Boomer versus Millennial ideology (and potential spirituality)

Because of the development of human consciousness, there is necessarily a generational effect in terms of the nature and possibilities when it comes to ideology - and also to spirituality. 

Biological generations used to be 25 years, but are now more like 30 years; since reproduction became increasingly delayed - and the popular usage of "cultural" generations actually references (more or less) biological half-generations. 

On that basis; I would like to compare (my) post-WWII Baby Boom ("Boomer") generation, with that of their children - who are mostly Generation Y ("Millennials"). 

Also, in order to confirm apparent trends, we would need to go back to the Boomer's parents' and their grandparents' generations; in order to get four approximate time-points.  

What can be seen across this span, is that the size-of-group with which people effectively identify has become smaller with each generation. 

And, as a consequence - the group identification has gone from being (at least somewhat) a positive aim (i.e. "we favour such-and-such a state of affairs" - i.e. a utopian ideology for my-group) to increasingly a double-negative value system (i.e. "we are against such-and-such evils" - i.e. an anti-my-group-dystopian ideology). 

That is, there was an incremental trend from propositional towards oppositional morality and values. 

The shrinking of group size went from the nation grouping (and or race) which may number tens of million; down by stages to a minority subculture - a grouping which may be tiny in proportion and/or numbers. 

And this shrinkage brings with it the de facto impossibility of a utopia - because a plausible utopia cannot be much smaller than a (not too large) nation. 

By contrast, the modern "identity groups" are tiny minorities, who cannot realistically aspire to a society organized around their desires; and who consequently are organized around fear and resentment of the majority who in various ways restrict (or potentially might restrict) this minority. 

Group size shrinkage is also confirmed by the nature of dominant mass media that define, sustain, and amplify group identity. 

In my childhood, for example, there were just two television channels, later rising to three then (in 1984) four. This meant that every TV programme had a viewership of many millions, and a high proportion of the relevant population shared (and was shaped by) this experience. 

The relevant categories with which people identified for Boomers and earlier were large: race or nation; social class or sex, and from Boomers a large age-category such as "teenager". And the media-mediated virtual "peer groups" for (e.g.) women or teenagers were also very large both proportionately and in actual numbers. 

For Boomers; to be an English woman or teenager, was to be one among many millions - with whom one identified.  

By the time of the Millennials (i.e. the Boomer's children) children there were first videos, then DVDs, then tens or hundreds of TV channels; then "broad band" access to uncountable sources of entertainment, information, ideology... 

The attitude changed from being one among millions; to (increasingly) selecting an ever-smaller (and self-selected) niche group - with whom one identified. 

A century ago there was a time when both the religious churches, and anti-religious atheist-communist parties, were selective, exerted sometimes-extreme discipline and control - i.e. the group-entity regulated inclusion and membership. 

But these organizations (whether churches or anti-religious) have progressively shrunk or collapsed - or else assimilated to the (always changing) profile of the mass mainstream. Millennials do not "identify" with the mass mainstream - they are instead induced to compliance by PSYOPS, threats, sanctions - and bribes. 

Because ideology among Millennials and those younger, is extremely "niche"; the groups must pander in order to recruit and retain members; this is required as there is so little and such feeble psychological (or spiritual) spontaneous group affiliation.

But Boomer ideology still retains a much greater element of self-influence by the past larger social groupings, than does the ideology of Millennials onwards. 

This may somewhat explain why large/ wealthy/ powerful/ influential organizations have been so reluctant to retire the Boomers - so that the biggest institutions/ nations seem to prefer semi- (or more than semi-) demented Boomers as "leaders"; rather than recruiting from the younger generations. 

Boomers have usually retained the expectations and values of their childhood and youth - from a time and consciousness when the world was segmented into relatively few categories. 

Consequently Boomers think of the world and the future in terms of few and large functional societal units - whether these units are multi-national/ global institutions, nations, mega-corporations, or whatever. 

But the Boomers are becoming incapacitated and dying; and later generations Will Not - first because they do not want to, but also because they indeed cannot - perform the same function as did Boomers. Later generations have changed, and the world has changed... 

If such generational change is (as I believe) indeed a consequence of the development of human consciousness, then it is irresistible; and the largest social categories will break down. 

Human society will then, presumably, "fragment" - and into ever smaller and less-positively-cooperative units - and the process may (indeed I think it shall) continue down to the level of individual persons. 

In other words; human consciousness has been on a trend towards individual autonomy, including personal choice - but this trend has not yet been fully manifested in societal organization. 

What we fundamentally believe is becoming more and more a matter of our personal choice. 

Choice includes choice of "friends" and allies; and choice among mass-social media for support; but also and more significantly: the fundamental choice either to believe-in what we know to be reality... 

Or instead to live-by what we know to be false in fundamental ways (which is what most people are currently doing).

Once this process has reached its completion; individual-level autonomy of consciousness and the primacy of choice will then become just A Fact Of Life; an aspect of reality around-which we would need-to choose-to operate.  

Is the planet of Kolob (i.e. the Mormon Heaven planet) in principle discoverable in outer space?

Reading Laeth's latest aphorisms, he reminded me of a 2019 post from Wm Jas Tychonievich about whether or not the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith was, in principle, correct to posit an actual planet (assumed to be orbiting a star that Mormons term Kolob) as the place of God's (usual) residence; thus the physical, material location of Heaven. 

I made a comment at WmJas at the time; and find I have further notions now that I have thought further about heaven in relation to entropy, creation, and love: 

I mean that I now understand resurrected (i.e. incarnate, physical, material) eternal life to be possible in a situation where all the Beings have committed eternally to be wholly motivated by love. 

It is this living from love that "abolishes entropy" (to express it as a double-negative!) - or, differently expressed; enables all of resurrected creation to be eternal, eternally developing, eternally living.

Heaven happened when this became possible (during Jesus's ministry, I assume); and began to be populated when humans (and other Beings) made the choice and eternal commitment to love, and began to be resurrected.   

Thinking about the possibility of something like the planet of Kolob, and whether it would be discoverable as a place in this universe - somewhere that might theoretically be travelable-to; I realized that it seems relevant that resurrected Human Beings are (apparently) to be able to visit and function on this earth and in mortal affairs - e.g. some of the Beings people call Angels are resurrected humans.  

This would mean that eternal Human Beings can exist on earth, and in an environment where nearly everything else (or, indeed everything else) is mortal and subject to entropy, decay, death. 

And it seems that Angels are not usually recognized as such; and indeed (at least in the modern West) Angels are regarded as impossible nonsense.

My notion is that even if mortal Human Beings were capable of travelling to a Heaven such as the planet of Kolob is supposed to be, and even if these people were allowed to "enter into" this Heaven (e.g. to investigate and study Kolob) -- then it is quite possible that these mortal Human Beings would not recognize or realise that they were in the place of Heaven. 

It is, in deed, easy to imagine that modern Western Men would even deny vehemently that Heaven was Heaven if told the fact, even if these people actually were living "in" Heaven! (i.e. were present as mortal-incarnates in the situation of Heaven, but were not resurrected-incarnates) 

This self-blinding to Heaven is, after all, no different from our mainstream and official on-principle/by-assumption/ and absolute denial of even the possibility of paranormal, supernatural, spiritual, and/or divine phenomena.

