What can replace "The" church for Christians?

For most Christians in recorded history (although not in the Gospels) being-a-Christian is the same thing as being an observant member of "The" church. 

But, of course, the identity of that The as it is applied to church; has varied in often incompatible and hostile - even lethal, and frequently evil - ways; since very early in recorded church history. 

Since the minds of Men and (therefore) society have both changed, Christians now choose The church for themselves, and choose which faction within that The which they are to be observant to. 

However; Christians then typically forget or deny that their own choices are rooted in personal assumptions - and usually pretend (for they are being untruthful) that their-"The" church is objectively, and evidentially, the-"The" church. 

So; for Men here-and-now churches cannot be, therefore they are not, what they were. 

Churches cannot be "The"; and cannot provide what they once (often) provided - and especially no church can be regarded as The in that way which was natural and spontaneous for so many centuries.  

What, then, can - or should - replace what The church once used to be? 

The first answer is nothing, there can be no replacement; because churches are all institutions, and all institutions are changed. 

All institutions are substantially and motivationally totalitarian-bureaucracy-assimilated; and have lost their distinctive purposes and the life-meanings that flowed from them - churches are now fundamentally, as well as in-practice, this-worldly. 

But perhaps what the churches used-to provide can be divided between spiritual and social? 

If so, the spiritual provision used to be external; mediated by symbolic, language and ritual; quasi-objective; and to-be-obeyed. 

This is exactly what has gone, and therefore this cannot be replaced for modern minds. At least; it cannot be replaced effectively and with sufficient motivational power. 

Churches as spiritual sources are self-subverted, hence relatively ineffectual - and so are church people. 

Instead, spiritual sustenance needs to come from direct participation with the divine - and all Christians therefore need to become mystics, in a certain sense. All Christians need themselves to communicate with (of know) the divine and the Beings of this world. All Christians need to be clear that their ultimate evaluations Just Are individual - and should work on making these as valid as possible. 

What of the social aspects of church? 

The social side of what churches once were cannot be replaced either; because society has transformed in its structures, laws, traditions, evaluations - and so forth. There is no longer an old-style church niche. 

Furthermore, with people as they now are; social support, inspiration etc is not, and cannot be, generically prescribed. First because generic provision is not wanted, not needed, and indeed actively abhorrent. 

But also because social provision (by whatever is The chosen-church) is so scanty, incomplete, crude, intermittent, insufficiently-sustaining... and basically unsatisfactory. 

We are long-since at a point (and this can, surely, only increase) where each individual Christian needs to seek for the social support he needs - search for wherever he can find it; in whatever form he can tolerate; and social support provides what he most needs; and in whatever way works-best for himself.

(Although that "best" is itself almost sure to be both short-term and insufficient.)

My conclusion is that the model of "Christianity" based upon The church is either dead and gone, or already-feeble, mis-matched, and dying.  

The alternatives to The church are not replacements but substitutes; and all substitutes rely upon an acknowledgement of the validity (as well as the necessity) of individual discernment, choice and validation. 

As see this as a plain fact - and IMO Christians ought to be honest enough to acknowledge plain facts. 

The intractable problem of moral legalism in Christian discourse

If there is one area of life in which discussion is futile, it is when trying to persuade a Moral Legalist in a situation where somebody has transgressed a law, rule or principle, that he regards as both absolute and primary. 

Such people cannot be made to recognize that the crucial move in their argument has been their own personal choice to regard values as existing ultimately in the form of laws. 

As well as, secondly, the choice to place This Law, here-and-now, as above all other laws that could (in principle) be applied to the situation under discussion. 

In other words; any possible argument has already-been pre-decided by the prior choice of These-Laws as necessarily valid and supreme, and the prior choice to apply This-Law here-and-now. 

Moral legalists have taken a vastly complex situation unfolding in real-time; and applied-to-it a grossly simplified model, that begs all the most fundamental questions. 

On the one hand we have Life; but on the other hand a set of Laws and relations between Laws. These Laws are then claimed to be descriptive of The Ultimate Truth about Life. The claim is that Life derives from Laws.  

In other words, the Man-assumed model of reality which is The Laws; is given primacy over all the multitude of details of that existence in which we find ourselves. 

There can be no relevant "evidence" for this assumption of the primacy of Law. It is an act of faith, a personal decision.  

Such moral legalists (and they are legion, and occur in all Christian denominations) cannot be persuaded; because they regard every attempt to point-out the fact of their assumptions, and that all such assumptions depend upon a personal choice of what-to-believe; as a challenge to their core moral values - hence as necessarily emanating from an evil tempter. 

One who debates a moral legalist, is subjectively assigned a (literally) demonic role. 

The reaction to any challenge to the assumption of the validity and applicability of Law is therefore typically extreme, and always negative. 

And also projective - in the sense that it attributes motivation in absence of knowledge. Any pointing-out of "my" assumptions as assumptions is experienced as an evil-motivated attack on what I have assumed to be ultimate good. 

Naturally enough, albeit mistakenly and sinfully; this may subjectively be regarded as "justifying", or even requiring (moralistic zeal!) - justifying an extreme response against this threat. 

Thus moral legalism is, I believe, a major cause of the extraordinary extremity of hostile rhetoric from some Christians online, and sometime IRL; and a cause of the inability of so many Christians to learn from experience, from Life. Because when These-Laws have-been accorded metaphysical primacy, primacy by-assumption; then anything that happens in Life can have nothing to teach us about the validity and applicability of These-Laws.  

Note added: If not, then what? If not Moral Legalism, then what instead? 

The answer lies in distinguishing the limitations of this actual mortal life from the ideal situation of Heaven - and in remembering the ultimate primacy of Heaven. Here-and-now in this vast and impersonal world as-is; we are stuck with legalism and bureaucracy as inevitable evils. Laws can be improved and reduced, implementation should be supervised and shaped by wise human judgment - but all Laws are ultimately wrong. 

And yet we are stuck with them, especially when it comes to public and societal morality (we can, and should, try to exclude laws and law-like rules as much as possible from a loving marriage, family, and strong friendships. 

(For the same reason, we should resist the temptation to conceptualize loving marriages and families in terms of societal-derived models - destructive errors such as regarding the family as essentially structured like a "social institution", as analogous to a mini-nation; as properly "ruled" by monarch, or "democracy", or whatever...) 

However; Heavenly morality and values are wholly relational, i.e. rooted in love between persons - and there is no place for Laws in Heaven. 

This is what we need to hold in mind, in order to avoid the self-blinded and destructive zealotry of the self-defined-Christian - but often net-evil, and in-practice demon-aligned - Moral Legalists. 

Warning: Proceed With Caution. Joining a Christian church is joining The Totalitarian System

Someone who is on the side of God the Creator, and who desires to attain the salvation of Jesus Christ, must Proceed With Caution when it comes to joining any formal organization. 

This is because we inhabit a totalitarian system; meaning that all formal institutions in our society are connected by a multitude of bureaucratic linkages - as was evident in 2020. 

Both totalitarianism and bureaucracy are intrinsically evil - which means that all formal institutions (politics, government service, law, medicine, corporations, charities, mass media, police, military, science, the arts, teaching etc... all of the social institutions) are (and must be) overall-aligned with the purposes of evil. 

  

This situation is a real and present danger: a spiritual hazard. 

The unwary shall be led-astray. 

And the warning applies as much to religions, churches, and specifically-Christian churches - as to all the other institutions; so that a Christian who joins a church is in spiritual Danger, and needs to Proceed With Caution. 

This does not mean that a Christian ought to avoid all churches - far from it*. 

For many people, a church is necessary; and for others a particular church (when available and accessible) is positively beneficial to sustaining faith.  

But it does mean that - just as a Christian chooses his church with discernment; he must not set-aside that discernment after joining that church. 

