Whatever happened to the power of Public Opinion? The dwindling of the Group Mind

It has often been noticed in recent years - since the 1960s at least, and ever-increasingly - that the ruling class of Britain (and other Western nations) almost-completely ignore mass public opinion. 

There are many instances, of rulers completely ignoring what the public think - indeed it is so normal that any exceptions are astonishing and short-lived. A couple of big examples are that the death penalty was abolished despite large majority support; while mass immigration was introduced, escalated hugely, and still continues to grow - despite large majority opposition. 

As a strong generalization - it doesn't matter what ordinary people think: the ruling class do whatever they want to do; and when met by any significant disagreement - mass opposition is strategically and rapidly neutralized (indeed demonized) by media propaganda; and coordinated totalitarian action of all major organizations, corporations and other social institutions.  

But reading sources from the past it is clear that Public Opinion was a used to be (eg. in the 18th and 19th centuries) real and strong factor in government; to the point that the ruling class took it into account in their governance. 

They apparently felt that they had to. 

Public Opinion was indeed a much stronger factor in government before mass voting (aka "democracy") than since. 

My explanation is that this is a consequence of the change in human consciousness - i.e. the transformation from a groupish mode of consciousness, in which there existed a "group mind" - diminishing towards the alienated separation of consciousness of people today. 

In other worlds, Public Opinion was referencing the Group Mind of the nation; and the leadership class, to some significant degree, in the past themselves participated in this Group Mind. 

This meant that the governance of Britain was influenced by the Group Mind, in ways that were spontaneous and often unconscious. 

Nowadays, after the Group Mind has withered to feebleness or indeed absence, the masses are no longer unconsciously united; and the ruling class are psychologically (and spiritually) completely detached from Public Opinion...

To the extent that they either regard it as unreal nonsense - or else they understand Public Opinion merely to be a product of the ruling classes own totalitarian psychological manipulations. 

What I think has happened is that Public Opinion has ceased to be spontaneous and unconscious; but a Group Mind can (in principle) be recreated consciously, voluntarily and by choice. 

The Ruling Class have, indeed, done this by means of their ideology of atheist/ materialist/ leftism - which is to say; by the ruling class having united in taking the side of purposive spiritual evil in this world...

Which is a negative agenda of destruction: of persons, nations, nature, and ultimately the aimed-at destruction of divine creation in all its manifestations. 

This choice of evil provides a "spiritual linkage" between individuals of the ruling class - that lends them cohesion and strength of motivation. 

A significant source of the strength of the Ruling Class is indeed this Group Mind on the side of supernatural evil. 

If the masses are to oppose this Group Mind of evil; they (we) need consciously, voluntarily and by choice to choose the side of Good, of Divine Creation: of God and the salvation of Jesus Christ. 

Insofar as this can be done - even by as few as "two or three" (who do not even need to be geographically "gathered together") - then the ruling class Group Mind in service to Satan may effectively and spiritually be opposed by both individual and group minds who are committed to the side of God and Creation. 

The question of how your mind is connected to a group mind

Is this the fundamental nature of inter-personal communication?

It seems evident that people in the past knew, or at least all assumed, that an individual person's mind was, or could be, connected with some larger group mind. 

The exact group mind to which an individual was connected seems to have varied between families, tribes, and clans; to larger groupings such as co-religionists, nations, or all of humanity. 

This assumption seems to lie behind, and justify, many Christian practices of the past and present; such as the phenomena of monasticism and hermits. These few were meant to be working on behalf of many others, in a way that seems to entail interconnectedness. 

Nowadays, there are group prayer meetings (to pray for some persons, outcomes, or general purpose). All of these assume a link between the individual and a larger human group. 

Furthermore, such a connection is a spontaneous assumption built-into young children; related to the belief that their thoughts are known to others, and may influence others - albeit this may mostly be related to fear of the discovery or harm, from guilty and "naughty" ideas or imaginations. 

Of course, nowadays and among adults; this kind of thing may be more of a social than spiritual activity; or it may be more like a "superstitious" observance than a genuinely spiritual activity. 

This practice is merely an enfeebled residue of earlier historical and childhood assumptions. Also, there is more conviction of the power of negative thoughts than of positive ones (which may be rooted in the intrinsic entropy of this mortal life where destruction is so much easier than creation). 

Nonetheless, I think there must also be positive potential in the connection between individual and group minds - in the right circumstances. 

One problem, as usual, is we tend to want other people to serve our interests, and not their own. Such that people are often praying (in effect) to control other people's attitudes, desires, decisions, actions... Such is the nature of many political intercessionary praying. 

Also we tend to become falsely focused in the supposed situation (as reported in mass media and by the leadership class) of people we know essentially nothing about, except what we are told by known liars and malign manipulators. 

So much so; that perhaps the most usual cause for group prayer nowadays is political: e.g. foreign wars, famines, natural disasters etc. - where the whole exercise is wholly framed by the information and moral-imperative of global media. 

In such situations; the group mind is highly politicized, with all the problems of insincerity and superficiality. 

And, in sum, such an exercise serves mainly to discredit the idea of an real and valuable connection between our mind and other minds; and to increase the already strong (and naturally despair-inducing) feelings of alienation and atomization that plague us.

Because if there really is no direct connection between our thinking minds and the minds of others, but instead it was true that we can only know people via perceptions and their interpretations; then we really would be isolated - ultimately "each on our own".

This is why I think we need to consider how, and in what situations, we are, and directly connected with a group mind. 

Because the alternatives are either the reality of your mind connected to a group mind; or else inescapable existential alienation. 

Hell - Where did it come from, where did it go?

I was reading a biography of Stevie Smith by Frances Spalding, and a chapter concerning her relationship to Christianity - by which was largely meant the Church of England. 

At one point it quoted a passage to the effect that the one thing SS found most repellent was the idea of Hell. In particular, to summarize, Stevie rejected:

Hell regarded as a place of eternal torment, to which people were sent by default, on the basis of divine judgment. 

In rejecting this idea of Hell, as well in her response to this rejection - i.e. ceasing to be what she regarded as a Christian - I suppose Stevie Smith was representative of her era.

Certainly I have often seen or heard the same kind of thing said by others. 

It seems that (in some broad sense) Hell came-in with "Christianity" around or after the time of Jesus - and disappeared with Christianity through the 19th and 20th centuries. 

And, at about the same time as Hell was disappearing - people began finding the idea repellent; because those who rejected Hell also assumed that Hell was not true: assumed that the Hell concept is ,and always had been, false. 

And therefore the Hell-rejecters infer that the primary nature of the Hell concept was as a psychological manipulation used to terrorize people into joining and obeying the Christian church. 

In other words, the Stevie-Smith-esque moral critique of Hell, already rejects the reality of Hell: it already assumed that Hell is not and never was real. 

The question I address about Hell is: Where did it come from, where did it go*? 

What has apparently happened; is that the modern human mind has become unreceptive to the reality of Hell. What once seemed real, possible, almost inevitable - has come to seem an obvious deception. A cruel, because manufactured, mass manipulation. 

To summarize: Hell used-to "work" very effectively as a mechanism of population control; but it does not work anymore. 

This historical change towards Hell-incredulity is usually interpreted sociologically; meaning in essence that the change in Men's minds was caused by changes in society. 

If the sociological explanation is true this would imply that if modern society was changed then Hell could again become an effective motivator; and this change would happen whether Hell is regarded as a reality that is now being denied, or if Hell is regarded as a not-real tool of social control.  

But I believe that sociological change to restore Hell could not and therefore would not happen. 

I suggest instead that Hell first came, and then went, because of changes in human consciousness. 

In other words; I am saying that Hell arose because Men's minds became receptive to the idea; and this change led to sociological change; and then Hell dwindled because Men's minds changed further - and then society changed to reflect this. 

The idea is that Hell is a product of a particular phase of Mankind's consciousness - and that phase has now passed. 

On this view; because Hell is primarily a product of Man's consciousness; then it would not be possible to restore the ancient idea of Hell. 

And if Hell is a product of consciousness at a particular phase of development; then a modern-day religious society could not motivate people with such an idea of Hell, even if it is true; and for the same reason; a tyranny could no longer effectively control society with the false-but-believed threat of Hell. 

What was this phase of consciousness that was so receptive to Hell? I would term it a semi-alienated state of partial group-mind. 

My idea is that in ancient (pre-Christian) times; Men were not alienated but were (mostly) immersed in their society, and actually lived as a part of the group-mind. The after-death experience was then regarded in a groupish way - whatever happened beyond death, happened to the members of the group. 

Men were not then afraid of becoming an "existential outcast" in the manner of Hell. 

Hell emerged when Men each began to separate their personal consciousness from the group-mind; and Hell was (I suggest) a consequence of this state of being semi-alienated. 

Man's hope was to retain the state of being in this group-mind after death; but Hell came from the terror that - after death - the group may choose to cast-out the individual because of that individual's transgression of the group-norms, and consign him to the eternal torment of being existentially-alone. 

The sociological phenomenon of Hell was therefore a consequence of Men's innate angst concerning emergent alienation from the group mind; which is why Men became receptive to the idea of Hell. 

