Monday 31 October 2022

Are a handful of Romantic Christians of any possible real-world use?

I find myself fascinated, these days, by tales and legends of a small group working against apparently insuperable odds, ridiculously overmatched... yet succeeding (overall, mostly) with the help of divine providence. 

This may explain my interest in such stories as The Journey to the West/ Monkey, the Lord of the Rings, That Hideous Strength, or the Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson. There have also been real life examples such as the 'Lake Poets', Tolkien's youthful TCBS club of school friends and later the Inklings

It is a familiar trope; and is usually associated with action and adventure. But I feel that the deep fascination of this scenario is at the level of thinking, not doing - and it about a spiritual rather than material quest. 

At any rate; the current situation is a quest for something uncertain, in an unknown place, and without any clear idea of how to achieve it...


Consider the blogs linked on the sidebar - the 'Romantic Christian' grouping. There is no way that a handful of people writing on obscure blogs could causally make a positive difference to a world of billions, or even just The West - many of whom are addicted to the mass media and overwhelmingly hostile to anything which might interfere with their pleasures, or which might threaten their comfort, convenience and self-esteem.

But a blog is merely the surface, communicating, aspect of a motivation that exists primarily in hearts and minds, in our thinking; and which can work by a direct and unmediated process of knowing - a mind-to-mind mutuality of knowledge; rather than being reliant upon the process of sending out signals and having them received and understood in line with our hoped for meanings...

Furthermore, the 'odds' of Romantic Christianity being utterly ignored and ineffectual, are balanced by divine assistance insofar as we are indeed pursuing a quest that is in-line-with God's hopes and plans... 

And if we are not doing what would please God, then such assistance will be withheld; so the harm is limited.


Divine assistance seemingly works by means of 'providence', or synchronicity - that is to say a 'behind the scenes' arrangement of events to produce the most hopeful juxtapositions of persons and incidents. 

But God can only do so-much when it comes to human affairs, since our 'free will' can and does often oppose God's will... Nonetheless; providence is known for recurrently leading to as-many-as-possible opportunities for us to 'make the right decision', and thereby to nudge things in the right direction.

So providence can ensure that something is noticed, but not that it is reacted-to; nor that it is reacted-to in a positive and constructive fashion. 

Providence can use communications to point-at a truth - but cannot ensure that a person grasps that truth intuitively (ie directly); nor that he acts-upon it.


Anyway; I personally feel vastly encouraged by the idea of a hopeless quest against the odds, of a type that could only succeed by 'luck'/ wildly improbable 'coincidences'!

Encouraged by the idea that we should simply get-on-with trying to do what we ought to do, as best we can determine and and best we can pursue that quest; and accept that that is all that we can do - but that is enough. 

(Despite that we almost certainly will never know the full outcome of our endeavor even if we did - improbably, overall - succeed.)


I also feel encouraged by the conviction that such a quest cannot fail, because it has intrinsic value in the doing; and that any genuine achievement in the realm of real-thinking (thinking by and of our divine selves) is permanent and eternally available. 

It contributes to the sum of divine creation. 

It makes a difference forever.



Note: This was adapted from a piece featured in Albion Awakening some four and a half years ago. 

Destruction is easy! - Explaining the (inverted) triumph of atheist-materialist-leftism

However differently things used to be, the world is now simplified - Good and evil are increasingly without overlap, separating, diverging. 

There are those who affiliate with God and divine creation - and there is the opposite side: the mainstream, common, majority of atheist-materialist-leftist ideology that rules The West (and which apparently includes most self-identified religious people, including most Christians). 

All the leadership class and most of the populations are therefore leftists; which means that their motivations have no genuine positive agenda, but operate via oppositions.


(e.g. As of 2022, leftists - i.e. the entirety of the mainstream of Western public discourse and a majority of the population - oppose 'climate change', or are anti-racist, or keen to protect and promote sexual 'minorities', or eager to transform the world to 'prevent' the birdemic, hate the Fire Nation etc - typically they are all of these. All major policy strategies of the mainstream are primarily oppositional, negative in motivation - and adopting even one of them, is to join the leftist alliance.)


Opposition is easy because it is destructive in nature, therefore leftism is easy: therefore the lefter has triumphed over the less-left, and the trend is ever-leftward. 

Any kind or degree of subversion, destruction or inversion - of whatever is created, divine, of Good - is therefore a triumph of leftism.

Of course, this 'triumph' is itself a value-inversion. To re-label destruction as triumph is to invert the true nature of accomplishment. 

The global triumph of leftism is only real, because value-inversion has become mainstream and dominant.


Creation is difficult in this mortal life, which is dominated by entropy; even sustaining good motivations and effective functionality requires ability, energy, effort...

To make something new, useful, beautiful, happy, complex... these are difficult

But anybody - even the laziest and most talentless fool - can destroy what has been made; destroy to a greater or lesser extent, or even completely!

It takes talent and hard work to design a functional machine - but any fool can throw a spanner in its works, sprinkle sand into its gears, or smash it with a hammer... There is just one way to make it work; but innumerable ways to break it. 


The leftist West is now self-weakening rapidly. It can accomplish less and less of the positive, and that only at greater and greater cost (due to massively reduced efficiency and the diminished status of functionality). 

Indeed the West is not even trying to create, grow capability, produce that which is necessary...

Instead; the West's diminishing resources are being increasingly channeled into the infliction of destruction


Even as the Western powers are consumed by their own evil; and as their capacity to create good - and even to sustain functionality - declines with increasing rapidity; they can easily destroy - internally and externally, at home and abroad...

Destruction is so easy that the powers of evil can attack simultaneously on multiple fronts. 

...As I write, leftist-motivated Western powers are seeding and nurturing chaos across the globe and in many nations; destabilizing, pouring fuel onto conflagrations; breaking complex systems of design, production, and maintenance; snapping webs of trade, transport, distribution; threatening, lying, blackmailing and bribing; encouraging hatred, resentment and despair. 


What can stop them? 

Well, the first thing is that there is no cohesive desire to stop leftist destruction. We would have to want to stop leftism, and do something else instead. 

The West is leftist here-and-now, and getting more-so. The mass majority are invested in one or several left-agenda items, therefore resistance is neutralized and cooperation widespread.

In the short-term it is nearly-always pleasanter or more expedient to join the left-agenda, than to oppose it; even when its long-term lethality has been recognized. Selling-out has become the single major career path for those with talent and the capacity for hard-work.

  

It is a snare and delusion to suppose that those who oppose the leftist-agenda can succeed in stopping and reversing it. It is too easy to destroy, too hard to sustain and build. 

Anyway, two wrongs don't make a right: double-opposition is futile. 

The problem is not what we shouldn't, but what we should do


So, first (before anything else) we must want to stop leftism because we want something-else more - want that something-else as the highest priority in our own life. 

Since this world makes destruction easy, and this mortal life is dominated by short-termism and expediency; the only conceivably effective answer is when people live with their hopes fixed beyond this mortal life and world; and with faith that to dwell eternally in such Goodness is personally achievable. 

Work it out...


Sunday 30 October 2022

Minimalism in music - Vivaldi to Glass

I was not, on the whole, much interested by the 20th century classical musical genre called minimalism; but I recognized that it was taking-up something that had been present in classical music from very early. 


There were pre-Baroque forms such as the chaconne and the passacaglia, which were built around a recurring bass line - but later there are many parts of Vivaldi's concertos that seem to capture the spirit of 'minimalism' more exactly.

These are built around an interest in musical textures of different layers of instruments structured quite simply, using rhythmically-pulsing, chordal homophony, and without melody; harmonically built on several (not just one) segments of repeated harmony. 

Vivaldi's Concerto for Four Violins RV 580 is a superbly enjoyable example where this 'minimalist' technique is used throughout - I regard it as one of Vivaldi's very best pieces of music:


My favourite piece of 20th century minimalism is Philip Glass's music for the 1985 movie Mishima; and, among these pieces, I think the best is Runaway Horses:


Glass returns to the Chaconne/ Passacaglia idea, but with a recurring sequence of chords instead of a bass line; a strong rhythmic pulse much like Vivaldi; and Glass uses a particularly appealing harmonic sequence. 

As with Vivaldi's RV 580 - there is neither melody nor counterpoint (melody played against melody) - which is, pretty much, what negatively-'defines' minimalism. 

Instead, sustained interest is effectively provided by adding-to, subtracting-from, and varying the layers of instruments (mirroring Vivaldi's use of textures) - and by deploying different kinds of arpeggio (broken-chords), with different divisions of notes.

Here it works very well for me! I find the result hypnotically gripping, and it packs an appealingly wistful emotionality. 


A man being lifted by a crane, with a hook through his nostril...

When I was 12 or 13, a new kid arrived in my year at school. The first I heard of him was a conversation that went:


Have you met that new kid, Peter Knight?

No - why?

He does a great impression of a man being lifted by a crane, with a hook through his nostril...


And, sure enough, he did! 

Aged 12-13 - that proved to be sufficient basis for a friendship that lasted for a year or two; until he moved somewhere else, and was never seen again. 


Note: I also mentioned this memorable event eight years ago in some autobiographical recollections

Saturday 29 October 2022

The catastrophic global collapse of the Christian churches thirty months ago - did you even notice it?

