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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The desperate appeal of deus ex machina

"Deus ex machina" is a term used to describe the plot device by which intervention from outside the action appears just before some catastrophic disaster, and solves an apparently impossible problem. 

In "real life" DEM has long formed the basis of optimism - the hope that something not-known (or known but previously inactive) will emerge unexpectedly to save us. 

Or to put it negatively, despair may be staved-off by hoping that "Something will turn-up". 

This may, of course, be true! 

Because we really do not know or understand much about how the world works; so there is never reason to give-up hope.

But hope is not the same as optimism - and it is a very different thing to hope for rescue, than it is to expect rescue by some unknown event.

In particular, it is foolish to construct a specific hope from a logical sequence of double-negative assertions. 

For example, that (for all we know) we cannot be sure that "leader"-X isn't really a genuine saviour, who is (despite superficial appearances) cleverly plotting behind the scenes towards some kind of decisive last-minute master stroke. 

Or, spiritually; the worse the world is apparently getting, and the weaker and more corrupt "my church" seems to be - nobody can disprove that this won't make it more likely that the Deity will (at last!) step-in, make a personal intervention, and save things in some unexpected fashion.

(Such a "saving might itself be negative - as in saving-from the default of Hell; or it might be positive in the sense of establishing a redeemed Church as dominant and pervasive across society.)

Such reflections were provoked by my again considering the (in retrospect) extraordinary optimism that was prevalent among spiritual people in the years approaching and just following the millennium. 

Among many or most such people existed a near-consensus that the whole world was shortly to be raised to a higher spiritual level (higher "frequency" or "vibrational" level); that would affect everybody and every-thing (like it or not).

...Although the more discerning in the New Age clearly acknowledged that for this external influx to be effective would also require a receptivity - or even some positive spiritual move - from each individual; in order to meet this incoming spiritual "energy" halfway. 

So an element of at least consent, and probably collaboration, was also required -- nonetheless the primary cause was a new, or greatly amplified, external influence. 

My interpretation of this apparently anachronistic millennial expectation is that it was the product of a kind of desperation; especially among those genuinely spiritual people who had rejected (or simply did not believe) Jesus's offer of reasserted eternal Heavenly life. 

And, mutatis mutandis, I think the same applies to the optimism (as contrasted with hope) of so-many of those Christians who are serious and motivated about their faith. 

The Christians who believe-in some kind of external saving of this mortal life and the earth; are guilty of conflating the true and sure hope of Heaven, with a false optimism concerning this-world. 

This false-optimism among Christians seems particularly pernicious, insofar as it entails God intervening to save (what seems to me) the most deeply evil civilization the world has yet known - I mean a civilization that is already, and increasingly, strategically and officially inverted in its values.  

The answer is simple, but difficult; and is to strive to be motivated primarily by next-worldly hope rather than this-worldly optimism - and to root this in the faith that God will (indeed, by Jesus, already-has) made it possible for anybody and everybody, in whatever situation, time, or place) to attain salvation.  

The next inference is more controversial among Christians, which is that this can only be attained by taking personal responsibility for salvation. 

In other words; I am assuming that there will be no worldwide, or even culture-wide, deus ex machina intervention; because everything has already been done; and "all" (!) that remains is for us as individuals is to recognize that reality - and to make our commitment, to choose to follow Jesus...

That is the essential starting-point. 

And then... we each need to discover what that actually means for us; for us specifically - here-and now.   

Christians have to 'Hope' - but what does that mean?

It seems to me that many Christians are confused by the injunction to Hope. 

Surely it is a vital truth that Christians must Hope - yet I often see this grossly (and sometimes anti-Christianly) misinterpreted and misapplied into a foolish and unrealistic optimism about This World; which amounts to the denial of Hope. 

For example, Christians may look at The World - at the state of the churches, politics, or any social institution; at the character and behaviour of some political, religious or business leader - and in effect they will refuse to take seriously the overwhelmingly negative and pessimistic signs and trends; because they must (they assume) be 'hopeful'. 

This amounts to a gross failure of discernment due to a failure even to try and discern; asserting a non-Christian kind of non-judgmentalism which is actually a denial of spiritual responsibility. 

Or, it may be a fear of despair; the sense that if we really took a serious and measured account of states and trends then we would be plunged into despair - and therefore they fall back on an assertion of 'Hope' which is actually a kind of dishonest optimism. 

The distinction between optimism and Hope is that optimism is about this world, while Hope is about the next. 

Jesus promises those who follow him, that their reward will be resurrected life everlasting in Heaven - but (obviously) he did not promise that life for his followers would be 'Heavenly' in this world. 

(And if he had made such a promise of worldly happiness, then by now it has been refuted so many times that it would make Jesus a liar.) 

Hope is indeed the antidote to despair; but this Christian Hope is a product of Faith - not of a fixed attitude of doctrinal optimism such as that things might get better, somehow; anybody might suddenly repent and reform, despite everything - and so on. 

Of course any such thing might happen and cannot be ruled-out; but that is not a reason to ignore, explain-away, let alone excuse evil when we have good reason to discern evil.

Faith is not about Hoping that God will intervene to make everything right in this world; Faith is a confident belief in our transformation into Sons and Daughters of God after death.

If we are using Faith and Hope as excuses not to discern, or as an excuse for cowardice and lack of principle; that is actually itself a type of sin - a turning-away-from God. 

So, let's take care not to do it - despite the frequent temptations!

 

Where lies hope? A Schumpeterian analysis

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The greatest weapon of the enemy is despair - it is against despair that we must fortify.

Yet not by false optimism.

Because false optimism does not work.

In a situation where realistic evaluation leads to pessimism about the outcome, where lies hope?

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What seems futile is to hope that the mass of population, and all powerful institutions (including most churches) can be persuaded to abandon their path of suicidal, hedonic distraction.

Absent an almost-instantaneous switch to Christianity, any of the ruling elite who abandon secular materialism will instantly be thrown into a despair which is paralysing.

They will be denied their pleasures, their goals, their social status and support - yet they will have nothing to replace them.

(A grim satisfaction derived from the greater accuracy of one's world view will not be of any practical consoling value - certainly it provides near-zero motivation for most people most of the time.)

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To reform a thoroughly corrupt and rotten 'institution' like the Church of England, state schools and universities, the legal system, political parties, the civil service, health services, or the mass media - to reform any these in a world of dominant and interlinked bureaucracy, and a world where a change of direction in any one place will be fought by all the other places... well, it really is inconceivable.

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And yet we must hope for change. 

And I mean must: Despair is such an overwhelming sin that it sweeps away all virtue.

If reform is impossible (or, more accurately, something an informed and rational person cannot believe-in) then replacement is the only alternative.

Replacement, not reform.

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The master theorist of this simple but unfamiliar perspective was, I think, Joseph Schumpeter:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=schumpeter

The idea was that economies grew mostly by replacement of large units - as when one whole industry (automobiles) replaces an other (horse drawn carriages and carts).

That human societal adjustment was not typically incremental but categorical.

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On this basis, we can assume, realistically, that the current secular, hedonic society of nihilism and self-loathing suicide will not last, and will be replaced; and we can assume that it will be replaced by a religiously-based society - but we can also assume that on present trends that, in most places of the modern world, that religiously-based society will not be Christian.

The trends are against Christianity.

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So, we have a situation in which we await a Schumpeterian period of 'Creative Destruction' in which we anticipate wholesale replacement of many or most social institutions - but most Christians in most places must realistically anticipate that the wholesale replacement will not bring in a Christian society.

And yet we must hope.

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My conclusion is that Christians need to transfer their hope away from dying institutions that want to die. 

These are hope-less.

And instead channel their hopes to living institutions that want to live: no matter how small and powerless they may currently seem to be compared to the vast lumbering cancer-riddled dinosaur institutions which constitute modern socio-political life in the West.

