The double-negative morality of Leftism

The actuality of Leftist morality - and that it is inversion of the true, beautiful and virtuous - is revealed by describing the double-negative reality concealed by the pseudo-positive moral 'principles' used to justify Leftist evil. 

Here is the way it works:

To be a 'racist' is = not to be anti-white

To be a sexist = not to be anti-men...

You see the way it works? Leftism is oppositional, being defined as 'against' various 'evils'. Most of the Leftist 'evils' (often expressed as '-ist' or '-phobic') can accurately be described in a similar double-negative fashion:

Not to be anti-native inhabitants of a country...

Not to be opposed to biologically real, reproductively-adaptive sexuality...

Not to be anti-Christian... etc.

The double-negative formulation is a necessity for Leftism, since Leftism is indeed ultimately oppositional (opposing God and divine creation; opposing the true, beautiful and virtuous); thus its 'positive' content (i.e. what Leftists want) is protean and labile, self-contradicting and incoherent. 

After all, there are an 'infinite' number of ways of opposing The Good. 

To be morally excoriated by the Left, all that is required is to be against opposing the Good, in any particular respect.  

Added - Double-negative denialism

For the sake of completeness, and to include two of the biggest recent double-negative global crusades. What do accusations of denialism amount to? 

Climate denialism: Hatred of those people who do not regard carbon as the greatest threat to life on earth

Birdemic denialism: Terror of those who are not afraid of close proximity to human beings

 

Note: This idea was triggered by a post by William Wildblood, where he give a double negative definition of 'racist'. 

Overcoming the double-negative conceptualizations of Jesus Christ

Over the past few years, since I spent a year or so multiply re-reading the Fourth Gospel ("of John") in isolation; I have often emphasized the covertly-deceptive way in which double-negative formulations have colonized and distorted our minds and motivations - both in Christianity and in mainstream modern secular 'leftism'.  

A double-negative is not the same as a positive; yet it seems obvious that most people fail to recognize the essentially negative conceptualizations of their own beliefs and ideals: they suppose themselves to be idealists, with some kind of positive agenda; yet they nearly-always are in thrall to some merely double-negation.

For instance, they believe that the double-negations of being against CO2 climate change, or protecting the environment, is the same thing as loving and cherishing our relation to this natural world. And the consequence is massive destruction of nature and the severing of Men from the natural. 

The supposedly 'ecological' doubled double-negative of "stopping climate change" and "protecting the environment" leads to an explicit (albeit deceptive) vision of humankind crammed into pods of '15 minute' mega-cities, eating processed bugs delivered by drones - and experiencing nature only virtually, via media. 

(The double-negative attitude towards nature leads inexorably to the negation of Man - i.e. his extinction.)

Unfortunately, this kind of double-negation applies to many Christian understandings of Jesus Christ.

This is evident from using the synonym the Saviour to describe what is regarded as the essence of what He did for us. And that essence of what Jesus did is summarized as the Atonement - which is another double-negation. The same could be said about calling Jesus the redeemer, and describing the crucifixion as a redemption; all terms betray the primacy of double-negative theology. Conceptualizing Jesus's goodness as primarily sin-less-ness is another such.  

I am sure that this is mistaken, and also stands as an obstacle to modern understanding of Jesus Christ. Partly because because it is obvious that modern Man feels no spontaneous need for saving, atonement or redemption. 

If modern man must first be convinced of his default damnation from sin; he cannot begin to understand what Jesus is supposed to have done for him - thus evangelism is crippled. 

Yet the Fourth Gospel seems to tell a different story - at least if read straightforwardly, as our primary source of knowledge of Jesus's life and teachings (by which I mean; trying to understand the IV Gospel without subordinating it to the other Gospels, other parts of the New Testament, and the Bible as a whole). 

Of course; the IV Gospel can be interpreted in a double-negative fashion - as about Jesus as Saviour - since all positives can be reframed in a double-negative form. 

But reformulating a positive as double-negation always and necessarily leaves-out that which is truly positive; because in real-life (unlike mathematics!) a positive cannot emerge from negations. 

Being "against sin", does not tell us what to do instead-of sinning; just as being against "Anthropogenic Global Warming by CO2" does not tell mankind anything about how to build a good relationship with the natural world. 

(The double-negation of Jesus's teaching and work, leads to a negation of this mortal life - such that 'goodness' becomes the negation of sin, life the avoidance of damnation - life itself a thing to be got-through without falling and failing.)   

Jesus in the IV Gospel is presented, perfectly straightforwardly, as the giver of life everlasting*. Which is presented as a positive addition to human possibility. 

Yes, this also means negatively that Jesus "overcomes death" (a double-negation) - but this is only half the story, and the least helpful part. What Jesus offers positively is resurrection to eternal life in Heaven. 

And what this means is set-out in many points of the Gospel, albeit in ways that we tend to regard as poetical or allegorical - but, at the time of Jesus this was very probably the ordinary way that language was used. 

(Ancient languages had, what seems to us 'moderns', multiple and simultaneous meanings; they did not have the narrowly and precise, 'technical' and specialized - but utterly un-poetic! - language systems that we know from sciences, law, and bureaucracy generally.)   

Double-negatively expressed Jesus "overcomes death" - and death meant something different in Jesus's time and place than it does for us; yet 'death', then and now, shared the core meaning of the ending of self, a situation caused by the death of our body. 

When we die, our self will cease to be. For the Jews of Jesus's time this probably meant that soul was severed from body such that we would become witless, demented ghosts in Sheol. 

For modern Man death means utter annihilation - body and mind - forever. But in both instances we, as unique selves, are finished. 

 

But positively understood Jesus adds-to the human situation as it is understood to exist. 

Instead of things happening as they do without Jesus; Jesus makes possible something new and extra. 

Essentially; Jesus is the Giver of Life Everlasting, not the Saviour; because a positive trumps the partiality of a double-negative; because a giver is greater than a saver. 

*I argue elsewhere that in the IV Gospel "sin" means something closely equivalent to "death" - so that references to Jesus taking-away or overcoming "sin" are intended to refer essentially to death. But it is also true that sin in the sense of disharmony with God's motivations and methods, dis-alignment from the ways of divine creation, must be overcome before life everlasting, resurrection to Heavenly life eternal, can happen.

The Left is winning, where it matters: Right triumphalism misunderstands the very nature of the Left

People who regard themselves as of the Right are displaying an insane and blinkered optimism that they are winning, and rolling-back Leftism. 

This is because they do not understand what the Left is, in its fundamental nature. 

If they did understand, those who proclaim themselves of the Right would realize that they are merely functioning as a subtype of the Left. 

The political Right supposes that the Left is an ideology rooted in some principles. They believe that the Left IS these policies that I call the Litmus Tests: I mean things like socialism, feminism, antiracism, anti-antisemitism, the Climate Agenda. 

In general terms, the self-identified Right define the Left in terms of Political Correctness, SJWs, Wokeness - and their manifestations in the mass media, law, employment regulations etc. 

Because they suppose that the Left is an ideology of "Wokeness" the Right imagine that reversals of specific social practices and regulations represent a rolling-back of Leftism in their nation, or in the world.

When the Right sees such laws, fundings, rhetoric being undone; they think the Left is being defeated. 

But this is completely wrong; because the Left is a negative ideology, an ideology of opposition, and none of the Litmus Tests are core features of Leftism - they might all, in principle, be undone and the Left still be as strong as ever.    

All the Left ideologies are negative in form: the Left is (in various times and places) against many things (capitalism, the bourgeoisie, inequality, patriarchy, European people, Christians) - but is not in favour of any state of affairs as an ultimate and real goal.  

In other words the Left is protean in nature, fluid, adapting - it is continually discarding old ideologies and taking up new ones. 

The Left used to be in favour of economic communism - but not any more; in favour of native-born male industrial workers  (the working class) - but not any more; in favour of equality of opportunities and unequal outcomes - but not any more. 

Leftism can and does discard anything that is currently inexpedient; because there are an endless number of alternatives.

And there is in fact no coherent thing as "the Right"; because the Right is merely opposition to the various Leftist oppositions. 

Leftist ideology is double-negative (i.e. against what they currently regard as bad things), the "the Right" is a triple negation (i.e. against those who are against what the Left currently calls bad things).

No wonder those endless essays striving to define the Right never gets anywhere!  

This is why the Right is so wrong about the rolling back of Leftism. It supposes that the Left abandoning some of its recent woke agenda represents some kind of a defeat, but it is just the usual slippery shape-shifting of Leftism; which now has other priorities - especially war. 

