Which end of a slice of bread do you prefer? Booly or Clappy?

Booly end is at the top, clappy at the bottom

From my childhood (by oral transmission, with no spelling); a Northumbrian dialect ("Pitmatic") term for the ends of a slice of traditionally-shaped bread is booly - i.e. because round like a ball (or bool); and clappy - because flattened as if clapped, or slapped-down-upon, a table (or anything else).

As a kid I much preferred the clappie end, and would always take it for preference. 

But now I'm grown-up my taste has reversed, and I will go for the booly end - if given the choice.  

In Medieval times, bread was cut horizontally so the booly ends and most of the bread, were detached from the clappie end - which was used as a plate or "trencher"; which after the meal, having soaked up various juices, might be given to The Poor. 

This was because bread ovens were insulated stone or brick boxes, pre-heated with burning wood. The ash was then mostly raked out, and the bread baked ASAP while the oven still retained its heat... 

But the clappy end would inevitably be permeated with wood ash, which is why it was sawn-off before serving.   

Whether this is relevant to my current booly preference is doubtful -- My worry is that the change signifies a covert transfer of allegiance from the Saxon peasantry of my ancestors (who would have got the clappie trenchers to eat, if they were lucky) to their evil Norman overlords that kept the booly for themselves. 

The replacement of disinterested judgment by the rule of the uninterested

It has been... interesting to observe how the word disinterested, which means impartial; has become co-opted as a synonym of uninterested - which means not having one's mind, feelings or motivation engaged by a thing. 

Properly speaking, a good judge in a court of law ought to be disinterested, but not uninterested. 

That is; a good judge ought to be impartial about the guilt of the accused, and guided by the legal process and its evidences. But the judge needs to be interested in the sense of engaged with the case, paying attention, and giving it active thought. 

Such a slovenly destruction of meaning as has happened to disinterested, is typical of a society in which people are uninterested - on a massive scale; from top to bottom of social institutions and discussion.

Our society is one in which an immense and increasing amount of "data" is hosed upon people 24/7, most of which is untruthful (lies, distortions, manipulation), and concerning matters about which hardly anybody has any interest - but for which there is a demand that "everyone" forms a judgment - and is ready to express and defend it.

Such everyday judgment is profoundly uninterested - as is necessarily so with such large amounts of stuff. And by the fact that nobody lifts a finger to verify the validity of what is discussed: neither by application of common sense nor personal experience; not by reasoning, not by seeking-out further and better information. 

On top of this there has been the totalitarian takeover of all major functional social institutions under a single multi-national bureaucracy-media-complex. 

Such that nowadays no sensible person would expect a judge to be disinterested; because any personal motivation a judge may have with respect to The Law (which concept he probably would not recognize as autonomously valid) will be subordinated to pursuit of the Establishment agenda.  

Yet an ideal and good judge would be disinterested about a case, while being intensely interested in the case; exactly because he was strongly motivated by the desire that justice be done in accordance with the spirit and letter of The Law.  

Likewise in what used to be science and the arts... 

Science used to be - when it really-was science - disinterestedly evaluated by a small group of individual scientists, each of whom was truthful and whose main interest was the same species of scientific truth. 

The disinterestedness of scientific evaluation, was therefore a product of intense interest in truth. 

Now that science is a mass bureaucracy manned by officials and functionaries who are uninterested by the truths they pretend to pursue; the guiding evaluations are provided top-down - by those who manage the system in accordance with ideologies provided by a totalitarian leadership class (in accordance with priorities that have nothing to do with real-truth - but only with manipulation). 

Scientists no longer run professional science, and it has been decades since they did; consequently, "science" has nothing to do with truth. 

And, since truth-seeking/speaking scientists are grit in The Machine; over the decades, scientists have been eliminated from the system (except sometimes, as isolated individuals, at a low and system-powerless level).  

When the arts were good, artistic evaluations (eg. of music, poetry, fine arts) were dominated by those few individuals who were intensely interested by the species of aesthetic beauty that the particular art provided. 

Therefore, the arts could be disinterested in their evaluations of quality, exactly because there were powerful and personal artistic interests driving them. 

Now that the arts are incorporated in the state systems of bureaucracy and the corporate worlds of trading. I mean especially the visual fine arts; painting, sculpture and the like) - where nobody involved is genuinely interested-in and motivated-by aesthetic beauty. 

Disinterestedness does not happen in the fine arts now. 

The evaluations of fine arts are based on interest - and the strongest interest now is a not-artistic mixture of finance, ideology, careerism, and the usual human corruptions (e.g. sexual). 

Artistic evaluations are nowadays utterly worthless with respect to aesthetic beauty - whether these evaluations come from (so called) artists, academics, critics, galleries, auctioneers, investors - or whoever. 

In sum: Uninterest in art among those who evaluate art systemically, has led to the loss of disinterested evaluation throughout the institutions of the arts. It also leads to the astonishing degree of aesthetic-incompetence among those who evaluate the fine arts; which is evident in all areas - awards and prizes, prices in sales, content of exhibitions, and the high prevalence of forgeries and fakes. Competence requires motivation, and therefore is also a product of genuine interest.  

In sum; genuine interest enables disinterestedness; while lack of interest is the same thing as uninterested. 

In the world of the uninterested, disinterestedness is impossible and becomes extinct.  

So... mass linguistic absorption of the word disinterested into meaning simply lack of interest-in, has paralleled the disappearance of interested-impartiality from public discourse. 

Why? Because motivations are what determine systems; and motivations derive from our world view... from our beliefs about the basic structure and purpose of reality. 

When it has been generally decided that reality has no purpose - and when that truth has sunk-in fully and everywhere (which took a few generations); then deep and powerful motivations become impossible; and we get the present world where people function in terms of superficial, labile and short-term motivations - which are easily manipulated top-down.... 

Which is why disinterestedness has been - deliberately - driven to extinction.  

It has now reached the point where many people cannot even conceive of the world that actually-existed 50-plus years ago, and more so in the more remote past; and deny that it ever existed or was possible. 

It seems impossible, because it was a world where it was normal for many people to be so interested by some-thing that they could - sometimes - be dis-interested about it.  

