Is there are permanent and complete cure for this mortal life on earth?

Is there are permanent and complete cure for this mortal life on earth? 

Or are there just temporary and partial alleviations of the problems of living? Are there merely palliations that leave the essential problems untouched - of which the primary problems can be summarized as evil and "entropy" (aka death). 

Most of modern discourse on values and policies proceeds under the lie (whether explicit, or more often by implication) that partial and temporary would-be improvements will solve The Problem under discussion. 

This is, indeed, the basis of the entirety of this-worldly, materialistic "leftism" as it emerged in the late 1700s, displaced and co-opted religion, and now exerts totalitarian control over much of the world. 

The lie is that leftist reforms make a fundamental difference, that their "answers" will fundamentally transform the nature of human life - but they never do, and cannot. 

Generations of waxing and enforced pacifism, socialism, feminism, antiracism, environmentalism etc. have led to a world in which all of the problems these ideologies are supposed to address, are instead perceived - by those who are most leftist - to be in a state of crisis, or indeed emergency. 

e.g. Feminist rhetoric and discourse perceives the condition of women here-and-now, to be as essentially unjust and oppressed as they did in 1800, or 1900, or 2000. Nine generations of incremental feminist reform, the transformation of society, the inversion of legislation; and yet, for feminists, the fundamental problem is untouched. Two centuries of what Feminists regard as quantitative palliation and alleviation - yet the qualitative problem remains as-ever. 

Biologically speaking; many diseases have become curable; infant and child mortality has been reduced from about 60% to about 1%; and the average lifespan in The West has been extended about thirty years - yet the existential problems of disease, ageing and death are the same as ever. There are many new and effective means of medical palliation - yet "the problem of pain", of human suffering, is still present as always.   

In economics; prosperity/ comfort/ convenience has rocketed in The West since the Industrial Revolution, and "Biblical poverty" has been abolished; yet the profound civilizational problem of the rich versus poor remains - and is rapidly increasing. 

The nature of this mortal life is such that nothing material can be done from within to cure its core problems; and anything short of cure leaves the problems qualitatively untouched. No amount of justice eradicates our perception of injustice, no amount of egalitarianism dents our perception of inequality here-and-now, no amount of delaying mortality leads to a solution to disease, ageing, and death. 

It is a case of cure or nothing. 

Alleviation or palliation don't make a fundamental difference. Either evil and entropy are eradicated permanently, or things will be essentially the same. 

That is the problem of which Heaven is the solution. 

Resurrection to eternal life in Heaven is an everlasting answer to entropy and evil. 

Do You want it? Is it truly possible? 

These are (ahem) important questions - or, so it seems to me. 

So do not You be distracted by claims of what can only be partial and temporary palliations of this mortal life; that leave fundamental matters essentially unchanged...

Seek first The Answer. 

 

 

Who are the poor? The traditional poor versus the modern poor; nature and personnel

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The identity of the poor and the nature of poverty both changed utterly at the industrial revolution.

In terms of the nature of poverty there are striking contrasts. For example, the traditional poor were thin, starving, and spent most of their tiny income on food - but the modern poor are obese, eat too much, and spend most of their income on entertainment, distractions, fashion etc.

The traditional poor worked very long hours, day after day - the modern poor do not work

And so on.

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But the traditional and modern poor are different people altogether.

1. The traditional poor were dead, or soon to be dead.

And if they themselves did not die, then all of their children very probably would.

(Pretty much all of the children who survived themselves to reproduce, were from the upper and middle classes - a small proportion of the population (?15 percent) produced nearly all the offspring who survived childhood.)

2. Therefore the traditional poor were a temporary class - always going extinct, but being replaced by downward mobility from the middle and upper classes.

3. In consequence, the traditional poor, while they were briefly alive, were recent descendants of the middle and upper classes - they had wealthy ancestors and probably wealthy relations.

The traditional poor were in effect 'distressed gentlefolk' - for instance the offspring of the younger sons, plain sisters, rebellious, idle, sick, unintelligent and unlucky members of the middle and upper classes.

4. Traditional poverty was therefore a temporary transitional state en route to (not long delayed) death.

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1. The modern poor are first and foremost alive, not dead.

2. Furthermore the modern poor will raise - or have raised by someone else if they cannot or will not raise them for themselves  - nearly as many children as they produce. Since the industrial revolution and for the first time in human history the poor have a higher Darwinian 'reproductive success' than the wealthy.

3. Thus the modern poor are mostly the descendants of previous poor.

4. The modern poor are therefore a permanent (multi-generational), self-reproducing class.

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In sum the Industrial Revolution did indeed create poverty - but not in the sense most people believe. The Industrial Revolution created poverty by keeping the poor alive, and allowing them to reproduce  - and making the poor into a permanent and self-replicating class.

In effect, and paradoxically; the Industrial Revolution has been blamed for keeping poor people alive and the children of the poor alive, rather than killing them all (or almost all) by starvation, disease and violence.

