Optimism and the ideology of progress: the Achilles Heel of Western Civilization

I have often commented on the absolute need and demand for optimism that is characteristic of our Western civilization. 

So much so; that many Western Christians have come to identify here-and-now, this-worldly, optimism with the virtue of Hope - which ought to come from faith and trust in God and the salvation of Jesus Christ that happens beyond death. 

So much so; that too many Western Christians refuse even to entertain pessimistic socio-political analyses, because for them pessimism about the future leads them to despair - which they rightly recognize as a sin. 

Their mistake is to suppose that the fault lies in the pessimism, rather than their own this-worldliness, their absolute demand to feel optimism. 

I will argue here that the ideology of progress, and the dependence on psychological optimism, are an Achilles Heel of Western civilization - which both explains and predicts the decline of real Christian faith: a faith that ought to be rooted in hope, not optimism. 

Historically, as the religion of Christianity waned, the ideology of Progress waxed; so that the one replaced the other as the dominant world view.

(The term religion ought to be reserved for religions with gods, spirits, another-world etc. Secular, materialist, this-worldly belief-systems - such as nationalism, communism and other species of Leftism - should instead be termed "ideologies".)  

This emergence of a "replacement for religion" of Progress was very evident, and much discussed, in the late 1800s and into the early decades of the 1900s - and it was so powerful a movement of thought that it hoovered-up and assimilated mainstream church Christianity. It also led to the Theosophical Society-derived, Hindu and Buddhist influenced, "New Age" spirituality of the past half century or so. 

Such a replacement of spiritual, other-worldly, religion by a this-worldly and materialist ideology; seems (in retrospect) almost inevitable - given the socio-political necessity for providing people in the Western nations with some sense of purpose and a basis for organization. 

This progressive expectation - this optimistic expectation - affected all the major Christian churches and denominations, especially those that saw (for some decades, at least) church growth - such as evangelicals both Protestant and Catholic, pentecostals, charismatics, Mormons... 

All were institutionally optimistic about continued expansion in numbers, growth in resources: outcomes of "success" that would be materially measurable. All looked towards some approaching this-worldly triumph, and socio-cultural dominance, or even takeover. 

Even that characteristic modern Western spiritual form called New Age, incorporated optimistic progressivism into its belief in reincarnation. 

Contrary to historical conceptualizations of reincarnation; New Age reincarnation provides grounds for optimism, being seen as an almost-inevitable process of learning, and consequent incremental increase in spiritual stature, with spiritual "progress" accumulating across many incarnations. 

New Age "Karma" will be the cause of this-incarnation constraints, and we may suffer set-backs from bad choices or bad-luck in our present life; but New Age Karma is essentially an optimistic process; building towards higher spiritual status.  

So - there are psychological (and consequently sociological) advantages to the modern spiritual ideology of optimistic progressivism. These include:

1. An expectation of change, therefore novelty and variety of life.

2. The expectation of something to look forward to, incremental betterment of the human condition; because things will improve - sooner or later, and all adversity is regarded as a set-back (e.g. the notion of "what does not kill me, will make me stronger").

3. Provision of a sense of historical direction, and therefore a basis organizing principle for one's life, and society. 

4. A belief that this Will Happen. That is, the implied (if not explicit) idea of "historical inevitability"; so that progress is something that happens to us, is imposed-upon us - and all we need do is respond accordingly; operating like a wave of positive change that we can surf into the future. 

   

However, there are (as is now evident) deep, inevitable, and ultimately fatal, problems with the ideology of progress, and a life built upon optimism. 

One is that by conflating Christian hope with optimism about this-world; Christians become vulnerable to despair when their life in this-world gets worse - and despair is something they are (rightly) told is a sin. 

Therefore, to avoid a despair which is actually a consequence of their secular and this-worldly ideology; such Christians refuse to be realistically pessimistic under any circumstances; e.g. deny the past reality and probable continuation of terminal decline in Christianity, and their church. 

They deny even the possibility that their church may be annihilated (whether by destruction, or by assimilation into some other institution or system) - because such a possibility would lead them into despair. 

The absolute necessity for optimism therefore renders modern Western populations (including most self-identified Christians) dangerously vulnerable to manipulation and external control, by any societal (or spiritual) powers that can affect their psychological state. 

At first people are manipulated into supporting almost any socio-political ideology that offers them an optimistic world view, that offers a feeling of participation in an inevitable trend...

But eventually, having been disappointed over and again, and having lost faith in a better this-world to come; then these people will be manipulated into despair - and by their own assumptions they will be trapped in this despair. 

In effect, such people will lose faith in God and will cease to believe in salvation, because they demand to feel optimistic about an inevitably better future in this-world. 

Such people will see their own pessimism as evidence of God's failure (or non-existence) to make this-world a progressively better place. 

And they will regard eternal salvation beyond death as merely a pitiable (and dubious) second-best compensation for what they regard as Jesus Christ's failure to ensure an always-improving mortal life and world. 

It can be seen that the ideology of optimism and the expectation of progress has been a highly successful long-term demonic strategy. 

Our only hope of hope, is our-selves to abandon the demand for optimism; which includes understanding and experiencing that the true object of Christian hope is located beyond the grave...

Such hope being situated safely out-of-reach of our current psychological feelings concerning the likely prospects for an improving mortal life on this earth. 

Groups of people (e.g. a particular sex, religion, empire, nation, ethnicity, or social class) are never the root of The Problem

A good deal of human discourse is - and maybe always has been - ranged around arguments over which group of people are most at fault for the state of things? 

That group-at-fault may be very large - one of the sexes, for instance; or may be variously small - a particular religion, empire, nation, ethnicity, or social class. 

The thing is, there are so many candidate groups; and loads of evidence for all of them as being a problem, or even a Big problem - so there is constant and unresolvable dispute about which particular group is the worst.

What this amounts to is a search for the source of the major problems of the world; that special group which is the origin of the problems caused by most or all the other groups across the spread of history.

The point of this search for the origin, is the hope that when the source is known, then a solution will become possible... If the Big Problem can be located, then maybe it can be isolated, and its threat eliminated? 

So alluring is this prospect, that the project to discover the root-evil group continues; despite many generations of futility and failure - and no solid example of successful positive transformation consequent upon elimination of a particular group. 

Some of these problem groups are nonsensical projections, others are identifying a real and serious problem - by which I mean a real spiritual problem. It is a major aspect of the extremity of spiritual evil in these times that large groups have been (and are being) made evil by the sin of resentment. 