In a totalitarian world, no institution should be trusted; because none are worthy of trust. 

"Christian" must not, therefore, be striving to serve and obey any actually-existing church, nor even that particular sub-section of a church which Christian has chosen from the contending factions. 

(Service and obedience to any totalitarian-aligned organization will lead the individual towards evil - later if not sooner.) 

Instead; he ought to be ready and willing to continue evaluating all aspects of the church; including whatever the church teaches, instructs, or demands.  And proceeding (to the best of his ability) on the basis of these evaluations. 

It is a matter not so much of every Christian "taking responsibility" for selecting and implementing his faith - everybody already does that - but of acknowledging the fact that he is responsible: like it, or like it not.  

*After all, many people must work therefore have a job, and will mostly work for an organization or several; everyone will have multiple dealings with government and large corporations; indeed people must join all sorts of institutions. We must join the totalitarian system. Opting-out of The System is not an option. You may try to ignore The Matrix, but The Matrix will not ignore you. 

So what's the special problem with a church? None unless you forget that the church is a part of The System, and think of it as something qualitatively apart. 

Yes, I know about the "Spiritual Church" within the "institutional church", and the SC is - of course - what you want, as a Christian. 

The trouble is that the church will try to insist upon the institution, while leaving the spiritual stuff as... well, nice but optional. Spiritual disobedience is tolerated, even encouraged (plenty of bishops and archbishops who don't believe that Jesus was divine, or don't believe in Satan or hell) - but institutional disobedience? That is what gets priests defrocked and laity excommunicated.   

Everything always changes, and yet everything stays the same?

Is it true that everything changes, and yet everything stays the same? 

It does seem to have a general truth, especially over the long term, and in one-direction - when the first "everything" is taken to mean the superficial aspects of daily life and things, which are always changing; but the second "everything" means the fundamental and overall goodness of daily life.

For instance, the design of an entity - whether a car or a constitution, fashions or laws - tends frequently and always to be changing (especially in this age of left-totalitarian bureaucracy), and these changes can be "sold" as improvements; however, these changes do not add-up; they fail to lead to any fundamental improvement in things-in-general (e.g. the totalitarian society of left-totalitarian bureaucracy continues, and indeed solidifies). 

What I mean by "one-direction", is that while it is common and easy for surface changes to make life overall and in the long-term worse; this seldom works in the inverse. 

It seems difficult and rare for a multitude of superficialities to improve life in a lasting and qualitative fashion. 

This is related to the observation that while it is relatively quick, easy and cheap to corrupt people and make them worse (It happens All The Time; and I have seen this qualitative corruption of people more often than not over the past decades; e.g. in relation to my class of people in medicine, science and academia). 

On the other side; it is so slow, difficult, and costly of effort to improve people; that I think it fair to say that there is no known method by which it can be done. 

To put it differently; people can be made worse passively and unconsciously, simply by their going-along-with the changes of life, passively responding to the incentives towards evil...

But for people to improve, to become better-people; requires in inner, active and conscious change in their attitudes and motivations. 

Since getting-worse is unconscious and passive and energy-absorbing; while getting-better is conscious and active and energy-consuming - getting-worse naturally happens more often and more widely. 

This, I think, is a reason why well-meaning people so often err in their optimism. 

After considerable investment of times and effort, they have been able to reform some evil or injustice, or to introduce some improvement; and the tendency is to regard all such positive steps as accumulating towards a hoped-for positive and general transformation. 

For instance; institutions, including churches, may have achieved many little-but-surface improvements - in some objectively-measurable area; such fund-raising, attendance, missionary/ evangelical activity, implementation of one or another scheme... 

And these several or many surface changes are mistakenly summated into the optimistic expectation that things are going their way. 

The model they believe is that any step in the right direction is of-positive-value; and so long as there are such steps, then things are optimistic. 

But, after a while, a step-back and an objective eye reveals that although "everything" changes in the desired directions over the short-medium term; over the medium-long term, fundamental decline continues... 

Christian apostasy continues, churches continue to shrink in seriousness and size; faith is rarer and weaker; assimilation to the values of secular-left totalitarianism is increasingly dominant. 

However, such is our addiction to institutional optimism, that an objective retrospect seldom happens, and lessons are never learned. 

Instead, over and again, some novel strategy is embraced, some new set of optimistic "initiatives" becomes the centre of attention and efforts, and some of these are achieved with superficial success...

And the cycle repeats. 

 

This is how it is with The World, and apparently how it always has been. Even when (perhaps stimulated by a religious revival, or a Good Monarch) there is a genuine positive transformation at the large scale - this cannot be made into a system, and the attempt to so so reveals flaws in the original basis for positive change. 

Such that new kinds of corruption emerge, and the benefits are soon dissipated then overwhelmed. 

Everything changes, yet everything stays the same? 

This is why Jesus Christ did not promise a better world, and did not construct a system for attaining a better world. 

He knew that such is impossible in this mortal life, by the very nature of this-world. 

But instead Jesus promised something genuinely attainable (thanks to His work): that individual people might, after death, have resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 

Western religious-motivated wars - Now? Ridiculous, nonsense, PSYOPS!

In the past - including in Western nations - there were religious wars, because religion was the primary motivator in many people's lives. 

For example in the 16th and 17th century in the British Isles there were religious inter-national and civil wars between Christians. It is very evident that - whatever other reasons there were to start and sustain wars - religion was primary. 

Back then and there; plenty of people - individually, as well as collectively, were strongly motivated, risked greatly, suffered greatly for their religion. 

But that was then; this is now. 

Things now are very different in modern, developed Western societies such as the USA and its vassal nations of UK, Europe etc. 

All Western and West-affiliated/ dominated states are secular - without any exceptions. 

And this secular perspective goes far deeper than constitutional factors: non-religious assumptions are fundamental and functional. Bureaucracy and mass media - which are everywhere in all modern states - are not just areligious, but are innately (and increasingly) anti-religious.   

Nowadays people are evidently-not primarily motivated by religion. Indeed (think of 2020) their religious practice almost invariably follows and reflects their atheist-materialist ideology.

The mainstream churches of all denominations and factions; are just "a lifestyle option" located within the all-pervading secular-leftism  

Ideology - not religion - drives motivation; and ideology is a product of the totalitarian state and its apparatus of bureaucracy, media, law, education, science, arts, military etc. 

This hegemonic Western ideology is negatively motivated (by sins such as fear, resentment, despair); the ideology is therefore both incoherent and destructive in its ultimate basis, as well as its proximate effects. 

This is reflected in the nature of modern drone and missile distance warfare; in which attack is much easier than defence - indeed, in which effective defence is all-but impossible to sustain.

By its technical nature, such warfare is primarily destructive; and the destructive effect is enormously amplified by the ultra-complex and unavoidable inter-dependencies of modern developed societies.  

In one word: modern warfare is primary spiteful in motivation. 

It is mainly concerned with the infliction of destruction of social and economic systems; with deliberate environmental destruction; with infliction of suffering and death on humans, animals, plants. 

Modern warfare is the material expression of our spiritual nihilism.  

Religions and churches in the West 2026 are almost-entirely assimilated as components of a top-down global totalitarian state; which for more than half a century has propagated a negative/ inverted ideology and morality of opposition. 

And this is so grossly obvious, so widely observed and measured, so wearisomely-often discussed and analysed; that it ought-to-be instantly obvious that the currently-circulating notion of the present war being religiously motivated is ridiculous nonsense.

Indeed, the idea that modern West-initiated wars are religiously-motivated - the idea that modern Americans would go to war for their religion is crazy! 

And that these fanatical "Christian" (or Judeo-Christian) religionists are actually imposing religious geopolitical priorities... 

Well... such beliefs are so utterly idiotic that they should be immediately be recognized as PSYOPS of those Agents of Chaos who increasingly dominate within the Global Establishment. 

