Resentment is almost unavoidable as a motivation - unless there is a stronger positive goal

I have often written about our age's besetting-sin or "master sin" of resentment; including how negative resentment is the basis of the mainstream dominating socio-political ideology of "leftism". 

(Where leftism is understood to include all types of secular materialism with some variant of an hedonic ethical basis - including conservatism, Republicans, libertarians, nationalists etc.) 

Thus the pseudo-goals of leftism (taken up and discarded expediently) such as equality, feminism, antiracism, anti-anti-semitism, climate environmentalism - are all negative, all oppositional in their nature, all against some-thing. 

...With the purported "utilitarian" justification that this negation will lead to greater human "happiness" of some group or all people - in which happiness is (in recent generations) equated, bottom line, with diminished-suffering. 

(And where suffering is itself conceptualized as a departure-from some implicit and imagined state of not-suffering.)  

The negations are indeed multiple, since to be against some presumed cause of suffering is already a triple-negation - or is it quadruple!... At any rate, in modern leftism there is no serious or would-be-coherent vision of an utopian, happy-state, of society. 

Thus we have the negative ideology of diminishing suffering; while lacking any reference state of a happy world and people. 

How did this happen? Because surely Man cannot and should-not live by negations alone? 

Not by accident; but not wholly imposed top-down either. 

Of course, nowadays the top-down structural political encouragements and inducements (the propaganda in education systems and the mass media, the subsidies and legal exemptions, the careerism) are all very evident. 

But there is another side to things - which is that, after the decline and end of spontaneous religiosity; there were no sufficiently-strong positive motivators.  

Nationalism is a good example; since in several societies it was the first attempted replacement for religion as a basis for social cohesion. Typically, nationalist movements start with considerable emphasis on positive national characteristics and "spirit", and national destiny... 

But always this proves to be too feeble to motivate, and the positive national destiny turns-out either to be a minority aspiration - and/or generally inadequate to provide a basis for national cohesion and direction. 

The nationalism invariably degenerates into double-negativity: into opposition to some source of presumed (or real) harm. For instance; the nationalism of resentment of some particular other-nation or group becomes the main theme, the main source of cohesion, the main basis of the main policies. 

This has been the fate of every nationalist movement of which I am aware: such Germany, Ireland, Scotland and... fill-in the gaps. 

A similar tale could be told of socialism degenerating into class war; feminism into sex war, pro-natural world environmentalism into a negative and destructive crusade against "carbon", antiracism into racism etc. 

The dominance of resentment is therefore a secondary consequence of the feebleness of positive motivators in a post-religious world. 

Resentment provides (at least in the short term) a basis for cohesion against a common "enemy"; and a basis for strategies to deal with this threat. 

But in the long-term, all these negations purposively destroy society - and this is inevitable unless resentment is superseded.  

  

What about individual persons? Why are we (nearly all of us) so helplessly vulnerable to pro-resentment propaganda that strives to turn us, each-and-all, into a self-perceived victim of somebody or something; a seething cauldron of entitlement, fears, anger, spitefulness? 

The ultimate cause is the same - which is the feebleness of our positive motivations. 

Of course it is facile to spout positive slogans, or pretend to be driven by positive goals about some future of enhanced achievement, creation, beauty, love... 

But actual behaviour (e.g. what people think, speak and write about; media and bureaucratic productions; laws, policies and behaviours) suggests that these are gross exaggerations that serve merely as dishonest excuses to hide the endemic negativity of core motivators. And we get the observable socio-cultural-psychological dominance of resentment as a core motivator. 

The only good answer; the only spiritual solution to the sin, is to recognize and repent it. 

This is an essential first step. 

Yet, if we desire to defeat a particular resentment in ourselves that is dominating and distorting our lives - and if we do not want simply to replace one sin by another: such as resentment replaced by self-aggrandisement (a common sight on the internet)...

Then we need to discover a genuinely positive and strong positive motivator that can press-down-upon and net-over-ride resentment; and this motivator must be religious. 

Because only religion is a stronger long-term motivator with sufficient potential for coherence and direction. 

And so we circle back to the problem of discovering a positive and personally-motivating and good religion in the 21st century - which is our only hope for genuine betterment. 

"AI" is strategically about destruction, not control - Francis Berger's post, Laeth's comment

Following an insightful post on "AI" by Francis Berger; in the comments, Laeth produced a simple and convincing re-conceptualization of what lies behind this global strategy 

I have edited this excerpt. 

Ahrimanic refers to a type of totalitarian/ bureaucratic/ systemic evil, that is materialistic in assumptions and seeks omni-surveillance and thought control. Sorathic refers to a more advanced, negative, and purely-destructive evil; that is motivated a spiteful hatred of humans, life, and all manifestations of divine creation.

**

(Laeth's comment, edited)...

When all this started my intuition was that the diabolic element here was mostly Ahrimanic, that is, the objective was pure control. 

But more and more I think I was wrong about this (even if Ahrimanic forces were channelled to bring it to fruition). 

It seems more likely to me now that 'AI' is actually pure Sorathic envious evil. A big fraud at all levels that won't really even be useful for control, only to debase and destroy everything - from its enormous consumption of earthly energy for its functioning to the consumption of human energy from the engagement of people. An all consuming strategy, really. 

I try to avoid even seeing anything of AI or about it. I even try to avoid speaking too much against it, because I fear that too is me being sucked into its web. But it's now impossible to not find it: it's everywhere. Even normal, (and older) people, have started to talk about it (and in the exact terms the system wants them to). 

Yet even my tangential acquaintance with AI is enough to see that it's terrible at its purported higher objectives. It will just jumble up things with no direction, no purpose and no coherence - and any minimally intelligent person can understand that it's all nonsense. it cannot 'manage' anything. 

If given any power to manage a system, AI will just run it to the ground'; and I see now that that it its goal. To destroy any possibility of management, while consuming every possible resource that could be used to correct it. 

I think Ahriman was tricked too, in other words. Full Sorathic destruction is its only route and possibility of it.

**

My Comment: This immediately struck me as correct. 

The globalist totalitarian Establishment who sustain "The System" is being lied-to and tricked-into the Trillions-Dollar-Project of AI, by demonic beings whose purpose includes the destruction of The System. 

Once pointed-out (but it needed pointing out!), the strategy seems clear. 

Because (given the actuality of AI, of what it is, of how it works) this is the only possible outcome of widespread usage of, and therefore inevitable dependence upon, so-called AI. 

AI is a kind of mind virus that has been introduced into the consciousness of managers, at almost every level - from national and multi-national leaders down to the multitudes of middling-myrmidons. 

In the immediate short-term, all the institutional incentives are lined-up to focus upon introducing and developing and expanding AI - regardless of its effect on institutional functionality. 

But in the medium to long term; AI will destroy management itself, in a very direct fashion; along with institutional functionality. 

So the mind virus of AI functions like an addictive drug that rewards its user by short-term euphoria, at the cost of actively killing the user. 

My reading of Western social trends is that the Sorathic agenda has been gaining ground since the summer of 2020; when the Ahrimanic-totalitarian global triumph of the Birdemic coup (with its international lockdowns); began to yield to the intrinsically socially destructive policies of combining multivalent institutional antiracism with a renewal and acceleration of mass immigration. 

Since 2020; the Sorathic destructive agenda has been doubled-down-on by those who control the Western leadership class. Especially, it has caused/ sustained/ escalated war in Eastern Europe; then rolled-out to the Middle East; now (being attempted) in South Asia (also elsewhere). 

All this gratuitous and self-annihilating destruction (eg "sanctions" that damage the sanctioner more than the sanctioned!) is "sold" to the managerial classes of the world as assisting their globalist totalitarian goals (Great Reset, Agenda 2030 etc.). 

They are told that inducing societal chaos will create a desire for order, and thereby facilitate a further coup (on-top-of the successful early-2020 Birdemic coup) to enable a stable and lasting dictatorship of the Left.

Yet this was never possible; because the materialist Leftist ideology of the totalitarians is intrinsically negative, oppositional, hence destructive. 

Even in its earliest and partly-good manifestations; Leftism always had Sorathic evil as its Secret Master. This canker of the heart was evident in that, whenever totalitarian control was (briefly) established, it was inevitably followed by accelerating disorder and destruction.      

 

While there is an almost irresistible Schadenfreude induced by watching the managerial state enthusiastically implementing that self-destruct button which is AI; observers need to be mindful that evil does not cancel-out. 

As totalitarianism is destroyed by spiteful sadism, the process yields no increase in net-good in the world. 

Good comes from recognizing what is going on in the spiritual war of this world; rejecting it inwardly (i.e. repenting our complicity); and then spiritually affiliating to God and divine creation - by following Jesus Christ to that salvation which is resurrected eternal Heavenly Life. 

The Left is winning, where it matters: Right triumphalism misunderstands the very nature of the Left

People who regard themselves as of the Right are displaying an insane and blinkered optimism that they are winning, and rolling-back Leftism. 

