What we most need *now* - Warm-hearted honesty

I fell to thinking about what would be the most useful and beneficial cultural first step, and (as has happened before) I came up with honesty.

At present, escape from our death-course is thwarted at every step by dishonesty. In a culture of dishonesty nothing can be relied upon, no person can be relied on, no institution can be relied on, contracts cannot be relied on - trying to understand anything is like gazing through murk: even worse, gazing through murk onto which are projected distortions and false inventions.

It can't be done.


Even the age old solution of retreat from public culture into one's own judgement based on experience and God-given common sense has been thwarted by decades of subversion of experience ('anecdote', 'biased'. 'self-serving') and common sense ('arbitrary', 'authoritarian', 'ultimately subjective').

So a restoration of the habit of truth would seem to be an absolute essential - I mean an ethic that people will not lie, will not mislead, but will instead try to be as honest as they can all of the time and about everything. This was not rare when I was younger - it is extremely rare now.


Yet honesty alone is not enough - the phrase 'brutal honesty' comes to mind. Decontextualized honesty is often aggressive and demoralizing - because honesty is ultimately a means to an end; and lacking a good end, honesty becomes a means to a bad end - which is exactly why honesty has become so rare.

In a world without religion there are no 'ends', so no reason to be honest except expediency, which is precisely the current situation: people are just as honest as they need to be in the circumstances, and abandon honesty when it leads to problems.

The typical self-proclaimed 'truth-speaker' nowadays is often a hard-hearted individual, full of pride and inflated ego at his ability to see-through the murk; despising the dupes who fall for the lies. He regards truth as brutal because for him truth leads to despair - but he embraces despair; and defeats it and energizes himself by building a solid core of steely pride fuelled by his admiration of his own courage in embracing despair.

Not a good person, not a good situation, not something which would lead to desirable outcomes...


So we must be truthful but warm-hearted - or rather, we must be warm-hearted and then truthful. That seems like the only way to avoid honesty leading us badly astray. Not to use honesty like a sledge hammer or a scalpel, but inflexibly and in a quietly insistent fashion to be absolutely honest about everything, while opening our hearts and feeling the consequences - both good and bad.

Lies upon lies about sex and the media - another consequence of the decline of Christianity.

Dishonesty is the most pervasive form of corruption - and the one that enables all the others to thrive.

This is possible because humans are Not naturally honest; neither intrinsically, biologically nor culturally honest.

Instead, as a general rule, people tell other people whatever is expedient - constrained only by what is deniable... what they can get-away-with - and truthfulness is reserved for a few, very specific situations.

But even specific honesty - as a positive goal - is unlikely, unless honesty is general. Science was basically honest until about the middle 1960s, but in face of the collapse of Western societal honesty is now no more honest that mainstream culture: which is to say that modern 'science' (ie professional research) does not even aim to be honest.  


Generalised honesty is, in essence, a purely Christian virtue, and has existed only in (some) Christian societies, and when Christianity has been dominant. And as Western Christianity has lapsed and been driven-out from public discourse and from all major social institutions (including law, education, and science); so has the ideal of honesty.

There is a clear dichotomy. Honesty is either a social ideal, and as such is the aim of all statements - great and small; or else is it is not - and any statement may be framed on a continuum from maximum to minimum honesty - from strictest possible honesty, to maximum strategic expediency.

Such thoughts were prompted by an extremely clarifying quote from the Instapundit Glenn Reynolds (H/T Dox Day):

Remember, they’re not making a big deal about sexual assault in Hollywood because they found out about it. They’re making a big deal because you found out about it.

The lessons of the Hollywood/ Mass-Media-in-general sex scandals are being lied about (purposefully, strategically) just as the normal, standard, approved, systematic sexual depravity and corruption of Hollywood is lied about in multiple ways.

The Mass Media who report the sex scandals are exactly the same social system within which the depraved sexuality occurs. What we can see is that there is a near-total cleavage in the sexual morals of the Mass Media and of ordinary people - especially in relation to the business of paedophilia/ pederasty/ assault/ rape relating to pre-pubertal children which is clearly common in the Mass Media, and a very common motivation among global Establishment leadership - while being almost unknown and incomprehensible outside of it.

This is not 'normal sexuality' being liberated by wealth and opportunity - it is a rare, corrupt, perverted and alien form of sexual desire. Yet it is so common among the ruling elites (not only in the mass media, but also politics and several other of the major social institutions) as to be regarded by insiders as normal.


As Glenn Reynolds said: from the mass media insider elite perspective, the only problem about systematic sexual corruption is when ordinary people get to hear about it. When there is honesty about what the insider elites are doing sexually, as a matter of daily routine - indeed as a matter of specific strategic preparation and organisation.

Otherwise it is evil concealed by lies upon lies, decade after decade. Among many tens of thousands of (rich, famous, powerful, high status) people who know exactly what is going-on and are quite happy about the situation - so long as other-people don't know what is going-on. 


If, like me, you believe that the mass media is the primary and most powerful social institution in The West; and the social institution that most pervasively shapes the minds, motivations and attitudes of the largest numbers of people... well then, This Is A Problem.

In fact it is, not just A problem; but The problem.

   

Honesty is why Christians have become unemployable

It is clear that Christians have become unemployable in positions of high status and responsibility; and this exclusion is being incrementally extended to lower and lower employment positions.

The main reason is probably the fear that Christians may be honest in the workplace - which, in the modern workplace, with its endemic corruption covered by pervasive dishonesty, could be 'disastrous'.

Of course, most people - including many/ most Christians, have no problem about being dishonest; indeed, they don't even notice it. Dishonesty is the air they breathe: they are dishonest in almost every sentence, and certainly dishonest in every paragraph. So much dishonesty - everywhere, all of the time - becomes specifically undetectable. It is just 'how things are done'.


Indeed, in my experience, the most pervasively-dishonest people - those whose every communication is an act of calculated manipulation - may become genuinely outraged and angry if their dishonesty is noticed, or pointed-out. For them honesty just is expediency, and expediency just is how they communicate and act. It seems grossly unjust for them, personally, to be singled-out for doing what is general, approved and indeed compulsory within the organisation.

For someone to threaten to expose any specific dishonesty (even in private) is to disrupt the system of inter-dependent lies - this is called 'hypocritical'.

Modern people are, in general, not hypocritical in this sense - because modern people are complicit.


For example, the extreme instances of sexual abuse in Hollywood (eg those involving rape of chidlren) are sustained by the fact that essentially-everybody is complicit in the sexual revolution in one or another of its many aspects, to a greater or (mostly) lesser extent.

And Hollywood is an excellent place to pursue sexual promiscuity of all kinds - so many/ most of the people there will be exploiting the sexual opportunities as much as they can.


Complicit employees are usually acceptable, because they are Not honest. They are kept in line because because, in a system of corruption, everyone is complicit; but it is the low level employees that get busted for corruption.


So modern employers want people who are complicit with corruption, especially the corruptions of the sexual revolution - becuase such people will not be honest.

Modernity entails the exclusion of honesty. 


However, quite a few non-Christian ethnic groups are also not complicit with sexual corruption; yet these are regarded as acceptable - even desirable, because 'virtue-signalling' - employees.

Closer examination will show that this is although such ethnicities are not complicit in many forms of corruption (indeed they may rigorously oppose the sexual revolution, they may reject drugs and alcohol, they may reject self-mutilation etc.); but neither do such ethnicities regard honesty as a duty. Thus they are safe to employ. 


Genralised and principled honesty is a Christian virtue - a specifically-Christian virtue.

It is, in fact, only Christians - and only some minority of the self-identified Christians - who are not complicit in the system of lies; and who know they have a duty to speak-out honestly in general and to everybody, at all times and about all things.

These are what the modern mainstream calls 'fundamentalist' Christians - and it is the type of fundamentalist Christians that are not-complicit and also honest, who are now unemployable.


(Quite obviously, and rationally, when you are running a corrupt system, and are happy with the state of corruption, and personally benefit from it; then it would be dangerous to employ people who are not-complicit and who are also honest. That is just asking-for-trouble.)


And this is why 'fundamentalist' Christians - and only Christians - are excluded from employment, and responsibility.

Serious Christians already unemployable in high level elite positions, and we are increasingly unemployable at almost any level in modern institutions, organisations and corporations.

And the prospect is one of (de facto and aimed-at) total exclusion of serious Christians from all mainstream social organisations at every level.


Dis-honesty is the best policy! You know it makes sense...


Just to clarify: serious Christians are the only class of persons who are systematically being excluded from institutions and employment at present - but there are also individuals who are honest and non-complicit that are also being excluded. David Icke is a current, in the news, example - relevant because he is anti-Christian (or anti-Christian-priests & -churches at any rate).

If this inverted world were turned upside-down... A restored discourse of truthfulness

Perhaps the most obvious fruits of repentance and awakening would be public honesty - in small things as much as large. It would be startlingly obvious, and would have immense consequences.

