Historical parallels are Not a reliable guide to action, because the present is fundamentally un-like the past

I've done it myself often enough; but nonetheless I am dismayed by the many people who currently seek guidance for present action and strategy from historical parallels. 

Including in the case of our Christian religion. 

When Ecclesiastes said "there is nothing new under the sun", he may have been right for his time and place, but he is dead wrong about here-and-now. Cherry picked, distorted and partial historical parallels are misleading. 

There has never been anything like the world now - this eight billion industrialized globalized totalitarian world - with its strategically evil, demon-affiliated multi-national rulers and their fingertip-ready capacity for military, economic, financial, legal, religious, environmental and other destructions - and their command of a colossal and coordinated mass media to which the masses are willingly addicted and from which they derive ideological and everyday guidance. 

The world is different, and people are different. 

There have never been such human beings as there are now. Anyone who knows history should be able to see that people have desires and exhibit behaviours, respond (and fail to respond) in ways that even four generations ago would have been regarded as alien and insane. 

But argument is futile. If you don't see such huge differences between here-and-now and anywhere-else at any time, then nothing I can say will persuade you. 

This difference is why - no matter how genuinely well-meaning you are (by which I mean how genuinely Christian are your aspirations); to sift through the past for traditional guidance of what to do from where we are, is doomed to failure - and likely to do harm. 

Before we can do anything good, we must first understand who we are and where we stand. 

That is possible to attain - at least in a broad sense; but not if we are determined to discover our understanding in the past, in some other civilization. 

There is no realistic alternative but to make the effort to understand things as they actually are. Perspectives derived from study of the past and other places may be helpful, may contain clues... but The Answer is not there to be found. 

We cannot get the recipe for a Good Future from what has-been. At best we may get some ingredients needed for a good answer - but it's just as likely vital ingredients may be found elsewhere (e.g. in literature, art, real-science, and from our enemies), and almost certainly some key ingredient will be new, unprecedented.   

The Answer we hope for is something that must be created - not discovered. 

I can't even hate-watch Amazon Rings of Power, second season

I perversely enjoyed watching the epochal incompetence that was Amazon's Rings of Power, Season One - mostly because it was constantly surprising and amazing me by its ludicrous ineptitude; and because it was interesting to try and understand how such a thing had come to be, and what were the global implications... 

I was, in a mean-spirited sort of way, actually looking forward to the second season. 

But I have to report I could only stomach fifteen minutes of the first episode, and shall not be returning. 

Why? Simply: to watch series two is to enter such an angry, miserable, sordid, sadistic and hate-filled world; that it makes me simultaneously bored and depressed. Just horrible. 

I am not a masochist, nor am I looking for reasons to embrace nihilistic despair as my philosophy of life; so naturally I shall not be subjecting myself to any more such stuff. 

Sorry! - if you want to know any more about the most expensive train wreck in the history of television; you will need to watch it for yourselves, this time. 

Christianity - crushed and tormented by centuries of theology

There are certain (often commonly used) Christian terms that I always have found deeply confusing, un-understandable. One is "redemption".

People have (for centuries) talked confidently about Jesus Christ redeeming mankind, of the world's need for redemption etc. They talk as if "redemption" was a clear and precise technical term, an obious thing; and as if it was axiomatic that redemption (above all!) was what Jesus did - the main thing Jesus accomplished. 

So again I read into the subject a bit, looked at the explanations of redemption suggested by various historical theologians, and at some of the various denominations, and considered what they meant by redemption; and yet again I felt as if I was being pressed down and crushed by swarms of crazed and biting insects! 

I wonder how many others have felt like this? 

On the one hand, it would seem that what Jesus did must have been simple and easy to grasp - given the broad historical facts and context. On the other hand, it seems that almost immediately after Jesus's ascension, all kinds of things were being ascribed to him that were either incomprehensibly abstract and paradoxical - or else wildly at variance with what Jesus said and did.

A word for this effect is stultifying: the effect is demoralizing. 

And it went on, and on, and on - until so much mass and inertial momentum had been accumulated, that it seems (for many/ most Christians) that there is (literally no alternative but to submit.  

The idea of redemption itself seems to have arisen as some kind of error, perhaps for different and almost opposite reasons, or from different agendas... It is as if the idea that "what Jesus did" was to redeem Mankind, and The World, was swiftly accepted as a solid and mandatory assumption, without any agreement about what redeem actually meant or implied, or how it had worked (even in the broadest terms)!   

The sense I make from this is that here, as in so many other ways, Jesus was inserted-into pre-existing philosophical and theological schemes - whether Jewish, Christian, or other. 

My conviction is that most of the people who wrote about Jesus in the early years after his ascension, made sense of Jesus in terms of what they already believed before Jesus's ministry - and these were the people who set the agenda for the various churches for centuries to come; until the quantity of commentary and contradiction has become unopposable* and appalling. 

*(i.e. It cannot be opposed, only ignored.) 

In this, as so many ways; Christianity painted itself into a corner. Only those who were able to live with a permanent state of imprecision and contradiction were able to participate in the discourse. Anyone who seriously tried to make sense of things and get at the truth - was excluded. 

It's hard for me to express (because it apparently invisible to most people!) my horror at the way Jesus Christ and what he did has been enmeshed in vast webs of other stuff. 

A new Christian may begin with a wonderful sense of simplicity and clarity; but is almost immediately confronted by enmeshing menaces wherever he turns. And the new Christian will find that such-and-such is regarded as absolutely necessary to being-a-Christian - that "being-a-Christian" is something which takes place only within these assumptions - that there is asserted to be no real way of being-a-Christian except within such assumptions...  

What's worse is that the simple and obvious truth and reality which led to becoming a Christian, somehow gets reversed, in all sorts of ways. The whole thing gets smothered by an endlessly regressing external weight of mandatory demands; which cannot be grasped and must just be accepted and obeyed. 

"Myself", as an individual, is implicitly (sometimes explicitly) regarded as utterly trivial, insignificant, of no consequence to the vast mechanism of Christianity - except in disobedience! By such an account; to be a Good Christian is to acknowledge and act as a tiny and inessential cog in a vast machine; and if the cog fails to accept this role, then he will be spat-out into the consuming void beyond the machine.

Because life in service to the machine is so utterly miserable and hope-less - the only consolation is that our reward is that we will (at some point) become so utterly changed as to find it wholly blissful. 

This is nebulous, and un-consoling - because such a transformation would be to convert me into somebody-else (or some-thing else); so in practice the main incentive is always negative...

"You may find this unsatisfying, but if you dissent then you will be actively tortured forever - so shut-up and get-on-with-it!"

(Of course, this kind of threat doesn't happen much nowadays - not for good reasons but because faith is so utterly feeble that almost nobody really believes their church - as was evident in 2020 and by lack of repentance since. But for much of history and in many places; the negative incentives of Christianity were much more strongly asserted than the positive: fear rather than hope was the major drive.)

I am trying to express here something of vital import: which is the false and evil idea that in becoming a Christian one should be subordinating oneself to a vast social and intellectual structure - one to which the proper attitude is submission (although such fear-full obedience is often praised as "humility").

My counter-assertion is that the freedom, agency, and chosen personal commitment by which somebody becomes a Christian; these are attributes that ought to be carried through into the life of faith. 

We should not just begin in freedom, but stay in freedom...

Stay in a Christian freedom dedicated to a personal quest of love, truth, virtue, beauty and other Christian values.     

A freedom that is rooted in the personal and not the abstract...

Rooted in our relations with the persons of God and Jesus Christ - certainly not defined by our obedience and service to organizations, or bodies of texts and commentaries, nor to traditions of teaching. 

To be a Christian ought not to be intimidated, crushed and suffocated by "the past" - but a joyous (because hope-full) engagement in the present quest of life - and in context of an eternal resurrected future. 

That can be so - but only when we as individuals "make it so"?

And in the face of a great mass of would-be suffocating opposition. 

War in this Planet of the Apes

A great performance by Andy Serkis (plus CGI) as Caesar

I've only watched it once, but the recentish movie War for the Planet of the Apes (2017) keeps coming to mind as I contemplate the global situation. 

In particular, the way that the film demonstrates that it can - in practice - be impossible to prevent war over the long-haul; when even just one powerful grouping on one of the sides is really determined to cause a war. 

In the movie, with its secular perspective, this outcome is unalloyed tragedy; but in this mortal life... not necessarily so. 

