What exactly is wrong with (mass) euthanasia/ assisted suicide/ humane murder?

Mass euthanasia - humane murder, or "medically-assisted suicide"; is already established in many nations, and will probably expand to become the statistically-normal cause of death.

The reasons are 

1. That the ruling class want this to happen; and 

2. That many people in The West want it - for themselves. 

And they want this, because their fundamental understanding of human life - including their own lives - is that it is purposeless and meaningless. This conclusion (whether explicit of implicit) is almost inevitable when our society assumes (as well as argues) that there is no creator God - therefore no purpose generally or for individual persons; no spiritual world; and no possibility of existence beyond death. 

Without meaning or purpose, life is merely a matter of current feelings - a balance between pleasure and suffering. 

Many people live in fear of suffering; and because they are so afraid of future suffering and will do almost anything to avoid the unbounded possibility of sufferings; they have rendered themselves willing dupes to the machinations of evil. 

Religious prohibitions against suicide have near-zero traction nowadays; because most Western people solidly believe (and our society assumes in all its functional systems) that death is followed by total annihilation.

For such people, the "problem" is therefore how to die without suffering; and this seems to require that they will be humanely-murdered by... someone else; ideally, killed just at the point when the prospect or actuality of severe and lasting suffering becomes probable.

People also believe (or, at least, behave as if they believe) that this point can be established, and suitable death-inflicting mechanisms decided, by a sufficiently rigorous bureaucratic procedure.   

Against this there are explicit religious prohibitions - but hardly anyone nowadays takes religion seriously when its demands conflict with perceived personal interests or societal pressures. 

Also against this is a deeply buried, inarticulate, usually uncommunicable gut-feeling of the wrongness of a world of bureaucratically-decided death - no matter how painless it might be. 

Yet this feeling of wrongness, probably because it cannot be coherently expressed in the context of modern ideology, is too feeble to counteract the strength of social pressures when these are implemented in laws and procedures; and when endorsed by officialdom, mass media, celebrities, and peer group/ neighbours. 

I therefore find it useless to argue against those many who advocate the introduction, spread or normalization of assisted suicide; because the arguments I can use all assume the atheist-materialist utilitarian world view - and thereby actually worsen the underlying spiritual problem. 

The bottom line is that if you regard your life as purposeless and meaningless, then naturally it becomes merely a matter of subjective expediency how and when you die, or get killed.

When life has no meaning, death can have no meaning. 

When life is a matter of being got-through as pleasantly as possible; then the same applies to death. 

To tackle the real issue requires deepening the discussion to a metaphysical level, the level that addresses the ultimate nature of reality and our relationship with it. 

Unless someone is prepared to have such a metaphysical discussion, then nothing substantive and positive can be done for them. 

And this applies at the societal level, even more than at the individual level.

When people are trapped by their false bottom-line assumptions, then nothing helpful can be done that fails to confront the falsity of these assumptions. 

And for that to happen, absolutely needs their cooperation in the process. 

 

Why are the totalitarian Establishment spreading predictions of "C.W." (= INAC: intra-national aggressive-conflict)

Some very high-up members of the totalitarian Establishment have recently been seeding the mainstream mass media with predictions and warnings of "C.W." - in the UK, especially.

(I will here term C.W. as INAC - meaning intra-national aggressive conflict; if you know what I am getting-at.) 

Clearly, INAC predictions coming from the Establishment are not the consequence of truth-seeking analysis or altruistic concern; but are instead some kind of an incitement and manipulation. 

So, what's going-on? 

My best guess is that this is part of the leadership-struggle and C.W. afoot within and among the Establishment - that between servants of two-kinds of evil agenda*. 

...The C.W between the bureaucratic totalitarians, who want a world of omni-survelliance and micro-control (and who reached the peak of their power globally, in early 2020); and the rising "Agents of Chaos (AOC)" - who are motivated by a spiteful desire to induce suffering and destruction.

I regard recent INAC predictions and "warnings" as a signal from the totalitarians to the Agents of Chaos, that the Establishment is ready, willing and keen to crush the AoC (and their minions) by coordinated force. 

In other words; that the "soft" totalitarianism of propaganda, bribery and demoralization (which has grown over the past half century to dominate the West; is preparing (if "necessary") to revert to old style, "hard", mid-20th century, coercive dictatorship. 

At least I think that is the intent. 

But materialist-atheistic-Leftism cannot force their genie of hedonic-despair back into its bottle. 

The actuality is that the 20th century dictatorship is no possible anymore, due to major changes in (especially Western) nations and their peoples; and the attempt to re-introduce it will instead play directly into the agenda of the Agents of Chaos. 

In other words, any approach towards INAC will fail to restore totalitarian-order; but will instead do the opposite - by fuelling the motivations of spiteful destructiveness on a widening scale. 

The totalitarian era is past - because of the nature of materialist-atheist-Leftism; which has been undermining and degrading its basis for many decades; so that our societies are not just deeply dysfunctional in multiple domains...

But also, at the level of individual people - as well as institutionally, have destroyed the basis for coordinated and long-termist action.

Instead; the mood in the West is one of self-hatred and civilizational suicide - and the strongest motivations are immediate-term, oppositional and negative - and this equally applies to whatever agencies (including military and police, law and administrative) by which it is indented that order be restored.  

Unfortunately, the masses (you and me, and those we care about) will as always be the primary victims of any intra-Establishment C.W. 

Yet, after all, that was an implicit inevitability, after Western civilization chose to reject and deny all possibility of purpose and meaning in life - in order to pursue our dreams of short-term material and sexual gratifications without being trammelled by divine considerations. 

My take home message is that we all ought to remember that the Establishment (both sides) and its mainstream media are not providing honest information or wise guidance for our benefit - but are trying to manipulate our psychology for their own ends. 

*Note added: The fracture lines interestingly revealed by the location of proposed violent conflict - intra-national or inter-national. Thus, the totalitarians are playing with the idea of INAC; while the AoCs have been pushing to expand and escalate WWIII on multiple fronts - especially since 2022. I guess that each side hopes that their favoured conflict will act to prevent the other - i.e. that inter-national conflict will be too urgent and demanding, to allow INAC on one side; or that intra-national conflict will weaken countries too much for them to engage in significant and long-term external combat. 

Bernard Shaw - the one volume definitive biography by Michael Holroyd (1997)

Bernard Shaw was often silly, childish and reckless to the point of breaking stuff and causing injuries (especially driving a car) - here he insisted being photographed as Rodin's "Thinker" while being sculpted by that great artist (unfortunately the resultant bust was mediocre*). 

For a couple of weeks, several hours per day, I have been reading Michael Holroyd's 1997 single volume condensation of his previously-published four volume biography of Bernard Shaw.  

It took me a long time. Even greatly shortened, this was one of the biggest biographies I have read all-through. Another reason for my slowness is that Shaw's life, or at least his adult life, was so complex, fascinating, and varied. 

Also, I (like most people) find Shaw's character extremely odd, inconsistent - in fact incoherent.

He was sometimes the kindest most considerate and helpful of people - genuinely saint-like in behaviour (including keeping secret the vast scale of his gifts and assistance). He could be almost paralysed with horror by the contemplation of cruelty and suffering, in reality or imagination.  

At other times, especially when wearing his persona of GBS; Shaw was himself, and advocated, a calculated hard-hearted indifference to well-being and life that was a glorification of cruelty and unkindness. 

This can be explained by thinking of Shaw as an extreme version of the Leftist (or Liberal) ethic that regards suffering as the worst thing in life and therefore the elimination of suffering as the primary value; to the point that mass deployment of suicide and humane killing become imperative, and a moral necessity. 

In this sense, as in others; Shaw was in the vanguard; because this perspective is nowadays mainstream and officially endorsed - although very few are honest enough to state it explicitly. 

I have been reading Shaw since my early teens. Back then, I thought that, although he persistently pushed some silly and false notions; Shaw was right about most of the most important things; and I modelled some of my own main ideas and aspirations on his work - at least in some moods, and to some extent.  

Nowadays, by contrast, Shaw seems to be fundamentally wrong about most important things, as well as having multiple very annoying or self-indulgent attributes! 

Yet I continue to regard him as a great genius, and return to his works to relish their distinctive quality of expression - whose good and bad qualities were both very obvious; and therefore probably two sides of the same coin. 

