Tuesday 16 May 2023

When politicians and other leaders do evil Deliberately - How come people cannot even Comprehend it?

This is very evident, on a daily basis: we have reached a point when deliberate evil destruction can work almost unimpeded, because most people have lost the ability to comprehend it. 

When there is no conceptual place for destructive evil; then - obviously! - such evil can't be recognized. 


This goes beyond a failure to recognize 'evil' in a general sense. 

Those who analyze - and try to explain and predict - politics, nearly always do so on the basis of self-interest; which is what they understand evil to be. 

They are keen to point the finger at politicians, parties, pressure groups, organizations who do evil in order to get power, make money, gain status, or indulge their personal desires for sex, drugs, or whatever.

This understanding of evil is one that sees it as pursuing private gain, rather than public good; and sometimes as immediate gain rather than long term benefit. Implicitly, by this view; leaders ought to be altruistic; and pursue long-term public good as their priority (even when, as usual, they can do better for themselves by doing otherwise).

But I am talking about the inability even to understand that there is an extreme kind of evil that is primarily destructive rather than self-seeking.

This I have called Sorathic evil (adapting the term from Rudolf Steiner). The point of Sorathic evil being that a spiteful desire to immiserate, harm, and destroy; is stronger than the selfish, self-interested urge.

Harm will be done by a Sorathic Being, even when the self-interested consequence is sub-optimal. Indeed, an individual Sorathic-dominated Being will harm himself, if this is expected to result in sufficient harm to those he hates*. 


My contention is that this kind of evil is currently very powerful and increasingly dominant in Western powers; and it is very effective for two reasons. 

1. Because it is much, much easier to destroy than to create; easier to break than to mend, to wreck than to build. 

2. Because people cannot understand it; Sorathic evil can operate undetected, unimpeded. 


This second reason - the 'invisibility' of Sorathic evil - is very important in its power. It means that a very obvious pattern of purposive destruction, breaking, wrecking is concealed - because it is broken down into a multitude of presumed self-interests. 

It also cripples opposition to those who wish to destroy, because opposition to destruction is always fragmented and fighting across multiple fronts - across many single-issues; whereas those who are doing the evil are continually opening-up new fronts. 


If we consider the Litmus Test issues: While sensible but uncomprehending people are laboriously building public resistance to 'the excesses" of birdemic measures, an antiracism crusade was introduced. When resistance to this latest insanity begins to accumulate, then the trans-agenda is wheeled forward, then the birdemic peck, then a climate emergency, then a war is started etc etc - in 'random' recombinations and cycles, without any obvious limit. 

Those leaders with the greatest power can keep-up this whack-a-mole game indefinitely, due to their control of The System of money/ law/ coercive force etc; and those who oppose specifics never can never get anywhere in stopping 'the game'. 

Even the rare successful specific resistances; leaves the basic power structure intact, and the Sorathic leadership in place. 


And what is the Sorathic nature of these Litmus Test interventions? 

Simply that - at the highest level - they need to be understood as destructive in their ultimate purpose

So that while the birdemic indeed gave some national politicians totalitarian power, and made uncountable trillions of dollars for various parties; its real purpose was destruction: destruction of many kinds and at multiple levels - of social cohesion, the money system, economics, trade, transport... 

And ultimately the destruction of Men's souls; by a system of totalitarian/ bureaucratic materialism with the aimed-at effect that Men choose to disbelieve/ reject Heaven and (implicitly) to embrace some version of Hell. 

Because when Men agree to live by fear, resentment and despair; they have already rejected God, divine creation, and resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 


The same principle applies to all the other major policies of evil. 

Everywhere in modern culture where there are institutions has been brought within 

And that spiritual basis of motivation is exactly why most people cannot understand Sorathic evil. 


At a materialistic level, Sorathic evil makes no sense. Indeed it is not even conceivable - because the built-in assumption is that all 'evil' just-is a kind of short-termist self-interest. 

That is how motivations are understood; so a primary motivation to destroy is simply incomprehensible. 

Despite that we are all capable of spitefulness, and it is all around us - and people will even admit to it and boast of it; nonetheless our own spitefulness is typically denied, or subject to self-blinding - and that of others explained-away in terms of self-interest that everyone understands.  