To hear most Christians talk now; you would have thought that the church apostasy, strikes, shut-downs, and lock-outs of spring 2020 was a trivial incident buried in ancient history. 

It should not be necessary; but in case memories have faded; remind yourself what happened:

https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-main-purpose-of-current-crisis.html


We need to get this straight: What happened - what the Christian churches did to themselves, by choice, and after reflection - was unprecedented in the history of Christianity, in its nature and its severity.

Because it has neither been acknowledged nor repented, the spiritual damage both revealed and exacerbated by the birdemic remains undiminished. 


Therefore; whatever the mainstream, self-styled Christian churches are now doing - they carry with them the full implications of this colossal sin; compounded by two years worth of dishonest denial. 


Demonic spite and resentment, on the cusp of nihilistic destruction

The recent act of European energy-supply sabotage - taken in its actual context - impressed me as one of the most shocking and blatant acts of calculatedly nihilistic destruction of which I am aware. 

That 'The West' is (here and now) capable of such a thing, defensible only by ridiculous lies and absurd projection. Yet exactly that insultingly-ridiculous absurdity was solemnly asserted throughout the globalist mass media and by (not-) 'national' (not-) leaders; and (apparently) believed by the unfathomably idiotic masses of the West, including those most affected! 

Well... in such a world, nothing of evil is ruled-out; almost anything could happen - even when it does not materially benefit anyone (any human, that is - which is the clue). 


I always expected that if the side of God, creation and The Good ever came to threaten the 'progress' of atheist-materialist-leftism; then the ultimate response of the dominant Establishment would be self-destructive; an attempt to blow-up The Whole Thing, and/or bring it tumbling-down. 

So, what is stopping the powers of destructive evil? Why are we still here; why are you reading this?

Well, those humans who are utterly in thrall to demons and in positions of power, are still in a minority; and must work with the consent of a larger assemblage of the greedy, the depraved, the power-crazed and the stupid. 

Destructive evil must still be cloaked in excuses and rationales - albeit the cloak may be flimsy and semi-transparent. 

These cloaking rationales do not need to be plausible by the standards of the past; because Men's minds - Men's thinking and insight - are by-now thoroughly corrupted by many decades of pervasive and rising materialism-atheism-leftism; willingly invited-into Men's hearts, and there nurtured.


But it is easy to see the cloaking process at work in the Western media (and, apparently, among the Establishment). 

Simply by talking incessantly about taboo possibilities, their shock and revulsion value is diminished by habituation. The once-unthinkable is actually thought; the once-undoable is modelled, and its pros and cons weighed. 

The clarity of stark moral simplicities is buried beneath (permitted) wrangling over (permitted) details, 'evidence' and rival models. 

The process is long-established in the media, in relation to all of the Big Lies upon which  the major strategies of evil are based (CO2 climate environmentalism, mass migration, antiracism etc). Stark, simple false assertions are buried beneath irrelevant quibbles over the 'validity' (and 'authority') of proximate 'data'. 


Anyway, there is no doubt in my mind that there is a powerful element in The West who are currently actively-engaged in the necessary 'manufacture of consent' among those with the necessary power; to escalate the Fire Nation versus West conflict into the most destructive possible conflagration

This goal of Mega-Destruction ASAP; is not 'for' any reason, other than that is what these individuals want; destruction is what gives them personal gratification. It comes from sheer spitefulness, triggered by their loss of global control. 

They do not need to gain from the destruction in terms of (for example) wealth, power, status or lust. They gain from the destruction of their 'enemies' - and that is enough. Such is the nature of spite. 

Indeed, when spite has mastery, individuals will self-harm, or even self-destruct*, in order to inflict suffering on those they most resent. 

(*e.g. This is seen in some suicides; and is indeed sometimes explicit in suicide messages or notes. "I'll kill myself, and then she'll be sorry." "You drove me to do this, and I want you to feel guilty for the rest of your life.")


The very fact that the Fire Nation has brought even a glimmer of hope to a world that - just two and a bit years ago - seemed to be caught inescapably in the grip of a unitary global totalitarianism that explicitly desired the full impoverishment, omni-surveillance and micro-control of nearly-all the population; is what fuels this spiteful destructiveness. 

We are seeing the very first movements of a tidal change against the core agenda of evil. Seemingly, the tide has actually turned, and events are (in totality, overall) moving against the totalitarian-progressive-leftist trend in several substantial parts of the world, for the first time in decades. 

This is, of course, existentially intolerable for those who have come to believe in the irresistible progression of their kind of inversional evil. 

They have had it all their own way for decades, but now - just as the world was in their grasp! - much of the world is turning-against them, defying their plans, opposing their values!


Materially speaking these are uniquely dangerous times. 

If the spiteful destroyers (at or near the top of power structures) get their way; we will soon (or today) begin to see acts of unprecedented destructiveness - designed to escalate rapidly and uncontrollably.

In my judgment; this will happen, unless those responsible are stopped from doing it. 

And the reason for stopping will have to be spiritual - since the world of material argument has been colonized and controlled by evil. 


In other words; there is currently an increased potential for spiritual growth among individuals in the West, as the spiteful become mastered by their destructive impulses, and as their cloaks of reasonableness and idealism become ever flimsier and more ragged.

I believe that this can be observed. It is part of things 'coming to a point'. 

The side of evil is getting more evil; and the side of good is separating-out, separating itself from evil goals bit by bit... and becoming more conscious of its own affiliation to God and creation. 


This divergence is observable on a month-by-month timescale - as can be seen from a comparison of the untruthfulness of leadership statements from either side. 

One side has incrementally built an empire of lies; lies built on lies, protected by ever-more (and more absurd) lies; with blatant projections of their own sins and motivations onto 'the enemy'. 

While the other side (remarkably!) has become more honest; and displays a increasingly balanced and complete understanding of the global situation, and the values and ideals at stake. 


All of which means that if mass destruction (of one kind or another) does Not happen soon; then things are probably looking-up, spiritually, for The World (if not for us in The West).  


Friday 28 October 2022

Can a real Christian be a member of the church of another religion?

This post is a follow-up to the earlier post today; and forms another - less extreme - example of the same principle that a chattel slave of an evil master - one who lives in accordance with his evil master's agenda; may, nonetheless, be a follower of Jesus Christ and attain salvation. 


Regular readers will know that I regard myself as a 'Fourth Gospel Christian' - the nature of, and arguments for which, I set-out in an online mini-book called Lazarus Writes

Such a conceptualization of being Christian - in its most stark and absolute form, as is currently imposed by a world led by evil-affiliated Men - is a matter of the heart; of inner motivation and commitment. That is, a matter having no necessary relationship to any church, profession or action: whether positively or negatively.

Thus, most church-affiliated Christians I judge not to be Christian; but to have (whether they know it or not) affiliated to the evil agenda of This World; affiliated whether directly by primary political affiliations, or via loyalty and obedience to a church leadership who is in-thrall-to the worldly agenda. 


Conversely I judge there to be at least some real (in their hearts, by motivation) Christians across all of the Christian church denominations of which I am aware; and those unaffiliated to any church...

And, I therefore presume, there are some real Christians in other, not-Christian, religions. Why not? 

There might be many reasons why this could happen, and therefore I presume that it does happen: i.e. that there are followers of Christ and desirers of salvation who are apparently devout members of non-Christian (including Christianity-opposed) churches.


To be clear; such a reliance upon inner motivation to define a Christian does not imply that it does not matter what a person does or what religion they follow - it surely will matter to each individual, in his own unique way. What is possible - or necessary - in the way of church membership for one person, may not be possible for another. 

Neither does it imply that I am obliged to accept anybody's assurance that he or she is really a Christian despite whatever he does (whether apparently Christian-compatible, or Christian-hostile) - quite the contrary! 

I can, will and do discern, evaluate and judge each Man's sincerity of faith regardless of the specific 'facts' of his worldly actions; and using the inner guidance and guidance of the Holy Ghost - which (as the Fourth Gospel tells us) are gifts of all who follow Jesus.  

In a world where (so far as I can tell) nearly-all the religious leaders of all the churches - whether self-identified as Christian or not-Christian - seem obviously to be corrupted into service to evil; I am not very interested in the specific external features of religious observance in 'people in general', but only in particular. 


We cannot, of course, know another Man's heart for sure; but in this mortal life we must do our best to discern other Men's hearts - and act accordingly; and this judgment ought to come primarily and fundamentally from the realm of spirit and our divine self - not from theories, nor 'observations', nor 'evidence'. 

 

Christian slave of an evil master: a thought experiment

If it is accepted that it is possible for a slave to be a Christian, even the chattel slave of an evil master; then it is sometimes valuable to consider the implications of this fact. 

This fact implies that it is possible for a Man frequently and systematically to do acts of evil, indeed to live his life in active service to the demonic agenda of evil - and yet to follow Jesus Christ in his heart, such as to achieve salvation after death. 


My assumption is that a slave may be compelled to choose between doing acts of evil (in accordance with his master's will); or else suffer starvation, dreadful punishment or death if he refuses; combined with a recognition that many (I would say most) Men will (for reasons of constitution as well as insufficient courage) lack the strength to resist this kind of intimidation. 

