Writers who always (by their own account) have a Great Time

There is a very great deal of untruthfulness in the world today! More than there was even as recently as forty years ago - although, of course, there has always been a good deal of lying and even more misleading - even in the most honest places (which used-to include England). 

In everyday social life there are some people who claim always to have had a Great Time, whatever they have been doing - at a play or concert, a party or holiday. By their own account - their lives are one fun thing after another. 

The valuation is not accurate - as you realize if you ever happen to observe them in such situations. Indeed, nobody who was not in the grip of chronic hypomania could possibly regard their own life in the way they claim to! 

Such people would be outraged if accused of lying, or even exaggerating, their own responses - yet, in their own way, each is systematically misleading other people about the nature of reality. 

We, as social listeners, need to realize that such people are not speaking accurately; and the same applies to writing.     

Social media has greatly increased the amount of Having A Great Timers among writers; just as, on the opposite pole, there are many more high-volume pathographers - indeed the same person may alternate their accounts of themselves, oscillating between accounts of exaggerated happiness and misery. 

Although it is true that a false impression is being deliberately created; the audience are complicit - because the audience wants to believe that a life of continual fun is possible, and achievable by themselves. 

And this is the basis of the exploitation: the apparently-hypomanic social media "influencer" is in some sense "selling" the method by which the audience expect to have as much as fun as the influencers appear to be having. 

And this claim-hope forms the basis of whatever is "for sale".   

But what applies, in a crude and rather obvious way, in the world of social media; also applies in the world of "serious" writing: of theology, philosophy, and spiritual writing generally.

Some authors (and these include some of the best, as well as most of the worst) project a personal of Having a Great Time; and describe their own exquisite responsivity to place and situation, to books and music; their intense and frequent religious experiences, their ecstasies and transcendental exaltations*. 

And readers need to recognize that this is as false and misleading an artefact; as contrived a construct; as the over-acted excitements of social media influencers. 

I did not recognize this as an adolescent; but (to an amazing extent) took authors at their own evaluation and projection. 

It was a valid learning process to realize (eg. from further experience, critical analysis, or biographies) that literally nobody I have ever known of - IRL or by writings - ahs "solved the problem of living" in the way that so many such imply that they have.

This insight has been vital in realizing that there is no solution to the problem of living in this mortal life and earth; and that attempts to emulate constructed authorial personae do more harm than good.   

It's a kind of laziness (to which I am also prone) to try and pick-up a purpose and meaning of one's own life in any second-hand, or emulating, kind of way. 

Certainly we can learn from other people - but we'd be wise to learn from what is true, rather the fantasies they try to convince us are true. This involves acknowledging that almost everybody with whom we interact is not just habitually and by social-conviction dis-honest, but is making no serious or sustained attempt to be honest. Especially not about their own motivations and responses.  

If we can sustain this realism; we might then be able to learn the right lessons, and make the right choices, relevant for our unique actual life and situation. 

+++

*Some other writers adopt a chronic and pervasive pessimism and/or affectation of misery - which, if sincere and chronic, would have long since led them to obscurity and death; rather than the fame and esteem they bask-in. Schopenhauer and Samuel Beckett spring to mind. This negative propaganda has only ever been popular among a sub-sector of upper class (or would be upper class) intellectuals... But that's another story.  

The magic of human institutions: Now absent, once always present; but never wholly sufficient

For most of recorded history until recently; many human institutions (organizations, formal groupings) were magical * - to some degree. 

The further back we go, the more magical they could be. The earlier in our life we go, the more likely that we would ourselves experience this magic. 

However, there were also not-magical groupings; and, no matter how magical the institution - there have always been those people who do not participate in it; being either immune to that magic, or susceptible but reject it. 

Furthermore, the innate magic of pre-adolescent childhood; means that - even now - groupings of such children often have a strongly magical ambience. 

The big difference across the generations relates to adult institutions - which used often to have a significant magical quality - but now are likely to be (almost entirely) soulless, dead, mechanical - and indeed purposively anti-magical... Zealous in their active destruction of any such qualities - typically by means of abstract and generic systems of bureaucracy and computerization. 

For instance; many educational institutions used to be strongly magical in their nature. This applied especially to small and localized institutions, or those with a mutually-selective character (i.e. both selected and selecting). 

Through my adult life I experienced educational institutions with considerable variations in the magical qualities; although I was also aware that most people were not consciously aware of such differences even when they spontaneously responded to them. 

Most people would speak against the reality and significance of such institutional aspects; and would cheerfully erode or eliminate magical aspects whenever this seemed expedient, from abstract ideology; or sometimes from sheer resentment-driven spite. 

Looking back; I could see that this institutional magic had, overall, been both more pervasive and common, and stronger (at least potentially stronger), the further back one went. 

Yet institutional enchantment was never complete. Human life was always and for everybody to some degree - marred by the "mundane" - this being the nature of our mortal state. 

The magic of institutions was therefore at its height (as I understand it) probably the major source of enchantment in human existence; while at the same time the very nature of institutions (plus the human beings who constitute them) meant that this magical quality was always both incomplete and contradicted.

 

And, through may adult life (from the 1980s) I could also see that this magic was innately ebbing - while also being purposively-expunged - from the educational institutions of which I knew. 

The difference across the decades was extreme. In my childhood and early adulthood the magical quality of (for instance) universities was (to me) palpable. By the time I retired from academia, the magic had been very-completely destroyed. 

Perhaps most evident when a soul-less, and indeed actively soul-destroying - institution, would attempt to cloak itself in the enchanted mantle of earlier generations. 

This would dishonestly be attempted using the mind-manipulating procedures of modern advertising and public relations; and would therefore fail to attain magic, but reduce enchantment to ideology, false promises of hedonism, fashion, and covert-appeals to status snobbery.  

While I devoted considerable energy to fighting this anti-magical trend, I now believe that a decline of that kind of spontaneous, largely unconscious, institutional magic was inevitable - due to the innate developments of human consciousness. 

When the human beings of an institution themselves come to lack spontaneous and unconscious magic; then enchantment is bound to wane from all institutions. 

The analogy with adolescence (nowadays) is close. Many children are spontaneously and unconsciously susceptible to enchantment; but the innate process of adolescence will abolish this; after which the capacity to know and live magically, must be the consequence of a conscious choice.  

In the later twentieth century, Western adults reached an "adolescence" of consciousness, so that spontaneous and unconscious magic receded - and if we were to continue to live any kind of enchanted life in our institutions; magic would need explicitly to be acknowledged as good, and purposively pursued.  

In sum: as we approached the millennium, magic needed to become self-conscious and consciously valued; or else there would soon be no magic.      

We know by now which of these happened! So complete has become the disenchantment of institutions, that (it seems) most people deny that things ever were otherwise! Most people assume that all institutions were always as they are now: spiritually-dead, exploitatively manipulative, habitually dishonest...

But such retrospective denigration is projection of our evil onto others; as can be seen if historical sources are experienced sympathetically. 

From where we actually-are; I find it hard even to imagine how institutions can be re-enchanted; because there is neither recognition of the problem, nor will to solve it. 

Furthermore; I am pretty sure that (from here, from now) institutional re-enchantment can happen only on the basis of Jesus Christ. 

Yet this needs to happen in a context where the churches are themselves very-thoroughly disenchanted - including by assimilation into the ideological materialism of totalitarian bureaucracy. 

This means that any future source of enchantment must primarily (i.e. as a first step) be sought outwith the Christian church institutions - and Christianity (plus/ minus specific churches) regenerated from that basis. 

From the spiritual place we now inhabit and the people we actually are; I cannot see any way that a Christianity rooted primarily in institutional affiliation (to any kind of institution, no matter how idealized) can succeed in doing what needs to be done.

On the other side; the attempt to do without enchantment; to construct a religion that operates at the level of institutional power, rooted in the mundane, rational, functional (e.g. a religion designed to implement a particular kind of society) - well, this will surely fail. 

Fail because it will inevitably assimilate to the existing mundane, pseudo-rational, quasi-functionality of that system of totalitarianism that characterizes our civilization. With Men as we are; any possible church-based, institutionally-rooted Christianity will be secular and materialistic, totalitarian and political, and spiritually dead.  

The only path ahead, is the right path ahead. 

**

*"Magic" does not mean Good - since there is black magic (intended to manipulate people and creation), as well as white (in harmony with God and creation). But magic is, of itself, good; in the sense that it recognizes the reality of our participation in creation; and by enchantment we are aware of this participation. Whereas the exclusion or elimination of magic is intrinsically an evil because rooted in falsehood, and the intent to cause spiritual harm.   

The "AI" Litmus Test Fail: Is it caused by a kind of Stockholm Syndrome? Projection? Managerialism?

I am intrigued by the Litmus Test failure of so many self-identified Christians to discern the grossly net-evil intent driving the current (post November 2022) wave of so-called AI. I want to understand it. 

"It's just a tool" - they say. Yes, and so are all the instruments of mass surveillance and population control "just tools"; from secret police and death squads, to smear campaigns, covert propaganda, and infiltration/ subversion. 