Since Leftism is fundamentally oppositional and negative - Leftism is essentially destructive. 

War is very destructive; hence world war is perhaps an ultimate expression of Leftism. 

(And it matters nothing that pacifism, anti-war, anti-violence; was one of the original roots of Leftism - from more than 200 years ago.) 

War can give Leftism everything and more of whatever losses it may suffer from dropping a few strands of political correctness.  

Just look at what the Leaders of Western nations are actually doing, where they are putting most of their effort - they are in practice (not in what they say, but in what they do over time) angling for more war. 

Not to win a war, but for the maximizing the destruction of war: destruction of economies, societies, trade, positive national identities, of nature (aka "the environment") - expansion of such negations as lies, resentment, and despair. 

We are - and have been for a few years - seeing more and more wars, and what war brings. expanding and escalating the already existing World War with its multiple fronts - but especially in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

We can see the globalist totalitarian leadership class at work engineering wars all over the place; recently on the Asian Subcontinent. This isn't easy to do, there are plenty of people who don't want war - for obvious reasons. But that is what "They" are serious about.  

Ultimately, of course, politics is downstream of the spiritual war of this world; Leftism is a tool of evil in its opposition to God and Divine Creation.

Yes, the sexual revolution was and is a deadly tool of corruption; but a self-righteous and hate-driven war of each against all would be deadlier still. 

When the Right celebrates a few small "victories" (many of which turn out to mere words, and no substantive change; they miss that the Left now has bigger fish to fry, and other things it care much more about. 

The woke agenda might be "forgotten" as thoroughly as the days (a century ago) when white European men were the Left's heroes! - but the Left is continuing to win, and win where it matters most. 

And this will continue until those on the Right recognize that they are part of the problem, and repent. 

  

Resisting evil... Is double-negative morality a viable option?

The internet is full of schemes and plans by which specific evils (you know what I mean...) might more-or-less-easily be resisted - individually or en masse. 

Yet this very seldom actually happens - either individually or en masse. 

And if they do happen-to-happen, it is never sufficiently intense or sustained enough. 

Rather than continually coming-up with new tactics - we need to understand why checklists are irrelevant if nobody want to follow them. 

It is not a matter of people desperately wanting to resist evil, but not knowing where to start, and seeking guidance...

It seems as if the problem must lie deeper than merely 'not knowing how' to resist evil.

The main problems are related to motivation - to the reasons (or rather the lack of reasons) people have for resisting evil; and this indeed cuts very deep. 

(Or would if motivation were not a problem - it is the very lack of depth that is the root of it.) 

In order to address the widest possible audience; those who describe how to resist evil usually present the problem in that double-negative form: Resisting Evil. 

That is: Evil is a negative, so resisting evil makes it a double-negative. 

The planners and schemers who seek to make something happen are compelled to focus on evil because there is no general social consensus about what is Good. 

For instance; the most general dissenting 'affirmation' is usually to campaign for more Freedom - yet Freedom is actually itself a negative: Freedom-from... some bad restriction. 

The 'fighting evil' discourse assumes a lot. It first assumes that people can indeed recognize evil - at least, when it is helpfully pointed-out. 

But why didn't the people already notice the evil - why did that have to have it explained to them? That does not bode well... 

It seems, indeed, to be the case that even gross and in-your-face evils - like kidnapping, poisoning and mutilating innocent children, or sexually grooming and abusing them - cannot be recognized as such by the mass of people; not they are called something 'good' by officials and the mass media, or 'protected' by the inverted values of Leftism. 

Surely if people need such extreme evil to be pointed-out and explained; then there cannot be any consensus that objective evil exists at all? 

So why would people be motivated to resist evil? 

But even when evil is recognized; people lack courage to think, say or do anything to oppose it - because evils are nearly-always backed up by Power, Status and Money. 

People are (quite reasonably!) afraid of opposing power, status and money; therefore they need courage to fight evil. 

And courage is just what most modern people lack: producing a fatally inhibiting combination of moral blindness with will-sapping cowardice.

Before evil will (not 'can theoretically') be resisted; Men must know good - and trust in something beyond this world of Power, Status, Money and lies. 

When Men both know and want good: that will be the time for plans and schemes and tactics...

But if then; plans/ schemes/ tactics would not be needed. 

Musk, Twitter and the bankruptcy of the "based" secular "Right"

When I began this blog on a frequent basis, in the middle of 2010, there was (supposedly) a new, vigorous, and intellectually-rigorous movement of the secular "Right" - variously termed Alternative/Alt Right, Neoreaction, and similar 

(The 'rump' of this movement is sometimes nowadays termed "based" - and can be sampled via this branch of Synlogos.) 

One of my earliest themes was that this movement was not actually "Right" but was just part of the Left; because they wanted essentially the same thing as the Left (i.e. optimal happiness and minimum suffering in this mortal life - the 'hedonic' calculus); and the secular "Right" therefore only differed in terms of their priority groups (eg. white native men) and the methods employed (e.g. new kinds of monarchy). 

Same ends, different means. But is the end that is definitive. 

I then argued that the only genuine alternative and opposition to The Left was religion. 

So, the truth was that the Left-Right axis was all-Left; and the only true axis of opposition was Left-Religion. 

For those who opposed The Left, I said; their only valid choice was: which religion? 

This has proved to be correct over the following decade, as evidenced by the fact that the self-identified secular Right are still merely negatively responding to what the mainstream Left are advocating or doing; much as 'fascism' did in the 1920s and 30s; . 

Since the Left is actually a negative and oppositional ideology; this means that the secular Right are a double-negative ideology. 

And since the Left's policies are already double-negative - e.g. anti-racism anti-men (feminism)  - the secular Rights policies are triple-negative anti-antiracism, anti-feminism...

Something like this explains the astonishing obsessions of the secular Right; who remain utterly focused-on everyday mainstream politics such as elections and the Twitter takeover by Musk (what!); but in this extra-negative way of opposing the destroyers instead of proposing positive creation; which the secular Right cannot do because they are secular.

The amount of internet-ink spilled over the Musk-Twitter business is especially gratuitous. Twitter is a Bad Thing, Musk is a Bad Thing - why discuss the business as if some Good would come out of it? 

The answer is: one regards this as a major issue, only when one is operating on the basis of mainstream assumptions of Good.

Just as the election-obsessives implicitly, by revealed-preference, believe (whatever they say) that we can vote our way out of trouble; so the Musk-Twitter obsessive believe we can Tweet our way to a Better World.      

So that Better means, for them, just more of the same stuff - but directed at groups they like. 

And they believe this because they have nothing better to offer. 

But what of the proper opposition to the Left: I mean The Religious? 

Well... In 2020 the major churches of the world - of (apparently) all religions and denominations - overwhelmingly made clear their convergence with the this-worldly and hedonic values of the Global Left: they made this clear by massive closures and cessations of their core activities. 

(It may be that the Government and Orthodox Church of the Fire Nation has since reversed that convergence with global Leftism: where that may lead has yet to be seen; but anyway, such a direction is not a possibility, nor desirable, for The West.) 

So the churches, of all religions, were revealed as just another part of The Left.  

So the situation is that even the Left versus Religion axis, which seemed a possibility back in 2010; is not a possibility. 

My hoped-for (albeit slender, pessimistic) possibility of a church-rooted religious revival to become culturally dominant; has since been revealed as a false hope. False, not merely because of the political weakness of the churches, but mainly because the churches do not even desire it, but instead seek assimilation to the Left (and as fast as the church leaders can persuade the laity).

Therefore; these times are far more desperate than the "secular Right" imagine; and far more desperate than church-orientated Christians acknowledge. Because (at least in The West - albeit the Fire Nation in the East may have chosen a different path of destiny) there is nowhere to turn in the world of powerful, high status, influential public discourse. 

We can neither vote-in a saviour (because none are available to vote-for, and because the bureaucracy-media control everything of social significance), nor can we engineer a way-out by participation in high-impact social media (because the medium is intrinsically evil-promoting; in form as well as its allowed-content).     

What we can do is at the individual level, not in institutions; is spiritual, not material; and is rooted in understanding correctly - which means honestly and with full acknowledgment of its scope - the nature of our situation and responsibility. 

The instinctual roots of "Leftism" are more like resentment of anyone-else having more than me, than any positive desire for equality

Since Leftism is the dominant ideology in the world today, and Leftism often appeals to some principle of "equality" (however vague or incoherent) as the rationale for its actions; the instinctual basis for "equality" is a subject that warrants closer examination. 

This examination is something I attempted, from the perspective of evolution by natural selection, in an oft-cited theoretical paper I wrote many years ago.