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Reference
This is a developed summary and interpretation of Gregory Clark's A Farewell to Alms (2007).

See also
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/biblical-poor-do-not-exist-in-west.html
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What is modern poverty? Loneliness. What should Christians be doing about modern poverty? Visiting

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Christians have become very mixed-up about poverty.

The idea (which I have heard from the current leaders of the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches) that alleviation of poverty is a particularly urgent task of our day and ought therefore to become the major priority of the Christian churches is especially misguided - indeed, not just a mistake but actually a dangerous and harmful policy.

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The fact is that poverty, in the Biblical sense, is pretty-much abolished from the modern world. 

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/almsgiving-what-ought-christians-to-do.html


Biblical poverty was about working all the hours of the day and indeed being worked to death, starving to death, dying of disease... it was about death.

In the modern developed countries, by contrast, so-called-poverty is characterized by what the Bible would have called something like 'luxury and idleness': over-eating, obesity, alcohol and drug over-use, and un-employment (not working), and by living longer than anybody in history - but having on average few children.

In undeveloped countries, nowadays, poverty has a lot more hunger and disease than in developed countries - but is nonetheless characterized by societies rearing unprecedented numbers of children, with the population being added-to faster than ever in the history of the planet: an extra billion people every 12 years since 1975 and another billion expected in the next 14 years.

(As context, there was only one billion people in the whole world circa 1800 and it took more than a century to add the next billion.)

Thus Biblical 'poverty' was about populations collapsing due to famine and plague - while modern 'poverty' is about luxury and idleness in the West, and an exploding population in the poorest nations.

Two different things.

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Furthermore, Westerners live in a world with a previously-unimaginable focus on this-worldly materialism, a world of short-termist hedonism, addiction to technological distractions, and intolerance for discomfort, a world of grotesque spiritual deficiency - so that to ask for a greater focus on relieving material poverty is precisely the worst possible emphasis for Christian leaders to recommend.

A greater focus on examining the distribution of material resources and on re-distributing material resources is exactly what we do not need; exactly what would be most harmful  to us - it is even further to subordinate Christians under the Marxist materialist preoccupations of Leftism.

I regard such policy as following the agenda of The Adversary, not of God.

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(This is why the secular Leftist mass media have given such a positive reception to Pope Francis. Because he is assisting their demonic agenda.)

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But we are told that the poor are always with us - so who are they?

I would say that the modern poor are the lonely.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/what-endemic-loneliness-tell-us-about.html

Therefore perhaps Christians could or should focus on the area of greatest need - that is to say visiting the lonely - as with the Biblical instruction to 'visit orphans and widows in their affliction' - but expanded to visiting the lonely of whatever nature or cause.

(I hasten to add that up to now I have personally failed in this, as in so many charitable imperatives. This is a case of don't do as I do...)

Visiting would therefore be a more worthy and more necessary aim, less counter-productive and less actively-harmful, than pandering to the already dominant corrosive priorities of Leftism; which merely fuels the tendency to see the world primarily in economic terms.

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Nonetheless, if modern Christians were to focus much more on visiting the lonely, they would not have the slightest difficulty in finding people who needed to be visited - in contrast to the way that people have great difficulty in finding people who resemble the Biblical depictions of poverty. 

To find the lonely, Christians would NOT have to travel thousands of miles to war-torn Africa, or home-in on disaster zones; they would not even need to cross to the other side of town. 

Christians could just step-out of the front door of their home or office, turn right or left - it doesn't matter; and walk for just a few seconds or minutes to find someone who needs visiting. 

Because loneliness is everywhere in the modern world. It is the main form of modern poverty.

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Almsgiving - what ought Christians to do about it in a society without Biblical poverty?

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Not, surely, to scour the world in search of genuine poor to whom we can then give alms.

Not, surely, to import genuine poor in vast numbers such that they can be sustained by coercively-extracted taxes.

Not, surely, to redefine poverty in relativistic rather than absolute terms (so 'the poor' are 'always with us' - but not because there are always poor people, but instead because there is always a bottom ten, or twenty, or whatever, percent of the population as defined in some statistically-measurable definition of wealth.)

Not, surely, to deliberately create and sustain local poverty in order that alms may be given them.

Not, surely, to equate taxation with almsgiving (nor to equate bureacratic organizations with 'good works').

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But if not, then what?

The short answer: Christian evangelism.

In a society where there is no real Biblical poverty - almsgiving (and good works) should focus on evangelism.

Specifically, on gaining converts, on deepening the faith of the converted, on supporting good teaching, on making the sacraments available, on spiritual activities (supporting Christian works, monasticism etc).

How best this may done is a matter of judgment, and discussion - but evangelism ought to be the focus, ought it not?

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NOTE 

On the definition of Biblical Poverty see:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/biblical-poor-do-not-exist-in-west.html 

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