A culture of suicide

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We live in a culture of suicide: a culture in which pleasure is the only good must inevitably be a culture of suicide since pleasure cannot be guaranteed - and when life has more suffering than pleasure, and the future prospect is bleak: why not suicide?

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It is ironic that when 'life' - vitality, gratification, comfort, fun - is the primary goal, then the opposite predominates.

So that the whole argument boils down to short-termism versus long-termism.

The short-termist lives on a knife edge; but usually obliterates suffering ASAP with technology or any other available distraction.

The long-termist response is that when suffering overtops pleasure, then suicide should be considered seriously, and postponed (never utterly rejected) only if the long term quantity of pleasure outweighs the short term quantity of pain.

(But why should we suppose that gratification is arithmetical?)

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"But, who knows what the future will bring... The safest thing is to die now, before there is a chance for anything bad to happen..." This sounds like parody - but surely it is precisely mainstream belief of teenage ethics, mainstream pop culture ethics, mainstream media ethics: the positive value placed on a beautiful corpse.

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Then there is the intense interest in euthanasia, when pleasure is insufficient to compensate suffering then die; indeed why not die - get yourself killed - before you get to that point, to be on the safe side.

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(Of course, it is equally insane to hold the view - which seems mainstream in the Roman Catholic Church, that it is on the one hand a duty for society to do anything and everything that the application of modern technology can devise to sustain human existence, and at the same time to regard the hastening of death - for instance by withdrawal of this modern technology - as utterly morally abhorrent.

(Apparently - by this reasoning - people must intervene technologically to prevent corporeal death, then must sustain at all or any cost whatever form of living-death may be a consequence of such intervention.

(But this is monstrous nonsense, and is indeed a variant of political correctness. A proper moral perspective on death surely entails an understanding that there is a right time and situation to die, and right level of intervention to prevent death - varying by context - and an acceptance of fate insofar as it can be discerned. And a recognition of the moral chasm between killing and letting-die.)

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What is remarkable is that suicide is not endemic.

But maybe it is endemic, in the sense that political correctness is suicide - since any self-blinding, mandatorially non-consequential reasoning is implicitly suicidal.

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[Note added - plus of course, the endemic suicide of awareness - the suicide of awareness from continuous distraction by compulsive and continuous usage of the mass media and electronic interpersonal communications, organized busyness, overwhelming pleasurable inputs including - junk food/ high cuisine, intoxicating or energizing drinks, drugs, sex, dreamy physical pleasures such as baths and sunbathing, exercise, shopping, fashion, fantasy... or whatever. Without the ability for most modern secular people most of the time to escape at will into such immersive stimuli - so abundantly provided by modern society - it is likely either that 'things would change' or else that actual physical suicide would be much commoner.)

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(The politically correct are engaged in creating a society which they, personally, would find intolerable. How do they imagine that they would cope? Answer: they won't cope. They imagine that will either let themselves die or, if that is too slow or creates too much suffering, they will take matters into their own hands.)

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I strongly suspect that a suicide fantasy lies behind the hedonism and political correctness of modern society. The idea that if, when, things don't work out - and it is time to pay the costs of recklessly self-gratifying and evasive policies, then there is a 'way out'.

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All of this depends on the belief - unique to intellectuals living under modernity - that the soul is unreal and that there is no existence after death.

A belief in the unreality of the soul is a crutch to hedonism.

Extinction after death is the 'get out of jail free' card for political correctness.

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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.   

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.

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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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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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.   

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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.)

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.

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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.)

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.  

*

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

Who are the Leftists in Lord of the Rings?

*

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)?

*

Why the future is theocratic not libertarian

Societies with a transcendental aim or purpose (i.e. some kind of 'theocracy' aiming for the salvation of mankind) will eventually displace secular modern societies based on the primacy of lifestyle freedom and guided by the pursuit of individual gratification.

This will happen (like it or not) because only ‘theocracies’ are potentially (although not necessarily) coherent, large-scale, self-renewing and expansive in aspiration.

