Euthanasia, antibiotics and Terry Pratchett

The matter of euthanasia has been 'in the news' lately in England, because of the advocacy of Terry Pratchett.

(Sorry, but I really cannot call him 'Sir' Terry. Sir has by now become a title overwhelmingly associated with a public career of political correctness and bureaucratic dishonesty, and has utterly lost its old romantic connotations of Arthurian knights in armour fighting evil and rescuing maidens in distress).

I can't think of another living novelist whose work I like and enjoy more than Terry Pratchett - especially his books featuring witches (e.g. Granny Weatherwax and Tiffany Aching).

But there is something I find terribly dismaying about TP's campaign to create 'tribunals' for assisted death:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/feb/02/terry-pratchett-assisted-suicide-tribunal

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As is well-known, TP has recently been diagnosed with a slowly-progressive but irreversible dementing illness - and he has expressed an understandable desire to avoid a prolonged decline into helpless dependency before his eventual death.

Terry Pratchett is a prominent atheist (although his best novels implicitly contradict his abstract opinions concerning the nature of the universe, since they are saturated with transcendental meaning).

Therefore TP's discussion of euthanasia is a clear statement of a humanist world view and its implications. Seeing this spelled-out so starkly, and from an author whom I like and respect, I find an uncomfortable, somewhat distressing experience. It has been on my mind for many months now.

TP's tone is the secular modernistic one that regards the value of a life as purely an hedonic matter - the outcome of a quantitative comparison of pleasant versus unpleasant feelings.

Life's value is implicitly assumed to derive from a surplus of good feelings (pleasure, gratification and independance) over bad feelings (misery, pain and dependance); and TP's argument is that when the good feelings have disappeared or the balance towards the bad has gone too far, then we should be assisted in killing ourselves if and when we wish (with abuses supposedly being prevented by the proposed bureaucratic tribinal).

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TP wants more people to have the possibility of a dignified death, a 'good' death. But it seems to me that the concept of a good death is meaningless unless life itself is seen as more than a matter of balancing subjective positives against subjective negatives.

Therefore, any discussion of the desirability of euthanasia *must* begin with a clear statement of the nature of human existence and the purpose of life. Because the meaning of death can only be understood in a context of the meaning of life.

I know it is meant as a joke - but the idea that a perfect finish to life would be to "die peacefully with Thomas Tallis on my iPod" is horrific. This embodies the secular modern idea that life is *essentially* a matter of maintaining a state of pleasant distraction from awareness of reality (especially the reality of death).

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But on the other hand, I also find the views of many people who publicly oppose euthanasia to be disturbingly incomplete. TP is describing real and big problems about modern death.

Modern medicine, modern culture, while valuing life no more highly than as a source of pleasure; yet recklessly prolongs this biologically conceptualized existence in vast numbers of humans, using a range of artificial means such as medication and biological support.

The situation is now one in which many people (and an increasing proportion of people) end their lives by enduring many *years* of a twilight, degenerating existence of heavy and increasing-dependency.

In other words, we are nowadays in an extremely un-natural situation. It is this modern and un-natural situation which has led to widespread demands for euthanasia.

Simply to state that euthanasia/ assisted suicide/ assisted death is unacceptable is correct so far as it goes, but does not help this situation. Yet I believe that this situation can indeed be helped, that death can again (on average) be made 'more natural'.

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Throughout history, death has seldom been dignified or pleasant for humans. The main causes of death in later life have been infectious diseases, starvation, predation/ poisoning and (especially for men) violence and accidents.

The single most important reason why modern people survive for so much longer than in the past is antibiotics. These (and the related antiviral and anti-fungal drugs; also a range of hygienic practices involving antiseptics and disinfectants) mean that humans can survive for many months or years even when very sick, e.g. suffering from advanced cancer or advanced degenerative diseases (such as dementia, Parkinson's disease, strokes and heart disease).

In the past, elderly and/or sick people would (sooner-rather-than-later) rapidly be 'carried away' by overwhelming infectious disease, and this would usually happen over the space of a few hours up to a few days.

Death from overwhelming infection is not likely to be dignified - indeed it is quite likely to involve delirium (acute confusion, disorientation, malaise; maybe fear and paranoia). However, pain, fear and discomfort can usually effectively be treated with opiates - and death is likely to come quickly.

The commonest cause of death among the sick and old was probably pneumonia (which was nicknamed 'the old man's friend'), and other causes may have been bladder/ urinary tract infections, blood-poisoning, gastrointestinal infections and skin infections.

This is because ill people, bedridden or immobile people, people without the ability to care for themselves - are naturally vulnerable to a wide range of infections. Without antibiotics etc. they would soon die.

So it is almost certain that without antibiotics it would be very uncommon for old, decrepit, and chronically sick people to persist for many years in a twilight state of dependant semi-life.

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Of course there will always be specific and exceptional circumstances in which people are afflicted by prolonged and awful deaths, and these need to be dealt with on an individual basis.

But as a general rule, my advice to Terry Pratchett and others is as follows:

If you are chronically ill or old and want to avoid a prolonged twilight existence of increasing dependency but regard the idea of assisted suicide/ assisted death/ euthanasia with abhorrence; then there are two main things which you should consider.

1. The first and most important is completely to avoid using antibiotics, antivirals, antifungals, antiseptics and the like.

Under ‘natural’ conditions, germs are going to be the commonest cause of death in ill humans, and infection will cut short prolonged sickness and helplessness.

Since everyone will die sooner or later of something or another, we need to remember that preventing one kind of death now, merely means ensuring another kind of death later - and perhaps a much nastier death.

2. Do not use any heroic life-saving measures such as cardioversion/ defibrilliation, ventilation or intensive therapy.

Best is to avoid hospital, hospices and the intensive involvement of health professionals where possible - because if you fall into the hands of health professionals then one or another of them will - sooner or later, for good or bad reason - initiate a course of action such as antibiotics, resuscitation or intensive therapy which it will be difficult/ impossible to reverse once begun.

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.   

Terry Pratchett - a personal evaluation

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The novelist Terry Pratchett died yesterday - and it seems like a good time to gather my thoughts on him.

First, I would rate him as one of my two favourite British novelists of recent decades (the other is JK Rowling in her Harry Potter series). I am very grateful for the hundreds of hours of enjoyment, stimulation and edification I have received from reading him (often aloud, as bedtime stories for my wife).

Furthermore I am equally grateful that he has been my teenage son's favourite and most important writer for the past several years - my son has read more Pratchett than me, indeed pretty much everything he wrote; and as well as the enjoyment and humour, Pratchett's moral influence on him has been, so far as I can tell, strongly for the good.