A good way forward can only come from revealing and challenging those fundamental (metaphysical) assumptions about the nature of reality that have so annihilated deep motivation as to render it unimaginable. 

The conflation of Christianity and Church - once inevitable, now impossible

By my understanding; it was once (almost) inevitable that Christianity would be conflated with "Church" (although exactly which Church, was very soon a matter of deadly dispute). 

Whether or not such conflation of Christianity and Church was once inevitable, so that it was natural, spontaneous, and necessary for a self-identified Christian to conceptualize his religion in church-terms; this conflation is now contingent upon personal choice.

Indeed, the situation is almost reversed; in that it is now natural and spontaneous - and almost unavoidable - for each Christian to conceptualize his own Christianity separately from Church. 

The tendency to mental separation between Christianity and Church happens in the modern Christian's own mind; even when that Christian asserts and believes in one of the orthodox-traditional, church-defined conceptualizations of being-a-Christian. 

The inner mental separation of Christianity from Church probably explains the progressively-increasing over the decades, shrill-aggression of Church-first Christians in their advocacy and apologetics. 

In other words, in arguing for an external and groupish conceptualization of Christianity as necessarily Church-originating and sustained; they are arguing, primarily, with themselves!

In other words; the trad-orthodox advocates are fighting their own recurrent inner tendency to separate their Church from Christianity - a tendency that is forced upon them by the continual crises and conflicts and profound schisms, endemic within all the Christian churches - as of 2025.   

I believe that human consciousness, human thinking, has changed over the centuries; and what was once natural, universal, and almost irresistible; has become a forced-choice - and almost impossible.  

A Western anthropologist watches a "shaman" working with spirits; the tribe sees the spirits but the anthropologist does not. What next?

A spirit; naturally seen by the shaman, invisible to Westerners...

Consider, as a thought experiment, a situation that happened for many Western anthropologists who were observing native tribes in various parts of the world. 

A tribal "shaman"/ medicine man/ spirit healer would perform some kind of ceremony - perhaps of healing - in front of the tribe; and everybody present would see spirits (or, claim to see spirits) - except the anthropologist. 

What does this mean, that everybody present perceives some-thing, except for one person - who is looking, but does not see? 

1. One possibility is that the majority are correct, and the minority of one who cannot see spirits has "something wrong with him" - some kind of perceptual deficit. 

Since spirit blindness is so common in the West, it is presumably some combination of racial and cultural "sensory defect".

The "answer" would seem to be for Westerners to become able to perceive spirits; and if this is taken seriously it leads Westerners towards exploring manipulations of consciousness such as happen during hypnosis and trances (perhaps assisted by music and dance), dreaming sleep, between sleep and waking; or in psychosis, delirium, and from the effects of some kinds of psychoactive drugs. 

2. Another possibility is that the majority, the tribesmen, are deluded by their expectations, or perhaps have been duped by a conjuring trick of the shaman. 

The idea is that the tribesmen are like young children in the West; who are fooled partly because they want to be fooled, and partly because they lack sufficient knowledge and experience. In other words; the testimony of the tribe is irrelevant: the Western anthropologist is right, and everybody else present is wrong.

The "answer" implied is that the tribesmen need to be Westernized, and educated in science - so that they will stop seeing what is not really there. 

3. For some traditional orthodox Christians, the spirits seen by the tribesmen are really spirits, and are really there; but are of demonic origin - designed to mislead, corrupt, and spiritually-harm the tribesmen. They are seen by the tribe because the tribes are in thrall to the devil; devil worshippers. 

The Westerners are immune to this demonic deception - either for the positive reason that they are Christians and reject demonic visions. Or the negative reason that Western anthropologists usually do not believe in the reality of the devil or of spirits - or indeed of Goad and angels; and made themselves incapable of perceiving either. 

So, in the imaginary tribal situation; the demonic influence on the Western atheist is present, but unseen and unconscious.  

Because the spirits perceived are real but of evil intent; to, the "answer" to the problem of tribesmen seeing spirits is to convert them to Christianity, and train them to discern demonic deceptions - so that the tribesman will cease to see the spirits conjured by shamans. 

(And the same applies to an atheistic anthropologist!) 

4. A less common interpretation is found among those influenced by Jung; which is that the spirits are real but in an intermediate and "imaginal" realm - situated between (and bridging between) objective-public-physical reality and subjective-personal reality. 

This tries to posit a psychological objectivity, distinct from literal-physical objectivity. And that this psychological realm is unconsciously collective, shared among all humans (whether they are aware of this or not). So the spirits are symbols (archetypes) of the collective unconscious, being reacted-to differently by tribesmen and the Westerners, due to cultural differences in attitude.

The Jungian answer to the different experiences of tribesmen and Westerners, is that the Westerners need to learn of the reality of the archetypal realm of the collective unconscious, reconnect with it and become conscious of it; and develop a relationship with the objective-but-symbolic images that inhabit that realm. 

Thus may Western alienation of Men from themselves and The World be alleviated.  

5. A perspective derived from  Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield (which I also believe is correct) is that the spirits are really there, they are not symbols but actual Beings; but whether spirits are seen is a matter of the development of consciousness. 

Some adult tribal people (like some Western children) are less developed in this respect, and still have the ability to perceive spirits - indeed they cannot help but perceive spirits, just as Westerners cannot help but perceive physical objects such as trees, chairs and other people. 

In the West; most adolescent and adult people have lost the spontaneous ability to perceive spirits; and this has also (like the Western anthropologists) made Westerners largely resistant to the communications of spirits. 

Negatively, the Westerners have lost the ability to see what is there. 

Positively; Westerners have gained independence from (freedom from) the previously inescapable influence of spirits - which include both good (angelic) and evil (demonic) spirits - as well as other spirits perhaps more neutral (elementals, "Fairies", or nature spirits). 

(This development of consciousness is divinely driven; and understood to be part of God's plan for the world. So the development of consciousness through an individual person's life, or throughout the history of Mankind; is something that happens by means of the incarnation of various kinds of spirits as mortal Men, and the attributes and needs of individual pre-mortal spirits.) 

The "answer" from this Steiner/ Barfield perspective; is not to ignore spirits, nor to try and perceive them again, nor to relate to spirits via symbolic intermediary symbols or archetypes; but instead to move forward a new relationship with spirits that is rooted in direct knowing of spirits. 