Secular modern societies will continue to tear themselves apart with nothing to arrest the process or generate coherence – they will self-weaken until they self-collapse. More likely before this is complete they will taken over by a theocracy.

Secular modern societies very clearly have *for a while* potential capabilities far beyond that of any theocracy past or present; but they are not stable, nor self-renewing. They cannot/ will not (it amounts to the same thing) – over the long term - use these superior capabilities to sustain themselves.

The triumph of secular modernity was therefore only a temporary phase - contingent upon cultural inertia. And once the inertia of religious tradition was overcome, and individual gratification by free lifestyle choice was established as primary; then secular modernity became first weakened, then directionless, and now is actively self-destroying.

Mainstream left-liberalism is self-hating and suicidal in its aspiration for universal (undiscriminative) egalitarian altruism. The incoherence of this ideology is obvious, and the stronger that liberalism gets, the faster will society destroy-itself.

Although mainstream liberalism is mostly passive in its guilt, any dynamic social cohesion that it is able to generate depends upon using lies, propaganda and indoctrination to inspire people to unite in the objective of organizing their own ideological-destruction and physical replacement.

(Liberals have ignored Karl Popper’s warning that for toleration to survive it must not tolerate the intolerant – that when intolerance is tolerated it grows in strength until it displaces tolerance. But such a view of discriminative tolerance requires belief in the reality of ultimate, transcendental values such as truth, beauty and virtue – and these are dissolved by secularism and the principle of universal tolerance as a primary process. When universal tolerance becomes a positive lifestyle choice, the days of tolerance are numbered. What remains is a choice between varieties of intolerance – and that is indeed the future of humanity.)

The dark side of liberalism (liberal fascism) adds the unifying fervor of organized hatred, systematic scape-goating and zealous persecution of those who oppose cultural suicide. These attributes characterize the mainstream intellectual group movements of the past 45 years.

But libertarianism is not a viable alternative to liberalism. (I speak as an ex-libertarian, one whose libertarian writings are all over the internet!) Libertarianism replaces the self-loathing, paralysis and ideological group submission of liberalism with a high-minded but actually psychopathic selfishness and a focus on personal, individual gratification. Libertarians escape the enervating psychological trap of liberalism (tender-minded hedonism, wishful-thinking, suicidal guilt and submission), and instead promote a guilt-free, ‘tough-minded’, cynical, worldly, hard-nosed self-gratification.

Since this is socially unacceptable, indeed criminal, libertarian theory (based on a broadly utilitarian ethic) necessarily purports to show how a *process* of competition and evolution will combines numerous instances of short-termist selfish individualism to benefit the long term interests of the group.

But a libertarian society would be self-destroying to the extent it was implemented, since libertarianism positively encourages free-riding. Libertarianism merely hopes-for long-termist utilitarianism, but it guarantees short-termist selfishness.

The libertarian ethic is that the highest value is each individual being maximally free to take the choices which best enable self-gratification. While the libertarian may sincerely *hope* that other people will exercise these choices in a way which promotes the greatest happiness of the greatest number (however that might be measured) it is a more direct route to personal gratification simply to seek gratification for oneself rather than for society. Even in the ‘perfect’ libertarian society it is always possible for an individual to further increase their own gratification at the expense of others – while some choices (e.g. to be the highest status, most desired, most creative) intrinsically entail the deprivation of others.

And if gratification is the goal of human life, because human life is unpredictable then *immediate* gratification – right here, right now - is vastly surer and more dependable than undergoing the risks and uncertainties involved in pursuing long term gratification. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

In other words, social cohesion in a secular libertarian society depends on individuals being long-termist utilitarians rather than selfish short-termist gratification-seekers. Yet libertarianism will self-destroy from free-riding; each zealous libertarian individual rationally seeking to gratify themselves at the present moment - not later – and selfishly at the expense of the gratification of others.