Many groups have been corrupted by resentment, to the point that resentment becomes the primary (or even sole) cause of their group-cohesion and motivation. 

Indeed, there may be nothing in common between the group members, except for the shared focus of their resentment. That is indeed the nature of The Left as of 2025: leftism has become nothing-but a collection of shared resentments. 

And, once a resentment-based group has been created, then there is the further spiritual problem that it leads not just to counter-measures, but to counter-resentment; such that a resentment-fuelled groups leads to the development of another group who "resent the resenters"*. 

And thus the problem compounds, and the search for an original group source of The Problem, and a remedy; instead spirals into a maelstrom of increasing mutual resentment.  

Why does this happen, and why does it happen so much here-and-now? 

It happens because ultimately humans are being manipulated by demons - because a world of humans that cohere by resentment is one that spiritually benefits only the Satanic strategy of human damnation - no matter what the (temporary) material outcome of inter-group conflict might be. 

And humans are more easily manipulated by demons here-and-now because we have (as a civilization) excluded the spiritual perspective from public discourse; including having denied the reality of the demonic - so that only human causes are regarded as permissible explanations for human problems.

(Spiritual explanations are regarded as necessarily false, because impossible.) 

The situation is strongly encouraged by the dominant Western ideology that regards "correctly-directed" resentment (e.g. anti-nationalist-globalism, socialism, feminism, antiracism, anti-antisemitism) as a virtue, not a sin; and which encourages resentment as a core human motivation by all means possible (state propaganda, media propaganda, laws and regulations etc).

Resentment is therefore a besetting sin of this era and place - because it is a sin that has been culturally-inverted into a virtue. 

Christians absolutely need to break out of this demonic cycle of group-resentment, on the basis that it is spiritual poison. 

As I've often said before: the reasons Christians are commanded to forgive in all situation is a spiritual (not practical) imperative; rooted in the fact that the opposite of forgiveness is the sin of resentment. 

Forgiveness is not about the evils of other person, or the other group, no matter how very evil these may be; it is instead about an evil in ourselves: We forgive sins in order that we ourselves do not fall into resentment. 

+++

* Examples of this abound on the "Secular Right" i.e. the group of anti-mainstream-Left political activists and commenters; which group includes plenty of self-identified Christians whose deepest and most compulsive interest is this-worldly, hedonic, and material. So we get those whose obsessive focus of discussion and argument is ("manosphere") anti-feminism, anti-antiracism, anti-(anti-antisemitism), and so forth. As with the mainstream Left, this broad grouping of "Alt-right"/ "Neoractionaries" etc has no net-positive spiritual motivation, and is united only by their resentments**.

**Further note: If you shake free of the past few weeks of gleeful euphoria of the Secular Right at the stated-intentions/?actions of the new US President's administration - you will observe a great surge of increased resentment (gleeful spite, Schadenfreude...), and nothing at all in the way of a positive spiritual programme. This may be "natural" for people to behave like this, but it sure ain't Christian thus gratuitously and publicly to celebrate one's own sin! 

Faces in the fire - our tendency to see patterns (even when the purposive destruction of patterns is afoot!)

The idea that humans have a tendency to see patterns where there is (supposedly) only randomness - like seeing faces appearing briefly in a fire - is used to argue that therefore we ought to discount as self-deluding, the meaningfulness of the world around us. 

This is one of those ridiculously over-influential, very selectively applied, reductionist pseudo-explanations upon which a great deal of Western materialist modernity is based. 

The "argument" is also used (selectively) to rubbish any attempt to unravel and expose the evil-motivated lies and manipulations of the ruling classes - but it gets completely ignored when it comes to the vast and absurd, smoke and mirror, elaborations of mainstream ideology; such as the birdemic, CO2 climate change or antiracism.

As a general rule, the real patterns are not abstract processes, but derive from Beings and their motivations. 

What we may call a "pattern" is therefore the consequence of the nature, desires, intentions etc of living Beings (including Beings of various kinds - divine, human, animal, plant, mineral, spiritual, and so forth). 

But, as well as positive patterns, there is always the possibility of negative anti-pattern. 

A real pattern is some kind of positive "order", and the only ultimate order is that of divine creation (all other order is derived from, or contributing to, that order). 

But an anti-pattern is the destruction of order; the negation of order. 

And it is important to recognize this negative, destructive motivation when present, because it is common. It is, indeed, an especially advanced type of evil (that I have often termed "Sorathic"). 

This needs to be borne in mind as we contemplate the world, and try to make sense of what is going-on in geopolitics, national politics, and within social institutions such as the workplace. 

In a world of advanced evil, where it seems that the demons of destruction are waxing dominant; then a policy of chaotic destruction may be pursued by the simple means of an accumulation of multiple incoherent changes - of many kinds, in many places, and at many levels.

The "faces in the fire" tendency tries to make overall sense of the by discovering some Master Plan. Or a clash of several Master Plans, Or else an all encompassing but non-purposing (non-) explanation such as insanity or incompetence. 

Yet we ought to bear in mind that chaotic destruction is not always a by-product; and negation may be a thing deliberately pursued. 

In which case; pattern-making explanations of lesser wickednesses (such selfish Master Plans as pursuit of money, power, fame etc. and their interactions) can serve as a convenient disguise or excuse, for what is actually the most advanced form of evil.  

This discernment, this recognition of negative-destructive (Sorathic) evil; will only be possible if we allow for its possibility. 

**

Note added: 

Self-conscious purposive destructive evil is rare and evanescent among humans, because it tends rapidly to lead to self destruction. Sorathic evil in this world is best understood as a purpose of the ruling demonic spirits, who are themselves immune to material destruction, while benefitting from it in the short-term. 

We can imagine that the Sorathic demons modus operandi is usually to set different selfish and exploitative motivations (of individuals and groupings) against each other - with mutually destructive intent. 

Also to encourage (and indeed spiritually "feed" upon) the spiteful, hating, resentment-driven and despairing destructive motivations of the humans involved. 

In sum, it is the net effect that is destructive of pattern, of order - and ultimately destructive of divine creation. And this applies even when there are indeed patterns to the individual component motivations among Men and groups, that leading to overall destructiveness.

There may be faces in the fire, but the fire itself is an agent of destruction. 

The intrinsic direction of divine creation - therefore including human history - is towards more consciousness, more freedom

If the direction of God's creation is towards greater consciousness, hence greater freedom, of Beings; then the direction of history is one of individual Men and Mankind's response to greater consciousness. 