As Tolkien showed in literary form: evil cannot comprehend good; likewise those who reject and are unfit-for Heaven, cannot even perceive Heaven.  

Note: I should be clear that Kolob does Not play an active role in my own theological metaphysics - indeed I have not even considered the matter for some years. But I don't see why Heaven, or God the Father's dwelling place - should be one particular planet, or  The reason I write here is that those who reflexively reject the idea as absurd, insane, or stupid - could probably benefit from thinking more deeply about their reasons for doing so.  

Biographical retrospective: Early adulthood and the search for purpose/meaning in life

Looking back to my early adulthood; it is evident that I was assailed by a sense of meaninglessness. 

This, in retrospect, was ultimately inevitable, given that I had since childhood decided to share our mainstream civilizational assumption that there was neither meaning nor purpose to ultimate reality - that it all "just happened" as a combination of accidents and necessity.

But there was also a more pressing problem for me personally; in that, after graduating from medical school, I could barely tolerate the work and conditions of being a doctor. In particular, the long hours including being on-call (and mostly working) through whole days and the nights between, was something that rapidly wore me down, hardened my personality, and amplified my selfish and hedonistic traits. 

I also found my work meaningless, in the sense that - even ideally - I had the continual sense that I was trying to keep things going for people - in a situation where things were not going anywhere in particular, nor for any particular reason. 

It all seemed very negative - what I would nowadays characterize as "double negative"; in other words, trying (albeit usually failing) to deal with problems; but without any positive notion of what was supposed to happen after the problems were dealt with. 

OK; as a doctor I might be part of a system that (sometimes) kept people alive, functioning, pain free... but without some sense of what the life of a functioning, pain free individual was for.  

I had supposed, as most people do (vaguely) suppose, that "doing good" was its own reward - but for me it just was not; or only feebly so. I usually felt "we" were not doing good in addressing misery and threat of death, fairly often suspected "we" made things worse, especially in the longer term - but even when we did "help people" I could not shake the question of what we were helping; helping to do what? 

For many reasons, I therefore needed to and ought to get out of clinical medicine; and into something else. At first this was into science; and I began a doctorate involving laboratory research into clinical problems - analysing blood samples (which, as part of a team, I organized and gathered) and post-mortem brain samples (from an already existing brain bank). 

But while this empirical science went very well in terms of discovering things and publishing papers etc; I was still plagued by a sense of meaninglessness in it - especially after it became evident how much of science was subjective judgment and standard group assumptions and practices. 

I had supposed that science was a special method of discovering real and objective reality - but it turned out that this was a text-book illusion (or delusion) - science seemed more like a set of of fundamental shared conventions, only within which was there research and discovery.

Once I had learned the relevant conventions and techniques, it was pretty much a routine: cranking a handle - at any rate there was little depth of satisfaction, and it did not answer to this nagging need for meaning. 

I had an idea that I might find what I wanted in the arts and humanities, instead of the sciences; or, at least, that they might be a suitable "backdrop" for my own investigations. Implicitly, I assumed that the answer to what I sought lay in that direction - if not on the official curriculum, then nearby or by extension of it. 

My first step was to read philosophy with more seriousness and intent than I had been doing up to that point. I attended a couple of evening classes about Wittgenstein, was drawn-in; and then applied and was accepted to study a philosophy degree at Trinity College, Cambridge (presumably, because that was where W. had been a Fellow). 

I then had second thoughts about whether this two-year (accelerated) degree was the right thing, and how much it would cost; and instead arranged to go to Durham for a one year Masters by research, in English Literature. During that year; I read a good deal in both English and Philosophy, attended seminars in both subjects, and read papers to their journal clubs. 

But by the end of the year; I realized that I did not want to take these subjects further in a professional sense; but instead embarked on the plan of making a living from teaching and researching science; while continuing to do "academic" work in the arts and humanities in my own time. 

This continued for several years; but instead of finding what I had originally sought, I was instead drifting further away from it. 

Eventually... I recognized that what I was looking for was not to be found in any academic discourse, nor any combination of such discourses - including not in any recognized philosophy. 

And that was when I began to shift my primary focus to theology, to God, to Jesus Christ - and all that followed.   

Lessons? It now seems obvious that I did not find any meaning or purpose to my life or the world for the simple reasons that I had already (at the very beginning) made the fundamental assumption that reality was accidental and/or entailed - so there could not be any purpose or meaning for relevance to myself.  

Or, more exactly; any meaning or purpose I located was wholly subjective; put-there by me, or copied by me; and that this had no higher status or validity than the self-pleasing delusions of a madman or drug-addict. 

It was not until I realized that I had made this assumption; that I could challenge, and unmake, the assumption - when I found I implicitly believed in just what I denied: that there was a creator, that it was a personal deity, and that this God loved me. 

Finally (and by then I was about forty-nine years old!) I got onto the right track!

**

NOTE: Some of the same ground as the above, and other stuff, is covered in my (so far 12K words) autobiographical notes: Lucky Philosopher. 

Not "Wars of Empire" - instead, the spiteful resentment of end-stage evil

The current burgeoning inter-national wars are not "Wars of Empire" - which is one reason why historical comparisons are mistaken and invalid. 

What is extraordinary, essentially unprecedented, about the main current West-initiated-and-sustained wars: the sustained and multi-pronged attempt to annihilate and culturally-assimilate enemy nations -- is that The West loathes itself and its civilization. 

The West has, for many decades, been engaged in purposively seeking its own destruction and replacement by multiple strategies (including ideological-moral, legal, administrative, demographic, economic, agrarian, technological, and artistic).  

Such is not the action of an Empire - at least not of any Empire in history: this is end-stage evil - nihilistic destructiveness.  

As for motivation... We of the West culturally hate ourselves en masse; and therefore we fear and desire to destroy any who do not hate themselves; any whom we suspect of wanting to stand-apart-from our strategy of incremental cultural suicide. 

Our desire to annihilate and culturally assimilate the enemy is therefore not Empirically motivated but instead rooted in resentment; not done in order to spread our values and practices, nor to rule, nor even to exploit for our benefit...

Ultimately, behind the current wars is that familiar but exclusively-modern double-negative "leftist" ideology and motivation; a world-view that spitefully wishes for nothing more than that our enemy be compelled to share in our own self-loathing and self-chosen annihilation. 

It was to fix the inadequacy of this mortal life, that Jesus offered resurrection

Jesus's job was to fix the inadequate nature, the insufficiency, of this mortal life on earth. 

This was achieved such that the purpose of resurrected eternal life in Heaven is for there to be a real and accessible state and place, where the intractable and incurable problems (that currently wreck any possibility of a good life) are permanently eliminated.  

If this mortal life was sufficient, or even if mortal life was perfectible; then there would be little benefit in offering the chance of Resurrection after death - because it would obviously be better to have all the good stuff and fix the problems of this world without first needing to die. 