Of course, there are always potentially useful aspects to any tool, bureaucracy, technology - but so what? You can use thumbscrews to hold the door open, or a cosh as a paper weight. You need to ask - what are they designed for, how will they be used.  

The real questions at issue are things like: why did the global Establishment spend trillions of dollars on developing, launching, and implementing these "AI" technologies; what results are they intending to achieve from their investment; and what functions will they actually be deployed for, in the world as it actually is? 

Clearly; it is very important to some people with a lot of power and money, that these AI technologies be adopted and used very widely - whether they work well or not, whether we want them or not. 

Then, from our spiritual and Christian point of view we need to ask - honestly, and by learning from past experience - what will be the overall effect of mass usage of AI-technologies: what will they (on average) do to the way people think, Western society and its institutions, our attitude to the world, our aspirations?

Does the spread of AI technologies lead towards a more spiritual and creative, personal, loving and Christian perspective - or towards ever-more this-worldly manipulative materialism? 

To ask is to answer. 

 

The only honest conclusion from such questions regarding the evil provenance of AI, the fundamentally untruthful propaganda surrounding its emergence and spread (e.g. the word-concept "intelligence!), the coercive and totalitarian implementation - is that this kind of AI is a massive strategy designed to do harm of many kinds. 

Whether you personally believe you are personally exempted from general harm, that you can surf this wave of evil to your own advantage - well this is another matter altogether. 

But even if you can, and even if you actually do make the best of a societal state of waxing corruption (gaining more money, prestige, or power for yourself, perhaps?) - this does not excuse you when you argue in favour of what should recognized as a malign plan.

Otherwise you are no better than a stereotypical war profiteer; one who uses his influence (fasle information, bribery, blackmail etc.) to cause, expand and continue destructive wars - so that you personally can do well out of it. Even if some war is good for you here-and-now, does not mean that war is good in itself - and you ought not to believe or say that it is. 

We cannot defend ourselves against evil unless we recognize evil. Apologists for "AI" are not just harming themselves but others in failing to acknowledge an obvious and major demonic scheme. 

Why, then, do they do this? I think the reasons are psychological - not spiritual. 

There is, I think, a kind of Stockholm Syndrome at work. 

I discern that some of the most vocal advocates of AI themselves actually fear AI; AI makes them afraid - and they respond by trying to make friends with AI - they take the side of AI, defend it against its critics. 

I think this befriending, like the Stockholm Syndrome it so much resembles, is fear induced - a response to a threat they perceive to be potentially deadly, and inescapable. 

(You cannot beat 'em, so you might as well join Them.)  

One reason I think pro-AI advocacy is often fear-induced, is that such people project their fear onto others - inappropriately, wrongly. They taunt that those who do not embrace AI are afraid of AI!

But this is patent nonsense in general and specifically. Fear of AI is far from normal - which is why so much propaganda must be expended on trying to generate fear (via innumerable mass media fictions about evil AIs, and AI dystopias).

In real life the overwhelming response to AI is on a spectrum from moderate irritation and boredom, to mainstream everyday careerist attempts at exploitation of "the latest trendy thing". 

Therefore such an accusation of fear is a dead giveaway, a projection onto others of something within oneself - often emanating from those who really feel, personally, threatened by replacement or oppression with AI technologies. 

For instance those who hope (like generations before them) to escape this fate by vaulting-over the threat into a managerial situation: to position themselves as expert and enthusiastic "AI managers" in their particular field. 

To adopt an accusatory or "therapeutic", stance to those who see the evil motivation behind AI is classic managerialism! 

The managerial way of dealing with dissent is that real world (and spiritual) problem is reframed into emotions... 

The problem is not the global Establishment-driven mandatory AI take-over;  the "real" problem is those who criticize or resist AI, or who decline to engage with it. "They must have something wrong with them". 

AI-resisters are assumed to be ignorant, weak, or frightened - and the managerial answer is they need to be educated, soothed, or mocked and shamed - until they fall in line, and do what is good for them.

If you regard yourself as a Christian, and are currently an advocate of AI - you are Missing The Obvious; and it is time to take a step back. It's never too late to repent, and all spiritual learning from experience is a positive gain. It's what we are here for, after all.     

 

Robert Graves as an extreme instance of "projection"

I have often written of Robert Graves, because - with GB Shaw - he was the first grow-n-up writer I engaged with after Lord of the Rings had opened the door to adult literature for me. Both Graves and Shaw were recommended by my father; Graves because of I Claudius and my burgeoning interest in history. 

I have - very gradually - come to realize that Graves was almost the opposite of what he claimed to be; but that his claims were believed (by me, and many others) because he was a superb (the word is intended descriptively) non-fictional prose writer. 

Graves claimed to be primarily a poet, a lyrical poet; in opposition to those well-connected and socially-endorsed Apollonian versifiers of intellect and scholarship that Graves contemptuously dissected and vilified in his critical writings. 

But in truth, Graves was not a lyrical poet, and was instead exactly the kind of poet his writings rejected. He was an upper class, academic, uninspired clique "poet" - one of a closed circle of mutual admiration and log-rolling.

Contrary to his own claims; he expended great energy on un-poetic/ anti-poetic activities such as wire-pulling, self-promotion, image-management and the like. He acted a part of an impoverished wild and Celtic bard; yet was actually a wealthy and influential - and hard-working - bohemian Norman; doing exactly the kind of stuff that bohemian Normans had been doing for generations.     

Outside this group of not-poets, none of Graves verses have achieve the spontaneous endorsement and love of those who are a part of the (now extinct, apparently) tradition of English lyrics (i.e. the Palgrave's Golden Treasury tradition) 

Graves has several great qualities - including an unexcelled prose style. In a sense he was a great critic of historical poetry - although his judgement of modern (20th century) poetry was so wrong as to be inverted.

But Graves was fraudulent in his nature; he lived a lie. At one level (although nothing like so deep as he claimed) Graves wanted to be something he was not, a poet; but pretended to be it anyway, and worked to persuade as many others as possible. 

In this respect he resembles Charles Williams - although Williams was lower middle class, not a Norman. Williams wanted to be a poet but wasn't; and expended great energies on literary, critical and educational activity to persuade others to endorse himself as a poet. And yet also, he did not want to be a poet as much as he pretended to himself, because he dissipated most of his time and energy on hack works - apparently undertaken so that he could have extra income for a more self-indulgent lifestyle. 

In sum; Graves was himself exactly the kind of pseudo-poet, fake poet; whose verse is not divinely inspired but instead the consequence of scholarship and intelligence; skeletal structures decorated with borrowed or stolen plumage taken from real poets.  

Graves's critical strictures were therefore projection; he publicly excoriated in others his own unacknowledged faults, deficiencies. And by this means Graves concealed from himself (?) and others  - his own innate nature, origins, workings, status, and stature.  

Graves's great advantage over his fellow not-real-poets came from his prose non-fiction - works such as The White Goddess, his brilliant and calculatedly-dishonest autobiography Goodbye to All That, or his critical lectures and essays such as The Common Asphodel. 

Critical and historical prose by which Graves created a mythology of which he was arbiter, and by which he was defined as a true muse-poet. 

It is, apparently, all there, all explained, all in-place... except for some actual real poems!

**

The lesson I draw from this is general. It is, I think, easy to be misled by propaganda, including self-propaganda; and especially when it emanates from a ruling class who control so much of the social institutions, and whose members often operate in mutually reinforcing cliques and factions. This misleading can go even so far as inversion: such that what is supposed is the opposite of what is actual. 

A supposedly beautiful person, building, or piece of music may actually be soulless ugliness; an alleged truth-breakthrough of science or medicine may actually be a tissue of invention and calculated;  distortion; a promoted pattern of virtue in a person (or institution) may be actual evil of a very extreme kind.  

And such inversions are often achieved by implication and projection; by such double-negations. Those who are most self-consciously the opposite of Good, have insider knowledge of the workings of that which opposes good; and can therefore provide convincingly detailed analyses of the projected evils of their enemies.

Political leaders, for instance; very often do in actuality precisely those things that they vocally and theoretically eschew; and absolutely do not do anything effective to deter or suppress those phenomena they rhetorically oppose. 

This is why it is so often observed that those active in charities against specific abuses; often themselves engage in exactly these abuses - and indeed use the organization and resources of their charities the better to prosecute these vices. 

In such a world as we now inhabit, this phenomenon of projection is very general in the high status officialdom and media; to the point almost of universality. 

Consequently, it is vital to look behind the rhetoric; to observe what is actually done (and not done) and consciously to deploy our innate capacity of intuitive inference. 

If God is a person, then God can be known (and if not - then not)

It seems important to Christians (particularly Christians) that we can know God. 

If God is a person, then we can know God. 

Even a young child can know a person; so anyone capable of knowing, should be able to know a personal God. 

But if God is not a person, then God cannot be known -- such a God can only be known about. 