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Life in the dinosaurs is one of mutual parasitism - success comes to the tumours which can most efficiently feed on the masses of rotting flesh which they themselves have caused and are exacerbating.

Modern leadership therefore celebrates neoplasia, and admonishes us to join-with the most malignant metastases; to focus on first killing, then consuming, the dwindling supply of healthy, living tissue

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This metaphor of malignancy seems to capture the weak-strength, the effete-vigour, the docile-domination displayed by modern bureaucratic 'leadership'.

Modern leadership is a matter of organizing the forces of destruction more effectively to exploit the destruction they themselves create and continue.

Replacing a modern leader with another who is more 'effective' is usually akin to a malignant transformation; in which a slow-growing local tumour - that might take many years to kill you - undergoes swift evolution into an invasive, metastatically seeding and rapidly-lethal sarcoma.

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The message of hope is not to cling to delusive optimism, not to seek by persuasion to reform suicidal institutions which do not want to be reformed.

Much of my life has been a serial (typically delayed) realistic recognition of the fact that things have now gone too far - and a withdrawal of hope from institutions, organizations, professions, groups that have now, one the whole and in overall tendency, abandoned their proper role and embraced self-destruction.

Realistic hope therefore depends on each of us finding at least one alternative group of at least some people who, one the whole and in net effect, embrace life not death, proper function not parasitism, creation and making not novelty and decomposition, Heaven not Hell.

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Clarification:

Lest I be misunderstood.

I am not advocating the utopian, impossible, unreal idea of quitting the evil bureaucracies of modernity - bureaucracy is in fact the world in which we all live, even when we do not work directly for a bureaucracy - bureaucracy, hence our complicity in evil-motivated institutions, is inescapable.

But I am stating that we must learn not to place hope in these institutions, not to hope that they will become self-reforming, or be persuaded to become good from the inside, or even significantly better.

Indeed, we must not 'give them the benefit of the doubt', as if they were basically well-meaning. If in doubt, we should assume (on the basis of past experience and organizational inertia) that they are always (except by accident) up to no good - any and all bureaucratic 'initiatives' are to be considered destructive (unless preceded by explicit repentance). 

Nor am I suggesting that we must join any or every group in which we have hope (that may, or may not, be possible, to varying degrees) - most of our hopes will necessarily remain theoretical and at-a-distance.

But if we cannot or do not join an institution in which we have hope, we should try to support it; and also I think we must endeavour to find at least one or two, or some group of, people with whom we can ally, meet, speak face to face. 

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Christians are badly mixed-up about Hope - with evil consequences

It seems to be a hallmark of the dangerous stupidity of most self-identified Christians that they translate the injunction to Hope - as one of the core virtues - into a kind of dumb optimism about the people and social institutions of 2025. 

They "hope" that if they continue to believe, support and obey their leaders, national government, church, science and medicine etc; then this kind of undiscerning process of taking the side of evil and obeying it, on the basis that it "might" (hopefully) actually be good is A Good Thing. 

Good and also necessary because a "Christian" thing. 

The reasoning is that if a good thing is not certainly utterly impossible, then Christians ought to believe it - or, at least, say they believe it. 

Such Christians seem to spend most of their energies and efforts in lending assistance to evil-affiliated people and institutions; on the grounds that "there is always Hope!" that these might already are secretly good, or good despite everything, or change their minds and become good...

Especially if we "give them the benefit of the doubt" - who knows? 

(It is easy to imagine what Jesus would have said if he had been told to "give the benefit of the doubt" to the activities of Temple money-changers, or the Pharisees?)

So people continue (actively as well as passively) to support Western nations and social institutions - including churches - that once may well have been overall-good; but now are quite openly and aggressively untruthful and pursue value inversion... 

And all on the basis of what they call Hope!

This is evil in at least two ways: Firstly because it supports the strategies of evil institutions in their work of corrupting the world. Secondly because it corrupts the individual who supports evil institutions. 

It's my impression that such is one of the most common methods by which individuals, including many individual Christians, get corrupted; and drift into changing sides in the spiritual war of this world.

Even worse, they change sides without realizing that they have done so, and therefore they have aligned with evil without repenting. 

[In this world of sin; to do evil, even to support evil, is itself not the most fundamental spiritual problem. Jesus came to save sinners, exactly because we cannot stop sinning. The really serious, indeed lethal, spiritual problem is to do evil without recognizing, acknowledging and repenting that evil.] 

Such Christians have set-aside the need to take personal responsibility for their discernments and judgments, and personally to make spiritual choices in this mortal life. 

Instead, what they actually do, is make more-expedient, more socially-acceptable, more personally-rewarding life choices on the excuse of Hope... 

Which as of 2025 means supporting organizations and groups that are overall explicitly evil in both their aims and methods. 

The problem with this "Hope" is therefore that it blocks thinking, discernment, judgment and personal responsibility - and dissolves the very purpose and meaning of life.

Not good.  

If not; then what?

Christian Hope is meant to be something very solid and sure; it is meant to be rooted our firm intention and belief in our own salvation. 

We ought not to be un-sure about this, because the matter is in our own hands. Jesus made it possible; after that, it is our choice. 

Vague wishful-thinking Hope has no place in this - we ought to be thinking of salvation in a realistic way: do we want it, will we commit to it? 

But what about other people? 

In the first place we have no business hoping for the salvation of people in the mass or in the abstract ("people" reported in history books, or the mass media); and our feelings are only genuinely Christian when they relate to actual human beings...

Indeed, to those whom we love to at least some degree. (Bearing in mind that love is inter-personal - between human and other beings.) 

We can and should and do Hope for the salvation of those we love: and this is very important. 

Loving is, indeed, the single most important thing that we can do for them. 

But this Hope is rooted in the fact that the game is not over until it is over. 

In particular, no matter how deeply enmeshed and engaged in evil; those who currently reject salvation are allowed to change their mind at the very last moment - and perhaps forever.

It can be seen that this Hope has nothing to do with the necessity for judgment and discernment in this our mortal lives. 

We can, should and must evaluate other people, organizations, nations; in terms of whether they are good-affiliated on the one hand - or else opposed to God and divine creation. 

We need to make and act upon such judgments. Obviously we do! As Jesus did. 

And this has absolutely nothing to do with any claim that our judgment is fallible... Of course our judgment is fallible, in this as in everything! If infallibility were required we could never do anything, and neither would we choose to do nothing. 

To demand infallibility before judgment is incoherent; hence (even for this reason alone) evil.  

Genuine, strong Christian Hope is in fact a product of faith in God: faith in a God who is our loving parents, and who is the creator. 

But that is not sufficient, because for Hope to be real and for us personally, we need furthermore faith in Jesus Christ who made our salvation - resurrected eternal life in Heaven - possible to those who follow him. 

All genuine Hope therefore springs from our personal confidence in our own salvation. 

So, in this sense, and contrary to mainstream Christian teaching; we ought not merely to "Hope" for our salvation, because it is guaranteed us - if we make the needful commitment to live wholly by love. 

We should therefore live in sureness of our salvation. 

And Hope? 

Well, Hope is for those we love; and Hope is an ultimate aspiration related to their final choice and destination.

Hope is not a guide to our behaviour in this mortal life.  

Bureaucracy kills the spirit - and bureaucracy is now (almost) everywhere

I find it hard to recognize that most people do not feel - immediately and without having to reflect upon it - the innate evil of bureaucracy; the soul-killing properties of a world of monitoring and control of ever more of life; the world of ever more regulations, procedures, check-lists. 

And the adverse effect that bureaucracy has upon people - on their thinking, behaviour - on their souls... I am astonished that this is not more widely recognized, and opposed.  

My own aversion to bureaucracy is spontaneous and powerful; and has shaped my life for several decades - and much of the 'activism' of my younger adult life was directed against it in medicine, universities and science.

For one example, I was the editor of what was apparently the last international academic journal Not to be (bureaucratically) peer reviewed (Medical Hypotheses). And the (official) reason for sacking me from this job was my refusal to introduce peer review. 

