Tuesday, 30 September 2025

Western Geopolitics and "You just go around the house... Creating!"

My mother, who (in stark contrast to her eldest child) was a wonderful housekeeper; used often to say to me - in an extremity of exasperation - "You just go around the house... Creating!" 

By which she meant I was disrupting and disordering her meticulous and laboriously-achieved state of neatness and convenience; for instance by carrying cups of tea or coffee, heaps of books and papers, around the house, taking off and dropping pullovers or socks - sitting in the midst of an island of mess...

And then leaving such messes behind, whenever I moved on to the next location. 


Now I know - from decades of failure - how very difficult it is to maintain a functional household; I can see that she was right to chastise me. 

At the time, I could not see what the fuss was about. After all, things just (apparently) tidied themselves. Something carelessly discarded would miraculously reappear in its proper place...

My mother's bit of Northumbrian dialect, was based in an implied oxymoronic phrase related to "creating" chaos


I now find this notion to be very interesting - I mean the idea of creating-chaos; because - by my best and deepest metaphysical understanding - creation and chaos are in truth opposites

...So that if one is really creating, one must thereby be reducing chaos - and if one is actually inducing chaos, then one is destroying the-created. 

Anyway, pedantry aside; what was implied by my Mother's phrase was:

The process of (at best) care-less, but often deliberately-motivated; reduction of the-created towards a state of disorder, mutual conflict, dysfunctionality... chaos


In other words; my Mother's phrase characterizes the long-term and systematic geopolitical behaviour of Western civilization since around the millennium (and the end of the Eastern Bloc): 

They/ we just go around around the world... Creating: that is to say - creating chaos. 

And this strategy is pursued over the long-term and by multiple means: such as bribery and corruption (aka. "foreign aid"). "International Law" and multinational organizations are part of this. 

Also economic pressures of many kinds, such as "sanctions" (which are actually directed mainly at causing chaos within the West, but sometimes have the desired side-effect of causing chaos abroad). 

There is, of course, war-all-over-the-place - and the attempts to induce more and bigger wars; by multi-pronged campaigns (and staging of "incidents") to induce previously amicable/ tolerant neighbours into becoming bitter enemies - and to keep things that way. 


This is happening All The Time - both at a large scale (e.g. in Asia) and at a smaller scale (e.g. in Europe). 

One "excuse" is (presumably) to weaken enemies, so that "we" may be relatively stronger... and thereby "do more good" for these other places. 

But that excuse is shown as a lie by the top-down and simultaneous deliberate weakening of the West; and the fact that we do not believe that we are good. 

Indeed, being atheist materialists - we lack any positive conceptualization of what good actually is; and instead suppose ourselves to be fighting evils of various (fluidly defined) types.  


The euphemistically termed "colour revolutions" - that are those Western-planned/ -funded/ -media-supported overturnings of national governments (all over the place; within the West as well as anywhere/ everywhere else) - especially by those themselves incapable of government - so as to install puppet regimes... 

New governments which lack native legitimacy, hence never last, hence lead to civil disorder or war - and other kind of chaos... 

This has been done dozens of times since 1990; and the pace of global disruption is still increasing! 

At present hardly a week goes-by without some such attempt, and many are "successful". Regimes are changed.  

However, the invariable result of "successful" West-induced regime change turns-out always to be chaotic, dysfunctional, damaging. Because, either there is careless indifference as to outcomes (so long as there is short-term selfish profit), or else destructive chaos is the real and covert motivation from the get-go.    


"More chaos" happens a lot nowadays, because - in an entropic universe - inducing chaos is Much easier than creation: much easier than creating cooperation, functionality, predictability. 

But It Was Not Always Thus!

Consider the Roman Empire. Yes, it was a crushing top-down tyranny with many bad features; but there is no doubt that it created greater cooperation and greater civilizational-functionality on a global scale. 

The Romans, unlike the modern West, did not purposively and over the long-term destroy societal functionality, did not deliberately "create" wars and economic chaos, did not encourage and fund agents of destruction. 