The problem is that too many self-identified Christians say that their God is personal; while actually defining (as dogma) that God abstract, impersonal, alien from Men; a God of attributes (such as omniscience, omnipotence, etc).

But such a God is infinitely distinct from, different from, Men in His nature. 

Such a God is not in practice knowable. 

The problem therefore is that too-many Christians have (over the centuries) posited a de facto impersonal deity-of-attributes, instead of a knowable God - while simultaneously asserting the incompatible doctrine that God is personal. 

Therefore, they block any possibility of really knowing God - for us as individual persons. 

Such Christians will not even try to know God experientially. For them, any God that is knowable (as a young child might know his parents) is not what they mean by God. 

What is knowable by experience is (for such Christians, and by definition) not really the real-God; but instead some-thing or some-one else...

Some lesser (or opposed) spiritual being; or some delusion or projection of Man's subjectivity. 

We therefore need to become clear and explicit about what we regard as primary about God: is God primarily and essentially a real person of the same kind as human beings? Or not? 

If God is a real person, then this is a knowable God, a God we can experience as a person - a God knowable (in principle) by anyone - to the extent that another person is knowable. 

Or else God is some unknowable entity. 

This ought to be an easy discernment, because we have Jesus Christ who was divine and also a knowable human person; and because of the way Jesus spoke of and to God in a personal and knowing way, in the Gospels; and because of the way that Jesus recommended we personally relate to this personal God. 

Yet, of course, it all depends on how we read the Bible, how we regard church dogmas, doctrines, traditions and teachings, the nature of our theology. 

There are plenty of these sources in the Christian tradition that point to God as ultimately, truly, genuinely an impersonal deity - and which regard God as a knowable person as a naïve, ignorant, or arrogant approximation or error.  

So, as usual, in the end, we are thrown back on our own personal resources, our own capacity for discernment. 

But this is what we should be aware of: that it all comes down to each of us. 

And then we should take personal responsibility for our choice. 

What then is it to be? 

The knowable personal God? Or the unknowable abstract deity?

Because it makes a big difference; and ultimately it cannot be both. 

 

Every mortal life is a failure - Don't cope with it: solve it!

Every mortal life on this earth has-been and will-be a failure, whatever you do. 

Of course! 

This has been known since ancient days by whoever is most thoughtful and honest. So we should acknowledge this from the beginning!

And then...?

And then solve the problem - don't merely "cope" with it by some combination of ignorance, wishful-thinking, gullibility, and projection - tactics that are so, so common (on-line as well as IRL). 

Ignorance and wishful thinking combined are what make many people (perhaps especially young people) believe that some person, somewhere, is living (or once lived) a life that Is A Success. 

Well, if you don't know enough about other people, gullibly assimilate whatever illusions you are told, or desperately need there to be examples of life-success - then you can make yourself believe anything is real and true - or at least possible. 

(And yes - "I was that soldier!") 

Furthermore, there are plenty of people whose way of coping with their own inevitable failure is to try and convince other people of their own successfulness...

By variously dishonest and distorted forms of direct and indirect boasting/ hyping - whether by spoken word, verbally, by image, through publicity, propaganda &c.

And then there is projection of one's own failure onto others. I mean that whole tedious discourse of pointing and naming "losers" and "retards" etc. - as if it any kind of answer existential failure, to convince oneself (or persuade others) that Somebody-Else is an even bigger failure that you-yourself certainly are...  

Okay - we're all prone to one or other such lapses; but the way-out from such futility and sin is to recognize that your mortal life is genuinely justified only in terms of eternity; not justified over the next few hours, years, or decades. 

And the justification of your life will be different from that of anybody else alive or who ever lived; because your environment, nature and experiences are utterly unique; hence your life-tasks or quest must be unique. 

The Answer is therefore to frame the problem from the perspective of your own unique situation in the context of everlasting life to come. 

That's the only basis for a valid and effective "answer" to your own (otherwise inevitable) failure. 

The literally delusional nature of that resentment which motivates so much socio-political action

The thing about paranoid and persecutory delusions (that is; beliefs that are false, strongly held, powerfully-motivating, in practice irrefutable), is that they cannot be contradicted by further knowledge or experience. 

Once a person has decided that X is "out to get them", is-harming or will-harm them in some way; then the whole cognitive apparatus is orientated towards collecting evidence based on this assumption. The assumption shapes the entire realm of facts, interpretation and theory. 

This delusional mechanism happens at the individual level; but also the long-standing, and sometimes all-consuming, resentments of history are understandable in this way. e.g. In the world today one race may attribute its low socio-economic situation to the effect of racism; while another race infers the reality of massive and worldwide racism despite occupying the highest socio-economic status and power. 

Once the assumption of racism, or sexism, or "fill-in the word"-phobia has been made, and once a person (or race/ sex/ orientation) builds its motivational system around racism - there is no possible empirical evidence or argument that can shake this delusion. 

In a very fundamental sense, it does not matter whether there is some or even a great deal of truth to the delusion of being-persecuted. The point is that the delusion is a psychological and motivational fact, for which reality is an irrelevance. Once established, a change in reality does not change the delusion. 

Therefore, when delusional thinking underlies political movement (as it so often does), when one group is delusionally-convinced of the hostility of another; then there can - in principle - be no political solution to the problem. 

Even a "final solution" of eradication of the perceived threat will fail; because it will turn-out that the threat has not, after all, been eradicated - but continues in some covert or crypto- form! The currently influential concept of implicit racism is a clear example... Even after all perceptible racism has been eliminated, racism nonetheless remains - and all the more threatening because of its invisibility.   

I have termed these "theory of mind" delusions; because they are based on normal cognitive processes (i.e. they are Not psychotic) and instead are rooted in a false inference concerning the intent and motivations of others - but this false inference cannot be corrected by evidence, because other people's minds are not transparent, and can only be inferred indirectly. 

What this means (as I - apparently - never tire of saying!) is that recognizing and critiquing the basis of underlying assumptions is of extreme importance. 

We all base our understanding upon assumptions of a metaphysical kind, that can neither be proved nor refuted; therefore we have a profound individual responsibility to examine our own baseline assumptions about the world with respect to coherence, and "good-ness" - because some assumptions sustain a good life and society, while others are deeply and incurably pernicious in their effects.

And ultimately the spiritual victims of that resentment which is rooted in delusional thinking, is the resenter himself; because resentment is a sin that must (like all sins) be repented if we are to want to choose salvation. 

(...Because we cannot carry our resentments into Heaven, which is a place motivated only by Love: we must check our resentment in at the door - permanently. One who does not want to leave-behind all sins, does not want Heaven - but something-else instead.)

(...And, resentment is an especially pervasive and dangerous sin to modern Western Man; because it is widely inculcated, engineered, encouraged, rewarded - sometimes mandatory.)

In sum: theory of mind rooted assumptions are inevitable and ubiquitous forms of thinking; what makes an assumption "delusional" is essentially that it is an evil model of reality.

Even when delusional thinking has some factual basis, it is an evil; because it is a spiritually-false orientation of life - a projection of attention and motivation onto "other people" that denies our absolute personal responsibility for our own salvation and theosis.  

The harm of such delusions is primarily spiritual and related to eternal post-mortal life; although the material harms caused by this trap of thinking during this world and life may also be colossal.

 

Romantic Christianity is Not a "movement", nor does it aspire to form a denomination or church...

I have noticed that some traditionalist Christians project-onto "Romantic Christianity" their own notion that it aspires to be some kind of denomination, or church, or - at least - is a would-be organization seeking "recruits". 

Ah well... It does not seem to matter how often I or others make explicit what Romantic Christianity actually is about. 

Projection is, after all, rooted in self-understanding and self-motivation; and it is therefore impossible to overcome unless there is an honest act of empathy - and a wee-bit of sustained effort. 

To understand some-thing entails that we are motivated to... understand it! When our motivations are otherwise, then the inevitable outcome is that we will Not understand it; but will create some kind of bogeyman or straw-man suitable for us to reject, ridicule, or otherwise attack. 

And sufficient honest empathy to grasp what the other chap is actually saying, is - apparently - something that too-many traditional Christians find impossible - or at least undesirable.  

Passivity and refusal of responsibility: Why the Millennial Spiritual Transformation led us to hedonic materialism and value inversion

I have often written about the (approximate) millennium - when so many people felt there was an approaching spiritual breakthrough, yet the spiritual changes that actually happened were the opposite of spiritual. 

So that we now live in a shallowly hedonist, materialistic, short-termist, gullible world - more evil than ever in history, because of widespread and officially-media encouraged (increasingly even mandated) value inversion. 

I have suggested that the millennial spiritual change was a change of consciousness (endogenous, primary and presumably divinely-destined); by which that which had been innate, instinctive, spontaneous and (often) traditional - lost their grip on our minds. 

We found ourselves cut-off from our previous immersion in a kind of general consciousness; and therefore both gifted and forced to choose. 

We must now choose; whereas in the past our values came naturally: partly inbuilt, partly absorbed from society (and most human societies shared most of these values).

