This-worldly pseudo-Christians cannot tolerate anything pessimistic, because that makes them feel despair

I have noticed that one of the barriers to (in the first place) valid Christian understanding, and (secondly) to a valid comprehension of how Very Bad things are in the world, now; is a mistakenly This-Worldly and Morality-Centred perspective. 

Furthermore, being this-worldly and morality-centred means that such Christians, almost-inevitably, are un-repentantly tainted by Residual Unresolved Leftism; since a TWMC perspective is also characteristics of the socio-political globalist totalitarian mainstream. 

Thus; this-worldly and morality-centred "Christians" gravitate towards a world view that could literally (non-pejoratively) be described as a type of Christianized fascism; since fascism was the early twentieth century's primarily-secular reaction against internationalist communism. 

Yet, of course, "fascism" is itself a species of Leftism - albeit a less complete and more-functional leftism than communism, socialism, or the current post-sixties "New Left"-ism.  

A Christianity that understands itself primarily in this-worldly and moral terms is catastrophically vulnerable to pessimism - where pessimism is understood as the belief that things in this world are already Very Bad Indeed, and most likely to continue getting worse. 

Anyone who is fundamentally this-worldly (whether self-identified as Christian, or not) will find it very difficult to avoid despair (which is, of course, a deadly sin) unless he is dogmatically and systematically optimistic; and this means that he cannot tolerate pessimism - no matter whether a pessimistic evaluation of this-world is valid or not. 

In other words, for the this-worldly "Christian" an optimistic understanding of this world is mandatory; and any pessimistic evaluation of current and future conditions is absolutely ruled-out, in-advance, by-assumption; otherwise the individual will be overwhelmed by despair.

This partly explains why so many Christians are so falsely optimistic about the condition of the world now, and its probably future; why they are so resistant to a realistic appraisal of this mortal life; and why they are so often drawn into advocating and supporting residually-Leftist and collectivist socio-political programs. 

Note: The answer to the impasse - which would enable Christians to be realistic about the nature and prospects of The World - would, of course, be to base one's Christianity primarily upon Jesus Christ's promise of  resurrected eternal life; as clearly set forth in the Fourth Gospel ("John").  

Residual Unresolved Collectivism (RUC)

Francis Berger: " I don't think speculating about consciousness development at the collective level is necessary or even helpful now."

My comment (edited): This articulates something that has been nagging at me for a while. In particular, I increasingly feel that the account of development of consciousness is valid for the past - and it is important to recognize that people have Not always been the same as now, nor are people the same everywhere at any particular time. 

But the Steiner/ Barfield theory of the Evolution of Consciousness went badly wrong in being used as a predictor. 

Thinking further about this exchange, I realize I have been guilty of significant Residual Unresolved Collectivism (RUC). 

In other words; while in-theory realizing that there is no legitimate optimism to be derived from expecting Good Leadership the The West or any of its constituent nations, institutions or churches; I still retain a residual expectation that there is a desirability hence need for some kind of communal or group-based spiritual awakening of the necessary kind. 

It is Residual because my habitual practice of thinking is different from what I believe (and even know) must be the case: the collectivism is left-over from an earlier set of assumptions and practices.  

And, to this extent, my habits sabotage my intentions. 

RUC is closely analogous-to, and indeed related-to, other left-over forms of wanting and thinking that I have previously described: Residual Unresolved Positivism (which I got from Owen Barfield), and Residual Unresolved Leftism. 

In other words; just as we have habits of considering the world as primarily material/ physical and abstract (e.g. as models) in terms of its reality and causes; and just as our values nowadays tend habitually to begin with leftist assumptions (such as equality, pacifism, antiracism) -- and just as these are difficult to eradicate even when that is our priority...

So, we tend to think about the human world primarily in terms of large human groupings; and understand the individual as a consequence of such groupings. 

The collective is how we analyze and understand problems; and the collective is where we seek for (or, at least hope-for) answers. 

Collective thinking is, indeed, woven-into Christianity from its historical basis; especially in the Old Testament where most things are conceptualized in terms of "a people": the nation (tribe) of Israel.