In no other area have there been such changes in my adult life as the expansion of dishonesty; from a few enclaves such as advertising and government to embrace all major institutions and activities, all of the time - in private as much as in public.

For example, in the worlds I worked in - universities, science, the medical profession - honesty was normal and almost complete at the lower and middling levels. Dishonesty (including deliberate misleading) while considerably more frequent, was not common even at the leadership levels - rare enough that it stood-out, and attracted explicit adverse comment, often sanctions.

But lying and misleading rapidly got more common from the late 1980s until the present situation when almost all public discourse is essentially dishonest - only containing enough factual truth to sustain the basic and motivating lies.

I found this particularly shocking in science which - in Britain at any rate - was almost ridiculously honest about almost everything forty to fifty years ago. Honest to the point of pedantic dullness (but, in retrospect, what an admirable fault!)

Even more widely in academia (I knew English Literature and Philosophy pretty well), there was an aversion to exaggeration, to one-sided selectiveness, to anything smacking of self-promotion.

Yet now, scientists do not write or speak even a paragraph without 'massaging' the spirit of truth into something more expedient. And as for Western politicians...

Because of all this systematic dishonesty everywhere, we inhabit a virtual reality - our world is a tissue of lies; and honesty strikes most people as a brutal act of aggression. Indeed, they regard honest men as obvious liars, because they assume truth is the mass consensus. Plain honesty is insensitive: one of the worst of crimes. 

If ever Western Society turns-around and becomes qualitatively better; it must include a restoration of the transcendental Good of Honesty in all public discourse - and this would be so shocking as to seem cataclysmic.

If this unlikely event ever were to happen, you won't miss it: Imagine the sensation of this inverted world being upended, and restored to stand right-way-up, on a solid base of truth...

Massive and pervasive dishonesty is a spiritual disease - the same disease that blinds people to its omni-prevalence

Dishonesty is a sin; thus a moral failing. But its roots are deeper.

The world is in a spiritual war - between God and his allies on one side; and Satan, demons, and the mass of variously evil-affiliated humans on the other. And Satan's side hugely-outnumbers God's side. 

That is the global state of play, as of 2020. It is a basic and essential fact of life. 

 

But, of course, almost everybody is blind to the fact; just as they are blind to the fact of truly staggering levels and pervasiveness of dishonesty in public discourse - extending from the international reach of the mass-social media and global/national government; to the level of millions of committees, and billions of interpersonal interactions. 

For such a moral sickness to have afflicted so many people simultaneously; indicates a deeper underlying cause. 

And that cause is the condition of spiritual blindness and denial which has swept Mankind over the past couple of centuries - beginning in The West, but now seeming to include almost everybody, everywhere. 

 

Consider that in the ancient past - from everything that is known - everybody perceived spirits, including 'the dead' and ghosts - who were present and active in the world around them. (The same was the case, if we can remember, in our early childhood.) 

But now, almost nobody does - and the reality of such spirits is denied, and their reality-significance is excluded from public discourse (including most religions).

Because spirits are denied, evil has no objective reality; because the nature of evil is spiritual; evil just-is to be on the side of the demonic spirits who are opposed to God and God's creation. 

If spirits don't exist, then evil doesn't exist - and therefore so-called-evil for Modern Man has been re-defined psychologically, subjectively and therefore relativistically. In effect; evil has now been explained-away.

 

Dishonesty too. Since honesty and truth are a product of God's creation - lies have no objective reality when creation is denied: when the universe is seen as value-free... just a collection of mechanical causes and mathematical randomness...

We can conclude that Men have changed. Modern Men sleep-through the spiritual reality of the world, in the same way that a sleeping Man is unconscious of what goes-on in the bedroom around him. The bedroom is still there, still effectual - perhaps dangerous; but the sleeper knows nothing of it.

However, this modern condition of innate spiritual insensibility is something we are 'born with'; it is an aspect of the modern condition. 

Modern Men are, in this respect, spiritually differently-set-up than Ancient Men. Modern Men just do not (except in altered and impaired states of consciousness - drugs, delirium, psychosis...) perceive spirits, the dead, ghosts etc. 

 

My understanding is that this insensibility to spirits is an aspect of the evolutionary development of consciousness - and happened because Men are destined to develop towards greater freedom, greater agency - and thus a more God-like consciousness. 

In a nutshell, because Modern man does not spontaneously perceive them - Modern Man is free to choose - and indeed Must choose - to be aware of spirits, the dead, ghosts, angels, demons etc. 

We cannot (and should not try) to choose to 'perceive' (see, hear, smell, touch) spirits; but must choose to be aware of them - to know them experientially.

(I say 'must' choose; because the alternative is this 2020 world of near-universal self-damnation.)

 

How does all this relate to honesty? 

Well, honesty (for all its practical benefits) must ultimately be a transcendental virtue - pursued for spiritual reasons. This is because it is so often expedient to be dishonest - and anything less than the full intention to know truth and communicate it truth-fully is dishonest. 

All forms of hype, spin, misleading, selectivity, exaggeration etc are In Fact dishonest - and indeed more morally wrong (because strategic and deniable) than many a plain lie.   

And truth-full-ness is impossible in a world in which the spiritual is not known, and is denied. The spiritual Just Is a part of our world, a very major - indeed primary - part; therefore there can be no honesty when the spiritual is excluded.   

There can be no honesty when the spiritual is excluded.

 

Or, to put it positively - to be honest we must know the spiritual realm. 

Of course, knowing the spiritual is not sufficient to salvation - since we might know the spiritual and also reject God and Creation; know the spiritual, and yet choose to fight and try to destroy all that sustains God and Creation. 

That is the demonic position - the spirits who know the reality of God and Creation yet have made an irrevocable committment to oppose God; and the devil is therefore correctly described as the Father of Lies. 

Evil regards truth as merely expedient; therefore evil is always as dishonest as is expedient - therefore the world of evil is a tissue of lies.  

(The Global System of lies, a Matrix of lies - a virtual-reality of lies...)

 

This is the deep reason why the side of evil (as represented by mainstream, world-dominant secular leftism) is incoherent: evil cannot be coherent! 

But evil does not 'need' to be coherent, because evil's purpose is to oppose God, Creation and The Good. 

Opposition need not be coherent, and it never is; it merely opposes The Good in whatever manner presents-itself; and justifies its evil using whatever excuse seems likely to be effective, here-and-now.

 

In sum - the fact of dishonesty everywhere, and all the time, is a consequence of Modern Spiritual Self-Blinding. 

Which is a product of the choice (which almost everybody seems to have made - although apart from the demons, this choice is reversible by Christian repentance) to choose Not to acknowledge the reality of the spiritual. 

Until we are again in a position where the reality - and significant, active presence - of God, angels, demons, the dead, ghosts and much else - are a part of our experience and discourse; then evil will remain dominant. 

And this is a matter of conscious choice. 

 

So every single person is ultimately responsible; there is no excuse of 'ignorance'. 

Not-choosing is not-an-option. 

You and I and everyone already-has-made a choice; but... that choice can be changed.   

Dishonesty - The biggest, most important sin in the world?

You would have thought that anybody who worked in any kind of job in (or interacting-with) any kind of bureaucratic large institution, organisation, corporation... would recognise the pervasive - daily, hourly - corruption. 

And would therefore adjust their expectations of corruption when it came to... oh, I don't know... elections? 

Yet people continue to assume the null hypothesis of No Corruption, of Systematic Honesty. Truthfulness until otherwise 'proven' (and each item of proof treated the same - if there is any other explanation than dishonesty (and of course there always is) then it should be preferred.

 

How are so many people missing such a vast Fact about our civilization, that it been becoming more corrupt for decades, and that the corruption is accelerating month by month in the year of 2020? 

(2020! - the Year of the Lie! - the Year of the Biggest Lie in the history of the world!)

How can they miss this corruption, exclude it by assumption and by argument?

 

Well, they do miss it, because the corruption is itself concealed by pervasive, systematic, compulsory dishonesty - which affects almost everybody, and everybody at high and middling levels in all large bureaucracies/ organisations.

Generalised, severe, pervasive corruption naturally conceals specific instances. And when (as now) there is enough corruption; specific instances become un-proveable... 

When everybody is lying all the time; why pick on a particular person, time, place for special attention? 

 

People have become so used-to public relations, advertsing, hype, spin, selection, distortion; to manipulation and propaganda... that nearly-all people are adapted to dishonesty in its multitude of manifestations. They have long since ceased to notice it. 

Dishonesty can become such an ingrained habit that awareness of lying gets buried very deep; that the slightest insinuation of the plain fact that most people are dishonest for their own advantage nearly all the time (especially during their working hours and social interactions), is met by outraged, indignant incredulity. 

The point is that dishonesty is so normal that people are not even trying to be truthful - and operate on a mixture of obedience and expediency. 

 

After all - who is responsible for societal honesty? 

At what level is honesty regarded as normal, necessary, mandatory? Obviously national leaders and corporate bosses are the biggest liars of all. And the people at the bottom are expected to obey, or be sacked. But nobody at any point of the unified global bureaucracy and hierarchy of the linked social institutions is expected or allowed to be wholly honest in intention and expression. 

