passage, which I first read only a few minutes ago, is a clarifying encapsulation of something that has become very evident over the past year-plus: the triumph of evil. 

And exactly because these are such evil times, the people are deeply corrupt - so the scale and depth of evil are not evident; or, when they are, the source and are misunderstood and the causes misattributed - which only compounds the evil. 

Evil is largely invisible almost-always misunderstood because people do not understand Good; and people do not understand Good because (for the first time in history) we have a generations-deep secular society that rejects God, denies the spiritual and regards the universe as meaningless and purposeless. 

Evil has been incoherently reduced to psychology; something to do with 'suffering' (which cannot be measured but only claimed or inferred) which may then, somehow, be multiplied by the scale of people involved - except when the suffering of one or a few people or a minority is deemed to outweigh in importance that of other people or groups... 

Evil is sometimes regarded as the perpetration of specific extreme acts of violence or killing; but at other times, extreme acts of violence are excused or celebrated. Sometimes great evil is attributed to a person (or organization) on the basis of a sentence spoken, half a sentence, the use (or alleged use) of a single taboo word...

All this mainstream moral discourse is incoherent, it is meaningless - thus evil can neither be recognized nor understood. 

Yet, from a Christian perspective, it is clear that indeed 'we are surrounded by evil as never before in human history'. 

To know this we simply need to know what is Good - and then we can recognize that everything working against Good is evil. 

In particular, we need to focus on inferred motivations that underlie specific actions.

We need to ask ourselves whether this person, group, organization is on the side of God, The Good and divine creation - or against these. 

Are they on the side of the spirit, on the side of resurrected eternal life in Heaven - or against these. 

Because, as of 2021, anyone not working for the Heavenly and eternal agenda of Jesus Christ; is working for the temporary, worldly agenda of the global totalitarian government. 

Anyone not motivated by God and Good is motivated by the devil and evil. 

Having reached this point, we are in a position to 'recognize and understand' evil: the great task of this era. 

All evil is one in its ultimate motivation against God/ the Good/ creation; yet we may then recognize that evil comes in several, superficially very different, types with different priorities. 

And these different types of evil, with their different priorities, may be in conflict - may indeed hate each other (as evil is prone to do), work against each other, fight and kill each other...

All of which can make evil harder to recognize. For example, anyone fighting a particular evil in the world of 2021, is most likely to be another, different type of evil person who has different priorites. 

It is for such reasons that I have adapted some of Rudolf Steiner's ideas about Luciferic, Ahrimanic and Sorathic evil - as useful categories to describe the different priorities of evil, and to help us recognize what is going-on. 

For example; a Luciferically evil person might be in favour of sexual liberation and the removal of law - when he thinks it will help him to achieve more sex, of a more self-gratifying type, with more people of the kind he likes to have sex with. His motivation is short-termist, selfish and pleasure-motivated. 

And Ahrimanic sexual revolutionary will be keen to implement bureaucratic systems for monitoring and controlling sexual behaviour; backed by laws and corporate regulations. His idea of sexuality is mostly negative, little to do with pleasure and mainly about 'rights'. Often focused on a 'lawfare' assault on Christian morality which intends to make it illegal to promote or practice Christian sexuality - ultimately illegal even to think Christian sexuality. 

While Sorathic evil is personal like Luciferic, but negative like Ahrimanic. It is motivated primarily by spite and resentment - and wants to humiliate, torment and destroy anything that is created by God; including not just divinely-orientated forms of sexuality, but sex itself. It is this motivation which lies behind the 'trans' agenda and the mixture of confusion, inversion and lies which seek to erase men and women alike. 

This is just an example; others abound - including in the realm of 'aesthetics' where evil (in its various forms) seeks to confuse, subvert and destroy beauty - and to advocate and enforce that which is ugly, vile, repellant, misery-generating, soul-crushing, and despair-inducing.

Our task is to recognize, understand and confront evil; in all its forms. 

It is easy work to find; since evil is everywhere, and seeking us out - each and every one of us; every hour of every day; escalating week by week.

That much is unavoidable - the question is what we each will do about it...

   

There is no such thing as luck, chance or randomness - and this fact should have profound consequences

One of the habits I strive to discard is to stop my lazy and ingrained habit of (not) explaining things as a result of luck, chance or randomness. 

Since I inhabit God's creation, there is no possibility of anything of this kind. If every specific event is not (cannot be) directly purposive, then surely it is part of some larger purpose. 

There are two possible purposes: Good or evil, divine or demonic. 

Some things happen because they are part of God's creative purposes, others as a consequence of evil choices by demonic beings or humans. It may be important to know which - yet even evil purposes will - in the course of time - always be turned to make opportunities for Good choices, for the chance to grow in a positive spiritual way. 

For example, the 2020 coup to install a totalitarian world government and fake-birdemic response is surely evil in motivation, and needs to be recognized as such; yet it has led to many opportunities for pursuing God's purposes. 