But on the contrary - such tactics work... 

There are those not-Christians who simply accept the evil-nonsense because it confirms their own biases against Christians. 

There are those Christians who accept the evil-nonsense because it confirms their own biases against evangelicals.

There are those religionists who accept the evil-nonsense because it creates an excuse for indulging their spiteful and destructive biases against other religions, ethnicities, nations. 

(Religion is convenient excuse and religious motivation - although too feeble to overcome secualr ideology - is nonetheless  

There are those who expend thousands of words on analysing the extent to which the PSYOP is true, and the extent to which it is not; the extent to which all this is a product of deficits in theology; and then making complex, nuanced recommendations concerning what to do next about things (which will of course be ignored).  

This in itself is evidence of the way in which - in this innately entropic world, that is also in 2026 dominated and pervaded by the powers of purposive evil - destruction is much easier than creation. 

A small effort by intel-ops who (presumably) constructed and placed the concept of a modern Western religious war - has led to a very large socially destructive, psychologically negative, consequence. 

Things now are just all too easy for the powers of evil, because of the extent and consequences of spiritual corruption in the world mass populations.

"They" merely need to pull at a string; and en masse "we" reliably panic, rant, dance... and destroy. 

   

The "magical scientist": Ceremonial Magic and Science

From the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game

I am re-reading Wizards: a history, by Peter G Maxwell-Stuart (2004); and reflecting on the use of ceremonial magic throughout recorded history; including in the Bible itself, and other early Christian texts where the magic attributions were sometimes vastly amplified.

It all seems to confirm my strong impression that magic and science were pretty much the same thing through most of history, and constituted part of the "this worldly" and social aspect of religions. 

So how and why did they separate - or is science still actually a kind of magic? Maybe...

The virtue (or otherwise) of magic was mainly a matter of the (genuine) motivations of the magician - whether, for instance, these were selfish or spiteful; or else altruistic and intended to benefit good causes. 

And to a lesser extent, the quality of magic was influenced by the good, neutral, or evil nature; of spiritual beings that were contacted and summoned, and whose cooperation or aid was sought. 

But mostly magic was regarded as method; a way of getting things done; such as a means to learn information or accomplish a desired goal. As are science and technology nowadays. 

 

Therefore the main question about any particular usage of ceremonial magic* was - does it work?

And the answer seems to be - Yes! Magic did work... 

Which is to say that magical ceremonies worked sometimes - magic sometimes did what it was intended to do. 

But magic typically worked (it seems to me) partially; by which I mean that although effective, the effects were achieved with great effort on someone's part, sometimes achieved only slowly; sometimes the magic only partially solved the problem. 

And the outcomes were often controversial - accepted by some, denied by others. 

And the explanation of any specific magical effect was also controversial; as we see in relation to Jesus in the New Testament. 

We see differing views of miracles. Was the "magic" done by Jesus himself (as a divine being); by God via Jesus; by angels or demons Jesus had enlisted; was there a natural explanation; or was the miracle some kind of illusion, trick or fraud? 

Much the same could be asked of any magician - since some magicians claimed (or were asserted to be, by followers) divine avatars or emanations (i.e. themselves a god), or to have assimilated to the divine. 

 

Therefore, although it can be said that magic "worked"; there remains the deep question of what it means that magic works; and (in sum) it is evident that any evaluation of any kind of "working" cannot be made wholly objective and impersonal. 

That is: different people, different societies, different social contexts - all affect evaluations of whether a procedure is "working", and to what extent. 

But it is possible to regard modern science (say, from the 1600s onwards) as a systematic and communal attempt to make magic work more reliably by diminishing the personal and contextual. 

Such that a given scientific procedure can be counted-upon to produce a given result, to a greater extent than was the case with ancient magic. 

And this goal was pursued, over several generations of scientists, even when the results were more modest, less spectacular, than the results claimed for magic.

The point was that scientific results could be relied-upon in a way that was less dependent on the qualities of the scientist and the specific situation, than was the case with magicians. 

Science required much less training and knowledge than magic; and the accepted societal applications of science became much wider than achieved by magicians - indeed, science became almost universal. 

"Less" dependent - but still dependent to a degree; because any reflective and critically-minded real-scientist would know that the results of science still depend on many of the aspects of ceremonial magic: the knowledge and skills of the scientist, elaborate procedures and equipment etc. 

My conclusion is that the magical elements of science were never eliminated, and science could still, therefore, be regarded as a type of magic. 

However; the successful attempt to reduce the magical aspects in science came at a cost; because the trend led, incrementally, to the eventual elimination of the divine and spiritual from scientific discourse... 

The point at which the spiritual and divine were altogether eliminated from scientific thinking (in the later 20th century); was the point at which science ceased to be real and became, instead, merely a branch of the totalitarian bureaucracy; and scientists merely a species of research bureaucrat.  

In sum: Real science is a sub-branch of magic built-upon those areas of life where the desired effects can most reliably, and more completely, be achieved...

Which also means that many aspects of life are ignored by real-science because outcomes are unpredictable; or depend too much on individual persons and circumstances. 

*By "ceremonial" magic; I mean that requiring some combination of knowledge or scholarship; training and practice; and using some kind of (more or less complex) physical procedure, actions, words, and/or material artefacts.  

"AI"-Christianity and other unfortunate predictions for 2026...

My prediction for 2026 is that "AI" will continue to subvert self-identified Christians (as well as everybody else); in particular that:

"AI" outputs will increasingly be cited as authority, evidence, or proof. 

This has, of course, already begun; but I am predicting that "AI" outputs will become put forward as publicly "official"; as the bottom-line reason why we should (or should not) believe, think, or obey X... 

This is the latest step in a long-term trend by which all forms of public knowledge - including Christian knowledge - have been:

1. First (a long time ago) made a matter of consensus (of some kind) - a "majority vote" kind of discernment. 

Then:

2. Consensus-formation was absorbed into bureaucracy. 

And up-coming:

3. Bureaucratic procedures will be (or at least this will be claimed) made objective and computerized - by the post-2022 version of globalist-generated "AI".

This is why Christians are failing the "AI" Litmus Tests; because most Christians have externalized their acknowledged source and nature of authority (e.g. in a church, or in a scripture, or in a theology); and all forms of external authority have been, are being, will increasingly be... sucked-into the consensus, bureaucratic, "AI" System. 

This means that mainstream church-orientated/ scripture-faithful Christians; will (step by step, but swiftly) soon find themselves believing one or another "AI"-Christianity. 

And "AI"-Christianity will be destructive to the possibility of that individual person actually following the real Jesus Christ...

Because "AI" is - by design and implementation, overall and overwhelmingly - an instrument of damnation.  

A sub- but related-prediction is that there will be a greater use of attempted, threatened, and actual physical-coercion in implementing public policy (including the "decisions" of "AI"). 

This will be "necessary" because the ruling class agenda is ever more obviously destructive and evil; and the propaganda/ education mechanisms for ensuring adequate brain-washed compliance of the masses, are breaking-down rapidly. 

Also because the "Agents of Chaos" party among the Western rulers wants there to be more violence, everywhere - so physical coercion and human suffering are, for Them, self-justifying. 

Litmus Test choices - a choice of totalitarian authority and surrender to that (versus heresy, versus Romantic Christianity)

There is a sense in which anybody that takes one step away-from obedience to an "authority", will continue to diverge - will continue to become more of what they have started. 

There is the observed fact that failure on one Litmus Test issue, or failure on a new Litmus Test as it arises, almost always leads towards greater corruption. 

And in this case, the corruption is an (in practice) assimilation towards the totalitarian program. 

So... people take a first step, and implicitly accept the authority of those who launched and perpetuated the Birdemic/ Peck international coup; or who provoked and escalated the Fire Nation conflict; or who propagandized and imposed the post-November-2022 "AI" pseudo-revolution...