But in the development of human consciousness, Men continued to detach from the group-mind; until for recent generations Men have ceased to experience the primacy of the group-mind - to the point of being unaware of it, and even denying its reality. 

Modern Men regard themselves as almost-wholly alienated; and therefore tend spontaneously to regard death as an inevitable and universal annihilation. 

In the officially (and inwardly-perceived) modern secular-mainstream understanding of each Man dwelling in a purposeless and meaningless universe - there can be no divine judgment. 

And the idea that mortal life death might lead to a default-inevitable state of being tormented cannot for a modern Man) be true - because for modern Men, after death there is nothing.    

For modern Christians (with the alienated consciousness we share with other modern Men); Salvation and Hell are alike consequences of personal choice in relation to the divine; not a judgment. 

And as this alienated consciousness continues to develop; these personal choices of post-mortal situation become more individual, bespoke, unique - and reciprocally less and less group-defined, less and less categorical in nature. 

Modern Christians now understand Hell (insofar as they have thought about it seriously) more as a positive choice - Hell is a choice made by those who have decisively-rejected (for whatever reason) the desirability and chance of resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 

Hence, for the consciousness of modern Christians; "Hell" is real but differently-understood than 1-2000 years ago. 

The modern concept of Hell is nowadays negatively-defined as "everything but" Heaven. 

For modern consciousness; Hell is therefore an open-ended variety of possibilities - and insofar as Hell is for some individuals experienced as a situation of eternal torment - then this is what has been asked-for, and from-which they do not repent.  

*NOTE: The title of this post references an amusing and enjoyable novelty song that my kids used to dance-to; mainly from a Wii Just Dance compilation. 

More Battle of Britain reflections

Brian Kingcome, and Geoffrey Wellum in front of a Spitfire - Wellum's First Light is one of the most inspiring and beautiful Battle of Britain accounts, and he himself an exemplar of the best spirit of those times. 

Like many British people, I am "a bit obsessed" with the Battle of Britain; in that I never tire of reading and viewing media about those months of 1940. 

Part of this is a boyish fascination with the aircraft, the pilots, the air services, the nation's mood and response etc. On any given day, I am more likely than not to be reading a pilot's memoir, or another historical study of this time. 

But, unlike most people, I am also prone to think about the spiritual or inner side of the BoB. This was, I believe, crucial to the success of the defence - in context esepcially of the counter-example of France and its stunningly fast capitulation, in which resistance was undermined by a national mood of confusion, incoherence, and despair. 

I regard the Battle of Britain as the last time that the group mind of the British people was powerfully and positively motivated. 

Since 1940, the group mind has sometimes been positive and feeble, sometimes powerful and negative - but never both good and strong in the way of the BoB. 

And I do not believe it ever shall be again - indeed the group mind has all-but disintegrated; as is inevitable when overwhelmingly-most people (including most religious people) are materialist by their fundamental assumptions. 

Even when people believe in God; God's role is relegated to materialist goals and methods (socio-politics); even when people believe in the spiritual, the spirit is seen in terms of its physical effects (this-worldly benefits and harms). 

Yet I do experience a good and positive group mind of Britain (or Britain's spiriual basis - Albion); and since this is not coming from the mass of people, from the mortal Men of the nation; my assumption is that instead this group mind is located in the resurrected Dead; and also in the non-human beings of the nation - in the consciousness of some of the animals, plants, and landscapes.  

So people here-and-now can be inspired, energized, and motivated by the group mind of Albion - even now; but on an individual level, and by means of direct contact with other minds that are not living mortal humans. 

This superficially seems weird, but it also seems experientially true. 

What's with needing to ask God in prayer for what (he already knows) we need?

Two aspects - one easy, the other difficult; but both depend on the business of asking as 'a form of words'. 

To the modern mind, words are just words. The idea of reciting some specific words to get a specific effect is not just obviously ineffective in everyday life, but ridiculous. 

However, if we take seriously Owen Barfield's (and Rudolf Steiner's) idea that human consciousness has changed/ developed/ evolved through history (in accordance with a divine plan); then we should note that in Ancient Times it seems that 'merely' reciting words Did have a specific effect on the world. The 3,000 year Egyptian Empire was based on exactly this - which is why the magician priests (House of Life) were careful to keep their magical 'spells' secret - anybody who spoke them could use them, even without training. 

Indeed, the written words did not (then) need to be spoken or read aloud. Egyptian spells might be carried around the neck in a container (phylactery) as a pendant, or dipped in a drink/ the drink poured over them - and then consumed, or written on the hand and then licked-off. The actual written words had an effect. 

In terms of human consciousness this means that the words had objective power, words used-to constrain human consciousness - it was as if much of our consciousness happened outside of us, happened in the general consciousness of the group - and did not require awareness or intent. Men lived immersed in a group-mind, as part of a group-mind (not as separate sources of awareness and agency); and individuals (such as they were, which was 'not very' individual) were (mostly passively) influenced-by the group; which was itself continuous with the divine.    

For us-now, almost the opposite is the case; and certainly words do not have objective power. So, the idea of 'asking' in prayer must be 'translated' for the modern mind. What it corresponds with - in modern consciousness - is that if we wish to live in accordnace with God's creation, we must consciously choose God's will. We must consciously ally ourselves with God. 

So our mind needs to meet God's mind, our intent match God's intent; our prayer be in harmony with God's plans - for prayer to be effective.  Yet harmony is not enough - we must still make a conscious choice to 'ask'.

On the one hand, God (obviously!) is not compelled to grant our every verbal request - we are no longer immersed in the group and divine mind as were the Ancient Egyptians; so our requests may be selfish and short-termist in a way theirs could not be. Nor does God impose his will upon Men, moving us around and compelling our thoughts as if we were puppets (or robots). For Good and also for Ill; Modern Man must consciously choose to do the right, follow the Good, live in harmony with God's creation. 

It seems that extremely few people do this; indeed extremely few people even attempt to do it! Nonetheless from where we are now it is the only way forward (and going backwards is neither possible nor desirable). 

The asking element in prayer can be considered a form of consciously chosen alliance with God. Obviously, we can only ask for what we can think, and we may be too corrupted (have too great a load of unrepented sin) to think in ways that are harmonious with God... In this instance, the asking in prayer, and the failure to meet a response to prayer, ought to be educational - ought to help us to clarify our own problems - ought to clarify that what we wanted and asked for is Not Good (i.e. not Good in terms of God's objectives, which primarily related to eternal resurrected Heavenly life). ...Not Good for us, and/ or not Good for somebody else. 

But (here, now) Good things cannot happen without our active participation - and this is another aspect of the asking; of the need to ask. At this point (in this mortal earthly life) God needs us to participate-actively in his work; and if we don't participate with God (consciously, by-choice) then much of this work will not be done at all (since we will-not/ cannot be compelled or manipulated). 

(Obviously, this failure to do our divine duty, failure even to acknowledge a divine duty to be done; explains some aspects of the extremely-bad spiritual state of the world: here, now.)

It is Modern Man's great privilege and duty to participate consciously with God. Privilege, because this was not possible to Ancient Man - immersed passively, as he was, in the group-mind - but also a duty, because necessary for God's work, here on earth. If we fail to do this duty, God's best (first choice) plans will fail. 

(We have failed, God's first choice plans have failed, and second and third etc. choice back-ups - and we are now beginning to reap the consequences. Yet still we fail. Still we shirk our part.)

There-fore, I need to remember to ask: and ask with my conscious will, not just with words.

Defence against Psychic Attacks of the totalitarian-materialist kind

Traditional psychic attacks are (or were) of a spectacular nature; such as a person being made sick, or becoming possessed with mind and body under control from some evil spirit, or demon. 

While (apparently) still happening to some extent; modern psychic attacks are very different in form, much less spectacular, much more insidious, and so common as to be completely unnoticed. 

Traditional psychic attacks (supposedly) depend - to some degree - with someone inviting possession, or surrendering will to another being - a being that is motivated by self-gratifying emotions such as lust, power, or pleasure in inflicting pain. 

Modern psychic attacks are usually mundane, mainstream; indeed, so normal as to be completely unremarkable. 

They involve surrender to materialism, to the will of the totalitarian system, to the guidance of some external "group-mind", and abrogation of personal responsibility.

Such psychic attack is pervasive and continuous, and happens via official sources, educational institutions, the mass media, laws and regulations - and pretty much all of the major social institutions - the arts, science, the police and military - and the churches. 

In a world where all social institutions and groups are more or less, and increasingly, corrupted by the totalitarian agenda of evil; anyone who chooses to serve any institution; who chooses to take their facts, concepts, motivations etc. from the civilizational and social group-mind - any such person (and this may be a majority) has yielded willingly to this evil form of psychic attack.    

And in a societal world of pervasive spiritual corruption it all slips-by unnoticed. 

And most Christians are as much willing victims of such psychic attack as anyone else - because they have chosen to put their faith primarily in a social institution, to serve and obey a social institution. Because all major churches are system-converged; they devoutly blot-up the psychic attacks, along with their religion. 

Such psychic attacks are simply a part of the major strategy of evil; which is to induce people to deny/ ignore/ subordinate the spiritual; to think materially and put materialist reasoning first, to focus primarily on this mortal life and its conditions; and to be orientated-towards (and motivated-by) the normal, ordinary civilizational group-mind. 

