Why lying is evil

Lying is evil. But there is an 'obvious' way that lying is pragmatically evil; and this should not be confused with an 'absolute' way that lying is spiritually evil. 

First of all - in 'lying' is included all forms of dishonesty, untruthfulness and misleading - for example misleading by partial, selective, distorted facts; and by saying something factually accurate but with the intent that it be misunderstood as meaning something else (this is SOP in legal situations and bureaucracies). 

All are evil - and the indirect and devious evils may well be the worst. 

Lies are (nearly always) expedient: i.e. beneficial to the liar in the short term - which is why they happen. 

But lying is pragmatically evil in human society in a strategic, long-term sense; because lies are dysfunctional in any social system. 

This ought to be obvious, it ought not to need explaining - but modern people cannot think more than one step ahead to consider the consequences; therefore even such simple logic is beyond the contemporary 'mind'. 

If you need the help of a thought experiment; consider trying to do an engineering project - something like designing, building and operating a bridge, or an airliner - when the participants are lying to each other. Or the fact that what was 'science' is dead - because it is no longer truth-seeking and truth-speaking (as it was until just a couple of generations ago). 

So a society where truth-telling is not encouraged and enforced but instead punished; where lying is encouraged, subsidized, and celebrated; is a society at best inefficient and ineffective - and ultimately (because lies feed on lies) will collapse. 

Lying will extract a price; and the more lying the greater the price; until it is socially lethal. 

But that is not evil as such. So why is lying evil as such? 

Lying is evil because it is a denial of truth, which is reality; and reality is God's creation. That is why lying is intrinsically evil.

If you do not believe in God's creation, then lying is not intrinsically evil; and if you do not take the side of God and divine creation - you will not regard lying as intrinsically evil. 

Thus, the reason that there is so much, and ever-more, lying in 2021 is that few people believe in God's creation and many people are opposed to God and divine creation. 

Either they regard everything as just pragmatics, and favour their own short-term expedience over long term functionality; or else they positively want to destroy whatever is true, real and Good: i.e. whatever is God's creation. 

Liars are troops on the front line of Satan's army; and that it true whether the liar is a politician or journalist, a philanthropist or a Christian church leader. And whatever the kind of lie: whether endorsing one of the Big Lies like the birdemic, climate change or antiracism; or one of the carefully-misleading managerial misrepresentations in public relations, mission statements and bureaucracy. And whether you are lying to 'the public', employees, employers - or to your-self. 

Note added. The reason it is important to emphasize the evilness of lying, is that people will often state some version of "there is no point in me/us being truthful"; because "me/us being truthful about this one specific things will not make any difference to what happens". 

They fail to recognize that the lie is itself evil - no matter what the probable consequences of truth-telling may - or may not - turn out be. 

Indeed; truthfulness - starting with our-selves - is perhaps the single most important act of Good an individual can accomplish in these ever-more-evil End Times (where recovery is unlikely, and all pragmatics lead to ruin); valuable in itself and in its potential spiritual consequences. 

They *can't help* lying... The *obviousness* of evil in the End Times

In the (real) Culture Wars - which are between Christians and the Mainstream it has become very easy to tell who's who. The baddies always lie* - they can't help themselves!

(The Mainstream is being defined here as wholly Leftist and materialist - and the Mainstream is Leftist whether the Mainstream calls-itself Socialist, Democrat, Labour, Liberal, Libertarian, Republican, or Conservative - all are Leftists because all are this-worldly, utilitarian materialists.)


Nowadays, at any given time, on any and every specific day; there is always an ongoing international Mainstream scandal, witch-hunt, frenzy, fire-storm; created and sustained by the politically-correct Social Justice Warriors from the Left: whether their case is based on class, 'gender', race, sex, immigrant-status, or sexuality.

But it is easy to tell which side are the goodies and which are the baddies; because the baddies always lie.

The fascinating thing is that they lie even when they don't need to lie! - because for them lying is normal, everyday, habitual... more than this, lying seems to be a necessity.