This is because they do not understand what the Left is, in its fundamental nature. 

If they did understand, those who proclaim themselves of the Right would realize that they are merely functioning as a subtype of the Left. 

The political Right supposes that the Left is an ideology rooted in some principles. They believe that the Left IS these policies that I call the Litmus Tests: I mean things like socialism, feminism, antiracism, anti-antisemitism, the Climate Agenda. 

In general terms, the self-identified Right define the Left in terms of Political Correctness, SJWs, Wokeness - and their manifestations in the mass media, law, employment regulations etc. 

Because they suppose that the Left is an ideology of "Wokeness" the Right imagine that reversals of specific social practices and regulations represent a rolling-back of Leftism in their nation, or in the world.

When the Right sees such laws, fundings, rhetoric being undone; they think the Left is being defeated. 

But this is completely wrong; because the Left is a negative ideology, an ideology of opposition, and none of the Litmus Tests are core features of Leftism - they might all, in principle, be undone and the Left still be as strong as ever.    

All the Left ideologies are negative in form: the Left is (in various times and places) against many things (capitalism, the bourgeoisie, inequality, patriarchy, European people, Christians) - but is not in favour of any state of affairs as an ultimate and real goal.  

In other words the Left is protean in nature, fluid, adapting - it is continually discarding old ideologies and taking up new ones. 

The Left used to be in favour of economic communism - but not any more; in favour of native-born male industrial workers  (the working class) - but not any more; in favour of equality of opportunities and unequal outcomes - but not any more. 

Leftism can and does discard anything that is currently inexpedient; because there are an endless number of alternatives.

And there is in fact no coherent thing as "the Right"; because the Right is merely opposition to the various Leftist oppositions. 

Leftist ideology is double-negative (i.e. against what they currently regard as bad things), the "the Right" is a triple negation (i.e. against those who are against what the Left currently calls bad things).

No wonder those endless essays striving to define the Right never gets anywhere!  

This is why the Right is so wrong about the rolling back of Leftism. It supposes that the Left abandoning some of its recent woke agenda represents some kind of a defeat, but it is just the usual slippery shape-shifting of Leftism; which now has other priorities - especially war. 

Since Leftism is fundamentally oppositional and negative - Leftism is essentially destructive. 

War is very destructive; hence world war is perhaps an ultimate expression of Leftism. 

(And it matters nothing that pacifism, anti-war, anti-violence; was one of the original roots of Leftism - from more than 200 years ago.) 

War can give Leftism everything and more of whatever losses it may suffer from dropping a few strands of political correctness.  

Just look at what the Leaders of Western nations are actually doing, where they are putting most of their effort - they are in practice (not in what they say, but in what they do over time) angling for more war. 

Not to win a war, but for the maximizing the destruction of war: destruction of economies, societies, trade, positive national identities, of nature (aka "the environment") - expansion of such negations as lies, resentment, and despair. 

We are - and have been for a few years - seeing more and more wars, and what war brings. expanding and escalating the already existing World War with its multiple fronts - but especially in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

We can see the globalist totalitarian leadership class at work engineering wars all over the place; recently on the Asian Subcontinent. This isn't easy to do, there are plenty of people who don't want war - for obvious reasons. But that is what "They" are serious about.  

Ultimately, of course, politics is downstream of the spiritual war of this world; Leftism is a tool of evil in its opposition to God and Divine Creation.

Yes, the sexual revolution was and is a deadly tool of corruption; but a self-righteous and hate-driven war of each against all would be deadlier still. 

When the Right celebrates a few small "victories" (many of which turn out to mere words, and no substantive change; they miss that the Left now has bigger fish to fry, and other things it care much more about. 

The woke agenda might be "forgotten" as thoroughly as the days (a century ago) when white European men were the Left's heroes! - but the Left is continuing to win, and win where it matters most. 

And this will continue until those on the Right recognize that they are part of the problem, and repent. 

  

How the Establishment have become both rulers and victims in the New Left era (post-middle-1960s)

Not many people realize that the Left underwent a major re-orientation through the 1950s and 60s, which was largely completed in the USA by the late 1960s - spreading from there (via the mass media, finance and the economy, and the mass media) to include the Anglosphere, Western Europe, and the globalist/ multi-national institutions. 

This was the re-orientation away-from Old Left socialism - with its focus upon class, with the Proletariat/ Working Class (of native-born men) as its core virtue-group; and towards ruling class personnel who are defined in terms of membership in a variety of virtue groups. 

The New Left was what has come to rule the world; and the new orientation was based on a proliferating collection of virtue groups; based upon not economic divisions but instead race, sex, and sexuality. 

This had the great advantage that the "oppressed", "victim", virtue-group could now be members of part of the upper class, the ruling class. 

It had been a disadvantage of Old Left socialism that the ruling class - who managed the whole thing - were always under pressure to favour and incorporate lower class people into the "elite"; where the New Left routinely framed ultra-privileged, ultra-wealthy Establishment figures as their new deserving class - to be accorded legal protection and promotion.

So we have, by now, become used to the idea that the exemplary assumed-intrinsically-virtuous persons of the modern Left, are drawn from ruling class backgrounds. 

Many have wealthy and powerful parents, and a high proportion have experienced grooming via Establishment educational establishments. 

Others are from among the very wealthy and powerful ruling families.

In sum: the New Left virtue-group are mostly extremely privileged individuals, locked into Establishment power structure - who are nonetheless defined as victims simply by categories relating to race, sex, or sexuality - or some other national, social or ethnic feature*.

The old socialist virtue group (native-born working men)  have indeed been demoted so low, that the situation is inverted. The privileged classes are a non-working benefits-dependent client underclass, any immigrant from anywhere-else, any race other than those native to The West, any religion other than Christianity, and any sex/uality other than men with families. 

To this has been added "environmentalism" - which favours some conceptualization of "planetary benefit" (currently almost exclusively the atmospheric concentration of CO2) to replace human beings as the proper focus of concern. It is important to recognize that what is defined as "good for" "the environment" is now conceptually controlled entirely by the ruling class - via ruling-class controlled social institutions.  

Of course, New Leftism is oppositional hence incoherent by it very nature; so that there is still "lip service" paid to Old Leftism - but that is all it is - there are words, but never actions, to help the Proletariat.

In actuality; the New Left is an expandable collection of double-negative imperatives; which are focused upon in rotation; and according to expediencies. 

Where is this going? There is no imaginable utopia; and public attention is instead focused upon the avoidance of an expanding range of projected dystopias.        

 

The difference between Old and New Left is therefore profound. 

The Old Left was based on coherent but untrue positive assertions about class and economics, and aimed for a describable (albeit in-practice impossible) socialist utopia.

The New Left now functions almost-entirely using ruling class personnel - who are also designated victims. 

And it had made itself the only recognized spokesman and representative for those other virtuous entities that are not included in the ruling class - such as those human individuals and groups that are incapable of leadership; as well as animals, plants, and The Planet. 

The great triumph of New Leftism has been to create a socially dominant morality by which the ruling class are encapsulated as both uniquely virtuous, and uniquely powerful. 

This explains A Lot...

 

*This always makes me think of a comment made by an old friend, the author Frank Kuppner, who was reading some feminist journalist in The Guardian (someone like Polly Toynbee) - one who had been born to rich and famous parents, with all the advantages of nepotism, top status boarding school, Oxbridge  etc - raging about the oppression of "women"... Frank quietly summarized her rant as: "Suffering? I'll show you suffering!". 

Building imaginary castles in the air, from fake straws

A while ago, I wrote a post about the determined optimists of "the Right" (especially people who still, falsely, believe there is such a thing as "the Right") - who busily build their optimism from "fake straws" they have clutched from the maelstrom of a collapsing civilization. 

Following the US election results, I can hardly believe the extent to which people are using fake straws to build grandiose but wholly imaginary castle in the air; that are supposed to represent their hopes of the kind of society that they want.

(Straw castles are bad enough, daydream castles are bad enough - but to daydream a castle made of fake straws! Well...)

Meanwhile... nothing has happened except words and emotions and speculations; and, by now, we ought to realize that (as of 2024) these do not amount to any good thing. nothing is cheaper than "words" in the West, in 2024 - being the most untruthful/ anti-truthful society in the history of the world. 

It should, however, be remembered that thoughts are real, even air castles made of straw - but not necessarily real in the ways intended; and certainly not necessarily real in A Good Way. 

What is apparently real, is that (perhaps) surprisingly large numbers of those who purport to oppose the totalitarian Leftist project; apparently believe (and are saying it) that decades of cumulative civilizational decline can be stopped and reversed by a mainstream election, leading to a new selection of mainstream political figures, being put in charge of an unchanged bureaucracy and media...! 

They are saying that! (Although maybe they don't really believe it.)