[The inequity of inequality: egalitarian instincts and evolutionary psychology. BG Charlton Journal of Health Psychology. 1997; 2: 413-425.] 

My conclusion was that evidence from anthropological studies of "simple", nomadic hunter-gatherer societies - i.e. the most economically-equal societies ever known - was that their culture of equal-sharing (among those of equivalent sex and age) is not due to a positive valuation of "equality". 

Instead, the sharing was a consequence of what I would now term a double-negative ethical reasoning - for which I used the term "counter-dominance":  

...Equal sharing is enforced upon high status individuals by spontaneously-arising counter-dominant coalitions of lower status individuals (Boehm, 1991; Erdal & Whiten, 1994). Sharing may be a way of encouraging co-operation and preventing conflict (Franks, 1988); it would compensate low status males for their reduced access to females of high reproductive potential and can be seen as a way of "buying off" potentially hostile rivals who might otherwise refuse to cooperate or take hostile action...

"Counter-dominant" instincts (Erdal and Whiten, 1994 and in the press) operate in two ways: firstly to enforce equal sharing of resources, and secondly to be satisfied with an equal distribution of resources. 

In support of this idea, primatologists such as Byrne (1995), Kummer (1995) and De Waal (1996) have traced the evolutionary history of food sharing (and of other counter-dominant - and proto-moral - behaviours) through monkeys and apes to reach the highest (non-human) intensity and sophistication among the chimpanzees. 

Egalitarian human societies are therefore not without their social conflicts: their harmony is of the nature of a dynamic equilibrium between dominance and counter-dominance, both of which sets of instincts continue to operate, the equilibrium between which can be altered by a change of circumstance. 

In all human societies, even in egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies, the persistence of dominance instincts leads to recurrent attempts by high status individuals to dominate, take more than an equal share of resources, or hoard (Knauft, 1991; Erdal & Whiten, in the press). 

However, in immediate-return economies attempts by high status individuals to breach the egalitarian distribution and attain coercive power will readily be detected, and can be met by counter-dominant community alliances of lower status individuals (Woodburn, 1982; Boehm, 1993). 

Counter-dominant alliances may employ a wide range of tactics for mobilizing concerted opposition from the rest of the community in such forms as public complaint, ridicule, threat, ignoring the would-be dominant individual"s orders, or actual group violence against dominant individuals. 

Homicide is not uncommon (and difficult to prevent) in hunter-gatherer societies. Other alternatives include expulsion of recalcitrant individuals, or mass emigration to another band to escape domination. 

Such strategies are possible due to the lack of sustained power differentials underwritten by resource differentials - in immediate-return economies no one person can become so powerful as to be immune to counter-dominant strategies. 

But when - as in delayed-return economies - high status individuals can appropriate a greater than equal share of resources, they are able to sustain this inequality by building alliances among high status individuals; and by enlisting supporters (eg. a "gang" or "bodyguard") to create larger and more powerful alliances, trading the stored resources as payment for cooperation (Barkow, 1992; Gellner, 1988).

In sum - the distribution of valued resources, such as food, tends to be equal, not because equality-of-everybody is positively valued; but instead because me-having-less than anyone-else is negatively valued. And those who have less, immediately gang-up on anyone who has more then them; and compel him to share it out.  

If counter-dominance is an approximately-correct explanation of the instinctual basis for "equality"; then it readily explains the observed structure and behaviour of modern Leftist ideology.

A close synonym for counter-dominance could be a spontaneous resentment at others having more than oneself; coupled with a tendency to form alliances with others having similar grievances against those who have more. 

Insofar as this is instinctual, it operates on people and situations in a person's perceived environment - which nowadays includes (and is perhaps dominated by) the "virtual" environment of mass and social media - reinforced by the "real life" social world of gossip and interaction, that so often takes up and amplifies themes from mass/ social media. 

For me, this idea of a double-negative, and resentment-based instinct helps explain the incoherence of Leftism - in that "The Left" is a collection of people with a collection of grievances, each rooted in the belief that anyone else having anything more of what I want is an "unjust" state of affairs. 

It is this instinct which leads to the supposed ethical principle of "egalitarianism" - that is manipulated by political leaders, in order to control (and weaken) the masses. 

Because, in a mass modern society, with multiple valued resources, there are many overlapping (hence incompatible) demands for equal sharing among many overlapping groups. There is never any greater equality in modern societies, and indeed this state is logically impossible because incoherent; but a there is instead a continual state of resentful complaint about inequality - as predicted by counter-dominance being at the root of it. 

And this continual state of resentful complaint is positively encouraged and reinforced by (and as) the value-system of Leftism.  

From a Christian perspective, we can see that resentment is a sin, indeed the master sin of modernity; and therefore that (insofar as the basis of equality really is counter-dominance) Leftism is rooted in evil motivation.

An evil motivation that is spontaneous and instinctive, hence powerful... 

Nonetheless, no matter how natural it may be (all sins are "natural", after all!); resentment is an evil that ought to be repented and minimized - not celebrated and encouraged. 

  

Negative critique is worthless; unless it comes from a position of self-awareness concerning assumptions and motivations.

I think we are all prone to critique, ridicule and dismiss the ideas of others by arguing purely negatively and without being clear of the assumptions from-which we are arguing. 

I've often done this myself, and indeed tend to fall-into it as a kind of Journalistic" default - to the point that I try to catch and halt this tendency, before it gets too established. 

Of course; one cannot always (e.g. in every blog post!) be re-stating one's assumptions; on the other hand:

1. It is obvious that most people do not even know what are their own assumptions; and

2. Even fewer people have subjected their own assumptions to the kind of critique that they so lavishly bestow upon other people. And

3. Even fewer people - having become aware of their own assumptions, and examined them critically - have found these assumptions to be solid to their own honest satisfaction over a prolonged self-critique*...

This is exactly why there is so much attacking of other people and their views in the modern world (including on the internet); and so little clarification of where that attack is coming from.

 When one's own views are unknown, incoherent, or feeble; and also if one's own person is very obviously flawed - then it makes sense to do everything possible to keep negative attention on the other chap and what the other chap is saying.  

But this is dishonest and incoherent. Therefore, unworthy of respect. 

*(This is, indeed, the entirety of the philosophical defense of modern mainstream ideology - the ideology shared by all people and institutions of wealth and power, all major participants in public discourse to the point that it does not even have a name for itself! I call it variously atheism-materialism-leftism-totalitarianism... but it-itself does not acknowledge any of these names, nor any other term, for what is By Far the most pervasive and enforced ideology in human history.)

 

So, I regard negative critique as so much blah blah - unless it is rooted in some, more or less explicitly known and acknowledged assumptions and motivations; some kind of evident self-awareness. 

This applies to critique emanating from what might be termed a Traditionalist Christian perspective, which can be almost any denomination or church - and indeed, almost the same negative critique may emanate from people/ institutions with very different assumptions - But this is not a strength!

After all, we get essentially the same "progressive" negative-critique of Christianity; coming-in from multi-national organizations such as the UN; from all Western Nations, and all the multi-national corporations and social institutions and the mass media - The Establishment. 

Negative critique is, mostly, merely negatively-motivated and ignorant-of-self; and even when it comes from multiple directions, it remains worthless. 

To be worth considering; negative critique must be in self-awareness of a coherent alternative and positive understanding. 

(Recalling that a double-negative is not a positive.) 

In short: we ought to demand (of ourselves, as well as others) If Not, Then What? 

Resentment is almost unavoidable as a motivation - unless there is a stronger positive goal

I have often written about our age's besetting-sin or "master sin" of resentment; including how negative resentment is the basis of the mainstream dominating socio-political ideology of "leftism". 

(Where leftism is understood to include all types of secular materialism with some variant of an hedonic ethical basis - including conservatism, Republicans, libertarians, nationalists etc.) 

Thus the pseudo-goals of leftism (taken up and discarded expediently) such as equality, feminism, antiracism, anti-anti-semitism, climate environmentalism - are all negative, all oppositional in their nature, all against some-thing. 

...With the purported "utilitarian" justification that this negation will lead to greater human "happiness" of some group or all people - in which happiness is (in recent generations) equated, bottom line, with diminished-suffering. 

(And where suffering is itself conceptualized as a departure-from some implicit and imagined state of not-suffering.)  

The negations are indeed multiple, since to be against some presumed cause of suffering is already a triple-negation - or is it quadruple!... At any rate, in modern leftism there is no serious or would-be-coherent vision of an utopian, happy-state, of society. 