Even many relatively recent and current forms of Christianity (such as Mormonism) have usually adopted collective explanations of God's motivations, and tried to recreate collective dealings-with God - including envisaging salvation - and theosis - in collective terms of God's dealings with A People. 

As I have often explained on this blog over the past decade; this I regard as untrue for this time and place; and counter-productive in relation to what Christians (as the individuals we actually-are) ought to be doing here-and-now. 

I believe that we cannot, and should not attempt to, live collectively in terms of our relationship to God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost - but should take personal responsibility, and should act, now, from our-selves to do what is right and necessary (rather than waiting and hoping for some collective grouping to tell us what to do, and support us in the doing). 

I hope that now I have - with some help from Francis Berger! - been able to recognize and give a name to this tendency; I may begin to eradicate it more fully from my metaphysical assumptions and habits of thinking.  

How we make our 'luck' - individually and socially

Most of us are prone to lament our own 'bad luck' - whether in terms of personal adversities, and/or the the time and place we inhabit. 

A Christian who believes that God is Good, as well as the creator, ought to assume that overall, we get the 'luck' we need.

Yet it feels wrong to attribute to 'everything that happens' to 'the will of God' - because that would put us into a position of passivity, and God into the role of a manipulator rather than a teacher.

So, on the one hand, in a created universe there is no such thing as 'luck', but on the other hand, in this reality made of beings in relationships, all purposes are not those of The Creator. We need to understand other ways by which life works.  

What follows is one of my favourite passages from the work of William Arkle - and one that has had a major influence on my thinking. 

Whenever I return to it, I find myself struck with renewed force at its discerning wisdom.

**

Edited (by me, for brevity and clarity) from 

A Geography of Consciousness by William Arkle, 1974

It is accepted that if we cut off the leg of a live bird, the bird feels pain and distress. But we suppose that if we cut off the branch of a living tree, the tree neither feels anything nor is aware of anything. While it is accepted that the tree is a living ‘thing’, it is not considered a living ‘creature’. 

This is because the tree cannot communicate its distress to us. But the fact may be that we are simply incapable of receiving the tree’s communications. 

Out of the thousands of such  assumptions made about our natural background, many will be quite wrong and a lot more partly wrong. 

We have denied real intelligence to most of the animal world; but species like the dolphin are now found capable of a high degree of intelligence, playfulness and co-operation with man. This has not been recognized before, simply because we had not tried hard enough to develop communications with the dolphin. 

It has been too readily assumed that lack of communication implied lack of consciousness; but never in ourselves, always in what we failed to communicate with. While it is not suggested that we can talk to stones, there is some sort of communication which links us with everything. 

And if the structure of nature is conscious of us, even if we are not properly conscious of it, this structure will express its friendship or hostility - and which will be based upon our attitude to 'the environment'. 

Because we do not get the messages from the background we avoid responsibility for failure to communicate. Therefore, when we suffer from savage storms, we assume that the savagery does not originate from our-selves but from 'nature'. 

[Either storms are meaningless and 'just happen', or] superstitiously, we fear that maybe some God is angry with us... We seldom consider the possibility that we ourselves have upset the structure of the natural background (of which we are an integral part) through the more intangible aspect of our personalities. 

The burden of all this is that a great deal of our ‘luck’ may be caused by the reaction of our background to the quality or attitude of our own consciousness. 

As this is a collective phenomenon in most instances, we may find ourselves conditioned by unpleasant effects which are not the result of our wrong attitudes but of the attitudes of our fellow men. 

This sort of luck or background conditioning falls equally upon the deserving and the undeserving. In sum; this sort of luck is not luck at all, it is the result of our collective behaviour. 

To put it into a few words, it is a rational proposition to say that if we lived more harmoniously with one another as well as with our background of ‘natural phenomena’, then this background would become more harmonious to us. 

Such a good outcome would not be caused by the intervention of God, but as a direct result of the unconscious effect our attitudes are in creating in the structures on which they impinge.