Where are the libertarian saints and martyrs? Libertarians are intrinsically and on principle cowardly and hedonistic loners who will not suffer privation, take risks or undergo personal suffering either for the good of the group or for transcendental goals (unless they subjectively, arbitrarily happen to enjoy doing so!). Instead, libertarians tend to minimize their losses, to cut and run. In sum, libertarian group goals are continually undercut by the selfish-short-termism which is itself the prime directive of libertarianism. Hence libertarianism is unable to generate cohesion beyond the level of a leisure club - not even enough cohesion to run a political party!

This is why so many libertarians are ‘pacifists’ and isolationists, fantasize about emigration and other forms of personal escape, and consider suicide/ euthanasia as an obvious – first-line - solution to suffering. Libertarians have no compelling reason why they themselves should suffer for a larger or longer term cause – indeed libertarians cynically regard heroic self-sacrifice with pity or scorn, as evidence of stupidity or insanity.

The consequence is that libertarianism – a collection of self-interested and self-preserving individuals – will submit (one at a time) to any group that can mobilize relentless heroic self-sacrifice in pursuit of group goals.

So, liberals are crushed with a guilty conscience to the point of denying their own right to exist, but libertarians are conscienceless hedonists for whom life has no point except to attain that state which most pleases them and escape from states which are distressing. Devout liberals are morally restricted, warped and incoherent; but devout libertarians are just plain amoral!

Neither can withstand pressure from an unrelenting foe prepared to sacrifice themselves or to die for a cause. Both will submit: liberals will submit on principle, libertarians from expediency.

***

The medium term alternatives (over the next few decades) are chaos or theocracy.

Over the longer term theocracies which can maintain their devoutness will win.

The ultimate choice is therefore between theocracies.


Note of clarification: I believe the future is a choice between theocracies. And my preference is for something like a Byzantine monarchial Christian Orthodox theocracy. Other alternatives include Orthodox Judaism, Islam and (perhaps) Roman Catholic Christianity (where national rule is divided between the national monarch and an international religious hierarchy ultimately under papal authority).

However, even the ideal theocracy would probably not suit me personally very well, and might indeed make me very unhappy. I fully acknowledge that most theocracies would be unpleasant for modern intellectuals such as myself. Neither do I believe that theocracy is the *happiest* kind of human society (when happiness is conceptualized in this-worldly terms).

I believe that the happiest societies, overall, were the simple hunter gatherer groups – i.e. the kind of social arrangements in which humans evolved. I also believe that – in an everyday sense) secular modernity in its decadent phase (i.e. now) is probably overall happier than many or most theocracies – especially in terms of the relief of suffering.

Theocracy is based on the primacy of human salvation, not human happiness; therefore if this-worldly individual happiness is your objective, then theocracy is not likely to appeal.

However, appeal or not, the main point I am trying to make here is that a society based-on pursuit of individual happiness through lifestyle liberty is incoherent: at first merely fragmentary and weak but eventually organized in self-destruction (a process led by the intellectual ruling elite, whether liberal or libertarian). Secular modernity will therefore decline to either a ‘Dark Age’ state of segmentary, tribalistic chaos; or (at a higher level of social complexity) a more ‘Medieval’ type of monarchial theocracy comprising large states or empires which will sooner or later displace small-scale chaotic tribalism.

Again I emphasize the choice for the long-term future: which is your preferred theocracy? Or, to put it another way – which is your preferred variety of intolerance?

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.  

*

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.

*

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.)

*

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.

*

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.

Old Left-New Left... Modernity-Postmodernity - surface changes masking a constant deep motivation against God

It is easy to make too much of the change in mainstream socio-politics that happened in the mid-1960s. Leftism has been increasingly mainstream in The West for a couple of hundred years - but within that project, there was a change in the 1960s; and on the surface it seemed to be a qualitative change.