They actually need to lie often, at a deep level, they just-must keep doing it... perhaps their demonic masters impose this duty upon them, to show their loyalty to the evil cause?


Of course, lying is absolutely necessary when the scandal is invented, based on a lie, made-up from whole cloth - and many/ most of these scandals turn out to be fake: false accusations. But sometimes the current scandal is based-upon some real breaking of a taboo or rule which would - even when utterly trivial, or not-really-wrong, in these totalitarian times - be sufficient to get the person demonised, fired, prosecuted...

So there are situations when the SJWs don't need to lie; when, indeed, lying actually weakens their case; when the truth is sufficient (in this evil world) for their needs...

Yet even when the baddies have a solid case for their accusations they still lie! 

Always they frame and seed the truth with lies. Always and without any exceptions.


This is really very easy to spot, unless - of course - you yourself are also on the bad side; and are yourself used-to habitual lying, and used-to excusing it.

But it makes discernment in the culture wars very easy indeed: The liars are the baddies.


The baddies are such systematic, deliberate and strategic liars that they also use false flags, and plants, and fake opposition - these are routine - so the some on the 'good side' of any dispute are also liars: they too are covert baddies, and this shows that 'the sides' are also faked.

Thus the detection of lies is really easy, except in situations where lies are universal such as 'foreign policy', or lies concerning 100% fake domains - such as the 'scandals' the mass media... Then there are liars lying about liars; and the truth cannot be known...

But then we know enough to shun everybody in these lying-fields.


Such are the End Times: evil is become pervasive, normal, compulsory; but the evil-ness of evil is ever-more-obvious.


*Note: Vox Day has written a book called SJWs Always Lie (2015). His assertion is quite literally true: lying is intrinsic to being an SJW - and this post is intended to analyse why. In my own book on the zealots of political correctness - Thought Prison, of 2011 - I mostly argued that they lied 'tactically' because it was expedient and they lacked the Christian requirement of honesty; but I now see that they are active, strategic, compulsive liars - even when truth would be more effective still they lie! 

Note added: I first became aware of the compulsive nature of lying among the Mainstream Mass Media in 2008 when I was subjected to a 2 week international firestorm of vilification for mentioning, in the course of argument, the fact that lower social class people have on average significantly lower intelligence than higher social classes; and that this fact would naturally have a significant impact on differential rates of university admissions - especially extreme at the most selective colleges. 

My statement would, of course, in-and-of-itself, have been more than sufficient to raise the guilty fury of the Mainstream; given that almost their entire raison d'etre is the thumping-lie that such differences don't exist - so that educational-outcome differences 'must be' due to irrational prejudice against the lower classes. However, to accuse me of class snobbery and class hatred was not sufficient for the media SJWs - and they manufactured the lie that my article had also been 'racist' - despite that race was never mentioned. 

In other words, the truth of my assertion was enough to convict me in their kangaroo court; but they just-had-to-lie as well! 

Perhaps the commonest lie of this sort nowadays is to call anybody disagreed with a White Supremacist; that is, a member of an essentially non-existent and certainly insignificant political group (whose minute and powerless self-identified membership, such as it is, consists almost entirely of false opposition and agents provocateurs).  

Why are people so eager to listen to lying?

This is a genuine puzzle. There is a sense in which we cannot avoid people lying to us - but it is striking that people will go to great lengths - in terms of moving themselves from one place to another, spending money, and directing their attention for considerable periods - to sit and be lied to.

It is not as if this is unusual - it is usual and normal. As a generalisation that is almost 100 percent true; every time somebody famous, powerful, or high status communicates - they will be lying. Sometimes they lie so much that there are only a few snippets of reality dotted among their comments, other times they speak mostly true things but from a lying perspective deliberately to mislead, other times they just slip one important lie into a background of true facts...

But - if people were honest with themselves - they know that they are being lied-to in public discourse - pretty much all of the time and by everyone. It is a web of lies.

People know at some level that the people addressing them are not even trying to be truthful - but are trying to 'sell' them something or another, or manipulate than for the good of somebody else, or simply as part of the kind of status competitions which humans so often regard as the main business of life.