It has made discernment easier, has shocked some people to an awakening, it has led to some positive re-evaluations of life and priorities - other possibilities could be added. 

So it is both true that evil triumphed in 2020; and that God has turned that triumph to make many new Good possibilities.  

Yet it is typical that God's plans are the fastest, most powerful, and have the fewest adverse effects; and God's re-purposing of evil will be very much a second-best; less sure and slower, and with more and nastier down-sides to the right choices...

Nonetheless, God's creation will always be working to keep creating opportunities for Good, from time to time. 

But this eschewing of luck/ chance/ randomness has some tough consequences. For a start, it undercuts both pride and resentment; since our basic situation in life (body, mind, environment) has been 'designed' for our own personal best learning of that which we most need to learn. 

There is no space either for self-congratulation or for guilt at privilege; nor for self-pity and resentment at the bad hand dealt. 

That old phrase "There, but for the grace of God, go I", is revealed as wrong, and mischievous - because in a strict sense there is no greater fortune nor misfortune in these things. 

The only valid metric is spiritual and needs to focus on the understanding that this mortal life is primarily a time for learning. 

One who fails to learn has failed in life, has utterly wasted his life - whatever the comfort and pleasure of that life. And vice versa - a life that appears materially dire may be a glorious triumph at the spiritual level.   

However, this fact is for each to discover for himself - I cannot know what God intended for other people, nor can I know the sequence of choices that led to a person's present position; hence I cannot dictate the proper meaning of another's life. 

(Although, equally, I can and should make my own judgment about other's lives, and may need to advise others accordingly. That, too, is part of what we are meant to learn.) 

But I can and should learn what is intended for me; by discerning and choosing well, as my life brings me my needful opportunities - which it surely will. 

Graspable truth: In a world of chaos (lies and manipulation); Truth can only be known bottom-up

Thinking back on my years as an atheist; I recall strongly wanting to be a Christian in the middle 1980s; but floundering around and around in an incomprehensible complexity of assertion about what 'Christian' meant and entailed. 

I was just going from one book to another, one assertion to another, one argument to another... With some I agreed or was convinced; others I disliked or found implausible... 

But it was a serial process - I never got deeper, I never got anywhere! I was just floundering in information mixed with error mixed with deceptions...

What I should have been doing, was discovering and working from my own primary motivations and intuitions. I needed to know what I most wanted, and what I most solidly knew. I needed to be driven by these - and to stop seeking for truth from some external Authority among the multitude of fake 'authorities' - who were so keen to tell me what to believe and to do.  

Part of the answer came from a remark of the theoretical biologist Francis Crick (co-discoverer of the structure of DNA) when he mentioned that when seeking to develop a true theory, the scientist must bear in mind that most of the 'facts' are wrong (as will become apparent when a true theory is eventually found). 

Most of the facts are wrong - and that is in science, real science as professional research mostly was in Crick's early years, when nearly-all scientists were honest and able at least, and many were geniuses (such as Crick himself).  

That was in real science - what about the modern world? In the modern world it may be either that All of the facts are wrong, or that they might as well be - since there are so many, and such contradictory, 'facts' that it is, in practice, impossible to find and discern the needles in the haystack. 

In other words, while real science may be very complex - because permeated with honest errors; the modern word is is not merely complex but chaotic - because overwhelmed with manipulative lies (as well as honest errors). 

The modern world is Not Even Trying to seek or speak truth (and neither is modern 'science').

People claim that the modern world is very complex and that it is hard to find the truth among so much information... this is false. 

The modern world is not complex, it is chaotic, it contains not information but noise, it consists not of  facts but mere 'data', it does not offer theories but models (which do not even attempt to capture reality, and are never tested against valid predictions). 

So, there is no way to scan and sift the overwhelming chaos of noise and data to discover whether or not there is real information and truth. 

In other words, top-down, 'evidence'-driven reasoning is now impossible. We need to proceed in a bottom-up and theoretically-driven fashion. 

And this is, in actuality, what everybody does - but most people adopt their bottom-up theory/s by passive and unconscious absorption from the mainstream media and officialdom - from those who are the same people and institutions that make the tsunami of hourly lies and errors which make modern life chaotic in the first place.

Thus modern Man 'copes' with the chaos of modern life by using chaotic pseudo-theories devised by chaos-generating specialists... 

(These chaotic pseudo-theories are what could be termed 'Leftism' in its incoherent, dishonest, protean, oscillating, slippery, self-denying actuality.)

So we get meaningless lies interpreted by incoherent fake-hypotheses - masquerading as reality, science, morality, truth... 

If not, then what? If we do not want to continue living in a demonically-generated chaos interpreted by incoherent pseudo-theories - then what should we do? Where should we turn, where can we turn?  

What is necessary is an understanding that can be grasped whole in a single act of knowing. Otherwise, we fall into the situation of my mid-1980s seeking, of (maybe) grasping one thing after another for a while, serially - but unable to put them together. 

As an antidote to our situation; I think we each need to seek that single moment of combined comprehension and motivation - which must be simple. 