Some contrasts... The Old Left was about economics, the New Left was about the sexual revolution and antiracism; equality of opportunity versus affirmative action and group preferences; nationalisation versus globalisation; planned economy versus free trade; protectionism versus mass-unlimited population migration; the native workers versus immigrants...

For a while the idea became fashionable that this was a shift from modernism to postmodernism; where modernism was seen as a kind of Enlightenment Rationalism and progress; and postmodernism was seen as relativism, loss of all values, loss of all explanations, loss of all sense of purpose and progress - a world of change but no meaning.

However, although the surface change was indeed qualitative; underneath the change from Old to New Left/ modernism to postmodernism, can be seen as an unfolding of the same underlying impulse.


How do we know this? Because many millions of individual people on The Left, en masse, made this exact transition in their beliefs; and very few of them refused to do so.

The same individuals who in their youth championed white, native-born, working class men as the oppressed 'proletarian' heroes of society... by the time they reached old age had demonised this group (as racist/ sexist/ homophobic/ Christian bigots etc.), and now champions everybody except them.

Another example is eugenics. Before 1960 pretty much All intellectual Leftists (except Roman Catholics) were ardent advocates of eugenics: i.e. of state control of human fertility as an essential means towards improving genetic quality, and therefore social functioning. By 1970, the same group of people, often the same individuals, regarded eugenics as a hallmark of 'Right Wing', 'Fascist' evil; and anyone proposing eugenics was aggressively, often violently, excluded from public discourse ('deplatformed' as people would now call it).

The same happened with 'feminism'. Before the transition; Leftists regarded feminism as subsumed within socialism (racism too) - the sexes being unified by equality of opportunity. From the 1970s, women were increasingly split from men as a victim group with opposite interests than men; and with different laws and rules applicable to women and men; so as first to equalise sex outcomes, then to make women's outcomes higher than men's - in one area of public action after another. The ideal of equality has been replaced by an ideal of inequality.

Yet although these aims (sex equality of opportunity versus sex inequality of outcome) were extremely different, almost opposite; Leftists remained Leftists - with very few exceptions they obediently followed 'the party line', and (in their multi-millions) set-aside honesty and consistency.

And Many millions more joined them - as the Left took-over all mainstream politics, government, all all major social institutions.


The fact that people on the Left so easily, seamlessly, changed - and even reversed - their superficial opinions and their policies; and did so dishonestly, claiming that they were not doing so; tells us that the roots and motivation of Leftism are not at the level of obvious opinions and policies.

The roots of Leftism are much deeper - and are, indeed, at the level of metaphysics. That is, at the level of basic assumptions concerning the nature of reality.

The basic assumptions of Leftism have unfolded over the past couple of centuries (and were foreshadowed before that time). The most fundamental assumption is a set of linked assumptions rejecting divine agency and the immaterial. These are along the lines that there is no God, and no objective truth, beauty or morality; that the material (perceptible, measurable) realm of things is the only reality; and that human emotion (pleasure-suffering) is the only valid measure of goodness (aka 'utilitarianism').

(You should note that materialism and utilitarianism are ultimately contradictory - because other-people's emotions do not exist according to materialism, being objectively unobservable, not-measurable, unquantifiable; nonetheless this combination of assumptions is universal in mainstream public discourse for the past century and more.)


On the positive side of 'what was wanted', Leftism probably began with pacifism among mid-18th century Nonconformists, the abolition of slavery spreading from this same group, and a mounting demand for relief of the new kind of poverty and misery that was caused by the industrial revolution by means of state redistribution of wealth...

And from the beginning the sexual revolution was a strong element, although initially only among the upper class radicals (e.g. Lord Byron, Shelley); who immediately used a political rationale for advocating their own practice of unbounded sexual relations outside of religious marriage. 

We need to recognise that, even though its early advocates espoused some good causes, and many individuals at the low level of the movement were basically good-but-misguided people, the Left always was from its very roots a basically false (hence evil) human motivation.