We became able to choose our fundamental values: but more, we were (and are) compelled to choose them. 

We might therefore have chosen to believe and live-by almost anything! 

We might have chosen some purposive, meaningful and hopeful assumptions and values! We might have chosen to live in divine creation, with a god/s who loved us personally, and took an interest in each of our lives. We might have chosen to believe in Jesus Christ who enabled us to have a resurrected and everlasting life in Heaven; by following Him on the other side of death...

 

But instead, overall and overwhelmingly; we of The West (in particular) rejected these possibilities. Going from my own responses and efforts, and what I have seen in others; here is my best guess as to what happened. 

Instead of making positive and hope-full choices, (and en masse) we chose rather to believe that both the reality of the universe, and our personal lives, are causally-determined and/or random; and that our own life will be objectively arbitrary, a temporary blip, and therefore objectively futile in the larger scheme of things. 

Consequently the mood of our times is one of fear, resentment at our situation; at best barely staving-off a suicide-seeking despair by continual distraction and projection.  

What went so badly wrong? 

Why did so many people choose so self-destructively, so miserably - to believe everything to be pointless? 

Why have so many people doubled-down on this decision?

 

Looking back at the end of the twentieth century and the hopes and expectations of a better and more spiritual world to come; I think the main reasons were passivity and the refusal of responsibility. 

The hope for a global spiritual transformation and awakening; were passive hopes that this would be done-to-us. Indeed, the idea of un-sought yet profound change was (and often still is) regarded as a hallmark of validity, authenticity. 

So people hoped and expected that everyone would be made more spiritual; everybody's consciousness would be raised-up by some external force or change. People's attitude was one of waiting for this to happen-to-them. 

The most we would need to do, for this to happen, would be to assent to its being-done: we would need to agree to being spiritually uplifted, but would not need to seek it out (and indeed, there was a feeling that to seek it out would be to open oneself to self-deception) . 

The other big factor is a refusal of responsibility. This operates at many levels, and may masquerade as humility, or public spiritedness. 

Thus people may decline to take full and personal responsibility for their spiritual and religious evaluations because they defer to "The Church" as contrasted with "mere little me". Meaning whatever church they already believe is true, must be right. Or when (as usual) the whole church is not united; then deference is due to whatever particular authority within that church is regarded as primary. 

Or personal responsibility for belief is set aside in favour of some supposedly pragmatic benefit; such as a belief that some-thing ought to be believed because it is beneficial for raising children; or perhaps regarded as beneficial for society at large or in the long-term. 

In other words; my sense is that some people shape their religious convictions around what they choose to sustain on the basis of what they believe to be a socially-helpful fiction; rather than taking ultimate responsibility, and then discovering that they have (apparently) thrown-out some valued social benefit.  

But this kind of deference and pragmatism are, ultimately, to put the cart before the horse; since (for Christians) what is most authoritative and/or beneficial can only be decided on the basis of real truth. 

And when we have pre-decided against taking personal responsibility for discerning and determining real truth, we are not able to evaluate if it is truly better to defer and decline, rather than to make a stand for our inner convictions. 

In sum; I think that there really was a change of consciousness that progressively (and over some years) swept-through The West (and maybe the world?) at around the millennium. 

This transformation pretty-much closed-off the remnants of that spontaneous, traditional and often-unconscious modes of religiosity which had been in-place throughout Man's known history; such that we can now only become spiritual by a conscious choice, by actively seeking, and on the basis of taking very personal spiritual responsibility. 

That means aiming to make ultimate choices from our-selves and for ourselves.

And only after that has been accomplished, should we turn our personal attention to potential social benefits.  

Some Romantic Christian "don'ts" about courtship and marriage

I find the "manosphere" - including the "Christian" sub-type - always and increasingly wrong-headed - and indeed harmful. 

So I thought I'd add my two-penn'orth in a way that is intended to be a negative corrective to some of the most blatantly false attitudes and aims. 

(I do not feel it would be right - would indeed be absurd! - for me to offer positive advice of a "what to do" kind; and indeed that would be counter-productive to the desired attitudes and aims.)

This is from a broadly Romantic Christian perspective (implicit in everything that follows) - which means it is rooted in my own intuition and experience for which I take personal responsibility; which implies that I will not "defend" my convictions, nor argue with those who disagree - because public "facts" and "evidence" depend on prior assumptions; and all logic and reason can do is infer the consequences of assumptions. 

One assumption, behind all this, ought not to need stating to Christians - but, of course, does (we are all sinners); and this is that Love is By Far the most important thing in marriage; as it is in this mortal life and in Heaven. 

(And Love is dyadic - as I have recently tried to explain.) 

If Love is not the underpinning of marriage, then we will be dealing with a public institution; and that means - in The West, now - marriage will be subject to a System that is evil overall and by intent. 

(Context: There are no guarantees in this mortal life; and your life is probably not "about" what you currently suppose it is about. We live in a divine creation - therefore (over the timescale of mortality - which is seldom in the immediate short-term) probabilities are not relevant to those fundamental matters crucial to the real purpose of your life; I mean, concerning matters where God would be expected to "intervene". In short; God will make happen what needs to happen.) 

Courtship begins with adolescence, and - as of this time and place - we all start-out from an adolescence characterized by intense self-consciousness and alienated consciousness: a situation of bad faith, hypocrisy and fantasy. 

We are hyper-aware of our-selves - but that "self" is compounded largely of fantasy (what we think we would like to be, what we want other people to be like). It is very seldom our real or true "primal self" indeed it is often an opposition or even inversion of that real self. 

We need to learn from this original situation, and work towards something better; which is:

Making our public persona a genuine manifestation of our real self. 

The other characteristic of modern adolescence, is also a consequence of our alienation. This is our conscious experience of being cut-off from spontaneous participation in the consciousness of other people; which means we tend to experience others (including women) in an un-real fashion - rather like characters in a novel, movie or play. 

Too often; because our the standard modern set-up of consciousness and culture: we engage our own fantasies our our-selves, with other-people's own fantasies of themselves (including women); and this must be overcome as much as possible. 

Furthermore; the above leads to the familiar situation in which relationships are reduced to a hypocritical war of attempted manipulations. 

(e.g. We attempt to project our fantasy persona (of what we think we want to be like) to manipulate a woman who may be doing the same: the "winner" is the one who succeeds in fooling the other into accepting the projected persona, and thereby successfully manipulating him or her. Meanwhile, the primal self is cut out-of-the-loop altogether.) 

For a Christian to accept that adolescent and alienated situation and work with it, rather than against it - and to claim this as Christian; is in bad faith - as well as hypocritical, dishonest, psychopathic (i.e objectivizing others and attempting to use them for gratification). 

It also prevents us learning from the experience of our actual situation in this mortal life. 

More explicitly, a marriage built on projection and manipulations is a marriage based on a lie. Furthermore, the lie intrinsic to a projected persona will tend to attract a woman who is attracted to that persona - which is not our real self: any resulting marriage will probably be rooted in dishonesty and deception.  

One very small positive suggestion to round-off: if you succeed in making your public persona a genuine manifestation of your primal self; then a woman (and you are only seeking one woman, a single wife) who is attracted to marry you on that basis (or something near to it, tending towards it) - will be more likely to love you for your real nature. 

If you hope for that marriage to be strong, lasting, loving - a basis in truth is surely for the best?

Note: To any new readers; check-out the guide to would-be commenters in the sidebar. 

Is it "wishful thinking" to believe in continued existence after biological death?

It is more accurate to talk of “continued existence” after biological death, rather than an “after life” – because, while all pre-modern societies agreed that death was not the end; there was a very wide range of fates described. 

Even the post-mortal fate of “reincarnation” – which has probably been the majority view through the whole of history, due to its dominance in the East, as well as the earliest known societies – has multiple, and incompatible, sub-types. 

I find it very striking, and important, that most ancient and historical societies that believed in continued existence after death, anticipated a more-or-less miserable post-mortal fate – Sheol and Hades for example, or Ragnarok. 

This tells me that “wishful thinking” was certainly Not a major motivation through most of history and in most places; and to suppose it was is just a typical piece of modern self-willed ignorance and "projection": a consequence of our endemic incapacity for coherent thinking. 

And the Good News of resurrection and Heaven after death for those who followed Jesus Christ, was surely the single most powerful reason why Jews and early pagans embraced Christianity. 

If pagans or Jews came to believe that Jesus was divine, and that Jesus’s promises were true, then it was a “no brainer” to become a Christian because it was already assumed that there would be continued existence after death; and Christianity offered a far better continued existence than any other religion.

Note: The above came from a comment I made to a meditation on death by Bonald at the Orthosphere. Bonald responded to my comment thus: 

"Even Christianity and Islam only hold out heaven as a possibility, not a certainty. I can’t think of any religion whose idea of the afterlife matches what anyone would wish for". 

In other words; if religions really did manipulate the masses by offering to fulfil wishful thinking, then they could do a much better job of giving people exactly what they most wanted after death, and making this reward easier, surer, and more straightforward to obtain. 