Difficult to attain, yes; but not difficult to know once attained - because it has a young-child-like simplicity, immediacy, obviousness. 

This will be under continual assault from the daily deluge of lying-facts, from the pseudo-sophistication of secondhand serial hypotheses and micro-theories, and from the fake-objectivity of instantiating these lies and procedures into computer models. 

Your achieved childlike simplicity and knowledge will continually be labelled foolish, insane and/or evil by adolescent minded poseurs, arrogant psychopaths and cowardly sleepwalkers. 

So what is required needs to be consciously chosen - because the original unconscious and spontaneous understandings of childhood (adopted by instinct and from lack of alternatives) - so the simple-minded will be assimilated by the expediency of conforming to these evil assaults. 

Childlike simplicity needs explicitly to be sought, acknowledged, and held-fast-to with love; because it is regarded as true and best; and also because the holder sees-through to the evil motivations of those who assault him.

(Even when (as is usual) the assaulter does not himself know or acknowledge his own motivations and denies their demonic implications.) 

But anything less than this primal simplicity can and will be penetrated and broken apart by the multitude of forces advocating chaos; by the beating-down of inducements to fear, resentment and despair.  

Graspable truth is simple; and, as of 2021, that which is not-graspable is not truth.

An eye-witness eye-for-detail in the Fourth Gospel ("John") - by Esther O'Reilly

From an essay by Esther O'Reilly, published in The Spectator 5 April 2021. This lucidly spells-out what was very obvious to me, in many ways both large and small, throughout my reading of The Fourth Gospel as if it was our only source of knowledge of Jesus.  

[First]... there is the matter of John’s eye for precise detail. It is commonly assumed that the author sacrifices on-the-ground accuracy for the sake of theological symbolism. But what symbolic meaning could plausibly be attached to oddly specific numbers like, say, the six waterpots at Cana (each containing 'twenty to thirty gallons')? Or the 'hundred fifty-three' fish in the great post-Resurrection catch? Or the 'twenty-five or thirty' stadia (~3 miles) that the disciples had rowed across Galilee when they saw Jesus walking on the water? See also the frequent 'approximate hours' given for various incidents, or awkwardly meticulous descriptions such as the exact positioning of the grave-clothes in Jesus’ tomb. 

The number of stadia relates to another puzzle for John’s detractors: the author’s intimate knowledge of his location. Not only does he accurately place the disciples 'in the middle' of the lake, as Mark more vaguely puts it, he also knows that this body of water had more than one name (Galilee or Tiberias). This from the same writer who mentions, by the by, that one goes down from Cana to Capernaum (2:12). Further, the gospel’s action, including miraculous action, is grounded in numerous specific sites around Palestine. These include the famous Pool of Bethesda, whose 'five porticoes' fuelled many a flight of academic fancy as to their deep symbolic meaning until they were literally excavated in 1964. 

In the information age, we can forget the significance of such easy local familiarity. For instance, suppose I, a hobbit-like American writer sitting in my armchair, became suddenly curious about the geography around and under 1980-something Piccadilly Circus, which in the intervening decades has been completely remapped. It’s not as easy as you might think to recover even this recent piece of history, even in 2021. Now imagine instead that I am a Greek writer in the late first or early second century, hoping to fabricate a convincing memoir of the pre-70 A.D. life and times of an itinerant Jewish peasant. Wish me luck in this hypothetical, because I’ll need it. 

Numerous details like these certainly appear to mark John as the work of a Jewish writer up close to the facts it relates. Much ink has been spilled over whether that writer is 'the beloved disciple.' But there are a number of clues. Note, to give just one, the apparent gap in the crucifixion narrative after Jesus commands said disciple to take charge of mother Mary. This suggests that the writer himself took her away immediately but returned for the bitter end. We then see the eye for detail once again in the vivid clinical shock of blood and water pouring from Jesus’ pierced side, stamped with the seal of eyewitness testimony. 

The gospel narrative’s lifelike quality demands to be reckoned with. Characters major and minor leap off the page, from impetuous Peter to doubting Thomas to the barb-tongued man born blind. This is to say nothing of Jesus himself, whose complex personality, teaching style, habits and even small tricks of diction are carried with uncanny unity across all four gospels (significantly weakening the claim that 'the Johannine Jesus' and 'the Synoptic Jesus' are two different entities). 

Then there are the layers of dramatic complexity in sequences like the raising of Lazarus, whose lead-up is fraught with rich emotion as Jesus first contends with the strong-willed Martha, then falls nearly speechless at tearful, heart-broken Mary. See also the unique touches that set the Last Supper on a knife edge of tension – the beloved disciple’s quiet question as to who will betray, or the observation as Judas stands at the open door, on the threshold of betrayal, that 'it was night.' And finally, on Easter morning, the crowning moment of the gospel, perhaps of all Western literature, the mother of all eucatastrophes contained in a single word: 'Mary.' 