I would certainly regard Terry Pratchett as the major English fiction writer of the 1990s and 2000s, and one of permanent significance.

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Yet there are significant reservations and restrictions on my personal admiration.

Pratchett's novels divide into two main categories - those with female protagonists (especially witches) and those which are satirical (getting fun from a theme like the postal system, the police, the movies etc).

It is the witches novels which I like so much - and, apart from a fondness for the wizards of Unseen University (which I can readily imagine my Discworld alter ego inhabiting) I general don't much like, and sometimes actively dislike, the satirical novels - which bring out Pratchett's faults and limitations, and lack his strengths.

For instance, I am generally unconvinced and unmoved by the supposedly sympathetic character of Sam Vimes; and have never finished any of the books in which he features strongly.

Also, the novels since Pratchett was diagnosed as suffering from dementia, the effects of which I first noticed in Wintersmith (published 2006), are not up to standard. Indeed, I find their prose style almost unrecognisable. I therefore infer that they are actually collaborations, and have been subjected to heavy editing. (I should note that my son has continued to enjoy these later books equally with the earlier.)

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Pratchett's greatest virtues as a writer are, for me, the sheer fluency and inventiveness of his ideas and humour - which I consider to be superior to any other writer of any period of which I am aware; and the humane qualities he brings to his best female characters - notably Granny Weatherwax and Tiffany Aching.

His faults are a cruel cynicism and a covert fascination-with/ admiration-of ruthless violence and torture - these are what mar many of the satirical novels for me.

In some of his non-fiction, and in some comments by Pratchett's friends, it is apparent that he was driven by considerable anger, irritation and resentment; and while he could not help having these traits built-into him (and they were perhaps what made him so prolific) there is not much sense that Pratchett acknowledged these were defects, 'sins', nor that he repented them - rather, he seems rather self-righteously pound of being so often angry.

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This segues onto what was undoubtedly the most significant blot on Pratchett's reputation and lifetime achievement - his strident advocacy of what he weasel-worded as the non-existent and nonsensical 'Right to Die', that is, what is more often called Assisted Suicide', but what is actually a call for the legalisation and bureaucratic-proceduralisation of Humane Murder.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/euthanasia-antibiotics-and-terry.html

This campaign revealed, or apparently revealed, lack of courage, lack of foresight and was justified by a grossly impoverished and inadequate conception of the meaning and purpose of human life.

However, Pratchett only began this campaign after the onset of dementia, and it is possible/ likely that he was being exploited for this purpose; after all, in later years, his communications were heavily censored and edited, and we only know what various amanuenses and media (who strongly favour 'euthanasia') chose to reveal and publicise. It is unlikely we would have been told of any late reservations or repentance, had they occurred.

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Terry Pratchett himself - in his non-fictional writings, and speaking as a prominent secular Humanist - said that he expected death to be extinction; but those of us who know better cannot help but be curious concerning his current post-mortal situation.

Who knows what happened as Terry Prtachett approached his end? Sometimes dementia may be part of God's plan - sometimes dementia seems to bring a proud and resentful person (in his innermost soul) face to face with his own state of dependence and the futility of his pride - presents a new choice, and the choice may lead to a dawning of gratitude and humility and open-ness to the gift of grace.

Personally, I regard Pratchett as one of those atheists who 'protest too much' and secretly and guiltily believed in the reality of God (or want very much to believe), but who misunderstand and therefore hate God as they understand Him.

When Pratchett discovers the truth of the reality of God - and the nature and motivation of God; I believe he will (or has) immediately and unhesitatingly repent and accept the salvation offered by Christ.

The man who created, and imaginatively-inhabited, Granny Weatherwax and Tiffany Aching was a man fundamentally good, fundamentally a realist, fundamentally motivated by love. With his experience and abilities, I fully expect Terry Pratchett to become one of the great human benefactors, working from  the other side of mortality.

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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. 

 

Purposive killing - infanticide and euthanasia - among Australian Aborigines

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This is a correction to a previous posting, in which I stated that past hunter gatherers would allow new born babies to die of exposure or neglect, and would abandon the elderly, but did not purposefully kill them.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/03/active-killing-versus-letting-die.html

It turns out I was mistaken, according to Australian Aborigines by James Dawson, published in 1881 by George Robertson of Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide and available online:

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Dawson_-_Australian_aborigines_(1900).djvu/7

This is an account of several years collecting oral testimony in the native language by someone who was extremely sympathetic to Aborigines as stated in the introduction:

In recording my admiration of the general character of the aborigines, no attempt is made to palliate what may appear to us to be objectionable customs common to savages in nearly every part of the globe; but it may be truly said of them, that, with the exception of the low estimate they naturally place on life, their moral character and modesty—all things considered—compare favourably with those of the most highly cultivated communities of Europe. ... away from the means of intoxication, and were to listen to their guileless conversation, their humour and wit, and their expressions of honour and affection for one another, those who are disposed to look upon them as scarcely human would be compelled to admit that in general intelligence, common sense, integrity, and the absence of anything repulsive in their conduct, they are at least equal, if not superior, to the general run of white men..

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[Infanticide]

Large families of children are unusual among the aborigines. However many may be born, rarely more than four are allowed to grow up. Five is considered a large number to rear.

Twins are as common among them as among Europeans; but as food is occasionally very scarce, and a large family troublesome to move about, it is lawful and customary to destroy the weakest twin child, irrespective of sex.

It is usual also to destroy those which are malformed.


Malformations, however, were so rare before the arrival of the white man that no instances could be remembered.

When a woman has children too rapidly for the convenience and necessities of the parents, she makes up her mind to let one be killed, and consults with her husband which it is to be. As the strength of a tribe depends more on males than females, the girls are generally sacrificed.

The child is put to death and buried, or burned without ceremony; not, however, by its father or mother, but by relatives. No one wears mourning for it.

Sickly children are never killed on account of their bad health, and are allowed to die naturally.


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[Euthanasia]

When old people become infirm, and unable to accompany the tribe in its wanderings, it is lawful and customary to kill them.

The reasons for this are—that they are a burden to the tribe, and, should any sudden attack be made by an enemy, they are the most liable to be captured, when they would probably be tortured and put to a lingering death.

When it has been decided to kill an aged member of the tribe, the relatives depute one of their number to carry out the decision. The victim is strangled with a grass rope, and the body, when cold, is burned in a large fire kindled in the neighbourhood. All his property is burned with him except rugs, weapons, and implements. In this cremation the sons and daughters and near relatives take part; and two or three friends collect the necessary firewood and attend to the fire.

This custom is recognised as a necessity. There is, therefore, no concealment practised with regard to it.