If wishful thinking really was the basis of after-life claims; then it would be expected that religions would compete in offering better and better lives beyond death, on easier and easier terms. 

But this does not happen - to any significant degree, and not between the major religions.

This is one reason why I tend to believe that - in some overall sense - all religions are broadly accurate in terms of their claims for the after-life; because (within constraints) God gives people "what they ask for" or "what they want" after death. 

(What they want/desire provided subjectively, in his experience, for that person - not necessarily or usually in terms of what he wants for other persons: God does not sacrifice his children to each other. ) 

Damnation is therefore, in its essence, inducing an individual to ask-for and want damnation after his death; and annihilation is what (apparently) many or most modern people ask for and want, following death. 

Projection is the New Normal! Or, how to infer what They are doing...

The handy psychological term "projection" derives from the nonsensical world of Sigmund Freud's psychodynamics - but, albeit for extremely different reasons than Freud suggested,  the actual phenomenon of accusing others of one's own motivations contains a great deal of validity. 

The reason for projection is that we use "our-self" - how we see the world, how we are personally motivated, what we are trying-to-do - as the basic model by which we understand "other people" and the world generally. 

Of course, knowing this phenomenon, it is possible to do otherwise - or even do the opposite; but the level of self-awareness in the managerial and leadership class of The West is... well, it is extremely low. 

The people running things are essentially either bureaucrats - obediently trying to please their bosses; or else psychopaths - self-centred and short-termist types - who don't care enough about other people to realize that they may be differently motivated. 

Therefore, unless they are continually watched and controlled; They will continually be giving themselves away, will repeatedly be revealing their real and underlying motivations, by their criticisms and accusations against others. 

That is what I mean by the term "projection". 

Examples abound!

During the birdemic - anyone who objected to the state bureaucrats and media Moghuls was labelled as a science denier; while the accusers were simply inverting or throwing-out a century of medical knowledge concerning epidemics and respiratory viruses. 

Those who objected to mass pecking with an unnecessary, ineffective and dangerous agent; were labelled as being dangerous gamblers with the public health! Parent who cared about the safety of their children, were labelled as selfish and short-termist - by those whose interests (money, jobs, status, promotion) was enhanced by pushing the peck. 

When the Fire Nation war came along; the inversions were legion. The Fire Nation were accusing of provoking the war, deliberate escalation, suffering massive casualties from "human wave" tactics, of imminently running-out of munitions, etc (continuing) - all of which were knowingly being done by the side making the accusations. 

More generally; They accuse anyone who notices, publicizes and opposes the explicit (UN Agenda 2030, Great-Reset) and massively-documented for decades global plan for totalitarian omni-surveillance and micro-control of everyone except an "elite" of (implicitly) wise and just leaders; variously, as "climate denialist" and as a "conspiracy theorist". 

In a nutshell; Their projections are an insight into their own natures, their motivations, their intentions. 

We can easily understand the way that They regard us, and regard the world, by observing that of which They accuse their enemies. 

**

Explanatory and Contextual Note: 

It might be asked how it is possible to escape from the accusation of projection - after all, it could and will be said that someone like myself is also projecting ("You are projecting!". "No, it's You who are projecting!... &c."- Maybe I am projecting even more and worse than Them! 

That is what inevitably (because intrinsically) happens to someone whose explanatory model goes no deeper than "psychology" - one who uses psychology as their ultimate and bottom-line explanatory model... Everything is ultimately reduced to "a matter of opinion", which itself reduces to whoever has the greatest power and influence... And we are back to square one! 

The "answer" is that we all need to become explicitly aware of our own most-basic (metaphysical - including religious) assumptions concerning the nature of reality. In public discourse, we can and should expect that such assumption be made clear. 

Metaphysical assumptions are the true bottom-line and ultimate distinctions; while psychology (or politics, or economics, or whatever) is only ever a proximate explanation; only valid insofar as the metaphysical assumptions are known, and are coherent. 

In this regard; They will not make clear their metaphysical assumptions, and will indeed deny the validity of metaphysics - stoutly maintaining all discourse on a surface and "sound bite" level of emotive manipulations and assertions about "evidence" and "facts" - which They can easily control. 

Projection is such a problem - here and now - exactly because the mainstream, official, mandatory modern discourse is a futile cycle of ungrounded assertions; that exclude metaphysics; and that operates entirely at the surface and proximate level, and with sound-bite (two step) logic. 

In a nutshell: the leadership/ managerial class are themselves slaves to projection because (by assumption) they see no deeper than psychology and its manipulations; and all possible depth is excluded by the anti-spiritual, atheistic materialism/ positivism/ scientism/ reductionism that permeates (and is enforced by) the whole official world. 

Recognizing Final Participation - inspiration plus personal creativity

If we assume that because Final Participation (FP) is our destiny, what God wants from us at this stage of things; then perhaps it ought not to be impossibly difficult or rare. Perhaps we should expect to see Final Participation in our own lives; and in those of at least some people whose work is recoded in the public domain. 

Maybe the difficulty in locating Final Participation is in recognizing it as something genuinely different and new, and therefore misclassifying it under old categories - because the old categories are all we know.  

To clarify; Final Participation is an engagement with reality, in which we bring to bear our own creativity - to participate in creating. 

This could be participation with divine creation (this is what I understand to happen in Heaven); or participation with another person's created work - perhaps someone from the past. 

This can serve as an illustration - taking the example of JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (LotR). 

Two widely known categories of engagement with life, with works; could be termed 'projection' and 'channeling' - and I will contrast these with Final Participation.

Projection

Projection is not intentionally a participation, because it describes what happens when a reader of Tolkien projects his own concerns onto the book. 

This seems to be the usual practice of Tolkien mass-fandom. Except minimally; the projecting fan-reader does not experience what Tolkien himself felt or intended; but instead uses the book (selectively and distortingly) as fuel for his own interests. 

For example such a fan might read LotR as-if it were a "sword and sorcery" novel, being interested only by the fights, magic, monsters, spectacle etc; and either not-noticing, skipping-over or forgetting the other material. Or, to judge by the content of one genre of fan-fictions; quite a few readers even seem to read Tolkien in a subversive fashion, as fuel for their personal sexual fantasies.   

Therefor projection is not a form of 'participation' except very minimally, unconsciously, unintentionally; because the intent is to impose oneself upon the-other. 

Channeling

The ideal behind the form of participation I am calling channeling, is that the reader become so totally immersed in the work that he identifies completely with the author. 

This is a contemplative, not creative, ideally-non-participating form of engagement - because the ideal is that the reader be passive, absorptive, and reflective. The reader seeks to lose-himself-in the work 

This is, indeed, the form that has been called 'inspiration' and which used-to be (in the pre-modern era) the form that so-called 'creativity' took. The 'creator' was supposed to be a clear-channel for God/ The Gods/ The Muses - and himself to play no personal role in what emerged.

In other words; with channeling, with inspired work, the ideal is non-participation. 

This channeling is therefore a particular example of what Owen Barfield termed Original Participation - which is the primal relationship with the world of the child or the early tribal Man. It does have elements of participating; but only in the secondary sense that we are then (and almost fully) engaged with the world, with life, with other beings. But (when channeling works) we are so immersed in the flow of external things, that while our own participation in them is inevitable, it is intentionally minimal.  

Perhaps the ideal of the medieval sculptor working on one of the great cathedrals might serve as an illustration. He is contented to be anonymous, and forgotten, and to work in exactly the same style as every other mason - because his personal nature should 'stand-aside' and should not have anything to do with the product. I have heard of musicians (conductors and soloists) who regard their interpretations likewise: they try to identify so closely with the composer that they lose-themselves in the perormance altogether. 

In terms of Tolkien, this is perhaps the ideal of the best kind of literary critic of the old school: he attempts to expound Tolkien, and not to 'interfere' by interjecting personal views or evaluations. In particular, he is very wary of 'projection', which he regards as itself a gross and unscholarly error, leading to distortions such as anachronism.  

Final Participation

For an example of FP we need to go to Tolkien himself, in his writing of Lord of the Rings; and to that activity which he termed "subcreation". 

This - I suggest - is the relationship between JRRT and his 'source material' - which came from the author's engagement with his academic subject of philology (the language-focused study of old texts), and his other concerns such as mythology, and the matter of England. 

I believe that Tolkien not only had a deep immersion in his sources; but that he also went beyond immersion in his 'sources'. That is; JRRT went beyond the contemplative-passive processes of channeling, and brought his own creativity to bear on the material that he was experiencing from-within. 

There are innumerable examples. Tolkien's elves are rooted in Icelandic, Norse, Anglo-Saxon, Celtic material from his philosophical studies - the words for elves, their histories, their implications (as discussed by Tom Shippey in Roots and Branches); but Tolkien also brought a deep and intense personal interest and concern with elves - which he envisaged as an ideal type of certain aspects of Men; blessed with innate health and extreme longevity, greater love of the earth, greater skills and intelligence, and magical powers. 