Not 'scientists', not scholars nor academics - not anybody At All. 

 

Everybody (here, now, 2020) is pursuing some other primary agenda than it says on the tin - every institution is thus, in itself, A Lie. 

Organisations pretend to focus on health services, educaton, policing, religion, whatever... but the bottom line is always and everywhere leftist socio-politics: that is, all institutions are converged onto the mainstream Global Establishment line as expressed by mainstream media, international bureaucracy and the dominant nations; whatever that line is on any particular day.

Since the Global Establishment is purposively-evil (strategically working against God and creation); then it means that as many as possible of the assumptions of the mainstream are designed to pursue and cover the workings of evil. As of 2020 this domination of assumptions by purposive evil is itself an established fact. 

 

And this means that truth telling is no longer about facts, but must be about assumptions. 

Have you ever tried even rasining and questioning assumptions in a bureaucratic setting? You will be treated as devious and evasive not honest. (Or else as childish, or else as insane.)

And when one of those assumptions you expose and challenge is that of the honesty of the bureaucracy?... 

 

It is the world-blanketing culture of pervasive, insensible, denied dishonesty that serves as cover for all the many other major, systemic evils; it serves as a cover for the entire web of Big Lies that makes up the world of public discourse.

 

There is apparently no limit to the power of Big Lies in such as world as we inhabit. The whole world can be bankrupted over a total fabrication such as the Climate Agenda; can be shut down ad incrementally destroyed over a trivial infection to be managed by unconnected, false and human-destructive policies; can operate on the basis of official personal, sexual and racial assumptions and procedures that are an inversion of truth and reality... 

And so on. 

Yet people, official people, worldly people, people who would know from experience, if they were capable of learning from experience... such people persist in regarding honesty as the norm - and demand literally-impossible levels of 'proof' for the blatantly obvious. 

In 2020 there is nothing more false than a fact-checked 'fact'; nothing closer to reality than officially-labelled 'fake' news; nothing more arbitrary than authoritative sources; nothing quite so distorted and agenda-driven as objective statistics... 

Dishonesty is - surely - the biggest and baddest sin in this modern world: it is the Master Sin - the sin that hides and encourages all other sins. 

And precisely because dishonesty so big, so integral The System, and as-of 2020 The System is everywhere: dishonesty is (all-but) invisible. 

 

How to tell if somebody in public life is a liar; and the mental mutilation of compulsory dishonesty

This is not difficult nowadays, in the modern West - because all of Them, everybody, without any exceptions; are constant, habitual, practised liars. The interesting aspect is what this means; how it affects us.


I find it astonishing when somebody or another in public life is accused of being A Liar. Such are always somebody on the so-called Right - but actually the moderate-Left, because there are zero people in public life who aren't on the Left.

But they All lie, all the time; the people making the accusation, the people reporting it, the people trying to refute it; the people discussing the issue: it is a community of liars. If they were not liars, if they were honest, they would not be in public life.

Lying-to-order is nowadays an absolute pre-requisite of being given a position of high power, wealth or status.

Of course they don't lie equally - some tell bigger lies than others, some tell lies more frequently than others; and of course some are better at concealing their dishonesty than others (e.g. psychopaths, who lack empathy and deeply regard all other people as subjects for manipulation, are usually the most convincing liars; the best con artists).


The thing about honesty is that it is one of the virtues which is actually possible to do for considerable periods of time - and almost anybody can achieve it (if they want to, and if they are prepared to take the consequences). Most people can be honest; at least, to such a level that the occasional lie stands-out (and can therefore, in principle, be acknowledged and/ or repented).

The possibility of sustained 'perfection' does not (for the majority of people) apply to all of the virtues (e.g. love, courage, humility); but it does apply to honesty. We can genuinely aspire to be perfectly honest; and to know whenever we fail to attain that idea. 

I know this because when I began as a scientist most of the scientists I met were completely honest about their science. (Those who were not were mostly famous and powerful US scientists, in medical research.) Nowadays, almost no (self-styled) scientists are completely honest - and most are habitually and increasingly dishonest; so I saw the transition, which happened within a generation.

I know the possibility of perfect honesty, and the consequences of abandoning the ideal.


Scientists were probably the last group in The West to adhere to an ethic of honesty; so since science was corrupted we now live in a world of pervasive and escalating dishonesty - in which liars incessantly (and dishonestly) accuse each other of lying.

Some of these liars are so deeply, habitually, professionally dishonest that they do not know the differencetruth and lie. There are all sorts of defence mechanisms and projection at work; some of them are engaged in strategically planned deceptions.

But we don't have the time or the information to distinguish between them, nor or to make quantitative evaluations of the relative degrees to which any specific individual is lying. However, in an ultimate sense, we don't need to know any more than that a person or institution is A Liar - at which point we ought to stop listening to them and ignore what they say; and certainly we should stop trusting them.


Yet the awareness of this situation is minuscule. People don't merely believe the liars, the systematic misleaders, the propagandists and hypers; they actually enforce an ethic that such people must be believed.

Anyone who refuses to believe the pronouncements of known liars in government, the media, the churches or elsewhere is accused of being evasive, of cherry picking - and of course, in a world of liars, they may indeed be engaged in simply reinforcing their own prejudices.

This especially applies to atrocity stories - of war, disaster, crimes, victimisation, fraud, good-works or spitefulness... the basic bread and butter of modern gossip. When some powerful group states that some atrocity has happened, we are expected to believe it or else be regarded as evil - indeed dangerous.


In sum, we know for sure that all official and influential sources are always liars; but belief in their lies has become the usual mechanism by which in-group identity is established.  

Belief in lies is our modern initiation ceremony; and this initiation never stops, we repeat it every day, many times per day.

Instead of accepting (for example) some kind of trial of courage or infliction of pain as a coming of age - or else be outcast; we moderns must accept the mental mutilation of believing lies (like pervasive sexism/ racism, CO2 climate change, or the reality of sex change) - Or Else Be Outcast.   


This is part of the highly-effective and evil system of totalitarian control.

To know that someone lies, to nonetheless believe those lies, and to know that one is believing lies - is one important reason why almost the entire populations of the UK and other Western nations are literally psychotic.

And this is what enables the evil totalitarian system of virtuality that we all, to a greater or lesser extant, inhabit.

The difference between truthfulness and (mere) honesty

People confuse honesty with truthfulness. 

Truthfulness implies a positive motivation to know reality - essentially for its own sake; because knowing reality is (for such people) among the highest of values. 

Honesty, by contrast; is in practice mostly negative; it is a commitment not to lie, or (much more rarely) not deliberately to mislead. 

In science - and indeed in scholarship more generally - negative honesty is necessary but insufficient: what is necessary is truth-full-ness - a positive commitment to know and describe reality, as best we may. 

The Way of Repentance via strict honesty, judged in an ideal context

Given that we nearly always fail in this world (e.g. see previous post about how we fail to live in a higher conscious state in the mainstream modern life of work and society)... given this endemic failure, our way must be a Way of Repentance.

In other words, the spiritual path is one where we recurrently recognise our failures; and (I would add) this recognition can potentially be attained by a strict and never-ceasing honesty.

We need to recognise that in normal discourse there is (intrinsically):

1. Simplification
2. Selection - in terns both of narrowness and short-termism
3. Bias
4. Wrong motivations (false aims)

The key is to recognise the deficiencies of routine discourse in terms of truth and reality: not true (not even trying to be true) and not embedded in reality (but only in a micro-operational reality, such as bureaucratic imperatives, or here-and-now social advantage or harmony).

Truth and reality are understood in the most total and ideal fashion - truth in terms of the wholeness of validity in every respect (anything short of which, must be recognised as a pragmatic, short-termist 'model' or hypothesis of unknown validity) - and a reality which encompasses divinity and eternity; (including God the creator and divine parent, post-mortal life, and our ultimate destiny and desire to become fully divine sons and daughters of God).

Everything ought to be seen in this perspective - and since this rarely happens we must explicitly notice, acknowledge and repent the failure. We must therefore respond to our deficiencies, and the deficiencies of everyday life and discourse as judged against this ultimate standard.

This implies we should not let any falsehood pass without noting it.

This absolutely requires us to interrupt every conversation or process whenever any such dishonesty (failure of honesty) becomes apparent - explicitly to note this dishonesty.

(It is the difficulty of doing this which holds us back. It is this habit which we need to inculcate in ourselves; by intent and then by practice.)

For instance, any and all questions (or required responses) that are framed in narrow, biased, false-motivated terms should not be answered without explicit reference to the falsehood of the situation.

For example, false statements should be noticed for what they are - eg intentionally deceptive, a screen for bad motivations, or simply hypothetical models which are known (for sure) to be grossly-simplified: selective, distorted, short-termist hence not-true (at best pragmatic means to a proximate end - which must be evaluated for its compatibility with the ultimate end of Life).