My main criticism of Shaw - as of so many people - is that he never reflected on his fundamental (metaphysical) assumptions concerning the nature of reality. Therefore, he never really understood that the inadequacies and contradictions of his attitudes, opinions, and actions; originated and were sustained by the incoherence of his deepest assumptions - many of which I believe Shaw would have rejected, had he ever become aware of them.  

*

Bernard Shaw by Rodin. Meh...

Pride/ Wishful Thinking - versus futility and shirked responsibility

There are always defaults in (what pretends to be) "reasoning" - and defaults are assumptions, not necessities.

Currently, the default assumption is that individual human beings are accidents of causality and randomness, products of physical processes and biology, motivated by evolved instinct... 

And, as a product of more fundamental causes and accidents, each human being therefore has no genuine significance - everybody is inessential; and to believe otherwise is a delusion of pride or sheer wishful thinking. 

Modern Man's default and underlying assumption is: "I don't matter to the universe, or to the world."

And insofar as modern humans matter to anyone, it is framed in terms of providing material, or maybe psychological, "help" to "others"... which, if thought about consecutively, means no more than that we are supposed to help each other to... help-each-other.

Against such a background; anyone who asserts (or even believes privately) that he has a significant cosmic role to play - a destiny in terms of "the cosmos"; is regarded as stupid or dangerous; maybe a childish daydreamer, insane with arrogant pride, or a would-be manipulator and dominator of others.  

And of course any of these might be true, in particular persons.

But they do not exhaust the possibilities.  

It should be recognized that there are very serious - indeed lethal - adverse consequences from an affected humility or conviction of insignificance. 

For a start, there is no basis for taking responsibility for anything at all! - and this fundamental evasion, this refusal to be responsible for one's existence, life, behaviour - is mainstream and encouraged.  

And if we have no spiritual or cosmic role, not even potentially; then life is reduced to mere hedonism - seeking pleasure and gratification, avoiding suffering and misery. And that tends (with uncertainty of expectations) to reduce towards hedonism in the short-term and for-sure; hedonism in here-and-now. 

(Which is why modern people are - compared with their ancestors - so weak-willed, demotivated, and cowardly.)

Also; it tends towards a lowering threshold of suicide - that is disposing of ourselves (preferably without suffering)... whenever it happens to be convenient, or apparently expedient.

(Suicide has become popular on the metaphysical assumption - which is unique to modern Western people - that death is annihilation, the end, and leads to nothing-else.)

Modern Western people therefore see no reason why we should not dispose of ourselves in order to avoid the risk of future suffering, if that currently happens to be what we want... 

(This is what is entailed by regarding "quality of life" as the justification for staying alive.) 

But - if we have no ultimate (cosmic, spiritual, eternal) significance, even potentially, as individuals - then we are just cogs in a machine, bits of a computer program... so there is no solid, objective reason why others should not dispose of us, whenever it suits them (i.e. whenever some kind of pseudo-plausible justification can be cobbled together). 

And this is what we find...

In the past, it seems that people justified themselves, saw reason for existence, not individually but in terms of their loyal membership of a family, clan, tribe... later of a nation.

That's gone. 

Now; it's either justification for each individual person, or no justification at all. 

Clear, simple, difficult. 

And if it is to be justification for each individual person, there can be no shirking of individual responsibility. 

We are each, therefore, of cosmic significance; each life is important to creation; and each person just-is responsible for his own life.

That's the proper default. 

We cannot hide behind service to some "group-good" - because we don't really believe it, so we don't really act upon it. 

It's a fake excuse. 

  

"Good Intentions" - Yes, but...

In a world where there are too many interacting and unknown causes for effects to be predictable from actions; then Good Intentions are crucial... So long, that is, as the intentions are Real (not merely excuses for self-interest or spiteful destruction), and are really-Good (and not double-negations, for instance).

Because genuinely Good Intentions, is a way of describing being consciously on the side of God and Divine Creation... 

And because it is only GIs that will take into account how things are working out in practice (which may be very different from what was hoped) and can made adjustments, and will (because genuinely Good in Intent) continue monitoring the developing situation. 

(That this is so rare, is indicative of the rarity of genuinely Good Intentions.)

So, real Good Intentions are vital - they are, in this meaning, the only way of doing-good in this world. 

Yet if intentions are good only when God-aligned; then genuine GIs are pretty-much restricted to situations when love is the motivator - actual, real love, between particular persons (or beings), and therefore not some generalized abstraction of love. 

General but vague benign-attitudes towards individuals or groups, or the favouring of abstract causes - do not suffice. 

Which analysis wipes-out almost all (but not all) of what passes for Good Intentions in public discourse. 

What is the relevance? Well, it is intended to explain the wrong-headedness of a good deal of the kind of thing that "groups of spiritual people" (whether in a church, or some other society, whether Christian or not) get up to. 

For mainstream Christians, this refers to group-prayer, when it it directed to specific personas and worldly outcomes - but when those persons and outcomes are not loved - for instance when they are remote and abstract. 

Group prayers can and may avoid such things - but there is a prevalent idea that a group of people can, by pooling their "good intentions" in prayer (or indeed some other form of ritual activity), achieve positive results in the world-at-large - for instance in praying for peace, or relief of some current sufferings. 

This is part of a generally "therapeutic" and this-worldly tendency of current religion and spirituality - the basis of which is that suffering is the worst thing, and the best thing is to relieve or (better) prevent suffering...

At the end of which goal, lies a nightmare dystopia of consciousness obliteration, including suicide and murder; done with a "compassionate" rationale. Western civilization is approaching this situation with considerable rapidity. 

I think it is worth remembering that thoughts are actions, and thoughts therefore have consequences; so such ideas as group interventions by prayer are not absurd. However, it is not true that groups are more powerful than individuals, nor is it true that the intentions of groups are usually genuinely good.

The point to remember is responsibility. 

Who is spiritually responsible for the outcome? The big problem is that groups almost never accept, or even consider, this matter - and (in this modern era) there is apparently no genuine way by which most groups can learn from what happens as a consequence of group intentions and actions. 

As usual, the conclusion seems to be that the individual is primary when it comes to genuinely Good Intentions - and (here-and-now) truly loving groups are rare outside of the family situation. As of 2024 in The West; it is nigh impossible for an institution (including a church) to be Good.  

And that part of goodness is a continued and responsible engagement with "the loved" - so that what we supposed to be Good does not, instead, turn-out to emanate in evil. We need to love, and continue to love - if we want to do good. 

Good Intentions cannot be plucked from the branches of external public discourse - but need, instead, to be derived from our own capacity and direction of love. Only that kind of Good Intention will align us with divine creation, and have the best chance of doing actual Good. 

"They" Want Us Dead - but dead too-late, too soon, and dying in fear and/or despair

The subject of death is becoming mainstream in modern materialistic culture - but, of course, death is framed by our evil-motivated Leadership class in ways that (if the frames are accepted) with induce us to choose damnation instead of salvation, and such as to corrupt as as much as possible. 

There are many aspects to death. One is that, in this entropic world, we will die. Another is that we dwell in God's continuing-creation, and God therefore can influence the way we die. And then there is our own freedom. 

I therefore assume that God (by his creative work) engineers the best "time to die" for us; within the constraints of entropy and the freedom of other beings (including, but not only, human beings). The best death is when - from our freedom, we willingly agree that this is the time to die - at which point, the process of death (which happens in time) will begin. 

But this best way to die is precisely what the weight of modern culture attempts (on the whole very successfully) to thwart - by two main means (although there are many others). 

The first is to induce us all to cling to life, for as long as possible - so that we will not consent to die when it is "our time" (and God will do everything possible to ensure that we - and those we love - know it is time). Hence the clichés such as "stay with me" that present dying as always a failure of will, a giving-up in despair. 

A good deal of modern health services are built on exactly this assumption - that everybody ought to want to stay alive, at whatever cost, for as long as possible -  hence the truly vast expenditure of health and social care in sustaining human life far beyond its biological span. 

But the vital thing to remember is that this artificial sustaining of life is only possible because that is what so many modern people are choosing. It is not difficult to die, and people will die when they are ready - when, at the deepest level, they have chosen to die. 