"Christianity" is therefore for those who realize that the core problems of this world and mortal life - i.e. entropy/ death and evil - cannot be solved inside this life and world - because they are of the nature of this creation. 

Because the core problems are insoluble within this creation; our only possible and real hope is for a second creation; for our-selves to look forward to a "second" life, in a world without death and without evil.

And such a world, as a matter of reality, can only exist on the other side of mortal death. 

So; Resurrection is not about "jam tomorrow" or "pie in the sky" - it is not a wish-fulfilment daydream...

Because the truly wishful daydreams are radical politics and utopian schemes - like socialism and "transhumanism" - ideologies that pretend to offer a future that solves the core problems of life... 

Ideologies that pretend to make possible a situation where Mankind (here and now, or soon) will have fulfilment and satisfaction, and escape from fear and suffering - where mortal life will suffice. 

Those who believe such claims are real and possible, are never interested by Jesus's offer of Resurrection into Heaven that is located on the other side of death.  

Also wishful are those religions (including Christianity, in many times and places) that promise a "millennium"... 

That promise their adherents Heaven on Earth, perfected Man, a world purged of evil and death; a second coming, an earthly-saviour - such promises are also in this wishful category. 

Yet, if such things really were possible; there would have been no need for Jesus, and what he offered would be redundant. 

After all; a chance of post-mortal Resurrection to post-mortal Heaven would be a shabby second best to Heaven on Earth accessible without dying.  

The commonly-expressed idea of Resurrection and Heaven as a reward for a Good Life is grossly to under-sell what is on offer. 

This is to downgrade Resurrection and Heaven to a delayed "earthly paradise"... a world and life that is quantitatively better than, but not qualitatively different from, what we already now have.

If quantitative improvement of this mortal life ASAP is that which is most strongly desired; then Resurrection and Heaven are of merely subordinate interest.    

Even worse is to explain Resurrection in terms of the double-negative theology of Resurrection and Heaven as an escape from the default of eternal torment in Hell! 

This bizarrely posits a God who purposively creates a mortal life so-often dominated by evil and entropy, and always terminated by death; after which everlasting pain and misery is the default destination of all...

And then the same God devises Resurrection and Heaven which constitute a delayed and selective escape route from horrors of His own devising. 

If such a creator-God existed, He is not the same Good God as known and described by Jesus. 

So, even before we decide whether we personally desire Resurrection and Heaven; and even before we decide whether Resurrection and Heaven are believable...

We first need to know our present situation, what R&H mean in context of our present situation, what R&H are for: and what they do. 

Unfortunately, the clarity and simplicity of what Jesus did and made possible; is by-now grossly obfuscated by millennia of misunderstanding, misrepresentation, disinformation - and deliberate lies. 

The only viable answer would seem to be for each creatively and actively to work it out for himself - from intuitive-experiential knowing; as it were from "first principles'. With the assurance that God and Jesus Christ will with certainty have made this possible for all Men... Possible if not now, or during mortal life, then for-sure post-mortally.  

Traditional Christianity damns marriage by dubious comparisons, faint praise, and pragmatic functionality

In a world where marriage has been, over several generations; purposively and systematically weakened, subverted, and finally rendered meaningless; it is tempting to yearn for the comparative situation of traditional Christian marriage - for its legal clarity and moral strictness.  

Yet the Christian churches (excepting the CJCLDS) have, in my opinion, seriously trivialized the spiritual potential of marriage.  

And for a very long time. 

I take my example from The Book of Common Prayer, the Church of England Solemnization of Marriage: 

DEARLY beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this Congregation, to join together this man and this woman in holy Matrimony; which is an honourable estate, instituted of God in the time of man's innocency, signifying unto us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church;

This is absurd! To justify marriage between two individual persons in terms of a (to my mind) exceedingly dubious and opaque comparison with a supposed "mystical union" between Christ and "his Church"! 

This is to "explain" the simple with the complex; the experiential with abstraction; the clear with the opaque.  

I cannot imagine that anybody who was doubtful about the validity or necessity of marriage would be persuaded by this - or would even understand what was meant by it. The analogy merely opens a can of worms rather than explaining anything. 

After all; what is this supposed mystical union of Christ and Church (which does not feature in the Fourth Gospel)? Exactly who is the MU between - I mean, what counts as "his" Church, and what is excluded? To be specific, which actual people of which particular Church can confidently be asserted to be parts of this mystical union? 

And given the gross corruption and dissent of all the Christian churches - who and what self-identified Christian institutions, and which parts of which institutions - ought to be ignored, and in what respects? 

...which holy estate Christ adorned and beautified with his presence, and first miracle that he wrought, in Cana of Galilee; 

This is bizarre. Is it seriously suggested that the institutions of marriage is justified because Jesus attended a wedding, and there performed a miracle? 

Using such an argument, all sorts of things might be justified. 

..and is commended of Saint Paul to be honourable among all men: 

Commended by St Paul? Well, if at all, only in the most grudging and negative way. Paul regards celibacy as the highest state, and did not allow marriage any positive spiritual value.

and therefore is not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy men's carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts that have no understanding; but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God; duly considering the causes for which Matrimony was ordained. 

Prudent advice, and nothing to disagree with here, but it would apply to life in general (e.g. eating and drinking) and any major life decisions (like choosing a job or purchasing a house) - and does not help explain why marriage might be "a good thing"

First, It was ordained for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and to the praise of his holy Name. 

The difficulty is that this is first a biological justification merely; and secondly a sociological one - and alternative arrangements for procreation and raising children might be (and indeed are) proposed. 

Secondly, It was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication; that such persons as have not the gift of continency might marry, and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ's body. 

See above. This is an appalling non-justification - and contains the assumption that the avoiding sin (double negative theology) ought to be our primary motivations. 

If this were true - ultimately, it were better not to have been born, or to die before having the chance to sin.   

Thirdly, It was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity.

Unobjectionable, so far as it goes; but nothing spiritual about it - merely a matter of expediency; nothing to do with salvation or theosis. 

I regard such feeble advocacy and rationalization of marriage as a symptom of very deep and widespread spiritual problems. 

This represents a pitiful and significant inability to explain or advocate a thing that has been so obviously, to for so many people, as one of the most wonderfully positive and desirable things in human existence. 

It strikes me as evidence of a grossly inadequate theology that (even) rigorous and honest traditional Christian churches at their best have failed so badly to make explicit the spiritual value and desirability of something that has often been directly experienced and known.  

The desperate appeal of deus ex machina

"Deus ex machina" is a term used to describe the plot device by which intervention from outside the action appears just before some catastrophic disaster, and solves an apparently impossible problem. 

In "real life" DEM has long formed the basis of optimism - the hope that something not-known (or known but previously inactive) will emerge unexpectedly to save us. 

Or to put it negatively, despair may be staved-off by hoping that "Something will turn-up". 

This may, of course, be true! 

Because we really do not know or understand much about how the world works; so there is never reason to give-up hope.

But hope is not the same as optimism - and it is a very different thing to hope for rescue, than it is to expect rescue by some unknown event.

In particular, it is foolish to construct a specific hope from a logical sequence of double-negative assertions. 