Doing this involves both a decision to:

1. Accord authority to the powers who have devised and sustained these strategies; and

2. Also the decision to submit (to a significant extent) to that authority. 

(This applies to individual persons - but also to institutions - including churches.) 

So it is obvious why any single Litmus Test failure is usually a significant step towards further corruption; because the powers being accorded authority are overall-evil in their motivations; and the choice implies obedience to that authority. 

Authority to evil and obedience to that evil. 

To summarize: a Litmus Test failure is therefore both a decision to confer authority upon evil - thereby inwardly submitting to that evil; and a decision to think and act in accordance with that evil. 

In the short term, this "feels good" - exactly because totalitarian evil is dominant in our world (especially in The West); and in joining oneself with The System (even to what is, initially, a limited extent) there is a sense of becoming "part of something bigger", and of a larger world of increased opportunities for personal status, power, wealth...  

So (in practice) when someone chooses a Litmus Test failure; this is not something they do with shame and try to hide; but on the contrary, something boasted-about - and (as far as possible) parlayed into increased career, business or social opportunities.

The public discourse is currently full of people who have one or more radically dissenting opinions - but whose Litmus Test fails are actually the basis of their fame, or wealth, or other appeal. 

And this number is net-expanding with every new Litmus Test - so there have been many new recruits to the totalitarian agenda since "AI" began to be implemented across all major institutions, top-down.  

Some of these happy-successful-collaborators are individuals (entrepreneurs of one sort or another; whether would be "me cultists" or money-seekers, or combinations) - but many are church-Christians of one sort or another. 

This is how it looks to me. But I can see that there is a superficially-similar critique operating from the perspective of "traditional" Christian religious orthodoxy of the kind that sees "Christianity" as an entity authoritatively defined and controlled by some particular church (or system - such as a system of authority accorded to "The Bible" or other scripture; including a particular interpretation of it). 

Any individual who steps away from the institutionally-controlled and -validated orthodoxy of Christianity; can be seen (from this church/ system perspective) to be "on the road to heresy" - because, having rejected church-authority and been disobedient in one respect - nearly-always leads to further rejections and disobediences. 

Therefore, the traditional orthodoxy of the favoured church is defended strongly by asserting that particular church's primary authority; because perceived the alternative is likely to be a collapse of "faith", that (it seems) does not have an end-point - and leads (it seems) towards Christian apostasy: abandoning the Christian faith altogether... 

This perception of the anti-Christian consequences of rejecting the chosen-authority in any single point; is almost inevitable if and when somebody believes that Christianity Just Is embodied in an external institutional authority. 

For an individual instead to assert his personal authority to discern the nature of Christianity; and to accord primacy to (what he believes) is a personal, direct and unmediated relationship with Jesus Christ, and God - is therefore regarded by the traditionalist as amounting to "the same thing" as mainstream atheistic materialism and its accompanying New Agey "spiritual"-hedonism.  

For the trad-orthodox church-based religious person; true authority is always external, and true virtue always depends on voluntary obedience to external authority. 

The crucial distinction for church-Christians is between what they regard as the real and valid authority of their church on one side; and the false authority of global totalitarianism on the other.

No other possibility is recognized.  

So any heresy seems analogous to a Litmus Test failure. 

Yet from my Romantic Christian (Christian individual) perspective; I observe that the trad-orthodox church-based Christians have in fact failed one after another of the Litmus Tests, and continue to do so!

And for the simple reason that their churches are In Fact part-of the System of global totalitarianism.

As of 2025; a church cannot exist as a socially-significant institution, except by being mandatorily locked-into The Totalitarian System in a multitude of ways: 

...Financial and economic, legal and employment-wise, and as part of a dense network of regulations to do with buildings, gatherings, social interactions etc. 

All of which is enforced by the police, the bureaucracy, and the immense destructive power of the mass/social media.     

It is a question of whether one is opting-out or opting-in; and what is being opted-into or out-from. Into authority or out. 

Is the opting out-from one authority (e.g. a church) into another authority (...secular totalitarianism)? 

Or, is it an opting out-from the primacy of external authority. 

It is a question also of the decision about the location and nature of ultimate authority.

Is authority to be outer-institutional to be obeyed - or is it aspirationally-rooted in a personal relationship-with the divine? 

And answers to such questions are, in turn, based on what one regards as possible... Mainstream materialists regard the divine as false and impossible. Church-Christians regard the divine as necessarily institutionally-mediated. 

But Romantic Christians regard the divine as real and rooted in personal relationship. That is the basis of its claim to provide a third option with respect to ultimate authority.  

How can modern people becomes sure enough about their beliefs, for this to be strongly motivating? Example from my earlier life as a scientist

We need to be sufficiently sure of our bottom-line convictions that they will serve strongly to fuel our personal motivation - so that we have the clarity and courage to aim at good; and to discern and navigate through life. 

But we modern people, in this modern world, find it very hard to believe in - anything!

At least, we moderns don't believe in stuff strongly enough that we can be truly free, and choose God and divine creation, and have the courage to stick with this --- in the face of a world that continually subverts, ridicules, suppresses, persecutes... and even inverts such intentions. 

We need true beliefs - i.e. beliefs that reflect reality (divine reality); and we also need to be subjectively sure about these beliefs in order that they can be positively motivating.

So how can we discover, and become sufficiently-convinced, by such things?  

The short answer is "intuition" - but I need to explain what I mean by intuition. 

For this I will here use the example of my earlier life as a scientist. 

When I began learning science, in the "early" phase;  it was learning "about" science; and I learned it in just the same way that we learn most other things about this world: we are told it we absorb it in terms of the assumptions that lie behind the functioning of our world. 

And we generally believe what we are told, especially when it comes from socially-defined authority figures.

But such "early" learning is superficial and passive - and such beliefs are not strongly held, not least because they have never really been understood, and we have never invested anything very personal into them. 

Consequently, these early beliefs concerning science were easily revised, modified, even reversed - when some "higher" authority said so. 

So: this early kind of passive and external belief about science was only very weakly inwardly motivating, and was unstable.

The same applies to all such beliefs - and this accounts for almost all proclaimed political, social and religious beliefs. They are shallow, impersonal - and very easily redirected or reversed by a change in what "authorities" are currently-saying. 

When I became a professional scientist, and began to do research; I entered an intermediate phase. I soon became much more discerning about what I believed, and more active in choosing who I would personally regard as authorities.  

My own understanding became deeper; albeit in externally derived terms. 

The doing of science became much more selective - but what I selected-from, and the criteria for regarding something as true; was something I assembled from that selective sample of what "authorities" stated.

I was not doing original or creative work in science; rather I was trying to be more professional, more discerning, and to do my work at a higher level than others. 

At this intermediate level; the work I was doing was not really anything to do with "reality" - rather it was dictated by the scientific literature - and was a matter of filling in gaps, extrapolating from what had already been done - and refuting pieces of established science that were (I believed) refuted by better authorities. 

It could be said I had "faith" in science as a process, as a social activity. This is analogous to most Christians "faith" in their church. 

I changed my mind less often than in the early phase, because I was more motivated - but this motivation was very much bound-up with and shaped-by the professional scientific environment - which was regarded as the ultimate arbiter. 

So, at this intermediate level; science was what the best scientists were saying (or had said) - and the intent was to become one of these "best" - and this was determined by the higher professional structures. 

Such a vision of science is this-worldly, and its standards and motivations are of this-world - even if rather idealized within this-world.

The motivations are stronger, because of the personal investment in the process; but the motivation is still ultimately external - and when the external consensus of those I regarded as "best" scientists changed, then so would my own purposes and motivations. 

I could (I hoped!) stand in a select company which I had partially chosen to ally-with; but I could not stand alone.  