The Romans did not induce net-chaos; because they (unlike "us) had other, better, more positive things that they were trying to accomplish. 


Compare the Romans with what happens at present!  

The Roman Civilization - and indeed a Roman Household - aimed-at (and sometimes achieved) a society that was clean, well-ordered, and effective. 

This did not happen by accident, nor as a by-product of deliberately inducing and sustaining chaos. 

Like the household of my childhood; Roman coordinated functionality happened because of clear purposes and plans, hard work, rigorous monitoring, and as a consequence of great efforts and labour*.

And this was possible because of what-was-good in the Roman Civilization. 


Top-down, purposive functionality does Not happen nowadays, because there is extremely little that is good among those with power and in leadership positions in Western civilization

Or, to put it more accurately; because Western civilization is controlled by those whose affiliations are overwhelming evil, demonic; anti-God: anti-divine creation. 

And the reason for this is clear and simple: the Romans were very religious

They recognized the reality of gods, spirits, and of transcendental values and purposes. 

Roman lives were permeated by religious devotions, and a religious perspective. 

For a Roman, including the Roman ruling class and their servants: life therefore had ultimate purpose, therefore meaning; and this "Roman" meaning was linked to each Roman-person as a member of Roman society, a Roman family - a Roman role or job that contributed to the whole. 


However, for our ruling class, in complete contrast, life has no purpose, no meaning, no personal relevance - except for a selfishness and hedonism that becomes ever more short-termist, and thus more easily manipulated by the demonic powers.  

Of course, none of this strategic and purposive "Creating (of chaos)" by Western civilization is explicitly stated - of course, there are always pseudo-constructive, pseudo-moral, rationalizations for destruction.

Always "reasons" why it is a good thing for the West to intervene everywhere, "for their own good", and in the end always to destroy - both abroad and at home.   


Part of this disguise of motivation, is to propagate the false dichotomy of chaos versus order

Acceptance of this calculated-error allows Them to depict order as necessarily oppressive, and chaos as if it were creative. 

Any nation that is reasonably functional will - like the Roman Empire - necessarily contain many attributes of oppressive order; and (under the order versus chaos scheme) can therefore be depicted as objectively evil and deserving of partial (or even complete) destruction. 


So that West induced national chaos as a consequence of intervention - e.g. civil war, starvation, disease, mass maiming and death; is routinely spun as if we were doing them a favour! Making the nations of the world free from oppressive order, one after the other; and all from the goodness of our Western hearts!

"Supporting" a nation is thereby made wholly compatible with action leading to destroying masses of people and the functionality of that nation - often for many decades. This induced social collapse may then serve as an excuse for further intervention, or takeover - or looting of resources. 

Meanwhile the same is happening at home, within the West. Always it is disguised by quasi-moral reasons; characteristically combined either with indifference to actual outcomes (including lying about or ignoring outcomes); or else by relabeling increased chaos and collapsing functionality as good things - like diversity, equity, freedom, vibrancy!   

...Meanwhile actual creativity - which was our "USP" for several centuries - is at an all-time low in the West.

Ultimately because human creativity is real only when it is good; when it contributes to divine creation; but our civilization is now rooted in denial of the divine - which is de facto allegiance to Satan.  


The lesson from my Mother is that chaos is easy, functionality is difficult. 

Anyone indifferent or hostile to functionality has an easy time of getting what they want; and need not expend much effort in getting it.

Therefore; the first and indispensable step towards doing anything constructive about deliberate global rampant chaos; is to acknowledge and understand the nature and reality of divine creation.

And then our-selves affiliating to it. 

**   

 

*Note added: A functional civilization or society must genuinely operate in pursuit of higher (transcendental, hence positive) values; such that it believes-in these values, believes these values are good, attains self-respect from these values; and regards it as beneficial that these values be spread and enforced elsewhere. 

These positive values are what enables a society, sufficiently and overall, to pursue coordinated functionality - society is engineered in pursuit of these values. Without such over-arching, and transcendent, and positive values - society will disintegrate for lack of cohesive principles.  