For example, that (for all we know) we cannot be sure that "leader"-X isn't really a genuine saviour, who is (despite superficial appearances) cleverly plotting behind the scenes towards some kind of decisive last-minute master stroke. 

Or, spiritually; the worse the world is apparently getting, and the weaker and more corrupt "my church" seems to be - nobody can disprove that this won't make it more likely that the Deity will (at last!) step-in, make a personal intervention, and save things in some unexpected fashion.

(Such a "saving might itself be negative - as in saving-from the default of Hell; or it might be positive in the sense of establishing a redeemed Church as dominant and pervasive across society.)

Such reflections were provoked by my again considering the (in retrospect) extraordinary optimism that was prevalent among spiritual people in the years approaching and just following the millennium. 

Among many or most such people existed a near-consensus that the whole world was shortly to be raised to a higher spiritual level (higher "frequency" or "vibrational" level); that would affect everybody and every-thing (like it or not).

...Although the more discerning in the New Age clearly acknowledged that for this external influx to be effective would also require a receptivity - or even some positive spiritual move - from each individual; in order to meet this incoming spiritual "energy" halfway. 

So an element of at least consent, and probably collaboration, was also required -- nonetheless the primary cause was a new, or greatly amplified, external influence. 

My interpretation of this apparently anachronistic millennial expectation is that it was the product of a kind of desperation; especially among those genuinely spiritual people who had rejected (or simply did not believe) Jesus's offer of reasserted eternal Heavenly life. 

And, mutatis mutandis, I think the same applies to the optimism (as contrasted with hope) of so-many of those Christians who are serious and motivated about their faith. 

The Christians who believe-in some kind of external saving of this mortal life and the earth; are guilty of conflating the true and sure hope of Heaven, with a false optimism concerning this-world. 

This false-optimism among Christians seems particularly pernicious, insofar as it entails God intervening to save (what seems to me) the most deeply evil civilization the world has yet known - I mean a civilization that is already, and increasingly, strategically and officially inverted in its values.  

The answer is simple, but difficult; and is to strive to be motivated primarily by next-worldly hope rather than this-worldly optimism - and to root this in the faith that God will (indeed, by Jesus, already-has) made it possible for anybody and everybody, in whatever situation, time, or place) to attain salvation.  

The next inference is more controversial among Christians, which is that this can only be attained by taking personal responsibility for salvation. 

In other words; I am assuming that there will be no worldwide, or even culture-wide, deus ex machina intervention; because everything has already been done; and "all" (!) that remains is for us as individuals is to recognize that reality - and to make our commitment, to choose to follow Jesus...

That is the essential starting-point. 

And then... we each need to discover what that actually means for us; for us specifically - here-and now.   

Two prevalent errors about death - one materialist, the other spiritual

The mainstream and official modern view about death is that it is the complete annihilation of the person, after which nothing of that person remains. 

That is one prevalent error about death - it is the error of materialistic atheism. 

The other prevalent error is spiritual. 

It acknowledges that biological death of the body is not a complete end but that something of the person continues - and it concludes that "therefore" to the enlightened mind death is not really significant. 

This error states that any negative anticipation or attitudes - anything like fear, horror, or a sense of tragedy and loss - that people commonly feel concerning death; is based on misunderstanding. 

The erroneous assertion is that one who really understands death; does not regard death as important - it is just like going-to-sleep, passing through a door, just "another great adventure", moving to a "higher level"*. 

The spiritual error about death seems less obviously an error in the sense that it recognizes what humankind always has recognized (until very recently, and among a minority): that death is not the end of everything. 

But this recognition has a double-negative form: death is 1. not, 2. the end. 

So of-itself this does not move us towards a better understanding. 

The spiritual error is an error because it is an explaining-away; a denial of another universally-recognized truth...

That universally-recognized truth is that a human death death is significant, and indeed represents some kind of a tragedy. 

The spiritual error is in arguing that because death is followed by something better "therefore" we ought not to be sad about it. 

The error is in the "therefore" because this is a non sequitur; it does not follow. 

The world changes, we grow-up and apart, children grow-up and apart - all these may be inevitable and potentially good - but they are also sad - rightly sad: it is an impairment of sensibility if we cannot experience that sadness.

Such things, including death, are indeed tragic partly because they are inevitable, and especially when the change is overall good.  

It is tragic that overall good is attained only at the cost of particular loss and sadness. 

Mortal death is therefore significant, and rightly regarded as tragic; even when it is followed by something overall better; even when death is followed by resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 

And this is explicit in the IV Gospel - which is all about the new hope Jesus has made possible, of eternal resurrected Heavenly life; but the sadness, the tragedy of death - whether of Lazarus ("Jesus wept"), or the impending death of Jesus himself, is explicitly (as well as by the structure of the narrative) treated with full tragic significance. 

Jesus knows that he will be resurrected and attain salvation, as did Lazarus; but he is still saddened and grieved by the losses involved in death.

So; let Christians avoid both of the false extremes of arguing: either materially, that death is an end to everything; or spiritually, that death is insignificant in the scheme of things. 

*Note: I am saying here that - for all Socrates genuine nobility during his death, as recorded by Plato in Phaedo; the attitude he taught concerning death was erroneous. 

The altruism fake

Altruism - helping others, especially at the expense of oneself - is widely regarded as the highest human value. 

This is especially on the Left, but in a modified form also on the self-styled Right - and very commonly among self-identified Christians (who may even claim that helping-others is the single core and essential Christian moral principle...) 

Yet altruism is a massive fake. 

It is not just an actually evil value - but it is also impossible; so the harm is multiplied when altruism is adopted and praised and sought. 

Since Men's minds have lost their spontaneous and immersive communality, since we all became (like it or not) alienated and cut-off; we cannot any more pursue "the group good" - because we do not experience that good in our consciousness. 

Furthermore; the actual human groups we inhabit are too large and too artificial for there to be any meaningful sense of group-good. 

So "altruism" can be recognized as an evil PSYOP (i.e. a manipulative concept originating from the powers of purposive strategic evil) that has been built, propagated and socially-incentivized - for the purpose of destroying people and damaging that-which-is-good wherever it may be found. 

But, of course, reacting-against altruism is also an evil fake! 

A double-negative is not a positive - but just another kind of negative: a sin against sin, advocating sinning against sinners. 

Indeed the supposed "Right wing" reaction-against altruism - i.e. the varieties of claimed political selfishness, enlightened self-interest, libertarianism, market economics etc... do not reject altruism, but actually sustain and reinforce the false value of altruism.

It can easily be seen that the rhetoric of the Right amounts to no more than the claim of a more realistic and effective altruism (e.g. the frequent claim that capitalism is better at abolishing poverty than communism, therefore better at "helping other people").

Or else the Right claims altruism, but for a different sector of the populace than the Left. The Left may claim an altruism directed according to class, sex, race; while the Right may claim to be altruistic on the basis of nation or religion. 

But both Left and Right self-justify in the same altruistic way. 

Even the Nietzschian-type (psychopathic) claim of individuals to be aiming at maximizing "my own" pleasure, power, lusts, status, Schadenfreude; and at the expense of other people -- cannot help but seek justification in altruistic reasoning...