In effect, Mankind has greater consciousness and freedom thrust upon him by the direction of divine creation; and the contingent aspect of history is a story of the sum of how individuals and groups have responded to this imperative. 

This does not mean that Man is passive and response merely; and there is no reason in principle (and sometimes in practice) that a Man or a group of Men (a tribe, nation, civilization  for instance) cannot devise their own spiritual agenda (or indeed non-spiritual or anti-spiritual agenda - as in the modern West), which will then interact with the underlying direction of creation. 

But underneath whatever other factors may be in-play; there will always be this trend towards greater self-awareness, greater autonomy from the world; a compulsion of freedom, choice, and personal responsibility. 

Thus history is linear, and never repeats, because human consciousness (and indeed the consciousness of all Beings) has this developmental aspect. Even when social features are retained or recur, things are different because the Men are differently set-up - have a different nature.  

By analogy; Mankind has gone through childhood and into an adolescence - and this developmental direction is mandatory, much as it is in the development of an organism. 

For instance; adolescence can only be stopped by adding pathology to prevent it - but interventions to sabotage development do Not retain the state of childhood, they merely prevent adolescence. 

(I regard oneness spirituality and religions, such as Buddhism, as versions of the attempt to return Mankind to the state of early-childhood, or ultimately to pre-creation beingness. This cannot succeed in mortal life, because we live in divine creation. If such attempts succeed after death, then the soul is simply removed from creation.) 

And the same applies to the transition from adolescence to adulthood, which is the transition currently underway in creation and beneath culture. 

(In a crude sense, the 1960s counter-culture was a necessarily failed attempt to arrest Western Man at the stage of adolescence, or to revert adults to adolescence. It succeeded only in preventing maturity, or imposing a superficial caricature of adolescent behaviour - but did not retain the essentially transformational quality of adolescence; because that is a product of dawning consciousness and inner freedom.)  

Our civilizational response to the underlying onset of spiritual maturity has been and is to prevent adulthood, by the denial of personal freedom and responsibility. 

But this sabotaging of spiritual development does Not keep Mankind in a state of adolescence, it leads to a pathological form of maturity - symptoms of which we see all around us. 

So-called "AI" (Artificial Intelligence) is a case of "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain"

Because so-called AI (Artificial Intelligence) is a top-down-imposed, totalitarian Establishment imposed, lying fake; it is always a product of some or another "man behind the curtain" (or institution behind the curtain) - someone who is trying to distract attention from himself and deny responsibility for whatever AI is trying to do. 

And what AI is trying to do - the reason for its existence, the reason it is being coercively implemented by multiple social institutions and puppet-leaders all across The West - is overall and by intention evil... of various types and kinds. 

Sometimes the evil is exploiting society in a parasitic fashion for money, security, power, lust etc. 

Sometimes it is to create helplessness, passivity, fascinated horror; or to sow fear, resentment, despair.

Sometimes the evil is to destroy that which is Good - the true, beautiful or virtuous. 

Sometimes the evil is in destroying life itself, divine creation - or what it is to be human. 

And overall AI is part of the demonic strategy of damnation to induce people to go along with, accept, defend, argue-for, and finally embrace these evils. 

Because, in the end, to be damned, we each must choose damnation. 

So, whenever confronted by AI, in theory or in practice; ask yourself who is the being behind the curtain of technology; and ask yourself what evil that being is attempting to induce you to do to yourself.  

The tragedy of historical (and modern) misrepresentations of the Basic Set-up of Christianity

I've said it all before, in different words; but it really was and is an epic tragedy to comprehend how Christianity has been so profoundly misrepresented throughout most of recorded history - with consequences that may be worse than if Jesus as a person had been forgotten, and Men had had to reply upon direct contact with the divine within themselves and with the Holy Ghost. 

(A false understanding often being worse than none at all, especially when complacent error become a delusion that closes-off the quest for truth about reality.)

Of course; there are multiple ways in which the basis of Jesus's work and our salvation have been twisted and inverted; but perhaps the worst is that which regards salvation and something earned by our behaviour in this world; and of God as a judge of our performance in this task.  

(God, our loving Heavenly parent - cast in the role of a heartless, remorseless "hanging judge" addressing each Man as a terrified villain, pleading for mercy!)

This was partly overturned by the clarity of the Reformation of recognizing salvation as a consequence of God's grace for an individual directly, not as something earned or requiring intermediary or intercession. Yet this insight was twisted and inverted by resurgent background assumptions of Man's core depravity and spiritual helplessness - which negated the fact and necessity of Man's freedom in the matter of salvation. Even going so far as the monstrously anti-Christian notion of regarding each Man's fate as pre-destined, and each Man's freedom as an irrelevant illusion.

So many perversions of simple reality! 

Some have rejected the false "weighing in the balance" idea of salvation as earned only to assert the equal falsehood that our actions are somehow irrelevant - as if the material had nothing to do with the spiritual! As if what we did in this mortal life was of zero consequence to eternal life. 

A modern version is one of salvation as un-chosen because universally imposed upon everybody and everything; who are then utterly compelled to become Good according to God's idea of good - again, falsely denying the inexorable reality and necessity of each Man's freedom; and inverting Heaven into a Brave New World totalitarian dystopia. 

I acknowledge that the devising of a coherent metaphysics of Christianity is something no church has yet achieved, something we must therefore do for ourselves (or do without) - so that there never has been an off-the-peg, externally available, understanding of Christianity. 

That this was not an utter disaster is because, for most of history - really until the "modern era" (commencing gradually from the 1500s and evident to all in the West by the middle 1800s) Men were much less self-aware and much more groupish in consciousness; that "group" including aspects of spiritual reality as well as other Men. 

...Such that Men un-consciously participated in truth, even when their theoretical understanding was variously false or opposite. 

Not any more! 

Now our nature is such that our theories dictate our inner realities; so false theories need to be detected, acknowledged, and revised. By us ourselves, because nobody else can be trusted to do it, and because we are each (and nobody else) ultimately responsible.

Freedom is a reality, a fact - not a gift, privilege, benefit or curse. 

And on the flipside, we are able to do what needs to be done, to take personal responsibility for our religious assumptions; in a way that was not really possible for pre-modern Man. 

But for this to happen we have to choose to do it; and therefore must want to do it - and this is the test for Christians. 

Do we actually personally cast-aside the errors and deceptions of the ages and of our time; to make the choice of following Jesus to resurrected eternal life in Heaven; which entails discovering for our-selves what that really means?

Or do we prefer... something else?