The other corruption is to regard death as something that ought to be done with the minimum of suffering, and therefore - to be on the safe side - we need to arrange to be murdered (assisted dying) before there is "too much" suffering. 

This discourse is rooted in extreme and chronic (existential) fear - the fear of what might happen to us...

Combined with such an extremity of fear of suffering that even a few minutes of pain (such as might result from actual suicide) is intolerable to contemplate... 

Ancient Romans used (apparently calmly) to kill themselves with a sword or knife - but modern Man demands (literally demands, as a human right) painlessly to be murdered by someone else, with legal approval, by some technological contrivance that is claimed to eliminate suffering. 

In the materialist culture of the mainstream West, there can be no conceptualization of faith and trust in God; not even trust that God will ameliorate our subjective experience of suffering at the time of death (as seems to happen in so many animals). 

Neither do we trust God to know when it is our "time to die" and will provide us with that knowledge when the time comes. 

Consequently there seem to be a lot of "bad deaths". One is the death of someone who is clinging to life for every last moment until overwhelmed by entropy - and total body failure supervenes - and whose soul is, presumably, dragged "kicking and screaming" into the after-life state. Which seems like a very bed preparation for the choices to be made at that phase of our lives. 

Another bad death is one who mistrusts God, or more the reality of God, and dies in a despair so profound that he cannot summon the courage to anticipate enduring even a few moments or minutes of suffering en route to the after-life.  

Another bad death is suicide; which is death too early - before the "time to die" - which happens when suicide is motivated by sin - sins such as fear, despair, or resentment ("that will show them!") 

A common things seems to be the death of those who have rejected their "time to die" and who have chosen to live on in a state of what must therefore be unrepented, hence probably cumulative, sin. In other words, who have (for weeks, month, perhaps many years) been progressively corrupted in soul by their embracing of fear and despair; such that when they eventually die they are significantly worse people than if they had died when God believed that they should best die. 

If such a corrupted soul accepts salvations in the after-life - which opportunity is, of course, open to all - they they will take much less of themselves through resurrection to eternal life. 

What I mean is that we can only take-forward what is good in us, and must leave-behind what is not-good. So those who die later will need to repent more and therefore shall take-forward less than if they had accepted death when God chose was the best time. 

(In other words; if there is a best time to die; then dying later than that time will be worse; when best and worse are judged by post-mortal and Heavenly standards.)

If we accept this idea of there being, for each person and spiritually-speaking, a time to die - and that this time is known by God; then it is indeed obvious that there is vast current propaganda otherwise. 

A denial of there being a time to die. 

And the colossal cultural effort to persuade people that their time of dying is an event to be decided by anything-other-than God: e.g. by "individual choice" of mortals who have accepted/ chosen annihilation after death (i.e. choice in context of materialist metaphysics); or chosen and administered by The System in some combination of Global Establishment/ State/ Law/ Media/ and Health (or Death) Services. 

From euthanasia to assisted suicide... Not so much a slippery-slope as jumping off a cliff

I have been observing the suicidal-turn of Western culture for considerably more than a decade. Its beginnings lie back many decades ago, while I was still a medical student. 

At that time, the issue was called euthanasia, and was focused upon people whose suffering was regarded as severe and intractable, and who were incapable of killing themselves - and their Right to have somebody-else kill them. 

More recently, there was a focus on dying "with dignity" - which meant without suffering; so that the debate expanded to include people who could kill themselves - but apparently only in ways that would cause them pain or suffering. The Right being requested was for somebody-else to kill such people pain-lessly, instead of them killing-themselves pain-fully. 

Now, we call it "assisted suicide"; and have reached the point where there is no question of "need", but instead the Right demanded is to be killed pleasantly by somebody-else. With the picture painted of a happy death by drowsing off into permanent sleep while outdoors in some beauty spot - such as a National Park. 

When the question of creating a bureaucratic system for legally allowing some people deliberately to kill other people; there were warnings that this was morally a slippery-slope. 

Well, if we examine the rationale behind such proposals, and the speed with which the Right to be killed has expanded from a handful of people per nation to... everybody; the issue has turned-out to be more like jumping off a cliff from strict-morality and unfortunate necessity, plummeting down into pure amoral (i.e. immoral) convenience and consumer choice. 

The reason for allowing legalized murder has gone from being a last-ditch and desperate remedy for those terminally ill or agonizingly suffering, to a lifestyle preference.    

This is one of those (many) situations in which a top-down strategy meets mass acceptance; because in our Godless materialistic society, the bottom-line for values, for morals, for laws is simply utilitarian human psychology - that is, what people want, what makes people happy, what makes them feel less miserable... 

And this is a matter of inference, unsupportable assertion, and subjective opinion. A situation in which the apparatus of propaganda and ideology has the greatest scope; and where the prevalent sins of this age - fear, cowardice, demotivation, resentment, dishonesty and (most of all) despair - can operate freely and without trammel. 

Unless the trends reverse (and encouraged by deliberately engineered war, civil violence, disease and starvation); we will surely soon be seeing suicide become a publicly explicit and media-favoured lifestyle strategy; with the Western bureaucracies providing whatever necessary facilities. 

In the spiritual war of this world; to have mass suicides of people for such reasons as loss of all hope, fear of the future, refusal to tolerate the possibility of pain, and despair at the present - is a Big Win for the powers of evil. 

Because these would be deaths happening in a state of self-chosen damnation: that is, dying while decisively rejecting the reality of God and the promises of Jesus Christ.

There is, I believe, the maximum possible scope given us for post-mortal repentance (however we die). Death is not the end...

Yet our decisions in mortal life make a permanent difference; and to leave this life in such a spiritual state as (apparently) those who express a desire to be killed pleasantly while contemplating a beautiful view...

Well, this is very far from a fertile seedbed for repentance.   

Dystopias reinforce double-negative values

One reason that we are fed a relentless diet of dystopian books, movies and TV - i.e. why this theme is so lavishly funded by The Establishment; is that consuming dystopian fiction demonstrably has zero benefit in terms of prevention (but instead facilitates actual dystopias by psychological and spiritual means); while portrayal of dystopias reinforces the bottom-line double-negative value system that is destroying modern Man. 

By the depiction of horror and misery is inculcated the (mostly-unconscious) idea that if-only these horrors and miseries were removed (or, at least, greatly reduced) then everything would be fine. 

The news reports and analyses of ongoing wars have a similar role and effect: indirectly pushing the idea that if-only there was peace; then everything would be fine...

(It should be noted that the same people who believe this kind of pacifism, are in-real-life nearly-always active in support of whoever is the worst side in those foreign wars that have been promoted and escalated by The West.)

Of course this idea that everything would be fine without war is not made explicit, because it is obviously absurd; but it is implied; often in a disguised form where the double-negative is presented as a positive. 

For instance "peace" - which is really the mere absence of war - is talked-about (written and sung-about) as if it was a positive concept, a positive value, an end rather than a means. 

This should be tediously familiar to anyone who has sampled the late 1960s-early 1970s pop and academic culture - ranging from ubiquitous "Peace" signs and symbols, through songs about peace phrased as if it were a positive thing, to academics working in "peace studies"...

Because, in a society without positive values, it is not just a safe-bet - but the only possible stance - to oppose some or another form of suffering as-if this was the was self-evidently the best possible belief and activity; the highest human value, the reason for our being, the purpose of life...

(And it can easily be inferred, and observed, that when the prevention of suffering becomes the highest value, we have an ethic of unbirth, death and suicide.) 

Indeed; it can be hazardous nowadays to espouse any positive goal for one's own life - such as a religion, or nationalism. This is increasingly regarded as dangerous, and a form of terrorism; unless it is religion or nationalism for someone-else, in some other-place. 

That's allowable, because it is conceptualized either as just-another double-negation, such as freedom-from-oppression; and is "altruistic" hence conforms to the supreme modern Western values of self-hatred and -destruction. 

If one takes a step back and considers; it really is inevitable that our culture is so fixated upon dystopias, exactly because that we have no motivating utopias; in other words, we fixate upon hoping to avoid dystopia, exactly because the double-negation of avoiding-dystopia is the highest value we can conceive as real. 

Genuine utopias have become (literally) incredible to modern consciousness, and rightly so; because modern Men acknowledge only this-world and mortal-life, and this-world is characterized by evil and entropy such that no genuine and positive utopia can ever happen.

