Monday 21 November 2022

Will people (en masse) be awakened and enlightened by the imminent physical deprivation and suffering?

Since, at least in the UK, all the signs are that we are in for very severe (and all-but universal - ultra-rich are exempt, of course) economic hardship and suffering. 

The plans have been implemented, the pieces are in place, the trend is already-established, and further destructive measures are being introduced on a weekly basis. 

So; will people (en masse) be awakened and enlightened by our coming physical deprivation and suffering? 

The answer is a firm No


If people (as they currently are) were capable of being awakened and enlightened by adversity, this would have happened in 2020; or, at least, the 2020 events would have been understood for what they really were, and explicitly repented. 

But, although (especially in England) there has been an unexpected (and welcome!) roll-back of the 2020 measures; and although this indicates the English are not such a beaten people as I suspected, and less dumb and sheep-like than the Scots, Welsh, Canadians, Australians or New Zealenaders - this push against measures has merely been based on mass passive disobedience; and rooted in negative, not positive, criticism (e.g. annoyance at inconvenience, rather than on principle). 

Any significant dawn of understanding has been among a few individuals; and not happened explicitly or widely. 


My feeling is that the people of the UK have absolutely No Idea what is about to happen to them: i.e. that we are (almost all) going to become very significantly impoverished - that we will lose a large proportion (tens of percent) of our income and then wealth - from inflation and much higher taxes and (no doubt) other covert extractions. 

(This at least - such rapid and severe changes will have unpredictable systemic consequences, that may induce societal collapse - nobody really knows.)

We face apparently-inevitable considerable suffering; but people will not be enlightened by this suffering. 

At present people 'cannot believe' what is coming because they are not yet suffering enough. Yet when 'enough' suffering comes (shortages of food, warmth, light, fuel, basic services) they will attribute it to false causes. 


Apparently the UK 'leader' (the Prime Minister) explicitly attributes the coming hardships primarily to the leader of the Fire Nation, and secondarily to Brexit -- despite that the true causes were all self-imposed, and deliberately self-imposed, with solid foreknowledge of consequences. (And despite that Brexit never happened!)

It is not enough for him even to pretend that well-intended errors led to unanticipated consequences; but nowadays an actual inversion of the truth is the preferred explanation - no doubt because 'opposites-world' reasoning better explains why the proposed 'remedial' measures instead actually increase economic damage. 

But plenty of people seem to believe this incoherent lying! Enough to make it worth saying. 


People will attribute their suffering to false causes and they will therefore fail to learn from it. 

They will blame false causes, because their basic metaphysical assumptions are false; and wrong assumptions make it impossible to learn from experience

Metaphysics comes first! When we have wrong assumptions, we cannot discern the relevant facts, nor can we reason correctly from them. 

It is our basic assumptions that determine what we perceive, and what we perceive as important; and - having chosen what is important from the endless possibilities - it is our metaphysics that determines how we can put these together to make an explanation, and infer from this what to do.


Since Modern Man assumes that we all live in a purposeless and meaningless, accidental universe; and that we humans are accidental products of purposeless evolution; and that our lives begin with random genetic combinations and we are annihilated at death - then we cannot ultimately learn anything at all concerning the true meaning and purpose of our lives. 

Modern Man has pre-decided that he is a passive consequence of blind processes, and can only 'know' the current state of his gratification (his happiness or suffering) - which affective state is manipulated by any of those with power who consciously posses the agency and purpose that Modern Man denies in himself. 


In the country of the nihilists, the purposive Man is king

So what is the purpose of our 'kings'? 

I am asking not what the kings say is their purpose; but what truly is their purpose... 

For any Christian who is prepared to think for himself; to ask that question is to know the answer: that the purpose of our kings is malign. 

Our 'kings' want to harm us: physically, but most-of-all spiritually.  


Until Modern Man can recover a basis conviction of purpose, hence meaning; Men will remain as they are: puppets, cattle, and prey; and will remain unable to learn from any possible kind of experience.  


7 comments:

Jacob Gittes said...

It's hard for me to believe, but here in the USA, there is almost utter indifference to hyper-inflation that is worse than when I was 12-13 years old. Back then, it was considered so bad that Paul Volker raised interest rates to almost 20%. Now, nobody even comments. Amazing. Yet food shelf usage is at record highs. The food shelves are running out of money and food. Should be an interesting winter. I've seen a bit of spiritual awakening, but only in a very few.
I went to mass for the first time since the Global Totalitarian Coup of 2020 (GTC2020), and I even said to the new priest (who seems uncharacteristically good), that he didn't recognize me because I hadn't been there since the GTC2020. He had a brief look of surprise, then said, "welcome back." I had a sense that he knew what I meant, and was happy that someone could say that. But we shall see.
Thanks, btw, for penning that phrase (GTC2020) or something like it. I always think of you when I say it or think it.