The full picture John offers, in all its vividness, in its peculiar combination of high drama and mundane precision, confronts the honest reader with the same dilemma that confronted C. S. Lewis: Either its writer unaccountably invented the modern realistic novel fifteen centuries early, or else we are dealing here not with fiction, but with history. In this voice, we hear the ring of truth...

The above article mentions approvingly this reading of the Fourth Gospel by David Suchet. It uses the New International Version translation; which is a verse by verse paraphrase popular with evangelicals. Suchet is a great actor, and apparently a serious Christian. 

My own preference is strongly for the Authorized Version (King James Bible) - because I believe it to be uniquely divinely-inspired among English-language Bibles; also it is one of the very greatest works of world literature - read here by Max Maclean. 

Note added by BGC: Of course, for this aspect of the Fourth Gospel really to strike home, the reader must at least entertain the possibility that it really is what it purports to be: the work of a truthful and informed eye-witness. Most modern readers have already-decided that miracles are impossible, God is not real, and therefore Jesus cannot have been divine nor risen from the dead and ascended to Heaven. 

But if such things could be regarded as at least hypothetically true in principle, then the Fourth Gospel might have a remarkable and transformative power; especially if the reader could set-aside (for the moment) everything he thinks he knows about Jesus and what he taught. 

H/T for this link to my nephew Tom. 

Christians have to 'Hope' - but what does that mean?

It seems to me that many Christians are confused by the injunction to Hope. 

Surely it is a vital truth that Christians must Hope - yet I often see this grossly (and sometimes anti-Christianly) misinterpreted and misapplied into a foolish and unrealistic optimism about This World; which amounts to the denial of Hope. 

For example, Christians may look at The World - at the state of the churches, politics, or any social institution; at the character and behaviour of some political, religious or business leader - and in effect they will refuse to take seriously the overwhelmingly negative and pessimistic signs and trends; because they must (they assume) be 'hopeful'. 

This amounts to a gross failure of discernment due to a failure even to try and discern; asserting a non-Christian kind of non-judgmentalism which is actually a denial of spiritual responsibility. 

Or, it may be a fear of despair; the sense that if we really took a serious and measured account of states and trends then we would be plunged into despair - and therefore they fall back on an assertion of 'Hope' which is actually a kind of dishonest optimism. 

The distinction between optimism and Hope is that optimism is about this world, while Hope is about the next. 

Jesus promises those who follow him, that their reward will be resurrected life everlasting in Heaven - but (obviously) he did not promise that life for his followers would be 'Heavenly' in this world. 

(And if he had made such a promise of worldly happiness, then by now it has been refuted so many times that it would make Jesus a liar.) 

Hope is indeed the antidote to despair; but this Christian Hope is a product of Faith - not of a fixed attitude of doctrinal optimism such as that things might get better, somehow; anybody might suddenly repent and reform, despite everything - and so on. 

Of course any such thing might happen and cannot be ruled-out; but that is not a reason to ignore, explain-away, let alone excuse evil when we have good reason to discern evil.

Faith is not about Hoping that God will intervene to make everything right in this world; Faith is a confident belief in our transformation into Sons and Daughters of God after death.

If we are using Faith and Hope as excuses not to discern, or as an excuse for cowardice and lack of principle; that is actually itself a type of sin - a turning-away-from God. 

So, let's take care not to do it - despite the frequent temptations!

 

A world unable to learn

I continue to be incredulous at the way people are immune to the experiences of 2020-21; even when discussing phenomena directly affected by the changes, such as politics and society. 

From the severity and universality of what has happened, and the fact that it is unprecedented in human history; it would only make sense if people tried to comprehend and understand what has happened to them personally  (and to those they know and love best) over the past year - and what this implies about the world they live-in.  

Yet, it is very clear that this is only seldom the case; and that most people regard 2020-21 as being merely 'events' within exactly the same framework as they held prior to this epoch. 

It is all the same old parade of entertainments; the regular Punch and Judy fights (with all parties and individuals invisibly controlled by the same puppeteer) which they view, get emotional about, and comment-on in the mass media and 'private' discussions. 

People focus on much the same things, in much the same way, as they always did; their attitudes to the various branches of the Global Establishment have not changed; their evaluations of the personalities and institutions has not changed; their discernments of the goodies and baddies of the world have not changed.

All that has changed is that people are more fearful and despairing, more credulous and insane, more easily manipulated, more foolishly optimistic and existentially hope-less than ever before. 

People talk about birdemic news to the exclusion of everything else - yet it still remains just 'news', un-real, beyond experience and discernment; merely a context for enforced obedience and directed resentments.

 

The world has darkened by the will of Men; but the darkness is explained-away as if a natural disaster. And the deliberate and extreme crippling of human fellowship and initiative likewise made into a thing necessary, inevitable and thus beneficial.

Passivity, obedience, un-consciousness are the new triad of virtues.  

We must not just obey the always-changing, never-coherent rules of our new world government and their prison warders; but must show (repeatedly) that we regard them as Good, and on the side of Good. We must display our conviction that those who disagree with Them (in small or in large) are The Problem (and as such will need, sooner or later, to be eliminated).