But what I did not recognize about bureaucracy until a few years ago - was that it was not just a result of evil choices; but more fundamentally a consequence of bad choices operating on changes in human consciousness. 

Past societies were never bureaucratic in the way that ours is - and officialdom lacked the parasitic and malignant tendency of modern bureaucracy, primarily because they could not be like that. The minds of Men could not operate in the ways necessary for a modern bureaucracy. 

When modern Man 'evolved' (developed deliberately; as part of God's creation, part of God's plan) bureaucratic thinking was always going to be a temptation; but it was one that Men were supposed to reject. 

A handful of the early (and Christian) romantics (e.g. Coleridge, Wordsworth, Novalis) showed the proper path, the God-intended and God-hoped-for path. But instead most Men chose the path of atheism, leftism and materialism - which leads inexorably to bureaucracy, death of the spirit, nihilism and despair.

Now bureaucracy is the public face of Ahrimanic evil: it has occupied the world, including the means of production and communication, and extends its tentacles almost daily. 

Now - if we reject bureaucracy, we also reject the System - and the System is what keeps us alive. 

Yet the ultimate evil motivation of bureaucracy is evident in the fact of its parasitic, malignant nature - that it will grow until it kills its host. 

And its evil is evident in that the bureaucratic leadership class - the leaders of major government, institutions and corporations; are advancing in corruption beyond the Ahrimanic; and into more purely negative evil of the spitefully-destructive.

In other words, because of their developing corruption - because of being ideological bureaucrats; They no longer serve The System - but instead serve Satan and themselves. 

Therefore the System - the global bureaucracy - is not only killing itself distally by parasitic colonization of the means of production... But also killing itself from within - by leaders implementing mandatory policies for enhanced group and interpersonal resentment; and multiple PSYOPS leading to destruction at all levels. 

The bureaucracy is, in other words, no longer internally-'rational', rule-based and systemic in nature;  but convulsed from within by contradictory objectives, compulsory incoherence, value-inversions and other manifestations of the most advanced forms of evil.  

 

This is why the individual must step-back from any affectation of concern with the System, with Politics, with Civilization or Society... These are not an answer, because these are destroying themselves from both external and internal reasons. 

We now have a global bureaucracy, which is a global system for evil; and the system evil is one that is atheist, leftist and materialist - and which therefore innately has the property of damning all those who live by it, believe it, endorse it. 

I think everybody knows this at some unconscious (and usually denied) level: i.e. that we are in the End Times - although what that phrase means in detail is unsure. But I mean the sense that things are going spiritually downwards and will continue to go inexorably downwards, to some kind of terminus.  

Thus hope is in opposition to optimism. 

Hope is spiritual - for salvation: for resurrection to life eternal. And hope depends on being spiritually separate from the System bureaucracy. 

Whereas optimism (expectation of positive outcomes) depends on wishing for the bureaucracy to continue - wishing for it not to be destroyed by inner-spite or by its own malignant tendencies - or not yet, at any rate. 

Optimism dictates that we defend and try to reform the System; hope dictates that we neither actively nor willingly participate in the work of evil; that we do identify, repent and reject evil. 

The System demands that we identify-with its evil - demands that we want and favour inclusion for our-selves and for all. 

But Romantic Christianity instead has it that our hope be located in divine creation rather than the System; beyond this world rather than in this world; beyond death rather than in mortal life. 

Our task is therefore to live from this transcendental root. 

This task is not easy - but it is possible. 

To be positive and hope-full - but not delusionally optimistic: The challenge of these times

In this time and place, it is my understanding that people have painted-themselves-into-a-corner by their fundamental assumptions - and I include most Christians in this criticism. 

This is, in a sense, unfortunate - or at least hazardous - because it means that a good deal of negativity is required when it comes to the negativity (and indeed nihilism) which our civilization, culture, and most people has incorporated as the basis of our world view. 

So there nearly-always needs to be a good deal of demolition of despair-tending ideas and ideals - and this negativity can itself become a habit, a mind-set; whereas it ought to be merely a swiftly transcended preliminary phase, prior to embarking on a positive and hopeful life. 

We cannot live spiritually on the basis of double-negativity. Especially not modern Men who spontaneously tend towards alienation, cut-offness: the assumption that the world is purposeless, meaningless and indifferent. 

Because we cannot live spiritually in opposition, not even in opposition to evil. 

In order that we have "something to look forward to"; there is a temptation to worldly-optimism, or even to spiritual optimism - "optimism" being here defined as the belief that things Will get better - that our mortal lives will be better, that we are on a path of spiritual progression.

(Such optimism is the basis of the vast industry of self-help. And much that presents itself as self-help, as ways to a better life or world, is - in fact - a dishonest species of would-be careerism.) 

Optimism just-is delusional in this entropic and evil-ruled world - and leads not to a better world, but to systemic distortion and denial of realities.

(e.g. The distortion of being optimistic about what are actually evils - but presented as a path to Good. e.g. The denial of things going-nowhere or getting worse, by constant hyping, spinning and propaganda about minor and insignificant triumphs.)  

Yet, if optimism is excluded, but positivity demanded; then there are ways ahead; ways of approaching your actual life that focus on the spiritual and the eternal - and do not require anything resembling incremental and cumulative progress or long-term improvement. 

Indeed; I think that circumstances (as well as divine communications) tend to guide us towards exactly what is actually attainable - towards that which we our-selves can do, regardless of what other people are doing.

What has been taken-away on the one hand; is a gift on the other. 

The spiritual temptations of worldliness and expectations of increasing health, wealth, pleasure, social status are (realistically) eliminated; such that autonomous agency is is laid bare. 

That which is necessary and good is also, increasingly, the only viable possibility!

In sum: we can choose to be realistically-positive and hope-full, about a situation in which we cannot (in honesty, as Christians) be optimistic. 

  

Socio-political optimism is merely an estimate of probabilities - not a virtue (Christian hope is "not of this world")

Socio-political optimism is merely an estimate of probabilities - not a virtue. 

The Christian virtue of hope is properly "not of this world". It is directed beyond death, beyond resurrection  - towards Heaven.  

So, an optimistic estimate of this-worldly (including socio-political) probabilities may be honest or dishonest, objective or manipulative, well-informed or blind, rooted in joy or in fear.

On the other side: pessimism about this world, including pessimism regarding the future socio-political situation, is neither a virtue nor a sin. 

In and of itself, pessimism is just a different estimate of future probabilities. 

What makes pessimism a virtue or a sin, is the true motivation behind a declaration of pessimism.  

In these times, one besetting sin is to despair existentially; to despair of salvation and God's loving creation; because of our personal (incomplete, biased) understanding of the events and probabilities of this-world. 

Another besetting sin of these times is optimistic despair... A Micawber-like clutching-at-straws type optimism; motivated by the reality that someone cannot psychologically tolerate the reality of a pessimistic evaluation. This is a refusal to face fear - therefore itself a species of despair; driven by lack of faith in Christian hope.

Whereas; it is virtuous (albeit a fine-line to walk) genuinely to be a joyous, hope-filled, pessimist!

 

The anti-Christian effects of superstition, propitiation, sacrifice

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I feel in myself a deep, existential worry which is superstitious, and relates to the idea of propitiating - ultimately by sacrifice.

So, I resist expressing happiness, confidence, hope, optimism - I resist allowing myself to feel confidence in the future - I am to some extent constrained in being honestly positive about such matters, for fear that it will trigger resentment, revenge, reaction from others.

It feels like there is something which regards my feeling happiness, confidence, hope and optimism as being arrogant or 'cocky'; and needing to be taken-down-a-peg  and taught-a-lesson. 