When this has been achieved (as it very largely has by-now) then whoever controls the material world, control the minds as well. 

For example; censorship, selection and control of those perceptions and concepts that are regarded as high status, authoritative, official - worthy of consideration and belief - entails mind-control of those materialists who interact with them.  

So we find that victims of modern psychic attack are just normal, ordinary, decent, respectable people - modestly thinking and doing what such people think and do. 

(Intelligent, modest, sensible folk - because to reject the mind-control of specialized social institutions would be dumb, arrogant, or just insane.)

The fact that their minds and bodies are colonized by demonic will seems absurd because theirs is a majority behaviour. 

There is no defence against this demonic influence, unless it is acknowledged to be happening; and the Christian churches are net-agents of exactly this form of psychic attack - so they are not going to acknowledge it!  

As with all psychic self-defence, the Big Thing is Not to invite evil into one's self, Not deliberately to surrender one's will to an external will that system-assimilated; hence opposed to God and divine creation.

And instead to adhere to the principles of Christian faith that the material is only a sub-set of the larger spiritual world; that this mortal life is only a finite episode in our eternal lives; and that we are committed to following Jesus to eternal resurrected life in Heaven. 

Against the siren calls of materialism - of the escapist illusions of safety, power, pleasure; there is a determination to consider first love as primary value; and our personal and creative destiny in this mortal life; and to be rooted (as best we may) in that which is divine within our-selves; and our personal and direct relation with the Holy Ghost.    

Why are so many people (including Christians) so committed to totalitarianism?

Given that it is intrinsically evil; why are so many people so keen on totalitarianism; being actively supportive in practice, if not necessarily in theory? 

I think the answer is related to the unacknowledged reality of changes in human consciousness. 

Changes in human nature have led to mass alienation - with the loss of that largely-unconscious "groupishness" of human consciousness which used to be a spontaneous source of social cohesion and inter-personal consensus. 

Through most of history until recent generations; people did not experiences themselves as wholly-separate individuals. Everybody (even, to an extent, rulers) was part-of "public opinion". 

There was a Group Mind, operating at a spiritual level. 

Because the group and the individual were not wholly separate, group norms did not need to be - and were not - experienced as having been imposed on individuals in a one-way fashion. 

When an individual experiences life as part of a group, he is himself a part of all group aims and decisions - the individual participates in the group as a matter of spiritual reality. 

In other words, in the past (to a significant, although not complete, extent) aims and decisions arose from the Group Mind; in which all individuals participated. 

 

But that spontaneous and unconscious groupishness has now all-but gone.

Individuals no longer participate spiritually in group aims and choices. Leaders do not feel themselves a part of, and in service to, a real "public opinion". 

Aims and decisions typically arise from the most powerful level of the social system - without participation of "the masses" - and these aims and decision are imposed-upon the lower levels. 

Top-down power has replaced the Group mind.   

This loss of participation has generated a visceral (and significantly valid) fear of the consequences of untrammelled individual agency. It has also enabled the one-sided manipulation of the masses by elites - with such phenomena as pervasive dishonesty, top-down propaganda, PSYOPS, and the use of terror, hatred and induced-despair as instruments of social control. 

Social cohesion nowadays must be totalitarian: material, procedural and enforced. The dangerous consequences of individualism are a problem that must be combatted. 

This is done by the integration of all human institutions, of all society (politics, churches, economics, media, law, military, police, education, science, arts etc); all social institutions are mandatorily-united under a single and all-pervasive ideology - with any opt-out regarded as actively hostile. 

The difference between modern totalitarianism and ancient theocracy is that totalitarianism is an ideology, not a religion; atheist not deist nor theist; materialist not spiritual. 

While theocracy explicitly purports to derive authority from transcendental sources (e.g. God or the gods); totalitarianism instead (but implicitly) regards goodness as impersonal, an abstraction - ideological. 

For totalitarianism; implicitly, goodness is a consequence of the system itself - a product of bureaucracy, committees, and procedures such as voting - and, especially, totalitarian goodness arises from those parts of the-one-system that are concerned with strategy, planning, long-term aims. 

So, under totalitarianism; goodness (as understood by mainstream modern people) is to be found near the top of the bureaucratic system, where it inheres abstractly; independently of the actual people involved.

And therefore this ideological faith is invulnerable to the high levels of selfish nastiness and many types of corruption of the actual people involved; invulnerable too to even extreme degrees of failure, counter-productive activity, or atrocities done by the higher bureaucracy.

For example "democracy" - which is a form of bureaucratic procedure - is regarded as good; whoever are the people involved, whatever their character or behaviour, and despite the outcomes. 

Goodness has become wholly abstract - detached from people and actuality.  

Thus for many mainstream totalitarians, goodness flows from top-level bureaucratic institutions downwards; and therefore the highest moral authority of this world inheres in strategic organizations such as the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the European Union, the Supreme Courts, and the various Courts of "Human Rights", or Truth, or Reconciliation; large charities and NGOs, the most wealthy and prestigious universities and "think tanks"... and so forth. 

For Christian totalitarians; their church is simply one of these high-level bureaucracies, organizations that both respond-to and contribute-to the ruling consensus that is enforced upon individuals by the propaganda of mass media, regulations of corporations, and laws of the lands. 

The totalitarian conceptualization is that Men are good only to the extent that they are made good by these top-down and procedural influences; and Men cohere and have common purpose only to the extent that they are part of the vast and interlinked System. 

Christian totalitarians accept the inevitability and indeed basic virtue of this model of human life and society; but desire to place the church (i.e. their church) at the pinnacle of the bureaucratic institutions. 

They envisage a world that is still totalitarian, and the individual is still to be manipulated and controlled; but they imagine a totalitarianism in which their church stands atop the UN, EU, SCOTUS, major mass media, the legal system, universities - so that church-originated ideas, rules, laws etc. will permeate all the major social institutions - and thus human life will cohere and have purpose.  

However... If totalitarianism truly is intrinsically evil (as I believe), then any such vision or hope for society cannot actually be Christian. 

It can only simulate Christianity - can only use Christian terminology to "justify" what are actually totalitarian (hence evil - i.e. on the side that is against God and creation) procedures and goals.  

For many people - insofar as they think about it at all - there is a sense that totalitarianism is inevitable; and therefore the only genuine value-choice is between a secular or a religious totalitarianism. 

The Big Question is whether this is a real choice - or whether, instead, religious/church and atheistic/ ideological totalitarianism are not, in truth, variations on The Same Thing. 

My personal understanding is that totalitarianism is indeed evil in all its forms and variants; so Christianity can only exist outwith The System -- in individuals primarily; and only in such non-institutional groups as cohere from love* primarily.

*By which I mean the kind of inter-personal and mutual love found in the best families, marriages, and friendships - at their best.

Join with demons or become mini-gods? Because we can choose, we must choose

The big, bad fact of these times is that people actually do choose their reality; and they are (en masse) choosing the reality devised by the powers of evil. 

If we consider meaning and purpose in life; then it can be seen that purpose dictates meaning; meaning derives-from purpose. 

Meaning derives from purpose - and purpose is external. 

We necessarily choose our purpose, because our purpose is outside us. Having chosen our purpose, we consciously derive meaning from that purpose.

Thus purpose is chosen. Therefore we actually-do choose the meaning in our lives; or more accurately we already have-chosen the meaning of our lives - but, that meaning can be changed if we change purpose. 

There are only two purposes, into which all others may be classified: with God, or Against. 

This has a precise meaning in that God is the Creator, and we live in divine creation insofar as our life has meaning (since the alternative is un-formed chaos, without knowledge or purpose). 

And God's creation is on-going, moment-by-moment - a living 'process'. (i.e. God is create-ing.) 

The purpose of a Christian is called 'salvation' - which means the choice of resurrected life eternal, in Heaven (with those others who have chosen salvation); to come after the transformation of biological-death. 

This is the choice to become immortal mini-gods (Children of God), whose life is participation in the work of divine creation. 

Therefore, salvation is bound-up-in affiliation to God the Creator - a wish to be part-of and harmonious-with ongoing divine creation. 

What we - each as an individual - decide is whether harmoniously to affiliate-with creation (this is called Love of God); or else try to use creation for our own purposes (this is called pride). 

If we pursue some other purpose than harmony with creation; then we are essentially subordinating divine creation to our-own-purposes. (Or trying-to...)

This is termed 'pride' and all other sins can be reduced to it - hence, for Christians, pride (in this meaning) is the master sin. 

In other words, if we want to live in Heaven, then we will put-first the harmony of God's creation and the people in it - and this virtue is called Love. 

(This is not something theoretical - but what all members of a happy and good family are doing; for so long as that family is happy and good - which, on this world, is always temporary and usually partial.) 

Love is the motivation for those who wish to live in Heaven as it actually is; therefore is is part-of salvation. 

(Someone who cannot love or does not love would not wish to be a part of Heaven; since Heaven 'entails' putting divine creation first.) 

It is the fate of modern Man that the choice to join the side of God and creation is unconscious. A choice that is unconscious, passive, will be a choice to subordinate to the group-mind; and that group-mind is (here-and-now) corrupted to the side against-God.