We must not only obey Big Brother, but also love him. He wants not just our hands and brains, but also our hearts and minds. And he has them... 

And by the way we interact, by the absolute failure to notice the biggest change in the history of the world and its cause; it is clear that Big Brother does indeed have the hearts and minds of a large majority in 'the West'; and of nearly-everybody with power, influence, high status and wealth.  

But the truth is that our hearts and minds are free; and that freedom is a fact. 

So if BB does have your heart and mind it is because you, personally, have gifted them. 

And you are unavoidably, personally, responsible for the consequences which will follow. 

Why is poetry uniquely embarrassing?

My premise is that poetry stands clear of the other art forms in that it is nearly always embarrassing. 

A thought experiment: Which would you prefer somebody to show you, asking for your opinion, watching for your response: a painting or a poem?

Which would you rather somebody did in front of you? Played you a tune he wrote on the piano, or recited one of his poems?

Gave you a present of a ceramic pot she had made, or a slim volume of her own verses? 

Now, I am talking here of would-be serious poetry - my point does not apply to light verse or to comic verse (and also to 'poetry in translation'); which are very different in both intent and effect. 

But you may well agree that there is something especially excruciating about nearly-all poetry. 

Or, to phrase it differently: 

1. There is extremely little real poetry, it is always culturally rare and often absent altogether; and 

2. Real poetry is qualitatively different from the mass of what might be termed failed-poetry. 

Most art forms have a much higher proportion of successes than does poetry, and a gradation of successes - so that it is far likelier that you will get some genuine enjoyment from somebody's sub-optimal sculpture, acting, novel-writing, musical composition... or almost anything; than from their failed poetry.

In brief: almost all attempts to write poetry fail; and failed poetry is not enjoyable. 

Indeed, there is something actively unpleasant about failed poetry, something that grates and embarrasses.

Why? Well, often it is self-revelatory in ways that are embarrassing; often it tells you things about the would-be poet that, quite honestly, you would rather not know! 

Failed poetry is either pretentious or bathetic in ways that often reveal that desperate craving for a kind of status which characteristically evokes a painful mixture of pity and disdain - emotions we would rather not be forced to feel. 

It is a bit like catching someone in a lie; but they don't realize it - and just keep-on lying, eagerly expecting you to go along with the lie. 

So many have tried and failed to be poets (and this includes nearly-all professional and 'recognized' poets) - that this whole area is one fraught with embarrassment. 

(Not many memories are so embarrassing to me as my own attempts at poetry, and realizing retrospectively how excruciating they must have been to other people!)

To try and fail at something so incredibly difficult as real poetry is no disgrace! 

Yet, it seems most are unable to learn from their own experiences; most are extremely resistant to the fact of their own failure - and although they can easily see the embarrassing failures of others; somehow continue kidding themselves that they-themselves are real poets - because of some external validation, or because they so much want to be a poet. 

Why this should be, I don't know; because even real poets write very few poems, sometimes just one poem. And having written one, or three, or thirty real poems clearly does not positively transform a person's life - and may even go totally unrecognized. 

All that can be boasted is: I have written a poem, a real poem. 

After all; 'Anon' has probably written more great poems than anyone else in history - including Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Border Widow's Lament. 

Why the goal of Equality is intrinsically and metaphysically wrong

The reason why the socio-political goal of Equality is and always was intrinsically wrong, evil, anti-Christian; has been described clearly and effectively by  William Wildblood (I have added emphasis):

Equality is only possible with complete oneness which means either the chaos of unformed matter or the Night of Brahma when the universe has returned to an unexpressed, unmanifested state which is basically non-being. 

Creation is a disruption of oneness which breaks the perfect equality of non-being. 

Inequality is the essence of manifested life, the very foundation of the world, and the current movement to erase qualitative distinction and differences is an attempt to destroy cosmic order and reduce light to darkness.

From this very fundamental, metaphysical-level, argument; we can see that the rooting of Leftism in a quest for Equality always-was an evil motivation - even in the early days of Leftism, when Leftism was mixed with many good motivations, and attracted many good people. 

Of course, as of 2021, the evil of Leftism ought-to-be obvious. Yet, by now Leftism (including the appeal to Equality) are so dominant, so permeated-through global governance, mass media, corporations and institutions; as to be universal and unchallengeable in public discourse (indeed, increasingly, unchallengeable even in private discourse - except illegally). 

Now, thanks to William W, I can better understand that Equality is working against Creation; that Equality is an agent of Chaos - that it tends always to destroy meaning, purpose, human relationship and the possibility of loving God... 

Equality tends to destroy All that is Good, and even the possibility of Good.

Small wonder that Satan and his Lieutenants are such zealous advocates of Egalitarianism! Egalitarian ideology gives the forces of darkness everything they most want! 