Very often the poor creatures intended to be strangled cry and beg for delay when they see preparations made for their death, but all in vain. The resolution is always carried out.


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COMMENT:

Reading this book on the Australian Aborigines, and another equally sympathetic account from 1845 -

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/e/eyre/edward_john/e98m/

- was an eye-opener in more ways than one; causing me to revise several beliefs about human nature.

Clearly, the bowdlerisation and sanitation of our knowledge about tribal peoples is far greater than even I had imagined.

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Active killing versus letting die - abandoning of infants and incapable elders

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My understanding is that natural law/ spontaneous human morality apparently accepts the action of 'letting die', under certain circumstances; and the qualitative distinction between letting die and actively killing.

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From my reading of the anthropology of hunter gatherer tribes, it seems very likely that passive infanticide of newborns by a mother abandoning her baby, and also abandonment of chronically incapable elderly relatives, are regarded as morally acceptable actions under some circumstances

(although certainly very regrettable and an occasion of grief and mourning which may be intense and prolonged).

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Indeed, as convincingly argued by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy in Mother Nature; infanticide by neglect or abandonment is probably the fall-back method by which humans (as a species) control the number of offspring (when the normal method of spacing-out offspring by the contraceptive effect of lactation has failed).

(Other mammals fail to conceive under stress, reabsorb the fetus while it is still in the womb and have other methods of controlling the spacing of offspring according to circumstances.)

The abandonment (leaving-behind) of chronically-incapable elderly relatives seems to be the norm among hunter gatherers and nomadic herders.

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It also seems that these actions of passive abandoning and letting die do not elicit a spontaneous and almost-universal abhorrence among mankind in general - in the way that active killing of newborn infants or incapable elderly would elicit a spontaneous and almost-universal abhorrence.

(Which is not to say that this abhorrence cannot be overcome - it can be overcome. Humans can, under certain circumstances, actively kill infants and elderly relatives and can regard this as morally justified. Nonetheless, there is a spontaneous abhorrence of these actions.)

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In practice, the abandonment of infants and elders means (so far as we can tell) all-but-certain death; and quite likely the horrible death of being eaten, perhaps while still alive, by predators or scavengers.

(But this fate would not be known for sure; and there may well be a hope of some fortuitous rescue or supernatural intervention, and the hope that this had in fact happened.)

This suggests that - for our ancestors, and probably spontaneously for all humans - the 'mercy killing' of infants and elderly relatives was probably perceived as being morally worse than allowing horrific suffering.

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Note that I am stating this as a factual observation, and not in terms of the 'naturalistic fallacy' of 'what is, is right'.

But I think these facts need to form the basis of honest moral discussion.

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I regard it as simply false to assume that abandoning and letting die of of the newborn and incapable elderly is something that humans, qua humans, find morally abhorrent.

And the prohibition of these acts of letting die or passive killing is more or less specific to Christianity. It was, indeed, one of the distinguishing marks that set apart the early Christians from those who surrounded them.

If, then, it is to be argued (perhaps, although not necessarily, by Christians) that humans ought not to commit passive infanticide or 'euthanasia' of the elderly by stopping active interventions etc; then the argument cannot (in my opinion) be based on natural morality, nor can it depend on a spontaneous abhorrence of humans qua humans for these actions.

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It is also false to argue that letting die amounts to the same thing (morally speaking) as active killing; since spontaneous human morality recognizes a qualitative difference between these actions.

To abandon someone to almost-certain death is not the same as murdering them - according to natural law.

Spontaneous human morality says that neglect of a person even unto their death is not the same as purposive destruction of life.

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Humans are not 'naturally' inclined to regard the prevention of suffering of loved ones as a higher moral imperative than the avoidance of oneself killing loved ones.

(An exception occurs during mental illness - specifically melancholia, when it is fairly common for a profoundly depressed parent to kill their family, then kill themselves, in order to protect the family from what is perceived as an unendurably miserable world.)  

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If, then, an argument is to be mounted that (probably-) fatal abandonment of infants and incapable elderly relatives is morally wrong, then the reasons for this prohibition must properly be based upon Christian revelation; and not on natural law.

Following from this, there is no coherent, truthful and rational argument by which non-Christians can prohibit the passive letting die of (for example) infants and elderly relatives.

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(Non-Christians might, nonetheless, wish to prohibit these actions; what I am saying is that non-Christians would have no coherent, truthful and rational arguments by which to justify such prohibitions.)

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Are You prepared to die?

This is the vital question asked by William Wildblood at his blog.

He concludes:

Death is the summation of life and should be completely accepted. If you submit to God's will in this matter and resign yourself to his keeping in humility then whatever you may or may not have done in your life you will be all right. The creature is returning to the Creator and that is a tremendous thing to be faced with a sense of awe but also wonder and excitement. It is only the person who rejects his Creator who need fear death.

My impression is that the mainstream attitudes to death are:

1. I never want to die and I won't think about it. I will do everything in my power to stay alive.

And/ Or:

2. I want to die quickly and painlessly, with total annihilation of consciousness, as soon as I stop enjoying life.

The main agents of hope are technology. On the one hand massive technologies of life support and intensive therapy to sustain life - many people wanting to 'live forever' (at any cost, even if as only a brain, or a computer download).

On the other, escalating propaganda and demands for a comprehensive bureaucratic system to provide painless killing on demand (euthanasia).

"Elite" survivalism

I have written before about the corrupting spiritual vortex that is prepper survivalism; where low-level people (such as you and me) engage in preparing to escape survive catastrophes, to become the nucleus and leadership of future human civilization... or something. 

I have also discussed "elite" survivalism, of the super-preppers and the mega-rich multi-billionaire class - who openly discuss vastly expensive schemes of many kinds to ensure their own survival of some kind of civilizational or planetary collapse...

While mocking and excluding as "conspiracy theorists" anyone who actually joins the dots to notice what They are doing!

Why does the collapse and dystopia scenario have such a fascination for modern people, and over so many decades? 

Why do people so much enjoy reading and viewing such fictions? 

I think one answer is that it is mostly a yearning for simplification of life and reversion to an imagined earlier stage of consciousness. 

The notion seems to be that a collapse into dystopia will strip-away all our "first world problems", anxieties and scruples; by an enforced focus of attention on immediate survival. 

And that this survival imperative will also simplify morality - so that we can become completely selfish and pleasure seeking - with (what seems like) the perfect excuse that we had "no alternative". 

Survivalism also carries the double incentive of indulging our spiteful natures. 

This shows-through the survivalist fantasies - peeping through the screen of rationalizations - I mean the pleasure taken in the imagined miseries, suffering and death of "other people"; while simultaneously blaming them for their situation and congratulating "ourselves" for our superiority in avoiding it! 

