Monday 11 September 2023

Secret personal resistance probably works better than politics

Organized politics is an energy-trap. 

The Establishment do what they want, without regard to law or rules; but sometimes they declare a law which confirms what they are already doing - and those who oppose are thereby "invited" to organize and oppose it. 

But such campaigns against evil rules are an energy-trap for those who try to oppose them. It takes a great deal of effort from lots of people to stop a law, and if if this "succeeds" then it will make no discernable improvement on what we currently have. 


This is what happened with Brexit. It took vast and exhausting effort for the UK to "leave" the EU - and now that it has supposedly happened, we find that it makes zero difference! We have had a Brexit-in-name-only (BRINO) - and the proponents of Brexit are demoralized. Probably this was always planned.

Or Trump versus Biden. From the perspective of those who oppose global totalitarianism, Trump was supposedly a better president than Biden... Yet the fact is that with Trump as President, and after three years in power, we got 2020: with the international coup, the bidemic-peck, and "MLB". 2020 was the worst period of time since WWII. 

Politics here and now is full of energy-traps; which depend on people believing subtle and speculative calculations; such as that the UK post-BRINO is even-worse than it would have been without Brexit; or that Trump staying President would have led to things being significantly better than they are now. 


And yet, and yet...

I think a significant number of British people must be resisting in various quiet ways, because things have not been getting worse as quickly as I expected they would be, back in 2020. 

If one judged by the public discourse, there is zero perceptible resistance to the totalitarian agenda. However, a good deal of the surveillance and control apparatus from the 2020 era has been removed; whereas I fully expected it would be permanent, and increased. (As was explicitly and frequently announced.) 

Such a minor reversal is nonetheless a reversal. 


Why did it happen? 

It was clearly not due to the leadership class having become better people, or abandoning the totalitarian agenda! - So, I suppose there must be significant invisible, unreported, maybe secret resistance.

That seems to be what They assume, and what They are trying to stamp-out. 


My message here is not one of optimism: I remain very pessimistic. 

But realistically, it seems that British "people" in 2023 are not quite as beaten as they were (or seemed to be) in 2020. 

Why this is so, I don't understand - not least because the whole thing seems very secret because unorganized and individual. 

At any rate, it seems that secret personal resistance works better than politics.  

12 comments:

Mike Bryant said...

I couldn't agree more Bruce, I love going to the East Somerset Steam Railway it has such a lovely nostalgic feel to it, the people who run it are obviously trying to recreate their version of 1940s/50s England their little heaven if you like. I think the popularity of Dad's Army is down to the fact that people yearn to go back to a time when we lived in communities where everybody knew each other it wasn't strangers and large corporations. As you've said in the past it's about being positively motivated rather than negatively motivated, you also see it in the re-enacters like The Sealed knott. Anyway I think these people do far more to push back the forces of evil than any political movement.

Joel said...

It's interesting that the EU's Eastern and Western neighbors both recently had to make the decision whether to back down or to risk threatened trade sanctions/tariffs. The Western neighbor backed down and signed a humiliating deal over fears of economic collapse from much lighter tariffs. The Eastern neighbor saw it as an opportunity for autonomy and did not back down.

Crosbie said...

One of the things I realized over the past three years is that society is not defined by laws, but by a network of personal loyalties (which necessarily form a hierarchy) By accident or design, Birdemic behaviors became a kind of personal loyalty test which, by external appearance, was hugely successful! I don't see any sign of a mass shift in personal loyalties. Nevertheless, I agree with you, the present seems much less grim than promised by the summer of 2020.

To return to your point, it seems the best, and indeed the only, influence we have over society is to decide to whom we give our personal loyalty.

pyrrhus said...

What about the "Blade runners" in London...That sounds like quiet but useful resistance...

Bruce Charlton said...