What is also apparently real, is the thoroughgoing mundane materialism of what such people want: they want so very, very little - just these politicians instead of those, these laws instead of those... just common sense instead of institutionalized insanity. 

The fake-straw optimists are therefore eminently reasonable - hence they cannot possibly succeed; because if almost-everything stays the same, then we will have the same, or worse.  

They accept geopolitics, but want a different arrangement of nations and distribution of power. They want "business as usual" - but without the weird excesses of the post-millennial era. They want people to be sensible - and "sensible" in a normal, mainstream, hard-headed context.  

They merely want, in other words; a different flavour of Leftism*. 

And Leftism is oppositional and necessarily destructive, because Leftism is fundamentally a-theistic and a-spiritual.  

"The art of the possible" is in actuality asserting the im-possible. 

It will never happen, it can never happen. It ignores and suppresses the need for motivation, and that motivation requires purpose, and that purpose requires the context of a purposive creation. 

And for creation to motivate us, requires that creation be of-God; and for God to motivate us we must have a relationship with God. 

And for our relationship with God to have implications of truth, virtue and beauty; that relationship must be one of Love. 

If we don't have that - we have no positive purpose, and insufficient motivation to do anything Good. 

Which is exactly our situation. 

And election enthusiasm is not merely irrelevant, but actively and powerfully hostile to what is absolutely necessary.  

*Note: there is a Left, but no "Right"; because Leftism is oppositional to religion-in-general, Christianity in particular - and the spiritual and next-worldly nature of Christianity, to be exact (Christianity - not churches, who are all of-the-Left). The only valid options in the West are therefore various flavours of Leftism - or Christianity. 

Spite is all around us; invisible, dominant: the fruit of resentment, fuelled by despair

Spite, spitefulness is a strong candidate for The Worst Sin (I've blogged on this often). 

Another word for (aspects of) spite is Schadenfreude - but this is more often treated as an amusing foible, trivialized; than recognized as among the worst of evils. 

Surely we can all, if honest, recognize in ourselves (and infer in others) this most evil of evils: a desire to harm others, to make others suffer: a motivation that will, at extremes, risk or sacrifice even oneself? 

Surely we have all felt an arising impulse that responds to awareness of happiness, beauty, moral decency, honesty in other people or the world around us... with an impulse of hatred, the urge to destroy it, to smash it. 

We observe perfection; and then a stab of desire to mar that perfection. The urge may even be yielded to, when "harmless" - as when we see a perfect reflection cast by a still pool of water... And then respond by smashing it to smithereens by hurling a rock into it! 

"Harmless" fun, maybe - a tiny lapse, in the scheme of things; no lasting harm done... Yet if we examine the motivations for such everyday (trivial) destructions, we may (if honest) find spite at the root of it.

Likewise for our actions against others. These may be rationalized as necessary, or because "he deserves it"; but at root, the motivation may be spiteful: "I want to see him suffer".  

Most people, most of the time, squash such vile feelings in themselves (and certainly try to forget them) - but surely we have all experienced them? 

And - if we have any insight or capacity to reflect - seen this in other people (including the best people, at times; including those we love the most), and perhaps been at the receiving end of it? 

People who cause trouble among groups of friends - break-up friendships, relationships, even marriages; who spread malicious rumours, mislead, misreport, life; who engage in "he said, she said" betrayals. 

And surely we have at least thought about doing such things ourselves?  

Spite is ignoble, it is despicable - but it is real.

It is found to some degree in almost everybody, and it is the master sin ruling some people (and many demons). It is seen all through human history, and all around us - yet, spite is hardly acknowledged. 

(Except, maybe, in stories about youngish children! Enid Blyton often included spiteful characters, named as such, in her stories - which is how I first put a name to it.)

It is regarded as more sophisticated and pseudo-intelligent to analyse spite in terms of other motivations - especially disguised forms of self-interest. So, the harming of B by A is likely to be described in terms of how harming B benefits A (perhaps indirectly, or over the long-term). 

But the point is not whether spite can be explained-away - Of Course it can! 

The point is to to Ask The Question. Is this spite?

We absolutely need to know whether whether spite is the real motivator behind behaviour; because if it is, then such behaviour cannot be appeased by fulfilling self-interest. 

And, like most sins, spite feeds on its own gratification. When infliction of harm brings gratification, then the infliction of more harm to more targets will probably follow.    

Spite cannot be bought-off. Spite will not be satisfied by less than suffering and destruction. 

Thus when spite is explained-away - this merely allows for the undetected and more effective deployment of more spite. 

And spite is a natural product of the besetting modern sin of resentment - with the dominant ideology of The West being the creation, encouragement, subsidy and protection of ever-more "resentment groups" defined in terms of class, sex, race, sexuality or... whatever*. 

And (in the West, the developed world) this is a world of despair (whether actual or incipient). Because nearly everybody lives-by the assumptions that reality has no purpose or meaning, and that human life is followed by annihilation. 

With such assumptions; existential despair is normal and rational; such that self-distraction from this (supposed-) reality has become perhaps the primary life goal.    

When we have so many people who fundamentally assume themselves to be victims, and who despair; the ground is prepared for the operations of spite - first directed against those who are most resented (i.e. the supposed "oppressors"); but soon (as the sin takes grip) directed against pretty much anyone who in any way irritates us. 

When the most spite-dominated people are also among the most powerful, wealthy, high status, and influential in the world - then we have.... Well, we have exactly what we see around us in the world of geopolitics, global strategy, and the international and national leadership class. 

This world of "Sorathic evil".  

A world in which anything that is (or seems to be) of-God, or Good; anything apparently manifesting the transcendental values of Truth, Beauty or Virtue. Anything wholesome, innocent, natural, spontaneous, care-free... Any such becomes a prime target for spitefully-motivated attack. 

Yet, up to now, spite is invisible. Trivialized. Explained-away. 

By refusing to recognize the operations of spite in ourselves - failing thereby to acknowledge and to repent its sinful nature; we thereby fail to recognize spite in others. 

So spite can be everywhere, dominant, and increasing - yet we choose to be self-blinkered against perceiving it. 

And until we are aware of spite; the operations of spite cannot be resisted - either in ourselves, or others. 

* Leftism now rules the West and much of the world; and Leftism is a negative, oppositional ideology built upon resentment, and depending upon continuing expansion of resentment. The so-called political "Right" (of all types) is merely a variant of Leftism**. This can be seen in its domination by resentments, but of a different inflexion; typically inversions of mainstream Leftism: e.g. resenting women instead of the Leftist resentment of men, resenting the Left-approved races etc. Of course, such motivating resentment is rationalized and explained-away on quasi-objective grounds - yet the actuality of resentment as prime motivator is sometimes revealed when spite-driven desires or fantasies are expressed; as well as by the relentlessly negative and oppositional focus of Rightist discourse (against, against, AGAINST!). 

**The only alternative to the Left is religion. All secularism, all atheism, all materialism is ultimately Leftist. 

H/T - This was stimulated by a comment from Avro G. 

The Litmus Tests revisited - or, what do we need to know about some-one/ some-institution?

The Litmus Tests* may seem crude and formulaic as a way of discernment applied to a person or institutions; but in reality they are almost the opposite. 

The Litmus Tests include the birdemic-peck 'healthism' agenda; support of the opponents of the Fire Nation in the ongoing war; antiracism; pro-sexual revolution; CO2 Climate-change/ warming; and any other form of leftism such as socialism, environmentalism, equality, diversity, libertarianism etc. 

The Litmus Tests refer not so much to specific beliefs, but to the core agenda items of the global totalitarian System, which - properly understood, from a Christian perspective - is evil in its intent -- i.e. the dominant System ultimately seeks the damnation of souls; which requires that (in the end) each soul desires and chooses to be damned. 

Therefore, to fail a Litmus Test means to be subordinated - in at least one major aspect, although typically many or most of the tests are failed - to the external ideology of evil. 

When somebody, or some institution, supports one of the Litmus test agenda items; this is evidence of value-inversion; which is evidence that they are self-subordinated to the dominant external agenda. 

In a sense, from the perspective of making an overall evaluation of somebody's (or some organization's) affiliation in the spiritual war of this world; this affiliation tells us all we need to know: Are they on the side of God/ divine creation/ The Good -- or are they opposed? 

Anyone who accepts, defends, follows, actively advances any of the Litmus Tests - has placed his motivations, thinking and actions under external control from those powers who oppose The Good.

This matter of external control is very significant. 

Because the world (here, now) is so pervasively and top-down corrupted by evil; all powerful external influences are evil. 

Therefore; to be externally-motivated - including by any large or mainstream church, of any denomination) is to be a part of the agenda of evil.  

(This is evil. Evil is Not about niceness or good works or devoutness... Evil is about taking the side of Satan against God. Simple as that. One on-the-side-of Good is Good; no matter what his personal sins - because anyone on the side of Good will/ must have repented his sins; will know, acknowledge, and reject his sins. That is what it means to "be Good".)