Ultimately, most Men will serve evil rather than die - that is a fact of observation. 

This is relevant to us in The West today, who are in a position analogous to the chattel slave of an evil master; because we are physically utterly dependent-upon (and helpless in the face of) a totalitarian social system that is controlled by evil Men, who serve the demonic agenda. 

Like the slave; to be a Christian we modern Men need to recognize a distinction (but not a division) between the body and the soul, between the controlled evil material realm - and the potential for freedom in the spiritual realm by which we are connected with God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost and a world of angelic spiritual beings. 

This can only 'work' for salvation when it is understood that the spiritual realm is primary and greater than the subsidiary material realm; such that - even when the material realm is wholly-subjugated to evil - such a realm is only analogous to a small planet in the universe of spirit. 

The imaginary (?) evil planet really is evil, and it is an indivisible part of the whole created universe; yet we can choose Not to dwell there as our final and eternal destination. 


Our first task is to acknowledge the reality of our situation; the scope and depth of the problem of evil here-and-now.

...Just as a slave of an evil master cannot achieve salvation until after he recognizes that his master is indeed evil when judged by divine standards: so must we.

Secondly, we need to recognize that God has made provision for the salvation of any Man who desires salvation in his heart - even those of us who are cowardly in respect of physical suffering, weak in terms of will and commitment, or who are terrified of death. 

So long as such sins are known as sins, and are repented by affiliation to God - and so long as the choice is made to follow Jesus - there is No Problem for the slave, or for us. 


If we really desire salvation in our hearts, we are assured of salvation.


Thursday 27 October 2022

Why are new laws evil?

It is an obvious aspect of contemporary value-inversion that new laws are net-evil and old laws are not enforced. The legal system has become an agent of corruption at both global and national levels (and indeed in the sub-legal regulations that govern the workplace). 

Yet it used to be the case that the law was seen as essentially moral - and indeed I think it mostly was. 

How did we get from a situation where laws aimed at good, to the current when laws are designed and implemented such as to corrupt?

The deepest answer is related to Man's contact with the spiritual realm and divine guidance. 


In the oldest kind of hunter gatherer societies there were no laws and no need for laws. 

Men lived - spontaneously, mostly-unconsciously - substantially immersed-in the realm of spirits (e.g. the dead walked among them, spirits participated in everyday life, spiritual guidance was sought for decisions). 

Divine values naturally permeated all Men and all of society - and it was obvious to the community when such guidance was defied; and what ought to be done about it.

When Man lives in close communion with 'the gods' there is no need for laws - indeed laws would be a crude simplification and impairment of the natural justice of (mostly-) god-aligned Men. 


In agrarian societies of the classical-medieval era - Men retained a considerable, albeit dwindling, element of this unconscious spiritual immersion and automatic knowledge of divine guidance; but it needed to be made explicit and codified as laws. 

In other words, what had been unconscious and implicit, needed to become (and was) made conscious and explicit - in the summary form of laws. 

(Albeit, laws still needed and got interpretation. A wise judge took law as a framework but discerned, from his participation in the spiritual, the implicit intent behind particular laws; and therefore the partly autonomous-partly-immersed judge bridged between the generalizations of law and the specifics of instances.)

Laws were therefore partly spontaneously-known and partly reasoned; and the spontaneous awareness aspect was widely shared among Men; such that they generated mostly-just laws; and were mostly-able to understand the justice and coherence of these laws. 

In sum: Men were partly-god-aligned; but needed explicit social guidance by laws. And this social guidance was also partly god-aligned (because of the Men who made the laws). So, the law served as positive and helpful 'backup' value system; to prevent the increasingly autonomous Men from straying too far from what was needed to sustain community.  


In the modern era; after childhood Men lost the ancient immersive awareness of spirits and the divine; and lost their innate knowledge of God. 

Society, and its laws, were no longer spontaneous, but must consciously be chosen (on the basis of reason acting upon instincts). On the whole, and by c. 2000AD overwhelmingly; modern Men eventually decided Not to choose consciously to re-engage with God or the spiritual realm.

Modern Laws are therefore the product of a materialist-atheist society; one that is detached from the natural, and disconnected from the influences that previously had coordinated Man's law with the divine. 

And modern Men regard modern laws as simply the product of the imperatives of a materialist-atheist society. While ancient laws were an (albeit imperfect, often corrupted) expression of divine will; modern laws are understood as essentially arbitrary aspects of a system consisting of interest groups.  

Modern law is just Man-Made: and its rationale and justification is no deeper than the motives and procedures of those Men who make and impose laws. 


Now, law functions (imperfectly) to assert here-and-now human interests upon the individual. The individual experiences law as either hostile and to be eluded, or a trick to be exploited for self-gain. 

And group interests change according to time and situation; and different societal groups generate different laws. As a result; laws are increasingly expedient; being changeable and incoherent - legally contradictory laws are commonplace. 

Since there is no legal coherence to enable harmony; actual implementation of laws therefore will fluctuate - unpredictably - in accordance with changes in the balance of social power.  

Incoherence is intrinsically evil, because it is the opposite of the harmony of divine creation - therefore generating incoherence is a frequent tool of evil. Contradictions between laws is therefore a feature, not a bug, for those whose motivation is evil. 


If law is not positively moral, that law is immoral (because there is no such thing as 'amoral') - and therefore modern laws are immoral. This is inevitable, since there is no basis for morality in an atheistic-materialist reality without purpose or meaning. 

Consequently, the legal system has transformed from being an imperfect instrument of divine purpose; to an increasingly effective tool for the promotion of purposive (i.e. demonic) evil in the world.

Evil is properly defined negatively; as being against Good - which is God and creation. Modern law - by its selfish and expedient motivations, arbitrary incoherence and changing implementation - works to damage, destroy, or invert the natural realm of divine creation. 

In other words; because new laws are disconnected from the divine and spiritual, and then imposed on Men who are themselves disconnected from the divine and spiritual; new laws must be evil - by intent and in practice. 


If we want again to have good laws; then we must first consciously choose to re-establish awareness of God and the realm of the spiritual (in other words: Final Participation); and then, from that basis; strive (through various means, potentially including laws) to live in harmony with what we would then (yet imperfectly) discover. 


Wednesday 26 October 2022

Chuckling baby-face sun today...

 


Crystalline knowledge versus random relativism

One of the philosophical problems of which I am most aware is that (for most people) there are only two - opposed - models of knowledge: both of which strike me as obviously wrong. 

The mainstream modern view could be called random relativism; which assert that ultimately there can be no knowledge; because all knowledge is relative to the limited perspective and labile capacity of the knower; and that meaningless randomness (or chance) can explain all apparent structure to reality. 

Random relativism removes and purpose (thus meaning) from human life and the universe; and human morality is explained in terms of a by-product of natural selection leading to the innate desire of pleasure and to avoid suffering. 

Mainstream modern 'morality' (of all its many types) is therefore some variant of 'utilitarianism' - which regards (in some way, and there are many versions - perhaps as many as there are relativists) optimizing Man's psychological state, during his mortal lifetime, as the only coherent virtue.  


Logically considered; random relativism is incoherent; since nobody could know that it was true; due to a version of the 'Cretan Liar' paradox. A Man cannot coherently assert that he knows that knowledge is impossible. 

Yet random relativism persists anyway; presumably because of the conviction that it might be true, whether we know it or not. 

For instance: "I cannot know for sure that life is meaningless; but life might be meaningless nonetheless." 

This is, in turn, bolstered by psychological aversions to 'wishful thinking' (or being suspected of wishful thinking); such that the default assumption among those who regard themselves as hard-nosed, bold and rigorous has become established that life is without purpose and meaning, and nothing is really known. 


And, in practice, such avowed skepticism functions more as an affectation and (attempted) status marker than a functional ethic; because those who assert this kind of nihilism nonetheless have strongly held convictions on numerous subjects, which they regard as important and strive to persuade others to accept.


Against this species of mainstream nihilism in public discourse is a version of the religious perspective that previously dominated public discourse. 

This regards truth as absolute, fixed and knowable (by some means). 

Thus true knowledge of reality is regarded as having an unchanging and structured quality, of a nature analogous to crystal; so we could call the understanding of the truth or reality a kind of crystalline knowledge. 

Crystalline knowledge is understood in terms of a created reality whose structure ultimately does not change (although it may go through recurrent cycles).

In other words reality is total, eternal, timeless - reality is complete, cannot be added-to - its structure Just Is: therefore to know reality is also a thing unchanging. 


This type of understanding has been characteristic of almost all 'Western philosophy' - and also of the official theologies of  'Western' (which includes Middle Eastern/ Asia Minor) religions - and of the Eastern Religions when they are given metaphysical form. 

Of course, many of the actual adherents of religions do not share their 'official' theologies, and live in accordance with some sort of 'folk religion' of an unofficial kind, one that is not compatible with crystalline knowledge. 

Or else they hold a variety of internally-incoherent fundamental beliefs - each 'encapsulated', to some extent, from the whole. Indeed, perhaps most religious adherents do this. 


These two version of understanding are usually presented as the only possibilities - and it is assumed that all other proposals will reduce, upon analysis, to one of these two. 

