Noisiest Bonfire Night ever?

Bonfire Night as I remember it when I was a kid (it was all black and white, in them days) 

It's Bonfire Night tonight, which is the main UK firework event; so November 5th is always pretty noisy for someone who lives within a mile of the city centre. 

And not just the 5th -- every year there are always sounds from fireworks, somewhere, every night from before Halloween until several days after The Guy (Fawkes) has been burned (although not many bother with this aspect nowadays). 

But today is by some margin the noisiest ever. The sound of banging and whooshing has been constant and loud - continuous for five hours (so far)...

(Almost drowning-out the uniquely-powerful vocal roaring and singing from Newcastle United's stadium - where they have been winning a European cup game.) 

Also continuous have been the sirens of the emergency services (fire/ police/ ambulances) - which might, but need not, mean anything very terrible happening, since these vehicles do love making a noise, and need no excuse for doing so. 

This kind of racket is quite exciting and doesn't trouble me as an occasional thing - at least, not now that the kids have grown-up (it certainly did annoy me when they wee babies and had just dropped-off then were woken and disturbed by bangs). 

But I am surprised by just what a Big Thing Bonfire Night obviously is for many people in 2025.

It is not many years since the Gunpowder Plot festival was waning inexorably, and looked-like disappearing -- having been (it seemed) displaced by the rise of Halloween, less than a week earlier.  

Yet another thing I don't understand about life here and now...

 

Does the ubiquity of faked photo evidence (going back decades) mean that stuff didn't happen?

One of the benefits I have derived from reading Miles W Mathis is an habitual sensitivity to the use of faked photographs. 

Mathis is a professional artist and has a trained and expert eye for such matters - but so crude are most of the photo-fakes that detecting them is mainly a matter of considering the possibility. 

It turns-out that almost all of the visual evidence for almost all of the major mass media narratives, is faked. 

And I am not talking about those undetectable "deep fakes" which the media have themselves been hand-wringing over recently; but crudely-faked pictures, videos and films - in top status contexts; and that are accepted by "everybody" in authority.  

It turns-out that these crude fakes go back over many decades, more than a century - even to the early usage of photography in providing "evidence" to back up the claims of the leadership class. 

If we just look for ourselves with a prepared attitude - the pictorial "evidence" is obviously bogus, in some way.  

These faked photos are so common that it is unusual to find a picture of somebody or some-event famous and important that has not been significantly tampered-with, in line with the narrative that is pushed.  

Perhaps most famously these include the space programme and moon landings - where many/ most of the iconic images were faked; despite that, as I believe, the space programme and moon landings really happened.

So, what does this mean?

In the first place, it is proof of the routine dishonesty that has characterized the Western ruling class. Anyone who has been involved in the workings of large institutions and corporations over the past few decades will know that the imperative to be truthful is something completely alien to those who work in such environments. 

Their imperative to to say and show whatever serves their purposes - constrained only by watching their backs in case there is a "leak" or accusation. 

It simply does not occur to such people that they ought to tell the truth and be honest. Such a notion is not even aired then rejected - it isn't even mentioned: all efforts are instantly put into attempting the management and manipulation of perceptions. 

However, it was not always thus in all social institutions. For example, I can vouch for the honesty of scientists and academics in the UK during the middle 20th century. 

They were shocked and openly critical about the way that the media distorted and misrepresented their work. 

As a trivial but significant example, when BBC Horizon filmed at the lab where I later did my doctorate, they would only have men with beards in some of the shots, even when they had nothing to do with the work being reported - i.e. their idea of what scientists should look like.  

My best guess is that this is how the fake NASA photos happened - the media imperative was for pictures that were of the right kind to produce the desired reaction; and honest pictures of what happened were either impossible to get, or of too low a quality.  

And soon this became normal - so that a parallel "virtual world" of pictures, administered by the media, became detached from the engineering and piloting world of what actually happened. 

I saw the same in universities and laboratories during the 1980s into the 90s. At first there was a separation between the science and the public reporting - the science was still honest, and the fakery was applied afterwards. 

But once the strict habit of honestly had been broken, the truth about stuff was on a slippery slope to routine, pervasive, near-total fakery - which is where we have been in the West since around the millennium. 

Now the fakery is everywhere and all the time; everybody is dishonest with everybody else in public life; and nobody knows what is true. 