I believe that this the situation at present - when one powerful grouping on the "Western" side is determined to provoke escalatory wars in many places, simultaneously - and ultimately everywhere. 

It seems very likely that They will succeed in causing world war - from somewhere or another, sooner or later - because that is just the nature of people and things in this mortal world. 

And by "war"; I mean a war that however it began soon develops into an unjust war, a war of evil-aligned against evil-aligned (at best, of greater and lesser evils): 

A war with no possible winners. 

So - if futile global war is in practice and eventually unstoppable - what then? 

What difference can you, or I, or anyone make?

And the answer is that we can make all the difference. 

Since this world is essentially in a state of spiritual war; then it is the attitudes, understanding and motives of individual persons that matter essentially. 

In war as in peace; there is all the difference in the world - which is actually all the difference in creation and eternity - in any war, according to the minds of individuals who participate or contemplate that war. 

When those individuals understand the spiritual reality of that war, and align with God rather than with one or another of the "sides" - that makes a difference. 

When individuals do not despair but repent their own fear, resentment, hopelessness as it (inevitably) arises - that makes a difference.

(For Christians, sin (i.e. evil and death) are inevitable. What matters is repentance. 

(And repentance, properly understood, is a positive inner act of affirmation and allegiance.)  

When individuals look beyond the war, beyond the tragedy of mortal life - to eternal resurrected life in Heaven - that makes all the difference. 

Spiritually to learn-from experience, is what this life's about. 

There are many, many bad things that happen in this mortal life and that cannot be prevented. 

That is inevitable. 

The big question we need to settle for our-selves is - what then?

 

Resentment at creation (more on "thrownness")

At a very deep level, it seems that people (and indeed beings of all kinds) react differently to awareness of "thrownness" - react differently from finding oneself "thrown into" God's creation, and where the only possible positive purpose and meaning is to participate in (or, at least, contemplatively enjoy) this ongoing creation. 

I think that some beings react to this experience of thrownness with an attitude of existential resentment. They respond to this situation by resenting the fact that they are in "somebody else's" project.

In other words, we recognize (usually implicitly, but sometimes explicitly - as with the "I never asked to be born" feeling and complaint) that reality is something other than our-selves.  

The Being also finds that he himself is, to a significant extent, the product of creation - and may resent that also. After all, he "did not ask to be created - which is a more fundamental complaint than birth. 

It seems a fact that each Being was (to a degree) created without his consent; and finds himself in a world created without his consent, and heading towards some goal that he himself had not agreed to... 

The question is how he reacts to this situation - negatively, or positively? Is he delighted and grateful to be and inhabit a creation of meaning purpose - and love? 

Or not? 

Good, or evil.  

Our choice in response to thrownness thereby determines our alignment to one or the other side, in the spiritual war of this world.

 

Be careful what you (and me!) complain of!

The major and over-riding complaint is (or should be) that the leadership class of the Western world and multi-national organizations are evil-affiliated and evil-motivated, and all its major social institutions likewise - including politics, big corporations, mass media, law, military, police, medicine, education, science and the arts. 

But/And they - and the nations they control - are also declining... 

Declining in population, military and economic power, intellectual achievement, effectiveness, wealth, confidence, self-respect... declining in all-round competence.  

It is therefore commonplace and accurate to complain both that The West is evil, and that Nothing Works Anymore. 

However! 

If The West and its nations is indeed evil by nature and intent (which it is); then surely we ought not to complain that it is also weaker (which it is)?

After all - do we really want the Empire of Evil to be more powerful? 

Do we really want Britain (or America) to be Great again? Given what these places actually Are, Do, and Want-to-do? 

We Shouldn't! 

So, let's all of us try to be a bit more coherent about our complaining - and try to avoid bemoaning the fact that we cannot pursue our evil plans with greater effectiveness. 

Note: In practice the decline is effectiveness is a symptom of the underlying evil. So we cannot (from where we are now) have greater effectiveness without first becoming more-Good. However, that is in practice, and I am here referencing spiritual matters. To want Western nations to become more effective without first requiring them to become spiritually honest and Good - is to want an evil thing. 

The doubled-edged quality of sacred symbolism: from means to the sacred, to blocking the sacred

By "sacred symbolism" I intend all the intermediary forms that are between a Man and the divine: so this includes all intended-means towards the desired-end: contact with the sacred. 

"Sacred symbols" include religious symbols (the cross, the crucifix, the ICHTHYS fish) and Icons; ritual and ceremony; prayer and meditation; sacred places such as churches, cathedrals, places of pilgrimage; and "the church" itself*. 

None of these are "the thing itself" but are intermediary - intended to function as means to that end.

(For my present purposes; this also applies to the Eucharist/ Divine Liturgy/ Mass/ Holy Communion - since, even when there is believed to be the real presence of Christ as a consequence of the ceremony; the ceremony is understood as intermediary - a means towards that transformative end. )

From our Modern perspective that is rooted in a non-sacred, materialist world-view, we usually tend to regard sacred symbolism in a positive sense: the sense of symbols generating "sacredness" from a context of the mundane. 

Those serious about their religion therefore tend to emphasise, and try to strengthen, the power of symbolism. 

But sacred symbolism is double-edged. 

It is intended to bridge between the mundane and the sacred; but symbolism also (and necessarily) stands between the mundane and the sacred. 

I believe that historically (and in our own development from young childhood) symbolism became a part of religion as a response to the waning, declining, sacredness of life-as-a-whole.

Originally, I think that humans lived in and experienced a sacred world. That seems to be the situation of the nomadic hunter gatherers. Symbolism ("totemism") emerged as a later development. 

Likewise in the transition between young and older childhood - initially all the world is experienced as "spiritual" (or "enchanted" - which includes negatively such), but later much of life retreats to the mundane - and the sacred becomes discrete and increasingly separated.   

Symbolism therefore has both the positive and intended effect of making a bridge to the sacred; and also a negative and inevitable consequence of relatively down-grading the rest-of-life (the "not-specifically-sacred" images, actions, places etc.) to a lower and mundane level.   

Therefore... If or when symbolism loses its power to form a bridge to the sacred; then symbolism in practice will have a negative spiritual consequence. 

By focusing attention and hopes upon intermediaries that actually fail to generate the sacred; symbolism stands-between the individual and the sacred. 

Symbolism will then block our access to the sacred: will block our potential capacity to experience the sacred. 

In other words; the pre-existing systems of symbolism may claim to be the necessary and only means of accessing the sacred; yet in practice they fail to provide access to the sacred - and thus the consequence is for sacred symbolism to prevent access to the sacred. 

Then we need to realize that...

The above is not just a hypothetical; but actually has happened: is our present situation. 

*I regard my general point about symbolism to be of primary importance for Christians; but it naturally applies to other religions, to New Age spirituality, and to occult "techniques" intended to engage with the spiritual realm - such as astrology, Tarot, numerology, ritual magic; and many types of intermediary method relating to meditative or group work. 

True measures - Temperature

John Michell summarized the case against the metre (and, by extension, other metric and "SI" measurements) as: it doesn't measure anything. 

This is why metres - their decimal divisions and multiplications - are almost useless to think with; whereas many of the Imperial measures are very well suited to inner work: each being a measure of some thing relevant - whether inches, feet, furlongs... or leagues. 

[The league ought to be revived, as being the distance an average person walks in an hour. Of course, you need some artificial device for measuring hours - which have no natural correspondence!] 

For examples: Understanding the height of everyday objects in feet and inches, or weight in stones and pounds... These are far superior to the metric substitutes. 

(Although I don't understand why Americans have abandoned stones - so that peoples' weights are stated given in very large numbers of pounds! This goes absolutely against the common-sense spirit of Imperial measures.)

My favourite instance is the acre as (roughly) defined as how much land could be ploughed in a day - thus an acre in areas with light sandy soil might be several times larger in area than an acre in heavy clay soil; and this difference broadly reflected the agricultural value of the land. 

It strikes me that metric measures have only replaced Imperial to the extent that people have stopped being aware of their environment, and ceased thinking about things for themselves. 

And have instead handed-over their thinking to machines and computers - devices that just tell us stuff in arbitrary, abstract and incomprehensible terms... 

And we are intended uncomprehendingly to submit and obey (and, nowadays, people nearly always do...).