Thus we have the negative ideology of diminishing suffering; while lacking any reference state of a happy world and people. 

How did this happen? Because surely Man cannot and should-not live by negations alone? 

Not by accident; but not wholly imposed top-down either. 

Of course, nowadays the top-down structural political encouragements and inducements (the propaganda in education systems and the mass media, the subsidies and legal exemptions, the careerism) are all very evident. 

But there is another side to things - which is that, after the decline and end of spontaneous religiosity; there were no sufficiently-strong positive motivators.  

Nationalism is a good example; since in several societies it was the first attempted replacement for religion as a basis for social cohesion. Typically, nationalist movements start with considerable emphasis on positive national characteristics and "spirit", and national destiny... 

But always this proves to be too feeble to motivate, and the positive national destiny turns-out either to be a minority aspiration - and/or generally inadequate to provide a basis for national cohesion and direction. 

The nationalism invariably degenerates into double-negativity: into opposition to some source of presumed (or real) harm. For instance; the nationalism of resentment of some particular other-nation or group becomes the main theme, the main source of cohesion, the main basis of the main policies. 

This has been the fate of every nationalist movement of which I am aware: such Germany, Ireland, Scotland and... fill-in the gaps. 

A similar tale could be told of socialism degenerating into class war; feminism into sex war, pro-natural world environmentalism into a negative and destructive crusade against "carbon", antiracism into racism etc. 

The dominance of resentment is therefore a secondary consequence of the feebleness of positive motivators in a post-religious world. 

Resentment provides (at least in the short term) a basis for cohesion against a common "enemy"; and a basis for strategies to deal with this threat. 

But in the long-term, all these negations purposively destroy society - and this is inevitable unless resentment is superseded.  

  

What about individual persons? Why are we (nearly all of us) so helplessly vulnerable to pro-resentment propaganda that strives to turn us, each-and-all, into a self-perceived victim of somebody or something; a seething cauldron of entitlement, fears, anger, spitefulness? 

The ultimate cause is the same - which is the feebleness of our positive motivations. 

Of course it is facile to spout positive slogans, or pretend to be driven by positive goals about some future of enhanced achievement, creation, beauty, love... 

But actual behaviour (e.g. what people think, speak and write about; media and bureaucratic productions; laws, policies and behaviours) suggests that these are gross exaggerations that serve merely as dishonest excuses to hide the endemic negativity of core motivators. And we get the observable socio-cultural-psychological dominance of resentment as a core motivator. 

The only good answer; the only spiritual solution to the sin, is to recognize and repent it. 

This is an essential first step. 

Yet, if we desire to defeat a particular resentment in ourselves that is dominating and distorting our lives - and if we do not want simply to replace one sin by another: such as resentment replaced by self-aggrandisement (a common sight on the internet)...

Then we need to discover a genuinely positive and strong positive motivator that can press-down-upon and net-over-ride resentment; and this motivator must be religious. 

Because only religion is a stronger long-term motivator with sufficient potential for coherence and direction. 

And so we circle back to the problem of discovering a positive and personally-motivating and good religion in the 21st century - which is our only hope for genuine betterment. 

When motivations are double-negative, the world cannot help but be a nasty place

I am sometimes astonished by people's blindness to the obvious fact that their whole lives are based on double-negative motivations; and that therefore they can only motivate themselves to get-through life, by maintaining a continuous state of frothing anger and seething resentment...

And then they develop a scheme of inverted values by-which this state of angry resentment is regarded as right, proper, praiseworthy!

Of course; in this totalitarian-secular world, where all major institutions are left-affiliated - double-negativity is inevitable, since that is the basis and nature of leftism. 

But, sadly, a great deal of Christianity (as well as other religions) is also mostly negative and oppositional in its theology, hence its motivations. 

So we are all surrounded by encouragements to base our lives on negativity, on oppositions; and to value only this...

What eventuates is a public, social, political, media world in a waxing-and-waning (but never-ending) frenzy of opposition to... something or another (mostly or wholly made-up, invented, manipulated)...

And this being resisted and opposed by Christians on a point-by-point basis; such that the end-result is a Christianity of triple-negation! 

(That is, group Christian life substantially consists of Christians opposing the secular-leftists, who are themselves motivated by one or many of the oppositional leftist ideologies such as socialism, feminism, racism, climate change, healthism, anti-Fire-Nationism...)

And public discourse is consequently oppositional in nature - consisting of ginning-up personal disputes, and escalating the interpersonal rhetoric; presumably in an attempt at avoiding self-awareness of the sheer flimsiness, feebleness and radical incoherence of one's own motivations.

This has been going-on for more than three decades even in science, and for more than sixty years in general culture; and so most people know nothing different. They apparently imagine that such spiteful scapegoating and schoolboy scrapping always has been the underlying nature of discourse on ideas, morality and the purpose of life. 

In such a world; a serious Christian who engages in public discourse will be corrupted by the process - one way or another: either by its becoming a demonstration of ritualized submission of Christianity to leftism; or else by him being dragged into the melee of name-calling, face-scratching and hair-pulling enacted as spectacle in front of a contrived media-cheerleading audience and its dopey addicts. 

Luckily for Christians, none of this is necessary. The powers of evil are very concerned to distract Christians from, or to deny, the spiritual power and effectiveness of the single soul. Very concerned to corral and corrupt the single soul, by insisting Christianity is only valid when engaged in group or corporate activity.  

Yet, on the contrary; any individual who achieves clarity in his thinking, clarifies thinking for Mankind. Any Man who is well-motivated, even for ten minutes!, creates a positive spiritual template for others. Someone that seeks and attains guidance from his real-divine self or from the Holy Ghost, makes it easier for this to be repeated by himself and others. 

All true thinking makes possibilities and alters the balance of powers. 

Why? Because although our experience is one of alienated consciousness and solitude, the fact is that all Men are spiritually 'linked' in vital respects - or, more exactly, Men share in a condition of inhabiting a "spiritual thought-world" - a world of mutual knowing and interactions.

Ancient tribal Men knew this innately - and lived by it; and we each personally spontaneously used-to know this as young children - we knew that some of our thoughts could be known by others, and that we could know the thinking of others; that we were never alone, that our dreams and thoughts potentially affected the world for better, or worse. 

CG Jung got it partly-right but distorted, with the Collective Unconscious - his basic point that we inhabit a kind of spiritual underworld was correct; and that this accounts for the very possibility of communication and knowledge.  

The personal is political; but not by material means (as leftists suppose) but because 'the spiritual' is public - potentially.  

In 'making the world a better place', or indeed in helping a neighbour; it is not just that we don't need to use the material mechanisms of human society - but that these mechanisms thwart betterment, and twist it to evil ends. 

The only proper reason for public discourse (like this!) is insofar as it contributes towards personal clarity and strengthens positive motivations. 

That work is done by the spiritual act of composition; as the benefit of thinking is done by the spiritual act of having right-thoughts. The achievement is at that point - and not by the later possibility of its physical spread and 'influence' of words, images, concepts...

We really do not need to worry about access to media or the levers of power; about accuracy or misrepresentation; about communication, about persuasion, about winning (fake) arguments! 

(Indeed we must not worry about such things - because such things work precisely by the corrosive effect of such worry. Worry about the material manifestation of communications is therefore a sin, that requires to be recognized and repented. Writers and other public discoursers need to be aware of this, or else the spiritual good of their activity will be undone, and they will be corrupted by their activities: as is so often evident.) 

We 'only' need to take care of our side of things! 

Anything we say that is right and Good will (insofar as it is helpful) be taken-up and woven into ongoing-creation by God. 

Anything we think right; any needful discernment, any repentance or other decision to reject an evil, will have its positive effect on the spiritual world. 

Since Modern man is blind and insensible; Our first and most important job is to become aware: to understand, become conscious, make the right choices and clarify our desire to follow Jesus Christ, for resurrection into Heaven, to live eternally and Sons and Daughter of God. 

Nothing is more important than this, nothing is more effective.

Everything we require for the job is supplied us; nothing else is needed that what we have and can get; and nothing external can stop us from doing the job. 

"Suffering? I'll show you suffering!" - and the leftist impulse

Insofar as it has any positive program (and in fact this is a double-negative, not a positive) the alleviation of suffering could be regarded as the focus of leftism - arising at its early roots in abolition, pacifism, socialism, feminism etc. 

My Glasgow friend, the writer Frank Kuppner, used to intone the phrase "Suffering? I'll show you suffering!" whenever some leftist, feminist journalist (invariably upper class, public school, Oxbridge educated; then straight into a prestigious and high profile newspaper job) embarked on yet-another account of the abuses, adversity and prejudices of her hellish life...