Such as claiming the real world works this way, so that "it would be better" if this was explicitly acknowledged: that it is better for civilization if The System recognizes that people are motivated thus...

Or that civilization is itself a mechanism for oppression -- so that it is "better" overall "for everybody" if the selfish hedonist destroys civilization...

So, even extreme advocates of individualist selfishness* cannot help but ground it in some version of claimed-altruism.  

*(Which is intrinsically a fake thing. A genuinely extreme totally selfish individual would not advertise the fact, nor would he try to make is a philosophical principle to be taught to others! All such rhetoric has some other real purpose.)  

At an opposite end of the altruism fake is "therapy". 

Therapy tries to reduce "helping" to a lowest common denominator of palliating illness, sickness, death; so that "helping others" becomes public health (or charitable, or religious...) programs justified on the basis of alleviating suffering, preventing or curing diseases.

Supposedly this double-negative value is actually is such an obvious good that only a monster of evil could oppose a therapeutic agenda - could oppose "saving lives", "reducing suffering" (of deserving people) etc. 

2020 and its sequelae shows where all that stuff leads. 

Because altruism is fundamentally and inescapably a fake value, therefore all claimed attempts to "help others" - including attempts to alleviate suffering - will not be, cannot be,  motivated by altruism -- and will therefore inevitably and instead actually be motivated by some other covert value - typically selfish-seeking, and/or spitefully destructive.    

Wherever you turn, however you twist; it seems that some claim of altruism is lurking underneath all modern justifications for doing, or not doing, anything. 

And this is inevitable because our society utterly lacks any positive goal or motivation; because this can only be spiritual in nature - and our society is structured-around denial of the reality and significance of the spiritual. 

Altruism is a fake, because society is a fake; and therefore if you personally don't want to live a life pseudo-justified by the harmful, corrupting fake that is altruism - then you will have to find genuinely positive and therefore spiritual values to live-by - and you will have to do this for yourself. 

Files don't prove... anything - and anyway, we should by-now Already Know what is needed

The Alt Media is abuzz about some "files" that have supposedly been released by the Establishment that "prove" the Establishment actively serves the agenda of purposive demonic evil.

And that the Western-Globalist Establishment leadership class are, personally, extremely corrupt.  

Let's be clear. Files, and especially officially-disseminated files, and especially files that are the product of evil; do not and cannot ever prove anything in the ultimate and spiritual sense that is necessary. 

But for Heaven's sake! 

We really, by now (and for at least fifteen years), ought not only to know that the globalist totalitarian Establishment is purposively-evil and personally corrupt; but this ought to have been absorbed into our world-view; and this reality ought already to form the basis of understanding socio-political actuality and events. 

Especially after the Birdemic-related events of early 2020 and subsequently. 

Files are, after all, merely data; and the provenance and accuracy of data is always contestable; and the interpretation of data is always contestable; and both accuracy and interpretation are a product of metaphysical assumptions concerning the nature of reality. 

Therefore; anyone whose fundamental assumptions disallow (or regard as impossible) the literal evil and actual corruption of the Western and Globalist Establishment (and especially the leadership class) - cannot and will not be persuaded of their evil and corruption by any data of any kind in any amount.  

(As will very soon become apparent.) 

Those who suggest that The Files are (i.e. should be, they believe) a watershed in the history of Western politics; are engaged in their own kind of attempted political (and geopolitical) manipulations... Usually concerned with trying to enlist active support for some ideology or party or program of some kind (some ideology/ party/ program that the writer or speaker serves or desires to dominate). Advice which purportedly leads back, in a loop, to the kind of society of some decades (or centuries!) ago: a "movement" which is not even going to be attempted (because of how people actually are), but would not work if it was (because people are not what they were). 

If not, then what? 

I see zero need to engage with the content of purported Files; and many probable pitfalls in doing so; the most likely of which is to be encouraged into an attitude of resentful spite and/or despair. 

We should already know what we need to know (i.e. what we personally know suffices without Establishment-supplied "evidence"); and if we don't know it by now, then it is not the problem of lack of evidence that blocks our understanding.

 

To engage-with The Files would merely be to participate spiritually with a staged media-political event; thereby voluntarily to open our hearts to that evil; and to engage in Yet Another example of double-negative values; values that are lethally-characteristic-of and foundational-to the atheist-materialist Western mainstream. 

What we need to do instead; is accept as true the reality of the evil of The Establishment, and the extremity of personal corruption of the human leadership...

And (less spectacularly) the facilitation of evil and spiritual corruption of their servant class such as bureaucrats, media people, managers, intellectuals, professionals etc. 

Accept that this is the way that our civilizations actually-is; here and now. 

Such knowledge not a trigger for action; but is a basis for understanding primarily - and understanding ought to serve a spiritual agenda; which is, for me - by my free choice, the life of a Christian. 

Only after that understanding is assimilated will we personally know what is right and good; and only after we know that, can we know what we personally ought to do. 

Good action lies on the other side of spiritual understanding and personal commitment in the spiritual war of this world. 

But anyone who tells us what we ought to do ("because of" the Files) when they themselves have not assimilated that understanding to their own personal and Christian life, and/or when we ourselves have not done so -- is necessarily trying to manipulate us to believe and serve some external, pre-existing, and anti-spiritual (and anti-Christian) agenda...  

In sum: Good comes only from Good, and Good is a spiritual (not material) value. 

No combination of oppositional agendas can lead to Good in the absence of actual positive and spiritual motivation for Good.  

To be guided primarily by any secondhand "data" or any other form of externally located "evidence"; or to serve the agenda of any external ideology or grouping - is to be assimilated more deeply into the evils of the Establishment agenda of evil.  

We personally can only do Good from the basis of our own personal motivations rooted in our own actual understanding. 

Insofar as we our-selves attain understanding and choose to take the side of divine creation in the spiritual war of this world; we will know what Good we can do, and doing that Good will surely affect "the world" for the better. 

And this is a necessary faith; it is the faith that lets us know what to do, that doing it will work; and this faith is also necessary in order that our choices can do Good, because without such faith we will not be aligned with God' intentions. 

In a nutshell: we do Good in this world only spiritually; by personal alignment on the side of God, and by our active and conscious participation in ongoing divine creation. 

A Messiah could make no significant difference - leaves the problems of Life untouched

There has usually been, and commonly, a yearning for a Messiah - a deliverer or saviour of a people or the world. 

The deep problem is not that the Messiah never actually comes; but that even if there was or is a Messiah, and even if he actually liberated or saved his people or the world; then doing this would leave the fundamental problems of Life untouched.

This because even if "my people" or the world was somehow genuinely and lastingly saved from any kind of worldly-affliction such as enslavement, poverty, natural destruction, war, poverty... then there would still be entropy (disease, degeneration, death) and there would still be evil. 

This came to mind in reading Philip K Dick's Exegesis - and considering that for many years he yearned desperately for a Saviour; in the last weeks of his life, he announced his vision of "Tagore" whose role was vicariously to save the planet from Man's ecological destruction.  