The fantasy is of the survivalist looking down upon the desperate situation of the masses, or perhaps the destruction of earth itself; with a combination of noble regret and smugness - while fortified by the conviction of having been "chosen" for the responsibility to continue the legacy of the human race. 

Oh yes - the spitefulness behind all this stuff is very evident!  

The bizarre incoherence of mainstream modern life is such that this desperate personal survivalism at any price, alternates with a cultural obsession with euthanasia; painless annihilation on demand. 

I regard this as evidence of demonic capture; that people have (willingly) surrendered their fundamental life-aims to purposively evil spirits; who are sadistically "playing with" human souls, and enjoying their power to seduce and manipulate human aspirations and behaviour. 

Just as the Elite survivalists enjoy their ability to manipulate public opinions and behaviours in all kinds of self-destructive but contradictory ways - to manufacture a delusional bubble and induce the masses to to choose to inhabit it - so, in Their turn, these credulous and foolish elites are themselves being manipulated by demonic lies. 

The elite survivalists are plotting to destroy a "doomed" world and most of its "useless" people (or sometimes planning to escape from a possible or impending catastrophic natural disaster); but in practice all this survivalism will amount to wrecking the world in order to build their own spiritual prisons, soul-torture chambers, and self-execution rooms. 

Such is Modern Mankind sans God and Jesus, excluding the soul and spirits; when the highest ideology is utilitarian altruistic hedonism, in this-world. 

When human life is bounded by birth and death, and is "about" nothing more than our state of happiness (and official ethics are merely justified by supposedly enhancing alleged happiness). 

We have committed our-selves to metaphysical assumptions that have left people with nothing-but the hope of optimizing their current state of pleasure, minimizing their risks of suffering. 

Then we have refused to acknowledge this is what we have-done. 

We made ourselves a gaol, walked into it; and then forgot we built it, blinded ourselves to the open doors, and cried that we cannot possibly escape. 

 

And the outcome is that we are wide-open, credulous, and willing to embrace our own destructive manipulation by those who are more selfish and powerful than ourselves - whether these others are incarnated humans, or demonic spirits. 

Fantasies of selfish escape and survivalism - at whatever level - are just one of these many destructive and corrupting manipulations. 

The desire to live in bliss and without suffering is - ultimately - a desire for annihilation

To live always in bliss is a common enough ideal; yet it entails the removal of past and future (adverse past memories, feared possible futures) such that only the present is experienced and real. 

We may have experienced such bliss, briefly; as when it is said that eternity can be found in the moment - and some want it permanently. 

Yet to want permanent bliss is to want not-to-be; because the present moment does not exist: as a time-slice - with nothing before or after - it is infinitely small. 

To have (to experience, to know-of) neither past nor future is not-to-be.  

To want to escape suffering - wholly and forever - entails losing all awareness of every-thing. 

This would be to exist in the present moment without desire and without attachment - which means without sense of self. 

To escape suffering therefore requires not-to-be a distinct-being (or, at least, not to be aware of oneself as a being). One must become subjectively unaware that one exists. 

Not to suffer at-all or ever, is a state indistinguishable from complete and permanent annihilation. 

If this sounds like a reductio ad absurdum, reflect that it is very common - almost normal - to feel thus. 

It is perhaps only a kind of uncertainty about what will happen afterwards (a residual fear that death might not be annihilation), plus cowardice about the physical painfulness (suffering) of actually-doing-it; that stops many modern people from killing themselves...

Which is why so many of them clamour for the 'right' painlessly to be murdered (i.e. 'euthanasia') on demand. 

A rejoinder might be that what most people really want is neither complete nor permanent; but simply greater and more sustained happiness, and an end to severe suffering. This even sounds-like common sense...

But these are not an answer that has satisfied; and we know this because so many people already live that answer, and have done for many decades in the West. 

Many or most modern people already have experienced historically-unprecedented gratification of happiness and elimination of physical suffering; yet they are not satisfied by such quantitative improvements.

Indeed, more than in many times and places of the past (insofar as such things can be compared) modern people have been distinctive for their escalating fear, resentment and despair. They have in fact - whatever the theory - focused on the incompleteness of their bliss; and the unbearability of their residual suffering. 

Hence the apparently widespread (albeit often implicit - since modern Man usually refuses to think consciously and consecutively about fundamental matters) desire for total happiness and the absence of suffering; as the only proper, un-controversially Good goals of life. 

All of which goes to show that ideals which are normal and widespread, common-sensical and regarded as ethically-vital; can nonetheless be incoherent nonsense. 

 

Why are modern people indifferent to eternal life?

I remember the answer to this question from personal experience, from remembering my earlier self.

Modern people are indifferent to eternal life because it is pictured as "more of the same - but forever"...

As nothing more than a continuation of this-life, as it actually is experienced by modern people...

Which life is purposeless, meaningless; and ultimately isolated and disengaged.  

Why, asks a modern Man, would it be regarded as good thing, eternally to continue a meaningless and purposeless existence? 

In other words, when my personal Life is already pre-assumed to be something that Just Happened as a culmination of science and randomness...

When my life exists against a backdrop of "the universe is dead and going-nowhere and I am a brief-insignificant nothing within this vastness of time and space". 

This is the official conviction of our civilization - taught from the highest to lowest levels, by those with greatest status and conferred authority.

And it forms the functional basis of all public and "objective" explanations and justifications from the major social institutions (politics, law, military, police, mass media, economics, science, medicine, arts, education etc, and also the churches). 

When human life is regarded as as thus futile; its continuation forever seems to most people like a prospect that would be more of a torment than a thing to be desired. 

In such a context, the core promise of Christianity has lost its appeal to the extent that most people think that - even if resurrected individual life beyond death could somehow be proved to be a real and genuine possibility - they wouldn't want it!

And would prefer the (supposed) assurance of a swift and painless death (i.e. euthanasia) followed by utter annihilation of consciousness. 

Such is the depth of our modern sickness of soul. 

Too deep to be touched by evangelism or apologetics - too deep to be touched even by the devout practice of any strict church Christianity.

Because the modern belief in purposelessness, and meaninglessness, and ultimate personal insignificance - is larger and more profound than our professed religions. 

Until we - as individuals - are able to build our religion on a foundation of ultimate reality having a direction, personal meaning, individual significance that we can choose from ourselves; then we shall not escape the vortex of modernity.

Where Wittgenstein went wrong about Christianity

That he did go wrong seems obvious - in that his life was intensely sad, angry and pessimistic and he was more tormented by religion than helped - such that his 'last words' "Tell them I've had a wonderful life" seemed astonishing and incommensurable to those who knew him best.