**

This, I find a helpful perspective from which to consider the (partly self-willed) end of Western Civilization, and its consequences. 

We may find ourselves interpreting much of what has-happened, and (presumably) will-happen in terms of our 'bad luck' in living here and now, and with such evil rulers. But the fact is that while our attitudes and choices affect our own lives, they also affect others - otherwise they would be merely subjective. 

And the flip-side of the power of our own good choices to benefit the 'collective' situation is that we ourselves are inevitably part of 'the collective' - indeed, typically we are far more collective in our attitudes and choices than we recognize. (as with such phenomena as RUP - Residual Unresolved Positivism; or R.U. Leftism).  

So when we ourselves become targets of environmentally destructive Climate Change politics, or antiracism and the transagenda, or (maybe soon) find ourselves embroiled in World War Three - there are two aspects to the situation: inner and outer; individual and collective. 

Individually, it is usual that some of our own attitudes are supportive of exactly that which is being-deplored. Typically, we support some 'principle' (or institution) that, further down the line, leads to consequences we don't like.

For instance, we act in ways that support agencies, charities, corporations, political groupings etc, who pursue net-evil goals, harm human beings and the natural world, and encourage people to reject salvation and choose their own damnation.  

Therefore; collectively, we have, by our individual attitudes and habits, earned a share of the adversity that falls upon whole communities from economic collapse, totalitarianism, and war. 

This should not be understood as an excuse for fatalism; because we are (if we choose) individuals with a capacity for positive spiritual influence of a general nature - beyond ourselves, beyond our minds. 

But conversely, as part of the same set-up; we are all somewhat responsible for evils of the collectives of which we are part. 

We can and should repent our complicity in evil, but repentance is not reform. 

We may know and reject evil; yet we cannot cease from doing evils; including to the non-human world of beings (whose agency and capacity for communication we typically deny). 

Therefore we should not be surprised when this living, conscious, purposive world of beings - who are as mixed in their nature and motivations as are we - try to 'tell' us ('communicating, sometimes, by various adverse occurrences) that they dislike what we are doing to them; that they react-against us,  

Freudianism in the USA, and its enduring harm to global public discourse (including the Secular Right, 'manosphere' and 'Trad' Christians)

Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis was mainly adopted in the USA, where it soon permeated almost the entirety of social discourse - and did immense and lasting harm. 

Of course, few people have ever been-through anything like a full 'analysis' - i.e. an hour, three times a week for several or many years, done by an accredited analyst who had himself been analyzed.

(Except for Freud himself. Founders of initiatory organizations, somehow, themselves never require the prolonged and systematic they require of their followers. Rudolf Steiner was the same in this regard. I suppose this exemplifies Weber's discussion of charisma and bureaucracy, and how the one invariably assimilates to the other.) 

But a very high proportion of people in the USA, especially among the ruling and professional classes, have spent significant time in 'therapy' of one sort or another; and all these therapies are more-or-less-closely descended from Freud in terms of their broad assumptions, and effects. 

(e.g. In a month at a medical school in Texas, I met only one person who had Not experienced psychotherapy.) 

All sorts of aspects of psychoanalysis became embedded in US life. For example, the idea of psychological 'traumas' being The cause of 'problems' later - this assumption forms the basis of most modern biographies. 

Or, the 'confessional' way of interacting; whereby people 'spill the beans' about themselves, their history and their feelings, as a major mode of social interaction, even among strangers - and the assumption that Not to do this is unhealthy: storing-up problems for the future. 

Extending from this, is the notion that 'repressing' any feeling does harm, whereby expressing it - doing it - is healthy and a sign of good adjustment. This, especially and above all, in the realm of sex and sexuality; where in fact the anti-Freudian idea is that desires need to be 'acted-out' rather than being purely articulated and discussed. 

('Strict' Freudian analysis takes places entirely within the consultation room.) 

The archetypical American extraversion and action-orientation thereby fused with Freud's abstract intellectualism, to produce a kind of public and explicit drama from the (all-but endless) speaking and listening, thinking and discussing of strict psychoanalysis. 