For modern people the problem of suffering in the world; and the socio-political intent to eliminate or reduce suffering (or, at least, the suffering of particular groups such as workers, women, or blacks), has come to seem The Primary problem of Life - the primary objective of life. 

Yet, suffering cannot coherently be made the centre of a moral system. And indeed 'suffering' itself is an incoherent abstraction of billions (at least) of individual responses to billions of different - labile, fluctuating and often utterly specific - situations. 

As so often, there is a colossal but unacknowledged and denied assumption at work here - that all these billions of adverse feelings to billions of specific instances and circumstances - can, should and ought to be considered together; and dealt-with by one or a few generalized socio-political solutions of the type that constitute leftist politics and ideology. 

And, even give that all these assumptions were true and reflected reality; the resulting ethic of diminishing suffering is one that has many consequences which would be considered self-contradictory if clearly apprehended and comprehended. 

Because when reducing the suffering in this-life becomes the priority, it trumps life-itself; as with the mainstream acceptance and advocacy of abortion; where the priority is to reduce the suffering of the mother and or the child - even at the cost of killing the child. 

It is quite normal to express the ethic that it is better not to be born, than to be born to suffer; not to live, than to live in (presumed) great suffering - and this also justifies the grossly sub-replacement reproductive rates that characterize the entire developed world.   

It is quite normal to envisage a massive (but suffering-free!) reduction in global human population ("giga-death") as a mechanism for reducing global suffering due to some imputed cause or another; or even to save the 'suffering planet'. 

There is no great mystery to all this. Suffering (like pain, fear, humiliation or any other of its subtypes) is a consequence of many possible causes of many types; and furthermore is not a fixed quantitative result but varies according to attitude, explanation and treatments. 

A person can be - often is - made to suffer by evoking resentment against real or imagined persecution for supposedly class, race or sex (etc.) reasons. And then more people can be made to suffer 'vicariously' by empathic identification with (alleged, often fictional) supposed-instances of such suffering! 

The left has developed an 'economy' of suffering. Suffering can be imputed to some groups while others are blamed for that suffering; suffering can even be imputed to the planet, biosphere, ecosystem or environment. 

After a couple of centuries of expanding and permeating leftism, and especially since the explicit emergence of a leftist world government last year; Suffering is now Big Business.

Indeed, suffering is now the biggest of all world enterprises! With multiple and linked agencies and bureaucracies engaged in the identification/ creation/'raising awareness', validation, and allocation of suffering on one side...While on the other side is a vast and ramifying state-media-charitable-corporate apparatus for (allegedly) preventing and alleviating suffering. 

Leftism has become a global machine for creating, amplifying, and spreading suffering; even as it claims to be alleviating - or, at its transhumanist extreme actually abolishing - suffering. 

Modern Leftism is - insofar as it has any positive content - a meta-ideology of suffering. 

We can regard this 'meta-ideology of suffering' as an almost inevitable consequence of abolishing God, the spiritual and the after-life. 

If this mortal life really is our only experience - then its rationale can only be related to our current state of experience. 

The ideology of suffering has therefore been made public and socially-manipulative by the bridging concept of altruism; so that ethical persons are supposed-to-be concerned primarily to alleviate the sufferings of as many others as possible. (i.e. the philosophical system termed Utilitarianism.) 

But when the transcendental and spiritual have been wholly removed from public discourse and life (ignored, excluded, denied, forgotten); now we can observe an accelerating centripetal tendency towards short-termist certainty rather than long-term strategy; and a focus on the experienced-self rather than the inferred and alleged suffering of others. 

Therefore the terminus of the leftist ideology of altruistic is selfish negative impulsive hedonism. 

And the only way to be sure of avoiding suffering is to die (either immediately or as soon as suffering is too great) - die painlessly and quickly. 

Hence my prediction of a (imminent) mass epidemic of fear-motivated, resentful-spirited and despairing suicide. 

And this leads to damnation - not because it is suicide as such; but because such attempted self-annihilation was motivated by the sins of fear, resentment and despair; which amount to rejection or  denial of the reality and Goodness of our loving God the creator. 

Destruction is easy! - Explaining the (inverted) triumph of atheist-materialist-leftism

However differently things used to be, the world is now simplified - Good and evil are increasingly without overlap, separating, diverging. 

There are those who affiliate with God and divine creation - and there is the opposite side: the mainstream, common, majority of atheist-materialist-leftist ideology that rules The West (and which apparently includes most self-identified religious people, including most Christians). 

All the leadership class and most of the populations are therefore leftists; which means that their motivations have no genuine positive agenda, but operate via oppositions.

(e.g. As of 2022, leftists - i.e. the entirety of the mainstream of Western public discourse and a majority of the population - oppose 'climate change', or are anti-racist, or keen to protect and promote sexual 'minorities', or eager to transform the world to 'prevent' the birdemic, hate the Fire Nation etc - typically they are all of these. All major policy strategies of the mainstream are primarily oppositional, negative in motivation - and adopting even one of them, is to join the leftist alliance.)

Opposition is easy because it is destructive in nature, therefore leftism is easy: therefore the lefter has triumphed over the less-left, and the trend is ever-leftward. 

Any kind or degree of subversion, destruction or inversion - of whatever is created, divine, of Good - is therefore a triumph of leftism.

Of course, this 'triumph' is itself a value-inversion. To re-label destruction as triumph is to invert the true nature of accomplishment. 

The global triumph of leftism is only real, because value-inversion has become mainstream and dominant.

Creation is difficult in this mortal life, which is dominated by entropy; even sustaining good motivations and effective functionality requires ability, energy, effort...

To make something new, useful, beautiful, happy, complex... these are difficult. 

But anybody - even the laziest and most talentless fool - can destroy what has been made; destroy to a greater or lesser extent, or even completely!

It takes talent and hard work to design a functional machine - but any fool can throw a spanner in its works, sprinkle sand into its gears, or smash it with a hammer... There is just one way to make it work; but innumerable ways to break it. 

The leftist West is now self-weakening rapidly. It can accomplish less and less of the positive, and that only at greater and greater cost (due to massively reduced efficiency and the diminished status of functionality). 

Indeed the West is not even trying to create, grow capability, produce that which is necessary...

Instead; the West's diminishing resources are being increasingly channeled into the infliction of destruction. 

Even as the Western powers are consumed by their own evil; and as their capacity to create good - and even to sustain functionality - declines with increasing rapidity; they can easily destroy - internally and externally, at home and abroad...

Destruction is so easy that the powers of evil can attack simultaneously on multiple fronts. 

...As I write, leftist-motivated Western powers are seeding and nurturing chaos across the globe and in many nations; destabilizing, pouring fuel onto conflagrations; breaking complex systems of design, production, and maintenance; snapping webs of trade, transport, distribution; threatening, lying, blackmailing and bribing; encouraging hatred, resentment and despair. 

What can stop them? 

Well, the first thing is that there is no cohesive desire to stop leftist destruction. We would have to want to stop leftism, and do something else instead. 

The West is leftist here-and-now, and getting more-so. The mass majority are invested in one or several left-agenda items, therefore resistance is neutralized and cooperation widespread.

In the short-term it is nearly-always pleasanter or more expedient to join the left-agenda, than to oppose it; even when its long-term lethality has been recognized. Selling-out has become the single major career path for those with talent and the capacity for hard-work.

  

It is a snare and delusion to suppose that those who oppose the leftist-agenda can succeed in stopping and reversing it. It is too easy to destroy, too hard to sustain and build. 

Anyway, two wrongs don't make a right: double-opposition is futile. 

The problem is not what we shouldn't, but what we should do. 

So, first (before anything else) we must want to stop leftism because we want something-else more - want that something-else as the highest priority in our own life. 

Since this world makes destruction easy, and this mortal life is dominated by short-termism and expediency; the only conceivably effective answer is when people live with their hopes fixed beyond this mortal life and world; and with faith that to dwell eternally in such Goodness is personally achievable. 

Work it out...

What we have Now is Not 'fascism' (not even 'neo'-fascism) - what is it?

Some people have noticed that the current global totalitarian system is more like fascism than communism, specifically in terms of its relationship between the state and the corporations. (In the sense that communism has every-thing nationalized, and included in the state system, while in fascism the state and corporations are aligned by a single, compulsorily-enforced ideology, but not ownership...)

On this basis, it is being said that we live in a fascist system; here-and-now, in 2021... 

Well, I am tempted to say "I wish!" - because what we actually have is far, far more evil than any of the fascisms. 