The group-mind of Man was not always and everywhere corrupted to oppose God and creation - but It Is Now. Therefore, in 2021, the default is anti-creation, prop-evil. In 2021, if we are ruled by that which is spontaneous and appears 'natural' - then we will be opposed to the divine. 

But the seduction to the side of evil is by pride. An implicit 'deal' is offered by evil, which is that: "We will support your personal purposes, If you you join our side." 

Such a person (and this appears to be the majority of people) has come to understand his own life as a matter of manipulating creation to maximize his own personal purposes or gratification.

This 'deal' ("join us and get what you want") is fundamentally dishonest - because 'joining' the side of evil is actually a voluntary submission; after which evil has no reason to honour the deal. 

Nonetheless there are many deal-takers - who are choosing the path to join with the demons*. 

In sum; the most important decision relates to our purpose in life - since this dictates meaning. If there is no conscious choice of purpose - then that purpose will 'naturally be dictated by the group-mind, which is on the side of evil. 

(In a world where God and creation are denied - this is the normal, default choice.) 

Yet we may consciously choose Heavenly Salvation as our personal purpose. This amounts to 'creating our own reality' - which (in a materialist world that denies life beyond biological-death) sounds like mere wishful thinking... 

In truth; it is explicitly taking responsibility for your purpose in living. 

*Few people apparently want Heaven, or do not put it as the priority - or else they do not, in mortal life, understand what is on-offer. But if mere ignorance of Heaven is the problem, we can expect that such people will choose Heaven after this mortal life. On the other hand, if a person is (by that point) too deeply corrupted by evil motivations, too deeply committed to his sins (sin meaning other, personal, priorities) then Heaven will be rejected. The main barrier to salvation is not ignorance but 'having other priorities'.  

The reality of group selection - and the not-niceness of group selection

*

I was talking with Michael A Woodley the other day about group selection, and he made an important observation.

People talk as if group-selection is 'nice' - a kind of caring-sharing socialistic thing; contrasted with the nasty individualism of neo-Darwinian mainstream theory.

But as Michael pointed-out, the opposite is closer to the truth, as we experience it. 

*

Group selection has been a dirty word in biology since the early-mid-1960s when the (brilliant) insights of WD Hamilton and GC Williams showed how selection was working on genes rather than individual organism - and how (as Richard Dawkins put it) the selfishness of genes implied that organisms could be altruistic... without need for group selection.

And indeed, from this perspective, the pre-requisites of groups selection were many and its effects weak and slow.

But there have always been people, mostly with a 'progressivist' stance, who advocated group selection - because it seemed to them that selection of individual genes or organisms was 'fascist' (in origin and effect) while organisms behaving 'for the good of the group' was nice and socialistic.

In the end, there was a sort of consensus that group selection would have been nice but probably didn't happen; it was a sort of wishful thinking.

*

But the opposite seems more likely: group selection is real, but it is nasty.

*

Group selection is certainly real in the sense that complexity can only be built by subordinating the individual unit of reproduction to the reproductive benefits of the larger group - so that a multicellular organism can only exist if it controls the individual cells reproduction such that the individual cell can reproduce only via the reproduction of the whole organism.

This is a matter of control; and especially coercion; and especially killing.

The cells of the body (of your body and mind) must be controlled so that they function for the benefit of the body (and its reproduction) - and this control is imposed by many organism-wide mechanisms of which the immune system is one.

When a cell stops performing its allocated function and/or starts to reproduce itself with the implicit goal of maximizing its own reproduction - then that cell is (usually, if possible) eliminated by the immune system.

If immune surveillance or effectiveness breaks-down, or if the individual cell evades immune elimination, we call the outcome cancer: so a cell that lines the lung or the gut or covers the body stops its proper function of absorbing gas or digesting food or covering the flesh - and instead switches its energy to making copies of itself and seeding these copies to grow around the body.

http://www.hedweb.com/bgcharlton/endopara.html

*

Anyway, the principles of group selection apply to human societies just as they do to human bodies: humans societies can only exist insofar as they subordinate individuals to the society - so that individuals 'benefit' more from performing their function and reproducing as a part of the society, than they do from pursuing their own independent reproductive benefit.

This aspect of group selection is basically a nasty thing - at least from our individual, personal perspective. It means that the social imperative is to ensure that individuals perform their function of serving the survival, growth and reproduction of the society that contains them - and if they do not, then they must be eliminated.

Still, nice or nasty, group selection is a reality in situations of complexity - and the scientific problem is not to argue over whether it exists, and is nice or nasty - but to understand how it works in each specific situation.

*

One aspect of group selection relates to genius.

Woodley made the comment that it is hard to make sense of the phenomenon of genius without group selection.

This is because even the most cursory examination of the history of genius reveals that those geniuses whose work has led to increased success of the group - increased power and efficiency, increased ability to impose itself on the environment - are not genetically rewarded for this contribution.

In brief, geniuses are rare and extreme types of person, present in high concentration only in some societies at some points in history, and whose contributions are crucial to the dominance of the societies they inhabit - yet these geniuses are not personally differentially rewarded for their vast contributions.

Thus genius is seen as a prime example of the individual benefiting the group, and not himself.

*

The high concentration of geniuses that led to the industrial revolution and the massive expansion of the population of Britain (and the expansion of the British Empire) - participated in this expansion, and so did their familial descendants, but this process was (in terms of society as an organism) operative at the group level.

*

However, as the example of cancer shows, groups selection is always prone to subversion by individual selection. If we lived long enough, everyone would die of cancer.

And this happened to Britain, as the genius-driven success of the industrial revolution led to the encouragement of individuals and groups that were analogous to cancer cells and tumours. The group selected immune system that maintained social complexity broke down.

*

My point here is that group-selected mechanism was all the nasty anti-individualism from which modern people are so happy to be free; and this 'nice' happiness is real, because to be group-selected is to be coerced.

So individualism is nice. 

But this freedom is the freedom of the cancer to do its own thing, kill the host, and then kill itself.

So individualism is nasty.

*

But the niceness is upfront and immediate while the nastiness is down-stream (and deniable). Because before the host has been killed, the cancer thrives, parasitically, by feeding-off the functional body and metastasizing (seeding) to take root and grow in whatever healthy tissues remain.

Since the social cancer thrives, the cancer comes to control the social immune systems (military, law, media etc).

And since the cancer is happy (at the moment) with its rapid growth and the metastatic dissemination of malignancy - then the immune system ceases to eliminate malignancy and instead promotes malignancy and encourages metastatic dissemination...

The immune system creates a new environment, the reverse of the healthy environment; a carcinogenic milieu (of unbalanced and abnormal chemical constituents) in which the malignancy is energized and the remaining healthy tissues are primed and prepared to yield to the cancer, rather than fight it...

*

But I am concerned here to make the point that should be obvious but is often forgotten.

That social complexity is group selected, and if we regard complexity as a 'good' then group selection is a good (or, at least, a 'necessary evil'); but that getting the individual to work 'for the good of the group' is ultimately coercive.

And therefore, by and large, individuals will resent being coerced to work for the good of the group; and will continually be trying to evade the social immune system which forces them to perform a function which only-very-indirectly benefits them.

*

This is the reality of the human condition - of mortal life - conceptualized in  reductionistic scientific terms - it is not, of course, the whole story of mortal life, nor is it the most important part of that story.

And it is not a matter of nice group selection versus nasty 'selfish gene' theory, nor of nice individualism versus nasty totalitarian coercion: the whole thing is nasty. 

*

It demonstrates the futility, the nihilism, of a bottom-line philosophy of life which is bio-socio-political - like the dominant secular mainstream Leftism.

The psychological consequences are so bleak they must be dishonestly denied, distracted from or obliterated by intoxication.

Rather, the above bio-socio-political analysis is the context for what is most important - religion.

And it clarifies that religion should be allied neither with individualism, nor with groupishness - because despite that both are real, and both in competition: both are nasty, albeit in different ways. 

*

The example of 'evolution' as an illustration of imagination (via meditation) as the final arbiter in science

As mentioned in the previous post, I have been working for some months on a concept of group selection using complex systems theory - and got to the point where the idea was complete, and the paper was about 85% done.

But then I got stuck, because as I got the idea clearer... there was something that felt wrong.

*

The way this proceeded was that the core of the paper was a concept of the network of communications among a human group became a cognitive entity ('group brain') capable of thought; and this would them impose upon the individuals of that group in order to shape behaviour - including naturally selecting among them, genetically.

I needed to get this clearer in my mind, by visualisation and by analogy - in other words, I needed to be able to imagine it. And to imagine it required what could be termed meditation - in other words a purposeful, focused, quiet kind of reflective thinking - the aim of which was to remove interferences, and to get this idea clear, isolated, as a thing which I could contemplate and evaluate.

When I did this, I found that it didn't really make sense to me - I could not see how this network of communications could do the work I needed it to do - I could not see how it performed cognition, or where its centre lay, or how it could use or make memories... most problematic I could not see how this could be stable enough to do selection across a timescale of several or many human generations.

In sum, this group entity - this group brain - just did not have the properties necessary... at least, so far as I could imagine.