And yet Tolkien felt a need to explain (to himself, primarily) how and why it was that elves were (more or less) estranged from, then replaced by, Men - who became rulers of this earth; despite that Men seemed inferior, overall. 

To generate acceptable answers to these (and other) questions about elves, problems about myth, England and so forth; Tolkien needed to go beyond existing material and theories: he needed to enlist his own creativity. 

I consider Tolkien's writing of LotR as a publicly-available example of Final Participation. 

In the first place JRRT was inspired by many, already existing, source materials; and had immersed himself in these materials so that he could, when needed or desired, 'channel'/ expound/ explain these materials in their own terms, in the context of the times and places of their composition. 

But in the second place Tolkien wanted to do more than just passively be-inspired-by; he wanted actively to generate something new by bringing to bear from-himself to participate with that which others had created.  

This was (pretty much) what he termed subcreation. 

To generalize, I think it would therefore be reasonably accurate to state that:

Final Participation = Inspiration plus Personal Creativity 

As such, examples can be generated from other areas of the arts, sciences etc. The pianist Glenn Gould did not just 'channel' Bach (as some have wrongly claimed), because, although he was steeped in Bach's creative mind and intent - Gould also added his own creativity, to make something participated. A synthesis, rather than recreation. 

A creative scientist of genius must, of course, build upon the valid science of his precursors; but as well as selecting from among the already-existing scientific literature that he deeply understands in its own terms (which might be said to 'inspire' him); and as well as extrapolating this work; the great scientist will bring something new, something original: from himself - in order to make a qualitative breakthrough.  

In sum; I hope the above might help make clearer what is meant by Final Participation; and to help recognize when it occurs in our own lives. 

The ultimate uselessness of Wittgenstein: Ludwig Wittgenstein by Miles Hollingworth (2018)

I came across a recent book - Ludwig Wittgenstein, by Miles Hollingworth Oxford University Press, 2018), via a podcast interview entitled "Wittgenstein as mystic" - which I found intriguing in several ways; including the Holligworth seemed rather more interesting and personally committed than the usual run of academic philosophers. 

Consequently, I got hold of and read the book with pretty intense concentration; and, at first, was stimulated and excited by the sense of some Big Thing emerging throughout. 

But, in the end, I felt very let-down. The book seemed to promise much, some kind of break-out into something free and creative and beyond the constraints of the usual... But it delivered me back to the same-old/ same-old world of mainstream academia and its solid linkage to The System - as evidenced by the insidious and soul-sapping inversional values that underlie this book, and lurk behind everything mainstream. 

It set me to reflecting, yet again, about that unusual quality in Wittgenstein; the way that he seems to hold-out the possibility of a genuinely alternative answer and 'escape' - and yet does not. And to wondering why this is.

My conclusion is that - for all his rigorous skepticism about The System (about the dominant and superficially-compelling discourse of logic, mathematics, science etc.), and for all the mysticism of that world of the unspeakable, the religiousness of that which lies beyond or behind what can be said (etc) - the whole of Wittgenstein takes-place within the core assumptions of "Western Philosophy", and so of course it cannot escape the implications of Western Philosophy. 

One needs to go deeper than W. went in order to see where we are, and thereby become inwardly free from it. 

In other words, we need to go as deep as our primary assumptions concerning the nature of reality - that is, metaphysics; and Wittgenstein shared the deep aversion to doing this which characterized his era - indeed the refusal to do this. Something which has, to very varying degrees and in different domains, characterized Western philosophy since at least Ancient Greek times when several core assumptions became habitual.  

And Hollingworth needs to go deeper than he does. He mistakes a degree of detachment from the career structures of academia for intellectual and spiritual independence. Yet it is again and again clear that he is himself a (partly explicit, more fully implicit) supporter and sustainer of several aspects of the core and mainstream 'liberalizing' agenda of the globalist-leftist-materialist System.

The explanatory 'climax' of the book purports to be a distinction between physical and mental philosophy, thinking and doing (which is itself a vast metaphysical assumptions!) and a series of reflections of sex/sexuality in relation to Wittgenstein. 

This whole section rings false, is full of strong but wrong assertions, inconsistencies, and - this is the problem - it is bounded by the very recent and local sex-conceptualizations of political correctness... Thus the foundation of the thesis is just A Mess. And since the key explanation is an incoherent mash-up, the whole of the rest of the books structure retrospectively collapses into less than the sum of its parts.

Wittgenstein's mysticism is ultimately a oneness mysticism, because his assumption is that God must be one, and one who created everything from nothing (ex nihilo) - so that everything is of God and one. 

The failure is that W. does not recognize the asserted oneness and this nature of creation as assumptions - therefore he fails to acknowledge metaphysics.

W. also shares the assumption that the world is made of Things as well as Beings; Things that include all manner of physical abstractions (relating to such as matter, forces, fields, and their mathematical descriptions). 

For instance, one major discussed philosophical example of 'freedom' is making moves on a chessboard: i.e. an abstract mathematical game of un-alive pieces within the bounds of a fixed and unified 'world'. Such a model begs all the vital questions concerning freedom. 

The failure is that to assume un-aliveness as ultimate to reality has such downstream consequences of that Beings, such as ourselves, are ultimately constrained by the un-alive. We are regarded as dwelling among un-aliveness. Un-aliveness even permeates the understanding of God (since Wittgenstein's assumed God, as with many mainstream Christians, must be the ultimate source of un-aliveness). 

By my understanding; a fundamental (albeit common!) misunderstanding of Christianity is almost inevitable given such assumptions. Indeed Wittgenstein's reflections of Christ and Christianity are ethically focused, and to do with conduct in this life - as evidenced by W.'s focus on Tolstoy's version of Christianity. Such entails a Great Deal of moral agonizing about the human condition, and its paradoxical impossibilities. 

That Christianity - on different metaphysical assumptions - might instead be about everlasting life versus death, resurrection versus spirit; and love as creation... such cosmic transformations are out-with the scheme created by Wittgenstein's ultimate assumptions.

In all this Wittgenstein is not distinctive nor unusual, but absolutely mainstream within Western philosophy. He brought a new quality to the conversation, as I say a kind of agonized and confessional quality; and the feeling (partly from his own subjectivity, partly asserted) that he was cutting deeper and making a fresh start on thinking - but this is ultimately an illusion.  

(The fact of Wittgenstein's immediate and sustained success among high status and upper-class British intellectuals of a modernists, anti-Christian (pro-evil) type (e.g. the Bloomsbury group and the Cambridge Apostles) - all this ought to be a red flag waving against the idea of Wittgenstein as a genuinely effective mystical or Christian thinker.   

Therefore, once again (and this has happened to me three or more times before), I leave this latest encounter with Wittgenstein once again regarding him as a rather fascinating character, indeed a somewhat addictive character! -- but one whose actual work is ultimately deeply-conventional and therefore useless to our fundamental needs here-and-now: not just useless but (due to its implicit promises) actually misleading.

Wittgenstein famously stated that the philosopher's job ought to be show a trapped fly the way out of a fly-bottle. The bottle was a container into which the fly had strayed (e.g. in search of aromatic food, being used as bait) but once inside the fly could not escape. Instead, he just buzzed about in a panic. To me, this seems like projection - in that Wittgenstein and his philosophy has served as a fly-trap for many people - both at the time, and since. His personality and work is baited with the promise of autonomy of thinking and escape from system; and the philosophy offers certain, limited, satisfactions. Yet once inside the Wittgensteinian bottle - all genuine escape routes are self-blocked by unexamined assumptions. 

So Wittgenstein will be discovered, eventually, to be as useless and misleading as is the work of the entirety of Western Philosophy - being - as it is - rooted in metaphysical assumptions that are unnoticed, denied; or regarded not as assumptions but as necessary truths of existence. 

Such is our situation. 

The reason for the intractability of our civilizational decline, and why the causes of decline are defended, sustained and abetted (at various levels) by Almost Everybody; is exactly that our ideological/ philosophical roots lie so deep... 

As deep as roots can be, which is as deep as our primary assumptions concerning the nature of reality.  

Note: I should give credit to the fact that - for about two-thirds its length - I was pretty gripped by Hollingworth's account of Wittgenstein's life and work. As academic books go, it is a superior product.

Yet the whole basis of the book is that it is more than just another academic book on Wittgenstein: thus it engages in various 'breaking the fourth wall' and Tristram Shandy-esque strategies of authorial insertion. These are seemingly expressive of sincerity and a perspective from 'life' rather than 'career'. 

But, by the end and overall, I felt instead the gravitational pull of the ordinary academic values, and the modern-Western socio-political assumptions into which academia is now locked by bureaucratic structures - as well as the pervasive leftism of the intellectual class. This constrains all official instances of 'rebellion' by the need to ingratiate oneself to the ethical arbiters of The System - of which the Oxford University Press is an integral element! 

So the initial promise - and the scattered and stimulating insights - only made worse my frustration at the eventual let-down: as if I had been 'taken for a ride', fallen for a line of speil... 