The highest level of science was concerned by transcendental ideals that looked beyond the scientific milieu; ideals to do with reality (not just the relevant scientific literature) and truth (not just professional standards. 

At this highest level I was compelled to take personal responsibility for my beliefs; and might therefore need to "stand alone" when I thought that "the external world of science" (even of the best scientists, and by my evaluation) was wrong and misguided. 

For these evaluations to become beliefs that were strong enough to motivate; I needed to have criteria for conviction that went beyond my interpretations of the external world of the professional scientific literature. 

At this point, as may be clear, I had actually moved outside of the professional system of science. 

I had come to recognize that science had its assumptions that were not really true; that it was a matter of models not reality; and that for science to be true and real, required that science be understood in terms of ultimate reality...

Which included God and divine creation, and myself as having some personal significance in this.  

This was the point at which I developed sufficiently strong a personal motivation that I could, where I regarded it as necessary, maintain my convictions and direction without support from other scientists. 

I was, in other words, innerly-motivated, and also (consequently) more strongly motivated. 

This stronger inner motivation came from a different quality of conviction concerning what was true. 

At the early and intermediate levels of science; I was dependent on external authority as expressed in external communications and externally-validated interpretations of these communications - i.e. my belief (hence motivation) was rooted the observations and theories to be found in some selective sample of the scientific literature...

To reiterate - this understands science as communications that are externally derived and externally validated. 

At both early and intermediate levels; my convictions could be no different-from, deeper-than, or more-solid-than these external factors.  

And when these external factors vacillated, or even apparently reversed - then there was no alternative but for me to revise my convictions. 

This situation is demotivating! - especially when, by criteria external to science (and to do with truth and reality) science is being corrupted, as was very obviously the case.

(Science began explicitly to serve the needs of bureaucracy, careerism, politics etc. I could not fool myself other than that this really was corruption!)   

For me to have a personal conviction and motivation in science; I needed to have an inner sense of truth and reality; what is more this inner sense needed to be direct, not a communication; needed to be self-interpreting - not dependent on observations and theories. 

In other words "intuition". 

Actually, I have put matters the word way around; because it was only after I had recognized that intuition was and ought to be the root of science, that I moved to the higher level. 

What happened was that I would be thinking about something, working on something; when I realized that "this was it". 

From the stream of superficial thinking and doing, there sometimes emerged, there was discovered, a solid sense of conviction and surety; a "this is it".  

  

After a while, the intuition of "this is it" became the final validator of my work - unless I got it, and unless the sense of this-is-it was solid enough to survive repeated consultations; then I was not convinced. 

Lacking such an intuition; I remained unsure. 

I knew that "more work was needed". 

But with this intuition, and so long as it lasted and was operative - I was highly motivated, and could withstand any amount of external contradiction. 

To generalize from this specific experience; when we regard the external world as corrupt, and increasingly taking the side of evil; then unless we are to be drawn-into that; we need to move "above" considerations of the external, the communicated. 

We need, I think, to operate from the kind of deep intuition I eventually found in doing science...

Because only this intuition can be the basis for us to be free and positively-motivated by something outwith "society" that is both solid and potentially real.  

"AI ethics" scaremongering is part of the totalitarian PSYOP

The global Establishment "AI" project began almost exactly three years ago - with the multi-national, multi-pronged, coordinated mega-launch on 30th November 2022.

The "AI" project has, of course - like all such*, tried to capture both of the side of the "debate" - by using some portion of its multi-trillion dollar budget to fund courses, qualifications, conferences, books, and jobs; that purport to discuss the "ethics" of this technology. 

Some of these "AI"-employees are techno-utopian apologists for "AI"; while others have the task of scaremongering.

"AI" scaremongering is done in such a way that the realities of this vast totalitarian project are obscured; and the categorically false assertions of "AI" are instead simply being-assumed to be true - by being used as the basis for the scaremongering!

In other words; the discourse variously called "AI ethics" (like the related field of "AI governance") is part of the PSYOPS that attempts (and successfully, it seems) to manipulate the masses into a state of bemused, terrified, passive and resigned acceptance of... whatever bad things "AI" brings. 

Some of the "ethicists" base their "concern" on evaluations of what is coming - very soon! 

These include assumptions that are smuggled in covertly, because they form the taken-for-granted basis of the ethical hand-wringing: 

1. Inevitability

2. Takeover from humans

3. Destruction caused by the technology

The assumption of "inevitability" hides the unimaginable trillions of tax dollars confiscated from the masses to fund the "AI" project - its massive computational infrastructure, the massive energy consumption, the countless reallocated and recruited "AI"-personnel in innumerable organizations...

And to bribe/force compliance upon all the major social institutions and corporations by a vast and coordinated program.

The assumption that "AI" will "takeover" from humans; hides that all actual decisions to (allegedly) "replace" people with computers, are made by humans.

Yet the background-assumption is that this planned takeover of human activities by "AI" technologies will - somehow - happen because of the technologies innate alleged-"power". 

The simple fact is that people make the decision; and when these humans decisions lead to "AI" takeover, this is because that human choice has been heavily propagandized, incentivized (by subsidies, tax-breaks etc), driven by legislation changes - and so forth. 

If "AI" is in any sense "inevitable" - then that inevitability is merely because enough people will respond to the enormous pressures and incentives that have been created via the colossal funding of the project and the compliance of the leadership class.  

Destruction: Software is stated to be the cause of the inevitable (i.e. planned) personal and social damage confidently-predicted to result from the "takeover" of "AI".

This tries to hide that the whole process of "AI"-replacing has been driven and enforced, top to bottom, by people.

And this includes the common appeal to "market forces" and geopolitical competition, that supposedly compel corporations and governments to implement "AI" technology - or else be overwhelmed by those who adopt "AI"...

This assumes what is false: that "AI" really does or soon-will replace humans more efficiently and effectively in significant functional roles. 

It also takes no account that the "market" for "AI" has been deliberately and artificially constructed by totalitarian fiat using coercively-confiscated resources. 

If the marketplace had instead been orientated towards effectiveness and efficiency in achieving real-world outcomes; then it would not, indeed could not, have led to "AI". 

So; the "AI" project serves to conceal and deny a vast program of (yes - inevitable! if the totalitarian Establishment get Their way) planned personal and societal harm; under cover that all this has been done "by the AI" - and in a way that is unstoppable and impersonal.

In a way that is nobody's fault. 

No person or group is to blame for anything!

It All Just Happened..

(And "how sad", say the AIethicists...)

The lie is that this is not really people who are doing the destroying by means of a colossal organized and resourced international strategy; but instead it is the software that is doing this to us humans!

(When we suffer or die; we are meant to cry out from our hearts: "Woe is me, my heart bleeds! But what can mere Men do against such impersonal necessity?")

Behind the advertised ethical "concern" lies a raft of made-up, dishonest and propagandistic assertions about the functional efficiency and effectiveness of (post-November 2022) "AI". 

The truth of these assertions is another thing which is assumed, in the face of a complete lack of serious and honest evidence; and fundamentally rooted in the categorical impossibility of the claims.

  

My point here is clarify that those who are put-forward in mainstream discourse as "ethically concerned" by the "implications" of "AI" - including those who scaremonger on the basis of false assumptions concerning the technology's effectiveness and impersonal-inevitability - are themselves part of the coordinated AI-PSYOPS. 

+++

*It seems that "AI" project (in all its facets) has been the primary - single largest and most sustained - strategy of the globalist leadership class over the past three years. 

"AI" is the current main mechanism of progressing Ahrimanic evil; those in the leadership class who desire a wholly materialist society of omni-surveillance and micro-control. 

Meanwhile, since early 2022, the "Agents of Chaos" (who pursue the spiteful and destructive agenda of Sorathic Evil); have been focussing their efforts on escalating everywhere-wars abroad plus intra-national violence at home. 