Such is the nature of Litmus Tests: they function as an index of whether some person or group has chosen subordination to fundamental, ultimate, external control. 

As of here-and-now; only one who seriously seeks to detach himself from external control can be on the side of God, divine creation and The Good. 

Such a detached person may Not be on the Good side - because he might choose evil from his own inner motivations; but only a detached person can affiliate to Good. 

In our totalitarian and media-saturated world; only inner evaluation and motivation can be a source of commitment to the motivation of Goodness. 

We are Good as individuals - from our inner choices - or not-at-all. 

Affiliation to any external authority is to subscribe to one, more, or many of the negative, incoherent, and oppositional Litmus Tests; and this represents a decisive affiliation to the work of Satan. 

Note added: It should not really be necessary to say so; but maybe it needs saying anyway: that the state of someone's soul now - e.g. affiliation to the Satanic agenda, as evidenced by Litmus Test failure - does not mean that they will choose damnation at the last. Indeed; I think it almost certain that an individual person is only sustained alive for as long as he is judged capable of repentance; which means that where there is life there is hope. However; the same does not necessarily apply to institutions/ groups/ corporations - including churches. Whereas there are many (including recent) examples of individual persons (and, presumably, other Beings) who seem very likely to have repented and chosen salvation despite previous servitude to evil - and done so very late, very near to death; there seem to be none among recent institutions. This may be because the kind of corruption that afflicts most modern institutions is one that excludes the ultimacy of the kind of "presiding spiritual Being" that used-to stand-behind traditional institutions (variously conceptualized as patron saints, angels, and the like). I would guess that so long as there is a presiding spiritual Being, then repentance is possible. But when there has been a hollowing-out, bureaucritization, self-subordination of an institution to external influences, then there can be no basis for repentance. 

When motivations are double-negative, the world cannot help but be a nasty place

I am sometimes astonished by people's blindness to the obvious fact that their whole lives are based on double-negative motivations; and that therefore they can only motivate themselves to get-through life, by maintaining a continuous state of frothing anger and seething resentment...

And then they develop a scheme of inverted values by-which this state of angry resentment is regarded as right, proper, praiseworthy!

Of course; in this totalitarian-secular world, where all major institutions are left-affiliated - double-negativity is inevitable, since that is the basis and nature of leftism. 

But, sadly, a great deal of Christianity (as well as other religions) is also mostly negative and oppositional in its theology, hence its motivations. 

So we are all surrounded by encouragements to base our lives on negativity, on oppositions; and to value only this...

What eventuates is a public, social, political, media world in a waxing-and-waning (but never-ending) frenzy of opposition to... something or another (mostly or wholly made-up, invented, manipulated)...

And this being resisted and opposed by Christians on a point-by-point basis; such that the end-result is a Christianity of triple-negation! 

(That is, group Christian life substantially consists of Christians opposing the secular-leftists, who are themselves motivated by one or many of the oppositional leftist ideologies such as socialism, feminism, racism, climate change, healthism, anti-Fire-Nationism...)

And public discourse is consequently oppositional in nature - consisting of ginning-up personal disputes, and escalating the interpersonal rhetoric; presumably in an attempt at avoiding self-awareness of the sheer flimsiness, feebleness and radical incoherence of one's own motivations.

This has been going-on for more than three decades even in science, and for more than sixty years in general culture; and so most people know nothing different. They apparently imagine that such spiteful scapegoating and schoolboy scrapping always has been the underlying nature of discourse on ideas, morality and the purpose of life. 

In such a world; a serious Christian who engages in public discourse will be corrupted by the process - one way or another: either by its becoming a demonstration of ritualized submission of Christianity to leftism; or else by him being dragged into the melee of name-calling, face-scratching and hair-pulling enacted as spectacle in front of a contrived media-cheerleading audience and its dopey addicts. 

Luckily for Christians, none of this is necessary. The powers of evil are very concerned to distract Christians from, or to deny, the spiritual power and effectiveness of the single soul. Very concerned to corral and corrupt the single soul, by insisting Christianity is only valid when engaged in group or corporate activity.  

Yet, on the contrary; any individual who achieves clarity in his thinking, clarifies thinking for Mankind. Any Man who is well-motivated, even for ten minutes!, creates a positive spiritual template for others. Someone that seeks and attains guidance from his real-divine self or from the Holy Ghost, makes it easier for this to be repeated by himself and others. 

All true thinking makes possibilities and alters the balance of powers. 

Why? Because although our experience is one of alienated consciousness and solitude, the fact is that all Men are spiritually 'linked' in vital respects - or, more exactly, Men share in a condition of inhabiting a "spiritual thought-world" - a world of mutual knowing and interactions.

Ancient tribal Men knew this innately - and lived by it; and we each personally spontaneously used-to know this as young children - we knew that some of our thoughts could be known by others, and that we could know the thinking of others; that we were never alone, that our dreams and thoughts potentially affected the world for better, or worse. 

CG Jung got it partly-right but distorted, with the Collective Unconscious - his basic point that we inhabit a kind of spiritual underworld was correct; and that this accounts for the very possibility of communication and knowledge.  

The personal is political; but not by material means (as leftists suppose) but because 'the spiritual' is public - potentially.  

In 'making the world a better place', or indeed in helping a neighbour; it is not just that we don't need to use the material mechanisms of human society - but that these mechanisms thwart betterment, and twist it to evil ends. 

The only proper reason for public discourse (like this!) is insofar as it contributes towards personal clarity and strengthens positive motivations. 

That work is done by the spiritual act of composition; as the benefit of thinking is done by the spiritual act of having right-thoughts. The achievement is at that point - and not by the later possibility of its physical spread and 'influence' of words, images, concepts...

We really do not need to worry about access to media or the levers of power; about accuracy or misrepresentation; about communication, about persuasion, about winning (fake) arguments! 

(Indeed we must not worry about such things - because such things work precisely by the corrosive effect of such worry. Worry about the material manifestation of communications is therefore a sin, that requires to be recognized and repented. Writers and other public discoursers need to be aware of this, or else the spiritual good of their activity will be undone, and they will be corrupted by their activities: as is so often evident.) 

We 'only' need to take care of our side of things! 

Anything we say that is right and Good will (insofar as it is helpful) be taken-up and woven into ongoing-creation by God. 

Anything we think right; any needful discernment, any repentance or other decision to reject an evil, will have its positive effect on the spiritual world. 

Since Modern man is blind and insensible; Our first and most important job is to become aware: to understand, become conscious, make the right choices and clarify our desire to follow Jesus Christ, for resurrection into Heaven, to live eternally and Sons and Daughter of God. 

Nothing is more important than this, nothing is more effective.

Everything we require for the job is supplied us; nothing else is needed that what we have and can get; and nothing external can stop us from doing the job. 

Why do most people respond so willingly and cheerfully to "scare tactics, emotional blackmail, shifting goal posts and gaslightning"?

Commenter AnteB made a very incisive point in discussing William Wildblood's fascinating account of his conversation with a peck enthusiast. 

The most difficult thing for me is to understand how so few people, Christian or not, resisted a campaign that was so clearly manipulative and coercive. A whole battery of scare tactics, emotional blackmail, shifting goal posts and gaslightning were employed but few seemed to care or even register that something was out of place.

This expresses exactly my own incredulity and disgust at the behaviour of... well, nearly everybody in The West! 

Clearly this behaviour was not limited to the issue of the birdemic-peck; but reflects a fixed mental and psychological habit of The West. 

We have reached a point where the mass of people - including especially the intellectual middle classes (who are the most passively credulous of all population sectors) - will believe and act-upon any-thing that is monolithically presented by bureaucratic officialdom and the mass media.

Anything!

Anything about-which The System has consensus today - here-and-now - will be believed and acted upon; and the same will apply to the System-consensus tomorrow. 

The fact that the System-consensus is incoherent and extremely labile (sometimes literally reversing in a matter of days) - is irrelevant. 

That the System-consensus is evil and/or insane - as, currently, with engineering and escalating World War Three - is irrelevant. 

The cognitive time-horizon has been (all but) closed-up to the present-moment; because past and future are defined and redefined - without limit - by the present-consensus. 

It seems clear that 'morality', reason, and political expedience have simultaneously been reduced to 'today's consensus'.

And this further implies that the crucial constraint on human bahaviour - almost its sole determinant, is now System-consensus. 

Proof of this can be observed by the immense efforts at manufacturing such consensus - for example the blatantly monolithic propaganda (clearly emanating from a single central source); and the blatant suppression ('censorship') of more, and ever-more, even slightly dissenting perspectives and sources. 

So; on the one hand, They can make Us believe anything at all that they wish us to believe; on the other hand, They can only make Us believe what They agree to agree-upon. 

We can only be made to believe that which is susceptible to System-consensus. 

The System has closed-in upon itself; and its main activity is now to to ensure its own current-consensus. 