So first we experience honesty - in private, and in solitude and detachment - this enables us to recognise the basic situation...

This Way of Repentance is both very positive and motivating, and also starkly realistic.

It is positive in the sense of the fact that by repentance we are continually escaping the narrow and deadly constraints of 'the iron cage of bureaucracy', and the triviality and exploitativeness of normal social life; and on the other hand it is extremely humble in that we are forced continually to recognise our failures: our pervasive, recurrent, and impossible to avoid failures

Dirty Work: What about the "necessary evils" of civilization?

Having grown-up in the 1970s (i.e. as a teen), and one who also read a good deal of philosophical/ political stuff from the late 19th, early 20th century onwards; I was familiar with the problem that any civilization entails a good deal of Dirty Work.

My interpretation of Dirty Work is the stuff that needs doing in order for a particular society to sustain itself, but which is the kind of thing that it would be better if nobody did; and therefore it is an ineradicable flaw that somebody has to do it. 

Whatever the society, real or imagined, and no matter how ideal in terms of what is realistically possible - it was pretty generally recognized, including among honest socialists (who used to exist!) and others of the left, that there is always Dirty Work that needed doing. 

That DW might be coal-mining, agricultural drudgery, factory assembly lines - or it might be military and police, prisons and guards, propaganda and incentivizing... But there is always Dirty Work to be done - and it was regarded as a genuine problem how to square this necessity with the ideal society; because it is a problem with all societies. 

Even among those who acknowledged the problem, there were always people who supposed that kicking the can a bit further down the road constituted an answer. 

Replacing labouring people with machines was one instance - because it replaced the problem of doing exhausting physical labour; with instead a vastly complex system of multi-national, multi-personal, economics and trade - including systems of education, training, factory work, transportation etc - all of which was just as systemic, just as mandatory (hence, ultimately coerced), as the toiling peasant.

The same problems apply to any imaginable system of religion that might be integrated with any ideal society. The building and maintenance of churches, the provision of religious professionals (priests, theologians, administrators etc) and the systems needed to provide these (education, training, discipline, monitoring etc), a system of laws and rules for the religion - the problem of Dirty Work in any realistically conceivable religion is indeed very extensive   

So this problem of the necessarily coercive and Dirty nature of every realistically conceivable society, was a constant problem for those who were honest, and who also hoped and intended to improve human life on this earth. 

The key terms above include "realistic" and "honest" - because (starting in the middle sixties, and beginning to become dominant through the 1970s) it became evident that it had become acceptable, indeed mainstream in public and intellectual discourse, to dispose of the problem of Dirty Work by being unrealistic and dishonest. 

For examples; by denying there was a necessary problem, or removing the problem by hand-waving. That is certainly the point we have now reached, and for a long time. 

The discussions of sex and sexuality, or race, are prime instances. The favoured outcomes are merely wish-fulfilment daydreams. Realistic evaluation - e.g. in terms of negative outcomes of policy, inevitable compromises, necessary and unavoidable flaws - is not just neglected but prohibited. 

This began with the denial of adverse personal and social outcomes from a system that allowed, then encouraged, extra-martial sex, promiscuity, normalized cohabitation, and introduced "no-fault" divorce - and went on from there as the sexual revolution expanded without limit.    

Environment is another instance. In the early-mid seventies it was acknowledged that preservation of nature and enhancement of the natural environment would require a lower population, a lower "standard of living", a great simplification of life, fewer and less complex machines - with less consumption and travel and so forth... 

But currently all such Dirty Work inevitabilities are just left-out, blocked from discussion - and boosteristic, vague, wishful thinking reigns unopposed.  

Much the same applies among modern Christians. While it used to be very generally accepted that there is a large Dirty Work aspect to system-integrated Church Christianity (of all denominations, although the main problems differed for each) - that this was an ineradicably very mixed solution to the problem of religion; nowadays such matters are left-out of discussion.

Probably in consequence; the Dirty Work, systemic aspects of the Christian churches have almost-completely taken over; and everything else (the actual religion that is supposed to be "provided" by the apparatus of organization) is so marginalized as to be all-but invisible (or, as in the Birdemic, eliminated until-further-notice). 

Furthermore; those who advocate a return to a society rooted in orthodox traditionalism seem to be living in an unrealistic and dishonest fantasy day-dream; where either there are no Dirty Work aspects of their desired theocratic system - or else these necessary flaws are re-interpreted as Good Things. 

This problem applies to all actual and possible Christian Churches. System always entails Dirty Work. 

What I mean is that stuff which used to be known as "necessary evils", are either no longer regarded as necessary or (more often) no longer regarded as evil!... Usually on the basis that the system advocated is, overall, judged better than the (totalitarian, materialist, evil-motivated) system in place currently - which is a very low bar to leap! 

And this applies pretty much across the board, including among far too many Christians. Dishonesty and unrealism are institutionalized; and not just accepted, but required in public discourse - even among dissenting minorities. 

So I have circled back to my old (well-worn?) point about the necessity of honesty, if anything is to be accomplished from the situation we now inhabit. 

And the further point I wish to make is that - in a world where honesty is neither valued nor permitted - this is a matter for each individual to do for himself. Self-honesty. 

Striving for honesty about everything, with oneself, for oneself (and God). 

Personal responsibility in all (or as many as possible) things - in other words. 

Things are 'coming to a point' in the Church of England

*

"If you dip into any college, or school, or parish, or family–anything you like–at a given point in its history, you always find that there was a time before that point when there was more elbow room and contrasts weren’t quite so sharp; and that there’s going to be a time after that point when there is even less room for indecision and choices are even more momentous.

Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing.

The whole thing is sorting itself out all the time, coming to a point, getting sharper and harder...”

(That Hideous Strength - by C.S. Lewis - p. 283)

*

Over the past few weeks, things certainly are coming to a point in the Church of England: the gloves are coming off, the wolves are discarding their sheeps' clothing, and the Christian and Anti-christian sides are revealing themselves with ever-greater lucidity.

**

On one side is Giles Fraser, sometime Canon Chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral, London and a hero/ martyr of the radical Left establishment in the Church of England.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/06/why-gay-bishops-have-to-lie

'So, bishop, are you having sex with your partner?" I can't imagine anyone asking that question with a straight face. And what constitutes sex anyway? Snogging? Toe-sucking? (Is there a Church of England position on this?) Yet the new line from the C of E – ludicrously, that gay men in civil partnerships can be bishops as long as they refrain from sex (or to put it another way, we'll have gay bishops as long as they are not really gay) raises the question: how on earth will the authorities ever find out? A CCTV in every bedroom? Chastity belts in fetching liturgical colours? No, the only way the bedroom police could ever really know is if they ask and play a moral guilt trip about honesty on those being interrogated. So do sexually active gay priests or bishops have a moral responsibility to tell the truth? Actually, I think not. I'd go further: in this situation, they have a moral responsibility to lie.

Sometimes we lie for self-advancement. Morally, it's a no-brainer that this is wrong. But at other times, we lie because we don't trust another with the truth. Because we have good reason to believe that they will use it to hurt us or others. In the case of sexually active gay priests and bishops, this fear is wholly justified. It is perfectly proper that ordinarily people should maintain a strong presumption in favour of truth telling. But the situation in which gay people in the church find themselves is far from ordinary. Physical intimacy is a moral good, the very incarnation of love. Those who enforce celibacy on the basis of sexuality are maintaining a system of oppression that brings misery and loneliness to many.

I believe all Christians have a moral duty to resist this cruelty. Lying to the church authorities, in these conditions, is a bit like disobeying an unjust order. It's a form of non-violent resistance.

If there is blame for all of this it must lie with the church itself. Through fear, it encourages people to live a lie, to build their whole identity upon untruth. Thus so many gay clergy have clandestine existences, lavender marriages and unexplained holidays. Indeed, the irony of the situation is that it forces gay clergy into the position where the only way they can be true to themselves and their partners is when they deceive the sex-obsessed bedroom police.

This outward lie makes a certain sort of truth possible. After all, sex between partners is, at best, a precious communication of truth. And this is the greater truth here, a truth that is as much about our relationship with God as everything else. For the love that dare not speak its name is love itself. This is the truth that needs protecting – by a lie if necessary.

In forbidding this truth-telling love for gay people, the church authorities are responsible for the culture of deception by frightening people into a double life. Indeed, forcing sexuality underground is precisely the way to disengage it from stable loving relationships. Thus those who attack gay sex as immoral – thinking it's all about anonymous sex in toilets – are doing a great deal to create the very reality that they condemn. Honesty would probably make for more clergy having boring vanilla sex; the sort most people have, the sort that is not about a heightened transgressive thrill.

Years ago, a gay priest friend of mine, just coming out, asked me if I'd go along with him to a gay club in Birmingham. He didn't want to go on his own. But he needn't have worried. There were loads of priests in the club. The ridiculous thing was, that night they were having a vicars and tarts party. So the only people in the place not dressed as priests were the ones who actually were. "The truth will set you free" says the Bible. In circumstances of oppression, freedom and truth go underground. Real truth comes to be expressed in the gay nightclub and not from the pulpit.