Consequently, psychoanalysis and 'therapy' of all kinds became, in the USA, heavily sexualized - with sexual relationships between therapists and clients almost normal, certainly unremarkable. 

More generally, psychoanalysis led to the idea that 'it's good to talk', to interact, to socialize, to have lots and lots of 'friends'; and that these friends are (primarily) 'supportive'  and 'encouraging' in terms of their comments.

And the flipside of this has been first to 'problematize' and then to punish the opposite: i.e. comments - or facial expressions - that make people 'feel bad'. Leading onto the ludicrous discourse of 'micro-aggressions' being developed, taken seriously; and then deployed as a core political weapon. 

Similarly, the culture of 'analysis' and 'therapy' created and sustained the discourse and legislation based on 'unconscious racism' (or sexism, or *phobias) - which is posited as the primary cause of any difference in outcomes that disfavour an officially-privileged (i.e. officially labelled 'oppressed') group. This represents Freud's 'unconscious'; literalized and weaponized for social control.  

Therefore, we can see that Freud was the origin of the New Left, with its psychological focus and (racial, sexual, etc.) 'victim groups'; which - from the middle 1960s - displaced the Old Left (which had been rooted in economics and class analysis). 

The US way of understanding was quickly (almost instantly) exported to the rest of the world, mainly by domination of mass media, but also by the US status of political hegemony.  

These and other themes were generated in the USA in the wake of the Freudian cultural-takeover back in the middle twentieth century. Freudian ideas (in culturally-adapted forms), in fact, became metaphysical assumptions: basic assumptions regarding the nature of reality - in particular the human condition. 

Mainstream US life came to be rooted in the atheism, materialism, psychologism derived from Freud and therapy; combined with a hedonism (or utilitarianism) the Americans added to it. 

This means that the framework of modern mass media - from news stories to movies and TV drama, and the interactions of social media - substantially dictates the approved content, and the status hierarchies.

(And these are sustained and manipulated - for Their own ends - by those with power, naturally.)  

This began the process we now see at an advanced and degenerate stage of evolved corruption. Psychologism 'infects' many areas of American discourse; even among those who regard themselves as on The Right or at least against The Left - even among Christians!

For example; the current (weird) 'manosphere' obsessions with the 'socio-sexual hierarchies' (alpha, beta, gamma men, and so forth); or the endless discussion of blue, red, black and white 'pills'... indeed much of the everyday discussion in this general corner of the internet, and among 'trad' Christians of several denominations and churches... 

Yet these discourses are derived from that same toxic set of attitudes and concepts that - broadly - evolved from Freudian psychoanalysis. 

They are, indeed, instances of Residual Unresolved Positivism - and thus also of Residual Unresolved Leftism - and they work-against Christianity at a structural, metaphysical level. 

Serious Christians would, I believe, be well-advised to recognize the malign roots of these ultimately New Left discourses; and to identify, and repent, their own impulse to engage in such thinking and interaction.    

Residual Unresolved Leftism: Is The Enemy in the spiritual war difficult, or easy, to discern?

It is a feature of the spiritual war nowadays that The Enemy (i.e. those on the side of Satan, against God) are dispersed in many places, deny any self-definition; and indeed are just part of normal, mainstream 'public opinion' as revealed in officialdom, institutions and the media, 

It is sometimes said that this makes evil difficult to discern - on the assumption that the evil is hidden among the good, in many and changing forms, under many and changing names and deceptive rhetoric...

But the truth is that evil is very easy to discern nowadays; indeed evil has never been easier to discern IF the line dividing good from evil is drawn in the right place. 

The problem that many people have in discerning evil is that they are retaining too much evil in their own assumptions, in their own world view. 

They are (in effect) trying to use a line between good and evil, when that line has been positioned such as to include evil; therefore they find the discernment to be difficult and unsure. 

This is seen, for example, in what Owen Barfield termed RUP - Residual Unresolved Positivism - something to which everyone brought up in The West is prone. 