The one bad non-SI measure - which has, significantly, spontaneously (by popular lack-of-demand) been abandoned almost everywhere - is Fahrenheit, which (significantly) is not Old English in origin. 

The Fahrenheit doesn't measure anything (in ordinary experience) whereas its more successful rival, the metric (but not SI) measure of Centigrade is rooted in the freezing and boiling of water. 

Yet a Centigrade is - as typical of such abstract decimalizations - the wrong size for everyday usage: been too big, too coarse, a measure; so that in practice half degrees Celsius (or less) must be used. 

The practical men who devised Imperial measures would have subdivided the difference between freezing and boiling into a larger number of degrees (maybe twenty-four?); and probably in accordance with what was most useful for the usual everyday purposes of measuring temperature - which occur in the lower half of the range.  

Note added: By my understanding, however, all mathematics, arithmetic, geometry, number-systems &c are abstractions that remove us from direct (i.e. relational) participation with reality. Just that the Imperial measures are less abstract, more rooted in human experience... It is a matter of degree, not a qualitative distinction. But there will be no Measures in Heaven!

Writing about music : The road not taken

For about a decade from the early 1970s, I was very powerfully engaged with music: both classical music - baroque, classical and opera; and also folk music - mainly English and especially Northumbrian, but also Scots and Irish, and especially "electric folk". 

I was almost constantly listening to, thinking about, learning about, performing, discussing or practising music of some sort or another.  

When I look back on those years, I am struck by the fact that I regarded music almost as a kind of salvation. Firstly for myself, where I though that music might be an answer to problems of purpose and meaning in life. 

And also, when it came to for folk music, that it would be part of a better future for England... 

I strongly felt that folk music could - and if given the chance would - deepen the national spirit, and become part of a re-engagement with the land and with each other.

I was also - and more generally - looking for a more active creative life. I was singing and acting, playing the accordion (but not particularly well) and a few other instruments in folk clubs and the like; and was involved in comedy performances including writing/ plagiarizing material. 

But I wanted something more originative than performance and adaptations; and was always experimenting with "creative writing" such a poems, plays and short-stories. 

As it turned-out, I had no talent for creative writing; but took quite rapidly (when I tried it) to "non-fiction" essayistic and journalistic writing; yet this avenue did not get-going until I was in my late twenties. 

What I now regard as a "road not taken" during those "lost creative years" was writing about music at that time when music was most important to me in the 1973-83 period*. 

Of course, I might not have been able to do it well - or even (more importantly) to my own creative satisfaction; but this can't now be known. 

It might be supposed that my lack of advanced ability at any instrument, my deficiencies in musical training, would have been a fatal deficit. But I didn't think so, and several serious musicians I knew well, regarded me as naturally insightful on the subject. 

But I did not even try; although there were opportunities, if I had asked for them - which I never did. 

Mostly this was not diffidence, but a kind of superstitious sense that if it was meant to happen, then it would happen - but if I tried to make it happen, then it wouldn't. 

This sounds a bit lame - but on the whole this has been the case through my life. Whenever I pushed myself towards some-thing by a conscious exercise of will-power: that invariably turned out to be wrong for me. 

Quite probably; me writing about music would have been, in some way a bad idea - which is why it did not happen. 

   

*[Actually, my very first published article was about music (a review of Rameau transcribed for synthesizers, done for a small specialist magazine) - but this was rather too late, didn't lead to anything else, and I had no chance to learn from it and develop.]

God will not put anyone in an impossible situation

For a Christian, God is The Creator, and also Good; and also Loves each of us at least as much as good parents love their children in the best imaginable family.  

This means that God will never place anyone in an impossible situation, and God will never allow any situation to remain impossible...

As soon as a situation has become impossible, God (because The Creator) will remake it such that there a good way-out from it - a way we are intended to discover and take. 

Experienced reality mirrors this so far as I am aware; but ultimately this assumption is faith-based - rooted in my experienced understanding of the nature of God... 

Part of which is to ensure that individual people will be able (from their own resources, and taking into account their own capacity) to navigate the needful discernment

So that any exception is only apparent, in not-real - and it is up to each person "caught" in what he supposes to be an impossible situation - to recognize this as fact. 

But all the above applies only when the purpose of this mortal life is recognized as being orientated towards eternal resurrected life in Heaven - and therefore when our perspective is not bounded by the contingencies of this temporary mortal life. 

We cannot always (and never wholly) escape from the inevitability of entropy (disease, ageing, death) nor from the activities of evil. So that kind of escape (i.e from "sin") is not (not necessarily) what God intends for us. 

Yet we can always learn from such experiences, and God always intends and hopes that we will do so; learn, that is, lessons that are extremely significant and beneficial to our resurrected life to come - even when the lesson is not (as often it is) beneficial to our remaining mortal life. 

The current hedonism

The raw hedonism of the Western populations is very striking - I mean the way in which people are self-blinded to depth; and explicitly dedicate their lives to having (what is generally accepted to be) fun and doing (what the cool people think is) cool stuff - then telling other people about it (humbly bragging). 

This is not something really new - but has become not just public (via social media, and the 24/7 connectivity to mass media) but the basis of life, for great masses of people of all ages and classes. 

What makes it so stark is that in the 2020s there are no remotely plausible social channels for people to practice virtue while gaining life-satisfaction. 

Half a century ago there were many niches - jobs, social institutions, churches, the arts and crafts - which were generally believed to be Good. And within-which there was (apparently) opportunity to build a viable life.  

This meant that many people could do these things, join these groupings, practice these activities - and feel that they were doing something that was worthwhile in some large albeit vague sense - while still (implicitly, covertly) being hedonic. 

It seems that people don't believe this now - except maybe briefly, in adolescence. 

And even if they do believe that some thing (such as "climate activism" say) is intrinsically worthwhile; they will very soon either be disillusioned; or else must consent to enter the web of lies and self-deceptions that characterises public discourse in our era. 

Such is the consequence of living under totalitarianism - there is allowed no autonomy of social institutions: all is brought under centralized surveillance and control - civil society is co-opted, regulated, emptied of agency, and squeezed towards extinction. 

In secular terms, and in the mainstream of life; the available choice is between honest disillusionment, nihilism, and isolated alienation on the one hand -- or immersion in The Matrix... with an attitude of quasi-compensatory pseudo-rebellion in the form of seeking the hedonic option. 

In other words; the dedication to hedonism is self-perceived as a stance of rebellion and dissent against the totalitarian system.

It isn't rebellion or dissent, of course - and there are, of course, other options...

There are other options... 

But only via developing explicit awareness of having been trapped by one's own metaphysical assumptions; by examining, critiquing, and revising the prevalent assumptions. 

And that development is something which can only happen by the active decision of each individual; by an inner quest that the great mass of Westerners absolutely refuse even to consider embarking upon.   

  

Genius at work: Discovering Artur Schnabel's Beethoven Sonatas

Yesterday - while suffering a migraine - I sought some edifying distraction among Beethoven's Piano Sonatas; and stumbled across the first ever complete recorded version by Artur Schnabel dating from the 78rpm interwar period of the twentieth century. 

I had (of course) come across Schnabel as a venerated name, since he was a major influence on, and favourite of, both Denis Matthews and Glenn Gould - two established favourites. I was vaguely aware that Schnabel was one of those regarded as more than a first-rank performer - also as a genuine musician.

But, for whatever reason, I had never troubled to investigate Schnabel - perhaps because of the primitive recording quality of what he left us. 

Yesterday I started to listen (in that strange, painful, detached way I sometimes do, when suffering migraine); starting with the first Piano Sonata of Beethoven - an old favourite I know well. 

I liked the first Allegro movement well enough; but spent most of the time adjusting-to - and editing-out from frontal consciousness - the "bottled" quality of the soundscape, hissing, crackles, and variable speed (with its distorting effects on tuning) of the 1934 recording. 

But when I reached the second movement - Adagio (at 3:20 in this recording) - I experienced one of those unmistakeable insights, awareness of the greatness of this musician; leaping directly across the ninety intervening years and the poor recording. 

Focusing on the melody in the right hand, I could immediately appreciate an almost miraculous long line of lyricism sustained across the musical phrases... And not just the phrases, but unbroken in its musical meaning throughout the entire movement. 

It was a direct encounter with a supreme musical intelligence; someone who knew, understood and was able to express the underlying structure and nature of this work.    