A form of economic ownership and state-corporate relationships was hardly the defining feature of real-life fascism, as it briefly existed in mid-twentieth century Italy and Germany! 

Fascism was characterized ideologically by being a secular, explicitly-leftist movement that was also strongly anti-communist (which meant, mostly, anti-nationalization). But hardly anybody notice that aspect of fascism (except for the owners of corporations, hence their support for fascism when it was the most viable alternative to communism) 

Positively fascism was a dictatorship motivated by militaristic nationalistic pride. 

The country was to be run on military lines, and the country was to be celebrated and glorified. That was was people saw, and liked, about fascism - and where it scored so heavily over communism. 

The motivations of fascism were comprehensible, human, and non-paradoxical - whereas communism was - like mainstream modern leftism - negatively, oppositionally, motivated. The communist atrocities and purges were all 'against' something (the bourgeois, the Kulaks, the Jews, reactionary saboteurs...); whereas fascism was motivated by nation-building. 

Of course, communists have since tried to reframe fascism as mainly 'about' racism. That clearly was not the case - but it is a telling projection; because if the communists had been running fascism, then it certainly would have been about racism!

In other words, to the communist-leftist mind, the only way to motivate people is in opposition; thus they cannot even imagine the kind of positive national pride that was crucial to the (brief) success of fascism. Communistic leftists can only suppose that nationalism was a mask for oppositional racism directed against some particular groups or groups.

Nationalism, including fascism, offered a kind of halfway house - a positive (but temporary) alternative to religion; briefly uniting the country around its positive celebration. 

Nationalism/ Fascism still used habits of thinking and motivations derived from the Christian era - but as a secular society, it had no way of renewing these resources - so all nationalisms, everywhere, weakened and declined - and it has not proved possible to revive an effective nationalism anywhere in the world for several decades.

By this analysis, in 2021 we have something new and unprecedented.

What we have is nothing like fascism - except in the double-negative way that it has enlisted the mega-private corporations by Not nationalizing them; and by (for mow...) coopting their interests in the totalitarian world government (public-private partnership).

What we have is much more like communism than fascism - especially The Establishment's uncritical/ warm feelings towards the communist dictatorships of past and present. But this 21st century leftism is post-communist; and has shed the economic focus of Marxism.

(No more nationalization of banks, media and corporations! Come and sit at the high table! So the billionaires are kept wealthy, and 'happy'...). 

Gone, too, now - are any positive notions of building a utopia; indeed, any attempt to represent a positive vision of the future sound like one of the fictional nightmare dystopias. We now have the implementation of post-1960s New Left oppositional-identity politics, which grew in the USA and is anti-nationalist, anti-military, anti-white, anti-men, anti-working class (aka. 'white nationalists') etc.  

Consequently, They keep the masses focused on rotating negative, oppositional scares and crusades; without mentioning where all this is supposed to be going... 

Anyway; the main point here is that what we have now is not fascism, neither is it communism - but is something new and different. 

We have a regime built almost entirely on negative and oppositional motivations. We have a populace who do not require heavy-handed violent and physical coercion; because they are so profoundly demotivated, passive and short-termist; that they will believe and go-along-with almost anything that is suggested by their state-media-corporate rulers. 

We have a world government of state-media-corporate rulers, we have a world ruled in conformity and global masses who are acquiescent to this totalitarianism ... yet there is no clear, simple, comprehensible positive ideology in which they are ruling. 

We are not going-towards any-particular-thing - or maybe, we are pretending to go-towards dozens of particular but incompatible things, each pretense being maintained for a few hours, days or weeks... Then swapped-out for something else equally temporary and insincere. 

The obvious but ignored fact is that we now (obvious since early 2020) have a world government for the first time, with an international scope for action...

But that government is not aiming to build anything in particular; instead it is being used* to destroy itself - partly by setting each against all; and partly by Just Plain Destruction... Stopping great swathes of the economy, stopping human interaction, stopping... almost everything. 

Just Plain Destruction. 

Not-doing, Stopping, Preventing... these are the huge facts of these times; and these times are fundamentally un-like any time or place before, ever. 

*'Used' by whom? By the evil supernatural forces of evil - Satan, and the demons of destruction.

Men and women *cannot* revert to traditional sex roles (at least, not without net-harm)

Modern, mainstream, official and mandatory ideas about sex and sexuality are so dishonest, inverted, and extreme in their evil - that it is very tempting to wish to re-assert, and seek to impose, traditional sexual relationships. 

But this cannot happen, and indeed should not be attempted. 

The results would be overwhelmingly negative, in terms of what God wants from us here-and-now. 

Reversion to traditional roles cannot happen (without net-harm) because men and women are now - at this stage and phase in the development of our consciousness - meant-to-be (and are) much more unique as beings, than was taken account of in the 'intellectual soul' (i.e. traditional-classical-medieval) ways of thinking. 

Our modern souls (in the 'consciousness soul' phase) rebel against being crammed into simple-and-few categories that are never quite right - because being crammed-into a few fixed roles thwarts that seeking after divinely-loving co-creativity which is our destiny. 

Therefore, traditional roles could now only be imposed (artificially, top-down) by a system of overwhelming coercion; which would have other and strongly-negative side effects. 

Of course, the devil has (via his favourite instrument of socio-political totalitarian globalist leftism) taken this fact, and twisted it by the sexual revolution, into the opposed-to-Good evils of modern sex/uality we see all around us. That is true and terrible. 

But the double-negative strategy of opposing the oppositional is not a path to Good. 

Traditional attitudes and roles cannot now be re-imposed except coercively - and in ways that would be net-harmful.

Men and women can no longer operate in a positive creative way within the roles prescribed by traditional categories, nor by any modification of such categories.

There is no formula, checklist or blueprint for what men and women ought to do in their relationships. All beautiful, good and true relationships between men and women are each essentially unique.  

(You may have noticed that among all the Good marriages that you know - and I mean marriages that you know genuinely and spiritually, and by personal experience over time, and have judged as good - each such marriage is essentially unique.) 

In rejecting the utterly-fake, inverted and manipulated hedonic 'individualism' of the World Establishment manipulators - we should instead seek the genuine spiritual individualism of Romantic Christianity. 

The categories of 'man' or 'woman' are, indeed, eternal metaphysical realities, and the original basis of divine creation.

But each real and valid actual relationship of a man and a woman is nonetheless between unique beings; and needs to be approached as such.  

Actually, modern Christians do not need to self-identify

*

A while ago I wrote a post advocating that modern Christians should self-identify by wearing a cross or something similar.

But today I realized that this is, or soon will be, unneccesary.

Because the degree of self-identification among non- or anti-Christians is becoming so clear and obvious that Christians will soon be identifiable merely by exclusion.

*

Devout adherents of other religions have often self-identified in the West - ultra-Othodox Jews, Moslems, Sikhs, Hundus and so on.

So that is easy.

But it is characteristic of the late stage of secular cultural Leftism that anti-Christians are increasingly marking and labelling themselves as such: typically by their inversion of the transcendental Goods of Truth, Beauty and Virtue.

(The transcendental Goods of Truth, Beauty and Virtue are not - of course - distinctively Christian; but they are intrinsically Christian. Therefore any deliberate, proud, public flouting of any of them is with a high probability self-labelling as anti-Christian - in the absence of self-labelling of being a member of another religion. )

*

Anti-truth is proudly displayed in the use of plastic surgery and bodybuilding drugs - to project lies about a person's age and aptitudes.

To the extent that a person advertizes their enthrallment to fashion they display their inauthenticity, their subordination to prevailing dishonesty above timeless truth; their willingness to mould themselves in accordance with worldly norms.

Anyone who deliberately deploys technology (make-up, hair dye, clothing) and ingenuity (to assemble these) such as to display an image that is (say) fifteen years younger than their true age, is very probably not Christian.

*

Anti-beauty is projected by the proud advertisment of self-mutilations of various types - tattoos, piercings, deliberate uglification with make-up or dye, drunkenness, intoxicating drug usage...

(Of course, a person may mutilate himself and repent to become a real Christian. And they may have been multilated by others - perhaps when young. It is never too late to repent. But Natural Law (as a component part of Christianity) is incompatible with the un-repentance involved in the proud and deliberate display of self-mutilations.)

(And of course being ugly is normal for humans, since beauty is rare and evanescent. It is deliberate uglification, purposive desecration of beuaty, which is sinful, hence anti-Christian.)

*

Anti-virtue is typically (although not excusively) displayed in terns of public, proud, displays of allegiance to any of the tenets of the sexual revolution - whether specific, or a general and indiscriminate sexualization of appearance or behaviour.