*

So, in the end, I could not finish the paper - I could not put the last piece into the edifice; and indeed this failure to complete the idea threw into doubt everything that went before - because a partial theory isn't really a theory at all - it has no more strength or value than an arched bridge minus the keystone.

*

And then I was also reading Owen Barfield's reflections on 'evolution' - his analysis of evolution - which began with philology; in the old meaning of the word philology which was something like 'history of ideas' - i.e. the conceptual history of the idea of evolution in the context of the cultures which used it. This was far from the first time that I had read Barfield on evolution, but it was the first time that I understood the nature and meaning of the distinction he was drawing.

Barfield demonstrated that evolution was originally (and properly) something more like we would call 'development' - a situation that begins with a potentiality and which unfolds by a process of transformation, or metamorphosis.

Evolution was about the change of forms, gradually, continuously, and by all intermediate stages.

In sum, in old-style evolution everything was there to begin-with that was there after evolution - and what had happened was that the earlier state had transformed into the later state.

*

By contrast, Barfield described how post-Darwinian evolution was a discontinuous sequence of replacements of one form by another form.

Darwinian evolution was about introducing something new into the system from outside. It was based on change by the injection of new information, and change by means of swapping the new for the old.

So, in Darwinian evolution, we start with one kind of thing, and end-up with another kind of thing, and the difference is that something extra has been added that was not there before.

(The point at which this new information was added was the point of discontinuity - this might be a genetic mutation; or, in principle, some other heritable input.)

*

At the end of grasping the distinction in the meanings of evolution, I realised that I had not solved the problem I set out to solve - although I still knew that there was something going-on which, if not group selection defined in the Darwinian paradigm, had to do the same job as 'group selection'.

*

Furthermore, I got an imaginative grasp of evolutionary history which revealed that I was making a set of metaphysical assumptions about the evolution of 'complexity' and of 'groups' - and these metaphysical assumptions might not be correct, or there might be better ones.

My earlier metaphysical assumptions - standard to modern evolutionary theory - had been:

1. Alive things evolved from dead things
2. Complex things were incrementally built from simpler things (including that groups were more complex than individuals)
3. Matter came first, and mind (cognition, including consciousness) arose from it (including that 'mind' was in some way a product of increasing complexity)

Yet there are an almost opposite set of possible metaphysical assumptions which I might have instead deployed:

1. Everything is alive (in varying ways and degrees)
2. Things began as diffuse and uniform, and 'condensed' to become more solid and differentiated
3. Mind came before matter (e.g. spirit existed before it was incarnated)

This second set of principles is close to my own 'religious' convictions (my faith) - in other words it is the second set of principles which I regard as True, and not the first.

So how could I expect to understand 'group selection' correctly, if I was building my understanding in a metaphysical universe that was almost the opposite to the one I believed was real?

The theorising was bound to be false, surely?

No wonder that I could not imagine my theory - it did not hang-together with my understanding of reality, it did not make sense.

*

(This was what Thomas Kuhn dubbed a paradigm shift. The evidence, the problem remains the same - but the underlying framework within-which the problem needs to be solved has been transformed.)

*

So, the task has now become one of explaining the same set of evidences ('facts') using a completely different set of assumptions: a different model, logic, grammar, bottom-line.

Everything changes, yet everything remains the same -- The meaning and purpose of everything changes, the problem to be solved and the evidence available for its solution remains the same (although with different interpretation and emphasis, and perhaps with new evidences becoming relevant). 

It is a big project and an exciting prospect!

Finding the Black Swan - a favourite study from my empirical researches

Much of my work as a scientist was theoretical in nature; but I published quite a few empirical (i.e. experimental and observational or statistical) papers as well. 

One particular favourite of mine, and which seems to have been somewhat influential too, was done with a student called Florence Walston who was intercalating a bachelor of science degree into her medical studies, and who did the actual "leg-work" and analysis; and Richard Blennerhasset - a clinical psychiatrist, who provided access to the subjects studied.  

I liked this paper because it was as clear an example of "Black Swan"-type - Karl Popper-esque - research as one is likely to find in medicine. 

So, what do I mean by "Black Swan" in relation to science? 

Well, to state the matter more "softly" than did Popper (who wrongly regarded it as logically definitive of "science"); the idea is that it is not possible to "prove" positively the "hypothesis" that "all Swans are White" by gathering observations of White Swans - no matter how many examples of White Swans that we discovered and counted... 

But it may be possible to dis-prove negatively the "hypothesis" that "All Swans are White" - by finding even just a single example of a Black Swan.

In other words, if there is one Black Swan, then all Swans cannot be White*.

The asymmetry of this logic, the power of that single necessary observation, is recognized by using the definite article "the", in referring to The Black Swan whom we ought to be seeking.   

In this research, we aimed to refute the theory that persecutory (also called "paranoid") delusions are caused by defective "theory of mind" (ToM) ability. 

In other words that when someone falsely and firmly believed that he was being persecuted by some person or group of people; this was caused by a fault in his ability to infer the thought and intentions of those other. 

The "hypothesis" was implicitly that all people with persecutory delusions, must exhibit defective "theory of mind ability. 

All we needed to do was find a single clear and un-ambiguous example of a person with persecutory delusions but with normal ToM; and we had found our Black Swan and refuted the hypothesis. 

So, to refute this theory, we sought-out examples of people who did have definite persecutory delusions, but did not have anything wrong with their "theory of mind" ability... 

On the basis that if someone actually suffered persecutory delusions yet also displayed normal theory of mind functioning, then the delusions couldn't be caused by defective ToM. 

“Theory of mind”, persecutory delusions and the somatic marker mechanism. Florence Walston, Richard C Blennerhasset, Bruce G Charlton. Cognitive Neuropsychiatry. 2000; 5: 161-174. 

Introduction: Pure cases of persecutory delusions can be interpreted as “theory of mind delusions”; using a model that equates the theory of mind mechanism with the “somatic marker mechanism” as described by Damasio and colleagues. Three predictions were tested in a case study design: that pure cases of persecutory delusions could be found, that such cases would retain normal theory of mind reasoning abilities, and that delusions would be encapsulated to a specific group of persecutors with hostile intentions. 

Method: The caseload of 17 psychiatrists and 4 community psychiatric nurses was surveyed for “pure cases” of persecutory delusions. Cases were excluded when there was evidence of other psychopathology, intellectual impairment, abnormal reasoning, “psychotic” features, or diagnostic syndromes. Selected cases were evaluated for the scope of their delusional beliefs and the nature of their social relationships using a detailed semistructured interview that was transcribed verbatim, and putative “theory of mind tests” as devised by Corcoran and Frith. 

Results: Thirty-four potential cases were referred among which four pure cases of encapsulated persecutory delusions were eligible for the study. All were men, aged between 32 and 43. Apart from their persecutory delusions, cases were free from other detectable pathology in their reasoning processes, affect, or social interactions - and scored highly on the putative “theory of mind tests”. Identified persecutors were males, and delusions involved false beliefs concerning the threat of violence from gangs of strangers. 

Conclusions: Pure cases of severe but encapsulated persecutory delusions can be found, and such cases demonstrate intact theory of mind reasoning ability. The nature of persecutory delusions is understandable in terms of the somatic marker mechanism, and the content of delusions is consistent with the nature of hostile threats to men in the ancestral human environment.

In sum, Florence found, interviewed and tested not one but four "Black Swans" (actually five, but one withdrew consent to being included in the write-up); the Black Swans being men had such severe persecutory delusions as to have required admission to a psychiatric ward; yet who passed the Theory of Mind tests "with flying colours". 

That is: five men with severe persecutory delusions who demonstrated no measurable (or indeed inter-personal, conversational) evidence of impairment in their ability to infer the motivations of other people. 

In simple terms; outside of the specific subject of their severe delusion; these men thought and reasoned normally - so far as we could judge. 

From which it seems reasonable to infer "negatively" that all persecutory delusions are not caused by defective theory of mind abilities -- although, of course, some persecutory delusions might nonetheless have this cause. 

*Note. In practice, a single observation will very seldom have this power; usually argued on the basis that the Black Swan is either not-really Black, or else not-really a Swan. 

Political correctness is anarchistic, not socialistic

*

The difference between socialism and anarchism is that for socialists economics is primary while for anarchists power is primary.

By this definition, political correctness is essentially an anarchist ideology, while communism (from which it evolved) was essentially a socialistic ideology.

*

The primary aim of communism is/ was to redistribute money (wealth, income, whatever).

The primary aim of anarchism, and of PC, is to redistribute power.

Political correctness redistributes power in various ways - some of these are indeed economic, since wealth leads to power: economic power is a form of power.

So PC allocates salaries, subsidies, taxes, tax-exemptions, selectively enforces economic rules, and so on.

But PC also redistributes power in other forms: it allocates privileges (legal and administrative) and positions, assigns duties, generates images (positive and negative), regulates propaganda and advertising, gerrymanders voting (ie. shapes constituencies to benefit PC-favoured groups), regulates media depictions in terms of relative and absolute frequency and whether positive and negative. And so on.