Although these two types of evil are increasingly in conflict among the leadership class of the world; they seem to have reached an uneasy truce on the subject of "AI"; based on opposite understandings of what "AI" will actually do. 

The totalitarians (falsely) believe that AI can be the basis of a world-administering bureaucracy that is both cheaper and more controllable than the current armies of managers and clerks.

On the other side, the Agents of Chaos (correctly) realize that "AI" cannot - therefore will not - perform this functional job; but will instead destroy social functioning, generate mass misery and death, and collapse civilization into that disorder they crave.

So, at present; both sides of the Global Establishment have reasons to continue to facilitate, fund, and propagandize the ongoing "AI" takeover - which is why you never hear an Establishment voice that is critical of "AI" for the right reasons and from the right assumptions. 

Fake nationalism: "Nationalism" in 2025 is just a disguise of the totalitarian backlash

Genuine political Nationalism was the first "ideology", it came after the collapse of religion as the primary organizing principle of societies - and it was a basis for national coherence and motivation... 

But this phase was always brief (a few decades at most), and nationalism has been feeble everywhere for many decades - and in most places for a century or more. 

And nationalism cannot be revived. 

The "collective" way of thinking and behaving upon which genuine nationalism depends; was part of an earlier phase of human consciousness - a phase which is now all-but gone, and shall not return.

Mankind has changed, so that real (strong in coherence and motivation) Nationalism is not just absent currently, but just not possible from here onwards. 

Of course there are plenty of theoretical nationalists (one can espouse theoretical anything); but that means nothing in practice; when people will not (and cannot) sink their individuality into the collective consciousness. 

What we actually have in geopolitics, which is significant and influential in some nations; is various types of fake nationalism. 

Fake nationalism is an Establishment project, that has arisen in the context of the civil war among the global leadership class. 

The two sides in this war are the bureaucratic totalitarians, and the agents of chaos (i.e. the servants of Ahrimanic versus Sorathic evil). 

The totalitarians reached their peak of international power in early 2020 with the global lockdowns; but since then the agents of chaos have been waxing strong. 

At present, the agents of chaos - who are located mainly in the West; are trying to unleash all kinds of destruction such as international war, civil wars and general violence, famines (by destruction of agriculture and trade), and many kinds of disease and toxicity, economic and environmental collapse - and so forth. 

(Because destruction is easier, quicker, cheaper than construction - the agents of chaos can pursue multiple simultaneous lines of attack.)  

The official forms of nationalism that we see pitted against the agents of destruction is therefore to be understood as a fake nationalism. 

Fake nationalism is a backlash; an attempt by totalitarians to reverse the increasing policy dominance of the agents of chaos. 

It is a fake nationalism because it is not derived from the group mind of the nation; and is not motivated by promoting the well-being of the communal or collective entity that is the people of a nation. 

Fake nationalism is instead a top-down manipulative strategy from the bureaucracy, directed at a substantially individualized (indeed atomized) populace; intended and designed to strengthen the 2020-style Establishment project of omni-surveillance and total-control.

But this time, instead of the proximate goal of world totalitarianism, as argued by Trotsky (and Trotsky's descendants are now among the premier agents of chaos - having moved from world revolution to global destruction); we are getting "totalitarianism in one nation" analogous to Stalin's strategy of securing communist power and influence within the USSR. 

That is all that modern "nationalism" really amounts to: it is "Totalitarianism in one nation". 

The problem is that when confronted by the agents of chaos who are, for example, trying to continue and expand and escalate WWIII - the bureaucratic totalitarians seem to be (and perhaps are) so much less evil than the agents of chaos, as to appear almost "good"!  

It is therefore very tempting to be induced to lend our support (our "hearts and minds") to one or another of the Fake Nationalists - in our own nation, or some other. 

Therefore; when confronted by the lesser-evil of Fake Nationalists; we need to remember and hold in mind that they are not good; that their motivations, methods and aims are all evil - simply because totalitarianism is intrinsically and necessarily evil. 

And I mean spiritually evil: because the highest-level and implicit goal of totalitarianism is the damnation of Men.  

"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. 

The middle nineteen-sixties was the inflexion point of a vast and strategic psychic attack on Western Civilization

The style and persons included in this image are significant - 

particularly the gratuitous presence of black magician and British intelligence operative Alisteir Crowley - back row second from left. 

The cultural changes in the West that happened in the middle 1960s - especially in the UK and USA - were stark; and shocking at the time. 

Although still at a rural English Primary School; I was very aware of these changes, they impinged upon me. 

I now regard the middle 'sixties as the inflexion point of a vast and strategic psychic attack on Western Civilization, mounted (mainly) by means of the mass media. 

Up to the middle 60s the mass culture was very positive in tone; all about people opening their minds; about embracing everything with discrimination, welcoming the new, looking forward to the future...

Change happened suddenly; beginning in summer 1967. 

For me it was marked by the surprising change in our cultural leaders The Beatles with their Sgt. Pepper album - the change in their fashion, behaviour, style of music, beginning to espouse of "radical" politics and alien spiritual stuff.

Things very quickly began to go sour, to lose innocence and optimism...

From the cheerful primary colours and plastic miniskirts and bobbed haircuts and Union Jacks of "I'm Backing Britain; then suddenly it was all about dirt, long-hair, drugs, violent "protest", Indian gurus, the Vietnam War etc. 

From light to darkness; from us to them, from hedonic materialism to satanic spirituality. 

In retrospect; I think the whole thing was a strategic psychic attack. That is, an evil-motivated attack on a person's soul. 

People were first encouraged to open themselves and welcome the future; then when this was achieved - all kinds of sickly stuff was poured-in. 

From shallow relentless cheerfulness; suddenly it was about fear and resentment, the pseudo-seriousness of ignorant philosophizing about remote matters; and the hedonism took on a self-destructive quality as it styled itself as a revolutionary activity.   

This is a pattern: first encourage open and uncritical acceptance and positivity; then when this achieved take rapid and powerful advantage of it to attack with demoralizing despair. 

And the pattern has recurred in culture, or at least this has been attempted, several times since. 

For instance the UK Blair government in 1997 explicitly tried to replicate the sixties optimism and openness and fun ("Cool Britannia" - pass the sick-bag please....); before suddenly transitioning to massive bureaucracy, pervasive corruption, globalism and wars. 

...Which had always been the whole point and purpose of the exercise. 

Again: this can be understood as a psychic attack. 

And, as well as at the mass and cultural level; the same sequence happens in individual persons:

First get them to open-up, and drop their guard, and welcome everything because all-is-one, all-is-good...

Then pour-in the nasty stuff - which they will at first welcome (i.e. they will invite evil into their hearts...); and try to overwhelm and dominate - before they can understand what is going-on.  

This can be understood using Owen Barfield's categories of the child's and tribal Man's enchanted state of Original Participation - which is what gets aimed-at by the phase of open acceptance...

Contrasted with the modern condition; which is the alienated Consciousness Soul - cut-off from its earlier immersion in the spiritual and communal. 

The effect of the civilization and personal psychic attacks is either that the person remains open and gets overwhelmed by the torrent of dark influences - like the casualties of the 1960s. 

Or else, when the individual experiences the torrential inrush of dark side: the barriers of alienation are re-erected and strengthened.

This large increase of psychological-and social alienation is what actually happened overall in Britain post 1960s and after the Blair-era attempted replication. 

In a crude form of emergency psychic self-defence; people became more less spiritual, more materialist - and bureaucracy grew and continued to grow. 

The naïve and brief utopian optimism about a wonderful future was replaced by dystopian fantasies ad the negative-fleeing escapisms of intoxication, the distractions of virtuality, fantasies of death as peaceful annihilation...

And as optimism became impossible (and spiritual hope was ruled out by atheistic materialism) the prevalent aspirations became and remained oppositional, negative: anti-men, anti-racism, anti-CO2 etc - a psychic world dominated by fear, resentment and despair. 