Instead of a spirit being spontaneously seen and communicating with the Man by means of perceived stimuli such as visions, speech or symbolism; the idea is that the spirit is known by the Man, in thinking. 

So, to return to our thought experiment; the tribesmen would see the spirits, because they could not help perceiving spirits. But the observing Steiner-Barfield anthropologist would not see the spirits; because he would would instead know by experienced thinking, that the spirits were indeed present and active here-and-now. 

This knowing would not be by any intermediary such as picture, sound or symbol; but the knowing would instead be direct knowledge, as intuition; as an experience of knowing occurring in the ongoing stream of thinking. 

 

Notice - The 2019 movie "Cosmos"

Much of the movie takes place inside or near a Volvo Estate car, parked in a wood, after midnight - the car sardine-packed with three astronomers, masses of equipment, and far too many cables for comfort or convenience

I just re-watched the 2019 movie Cosmos (currently on Amazon Prime), and again found it to be well worthwhile seeing. 

Cosmos is unlike any other movie I've seen. It's an almost moment-by-moment (with a few time-skips) account of a night spent doing detailed astronomical observations by three young men (all professionals in astronomical research, but engaged in their hobby); using various sensing techniques. 

The movie is "about" science and engineering in its idealistic and best sense, the friendship and conflicts of the three men, and the shock and implications of discovering that "we are not alone". 

In other words, it's a very serious and heartfelt movie, with a (mostly) slow-burning pace; so it would not be a surprise to learn that it was made as a labour of love by two brothers over several years and with "zero budget" - because such a film could not have happened otherwise. 

It is a gripping and thought-provoking story, which stuck in my memory. 

Why the biggest Western civilizational strategies have Zero validity? A multi-level explanation

It is an interesting aspect of the most recent giga-dollar projects, schemes, and strategies (characteristic, especially, of Western civilization in its end-stage) - that they consist almost entirely of coloured lights, smoke and mirrors, vapour and blank-assertion. 

Among currently active projects of colossal size, scope and expense; there is the climate scam, the birdemic/peck scam, the antiracism scam, the AI scam, and the war-everywhere scam... 

These all share:

1. An absence of mass and grass-roots origins or support. Such projects are imposed top-down, multi-nationally. By simultaneously coordinating the many functional specializations, and integrated goals and bureaucratic-media methods, of the global totalitarian system. 

2. An absence of coherent reality in terms of need. Ends and means are alike invisible to personal experience. The rationale for these projects is wholly manufactured, and disseminated by "research" and mass media propaganda. 

3. An absence of rational credibility for the effectiveness of the vast schemes of "intervention". 

No demand, no coherence - no genuine need, no potential effectiveness...

There must be some reason why nothing-burgher projects are consistently chosen, in preference to schemes addressing real needs by valid measures?

In fact there are many reasons and at many levels by which to understand why strategy is rooted-in and aimed-at Nothing, rather than... something.

At the deepest (spiritual evil) level it seems obvious that to organize the world on the basis of nothing, fits with the nihilistic - anti divine creation - stance of the demonic motivation. Insofar as creation is subverted by incoherence and lies; the anti-God alliance is winning. 

At the level of the most powerful human leadership class; a strategy based on nothing, is - once established and launched - impossible to refute. Nothingness cannot be critiqued on the basis of either data or individual human experiences. 

At the level of the puppet-leadership class - those heading the nations, major corporations and most significant institutions - the only requirement is that strategies be backed-up by the largest possible and longest sustainable infusions of money and other resources; so that multiple forms of (mostly-legal) corruption can redirect benefits to their pockets. 

And when the entire project is phony, then such vampirism is less noticeable and less likely to be suppressed than would be the case if there was a real problem being addressed by a potentially valid solution. 

(Consider CO2 climate strategies or the Birdemic-Peck... When the whole vast theoretical scheme is shaped from nothing and lies, then nobody really expects anything to work - and they wouldn't know if it did.) 

In consequence; nihilistic indifference prevails; and nothing is done to prevent, limit, or punish the overwhelming incidence of tyrannical self-enrichment, expedient policy contradictions, and obscenely flagrant hypocrisy,   

At the level of senior and mid-level bureaucrats/ managers/ intellectuals - these types are indifferent to content, and wholly focused on proximate matters such as careers and status. They will willingly say and do anything required of them by their bureaucratic superiors - so long as this aligns with incentives; and will eagerly manufacture the necessary rationale or obfuscate the obvious: on demand.

At the level below the middle-managerial-myrmidons of evil - it does not matter what the masses think about these projects. The schemes are done-to such people; whose only job is to do the needful stuff and provide the necessities of living. The masses are the despised host; whose existence merely enables the thriving of an extractive parasitic superstructure.      

In sum, there are many reasons, from up-front and proximate to long-term and ultimate; why it suits the totalitarian system to prefer ruling the world on the basis of nothing, rather than something. 

A lesson of Tolkien's Numenor: Mortal life can only be partly enchanted, even in Faery

Over at my Notion Club Papers blog; with reference to the Numenor story by Tolkien, I discuss the implications of the tragic fact that an "enchanted life" is only partly or temporarily available to Men - and how this interacts with ideas of elves and fairies; and the hope, or delusion, that a Faery life of continuous and complete enchantment might be a full answer for Men's existential yearnings.  

A motivational explanation of "Lawful evil" - and its development into "Chaotic evil"

Lawful evil is totalitarian and systemic evil - its core aim is to create a machine for the corruption and eventual damnation of mankind. 

For this ultimate goal to happen entails the participants foregoing the upfront gratifications of short-termist and purely selfish satisfactions.

Lawful evil embodies some virtues (or partial-virtues), some at-least-somewhat positive values - in service to its long terms goals: values such as obedience, loyalty, hard work, deferred gratification. 

Chaotic evil is (by contrast) short-termist and selfish - but the gratifications it seeks are of a negative kind. 

(In Dungeons and Dragons terminology, the earliest most primitive form evil - coming before Lawful, which comes before Chaotic - is mostly positive in its rewards; and might be termed "Neutral" evil - I mean the evil that seeks short-term selfish gratification of a positively rewarding kind, such as the gratification of greed, lust, excitement, luxury etc.)  