@P - I don't follow the mainstream news, but I think I know what you mean. Who knows whether this is real or effective - or its motivations? That its in the mainstream media is a red flag. There are Establishment figures who want to encourage violence and wrecking - the Sorathic is opposed to the Ahrimanic, after all.

Supposedly populist direct action often seems impressive for while - but it's amazing how such things fade from memory leaving not a wrack behind. There were Massive diesel fuel price protests all over France and UK, with huge road blackages for a couple of weeks in late summer of 2000 - who remembers? The Tea Party in the USA, Yellow Vests in France, Canadian truckers...

Come back in a couple of years and we may see whether such things reversed the trends, even slightly. Yet something *has* done so - albeit slightly (and I suppose temporarily, unless a lot changes first)

David Earle said...

Exactly right. This is probably the hardest thing for people that are concerned about the
current state of things - who self-identify as Christians - to acknowledge. Nothing can be more freeing (and exciting!) than truly understanding this as well as honestly and faithfully living by it's implications and exploring where this line of thought and behaviour lead.

As you eloquently put it in an older post: "Courageous faith in Divine Providence should now replace politics."

Dynamic said...

This is an excellent post. We can't expect or politics or other collective action to get us out of the mess that we're in. Our current woes are caused primarily by individuals rejecting Jesus Christ and what he has to offer us. This is a choice that is made at the individual level, and there isn't really any way for collective action to cause individuals to choose differently, especially if the majority don't want to do so.

Over the past few years, I've seen a fair number of political disputes where both sides appear to be on Team Satan. Choosing either side won't make things better.

Perhaps the best way to try to make things better is for one to pursue the good, the true, and the beautiful on one's own. Perhaps (although there's no guarantee) this might lead to more people changing sides and pursuing these things as well.

Bruce Charlton said...

@pyrrhus - A further example is Brexit. When the positive vote came in, there was a great surge of excitement and celebration, and gratitude for the hard and long work of those who had managed to introduce the referendum. At that point, I'm sure that many people regarded the nation as having changed - that is certainly what it felt like, for a while. It seemed that politics, for once, had succeeded in doing something good.

But, in the end, it was just a vote, just a big opinion poll. It was more useful to the totalitarian Establishment (who knew better what they were up against) than it was to the pro-Brexit masses, who realized they had no power to implement what they wanted; since by 2016 the entire Brexit process was (long since) in the hands of pro-EU leftist-totalitarians who opposed it, and were absolutely determined to prevent it.

My point is that the Brexit vote seemed like a huge HUGE positive political event at the time it happened - and yet... It seems we have a tendency greatly to over-rate the political, and not even to notice other causes.

Jacob Gittes said...

My deceased father was a dentist. An excellent one at that. I still remember how he would fix the teeth of the auto-mechanic, who would then fix our cars. Barter. Word of honor. No paperwork.
He also practiced dentistry in Canada, across the border, up at the far wilderness lake resort, in return for goods and services for our remote Canadian cabin.

That is how it's done: quietly, out of the limelight. Active, but secret, resistance.
We could create whole parallel economies and networks this way, but there can't be a paper trail.
Regardless, the resistance must be done one human relationship based on trust at a time.

Joey said...

Long time reader here. Thanks for regularly stimulating my thinking.

Maybe a dense question, but what does the acronym "MLB" stand for?

cecil1 said...

What are some examples of HOW you suspect people in the UK are quietly resisting??

What do you think they're doing, and how does this stop the system evil from advancing?

This would be useful to flesh out. A commenter above (Jacob Gettes) gave a good example of how undercover resistance can work.

There's so much control in daily life its hard to resist---ie: they will kill/or destroy me if I don't enable they to steal my income in taxes, they censor any real free speech on major media networks, the bureaucracy has technicalites to slow any legal process, and huge penalties if you don't follow them... its hard to resist in a practical way if you want to be in control and dictate your life.

Bruce Charlton said...

@Joey MLB is an anagram of the antiracism organization from summer 2020.