"Everybody lies" says TV doctor Gregory House. That's too cynical. But you don't need to read much Freud to appreciate that deception and self-deception is endemic to the human condition, especially when it comes to something that makes us feel as vulnerable and fearful as sex. We may blithely use the language of honesty as a moral imperative but few people live up to the high-minded nature of that calling. Indeed, it may be worth extending the liar's paradox (everything I say is a lie) to suggest that people often lie the most when they are asking about truth. Truth language can be a red flag indicating evasion and bullshit. So come on, let's be a bit more honest about honesty. 

**

And on the other side, the Archbishop of Uganda:

http://www.anglican-mainstream.net/2013/01/07/archbishop-stanley-ntagali-responds-to-decision-of-church-of-england-to-allow-gay-bishops/

It is very discouraging to hear that the Church of England, which once brought the Gospel of Jesus Christ to Uganda, has taken such a significant step away from that very gospel that brought life, light, and hope to us.

The recent decision of the House of Bishops to allow clergy in civil partnerships to be eligible to become Bishops is really no different from allowing gay Bishops.  This decision violates our Biblical faith and agreements within the Anglican Communion.

When the American Church made this decision in 2003 it tore the fabric of the Anglican Communion at its deepest level. This decision only makes the brokenness of the Communion worse and is particularly disheartening coming from the Mother Church.

We stand with those in the Church of England who continue to stand for the Biblical and historic faith and practice of the Church.

Our grief and sense of betrayal are beyond words.

The Most Rev. Stanley Ntagali

ARCHBISHOP, CHURCH OF UGANDA.

**

It has suddenly become very easy to discern the sides, and what each side stands for. 

Now we can - with our eyes open, and implications clear - choose which side to stand upon.

* 

Science - from maximum to minimum honesty

*

A major difference between real science (as it was) and scientific research (as it is now) can be stated in the form that real scientists aimed to be as honest as possible, while scientific researchers do not allow their honesty to fall below a minimum level.

*

Real scientists were striving to be as honest as possible - constrained by the self-discipline, time and effort; other people's attention; the demands of bosses and referees and so on.

Modern scientific researchers strive to retain a core of essential truth in their communications - but in no sense do they try to be as honest as possible.

The appreciate that the system requires them to be dishonest, within limits, in order to get jobs, promotions, publications, funding (even in order to retain their status in situations where disagreement with the mainstream is regarded as not so much wrong as unethical).

*

Naturally, this means that real scientists were more honest that scientific researchers... but did this matter to the scientific process?

Was the difference significant?

Does it make any difference whether the average scientist is nowadays, say, 90 percent truthful when in the past the same person would have been 97 percent truthful?

*

Well maybe it does make a difference: maybe it makes all the difference in the world: the difference between science that works and science that does not work.

*

Maybe the combination of numerous persons work done with 97 percent honesty  is still mostly honest, whereas the combinations of work done as 90 percent accuracy has dipped below the level at which it is useful - the proportion of noise to signal overwhelms the specific content?

Maybe, too, once humans beings abandon the iron law of truth, and instead of striving to be 100 percent honest, they begin to allow a certain 'minimum' proportion of dishonesty (with respect to 'inessentials' - merely as a means to the end of necessary career or institutional success)

- but maybe, once you begin using dishonesty expediently, there is no reason to stop at any particular point, no reason to keep the dishonesty minimal; and many reasons incrementally to ramp-up the proportion of expedient dishonesty until...

Yes, I think that's how real science works; why scientific research does not work.

*

Christian theories should be understood as like scientific theories - Even when judged True, they may be improved, or replaced

A big, maybe lethal, problem with almost all of Christian theology, is the absolute conviction that there can be nothing new under the sun.

So that (for instance) because we have inherited an either/or dichotomy - such that knowledge or values are either subjective or objective - that must be all there is, and nothing more valid can ever be discovered or devised. 

Or, there is the idea that - to be A Christian involves accepting some body of already-existing knowledge as Just True - all true, now and forever. 

This blocked me from becoming a Christian for many, many years - because I had never come across any field of knowledge that was ever Just True, now and forever - or where I was expected to accept this up-front - expected to submit my judgment (now and come what may) to a large, complex, total and unalterable package. 

This is what is required of a Christian convert in most churches; there is some body of statements that you expected to promise, to swear is true, to pledge obedience, to commit to behave thus...

This is difficult for a truthful person to do, and it does notfeel right to be asked to do it. It is an act of submission - and what the convert is asked to submit to claims to be divine truth - and yet it comes to us as human, all too human - and indeed it soon turns out that nobody on the inside really believes or does all of it; especially not church leaders.

  

Of course one can do this nonetheless, and suppress the worry that one will not be able to live up to the promises. But what is hard to suppress is the conviction that this is a bad thing to do: I mean, it is a bad thing to expect people to swear and promise to stuff that nobody really believes or acts upon - and which often does not make coherent sense. 

It is maybe because I was a scientist - and a theoretical scientist - for much of my life, that I have always believed that there are indeed new concepts that may be discovered or devised, and that these revisions may be better than what existed in the past. 

Something that is "true" - a theory, a monograph, a scientific paper, a field of research - is true in such a way that it is nonetheless capable of revision, or even radical reshaping - as when Newtonian Physics was true; yet gave way to Einsteinian or Quantum Physics - which was also true, and better. 

This seems quite normal to me - and the weight of tradition (the great names of the past) in science does not have the same inhibiting - indeed paralysing - effect that it does in theology. 

Creative science is about accepting the overall validity of tradition (its honesty, and usefulness), but that any actual science always has errors, incompleteness, and incoherences; and therefore can be - often needs to be - improved, and potentially transformed - at least in principle (although this is usually difficult). 

And our guide is primarily honesty - with ourselves and with others; and honesty in the context of transcendental values; which for a Christian means (I would say) motivated-intent to live in loving harmony with divine creation, and the aspiration to salvation . 

I think this is a true and healthy attitude to any functional body of claimed knowledge, any system - including theology and any particular church doctrine. 

In real science, we engage with tradition and great scientists, strive to understand them - but any serious scientist regards himself as at least able to add something, to change things for the better. 

And, if he is any good, and has found "his problem"; he ought to strive to make new discoveries (or reveal past neglected discoveries) - when these are needed. 

For instance; nobody in 20th century biology is, or would regard would regard himself, as an equal to Darwin - or as his superior as a scientist. 

But Darwin's mechanism for his theory of evolution by natural selection did not make coherent sense; because Darwin did not know about genetics.

 

To combine natural selection with genetics (the "Modern Synthesis") was a colossal intellectual achievement that took several decades, and involved work by several people; such as Julian Huxley (brother of Aldous), Theodosius Dobzhansky, and Ernest Meyer - none of whom have a reputation as great as Darwin, and who (despite being genuinely creative and major scientists) are essentially unknown outside a group of specialists. 

If the scientists of the Modern Synthesis had shared the attitude of church-serving Christians; they would have said "Darwin may be incoherent, but Who Am I to try and improve on what such a toweringly great scientist did? How can little old me possibly succeed, where Darwin failed?" 

They would have given up without trying! And thereby the synthesis of Natural Selection and genetics - a theory that nowadays is understandable by innumerable normal school children (and even by most biological science majors at university) - would never have happened. 

Instead, if science had been like theology; Darwin's much more partial and incoherent theories would still be taught as the best that can be known by humans. 

In sum: the first and most famous of past scientific theories can be, and often have been, improved by other and later humans - even by those far less great that the originators (or not great at all); because it is so much more difficult to create a theory as Darwin (and Wallace) did, compared with being able to comprehend and improve a theory as Huxley et al did; compared with merely being able to understand and repeat a theory - like any 18 year old who has studied the theory of natural selection. 

Christian theology is stuck at the level of understanding and repetition. 

Well, by my reckoning; Theology consists of human theories. Theories about things like the nature of reality, the nature of God and what Jesus did; and human theories are prone to human incompleteness and error. 

(Analogously, church doctrines, principles, and rules are in-effect human theories about matters such as how best to become and stay a Christian, and how best to attain salvation.) 

In principle - so long as someone is honestly motivated to live in loving harmony with divine creation, and committed to salvation; then I see no reason why he needs to be a theological genius of the stature of Abelard, Scotus, Luther, or whatever is your idea of a definitive theologian. 

But with theology, as does not happen in science; this matter gets mixed-up with assertions of spiritual authority of churches and church-endorsed theologians. 

We are stuck at the level of repetition; because anything else is regarded as blasphemous pride - as if anyone who understands and tries to improve on the human theological theories of the likes of Paul, Boethius, Augustine, Aquinas - must be setting himself up as greater than them!

The point is that the issue at stake is - for each of us - my life in this world and my salvation. 

What matters crucially is whether I am satisfied with the truth and coherence of given theology, the implicit theories of church doctrine, or whatever is important to my situation in this world. 