Chaotic evil is therefore spiteful; it seems to harm others more than to benefit itself - or, more exactly, its greatest self-benefit (its greatest pleasure) is the harm of others. 

(The negative gratifications of Chaotic evil are a late corruption of evil; developing after someone has been sated or jaded by positive rewards.) 

Therefore Chaotic evil is primarily motivated by emotions such as resentment, revenge, and sadism. 

Ultimately; both Lawful and Chaotic evil are motivated by hatred of God and divine creation, and indeed anything created or creative. 

Lawful evil will always trend towards Chaotic evil, because Lawful evil entails doing some good in order to achieve a greater evil. 

Therefore, every individual who serves Lawful evil will continually be tempted by the opportunity for "me" to to do immediate evil, here and now; breaking the laws of Lawful evil - instead of putting-off present temptation in order to pursue some delayed overall goal.

So, Lawful evil is intrinsically unstable. 

The closer Lawful evil gets to achieve a system of damnation, the greater the commitment to evil goals of the system participants, and the greater the opportunities for doing evil ahead of time, and reaping the rewards personally rather than vicariously. 

Thus it was that when Lawful evil achieved its goals of a global totalitarian system in 2020, in the birdemic coup; within weeks The System had begun to self-destruct with Chaotic evil - e.g with "MLB" antiracism; and then escalating chaos and wars in many nations and on many fronts. 

The "necessary evils" of civilization, lead to the ascendancy of chaotic evil (under conditions of modern consciousness)

I am pessimistically convinced that the "chaotic evil*" of the self-imploding Western totalitarian system is going to prevail; and for deep, inescapable reasons. 

If we survey the history of civilizations, it is always apparent that each is characterized by "necessary evils" - most often in the form of human coercion and manipulation. All military and police activities are an example of necessary evils; and all religions include them as well. 

Nonetheless, in the remote past some civilizations (e.g. Ancient Egypt, Eastern Roman "Byzantine" Empire) were intrinsically stable and lasting - although any society can, of course, be overcome by attack from a more powerful external threat.

(The contrast is with civilizations that destroy themselves; whether passively by neglect and/or by stupidity; or - as now - actively, with self-hatred and by value-inversion.)

My understanding is that this multi-generational innate stability of ancient civilizations was made possible by a more groupish form of human consciousness, whereby there was a spontaneous (mostly unconscious) sharing of awareness between people - especially when there were hereditary links. 

In such conditions, it seems that the necessary evils were tolerated long-term for the benefit of the group - such group benefits as civil peace, defence against invasion, stable food supply, greater comfort and convenience; and the consolations and joys of religion.

Necessary evils were tolerated - but more importantly they were constrained, confined, encapsulated; so that the evil did not expand - and destroy the society. 

It is this restriction of necessary evils - preventing their longitudinal increase - that has become impossible in modernity.  

It has always been the case that individuals, especially the most powerful individuals, had to give-up personal gratifications to attain these group benefits. 

This happened in the past (I am suggesting) due to spontaneous and unconscious reasons; sometimes from to genetic relatedness between the rulers and the ruled; and/or from a shared and powerful religion. 

However; human consciousness has changed, and become increasingly more self-aware and individual, especially over the past two-three hundred years. 

So that powerful individuals are now much more aware of their own personal wants and how these conflict with the "good of the group"; more aware of their immediate and certain gratifications and how these differ from long-term probabilistic benefits; and they lack the unconscious and spontaneous sense (and duty) of being immersed inside a valued societal group that would once have constrained such selfishness and short-termism.

In spiritual terms; in the past individual evils were (most of the time) innately restrained by groupishness; whereas with modern consciousness this has ceased to be the case. 

Furthermore, all historical societies functioned "inside" religion: their world view was involuntarily through the lens of religion, which was larger than any individual. 

(This is a generalization - albeit a strong one, But there probably were exceptions, when an individualistic - perhaps psychopathic/ incapable of empathy - individual would act with increased selfishness and callousness (a.g. Caligula); or would disbelieve the state-religion and therefore broach its restraints - e.g. Some of the perpetrators of the great horrors of history probably ensued, when such a person was in a position of power (e.g. Akhenaten).   

The situation at present is that all the nations and international groupings of the modern world (even the better ones, even the best of them) are totalitarian in nature - which is a kind of "lawful evil"*; and, as such, are net-evil.  

All are societies in which the civilizationally-required elements of "necessary evil" are very strong, and core, and ineradicable.

(Which is why, especially since the 1960s, there has been such a strong counter-cultural tendency - rooted in opposition to the particular necessary evils; but - dishonestly and fatally - without understanding or acknowledging that such evils are inevitable in any possible civilization.) 

Add to this that evil is not static; but tends to feed upon itself and increase - especially when evil is un-repented, as happens (usually) when evils are necessary to continued worldly survival. 

Thus I believe and have often argued that - under modern conditions - lawful evil degenerates inevitably into chaotic evil, due to the (sooner or later) irresistible pressure of increased selfishness and short-termism among those with power. 

I get a strong sense that exactly this is happening - that the agents of lawful evil are progressively weakening, and those of chaotic evil are strengthening, at a world civilizational level; and that will become evident very soon - perhaps within a few days. 

Because of the "compromises" (i.e. necessary evils) of modern totalitarianism, and because of the nature of modern consciousness; modern societies cannot hold-the-line at the necessary evils of a nation. The necessary evils will expand, and the goodness will be eroded. 

So; I mean that there will be (under whatever lying disguise, and will the self-blinded collusion of the totalitarian bureaucrats) a major action that will tend to provoke global chaos. 

But if not now then soon - because there are no countervailing material powers that are sufficiently aligned with good, and sufficiently strong/ cohesive, to stop and reverse the waxing trend towards chaos. 

*See this later post, for further explanation of Chaotic and Lawful types of evil. 

Is it difficult and complicated to discern the reality behind official propaganda and the mass media deception? No. It is easy for The Good.

Those who urge modern people to look behind the deceptions and manipulated of the totalitarian system we inhabit, usually make the process of discerning truth in a world of lies to be terribly difficult and complicated - almost a life's work. 