In the spiritual war, motivation is All that matters

In the spiritual war of this world, motivation is all that matters

It applies to all times and places and nations - including here, and now. 

This principle obliterates the value of all politics and mainstream public discourse; because this is all done with bad motivations*.

Differences between the political parties and political ideologies is merely the difference between different species of wrong motivations. 

One of the currently sad and pitiful things about so many US folk who regard themselves as on the Right, and who have allowed themselves to be manipulated into optimism by the announcements of the latest US President; is that these folk have forgotten that it is all about motivation. 

Good and evils are not acts or facts, nor policies nor strategies. Good and evil are sides in a spiritual war: the side for God, versus the side against God.

When people are operating on the side of evil, they are (strictly speaking) incapable of good. 

(Of course this is a mixed world, and we are all inconsistent about the sides we support - to some extent; such nobody - except Jesus Christ - has been always on the side of God; while even the most committed servants of the demonic agenda are occasionally liable to find themselves on the side of God and divine creation - however partially and briefly.)   

Life is not symmetrical because while there are evil policies, there is no such thing as good policies; because goodness depends on motivation. 

(By motivation I mean that whole complex of a Being's (including human beings) nature, intentions, disposition, affiliation, aims etc.) 

There has never been a policy so sensible, or valid, or logical, that evil motivation could not turn it to evil; and there are a limitless number of ways in which this can be accomplished. 

(Surely we know this from experience? When some policy of which we support and of which we approve; is adopted yet - inevitably, it seems - gets twisted to accomplish the opposite? For many people in the UK Brexit is an example. Britain is supposed to have left the EU some years ago, yet immigration continues to ratchet up; and last year there were one million net-immigrants by official (under)estimates - the highest ever. The decision to Brexit was mostly motivated by those who wanted to stop mass immigration - yet implemented by those who wanted to increase it. Guess who got their way?)

So, when people have self-duped into accepting and celebrating as good the products of evil-affiliated Men and Institutions, these people are not merely delusional - but in a core sense wilfully so, and therefore have chosen service to the agenda of Satan. 

Luckily, even wilful delusion in service of evil is not fatal when the sin has been recognized, acknowledged and repented. It is never "too late" for this - never too late from the perspective of God. Even last-nanosecond repentance will suffice. 

But very sadly this seems seldom to happen (as far as may be judged), and it is apparently more usual for people to double-down on their first sin, refuse to admit their self-gratifying error; thereby compounding it with further sins, and cementing these into place. 

So it is useless to try and persuade such people to change their minds - and certainly I have no intention of doing so. In the end we are each responsible for our own souls destination, and not that of others - which is freedom. 

On the other hand, discernment is a vital and unavoidable spiritual challenge and an experience from which we can learn. 

It is worth reminding ourselves that much of modern life in this collapsed Western Civilization entails being assaulted by evil masquerading as good under a multitude of disguises; and in such a way thaht those most prone to fail in discernment are those who engage with the specific lies and detailed untruths and distortions of the demon-affiliated leadership class and their minions. 

In reality, discernment is perhaps too simple to be truly easy; because the goodness-or-evil of some-thing is a matter of motivations, which are a matter of provenance - an attribute of the origin. 

We only need to know, or guess, from-whom or from-where to detect motivational evil.

But those who demand grounds for optimism - who demand an external saviour from in this-world, those addicted to believing the world is getting better - such will be deluded, and by their own choice. 

 

*Note added. I am talking about here and about now - The West 2025 - it was not always thus in the past or in some other places. Indeed some public discourse was well-motivated (overall) even within my lifetime - science in the UK, for example, was motivated by truth-seeking and truth-speaking. But that was then, this is now. Now, "science" (i.e. professional accredited "research") is merely one department of the bureaucratic-media totalitarian System, which is net-motivated by evil intent. Science is a good example, a test case, of why we must continue to practice discernment; because corruption is a real thing, and in our world a normal thing.   

This creation we inhabit depends upon compulsion and unconsciousness - hence the need for Jesus Christ and the Second Creation

Lazarus was apparently the first Man freely to choose the Second Creation

One big problem with this divine creation, the "primary" creation, the one we inhabit here-and-now; is that it depends upon an inevitable degree of compulsion and unconsciousness.

This is a problem that God acknowledged implicitly; by sending Jesus Christ to make a Second Creation, and ensure that all who wanted-it and chose-to, would be able to move onto that Second Creation after their biological deaths. 

 

God began with a universe of Beings, living without mutual awareness, without cohesion. Creation proceeded by God endowing these Beings with the beginnings of conscious awareness, and by coordinating them with His own divine love - binding them together and providing a direction, and principles of interaction.  

In this, it resembles a Man's young childhood with loving parents. 

The child is born-into this world mostly unconscious, and his life is given shape and direction by the parents' love. (In an idealized childhood...) While still hardly conscious the child lives and develops immersed in the atmosphere of parental love - and the child is required to do little more than return that parental love, and therefore be obedient to the greater wisdom of his parents. 

(This corresponds to the situation of early Man, and the earliest phases of true religions - obedience to God was core.)  

In a negative sense, the child is compelled to go along with parental guidance; but this compulsion is concealed by the child's unconsciousness of it. 

In other words, a young loving child in a loving family just accepts the situation in which he finds himself.  

However, it is a common destiny of babies to develop and mature, to become more conscious; and often to become aware of their situation. 

In other words, as a child becomes more conscious, he becomes aware that he is living in a world he did not choose, and which he is compelled to fit-into - if he wishes to survive and thrive. 

This is a microcosm of the situation in this divine creation that we currently inhabit. Insofar as Beings are unconscious and immersed in divine loving-guidance, they simply go-along-with divine creation. 

But as a Being becomes more conscious, he becomes aware of the essential element of compulsion in this world, this creation. 

This happens in the development of a human, and it has happened to Mankind (overall, on average) throughout history. Primordial Men were more like young children, with little self awareness or freedom of will; and knew God (and the spirit world); and when capable of love - they went along with it, hardly aware there was any alternative.

However, through recorded history, there has been an increase in Man's conscious awareness analogous to the development towards adolescence - Man became more conscious that this universe was based on a compulsion, that he need not obey. 

More conscious Man could, and sometimes and increasingly did, opt-out of creation.

Thus; Men ceased automatically to ally with God's creation - it became a choice whether to join-with God's creation - or else to oppose it, exploit it. 

Or sometimes the reaction was a desire to opt-out of Primary Creation altogether - and return to that primordial unconscious separateness which prevailed before creation began. 