Part of the PSYOPS is to restrict options to these two - going back into a spiritual state of open-immersive passivity and oneness, like the early 60s; or going forward into a cut-off, impersonal, anti-spiritual, anti-human, anti-life-itself world - as with the current global totalitarian "AI" project. 

These psychic attacks continue...

Unless you personally are happy to pick and live-by one of these available and "approved" options - then you might to well to reflect on your underlying metaphysical assumptions that appear to make these two possibilities inevitable and exclusive.

You might do well to explore the only coherent alternative of which I am aware: which is something on the lines of Owen Barfield's Final Participation. 

Totalitarianism and/or Chaos: Ahrimanic backlash and/or Sorathic escalation in response to the latest global Litmus Test

The latest global Litmus Test (aka the most recent Establishment agenda theme) is playing-out negatively and for evil - as any change must, when not motivated by positive good. 

Whatever the original intent of the event and its propagation may have been, the existing Establishment power blocs are competing over what it implies.

Competing, often within different parts of the same media outlet! - as would be expected when there is a genuine schism and "civil war" within the Establishment.  

We need to be clear that in this war, both sides are of evil intent; but different types of evil. 

On one side, and this includes the political "Right" (actually, part of the Left); and this also includes the nationalistic "Christian Right" - there are the Ahrimanic totalitarians. 

These desire - first and foremost - an efficient and effective international System... A coherent political-bureaucracy-media complex. 

And the Ahrimanic totalitarians are trying to escalate and use the new Establishment agenda to make the System work better, mainly so-far by undoing some of the more egregious consequences of political correctness. 

This is the true nature of whatever is real in the "anti-woke" backlash assiduously reported by the mainstream sources. 

What motivates these System-reformers is a materialistic and this-worldly desire for a more comfortable, prosperous, and secure life (first and especially for themselves, and those of whom they approve). To be done by means of working-towards an effective and efficient System. 

This is why there is such a strong enthusiasm among such people, for ruthless coercion of individuals justified by "rational" objectives and "the common good." In other words: "enemies" are to be made to conform to the new rules of a better System.

For a truly Ahrimanic totalitarian, this coercion of conformity is done impersonally, without sadism - because it is the result of "objective" calculation of System necessity.  

In sum: For mainstream Establishment totalitarians; it is the individual person's role, whether voluntarily or coerced, to serve the System...

The only difference between the "Political Right" and the "Christian Right", is that the System to be ruthlessly imposed is intended to be one that is explicitly Christian in its forms: a Church System*. 

(Insofar as any totalitarian bureaucracy can really be Christian when it is intrinsically evil!)

Consequently; our old friend The Boromir Strategy is very much in evidence! 

The Political/ Christian Right advocate using the "weapons" of the enemy, including the psychological motivations of leftist materialism - rationalized by the excuse that this is the most effective way to win... 

Under the assumption that "our System winning" (by whatever means are judged to be expedient) is the same thing as "Good". 

In sum: For Christian totalitarians; it is the individual person's role, whether voluntarily or coerced, to serve the Church System...

Mixed-in with totalitarianism (of various stripes) - and sometimes dominant - is explicit expression (across the board, including the "Right", including among self-identified-Christians) of the characteristically "sadistic" emotions of spiteful Schadenfreude. 

In other words, we see the fingerprints of strengthening Sorathic Chaotic Evil.

This is motivated mainly by personal gratification at the sufferings and destruction of "enemies"; or, at first enemies... 

Instead of the impersonal and calculating Ahrimanic justification of coercive imposition for reasons of Systemic-necessity; the Sorathic "Right" will characteristically express positive pleasure in the "need" for imposing suffering on their enemies. 

They typically express delight at the prospect of the misery and destruction of those who will not conform to the new programme. 

...But later, as evil feeds-upon-itself, they will go on to enjoy the suffering and destructions of anybody and anything that opposes or ignores our personal interests and enjoyments.

(And finally the ultimately nihilistic destruction of divine creation - and at last, the suicidal annihilation of their own self; as something created by God.)  

In other words - because people are currently riled-up and feel free to express their dark and usually-secret motivations - we can currently observe the inevitable waxing of evil that happens when both "sides" are actually rival factions of the spiritual war that opposes God and Divine Creation. 

Both totalitarian and chaotic evil are, in their different but overlapping ways, de facto working towards the self-chosen damnation of self-righteous sinners. 

In other words, all varieties of evil are working towards an increase of the self-exclusion of the unrepentant from Heaven; which self-exclusion includes those unrepentant for whom this-worldly expediency is affirmed as primary...

Those for whom their superficial assertion of wanting a more-Christian world and future Heaven, has become an insincere excuse for advocating and doing More Evil Now.

**

*NOTE ADDED: I would like to clarify that I intend the term Church System - which I judge to be the large (or at least vociferous!) majority of Christians who identify with "the Right" or nationalism - to refer to those whose priority is System. here-and-now, in This World - and starting from where we actually are. I mean those many who, at worst (explicitly or covertly), regard their favoured Christian Church as the best or only means to what they really and most deeply want: which is an effective, efficient and "us"-orientated social System. 

(Looking back some 15-plus years; I can see that I was one of these at the time I converted to Christianity. I wanted what I hoped the right Church might do for society during my mortal life and those I love; more than I wanted to follow Jesus to Heaven.) 

I also mean the term Church Systematists to include others, less culpable perhaps, who - sincerely and without covertly-pursued primary self-interest - regard System as a necessary materialistic means to the salvific and next-worldly and spiritual end, of what the uncorrupted Christian Churches advocate. That is to say the Church System totalitarians include those who want System-reform first, to be followed (some unspecified time later) by top-down and imposed Christianization, made possible by the attainment of power (i.e. the Boromir Strategy). These are blind or foolish (if sincere), but not so strategically-bad as those who merely desire to use the Churches for material ends  

But I do Not mean to include in the Church System category, those real Christians who retain loyalty to the spiritual goals of their Church in its ideal form - those who, by discernment and personal evaluation, seek and follow the Christian Truth among the lies and expediencies of the totalitarian-affiliated human institutions of the actual Churches of 2025.  

Some Christian Churches yet retain the capacity to help individuals in their Christian Faith; with political considerations as secondary and derivative consequences of this primary faith. 

"AI" (so-called) and the "wisdom of crowds" delusion - what is the motivation?

Back in the middle noughties I was a New Agey atheist; keen on modernity, globalization, economic growth, democracy - a sort of libertarian; and saw many applications of evolutionary theory to human life... that kind of person.

(See, for instance, this - written at the time; which tried to provide a coherent underlying mechanism for WoC phenomena; derived from complex systems theory.) 

And I was much taken by the general idea of the "wisdom of crowds" (WoC) that was prevalent at the time and much discussed (and advocated) on the blogosphere. 

This argued (and purported to prove inductively, by empirical examples) the generalizable principle that there was a collective wisdom that transcended the individual's knowledge, ability - and judgment. 

To a considerable extent, the WoC theory was merely making explicit our civilization's existing and pervasive implicit faith in the authority of groups, committees, voting, mass opinion... 

What I then had was a progressivist expectation that things are self-correcting over time; and will spontaneously tend to sort-themselves-out (if left to themselves, and not interfered-with by individual humans or interest groups)...

An expectation that human affairs are actually much better than commonly acknowledged; and are naturally and impersonally trended on an upward and positive trajectory - over a sufficiently long span.

In contrast, was the (correct) recognition that individual humans would often be dominated by short-termism and selfishness, were lazy, could easily be misled, and in general nearly always were misguided in their aims and actions... 

Where I strayed from reality was in sharing the common, hopeful, delusional inference that, because individuals were imperfect therefore, the mass of people, the "system" of people and technologies was preferable - because the mass had an organic tendency towards self-optimization, self-preservation and improvement.