Thus, in their heyday, the leadership and masses of both the Roman and British Empires regarded it as good to make foreigners Roman/ British. 

In both instances; the means to this end included religion primarily, laws and education consequentially - which were top-down and enforced on colonies. 

It was this underlying reality that led to the surface homogeneities of Roman/ British societies. 


FURTHER NOTE: I should not be understood as advocating a return to the values of the Roman, or even the British, Empire! What I am intending to highlight is that the civilizational dominance of these Empires both were rooted in a transcendental conviction of having positive values to impart. In other words; their sense of superiority was substantive, because it was religious. That is Not the case for Western civilization now: without any exception, all of its self-defining values are not merely negative but double-negative. And this is why Western civilization-as-is, is wholly oppositional - hence necessarily destructive in sum. 

8 comments:

agraves said...

Numa De Coulanges wrote "The Ancient City" describing religion and laws in Ancient Greece and Rome. To read about pre-Christian religion and piety on a daily basis is overwhelming. The deceased ancestors, Lares, were consulted in all matters. Their Gods were local and not universal in our modern understanding. We can call it backward or pagan, but who wrote "know thyself" 2500 years ago in Greece still commands our respect.

Bruce Charlton said...

@ag - I was in the museum of Chesters Fort on Hadrian's Wall yesterday, with its big collection of Roman Altars from all kinds of people to all sorts of gods - which brought home this point.

Maolsheachlann said...

I'm never sure how intentional all of this is, but certainly the ideology that animates the West seems to be geared towards disintegration-- whether it's nations, families, traditions, or anything else that's comparatively stable and enduring. Always measuring these things against an impossible ideal. So in the end you don't get the imperfect reality or the ideal.

No Longer Reading said...

"the civilizational dominance of these Empires both were rooted in a transcendental conviction of having positive values to impart."

Indeed.

Most civilizations wanted to preserve the good aspects of their own societies indefinitely. Although they were ignorant of other possibilities, thinking that their own societies were the paradigmatic civilizations of all that ever were or ever could be, they still had real, positive values.

Something new emerged around the turn of the 19th century, the idea that a society could keep getting better and progressing. But even then better was still viewed in terms of fixed values. That the good aspects of their civilization would stay themselves, but improve. Development rather than divergence.

Now we have something even different than that, (it goes back further but has kept getting more extreme), the idea that we "live for advancement". We have no fixed values because everything is up for change but such change (especially if technological) can't be bad and must be good or neutral. In practice, this isn't a belief in positive values, it ends up with people just going along with what comes down the pipeline and saying it's actually good.

But that does not actually involve positive values or a transcendental conviction, so despite the propaganda that this attitude is superior to all others, it has been corrosive over less than a century, so it can't even maintain itself.

As C.S. Lewis said in one of his essays, "progress implies a fixed standard", otherwise it is just change, just disruption.

Bruce Charlton said...

@M "I'm never sure how intentional all of this is"

I am sure it is intentional - because the strategy has been pursued across many domains and several generations, and there has never been a pendulum swing in the opposite direction.

Bruce Charlton said...

@NLR - Some very good points.

"it ends up with people just going along with what comes down the pipeline and saying it's actually good."

That describes it well. It is understandable in that when people lack transcendental values and live only for psychological optimization in this world and before death - then expediency is the bottom line value.

So nobody cares whether what comes down the pipeline is good or bad - the real question is what it is most personally advantageous for "me" to espouse.

Rich said...

Thank you for this, Dr Charlton. You really have a way of distilling these matters down to their essence. There is real imagery behind your words and a picture of the whole state of affairs emerges as I read on. I find truth often comes forth as a symbolic image and a resonance from within. Words often fail to create this feeling for me, but yours so often do. I can only conclude after all these years of you consistently finding a way to do this that you are a very gifted and creative person that has true goodness in their heart. Thank you for carrying on and continuing to share your work.

Bruce Charlton said...

@Rich - thanks for your encouraging comment!