Given that there is such an awareness, then why to people go to such extreme efforts to listen to lies? Why don't they do anything at all to avoid being lied to? Why, on the contrary do they bask in lies?

Why? - The answer must surely be because people are very thoroughly corrupt? Because, so far as I can see, only a person who was very corrupt would want to be lied to; and since almost everybody behaves consistently with the fact of wanting to be lied to - then almost everybody is corrupt.

The populations of The West are full of complaints about each other's behaviours, the way they are treated, or the way some people treat other people... but then they actively sustain a network of lies, counter lies and the acceptance of lying... Those very few people who try to be truthful, or who will not passively accept lying are ignored or persecuted - to general approval...

Indeed, openly to disbelieve someone - even in an environment which makes no attempt at truthfulness and where dishonesty is meat and drink, and a lucrative career - is regarded as an awe-full insult and an outrage. Yet another lie!

Whose fault is all this? Clearly there is responsibility - such things don't 'just happen'.

Modern people would, of course, like to blame somebody else for the situation - just as they do for everything. Or else they would assert that nobody is responsible personally, that these things are due to larger forces, out of their own control and anybody's control...

But of course that will not wash, not really. Each person just-is responsible for their own life - nobody else is. And if they know-about the lying (and they do) and they don't just accept but actively choose to swim-in the sea of lies... then they already have-made a fundamental decision of the type of world they want.

And that kind of wanting will always be gratified: it is a standing invitation to evil, saying 'Come in! You are welcome in my heart'. 

The devil is father of lies - those who lie are the devil's children; and they cannot even hear the truth

The essence of lying is not in asserting false facts or denying true fact; the essence of lying is at the level of motivation - of concealed motivation, or faked motivation.

To be A Liar is not to be motivated by truth; and to lie about that fact. 

Considered thus; our society is riddled-with, and permeated-by and structured-on lies. Very, very few individuals and zero mainstream institutions are truth-motivated. 

Jesus was clear that lying is definitive of the devil - it follows that our society is demonic in its essence.

We need look no further (although clearly lying is not the only prevalent sin) - this is sufficient. To be A Liar - that is to live in a lying society and not to notice, to deny the fact, and not to repent - puts us into the devil's party.

And if we are liars we cannot hear the truth: we have already decided against the truth; and against salvation.

To be a liar is to be self-damned and with no way out. 

It really is as simple as that.

To seek and speak truth, and repent all lies, is perhaps the single most radically Christian act imaginable: here-and-now.

Lacking-which, nothing can be done.  

**

John 8: 31 Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; 32 And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. 33 They answered him, We be Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free? 34 Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. 35 And the servant abideth not in the house for ever: but the Son abideth ever. 36 If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. 37 I know that ye are Abraham's seed; but ye seek to kill me, because my word hath no place in you. 38 I speak that which I have seen with my Father: and ye do that which ye have seen with your father. 39 They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham. 40 But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham. 41 Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God. 42 Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me. 43 Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word. 44 Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. 45 And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not. 46 Which of you convinceth me of sin? And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me? 47 He that is of God heareth God's words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.

The dishonesty of JK Rowling - the fake biography of Robert Galbraith

*

One of my major ethical concerns in reading the Harry Potter series was Harry's habitual lying - up to the point in the Deathly Hallows when he is sanctified, after which he becomes completely truthful.

My problem was not so much that Harry lied, but that I did not sense any authorial disapproval of the lying - it was as if the author went-along with Harry's dishonesty, such that almost anything served to justify Harry's lies (even to Dumbledore).

I had the feeling that this flaw was a consequence of Rowling's own moral stance - that she was herself the kind of person who lied easily, and who easily excused her own lying.

Seems I was correct.