And where he went wrong is not far to seek.

(From Culture and Value page 53)

One of the things Christianity says, I think, is that all sound doctrines are of no avail. One must change one's life. (Or the direction of one's life.)

The first sentence is false - but characteristic. Wittgenstein rejected 'doctrine' and he rejected any 'cosmology' or story or description of the nature of God and reality and Man's relationship and purpose in relation to God and reality - and any account of the specific implications of this description.

But it is - surely - very obviously untrue that these things don't matter to Christianity; at least, it is very hard to think of a Christian exemplar who did not have a belief in doctrine and an understanding of what life is about.



Indeed these things are absolutely essential to any minimally-coherent 'good life'. Wittgenstein placed enormous emphasis on 'good works', on 'helping others'- acts of kindness, altruism, alleviating suffering - but none of this can be done without a prior knowledge of what life is about.

If you do not know what 'good' is, then how could you know you were doing good to others?

Because if you don't know what life is about, then how can you 'help' anybody? You do not even know what 'help' is.



(Not even so minimalist and apparently-uncontroversial a principle as 'alleviation of human suffering' is adequate as a guide for 'doing good' - since this also implies a program for humanely-killing those who suffer now, or fear suffering in the future; and the need for more of his kind of thing is indeed a major theme of modern public discourse on 'euthanasia'. There is always a need to conceptualize suffering in a context of purpose, meaning, principles etc.)



Instinct or doing what seems natural is no assistance, because there are several or many goods, which conflict and clash - and must be prioritized and integrated.



Wittgenstein wanted faith and a New Life, but without believing the truth of anything in particular - hence he insisted on Christianity as a pure, inexplicable and ungrounded psychological change coming upon a person.

But this is grossly incomplete as an account of any actual or long-term-viable Christianity - or, at least, it takes for granted a vast implicit social-cultural grounding.

As it stands, Wittgenstein's account of Christianity sans cosmology, sans doctrine cannot be prevented from toppling-over-into relativism and subjectivism - hence nihilistic nonsense. And this has been Wittgenstein's major philosophical legacy.



The interesting question is why Wittgenstein made such an obvious and gross blunder - did he really not perceive the inadequacy of his assertions? Surely his own life (and the lives of people around him - many of whom were exemplars of hyper-intelligent glib shallowness and self-indulgence) refuted his expressed views?

Or was it a psychological blind spot - something Wittgenstein personally could not do, so he assumed it was a universal incapacity?

Or was there a valid reason - such that Wittgenstein simply could not commit himself fully to Christian doctrines and cosmology as he knew them? I suspect that this was the real answer. For example, he expressed profound reservations about Predestination, and seemed very averse to scholastic philosophy in Roman Catholicism - probably there were others.



The way I suppose it worked was something like the following: Wittgenstein could not accept the validity of Predestination as he understood it; and while he accepted that there may be a higher sense in which it was true - he could not simply take that on trust when it was insisted that he believe, make public avowal of the truth of, predestination here and now.

(Such a declaration would be required before Wittgenstein would be qualified and entitled to become a church member of some (Calvinistic?) Protestant denominations, which he presumably felt otherwise attracted towards.)

Something similar probably applied to the necessity for acknowledging the ultimate validity of the philosophical system of Thomism (including Aquinas's proofs of the existence of God, which W particularly objected-to) within the Roman Catholic church.



Since Wittgenstein could not with honesty swear to the truth and validity of certain core doctrines or philosophical propositions, regarded as essential for all members, there was simply no possibility of Wittgenstein becoming a church member in any of the denominations of which he knew.

Yet he quite possibly regarded church membership as essential to the status of being a publicly-identified Christian. So he was stuck - outside of any actual denomination, yet extremely concerned with Christianity: 'merely' a simple believer in the reality of Christianity in his own life, and the lives of others.

So Wittgenstein reduced the definition of Christianity to being something inferred from 'the difference it makes to a person's life' - which is correct but incomplete.

In trying to make sense of his (chronic, painful) situation; Wittgenstein tried to argue that doctrines were not a necessary part of Christianity, since it was doctrines which kept him out of the churches.

In a limited sense, then, this hostility to Christian doctrine was an accurate specific observation - Wittgenstein himself was a Christian despite being unable publicly to assent to some specific doctrines variously regarded as crucial to church membership by the known Christian denominations - but as a general principle the hostility to Christian doctrine, and statements that Christianity did not require doctrine, was false: an error.

Argument errors of Christian reactionaries - using Leftist reasoning

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It is counter-productive (strengthens the enemy) for Christian reactionaries to argue against some Leftist policy on the basis that it:

Upsets people. (Somebody is always upset by everything.)

Is inefficient. (Liberals don't care about efficiency.)

Is dysfunctional. (Liberals take functionality for granted - if they did not, they would not be liberals.)

Wastes money. (Liberals don't care about wasting money. Indeed, they equate wasting money - their own money, or other people's - with altruism.)

Is silly/ absurd. (Liberalism operates by taking more and more silly/ absurd things seriously.)

Is trivial. (For Liberals nothing is trivial if it opposes Liberalism.)

On the basis that procedures ought to be neutral. (Procedural neutrality is impossible, and its pursuit is evil - what matters is deciding which side will be favoured; and that should be the side of truth, beauty and virtue. The task is for procedures to achieve a Good result - not for procedures to be neutral.)

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Arguments Christian reactionaries should use against Leftist policies:

They are destructive of Good/ Truth/ Beauty/ Virtue; are evil/ dishonest/ ugly/ sinful.

They do not conform to Reality.   

*

Of course none of these arguments will convince Liberals - indeed they are meaningless to to the Liberal perspective. What then?

Just keep repeating and repeating them anyway.

Because these arguments are the proper reasons for Christian reactionaries to argue against things: Good reasons; the real reasons; true,  beautiful and virtuous reasons.

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(At some level whatever they may say or do, Liberals know for sure that they are wrong. Objectively, finally, ultimately wrong. And that is why they are anti-life; why they live for distraction and destruction; why they idolize the evil, selfish and self-mutilating; and why they are fixated upon sterility, suicide and euthanasia. Never in human history has there been such visceral loathing as Liberals feel for themselves: they want their own extinction more profoundly than they want anything else.+)

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(+ Lest I be misunderstood: Liberals know for sure that they are wrong, but they do not know that we are right - they believe that we are wrong, but they do not know what is right. They know that they are wrong now because they know they have changed their Liberal beliefs several times already and will have to continue changing their beliefs every few years. So they know their current Liberal beliefs cannot be right; and they also know that whatever future Liberal beliefs they may embrace will only be for a while; since they will be equally unstable. Their tragedy is that they know that Liberalism is false, ugly and evil - but they think they know the same about Christianity - so they have no hope and cannot find rest. Except, temporarily, in forgetfulness, that is in ceasing to be conscious - hence ceasing to be human. Thus they yearn to become animal, or for permanent distraction, or - as they mistakenly suppose will happen - to have consciousness finally annihilated by death.)