If so, then - by my understanding - we would be left with a choice between two types of incoherence. Crystalline knowledge was comprehensively rejected by Western civilization as inadequate - while random relativism leads to a arbitrary assertions.   

These are two systems of metaphysics - that is, we are concerned with the primary assumptions we make about reality. And, at the level of metaphysics, nothing is proved or disproved by 'evidence' - because what counts as evidence and proof is dictated by prior metaphysical assumptions.

If neither of the above are regarded as satisfactory, then at least one other possibility might be discerned that may prove better - and perhaps even good enough to form a basis for explaining human knowing. 


I believe that I have found such a metaphysical system (that understanding which has been expounded many times on this blog since about 2014) - one that cannot be reduced to either of crystalline knowledge or random relativism; and which does a better job of explaining those things* that I regard as most needing explanation.

 However, although I regard metaphysics as vitally important for me, and for others who are trapped by the false dichotomy of two systems neither of which they regard as satisfactory; nonetheless, metaphysics is not reality itself - but only the most fundamental description of reality. 

It is therefore vital to recognize that no finite description can capture the unboundedness and mutuality of reality; therefore no system of metaphysics can ever be wholly satisfactory - but will always have limits, contradictions and defects. 


*Things such as the primacy of love, free agency, the reality of evil in the creation of a Good and loving God; and the reality of truly generative and open-ended creation that Men can participate-in. 

Advice about "women"...

Don't know about you - but I cordially dislike the online (and print) manosphere genre of "advice about women" - the stuff that emanates from chaps who claim to have a lot of experience of a lot of women (because, obviously, they know the most and are wisest on the subject - yes?) 


Not, I notice, the opposite kind of chap who has known one woman and stuck with her... Apparently such men don't seem to have quite the same keen-ness to expound at such length on "women" - and what could such a man know about "women", anyway? 

(Or maybe it is best for the expert on women to be something in-between? Perhaps there is an ideal number for experience - a sweet spot, somewhere between one and loads?) 

The women-experts talk about "women" in the form of sweeping generalizations, almost invariably rounded-out by checklists and bullet points. 


My problem is that - when it is Christian, as well as manosphere - the mode of such discourse destroys that which it purports to promote: i.e. the possibility of good relations between a man and a woman - one man and one woman. 

Why? Because it is an Ahrimanic, bureaucratic way of talking about people and inculcates and entrains such a mindset. But instead we ought, as Christians seeking good, to be concerned about individuals. And not, therefore, to reason inductively about particular people. 

Now, of course, everybody - including myself - talks and writes about 'people' and subsets of people such as The Establishment and The Masses, and Westerners. We talk about specific nations, classes, professions, religions, ideologies etc. etc. We do so for various reasons - sometimes genuinely scientific, more often to do with how 'best' to 'organize' society. 

Or sometimes it is a form of humour (albeit this may be destructive in tendency and in large doses, even as it is indeed genuinely funny).


But that 'categorical' way of talking about aggregates and averages is innately and intrinsically hostile to good individual human relationships. 

It is even hostile to our capacity to respond to specific situations, to the me-here-now of actual living in particular places.   

The one is descriptions of crystalline structured, timeless-generality; the only is our personal experience of something fluid, interactive, unique. If the first impinges on the second, it will tend to degrade and destroy it.   

And 'the general' does indeed tend to impinge on 'the personal' - because the general is the subject of public discussion and debate; the subject of expertize, training, evidence, reasoning and argument. 

Whereas the personal is - and should be - essentially private. 


If you want to weaken or destroy an established good personal relationship (e.g. a marriage) - then it just needs one of the two to start analyzing it using general concepts that (supposedly) apply to most/ average/ subsets of people; to start discussing its details with 'friends' or with professional experts whose knowledge derives from samples of data from several or many persons - and who claim the ability to apply this 'evidence' to the specific situation. 

If you want to prevent somebody finding a good relationship - go ahead and do the same! Get him to frame all potential and incipient relationships within a categorical scheme derived from what most/ average/ this-subtype of person supposedly does. 

Yet, there is a vast gulf between, on the one hand, trying to prevent what are usually bad outcomes for most/ average people of certain types (utilitarian social policy...); and, on the other hand, trying to promote good outcomes between specific and unique individuals. They aim in opposite directions. 

Trying to conflate two incommensurable approaches has predictably adverse outcomes. 


My point is general: How we discuss something affects - and may destroy - what it is that we intend (or tell-ourselves we intend*) to say. 

For instance; as a doctor, scientist, literary scholar or teacher; I came to realize that anyone who advised or instructed me about my subject in a 'managerial' mode Would Do Harm to that role, if I took any notice of him; regardless of the content. 

The mode of thinking that was signaled by managerial discourse, is one that is innately hostile to good outcomes of a kind that required either personal or creative engagement.

The same applies to advice or instructions purportedly aimed-at personal (or creative) goods.


Think about it. 


*Our awareness of our own good intentions may be (often is) self-deception; may be yielding to a temptation to sin. Do we really want to help 'people'; or is it instead that we personally enjoy talking and writing about 'this kind of stuff', and posing as an expert; and rationalize it with an altruistic veneer?

Tuesday 25 October 2022

Woke censorship of truth is rooted in dishonesty

The astonishingly aggressive zeal behind the woke censorship of truth, originates in the foundational dishonesty of woke ideology. 

The mainstream-dominant materialist-atheist-leftist ideology is rooted in the Big Lies that underpin it. 


Those who inhabit such ideology (essentially all leaders, and a probable majority of the Western masses) cannot bear to see, hear or read truths that contradict their ideology. 

Such truths cause them to experience immediate and accelerating mental anguish; since they 'trigger' progressive and open-ended collapse of the ideological system. 

Consequently, the instant response is to attempt an immediate shut-down of truth-telling; at any cost and using whatever means; without limit - up-to and including destruction of property, production and human life. 


In a system of inverted-values; the morality is one that acts to maintain the system - which entails an imperative of rapid suppression of any relevant but contradictory truth: complete suppression, as fast as possible. 

Hence the unique nature and severity of woke censorship. 


Harmony with divine purposes

From the Classical-Medieval era of human consciousness, we have inherited an habitual way of planning life according to a blueprint. We make a picture of how ideally we want things to be; and - obediently to the blueprint - work-towards making it, realizing it; often by making rules and following stepwise plans. 

This has been common in traditional religions. There was a more-or-less explicit model for how Men ought to be, for the trajectory of their lives, for the kind of society and how it should function. This mode of living was inherited and adapted by the early secular ideologists such as communists, nationalists, fascists - they worked towards some ideal blueprint by means of encouraging obedience to stepwise plans. 

It is still the usual way of proceeding for the rulers of this-world; and indeed over the past few decades it has been extended down to even medium sized human institutions, via mandatory (law- and regulation-driven) bureaucratic requirements for 'transparent' auditable structures - from 'mission statements' at the top; all the way down to micro-monitored, micro-managed functionality of all personnel.


But Man's consciousness has developed such that this way of proceeding has become first ineffective, then actively destructive. This applies to the ideals and procedures of traditionalist churches, as well as to corporations and government - these do not work as they used to work, nor as intended.

The means defeat the ends. 

The ultimate reason for this failure is that in the 'Medieval' consciousness era, Men did not (and could not) distinguish between spirit and matter. Material manipulations were therefore effective at shaping (including improving) Men's spirituality toward ideal blueprints exactly because the material manipulations arose-from Men's spirituality. 


For instance; until recent centuries Men did not (could not) distinguish between the consecrated host and the body of Christ; only around the reformation did Men begin to separate the spiritual and material aspects of the host, and ask what was the relationship, and 'how it worked' when the host was consecrated. 

Modern Man is much further down that path, and does not spontaneously experience that the material is a 'subset' of the spiritual; and so the link between what we Do and our Spirit, has become 'problematic'. The answer decided is not the point; but instead the fact that there is experienced a question to be answered. 

Now we can-not (because we do not) take-for-granted what used to be known unconsciously and spontaneously.


Yet, for most serious Christians, there seems to be no alternative to the traditional ways of creating a blueprint and striving to realize it. It seems to be the choice between that - or else a surrender to the evils of mainstream-materialist-atheism. 

This is experienced as the contrast between order and chaos - God's order versus the devil's chaos. 

Such a framework envisages human life as a static conformity to order - our proper life is allocated to each, and Goodness is to obey that allocation, and to behave as set-out by the ideal situation; and how to get there is a function of laws and practices - which it is each Man's job to follow. 

For traditional religion; the aim is the blueprint: each Man's job is to conform to that blueprint*.


It may be helpful instead to consider the ideal of living in Harmony with Divine Purposes

This sees the opposite of demonic chaos as being creation, rather than order. 

The principle of life is creation - not order; in other words we are intended to join-with and add-to God's ongoing work of creation - which is a matter of continually-repeatedly bringing our own selves and resources into harmony with God's purposes (instead of fulfilling a pre-decided role). 

In principle (as an aim) all of life can be conduced on that basis. Whenever we need to decide; we might do so on the basis of how our choices fit with our knowledge of divine purposes - and aiming to remain always in harmony with God's existing creation


('In harmony', that is, with creation - not with 'this world' - because 'this world' includes much evil intent, corruption and chaos - as well as creation.)