But PKD was being short-sighted and overwhelmed by current emotion - like when we are sick or afraid; and imagine "if only" we could be well we would never be unhappy again. 

Even if Tagore had been true and had achieved exactly what Dick hoped he would - this would have made zero qualitative difference to the human condition. 

It is the problem of double-negative values; the Messiah is supposed to save-from - and no matter how many things he was able to save me or us from; then the problems of entropy and evil would still remain.

 

Indeed; no matter what I personally was saved-from - I would still have the problem of my-self and of my-death. 

Like everybody I have ever heard of; I am quite capable of tormenting myself into misery (even despair) even when I am currently un-afflicted by any significant problem - when I am free of pain, of hunger, when I am warm and comfortable and here-and-now secure. 

When I imagine or dream terrible things - I am doing this to myself, and the evil is from me. 

There is the evil in me; there are an uncountable number of bad things that could happen, that cannot be excluded - and there are the universal actualities and possibilities of entropy (especially death) and evil.

The most that could realistically be achieved by an actual Messiah would be to impose on his people (because few would accept it) a kind of irreversible blissful ignorance of the fundamental problems - which would need to be some kind of permanent annihilation of consciousness...

Which is, if not exactly death, then subjectively indistinguishable from being unalive; and amounts to the wish that we never had lived. 

This is the terminus of the primacy of any double-negative values: a preference for not-existence. 

Mercy versus Justice, and Mary the Mother of Jesus

I am still reading Geoffrey Ashe's The Virgin - his dense, fascinating, and very stimulating book about the historical development and meaning of the Catholic veneration of Mary, Mother of Jesus. 

(Ashe was himself a Roman Catholic, and deeply involved with Marian societies - especially the Carmelite Friars' shrine to Mary at Aylesford in Kent.)  

This passage was one I found very striking. Ashe is describing the theology of Saint Germanus, who was Patriarch of Constantinople in the early 700s. 

Mary, Germanus maintains, does not simply put requests to the Deity on matters they could agree about; she actively and successfully opposes him. "You turn away the just threat and the sentence of damnation, because you love the Christians... Therefore the Christian people trustfully turn to you, refuge of sinners." 

The universe is split at the summit. God stands for Justice, and since we are all sinners more or less, most of us have little to hope for at his hands. 

Mary stands for Mercy, and it is only because of her influence at court, not because of love or goodwill on God's part, that Heaven is within reach for more than a handful of human beings...

The Byzantine Virgin seems the only friend close to the throne and the only rescuer from utter awestruck despair...

The Greek church agreed that Mary was indispensable to salvation. An edict issued from Constantinople in 724 condemns anyone who withholds worship from her... 

She is no longer the gentle Lady to whom Christians may turn for help. She is the unique being... to whom they must turn or be in peril of losing their souls forever.    

[From before 1233] the norm of Marian miracles in hardening. The people concerned are apt to be commonplace and sometimes repellent. 

The sole redeeming feature they have in common, "redeeming" quite literally, is their love for the Virgin. This protects them against the consequences of wrongdoing. Her devotees seem able to get away with anything....

It is unfair to treat this mythology as a license to sin; by saving misguided mortals the Virgin enables them to repent. 

But the moral is not always conspicuous... 

The medieval popular Virgin represented the all-too-human, the irregular, the exceptional. She was superior to the system and could break through every rule. Humanity had her on its side in its perpetual protest against divine law and human ordinance. 

For her, every case was a special case. She could draw "her" sinner up out of hell itself, giving him another chance.

Such considerations stimulated various thoughts. One is that - however theologically alien and contradictory the role of Mary in Catholic devotion; the effect of Marian devotion has often been exemplary from what I regard as a strictly Christian perspective (as well as this-worldly-expedient - in terms of sustaining and strengthening the churches). 

I understand the above descriptions to represent a spiritual correction to the not-Christian (i.e. not Jesus-derived) emphasis on Justice that has so often overtaken Christian churches of almost every kind. 

When Jesus is made into a divine ruler of the universe, he has often been attributed with the characteristics of an idealized human ruler in some particular society - hence the de facto primacy of justice, defined legalistically - despite this being multiply-contradicted in the Gospels. 

Furthermore, the tortured theology of Original Sin (which was only required because early theologians made it mandatory to conceptualize and define God as Omni) - led to the weird double-negative explanation of Jesus's work; as having been accomplished by a vicarious sacrifice (torture and death) demanded by Divine Justice to compensate for sin. 

Against this historical backdrop of systemic misrepresentation of the fundamental nature of Jesus Christ's work and the paths to salvation by love of Jesus; Mary seems to have emerged, with the consequence of  re-creating the truth of Jesus's salvation by personal love.

With the difference that the necessary love is displaced from Jesus, to his mother (but his mother having been re-conceptualized to possess the salvific attributes of Jesus). 

But I don't doubt that this displaced or indirect love was none the less effective in attaining salvation for Marian adherents ; so long as the motives were true. 

The simple heart of Christianity - i.e. resurrected eternal heavenly life to those who follow Jesus - has always been open to the kind of "license to sin" misrepresentation Ashe describes in the second excerpt above. 

This is a kind of parody of Christianity, along the lines of: I can do what I like, be as selfish and gratification-seeking as I like... yet Mary will save me if I love her... 

Such is the exactly the same type of criticism made of Jesus's teaching during his life, by those whose real concern was social order and sustaining the power of their church...

Popular with those who do not really believe that All Men are sinners including themselves; and that no Man good enough for Heaven without first passing through death and resurrection*.

(Or who may regard following Jesus as less a matter of love than of following rules.)

 

The parody is untrue, because it ignores that motivation is primary, and that the love really must come first. 

Salvation is not attained by using love as an excuse to enable the primary motivation of doing evil. That is to put this-worldly gratification first. 

But, on the other hand, salvation really is - not for those who successfully past some test of following some laws; but salvation is for all those who love and desire to follow Jesus more than anything else.

Or, in this instance... love and desire to follow Mary more than anything else - so long as Mary is conceptualized in the way she has been by some ancient (and some modern) Catholic Christians, as described in Ashe's book. 

*I suppose I should state that I regard it as theologically incoherent from a Christian perspective to claim that Mary was conceived and existed without sin, and was assumed into Heaven without going through death and resurrection. The necessity and work of Jesus - and the requirement that we are all  incarnated into mortal life - only makes sense when it is understood that death and resurrection was and is the only way to "fit us for Heaven". Nonetheless (fortunately for all of us!) theological coherence is not a requisite for salvation! 

"AI" is a "Magic 8-Ball" (i.e. obfuscated dice-roll or coin-flip)

The current primary global strategy for replacing people with "AI" programs; amounts to the substitution of a "Magic 8 Ball" for human judgment. 

This statement is hardly an exaggeration!

The Magic 8 Ball is actually a yes-no dice* with a verbal output, which is indeed just an elaborated coin-flip. 

To set-up the analogy with "AI"; here are three aspects of the Magic 8 Ball mechanism:

1. Functionally; M8B is an obscuration and complication of a simple device for generating positive and negative responses. A child does not realize that the (relative) complexity of operation, functions to confuse the user about what would otherwise be obvious. And the verbal nature of responses (e.g. "As I see it, yes", "Don't count on it") merely provide a more human-like output than would numbers or symbols. 