The coming cult of altruistic/ suffering-avoiding suicide

Modern Western secular man explicitly and as an inward experience feels himself to be worthless and evil, and deserving of (what he imagines will be) annihilation by death.

He is afraid of dying, however, and is increasingy clamouring for widespread and convenient euthanasia (humane murder, suffering-free legal-murder) - and specifically wants this for himself (not just for other people).

On present trends there will soon and increasingly be a kind of 'cult' of suicides among the baby boom generation - suicide seen as a public duty, a positive act: an act of ultimate altruism.

This will first emerge among the elderly intellectuals of post 1945 generation as they hit their late seventies; but will soon spread to ever younger and fitter people as a morally-admirable safe-option - the logic for this is already in-place.

As such Western people die, they will do so with much public boasting, a smug and warm glow at their own generosity in 'making way'; and in expectation of the gratitude and admiration of the population that they have brought-in from elsewhere to replace them.

The younger migrant population, of course, never had any intention of supporting, nor indeed the ability to support, a truly massive, alien, older generation of Westerners through long, unproductive and dependent old age. The idea is indeed ridiculous (despite that so many people seem to believe it).

The dawning prospect of a slow death of suffering from starvation and neglect will only increase the mass desire for pain-avoiding suicide among the declining natives - and encourage people to dress-it-up in a pseudo-morality of self-sacrifice - the kind of thing modern elites are so expert at accomplishing.

Is there any *right* to have a "pain-free and peaceful death"? (aka wholesale humane murder)

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From today's issue of The Independent (the most Leftist of British mainstream newspapers):

Locked-in syndrome sufferer Tony Nicklinson, who lost his High Court battle last week for the legal right to end his life when he chooses with a doctor's help, died today...

Last week following the legal ruling, Mr Nicklinson's wife, Jane - standing by her weeping husband's side - described the decision as "one-sided". She said: "You can see from Tony's reaction he's absolutely heartbroken." They said they intended to appeal against the decision.

Mr Nicklinson's daughter Lauren said last week that the family would keep fighting to allow her father to die "a pain-free and peaceful death". "The alternative is starvation," she said.

"Why should he have to starve himself to death when he could go (die) in a safe home with people that love him? "To think that he might have to waste away and starve himself to death is horrific and it makes me feel quite ill, to be honest."...

After the ruling, Mr Nicklinson said in a statement issued by his solicitors, Bindmans LLP: "I am devastated by the court's decision.

"I am saddened that the law wants to condemn me to a life of increasing indignity and misery."

Asked what would happen if the appeal fails, his wife said: "Tony either has to carry on like this until he dies from natural causes or by starving himself."
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Almost all of the British mainstream media, and especially the BBC, are campaigning for euthanasia on request - starting-with some rare cases of chronic paralysis such as the above - but as the speaker makes clear, what is being asked for is nothing less than the legal right to "a pain-free and peaceful death" - which is de facto the legal right to being humanely murdered, including the legal right that somebody act in the role of humane murderer.

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This is not at all shocking to the modern secular Leftist, because their evaluation of life is purely hedonic - and when the balance between pleasure and pain tips too far in an adverse direction they regard it as the duty of the State to end things - simply out of compassion for suffering.

Of course, the vast majority of humans throughout human history have had painful deaths, unpeaceful deaths - deaths without 'dignity'.

For example, two of my greatest Christian heroes Blaise Pascal and Fr Seraphim Rose suffered horrible terminal illnesses lasting for some weeks. They would have been prime candidates for humane killing.

But in fact, most people have bad deaths - and by the criterion of 'a pain-free and peaceful death' would be 'deserving' of humane killing.

So this is not a trivial or minor matter, not at all - once the principle in is place that deaths ought to be pain-free and peaceful then the vast majority of people will be humanely killed - not least to be 'on the safe side' when suffering seems a likely prospect and to prevent it.

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Of course there have been pagan societies of the past - such as Ancient Rome, or the Japanese in the Samurai era - when suicide became almost the normal way to end life.

But these societies did not kill themselves in order to avoid pain and be peaceful - (as I understand it) the Patrician Roman killed himself to avoid all his property being confiscated by the state if he were executed; a Japanese noble in order that his death be equivalent to death in battle.

*

Mr Nicklinson, 58, died at his home in Melksham, Wiltshire, this morning following a rapid deterioration in his health after contracting pneumonia over the weekend. He had suffered from locked-in syndrome following an accident in 2005 and wanted a doctor to be allowed to terminate his life...

Professor Penney Lewis, professor of law at the Centre of Medical Law and Ethics at King's College London, said today that Mr Nicklinson's plight would continue to raise questions about a change in the law, after being denied the right to die by High Court judges last week in a landmark ruling.

(Emphasis added.)

*

What is clear is that this has nothing to do with a 'right to die'. It is clearly acknowledged that this man could refuse food, as he apparently did for the days leading up to his death (reported elsewhere), and then he would die - and in fact he died within a few days of refusing food.

The whole crux of this campaign is not the right to die, but the right to die painlessly - which is de facto the right to be killed before there can be any suffering.

It has a conceptualization of life that regards any form of suffering, even temporary and terminal suffering such as humans have endured through all history - as utterly intolerable, such that nothing is worse, such that being murdered humanely is a right and to murder humanely a vital social function.

This just has to be the most clear cut example of moral inversion which can be envisaged; going against the most basic and uncontroversial and universal Natural Law.

And yet this is now the mainstream, normal, enlightened viewpoint among modern Western elite opinion - such that those who hold it are moralistically angry and outraged that anybody could object to their proposals.

*

Just take this on board.

The campaign to legalize wholesale humane murder is not an extrapolation, not science fiction - this is what is happening now.

This is the state of cutting edge, widely-supported secular morality.

This is not something being covertly or indirectly argued - it is a straightforward proposal supported by many or most high status people, pretty much all the mass media and university ethicists and experts of many stripes.

People feel good about themselves for supporting wholesale humane murder, because as good secular Leftists they regard suffering as the worst thing.

People feel very angry against those who block wholesale humane muder, they hate the people who oppose wholesale humane murder - because these people are cruel, they are deliberately inflicting suffering upon helpless people at the end of their lives.

*

The situation is beyond parody: the situation is an everyday fact of modern life.