In seeking to do better than what is inherited - or, more exactly, what current authorities interpret and assert has been inherited; I don't need to convince anybody else - than I need to satisfy myself. 

I should keep striving for something better until I am honestly satisfied.

And if I later stop being satisfied with what used to satisfy me, and this is making an adverse difference; well, then I should be prepared to start striving all over again. 

NOTE: This post is adapted from some comments I made at Francis Berger's blog.

A pause for thought - Rhetoric or Deep Honesty?

We are all tempted by the idea that what we say to other people - perhaps in response to a question - might influence them for the better. For instance, the idea that when somebody says something about the birdemic, the peck, antiracism of climate-emergency-warming-change; we might respond with some phrase that does real goo. 

Thus we are tempted to use rhetoric - which, I take it, is language designed to influence other people in a particular direction; language designed to affect others as desired. 

For example, rhetoric might be defensive language designed to escape from the feared consequences of non-compliance with social norms; or evangelical language to awaken another person to the truth specifically, or to the Good more generally.

Evangelical rhetoric may be highly-motivated; but even them it is prone to be manipulative and to treat other people as interchangeable units - rather than as individuals. Of course, the particular 'other person' might not be known to you - and therefore can only be treated as a stereotype of one sort or another. 

My aim - which I seldom achieve - is deep honesty or silence. 

Silence is the honest response appropriate to presumptively hostile persons (especially those on the other-side, against God) - which nowadays is the majority of human interactions (especially in the workplace). 

Deep honesty is trying to answer the underlying question, not just the specific question; to address the assumptions behind the question. 

For example, an honest answer to 'Have you had the birdemic peck?' might be just a flat 'No'. Without explanation or excuse. That might, itself, lead to something. 

Or it might be 'No - it's too dangerous' (or some elaboration thereof). 

But the deeply honest response might be that you regard the whole birdemic business as an Evil Lie; or that that you believe the peck to be, in some way, an instrument of evil in the spiritual war against God. 

Thus, to provide a deeply honest answer almost always requires a pause for thought - to take account of the personal and situational context; and then an answer of a few sentences, at least. 

That in itself means that silence, or no answer at all ('I don't want to talk about it, thanks.') may be the only practical response in most ordinary social situations. 

Yet even this kind of response is very unusual, and perhaps difficult, in 'normal' social interactions. Not to reply instantly to every question needs forethought, and - probably - would need to be practiced a few times before becoming natural and spontaneous. 

Again, a pause for thought, interrupting the usual rapid to-and-fro of casual social chit-chat, would seem to be necessary. 

For secular modernity, hypocrisy is the worst moral transgression

For secular modern societies hypocrisy is the worst sin.

Traditional Christian morality is that to sin is bad, but everyone sins since we are naturally worldly and self-loving (prideful) - what is important is to repent the sin.

And, traditionally, denying sin or defending sin or advocating sin in others are all very bad sins indeed.

In other words, although we cannot ever wholly stop ourselves from 'transgressing', we should never encourage others to transgress; people should aim at the highest standards; should publicly defend the highest standards - although they will not be able themselves to attain the highest standards.

Therefore, in the modern loose usage of the word, 'hypocrisy' is inevitable.

***

In secular modern societies, morality is regarded as being something invented and chosen; and Christianity in particular is vehemently rejected.

Yet there is a natural morality, natural law - or what C.S Lewis called the Tao in perhaps his greatest lecture series The Abolition of Man - http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/lewis/abolition3.htm

Natural morality is spontaneous in all humans at all points in history (quite possibly it is an evolutionary legacy, related to humans being social animals), and everyone (who is not a conscienceless psychopath) knows when he is transgressing it.

But secular modernity does not recognize the validity of natural morality, and the morality of secular modernity contradicts natural morality in many respects (usually with a utilitarian rationale) - this is what can be termed 'moral inversion' - where bad (according to natural morality) is re-labelled good and vice versa; bad people and good people are reversed in public esteem.

This is a normal aspect of political correctness, where monogamous heterosexual marriage among family orientated, law-abiding and hard-working people is loathed on the grounds of its hypocrisy and judgmental-ness; while open advocacy and practice of transgressive behaviours (i.e. transgressive according to natural morality) is morally aggrandized as being 'honest' and tolerant.

***

The moral inversion of PC seems to spring from its generally 'rebellious adolescent' mind set. Adolescents are (naturally) the worst behaved group in society - in terms of the psychology of personality across lifespan, it is during adolescence that a person will (on average) reach their highest levels of neuroticism, impulsiveness and extraversion, their lowest levels of empathizing/ agreeableness; and aggression levels peak around the mid teens.

The youth culture - driven by pride - has therefore evolved a new morality which makes adolescents the best people instead of the worst: the teenager as moral exemplar - the sensitive adolescent - impatient, full of angst, with multiple sensitivities, with easily bruised ego, lonely yet yearning for love - as the moral hero and compass for the rest of society...

Secular modernity (with its psychological neoteny - its essential adolescence, its suspended immaturity) therefore performs a moral inversion which relabels its own faultsas virtues, and reframes morality as primarily a matter of 'honesty'. Honesty means living by chosen standards. The square adult world is accused of hypocrisy - of failing to live up to the high standards it advocates - and this sin is seen as invalidating all else.

Adolescent 'honesty' is not, therefore, about telling the truth - but about advocating very low standards of behaviour, then exceeding them!

Only adolescents, so the story goes, are really moral - because only they adopt an 'honestly' low standard of behaviour which they - and everyone else - can truly live-up-to, can even exceed (and exceed gratuitously! - as a pure act of surplus goodness - not underpinned by religious or otherworldly rewards or sanctions).

This is perhaps the essence of moral inversion in modernity.

***

For example; for secular modernity; the open, explicit advocacy of impulsive sexual promiscuity is regarded as in itself morally admirable - since it is a standard that anyone can live up to (and gratifies at least the person doing it - the main problem being to convince the victims of assembly-line seduction that they too are being made happy and morally-enhanced by their exploitation).

Indeed, anyone who exceeds the very low moral standard, and behaves somewhat in the direction of natural morality, may be regarded as a genuine moral exemplar - e.g. a ruthless, manipulative, serially promiscuous individual who nonetheless maintains a long-term and affectionate relationship. 

***

In sum, the morality of secular modernity 'solves' the ancient problem of the inevitability of human sin by denying the sinfulness of most attitude or acts - the inevitable gap in behaviour between spontaneous morality and actual human behaviour is dealt with by down-grading the definition of moral behaviour until it is low enough that anyone can attain it.

But because humans cannot stop making moral evaluations, sin is not actually eliminated, rather the location of sin is displaced.

Evaluative neutrality is impossible for humans (we cannot be 'non-judgmental'; we are judging or evaluating animals), and because societal manipulations of natural morality are pushing against human nature, the displacement of sin is only possible with a high level of social coercion. The freedom to live a hedonic, gratification-oriented life becomes *moral advocacy* of a life of self-gratification.

The displaced sin then becomes the advocacy of high standards. High standards are regarded as aggressive because high standards will not be met, which will make people feel guilty, which makes them intractably miserable (because in secular modernity there is no forgiveness for guilt - only an attempted denial of the basis for guilt).

In a utilitarian society, to behave in a way that makes other people intractably miserable is regarded as the worst of sins...

***

In secular modern societies, people that advocate a high level of morality, especially natural morality, are seen as aggressors against the happiness of the majority - even or especially when such people actually achieve significantly higher standards of behaviour than the rest of society. The point is that their behaviour is not perfect, therefore they are hypocrites; which is the worst thing to be.

And of course such people really are 'hypocrites' in the sense that with high standards some level of degree of failure is inevitable.

***

So we get the profound moral inversions of secular modernity, in which exemplary citizens who advocate high moral standards - like Mormons and devout Evangelicals - are the primary hate figures.

While people who both advocate and practice lives of aggressive, exploitative, manipulative self-gratification are regarded as moral heroes.

Because so long as their explicitly advocated standards of behaviour are set even-lower than their actual behaviours; arrogant, selfish pleasure-seekers are immune against being regarded as that worst of modern villains: the hypocrite.

Two superb poems: two contrasting philosophies

*

Aubade by Philip Larkin


I work all day, and get half drunk at night.

Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.

In time the curtain edges will grow light.

Till then I see what's really always there:

Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,

Making all thought impossible but how

And where and when I shall myself die.

Arid interrogation: yet the dread

Of dying, and being dead,

Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse

- The good not used, the love not given, time

Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because

An only life can take so long to climb

Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never:

But at the total emptiness forever,

The sure extinction that we travel to

And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,

Not to be anywhere,

And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.



This is a special way of being afraid

No trick dispels. Religion used to try,

That vast moth-eaten musical brocade

Created to pretend we never die,

And specious stuff that says no rational being

Can fear a thing it cannot feel, not seeing

that this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,

No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,

Nothing to love or link with,

The anaesthetic from which none come round.