2. The other point of the 8 Ball is that it is supposed to be "magic". In other words; the M8B user has had the idea planted that the ball is (something like) sentient, conscious, has innate wisdom, and even predictive power. 

3. Finally; the complexity of the structure enables much more money to be charged for the device; than if it was a die, or a coin. 

The analogy between the Magic 8 Ball and the global totalitarian "AI" project is very close:

1. The colossal computational complexity of "AI" obscures that it does not understand anything - any more than does an M8B. And "AI" in its post-November 30th-2022 iteration, has been specifically-engineered to generate pseudo-relevant, human-like verbal outputs. 

2. By means of a vast propaganda PSYOP - "AI" has been attributed with "magical" powers of intelligence, wisdom, creativity etc; so that people are inclined to treat its output as having (or very soon about to have) literally superhuman capabilities.  

3. Nobody would pay much for dice; but the global establishment have spent many trillions of dollars (of "our" money) in "AI" technologies and its infrastructure (which, functionally, merely amounts to an eight ball on steroids with plastic surgery); of which most has gone into the pockets of pseudo-"investors"; with significant sums spread among their managers, propagandists and minions.  

The question arises as to what will happen if or when significant decision making is taken from humans and given to the output of a Giga-Magic Eight Ball? 

The answer depends on whether the real decision makers (i.e. the ones who chose to develop the obfuscation in the first place, and who oversee its implementation) take any notice of the "AI" decisions, or just make their own decisions as usual, but pretend that the "AI" was responsible...

This seems the likely intended scenario. 

But maybe, instead, many people really will believe their own propaganda (it surely looks like it!); and the M8B will actually, in real life, be used to generate decisions that humans will then obey!

And maybe the leadership class of the world will allow or encourage this to happen - probably from motivations such as spite, sadism and destructive zeal - and will them will "sit back" in their secure and provisioned shelters, cackling at having so grossly fooled so many people; to "enjoy the show" of what eventuates. 

In which case civilization will crumble and collapse... and more rapidly than would otherwise be the case.  

 

*Magic 8 Ball is a 20-sided dice suspended in fluid, which is shaken, and then provides ten "Yes" and five "No" themed verbal answers - the other five answers are essentially "roll again". All of which ultimately reduces to a die with only yes/ no responses (in this case; double the proportion of "yes" than "no" answers) which could further be reduced to coin-flips. 

The metaphysical failure of All Christian churches

...But don't ask me about my metaphysical assumptions

(The above being the argumentative strategy of all churches)

The generations-long, inexorable corruption, apostasy and (remember 2020) self-destructive failure of Christian churches has nothing to do with me!* but is there for all capable of seeing it. 

*(I am but the bearer of bad news; and one who seeks to proceed on that basis - rather than on the basis of the delusional and dishonest optimism all-too-characteristic of those whose Christianity is inextricable from some particular church.)

And yet there is a sometimes-palpable metaphysical hunger among the mass majority of not-religious people; who realize that mainstream materialist totalitarianism offers no meaning, no purpose; and zero basis for ethics, beauty or truth. 

Metaphysics is the discourse concerning ultimate, fundamental reality. In other words metaphysics seeks to make explicit and examine our deepest convictions and assumptions concerning the way that things are.

The metaphysics of dominating mainstream modern materialism; explicitly regards ultimate reality as dead (unalive), ruled by blind causation and undirected randomness - there is no direction to it, no reason behind it, it has no values; therefore nothing is better or worse than anything else...

The only basis for preference and choice is our own temporary, subjective, psychological state; which itself has neither purpose, nor meaning - and merely whatever happens-to-be, at present. 

The official non-explanation of life, the universe, and everything is: Things Just Are. Nothing can coherently be said about any of it.   

There is a hierarchy of explanation that runs from fundamental, primary and metaphysical assumptions to make sense of the secondary, surface and observational aspects of life.

Thus: we derive our meanings and purposes from our metaphysical assumptions, and not from our "factual" observations - indeed, we cannot even know what counts as "a fact" without prior assumptions (theories) to tell us. 

Consequently, of themselves, our perceptions mean nothing, imply nothing and are undistinguishable - since the world does not come to us divided into different objects, nor do the supposed causes acting on such objects come to us divided into types. 

It is by our interaction with the world (our "participation" with creation) that what would otherwise be incoherent "noise" is instead known as having structure, meaning, purpose. 

A perceived world without primary assumptions - without the metaphysical and structural basis of reality; well, it is hardly even imaginable - but might be pictured as a booming, buzzing, fuzzy, incoherent, literal-chaos.    

It might be supposed that the churches would benefit from this vacuum of purpose/ meaning, this craving for fundamental values; but the churches eschew the deep level of metaphysical assumptions; instead trying to reason from current preferences, agreed observations, accepted facts... 

Each church hoping to convince that its particular "package" of administration/ rituals/ scriptures/ symbols/ prayers etc; offers a better psychological or socio-political outcome, or a better (perhaps the only) chance of some kind of life beyond death. 

While churches will often critique mainstream materialism, and expose its vacuity; what the churches fail to do, is go back and down to the deepest level of their own fundamental assumptions. 

The churches Will Not make explicit and examine their own assumptions. 

The Christian churches' attempts at conversion are therefore of a double-negative nature: they are happy to expose and demolish the assumptions modern atheistic metaphysics; but they will deny that their own metaphysical fundamental are assumptions. 

The churches all claim that their own metaphysics Just Are True. 

Or else the churches reverse the hierarchy of explanation and pretend that their metaphysical assumptions can (somehow!) be derived from the accepted facts of life; being so obvious that to express disagreement is idiotic, evil, or dishonest. 

But this comes across as (and indeed actually is) merely dogmatic bluster.  

The answer is that we modern people must go deep, we must go as deep as we possibly can - in order to discover our own bottom-line assumptions about reality - and to expose those of other thought-systems such as particular Churches. 

It is not enough to "show" that somebody else's metaphysical assumptions are incoherent or absurd or inadequate - we must as-well be prepared to bring forward our own fundamental beliefs in order to compare them with whatever is being critiqued. 

Indeed; it seems to me that after we have genuinely exposed our own metaphysics, and recognized that it is rooted in primary assumptions which are a product of our own free agency - will we then be able potentially to understand the metaphysics of anybody else. 

Only when our own fundamental assumptions demonstrate positive superiority with respect to what we regard as most important, and in comparison with the fundamental assumptions of other ideologies and/or religions; will we actually have made real progress in terms of overcoming the endemic metaphysical failure of this time and place.   

**

Note added: 

I do not suggest, nor even believe, that it is possible that Christian churches, or any churches, could possibly do what I am suggesting - because as institutions, this would expecting churches to be anti-institutional. 

No: this is something that individual persons can only do for themselves, because for themselves; else it will not be done at all. 

And because it needs to be done for individual persons; this can only be done with the necessary good motivations by one who believes that knowing truth experientially is an activity harmonious with divine creation.