*



Note - I would not like to give a false impression: I remember clearly what it was like to believe that wholesale humane murder - properly done, by decent sensible properly-trained people - would indeed be a vital element in continued human progress. To my former secular hedonic self, removal of that basic terror of the process of death seemed like a fine thing, crucial to peace of mind. To object was evil, reactionary, insensitive, indifferent. We moderns had got beyond such barbaric harshness. Only since I became a Christian did the scales drop from my eyes.

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What if the sensible, balanced middle ground is impossible (as it seems to be)

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Sophisticated modern thinkers like to come up with a balanced, sensible, middle ground between two problematic extremes - but what if there is no stable middle ground?

What if the middle ground is merely a temporary transitional state between the extremes? What if the real choice is between those extremes - warts and all?

Since humans are (in part) animals, hence biological beings; our natures are (partly) biological - which means we have an inbuilt tendency to reproduce, to expand, to fill-up niches, to explore, to colonize, and to dominate.

This is not the whole story - but it is part of it.

*

So - when we turn away from all of this - for bad reasons but also for good reasons - when humans suppress their own reproduction, when they do not expand, nor explore, nor colonize, not to dominate - but to tread lightly on the planet... well, what actually happens can be seen all around us in the disappearance of Christendom and the West.

*

In striving to avoid the horrors unleashed by our biological nature we have instead created the culture that embraces death: delayed reproduction, voluntary sterility, falling and ageing populations, mass immigration and population replacement, euthanasia and mercy killing - and we have given-up on exploring and settling the Arctic, the Antarctic, the oceans and their depths; and of course outer space.

*

Yes, yes - I know all about environmental damage, exploitation and slavery, genocide, extinctions, the spread of deadly disease, minority authoritarian rule... and all the rest of it.  

But so far there is zero evidence of a viable alternative.

It seems that it is either expansion or contraction - in biology there is no other alternative to one-of-the-above - and what superficially looks like stability is actually an unstable dynamic equilibrium.

*

So, what is the Christian answer to all this?

Somehow Christianity must sanctify biology with love, as best as maybe.

Because anti-biology is not an answer; anti-biology is actually worse then domination and expansion; since a life and culture of despair, contraction, submission and self-willed suicide are demonic, not Christian.

*

Indeed, far from Christianity being intrinsically about anti-biological contraction and death; as we have seen, Christianity has been one of the earliest casualties of anti-biology.

So, if anti-biology is of Satan, not of God; we must embrace positive (not negative) theology, the way of affirmation (not negation), the path of the patriarch (not the celibate); Christians must (on the whole, on average) reproduce, explore, colonize and (yes) dominate - or... we will first despair, and then die without fruit.  

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H/T to an exchange with Adam Greenwood from http://www.jrganymede.com

Who are the Leftists in Lord of the Rings?

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Lord of the Rings is a profoundly reactionary work, which is one reason I love it so much, but there are Leftist, or proto-Leftist, characters and attitudes.

The most obvious (pointed out by Tom Shippey) is Saruman, who talks much like a modern bureaucrat/ public relations specialist.

But Denethor is perhaps another - he has abandoned the religion of his fathers and become a utilitarian who, when the prospects seem bleak, chooses assisted suicide and euthanasia of Faramir as a means of avoiding further suffering.

(Although, admittedly, burning yourself and your son to death is not what a modern Leftist would call an 'easy way out'.)

Any other suggestions (with explanations)?

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Why do cynics loathe religion?

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Actually, it is a loathing underpinned by fear - the combination producing the kind of venom most eloquently and savagely expressed by HL Mencken; but replicated in a watered-down form by the New Atheists, self-proclaimed Skeptics and the like.

This is not a matter of merely rejecting religion; it is the business of making anti-religion into a focus of life; of not merely not practising religion but wanting the whole thing stamped-out, once and for all; so that it will be gone forever,

The reason is quite simple: cynics live only on their pleasures, and religion wants to take them away - or some of them at least.

The cynic finds no meaning, purpose or permanence in life - mortal life is everything, and the cynic's own life is (of course) primary, and the present moment and near future are the most certain - and this situation is only valuable (only tolerable) insofar as it is pleasurable (or at least not an active state of suffering).

The worst thing that can happen to a cynic is to suffer - therefore cynics favour humane murder (euthanasia) for themselves and others; and quick, painless suicide on demand ('assisted' suicide) as the bottom line, safety net in life.

But for the cynic, living is a matter of getting-through life as best as may-be; and this is achieved with the assistance of pleasurable habits and pastimes - like alcohol and other drugs, good food, travel, sports; and sex, as and when the chance arises, with whomsoever is fancied, and involving whatever activities are most enjoyable.

Religion threatens this whole package of a maximally-pleasurable and minimally-suffering life - thus religion directly threatens the primary coping mechanism of the cynic, the whole cynical modus operandi.  

This is why cynics are hardline in their intolerance of religion - they correctly perceive that religion attacks their basis of existence; and for what appear utterly nonsensical reason! - yet a species of nonsense that carries extreme conviction and that most people find highly motivating - so that religious people will reject pleasures and choose suffering, in the name of their religion.

Terrifying.

For a real cynic, religion is something rationally to be hated.
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Australian Aborigine life 100-plus years ago

In commenting at another blog recently, I dug-out and re-read a couple of interesting posts from 2011 about Australian Aborigine life at the time of the first detailed records.

I had a long-standing interest in hunter-gatherers, and thought I knew the anthropology pretty well; but this information surprised me.

I expected the Aborigines to be similar to the Southern African hunter gatherers such as the Kung San or the Hadza. But I should have been prepared for Aborigines to be unique, since it is believed that they were genetically separated from other humans some 50,000 years ago - or about 2,000 generations. This would make them likely to be more different from other humans than any other group.

One difference is that the Aborigines have a 'totemic' religion - relatively fixed in beliefs (within constraints of oral transmission), with something like priests and handed down as accurately as possible between generations.

Whereas most similar 'immediate return', low technology hunter-gatherers, rather than a fluid, (part-time) shaman-led animistic spirituality.

Another difference was that Aborigines had larger 'bands' than the usual immediate-return hunter-gatherers - my theory was that this was because their totemic religion sustained a higher level of cooperation beyond the extended family. Interesting; because most totemic religions are found in more complex (socially-stratified and specialised), sedentary, early agriculture societies - or those with rich food resources available without being nomadic - such as the totem-pole-making Pacific Northwest American Indians - who had resources of shell-fish to gather.

Anyway, the - rather unpleasant - surprises I had about Aborigine life are detailed and referenced below.