And so it stays just on the edge of vision,

A small unfocused blur, a standing chill

That slows each impulse down to indecision

Most things may never happen: this one will,

And realisation of it rages out

In furnace fear when we are caught without

People or drink. Courage is no good:

It means not scaring others. Being brave

Lets no-one off the grave.

Death is no different whined at than withstood.



Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.

It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,

Have always known, know that we can't escape

Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.

Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring

In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring

Intricate rented world begins to rouse.

The sky is white as clay, with no sun.

Work has to be done.

Postmen like doctors go from house to house.


***

Psalm 49



Hear this, all ye people; give ear, all ye inhabitants of the world:

Both low and high, rich and poor, together.

My mouth shall speak of wisdom; and the meditation of my heart shall be of understanding.

I will incline mine ear to a parable: I will open my dark saying upon the harp.



Wherefore should I fear in the days of evil, when the iniquity of my heels shall compass me about?

They that trust in their wealth, and boast themselves in the multitude of their riches;

None of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him:

(For the redemption of their soul is precious, and it ceaseth for ever:)

That he should still live for ever, and not see corruption.

For he seeth that wise men die, likewise the fool and the brutish person perish, and leave their wealth to others.

Their inward thought is, that their houses shall continue for ever, and their dwelling places to all generations; they call their lands after their own names.

Nevertheless man being in honour abideth not: he is like the beasts that perish.

This their way is their folly: yet their posterity approve their sayings. Selah.



Like sheep they are laid in the grave; death shall feed on them; and the upright shall have dominion over them in the morning; and their beauty shall consume in the grave from their dwelling.

But God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave: for he shall receive me. Selah.


Be not thou afraid when one is made rich, when the glory of his house is increased;

For when he dieth he shall carry nothing away: his glory shall not descend after him.

Though while he lived he blessed his soul: and men will praise thee, when thou doest well to thyself.

He shall go to the generation of his fathers; they shall never see light.

Man that is in honour, and understandeth not, is like the beasts that perish.

***


Comment

Larkin's Aubade is perhaps the best English poem written over the past six decades? - well, for quite a long time. That is the opinion of many mainstream poetry critics, and it is my opinion also.

And yet, masterpiece though it surely is - when I (by chance) turned to look at Aubade after reading Psalm 49, I could not but notice the gruesome narrowing from a universal, metaphysical, prophetic perspective to Larkin's merely personal statement of nihilism.

For Larkin, death negates life, an irony that is absurd: death makes him, personally, terrified by its implications; but for the Psalmist death underpins life with a tragic ballast: death fills him with sorrow for the world.

*

And in particular, I felt the contrast between Larkin's apparently modest, blunt, plain man's 'no nonsense' pragmatism - and the actual, underlying arrogance, glibness and superficiality of his casual discarding of the wisdom of the centuries - discarding the perspective of prophet and common man as regards death.

For Larkin death is nothing; for the Psalmist death has tremendous, overwhelming density.

Larkin's (famous ) dismissal of religion as "That vast moth-eaten musical brocade/ Created to pretend we never die" - is that really how the ancient metaphysics of the Psalmist struck him when he said? "Like sheep they are laid in the grave; death shall feed on them; and the upright shall have dominion over them in the morning; and their beauty shall consume in the grave from their dwelling."

And if it did, what does that tell us of Larkin as a representative modern man?

*

The Psalmist's prophecy of Christian salvation comes only after his profoundly (in the sense of heavily, weightily) serious hymn of the existential nature of the human condition of a society for which death was the end of worldly human delusion ("They that trust in their wealth, and boast themselves in the multitude of their riches"), exchanging this for an eternal reality of Hades: "He shall go to the generation of his fathers; they shall never see light."

Larkin speaks - or reports - as an isolated, observing self.

*

It is the characteristic modern stance of seeing through all that rubbish from past generations which struck me so forcibly about Aubade on this reading.

Larkin's arrogance is that of the isolated self whose pride at its own autonomy is based on an habitual sneering sense of its own superiority; when the self dislikes what it has made of life, then it takes pride in telling itself how bravely it is taking the nasty medicine of life.

*

Just how, exactly, did Larkin see though the perspective of the Psalmist and - suddenly, for the first time in history - recognize all-that-stuff as obviously absurd?

So obviously absurd as to require no more justification than mere statement: what amounts to pointing and smirking.

And why is this supposed to be an advance in understanding?

*

Of course, Larkin stands for us all, he is a modern Everyman; his poem is great because it depicts with searing honesty our own habitual default state.

Yet, Larkin's poetic depiction is easy to mistake for searing honesty about metaphysical reality (that is a consequence of its poetry, the sense of a general validity).

But it is not honesty about general reality, Larkin's poem is searing honesty about personal sin; a very common but distinctively modern state of sin.

Larkin's inferiority to the Psalmist derives from the fact that he had no framework from which he could perceive this depicted terror of death as a consequence of sin: the master sin of arrogant, self-sufficient pride.

*

Larkin, as a representative modern, felt the consequence of sinful pride, but could not perceive the cause: his only constructive suggestion was characteristically modern: to attempt a life of continual distraction, not to think about it: people or drink.

Larkin envied those he believed to attain this state naturally: those too dumb or unreflective to perceive the human condition, those for whom life came and went without recognition of what was happening.

Larkin envied people like that! The Psalmist pitied them.

*

Our culture of pervasive dishonesty reflects the decline of the objective symbol - How to overcome it, and live by truth

In the past, symbols - such as words, images, rituals - had an objective power that did not depend upon the mental state of the individual - in effect the symbol caused the mental state (an reality generally) in a reliable and irresistable fashion. 

This was especially seen in religion - where the effects of - for instance - Baptism or The Mass, did not depend on the individual subjectivity of the participants. The 'procedure' had an objective effect on reality, changed the world; whatever individuals may think about it.

Later, as marked by the work of Jung; there was an era in whiich objective symbols produced fairly specific effects - but only with the subjective participation of persons. The cross had a specific meaning, as did other 'archetypal' symbols; but only when the individual had faith or consented to participate. The combination of objective and subjective produced a specific effect.

 

But now, symbolism has become so weak as to be ineffectual and ineffective. People regard - for example - visual symbols such as the Rainbow, as arbitrary signifiers whose meaning can be defined and redefined at will (by the usual methods of mass persuasion - via public relations, advertising, 'education', and propaganda). Thus the rainbow went from a symbol of Christian hope, to pro-QWERY, to 'support the NHS' within a decade - and next week it may be reallocated meaning again.

In other words, symbolism is now wholly determined by power: specifcially the power to affect psychology - which includes coercive power (police, military, mobs), 'education', law, advertising, mass media, the arts and the (so-called) sciences. 

Words are likewise affected; and the meaning of words changes very rapidly - a particular word may be mandatory in public discourse and then a few years later taboo; or taboo for one group and allowed by another - such as Black, or the N word. 

The name of an entity, likewise; re-naming (of products, institutions, groups of people) is a primary tool of modern management, advertising and public relations - again the ideologies of sexual revolution and antiracism provides many examples. 

 

This is the state of consciousness of modern Man, increasingly over the past few decades; very completely-so by now. 

Consequently, the idea of honesty; the idea that one ought to use words truthfully - has all-but disappeared from public discourse. Because now words are only arbitrarily attached to things; therefore people feel no compulsion to be accurate with words (what does 'accurate' even mean?); nor to use one set of words rather than another. 

There is no dividing line between honesty and lies; indeed no meaning to the distinction - since the content of categories may be contested, swapped around, made opposite (like 'Fake News'). 

Or, more exactly, because the situation of maining is in constant flux; there is a possibility of using words to refer to a predicted future state of affairs, to a future set of relationships between words and things. 

In particular, it is permissable to use words as instructed by power; because power can and will soon be redefining things just as they wish, and the mass population will go along with this (because they always do).

 

This is perhaps a major reason why those closest to power, and who serve power, are nowadays always and habitually dishonest - why they use language wholly rhetorically (i.e. to manipulate behaviour); and yet are unaware that this is what they are doing.

(They may be angry and indignant at the 'accusation' that they are dishonest, despite that their dishonestly is an hourly-repeated objective fact, and they are Not Even Trying to be honest - the reason being that they are never honest, so have no basis for comparison.)

And this is surely why the attempts of traditionalists to hold to a fixed and objective scheme of symbolism have failed so comprehensively (even in an institution like the Roman Catholic Church, that is itself built-upon a set of fixed symbolisms).

 

This is a situation of tyranny, where power defines meaning open-endedly; and of arbitrary tyranny - since the power and meanings are circular. Naturally, purpose is abolished, along with meaning - since purpose depends on sustained values. 

All this fits with the negative and destructive nature of mainstream Establishment leftism; i.e. the global bureaucracy, which is continually and progressively destructive of all meaning, including all Good. 

The System is intrinsically evil - The System is allied to the Satanic (anti-God) agenda. Two equivalent statements...