Furthermore, anti-Virtue nowadays includes public displays of Leftist markers; since we now realize that Leftism is inrinsically anti-Christian.

(This was not always the case, and in the past there were real Christians who were socialists, for instance - but for the past several decades (at least) Leftism has evolved to exclude Christianity.)

So all manner of Leftist causes may be marked and proudly displayed - whether banners, posters, books, badges, dress styles, or whatever - and these can be used as indicators that the user has a very low probability of being Christian.

*

In conclusion, the small minority of Christians will - before much longer - be able to recognize each other by a double negative: simply as being the only ones who are not clearly self-labelled as not-Christians.

*

How the Establishment have become both rulers and victims in the New Left era (post-middle-1960s)

Not many people realize that the Left underwent a major re-orientation through the 1950s and 60s, which was largely completed in the USA by the late 1960s - spreading from there (via the mass media, finance and the economy, and the mass media) to include the Anglosphere, Western Europe, and the globalist/ multi-national institutions. 

This was the re-orientation away-from Old Left socialism - with its focus upon class, with the Proletariat/ Working Class (of native-born men) as its core virtue-group; and towards ruling class personnel who are defined in terms of membership in a variety of virtue groups. 

The New Left was what has come to rule the world; and the new orientation was based on a proliferating collection of virtue groups; based upon not economic divisions but instead race, sex, and sexuality. 

This had the great advantage that the "oppressed", "victim", virtue-group could now be members of part of the upper class, the ruling class. 

It had been a disadvantage of Old Left socialism that the ruling class - who managed the whole thing - were always under pressure to favour and incorporate lower class people into the "elite"; where the New Left routinely framed ultra-privileged, ultra-wealthy Establishment figures as their new deserving class - to be accorded legal protection and promotion.

So we have, by now, become used to the idea that the exemplary assumed-intrinsically-virtuous persons of the modern Left, are drawn from ruling class backgrounds. 

Many have wealthy and powerful parents, and a high proportion have experienced grooming via Establishment educational establishments. 

Others are from among the very wealthy and powerful ruling families.

In sum: the New Left virtue-group are mostly extremely privileged individuals, locked into Establishment power structure - who are nonetheless defined as victims simply by categories relating to race, sex, or sexuality - or some other national, social or ethnic feature*.

The old socialist virtue group (native-born working men)  have indeed been demoted so low, that the situation is inverted. The privileged classes are a non-working benefits-dependent client underclass, any immigrant from anywhere-else, any race other than those native to The West, any religion other than Christianity, and any sex/uality other than men with families. 

To this has been added "environmentalism" - which favours some conceptualization of "planetary benefit" (currently almost exclusively the atmospheric concentration of CO2) to replace human beings as the proper focus of concern. It is important to recognize that what is defined as "good for" "the environment" is now conceptually controlled entirely by the ruling class - via ruling-class controlled social institutions.  

Of course, New Leftism is oppositional hence incoherent by it very nature; so that there is still "lip service" paid to Old Leftism - but that is all it is - there are words, but never actions, to help the Proletariat.

In actuality; the New Left is an expandable collection of double-negative imperatives; which are focused upon in rotation; and according to expediencies. 

Where is this going? There is no imaginable utopia; and public attention is instead focused upon the avoidance of an expanding range of projected dystopias.        

 

The difference between Old and New Left is therefore profound. 

The Old Left was based on coherent but untrue positive assertions about class and economics, and aimed for a describable (albeit in-practice impossible) socialist utopia.

The New Left now functions almost-entirely using ruling class personnel - who are also designated victims. 

And it had made itself the only recognized spokesman and representative for those other virtuous entities that are not included in the ruling class - such as those human individuals and groups that are incapable of leadership; as well as animals, plants, and The Planet. 

The great triumph of New Leftism has been to create a socially dominant morality by which the ruling class are encapsulated as both uniquely virtuous, and uniquely powerful. 

This explains A Lot...

 

*This always makes me think of a comment made by an old friend, the author Frank Kuppner, who was reading some feminist journalist in The Guardian (someone like Polly Toynbee) - one who had been born to rich and famous parents, with all the advantages of nepotism, top status boarding school, Oxbridge  etc - raging about the oppression of "women"... Frank quietly summarized her rant as: "Suffering? I'll show you suffering!". 

The spirit of Antichrist in the Queen's Christmas Message 2019

One important factor in this era of things coming to a point, is the distinction between good and evil becoming ever clearer even in our own hearts - and even within Christianity. Among which, the very longstanding errors and false emphases of Christianity are being exposed mercilessly.

One such error can be seen when comparing the Fourth Gospel with Luke's and especially Matthew's Gospel's - and is related to the idea of Jesus as Messiah of this world, of being a socio-political saviour of his people. And the idea that this will be evident in terms of Jesus, and then of Christianity (and the purported institutional continuation of Jesus's mission) being a positive influence in the development of this world.

It is normal now - and has been from not long after Jesus died - to claim that Jesus made The World (this mortal life) a better place; just as it is common from the enemies of Christianity to claim the opposite. And often to claim this better world as the main 'benefit' for Christianity, the main reason why people should be Christians*.

But in our time, with our pervasive materialistic world view; the arguments for Christianity have become almost entirely this-worldly. And, to make this appealing to the mainstream masses, the effects of Jesus Christ are seen in terms of Christianity promoting the values and outcomes that are currently mainstream.


This can be seen in yesterday's Queen's Speech. Elizabeth II is Head of the Church of England - officially responsible for appointing the bishops who ordain the priests; so that having Christian references is normal and mandatory in her annual address; the question is: what are these Christian references, and what do they imply?

This year, the nature of these Christian references shows clearly the ways that the spirit of Antichrist is at work in this era, here and now; such that references to Jesus and to the Christian churches are framed in social terms quite alien to the spirit of the Fourth Gospel.

Of course, at the heart of the Christmas story lies the birth of a child: a seemingly small and insignificant step overlooked by many in Bethlehem. But in time, through his teaching and by his example, Jesus Christ would show the world how small steps taken in faith and in hope can overcome long-held differences and deep-seated divisions to bring harmony and understanding. As Christmas dawned, church congregations around the world joined in singing It Came Upon The Midnight Clear. Like many timeless carols, it speaks not just of the coming of Jesus Christ into a divided world, many years ago, but also of the relevance, even today, of the angel's message of peace and goodwill. It's a timely reminder of what positive things can be achieved when people set aside past differences and come together in the spirit of friendship and reconciliation.

This false idea of Jesus as primarily, essentially, the agent of overcoming differences and division, of offering a blueprint for harmony and understanding, and of instituting a society of peace and goodwill; is a modern version of the same error and distortion seen when Jesus was regarded as a Jewish political leader; whose primary mission was to inaugurate a new way of living on this earth and during this mortal life.

Whereas, in reality Jesus was essentially addressing the individual person; and any social changes were secondary to that person coming to believe-on Jesus, have faith-in and love-for him; and desiring to follow Jesus through death to resurrected life everlasting in Heaven.


The influence of Jesus, of Christianity, on this world and mortal life is therefore via the effect of transforming individual minds by the love of Jesus and the expectation of Heaven.  

The error of regarding Jesus's mission as primarily political is even more harmful now than it was at and around the time of Jesus's life; because we have (as a society) lost our ability even to acknowledge the reality of the spiritual - and this is also the attitude of the Establishment Christian leadership such as the Queen, Archbishop of Canterbury and Pope Francis.

I call this the spirit of Antichrist, because the idea of Antichrist is to be a fake Christ who uses Christian language and concepts but whose covert motivations are evil; the spirit of those who affect to be on the side of God while operating on the side of Satan. This is done by incorporating selective aspects of Christianity with a false emphasis, and by leaving-out the essence. (Plus, of course, by lying.)


So, the actual religion of the 2019 Queen's Speech is, unsurprisingly, Leftism: we have a Leftist fake Christianity of social reform, and an overt Leftism of that modern 'climate' focused pseudo-environmentalism that has become merely an excuse for a wholesale, Global totalitarian power grab:

Since the end of the Second World War, many charities, groups and organisations have worked to promote peace and unity around the world, bringing together those who have been on opposing sides. By being willing to put past differences behind us and move forward together, we honour the freedom and democracy once won for us at so great a cost. The challenges many people face today may be different to those once faced by my generation, but I have been struck by how new generations have brought a similar sense of purpose to issues such as protecting our environment and our climate.