It has emerged that JKR has published a crime novel under a male pseudonym

http://www.hogwartsprofessor.com/j-k-rowling-ghost-writes-the-cuckoos-calling/

I don't have any disagreement with publishing under a pseudonym, nor even under a male pseudonym - but the fake-biography of the pseudonymous 'Robert Galbraith' is a self-serving lie:

“After several years with the Royal Military Police, Robert Galbraith was attached to the SIB (Special Investigative Branch), the plain-clothes branch of the RMP. He left the military in 2003 and has been working since then in the civilian security industry. The idea for Cormoran Strike grew directly out of his own experiences and those of his military friends who returned to the civilian world. ‘Robert Galbraith’ is a pseudonym.”

There is no doubt that the specific but lying claim of the novel to have a basis in direct personal experience lends fake authority to a crime novel in a way which is expedient and financially rewarding to the real author - as much as if the author of a scientific novel falsely-claimed to have a PhD in the subject, or if the author of a self-help book on money making pretended to be a multi-millionare.

I find this very disappointing, and indeed shocking - it goes far beyond even the most extreme exaggeration, hype or spin.

And it confirms my perception that JK Rowling, despite having written one of the most profoundly moral of popular novel series, has become corrupted, a turncoat and traitor, and is now working undercover for the Death Eaters.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/case-study-of-leftist-resentment-moral.html

*  

Another reason why the mass media Always Lies about those people it witch-hunts

I have often been puzzled why it is that the mass media Always lies about the people it is witch-hunting. 

If you know anything of the reality of what lies behind these witch hunts, you will know that extra and lying accusations are Always smuggled into the charge-sheet, or even made central. 

This addition of false "crimes" is Always done, even when there are are sufficient reasons (from the evil totalitarian POV!) to "convict" the victim of wrong-doing. 

Such happened to me when subjected to an international mass media firestorm back in 2008. An article I published in the Times Higher Education Supplement was directed against the UK government's false assumption of identical average IQ in all social classes, and illustrated that the real differences had a much bigger than expected effect on the most IQ-selective universities. 

But some of the most impactful of global media added IQ "racism" - to the charge sheet; about which there was literally nothing mentioned in the article.  

Of course I knew, and had written elsewhere, about racial differences in average IQ - but the mass media did not know that I knew! Presumably because the journalists were too idle or busy to use a search engine. Apparently; making-up (what They believed were) lies it was quicker, easier - and just as effective for their purposes. 

I found this very interesting at the time, and since; and wondered why this happened. 

There are several reasons I came up with - all of which seem true. 

One is that that habitual liars habitually lie. Simple as that. 

But another is that it seems normal human nature to assume that somebody who is bad in one way is also bad in every other way - including the worst way.

This is, after all, what happens in novels, on TV, and in movies - any baddie is all-round bad - but especially in the way that the writer regards as most-bad. 

And therefore, when anyone is accused of badness, then you might as well accuse them of the worst possible badness - which, for the modern mainstream totalitarian-affiliate, is of course "racism". 

This is why all genuine baddies in nowadays-fiction are shown to be "racist". Whereas the antiheroes (which is the only kind of hero in the mainstream) is always "antiracist" even when a violent, thieving, arsonist, murderer.  

So, "racism" is semi-automatically added to the charge-sheet of all accused bad persons nowadays - and such is the definitional-usage of the term, that the accused can never prove himself innocent (even if he is foolish enough to try!).   

The problem of lying on the charge sheet goes even beyond that, however. There are also Always what might be termed gratuitous lies - random seeming made-up stuff. 

This, again, may be rooted in a natural human propensity to fantasize about enemies when in a position of power over them - because enemies don't matter, and we can say anything we like about them. So why not indulge - from sheer spitefulness.  

And the more false things we say about our enemies, the more time and energy they are tempted (or compelled) to waste in refuting random-nonsense. 

In other words; one aspect of the industrial-scale lying that goes on is our old adversary: top-down Project Chaos. 

Lying at every opportunity serves permanently to confuse (and thereby weaken) everybody on whom it is practiced, or who is drawn into the pointless and endless business of claim and counter-claim, evidence versus refutation. 

Why won't people acknowledge the nihilistic dead-end we live in?

If you try to speak to anybody about the kind of things I discuss on this blog - you won't get far: indeed you won't get anywhere.