 

Such a life-ideal depends on each Man being able and willing to discern divine purposes, and the presence or absence of harmony between our choices and ongoing-creation. We each need to be able to know (or to learn) the relationship between our choices - and that harmony-purpose.

This is possible because we are each and all Children of God: that is, we have divinity in us, and therefore innerly partake of God's purposes; also because outer guidance from the Holy Ghost is available to all who wish to follow Christ to resurrected eternal life.

Yet it is also essential to be aware that this ideal of living in harmony with divine purposes is a guiding ideal - and not actually attainable; because this mortal life is ultimately for learning, not to be perfect. 

In mortal life on this earth we are learning for Heaven


Thus, we Modern Men are intended to learn from our failures (and successes) in living in creative harmony with God's purposes. This is in contrast to the traditional framework, where we were intended to learn from our failures (and successes) in conforming to an ideal blueprint of life. 

Now we are meant individually to be creative in our stance; whereas in the past we were (to some partial but significant extent) operating from the situation of being immersed-in God's creativity: the challenge was to conform to it. 

We can only add to God's creativity (as we are called to do) when we are no longer immersed in it. And creating in-harmony only becomes a problem (only something to strive-for) when we are Not already and spontaneously a part of God's creativity.   


Living in harmony with divine purposes requires faith; because the inner and outer guidance concerning what is divine purpose and harmony, is a direct experience relevant to exactly that specific situation in which we currently find ourselves. 

...And not, therefore, a consequence of either external instruction from some blueprint, nor a consequence of reason working upon evidence.  

This means that we may need to conduct our lives, make our decisions, in ways that violate both the blueprint and the dictates of reason-applied-to-evidence. 

Hence the need for faith.


*NOTE added

Traditional Heaven could be characterized as having No purpose, but only harmony

In other words (and deriving, probably, from Plato's conception of the realm of ideas) Heaven is not going-anywhere

Traditional Heaven Just Is. Because Heaven is perfection, there is nowhere for it to go. 

This contrasts with the idea of Heaven proposed here; which is that Heaven is the situation in which Men have become fully-divine and therefore fully in harmony with God's creative purposes; and thus Men participate (each to to the limit of his or her capacity) to the unending work of creation.

Monday 24 October 2022

The sun is sleepy today


 

Irony is weakness

To use irony is, in essence, having it both ways; saying one thing but implying another. 

This is taken as a sign of subtlety and wit - a deliberate 'playfulness' that is much praised in contemporary literature and art; and is certainly appealing at a surface level.

The resulting ambiguity gives access to a larger audience and unifies even Men of opposed tendencies; yet irony is dangerous in these times - a snare that may become a habit. 


This because irony is weakness; it is a hallmark of one who does Not himself know with confidence and surety - and who also does not want to be known as one who operates from solid premises.

And that means weakness; it means lack of courage. 

Courage can only be sustained by solidity, confidence, surety; and sustained courage is essential to choose and keep the side of Good, in a world ruled by evil. 


Is there any good reason to be aware of the mainstream media?

On the whole it is certainly best to avoid the mainstream media; because - except in very small and short doses - we will soon find ourselves interacting with it; and then, at the detailed level of specific assertion, we will be interacting with zero informational content

The main reason I can think of, to be aware of the mainstream media, is simply to recognize how opposed or unrelated it is to reality at a thematic level; and to keep in mind this fact. 

And for this; a swift glance at the Headlines is sufficient. 

After all, from the media POV - the Headlines are (apart from fake-images) the only thing that really matters. 


Sunday 23 October 2022

The corruption of religions, by piling-up of revelations

It seems that there is an almost irresistible tendency for 'religions' (and other things like 'religions' to bulk-up with time: to become, if not more genuinely complex, greater and greater in quantity of assertions. 

More and more 'revelations' are added to the original foundations until... well, in the first place the original foundations may become obscured, the reality of the religion may be distorted away from its primary core; and eventually - which may not take long - the actuality of the religion may be directed in the opposite direction from its origins in several or many respects. 

In the end, a religion - in its actual practice and effect - may become the inversion of how it began.  


This can be seen with Christianity if, like me, one regards the Fourth Gospel as a valid record its its origins. It seems that the primal simplicity of Jesus Christ's example and teaching was substantially added-to (and thereby, significantly, both obscured and distorted) almost immediately after his ascension; and the process continued for centuries.  

Some of these post-Christ revelations were helpful clarifications and extrapolations of the consequences of what Jesus said; but most were not; and many were contradictions. 


Ideally, it seems to me, it would be best to take the primal simplicity of the origins, and to examine the implications, and to explore what these mean in individual lives and the lives of groups and nations

However, this process seems to be rare - perhaps because it is cognitively difficult; and because Men have an innate interest in novelty; and in getting immediate answers to their own personal and urgent questions, rather than to exploring the implications of the foundation. 

And sometimes because there are successful attempts to manipulate Men; by snowing them with unmanageable information, by generating the incomprehensible, by creating a fixed attitude of inadequacy and therefore de facto obedience and passivity in relation to authority.  


At any rate, I observe a very similar trajectory of accumulations of assertions in those religious and spiritual movements of which I have some knowledge. 

Mormonism underwent enormous accumulative changes through its first decades from the origins in 1830; and soon became hardly recognizable both in terms of style and content, and in terms of the scale of emphasis.  

Similarly Rudolf Steiner's spiritual science movement rapidly accumulated a truly vast mass of assertions, almost wholly from Steiner himself; from its simple origins in the philosophical works and Christian conversion of the late 19th century; and through next quarter century - only terminated by Steiner's death. 


The most extreme example is the New Age movement. This was never simple nor coherent, because always eclectic; drawing on CG Jung, the Westernized versions of several Eastern religions, and the 'beatnik'/ hippie youth cultures. 

But the New Age movement grew almost entirely by addition. Interest and motivation was maintained by heaping-up more and more possibilities - more alternative healing systems, more techniques of meditation... different psychoactive drugs; divination by astrology, magic or tarot; artifacts such as crystals, pyramids; ever more varieties of neo-paganism (Wicca, Drudism, Shamanism...). And so on. 

There were periodic attempts to bring some kind of coherence - for example John Michell's 1969 The View over Atlantis - which linked several themes such as UFOs and ETs, ley lines, and Atlantis as an archetype of ancient high civilizations - my means of a revived Neo-Platonism. 

But even in Michell's own work, the strong tendency to accumulate overwhelmed the rigorous exploration of principles. And the New Age movement as a whole simply absorbed and absorbed - and any rigor of reasoning was itself in a playful spirit; designed more to stimulate and entertain rather than to explore the implications of truth.  


(In such a situation, the true ruling principles of New Age became those of society at large - in this instance the acceptability boundaries of hegemonic materialistic, atheistic, leftism - within-which all New Age activity functioned. Thus the phenomenon of 'convergence'. New Agers might 'believe' almost anything spiritual - but are united in regarding (e.g.) climate change, racism, and the sexual revolution as among the most important moral issues of the day.)

   

I see much the same tendency at work in almost all domains of human action; including science where vast superstructures of 'research' are built on arbitrary or false claims (CO2 warmism - with its foundational lie of being able to predict global climate - is the egregious example). And in law - where legally-nonsensical and/or undefined-undefinable principles (such as 'hate crimes', 'racism', 'asylum-seeker', 'diversity', 'inclusion') are used to underpin truly enormous superstructures of bureaucracy; and to determine the fate of nations and civilizations. 


All these many tendencies have led to where we now stand; where Men's mind are utterly stunned and rendered ineffective by the incomprehensibly enormous accumulation of assertions. 

This leads, inevitably, to passivity; and to an attitude of 'not even trying' to understand but instead a stance of fluid, pragmatic, unprincipled, unmoored, here-and-now, expediency - getting-by, getting-along, making-the-best-of-it...

And yet: anther possibility remains as a living alternative. To discover, each for himself, the stark simplicities that underpin the incomprehensible superstructures: first and crucially in religion, especially including Christianity - but also everywhere else. 


...And then to determine whether these fundamentals are indeed true to reality as we know it; simply by paying them sustained attention, and learning from what eventuates


Saturday 22 October 2022

How to be 'humble'...

It might be thought that I am almost the last person in the world who is in any position to offer advice on the subject of attaining humility!*

The fact is that I don't even attempt to be humble; because I don't believe that humility is something which can be attained by striving, therefore people should not even attempt to be humble.

Furthermore, those who urge humility upon others are usually trying to manipulate - or dis-courage - them; it can be an aggressive act to urge humility on another, and an act of self-hating, demotivated nihilism to strive for humility in oneself. 


It seems particularly important at present that people do not get tricked into striving for humility; because these are times when the world at large is (wittingly, or self-deceptively) in service to evil; therefore a large majority of people - including the bulk of 'experts' - will falsely be informing, advising and instructing us. 

Anyone who does not go-along-with the prevailing ideas will likely find themselves accused of arrogance, and urged to be more humble: 

"Who are you? A single and a lone voice - to go against the consensus of both the mass majority and the (apparently) unanimous judgment of the experts, the professionals, those who are are far more educated and experienced in such matters. Isn't that extremely arrogant - if not crazy? Shouldn't you (as A Christian!) acknowledge that these others know-better than you do?..."  