On another day, in another mood, and with a less focused and sustained concentration from me, I would surely have missed it - and heard instead just some olden-days guy playing what sounds almost like a bar-room piano on a damaged old shellac disc. 

But yesterday afternoon, in that mental state - I caught it... 

A genius at work. 

 

I can't comment! So here are my comments...

Problem gone. 

Commenting will resume as per... 

***

For incomprehensible reasons - I cannot at present comment on my own blog!

So, here (for the time being) is what would have been a comment in reply to Henry, for the post below:

@NLR - Not applicable in this case. I don't think I've done anything, and currently think its something to do with a bug in the recent "update" to the commenting format - just waiting to see if it gets fixed soon. Seems weird that commenters can comment but not me!

@as - I mean the relationship between the sexes, as they believe it ought to be.

@Henry - Interesting comment - especially the Rhinegold reference. 

By my understanding, the false model of the post-sixties sexual revolution wrt men and women, is opposed in the public arena by another false model from patriarchal and traditional religions - which regard women as a sub-man. 

As usual, both of the common and mainstream options are false, and have shown their major flaws over the past 200-plus years. 

Again as usual, we are left in the position of being individual men (or women) who must work out the right answer - from trial and error, experience and learning - with another individual woman (or man) - based on mutual love and mutual respect. 

Standard templates or blueprints for what men and women are supposed to be like, how supposed to behave, and what supposed to do - are net-harmful to this quest - as of here-and-now (even though some are less harmful than others). 

What's more they are bad for the soul. 

(Most "traditional" Christians who bang-on so relentlessly about sexual relationships; sound to me as if they would genuinely be much happier as Jews or Muslims -- also because of their conviction of the Monotheistic "Omni-God", to whom obedience and submission are primarily required. And indeed, that is where they may well gravitate... sooner or later. For them, women have no necessary or eternal theological function - only a temporary and biological job in this mortal life. When "trad Christians" also realize that (their idea of) Jesus has no necessary function in their theology - then they will recognize that they have picked the wrong religion for their bottom-line ineradicable convictions.)

The direction of creation

Typically (too often!) Christians make God responsible for everything... And are then appalled that God is responsible for... everything! 

If God really had made everything from nothing - then there is nowhere to go, nothing to do - and nobody to do it. 

Creation should be understood as creation-from-something, in the direction of something-more. 

Creation is not from one-thing (it is not one-thing) but from many things (many Beings) in harmonious love. 

(originating in many things...) Whence then cometh the coherence of creation - what is the origin of this love? Why is not creation the war of each against all?

Because of love - insofar as love. 

Love is between the Beings of reality. And God began love.

(Because God is two, not one: heavenly Parents, not just Father. It was their mutual love that began love.)

God began love, God continues with love. Anyone else who desires can join-in. 

The direction of creation is from the passive and accepting love of childhood, towards the active and autonomous love of maturity...

From helping with creation, towards contributing to creation.  

What's going on at the planetary level? And how can we know?

A brief reflection. 

Something has been going on at the planetary level, and also with Men, since about the millennium - and this was foreseen by quite a few people in the decades (going back many decades) leading up to this stage or phase. 

I assume that there is some kind of God-aligned planetary Being (an angel, the angel of this world; some would call it) who is involved; as well as Satan and his gang. 

How might this work? Given that the planetary Being, and each of us, are free agents? 

I think it must work by love, by-analogy-with (and also in "the same way" as) the ideal human family. 

Satan's rulership, by contrast, either manipulates people as if they were cause-effect machines; or else strives to dominate their wills utterly, to "make" them do what Satan wants. 

Love is not (ultimately) an emotion or feeling; but is a creative relationship between any two Beings - it is, indeed, the ultimate basis of divine creation.   

So this contest - this war - of spiritual good, and the opposition to spiritual good - has reached a point of potential awareness in recent decades - as humans have changed to become more spiritually aware. 

(Sadly, this awareness has been, so far, overwhelmingly negative in effect - awareness has destroyed the power of traditional religion, but few have embraced the power the new awareness brings. People use their new ability to intuit and believe - to dis-believe truths because imperfectly expressed or corrupted; and believe incoherent nonsense that is part of the agenda of evil.) 

It seems that many more people are aware of the evil attempts to dominate and control this world - earth and Men; than are aware of the positively good "angel of this earth". 

This is (I think) because we are aware of love and of the angel only by the spiritual (immaterial) way of "direct-knowing"... 

And this way of direct-knowing is denied, ignored (and over-ridden) or else regarded as trivial by comparison with the material communications of institutions, words, symbols, models etc. 

Another way of conceptualizing this distinction is to regard that which is directly-known as a consequence of heart-thinking. Whereas all the mass of other communications are kind of head-thinking, rationality; modelling that maps components of reality onto a wholly-known scheme; all based ultimately upon perceptual "data" (including the perceptions and measurements of machines).  

 

So - if the above is true; it suggests that we ought to allow ourselves to aware of the angel of the earth - and also many other spiritual realities - but in such a way that we don't simply fall back into giving authority to the materialism of of head-thinking. 

This is exactly where so many spiritual writings and teachings fall down. Direct insights are re-expressed (approximated, modelled) in communicable systems; but then (and this is the fatal error) this head-thinking is allowed to take-over. 

So that we get spiritual systems that are easily assimilated into the demonic system. 

This is the problem, not only of all traditional religions (with their philosophies, specified rituals, formal symbolism etc.) - which purport to define and thereby capture spiritual realities...

And thereby become the basis for schemes of monitoring and control; very similar in nature to that of the current global totalitarianism: doing things "to" people "planning" to "make" people do what is wanted.

Not only religions; but also many spiritual systems that purport to replace religions - from the many New Age ideas to older systems such as Steiner's Anthroposophy. 

The danger is that so many of these begin with genuine insights, often achieved by direct knowing, which impress us rightly; and only then do they shift into the mode of system and communication.  

As when Rudolf Steiner or his disciples begin with true and rare insights derived from direct and personal intuitions (and thereby gain our admiration) - but then construct and fit these with numerology, categories of many types (mineral, plant, animal, human - material, etheric, astral, ego), astrology, and detailed schemes of the purported evolutionary history and future of the solar system, earth, and Men (and thereby attempt to re-impose a tyranny of external spiritual authority). 

It seems natural, and almost inevitable, for us to express direct-knowing and heart-thinking in such categorical and systemic ways, in order first to communicate-with, then maybe influence - and potentially control - other people. 

The systems begin by explaining and teaching, then get used for monitoring and evaluating; but end by attempted domination and over-riding the ultimate agency of other Beings. 

Much of our deep and strong drive to do this; arises (I think) from a strong, prioritized, sometimes exclusive, focus upon the conditions of this mortal life and our gratification during it. 

If we could, instead, view this life and world as a vital but intermediary phase leading to resurrected life in Heaven - maybe it would be easier to resist such temptations?

Meanwhile, we can but strive to recognize and repent our tendency to make ourselves (and others) captive to "that which can be communicated and systematized" - and instead strive to use our heart-thinking to listen for direct-knowing.  

Why did JRR Tolkien fail to complete and publish The Silmarillion?

JRRT in retirement - no longer so inwardly driven?

There are many contributory reasons why JRR Tolkien did not complete and publish The Silmarillion in the eighteen-plus years between the publication of The Lord of the Rings and his death in 1973. 

But - over at the Notion Club Papers blog - I describe what I believe was the primary cause of this failure: a decline in his previously genius-characteristic power of sustained and focused motivation (presumably due to age, illnesses, and consequent dwindling vitality). 

Voluntarily to participate in voting; is to invite evil into one's heart

Voting, as a method for arriving at binding decisions; is clearly evil in itself and tends to corrupt participating individuals - as becomes obvious to those (but there are few such!) who shake-off the propaganda and ask the right questions. 

Furthermore; the extent to which voting corrupts its participants has increased, as the range of options to be voted-upon have all become evil-aligned: net-evil in their nature. 

In other words, voting is more extremely evil when the voter is choosing between evils; and is casting his lot for (what he tries to discern as) the lesser of acknowledged evils. 

Lesser or not; a vote for evil is a vote for evil.  

In different words: voting is not so bad when a vote can be (and is) cast for some positive net-good (e.g. for some good-affiliated person, party, policy). But voting becomes extremely corrupting when all possible options are net-evil, evil-affiliated... When all choices are actually motivated against God, divine creation, Jesus Christ... 