*

In practice, PC (because it is an ideology of the ruling elite) in the first place takes power from the middling people and allocates it to bottom people - from the moderately-powerful to the least powerful; subtracts power from PC-disfavoured groups (whites, men, economically-productive people, the native-born, tax and rates-payers etc.) and adds power to favoured groups.

Political correctness perceives this process as being a just re-allocation from selfish, undeserving exploiters to miserable, vulnerable victims.

Since this process is a matter of raising-up the lowest using the money of the middle, it is a matter of being 'generous' using other-people's-money; and is therefore - at the first level of analysis - an extreme form of hypocrisy and moral grand-standing.

And, for the most part, that is precisely what PC is: the appropriation of moral approbation by  elite bureaucrats who coercively extract resources from their enemies and reward their supporters.

*

But at the highest level of politically correct aspiration and devoutness, the elite among the PC sincerely intend to take this process through to completion. They sincerely intend to destroy their own class, as well as the middle class.

Naturally, this intention is kept under wraps; not broadcast to the mass of PC careerists; but it is surely there.

The elite within PC intend to redistribute their own power.

*

In the short term the PC elite need to take all power to themselves, partly in order to begin the process of redistribution of power, but most importantly so that they can convert their personal power into impersonal power.

Those who sincerely want an egalitarian distribution of power cannot simply replace themselves with another class of redistributors, because humans are intrinsically selfish and corruptible.

This would soon lead to a recapitulation of power inequalities, as always happened under communism. The Marxist idea of replacing the bourgeoisie with the proletariat only replaced the personnel in charge of the state, only inverted the power structure - but it did not create an equal distribution of power.

The PC elite therefore intend to disempower themselves, intend to redistribute their power permanently.

This means not installing people or classes into power. Instead the PC elite intend to replace themselves with abstract systems of redistribution.

*

The PC elite intend to replace their own personal and inevitably selfish power with abstract power, in a nutshell to replace people with committees, to replace individual discretion with algorithmic regulations and votes, irreversibly to install redistributive procedural bureaucracy as the permanent form of ruling power.

*

Once procedural bureaucracy is irreversibly installed, thenceforth society will experience a continual redistribution and equalization of power imposed by an all-seeing, all-measuring, all-powerful system.

And the system will not depend on its personnel; indeed the ideal ruling system would be immune to influence by its administering personnel, unaffected by change in personnel, the system would use the personnel - not vice versa.

It would perhaps be something like rule by a computer - or maybe rule by 'The Borg' from Star Trek: the Next Generation: that is to say, rule by a group mind - an entity in which the individual is immersed, and which selfishness is therefore impossible.

From this perspective the ubiquity of voting (as the only method for generating authority) is merely a primitive step on the road to decision by the group mind.

*

So political correctness is the evolutionary child of anarchism, the product of a New Left focus on the distribution of power replacing the Old Left perception of economics as the primary social reality.

And - interestingly enough, ironically enough; PC is of course a totalitarian ideology which aspires to annihilate individual agency.

A totalitarian and anti-human bureaucracy was not-at-all what early anarchists were hoping-for.

Nonetheless, it is what they are getting...

So, anarchism has evolved from extreme libertarian individualism to the dissolution of the individual in the group mind...

*

Those whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad.

*

Subfertility is willed biological extinction - an intractable fact. What then?

People are apparently unable to grasp the very simple fact that the "subfertility*" of all the populations of all the developed nations is a strategic choice of biological extinction. 

The peoples of the modern world are willing their own annihilation. 

Of course, the averaged population choice in favour of death is composed of multi-millions of individual choices - which have, presumably, thousands of specific reasons and motivations. 

Nonetheless, if we are talking at a population level, in terms of group averages of reproduction - then the deep psychological (indeed spiritual) problem; is that the population has chosen its own destruction. 

At every level from the family, through the tribe, clan, nation - religion, or ideology. 

This seems to me a far more significant fact than real-but-temporary issues such as an ageing population. It is very solid, biological, evidence of the short-termism and self-focus characteristic of all modern populations. 

This is, in itself, a product of the changes in human consciousness that have happened everywhere - which could be described as alienation, or as the autonomous consciousness. 

In the past, people felt themselves part of a group-consciousness. Much of behaviour was unconscious, automatic, and flowed-into each person from the group-mind. 

The group-mind could be resisted, but such resistance need to be active. 

Individuals did not therefore consciously "decide" to have "at least three children" (e.g. weighing the options, calculating the risks and benefits) - instead it was not experienced as a choice, certainly not an individual choice. 

Wanting children was just "what people did"; and "I" am "people"... so I want it too.  

Modern consciousness doesn't work like that. 

We modern live "inside our heads" - looking-out. 

We often pretend to be concerned about other-people-in-general and in-the-long-term; but endemic subfertility shows that we don't genuinely and powerfully experience such oft-expressed care and concern. 

Ultimately, we don't care about the extinction of our kind; and we don't care so deeply that we cannot even notice or acknowledge that it is happening!

If we don't care about the extinction of our people - And We Don't! - then all the other altruistic and planetary concerns are revealed as puffs of wind! 

This relates to the currently so-evident "wars and rumours of war" - which are also symptomatic of the same underlying spirit**. These wars, and their gratuitous and gleefully spiteful nature, are a consequence of profound facts of human spirituality - here-and-now. 

To be clear - I am not suggesting that we "ought" to be less selfish, more long-termist, more group-minded: the reality of our situation is that these are impossibilities. 

We can in theory ask for them, recommend them, incentivize them - but because people do not want them, they will not happen - just as all attempts, everywhere, to reverse subfertility have utterly failed (but mostly, they are not even attempted). 

These are facts of the human condition in this earthly mortal existence. 

Sins are fact - they cannot be evaded; but that does not free us from the responsibility to acknowledge and repent them.

Why do we find it so difficult - impossible, even - to acknowledge and repent facts which will not be changed? Usually because we do not fundamentally desire to change the facts; or if part of us does want to change - we cannot make ourselves do it.

Why are we so eager to pretend these are soluble problems, why expend such energy in evasions?

Surely this intractability of mortal Life is at the very heart of Jesus's message, and the reason for his great gift (or offer) of salvation? 

What we need to do is something that we think is "too easy" or "not worth" doing...

Therefore we do not do what actually-is needful, and possible for everybody - and thereby reject salvation.   

*Anything less than two-point-something children per woman, on average. The point-something is (approximately) to account for children that do not survive to adulthood, or are otherwise infertile. Biologically speaking, it is very probably necessary to have considerably more than an average of two children per woman to replace the human population - if significant and cumulative genetic damage is to be avoided.  

**The world is breaking down. When that happens the structures of civilisation develop cracks and start to fail after which the normal forces of entropy and decay take over and do the rest. 

Recent wars are the result of a loss of centre. The centre is the spiritual focus of a society, what it is grounded in and what sustains it. When that no longer holds then things do fly apart, as the poet says. 

We have had no centre for a long time in the West which is why we have pitiful replacements such as human rights and democracy but these have no real substance to them. They are feeble ideological substitutes for what we have lost or rejected and they don't really inspire anybody for long. 

Wars come about because of ambition, and that is certainly a factor with the present one. But there is something else going on which is a simple desire for destruction. 

When the world has no meaning, and it has none without a sense of something beyond itself, we can find a crude purpose of sorts through destruction. Destruction is easy and it's exciting. It can stimulate the jaded palate and thrill the mind that has become bored and without a deeper goal.

From William Wildblood

A theory of creativity based on a new understanding of the nature of high-Psychoticism

*
If the standard 'natural selection' model of creativity is regarded as deficient, as previously argued - I mean the 'Simonton' model in which creativity is explained as a product of the high-Psychoticism-trait (high-P) personality producing wide-ranging and abundant random variations on old ideas, and high intelligence sieving and sorting-through these abundant randomly-varied ideas on the basis of coherence and memorized knowledge - then what do I propose to put in its place?

*

The key relevant difference between my view and the natural selection view - and the difference which leads to the following alternative model for creativity - concerns the nature of the high-Psychoticism trait.

Eysenck sees Psychoticism in terms of a tendency towards loose or broad associations - in other words a partially-pathological state. Psychoticism is seen as a partial breakdown in the normally tightly controlled and narrow associations of ideas to a situation being more like we have all experienced in dreams, and some people have experienced in delirious states of illness or alcohol withdrawal, or psychotic illnesses such as mania or schizophrenia, or under the influence of psychosis-inducing drugs (such as mescaline or LSD).

By contrast, I regard high-Psychoticism-trait as being an innate, substantially heritable, hard-wired set-up of the nervous system in which some individuals experience a higher dominance by 'inner' states than do most normal people. High-P individuals are inner-attentive, inner-aware, inner-engaged and inner-motivated.

*

So how does high-P work in producing 'creative solutions'?

The short answer is that the creative insight is preceded by a period of focused 'quest' (which may last many years) during which the mind is filled with more-or-less relevant ingredients. The inner-directed processes then observe, work-on, try to understand these various facts and concepts - try to select among them, achieve a clear view of their proper or best organization or arrangement,

This means that such high P individuals are attentive to their inner states (i.e. their thoughts and emotions, their 'stream of consciousness'), they are more spontaneously aware of their thoughts and feelings, they find these inner experiences more engaging, spontaneously more interesting than external matters such as social and sexual interactions (which fascinate most people for most of the time) - and these inner states provide the dominating motivations for such people, such that they are therefore substantially autonomous - that is to say indifferent to, independent-from peer pressure and socialization.