Within The System - all serious effort is directed at alignment with other aspects of The System (bureaucrats servicing bureaucrats - and other synergies between sub-systems; in a web of mutual-influence, mutual adjustment, mutual manipulations).  

While those-who-stand-outside The System, and who control The System; are mainly concerned to create serial current-consensuses that will advance their overall agenda. 

The point being that The System has Us under control; and System problems nowadays come only from power games ('office politics') within The System. 

To this picture need be added that there is (of course!) a reality outside-of, and all-but unrelated to - the System-defined current-consensus; and this reality is always constraining The System - but imperceptibly to The System.

(The System cannot understand reality - but only itself; therefore when reality affects The System, the effects will always be explained as having been caused by The System, from within The System - not by reality. This is one deep cause for the 'doubling-down' phenomenon which has been noted as characteristic of the System ideology: i.e. atheistic-materialistic-leftism.)

And furthermore that "those who control The System" are ultimately demonic, plus the servants of demons (humans who may, remember, be more evil-motivated than actual demons). 

Therefore the ultimate goal of this System-control and serial-consensus-formation; is the damnation of Men and the destruction of divine creation and all that is Good.  

This explains why The System is indifferent to its own coherence - whether linearly (through time) or cross-sectionally (here-and-now). Its deep nature is oppositional - so coherence is not required. 

Coherence is irrelevant - consensus is all - and consensus defines reality for those who accept The System's current-consensus - which clearly includes most of the masses, most of Us, in The West.

For so long as We overwhelmingly regard obedient conformity to System-consensus as our highest value; for so long will this continue. 

 

Why modern Man's ideologies (and religion) have become more truly negative

It is very striking to me, how negative are people's ideals now; compared with even fifty or a hundred years ago. 

And I mean negative in practice - not just in theory; because there have been negative religious theories for at least a couple of thousand years - yet in practice Christians had strong positive motivations. 

Negative Theology (Via Negativa) was prominent in Christianity (substantially inherited from pagan Romans and Greeks) in the early centuries AD. I mean the ascetic path of opposition to the world, elimination of temptation, and repudiation of "the flesh", which was taken to the greatest extreme by the hermit Desert Fathers. 

The Neo-Platonic theology (e.g. associated with Dionysius the Aeropagite) was one of explicit negation; that asserted we cannot know God except by knowing what God is Not, are dragged down by our instincts and desires. This in general down-rated or rejected marriage, family, creativity as paths to God; due to their excessive risk of temptation by fleshly pleasures - binding us to mortal life, its pleasures and pains. 

These desires were to be overcome by prolonged disciplines of deprivation and chosen suffering; so that we may learn control of them, and ultimately independence from them. 

Yet, in practice, there was at this time also a very powerful yet implicit positive desire for communion with God, to emulate (their idea of) Jesus Christ, and to dwell spiritually in Heaven even while on earth.

Therefore, the true situation was one in which there was strong positive desires that were unconscious and implicit; which were disciplined and shaped by the explicit rituals and practices of a negative nature. 

Through human history, these unconscious and implicit positive instincts have dwindled, until many modern people are hardly aware of them, deny their validity, and often altogether deny their presence. People (especially in The West) are no longer guided by positive implicit instincts towards God, the spirit, higher consciousness... 

Instead we are guided by external human-originated ideals - especially the dominant ideology of 'secular-leftist-materialism' that underpins all of social and political discourse and institutions in The West. 

If an individual rejects the dominant ideology, he must (as a rule) do so by an explicit and consciously chosen act of will. 

Interestingly, even the ideology of left-materialism itself has been subject to the same trends in consciousness. It has gone from containing a considerable largely-unconscious and implicit positive element; to being almost wholly negative in its ideals, and oppositional in its practices. 

When it began to emerge a couple of hundred years ago, leftism often shared in the (mostly unconscious) positive goals of Christianity; so that there were many "Christian socialists" in the UK (from the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church of England, as well as Nonconformist churches), who (albeit misguidedly) saw socialism as a means to the end of a more Christian society. These were a significant cultural phenomenon into the middle 20th century. 

Even among the explicitly materialist-atheist leftists of the late nineteenth century - such as the revolutionary communist William Morris and the gradualist Fabian George Bernard Shaw - there was strong (albeit un-theorized, un-grounded) positive assumption concerning the goals of leftism. 

Such Men would argue that socialism was a necessary/ the best means to achieve the kind of society that was 'common-sensically' (by appeal to universal evaluations) regarded as a good environment for positive virtues. 

For Morris that was a quasi-Medieval agrarian society in which the arts and crafts thrived, and were universal - a world of craftsmen and artists, for whom labour was an altruistic joy. 

For Shaw it was a modern industrial society where all were allocated an equal income that made accessible all the higher things in life (arts, sciences etc). The purpose of universal and equal prosperity was to enable Men to pursue 'mystical' goals; such as attaining higher consciousness - en route to a somewhat Platonic world of pure intelligences whose gratification was contemplation, and untrammeled creativity.

For the likes of Morris, Shaw and other early socialists; the desirability of such a society was self-evident; but it is no longer self-evident in 2022. Indeed, such utopian schemes are all-but off the map, seldom mentioned; and so weakly believed (if at all) that such ideals are unable significantly sustain a life or even (noticeably) to influence behaviour.  

What I mean is that - diminishing, but evident until about the middle-20th century - the underlying, even if unstated, belief even on the Left was that if the obstacles to a better and higher life could be removed by socialism (or feminism, antiracism, an economy of common ownership etc) - then a better and higher life would spontaneously emerge - because that (it was assumed) was what Men wanted.

And it was that better/ higher life that was the ultimate justification of leftism. 

 

Well, that concept has become meaningless, and since the 1960s, as the New Left has focused on negative aims, without any positive sense of where this is going, or what state of society it is trying to achieve, or what people are supposed to do and live-by in a future society. Contra Morris; the arts and crafts, guilds and professions, small villages and farming as a vocation; have all declined catastrophically. And, contra Shaw; Men are more, not less, focused on materialism, consumption and shallow pleasures and dissipating distractions.  

Underlying such changes in both Christianity and Leftism is this waning of the unconscious and implicit, ultimately spiritual and self-justifying, ideal of The Good Life.  

Now we must consciously choose God, Jesus Christ, and to live by the transcendental values of divine creation. These are not longer spontaneously generated from within ourselves. 

On the one hand; we are free-er than Men used to be; because we are no longer subject to uncontrollable drives from unconscious motivations. 

On the other hand; if we do not choose correctly; then we are prone to purposelessness, meaninglessness and therefore despair - in a way that used to be extremely rare, even among the explicit atheists and nihilists of 100-plus years ago. 

Musk, Twitter and the bankruptcy of the "based" secular "Right"

When I began this blog on a frequent basis, in the middle of 2010, there was (supposedly) a new, vigorous, and intellectually-rigorous movement of the secular "Right" - variously termed Alternative/Alt Right, Neoreaction, and similar 

(The 'rump' of this movement is sometimes nowadays termed "based" - and can be sampled via this branch of Synlogos.) 

One of my earliest themes was that this movement was not actually "Right" but was just part of the Left; because they wanted essentially the same thing as the Left (i.e. optimal happiness and minimum suffering in this mortal life - the 'hedonic' calculus); and the secular "Right" therefore only differed in terms of their priority groups (eg. white native men) and the methods employed (e.g. new kinds of monarchy). 

Same ends, different means. But is the end that is definitive. 

I then argued that the only genuine alternative and opposition to The Left was religion. 

So, the truth was that the Left-Right axis was all-Left; and the only true axis of opposition was Left-Religion. 

For those who opposed The Left, I said; their only valid choice was: which religion? 

This has proved to be correct over the following decade, as evidenced by the fact that the self-identified secular Right are still merely negatively responding to what the mainstream Left are advocating or doing; much as 'fascism' did in the 1920s and 30s; . 

Since the Left is actually a negative and oppositional ideology; this means that the secular Right are a double-negative ideology. 

And since the Left's policies are already double-negative - e.g. anti-racism anti-men (feminism)  - the secular Rights policies are triple-negative anti-antiracism, anti-feminism...

Something like this explains the astonishing obsessions of the secular Right; who remain utterly focused-on everyday mainstream politics such as elections and the Twitter takeover by Musk (what!); but in this extra-negative way of opposing the destroyers instead of proposing positive creation; which the secular Right cannot do because they are secular.

The amount of internet-ink spilled over the Musk-Twitter business is especially gratuitous. Twitter is a Bad Thing, Musk is a Bad Thing - why discuss the business as if some Good would come out of it? 

The answer is: one regards this as a major issue, only when one is operating on the basis of mainstream assumptions of Good.

Just as the election-obsessives implicitly, by revealed-preference, believe (whatever they say) that we can vote our way out of trouble; so the Musk-Twitter obsessive believe we can Tweet our way to a Better World.      