Sorathic evil therefore seems 'irrational', bizarre, far-fetched; incomprehensible - therefore invisible. 

The idea that there might really and truly be a group of people (perhaps of demonic beings controlling people) who have (for instance) deliberately planned and incrementally implemented a world war, and then are now doing all in their power to escalate it as widely and as fast as possible... 

The idea that such people would be delighted if (when?) such a conflict became the ultimate conflagration of tens of millions, of cites, that the good earth be poisoned...


And the idea that this mass destruction would be done for its own sake... 

Not for power/ money/ status or from lustful desires; but done exactly because more-and-more of their primary Litmus Test policies means increasingly massive destruction, starving, fighting, maiming/ disease/ poisoning, killing...

The idea that (for instance) an state of total - no-holds-barred - world war might be for its engineers an end in itself - and not merely a means to some other end...

Such concepts are apparently beyond the scope of comprehension. They seem just silly, impossible, they 'make no sense'. 


And that incomprehension is, proximately, exactly how and why such evils happen, and continue to happen. 

But the reason people cannot understand is deeper, and lethal. It is ultimately a failure to understand evil at all; which comes from a failure to acknowledge the reality of this world - the ultimate nature and purpose of our lives in divine creation. 

Such a deep deficit in understanding is not fixable by any conceivable actual external pressure; each must do it for himself, or it won't be done. 


*Note added: The current problem seems partly to be an inability - or inner resistance - to imagining Sorathic evil. Yet, external observation suggests that almost everybody is prone to this, to some extent. What seems to be required, therefore, is that people look within themselves and reflect on their own propensity to the most negative of evil impulses. Only then may they be convinced of the reality and power of Sorathic evil, and able to recognize its fingerprints all over the Western world today

10 comments:

William Wildblood said...

People don't recognise this because they haven't yet been personally affected though with inflation and interest rates going up, increased energy prices etc, they soon may. As long as we are comfortable and things appear to be continuing in the way they normally do most people will remain asleep. But when hardship really strikes it may be different though I have to say the majority of the populace are so unaware that even then they may be bought off with excuses as to how it is really someone else's fault or some unseen and unavoidable external factor.

Bruce Charlton said...

@William. I don't hold out much hope for people identifying the real 'upstream' causes of problems that afflict them; especially when they apparently do not even recognize the *possibility* that bad outcomes now have been deliberately planned and built-in over many years.

Such a failure to identify causes is probably necessary for suffering to lead to self-damnation rather than to turn to God for help, as often happened in the past.

My best guess is that people will blame other people's (other groups) selfishness for their own sufferings, against whom they will develop resentment and hatred; and such sins will not be repented = damnation. Yet often these 'other people' (just as we ourselves) are being used as pawns in a demonic game.

Mia said...

Having had "the conversation" many times with "follow the money" types, it feels very similar to conversations about every political issue my whole life.

There's clearly a piece that goes like this:
"Look at this brilliant argument against Litmus Test issue! It proves how measure A won't actually work to solve problem B!"
"What makes you think your opponent *wants* to solve problem B?"
>confusion and silence but clearly the actual answer is "Because that is all *I* care about, I only care about material non-suffering in this world." I see this with a lot of false Christians who value God's forgiveness to relieve their guilt and suffering in *this* world.

Comes to mind also the "How to Win Friends and Influence People" attitude of never calling out evil actions because "it's a non-starter in persuasion." What are you aiming to persuade them to do? Seek life ever-lasting? No, inevitably you seek a short-term, materialist goal.

Then there is the curious subset of atheist materialists I used to run with who had no problem calling out evil in a general sense, but who gave themselves countless excuses to either reclassify evil as good or to cave to it when opposition created material inconvenience (not even hardship, simply minor inconvenience!). And nearly everyone from that circle who did not ultimately cave is now a Christian and explicitly through revelation not that God is real but that the Devil is (and so you'd better hope there is a God and ally yourself with Him or we have no chance).