The process by which the mind works on these ingredients to give a breakthrough is a 'black box' - so far as science is concerned. (Although it can be said that the inner, unconscious mind works by different rules than those of conscious logic.) But it is the high-P person who has the focused abstract interest to bring together the ingredients, to watch the processes of understanding and organization, and to get a clear view of the answer as it emerges; and then powerfully to feel the rightness of the right answer as energies and positive emotions are triggered and experienced.

*

Although this inner-dominance can be caused by diseases and toxicity or brain damage; which can cause any normal person to be overwhelmed by powerful and pathological inner stimuli, or cut-off-from outer perceptions - the idea of Psychoticism is that high-P is a relatively rare but hereditary personality trait - commoner in men than women, inborn, emerging in childhood and persisting through maturity and adulthood.

The reason that high-P is hereditary, is that it is an evolved adaptation with a useful functional role to play - i.e. creativity - and the reason it is rare is that not many (i.e. not a high proportion) of creative people are required by a society; and high-P tend to be associated with lower reproductive success overall (as would be expected when individual invest more time and other resources in the inner life, and therefore relatively less resource into social and sexual life).

*

So high-P creative people are sometimes very useful to a particular human society (assuming that society 'takes advantage' of their special abilities) but there cannot be too many and indeed not many are needed.

The reason that high-P people are needed, but not often, is that most socially relevant problems (of population survival and expansion) are dealt-with by habitual and traditional means - the individual is socialized into the usual way of dealing with problems through childhood, and these usually work.

But most human societies have recognized (whether explicitly, or more often implicitly, tacitly, that some problems do yield to tradition or habit, and other problem do not always yield to tradition or habit - and what then?

In a nutshell, then is the time to bring in the creative specialist - the Shaman, the mystic, the intuitive priest, the scientific or inventive genius, the Holy Fool: someone who has resisted socialization and instead thinks by different rules, because he is more engaged with the inner world

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So the assumption is that high-P has evolved at a low frequency by some (unknown) group-selection mechanism that leads to a reliable but rare supply of high-P individuals to do this vital but infrequent job. And part of this group-selection must also be a recognition from the majority of low-P individuals that these high-P 'oddball' or 'eccentric' individuals must be tolerated, supported, and asked for advice and guidance in certain relatively unusual circumstances when their special abilities are the best (or only) hope for group survival.

Since the supposed mechanism is group selection, and different human group shave experienced widely different selection pressures; then it is likely that high-P is not found with identical frequency everywhere. This presumably explains why creative genius is very unevenly distributed by time and geographical space - and why its frequency varies over time within the same culture - not least because group selection is always open to being subverted by individual-level selection.

This group selected nature of high-P potentially explains why creative genius is all-but absent from many continents and nations, and also why it may appear in abundance (e.g. in ancient Greece) then disappear. However since genius also requires high general intelligence (high-g) then too low an average level of g, or a decline in g, may also be a cause of declining rates of genius.

But I think it fair to say that high-P is a more crucial aspect of genius than high-g, because any high-P individual who is sufficiently higher in intelligence than the majority of his group can perfom his creative social role; while a low-P person will not be creative, no matter how high his intelligence.

So I imagine that the 'shamans' of a recent hunter gatherer tribe will typically have had an intelligence level that is high for their tribal group, but of a lower than average level for a Western nation (as measured by IQ tests). However, such (by Western standards) 'low-IQ' individuals could nonetheless perform their highly valued and effective social function - so long as they had the high-P, creative personality trait.

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Also posted at:

http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/the-inner-nature-of-trait-psychoticism.html
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The innate sense of "cosmic significance"

Young children have an innate sense of the "cosmic significance" of what they do - and what they think. At such an age, our selves and our minds are part of a larger group. 

We may not be exactly aware of it, and we certainly don't know the exact scope of it (it often seems to include not just people, but other animals, nature, gods, spirits ghosts...), but we know that we are connected. 

This immersion in a group mind is for both good and ill, and is just a fact of life,

There is an in-between phase or stage, in which the inner contact is no longer a spontaneous, direct, quasi-telepathic thing; but instead is sought via symbols, language, image, stories - meand to an end; methods by which people get back (partially, temporarily) that childhood state.    

At this time and place of history; this is mostly or entirely lost. If people do feel connected and part of a large group, then it is not even at secondhand - via symbolic communications. The recent and current addiction to mass and social media is not about symbolic contact with a group mind, but about emotions; excitement, distraction, triggering of feelings. 

The experience is apparently of isolated selves observing a display of phenomena, hoping to be stimulated. 

But not entirely thus. I think there is always a sense of cosmic significance, of connection of "just being" part of something much larger - at back of people's minds, even though not-believed-in, even in these here-and-now conditions. 

Such "cosmic" intuitions are nowadays publicly mocked and pitied as necessarily immature, deluded, wishful, self-aggrandizing, sad, psychotic - in a word anyone who harbours or expresses them is insane. 

And, of course, they may be - especially when somebody tries to persuade and argue others into objectively accepting "his" special importance on a large, even cosmic, scale!

Yet, this typically-modern way of explaining-away anything that might serve as a basis for purpose and meaning in life is altogether typical of our civilization - where is it a core element of the demonic "Project Despair".

This nihilism encompasses the whole of science (when science is taken to be a complete picture of life) as well as the workings of The System, its laws, bureaucracy, media and the rest of it. 

All public and official aspects of modern life are predicated on their being no "cosmic" purpose or meaning in our personal existence.   

The insanity slur is a typical modern value-inversion. 

The opposite is true: 

The reality is that anyone who does Not have a sense of cosmic significance is insane. That is; their thinking is necessarily incoherent. Their behaviour can be of personal and immediate significance merely - adding-up to nothing whatsoever.   

I think we should regard intuitive assumptions of cosmic significance as one of those aspects of innate knowledge that were built-into us by The Creator; to serve as a necessary basis for... everything else. 

What's wrong, and right, about "collective" values as the bottom-line validation for our life?

It strikes me that most kinds of atheism have some kind of psychology or sociology as the bottom-line explanation and justification for judgments of value. Purpose and meaning are regarded as products of humans; and particular judgments regarding values such as truth, beauty and ethics reach their final explanation in terms of psychological concepts such as the human mind, human instinct; and in terms of collectives or groups of people and their psychology. 

In other words; when individual psychology seems too diverse and conflicted to rationalise values - for many generations people have reached for collective values to make their bottom-line judgements. 

For instance; when it seems obviously inadequate to relate a prohibition on murder to what is best for or wanted by a single person; it seems natural that when the problem is restated collectively - as what is best for or wanted by some large (or universal) conceptualized of many-people (some community) - that this is a more "objective" explanation and justification. 

Consequently, many of the most influential kinds of atheism have some collective value as their bottom line. Utilitarian philosophy is stated as aiming at the greatest happiness (or "utility") of the greatest number. This usually led to economic conceptualizations of society (as with communism and other types of socialism) - since the group utility was described and manipulated in terms of statistics about income, wealth, working-hours and the like. 

Nationalism regards the well-being of the collective nation as primary; and the value of individuals of that nation as derivative of the national "spirit"; so that the individual may be (and should be, when required by the collective nation) sacrificed to the imputed nation - potentially even to the point of near extinction of the individuals of the nation. 

The kind of public health thinking that (for instance) underpinned the Birdemic-response was rationalized on the basis of what was best for the health of the collective - in which health was analyzed and expressed statistically; in terms of measures such as disease numbers and rates, and death numbers and rates. 

Another example is Jung's collective unconscious - which was conceptualized as a universal group mind; so that what might have been individual, experiences, instincts, needs etc. were restated as deriving from a shared, group reality. 

This was regarded as more spiritual, because such things were not detectable or measurable by perceptual means, nor were there measurements; but instead via qualitative phenomena such as archetypes, and evidence came from inter-personal communications of dreams, myths, artistic productions and the like.  

But although often regarded as "spiritual", the collective unconscious seems to be - in reality - a quasi-biological entity. 

I wonder why it is seen as too subjective to have individuals as bottom-line, whereas it is more objective to have a collective bottom line - despite that the collective is dependant (ultimately) on the individual? 

It seems, on the face of it, irrational that people seem ready to reject the significance of the individual experience or evaluation, as "merely" personal and subjective; whereas the same people seem not just willing but more highly motivated to suppose that there is an objective reality - and an imperative value, that we should be guided by it - about the collective. 

This would hardly be likely if the collective was nothing-more than the collecting-together and combining of many individuals.  

Yet this is so; and (apparently spontaneously) we actually do regard group phenomena as (at least potentially, ideally) in some way more objective, more binding on our values. 

My interpretation is that there is a fundamental underlying truth behind this "collective" way of thinking - even for those (like communism or "healthism") badly distorted by abstraction, which is what lends such systems a degree of motivational effectiveness. 