But this is not so. The problem is not of that kind. It is not a matter of increasing effort and expertise. 

The root of the problem is that Modern Man is easily fooled because he is not good, and does not even want to be good.

Discerning that we are being lied-to and manipulated all the time is something that any Good Man (Jesus, for example) would find utterly obvious: a simple matter.

It could be summarized as the obvious sense of not-believing the words of known liars, combined with noticing that we are being asked to share inferences and interpretations of people and events that lack innate common sense, and are indeed inversions of The Good.

It is because Modern Man has chosen (and keeps choosing) to discard innate common sense, and to believe those he knows to be liars; that he makes-himself so extremely susceptible to propaganda, so extremely resistant to de-programming.    

There are many reasons of expediency (of short-term self-benefit) why so many people choose to believe officialdom, corporate and educational pronouncements, the mass media etc. 

There are extreme social and psychological pressures to conform with these beliefs. 

But... We also know, without needing to be told, that all these pressures to conform and believe are actually powerful reasons why we must therefore doubt the truth of such coerced belief.   

A Good Man would not be so easily, so eagerly, fooled as we are - because a Good Man would know that a system of idea enforcement by manipulation of personal expediency, has nothing to do with reality and truth - but implies exactly the opposite.

It is the powers and servants of evil who claim that coercion and appeals to selfish and hedonic expediency are reality and truth. 

(And this applies also when the coercion and appeals to hedonic expediency come from within religions, including from within Christianity.)

It is Modern Man's lack of Goodness, our lack of commitment to live in accordance with divine creation; that makes us so very easy to fool, and so very resistant to undeception.   

"As a dog returneth to his vomit..." Why plans for making people happier/the world better - inevitably go nowhere

 As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly. 

Proverbs 26:11. 

Every day our speech and writing, our conversations and media; the world of academia, medicine, officialdom, news and education... are such all replete with analysis, reforms and strategies for making the world "a better place", or making some class of people happier, or less miserable - or whatever...

Oh so many "good intentions" from so many directions, and unrelenting. 

Yet it all adds-up to a Great-Big Nothing-Burger...    

Indeed, things overall keep getting worse, the decline being actively fuelled by the endless affected-attempts at betterment.

Why? 

Because our fundamental understanding of the world is false. 

In other words: 

When our basic understanding of the nature of life and the universe is qualitatively-wrong; then no amount of quantitative activity will make a dent in things.

When deep understanding is wrong; then our sense of the purpose and meaning of life will be wrong, feeble... or (mostly) absent. 

Socio-psychological therapy and reform constitutes no more than patterns of evanescent ripples that sweep and swirl across the surface of an oceanic swell. 

When our basic understanding of oceanic reality is that the universe is purposeless, meaningless, and (mostly) dead - then this underpinning assumption is the vomit to which the dog shall inevitably return; again, and again, and again. 

When Men have become such fools as to pretend that they can have purposeful and meaningful mortal lives without anything to underpin this in fundamental and ultimate reality; such folly will always  undercut all and any superficial efforts at betterment.

   

The outrageous imposture of Christian Churches as gatekeepers of Heaven

Looked at retrospectively; it seems extraordinary that all the major Christian churches went down the path of claiming to be the gatekeepers of Heaven: of claiming that the eternal salvation of every individual Man depended on the say-so of a church on earth. 

It is not really difficult to understand this in terms of sociological advantage; in terms of how a church - which is a mortal, material, human institution - can enable itself to grow, survive and expand. 

It is clearly an advantage in this-world, if an organization can persuade enough people that it is essential for resurrected life in the world-to-come. 

This applies even when the fundamental basis of the Christian religion is one of the primacy of each individual person's spiritual relationship with the ascended Jesus Christ. 

While there are insufficient historical records concerning the mainstream Christian churches, the trajectory can be seen for the Mormon church (CJCLDS). 

Mormonism was built around assertion of the primacy of personal revelation (a direct spiritual relationship between each person and the divine), and a conviction that salvation to a kind-of Heavenly state was the default outcome for all but the most depraved persons. 

But the church rapidly developed a gatekeeping role analogous to (although not identical with) the mainstream Christian churches; in that access to the highest levels of eternal Heavenly exaltation after death; were asserted to depend upon church membership and the performance of particular rituals on this mortal earth. 

I suppose that something similar applied to the mainstream churches. For example, the individual and non-church family-like Christianity described in the Fourth Gospel ("John"), lost out to the organizational church by which salvation was institutionally mediated. To be "a Christian" soon became a matter of formal membership of (and submission to) a defined institution, and participation in official and prescribed procedures.  

Such gate-keeping claims as churches make, elide the distinction between earth and Heaven. Of course anyone can claim anything, and we need to ask why such claims were accepted. 

I think the ability of churches to make this elision probably rests on a capacity to provide - albeit briefly and partially, but with some degree of sureness and reliability - experiences of Heaven while still on earth.

It has been the progressive decline, since Medieval times, of Western churches ability to provide to the mass of people such "religious experiences" (e.g. by means of their earthly symbolism, ritual, scriptures, and spiritual training); that has perhaps done more than anything to erode belief in the necessity of any particular church to salvation. 

And when a person "sees through" the false claims of any Christian church to gate-keep Heaven; this involves a recognition that the church is constructed upon a lie. 

At this point, most people seem to give-up on both church and Christianity, together and altogether. 

But the proper conclusion is to separate church from Christianity. 

And then to choose Christianity, while recognizing that any particular church is secondary - maybe helpful to our salvation, but maybe (and more often!) not helpful...  

But responsibility for our salvation after death is always primarily our own; and a matter of our spiritual relationship with Jesus Christ. 

My (or your) decision to be or not to be a Christian, and to choose to follow Jesus to eternal salvation, should not be mediated.

And cannot be blocked, by any earthly church...

Unless you choose to make it so. 

Mega fake page views on blogs, coming from Vietnam, Brazil, Singapore, and Hong Kong - what's going-on?

As William James Tychonievich notes; these four countries (but, for me, especially Vietnam) have been the sources of millions of fake "page views" on at least three Blogger blogs.

I could speculate; but does any reader have any solid insight into why these places, and what's going-on? 

Q: Do you believe in God? A: What do you mean by "God"?