Then all voters are actually voting for evil.  

Evil, because the process and act of voluntary voting is (passively expressed) an act of consent; also (actively conceptualized) itself an action in support. 

When evil is voted for - including a lesser evil - then this is to invite evil into one's heart. And that is the only way that evil can enter one's heart. 

We cannot be made-evil purely from external influence; evil must (like a vampire) be invited-within. 

And surely the actual corruption from voting is obvious to anyone who is good-affiliated and stands outwith the processes of voting? Such as political elections; but also any other situation when would-be binding-in-advance decisions are made by some mathematical counting procedure. How could anyone regard such a procedure as intrinsically virtuous? 

Ultimately, voting has come to dominate societies of the modern world, at every level power is exercised; exactly because when people voluntarily participate mentally in the business of voting, they are choosing to take the side of evil in the spiritual war of this world. 

(And the spiritual war is what matters most to those with greatest power.) 

By voting; Men are choosing to corrupt themselves, by inviting evil into their hearts - again and again. By defending voting, they are doubling-down on evil: actively repelling good.  

Furthermore, as the matters voted-upon have been made all evil, and more evil; such corruption has accelerated and become more extreme. 

Why bother with the Sorathic understanding of evil?

It might be asked why it is potentially useful to have a differentiated understanding of evil? Why, in particular, it is helpful to be clearer about "Sorathic" evil?

I think it is helpful to anybody (of almost any religion*) to be aware that some evils of this world - including, I believe, the dominant motivation for current wars by Western powers against the Fire Nation, in and around Arrakis and potentially the largest polity of the Far East -  are actually negatively motivated. 

These are Sorathic wars+. These are wars that are ultimately - covertly, behind the self-enriching bribes, and geopolitical excuses - being provoked, sustained, escalated for reasons of destruction rather than for anything that might be gained from them. 

In other words - such wars continue, and continue to grow - long beyond the point when those in charge might be expected to benefit from them. 

The Sorathic insight is also potentially helpful from a Christian perspective; because Sorathic evil is not primarily directed against the salvation of Men. This can be confusing to Christians, who tend to assume that all real evil is directed towards the damnation of souls. 

This took me until yesterday to get clear. If evil is assumed to be directed against Christian hopes primarily, it becomes hard to see why destruction should become a dominant goal... 

Indeed, it might turn-out that Sorathic wars are less-bad for Christianity than is the current global-bureaucratic-totalitarian system of value inversions - because Ahrimanic-totalitarian evil is indeed anti-salvation, primarily. 

(It is an interesting aspect of the ongoing wars that they are destructive of all kinds of people. Yes, the Fire Nation is Christian, but their more-slaughtered opponents are Western-ideologues and secular nationalists. The Arrakis conflict is between non-Christians (and numerous secular CHOAM). But all this makes sense when it is recognized that Sorathic evil is directed against divine creation, against any-thing and every "thing" created; rather than being orientated specifically against Christian salvation.) 

**

Many people have the attitude: "But what is the use of understanding evil, if we can do nothing practical about it?" 

Especially given that destruction is so much easier than creation. 

(It may be very difficult to win a war; but it is much easier to make a war more-destructive. And that is exactly what we are seeing...) 

So; what is the use of understanding - even if it is true? 

There are at least two answers (assuming an understanding is indeed true):

First is that we cannot do anything practical and effective, until after we first understand truly. 

But second is that any true understanding is valuable "in itself" - in terms of the spiritual war of this mortal world:

True understanding is valuable for the first "understander" in his discerning quest to learn from experience in this mortal life; 

And that truth is also potentially valuable for those who may subsequently choose to share that spiritual possibility - by direct knowing. 

(Because all true learning is permanent and potentially accessible to all those who seek truth.)     

***

*I say "religion" because, although different religions explain evil in various ways, without religion there can be no coherent understanding of evil. 

+While there have been Sorathic individuals in history, there has never been a Sorathic culture or civilization until the Modern West. Thus, in the past, the Sorathic phase of a war tended to be a brief and terminal episode, and the leader became consumed by a destructive frenzy that is rapidly self-destroying (like, apparently, the last days in The Bunker; or the fictive example of Saruman). But at a societal level, this end-phase of Sorathic evil can be, and is-being, much more prolonged. Prolonged partly because multiple people are involved, with overlapping influence; and partly because the people in charge are under supernatural demonic influence/ control; such that individual human leaders are "disposable" and may die - yet the strategy continues...  

The progression of Luciferic, Ahrimanic and Sorathic evil; related to our loving-creator-personal-God, and to Jesus Christ

Christianity is not just about Jesus Christ; it is built upon several other realities:

1. We inhabit a creation - the world is created.

2. The creator is a God, i.e. a personal God (not an abstraction)

3. The creator God is loving towards all the Beings of creation (God might be otherwise, but is not)

In sum: Jesus operates in the context of reality being the creation of a loving (hence necessarily personal) God. 

Jesus is necessary because of the nature of creation: Creation takes place in the midst of primordial chaos. 

Primordial chaos is primal Beings existing without love - without coordination, without harmony; each Being a world unto Himself. 

This is why our mortal reality (termed Primary Creation) is subject to Entropy. Entropy is the spontaneous tendency of creation to revert to primordial chaos. (We experience Entropy in terms of disease, degenerative change, and the inevitability of death for all Beings)

Jesus offers the possibility of permanent and complete escape from entropy and the threat of chaos. 

Evil is the rejection of creation. 

Evil therefore came after creation. 

Evil entails the rejection of love, since love between Beings is what makes creation - creation is the harmony of Beings. 

The first evil is called Luciferic.

Luciferic evil is the assertion of a Being's selfishness ("my" self is all that matters) and the rejection of Love between oneself and other Beings. 

Luciferic evil therefore aspires to use (therefore not destroy) creation; to use creation in order to serve its own selfish will and personal gratification. 

Luciferic evil does not aspire to the damnation of other Beings (i.e. to make them reject resurrection into Heaven); it tends to be indifferent to the spiritual fate of other Beings. 

A Luciferically-evil Being, exploits ruthlessly and without love: desires that any and all other Beings will serve his personal satisfaction. 

In a sense; a Luciferic Being desires that creation will serve his will. This is why he is not against-creation as such. 

It could be said that Luciferic evil hates God (is anti-God; because God is loving), and is indifferent to Jesus.  

The second evil is Ahrimanic. 

Luciferic evil tends to develop into Ahrimanic evil; because Luciferically evil Beings band-together in mutually beneficial alliances, in order more effectively to exploit other-Beings. 

Ahrimanic evil is an alliance of the selfish. 

Ahrimanic evil is anti-God, which it inherits from Luciferic evil; and Ahrimanic evil is in addition anti-Jesus. 

Thus Luciferic = anti-God; whereas Ahrimanic = anti-God plus anti-Jesus. 

Therefore the alliance of the selfish will organize, manipulate and coerce other Beings, aiming that these other Beings will reject salvation: will reject the offer of resurrection to eternal life in Heaven.

In sum; while Luciferic evil desires the exploitation of Beings; Ahrimanic evil desires the damnation of Beings. 

Ahrimanic evil desires damnation because it is more spitefully evil than Luciferic evil. It's desires are not just for selfish gratification; but also for the immiseration of others. 

It could reasonably be said, therefore, that Ahrimanic evil is a greater evil that Luciferic; wanting not just its own satisfaction, but the stripping of satisfaction from others. 

This is why Ahrimanic evil has tended towards depersonalization via bureaucracy. 

The Ahrimanic aim of omni-surveillance and micro-control is not just a positive aspiration for domination; it is also actively directed-against the freedom and agency of other Beings. 

Yet Ahrimanic evil of-itself does not aim at the destruction of other Beings: it aims at domination, not destruction. 

It wants a universe of miserable slaves.

(Indeed; including the "enslavement" of animals, plants, earth and heavenly bodies, and indeed the "mineral" world; permanent utter domination of every-thing, rather than to kill every-thing.) 

And the Ahrimanic desire for damnation of other-Beings is a consequence of being against Freedom and Agency. Salvation is, after all, an eternal choice for resurrected Men to participate in divine creation; which absolutely entails their agency and freedom.   

The third evil is Sorathic. 

Sorathic evil is anti-creation; it aspires ultimately to reduce creation to chaos.