So that Better means, for them, just more of the same stuff - but directed at groups they like. 

And they believe this because they have nothing better to offer. 

But what of the proper opposition to the Left: I mean The Religious? 

Well... In 2020 the major churches of the world - of (apparently) all religions and denominations - overwhelmingly made clear their convergence with the this-worldly and hedonic values of the Global Left: they made this clear by massive closures and cessations of their core activities. 

(It may be that the Government and Orthodox Church of the Fire Nation has since reversed that convergence with global Leftism: where that may lead has yet to be seen; but anyway, such a direction is not a possibility, nor desirable, for The West.) 

So the churches, of all religions, were revealed as just another part of The Left.  

So the situation is that even the Left versus Religion axis, which seemed a possibility back in 2010; is not a possibility. 

My hoped-for (albeit slender, pessimistic) possibility of a church-rooted religious revival to become culturally dominant; has since been revealed as a false hope. False, not merely because of the political weakness of the churches, but mainly because the churches do not even desire it, but instead seek assimilation to the Left (and as fast as the church leaders can persuade the laity).

Therefore; these times are far more desperate than the "secular Right" imagine; and far more desperate than church-orientated Christians acknowledge. Because (at least in The West - albeit the Fire Nation in the East may have chosen a different path of destiny) there is nowhere to turn in the world of powerful, high status, influential public discourse. 

We can neither vote-in a saviour (because none are available to vote-for, and because the bureaucracy-media control everything of social significance), nor can we engineer a way-out by participation in high-impact social media (because the medium is intrinsically evil-promoting; in form as well as its allowed-content).     

What we can do is at the individual level, not in institutions; is spiritual, not material; and is rooted in understanding correctly - which means honestly and with full acknowledgment of its scope - the nature of our situation and responsibility. 

Destruction is easy! - Explaining the (inverted) triumph of atheist-materialist-leftism

However differently things used to be, the world is now simplified - Good and evil are increasingly without overlap, separating, diverging. 

There are those who affiliate with God and divine creation - and there is the opposite side: the mainstream, common, majority of atheist-materialist-leftist ideology that rules The West (and which apparently includes most self-identified religious people, including most Christians). 

All the leadership class and most of the populations are therefore leftists; which means that their motivations have no genuine positive agenda, but operate via oppositions.

(e.g. As of 2022, leftists - i.e. the entirety of the mainstream of Western public discourse and a majority of the population - oppose 'climate change', or are anti-racist, or keen to protect and promote sexual 'minorities', or eager to transform the world to 'prevent' the birdemic, hate the Fire Nation etc - typically they are all of these. All major policy strategies of the mainstream are primarily oppositional, negative in motivation - and adopting even one of them, is to join the leftist alliance.)

Opposition is easy because it is destructive in nature, therefore leftism is easy: therefore the lefter has triumphed over the less-left, and the trend is ever-leftward. 

Any kind or degree of subversion, destruction or inversion - of whatever is created, divine, of Good - is therefore a triumph of leftism.

Of course, this 'triumph' is itself a value-inversion. To re-label destruction as triumph is to invert the true nature of accomplishment. 

The global triumph of leftism is only real, because value-inversion has become mainstream and dominant.

Creation is difficult in this mortal life, which is dominated by entropy; even sustaining good motivations and effective functionality requires ability, energy, effort...

To make something new, useful, beautiful, happy, complex... these are difficult. 

But anybody - even the laziest and most talentless fool - can destroy what has been made; destroy to a greater or lesser extent, or even completely!

It takes talent and hard work to design a functional machine - but any fool can throw a spanner in its works, sprinkle sand into its gears, or smash it with a hammer... There is just one way to make it work; but innumerable ways to break it. 

The leftist West is now self-weakening rapidly. It can accomplish less and less of the positive, and that only at greater and greater cost (due to massively reduced efficiency and the diminished status of functionality). 

Indeed the West is not even trying to create, grow capability, produce that which is necessary...

Instead; the West's diminishing resources are being increasingly channeled into the infliction of destruction. 

Even as the Western powers are consumed by their own evil; and as their capacity to create good - and even to sustain functionality - declines with increasing rapidity; they can easily destroy - internally and externally, at home and abroad...

Destruction is so easy that the powers of evil can attack simultaneously on multiple fronts. 

...As I write, leftist-motivated Western powers are seeding and nurturing chaos across the globe and in many nations; destabilizing, pouring fuel onto conflagrations; breaking complex systems of design, production, and maintenance; snapping webs of trade, transport, distribution; threatening, lying, blackmailing and bribing; encouraging hatred, resentment and despair. 

What can stop them? 

Well, the first thing is that there is no cohesive desire to stop leftist destruction. We would have to want to stop leftism, and do something else instead. 

The West is leftist here-and-now, and getting more-so. The mass majority are invested in one or several left-agenda items, therefore resistance is neutralized and cooperation widespread.

In the short-term it is nearly-always pleasanter or more expedient to join the left-agenda, than to oppose it; even when its long-term lethality has been recognized. Selling-out has become the single major career path for those with talent and the capacity for hard-work.

  

It is a snare and delusion to suppose that those who oppose the leftist-agenda can succeed in stopping and reversing it. It is too easy to destroy, too hard to sustain and build. 

Anyway, two wrongs don't make a right: double-opposition is futile. 

The problem is not what we shouldn't, but what we should do. 

So, first (before anything else) we must want to stop leftism because we want something-else more - want that something-else as the highest priority in our own life. 

Since this world makes destruction easy, and this mortal life is dominated by short-termism and expediency; the only conceivably effective answer is when people live with their hopes fixed beyond this mortal life and world; and with faith that to dwell eternally in such Goodness is personally achievable. 

Work it out...

Men and women *cannot* revert to traditional sex roles (at least, not without net-harm)

Modern, mainstream, official and mandatory ideas about sex and sexuality are so dishonest, inverted, and extreme in their evil - that it is very tempting to wish to re-assert, and seek to impose, traditional sexual relationships. 

But this cannot happen, and indeed should not be attempted. 

The results would be overwhelmingly negative, in terms of what God wants from us here-and-now. 

Reversion to traditional roles cannot happen (without net-harm) because men and women are now - at this stage and phase in the development of our consciousness - meant-to-be (and are) much more unique as beings, than was taken account of in the 'intellectual soul' (i.e. traditional-classical-medieval) ways of thinking. 

Our modern souls (in the 'consciousness soul' phase) rebel against being crammed into simple-and-few categories that are never quite right - because being crammed-into a few fixed roles thwarts that seeking after divinely-loving co-creativity which is our destiny. 

Therefore, traditional roles could now only be imposed (artificially, top-down) by a system of overwhelming coercion; which would have other and strongly-negative side effects. 

Of course, the devil has (via his favourite instrument of socio-political totalitarian globalist leftism) taken this fact, and twisted it by the sexual revolution, into the opposed-to-Good evils of modern sex/uality we see all around us. That is true and terrible. 

But the double-negative strategy of opposing the oppositional is not a path to Good. 

Traditional attitudes and roles cannot now be re-imposed except coercively - and in ways that would be net-harmful.

Men and women can no longer operate in a positive creative way within the roles prescribed by traditional categories, nor by any modification of such categories.

There is no formula, checklist or blueprint for what men and women ought to do in their relationships. All beautiful, good and true relationships between men and women are each essentially unique.  

(You may have noticed that among all the Good marriages that you know - and I mean marriages that you know genuinely and spiritually, and by personal experience over time, and have judged as good - each such marriage is essentially unique.) 

In rejecting the utterly-fake, inverted and manipulated hedonic 'individualism' of the World Establishment manipulators - we should instead seek the genuine spiritual individualism of Romantic Christianity. 

The categories of 'man' or 'woman' are, indeed, eternal metaphysical realities, and the original basis of divine creation.

But each real and valid actual relationship of a man and a woman is nonetheless between unique beings; and needs to be approached as such.  

On what grounds do people choose their ultimate (metaphysical) assumptions about Reality?

I am slowly and carefully re-reading Owen Barfield's Worlds Apart (1963) - one of his best books - which is a profound 'Platonic dialogue' between characters representing different philosophical and scientific viewpoints. 

I have just worked through sections in which Linguistic Philosophy, and then Freudian Psychoanalysis, are expounded: firstly in all their irrefutable nature, as if each 'must be' true; and then revealed to be wholly a product of assumptions that have been chosen.  

This is how it is - at least in our era: we choose our reality by choosing our fundamental assumptions about the nature of reality (i.e. metaphysics; which is that philosophy which is concerned with the deepest assumptions of the nature of reality). 

Choosing and accepting different sets of assumptions leads to different world views - each of which is irrefutable once entered. If you have ever talked with a Marxist, Freudian, or SJW - you will know that there is no possible evidence that does or could refute their system - once the assumptions of that system are accepted; and, indeed, exactly the same applies to a Christian of any denomination, or to adherents to other religions. 