This-worldly pessimism about the possibility of u-topia, then turns into this-world fear of dys-topia - and here we are. 

The sequence is almost inescapable, unless there is a profound reorientation of metaphysics. Unless (that is) we personally, and then culturally, acknowledge and believe-in the reality of post-death personal existence; then we cannot even begin to escape from the futile paradoxes of double-negative values. And we will continue to obsess over dystopias and wars.  

Suicide Pills will be welcomed by many/ most of the public, for at least three reasons

When (not if) the plan for mass free distribution of painless-suicide pills gets unveiled; it will be welcomed by many or most of the Western public - for at least three reasons:

 

1. Fear: Because so many people fear that they will suffer while dying. 

It doesn't matter that prolonged or extreme suffering is usually preventable - because some risk of a painful death cannot be eliminated... except by pre-emption. (Prevention is the best cure!) 

And 2020 shows how easily extreme fears can be whipped-up by the Establishment, and how resistant the most-terrified can be to reason or reassurance...

Probably because - in a world that believes death is annihilation - health has taken the place of religion (including for most churches); and current suffering (of almost any degree or duration) becomes regarded as an intolerable violation.

 

2. Altruism: Because some people regard the death of people such as themselves as a benefit for the world. 

"With me and mine out of the way; there will be more for everyone else."

Indeed, plenty of people claim to regard human beings as a plague on the biosphere - whose elimination would be better for all other living things... and much better for The Climate! 

Thus suicide is an expression of ultimate altruism! In a world where avoidance of suffering is the highest value - the best way permanently to reduce our carbon footprint, to walk lightly upon the earth, to minimize finite-resource consumption - is to offer our own death as a willing sacrifice to the goddess of environmentalism.

3. Despair: Because the mass majority are materialists who, at bottom, regard reality as purposeless and meaningless; and who therefore live only for the satisfactions of this-life. 

Such people have no strong reason to stay alive - because their life is going nowhere except death, and has no meaning except whatever comforting "delusion" they themselves try to invent. 

Therefore; as soon as life starts to go badly - overall; then why bother with it? 

 

For such reasons as the above; I suspect that plans for mass provision of painless suicide pills will find themselves pushing at an open door. 

Especially if the Western Establishment succeed in escalating the Fire Nation and Arrakis conflicts into all-out world war - with its high-likelihood of causing widespread violence, disease and famine; then the Western masses will be biting-off the hands of state-sanctioned death-draught feeders, in their eagerness to get hold of the medicine.

Indeed; it seems far more likely that the masses will protest against the ineffectiveness (or "inequity") of suicide pill distribution, then to protest against the Establishment encouraging suicide. 

The therapeutic perspective on life runs so deep that we don't even notice; yet points (again!) towards mass suicide

It is deeply strange to contemplate the extent to which people believe that the main purpose of life is therapeutic - by which I mean, that people believe the main purpose of life is to deal with the problems of life. 

The fact of life and living is taken for granted, and the problems of living become the dominating focus. 

 

It's like asking: "what is the purpose of life?"; to answer: "striving to overcome misery and suffering". 

Yet - if this really was so: Why life in the first place? 

 

And yet, if you ask modern, high-status, kind, compassionate, and "enlightened" people; they would very likely state that some version of "striving to overcome misery and suffering" is the highest moral and ideal activity that they can imagine.

That - indeed - is the modern idea of what a "good person" would do. 

Twenty-first century "Christians" (if you can find one) would agree - and would regard Jesus as the best Man who ever lived exactly because he went around healing people, feeding the poor, raising the dead - and eventually set up a church that (allied with government), "made the world a better place" through taking practical action to overcome misery and suffering.

 

Apart from the philosophical/ theological/ ideological superficiality and weirdness of adopting a double-negative conceptualization of life and living - this is strategically-feeble as a motivator compared to some actual positive goal. 

And when the double-negative understanding of life and morality collapses; it often leaves-behind (the sin of) despair; because the realization dawns that if my life is striving to overcome suffering, then the only certain answer is death and annihilation of that life. 

 

In a world where death is understood as utter annihilation of the self; a life-focus on the alleviation of suffering is the precursor to a culture of death attained by suicide.   

The common attitude that Men in general, Western Man specifically, and people-like-us in particular, are a "cancer on the planet", likewise feeds the implication. 

 

And further; if anything like social apoptosis is going-on, such that the spiritually-defective are inclined to eliminate themselves; then the predicted mass distribution of Suicide Pills becomes not just rationally defensible, but something regarded as the highest kind of altruistic morality of which modern Man can conceive. 

     

In Case of War, take the Suicide Pills: When Social Apoptosis meets spitefully destructive totalitarianism

A few months ago I formulated the term Social Apoptosis as a model which may help to understand the way that Western Civilization is eliminating itself. 

The idea is that in the individual cells of multicellular organisms, or individual organisms in social animals such as humans; there are evolved mechanisms by which individuals (and probably groups of such individuals) delete themselves from society, by choosing not to reproduce. 

Such apoptosis can be understood as intended to pursue "strategic", long-term and overall benefit at the expense of short-term and individual benefit; so that the individual has some kind of built-in "programme" to sacrifice its own survival and reproductive prospects in order that larger goals may be achieved. 

 

Something of this kind certainly seems to be at work in Western Civilizations; both individually - where a majority of the native populations choose either not to reproduce at all, or to be subfertile (with much below replacement levels of offspring). 

Modern societies exhibit little in the way of what used to be regarded as natural instincts for self defense or survival - there is a much greater observable concern to avoid avent moderate or brief suffering and pain than to stay alive and leave-behind children. 

(The idea that it would be thought necessary to encourage people to defend themselves and their conditions, or to have children, would have seemed bizarre to most humans throughout history!) 

And apoptosis apparently also operates at a societal level, where whole nations (essentially all Western nations) have for some decades tolerated, and often enthusiastically embraced, multiple policies whose consequence is self-extermination - even when self-extermination is explicitly stated and aimed-at. 

 

Of course; there are many other external and top-down factors at work. But I feel that there would have been a great deal more in the way of mass resistance and refusal if it was not that so may individuals and groups apparently regard themselves are deserving of elimination. 

This widespread sense that "we" - as individuals and societies - deserve to be eliminated, meets with a leadership class that is increasingly motivated by a spiteful desire for destruction. 

A leadership class that demonstrates an implicit - and sometimes explicit - personal satisfaction at the suffering of individuals, and the decline of social institutions. 

 

One reason why unrestricted world war is now such a high probability, is this combination of a Western Civilization that feels it ought to be eliminated, and is motivated by the desire for elimination; with a totalitarian leadership class that would enjoy creating a situation in which this elimination would happen on a rapid and massive scale - accompanied by the greatest possible degree of human fear, misery and suffering. 

 

(While it is only The West that is ruled by a class many of whom are actively seeking destructive war on any excuse, or none; it only takes one side to make a war. Or rather, the only alternative to war in such circumstances, is passive acquiescence to being genocided.)

 

In a spiritual sense; this is understandable in terms of the elimination of religion, and indeed the reality of the spiritual, from the minds of modern Men. 

Our publicly operative metaphysical assumptions are utterly nihilistic; we are taught and believe that there is no purpose or meaning to our lives, or indeed to life itself. All is accident and determinism.

In The West it is fashionable, and publicly approved, to regard Mankind as a plague upon the planet - and the universe... 

The obvious conclusion is that we should eliminate ourselves. 

 

This is our situation here and now; and one reasons why the prospect of explosive and wholesale destruction seem to be increasing all the time.  

An implication of this spiteful-suicidal synergy is that The West will continue to destroy its own military capacity, even while trying to escalet wars on mutliple fronts. 

So "They" want war - but they are Not planning to fight a war... 

What does this imply?

 

To me it suggests that if, or when, They get the war they so much want, involving Western populations who deeply feel that they deserve to die; instead of trying to win the war by fighting - the leadership class will implement a mass distribution of "Suicide Pills". 

Thus there will be a war, and from fear and despair, encouraged by a monothematic propaganda onslaught; the Western masses will kill themselves in droves - the Suicide Pills enable the masses to kill themselves without suffering, and fear of suffering is the only thing that stands between many people and desired annihilation.