This is, by my understanding, the ultimate but implicit teleological basis of Buddhism, and some kinds of Hinduism -- as well as of some who would call themselves Jews, Christians, or Muslims (I mean the traditions respectively of Qabalah, Via Negativa, and Sufism - for instance).     

I presume that this development was foreseen by God as an inevitable consequence of Man (and other Beings) increasing in consciousness. 

Sooner or later; the First Creation would be know for what it was, which is a top-down and imposed scheme - and as consciousness increased in created-Beings, sooner or later some Beings, some Men, would desire to opt-out of it. 

Therefore; the divine plan was for there to be a Second Creation, which would be individually chosen, an opt-in scheme.

This happened with the work of Jesus Christ; and the way-into Second Creation was to follow Jesus through death into resurrected eternal life. The Second Creation is, therefore, Heaven. 

The Second Creation both required, and was necessitated by, the increase of consciousness of Beings that was a consequence of ongoing divine creation. 

In sum: This "first" creation we inhabit here-and-now depends upon compulsion and unconsciousness; but Man (and other beings) are destined to increase in consciousness - hence the need for Jesus Christ and the Second Creation. 

We now can choose the Second Creation - but the Second Creation can only be chosen - it is not, and cannot be, imposed. 

And choice must be free, which entails conscious. 

Spiritual relationships should primarily be loving, not functional (or, Why is the Holy Ghost called "the comforter"?)

If our relationships ought to be loving; this means that thy ought Not primarily to be functional. 

Yet this is easily forgotten - plus, of course, the functional aspects of friendship and relatedness may lead to, and synergize with, the loving. Yet, for Christian ideals, the loving must be first and foremost. 

For Christians the Holy Ghost is a Being (I personally believe the Holy Ghosts is Jesus Christ, ascended) to whom we appeal for guidance, strength, help in time of need etc; yet the Holy Ghost is also called the "Comforter" in the Authorized Version of the Fourth Gospel (called "John") - especially in Chapters 14-16. 

To provide "comfort", in the modern sense of the word, sounds pretty feeble and insipid as the job of a divine Being!

Yet I now think that - properly understood - this "comfort" is, or should be, the primary aspect of our relationship with the Holy Ghost. 

I have come to understand "Comforter" as meaning the primacy of a loving relationship with the Holy Ghost; such as we might have - at the best - with a parent, sibling, child, spouse, best friend or similar. 

Such a relationship ought to be loving first and foremost; and therefore not to have its foundations built on a basis of functionality, nor of providing useful this-worldly service to each other. We ought to be visiting our parents because we love them, rather then to get a good meal, clothes washed, or for presents. No matter how sustaining and mutual such exchanges may be; they have to be secondary if they are not to be corrupt.  

After all, whatever we might do for each other in this mortal life and world is temporary and expedient, and will (unless resurrection follows) be lost at biological death -- if not (usually) before death.

I think the "Comforter" should therefore be understood as  meaning that there is a primary - and potentially eternal - comfort - encouragement from faith and hope - to be had from the basic fact of contact, and awareness of contact, between us in this mortal life, and the spirit of the Holy Ghost. 

We ought not to regard the Holy Ghost as mainly about helping us navigate through mortal life by the giving of good advice, nor even by providing us with the wherewithal to do  the right thing; these should be regarded as valuable by-products of the simple fact of our awareness of here-and-now contact with the Being that is the Hoy Ghost. 

"Comforter" can then be taken to mean the faith and hope that we might reasonably hope to derive a recognition of the reality of the Holy Ghost; that derives from experiencing contact between our conscious thinking, and the actuality of the Holy Ghost.   

Note added: I would not like to give the impression I regard love as a static state, a kind of time-less bliss or something. Love is inter-personal (including inter-Beings, Beings of all kinds). Indeed, I regard love as bound-up with divine creation, and therefore purpose and direction. This is why (as I understand it) love of God is given primacy in Christian theology - because it is by our love of God that we become part of the whole purpose of divine creation; and also part of the whole "method" of that creation - which "works" by means of the cohesion and desire that is part of networks of mutual loving. To state it very simply; our love of one another provides the cohesion of creation, and our love of God provides its direction. Neither being sufficient without the other... meaning they are inseparably linked in the choice to affirm love as the primary value; that-lovingness upon which the origin and progression of divine creation rests. 

Death and entropy are more fundamental than evil - JRR Tolkien agrees

Over at my Notion Club Papers blog; I discuss how Tolkien's great poem "Where now the horse and the rider" was explained by the author as being about the ultimate poignancy of the transience and oblivion of all that is Good in this mortal life; more than it is a lament for the wickedness of Men and the harshness of this world. 

In my jargon; JRRT seems to agree that The Fundamental Problem which is solved, for those who choose it, by the salvation of Jesus Christ; is death, rather than evil. 

Current-wave AI ("Artificial Intelligence") is just simulated humanness

The current wave of Establishment-styled AI ("Artificial Intelligence") is a fake and a cheat, designed and implemented for the malefit of Men - as must be the case given its provenance.

(i.e. Given the sources that have funded, devised, advertised and imposed these technologies). 

Current-wave AI is not, of course, intelligence; but what is its relationship to intelligence? 

Current-wave AI is a simulation of human intelligence, it is a set of computer programming technologies specifically designed to mislead human beings into supposing they are dealing with another human being. 

Current AI is, in other words, designed to be a way of successfully cheating at the Turing Test.  

But for current-AI to be an effective simulation, for it to fool humans as successfully as it does; entails that humans are operating in such a pervasively reductionistic and computerised environment that this cheating becomes almost undetectable; and that such humans have habitually assimilated computer-like patterns of thinking*. 

The success of AI entails that the full scope of the natural human world has become stripped-down to such a minimal level - for instance; that the fullness of Man's sociality has become brief and hurried interactions with de facto strangers on restricted themes, via type-written media. 

So impoverished, so unnatural, have become our worlds, our relationships with other people and with nature and the cosmos; that within-this-context, it is possible for the outputs of computers to be indistinguishable from the real people who are hamstrung in multiple directions, by the compulsion to operate in such constricted and artificial situations. 

As a thought experiment, imagine current AI technologies being introduced to historical societies - even just a few generations ago, but more obviously some centuries in the past - and then ask yourself whether in such a total-context AI technologies would have been able to pass for human beings? 

Of course they would not; and considering this fact brings to the surface the extremity of reductionism of culture, within which current AI is making its claim of intelligence.   

*See Jeremy Naydler's In the shadow of the machine. 