RUP is a matter of retaining 'materialist', 'scientistic', 'reductionistic' assumptions that were unconsciously absorbed in childhood and adolescence, are invisible to normal introspection, and which have become habitual framers of thinking. 

This happens when we consciously oppose positivism, wish for a fully-spiritual life, yet keep un-consciously falling back into positivistic ways of regarding the world; therefore we sometimes fail to detect (and may end-up supporting) positivism when it is being deployed by the powers of evil. 

Another - just as common and related - problem is RUL - Residual Unresolved Leftism. 

The assumptions of Leftism (e.g. Leftist concepts of equality, social justice, diversity, environmentalism, antiracism, feminism, sexual revolution, the mainstream hedonic utilitarian morality etc) is pervasive in public discourse as background assumptions. 

Very few people in The West are altogether free of these false, tendentious, evil-tending ideas - and Christians, as much as most, often cherish such ideals - or try to do so. 

RUL therefore confuses our discernment of evil; since Leftism has been a major (probably The major) strategy of evil in the modern world. 

Thus there is evil at work in the world and impinging upon our personal lives, yet because some evil in our-selves matches that external evil, we fail to recognize its true nature. 

With RUL, the line has been drawn wrongly; too close to evil - not including all of evil; with some evils left-over on the side of good; so discernment begins to seem difficult, complex... 

We become confused, disorientated, unsure of what to do and what to reject. 

But the difficulties and complexities are an artefact of the line being drawn in the wrong place - due to Residual Unresolved Leftism. If we can identify and repent all of our Leftist assumptions, the task of discernment is revealed as simple - indeed it has probably never been simpler than Now! 

But another difficulty is that when the line between good and evil has been drawn correctly, and discernment is swift and decisive - it will be found that most of the world, and pretty much all of officialdom, major institutions, and the mass media - are on the side of evil. 

It will also be found, more disturbingly, that most people are on the side of evil; which means that most individual persons we encounter will support the side of evil - will be cooperating-with and probably defending/ advocating/ working-for the powers of evil. 

And this applies even in Christian churches and among the leadership of Christian churches; because being on the side of evil is not about one's majority or average beliefs. 

Even one Leftist belief or assumption suffices to corrupt; because (as of 2020) the tendency of institutions and their choice between good and evil sides may be dictated by a single Leftist belief (such as the Litmus Tests). 

This may be disturbing, unfamiliar, and often demoralizing. 

Yet we should remember that with normal Christianity; any single unrepented sin - no matter how 'small' - is sufficient to cause damnation; because we only truly desire Heaven when we are prepared to give-up all sin for it. Heaven is a place without sin; and nobody can enter it who has not repudiated sin. 

Here on earth, something analogous applies to the sins of Leftism. To be on the side of God, persons and institutions must reject the devil and all his works. 

This does not mean any kind of impossibly perfect standard of behaviour - but repentance - which is the correct detection and identification of sin as sin -and the 'in principle' willingness to discard it. 

Perfection of thoughts and values is impossible in this mortal earthly life; but repentance is always and everywhere open to any person or institution. 

Residual Unresolved Leftism is a serious problem because sin is unrecognized, is indeed defended and advocated; and the consequence is that perception of discernment as difficult and uncertain - in a world where in fact evil is more naked and extreme than ever before. 

So, if you are confused, and find evil difficult to discern; look within for those unrepented sins which are probably the source of the problem. 

One great and immediate advantage of eliminating Residual Unresolved Leftism is that we attain clarity about the spiritual war of this world; and can set-to on the task of fighting that war instead of being enmeshed in confusion. 

Such clarity of discernment is liberating, exciting, and motivating! Which is just what most-people most-need in a world such as this. 

RUL - Residual Unresolved Leftism - Any person or organisation that is anti-Christian (that is, not explicitly pro-Christian) is objectively Leftist in effect

Diagnosis is easier than treatment. A fair number of authors, even some in the mainstream, are able to diagnose the main problems of The West; but extremely few of them are able to make valuable recommendations for how to 'treat' the sick patient - and the reason is typically Residual Unresolved Leftism.