Note: I do not, of course, intend to imply that Equality is the master-key principle of Leftism (since Leftism has no principle, and is oppositional in nature); nor that Leftism has ever made any serious attempt to create a genuinely equal world (whatever that might mean). 

Leftism merely uses Equality expediently, whenever it might be effective, as one of its rhetorical weapons in the intended destruction of that which is Good, of God, and from divine creation. 

In practice Equality is made to mean almost opposite things, including the deliberate construction of inequalities, according to whatever is judged to be most effectively destructive in specific context. 

However, by constant use over many generations, the universal desirability of Equality has become a truism, an assumption - to oppose which is regarded as deeply offensive --- and more shocking than even the most horrific means that are deployed supposedly in pursuit of Equality (such as the forcible surgical mutilation and hormonal poisoning of children under the pretense that this 'changes their sex' and is somehow necessary to create 'gender' Equality... which is - of course - supposed to be an intrinsically-ethical imperative).  

Is death the great fact of life, or not?

I was an atheist for most of my life - especially in terms of believing that I would be annihilated at death - that nothing of me would remain. 

I had heard it said that death was the main fact of life, that knowledge of our mortality cast a shadow back over life, that awareness of death affected everything about life - but I did not feel this myself. For a long time, death was a remote and 'theoretical' possibility. 

I think this had to do with the nature of my reasoning about death - from an atheist perspective. The fact that everybody reported that everybody in the past had died - and the inference that therefore I too must die, was a 'secondhand' piece of information (like astronomy) - and was not inner knowledge. 

I was 'convinced' of it only as I would be convinced by some fact of history or science. And facts of history or science are not the kind of thing that operate as 'the main fact of life'.  

My general attitude to death was that I hoped it would come upon me unawares - that I would be living well (as I then regarded living well), and then suddenly I would not be alive - but would know no more about it than falling asleep. 

In other words, contrary to the notion that death was the great fact of life, it was not a fact in my life. 

This was, and is, pretty much the standard, mainstream modern attitude and belief, I think - among young people, most of the time. Death didn't bother me. I didn't have any 'hang-ups' about being dead; did not live in fear, was 'cool' about mortality...

I had no psychological problems about death - no depression, no anxiety...

And this seemed to me to assert the superiority of atheism over Christianity - because Christians seemed to be terribly bothered about death. 

So, the assumption behind this atheist view of death is that being dead is separate from life and that therefore death has nothing to do with life. 

Death is not an event 'in' life; consequently there is an exclusion of death from life. 

Because we will not be around to experience it, it therefore seems best to live as if there is no death. Seize the day, and all that jazz. 

What about the death of other people? 

More of a worry - for sure. But it was understood wholly in terms of their absence. Somebody dead is outside of life, he has gone from life - irrevocably. 

That might be very unpleasant for me (while I was alive) but after I died and ceased to suffer then that's it. 

It now seems clear that this was a literally insane way to live; and the fact that it is normal, mainstream, common just means that nearly everyone is insane. 

But why insane? 

What's the problem - if there is no immediately-obvious negative psychological impact? 

The problem is that by deleting death from life - there are no grounds for preferring life over death: such a preference is utterly arbitrary. 

We can feel and say that we personally would - at this exact moment - prefer to be alive than dead. But if we were dead and gone, then we would be none the wiser - so the preference is arbitrary. 

Indeed, matters are even worse; because life contains the possibility if suffering. Indeed, it seems that life entails suffering: suffering is inevitable. Suffering is, apparently, the main fact of life for some people (and for me, some of the time). 

Since suffering is generally regarded (in this modern world) as The Worst Thing, then wouldn't people be better-off dead. Indeed, wouldn't everybody be better-off dead? 

Why not? If death has nothing to do with life, and life has serious intractable problems; then who is to say that death isn't better? And if anyone disagrees - well, that's just their current personal preference, and might well change in an hour, a day or a year...

It turns-out that there are devastating long-term disadvantages to the exclusion of death from life. 

To live with death excluded-from life is not 'obvious common sense' - as most modern people assume; this is something new in human history - and something alien, unnatural and deranging for human beings. 

By deleting death from life; we delete our-selves from the universe; we render our lives insignificant because a matter of arbitrary preference. 

Yet here we are - in the universe! And (for some reason) we keep on living - we keep on preferring life over death; and we keep on doing the same for others.

The insanity comes from the absolute conflict between fundamental beliefs and daily living; between our metaphysics and our morality; between what people do all the time and force other people to do - and the fact that they cannot (by their own basic assumptions) justify doing any of it.

Being insane, lacking any coherent basis for reasoning, people cannot think coherently; consequently people have no insight into the fact of their own insanity; and having no insight therefore cannot discover a cause or cure for it.

Such is the modern condition - and much of it derives from our failure to recognize, feel, experience in our depths - what was obvious to past generations: that death is indeed the great fact of life.  

Sorath is ascendant... But is Sorath a specific being?

I have recently blogged about the theme of Sorathic evil; which I adapted from some remarks of Rudolf Steiner - and which I first came across, summarized, in the work of Terry Boardman. 