I therefore feel negatively-compelled to think things, and to avoid thinking things, from a fear that someone or some-thing will be offended, prickly, insulted, jealous; it is a fundamentally superstitious attitude of living life among rules - mostly unknown - which prescribe and prohibit and are zealously enforced; and the main business of life as being rule-following and avoidance of rule-breaking - and the servile serving-out of punishments for our inevitable breaches.

*

This constraint motivated by fear of reprisal may be realistic in human society - given the endemic nature of spitefulness, and the 'dog in the manger' attitude of so many people who delight in the misery of others and whose main concern is that nobody else should have more or be more than themselves.

(This is, indeed, the case for such high-flown garb as 'equality', egalitarianism, sexual liberation, democracy and so on.) 

*

But there is more to it than this. The constraint is also (and perhaps primarily) inner - it is present even in the privacy of my mind, of my stream of conscious thought.

This is not surprising since belief in gods, spirits, ghosts, malicious ancestors at large - belief in 'the supernatural' in general - is spontaneous and natural to humans - we believe that our inner thoughts are to some extent accessible and shared and communicated, and that among those who share them are powerful and malicious entities (something like the Christian concept of demons).

This is a powerful constraint - and I suspect it is a very general factor in human affairs (although I can only observe it indirectly in other people - I and sure it is there). However, although general, spontaneous, natural - I suspect it is anti-Christian in a developed sense of Christianity - for the simple reason that it implies God (who knows our thoughts) is not fully loving, but is prone to the same kind of resentment and revenge as other people - indeed the worst kind of people - in this world.

Yet at the same time (because it is general, natural, spontaneous to humans) this tendency to assume that God really does have a resentful and vengeful attitude is a constant tendency to which individuals and organizations and society tend to recur (for motivations which may be 'good' - e.g. encouraging or enforcing good behaviour - as well as wicked).

*

This can be seen even among our own young children, who sometimes act towards us in a way that shows they are afraid that we do not really love them, that we need propitiating.

Sometimes the children are right - because parents are not perfect; but they are fundamentally wrong in that loving parents really are not motivated by resentment and really do not need to be propitiated - indeed a loving parent is appalled and deeply sorrowful to perceive this attitude in his children - an attitude based on fear. 

*

So, the situation seems to be that it is (at least to some significant extent) natural for humans to treat God as if he were a demon; and demons (I think) really do want to be treated with superstitious concern, propitiated and sacrificed-to.

Demons (presumably) want us never to be free of the constraining fear to express (or even to feel) an attitude that is positive care-free, hope-full. They want humans to cringe, to be eaten up with anxiety about deflecting bad luck, evil influences, they want us to be hog-ridden by superstitious observations, they want us to be always and repeatedly destroying good things as 'sacrifices' - and to regard this destruction of good things as necessary to deflect divine 'wrath'.

*

Unsurprisingly, because humans are error prone and yield to sin, this attitude of constraining fear has been (to varying extents, but sometimes very fully) incorporated into Christianity - the attitude that God watching out for us to trip up, get angry, punish us - unless this is deflected by propitiation and sacrifice - by a general human attitude of pessimism, expressions of misery... an attitude which is in fact and to some significant extent a dishonestly negative expression of our state of mind.

People come to fear - even inside their heads - a full and honest expression of positive and happy states of mind; asif this would trigger the jealous resentment of God! This I feel in myself, and I believe I perceive it in people all around me.

But I believe it is anti-Christian - a flaw, an error, a sin - a consequence of insufficient Christian faith and not a sign of Christian faith: this anxious, superstitious focus on propitiation and sacrifice is itself an insult to God rather than respect for God; deeply saddening to God, rather than what he wants from us.

*

Indeed, when we treat God as if He were a demon, it is analogous to someone who falsely accuses her loving parents of 'abusing' her. It is to treat our loving Father in Heaven as if He were an abuser.

That is a measure of how serious an error we are making; how serious a sin it is to feel constrained against expressing - even to ourselves - our happiness, hope, confidence.
*

Note: On this view, Christ as a propitiation and sacrifice is a matter of getting all that stuff out-of-the-way; of telling us not to worry about it any more because Christ has utterly and permanently taken care of it.

Political optimism is an Antichrist phenomenon

Just a reminder, eight years on - referencing the current environment of optimism among the self-styled "based" online - that we live in a totalitarian civilization; and that to desire for its revitalization by the results of an election is the kind of sin implied by the Antichrist phenomenon - to place one's hope in one who is not Christ, but in important and fundamental respects - a this-worldly net-opposite of Christ*. 

Recall too, that this-worldly pessimism Is Not Despair. 

Nor is optimism a Christian virtue; indeed, it may be an evil coping-mechanism. 

With matters as we know they are in The West; we should hope for the best (because we do not know everything) -- yet our hope needs to be not of this world;  but we should expect things to get worse - because that is where we are+, and the trend for generations, with self-destruction baked-in; and "the worst" is what Western people deeply and overwhelmingly want.

*Of which the "queue a-none" PSYOP was a prime instance: its mantra being that we ought-to "trust" [i.e. assume the positive inner motivations of a mainstream politician, and team], "the plan" [i.e. The System - i.e. external and human guidance; and do not take personal responsibility for your value-discernment]. 

+Things are much worse than you think: progressing over more than two centuries, by now the rot goes very deep and very wide. Reset to an earlier phase is impossible - it has never happened, and it never will.   

Superstitious fear of nemesis thwarts joy and hope - Colin Wilson, William Arkle and optimism

The superstitious attitude assumes that there is some cunning and perverted consciousness presiding over all our acts and, if we fail to keep to the special and secret rules, this presiding entity causes unpleasant things to happen to us and our loved ones.

From 'Justice' in William Arkle's Geography of Consciousness (1974).

This above passage struck home hard with me, and I have returned to it often; since it describes a besetting problem of mine - which is that I fear to speak explicitly and honestly about my happiness and hope, or my appreciation of the goodness of things, for fear that this will be seen as arrogance (hubris) and will attract retribution form some kind of 'cunning and perverted consciousness' - that I will be punished for my presumption - I and those I love will suffer the nemesis of the gods.

This attitude runs deep: very deep.

I seem to worry that displaying a sunny and optimistic aspect will attract cosmic schadenfreude, and will get me noticed and singled-out for humiliation and degradation and torment -- that I will be like a butterfly broken on a wheel - and the wheel could be any one (or more than one) of so many hazards and horrors of the world.

Yet this fear-full, dread-full, superstitious attitude may itself be one of the major hazards in the world. If (as I believe) the world is alive and responsive to our attitudes - full of sentient entities, many benign; then this attitude of suspicion and supplication cannot fail to bring out the worst in our environment.

Of course, nobody wants to be 'taken for granted' - but on the other hand we want our good intentions to be appreciated - and if despite we are treated as cunning, perverted, hostile; if we are treated as an implacable foe looking for any excuse to inflict harm - then we are likely to be wounded and dismayed even if we are the most virtuous of entities, and be irritated and angered and proviked if we are neutral.

I have therefore come to recognize a great courage in explicit declarations of joy and hope.

Our culture tends to admire the cynic, the pessimist, the hard-boiled, slyly-corrupt hedonist - the anti-hero. But I feel that the greatest Christian hero is the one who really believes in the goodness and love of God such that full value is accorded to those moment of joy, hope, beauty and inspiration which come our way.

It was a subject that Colin Wilson worked-through over many decades: the difficulty of being an overall-and-in-the-end optimist in a culture which regards pessimism, nihilism and assertions of the meaninglessness and purposelessness of life as being deeper and truer. Wilson got himself called naive, childish, shallow, insensitive - but he was right; and he was braver than his critics.

William Arkle took this optimism even further such that he started even Wilson (the two men were friends). Arkle had been in war, he knew about the harsh, tough and terrible things of life; but he would not allow himself to be deflected from his deepest convictions that this is a benign world, set up by loving Heavenly parents; that we are surrounded by helpers; and that in the end, so long as we strive and stay true, so long as we don't succumb to bitterness and despair, we will be given a prize, a situation, a world more wonderful in its scope and nature than our sweetest dreams.