Treatment of girls and women:
https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/12/life-for-women-among-australian.html

Infanticide and euthanasia:
https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/12/purposive-killing-infanticide-and.html

Nietzsche's The Antichrist - the argument extended

Frederick Nietzche is generally known as one of the most vehement and radical foes of 'Christianity' - certainly he described himself as such in his last main book The Antichrist. 

Yet as I read Nietzsche's argument in The Antichrist now; it seems to be directed against mainstream, modern, Establishment materialist Leftism - against 2020 systemic totalitarianism triumphant - rather than against Christianity as I understand it.

Indeed, read this way, The Antichrist is a brilliant exposition of the dominant reductionist and secular negative- ideology that has infiltrated, subverted, inverted and (since the global church closures of least year) all-but destroyed institutional Christianity. 

Nietzsche's criticism's of Christianity are characteristic of modern, mainstream, secular, bureaucratic Leftism: The morality based on resentment; the incoherence of equality; that mass inculcation of 'pity' which is designed to paralyze with guilt; and to induce self-hatred, nihilism, despair and the desire for death (eg. abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide).  

Nietzsche's assumption was that there was only 'this world' and he failed to recognize that, if true, this negated all possible justifications for Life of the kind he sought. His diagnosis of Ahrimanic evil was exact and prescient. 

But - at the time of his final dementia and mutism - he had not recognized that his alternative of a morality of Life (by which he meant individual spontaneous instinct) was subhuman, selfish, destructively short-termist - and by nature and merely atavistic, regressive and Luciferic. 

In other words, Nietzsche had not got beyond a negative critique based upon unexamined assumptions. The development of human consciousness means that the Luciferic is unattainable (even if it were desirable) and the Ahrimanic inevitably defeats it. Thus the German National Socialists (who revered Nietzsche, and issued Zarathustra as a Bible-equivalent) began with a philosophy of Life; but inevitably ended with escalating bureaucracy. 

This failure of the Luciferic is why the actual effect of Nietzsche on the atheistic anti-Christian culture which followed, has been to lead towards the Sorathic world of spiteful destruction - a program of civilizational/ national/ personal annihilation - instead of his hoped-for fantasy of pagan strength, courage and dominance.   

What Nietzsche should have done (and perhaps would have done - given more time; and an intuitive recognition of such realities as God, creation and life beyond mortality) was to move on from his negative critique of historical-actual church-dominated Christianity, to apply his creative insights - his direct-knowing - to remaking Christianity instead of trying to destroy it. 

As things stood; Nietzsche was using a double-standard - applying his 'methods' only against Christianity; and not against the assumptions from-which he critiqued Christianity. 

Nietzsche's own method, if thoroughly applied, would have led him back to Christianity - but Christianity of a very different nature than the one from which he began. 

Also, as I have said before, I think it likely that Nietzsche was himself 'saved' - i.e. that after death he chose to follow Jesus Christ to resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 

Why? How? Well, in a nutshell, what Nietzsche had against Christianity was that he believed it was not true. 

If when, after death, Nietzsche discovered that Christianity was true; then a Man of his creativity and honesty - and with his passionate human motivations - would likely have chosen active, eternal, interpersonal Life in Heaven; rather than the anti-Life lies, ugliness and sordid sins of Hell; or the living-death, un-conscious, blissed-out passivity of Nirvana.  

When therapy and healing become the bottom-line, the ultimate in life... More on Steiner's 1918 prophecy

It is noticeable that modern spirituality, especially New Age themed practices - including Western versions of Eastern religions, almost always focus on 'healing' and the practice of therapy.

This is also, substantially, the case for many types of self-identified Christianity - that the main focus is healing, and Christian practice is seen as a form of healing.

Government, too, is seen as a kind of healing - it puts itself forward as a mass-healing process ('the therapuetic state').

It seems everyone, all the time, is talking about healing. Of course they seldom achieve it and typically do the reverse - but healing is the prime justification for... everything.  

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What this means is that spiritual life, religious life, ends-up being about human psychology - and more exactly about human psychology as it is now.

There is no doubt that the human psyche needs healing - that people are alienated, and their very selves feel cut-off from the world (that is when people are not simply lacking in consciousness and self-awareness, in sleep, intoxicated, or just distracted e.g. by the mass media and social interactions).

This lapsing of religion and spirituality into therapy is pervasive. And it is inevitable - so long as there is no external divine locus towards which we are orientated.

Therefore, religions or spiritualities which emphasize, almost-exclusively, the 'immanence' or indwelling of the divine (God in us, God in the world, in nature...), also become (before long) just another kind of therapy.

It is only when the divine is located elsewhere and when we are personally orientated towards the divine (and, preferably, on a path to the divine) that we can avoid having therapy as the main thing in life.

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Because: therapy for what? We want to be healthy, happy, energetic - for what? What are we supposed to do if or when we are fortunate enough to be in this state?

Plus of course, life always end in death (usually preceded by some sickness and pain) - so if therapy is the focus of life, success is very temporary, and then life is always and for everyone an inevitable failure.

So why bother? hence the modern fascination with and esire for suicide (euthanasia, chosen reproductive sterility, anti-natalism, national self-annihiliation, fetchization of 'the other' etc.)

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If we revisit Rudolf Steiner's prophecy from 1918:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/the-absolute-necessity-for-change-of.html

Then I think we can see that this situation we are in, this situation in which therapy (healing the body, healing the mind) is exactly the situation that Steiner described as the working of angels during 'sleep' - in 'Steinerese' this refers to the body becoming primary and consciousness being ruled out of consideration.

This is exactly the seismic change in Western society since the 1960s with the take-over of the sexual revolution and identity politics (it began earlier, but became mainstream in the 60s).

It has, of course, been staggeringly un-successful in terms of its objective of healing! But that was also to be anticipated, since there is no foresight, no order, no prudence, no consciousness about the Leftist revolution including the sexual revolution - which is now the mainstream, official, mass media driven and state enforced ideology.

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That is the point that Steiner was making. When The West turned away from religion in favour of 'therapy' - of sexual and individual license ('freedom'), short-term happiness and avoidance of suffering - it also sabotaged the attainment of those goals which are not true goals, and cannot function as goals - but are actually means to the external end which is divinization - becoming more like God, who is 'other', another personage - as well as permeating the world

So - we should not neglect the necessity for evolution of consciousness, in Man and in ourselves - the need for theois, for maturation towards becoming adults in faith; but consciousness, therapy, healing only make sense and can only be achieved in the ultimate framework of the external divine.

Striving fof higher consciousness in the absence of religion is just another kind of lethal. (Just look at the people who try it!)

God is the First Thing; and absolutely essential - not an 'option' but a necessity.

(I mean psycho-socio-culturally essential - not philosophically.)

Or else... What-is-happening, as prophesied by Steiner.