Sorathic evil is here defined as a purely negative, short-termist and destructive kind of evil; ultimately motivated by resentment and hatred of God and all that is God's creation. 

I envisage Sorathic evil as a kind of end-stage (end-times) phenomenon; and one we may observe following-on from the recent and current Ahrimanic evil that denies the reality of God, creation and the spiritual realm altogether; and attempts to impose a wholly materialistic and scientistic, Global Total System of surveillance and control. 

This Ahrimanic evil takes a long-term perspective, aiming to maximize quantitative human damnation - and in pursuit of this goal includes necessarily various elements that are good; such as the bureaucratic virtues of obedience, thoroughness and hard-work. 

Ahrimanic evil aims to create a system of value-inversions (virtue becomes vice, while sin is encouraged and rewarded; truth becomes hate-facts and fake-news, while lies are science... etc.). This System will (by such means as law, media propaganda and corporate regulations) subversively 'process' people into a social structure that is anti-God, anti-Christian, anti-Good.  

But as Ahrimanic evil has become dominant and pervasive, and gets closer to completion (as is happening rapidly at present) so the stage is set for Sorathic evil. 

It will begin to be 'noticed' that The System still relies upon good-motivations (e.g. residual habits of thinking and behaving inherited from tradition and Christianity; or innate common sense evaluations and survival instincts as a consequence of human biology). 

When these tacit and implicit Christian (or Pagan) virtues are pointed-out;  and the Ahrimanic will begin to lose faith in their compromises. 

As The System becomes more 'total', and as Good agents are disempowered and suppressed) inevitably Sorathic zeal begins to focus on those aspects of the The System itself, that conflict with the aims of evil. 

Extremist and impatient Sorathic agents will turn-upon the plodding 'moderates' of evil; aiming to purge them. Indeed, by this point the sincere Ahrimanic agents will be among the least-evil of those who wield power and influence.    

Until that point, short-termist immediate evil cannot prevail; because it cannot self-organize. After all, Sorathic agents will fight each other whenever immediate advantage is to be gained from it.

However, when Good has been substantially destroyed and replaced with an evil-orientated and evil-permeated System; then there will commence a kind of natural selection among agents of evil. 

Sorathic agents that are more short-termist (hence destructive) will begin to prevail over Ahrimanic agents who are trying to be long-termist by clinging-onto virtues like obedience and pragmatic long-termism.  

And Sorathic 'gratification' is, at this extreme, sheerly spiteful destructiveness. A Sorathically-motivated being will destroy even when this takes hard work, and even when it harms the Sorathic being. 

(For a Sorathic being; cutting off your nose to spite your face is normal operational procedure.) 

Against such reckless, frenzied, destructive hate; the sensible, practical, self-seeking Ahrimanic 'moderates' will be helpless. 

For this reason I do not think that there can be a specific being of Sorath. 

Instead Sorathic evil is a kind of mass effect, the product of many spiteful individuals operating in a situation of advanced-evil where good agents have been dispersed and stripped of power. Individualistic spite will prevail. 

There cannot be a Sorathic 'leader'. Any attempt to plan and lead Sorathic activity, would be self-contradictory! After all; planning and strategizing of evil is Ahrimanic rather than Sorathic! 

Maximizing immediate short-term destruction is intrinsically opposed to optimizing long-term Systemic evil They are goals that cannot simultaneously be pursued - one or the other must prevail. 

In conclusion, I do not think that Sorath is a specific being, but a type of evil: the most advanced and extreme type of evil - therefore, one that cannot thrive until the ground has been prepared for it, by the success of Ahrimanic evil and its expulsion of Good agents from public discourse and practice. 

And the ground has, very nearly, been exactly thus prepared; and the ascendency of the Sorathic has already begun. 

Spirit and the material - spirit comes first

We live in a materialist world, in which only the material (that which is 'perceived' i.e. detected by the senses or the instruments of science) is acknowledged as real. 

That which is regarded as real but is not perceptible tends to be called 'the spirit', or the spiritual realm. 

However, this is misleading, because it tends to divide the world into the material and the spiritual - as if there were two separate kinds of thing. 

Yet the reality is that the world is one-kind-of-thing - which is the spirit; spirit was primary and the material developed from spirit.

In other words: the material is a subtype of the spiritual. 

I tend to think of the material by analogy, as something like condensed or concentrated spirit; or as spiritual with a boundary - spirit which has (from within) bounded-itself. 

So, originally, everything was spirit; and although there were different beings, these beings were not physically separated and there was relationship, flow, between them. This meant that there was a primal state of universal connection and communication between beings. 

(But bearing in mind that these terms 'connection' and 'communication' can be misleading because they are already presupposing separation by assuming that beings need to be-connected or to-communicate - yet in a world of only-spirit this just-is, just happens; and indeed cannot be stopped.)

  

Materialism is essentially the world as it is when structured by modern consciousness - and modern consciousness has cut-itself-off from all awareness of communication and connection with spirit. 