If somebody asks: Do you believe in God? 

Then the true answer depends on what is meant by "God" - and there are very wide divergences indeed between understandings what is meant by "God" - even among Christians. 

The only valid answer would be some version of: First; what do you mean by God? 

So, you cannot, and indeed should not, answer the question without getting clarification of what the enquirer is assuming about (what he is calling) God.

Otherwise, by saying "yes", you are assenting to buy a Pig in a Poke. 

For example, my understanding of God, the God in whom I believe;  is one that many/most Christians, Jews, Muslims would not consider to be actual God at all - or, at best, only a selective sliver of what they believe God to be. 

To such people, because I regard the Omni-God as false (and indeed incoherent), I am a kind of pagan - whatever my attitudes to Jesus Christ, whatever my desire for salvation.  

While to me; the Omni-God believers (insofar as they are real Omni-God believers, rather than those who are merely parroting forms of words, in obedience to the authority and doctrines of their church); are all de facto monotheists...

Monotheists whatever their Trinitarian protestations; and as such they do not really regard Jesus Christ as essential to anything (not even salvation) - nor do they believe in evil or freedom.   

And I regard all Omni-God monotheists as metaphysically indistinguishable from proponents of Oneness spirituality - and therefore their many practical differences are varieties of incoherent with their metaphysics.

I mean that the Omni-God is reducible-to/ metaphysically-indistinguishable-from the "deity" of "Deists" - which is not a person, but Just Is. Such a God-Deity is The Way Things Are.  

Answering "yes" to "do you believe in God?" therefore means very little or nothing - and a "yes" is more like to mislead than enlighten. 

Of course, in the West hardly anybody believes in God of any kind - so a negative reply to "do you believe in God?" is usual, and informative.   

But before assenting to belief in God we ought to be clear what we really mean by this - what we regard as vital to our understanding of God. 

Once someone has honestly (and without veiling-abstractions that serve to disguise incoherence or incomprehension) explained what he means by "God" - he has gone a long way towards explaining how he regards ultimate reality. 

He has also, potentially, done himself a big favour - because it may be that, once he has explained what he means by God, in terms that he himself can clearly grasp - then he will discover that this God is not really what he does believe or desire: in his heart of hearts. 

Is metaphysics important to being a Christian? Here-and-now it is Vitally important

Metaphysics is discourse concerning our fundamental assumptions regarding the nature of ultimate reality. 

It was the case through much of Christian history that disagreements about what was fundamental reality didn't make much difference to being a Christian; because all the necessary assumptions are natural to children - hence were common to pretty much all of humanity. 

But things have changed. 

In our civilization (which dominates the world) the fundamental assumption underlying all of our official and public discourse is that everything-that-is, the universe, arose without purpose as a consequence of physical "laws" plus "randomness". 

Most of this universe, the ultimate particles, elements, compounds; water and rocks and gases; are not alive...

So life, consciousness, Mankind - inhabits a dead reality that has no purpose or meaning. 

We need to be clear that these modern assumptions are neither spontaneous nor natural; all have been deliberately and elaborately inculcated and are sustained via social systems - education, employment, mass media, propaganda etc.   

This is probably the main reason why Christianity - and the other religions - is almost entirely absent from the world, and especially from The West; and feeble when it does exist.

Christianity contradicts our fundamental understanding of reality.  

In other words; Christian faith tries to survive as a thin film of psychologically-asserted purpose and meaning, life and consciousness - floating on the surface of a world-pervasive metaphysical assumption of death and nothingness.

So Christianity is rootless, unmoored, adrift; and strikes the modern person as arbitrary-believing, wishful-thinking, and/or psychological mass manipulation.  

Which would be true if modern metaphysics was valid. 

As we find it, here and now; Christianity is both rare and weak.  

The implication is that - unless we focus-upon and evaluate our fundamental assumptions regarding the nature of ultimate reality, and reject them - then Christianity will be contradicted by our deepest beliefs. 

Unless we know, reject, revise our metaphysics - Christian evangelists are wasting their time because real Christianity is doomed. 

Lacking which; even when Christianity is asserted, it will be incoherent with life and society, therefore experienced as irrational and honestly-indefensible. 

Hawkbits, Hawkbits everywhere...

This is the first year I have been aware of the Hawkbit as a dominating flower on areas of grass - city and countryside alike in July and into August; taking over as the Buttercups faded.

I have always known about these flowers, but never before found-out their name - I just used to categorize them as "looking like a Dandelion - but not". Even as a kid I realized that, while the Dandelion had a hollow stem that leaked milky sap, this similar-looking flower had a solid stalk. 

Another difference is that Hawkbits don't make a spherical seed-head like the Dandelion "clock" - and that the Hawkbit is much more sensitive to the absence of direct sunlight - with the head closing-up at night or in gloom (as does the Daisy). 

Anyway, I have gained considerable pleasure from the Hawkbit this year; often it has been the only splash of colour on the grassy areas of the city. 

Not quite as glorious as the shining and reflective masses of Buttercups (perhaps my favourite wild flower), but very welcome all the same. 

Hawkbit - Remember the name! 

Progress on the "current metaphysical problem" relating to Consciousness of Beings - personal, individual, groupish?

I think the answer to my current metaphysical problem how to picture a consciousness that is group-originating and personal - but neither individual nor abstract - may lie in the individual consciousness "receiving" consciousness.

Suppose that the situation is one in which each being has a permeable consciousness; there is some level of awareness of other Beings' consciousnesses. 

So we begin as aware of other consciousness's (approximately, "other minds"), which are included in our stream of thinking without much capacity to distinguish what we are thinking from what they are thinking. 

And conversely, our minds are "leaky" and other Beings are aware of what we are thinking. 

To start with; we don't have much ability to distinguish any individuals around us; but experience something like a mass effect, of many consciousnesses. 

We experience a group-effect, rather than relationships with individuals. 

This experienced group-effect will operate rather like taking an average; because if we are aware of several or many other Beings with much the same relational-attitude to us, then this will be more powerfully experienced. 

 

This situation is approximated by a very young child; who does not much distinguish self from other consciousnesses, and is initially hardly aware of differences between others. 