That is my prediction. Sooner or later we will be hearing about a plan to distribute Suicide Pills, freely, to the Western Masses - to be used "compassionately" in case of the third world war that is the leadership class's major current project. 

 

Of course, painless death will rather thwart the desire to inflict suffering - and the sadistic demons won't like it... 

On the other hand, the Master Agenda is that of Satan - and that is self-chosen damnation, of which a pretty reliable preparation is to die in deliberate and unrepented sin. 

To kill oneself in fear and despair (and, probably, in a state of seething resentment against God and Jesus Christ) is itself a rejection of Heaven, and the willed choice of Hell.   

Last days of Atlantis...

John Martin's The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah - Not our fate

I find that thoughts of the the last days of "Atlantis" - especially of Tolkien's Numenor - come to my mind more and more often: visions of a vast society crumbling and rotting - while its citizens are oscillate between vague obliviousness, and a smug-spiteful-cowardly-passive-aggression that seems (in my imagination) to be distinctive and causal of civilizational decadence and corruption. 

Almost everywhere, there seems to be a lethal mixture of ignorance and bland idiocy, with pettiness and prideful inversion. People claim to be unaware of the important things that have happened and are happening, yet when they hear about such things almost instantly forget them; and unerringly focus on some minute irrelevance. 

If even some brief understanding of the scale and depth of lethal threats is able to form itself mentally; like as not people will instantly and stubbornly take the wrong side, grasp the wrong end of the stick, advocate some action that is counter-productive and indeed suicidal. 

What is most striking is that - from all the above - it seems certain that when collapse commences and continues; there will prevail a grossly false belief in the reasons; combined with an absolute failure to take responsibility for self-blinding, supporting evil assumptions and concepts, and for sustaining and amplifying the underlying causes of destruction. 

This is Atlantis because a great civilization had become so greatly evil such that it has turned-against itself in self-hatred, and engineered its own destruction. 

Yet all this is hidden, and the situation is robbed of grandeur, nobility and tragedy, by the depth and scale of dishonesty. 

The culture of lies, untruths and deliberate misleading is so prevalent, habitual, and vehemently defended and coerced; that Atlantis is ignorant of its own nature, and of what it is doing to itself. 

Even as Atlantis engages in systematic suicide, it is consumed by resentment. 

Even as it inflicts suffering and terror on itself, it seeks to shirk responsibility and to blame others 

Even as it despairs at the purposelessness and meaninglessness of its fundamental beliefs and aspirations - it scorns and persecutes all attempts to diagnose or cure the sickness.  

Thereby the sins of Atlantis sins are compounded. 

TS Eliot: This is the way the world ends: not with a bang but a whimper.

The Empire Strikes Back! The current Ahrimanic (globalist) backlash in the United Nations

(For once!) I seem to have been correct in my prediction that the current Arrakis war is being exploited (and, very likely has been set-up) as a way of re-asserting globalist totalitarian bureaucratic control, especially via their long-favoured tool of the United Nations. 

The current quasi-legal proceedings against CHOAM is being accepted as A Good Thing by many supposedly awakened and skeptical radicals who, a mere few months ago, would have recognized the UN as an agent of Ahrimanic evil; an institution designed to be a prime agent of the intended internationalist tyranny of a System of mass omni-surveillance and micro-control. 

But now; this same UN is being regarded as a beacon of impartial law, defender of the weak and innocent, wielded against a rogue-state; and its powerful, wealthy, reckless and cruel Western backers*...

(*Although the worst that can be said against The West and CHOAM is true; on the one hand this was made so by those same powers who are now shrouding themselves in the mantle of Justice; while on the other hand the solution on-offer is as evil - in its different mode - as the problem it affects to address.)

To me, the situation has, very obviously, been manipulated into being by the Empire (that is, the Empire that never ended, the Black Iron Prison); who are fighting back against the chaos-loving, war-mongering, destructive Sorathic factions (arising within the Empire itself) who delight in human suffering and death for its own sake - and even at the cost of weakening or breaking The System; and who have are waxing ascendant in the ruling classes of The West since at least the summer of 2020^.

(^This may need clarification. My understanding is that The Empire is an Ahrimanic project; but that Sorathic individuals arise within it as a kind of psychopathic and parasitic element, and these individuals form a faction who band together expediently to indulge their purposively destructive agenda. This can be seen, perhaps, in US politics where a small but powerful faction within the leadership - successfully cooperate to create and amplify torture, war, famine, mass death - and other forms of chaotic destruction.) 

The Ahrimanic agenda includes the discrediting and elimination of all nations, especially those with power or who display any desire for autonomy. There is zero national loyalty among the totalitarian bureaucrats - although they are happy to allow and encourage nationalism insofar as it can be manipulated towards that destructive end. Which is precisely what is afoot. 

They are very keen to destroy all the Western nations, who are all very keen to be destroyed; and even keener to destroy any nations such as CHOAM (and the Fire Nation) who desire to survive. This is attempted by trying to reshape nationalism into resentment, and transform the desire to survive into the desire for revenge - both of which will be likely to lead to reckless and self destructive behaviour. 

So far this has failed in the Fire Nation, but succeeded spectacularly in CHOAM, which is behaving in ways almost guaranteed to lead to its own utter annihilation. 

So - the situation is set-up in which there is apparently a forced-choice between (Ahrimanic) global totalitarianism, and (Sorathic) global war; that is - between tyranny and death. 

(Indeed, in an ultimate sense, the choice between chosen slavery to Satan, and indirect suicide.) 

And, as always with evil - the choice is real in the sense that (to be spiritually effective) we need to consent to evil: to invite evil into our hearts. For example, by enthusiastically regarding as our saviour and supporting the UN... with all that implies+.  

In such a situation; the only escape from embracing one or another of the twin evils of worldly expediency, and thereby taking the side of evil; is a perspective that is Not of This World. 

As seems more and more often the case: the age of neutrality is passed, things have come to a point; we are being corralled into making an ultimate existential choice for God and Heaven - or actively enlisting against them.

  

+Note added: I do not think that this current Ahrimanic backlash will be effective in reversing the progression towards Sorathic destruction; partly because this trajectory is the inevitable direction of those who are allied to evil; and partly because reckless destruction is so much easier and more rapid than making and sustaining a System of global totalitarianism. 

Is the chosen self-annihilation of The West a matter of "Apoptosis"?

Apoptosis (usually pronounced ap-op-tosis) is a biological concept used to describe the self-triggered death of cells in various situations. 

One such situation is cancer - e.g. a cell that undergoes the kind of genetic mutation that would lead to cancer might instead kill itself - thereby safeguarding the organism as a whole. 

In other words; in this situation apoptosis is the result of a fail-safe mechanism, built-into each cell, and "designed" (e.g. by adaptive natural selection, but not wholly so) to eliminate a potential cause of life-threatening harm. 

In general terms; apoptosis forms part of a suite of adaptations that maintain the functionality of multi-cellular organisms. 

Most cell are a potential biological unit in their own right, each having its own genome, each reproducing; and therefore each potentially capable of evolving by natural selection to promote its selfish cellular reproductive interests, above the well-being of the multi-cellular organism as a while.

If this was unchecked, every multicellular organism would fall-apart into selfishly competing lineages of replicating cells that have evolved to promote their short-term reproduction, above the long-term functional-coherence of the organism. 

Multi-celled organisms are therefore only possible to sustain, when there are surveillance and control mechanisms that enforce the mutual cooperation of cells - these mechanisms include the immune system (to identify and eliminate "rogue" cells) and apoptosis. 

It strikes me that apoptosis provides an analogy, which may even be true at the causal level, for the self-destruction of Western Civilization. 

Each human being is an organism that is capable of selfishly pursuing its own self-interest at the expense of society; and this innate self-interest therefore requires to be suppressed, re-shaped, and harmonized across human society for the benefit of that society - if that society is to be sustained. 

Throughout known human history; the System for the harmonization of human society has always included what might be termed Religion; and it was characteristic of such Religion that it referenced human society to some-thing above-and-beyond human society - a world of spirits, gods or God - for example.

Religion can be regarded as an externally valid source of social regulation, and a justification for social regulation; and I am assuming that (over multiple generations) this biological fact was also internalized by each individual human being - including as a fail-safe mechanism, analogous to apoptosis. 