Our society cannot fulfil a functional purpose - or even know whether our purpose has been achieved.

Does a fake photo mean that nothing is happening at all, or something different is happening, or is it just a matter of making better visuals for what really happened?  

Fakes are built on fakes in vast constructions; and we cannot ever know if or when we have reached the bottom. 

Everything significant we are shown is faked - one way or another - if not visually then by interpretation.*

All we can do with confidence, is identify that the evidence is fake, that we are being lied to - and the purpose is to manipulate us. 

But, spiritually-speaking, knowing that is enough. 

*Note added: The way that this visual evidence usually works is that - before seeing the images - people are told what the images will show. And that is what people then see. After which they suppose the image proves what they were originally told -- the circle has closed, the narrative has been proved; and anyone who contests it must be evil, insane or dishonest. An example of such circularity was the triggering-fake-visuals of "MLB" summer in 2020.

*Why* should we affiliate with God the creator?

Why should we affiliate with God the creator?

Is it because we believe God to be powerful - by far the most powerful, infinitely powerful?

Is that why we should affiliate with God?

Is it instead (or as well) because we believe there is nothing-else-but God (and divine creation) - so that it is insane and irrational not to affiliate, because there is literally nothing-else? 

These are reasons that some people have, or give, for affiliating with God (as such people understand God). 

But it seems to me that the Christian reason for affiliating with God, by-far and essentially the main reason: 

Is that - from the depth of our being, insofar as we know it - we approve of God.

Because we know and love God's loving nature. 

Because we desire to join and ally our-selves with God's hopes, and plans, and methods. 

Thus, for a Christian we ally with the creator not because of his power or oneness or totality; all of which are uncertain and debateable - but instead from our own love of who God is and what God is doing and aiming-at - and the desire to join our efforts, join our selves, with that nature and purpose.

Double-negative values lead to self-justified spitefulness

Depicting a world of institutionalized spite...

The other day I was musing upon how intelligence work seems to attract and encourage the worst kind of people, and develop the worst kind of habits - probably because it is (from the late 19th century at least) almost-wholly engaged in destruction.

For instance, the rationale of "national interest" is used to excuse even the vilest of destructive practices; which are then denied, lied-about and/or blamed on others - which is a perfect set-up for generating extreme corruption of individuals and institutions. 

One example of what is apparently a very common activity was described in an earlier post; whereby the British were successful in fomenting dissent in the German-occupied Denmark of WWII; the aim being to use-up more German resources. The mechanism for this was that the Danish peoples' lives were made deliberately much more miserable, and their sufferings greatly increased. 

This is an example of double-negative values in action - values that are reducible to opposition to something-bad (or, at least: something defined as bad); or negating the negative. 

The values of modern Western civilization are entirely double-negative - there are no public values that are rooted in the support of some positive value - such as the traditional "transcendental" values of truth, beauty, and virtue. 

When the West discarded and did not replace its religion of Christianity; a moral system of double-negations was the inevitable outcome.  

Because ultimately destructive; a double-neg morality attracts, encourages, and makes-habitual an attitude of spitefulness - and this is exactly what we find...

So that much public (and private) moralizing here-and-now is, very obviously - once you are aware of the possibility - spitefully-motivated; it's "highest" goal being to inflict misery and harm on some person, institution, nation, or cause that is regarded as "bad", and thereby deserving of it.   

Yet, as I've often said, spite is one of the very worst of sins; one of the most advanced forms of evil.

Resentment is one of the premier besetting sins of the modern West: resentment-based leftist ideologies are our highest values; our most praised motivators. 

I mean ideologies such as class-war, feminism, antiracism, climatism etc; which are officially devised, propagandized, promoted, rewarded, enforced - through the totalitarian apparatus of law, media, and the state and private bureaucracies. 

The latest and dominant AI-dolatry is, evidently, substantially resentment based; and spitefully/ destructively motivated. 

(Consequently; Schadenfreude repeatedly invades the quasi-objective "technological inevitability" pro-"AI" rhetoric.)  

Action aiming at the spiteful destruction of something we resent, is therefore currently one of the most powerful of motivators - sometimes even to the paradoxical extent of sustaining actions of great courage (courage being itself a virtue). 

For instance a war motivated by resentment and the spiteful desire for destruction of the enemy (an enemy who may in fact be superior to oneself); may nonetheless inspire virtuous altruism, self-discipline, acceptance of hardship, and valour.  