On the limitations of a palantir: Tolkien on the irrationality of despair

That greatest of Tolkien scholars, Tom Shippey, noticed something profound yet hidden in the Lord of the Rings - which provides narrative 'evidence' for Tolkien's frequent theme that it is always wrong to despair. 

Despair is wrong primarily because we live in the ongoing creation of a God who loves us as his children; so this world is being-created, moment by moment, with an eye to the primary purpose of life: which is providing each of us with the experiences we most need to learn from in terms of our Christian choice of resurrected life in Heaven. 

 

(Conversely, this world is Not designed for atheist-materialists, who disbelieve in Heaven. Their lives are indeed, by their own assumptions, meaningless and pointless.)

So, 'general' despair is wrong, and a consequence of lack of 'faith' - that is, lack of trust in God's loving goodness and personal concern for each-of-us. But specific causes of despair are also a mistake; mistakes of inference. 

Why? Because despair is the certainty of bad outcome, such that one gives-up hope. And - simply put - despair is always wrong because we never have conclusive reasons to give-up hope. 

 

Despair is not based on probability, but certainty - and that certainty is always false. A high probability of a bad outcome should be called pessimism. It is not despair because it is a best guess, and estimate; and we realise that even the very improbable sometimes happens. 

Note: It is vital to distinguish between despair and pessimism; and between hope and optimism. 

Despair is a sin, and is always-wrong; hope is a virtue and (for a Christian) always-right. Optimism and pessimism are merely conjectural judgments about the likely future - constrained by individual ability, information and honesty...

 

But more fundamentally, despair is not even about strict-probabilities of the future of a known situation; since we are very unlikely to be framing, to be understanding accurately, the real nature of the situation.

Even if we know a lot about a situation, we never know every-thing about it; and some specific thing (some 'fact') that we do Not know, may have the capacity to transform our understanding. 

If we knew that particular fact, then our 'conclusive reason' for despair would go. 

 

In the Lord of the Rings, there is a seeing-stone device called a palantir, which may be used to gather information. Yet, whenever we see a palantir in use to gather more information and make a judgment, an error is made.

Always, something important about the user's assumptions are wrong, and some vital fact is missing; and therefore his interpretation of the factual information is in error. 

 

For example, when Sauron sees Pippin in the Orthanc stone, Sauron assumes this is the hobbit ring-bearer ('Baggins') who has been captured by Saruman - and he dispatches a Nazgul to collect this precious prize. 

This is a mistake, which happens because Saruman does not realise that the palantir is no longer in Saruman's hands - and because he assumes the stone is being deliberately used, rather than merely the object of hobbit curiosity - an 'accident'. 

Later, Aragorn shows himself deliberately to Sauron, after Sauron has discovered that Isengard was defeated and (presumably) the stone taken. 

Sauron then assumes that Aragorn, as the heir of Isildur, has taken the Ring and is learning to use its power. Sauron therefore 'hastily' launches his assault on Gondor before this has been fully prepared - and is defeated. 

 

A third example is easily missed (I missed it! - but this is where Tom Shippey contributed his key insight) because it can be inferred only by a careful calculation of chronology. It is that Denethor uses the palantir at the time when Frodo has been captured by Sauron - and sees a hobbit in the enemy's hands. 

Denethor assumes that this is the Ring bearer hobbit whom Gandalf sent into Mordor, and that Sauron now has the Ring. Denethor therefore despairs, his mind breaks, and he descends into madness, suicide; and the attempted murder of his son Faramir (who Denethor assume, also falsely, to be certainly fatally injured). 

What Denethor does not know is that although this is indeed Frodo, and he is indeed in the enemy's hands - at that time Sam has the One Ring; and is not in captivity. 

And it turns-out that this small unknown fact is enough to transform the entire situation from one of 'certain' despair - to the success of the quest. 

This warning of Tolkien's is of crucial significance to these times. 

There really has been a successful global coup, and the world really is ruled by an evil totalitarian government. And there probably are a large proportion of the population who have taken the side of evil. 

From what I know, according to my framing of the situation, the probabilities for the future seem extremely adverse: therefore I am a pessimist about what is coming.

 

Yet my understanding is at least distorted, and may be wrong; and my information is certainly incomplete. There are many facts of which I am unaware. So I have zero grounds for certainty. 

On the other hand, I know that this is God's creation and is being-created moment by moment; and that (since we are all God's beloved children) this creation is always taking into account each individual in ways that I cannot comprehend - but can guess-at based on the way that loving parents regard all their individual family members. 

God does Not see mankind as an homogeneous mass; but instead sees each person as a beloved son or daughter in relationships with other sons and daughters. 

And God is not trying to optimise our temporary, mortal earthly happiness (although that is a factor); but is instead primarily focused on our eternal salvation and life as participants in the work of divine creation.  

We do not have the advantage of a palantir, which always shows the factual truth. But even the palatir does not show the whole truth; and it cannot interpret what its pictures mean. So, even a palantir may well be deceptive - fatally deceptive. 

Our information is much less honest and reliable than that of a palantir; and we are even less 'wise' than either Sauron or Denethor...

So, as Christians we do not have grounds for general despair; and being poorly-informed fools, neither do we have specific grounds for despair - there may well be a transformative fact of which we are unaware. 

 

Therefore, be not afraid; be of good cheer! That is the only faithful and accurate way.

Trust in God! Follow Jesus Christ! 

And you cannot be wrong. 

 

Americans are *mental*, when it comes to politics

Americans are even further from the needful awakening than the rest of the West, because they (unlike Europeans or the Brits) continue to be optimistic about the possibilities of politics in general and elections in particular. 

This seems almost incomprehensible, but it does seem to be true - not least as evidenced by the sheer volume of discourse about the current Presidential elections. 

Amazing numbers of people including many commenters who regard themselves as sceptical, hostile to totalitarianism, aware, Red-Pilled - seem to have forgotten that a seventy-year-old DT has already been president once. 

During which term he failed to fulfil his primary espoused slogan-objectives (build the wall, drain the swamp); but instead led the nation and world into the birdemic-peck totalitarianism and the international chaos of "MLB" antiracism...

Culminating in a blatantly distorted and overturned election, after which he caved-in, failed, forfeited his honour.

Furthermore, since 2020 the world now knows, as a solid fact, that the US President does not run the USA. 

Yet all over the internet is expressed the delusional optimism on the self-identified "right" that a 78yr-old DT might - if elected - make a significant positive difference to the US and the world...

Rather than what seems obvious: that if DT is elected, it will be because elements within the global totalitarian leadership class want him elected, and (doubtless due to private deals and pressures) he is regarded as a sufficiently "safe pair of hands" to take forwards their agenda of evil. 

Such optimism, such "hope" is mental - but there it is. 

It seems that things will need to get even worse; before there is any possibility of genuine understanding of the primacy of the spiritual in the simultaneous suicide/ rabid-dog destructiveness of The West generally and the USA in particular. 

Superficial reformative changes "within The System" cannot be positively effective; but "at best" will sustain The System to increase the depth and extent of inflicting its strategic destructive evil. 

When things are bad, then things can only get better in the long term via getting worse in the short term - that is a rule of life - and this entails positive and voluntary acceptance: spiritual benefit cannot be imposed. 

The System is built for evil, and corrupted throughout - in all social institutions; by international and national laws, regulations, mass/social media, and social mores. 

Any genuine hope of positive social change must be led by deep change in individual persons; because there is no other possible source of good motivations. 

Thus from where we actually are, pessimism is simple realism. 

Things are probably already lost (many times over) and there can no guarantees of turning around generations of willing and celebrated corruption - and anyway, why should a serious Christian desire to save and strengthen the major source of strategic evil in the world today (or perhaps ever) - the engine and enforcer of global value-inversion? 