The difference between old-fashioned discernment, and Romantic Christianity

There is a sense in which all Christians have always practiced "discernment". 

That is, Christians could only seldom - and never continuously - live in complete and perfect obedience to The Church (whatever that church might be). Because the situations of life are specific, while rules are general; and because there was always a degree (sometimes a very large degree) of disunity (or at least ambiguity) among the statements and instructions of church authorities. 

So people might not know exactly what to do, and would need to make up their own minds; or people would have to decide who to obey when contradictory instructions were given - and so forth. 

But this kind of discernment acknowledged that ultimately - legitimate authority lay externally from each Man - in the church - mediated by the church, not the individual person; and that therefore discernment was being used to discover the true nature of that authority. 

The core purpose of ancient unity was a life of obedience. 

This ancient kind of discernment was essentially passive and partly unconscious - indeed, it had something of the quality of an 'unfortunate necessity'. Ideally, as little discernment as possible would be necessary in life - because church guidance was clear and unified, and people would be naturally obedient. 

And when life did not change much from one generation to another: such an ideal could be approached closely. 

Indeed, the ideal of ancient discernment was to forget itself, and to assume that the Christian life was a life of simple obedience to the church; unchanging and clear guidance for in navigating-through the recurrent, repeating, problems of human life. 

At all costs, awareness of the discernment of individual persons was not supposed to extend to a sense of active responsibility for one's salvation and conducting life. The desired discernment was externally-directed, towards discovering the true-source of guidance within the church - and was not striving to be self-aware.   

The consciousnesses of modern Men are differently constituted; and this affects both laymen and priests, those within and outside the churches: all churches.

Overwhelmingly; Modern Man experiences himself (whether he likes it or not) as starting from the situation of being cut-off from the institutions of his society. His condition is one of alienation.

He no longer takes institutions for granted, can no longer un-consciously follow their guidance, can no longer actually-be passive and obedient merely. 

This alienation, cut-offness, is now simply taken for granted as the basis of our society, in multiple forms of discourse. It does not need arguing - it is just assumed as a situation, as a problem. 

Life is experienced as choices; and these choices impinge on consciousness - we choose and are aware that we choose. 

Such awareness permeates modern discourse - it is the subject matter of the vast bulk of modern stories and narratives - such that we simply take it for granted. Yet to experience life as multiple choices is recent, modern; and was not an aspect of ancient human life (except maybe for a very few exceptional individuals). 

What this modern consciousness means is that the ancient discernment is not possible. 

I would also argue that ancient discernment is not desirable either; that ancient discernment is now "not a good thing" - but the fact of its impossibility is one reason why striving for it is not desirable.

But what we have nowadays instead of ancient discernment is self-blinding and dishonesty. In other words people who claim to be anciently-discerning are actually obscuring their own acts of conscious discernment (perhaps by not-thinking, by distraction, by projection...) - or else they know they are consciously discerning but lie about the fact - maybe for exploitative, maybe for manipulative reasons.   

At the very least; ancient discernment is nowadays something chosen, rather than something spontaneous; it is something we are aware or doing (or, more often, as aspiring to do) rather than something so natural that it Just Happens. 

What Romantic Christianity does is to recognize the change in consciousness; and to assume (from an understanding of world history, and the nature of the divine plan) that this change was of-God. 

In other words; modern man's consciousness is different because (and in so far as) God wants it that way - for our own good, for the good of our actual, specific souls; as these were incarnated into this mortal life. 

God wants for us to make conscious choices, and to know we are doing so: and to take responsibility for doing so! 

God does not want for us not-to-think, to distract or suppress awareness; to pretend that 'nothing has happened' and that the religious life Now is the same as for a Catholic peasant in the Christian-permeated (no-alternatives) societies of the Middle Ages. 

God does not want us to be dishonest with ourselves or with others - even (especially!) when this dishonesty is self-justified as a "necessary lie" for the public good... Does not want that we try and pretend that our Christian life can be, or is; one of 'simple obedience' to a church whose ultimate goodness and authority should simply be taken for granted. 

Surely? God wants for us to be honest: therefore wants us to be honest about our situation - and honest that it is what it is. 

Nowadays discernment is far more necessary, more frequent; and far more conscious - than ever in the past; and this Just Has overturned the earlier ideal of the Christian life as being one of passive, unconscious, self-forgetful obedience to an external institution - A Church.  

We now actually-have (like it or not) an active role in chiseling-out our own path through life. We are aware of being personally responsible for many discernments about which we could, in the past, have been unconscious. 

Our situation is what it is, our discernment ought to be active, we should take full responsibility for the necessary and frequent choices of Christian living, and we should strive-for, and explicitly acknowledge, the fullest-possible consciousness of all this! 

That is perhaps one fundamental assumption of "Romantic Christianity": deliberately taking conscious and personal responsibility for that which - in the past - were often matters of obedience to an external (ideal) institution.  

When absurd projection becomes routine - People behave as if lies were specific, while truth is systemic.

The term 'projection' was originally given a false causal explanation in terms of nonsense psychodynamics; but the phenomenon is real, and the term is useful. 

People really do accuse others of their own faults, their own illicit desires, their own misdemeanors - and on the perfectly understandable grounds that their own character and behaviour is their 'model' for how the world works. 

So, projection may be perfectly sincere - the projector may really believe that his enemy is exactly the same as himself, as bad as himself - only worse, for not being the projector, because he is The Enemy. 

Currently The West, the global totalitarian leadership class; is accusing its enemies of its own evils all over the place, in an automatic and routing fashion, and without regard to plausibility. 

And getting away with it, being believed... Insofar as anybody really believes anything in this post-God culture: belief is now a passive, externally-driven, and labile state.

Believed because The System echoes back the lies from all directions; especially the mass media reflect back the evil assumptions and hostile projections of the political leadership. 

The masses realize that the leadership class are liars; and the masses even 'notice' (i.e. have pointed-out by the mass media) a few of the more trivial lies of their leaders. 

But the assumption behind all this activity is that liars are the exception among leaders; rather than the truth that only those who will lie to order are eligible for leadership positions. And that while there are specific lies devised, pushed and sustained by The System - these happen against a background of valid assertions, and good motivations. 

People cannot, or will not, assume that The System as a whole is evil motivated, or that it is anti-human. They cannot grasp (and find the idea too despair-inducing) that the leadership class uses the masses, cares functionally-nothing for any peoples or nations, for 'rights' or 'freedoms', for 'law' or 'peace'. 

Any such private sentiments (which are never strong in those selected for system-leadership) are stripped away (if not simply sold) by the realities of wielding and retaining power in an evil-orientated System.  

To notice such matters is regarded as cynical, conspiracy theorizing, and despair-inducing; because in a this-worldly sense all these are true. 

If this mortal life and world are all that there is - then it is needlessly cruel to point-out miserable truths - especially when nothing effective can be done to correct or better them them: at least, nothing in a mainstream, socio-political, materialist way. 

If mortal life is everything and socio-political reality is that we are ruled by heartless, selfish, and cruel people - then maybe it really is better to be unaware of the truth - better not to think about such things? 

This is the 'therapeutic' view of human life, a variant of utilitarianism (in which morality is calibrated against an hedonic calculus) - which traces ethics back to human psychology; and regards the primary duties as reducing suffering, and enhancing gratification.

If this life and world are everything, and yet that everything is hostile and cruel; then it is probably best to regard our discourse as a palliative therapy - the kind of terminal health care provided to those who who are dying, who cannot be cured - but can be helped to suffer less, and maybe experience a few more pleasures. 

In other words; the prevalent morality is one of: "eat, drink, and be merry; because tomorrow we die". 

In such a situation; one who points-out the situation - who increases conscious awareness of the miserable nature of life - is an enemy. 

Only if our world view is rooted in the eternal, and if we our-selves are confident both of our post-mortal salvation, a job-to-do while we still liv. Only when others may share this life-beyond-life if (and only if) they understand and choose spiritual truth... Only then is it worthwhile looking beyond the therapeutic perspective - and to matters of reality. 

Christianity is (or should be) a religion of inequality

Equality is supposed to be 'a Good Thing', but isn't; as William Wildblood demonstrates in a forthcoming book - which I have had the privilege to read in manuscript.

As well as equality being a Bad Thing to aim-at; indeed, equality is not even a real thing. 

The word and concept of equality is, of course, very vague in terms of its actual (i.e. rhetorical) usage, which resembles an hypothetical black box, more than a useful category; but 'equality' can usually validly be reduced to an assertion of sameness... 

Either an assertion that some-particular-things are, or ought to be, The Same. 

But are things ever the same? 

Well, in some sciences, especially the physical science, science there has been an assumption of sameness among things like particular chemicals or atomic particles. Yet even here, the progress of science has usually been towards finding differences among things that were originally assumed to be the same: for instance all atoms were originally assumed to be identical - even between different elements and substances. And in biology, an assumption of sameness is much less frequent, and soon breaks-down, the closer we look. 