Christians need to be able to withstand such pressures, and resist the calls for greater humility (among those who dissent). And they need to be able to do so on the basis of Christian virtues - because motivations are primary; and only Good motivations tend towards Good outcomes. 


Humility is indeed virtuous, but it is a sort-of side effect of other virtues that we can and should strive for; one of which is honesty. 

Thus humility is Not a 'primary' virtue; but a secondary consequence, an inevitable outcome, of pursuing the genuine primary virtues**. 

Desirable humility (the actual virtue) needs to be based-upon conscious and responsible acts of personal discernment. It should never be automatic, unconscious, nor done on the basis of external factors. Nor should our well-considered judgments be abandoned at the first sign of any opposition. 


Desirable humility is therefore a deep and structural thing; which has nothing to do with manners and personality. Someone who asserts his own humility and urges it upon others, is nowadays likely to be someone who shirks his ultimate responsibility for salvation. 

He is superficially humble, affects a 'meek and mild' demeanor; but is deeply prideful - because he has taken the side of the devil against God; opposes the loving harmony of divine creation; and seeks solidarity with the Empire of Lies - and he structures his life and behaviour accordingly. 

This may be evidenced by the phenomenon of doubling-down - whereby a sin is compounded by denying it is a sin, where an error is amplified by refusing to acknowledge it, where a lie is excused then covered-up to become a mutually-supporting system of untruths - rather than being admitted... 


While, on the other side, someone who digs in his heels and refuses to be persuaded by (dishonest) propaganda from (lying) Establishment sources - who indeed may publicly and forcefully assert what he judges to be the truth - may in fact be humble in the desirable and deep sense: as evidence by his commitment to truth, and willingness to admit his errors and expedient untruths. 

But errors will be admitted on a timescale of being personally worked-through, and known from within - not by 'humbly' submitting to the pressure of public opinion or official sanctions. 

Such a person is likely to become aware of his own sins, cowardice, misjudgments, missteps; and to acknowledge and repent them - to turn-around when he is going in the wrong direction, has taken the path towards evil. 


In sum, we can discern the desirable kind of real and deep humility when we observe someone over-time self-correcting - something always necessary; and self-correcting into-line-with real-reality, not conforming into-line-with the expedient fakes and lies of the mainstream and powerful. 

And we should learn to detect and reject those who affect humility as a style, and deploy the demand for humility as a cloak for domination.

In sum: desirable humility is only possible to those who acknowledge and discern correctly about the nature of spiritual war in this mortal world.

 

Notes: 

* Or if not me, the "last person" to advise on humility might be supposed as Vox Day... The rest of the post is intended to show the error in such a judgment!

**It is common to regard Pride as the worst of sins; and to regard Humility as the opposite of Pride - which, if true, would make Humility the greatest virtue. But this is not true. If Pride indeed has an opposite virtue, this virtue would be Faith: Faith in and commitment to God and to God's will. In other words the First Commandment, as applied to the Christian understanding and knowledge of God. 

Friday 21 October 2022

Living after science

We are living in a post-scientific age; which resembles the situation described in Walter M Miller's 1960 post-apocalytic sci-fi novel A Canticle for Liebowitz

This imagines a future when the tradition of science has been broken; therefore people can no longer understand the surviving artifacts and writings from the era when science was real

We need to be clear about this - "science" in 2022 is not corrupt, incompetent and inefficient: It Is Dead

What now calls itself science, simply is Not science: indeed, it is Not Even Trying to be science. 

I first expressed this in an article written 12 years ago; which may be of interest...  


After science: Has the tradition been broken? 

Bruce G. Charlton. After science: Has the tradition been broken? Medical Hypotheses. 2010; 74: 623-625 

Summary 

The majority of professional scientists make use of the artefacts of science but lack understanding of what these mean; raising the question: has the tradition of science been broken? Explicit knowledge is only a selective summary but practical capability derives from implicit, traditional or ‘tacit’ knowledge that is handed on between- and across-generations by slow, assimilative processes requiring extended human contact through a wide range of situations. This was achieved mainly by prolonged apprenticeship to a Master. Such methods recognize the gulf between being able to do something and knowing how you have done it; and the further gap between knowing how you have done something and being able to teach it by explicit instructions. Yet the ‘Master–apprentice’ model of education has been almost discarded from science over recent decades and replaced with bureaucratic regulation. The main reason is probably that scientific manpower has expanded so rapidly and over such a long period as to overwhelm the slow, sure and thorough traditional methods. In their innocence of scientific culture, the younger generation of scientists are like children who have been raised by wolves; they do not talk science but spout bureaucratic procedures. It has now become accepted among the mass of professional ‘scientists’ that the decisions which matter most in science are those imposed upon science by outside forces: for example by employers, funders, publishers, regulators, and the law courts. It is these bureaucratic mechanisms that now constitute the ‘bottom line’ for scientific practice. Most of modern science is therefore apparently in the post-holocaust situation described in A canticle for Liebowitz and After Virtue, but the catastrophe was bureaucratic, rather than violent. So, the tradition has indeed been broken. However, for as long as the fact is known that the tradition has been broken, and living representatives of the tradition are still alive and active, there still exists a remote possibility that the tradition could be revived. 

*** 
 

Imagine that the natural sciences were to suffer the effects of a catastrophe. A series of environmental disasters are blamed by the general public on the scientists. Widespread riots occur, laboratories are burnt down, physicists are lynched, books and instruments are destroyed. Finally a know-nothing political movement takes power and successfully abolishes science teaching in schools and universities, imprisoning and executing the remaining scientists. Later still there is a reaction against this destructive movement and enlightened people seek to revive science, although they have largely forgotten what it was. But all that they possess are fragments: a knowledge of experiments detached from any knowledge of the theoretical context which gave them significance; parts of theories unrelated either to the other bits and pieces of theory which they possess or to experiment; instruments whose use has been forgotten; half-chapters from books, single pages from articles, not always fully legible because torn and charred. Nonetheless all these fragments are re-embodied in a set of practices which go under the revived names of physics, chemistry and biology. Adults argue with each other about the respective merits of relativity theory, evolutionary theory and phlogiston theory, although they possess only a very partial knowledge of each. Children learn by heart the surviving portions of the periodic table and recite as incantations some of the theorems of Euclid. Nobody, or almost nobody, realizes that what they are doing is not natural science in any proper sense at all. For everything that they do and say conforms to certain canons of consistency and coherence and those contexts which would be needed to make sense of what they are doing have been lost, perhaps irretrievably

From After Virtue – Alasdair MacIntyre [1] 


The classic science fiction novel A canticle for Liebowitz by Walter Miller [2] portrays a post-nuclear-holocaust world in which the tradition of scientific practice – previously handed-down from one generation of scientists to the next – has been broken. Only a few scientific artefacts remain, such as fragments of electronic equipment. It turns out that after the tradition has been broken, the scientific artefacts make no sense and are wildly misinterpreted. For instance a blueprint is regarded as if it was a beautiful illuminated manuscript, and components such as diodes are regarded as magical talismans or pills.

I will argue that modern science may have entered a similar state in which for the majority of professional scientists the artefacts of science remain – such as the academic hierarchy, laboratory techniques and machines, statistical methods, and the peer review mechanism – but understanding of what these mean has apparently been lost; raising the question: has the tradition been broken?

A theme associated with philosophers such as Polanyi [3] and Oakeshott [4] is that explicit knowledge – such as is found in textbooks and scientific articles – is only a selective summary that misses that the most important capability derives from implicit, traditional or ‘tacit’ knowledge. It is this un-articulated knowledge that leads to genuine human understanding of the natural world, accurate prediction and the capacity to make effective interventions.

Tacit knowledge is handed on between- and across-generations by slow, assimilative processes which require extended, relatively unstructured and only semi-purposive human contact. What is being transmitted and inculcated is an over-arching purpose, a style of thought, a learned but then spontaneous framing of reality, a sense of how problems should be tackled, and a gut-feeling for evaluating the work or oneself, as well as others.

This kind of process was in the past achieved by such means as familial vocations, prolonged apprenticeship, co-residence and extended time spent in association with a Master – and by the fact that the Master and apprentice personally selected each other. The pattern was seen in all areas of life where independence, skill and depth of knowledge were expected: crafts, arts, music, scholarship – and science.

Although such methods sound a bit mysterious, not to say obscurationist, to modern ears – in fact they are solid realism and common sense. Such methods for ensuring the transmission of subtle knowledge recognize the gulf between being able to do something and knowing how you have done it; and the further gap between knowing how you have done something and being able to teach it by explicit instructions.

Such systems as apprenticeship recognize that the most important aspects of knowledge may be those which are not known or understood to be the most important, or may even be in opposition to that which is believed or supposed to be important. The educational ‘method’ was that an apprentice should spend a lot of time with the Master in many situations; and as for educational evaluation, the best way for a Master to know that his skill really has been passed-on, is for him to spend a lot of time with the apprentice in many situations.

Imperfect as it inevitably was, traditions were maintained and often improved over centuries by means of apprenticeship – which was regarded as the safest and surest way of ensuring that the knowledge and skills could be sustained and developed.