Put bluntly: until the past half-dozen or so generations in The West; all human beings that ever lived were born-into, raised, and functioned adaptively (overall) in Religious societies. This is all that humankind had ever known - so naturally it is the society to which human beings are adapted. 

In other words; in traditional society any individual human being who lost his belief-in or capacity for religion, would have experienced a kind of "suicide trigger" - some kind of self-deletion mechanism; by which the integrity of society was preserved against the short-term selfishness of its component individuals. 

But now, and for the first-time ever; we have a whole civilization that has deleted religion as the primary principle of social coherence and purpose. Modern Western people are born into an utterly alien social environment. We are biologically adapted to a society that has gone.  

If true; this means that religion has been absolutely essential to the formation and maintenance of all human societies - and the larger and more complex the society, the more important has been religion. 

Therefore, when Western Civilization deleted externally-valid religion as the primary reality; it deleted its external control mechanism of Religion - which included the external control mechanism which we might call The Church in all its many manifestations. 

However, the inner fail-safe mechanism of something like apoptosis was not deleted; and it still remains; because it was built-into all (normal, potentially social) human beings.   

What I am saying is that when Western Society deleted religion, it began to fall apart because of the lack of an "immune system". However, a non-religious society also triggered, and left unopposed, a self-destructive instinct in human beings.  

Therefore, individuals ceased to desire to reproduce - in order (implicitly, biologically) to eliminate their damaged and non-sustainable lineage from society. And also, in general terms - such people began to behave in ways that tended to eliminate their non-religious society, which was innerly-recognized as not-viable and dangerous. 

I am suggesting that - at an innate, inbuilt, instinctive level - Not-Religious human beings may be "biologically programmed" to eliminate themselves, and also any society that has become non-religious. 

Over-simplified: the idea is that unconscious human psychology detects "I am Not Religious"; concludes that "I am a threat and need to be eliminated" -- and this triggers innate self-destructive impulses that manifest in multiple ways - such as self-destructive attitudes, desires, ideology, evaluations, preferences, and behaviours. 

This would work both passively, e.g. by not-resisting destruction (which is something widely seen in The West); and also more actively, by Not Religious people and groups seeking their own destruction - not just biological destruction, but social destruction: in other words they seek to eliminate their own non-religious and unviable selves, culture and genetics. 

Because a non-religious, religion-rejecting culture like The West is a threat to all possible cultures; and needs to be eliminated if human society as such can survive.  

Apoptosis is an analogy, no matter how relevant it seems; and I do not believe that it (or any other biological cause) is the whole or even the primary reason for the self-willed self-destruction of The West. 

I personally believe the deepest and most profound reason for our situation is spiritual, not biological - as I have stated many hundreds of times on this blog. Nonetheless; taken in this larger spiritual context, biology may still have a role in aiding understanding, and providing a causal-mechanism. 

I am not talking morally here - I am not, for instance, saying that social survival is more important than the individual in God's eyes; but I am trying to describe the workings of a putative natural or biological mechanism for social survival. 

But I do find apoptosis quite helpful as a way of explaining why so many (apparently a large majority) people in The West exhibit attitudes and behaviours that will (pretty obviously) lead to the annihilation of themselves, and of their culture. 

In sum: while there have always been evil leaders (who are sometimes demonically aligned) - and we certainly have these in The West; the currently manifest widespread suicidal desire and willed socially destructive behaviour was not seen among the masses in earlier and religious cultures. 

The fact that self-elimination is so evident, endemic, powerful, and increasing in The West; invites explanation. 

***

Note: By the assumptions and terms used here, by historical standards: The Modern West is Not Religious. 

Even the minority of self-identified Religious people in The West (such as devout, active church members and leaders) are overwhelmingly Not Religious - not in the way nor to the degree that Men of traditional societies were Religious. 

This is clear from their attitudes as well as from behaviour (as was very evident in 2020 when supposed "health" considerations instantly and comprehensively overcame and displaced all inconvenient religious priorities). 

The West is this-worldly, and is ultimately dedicated to therapy (e.g. alleviation of here-and-now suffering, promotion of gratification). 

Whatever we may believe or assert about ourselves: our inbuilt biological mechanisms recognize the reality of our religion-rejection, and are acting accordingly. 

Therefore; if you genuinely desire to escape the instinct-level societal and personal self-destructivity; the real problem is not convincing yourself and/or "other people" that you are genuinely Religious (i.e. that your ultimate and bottom-line perspective is "not of this world" but directed at highest and eternal reality) -- the real problem is convincing that-within-you which recognizes and acts-upon religion-rejection. 

Why Zooey (by JD Salinger) made such an impact

Zooey, depicted by David Richardson - catches the character nicely, although Zooey is meant to be a handsome actor and juvenile leading man on TV. 

I have written before about JD Salinger's novella Zooey; and how it has fascinated me, off and on, ever since I encountered it in the summer of 1981. Well, I have again been dipping into it, and as usual it has triggered some associations and notions. 

Zooey struck me as a deep book, when I first read it - as if it might contain the "secret of life" somewhere embedded. It probably had this effect because this was the first time in my life that I had met with "spiritual stuff" that really interested and excited me. 

I was very taken by the way that some of the characters talked about spiritual and religious matters; in a personal and engaged way; this was obviously the most important thing for them (and implicitly the author). 

Maybe this was the first sense I got of the possibility of a personal and inwardly-driven spiritual/ religious quest for people of my broad type, people with whom I could identify. 

The Glass family did plenty of quoting and name-dropping, true; but clearly they were not just repeating what "other people" had said. 

And also, they were trying to use these insights in living their lives: giving it their Best Shot. 

My reaction was, I now perceive, a kind of recapitulation of the way in which, from the late-1800s and with the emergence of Theosophy; many Western people were attracted to the esoteric spirituality and religions of the East - mainly philosophical Hinduism and Zen Buddhism. 

(Mainstream Christianity was largely irrelevant to this quest - it simply did not address the driving motivations of such people.) 

And the way, also, that this Eastern perspective was then brought-back and applied to "Christianity" -  because Zooey (and the short story Franny that precedes it) is focused on the Jesus Prayer, and the Russian Orthodox book "The way of a pilgrim" - which is about the use of this prayer as the centre of a religious life. 

Zooey is permeated-by, and culminates-in, what I found at the time to be an appealing positive presentation of Jesus Christ - and that was something I had seldom encountered before.

(As a child and adolescent I had always found the character Jesus to be uninteresting, alien and irrelevant to my problems and concerns.)  

I can nowadays see that the version of Jesus Christ, the Jesus Prayer and "Christianity" that are featured in Zooey are primarily Hindu/ Buddhist/ Eastern. For instance; the Jesus Prayer is presented as a mantra, pure and simple; and Salinger's Jesus is a very different and almost opposite phenomenon from that of what I now regard as real Christianity. 

Salinger's Jesus is indeed much more like Buddha than the Jesus of the IV Gospel; and Salinger's Jesus's concerns and aims are in-line with Oneness spirituality; rather than being focused upon life after death, salvation, resurrection - and Heaven. 

But this understanding of mine is all retrospective. At the time of reading, my concerns and demands were much like those of the Glass family children. 

What, then, were these demands and concerns?

The big problem for the Glass children is that this mortal life on earth cannot live up to the aspirations and perceived possibilities of youth. 

This afflicts all the children we encounter in the main Glass stories: Franny, Zooey, Seymour, and Buddy (the author's persona) - and, implicitly the others too. They all seem to have a yearned-for ideal of what life could and should be - but later discover that whatever they do (and, between them, the children try a range of strategies)...

Whatever they try: life just doesn't match up with these intense hopes. 

Therefore, there is an underlying pessimism about the Glass family saga; even when the specific stories end in an upbeat fashion - upon what seems like an epiphany, an insight, an answer (as do both Zooey and Raise high the roof beam, carpenters) - the reader senses that it will be a very temporary and partial triumph.

This pessimism comes across primarily because the oldest child, Seymour, committed suicide; shot himself with a gun (in A perfect day for bananafish). 

Yet Seymour was (at least to his family) a spiritual genius, the best of the children - a man we are told was both far-advanced and deeply-into the actual practice of Eastern spirituality. 

Therefore, despite that Seymour, like Salinger himself, suffered from Combat Fatigue (true PTSD, not the watered-down modern usage) as a consequence of prolonged front-line participation in the World War II invasion of Europe - we feel that Seymour should, nonetheless - as a kind of saint, have been able to overcome whatever horrors life threw at him. 