In such a context; to be existentially interested and engaged by politics, to grasp at straws of "not impossible" benefits, to pin any kind of hope on elections; is not just childish - but a profound act of irresponsible subservience to demonic powers. 

Why I am socio-politically pessimistic...

It is not surprising, but even Christians mix-up hope with optimism, and this-world with eternity. 

But in reality our Hope of salvation (getting to Heaven) and theosis (spiritual development during mortal life); have almost nothing to do with Optimism about our socio-political situation - with 'saving The West' - or, in my case, with restoring Albion. 

Therefore, while Christians must have hope, we are not obliged to be optimistic. And while despair is a sin; my pessimism about the prospects of a Western (or English) Christian revival rolling-back the Global Satanic Establishment coup, is merely my current personal evaluation about future socio-politics. 

And although I sometimes have preferences among the various powerful/ high-status/ famous/ influential persons and institutions of public discourse and organisation - from what I actually know; I regard them - one and all - as being On The Wrong Side in the great spiritual war of this world. 

 

Therefore... I am generally un-impressed by bravado and sabre-rattling among Christians when it comes to what Christians should Do, what Action we should take, and how important it is to Fight - when it comes to this-worldly socio-politics.  All this amounts to a vague wish that first somebody-else will make a Big Strong Army of God - and then I will consent to join-in the battle.

By my judgment, Kristor - at the Orthosphere - gives better strategic guidance, when he says:

The only question then is whether we shall die nobly, as faithful Christian witnesses and vassals of Christ our Captain and Head, or debased, as defectors from the cause of Truth in favor of the Father of Lies, and so for the sake of some lesser and impermanent good.

So; while it is indeed appealing to suppose we might engage in some modern, idealised version of The Crusades, side-by-side with other brave men and as part of an Army of God; it seems more likely that we should be preparing for a 'fight' requiring far greater courage and resolution: to make the choice that leads to a reviled death alone - or (if we are fortunate) with a handful of faithful family.

You know the kind of thing I mean...   

The battle between enchantment and glamour (with reference to Tolkien)

We all need to escape - with a psychological need that gets more urgent and compelling as the bars of the Iron Prison close-in upon the whole world. 

But the psychological need is mostly assuaged by glamour - as constructed and disseminated by the mass media. From adolescence onward, typical modern Man absolutely relies-upon glamour fantasies (and, maybe, a bit of our own - secondhand - glamorous reality at evenings, weekends and on holiday). 

In daydreams, in fantasy, modern Man sees himself, watches-himself and his life, as if he was in a photo-shoot or movie - cool, stylish, attractive, charming, dominant, impulsive, blissed-out... whatever it may be - as if he lived 'inside' the world of the media. 

The hedonic life... And of course it does not work; even on its own terms. It is not gratifying - except negatively (scratching an itch of dependence), it is merely addictive. 

People have 'fun' and 'enjoy' themselves, and (essentially) discuss this online (and sometimes in person...) - and people are depressed, miserable, afraid and despairing... As who would not be with a life divided between expanding-crushing bureaucracy and totalitarian regulation on the one hand; and the shallow, jaded triviality of glamour on the other. 

We need enchantment (not glamour) - and the re-enchantment of The World, of Life, must not be an attempt to apply enchantment like paint on a surface; but instead a rebuilding of life from new (or rather) old assumptions.

Building from assumptions that are first Christian (so that our faith brings hope) and secondly (but vitally) Romantic - so that we know our own personal everyday world (properly understood) is alive, conscious, purposive - and that we are personally involved in the reality of this world by the relation of love.

This spiritual life of excitement and enchantment is not 'private' - because the spiritual realm is objectively real; but enchantment is hidden from the world of politics, bureaucracy, the media and public discourse generally. 

We really are actors in an unfolding drama of enchantment - but this is not a public drama to be observed on screen and in media; instead our life is a spiritual drama that we know in our own heart-thinking; and shared with God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost - also with spiritual beings such as angels and demons, who have vital roles to play in the drama. 

And re-enchantment must come from within - it is not a consequence of external stimuli.

Not even Tolkien's work will supply enchantment - obviously, because most of his fans have extracted merely distracting glamour from Lord of the Rings: they see it as 'sword and sorcery', not as an enchanted world.

Tolkien rightly defended escapism as a valid goal of reading fairy stories - but he meant the escape to be into the enchantment of faery; not escape into merely mundane glamour, excitement and hyper-stimulus. 

For Tolkien it was only partly a matter of 'escape-from' - but mostly a matter of what the reader 'escapes-to'. 

If the reader escapes-to a fantasy world that is merely not-true, a world into-which the reader imports the (inverted) values of modernity - a focus on cool, style, charm, sex and sexual transgression, ultra-violence fear and despair; then glamour has displaced enchantment, and escapism has become merely therapeutic

To regard Tolkien's world as implicitly one of mere 'glamour', of psychology - as do most of Tolkien's modern 'fans' and 'scholars' - is an inevitable consequence of carrying mainstream leftist-materialist atheism into that world - thereby annihilating enchantment. 

Enchantment is (as of 2021, when things have come to a point) open only to Christians - and only effective in their lives when that Christianity is Romantic. 

Enchantment then brings both hope and optimism - because Christian hope points beyond this mundane and transient world of corruption; and  optimism comes from the revelation that our actual life can be - when properly regarded - an heroic daily adventure, a war of good and evil: exactly like the Lord of the Rings truly is, for those with hearts to know it.    

A strategy for permanent resistance against superior forces

*

We are losing.

The tide shows no sign of turning.

Reactionaries in general, and those who aspire to be real Christians in particular, will (for the foreseeable future) have to operate in this context: the world as we find it.

Therefore we must do without optimism - do without the expectation of victory; but we must always be hopeful and we must never give up.

*

We will need to prepare for a long and patient fight, a defensive war, the kind of resistance which will not yield up an inch of ground without making it as hard for the enemy as possible.

When forced to retreat a few steps, each of us must immediately turn and dig-in to hold the next defensible position as long as possible.

*

Dogged resistance is much more important than argument.

Silent, unexplained, indomitable resistance is far more to be desired than the fake conflicts of flashy verbal and symbolic posturings of mainstream 'conservatives' and fair-weather 'traditional' Christians; which consists in rhetorical displays of eloquent, lucid, witty argument - inevitably followed by swift surrender and total capitulation (and always somewhat earlier than is necessary).

Dogged resistance every step of the way and without end...

*

This strategy certainly makes life harder for those who seek to impose evil; it forces them to expend energy they would prefer to use in other tasks, they are dragged-down from the heady intoxications and novelties of the easy victory after easy victory resulting from a successful Blitzkrieg; dogged resistance makes 'reform' boring, thwarts feelings of 'progress', and exacerbates their natural and intrinsic impatience; they lose the expectation of a final and complete victory achievable by one devastating blow.

*

Since the enemy are secular, worldly, short-termist hedonists with a short attention span - they  loathe the messiness of infantry warfare and aspire that we will all surrender after a single devastating airstrike has shown that our cause is 'hopeless'.

(That is the key: they seek to overwhelm us by making us give up hope, make us surrender and submit, or make us turn and run.)

But we must never give up hope. We must make them root us out, building by building, trench by trench, foxhole by foxhole; in close combat.

(This need for the enemy to engage in hand-to-hand combat may even bring a greater possibility of repentance and reformation. Probably not; but it might.)

*

We must discard all optimism, we must not expect to see anything resembling a victory in our lives and in this world (at most a temporary stay or cease-fire in which we can recover); but instead live on indestructible hope and in assurance of ultimate victory.

We don't need to say much - just a few battle cries.

We just keep on and on fighting, and make sure they know that we cannot be demoralized, always will keep fighting; inch by inch.