Supposing you are God, setting-up the world for Men's salvation...

Supposing you are God, setting-up the world for Men's salvation, then how would you devise things? 

You must take into full account that each man has "free will", agency; and also that modern Western adults are cut-off from the spontaneous knowledge of the spiritual and supernatural, and belief in the divine, of earlier times. 

This means that Men must actively decide to seek and engage with God.

Given such constraints; what would be the best way to engage with modern, Western adults?   

Would it be via the mediation of one true church, or even via several valid churches (as churches actually are) - I think not. That would be an exceedingly bad way of providing for Mans salvation. Church is intrinsically indirect, and subject to corruption. 

What, then, about relying upon a sacred scripture, such as the Bible? Again - this would be a highly suboptimal plan; given that there are multiple translated and distorted texts, the sheer difficulties of the texts; and the variability of textual interpretation. Scripture, like church, is both indirect and corruptible.

Or perhaps by relying upon a True tradition, that Men would absorb unconsciously? I think not - traditions are too easily, and too often, subverted - even inverted. 

What about logic and reason? Setting-up a world so Men can work-out their place and role by philosophy, by dialectic? Well, obviously, that would only be possible for a small minority of specially-gifted Men in particularly advantageous situations - and these sages would then need to transmit their conclusions by Church, Scripture or Tradition - and we have already seen how these are inadequate.   

It seems clear that the best and most reliable way to set-up this world for the salvation of all Men, of all kinds and circumstances, to cover all contingencies - would be to provide Men with direct knowledge of God; by a communication that was un-mediated - as some kind of wordless/conceptual telepathy or thought-sharing; and provide all Men with sufficient ability to access this knowledge. 

If Beings are primary, and physics is Not fundamental - then entropy needs to be reconceptualised in terms of relationships

I have harped-on about our civilization's false assumption that physics (or mathematics) is the ultimate reality - whereas I regard Beings as primordial. 

On teh other hand, I am about as prone as the next Man to continue the ingrained habits of thinking that regard the universe as having begun as a world of dead "matter" - of particles, fields and forces. 

Consequently, the picture in my mind of the concept "entropy" - to which I attach such importance, including as the fundamental reason why Jesus made available the Second Creation - is indeed, pretty much, the usual physics/ mathematical formulation. 

But if Beings are primary, then the causality of science is just a pragmatic model of reality, therefore not True (no matter how useful it may be, for certain purposes). 

So, entropy must be reconceptualised in terms of the relationships between Beings. 

(Which I am currently doing.)

 

Attitude to politicians (and other leaders) is All about assumed intentions and motivations - unaffected by actions and facts

People have assumptions concerning the intentions and motivations of politicians; and it is in the light of these assumptions that people evaluate what the politicians do, what actions they take, the facts of their policies. 

The shaping effect of assumptions is so great - so absolute - that it matters very little what actually happens. There is always a way of interpreting events so as to conform-with, and confirm, what has previously been decided about the politician.  

The big and unasked questions relate to our actual but unconscious assumptions: 

What exactly and explicitly are our assumptions about the nature, intentions, motivations etc. of any particular politician? 

Why have we, personally, adopted these assumptions?

And, do we regarding it as valid that we have done so?  

This can be seen in psychiatry, where people may develop persecutory delusions focused upon a particular person or group; and once the patient had made the assumption has been made that this person/group had malign intent towards the patient - then everything that happened (or could happen) was interpreted as evidence of their malignity. 

Alternatively, a man might begin to assume his wife is having an affair, and from then any and all her activities can be understood as further evidence of her infidelity. 

And what is visible so starkly and strangely in psychiatry, is a normal and unavoidable part of human thinking. 

It can be seen in the baddies and goodies of political discourse. The baddies are regarded as malign in the same way as happens in persecutory delusions. 

But the political goodies, in contrast, are assumed (for whatever reason) to have begin and positive intentions towards ourselves; assumed to share our personal values - so that everything they say and do is regarded as evidence of their rightness. their actions either being straightforwardly right and approved of, upfront; or else approved-of on the basis of indirectly aiming-at the right outcomes; but unable to do good directly because constrained by matters of possibility and pragmatism... 

Consequently; a lifetime of personal experience, political transformation, variation in persona and policies, U-turns and betrayals... typically make zero difference to political affiliations; or indeed to faith in the potential power of politics to do good.   

This explains why, although we expend so much time and energy generating, seeking, sifting, and arguing over "facts" and "evidence" - none of this matters; because the real differences lie at a conceptual level from-which the facts get their meaning and are interpreted. 

The implication is that we ought to be focusing on our assumptions, and whether these are reasonable -- whether, indeed, we really choose to endorse and believe-in our own assumptions - once these assumptions have been isolated and exposed to the light of awareness. 

Without such self-awareness and self-examination of their own underlying conceptual assumptions, people can easily and permanently be manipulated - even against their will. 

Because false and evil assumptions may be (and are) implanted unconsciously; so as to shape a person's whole outlook, whole way of understanding the world - in ways of which he is unaware. And because unaware, unable to evaluate or change. 

The fact is that we choose our assumptions - but the choice is not arbitrary, because assumptions are values, and as values they can and should be evaluated. yet assumptions cannot be chosen until they are known. And assumptions cannot be known unless each individual desires to know his own assumptions. 

That is the big blockage - that people do not want to know their own assumptions, and strenuously resist and deny such knowledge. 

And, in a world so permeated by the powers of evil; such an attitude is spiritually fatal. 

 

Charles Williams and Magic

Charles Williams, the Inkling, had been a high level initiate or "adept" in the Golden Dawn tradition of ritual magic. Some thoughts on this subject are posted over at my Notion Club Papers Blog. 

 

The poet Stevie Smith

Stevie Smith (1902-1971) was one of the last of the real English poets. Indeed, one of a relatively small number or women who were (by my criteria) genuine lyric poets (Emily Dickinson is another). 

I have been re-reading the 1988 biography by Frances Spalding, which is good on information - although I found its literary criticism to be rather uninspired. 

Stevie was a superb performer of her own work; with a peculiar upper class, sing-song way of speaking; and in the nineteen-sixties she was to be found performing alongside trendy pop poets forty years her junior, in major venues. 

She was also fairly typical of women geniuses in being semi-insane in real life, and much in need of looking-after - which was mostly accomplished by her beloved aunt in the suburb Palmers Green where she lived her entire life from age three.   

She was unmarried and mostly, perhaps entirely, celibate; although she knew almost everyone in the literary scene, and went to all the parties. At one point had some kind of relationship with "George Orwell" who features, as two characters, in her last novel The Holiday. 