That is to say; one who knows, and knows why, honestly "doing metaphysics" is something that is of-itself-and-necessarily beneficial to God's cause; as well as to the benefit of our own post-mortal, resurrected self.  

Double-negative values lead to self-justified spitefulness

Depicting a world of institutionalized spite...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Parasitic destruction - Increasing local order, by increasing total entropy? The Neo-Darwinian assumption of Western geopolitics

Deep theorists of biological evolution since Schrodinger, have (by ignoring his speculations on negentropy) mostly assumed that it is a parasitic process; which exploits already-existing order. 

This is inevitable in an atheistic context, where divine creation is rejected. 

In effect; because entropic change (and death) is unavoidable; modern secular societies must theoretically derive order from chaos - because nothing else is conceivable, must derive adaptive evolution from a tendency towards random disorder combined with zero-sum competition, positive from negative, good from evil.

In a nutshell; local creation is seen as only possible by net-destruction.   

What happens (in ultimate terms) from this mainstream secular "Neo-Darwinian" point-of-view is that an organism maintains or increases its own functional order by increasing total entropy.

(When the existence of a positively creative force/ tendency/ purpose has been ruled-out by assumption, and only negative/ destructive/ entropic tendencies are allowed for consideration - then some version of this "getting positive outcomes from from negative inputs" must be the case. Neo-Darwinian evolution is the best known version of such reasoning; Adam Smith-type "free market economics" is another.)   

For instance; the functionality of an animal depends upon them consuming (using-up) the energy and organization of plants; and plants use-up inputs of solar energy to construct high energy molecules that are used by animals to remain functional. 

All the time; no matter the level or organization achieved by organisms and their social structures; overall entropy is increasing, net energy is being used-up by the existence of organisms - and societies.

This model has, over the past century and a half, become the basis for the fundamental value-system of first Western, then global, society. 

To put it differently; all that is "good" (i.e. functional) in a society - effectiveness, prosperity, capability, law and order, consumer goods, entertainment... All this necessarily and ultimately derives from a parasitic exploitation - by a process of extraction. 

Such parasitic exploitation typically including other societies. 

Because every such transformation of order is always less than 100 percent efficient (usually much less) then every time there is extraction there is loss of order, i.e. increase of entropy. So that the more finance, industry, trade, exchange, complexity of organization is generated and sustained; the greater must be the increase in disorder which is its price.

Indeed, such processes are not zero-sum (whereby the positive/ good/ creative is merely a re-arrangement of what went before); but less-than-zero-sum - because we always end-up with less of the good stuff than we began-with.  

Such a less-than-zero-sum world view is (I infer) explicit among the leadership classes - it is (I think) a "dirty secret" about geopolitics; something shared among the social strategists in private; and a secret by which they are initiated-into the power club.

And because this class of people have either excluded the divine and creative as unreal, or else (at the highest levels) explicitly joined with the demonic alliance against God; these people "know" that they "themselves" can only thrive - can only be prosperous, powerful, comfortable, and have pleasurable lives -  by destruction of others. 

The conviction is that - in an ultimate and absolute sense; "their" well-being (both physical and psychological, and indeed spiritual) is only achievable via actual destruction of the well-being of others. 

They "understand" that to generate what "they" desire, necessarily entails a greater volume of destruction of what "other people" desire. 

This is the dirty secret by which they operate. 

And this is what is happening, all the time and all over the place - it is the world-view that drives Western strategic policies of all kinds - although this is covert, except among the higher human leadership class (i.e. many national "leaders" and CEOs of big corporations are ignorant of this reality - believing in ideological nonsense and serving only as manipulated puppets).  

Western Geopolitics is a combination of the (Ahrimanic) totalitarian desire for control and social order as primary goal; with the recognition that this can only be achieved for a small and shrinking minority and by means of (Sorathic) destructive-exploitation of the majority. 

The driving belief is that the greater the destruction of the mass majority, the more "order" and "energy" will be liberated for exploitation...

The greater the scale of mass collapse into social dysfunctionality - the greater the scope there shall be for generating small islands of order and purpose; by transmutation of the energies and potentialities of a collapsing world, into that which they desire for themselves. 

At the highest level of anti-God, anti-creation evil, the demons understand that this vastness of destruction consumes itself, and the number of those who "benefit" from parasitic destruction will necessarily always be shrinking, and as matters proceed that shrinkage will be more rapid; and that the end can only be a kind of universal death. 

But meanwhile, they derive vast satisfaction from covertly engineering the process of exploitation - and especially that the masses who are destined (if plans go right) to be consumed and annihilated, in order to extract their positive energies are consenting to this. 

In sum - there is a duality to the current nature of global evil; by which those whose desire is to maintain order and functionality - i.e. the Ahrimanic totalitarians, bureaucrats, managers etc - operate on the basis that this is only possible by social destruction elsewhere. 

The basis of current geopolitics is that the survival and thriving of The System (and "my" place in that system) is achievable only by increasing overall chaos - because order must consume order, always at the cost of increasing total entropy. 

Because they believe that parasitic destruction is fundamental to reality; the Western leadership class is therefore purposively creating chaos all over the world, as well as within their "home" societies - as the "fuel" they need to maintain their position - for a while, anyway. 

And this is done with a clear conscience, and indeed a sense of virtue; since "they" regard parasitic destruction as an unavoidable reality - and themselves as superior by knowledge of this tragic reality - hence most deserving to be the "winners" in the inevitable process. 

And they also recognize that this process must of its nature accelerate, as the negentropy of the masses is consumed; and recognize too that the membership of the parasitic ruling class must shrink - which is why there is so much, and accelerating, "civil war" among them. 

Is all this true and inevitable? It parasitic destruction that nature of ultimate reality?

Of course not! 

This demonic world view of the necessity and desirability of parasitic destruction; is a product of fundamental assumptions, of personal commitments to the metaphysical principle that there is no God and no divine creation...

Or, at a more advanced level of evil; the personal conviction that God and Creation are evils that should be opposed; and joining the side of those who oppose these. 

The way out (the only way out) from the "imperatives" of this mainstream, global geopolitical alliance - which regards destructive evil as necessary and "good" - is to know the reality of God as personal, good, loving, the creator - and to join our-selves to the side of the divine. 

Note added: To put it another way... Because our society and civilization has no belief in the reality and primacy of God and divine creation - it cannot be motivated by any concept of positive good. Any and all apparent public examples of generally accepted good; turn-out to be double-negative in form. this means that "doing good" is ultimately, bottom-line, a matter of destroying (or otherwise eliminating) "evil" - so destruction is baked-into modern ethics, that is all there is. Furthermore; all evil is defined in negative psychological terms; in terms of pain, misery, suffering... To a remarkable extent, therefore, ethical behaviour, "doing good" is a matter of eliminating whatever makes "me" and "us" happier or less unhappy. Doing good on a global scale, therefore becomes the business of weakening and destroying any nation or groups by which we personally (and those of whom we approve) feel threatened. And this is what we find.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But It Was Not Always Thus!

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

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

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

Compare the Romans with what happens at present!  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then our-selves affiliating to it. 

**   

 

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

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

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

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

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

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