Here we have it, the Antichrist spirit; where it turns out that many 'charities, groups and organisations' are involved in (supposedly) promoting peace and unity around the world; with a special endorsement for that most immediately threatening evil of putting-aside-differences (ie. enforcement of sameness and elimination of borders) that is being pursued under the excuse of 'protecting our environment and our climate' [sic!]).


In sum, the Queen is explicitly making an equation between the aims of Christianity and the aims of mainstream charities, groups, organisations, environmentalists and climate change activists.

In other words, since Christianity and Leftism are being regarded as amounting to the same thing, and both are to be pursued by the same strategy of promoting peace and unity. Therefore, in practice: pursuing Leftism is claimed here also to be promoting Christianity. And the Christian message is transformed into eliminating inter-societal and inter-personal differences/ imposing uniformity of thoughts, attitudes and behaviours/ empowering international agencies with total powers of surveillance and control etc.

Thus we see the spirit of Antichrist at work. And, as always, the greatest danger is the failure to discern it; the failure to perceive that - whatever the Christian language - evil is the true motivation.


*Note added: Jesus came to offer the new possibility of resurrected Life Everlasting - which is the positive meaning of the double-negative theology of saving us from 'sin' - where 'sin' is being understood as 'the mortal condition', which is itself being understood primarily (but not wholly) to be death. That was what Jesus did, what his life and death was for; and Jesus succeeded completely in this objective with nothing of it left outstanding or still-to-do. And the further things that Jesus came to do are contingent; being secondary to this primary completed act of Jesus, and contingent upon the human individual and his circumstances, and to the society at that time and place. Of course, becoming a follower of Jesus necessarily affects your life and this world, but that is not the point of it. Nor can such societal effects be made into a checklist, code, blueprint or System - separable from the souls of specific Christian individuals.  

Nietzsche's The Antichrist - the argument extended

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Evil is a preference: a choice - and so is Good (contra- or pro-creation)

Many Christians have for many centuries wanted to be able to argue that evil was an insane unjustifiable irrationality. That it made no sense. That the only thing which did make sense was to live in obedience, and conform to the single reality that is God's creation - in the strongest possible sense that there is nothing else but God's creation. So, to be evil is to reject the only reality. 

One important half-truth behind the "relativistic" ideology of the dominant West-Globalist secular Leftism, relates to its rejection of this traditional "objective" Western Christian conceptualization of good and evil as reality versus anti-reality. 

For traditional Christianity - as (I understand) for Judaism and Islam - Good was theologically conceptualized as bound-up with God as the sole source of creation (God created everything from nothing); therefore Evil was conceptualized as objectively irrational, because it is against everything. 

Good was therefore conceptualized primarily in terms of conformity to God. 

With this scheme, there was no positive role for Man's freedom and agency except to submit to the divine order; because there is nothing except the divine order. 

There is only one coherent choice for each Man, for each Beings, in such a scheme - which is to choose allegiance to God - thus all evil is necessarily incoherent and insane*. 

Against this the false-half-truth ideology of secular Leftism proposes some version of "relativism", of the non-objectivity of values -- which is calibrated against the bottom line "hedonic" assumption that mortal life is the only life, and that the values of mortal life are therefore (merely) means towards the end of maximizing happiness and/or minimizing suffering. 

In other words, by this account, truth is whatever happens to make me most happy (or those I care about) over some timescale that I prefer - whether immediate happiness, or some kind of predictive happiness ranged over some future span. 

The more recent conceptualization that swaps happiness for the double negative-freedom-from-suffering , works the same way. Truth is just expediency with respect to minimizing suffering on a timescale from now, to some variably longer span. 

But relativism is itself incoherent for many reasons, as has been known since antiquity. It has no basis for asserting its own validity. 

And, after all, why is it assumed to be better to experience happiness and avoid suffering? Supposing I, or somebody else, says the opposite - then that is as true or untrue; and the choice between inverses depends on some utilitarian prediction of the consequences. In practice it is facile to argue that suffering now leads to happiness later - or the opposite; and the wrangling never stops unless coercively imposed!

If there are no objective values and all opinions are equally valid; then this assumption, and all other values, can be inverted - for any reason, or for no reason.

Yet relativism - in a soft and short-termist sense - clearly has some kind of powerful and lasting appeal when measured (as it is) against the "traditional Christian" version of values as objective, impersonal, and therefore a matter of submissive obedience to what is asserted to be the nature of reality. 

I think the element of truth in relativism is embedded in an individual intuition that a moral system which utterly downgrades "my" individual conscious human to (near-) irrelevance, cannot be right. 

When morality is made utterly objective, nothing to do with me - it becomes simple tyranny. 

Surely real, spiritually-compelling, mortality must be something that is in each of us, from each of us - and not just a thing "out there"? 

Surely we must be able to choose our values, or else they aren't values? 

And surely our choice depends on what each of us is by nature and wants most; on what each of us regards as good - and surely this is the primary moral act? 

We are confronted by reality - and (on the basis of our specific personal nature) we must and shall choose what will be our overall attitude to that reality?  

From this perspective, good does not feel like a wholly external reality, and evil does not feel irrational or incoherent; but both and either a choice rooted in what we personally most want among various possibilities. 

Then; whether we want it here-and-now, or want it in the long-term (a long-term that potentially might extend to eternity).  

So - In mainstream culture, we are apparently confronted with two incoherent and therefore false alternatives: the "Christian" supposedly being an objective and impersonal morality in which individual discernment has no positive function. 

Or there is a nihilistic fatalism where there are no values, but only an unbounded choices between arbitrary individual preferences - presumably based on the fluctuations of current feelings and emotions. In practice, the choice between-relativistic moralities seems to hinge on relative differences in the power to coerce and deceive, desire to belong to particular groups, and the like.    

My conclusion is that both alternatives should be rejected because incoherent hence false; and the truth needs to be sought in some other scheme of things. 

The truth embedded in relativism is that it is possible, rational and coherent that some people (and other beings) can and would choose to reject God and divine creation; would choose Not to affiliate to God's hopes and plans. 

And that rejection is the essence of evil. 

This rejection is a choice rooted in the fact that although we all are created Beings, are indeed Children of God; we are not entirely so - and we each and all "contain" aspects of that primordial self from-which we were created - and these primordial selves are each unique. 

Some primordial selves are less able (or perhaps unable) to love, or maybe the love is present but very weak and a low priority compared with other desires. 

Therefore, when confronted by God's creation which is rooted in love and aims at a reality of love; there are some beings who reject that vision - and who are therefore evil.

(So, I am defining good and evil by either affiliation to God's creative will and plans - rooted in love - or else the active rejection of that, for any reason. 

(There is also, I believe, a theoretical possibility of a wholly passive and personal declining to join the work of creation - a simple opting-out; without any attack on creation or any attempt to persuade others to reject God. Just a cosmic "no thanks" and a reversion to unconscious unawareness in isolation. If this happened, we would not know anything about it except that a being would "disappear" from creation.) 

As I said, some Christians (and others) want to be able to state that this rejection is incoherent, irrational, illogical - and that evil is objectively-impersonally wrong. 

They want to say that evil is: Just wrong without reference to any consciousness of any Being. 

But I would say that the objectivity of the wrongness of evil derives from the fact that by rejecting actual divine creation rooted in love, an evil Being ultimately places itself against creation as such. 

To be against creation is not relativistic; it is an objective fact about a Being's relationship with God and divine creation. 

Thus values are not subjective, nor are they objective - values are about a relationship. 

Evil is not a "mistake" of itself; but is a choice. There may be a mistake in terms of an evil Being wrongly predicting the consequences of rejecting God, rejecting love, rejecting creation...

But the error is not a logical one. Its more a matter of getting what you asked for, but not liking it when you've got it. 

*(Why it is possible for Men, or anything, to reject the divine order? If the theology says that such a choice is incomprehensibly insane, then where could this desire comes from in the first place except from God Himself?  This logical incoherence has never been clearly explained; and indeed it cannot be made coherent. Because because if God created absolutely everything that exists, then the desire to resist God must ultimately have been created by God Himself - as must all evil. Saying that God gave men Free Will does not answer this - because agency can only operate using the materials provided by God, which must mean that God made the evil in the first place, for evil to be choose-able. Yet for Christians, specifically, God is known and said to be wholly Good - so how (for a Christian) could a wholly good God provide evil for free will to be choose-able? My answer (in brief) is that God is wholly Good, and did not make evil - because God did Not make everything from nothing; but instead created using pre-existent Beings; some/most/ all of whom were capable of evil by their primordial nature. Thus evil has always been present in reality - and God is creatively working towards Goodness.)