The survivors from this group all put their hope in a "great bifurcation" of humanity, with Heaven/Hell serving that purpose for Christians and colonizing space or mass death or personal isolation serving for the stubborn atheists. At that point, the struggle I see is how does one lovingly want that? How can a loving God create Hell and a loving person accept anyone going there? And only the Christian bifurcation is based in love as primary, so if you reject that then you either opt for material bifurcation based in resentment or embrace false universal love that consciously chooses to love evil.

The Original Sin concept, which I know you reject on grounds I concur with, used to mostly block all of these paths since it was so widely understood that we all "drift" toward evil due to our very nature, so the idea of freeing yourself from sin by denying the existence of sin was a non-starter. But it's all lost now. Many times as a young atheist I resented the Genesis account of the Fall, and since converting I've had a conversation with an atheist teen exactly like myself and it's like an inverse Mandela Effect- everyone believes Adam and Eve were tricked when *God told them to eat the fruit was to bring death upon themselves.* "No one would choose death!" Wrong, everyone chooses death. You can change your mind and choose life, but not if you deny the first choice. But now we live in a false world and "I had no choice!" is the most common refrain on any moral issue.

Now interestingly as you point out it's now true, you don't have a choice anymore about materially supporting evil, and I think that is God's solution here. It's like "OK, fine, you didn't have a choice. Choose *now*." So we'll see!

Bruce Charlton said...

Mia - Very interesting comment.

Matias F. said...

My impression is that after the financial crisis of 2008 there was a lot more discussion about the problems of Western societies (eg. Thilo Sarrazin) and a reasonably informed person could have almost via mainstream media come to the conclusion that the system is broken and we can't continue. The fact that the system continued should have made people realise that someone wants to bring us to the abyss and over the cliff.

Those that analysed the problems have had the tendency to concentrate only on one topic so the overall situation has escaped them. I used to think this would change when people experience hardship but after these last years of litmus test issues. You are right that it is impossible to perceive something which has been deemed not to exist.

Jeffrey Cantrell said...

Excellent post and discussion. I am at the point where I rarely engage in debates with others because they simply cannot understand the fundamental principles. It is like trying to debate how to build a radio with a primitive who, having never been taught about electricity, does not admit to the necessity of having to have a rubber insulation over the wires to keep them from shorting. What did Heinlein say? "Never Attempt To Teach a Pig To Sing; It Wastes Your Time and Annoys the Pig."

The Anti-Gnostic said...

Admitting that such a depraved level of evil exists takes a lot of people out of their comfort zones. It means you're not voting or debating your way out of the mess. Indeed, you may literally have to kill or be killed.

It's the same reason people on subways sit in paralyzed shock (i.e., normalcy bias) as a schizophrenic grabs a woman by the hair and makes her sit beside him. (You can look up the video on the New York Post website). When the thin veneer of civilization starts peeling away it's a systemic shock that lots of people will put mental blocks around rather than facing a horrible reality.

Bruce Charlton said...

@AG " kill or be killed." It is probably worse than that! In that it will likely become a situation in which *vast* numbers will "be killed" (as a consequence of things already done and being done now) whether or not they themselves "kill".

Being spiritually ready to die, is the main kind of 'prepping' that *everyone* needs to do.

@JC - Yes.

@MF - The mainstream media is now *wholly*-controlled (at least, in the UK) so there is no substantive discussion of anything important. Massive news events are simply blocked - or else so grossly misreported as to reverse their meaning.

lea said...

Highlighting the key phrase: 'because the built-in assumption is that all 'evil' just-is a kind of short-termist self-interest.'

This ties into so many statements deflecting/ downplaying/ even siding with things occurring.
These are almost always acccompanied by softening words and phrases such as 'its just for profit' and 'it's only corporate strategy'. Of course it gets worse when it gets accompanied by phrases like 'thats how the economy/ capitalism works'. I dont really know what to do about it. The frames of reference lacking, that need to be built up from the ground almost to have an actual discussion about these topics are overwhelming, and no one has the attention span for it anymore apparently.

Jeffrey Cantrell said...

Being spiritually ready to die shouldn’t be too hard, everyone is going to die some day. After that, it is up to us how we spend that time as free men and women or as slaves to lesser men (or demons).