The background - and deeply-sad - implication and conclusion; is that there is no answer to the problem of that between life-as-it-might-be and life-as-it is; because not even Seymour could find one. Seymor's failure in this mortal life casts across all the Glass stories a shadow of the inevitability of failure.  

The young Glasses may not grasp this, when they are still growing-up, extraverted, when life is apparently opening-out - and they have the delusional confidence that they will be the first to find this answer. 

But this will always fail; and will lead either to an abandonment of the spiritual quest (as with sister "Boo-Boo" - a socially-integrated housewife and family woman; or else to a frustration and dismay that increases with age (Seymour, and Buddy).

Then there is Waker, who is described as having become a Carthusian monk, vowed to silence for much of the time. It may be that we are supposed to infer that Waker has candidly acknowledged to himself the insufficiency of this mortal life; and looks therefore to the life beyond. 

My interpretation of Waker is that Salinger saw him more as an Eastern monk than a Christian. One who regards this life as suffering and an illusion, from-which we should seek to detach ourselves - awaiting a kind of re-absorption into universal and impersonal divinity. 

In other words; (IMO) Salinger had neither an understanding-of, nor belief-in, the Christian idea (well, some Christians believe it) that this mortal life and our death are real, necessary steps en route to a state of post-mortal divinity that is personal.  

So, I agree with Salinger that this mortal life is inevitably insufficient; and I agree with his implicit conclusion that there is no answer to this problem within the scope of Eastern religion.

(Since; to regard this mortal life as a tragedy of suffering and attachment is not a solution; and to cure our sense of tragic insufficiency with annihilation of "the self" and consciousness is to avoid, but not to solve, the problem.) 

In conclusion, I continue to regard Zooey as a valuable and honest - as well as interesting and exciting - "spiritual story" - but I no longer believe it contains "the answer" to this mortal life!

Rather, Zooey and the other Glass stories show us what are Not the answers... 

But more than just "showing"; through participation in these stories, we potentially live-out putative answers, and experience for ourselves their (noble!) failures; and they leave us to continue the quest for ourselves and in different directions. 

What's new in the Satanic agenda since 2020? War, mainly.

The greatest novelty from the Global Establishment since the totalitarian coup of 2020 is surely war, specifically engineering and escalating world war III; presented as "a good thing" or even as an absolutely essential thing. 

This is a tough sell for the totalitarians! - because the kind of war which is being pushed-for will destroy all the (albeit incoherent) aims of the existing major-core leftists issues, by which the world has been changed. All-out, everywhere, world war - will put an end to Great Reset type 'concerns' about a climate 'emergency', the transagenda, antiracism... and all the rest of that kind of thing. 

All these leftist-evil-agendas depend upon the 'rulers' and their minions accepting, and living-by, the delusion that their pet projects will incrementally be implemented in a future society dedicated to this-kind-of-stuff. 

Of course, these pet projects are all in actuality socially-destructive in effect, and therefore can never really be implemented; because the more rapidly the agendas 'succeed', the more rapidly society will crumble - so the authorities will be unable to impose them. 

That awareness of the incompatibility of world war (2023 style) with new-left-totalitarianism is, however, blocked by continual propaganda and the continual construction of a virtual-reality; a 'virtuality' existing in a closed-circle of mutually-reinforcing mass-media with bureaucratic statements and rules. 

But war? It is indeed a very tough sell to convince bureaucrats and media moguls that a long-term, unrestricted, international war will be compatible with their cherished ideologies! Because it simply isn't!

Yet, remarkably, for the past year-and-a-half; they do seem to have been convinced! 

Convinced by a combination of multiple Total Lies with increased censorship, and levels of frenzied national-demonization not seen for a century... Indeed, recent demonization and persecutions of the Fire Nation and its citizens have been in some ways (especially financial and economic) never before seen anywhere or at any time in the modern era. 

The leadership/ minion class has not even noticed that the sanctions and measures imposed ostensibly to destroy the Fire Nation have, in fact and surely quite clearly, harmed the imposing nations - and that was their intention from the very start, which is why they continue to be escalated. By such means; the war has been used to accelerate the purposive-suicide of The West (the West being Satan's prime target in recent generations - even above the Fire Nation). 

So, the stupidity and obedience of the rulers and their minions turns out to be very great indeed; and they really seem not to have noted the gross and widening discrepancy between the bureaucratic-media version of reality, and what they can observe and experience for themselves!

But the longer the situation continues, and the wider the gap in realities, the more difficult it seems to be to sell a proposed war of unprecedented destruction as being (somehow!) helpful to the attainment of the totalitarian-leftist 'utopia' of Agenda 2030 and the Great Reset!

I think that this is what is going-on behind-the-scenes of the Western Establishment at present. 

All the participants are affiliated with evil, servants of Satan; but the mostly-evil Ahrimanic totalitarians are (at last!) starting to wake-up to the incompatibility of their ultra-controlled world-view with the chaos of wreckage and killing, favoured by of the more-wholly-evil Sorathic spiteful-destroyers. 

I personally do not want either of these groups to prevail! 

Indeed, the mostly-but-partly evil totalitarians vision of a world of omni-surveillance and total mind-control is spiritually even worse than a world of total war, horrific bodily suffering, and mega-death. 

Mankind has painted itself into this Satanic corner, by many generations of wrong and evil choices and decisions - and by continuing in these falsehoods. There are no good options for The World. 

Maybe we will be faced with a choice between supporting wholesale spiritual destruction (totalitarianism) or else supporting gross physical destruction (war)... certainly that seems like the way that Satan desires us to see things. 

I hope that - when the crunch comes - I will choose neither.  

Societal demotivation - how far can it go?

I have been asserting for many years that motivation - the lack of it, its weakness - is the overwhelming problem in modern Western societies; and that its root is the deletion of (real) religion - which was, through recorded history, the strongest motivator of Men.

The fact that fashions and fanaticisms change so often and so fast, is a consequence; that almost nobody resists anything pushed at them; that public discourse is so reactive to top-down formation. 

That organizations no longer pursue distinctive goals; the feeble and dwindling attention span; the near-immediate memory-holing of major life experiences... all are evidences of this motivational deficit and its worsening. 

Most attempts to recover motivation, have themselves sought to create or develop external-motivators; to try and rebuild the by-now themselves externally-manipulated, corrupted and converged institutions and nations which used to be associated with a more motivated past. 

But the (supposedly) stronger external institutional motivators of the past were themselves generated and sustained by more-motivated individual Men. Modern institutions, however, are merely bureaucratic - and bureaucracy is prime evidence of our demotivated state. 

Bureaucracies are circular, self-parasitizing systems that only work when Men are significantly demotivated; and bureaucracies need to provide more and more, ever more arbitrary, micro-motivations - in order simply to continue. 

So; the desire to re-motivate Men by a resurgence of strong, self-confident, and inspiring institutions - especially churches, or The Church (i.e. 'The' for a particular person) is itself doomed to fail; since such churches will necessarily need to be made and operated by Demotivated Modern Men. 

But how far can this go? The dominant globalist totalitarian agenda is exactly calculated to demotivate the world population - in order that it be docile and manageable. 

But, at some point; won't people Just Give Up? 

...Lose motivation to live, and - with their last glimmer of motivation - yearn for, and feebly seek, only a quick and comfortable death? 

Some such dynamic would seem to underlie the rise of state-administered programs of 'assisted suicide'/ euthanasia; all of which seem readily justified to the modern mind by their promise to reduce human suffering - which seems to the modern mind the highest and noblest goal of morality.

(Not noticing the logical conclusion: when life entails suffering - then no-life seems preferable to life: and we arrive at the 'moral' justification for massive population sterilization and ('humane') annihilation.)       

Those of us who disagree-with and are resistant-to the down-spiral of demotivation are - understandably - casting-about for something to motivate them. 

But there are plenty of pitfalls if motivation becomes the proximate and this-worldly goal. 

Although we must-have something to motivate us; this does not mean that anything will suffice to do the job. 

Among the most-motivated individuals are those being progressively consumed with prideful self-love; psychopaths whose rewards come from the manipulation and harming of others; and those who embrace a kind of mania of self-stimulation and hyperactivity. 