Perhaps the only genuine sameness is in mathematics (and formal logic), where the sameness is axiomatic and wholly abstract: a matter of definition. 

But mathematics is not the real world. 

What about in religion? Well, so far as I know, there has never been any actual, viable religion where all people are judged to be the same. 

In the past, human differences were often simplified (for practical purposes) into categories, or classes of Men - but even there, there was always provision for making distinctions. 

e.g. Priests may have been in a different category than non-priests; but priests were internally differentiated in many way - even down to the individual level.  

But what of a divine level? Again, it seems there has never been equality of divine regard of Men - but sometimes this has been simplified into categorical levels of classes of divine esteem; which often reflected social organization.  

So where does the idea of equality come into religion? Well, sometimes there is an equality of 'destination' in terms of post-mortal, afterlife fate. In some religions it seems that all Men will (sooner or later) end-up in the same situation. 

For instance, the Ancient Greeks and Hebrews seem to have regarded the afterlife of all Men as a an underworld of demented ghosts: Hades/ Sheol. 

Or the Eastern Religions Hinduism and Buddhism have sometimes envisaged all Men as sharing the same fate of eventually (after varying numbers of incarnations) being re-absorbed back into the divine, from which they came - at least, that goal was the same for all Men. 

Christianity has always divided the destinations between at least two (not-equal) possibilities: Heaven and Hell; and this has sometimes been elaborated by additional possibilities such as Limbo and Purgatory; and by differentiation of fates and roles within both Heaven and Hell (e.g. the circles of Hell, or the layered Mormon 'Heavens') - sometimes differentiation by categories of people, sometimes at the individual level. 

The main assertion of, and emphasis upon, 'equality' in Christianity is almost-wholly modern (coming after the emergence of political leftism, with is promiscuous talk of actual or aspirational 'equality'), and is related to God's supposed attitude of Love to all Men being absolutely 'equal'. 

But God's 'equal' love can only be entertained as a possibility either if Love is regarded in an extremely abstract way (because in real life, including in the Bible itself, love is always differentiated and selective) -- and/or if equality is redefined into a very vague notion that because God Loves all His children, this 'must' (or should) mean that God (somehow, for some reason) loves all his children in exactly the same way and to exactly the same degree...

This supposed 'equality' has been spun into highly abstract assertions of God's absolute and unconditional - therefore equal - Love; rather as if God's love was an evenly-distributed gas, or a radiation of completely equal intensity that bathed all Men without distinction. 

To my mind, this (frequent) attempt to express God's Love as equal and unconditional is probably an alien import to Christianity; either derived from politics; or apparently derived by back-projection from the (not Christian - but nonetheless held by some self-identified Christians) idea of post-mortal Men all returning to be assimilated-into the divine...

Maybe the argument hinges on the idea that if all Men end-up equally, then this happens because God regards all Men as the same. 

At any rate, these two ideas of the supposedly unconditional and universally-equal Love of God, and a Nirvana-like life after death destination of all Men - seem to go-together. 

For a Fourth Gospel derived and focused Christianity; I would regard it as obviously wrong to regard equality in Christianity as a Good Thing. 

Christians ought instead to be trying to understand God's plans for men in the most differentiated and individualistic way possible; much as the ideal attitude of earthly human parents to their children is one that recognizes each child as individual, unique; and needing (ideally) to be regarded as such in terms of their destined and best path through mortal life and beyond. 

Ideal earthly parents would not love all their children 'equally'. Neither would they love their children in a rank-order. Instead they would 1.) love all their children, and 2.) love and value each child in a particular and unique way to correspond with his or her individuality.  

In other words, it is high time Christians set-aside 'equality-talk'; and began to recognize that the traditional categories and classes of past-Christianity were an imperfect representation of what is actually - from God's point of view - an individual-level scheme of Man's salvation and theosis.  

Demonic spite and resentment, on the cusp of nihilistic destruction

The recent act of European energy-supply sabotage - taken in its actual context - impressed me as one of the most shocking and blatant acts of calculatedly nihilistic destruction of which I am aware. 

That 'The West' is (here and now) capable of such a thing, defensible only by ridiculous lies and absurd projection. Yet exactly that insultingly-ridiculous absurdity was solemnly asserted throughout the globalist mass media and by (not-) 'national' (not-) leaders; and (apparently) believed by the unfathomably idiotic masses of the West, including those most affected! 

Well... in such a world, nothing of evil is ruled-out; almost anything could happen - even when it does not materially benefit anyone (any human, that is - which is the clue). 

I always expected that if the side of God, creation and The Good ever came to threaten the 'progress' of atheist-materialist-leftism; then the ultimate response of the dominant Establishment would be self-destructive; an attempt to blow-up The Whole Thing, and/or bring it tumbling-down. 

So, what is stopping the powers of destructive evil? Why are we still here; why are you reading this?

Well, those humans who are utterly in thrall to demons and in positions of power, are still in a minority; and must work with the consent of a larger assemblage of the greedy, the depraved, the power-crazed and the stupid. 

Destructive evil must still be cloaked in excuses and rationales - albeit the cloak may be flimsy and semi-transparent. 

These cloaking rationales do not need to be plausible by the standards of the past; because Men's minds - Men's thinking and insight - are by-now thoroughly corrupted by many decades of pervasive and rising materialism-atheism-leftism; willingly invited-into Men's hearts, and there nurtured.

But it is easy to see the cloaking process at work in the Western media (and, apparently, among the Establishment). 

Simply by talking incessantly about taboo possibilities, their shock and revulsion value is diminished by habituation. The once-unthinkable is actually thought; the once-undoable is modelled, and its pros and cons weighed. 

The clarity of stark moral simplicities is buried beneath (permitted) wrangling over (permitted) details, 'evidence' and rival models. 

The process is long-established in the media, in relation to all of the Big Lies upon which  the major strategies of evil are based (CO2 climate environmentalism, mass migration, antiracism etc). Stark, simple false assertions are buried beneath irrelevant quibbles over the 'validity' (and 'authority') of proximate 'data'. 

Anyway, there is no doubt in my mind that there is a powerful element in The West who are currently actively-engaged in the necessary 'manufacture of consent' among those with the necessary power; to escalate the Fire Nation versus West conflict into the most destructive possible conflagration. 

This goal of Mega-Destruction ASAP; is not 'for' any reason, other than that is what these individuals want; destruction is what gives them personal gratification. It comes from sheer spitefulness, triggered by their loss of global control. 

They do not need to gain from the destruction in terms of (for example) wealth, power, status or lust. They gain from the destruction of their 'enemies' - and that is enough. Such is the nature of spite. 

Indeed, when spite has mastery, individuals will self-harm, or even self-destruct*, in order to inflict suffering on those they most resent. 

(*e.g. This is seen in some suicides; and is indeed sometimes explicit in suicide messages or notes. "I'll kill myself, and then she'll be sorry." "You drove me to do this, and I want you to feel guilty for the rest of your life.")

The very fact that the Fire Nation has brought even a glimmer of hope to a world that - just two and a bit years ago - seemed to be caught inescapably in the grip of a unitary global totalitarianism that explicitly desired the full impoverishment, omni-surveillance and micro-control of nearly-all the population; is what fuels this spiteful destructiveness. 

We are seeing the very first movements of a tidal change against the core agenda of evil. Seemingly, the tide has actually turned, and events are (in totality, overall) moving against the totalitarian-progressive-leftist trend in several substantial parts of the world, for the first time in decades. 

This is, of course, existentially intolerable for those who have come to believe in the irresistible progression of their kind of inversional evil. 

They have had it all their own way for decades, but now - just as the world was in their grasp! - much of the world is turning-against them, defying their plans, opposing their values!

Materially speaking these are uniquely dangerous times. 

If the spiteful destroyers (at or near the top of power structures) get their way; we will soon (or today) begin to see acts of unprecedented destructiveness - designed to escalate rapidly and uncontrollably.

In my judgment; this will happen, unless those responsible are stopped from doing it. 

And the reason for stopping will have to be spiritual - since the world of material argument has been colonized and controlled by evil. 

In other words; there is currently an increased potential for spiritual growth among individuals in the West, as the spiteful become mastered by their destructive impulses, and as their cloaks of reasonableness and idealism become ever flimsier and more ragged.

I believe that this can be observed. It is part of things 'coming to a point'. 

The side of evil is getting more evil; and the side of good is separating-out, separating itself from evil goals bit by bit... and becoming more conscious of its own affiliation to God and creation. 

This divergence is observable on a month-by-month timescale - as can be seen from a comparison of the untruthfulness of leadership statements from either side. 

One side has incrementally built an empire of lies; lies built on lies, protected by ever-more (and more absurd) lies; with blatant projections of their own sins and motivations onto 'the enemy'. 

While the other side (remarkably!) has become more honest; and displays a increasingly balanced and complete understanding of the global situation, and the values and ideals at stake. 

All of which means that if mass destruction (of one kind or another) does Not happen soon; then things are probably looking-up, spiritually, for The World (if not for us in The West).