Or when intelligence services - typically deployed in the subversion, immiseration and destruction of better men and nations; yet, sometimes, evoke exceptionally courageous behaviour among their operatives such as "spies". 

Nonetheless, and bearing in mind that un-repented evil is not a static state but feeds upon itself and increases; it can easily be observed that when organizations are negatively, destructively, motivated - then, no matter their supposed justification - they are intrinsically-corrupt.

And this institutional-corruption will attract spiteful people, so that the self-justifying evil will increase with time. 

And this false and hypocritical pseudo-morality is intrinsic to our atheist-materialist ideological system.

We cannot expect, nor shall we get, anything better; until after Western Men acknowledge the reality of God, and embrace the offered-gifts of Jesus Christ. 

Since this seems highly unlikely - presumably such matters will continue to worsen; and imposing some of the most evil of all sins, shall therefore continue to be global policy.

Because, in our totalitarian society, the tendency is for all social institutions to become essentially like the intelligence services; i.e. rooted in the prevalent value-inversion and rationalized by double-negations.   

"AI" is the reductio ad absurdum and revenge of "Truth is Out There"

There is a fundamental, integral, by-assumption incoherence of Western thinking; that was described by Rudolf Steiner in The Philosophy of Freedom (1894); then further elucidated by Owen Barfield in Saving the Appearances (1957). 

These deep errors have not been acknowledged so could neither be analysed* nor be reformed, therefore have remained; and now are wreaking their revenge in the strategically destructive nonsense that is the post-November 2022 totalitarian global project of "AI". 

Such metaphysical assumptions have led Western civilization to the apparently-inevitable conclusion that, since truth has nothing to do with the active thinking of living, conscious, purposive beings (such as human beings); "therefore" truth can be more efficiently and impartially "discovered and done" by computers.

For the AI-dolaters; Truth is something that can be built-into a logical system; and it is the job of rational humans to submit to... whatever that logical system tells us is true. 

For AI-dolaters - "AI" is just a mechanical tool for discovering, and perhaps implementing, those self-explaining and objective truths - "truths" which are implicitly regarded as floating around "out there", waiting to be discovered and used...

For the Truth Out There gang; Truths are like pre-cut diamonds mixed into a vast heap of useless rubble - and they regard AI as merely a machine for sifting through trash and extracting the valuable elements.  

There is widespread acceptance (among the managerial and intellectual class) of the false mantra of "Truth is Out There", objective, independent of what we think about it; with its implication that rational men therefore ought to submit to that external truth...

And because this nonsensical assumption is integral to the functioning of bureaucracy and functional discourse; the demon-serving powers-that-should-not-be - most of the middling people of Western society have ended-up supporting (by word and deed, even when there are vague mental reservations) an insanely-dysfunctional but mandatory project to "replace" human consciousness with machine algorithms in as many kinds of socio-economic activity as possible. 

This happens because it is lazily assumed that the only alternative to the fake reasonableness of Truth is Out There is the solipsism of Truth is in My Mind.*

Such vague ideas of the subjectivity of truth have been floating around the counter-culture for many decades, indeed a few centuries: e.g. "my truth" notions such that ultimate truth is wholly-subjective, is whatever I currently assert it to be. 

Such subjectivist "relativism" is just as incoherent as "Truth is Out There" - but in addition it is upfront socially subversive and destructive. 

So it seems that mainstream "responsible" opinion - which cannot/will-not reject the exclusive dichotomy of conception; it has doubled-down on Truth is Out There. 

Consequently; it is routinely pretended (but aggressively!) that real truths are objective, independent of minds and consciousness; and have nothing to do with what humans (or anyone else) thinks...

It is important to recognize that "external truth" assumptions, are shared across the divide between mainstream materialist-atheism and mainstream-church-Christianity.

Therefore; the totalitarian assumption that it is the duty of individuals to submit to external truth - is also shared by totalitarians of secular and Christian types. 

This, I suggest, is why the "Truth is Out There" Christians have so often embraced and celebrated the totalitarian AI Project. 

Church-rooted, or "systemic", Christianity on the one hand, and materialist-secular-atheism on the other hand; are in this respect two sides of the same coin of "Truth is Out There"-ism. 

And this explains their analogous failure to discern the fraudulent and evil-motivated nature of current "AI". 