This cutting-off is such that there is no spontaneous awareness of the spiritual - modern consciousness spontaneously confines-itself (and is confined) within the body, within the senses and memory of perceptions. 

Yet - since the world is primarily spirit - the potential remains to resume communication and connection with that of creation which is not perceived - in other words, modern Man does not spontaneously perceive the spirit beyond the material, but can choose to do so.

The reason why modern Man lost the spontaneous connection with the spiritual is that this makes him free in his thinking; free from the thinking of other beings, and free from the effects of spontaneous awareness of the divine. 

This freedom from being-affected-by the spiritual world moved Man a step closer towards himself being a God - and this separation-step is part of our divine destiny - but actually-is a step closer to God only if the choice is made to re-connect and again communicate with the spiritual. 

Otherwise, if modern Man simply relies on spontaneity - he will have lost contact with God, and lost awareness of the whole of reality that lies beyond perception and scientific instruments.  

So, that is our situation. We all of us move-through a spiritual world which surrounds us and from-which we (our-selves) condensed and separated; spontaneously this world is imperceptible to us; but the spiritual may become accessible to us by our active choice.

Why now? Why did 2020 have to wait until 2020?

Why did the Global Establishment wait until 2020 to launch its coup and implement a global totalitarian government? The answer lies in the tremendous success of the coup; and the fact that very few people have even noticed it. It is the not noticing that is key. 

Some analysts talk about this being a 'soft' totalitarianism, because it relies on propaganda and manipulation of public opinion more than violence and terror; but that is to put the matter upside down. What we have now is not 'soft' but successful totalitarianism, and the need for violence and terror was a mark of the failure of previous systems. 

Previously in history; people's world view was based in religion (God or gods) and outside of this mortal-earthly life; which gave them them a root, focus and coherence of observation and thought that is now altogether absent. Now, Men are rootless, adrift - and incoherent without awareness of the fact. 

Also, past people lived in 'real life' rooted in their own experience and common sense reasoning. Now people live 'virtually' and take their information and interpretations from The System; because (lacking religion, denying the spiritual) they know nothing, experience nothing, that is out-with The System. 

Men now live virtually within The System - and The System includes all public discourse and activity - politics, government, law, the economy, the mass media, police and the military, churches, science, arts, education... All are linked and controlled bureaucratically and via the media information system*. 

In the past a totalitarian government of the world would have been just too difficult - beyond the reach of any authority; not least because it would have been obvious, and would have evoked widespread and vehement resistance. 

But now, the obvious is ignored; and the false but System-endorsed is accepted in the teeth of personal experience and common knowledge. 

And (especially in the developed world) the masses, the 'expert' class, the population generally - have been so degraded and demotivated by several generations of what amounts to arrested cynical adolescence, that they are without courage - because courage requires principle, and thoroughly godless Men have no basis for principle. 

So, this time - in 2020 - the world government has been successfully implemented and without resistance, because people have not been told explicitly about it by The System - therefore they do not know. 

And even if people do think for themselves, for a little while, and consequently begin to realize what has happened - their lack of principles and courage means that they will soon realize that it is most expedient to go-along-with The System because... why not? What else is there?

Another factor - related to the godless materialism - is that people regard action as the only reality and thinking as disconnected, subjective, ineffectual. So, people assume that - if they are not going to take some action 'against The System' (which would, almost certainly, be ineffectual or counter-productive; and which they are too cowardly even to contemplate anyway) then there is no point even in thinking about it. 

Best to quench all doubts and re-immerse oneself in the pervasive propaganda and re-engage with the mainstream discourse... 

Yet in the past - and in truth - it was always known that thinking was effectual - that thinking can directly-affect reality, affect the universe. 

You may remember as a young child knowing this as a truth - remember believing that thinking a thing could make-it-so; and you may actually have experienced this happening.

Of course it is not as simple as superficially 'having thoughts' then making those thoughts happen, clearly that is not true; since most thoughts are passive, superficial, merely passing-through the mind. 

But some thoughts of a particular and profound kind can, and necessarily do, affect the universe. 

Modern totalitarianism is, therefore, so effective because modern people have outsourced their thinking to The System.  

If modern people were to think, really to think; then the current totalitarianism would not be possible; because people would observe for themselves, evaluate for themselves, would notice. 

They would be free in thinking because they would be standing out-with The System in their thought. 

And that thinking - that kind of thinking - just-does make a difference, objectively; because by-it we are participating in divine creation. 

*Even for modern mass Man, there is a world out-with The System - but that world is formless chaos; about which nothing can be known except that it is utterly destructive. So the perceived 'mainstream', Establishment options are either to live in The System, in whatever way The System dictates - or else to die. At present most people prefer survival under any terms - but that may not always be the case; and despair may lead many people to choose chaos, destruction and death in preference to the kind of life The System enforces. To a smallish but significant extent this is already happening; but suicide and other forms of willed self-destruction may (soon) become endemic, common and 'normal'.