In other words, people suppose they are free of false and unfounded assumptions; but in fact there are Leftist assumptions built-into their understanding, and which negate their ability to see what needs to be done.

To put it another way: the study of fundamental assumptions about the nature of reality is metaphysics; and it is metaphysics which is most often and characteristically flawed in modern discourse.

And because there are unwarranted assumptions at the metaphysical level, then everything built upon these foundations is vulnerable to the insecurity of the foundations.

In particular, the most idealistic anti-Establishment cultural critics fail to perceive that Leftism is at the very root of that which they most deplore in modern life: the pervasive dishonesty and manipulation of public discourse; the iron cage of bureaucracy; the international global elite; the pacifist warmongers; the pseudo-egalitarianism of exploitative corporate power; state propaganda' bribery and soft-terror, the corruption of education; the systematic inculcation of fear and resentment between sexes, races, nations; anti-environment fake environmentalism, and so on.

Idealistic people who genuinely want to address these problems and who raise awareness of the problem; almost-always make matters worse in practice, because of their RUL.

And it turns out that the essence of RUL is usually very simple indeed! It is denial of the reality of a personal creator God. That is the root of Leftism, and it is the main form of RUL that subverts nearly all would-be idealism in Western politics.

The Counter-Culure may be, often is, spiritual or even deistic (allowing the philosophical possibility of an impersonal creative force or principle); but it is atheistic with respect to a personal creator God.

Specifically, since it is the only such religion of The West as a culture; anti-Christianity is the main form of RUL among political radicals, whether they self-identify as Left, Right or neither.

This large scale and pervasive failure is - probably - due to a failure to discriminate between Christianity and the Christian Churches; a failure which is, of course, encouraged by most of the Churches themselves (each of whom claim to be the only repository of true or real Christianity).

But we have reached a point in history when the difference between being a Christian and the institutional actuality of most of the large, powerful, wealthy self-identified Christian churches has become near-crystalline in clarity.

There is (in the West) an absolute and un-dodgeable necessity for effective cultural analysis to be pro-Christian - even (or especially) when it is actively anti- most of the actual Churches that self-identify as Christian. 

Because the mainstream Christian churches have been becoming weaker, smaller and more corrupt for many decades; and because their membership (and, even more so, leadership) are so comprehensively and deeply complicit in Leftism (such they they base their version of Christianity upon secular cultural-inculcated Leftist assumptions that they treat as unarguable, while supposing they are doing the opposite) - it is quite normal, almost universal, for radical cultural critics and activist to be anti-Christian.

Yet this anti-Christian RUL always-and-inevitably delivers would-be radicals (whether they imagine themselves of the Right, Left or apolitical) back into the hands of the Leftist Establishment, into indirectly supporting the status quo of an ever-more dominant elite global conspiracy of evil.

Leftism, as a mode of thinking, is behind all the distinctively self-destructive tendencies of the Left and Leftism is the creed of the global Establishment of evil - but to do anything positive to rectify this situation, we absolutely need to understand that Leftism is first-and-foremost anti-Christian: that is the foundation stone.

And there is no neutral stance possible on this matter: one is either pro- or anti-Christian. 

Therefore, the lesson of Residual Unresolved Leftism is that any person or any organisation that is not pro-Christian is anti-Christian, hence objectively Leftist.


NOTE: Being pro-Christian is the minimal necessary pre-requisite for being a good cultural critic; but it does not, of course, make somebody a good cultural critic! Most Christians are ignorant of, or uninterested by, cultural analysis; most cannot express themselves; most have been badly misled by the pervasive modern environment of Leftist deception - the totality of which is grossly underestimated by nearly everybody. But lacking a pro-Christian foundation, all cultural criticism will be objectively Leftist - even when it is trying very hard not to be. 

The idea of RUL was inspired by Owen Barfield's notion of Residual Unresolved Positivism - which I discussed here: 
 http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/the-demotivating-effect-of-residual.html