However, priorities have changed. The preservation and development of high-level human skills and expertise is no longer regarded as a priority, something to which many other concerns will inevitably need to be subordinated. And the ‘Master–apprentice’ model of education, which stretches back in human history as far as we know, has been all-but discarded from science (and much of mainstream culture) over recent decades. Indeed the assumptions have been reversed.

It is important to recognize that the discarding of traditions of apprenticeship and prolonged human contact in science was not due to any new discovery that apprenticeship was – after all – unnecessary, let alone that the new bureaucratic systems of free-standing explicit aims and objectives, summaries and lists of core knowledge and competencies etc. were superior to apprenticeship. Indeed there is nothing to suggest that they are remotely the equal of apprenticeship. Rather, the Master–apprentice system has been discarded despite the evidence of its superiority; and has been replaced by the growth of bureaucratic regulation.

The main reason is probably that scientific manpower, personnel or ‘human resources’ (as they are now termed) have expanded vastly over the past 60 years – probably about tenfold. So there was no possibility of such rapid and sustained quantitative expansion (accompanied, almost-inevitably, by massive decline in average quality) being achieved using the labour-intensive apprenticeship methods of the past. The tradition was discarded because it stood in the path of the expansion of scientific manpower.

Among the mass of mainstream professional scientists, science – as a distinctive mode of human enquiry – now has no meaning whatsoever. Among these same scientists, who dominate the social system of science both in terms of power and numbers, the resolution of scientific disputes and disagreements is a matter of power, not reason – and relevant ‘evidence’ is narrowly restricted to bureaucratically-enforced operational variables. The tradition seems to have been broken.

I first observed this when I worked in epidemiology, and I realized that most epidemiologists did not understand science and were not scientists – but they did not realize it [5]. They believed that what they did was science, since it had many of the explicit characteristics of science, it involved making measurements and doing statistics, it was accepted as science by many other people, and (most importantly!) epidemiology got funded as science. But most epidemiology was not science, as any real scientist could easily recognize – it was no more science than were those market researchers with clipboards who question pedestrians on the high street. I saw a similar picture in almost all the vast amount of ‘functional brain imagining’ which was the dominant and most prestigious type of Neuroscience. And again in the people who were mapping the average human genome – then (presumably) going on to map the genome of every individual human, then perhaps every creature on the planet?

As Jacob Bronowski once remarked: science is not a loose leaf folder of ‘facts’; not the kind of thing which can be expanded ad infinitum – simply by iterative addition of ever-more observations. Science is instead the creation of structured knowledge, with the emphasis on structure [6]. The modern scientific literature is ballooning exponentially with published stuff and ever-inflated claims about its significance – but, lacking structure, this malignantly-expanding mass adds-up to less-and-less. Meanwhile, understanding, prediction and the ability to intervene on the natural world to attain pre-specified objectives all dwindle; because real science is a living tradition not a dead archive.

The younger generation of scientists are like children who have been raised by wolves. They have learned the techniques but have no feel for the proper aims, attitudes and evaluations of science. What little culture they have comes not from science but from bureaucrats: they utterly lack scientific culture; they do not talk science, instead they spout procedures.

It has now become implicitly accepted among the mass of professional ‘scientists’ that the decisions which matter most in science are those imposed upon science by outside forces: by employers (who gets the jobs, who gets promotion), funders (who gets the big money), publishers (who gets their work in the big journals), bureaucratic regulators (who gets allowed to do work), and the law courts (whose ideas get backed-up, or criminalized, by the courts). It is these bureaucratic mechanisms that constitute ‘real life’ and the ‘bottom line’ for scientific practice. The tradition has been broken.

A minority of young scientists have, by dedication or luck, absorbed the tradition of real science, yet because their wisdom is tacit and is not shared by the majority of the bureaucratically-minded, they will almost-inevitably be held back from status and excluded from influence. It is bureaucracy that now controls ‘science’, and that which bureaucracy cannot or will not acknowledge might as well not exist, so far as the direction of ‘science’ is concerned.

Most of modern science is therefore apparently in pretty much the post-holocaust situation described in A canticle for Liebowitz and After Virtue – the transmission of tacit knowledge has been broken. But the catastrophe was bureaucratic, rather than violent – and few seem to have noticed the scale of destruction.

But, it might be asked, supposing the tradition had indeed been broken; if this was true, then how would we know it was true? – given that the point of MacIntyre’s and Miller’s fables was that when a tradition is broken people do not realize it. The answer is that we know at the moment that the tradition has been broken, but this knowledge is on the verge of extinction.

The sources of evidence are at least fourfold. If we judge the rate of scientific progress by individualistic common sense criteria (rather than bureaucratic indices), it is obvious that the rate of progress has declined in at least two major areas: physics and medical research [7], [8] and [9]. Furthermore there has been a decline in the number of scientific geniuses, which is now near-zero [10]. If geniuses are vital to overall scientific progress, then progress probably stopped a while ago [11].

In addition, the actual practice of science has transformed profoundly [12] – the explicit aims of scientists, their truthfulness, what scientists do on a day by day basis, the procedures by which their work is evaluated… all of these have changed so much over the past 50 years that it is reasonable to conclude that science now is performing an almost completely different function than it was 50 years ago. After all, if modern science neither looks nor quacks like a duck, why should we believe it is a duck? Just because science has the same name, does not mean it is them same thing when almost-everything about it has been transformed!

And finally we might believe that the tradition has been broken because this has been a frequently implicit, sometimes explicit, theme of some of the most original and informed scientists for several decades: from the Feynman and Crick through to Brenner – take your pick. It seems to me that they have for many years been warning us that science was on a wrong track, and the warnings have not been heeded.

So: the tradition has been broken. However, for as long as the fact is known that the tradition has been broken, and representatives of the tradition are still alive and active, there still exists a remote possibility that the tradition could be revived.
 

Acknowledgement

Some of these ideas emerged in conversations with Jonathan Rees, and quite a few were derived from him.

References

[1] A. MacIntyre, After virtue: a study in moral theory, Duckworth, London (1981).

[2] W.M. Miller, A canticle for Liebowitz, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London (1960).

[3] M. Polanyi, Personal knowledge: towards a post-critical philosophy, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, USA (1958).

[4] M. Oakeshott, Rationalism in politics and other essays, Methuen, London (1962).

[5] B.G. Charlton, Should epidemiologists be pragmatists, biostatisticians or clinical scientists?, Epidemiology 7 (1996), pp. 552–554.

[6] J. Bronowski, Science and human values, Harper Colophon, New York (1975).

[7] L. Smolin, The trouble with physics, Penguin, London (2006).

[8] D.F. Horrobin, Scientific medicine – success or failure?. In: D.J. Weatherall, J.G.G. Ledingham and D.A. Warrell, Editors, Oxford textbook of medicine (2nd ed.), Oxford University Press, Oxford (1987), pp. 2.1–2.3.

[9] B.G. Charlton and P. Andras, Medical research funding may have over-expanded and be due for collapse, QJM 98 (2005), pp. 53–55. 

[10] B.G. Charlton, The last genius? – reflections on the death of Francis Crick, Med Hypotheses 63 (2004), pp. 923–924. 

[11] C. Murray, Human accomplishment. The pursuit of excellence in the arts and sciences 800 BC to 1950, HarperCollins, New York (2003).

[12] J. Ziman, Real science, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK (2000).


Accelerating incompetence and chaos are caused-by short-termist, selfish, spiteful evil

The UK has descended into political chaos, and this is being blamed on incompetence; which is both true, and misleadingly false; because the already-vast yet still-increasing incompetence of people in charge of Western nations and institutions is merely a side-effect and consequence of the primary reality; which is the evil-intent of the Global Establishment, and the spiritually-blind passivity of the Western masses.  

Chaos in not just a side-effect of evil; it is the deepest motivation; since evil is ultimately opposition to God's creation

(Thus the true opposite of chaos is creation - not 'order'.) 

The purest 'Sorathic' evil is sheerly-spitefully-motivated destruction of every-thing created; of-God, functional. 

This merely-spiteful, short-termist, selfish evil is precisely what we are seeing waxing ascendant in the world in general - and the UK in particular.  


Other forms of evil are merely intermediate, mixtures of sin and virtue; such as the type of totalitarian, bureaucratic, survelliance-and-control evil we saw peaking in 2020. Such 'Ahrimanic' evil requires the admixture of at least some virtues such as prudence, co-operation, long-termism and intelligence. 

And it is this kind of long-term, conspiratorial,  strategic, planned evil that is being subverted and destroyed by the break-up into smaller warring factions, conflicting individuals - each tending-towards simply seeking its own here-and-now, personal gratifications - and these gratifications becoming ever-more negative: fuelled by resentment, revenge, fear - and eventually despair. 

This process of the waxing of evil is natural and inevitable; since evil is negative, dynamic, and feeds upon itself. 

The more power evil gains, the more evil it becomes. The residual virtues that enabled the triumph of evil - perhaps courage, or self-control, or hard-work - are no longer 'needed' and more gratification can be gained for each powerful group or individual (here and now!), by pursuing more-and-more selfish and ever more short-termist goals. 