***


Note: this theme is continued at

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/units-for-permanent-resistance-groups.html 

*

Turns-out the new Archbishop of Canterbury is not just non-Christian, but anti-Christian

*

Excerpts from his first statement:

http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/2692/#Audio

*

I want to say at once that one of the biggest challenges is to follow a man who I believe will be recognised as one of the greatest Archbishops of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. He is some one with a deep love for Jesus Christ, an infectious spirituality, extraordinary integrity and holiness, immense personal moral and physical courage, and of course one of the world's principal theologians and philosophers...

Comment: "one of the greatest Archbishops of Canterbury" - This ludicrous remark is a combination of dishonesty, incompetence and ignorance.

*

The work of the Church of England is not done primarily on television or at Lambeth, but in over 16,000 churches, where hundreds of thousands of people get on with the job they have always done of loving neighbour, loving each other and giving more than 22 million hours of voluntary service outside the church a month.

Comment - It is significant that he does not mention among these secular activities anything Christian that churches should do; such as worship, Biblical teaching or evangelism.

*

We have seen the wonderful hospitality and genius of the people in this country inside and outside the church during this marvellous year of Jubilee and Olympics.

Comment: What in Heavens name has the Olympics to do with the Church of England?

*

Because of that vast company of serving Anglicans, together those in other churches, I am utterly optimistic about the future of the church.

 Comment: any serious reader will switch off at this point. Optimism is believing that things will turn-out well, and has nothing whatsoever to do with Christianity (which is about hope) - but anyone who sees any grounds for optimism in the catastrophic state of the C of E is either psychotic, demented, or calculatedly dishonest: in other words anti-Christian. Only an anti-Christian could be optimistic about the future of the Church of England - which teeters on the verge of irrevocable corruption - and it is absolutely vital that its leader recognize this, and operate on this basis. 


*

...The House of Bishops is very wise. 

Comment: no comment. 


*

The Anglican communion, for all its difficulties, is also a source of remarkable blessing to the world. In so many countries it is one of the main sharers of reconciliation and hope in Jesus Christ. Anglicans today stand firm in faith alongside other Christians under pressure in many places, especially in northern Nigeria, a country close to my heart. 

Comment: To say that Christians are 'under pressure' in northern Nigeria is a disgusting euphemism, literally disgusting.


*

...This is a time for optimism and faith in the church. 

Comment: What? The opposite is true - it is the time for Christian renewal of a horribly corrupt, wordly, expedience-driven institution which formally resembles the official 'Sergian' Russian Orthodox church under Stalin (de facto a branch of the government). 

*

I know we are facing very hard issues. In 10 days or so the General Synod will vote on the ordination of women as Bishops. I will be voting in favour, and join my voice to many others in urging the Synod to go forward with this change...

Comment: This is why he got the job.


*

We also face deep differences over the issue of sexuality. It is absolutely right for the state to define the rights and status of people co-habiting in different forms of relationships, including civil partnerships.  We must have no truck with any form of homophobia, in any part of the church. 

Comment: Anyone above the age of consent who uses the word 'homophobia' except in order to highlight its revolting abuse as a totalitarian weapon of nihilistic oppression is on the side of evil. But here is the most 'passionate' part of the speech - the statement of 'principle' - and a focus on a vile, commissar's weasel-word providing unambiguous evidence of his intention to persecute real Christians.


*

The Church of England is part of the worldwide church, with all the responsibilities that come from those links. What the church does here deeply affects the already greatly suffering churches in places like northern Nigeria, which I know well. 

Comment: 'greatly suffering' is better than 'under pressure' - but he doesn't mention who is applying the pressure, causing the suffering...

*

I support the House of Bishop's statement in the summer in answer to the government's consultation on same sex marriage. I know I need to listen very attentively to the LGBT communities, and examine my own thinking prayerfully and carefully. I am always averse to the  language of exclusion, when what we are called to is to love in the same way as Jesus Christ loves us. Above all in the church we need to create safe spaces for these issues to be discussed honestly and in love.

Comment: The bile rises. " I am always averse to the  language of exclusion' - apparently except when the exclusion is being applied to Christians. Then he is very keen on the language of exclusion - having just said "no truck with any form of homophobia, in any part of the church".

And focus on another vile, abusive, commissar's weasel word with 'LGBT': a very obviously disparate constituency, currently-united only in political demands for institutional preferences and unrelenting opposition to marriage and the family (hence real Christianity).

But when Welby says "Above all in the church we need to create safe spaces for these issues to be discussed honestly and in love." this is where he hits rock-bottom; since he is using rhetorical tricks to put his opponents beyond the pale, as if there were any real Christians who would oppose such a notion; and yet at the same time he conflates proper Christian behaviour with 'safe spaces' - accepting without argument that most of Christianity is 'unsafe' for people of non-normal sexuality; and accepting that the solution to this 'hostile' environment is an essentially bureaucratic process of allocating specific times and places and persons (as if in a school timetable) for 'these issues' - implicitly set apart from Christianity - to be 'discussed honestly' - implying that at present these issues are dishonestly discussed specifically among Christians - and 'in love' again defining the Christian problem as being lack of love. Pah!

*

The first speech of the head of the third largest Christian denomination in the world is dishonest from top to bottom, inside and out.

This is utterly inexcusable from a Christian leader, and is indeed so extreme as to reveal Justin Welby as an anti-Christian; one whose energies and efforts will be devoted to subversion and elimination of the real Christian elements within the Anglican communion.

This is, in short, the last nail in the coffin of the Church of England, and the point where break-up of the denomination becomes not just a regrettable probability but a Christian necessity - the only hope for survival of Christianity within Anglicanism. 

*

Well at least we know where we are, and what needs to be done.

We have gone from Archbishop Rowan, who was muddled, ineffective, pompous and mostly bored-by and indifferent-to Christianity; to Justin - who is the first systematically anti-Christian Archbishop of Canterbury.



*

The eco-thriller - more merely double-negative heroics, leading only to a life ruled by fear then despair

The iconic moment from Edge of Darkness when the antihero brings together two lumps of plutonium to give all the baddies radiation sickness (and kill himself)

The eco-thriller - saving some-place or the world from an ecological disaster - is a subgenre of the disaster movie; but with pretentions of being deeper, more thoughtful, more idealistic. 

The genre got going in the 1970s, I think; for example I have just read Raven (1977) by Jeremy Burnham and Trevor Ray; which is a modern Arthurian adventure for children, with the specific objective of saving sacred ancient caves from becoming a nuclear dump. 1985 saw a high impact adult TV drama called Edge of Darkness - again about nuclear waste contamination. The eco theme has since become a staple of Hollywood blockbuster movies, and B (or C) movies.

But - like everything else in modern culture; the eco-thriller tries to present a positive message from ingredients that are actually double-negative: the hero is not making life better, but is saving life from a threat.

Such double-nativity is, of course, the entire basis of all mainstream modern politics. There are now no utopians. 

Consider the mainstream Litmus Tests - climate change is entirely about 'saving the world' from (what is asserted to be) human caused and harmful raising of the average global temperature - there is no positive message at all. 

Antiracism (or feminism, or the gaytrans agendas) all claim (only) to be against negative-discrimination (or even, bizarrely, compensating for historical injustice) - and they do not even attempt to sketch out the kind of 'better future world' that they are supposed to be aiming-at. 

And the latest and greatest left-mania of the birdemic-peck alleges its motivation to be nothing more than keeping (almost entirely) already-old and -sick people alive for a bit longer. There is zero consideration of what used to be the leftist mania of 'quality of life'. And any serious consideration of the adverse future consequences of this present policy is ruthlessly stamped-down. 

We have arrived at a point where the world is ruled by fear, and must be ruled by fear, of death - because there is no positive, remotely-plausible better future towards which we must strive. Thus an already demotivated population is further reduced to mere survivalism; grasping and gripping at their few remaining 'allowed' pleasures and freedoms.   

I do not contradict this pessimistic vision of The World, and this mortal life - it is a real thing. Of course, there is (for Christians) real hope, and the assurance of a (much) better future - but not in this world and mortal life; but on the other side of death, and only attainable by dying. 