Sorathic evil is directed against all kinds of creation; it is against not only positive Good, but also against Luciferic and Ahrimanic evils - insofar as these seek to exploit or enslave creation. 

Sorathic evil can be considered a completion of the motivational shift from Luciferic to Ahrimanic evil, which is a shift from seeking personal gratification by using other Beings, to a type of personal gratification that enjoys the utter domination of other Beings. 

A qualitative shift from hedonism, to spitefulness. 

Sorathic evil moves on from the desire to dominate the whole of creation, to the desire to destroy all of creation - including oneself, insofar as we all are products of divine creation. 

The Sorathic can be seen as a purely negative form of evil, found in Beings that have lost all capacity for positive personal satisfaction, and can only enjoy destruction.

To summarize: Luciferic evil is pro-creation and anti-God because anti-Love. 

Ahrimanic evil is pro-creation and anti God (anti-Love) and also Jesus (anti-salvation). 

While Sorathic evil is "anti-" all manifestations of creation - including anti- all Beings (including anti-God and anti-Jesus Christ); also anti-Love, and anti-salvation. 

Sorathic evil tends to chaos; but it is not pro-chaos. 

Ultimately, Sorathic chaos is the negation of creation; the end-result of being anti-every-thing...

***

Note on Sin = Entropy and Evil; Salvation being from both Entropy and Evil 

Entropy (termed "Death") and Evil are, together, what is called Sin in the Fourth Gospel. 

Jesus came to save us from Sin - that is, to offer us the chance to reject Sin eternally; live without-sin eternally. 

Thus resurrection into eternal Heavenly Life saves us both from entropy including death (as well as disease and degenerative change); and simultaneously saves us from evil of all kinds. 

Resurrected Eternal Life in Heaven in therefore the Second Creation; which is derived from Primary Creation but operating entirely and eternally on the basis of Love, and without entropy or evil - because Sin is left-behind at resurrection. 

Should there be a seventh "simple machine": the Spring?

My son suggests that there ought to be a seventh "simple machine" added to the usual six; which is the Spring. 

The standard six are:

1. Lever.

2. Inclined Plane

3. Wedge

4. Wheel, and axle

5. Pulley

6. Screw

These are distinguished on the basic of their basic function - each does something distinct in mechanical terms. 

We could perhaps add "spring" for two reasons. Firstly because a spring does something (i.e. stores energy) that the other machines don't; and secondly because a spring is (or can be) simple. 

Therefore it could be argued that a spring is also a simple machine.  

Makes sense to me; albeit I suppose a spring isn't actually doing anything in terms of mechanisms; rather enabling something to be done in future. 

More exactly; a spring does not fit the definition of a machine, in terms of a machine being something that changes the direction or magnitude of a force. 

On the other hand; by a common sense understanding of what constitutes "a machine"; the spring does seem to be an appropriate addition. 

(As nearly always; answers depend on assumptions: on prior definitions and exclusions.)

BTW - Such simple machines can be used (with intelligence and planning, and some joinery ability) to accomplish the apparently impossible... Such as quickly (within minutes) moving a 439 pound box containing fragile precision machinery, from the back of a van down steps into a basement, equipped only with the strength of a single 13 year old boy...

The overcoming of darkness and death is The Grand Theme

The reality or otherwise of of a greater life can be seriously discussed. 

If we consider the saints and martyrs and patriots, the artists and mystics and revolutionaries who have believed in it; if we study the movements embodying that belief - do we find that the humanist science which denies it can explain all the facts: psychological, historical and poetic? And should it fail to do so, what are the implications of the residual mysteries? 

If humanist science succeeds and there are no mysteries, then the sooner such illusions are shed, the better...

But their dismissal will leave the humanist facing his old problem: how the "mortal worms" of Men in their billions can be brought to accept mortality, and care about an infinite vista of Progress when their own lives are finite and unprogressive. 

In any case, the overcoming of darkness and death is The Grand Theme. 

Edited from the closing paragraphs of Camelot and the vision of Albion, by Geoffrey Ashe

 

For "darkness and death" I read "evil and entropy" - which are, indeed, the grand theme of this mortal life; a theme that can be ignored only at the cost of regarding our-selves as "mortal worms", as futile and temporary patterns of unalive "atoms".

But does this matter? 

Why can't Men continue to live (as they now do, mostly and increasingly) from hour to hour, day by day; responding (as compelled or inclined) to immediate incentives - to live just as mortal worms, and to be content with this?   

Well Men can and do continue to live thus - but there are consequences; and men are not, apparentyly, content. 

Because the consequences of such a world-view do and shall depend on what kind of world this actually is. (Not merely what we want or assume it to be, but what it actually is.) 

The view of "humanist science" - of mainstream materialist metaphysics - is that this just-is a universe without purpose. In such a universe the mortal worms will (ultimately) be left-alone to drift through their present moments of mechanical stimuli and responses - until they die, and this ceases. 

Such a view is not rooted in evidence or experience; it is rooted in assumptions concerning what is objectively real - i.e. only material things, detectable, measurable, modelled by "science"; all else being regarded as unreal, subjective, mental constructs merely.  

But if this material reality contains more than the assumptions of humanist science have pre-decided to include in its world-view; and if those unrecognized realities ("residual mysteries")  include beings of purposive evil - then the mortal worms will not be left alone - but their brief lives will be manipulated; and will be channelled towards the purposes of darkness. 

In other words; modern materialism has pre-decided to assume that there is no objective purpose in reality. Pre-decided that the only valid explanations are strictly meaning-less: of undirected randomness and mechanical cause and response...

But if there is an objective purpose; and if that purpose includes evil purpose; and when that actually-existing evil purpose is denied hence unacknowledged by the mass of mortal worms... Well, this fact will make a decisive difference to the experiences during the brief-lives of these mortal worms. 

If so, what then? 

The choice is between continuing to exclude and ignore the reality of "darkness"; and uncomplainingly (because complaint is futile, and increases misery) accept... whatever happens to us in the short period between birth and extinction. 

Or, on the other hand, we must accept that the Grand Theme is to overcome death and darkness - which points beyond the experiences of this mortal world of evil and entropy...

Or more exactly than this negative talk of overcoming bad-things; we would need positively to pursue a goodness and immortality. 

Sooner or later recognizing that - in our actual continuous experience - Goodness and Immortality (while we know them from direct inner conviction) only fully-exist in some realm other than the present dispensation of our-selves and our-environment. 

Paucity of motivations among the New World Orderers

In considering the dwindling to ineffectuality of positive national motivations; we soon find ourselves up-against the recognition that there are extremely few motivations, and no public and organized ones, that don't seem to crumble in our hands...

This applies even to the (by far) most dominant and successful motivator of recent generations: the plan to construct a New World Order (NWO), a pan-global totalitarian system of omni-surveillance and micro-control.

The stunning success of this motivator is rooted in its enabling tens of millions of "implementers" among national leadership classes such as managers, journalists, academics, administrators etc - to feel good about themselves, their opinions, their work. 

But this feeling positively good has swiftly crumbled-away as the system became more powerful. 

Now the motivation of the NWO-implementer-class is almost wholly negative - to the point that they often deny the positive (once justifying) goal of their endeavours - they deny (especially in public) that they actually are working to build and extend a pan-global system of (self-styled) benevolent rulership aiming at peace, prosperity, comfort, convenience for all. 

Nowadays, this same class is possessed by almost wholly negative motivations; relating to fear-of, hatred-for, and determination to-eliminate ever more and more people and classes.

Their focus is to find and eliminate all of those who (supposedly) stand in the path of what are actually ever-more nebulous and incoherent goals - such as social justice/ equity/ diversity/ inclusion/ sustainability/ health etc. etc. 

Consequently; the actuality is now "pursuit" of social justice through differentially-targeted and asymmetrically-applied laws/ regulations; peace through provoking and escalating ever more, and more destructive, wars; prosperity through destroying economies/ food production/ trade and transport; comfort and convenience by promoting worldwide violent chaos.     

This is a consequence of replacing positive goals with double-negatives across the board: creative destruction, as I have called it - in which destruction is up-front and actual and purposive, whereas any subsequent "betterment" is vague, conjectural... and almost-never happens. 

Instead of working for some state-of-affairs; the NWO-ers are working against particular people and groups. (And indeed; some of those worked-against are imaginary and manufactured threats!) 

I regard this long-term and (so far) inexorable devolution from positive to negative goals, as a very general trend of this era - both symptom and cause of the increasing evil-affiliation of humanity. 