The chaos being observed in the UK are therefore the intra-office conflicts of the ruling class; in which the totalitarians strive to re-assert control, and rebuild their conspiracies - yet the attempt is thwarted again and again by the fact that everybody and everything has become worse. 


For instance; totalitarianism cannot happen without sufficient honesty and obedience within the ruling group. Yet, it is often expedient to be untruthful - and for the evil there is no positive reason to be honest. 

Thus the slippery downslope from manipulation (hype and spin), distortion, deniable dishonesty; to outright lies and value inversions covered by expansile propaganda and censorship. 

Lies and inversions are now built-into The System and the normal, dominant, primary mode of functioning. 

Therefore strategic plans are impossible to implement! - at every level: the plans themselves are incoherent, impossible lies, the methods for implementing them do not work, and every group and individual tasked with doing the work will be pursuing short-termist and selfish goals instead.  


What we are experiencing today is just the tip of an iceberg of latent chaos; the causes of which can neither be perceived by the ruling class nor the masses - both of whom are self-blinded by false metaphysical assumptions (atheist, materialist, leftist etc.) that they will neither acknowledge nor correct. 

Because everybody misunderstands (grossly) what is happening, it cannot be corrected.

And because the traditional, unconscious, automatic, self-correcting social mechanisms have long since been destroyed.


Evil cannot be corrected except by Good; Systemic totalitarian evil can be destroyed by short-termist/ selfish/ spiteful evil - but that only increases the amount of evil.

The future is therefore just: more of the same - a descent into chaos; unless or until people begin to understand, and begin to correct, the evil affiliations in themselves...


Thursday 20 October 2022

Living in expectation of the collapse...

I am so convinced that our civilization is being top-down engineered (bottom-up accepted) into collapse, that I have (spontaneously, not by choice) developed a 'catastrophizing' mind-set. 


For example, I woke this morning and the wi-fi signal was absent; so my immediate conclusion was that the global internet had been sabotaged. I was quite surprised when a reboot fixed the problem. 

The other day, I went out and there were no cars visible on a usually-busy road; and I simply assumed that there had been a nuclear warning and everybody had sheltered indoors. I felt quite causal and fatalistic about this prospect - just a shoulder shrug and some regret that I would die alone and without a change to think things through; but the possibility seemed almost everyday. 

And then just a few moments later; the traffic lights somewhere went green - and a wave of cars hove into view... as usual. 


I'm actually quite happy to think this way, because it helps in - almost effortlessly - resisting many of the recurrent (and manipulative) Project Fear campaigns to which we are subject in England these days. 

It's not because I regard catastrophically-bad futures as unlikely or exaggerated (although the real threats do not overlap with the fake ones which get pushed on us); in contrast, I continue to be surprised at the delays in their emergence.

...Although my understanding is that the longer the delay, the faster and more comprehensive the collapse will be, since we are progressively damaging our civilizational resilience. For instance, we are much, Much weaker than a year ago - because of sanctions; and that was on top of the purposive and chronic damage of the sexual revolution, 'sustainable/ Green', birdemic-peck, and antiracism/ mass immigration.

In material terms there is no way out; the only possible solutions are in the spiritual realm - yet there seems to be extremely little interest in this - so far as I can judge. Nearly all public discourse proceeds on an assumption that there is nothing new or different now than in the past. 


Nearly all public discourse is framed by the assumption that the scope of concern is this biological life and the assumed balance of pleasure versus pain in various persons and groups. What is worth thinking, saying and doing is evaluated on this 'hedonic mortal' basis, only.

So, it is natural that - because my own perspective is so different - I should find myself continuously at odds with The World. 

Including this continual expectation of imminent disaster which has such absurd consequences... until it doesn't! 


Reality is real because it is divine creation - and we can know reality for the same reason

Reality is (really) real - it is God's creation. Because reality is God's creation, we personally can know it. 

We can know reality because we are Children of God; and share in the divine nature. This means we have qualitatively the same attributes as God - beingness, life, consciousness, and the capacity to create - to generate, originate. 

We are capable of understanding creation because we are not just a part of creation but also share God's potential for 'doing' creation. 

In different words; our understanding of creation derives first from our potential to participate in the ongoing work of creation; and secondly from our ability to perceive this consciously

So, it is because we are not only created beings, but also potential creators with potential for consciousness of our situation, that real knowledge about reality is possible to us.


Wednesday 19 October 2022

Most Men have been sleeping-through the 20th century human development - mainstream radicals and traditionalists alike - and what it really means to 'awaken'

Probably the single most important thing that modern people needed to do in the 20th century, was to wake-up to their own fundamental metaphysical assumptions: for each person to become consciously aware of their primary beliefs concerning the nature of reality - and then to discern and make a commitment about whether these ought to change. 

Man transformed through the twentieth century (although the change began earlier, and continues). But the transformation was at an unconscious level - a matter of instincts, motivations and gratifications. 

This transformation was un-conscious, it affected Men whether they acknowledged it or not; because the transformation was deep, it made changes in many superficial ways to do with attitudes, motivations, gratifications and behaviours.


Most Men did not awake to this transformation - that is, they did not become consciously aware of it in relation to their own metaphysical assumptions. 

Most Men either denied the transformation - asserting that Man was the same as ever, and Men who had changed ought-to revert to how they had-been. These were 'traditionalists' broadly-conceived. 

Or else Men simply accepted the change at the level of surface changes in attitudes, motivations, gratifications and behaviours. These changes were justified (regarded as 'a good thing') post-hoc and without personal evaluation; explained and rationalized by means of concepts drawn from the surrounding culture. 

These concepts were (overwhelmingly) materialist, atheist, leftist in nature.

Because individuals remained 'asleep' and unaware; they could not (would not, did not) discern and choose the expression of underlying (instinctual) transformations; because they had no deep basis for comparison - because they were not aware of their own deepest and most important assumptions*.


Traditionalists found themselves in a situation where Men had changed, they themselves had-changed, at an instinctual level that altered the basis set-up of human behaviour; yet they tried to re-impose traditional behaviors upon deeply transformed human beings. 

In other words, by failing to become awake and aware of their own deepest assumptions, they necessarily regarded traditionalism as a surface-level phenomenon - consisting of prescribed principles, rules, actions etc; which they intended to re-impose on the altered instinct-level changes of modern Men. 

Unsurprisingly, this pseudo-traditionalism (of the surface, but not the instincts) utterly failed - it never happened anywhere. It was just a theory. 

No person and no society genuinely reverted to a traditional way of being. Because the most that could be achieved was surface conformity to prescribed principles, rules, actions etc. Yet old-type ways applied-to new-type people; was a very different matter from old-type ways arising-from old-type people. 

The feeble superficiality of traditionalism was evident when the power of global totalitarianism waxed in 2020; and the traditionalists almost wholly embraced the agendas of materialism/ atheism/ leftism. And, because they remained asleep and unaware of their own metaphysical assumptions; they could not even perceive their assimilation to evil purposes. 


What was, and is, needed is a spiritual awakening in terms of individuals becoming aware of their own actual and basic metaphysical assumptions; the assumptions they make about the fundamental nature of reality. 

When these are brought to awareness, they can be evaluated - the individual can make an active choice of whether to embrace or reject each (and the totality of) their current assumptions.  

If this deepest of levels is reached, then the more superficial changes at the level of human instinct (i.e. our set-up in terms of motivations, attitudes, gratifications etc) can be observed, and also evaluated - and we can see that the true implications of such changes are Not Necessarily those of mainstream/ materialist/ atheist/ Leftism. 


For example, Men have indeed instinctually changed in terms of sexuality - but when one has chosen to commit to a Christian metaphysics; such changes are no longer the deepest level. Behaviour is experienced as arising-from deep assumptions, and secondary to them. Thus we can evaluate our lives, and the choices of living. 

The surface level of observable behaviours and socially-imposed rules is no longer regarded as primary - our actions are no longer definitive - but seen in context of large and over-arching aims such as salvation and theosis. 

No specific action (considered in isolation) has innate meaning and value; actions are instead known as part of the larger purpose of life. We no longer accept an action merely because we instinctually desire it; nor do we reject it merely because it breaks a set of external rules. Ideally; we know its value as an unique phenomenon in an unique situation. 


We cease to regard Christianity in terms of lists to be obeyed or else rejected; and instead understand it as an harmonious path through mortal life, and aimed at resurrected eternal life. 

 

*Note: Mainstream modern materialist leftists typically deny that they have any metaphysical assumptions; indeed they may deny the validity of metaphysics. They say their basic assumptions come from science/ evidence - but what they really mean is that they have absorbed them passively, unconsciously, from external sources. Much the same, but for different reasons, applies to traditionalists. They may know their own metaphysics, but do not accept that these are personal assumptions. Instead they absorb them from external sources, as part of a religious 'package. What they fail to do is distinguish the metaphysical assumptions from the religion itself; and they do not isolate the assumptions and examine each by discernment before endorsing and committing-to them. The traditionalist need to dig deeper until he finds himself explicitly conscious of the primary personal acts of discernment that underpin any religious 'package'; and must acknowledge that here he is confronted by a pure act of intuition - for which he is required to acknowledge absolute personal responsibility