Here is another instance of the black and white nature of life, now. The world offers us only fear and despair; only Christianity offers us optimism. 

Either we place hope in this world, which world does not even anymore pretend to offer grounds for hope - but rules only by ever-bigger sticks compensating for ever-smaller, ever-fewer this-worldly carrots. This can only end in despair - there is nowhere else it can end.  

Or, we place our hope in the next world, sustained by determination to follow Jesus Christ to resurrected life in Heaven.

Here and now, there really are no other actual, living, motivation alternatives. 

The West cannot be saved, because it wants to die; but persons can be saved, and their lives transformed into joy

The West cannot be saved, because it is secular. And because The West has no religion, there is essentially nothing to save.

The West has no essence, is merely contingent - just a time-slice through an always-changing, self-subverting, and continually-inverted aggregation of attitudes, beliefs and practices. 

So culturally, the West is purposefully, strategically destroying itself - always, necessarily as a continuous process. 

And biologically The West is destroying itself: by choice the Western population have long since ceased to replace themselves; by strategy it is replacing its own population - and from existential terror (and deliberate wicked intent) this whole subject is taboo, denied, lied-about. 


The West is not even trying to save itself; indeed The West has self-destruction built-in, woven-in, pervasive. After all, how can you save something which so much wants to kill itself? Something which regards every effort to keep it alive as an aggressive act of torture. 

Take your eye off Western Civilization for just a moment and it will be swinging from the rafters with its own belt around its neck...


So long as The West has no religion, it cannot be saved; and there is only one possible religion for The West: Christianity. A Christian revival is the only hope. 

But there is no sign of this happening - all the large mainstream self-identified Christian denominations are primarily secular, hence are well down the path of killing themselves (where they are not already long-since dead).
 
Only (real) Christians can perceive this clearly; so what should Christians do? 

 
The choice is either a greater focus on politics and policies, on laws and society, on constitutions and systems... As our numbers and power ever-diminish, to argue harder and harder to reverse the juggernaut of secularism who have near-zero interest and knowledge of Christianity, but ever greater hostility towards what they suppose it to be?...

Or to switch attention away from politics altogether - to ignore the adverse oceanic tides of mass secular movements, and the corruption and dishonesty of most churches leaders, and instead to focus attention on bringing the message to persons, one individual at a time?

To be always fighting-against (and net losing), or to be positive for (and sometimes winning)?     


If we focus on the big picture - then being a Christian in The West is to be a miserable failure; but, if we focus on the person, then to be a Christian is to experience a deep and mostly hidden well-spring of courage, love, hope, meaning, purpose, belonging - secretly to be gloriously happy despite whatever happens on the surface.

It is impossible to exaggerate the difference that this makes to me, and to every Christian; it is an almost exact inversion of what it was not to be a Christian - when every pleasure was potentially available, nothing was forbidden - but never hope, never happiness.

The secular modern is afraid to probe too deeply, because he is sure there is nothing underneath - all is surface. He is afraid to look ahead, because he has decided that will be nothing there. To him, all human lives are failures because they end in decline, suffering, and death - biography is tragedy (either unfulfilled promise or the disappointment of all desire).

His strongest principles are without foundations - and therefore will almost certainly be discarded when they become inexpedient, or even if they are not discarded then this will be an arbitrary gesture. His most profound yearnings can only be fulfilled in imagination - which is to say they will not be fulfilled, and are delusions.

He sees Christians as torturers because they talk of eternal life, and of the disciplined and constrained path which leads to it - and for modern man that means snatching away the pleasures which are all that make life bearable, and the hope of extinction which is all that makes life endurable.

For such a man, life equals 'existence'; eternal life equals eternal torment.


As Christians, we may be able to save someone, or more than one person, from this horrible existence; and the benefits are not deferred, not only after life and in eternity - but immediate, in this life, here and now and straight away.

Our resources are finite, our effort and enthusiasm requires realistic grounds for optimism. Therefore, let's stop monitoring and trying to turn-back the civilisational tsunami of secular nihilism - but ourselves drowning in pessimism.

And instead adopt the positive, optimistic, realistic goal of saving a few people: saving them into invincible joy.
 

Reposted and edited from December 28th 2014

 

The West cannot be saved, because it wants to die; but persons can be saved, and their lives transformed into joy

*
The West cannot be saved, because it is secular.

And because The West has no religion, there is essentially nothing to save.

The West has no essence, is merely contingent - just a time-slice through an always-changing, self-subverting, and continually-inverted aggregation of attitudes, beliefs and practices. 

So culturally, the West is purposefully, strategically destroying itself - always, as a continuous process. 

And biologically The West is destroying itself: by choice the Western population have long since ceased to replace themselves; by strategy it is replacing its own population - and from existential terror (and deliberate wicked intent) this whole subject is taboo, denied, lied-about. 

*

The West is not even trying to save itself; indeed The West has self-destruction built-in, woven-in, pervasive.

How can you save something which so much wants to kill itself? Something which regards every effort to keep it alive as an aggressive act of torture. 


Take your eye off Western Civilization for just a moment and it will be swinging from the rafters with its own belt around its neck...

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/should-western-civilization-be-saved.html

*

So long as The West has no religion, it cannot be saved; and there is only one possible religion for The West: Christianity. A Christian revival is the only hope. But there is no sign of this happening - all the large mainstream self-identified Christian denominations are primarily secular, hence are well down the path of killing themselves (where they are not already long-since dead).

Only (real) Christians can perceive this clearly; so what should Christians do? 

The choice is either a greater focus on politics and policies, on laws and society, on constitutions and systems... As our numbers and power ever-diminish, to argue harder and harder to reverse the juggernaut of secularism who have near-zero interest and knowledge of Christianity, but ever greater hostility towards what they suppose it to be?...

Or to switch attention away from politics altogether - to ignore the adverse oceanic tides of mass secular movements, and the corruption and dishonesty of most churches leaders, and instead to focus attention on bringing the message to persons, one individual at a time?

To be always fighting-against (and net losing), or to be positive for (and sometimes winning)?     

*

If we focus on the big picture - then being a Christian in The West is to be a miserable failure; but, if we focus on the person, then to be a Christian is to experience a deep and mostly hidden well-spring of courage, love, hope, meaning, purpose, belonging - secretly to be gloriously happy despite whatever happens on the surface.

It is impossible to exaggerate the difference that this makes to me, and to every Christian; it is an almost exact inversion of what it was not to be a Christian - when every pleasure was potentially available, nothing was forbidden - but never hope, never happiness.

The secular modern is afraid to probe too deeply, because he is sure there is nothing underneath - all is surface. He is afraid to look ahead, because he has decided that will be nothing there. To him, all human lives are failures because they end in decline, suffering, and death - biography is tragedy (either unfulfilled promise or the disappointment of all desire).

His strongest principles are without foundations - and therefore will almost certainly be discarded when they become inexpedient, or even if they are not discarded then this will be an arbitrary gesture. His most profound yearnings can only be fulfilled in imagination - which is to say they will not be fulfilled, and are delusions.

He sees Christians as torturers because they talk of eternal life, and of the disciplined and constrained path which leads to it - and for modern man that means snatching away the pleasures which are all that make life bearable, and the hope of extinction which is all that makes life endurable.

For such a man, life equals 'existence'; eternal life equals eternal torment.

*

As Christians, we may be able to save someone, or more than one person, from this horrible existence; and the benefits are not deferred, not only after life and in eternity - but immediate, in this life, here and now and straight away.

*

Our resources are finite, our effort and enthusiasm requires realistic grounds for optimism.

Therefore, let's stop monitoring and trying to turn-back the civilisational tsunami of secular nihilism - but ourselves drowning in pessimism.

And instead adopt the positive, optimistic, realistic goal of saving a few people: saving them into invincible joy.

*