Bruce Charlton said...

@Jacob - I am pleased to be reminded of the global coup of T20. I haven't thought about it explicitly for a while - yet it was the biggest international event of my life.

What was interesting - but not uncommon - is that the fact of the coup went almost instantly from being something that denied as an absurd fabrication, to becoming so familiar it was part of the scenery.

I mean after the Great Reset people began to tell anyone who would listen that a global group had indeed taken-over world management, and what was planned for the rest of us.

As with so many successful revolutions, it quite quickly began to fall-apart due to infighting over the spoils; and when at least two of the major players (codenames Fire Nation and Earth Nation) seemed to change their minds about the wisdom of self-subordination to a single system of totalitarianism - that intended the destruction and assimilation of these, and all other, nations and cultures.

Francis Berger said...

I've had comments on my blog that have assured me that people will wake up and resist once they really begin to suffer. I'm extremely pessimistic in this regard. I get the sense that increased or intense physical deprivation or suffering among the masses might only make people even more submissive and compliant, especially if they are presented with means through which the suffering can be ameliorated.

On the other hand, there's a slight chance that those inflicting the physical deprivation and suffering might induce the masses to "rise up" and seek "justice" against some manufactured evil within society.

Needless to say, neither is good. Both are predicated on your observation that "Modern Man has pre-decided that he is a passive consequence of blind processes, and can only 'know' the current state of his gratification (his happiness or suffering) - which affective state is manipulated by any of those with power who consciously posses the agency and purpose that Modern Man denies in himself."

I personally refer to this condition as despiritualization. Sadly, like you, I don't think much good can come out of suffering until people become aware of the condition and address it at the basic level of metaphysical assumptions.

agraves said...

Okay Bruce, feel free to not print this comment. But people in the modern West will never wake up because they are too stupid! They don't even know what metaphysics is, let alone try to understand their ancestors. There is no common ground with history because their minds are addled and cannot think deeper than the last tiktok. It is all so very superficial, they cannot understand what is happening to them, like cattle in the field waiting for the butcher, enjoying grass in their oblivion. This is reflected not only in the man in the street but political leaders, religious and scientific establishments. To go one further, the testosterone levels and sperm counts continue to plummet which I believe is related to increased passivity and lower i.q. scores, causing the entire population to be unable to arrive at solutions for the most basic problems.

Bruce Charlton said...

@ag - You are actually putting forward a wide variety of causes there, and probably more could be suggested. Such a scattergun of ideas doesn't really move understanding forward.

I don't know whether you are aware that I have written a fair bit about the fact that modern Men are indeed much less intelligent than 150 years ago, less conscientious, and that there is also an accumulation of mutational damage which would be expected to affect sexuality and social behaviour, as well as health.

(various posts at https://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.com/ )

But I don't think that such factors are what explain the modern problem. If health, intelligence, personality etc were the prime cause of our situation - then the healthiest, most intelligent, most conscientious etc among modern people would be the most 'awoken' whereas they are actually the most extremely deluded.

I believe that the root cause is our metaphysical assumptions. In the past, people were spontaneously more or less correct in their assumptions - i.e. almost-everybody was 'religious' and regarded this as centrally important in life. It is deleting 'religion' from human consciousness and behaviour that has left modern Man so deeply damaged.

ben said...

I was thinking there might be a distinction between a person being committed to evil causes vs a person engaging in evil behaviour having to do with this sexual and social dysfunction.

Maybe there's a 'deliberate perversity' as I remember you terming it that can manifest in orientation and thinking but not in social/sexual behaviour or the other way around.

Leftist orientation and thinking would have the same underlying wrongness for the sake of wrongness (sorath) to it as modern sexual/social dysfunction; maybe what makes the difference is intelligence, with higher intelligence making for a greater ability to pervert one's own orientation/thinking (albeit less of the underlying tendency to perversity because lower mutational load). Non-Christianity would have the role of rendering a person defenceless to their own evil inclination of this sort.

But what is more likely to keep a person from choosing resurrection? Some of these resentment-based causes are particularly difficult to dislodge. Who's further from resurrection, the person with more gut-perversion or the person whose (lesser) gut-perversion has caused more head-perversion via higher intelligence...

Bruce Charlton said...

@ben - When one gets down to specifics, each 'case' is different, because each person and his situation is different.

Nonetheless, if one personally knows and cares-about (i.e. loves) the specific person and his situation, then we are all *potentially* able to discern and evaluate what is going-on: who is, for example, is an innocent dupe or one who has deliberately chosen to pursue the path of evil - or whatever the situation. We may not be able to influence the situation (materially, in this mortal life) - but it is rare that we don't know what side a person is currently serving.

Of course, we can't really know about hypothetical situations - such as you describe; nor about secondhand situations in history or from the news; where we don't actually care about the individuals involved or know their situation. We cannot discern because we do not know.