The conclusion is that our relationship with the world is rooted in metaphysical assumptions, and these assumptions are chosen... Thus we choose our reality. 

So what determines our choice of assumptions? Why does somebody choose one reality rather than another? In particular - why do so many people choose assumptions about reality that lead to a miserable, futile, meaningless, demotivated life? 

To be specific, and to take a mostly-past example, why did so many people (especially Americans) choose to believe Freudian Psychoanalysis was the truth about reality; when that reality was so utterly nihilistic? 

Those who chose the metaphysics of psychoanalysis could, in principle, have chosen assumptions that sustained purpose in life, life beyond death, and a meaning in life that included real and eternal relations with other Men, Nature and God... Yet all this was rejected in favour of embracing psychoanalysis...

As an up-to-date example we have the dominating, hegemonic, political attitude of 'leftism' (including All mainstream political groupings and parties) - which again is rooted in metaphysical assumptions that see human life as purposeless, meaningless, and oppositional (rather than creative) in its ultimate nature. 

Why would anybody - so many hundreds of millions of people - choose to believe assumptions that lead to such a pointless and worthless concept of their own (and everybody else's) life?

I think we can see the answer in terms of a basically perverse attitude, that regards anything bleak and depressing as thereby true. 

There is a prior, and unconscious/ unarticulated, assumption that anything true, beautiful and virtuous is a fake. 

This is the idea that has, for the past century, sustained high-status art and literature which is overwhelmingly (and deliberately) hope-less and hope-destroying, disgusting... Which assumes that life is futile and seeks to reveal the selfishness, hedonism, manipulation that lies beneath all apparent 'good'. 

In other words; people in The West overwhelmingly choose to choose a reality in which evil is true, and Good (and God) are fakes. And they regard anything else as childish, ignorant, deluded - or some kind of fraud. 

Where does this attitude come from? I believe that it is rooted in the pre-mortal nature of those people who are incarnated in the modern era; amplified by evil-choices un-repented, and reinforced by the society which these people have built. 

In other words, the ultimate cause is the innate nature of Men; but Men are free agents; and their disposition does not dictate their choices. Yet men have, overwhelmingly, chosen to make choices to disbelieve in God, the soul, the spiritual world; and more recently to reject God and favour the side of the devil. 

Men are not naturally Christian, but have chosen actively to reject Christianity, including the promise of eternal resurrected life - and to regard it as an evil which should be eradicated. 

Thus Men who were born with a greater disposition to evil, and a lesser spontaneous knowledge and experience of the divine, have amplified (rather than repented and worked against) these traits; which is why Men (in the West, primarily) have overwhelmingly and increasingly chosen to believe nihilistic metaphysical assumptions. 

My conclusion is that people actually choose the reality they live-by (whether consciously, or mostly unconsciously); and most people in The West have apparently made the choice to believe ultimate assumptions about reality that lead to the conviction that life is futile and without coherence, and is extinguished at death.

This, in turn, leads to a conviction that there is nothing to be learned from life, that the short-term is the only dependable reality, and that our personal state of happiness/ pleasure (or misery/ pain) is the only reality that really matters. 

There is no long-term (especially not eternal) purpose; so there is no long-term or strong motivation. 

There is no reason to remember experience (because our reality is not permanent in value), and no possibility of valuable learning (because here-and-now is the only dependable truth) - therefore people try (as best they may) to live in the present, and to live in accordance with... whatever incentives are most dominant in the present.  

So far it seems that our dispositions tend to dictate our choice of assumptions; but of course we are (by our nature) free agents and able to choose differently. 

But we can choose differently only if we are consciously aware of the fact of our choosing. 

If we are unaware that there are metaphysical assumptions, and that we have in fact chosen to believe some assumptions rather than others - then we are trapped; because the assumptions dictate what counts as evidence. 

Freudianism (or Marxism, or Scientism, of Christianity...) explains all possible 'evidence'; therefore only when the Freudian realizes that he has chosen to believe this and this as his assumptions concerning the nature of reality, is he then able to choose differently. 

What might be his motivations for choosing differently? 

Well, at one superficial level he might want to choose the beliefs that sustain the 'happiest' possible life, in which there was present those motivations that are subjectively most satisfying. But in practice, that does not seem to work - modern men are pre-immunized against this; by the assumptions that such happiness-seeking people are mindless, gullible fools; or else cunning manipulators.  

We cannot, of course, make an appeal to 'the truth' because that is begging the question: The Truth is precisely what needs to be established by choice of assumptions. Once someone has already made a choice of assumptions (and this applies to all post-adolescents), then 'the truth' of whatever he has chosen is confirmed by all subsequent experience. 

I think the only possible motivator to change assumptions is intuition, that deepest and most ineradicable of evaluative inner convictions. 

If the Freudian can get to the point of recognizing and becoming aware of his own primary assumptions and the fact that he has chosen to believe them rather than other assumptions; then intuition can (and will) get to work on them.

All assumptions are chosen in modernity - yet intuition recognizes some as arbitrary while others 'ring true'; some assumptions are dead, inactive, unsustaining - while others awaken motivation, creativity - and Love. 

Perhaps Love is The most important thing. Anyone who is capable of Love and values Love; will find his intuition working on his own core assumptions, evaluating them in terms of Love. 

And it is Love that leads a Man to reject the assumptions of Psychoanalysis, Linguistic Analysis, Scientism, Leftism etc... (i.e. recognizing them as love-denying, love-less and love-destroying assumptions) and which begins to move his choices towards Christianity...

And - by Love - within Christianity; his chosen assumptions will move towards that true Christianity that was exemplified and taught by Jesus Christ - rather than the errors and perversions of Men.

Why leftists affiliate with each other, and with supernatural purposive evil

The only unity to leftism - which now rules the world - is based upon negation, rejection, opposition; and this is what brings leftism (over time) into cooperation with the agenda of the devil.  

Leftism is 'the party' of those whose bottom-line ideology is oppositional - because pacifism, abolition, socialism, feminism, antiracism, environmentalism, healthism and all the rest, are oppositional in nature: none aim at any particular state-of-being or -society. 

Of-a-piece is the usual leftist conviction that one is a victim, and/or works on-behalf-of victims: victimhood is just another negation. 

But the ultimate negation of leftism is the rejection of all that is divine, spiritual, eternal... Leftism is rooted in atheism, denial of the reality of the spiritual and the soul, denial that reality is created, denial of any purpose to creation. 

Therefore leftism is necessarily incoherent - because to deny all these is to deny any possibility of meaning and purpose, to deny any possibility of coherence and understanding. For leftist materialists; reality is understood to be merely an outcome of material causes and/or randomness. 

And for conscious allies of Satan; 'reality' is an arbitrary and exploitative construct of a deceptive, manipulative, selfish deity. Evil is therefore, of its nature, (like leftism) also oppositional. 

But the (Christian) truth is that this world is in spiritual war between God and those who ally with God on the one hand - and who desire the salvation of Men's souls; and on the other, those who oppose God's aims, plans and hopes for whatever reason - and who desire something-other-than salvation.

God's party has eternal purpose and meaning; the devil's party does not - but is a (temporary) alliance of expedience between those who oppose God. 

Each human or demon of the devil's party is ultimately 'in it for himself' (as he personally understands and values his self-interest) - and all alliances are therefore understood as contingent means to that end.  

The alliance for-God is (by contrast) ultimately coherent, because it has purpose - and meaning derives from purpose. 

'The opposition party' includes a multitude of heterogeneous motives against God - disbelief, belief but rejection, dislike, hatred, inversion... 

Leftism grows by fomenting opposition, and by collecting-together those who oppose on the basis that it will (for now) aid their personal goals.

The many materialist (ideological) 'leftisms' tend, over time, to develop alliance with supernatural purposive evil; because both are oppositional and materialist leftism is thereby strengthened with a (typically unconscious) spiritual power and purpose. Individual selfish motivation is also strengthened by hope for power over others, and the desire to be part of a large and strong allied-bloc.  

Thus the world of 2020 is dominated by a vast, heterogenous and incoherent party of leftism = evil-affiliation. That is, a party that defines itself by what it opposes - and what it opposes is ultimately traceable to that which is of-God. 

Such a party cannot construct, create or even conserve: it can only lie, subvert, manipulate, torment, invert etc. because it has no ultimate positive purpose, and because the left-alliance is based only on shared-opposition. 

Purpose is impossible in a senseless-meaningless determined-random universe... 

And such a party as the left will therefore necessarily be negative and destructive in its operations and outcomes: such a party will always tend to converge with supernatural evil, and will tend towards more purely-evil forms of evil. 

Mainstream globalist leftism, and Sorathic conquest by deliberate corruption and chaos

It seems to have been little noticed that for several decades, the West's idea of 'conquest' has been morally to corrupt nations - for the obvious reason that those paid to notice and inform the masses, are themselves among the most corrupt. 