There is also an untruth - which is why none of the atheisms have proved sufficiently effective social motivators - none have come close to replacing religion, none have been able strongly to motivate men to acts of courage and self-sacrifice for long-term goals. The consequences we see all around us, in mainstream hedonic nihilism, and the prevalent self-loathing and covert suicidality of Western civilization.

In sum - the collective is, in practice, as well as theory - not just a collection of individuals; but what exactly it is (or could be) is distortedly and incompletely formulated by the most influential kind of atheism. 

Conclusions? I think we have a vague but true sense that we are justified in some kind of groupish and collective way. 

To some extent this is a mistaken attempt to overcome the nihilistic meaninglessness of atheism - partly by a sleight of hand, and also by a kind of averaging process in the group. Individuals generally change more rapidly than do groups, and individuals usually have a shorter lifespan than groups - so that the sheer lability and instability of individual life is ameliorated by immersing individuals into a conceptualized group. 

In other words; while collectives are not more objective than individuals; groups seem somewhat more objective: quantitatively, not qualitatively. Compared with a single person; groups are bigg-er, strong-er, wealthi-er, more powerful, long-er-lasting... In a sense, this makes groups feel "more real". 

But deeper than this lies the potential of a profound truth about "the collective". 

If the true collective is the totality of divine creation - rather than merely some group of humans - then it would seem that there is a valid and ultimate sense in which a big question about life is whether or not we affiliate our-selves to the collective that is creation: whether we join our individual person to God's creation and God's creative will. 

By the decision and act that Christians term "love"; we can choose to put "creation" above our individual selves; and to derive our values from the totality of our-selves in loving-alliance with creation - in a mutual relationship. (Mutual because we love God, God loves us.)

Instead of the relatively great-er objectivity of human collectives compared with the individual person, there may be an everlasting and qualitative objectivity of the resurrected individual Man, in the wholly divine reality of Heaven.  

What are the causes of the developmental change ("evolution") in human consciousness throughout history?

A clear statement description of the way that human consciousness has changed throughout recorded history (and inferred from pre-history) is something I associate with Rudolf Steiner and his later follower Owen Barfield; who both explained it in terms of each human being having undergone multiple reincarnations. The changing nature of consciousness was therefore assumed to be caused by the accumulated experience and learning - hence maturity - of the reincarnating spirit. 

Ultimately, the underlying cause of these assumed multi-reincarnational changes was tacitly assumed to be the divine will; which sought to provide multiple and additive experiences to spirits. 

This was supposed to operate by a process that starts with pure (immaterial) spirit beings, leads down into denser and denser incarnations (such as ourselves), and ultimately (as its highest goal) leads back up to purely spiritual existence. 

But I do not share these assumptions about reincarnation. 

More importantly I regard Jesus Christ as having provided Man with the opportunity of resurrected human life in Heaven - which is a permanent state of embodied incarnation. 

In short: as of 2025 (and for nearly 2000 years) God does not want us to reincarnate after death - but instead to follow Jesus Christ to resurrected eternal life in heaven. 

Thus, for me, the objective of spiritual development is not a "spiritual being"; but instead a resurrected and embodied Man, of which the model was the resurrected Jesus.    

However, since I regard the evolutionary development of Mankind as a reality, but reject the Steiner/ Barfield explanation; I feel a need to explain this in terms of causality. I believe that there are several interacting causes, working at different levels. What follows is my current understanding. 

1. God's plan

At the deepest level of causation; I believe that God (our Heavenly Parents) desires that divine creation should lead first to divine children, and then towards the idea of "divine adults" - God seeks to encourage childlike children to develop into grown-up friends. 

(Much as it is usual (but with significant exceptions) to expect and hope that our own mortal children will not remain immature and childlike; but will grow-up to make the choice to become "best friends" with their parents.) 

In other words; divine creation is structured towards the generation of God's children - such as we now are; and that we children should be enabled and encouraged to "grow up" further, in order to mature towards becoming beings of the same kind and level as our Heavenly Parents. 

In yet other words; God desires that we would (through time) choose to develop towards becoming fully divine, fully loving, creators - and then to participate in the eternal work of divine creation. It was Jesus Christ who first achieved this, and who made it possible for others to follow Him in this. 

The goal is that our Heavenly Parents should cease to be the only beings at their level of divinity, but should build a continually growing family of grown-up children of God (together with the extended family of those beloved children who - whether by spiritual nature or current-choice - remain spiritually "immature": i.e. not full-creators.  

2. Incarnation of progressively more mature spirits

One of the ways that God influences the direction of creation, is through the nature of pre-mortal spirits that are incarnated into mortal life on earth. 

My impression is that when the earliest-known Men were first incarnated, their consciousness was more like that of young children. And incrementally throughout history, progressively more-grown-up spirits were incarnated; who tended to mature towards what we would now recognize as more adult modes of consciousness. 

So, at present and overall, spirits are incarnated that spontaneously mature to a kind of spiritual adolescence - beyond which further maturation depends on various individual factors, including personal will and choices. 

(I suspect that while spiritual maturation from childhood to adolescence is mostly spontaneous and involuntary; maturation beyond spiritual adolescence can only ever be attained by active alignment with God's nature and creative will, and by personal choice - the choice to live only by love.)

Maturity is most obviously revealed in terms of thinking and self-awareness... Modern Men are aware of our-selves and the distinction from the world and others; and we live subjectively in our stream of conscious thoughts - in ways that did not happen (or only in rare individuals) in the past. 

3. Metaphysical assumptions and ideology

Due to the nature of the human society into-which modern humans are born (which is partly a consequence of past and present choices by other people; under the influence of demonic beings) - modern Men assume that ultimate reality is dead (unalive), material (not spiritual); and operates solely by physical-mechanical causes or non-causally/ chaotically (ie. "randomly").  

I believe that these bottom-line assumptions concerning reality have a profound and malign effect on modern Man's consciousness.

What this typical modern metaphysics does to our consciousness; is to transform self-awareness into a false conviction of inescapable existential alienation - the implicit yet wrong belief that we are alone in our thinking, which is merely subjective: detached from reality. 

And this leads onto the typically modern mind-set of existential despair; variously countered by the attempt to overwhelm it with hedonism, and/or to obliterate thinking by such means as constant distraction by powerful stimuli, strong emotions, intoxication, and the like. 

In sum: an element in the changing of consciousness is the prevalent ideology of our times. And in more general terms, it would be expected that metaphysics, theology, and ideology would often (although not necessarily) tend to shape human consciousness in particular directions - which is, of course, exploited as much as possible by the purposive powers of supernatural evil. 

4. Direct spiritual contact between people, and other beings

I believe that there is potentially a direct (mind-to-mind, as it were) contact between living people, between the living and some of those who have died, and other beings. 

Insofar as this happens (for instance, among those people in mutually-loving relationships) among people whose consciousness's are changing for the reasons described above; this is the basis for shaping, perhaps amplifying or instead reversing, changes in consciousness that may be directional through time.

Put differently; we each inhabit a very selective thought-world - one that changes throughout our lives, and includes new, different, other-minds (alive, dead, or potentially not human). 

This, then, is another reason for changes in consciousness.  

5. The comfort and guidance of the Holy Ghost

The Holy Ghost is a potential source of comfort and guidance for those who follow Jesus, and this contact naturally affects a human consciousness and its development through time. 

Such interaction with the Holy Ghost has the nature of a chosen, mutual, and specific relationship between one spiritual Being and another. 

Which means that I disagree with those who conceptualize the Holy Ghost as providing some kind of blanket effect on Mankind, or any particular group of people. 

(I also disagree with those who regard the evolution of consciousness as driven by any kind of quasi-physics-like influence on the planet and its inhabitants... I mean those who see the maturation of consciousness as driven by an externally-applied influence - such as increasing frequency or vibrational level; or some kind of transformation of spiritual force, or an increase in spiritual energy; or indeed by astrological change.)

  

 

As a general comment - I think it is probably necessary to emphasize (to myself, if not other others!) that the causal mechanisms that contribute to the developmental evolution of human consciousness, are all aimed at the individual human spirit. 

I am increasingly sure that God does not, and never has, operated primarily at the level of human groups. 

We ought therefore to try and stop thinking habitually about Men In The Mass; when it comes to understanding fundamental spiritual matters.

 

The false-impression that God is concerned primarily with the salvation of particular tribes or particular churches; was I think an (inevitable) artefact of an earlier stage of human consciousness; among Men who (inevitably - but with some few exceptions) experienced reality in this groupish way.

That is to say: The earlier we go in history, the more groupish was human consciousness - and individuals were not, and did not feel nor aspire to be, detached from the "group mind". 

But as of Now - things are very different. From adolescence onward, modern people are spontaneously detached from the group mind, and must therefore be influence and controlled ("micro-managed") by multiple and constantly-applied external and perceptual inputs - laws, rules, propaganda etc.)  

Nowadays, such groupishness in considering Christian theology is simply an error - but no longer an inevitable error; being instead the consequence of (for example) false metaphysics, wishful thinking, despair, dreadful fear - or a simple paucity of alternative ideas.  

Therefore; we should understand the evolution of consciousness as the averaged outcome of our innate (inborn) spiritual-nature; with a multitude of individual human choices; concerning the outcomes of individually-tailored ("bespoke") interactions between each individual person with God and the Holy Ghost.