With development, specific individuals emerge from the mass-affect - usually the mother at first, then father and any other family members who are concentrated on the child - who have relationships with the child. 

Presumably this continues with development; but there is always a background and implicit - perhaps unconscious - receptivity to the group consciousnesses that impinge upon us.  

In brief, therefore, our experience of direct awareness of the consciousness of other Beings is some mixture of individual consciousnesses; and a remnant of the primordial and undifferentiated awareness of the combined-effects of more than one (perhaps many) other persons. 

So direct mind-to-mind contact is always of Beings, of persons; but these are not always experienced individually - they may be (often are) experienced as groups.

What makes us have these experiences is our own consciousness, its degree of development - and the moment-by-moment variations we experience due to variable factors such as the direction of our attention, mood, health, and alertness/ sleepiness. 

So far this fells about right - but will require further thought and evaluation. 

 

How to be personal but not individual. Groupish but not abstract: My current metaphysical problem

Blogging has been light because thinking has been heavy.

 I've realized I don't have a clear understanding of intuition, inspiration, influence - that i neither individual nor abstract (because I haven't understood it, I can only express it negatively).

When a young child experiences his world, there is an animistic sense of the presence of other consciousnesses, but only a few are of known individuals. How can the unindividual but personal (...of beings) consciousness be pictured?

Not from a combination of individual consciousnesses, because the primal state is not as fully individualized. The egregore idea has it backwards, or at least is a late development of the medieval type of consciousness. But abstract explanations in terms such as fields, auras etc aren't fundamental, aren't really real...

I need a clear, simple, graspable picture, and I do not have one.

However this is a gap, an incoherence in my world view that needs fixing - if possible. So, that's what I'm trying to do.

We can choose what we want to be, but we cannot choose to be it Now

We can choose what we want to be, but we cannot choose to be it. 

This is a fundamental basis of what Jesus taught and made possible.

That we cannot, in this mortal life, be what we want to be is innate common sense and confirmed by observation and life experience... Yet it is often denied. Promises of ways of enabling our will for ourselves to be enacted in mortal life Now, are recurrently dangled...

What Jesus promised relates to what we can choose to become After Death. 

But people (including, for instance, the Apostle Paul) want what they want Now, and get Very frustrated when it does not happen Now. 

Countless numbers of people have been put off, driven away, from Christianity - because it failed to enable people to become what they wanted to become, or "ought" to become, during mortal life.

Having projected their misunderstanding onto Jesus, they then regard Jesus's "failure" to transform their mortal lives in the desired fashion Now, as a refutation.

This mortal life Now is highly relevant, vital, to choosing what people want After Death; and what we experience and learn in mortal life affects our eternal nature.

But the reason Jesus promised resurrected eternal life in Heaven After our death, is that this outcome is not possible in This Life Now.

Salvation is therefore about choosing what we want to be.... But if we want what Jesus offered -  i.e. resurrected everlasting Heavenly life; then salvation cannot be about achieving Now, that which we desire for eternity.

Indeed, if we desire salvation; we can choose to want it, but cannot be what we want to be without Jesus. 

Our job in mortal life is to want salvation, and then wanting-it, we will realize that we cannot have it except by Jesus. 

We have the innate capacity to Want salvation, but cannot be Be saved - without Jesus. 

Jesus was necessary that resurrected eternal life be possible; and Jesus is necessary that we personally can be saved.

Understanding Christianity - the role of the Fourth Gospel ("John")

The role of IV Gospel in my understanding of Christianity is of a means to the end of understanding. 

Once I had grasped that understanding, from then the validity and authority of the gospel became almost irrelevant. Much as if it were a work of explicit fiction that expressed truth, like Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.

But! In order really to engage with IV Gospel, I needed to be convinced it was worth the sustained and intense effort that was required.

Of all the Bible, I was most sure of the authority and value of IV... That was my starting point. I felt sure that, if truth were to be found, that's where it would be.

So I was able and keen to put in the effort of grappling with IV, and then it yielded a clear and simple understanding... 

But the truth of that understanding was then discerned by "intuition" - by my deepest attainable sense of inner sureness.

This intuition was something tested across time and in whatever was emerged or struck me, as life continued, as challenges were encountered. As I used my new IV Gospel understanding in living.

The new understanding "worked".

And at a certain point I felt a strong sense of Yes - This is real and true.

That's how thing happened for me.

What caused the surprising re-normalization after the 2020 global coup (Birdemic and Peck)?

I was and am amazed at the remarkable degree of re-normalization within Western societies; that followed after the successful early-2020 global totalitarian coup which was effected under the excuse of the Birdemic, and the giga-imposition of the (unnecessary, ineffective, harmful) Peck.

That the significant collapse of the world state was Not due to any kind of positive spiritual awakening is obvious from the mass failure to understand and learn from 2020; from continued strategies of Western self-destruction by multiple means; and from the gratuitously destructive, Western-caused, wars that are continually sustained and escalated.

My best guess of the cause of totalitarian recession post Birdemic is of increased dissent among the ruling class, causing loss of governmental cohesion and control.

To sustain the 2020 coup required that members of the "elite" ruling global government would suppress their own selfish short-term inclinations; and instead pursue a long-term group-agenda of mass surveillance and population control.

But instead, the erstwhile world rulers have broken down into multiple hostile factions, each pursuing a more local agenda.

Plus - rampant and accelerating individual-level self-gratifying corruption among members of the elite ( e.g. self-enrichment, and indulgence of spiteful personal resentments); has combined with the runaway factionalism, to destroy the cohesion of the 2020 worldwide totalitarian takeover.

In other words - although this relative  relief from the tyranny of 2020 is welcome, there is no cause for celebration at Good Triumphant.

There is no positive reason for betterment; the Western trend toward evil has not reversed; and the partial collapse of 2020 global totalitarianism is Not a valid reason for civilizational optimism.

Final Participation is a conscious consecration of this-moment to our eternal resurrected life

For the past decade or so, I have been trying (in multiple ways) to understand the implications of Owen Barfield's concept of Final Participation - as being the destiny and proper aim of our spiritual life. 

Some modern people seem wholly enmeshed in mundane materialist thinking and feel detached and alienated from the living world - trapped inside their own heads. Their only relief is temporarily to forget this in sleep, intoxication, psychosis - and in occasional moments when there is a resurgence of a child-like sense of belonging and involvement. 