Too many any of those who offer to lead 'us' into sunny uplands of meaningful and purposeful lives betray such or similar gross personal pathologies: in effect their own craving need for motivation fuels their crazed and unbalanced attempts at crusades. 

This includes self-identified - and indeed sincere - Christians; who lack the insight that that their own zealous and burning motivational state is using Christianity as a mere vehicle for the self-aggrandizement - a self-reinforcing process upon-which they depend like an addictive drug; a drug required in increasing doses in order to retain the (here and now, this-worldly) motivational state that they absolutely need - and without-which they would rapidly collapse into oblivion-seeking despair.  

The problem of demotivation is therefore extremely serious, central to our times, and getting worse; yet the proposed solutions often make things even-worse-still by displacing self-help into fantasies of external saving; or delivering people into the mercies of sadists, maniacs or the pathologically-driven.

As usual, any genuine solution to such deep problems will begin with acknowledging and understanding that there is a problem, and its nature. 

The right answer must, usually, come from-within - and will certainly not be imposed from without, from a dominant culture which has made and worsened the demotivated world. 

And the right answer will - surely? - be other-worldly in its primary basis and frame: will overleap the corruptions and deceptions of immediate gratification and 'success' and look beyond to life everlasting. 

From that next-worldly perspective, we may then look-back on our actual mortal life - and sufficiently recognize, understand, and be motivated to do... 

To do that which needs-to and should be done; by us, by Me: specifically and personally, starting Now. 

The double-edged sword of romanticism

Romanticism began to arise in the minds of Men from about the middle of the 1700s, in Western Europe - and has spread from there. What romanticism arose from, was Man's new awareness of himself and the world.

In other words, romanticism was a development (or an 'evolution') of human consciousness. 

But there was a double-edged quality to romantic consciousness. 

Men became aware of the wonderfulness of nature, and of the achievements and potential of their own thinking - but also of opposite tendencies. 

With romantic consciousness; at times, for moments or bursts, life seemed raised to a higher level. Various names were given such experiences: Sehnsucht, ecstasy, epiphanies, religious experiences, mystical insights, joy, peak experiences... these episodes were noticed, described and pondered for the first time.

There seemed to be a possibility that these best-of-times might be insights into ultimate reality; and might therefore become continuous and permanent - or, at least, frequent and long-lasting. 

Thus romanticism often led to great optimism, happiness, and the sense of potential for a larger and better life and world. 

However; there was the other edge to the sword of romantic consciousness; which was that - in practice - these periods of romantic ecstasy were brief and infrequent, could not be aimed at and achieved directly - and the opposite conclusion soon began to emerge that they were delusional. 

The everyday reality for everybody for most of the time (and, apparently, for some people all of the time) was of mundane consciousness; of life as commonplace, dull, shallow - pointless, purposeless, meaningless...

Society was so heavily-stacked against romanticism, that the most intensely romantic individuals often felt themselves to be 'outsiders' (to use Colin Wilson's term). And, even under the best imaginable social conditions; Man's life is unavoidably pervaded by change, decay, pain and disease

And, no matter what the degree of attainment was achieved; every life is always terminated by death. 

The contrast between what seemed possible, and what was actually attainable, led to existential angst, to a cynicism that often led to despair - and was fought-against by seeking either for selfish hedonic oblivion, trying to blot-out awareness of failure and futility. Or by seeking an end to all conscious suffering in chronically self-destructive behaviour, and by suicide (whether deniably-sought, or actively-committed). 

Romanticism was therefore a mixed-blessing at best, a curse at worst. Yet, because romanticism was a consequence of the development of consciousness, it could neither be suppressed nor ignored. 

Romanticism changed everything... Yet, there was and is no 'answer' to the possibilities and problems of romanticism within the bounds of this world.

On the one hand, we now have many experiences that create yearnings and expectations for a higher form of life; on the other hand, we cannot achieve these yearnings and expectations in our actual lives; due to the many social, psychological and physical (i.e. ultimately entropic) constraints of this world.  

  

The simple answer requires that we take-into-account a personal life beyond this life; and an afterlife that incorporates those romantic experiences of this life. 

In different words; we need to regard the romanticism of this mortal life as learning experiences directed at full attainment in an eternal life to come. 

Then, but only then, can we cope-with and learn-from our own romanticism; and render romantic experiences into a positive and inspiriting development of Mankind. 

War among old, dying nations - whose death comes first?

The civilized world is voluntarily dying towards extinction, and has been for decades, due to chosen sub-fertility - less than two children per woman (and falling) despite conditions of peace and prosperity. 

Indeed, this gradual suicide has been going on for considerably longer among the upper classes, because increased wealth, intelligence, education and conscientiousness are all associated with reduced number of children (mostly strongly among women - the most intelligent women only average half a child each). 

The current world war is therefore one between dying nations - a war between nations that have all chosen to exercise their health, wealth, and freedom of choice to have fewer, ever fewer, children.  

Furthermore; substantially because of this low and falling fertility (but also because of increased average and extreme lifespan); the civilized world is now old. 

Modern societies are - on average and at the extreme - the oldest by far in the history of the world; with a substantial majority of the population in the second half of their natural (c70 year) lifespans. 

This is accelerating almost inevitably because a very small and shrinking proportion of the women are of reproductive age.

This fact of such old and declining nations must make a difference to the nature and conduct of war - it cannot help but be so; yet the subject is hardly ever raised, let alone its implications understood. 

This description of old and dying nations fits all the most developed world, and all participants in the current world war (especially when recent immigrants for the third world are excluded from the averages - as they should be). 

There are quantitative differences between nations, and between the sides, relative differences in trends; but all are essentially on the same trajectory. 

This is an extraordinary situation; given that the war is being fought on an existential basis - that is both sides believe that the their continued existence as socio-political entities depends on either not-losing (in the case of the Fire Nation) or winning (in the case of The West). 

On the one had; the war is being fought by nations that have (in an ultimate sense) chosen to become extinct -- while, on the other hand, they two sides are fighting for the proximate (short-term) survival of their 'systems'. 

There is therefore a dissociation of motivation, and profound incoherence at work. It seems that biological extinction is either regarded as inevitable, accepted or embraced; while ideological survival (for the Fire Nation) or global expansion (in The West) is apparently regarded as absolutely vital. 

None of this is surprising if - as seems true - the war has been engineered and escalated merely a pretext for mass infliction of human suffering and increased human annihilation.  

On the other hand, the spiritual aspects of such dissociations are very peculiar indeed! I am convinced that the chosen sub-fertility of the entire civilized world  is an index of profound and nihilistic despair. 

Despair and a covert desire for annihilation is the ultimate and underlying reality of this war - whatever the apparent strength of short-term surface motivators. 

And this is an extremely dangerous situation; spiritually as well as the more obvious physical risk. 

When nihilistic despair is the deep motivator it would take very little to trigger purposively and mutually destructive decisions. And to die in despair - and remain so - is to make the choice of hell. 

Since The West operates increasingly on the basis of value-inversion (at the level of metaphysics - of primary assumptions about reality) - the evil of The West is purposive and worsening. 

I am in no doubt that The East started the war as the lesser evil; but that is not good enough. There have been some remarkable and encouraging signs suggestive of a partial good-affiliation; but mostly of a negative nature (i.e. what they have Not done, rather than what they actively espouse). 

But to withstand the escalating temptations of war; The East would need explicitly and coherently to affiliate, with a positive trajectory, to the side of Good. 

As yet; the situation remains uncertain; and the effect of war (and the activity of demons) is to abandon Good in pursuit of expedient military goals, or for sinful reasons such as vengeance. 

All the time, things are changing; and one of these changes is that the participant societies are ageing and dying - and, especially, the causes of these demographic trends are continuing to operate, and perhaps increase. 

How will such nihilistic and covertly-suicidal societies behave in a war? History provides no valid examples for comparison; and the answer is currently a mystery.

...And likely to remain so since the reality and deep-causes of civilizational subfertility and strategic self-extinction are ignored or trivialized. 

But the outlook seems pessimistic. A society that chooses not to have enough children even to replace itself - and then not to talk about the inevitable consequences, or pretend that this is 'a good thing'; is an unrealistic and unwise society - operating on the basis of false priorities, and motivated by lies.