Steve Smith's great appeal, apart from her poetic gift (here is a selection and some more here), is her unique and uncompromising perspective on life and (especially) death; which was unlike anyone else's, and derived from her absolutely centred-on-self nature, and her unflagging desire to give this expression in all its minutiae and contradictions. She often included peculiar, apparently naive, illustrations; which sometime add considerably to the poems.

The theme and tones veer between extremes; encompassing (or rather hinting at) flippancy, despair, bitterness, joy. Some are very harsh and shocking, like The Face:

There is a face I know too well,
A face I dread to see,
So vain it is, so eloquent
Of all futility.

It is a human face that hides
A monkey soul within,
That bangs about, that beats a gong,
That makes a horrid din.

Sometimes the monkey soul will sprawl
Athwart the human eyes,
And peering forth, will flesh its pads,
And utter social lies.

So wretched is this face, so vain,
So empty and forlorn,
You well may say that better far
This face had not been born.

Captain Hastings on Jazzy Flute

Hugh Fraser, the actor who so definitively portrays Captain Hastings in David Suchet's ITV Poirot, and is a superb narrator for many Agatha Christie audiobooks; was a musician in younger days, and played jazzy flute - and guitar (below) - on the theme tune of TV's Rainbow programme, for pre-school kids in the 1970s. 

Rainbow is probably most remembered for the legendary, "naughty" and boastful, character of Zippy. 

(Note: Zippy is the one above, with the orange head... and zippable mouth. 

Zippy was the instigator of most of the trouble that led to the plotlines (his abrasive character being refreshing and necessary, given how soppy and insipid were his co-stars); and he had an distinctive throaty and whining voice - somewhat like a deeper-toned, and English, version of Kermit. 

Miles Mathis's "credo": On Jesus and Fear

Miles Mathis has written his "credo" - a long, somewhat sprawling, but honest and probing examination of his guiding principles and assumptions. 

Most interestingly, to me, this focuses on the nature of Jesus - especially in relation to an overarching theme that Mankind has been manipulated by Fear primarily, for many centuries and continuing. 

(This is something I have also become convinced of - including that fear should be known as a sin.)  

The essay also describes how, despite Jesus's teaching and example to the contrary; the Christian churches have all too often been co-opted as agents of this evil agenda.  

I have written about Mathis before, on a couple of occasions, and my mixed feelings concerning his writings. 

But when I say "mixed", I mean that there is a significant amount of very good stuff in his writings, as well as plenty that I regard as wrong. The test being that I keep returning to read his articles. 

And his personality, too, seems a mixture of admirable traits, with other attributes I find off-putting. But the strengths are more important.   

In this latest essay, I found a good deal to appreciate. It strikes me as an exceptionally honest and self-revelatory piece of writing; and such writings are rare, and always of considerable interest to me. 

Because such writing is well-motivated, his  particular current conclusions are less important to me than than a particular revelation of the process of an individual person earnestly trying to sort-out his understanding of the basic human condition. 

Caveat: MM's interpretation of Jesus, Jesus's example, and Jesus's core teaching; misses-out the single most important fact - i.e. that Jesus claimed to offer resurrected eternal Heavenly life to those who followed him. 

I think this is because (unlike me) Mathis is not interested by resurrection and everlasting life in Heaven, apparently because he is one of those (apparently rare) people who regard this mortal life as ultimately sufficient... He is satisfied by his life and by life in general; as it has been and is. 

Of course this overall satisfaction may, or may not, survive to the end and into post-mortal existence - but it seems clear that as of now, MM has no desire for a qualitatively different way of being. 

Consequently, Mathis genuinely (it seems) wants nothing more or other than to have more of the same-kind-of-thing, recurrently, forever - i.e. a continuation of the cycles of reincarnation, not resurrection. 

MM himself wants repeated mortal lives, not eternal Heavenly life. 

Accepting this difference of desire and motivation as real and valid; Mathis has some excellent (and clearly heartfelt) comments to make about how Men must strive to overcome fear - or else be manipulated and tormented by the powers of strategic evil...

Powers that he here calls the Phoenicians (and which I would regard as Satan and the demons, and their servants among Men).  

It is, of course, necessary to "read the whole thing" to appreciate its qualities - even if some parts of the essay are at a lower level, this is a necessary part of any honest exploration. 

But here are a couple of excerpts, that may whet your appetite: 

**

What are people most afraid of? Death, torture, loss. 

Well, of course Jesus and the other prophets taught there is no death, since your spirit lives on. 

Like matter, spirit cannot be destroyed. It simply changes forms. 

The Modern definition of death as a stark and final end was invented by the Phoenicians, and it was invented on purpose to scare you and control you via that fear. Jesus was among the first to counter that definition, reminding you we have no evidence for that and a lot of evidence against it. 

Tribal and pre-Phoenician peoples never believed that, and it wasn't because they were ignorant savages. It was because, given everything we knew then and everything we have since learned, the default assumption was for continuance, not a final end.

*

Same for torture, which Hollywood shoves down your throat year after year to keep fear high. About half the movies now released have an nearly unwatchable torture scene. 

One problem: in reality, torture isn't very successful, due to a little thing called shock. The body can only take so much pain or stress before it goes into shock. 

Shock is another gift of Nature, and you can understand it most easily by again looking at animals. A zebra in the jaws of a lion almost immediately goes into shock. 

What is shock? It is the disassociation of the animal from the pain. The mind separates from the body, so the pain never makes it to the brain. It is sort of like a dream state. 

So in real life (not Hollywood), torture is generally more stressful for the torturer than the tortured. The torturer has to stand there and watch the proceedings, while the tortured has drifted into a dream state and doesn't even feel it. 

When you watch a torture scene in a movie, it is far more stressful for you, the viewer, than it would be for the victim, because you aren't in shock. So if you think about it that way, many Hollywood movies are a form of successful, low-grade torture of the audience. And you are so messed up from a life of that, you pay for more of your own torture. I suggest you stop doing it.

*

The Phoenicians learned a lot from Jesus. . . namely how to most efficiently prevent people from developing that character. They could see that character was dependent upon being fearless, and the reverse, so job one for them became instilling fear of death and loss, and inverting everything Jesus taught. 

Some of that they did by rewriting and bastardizing scripture directly, but most of it was done over the centuries by infiltration. Within a few decades or centuries they had infiltrated the Church, and in this position they didn't need to rewrite scripture. They could achieve the same thing by stressing some things and downplaying others. 