It is therefore something that needs to be recognized - in ourselves primarily, but also as a fact of life as we experience it. 

Negation cannot be a valid basis for living; so it behoves us (each and all) to find some genuinely positive motivation upon-which we can base our motivations and build our lives. 

This is not being given us by anything external: not by society-at-large, not by any of the social institutions, including not by any of the churches. 

To find a genuinely positive motivation, we must either derive it from our individual spiritual insight and intuition; and/or actively seek it among the great mass of evil-affiliated dross and poison of corrupt institutions.   

It is up to us. 

 

Was there ever a Golden Age? Camelot and the Vision of Albion, by Geoffrey Ashe (1971)

Geoffrey Ashe is one of my favourite authors, and Camelot and the Vision of Albion (1971) is (for me) his best book. Strongly recommended. 

I have been re-reading it - slowly and with much provoked thought - for the past couple of weeks; and pondering its core ideas, concerning the powerful conviction of a "golden age", specifically for Britain ("Albion") - how this is exemplified by the Arthurian "matter of Britain" through its many developments. 

William Blake's writings, especially his long prophetic poem "Jerusalem", are given especially close attention. 

More broadly, the book is about the idea of a golden era that is lost ("Camelot"), remains as a visionary memory, yet may be recovered; including an heroic leader (such as Arthur) who has died, yet may return... 

Ashe considers how such visionary ideals have been recurrent through many places and times; how they have shaped, and continue to shape, the human imagination - and have inspired human action: individual and societal. 

The book is typical of the best of late 1960s, early 1970s psychological and social reflection (which is, at a higher general level than anything since) - which means that the treatment of Christianity is largely "comparative" and in terms of its effects - rather than assuming (some form of) Christianity to be Truth about Reality, and exploring the consequences of that assumption.

(...This despite that Ashe was himself an active and devout Roman Catholic - he never states this in his major works, and I did not know about it until after his death.)

   

When it comes to the basic idea that there once was a Golden Age, and we that we ought to be working restore its essence in the future - I assent only partly: only about fifty percent!

Clearly an idea as frequent and near-universal as the past Golden Age must be based in something real; and my assumption is that this is some combination of our memories of early childhood, with some kind of yearning for the simple hunter-gatherer life that used to be universal for Men. 

But how "golden" are such lives? I think the point is that the human consciousness of the golden age is best understood as being much more natural and spontaneous and present-minded; and much less self-aware than adults and modern Men.   

Therefore, the golden age cannot be restored when Men have modern adult consciousness; and it cannot be restored in the context of any settled, civilized, organized society or civilization - because such lives require planning, specialization, organization... and many other things that alienate us and subjugate us. 

More deeply, there are the twin realities of evil and entropy. 

Firstly: what about evil, and entropy (i.e. disease, degeneration and death) in the Golden Age? 

My understanding is that awareness of these was diminished by the lesser development of consciousness among children and early tribal people. Therefore, evil and entropy were always present - but not conceptualized, mostly ignored, easily forgotten.  

So (by my understanding) the Golden Age did not solve the perennial problems of mortal life on earth - it just found these problems much easier than we do Not to think about. 

This is why there can be no future Golden Age, because we now are aware of these problems - to the extent that many people's lives are made fearful and miserable by thinking about them - even when they are not actually being experienced. 

Those who believe in the possibility of a future golden age must therefore posit some qualitative change in Men - the future golden Men must (if that age is to be golden) not be motivated by evil, they must not be susceptible to disease and degeneration, they must not be troubled by death and loss. 

...Which means that such Men will not be like us, they will no be us; and it's no solution to the problems of entropy and evil in the human condition to posit a golden age for "other people" and "somewhere else" in which there is neither entropy nor evil - it's a non-sequitur. 

If everything needs to be changed, then that is a replacement, not a solution. 

More deeply still; the ideal of a future golden age does not, and cannot say how - even in theory - evil could be eliminated, when it is found in all beings including ourselves; and how entropy could be eliminated when it seems universal.

My conclusion is that the golden age for us, for our-selves, can lie only in another state and place of being, not in this world. 

For me; that would be Heaven, and it lies outwith this mortal world.

In sum; the yearning for a restored Golden Age is understandable, significantly reality-based, and we can learn much from it; but ultimately it is impossible. 

The strategic PSYOP of global horror intended to overwhelm with fear and inculcate despair

It strikes me that there has been and is a very long-term demonic PSYOP, which has largely succeeded in embroiling the world's discourse in a non-stop festival of horror, with the aim of overwhelming us with fear and inculcating an extremity of despair. 

There is, of course, more than enough horror in the world at any time, and then there is a vast amount of lying, selection and distortion. 

And nearly-all of this reported as happening remotely - elsewhere and to other people (or indeed, supposedly, in the past) - and we know it only by second-/ third-/ nth-hand report by agents... 

We know it mostly (or wholly) via agents who serve the agenda of evil; and who supply slanted or inverted concepts with which we are intended to interpret their alleged-facts. 

On top of this there is a dominant ethic, or value-system, which both implies and argues that - because of the alleged extremity, pervasiveness and causes of this reported-evil; remote evils are actually the most significant evil in the world. 

By comparison; whatever evils that we personally experience and know are portrayed as trivial and subjective. 

This combination of depictions of extreme reported horror, with a pervasive and powerfully-enforced value system that puts this reported horror at the centre of the ethical concern of people worthy of admiration and respect, makes for a potentially lethal cocktail. 

I say potentially lethal, because (like so many aspects of the modern world) this evil-made and evil-motivated situation within divine creation, is made-use-of and intended by God to teach us vital lessons during this actual mortal life here-and-now. 

It is nigh impossible to avoid exposure to this inducement to sin; and to be influenced by it. Yet, as Christians; we ought first to recognize that fear and despair are sins that must be acknowledged and repented. 

The upshot is that we are each compelled to deal-with this very strong source of temptation to sin; so that we will not be manipulated into evil attitudes for the evil ends of our evil overlords!

As usual in such situation; our single most vital defence is to acknowledge what is going-on: that we have been deliberately placed and kept in a deliberately corrupting situation by the powers of purposive evil and their servants.

But no matter how corrupting the situation (and how compromised we have become by past choices); our loving God (by his creative power) will always ensure that there is a way to learn and an open route to salvation.

From that basic understanding, our experiences of being-manipulated may lead to us learning many and important life lessons (of permanent benefit to us in the life everlasting to come); and to develop attitudes that lead us towards salvation - rather than towards the intended self-damnation consequent upon surrendering to fear and despair. 

Captivity in the tower of Cirith Ungol is, from Frodo's perspective, the ultimate "hopeless situation": Yet he was wrong to despair

The capture of Frodo - according to Rankin-Bass in 1980 (yet, sadly, not how I imagined it)

Over at the Notion Club Papers, and using an example from The Lord of the Rings, I discuss how no situation is ever hopeless, and no situation ever justifies despair - for one who inhabits the divinely created world of a good God. 

And, on the other hand, it is despair itself that cuts us off from valid grounds for hope. 

Are all religions fundamentally the same?

When you get something false (because it is false) asserted as often as that "all religions are fundamentally the same" - it is usually because of an unexamined, perhaps unnoticed, assumption. 

Disagreement arises among those who do not share this assumption - yet the root of the disagreement is too seldom unearthed in the heat of argument. 

I think that people started saying all religions were (at root) "the same" when people started focusing (almost exclusively) on this-worldly aspects of religion and began ignoring (or simply not thinking about) what happens to us after death. 

In essence: The disagreement over whether religions are "the same" hinges around whether we assume a religion is defined by what it says and does about this mortal human life on earth; or whether we assume a religion is rooted in what it says about the life of our soul/ spirit after we have died. 

For atheists (and therefore the mainstream of public discourse in the modern world), of course, death is The End; so it is unsurprising that their comparisons of religions focus entirely on the psychology and social behaviour of various kinds of religious people. 

Since there are many broad similarities in the behaviour of people of various religions, then - by these assumptions - it seems reasonable to assert that all religions are fundamentally the same, and that differences are superficial and contingent. 

The other group who assert religions are fundamentally the same are those Westerners who advocate The Perennial Philosophy: some "oneness" spirituality that draws upon mystical (often "Eastern") religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Sufism or the like; and upon the tradition of Neo-Platonism or Gnosticism (for example) either with a pagan or Christian vocabulary. 