In sum, I believed (and wanted it to be true) that "crowds" reliably exhibited an innate wisdom and virtue which was absent from individuals.  

Such wishful-magical views are actually much more prevalent and dominant than most people would admit - indeed, however vehemently denied when made explicit such assumptions are almost universal. 

For instance, almost everybody implicitly believes - and acts on this belief - that a committee, a vote, is more authoritative than an individual human; that elections are the only morally valid way of choosing a government; that consensus is superior to personal judgment; that (proper) processes and procedures are the best way of conducting important functions such as government, the law, medicine, science, mass media... 

And so forth. 

In sum; there is in Western Civilization an extremely strong and widespread aversion-to and prejudice-against individual persons; and instead a solid faith in the groupish, systemic, and abstract*. 

What this amounts to is a metaphysical assumption concerning the nature of reality. 

People have a solid faith-in and commitment-to the group (no matter how vaguely that group is defined) and to (some kind of) process - as intrinsically superior to any and all individuals.  

I say "people" and I mean... nearly everybody; if you dig-down and are honest about what you find. 

In ancient societies this belief was unconscious and immersive; in modern societies it is conscious - but mediated-by (embedded-in) ideologies and religions. 

The problem is that we are, each and individually, trapped and disempowered by such assumptions - and at the level of thinking.

(ie. Before any question of action can arise we are already blocked by our thinking.) 

We feel (deeply) that we personally cannot and should-not think any thing; unless and until the after relevant group has endorsed it. 

But in a totalitarian world inhabited by people who just-are cut-off spiritually from any group, and self-aware to an unprecedented degree; such an assumption is a prison: a thought prison. 

It is, in effect, a demand that we ourselves must and ought-to inhabit a societal prison; and all our hopes then become fixed upon that prison becoming as kind and efficient as possible; perhaps (the common "therapeutic" value-stance) functioning more like a hospital than a prison... 

But (we believe, because of our assumptions) it is a thought prison society that inevitably must and shall remain.   

+++

How does this related to so-called "AI"?

I think it helps understand the otherwise extraordinary degree of optimism, and indeed existential hope; that so many people place in these new technologies: technologies which operate by rapidly and simply "pooling" and processing vast quantities of anonymous data, under the ruling (but implicit) assumption that this group-process is superior to any individual.

"AI", in other words, is a variant of the "wisdom of crowds" assumption: 

AI = WoC On Steroids. 

"AI" seems - to such people, with such "wisdom of crowds" assumptions - to offer a permanent way out from the inevitable evil and partiality of individuals - a way forward towards a world of universally accessible knowledge, ability, and objective virtue. 

My point here is that - to my judgment anyway - the actual nature of what happens with "AI" systems is - by its nature - obviously not knowledgeable, not competent, and cannot-be wise. 

And the same applies to the (various) systems of democracy, the processes of bureaucracy, the work of voting committees... 

Once you become aware of, and explicitly consider, what actually happens inside these "black boxes" then it is obvious that they cannot be good. 

For exactly analogous reasons; "AI" cannot be good. 

But people have the metaphysical assumptions that they have; and these are often buried deep, and are typically regarded as facts. 

Most people evidently do not want to become aware of their fundamental convictions; nor to acknowledge that they are indeed assumptions - therefore not the consequence of evidence and logic. 

Yet it is these assumptions concerning what is effective, true and good; that lead to the absurd conviction and hope that "AI" is (whether actually already, or potentially) wise, competent, and will be beneficial overall and in the long term. 

Until these ridiculous, but pervasive, "wisdom of crowds" assumptions are exposed and acknowledged**; then many or most people will remain spiritually help-less and resistant to help; emotionally and intellectually in thrall to those who designed, created, implemented, and administer the "AI" systems.  

+++

* Another version of this - although rare nowadays, especially in practice, is faith in the truth and rightness of "tradition" - belief in "the wisdom of the crowds of the past", perhaps. 

But due to modern self-awareness, it has become impossible to establish unambiguously what is tradition. Tradition itself becomes contested; and then the problem reverts to the modern one of who-or-what entity has the authority to declare what is the real and true tradition. 

That tradition is a variant of the wisdom of crowds delusion; is evident in the way that so many self-identified traditionalists have embraced and become advocates of "AI". They apparently believe (or hope) that "AI" (properly designed and used...) will become a (generally-accessible and easily-usable) supreme source and repository of the wisdom of the crowds of the past.

** It was, I think, the fact that I had exposed and made explicit my own atheist, modernizing, groupist, progressivist etc assumptions; that ultimately led to my recognizing their arbitrary incoherence and inadequacy - then abandoning them, and consciously choosing and adopting something better. 

On mass media censorship and propaganda - If we need to be told major stuff by the mass media, then we are already lost

The UK mass media are censored and controlled - both openly and explicitly (eg. wrt the birdemic dissent, or Fire Nation news sites); and by news blackouts wrt mass immigration and its consequences.

And, of course, this censorship and propaganda usage of media is increasing rapidly in scope, completeness, and coercion.  

There is a great deal of complaint in the alternative media about this - but the complainers are part of the problem.

The real problem is that people have come to rely on the mass media for basic information and understanding of the world and their lives. 

If we need to be supplied by the mass media with information on matters of direct human observation and experience, and if we need to have its implications explained to us by the mass media - then we are already lost.

We are lost; because because we have handed-over responsibility for our fundamental understanding of the nature of things. 

Even worse; we have chosen to hand-over responsibility for our basic assumptions and values to the worst possible external influence: to evil-motivated people, who work in corrupted and converged institutions/ organizations/ corporations that constitute the bureaucracy of an intrinsically evil totalitarian system.

(Evil in itself; and which is also in service to the agenda of demonic supernatural powers.)

Complaints that the mass media are censoring their output are dangerously misplaced - after all, what on earth do people expect from the mass media in the Western world as it is now? 

Clearly, the complainers have grossly underestimated the pervasive extremity of evil as it actually is in the world now, and has been for many decades - and worsening. 

It is not as if knowing more "news" about the horrendous corruption and us-hatred of the leadership class, has done or would make any difference to "their" aims and conduct - their desire to corrupt, torment, and spiritually-annihilate the nations and their peoples. 

And it's not as if there are a great mass of good-motivated "ordinary people" who are being hoodwinked by media censorship, but who would otherwise compel significant and positive reforms in public affairs. 

Ordinary people "know" (in the sense that the information has passed through their eyes and ears) all kinds of terrible stuff, more than enough! And/yet it makes no apparent difference whatsoever to their fundamental assumptions, world view, values, behaviours... 

"Concerned" words are cheap, but human priorities tell a different story. 

The Western masses are, even if much less evil as the leadership class; deeply complicit and accepting of major strategic agenda themes of the recent decades; and have a system of values that do not rise above the level of the farm yard (i.e. this-worldly hedonism, fear driven avoidance of suffering, addiction to convenience, and craving for continual distraction). 

There has never, in the history of the world, been such shallow, trivial, and cowardly (because demotivated) people as there are in the West, now. 

And if people need to be told something so invasive and everywhere - things we all know from observation and our daily personal experiences (and the observations and experiences of our direct social circle) - then clearly it is already too late. 

So, what to do? 

Forget about "effective political action", resistance, reform: that is absolutely Not a possibility, when basic understanding and proper motivation is so completely absent; when indeed the actuality is of a widespread and accepted social ethic of value-inversion.

From where we are as a civilization - spiritually and morally; all social action going forward must be net-evil. There is no source for it to be anything else. 

 

We must first want what is good, or no good will eventuate. 

Real understanding follow only upon proper motivation...

And then, when it comes to important matters, such understanding follows easily and swiftly.

To know and desire a human life based on good aims and conduct; we need-not, and certainly should-not, depend on anything produced by the mass media.