By excluding or marginalising the divine perspective; by placing mortal life, materialism and human emotion as the focus of human evaluation and action; it was always inevitable that Leftism would unfold to short-termist hedonism, despair, and nihilism - and would lead its adherents (at first unconsciously, but increasingly explicitly) to seek their own self-annihilation - both in general - by working actively for the destruction of their own marriages, families, institutions and nations) - and individually.

This self-annihilation is rationalised by a publicly enforced cancerous compassion. Compassion is, objectively, a minor virtue intended as a duty in relation to a person's immediate circle of family, friends and neighbours. But post-60s Leftism has raised 'universal, unbounded compassion' to be the ultimate virtue to be striven-for - and, of course, this is a form of suicide - both at a group level and for individuals.  

Self-annihilation therefore also operates personally - with its compassion-driven focus on abortion/ infanticide, and euthanasia for an expanding and open-ended scope of indications. The ideal of unbounded non-procreative sex is also justified by compassion for those with 'unconventional' desires.

Ultimately there is the increasingly-accepted/ wanted transhumanist project of destroying and replacing humans (by drugs, genetic engineering, implanted social-mass media, microchipping, downloading etc) - again, advocated mainly on the basis of compassion for suffering.


All these 'new' phenomena have their motivational roots in the centuries-old and basic assumptions of Leftism; they were implicit from its very beginnings.

Which tells us that the origin of Leftism lies in the demonic; in immortal purposive evil with foresight.

And this is why Leftism has been by far the most successful of all evil strategies in the history of Mankind.

Societal demotivation - how far can it go?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cool, ironic 1980s Postmodernism - and its transformation to the 2021 world

In the middle 1980s I came under the spell of the Anglosphere version of that postmodernism which had been building up for several decades. My entry was via the theologian Don Cupitt, philosopher Richard Rorty and the religious studies professor James P Carse. 

Their thing was that life had no depth, and no purpose. And the idea was that the problem is in the people who regard this as a problem. 

Their goal was - like a therapist - to cure us of the irrational desire for more than what this life now had to offer; and to encourage a value-system which was wholly satisfied with the transient here-and-now which appeared and disappeared leaving no trace. 

Because there was no purpose to living; the focus was moved from vertical justification (based on meaningful history pointing at a desired future), to evanescent horizontal justifications concerned with how the present world fitted-together - to be suggested and discarded unendingly, and which strove to be stimulating, amusing... to generate an edifying affect (albeit temporarily, and needing frequent and novel replacements).  

In lucid and calm prose; Cupitt relativized all of Christian history and possibility (except for his own authority as relativizer!). Under the assumptions of a cleverly concealed leftist morality; all religious activity was unmasked as being motivated by power-seeking, money or psychological need. 

The suggestion was that Christianity must be reconceptualized and reorganized in pursuit of these taken-for-granted moral ideals - with the new church as something like a Cambridge college: an educationally-orientated dining and conversation club, organized by some charming rituals.  

Rorty said life was a conversation - and the purpose of living was to 'keep the conversation going' in as pleasant, amusing and 'edifying' a way as possible; characterized by an even-tempered, humorous and ironic tone. 

Carse - in his book Finite and Infinite Games - regarded living as playing; and the challenge as making this play 'infinite' - so that the game never ended, but instead regenerated itself, by continually changing the rules. 

In their differently flavoured ways, all these men were advocating that life become explicitly a matter of pleasure-seeking - of hedonism. Yet their underlying socio-political leftism shaped this hedonism, in line with contemporary ideology; so that this hedonism must be pursued within frames of socialism, feminism, sexual liberation and environmentalism - for instance. 

But all these writers affected a cool, ironic, witty detachment; and their core ideas came across as heartless, demotivating and nihilistic. If they hadn't been personable and charming chaps; their message was very close to the kind of psychopathic exploitation and selfish manipulation which much the same ideology supported in some French authors such as Foucault. 