The main difference between church-Christian and secular AI-dolaters, seems to be that the Christians want their AI systems to be "trained" on a somewhat different data set. 

Other than that; church-Christians seem to be eagerly anticipating a system of AI-religion - a fusion of bureaucracy and computers - that they hope will become objectively valid, and to which they believe we ought then to submit obediently.   

*Note added: the reason for the apparently exclusive dichotomy of truth as either wholly subjective or wholly objective; is that Western philosophy has assumed this separation and division into place - then finds that it cannot be bridged. Most who realize that the result is a choice of two incoherent possibilities then assert some version of Oneness spirituality - which also does not make sense, since it provides no basis for creation or human existence; and there is no basis in it for any distinction or discernment of life. The only coherent basis I have found is to assume that the fundamental reality is of pre-existent/ eternal living beings, and this is the basis of true distinction and discernment. We start with Beings. And divine creation is a matter of developing relationships and creating cooperation between such Beings. This means that the baseline is that all knowledge is a product of the relationships between conscious Beings - so that detached subjectivity and objectivity are alike meaningless. 

Every person is unique - a plain fact of experience, contradicted by nearly-all theories (including religions)

When I reflect on the people I have admired particularly - who are mostly authors - I am struck by how extremely different they are from me in nature and motivations. 

But then, I have never met anyone who is much like me, even superficially - not even my brother, who is obviously the most similar. 

It might be supposed this is because I am exceptionally strange; but the fact of my experience is that I have never met any two people who were fundamentally alike.

Every single person I have ever known at all well, man or woman, was unique; and unlike any of the others in their nature. 

All my family and relatives are each absolutely distinctive; all my men friends and colleagues, all the girls I knew at all well. None could be confused with another. 

(Although, admittedly, there are people who it seemed impossible for me to get to know; as if they had a shell, or might be putting on an act all the time.) 

And this is not just The Human Condition, but apparently applies to animals - in my rather limited acquaintance. I have got to know quite a few cats, and each of these was absolutely distinct - and dogs seem to be just as individual, from a smaller sample size. I am confident I would find the same with any kind of knowable animal I made the effort to get-to-know - although there would doubtless be many kinds of animal I couldn't know.  

In sum: Uniqueness is the norm in this world. 

And Yet!...

Pretty much all of the socio-political, scientific and religious schemes and theories concerning human beings; operate on the basis that people are interchangeable units, that can be swapped for each other. 

Or, at best, that all human beings can be fitted into a small number of categories - within-which they again become interchangeable units. 

In conclusion: this defect of nearly-all socio-political, scientific and religious theory is solid experiential evidence that None Of them Are True. 

All are, at best and most charitably interpreted, merely ultra-simplified models of superficial aspects of reality. 

This includes Christian theories and theologies. 

At their hearts, all such schemata share a literally-demonic indifference to actual people, actual beings - evident when any of these models are regarded as being the truth about reality. 

 

Get A Grip - on something positively-good, true, motivating... and grippable!

I had a sudden feeling last-night that it was important that everybody needs to Get A Grip - and soon. 

This, because I felt that the time is near when when we will need to know For Ourselves and Affirm in our Hearts, that which is positively-good, true and motivating to us personally. 

And it struck me that it is vital that what we Get A Grip upon be grippable...

By which I mean, that-which-is-gripped - and upon-which we need to depend independently of external institutional or personal encouragement or validation - must really be gripped. 

To be gripped it must be small-enough, that is to say simple-enough and clear-enough, for us truly to grasp what it is that we are affirming, and will be living-by (in our secret hearts, when speech is not allowed).   

Complex systems and structures of theology and doctrine and practices will not suffice - because we forget the details or misremember, we get lost in them.... there is altogether too much wriggle room. 

Abstractions and "mysteries" do not work either - because we do not understand them well enough to hold-fast; and, again, because their cloudy-imprecision fails to provide the purchase necessary for lucid inner guidance. 

Christians are fortunate because we have (if we choose to accept it) an exceptionally clear and simple and graspable inner vision; which is following Jesus Christ through death to eternal resurrected life in Heaven. 

Once conceptualized and affirmed; this is independent of The World, does not require further input, and - if desired from the heart and grasped firmly - it has the requisites of being invulnerable to the pressures and corruptions which assail us.

It is that upon-which I shall be endeavouring to close and strengthen my grip.