These brief times are what Barfield calls Original Participation, because they were our original state of consciousness as young children, and also (it is believed) the normal state of the earliest ancestral Men.  

Original Participation is - pretty much - the same as Novalis's Sehnsucht and CS Lewis's Joy; Gurdjieff's self-remembering, Maslow's Peak Experience, or Csíkszentmihályi's Flow state are psychological reductions of the experience.  

Such moments may be pleasant, indeed there have been times and places (e.g. some of the Romantic movement around 1800, or the 1960s counter-culture... still ongoing) when many people aspired to abandon modern consciousness and return to Original Participation. 

Although this return to the spontaneous, natural, child-like, primitive, here-and-now consciousness is powerful and alluring to many people; it has always failed - and must be assumed impossible (except briefly).  

However it makes a difference how we regard these brief moments. 

If they are regarded as merely pleasant psychological states, then Original Participation can only be therapeutic - like taking a short holiday from the "real world" of mundane materialism.

Yet Barfield asserted that Final Participation was not just a pleasant interlude; but in some deep sense absolutely necessary - necessary if we personally, and our society as well, were to avoid being overwhelmed by evil.   

However, Barfield was vague about how this might be achieved (he usually advised consulting his mentor Rudolf Steiner's work - but Steiner's techniques seem obviously ineffective, and Barfield never claimed that decades of practicing Steiner medications had led to any very significant effect on Barfield's own thinking in terms of Final Participation. 

Indeed, it seems that FP is not really achievable in a lasting and dominant way. 

So we seem rather to be trapped between impossibilities! We cannot go back, cannot stay as we are - yet the destined path forward seems blocked...  

Yet anyone who conceptualizes life as bounded by conception and death will find himself bounded by exactly such impossibilities. We cannot escape the constraints of entropy (and death) and evil. 

But this is forgetting the reality that we are eternal Beings, and this mortal life can be (should be) seen as a finite transitional phase between eternities before and afterwards. 

Furthermore (and here I depart from Barfield, with his ideas of multiple future reincarnations) a Christian sees his eternal future as including resurrected Heavenly life, following after this mortal life.

My idea of Final Participation is that it is the conscious choice to consecrate those moments of Original Participation.     

So that when moments of OP happen; we choose to regard them as sacred. 

In such a "consecration"; the momentary experience of OP is consciously recognized as being of potentially eternal significance to divine creation - and is actively taken-up into ongoing thinking.

This contrasts with, say, the sixties counter-culture response - which is to stay inside those OP moments, and perpetuate them or as long as possible. 

I would regard this as akin to a religiously-contemplative response to Original Participation. Contemplative because it is deliberately passive and self-negating. The moment is primary and we intend to stay with it, dissolve-into it. 

This is analogous to the contemplative kind of meditation where people seek a "blissful" state of consciousness and try to maintain it for as long as possible. 

The ideal is of stasis in perfection.  

But Final Participation is active and creative - hence is is both dynamic - like divine creation; and aspires to join-in-with and influence ongoing divine creation.

And all this is a choice, not a surrender. It is an affirmation of the self, not an attempt to lose the self. 

It is the choice to be a Son of God, a sibling of Jesus; one who want to join with God in the work of creation, and add to to that creative work whatever is unique in himself. 

So, Final Participation is an active self-confidence; confidence that by the "process" of resurrection after this mortal life we can be transformed such as to be able, worthy, and trust-worthy of eternal participation in creation.

Thus, FP is a state of being only achievable permanently (as a normal state) after our death, and only among those who have then chosen to follow Jesus through resurrection to everlasting Heavenly life.  

But Final Participation does have a vital role in this mortal life; because it is when we can add to our resurrected life. 

FP represents our choice to learn from experience in such a way that our immortal soul is permanently transformed.

We are talking about our immortal souls, not the conditions of our mortal lives on earth - so the fact that our modern experiences of participation may be relatively few, infrequent, brief - does not invalidate these experiences... 

FP experiences are of permanent value not because they last a long time; but so long as we choose to consecrate them.

Consecration would go something like this:

1. Original Participation happens. 

2. We recognize that it is happening. 

3. We acknowledge that this happening is of potentially permanent importance to our resurrected Heavenly self. 

This needs to be done when Original participation happens - Now: here-and-now. 

Not put-off until later. 

If we do not do it at the time of Original Participation - it will (probably) not be done. 

However... An intense imagined re-living of the moment, could also be used to consecrate that moment retrospectively. Because then the moment is not merely "retrospective" but a re-experiencing here-and-now - which is perhaps one reason why we may recollect and meditate on such moments... Why they may last so tenaciously in our memories. The experiences may be re-presenting themselves for consecration. 

Maybe, if we do this on principle and habitually; then this will act as a positive feedback and establish a "spiritual reward system" - so that such opportunities will become more frequent? 

The thing is: we modern Men are terribly demotivated, prone to despair - and any spiritual advice that diminishes or delays our gratification seems doomed to fail*. 

Consecrating our moments of Original Participation generates an immediate spiritual reward as well as a hope-full anticipation. 

Instead of OP being a tragic joy; doomed to be short-lived, doomed to be forgotten and lost by age, disease, death... Instead of this; the act of consecration transforms it into a moment of permanent and positive significance.  

As far as I can understand; only a follower of Jesus Christ who lives in confident expectation of resurrection can do this; and it will not "just happen" but must be done by conscious choice. 

All then depends on making that choice. 

NOTE: It may be objected that because Original Participation is spontaneous and natural, it is not necessarily good. This is true; and if an OP experience is not good, then it cannot and shall not be consecrated to resurrected eternal life - so any such attempt will fail. Christian discernment - knowledge of good and evil, God and that which opposes God; is a necessary part of Christian life - and always applies. 

* The mass of people are (quite literally) spiritually-dying of despair, for lack of any genuinely positive purpose in life. It seems obvious that the double-negative (e.g. therapeutic) values that are exclusively propagated, including by nearly all religions (eg religions rooted in avoidance of default divine punishment), including most Christian churches - are simply ineffectual; leading to short-termist this-worldly hedonism now, and ultimate despair eventually.