In practice, and Rorty was specific about this; the positive, hedonic pleasure seeking became replaced by the negative program of avoiding suffering - both physical and psychological; and this slotted-into the New Left program of victim politics and lifestyle critique. This was more motivating and provided some basis for altruism, since intellectuals could get angry on behalf of the humiliations allegedly suffered by those defined as oppressed, marginalized, excluded etc. 

Thus a cool, hedonic philosophy advocating a life of pleasurable distractions; evolved into this world we see around us. Where anger and resentment are the prevalent emotions, and ultimately everything is justified in terms of opposition. 

And they all tried to deal with the inherent nihilism of their views by suggesting that death did not really matter because in reality everything was temporary; that life was simply self-justifying; and that the way to cope with the fact that everything was futile was... not to think about it, but to become utterly absorbed in the business of living. 

Their vision of the ideal life was, indeed, much like their own lives: pundits who straddled academia and talk-shows; a life of lectures, workshops and parties; a life of public speaking and publishing. 

Keeping busy, keeping active and productive; trying to get as much 'fun' as possible from life, work hard to cram-in as much enjoyment as possible - without harming others, they would hasten to add (as if that were possible!); which meant, in practice, vociferously and explicitly supporting leftist causes while engaged-in amusing/ playful/ pleasurable talking, writing and teaching.  

(The dark fact that many-or-most people engaged in a life of pleasure and novelty-seeking will sooner-or-later engage in some kind of serial, escalating and manipulative sexual promiscuity was only very indirectly implied; except by a few such as Foucault, who did this to the highest degree; while being philosophically rationalized and praised for his ruthless and aggressive selfishness in a 'radical' cause.)   

And what then? What if or when one is sick, old, tired?... 

Keep going, if at all possible. Keep 'engaged' - and die 'in harness' while in the middle of one's latest book... Regretting nothing except lost opportunities for playful pleasures...

Of, if the miseries outweigh the pleasures - presumably hope to die quickly and painlessly - whether by luck - or, if not, by assisted suicide or euthanasia. 

So, here is a vision of life. A positive vision? Well, not really; because it is explicitly futile and doomed to end in death and to leave nothing behind. So amount to a moment-by-moment intent to live with enjoyment and without suffering; pursued under cover of ideological altruism.  

This cool postmodernity is now mainstream among those few remaining intellectuals who espouse any positive goals in life. But mostly it has been discarded in practice as something that just doesn't work. Its positive ideals are just too feeble, and too difficult to sustain - because nothing is more physically and psychologically impossible than a life of continuous pleasure.

In practice, cool postmodernity invariably subsides into the expedient careerism of bureaucrats and celebrities, passively bobbing-around in the currents and tides dictated by the Global Establishment - yet accompanied by a self-gratifying and marketable pose of courageous radicalism.

Is death a good thing, a bad thing - or what?

In this modern secular world, there are two main views about death - both deficient.

The usual view is that death is a bad thing, because it is extinction, annihilation. Only life can be good because death is nothing. 

The more covert but increasing view is that death is a good thing for exactly the same reason.

In other words; because life entails suffering, sometimes extreme suffering; from this (actively pro-suicide/ pro-euthanasia) perspective, death is the only sure safety and escape.


The truth of the matter, so far as I can understand it, is that over the long terms mortal life requires death, because death is the only means of transition to resurrected everlasting life - so death is a good thing...

But also that a good death needs to come at the right time for a particular person, according to that person's destiny and life experience.

Thus death can be too early (for example when a person is killed as a consequence of the evil choice of another); or death can be too late (as when a person clings to life, when they know in their hearts that their proper time for dying has come).


So death is a good thing overall; but not all death. More precisely death a good thing when it comes at the right time and in the right manner; but the reason for a particular death in a particular circumstance may be bad - bad overall, for the person that dies, or for someone else.


(Note: This leaves aside the process of dying - which is a a major concern for many people - because of the fear of extreme suffering, especially pain. The point to recognise here is that dying can only be understood in the context of death. A further matter is also what happens to each specific person after death - again only answerable in context.)