If you follow-up the consequences of any Western intervention - whether an invasion/ occupation; engineered and paid-for 'regime change'; or 'subversion as usual' by means of subsidizing NGOs, 'charities' and funding destablizing leftist groups...

You can see a pattern of Western intervention invariably increasing moral corruption (bribery, theft, sexual immorality, social breakdown with violence); including the destruction of any genuine religion by convergence and suppression (especially Christianity, but also any traditionalist religion with a distinct world-view and morality). 

Thus, the actual and achieved pattern of Western intervention abroad is Sorathic (i.e. doing evil by inducing chaos) rather than Ahrimanic (i.e. evil imposed by systems of totalitarian bureaucratic surveillance and control) - and has been for a good while. 

A clear example is the current conflict involving the Fire Nation - where it seems that (as usual) the main Western 'plan' has been first grossly to corrupt the top-level leadership-class of a nation (by standard techniques of bribery and blackmail); then deliberately - but 'deniably', by proxy - to provoke a war; and now to encourage the maximum of destruction to population and infrastructure. 

By such means has the Western Establishment has pursued the most advanced forms of Sorathic evil abroad - but what about 'at home'? 

Meanwhile, for the past couple of decades and peaking in 2020 with the global coup; the dominant strategy 'at home' in the West has been Ahrimanic. That is, to use a single, linked, increasingly international bureaucracy-mass media, to create a society of omni-surveillance and total control. Agenda 2030 and the Great Reset are some statements of this plan. 

However, there have also been strongly Sorathic aspects in home policy; especially the implementation of mass immigration to the West - including the encouragement of illegal, violent and criminal migrants. 

This inevitably creates social and economic breakdown and chaos; and the chaos has been deliberately concealed by suspending the surveillaince-control Ahrimanic state when it comes to 'multicultural' sub-groups - such as 'no-go zones' of cities, and police policies of 'non-intervention'. 

The actual governance of Western nations (e.g. in relation to the personal behaviour of politicians, and the conduct of elections) has also become extremely, now all-but openly, corrupt - hence chaotic.

Chaos has more recently been fuelled by birdemic-testing-quarantine and the peck, the imposed cult of antiracism and race-sex preferences, and the truly colossal global economic destruction caused by financial and economic 'sanctions'. 

At some point, the forces of chaos become, of their nature, irreversible. Evil feeds upon itself - inevitably, by its nature (when unrepented); and the Sorathic is a more advanced form of evil than the Ahrimanic.   

The triumph of leftism (and it is, indeed, triumphant - worldwide, at the highest levels) therefore turns-out to be the triumph of corruption and chaos. 

That is what leftism is at root, and what it always tended to become over time - because the nature of leftism is oppositional and negative; hence incoherent; and incoherence is another word for chaos. 

In other words; leftism is the ideology of evil, but evil has different forms; and there is always conflict among evil-serving persons and entities.

Yet, over time, evil innately 'progresses' from Ahrimanic to Sorathic; from (partly) constructive and planned, towards very-fully-destructive and chaotic. 

For a while, the most destructive evils of mainstream Western Establishment leftism were mainly exported abroad; where societies were destroyed serially. 

But now, the same chaotic evil is getting a grip 'at home' - overwhelming the bureaucrats, transhumanists, and mind-programmers - and the current triumphs of the left are more about spreading destruction than about increasing control. 

The bad news is that it is much easier to corrupt Men than to encourage morality, to destroy than to create. 

The 'good' news is that the left is - at an increasing rate - destroying its own capacity to inflict chaos.

Yet evil does not destroy itself as it advances, and Good can only arise from Good-aiming Persons - and Good means of-God. 

However, this analysis suggests that there may be coming more spiritual scope for Good, for Christian awakening and conversion, as The System destroys itself... Even though the physical/ material prospects seem extremely bleak. 

Imposing sexual values

It was always an element of Leftism, but from about the middle 1960s, anti-Christian, anti-traditional, anti-functional and anti-biological concepts of sex and sexuality became a recurrent and core strategy of Leftism. 

As a young Leftist; I personally found this strategy difficult to take seriously - and that was because I was of the Old Left persuasion, that regarded politics as properly concerned with economic and social arrangements. 

I failed to notice that Leftism lacked any genuine socio-political-economic goal; and was of-its-nature subversive, oppositional and intentionally destructive; and for this purpose sex/ sexuality is an ideal tool.

(Although the Left also has several other tools of similar value, including healthism, antiracism and 'environmentalism'.)

As I wrote a while ago; in natural Man, sexuality seems to be the second-most powerful motivator. Second, because Religion is - historically, and properly, the primary human motivator. 

But in a post-religious society, such as we inhabit; this means that sex tends to become the strongest motivator for many or most people. 

I think we can observe that this is broadly true, and that sex-as-motivator has been for many decades strongly encouraged, indeed enforced, by the major social institutions and corporations, mass media and the arts. 

Such sexualizing of culture is a self-reinforcing positive feedback cycle; since many of the majority of secular people (including many of those who affect to be religious and identify as-such, but who in practice always put religion in a subordinate place to dominant - therefore Leftist - social mores) are already primarily motivated by something-to-do-with sex - and the encouragement of a sexual focus has the effect of continually adding petrol onto smouldering ashes, and then permanently fanning the resultant flames. 

Even the reluctant and media-avoidant are unavoidably assailed by sexual stimuli and propaganda from all sides, on a daily (hourly) basis; which they cannot really ignore. This is why sex/ sexuality is nowadays primarily a motivator rather than something that someone does. 

In other words, the overwhelming importance of sex in modern life is its role in thought; in imagination and day-dreams and (mostly) in personal and secret 'fantasies' - which are seldom 'successfully' enacted yet still exert a powerful, albeit mostly negative, effect on people's actual lives and decisions. 

The modern sex/uality that so dominates modern societies is Sex In The Head - and may have little or nothing to do with the body; although such themes may (whether directly or indirectly) occupy a good deal of social interaction.  

 

Yet, of its nature, personal motivations to do with sex are unsuitable as a basis for changing social arrangements - therefore sex/ sexuality first needed to be assimilated into a Leftist ideology; directed at society-as-a-whole.  

This ideological assimilation of sex was accomplished from the 1960s (initially as 'free love' with easy divorce, then feminism, then campaigns to support various forms of unnatural sex/ sexuality, now the transagenda); by an army of ideologists, journalists, writers and artists, social scientists, critics, and bureaucrats. 

These sexual commissars were (apparently) mostly personally core-motivated by sexuality, and they were supported (materially and by attention and encouragement) via multiple channels - commercial, official, and overtly political; presumably by those who were similarly motivated. 

Thus, in a post-religious society; we have experienced a continual increase in concern with sex and sexuality; an increase which feeds upon itself - and is especially targeted on adolescents (and the increasing numbers of perpetual-adolescents) who, for biological reasons, are usually spontaneously focused upon sex and sexuality. 

Sex has therefore proved to be the single most effective battering ram used against the residue of religion; almost certainly responsible for most of the epidemic of apostasy that has over the past several generations afflicted and destroyed first The West, then The World. 

This means that - in a society increasingly dominated by Leftism - sex and sexuality are mainly pursued via ideology; and that people are strongly motivated by sexual ideology since (in absence of serious religion) sex represents their most powerful motivator - and they have been convinced that the attainment of their major life-motivations must run through support for Leftism. 

Thus the sexual revolution has been one of the most important Litmus Test issues, determining whether someone is pro-The System, or pro-God (which are, increasingly, the only possible choices). 

To understand this - and why it is that sex is such an important human motivator - yet properly not the most important motivator - is now a vital spiritual task for most people; and a task for which there is no help (but much hindrance) from the mainstream and mass media, and not much help from the mainstream of traditional churches. 

As usual - this is a task that needs doing for (almost) every person; but external sources are corrupted; therefore we must take personal responsibility and do-it-for-ourselves and from-our-selves - which is possible, with guidance of the Holy Ghost. 

 

Note added: It strikes me that I have relied on readers to join the dots here. Current news in the USA is about who gets to impose their sexual values on everybody else; and - in the context of our post-religious, hence sexually-motivated society - this is a set-up by The Establishment/ The System - intending further to undermine, scapegoat and destroy the residue of faithful Christians. But especially (as we perceive from evil-Leftist words and actions) the faithful in the Roman Catholic Church. Non-Catholic Christians should take note that the demonic powers (and despite the horrific extent of RCC corruption) nonetheless regard the Roman Church as a significant obstacle to their goals, worthy of specific attention. This I take as confirmation (for those who doubted) that there yet remains a significant and specifically-Christian force-for-Good in the RCC, as is. 

Further note: As so often in these End Times; if the current situation is looked-upon as a learning opportunity - provided by God in context of the world as people have chosen; it provides a yet further, yet clearer example of the purposive and strategic evil of the global ruling Establishment and The System they control.