Such people do believe in existence beyond death; but this existence is impersonal. Survival is without ego, without personality; perhaps pure passive contemplation, perhaps by assimilation into The One (from which all originated). Oneness spirituality regards this mortal life as secondary, temporary, superficial; indeed an illusion ("maya") - the only real-reality is in the permanence and changeless stillness of oneness.  

Therefore, from the Perennialist/ Oneness perspective; all specific religions are this-worldly, ego-focused, and delusional: therefore all religions are fundamentally The Same - i.e. wrong!

But if instead we assume (as I personally do) that the fundamental nature of a religion is defined by its account of what happens after this mortal life: that is after death - then we get a very different understanding. 

If the main thing about a religion is supposed to relate to this mortal life and world; then we may well conclude that the similarities are more important than the differences; and that all religions are - near enough - "the same". 

But if instead we focus on the nature of life after death - as I believe that we should - then we discover that there are many, qualitatively distinct and mutually incompatible differences between religions - and differences between any religion and other types of world-view and ideology. 

For instance; if we expect or desire to reincarnate after death there are several very different models of how reincarnation works (re-cycling of souls, spiritual evolution, operations of karma etc).

If one of these reincarnations happens to our soul, then the others don't happen! And therefore the religions are different.

Like wise with other possible outcomes. If like the ancient Greeks or Hebrews, every soul is assumed to become a demented ghost dwelling forever in an underworld; then this post-death outcome is absolutely distinct-from and incompatible-with  the Christian belief in resurrection of the body to eternal Heavenly life.  

In sum; all religions came be regarded as very broadly "the same" if we focus wholly on our bodies, on human psychology and sociology, during this mortal life on earth; but there are many distinct religions (and non-religions) if, instead, we define a religion primarily by its assertions concerning the nature or absence of existence of the soul or spirit after death.  

Q: Why can't Western nations "mind their own business?" A: Because they have no business to mind.

Sensible and common-sensical people from places like the USA, UK and France will often wail: "But why can't we just mind our own business?" 

Meaning, why are we intervening/ interfering abroad; when so much needs to be done to sort-out our affairs "at home"?  

This, especially, when it comes to engaging in wars on behalf of nations with which we have no treaties; or intervening to replace the rulers and change the way of life of... anywhere we fancy, anywhere in the world... for as long or as short a period as is convenient to us. 

But the simple answer is that we cannot mind our own business because we have no business to mind. 

For instance; what, exactly, is the business of the UK? 

(I don't mean to ask what our business should be, but what our business actually and currently is?) 

To which we can only say - there isn't anything At All: No actual business... Not so far as the people who run the UK, and their obedient managerial-state minions are concerned.

At least, there is no positive business... 

The fact is that our rulers (e.g. in politics, finance, mega-corps, and the mass media) are already sorting our our affairs "at home" in just the way that they want it sorted. 

That is: they are replacing the native population with immigrants and encouraging hatred between them; they are destroying the economy and the environment; and have already captured and corrupted the military/ legal system/ policing/ education/ health services/ churches.

Their home "business" of civilizational and social destruction is going very well, therefore they are "minding their own business" - i.e. the business of destruction; so (from their perspective) they are free to engage in similarly-destructive foreign adventures to their hearts content!     

Dealing with the problem of entropy. Love versus Bliss - Creation versus Stasis

Mainstream Christianity (although, presumably, not what Jesus actually said and did!) has apparently always embodied a fundamental, metaphysical, incoherence  - whereby it has tried to assert two incompatible world-views and life-aspirations. 

(I assume - but cannot "prove" - that this arose as a consequence of early theologians being unwilling to give-up their Judaic assumptions and/or the Classically-derived Greek and Roman philosophy - especially Neo-Platonism; and instead fitting the simple reality of Christianity into one, the other, or both of these pre-existing moulds - thereby creating the unclarity, paradoxes and "mysteries" which have existed since.) 

Entropy - leading to our death and the death of every person and thing that we know - is an unavoidable experience and fact of life; unavoidable so long as we are aware, purposive, and/or take memory seriously. 

People have therefore dealt with entropy, tried to remove it from experience and/or from reality, by several tactics and strategies. 

One is the goal of living in a perpetual present. If Time is cut down to a present-moment in which (so far as we can tell) nothing happens; then we have apparently deleted Time. If there is no Time, there is no entropy, and no death...

The idea in practice may become manifested as life being cut-up into a sequence of disconnected "now"s; each without relation to what went before. 

To some extent, this can be seen in popular mainstream culture, and its extreme un-interest in looking at trends, or "joining the dots" between facts or experiences. "That was then, this is now"... so why bother about it? Concern about the past or future is a "downer". If I feel OK now, then that's all that matters... 

In effect: if I can say "I see no entropy now" (i.e. there is no change, no degeneration, no death) in the time-slice that is the present moment under consideration; then (it is inferred) entropy can be denied or ignored.

This "works" insofar as analysis is restricted to this present moment. 

Ultimately, this aspires to delete Time - or, if not possible, to delete any perception of Time. 

Thus life aspires to a state of stasis - preferably blissful stasis. 

The aim is contemplative, not creative.

Thus the ideal state is to "stop" or escape Time, and therefore (necessarily) to "stop" creation - more exactly, to stop creating. 

(God's creation is seen from this perspective as done and finished, completed once and for always, total and complete - a creation to which nothing can be added.)

The above analysis and purpose seems to be converged-upon by a wide range of religions and spiritualties; I think because it arises from commonly shared assumptions and practices - from a particular way of dealing-with, of escaping-from, the problem of entropy. 

The attitude aimed-at is indifference, detachment, not-feeling, not-caring; the desire is to become unaware of entropy and its consequence. 

The attitude aimed at is acceptance: don't compare, don't remember, don't plan... 

Accept whatever happens. Maybe it is all regarded as "good"... But however regarded What Is, Just Is, and should be accepted. 

(Our misery is interpreted as a consequence of failing to accept.)

But (by my understanding) what Jesus said was aimed-at those of us who choose creation as our primary goal, not contemplation. 

Those of us who choose love as our fundamental value, rather than indifference.  

Jesus dealt with entropy by accepting its inevitability in this mortal life; and offering the elimination of entropy ("life everlasting") in resurrected heavenly life - after death. 

The need for resurrection derives from the inevitability of entropy in this mortal world. From the fact that this mortal world cannot be "redeemed". 

Entropy is a part of this mortal reality - therefore there cannot be a heaven in this life or on this earth - which is why the Heaven of Jesus is in the resurrected life and in Heaven.

Jesus's teaching is linear, sequential, includes time, includes change, entails freedom and the capacity for love - and from this it promises to eliminated death - which concept included sin and corruption. 

In the Heaven made possible by Jesus; there will be love, creation, and change - but there will not be sin, corruption or death. 

Resurrection is a voluntary remaking: we desire and allow ourselves to be remade without entropy, and without sin by following Jesus - and that is the only way it can happen. 

Implicitly; Jesus dealt with entropy by love; and love is a choice - love entails freedom. 

Jesus embraced creation rather than contemplation, and invited Men to join with the work of creation (to become Sons of God). 

This is why Heaven is necessarily opt-in - because people cannot be made to love, nor to create - these come from freedom, not coercion. And this is why those who do not (from their freedom) opt-in, are thereby (self-) excluded.

And those self-identified Christians who aspire to a Heaven that is without Time, that contemplative not creative, is changeless, is experienced as a constant present... 

Well, such people are wanting something different from what Jesus actually offered. 

"They mean well..." What it Really means...

They mean well is a phrase used frequently about the astroturf-activists who support "good" (i.e. leftist) causes such as antiracism, climate, antiwar etc - but "go too far" by committing acts of sabotage, menace, destruction, violence etc.

The term is also applied to the the totalitarian-manipulated intractably-stupid masses, who get their facts and opinions from officialdom and the mass media... 

"They mean well..." 

So far as I can discern, "they mean well" actually means":

1. "I want to feel good about myself". 

Plus

2. "What makes me feel good about myself, is approval from those who get their facts and opinions from officialdom and the mass media."

This is understandable - as most types of sin are understandable (e.g. dishonesty, resentment, greed, lust, laziness) - being based in instinct...

But I don't think that really means that such people "mean well" - even when they constitute a large majority of the Western population.