 

The way out is Not to focus on the surface symbolism and language - which cannot be effective; but to align with the side of God, creation and The Good. 

To assert and support the reality of reality as directly (Not symbolically) apprehended. 

To live by the primacy of direct knowing, of intuition. By which truth is not 'fact' but reality. 

And we are not loyal to words, but realities.

 

Honesty is therefore to ally with God's creation and to live by its reality. 

Thus 'the death of the symbol' is itself by-passed, trasncended, rendered ineffectual.  

Are you an honest academic?

Are you an honest academic? Eight questions about truth

Bruce G Charlton

Oxford Magazine. 2009; 287: 8-10.

A culture of corruption in academia

Anyone who has been in academic life for more than twenty years will realize that there has been a progressive and pervasive decline in the honesty of communication between colleagues, between colleges, between academia and the outside world.

With this is mind, I would ask you, the reader (and presumably an academic), to consider the following three sets of questions about truth.

1. Truth-telling.

a. Have you always been truthful in response to questions about your research and scholarship –questions concerning matters such as your performance and plans, or lack of plans, for future activities?

b. When asked to fill-out forms by administrators and managers, do you answer accurately?
c. Have you ever declined to complete a document because you felt you could not, or were unable to, be truthful; and you were not prepared to be dishonest?

d. Have you been correct and balanced in describing the implications and importance of your research in the RAE, in grant requests, and in job or promotions applications?

e. Would you withdraw a paper from a high impact journal if, as a condition of publication, a referee or editor insisted on modifying the text in a way which misrepresented your true beliefs?

2. Truth-seeking.

a. Are you trying your hardest to do the best work of which you are capable (given the inevitable constraints of time and resources)?

b. Would you stop working in a well-funded discipline because it was incoherent, incorrect, grossly inefficient, or where intellectual standards were corrupt?

c. Have you declined to cooperate with any of the numerous bureaucratic schemes, projects, exercises, commissions, auditors, agencies, offices or institutes that you know are predicated on dishonesty, misrepresentation and/or propaganda?

There were eight questions. The correct answer was yes, in all instances.

Interpretation: If you scored 8 then that is OK, and you have at least a chance of doing good work in academia.

If you scored less than 8, then you ought to quit your job and become a conscientious bureaucrat instead of a phoney academic.


How to become a virtuous scholar

I say you ‘ought to’ quit your job; but maybe you don’t want to quit but you do want to change, to become a virtuous scholar. Yes? In that case you must first admit to yourself your own state of complicity in the culture of corruption, and secondly embark on an immediate program of self-reform.

Truth is difficult, very difficult: it is either a habit, or you are not truthful. Humans cannot be honest in important matters while being expedient in ‘minor’ matters – truth is all of a piece. This means that in order to be truthful you need to find a philosophical basis which will sustain a life of habitual truth and support you through the pressure to be expedient (or agreeable) rather than honest.

Because truth cannot be a solitary life: the solitary truth-seeker who is unsupported either by tradition or community will soon degenerate into mere eccentricity, incoherence or covert self-justification.

There are plenty of resources to support truth – both religious and also secular (e.g. Platonic, Aristotelian or Confucian ethics). Any academic who seeks a cohesive philosophy knows how to find such resources, and it is incumbent upon you (as a would-be virtuous academic) to explore them; find one that suits you and in which you can believe; learn about it and live by it.

How did we get here? Drawing the line

We inhabit an academic system built on lies and sustained by lies. So, how did this situation came about? Another question might help clarify:

Q: Have you ever been asked to make a statement about your research, scholarship (or indeed teaching) that is less-than-fully-truthful; with the rationale that this is for the good of your department, research team, college, university or discipline?

Everyone reading this article would have to answer yes to this question. The explanation is that academics are pressured to lie for the (supposed) benefit of their colleagues or institutions. For instance, when your unit was being ‘inspected’ have you ever been told: a. that you must attend the inspection and meet with the inspectors and also; b. that you when you do meet the inspectors, you restrict your remarks to pre-arranged untruths. You are expected to lie, the inspectors expect you to lie; and the biggest collusive lie is that the process of inspection has been honest and valid.

For decent people, such quasi-altruistic arguments for lying are a more powerful inducement to becoming routinely dishonest than is the gaining of personal advantage. Indeed, lying to be agreeable is probably the primary mechanism that has driven the corruption of academia. Modern academics have become inculcated into habitual falsity by such arguments and pressures, until we have become used-to dishonesty, don’t notice dishonesty - eventually (like the inspectors, managers and administrators) come to expect dishonesty.

The solution to the current degenerate situation is radical in its simplicity – just be truthful, always. Never lie about your work, not even in a ‘good cause’. Maybe in some other professions absolute honesty can be subordinated to other imperatives (e.g. loyalty, literalistic rule-following, and obedience) – but not in academia. Here honesty is primary and ought to be non-negotiable.

As an academic, your colleagues, your employers, your institution should be able to ask a lot from you – but not to lie. As an individual you can pursue personal status, security and salary by many legitimate ways and means – but never by dishonesty.

That is where the line must be drawn. Starting now, why not?


Obstacles in the path of virtue

Why not? Because to become systematically truthful in a modern academic environment would be to inflict damage on one's own career: on one's chances of getting jobs, promotions, publications, grants and so on. In a world of dishonesty, of hype, spin and inflated estimations - the occasional truthful individual will be judged by the prevailing corrupt standards.

When 'everyone' is exaggerating their achievement, then an automatic deduction or devaluation is applied – so that the precisely accurate person will, de facto, be judged as even worse than the already modest (compared with prevailing practice) estimation which they place upon themselves. In an environment when it is routine for mainstream academics to claim 'world class' status' (and this is understood to represent national fame in the real world); an honest academic who accurately claims national status will find it is assumed that his true status is merely of local importance.

Obviously, taking a firm stance of truthfulness would mean such individuals would forgo some success in their careers at least in the immediate term; indeed the sanctions might be much more extreme than this. But over a longer timescale, the superior performance of self-selected groups of honest academics working together in pursuit of truth would become seeds from which (with luck) real scholarship could again grow.

The necessary first step would be for academics who are concerned about truth to acknowledge the prevailing state of corruption and then to make some kind of personal pledge to be truthful in all things connected with their work: to be both truth-tellers and truth-seekers.

Truth-telling would apply to matters both ‘great and small': things like grant applications: applications for jobs, tenure or promotion; communicating with the media; casual informal conversations; conference presentations; papers and books; and reviewing or refereeing. This would be done such that that a 'habit of truth' becomes thoroughly established.

Furthermore, the pledge should also be primarily to seek truth in one's work (and not mainly to seek status, power, grants, promotions, income etc). Even more difficult is the imperative to focus one's own research and scholarship where one believes there is greatest potential to make the largest contribution; and not (for example) merely to follow academic fashion, or do whatever is most likely to lead to grants, or do what most pleases the department, or do work because it leads to higher research ratings.


A 'Church' of truth

Such is our current state of corruption that the above insistence on truthfulness in academic life seems perverse, aggressive, dangerous - or simply utopian and unrealistic. But truthfulness in academia is not utopian. Indeed it was mundane reality in the UK, taken completely for granted (albeit subject to normal human imperfections) until just a few decades ago. Old-style academia had many faults, but deliberate and systematic misrepresentation was not one of them.

Now, however, academia is a communications economy that operates using debased currency. Our discourse uses paper money inflated by hype and spin - like a ten dollar bill crudely stamped-over with a ten million dollar mark; until we no longer know what is accurate and who to trust, what is exaggerated and which is trivial, and when stuff simply got made-up because people felt they could get away with it.

So I am proposing nothing short of a moral Great Awakening in academia: an ethical revolution focused on re-establishing the primary purpose of academic life, which is the pursuit of truth. Such an Awakening would necessarily begin with individual commitment, but to have any impact it would need to progress rapidly to institutional forms. In effect there would need to be a 'Church' of truth (or, rather, many such 'Churches' – especially in the different academic fields or 'invisible colleges' of active scholars and researchers).

I use the word Church because nothing less potent would suffice to overcome the many immediate incentives for seeking status, power, wealth and security. Nothing less powerfully-motivating could, I feel, nurture and sustain the requisite individual commitment.

However, given that we are in the current mess, and pre-existing safeguards have clearly proved inadequate; there is a big question over whether academia has within itself sufficient resolution to nourish individual academics in their difficult task of devotion to truth. What we need is moral courage. But there is a severe and chronic shortage of this commodity in modern British universities.

I suspect that the secular and this-worldly Zeitgeist of the modern university operates on such a here-and-now, worldly, pragmatic and utilitarian ethical basis as utterly to lack moral resources for the job I have in mind. When happiness is the ultimate arbiter, the certainty of short-term punishment weighs far more heavily in the balance than a mere possibility of greater long-term rewards.

So will it happen? – will there be a Great Awakening to truth in academia? Frankly, I doubt it; and we will probably continue to see the world of scholarship degenerate towards being merely a mask for the pursuit of other interests.

But I would love to be proved wrong.