They sold Jesus as the Prince of Peace to further pacify the masses, while importing a hell of tortures into the afterlife, to make sure the fear remained. 

Jesus was trying to dissipate the false fear of this life, but the Phoenicians brilliantly transported that torture into the after-death, making it almost universal. In that way, even death was no escape from the Phoenician gaslighting: they could frighten you retro-actively, from beyond the grave. 

Overnight, Jesus' good news or glad tidings had been flipped into an infinite future of dread and punishment, one that many Christians still believe in. The fear hadn't been mitigated, it had been magnified a thousand times, while seeming to keep Christianity. 

Surely the greatest reversal in history.

I am Not a relativist about Christianity - Here's an explanation why

I have recently been having some discussions in the comment sections at Derek L Ramsey's blog, initially in relation to The Trinity (as conceptualized in mainstream Christianity); interactions that have been helpful to me - and apparently to him as well. 

In particular, I responded to his question about whether my brand of Romantic Christianity would become relativistic in practice, if it were to become common. He found my answer helpful in clarifying my beliefs - so I reprint it here, edited somewhat:

Question from DLR: 

It isn’t that you hold an explicitly relativist philosophy—you obviously don’t—but that, IMO, the consequences of your beliefs lead to relativism, despite your intentions or stated beliefs. 

Imagine there were 100 copies of you, scattered throughout the world. Each one would be gaining divine knowledge directly, but unless you were historically unprecedented, they’d all come to a set of (ultimately) mutually incompatible positions. Without any objective standard, there would be no way to determine what knowledge was correct and what was imagined.

This is ungrounded. Each one of you would think they were right. This is indistinguishable from relativism where truth, morality, and knowledge are not found in the absolute. I don’t see how you avoid this problem. 

Am I explaining myself well enough?

Answer from BGC:  

Oh yes, I understand you perfectly – and I asked myself the same question. 

Recall that when I converted I did so because I thought Christianity could be (and was the only hope of) the basis for a good (or at least good-seeking) society. That was my priority for a few years, and why I found it hard to find a church (either within, or outside, the CofE), why I changed direction a few times. 

It’s a matter I have addressed in my blog scores of times; but my answer is not acceptable – nor even regarded as a real answer! My answer is apparently invisible. 

One answer is to consider the primacy of motivation. 

I believe that, insofar as Christians are honestly motivated, there will be sufficient convergence on the essence of truth to enable salvation at least, and probably a good deal more than that. 

Another answer is that this line of questioning derives from a world view that seems the truth of Christianity, the truth that Jesus provided and taught, as bound-up with social organization – that it is bound-up with mechanisms for ensuring (or at least incentivizing) uniformity of beliefs. 

In other words; a world view that sees Christianity as church primarily – then state. That sees Christianity as primarily social not individual. 

Like the Judaism of the OT – such a Christianity is tribal – the tribe is the nation. For the Ancient Hebrews, the Messiah was understood as primarily a tribal/ national leader. The individual’s spiritual job was merely to serve the tribe. Salvation was of-the-tribe. 

And this role was externally forced-upon Jesus during his life, and after (especially by the evangelist Matthew) – pretty successfully!

I do not believe that this Christian tribalism or groupishness is any longer possible; my evidence being – look around and consider the past couple of centuries! 

I also believe, more controversially, that the attempt to reintroduce mechanisms for unity of belief can (here-and-now) only lead to evil. 

In other words, it is possible even nowadays in The West to enforce unity of belief (e.g. 2020) but this Will Be evil. 

Good (i.e. taking the side of God) can no longer be enforced top-down. 

I suspect that the only path to good (at least in The West, for you and me) is therefore non-institutional, much more like a family than an organization or nation. 

This must develop bottom-up, and from love. 

What such a human society would look like if it happened, I do not believe can be foreknown – because there can be no blueprint for it, just as there is no blueprint for a loving family.

On looking like "other people"

All through my adult life, I have "suffered" from being mistaken for other people. 

Friends and acquaintances claim that they have seen me in places where I have never been, that they waved to me from passing cars but I did not wave back, that they went up to somebody on the street and spoke to them - but they turned-out to be... somebody different. 

This is, I presume, due to having a somewhat nondescript face with rather indistinct features - a type common enough among grey-eyed, fair-haired, light-skinned, North Europeans and Scandinavians. 

It has also led (especially during the nineteen eighties) to people saying that somebody or another in the public eye looked "exactly" like me. 

For instance, Andy Partridge - lead singer of the pop group XTC: some giggling teenage girls on a train once thought I was him; and sang "Senses working overtime" at me, as I walked past.

Watching life of Bryan with friends, when the Michael Palin character who keeps saying "Crucifixion? Good..." came on screen, my pals simultaneously turned towards me claiming that he not only looked but was "exactly" like me:

Then was Ghostbusters, when Dan Ackroyd was another, supposed, lookalike:

And later still, Kenneth Branagh in the TV series Fortunes of War, was again "exactly" like me:

In later decades, there were no celebrity comparisons; just unfortunate bystanders and blokes in corridors, on pavements, in workplaces or social gatherings; who got mistaken and variously accosted. 

(At this point the problem was exacerbated by the fact that (due to baldness) I always wore a hat - preferably with a broad and shading brim. Any rubber-faced chaps in a big hat in Newcastle, might then expect to be assailed.) 

The moral is that some people look distinctive (once seen, never forgotten), while others Do Not - apparently I am, or was, one of the latter. 

And, with the advent of bogus "face-recognition" software - I suspect that my troubles are just beginning... 

US public opinion being successfully prepped for war

The current patriotic mania apparently escalating among so many of the erstwhile disaffected US population of anti-leftist instinct and European descent - so far fits with my hard-timeline geopolitical prediction of an imminently upcoming fake pennant event being used to trigger massive US involvement in a Middle Eastern war. 

If so, this has been a clever manipulation - because just a few months ago there would have been little enthusiasm for a "Patriotic" war (for "US interests") among the class of Americans who are most inclined to support the military. 

But currently, these oh-so-recent cynics about state-led political projects, have become wildly enthusiastic supporters of the government; and pin great hopes upon the capacity of official power to turn-around the nation, and recreate the kind of conservative-materialist-utopia of prosperity and accomplishment that they associate with the 1950s, or 1980s. 

The ex-cynics would, in this prevailing mood, surely support their adored Leader in whatever military venture he regarded as necessary.  

Time will (and soon) tell whether or not the prediction turns-out correct.