And the difficulty is that there is not just one reason for this, but many reasons - mutually reinforcing, like a Roman shield-wall: when one reason is eliminated, another reason steps forward to take its place; and there are many such reinforcements.

It is clear enough that we in The West are on a track to disaster - indeed multiple, linked disasters of damnation, population replacement, civilisational collapse - with mass civil and international wars, epidemics and starvation.

Indeed, it is likely that much of this is unavoidable. Yet by-and-large, people don't care; or prefer not to think about it. After all, we are all bad at prediction, and maybe it won't happen - or won't happen until we are dead and gone (such a hope is one I hear commonly expressed among the elderly).

Probably the core fact is that people don't want to think about things. And this objective of never thinking is easier for them then ever before - with the ubiquity of mass and social media. Observing the behaviour of people as they go about their business, it is clear that not thinking is a major motivation.

And the attitude is - why bother? Why bother thinking when the end point is despair? This despair is multi-faceted - the deepest and most existential level is the despair of death being annihilation; the belief that after we die nothing remains of us.

(Is anybody really convinced by the non-sequitur that we continue to live in other people's memories?  This is not so much false as irrelevant.)

So the mass of people find their life to be rising from nothing and disappearing into nothing. And the same annihilation is the fate of everything in this world which they care about... their family, friends, their village or nation, the arts and sciences, and their churches... all are destined for annihilation of one kind or another.

All possible hopes are therefore focused on our mortal lives - and as culture and everything crumbles around us (or rather, is gleefully demolished and the process labelled progress); our mortal lives have narrowed to a focus on getting pleasure and avoiding suffering.

And since anything we personally might do to improve things in the long term will always increase our personal suffering in the short term - without any guarantee of making any positive difference after all... Why bother?

This sense of Why Bother, What's the Point?  is the root of one of the most prevalent and denied of modern sins - cowardice: both physical, and moral.

The only way to combat our natural cowardice is by faith in a larger perspective; the kind of faith that leads people to do the right thing (as they understand it) regardless of the probabilities of outcomes. Because they see the small, seemingly ephemeral events and decisions of life as being part of larger and permanent things.

There is an extremely high prevalence of lying in public life. In all major institutions - lies are the meat and drink of communication. There are some true sentences spoken and written - because effective lies need to contain facts - but every paragraph is dishonest, tendentious, deliberately misleading. A modern executive, manager, official, leader, spokesman... cannot speak for five minutes without lying.

The lying is thus another facet of cowardice: modern people are lying cowards, cowardly liars. And why not? - when dishonesty and compliance lead to more pleasure and less pain, as they generally do in a corrupt society?  

There is a stark choice, and we are all faced with it; of living within society and outwith it. But modern society has occupied almost the entirety of the material world; so where could we go?

The answer is simple - that living outwith society means living in the larger world of God. To escape materialism and that which controls the material; we can only turn to the spirit. When the mundane has nothing to offer - we must inhabit the transcendent. When our every word and action is constrained and coerced - we need to dwell in our thinking.

And we need to know, with inner surety and confidence, that God, the spirit, the transcendent are all real and of prime importance - and that thinking makes a difference.

That knowledge is the most precious gift we could have - and attaining it should be the objective of everybody; it is the single most important thing in Life.

The understanding imperative: Denial is not ignorance - and, anyway, ignorance is not innocence

Something that is hard to grasp and keep-hold-of, is that one vital action we should take is to become conscious of the spiritual war - the war between Good and evil.

(Or God and evil - in which evil is defined by that which opposes God, Good, Divine Creation.) 

 

At this stage in human development, we need to become conscious of much that was unconscious in earlier states of human development; and with consciousness comes choice. 

This is very important. Modern Western Man is grown to spiritual adolescence, and does not inhabit that ancient world of spiritual childhood in which the unconscious and spontaneous are dominant; and in which Goodness comes from obedience to legitimate authority. 

That is gone and irrecoverable; just as our own childhood is gone. 

Us, Now, must become conscious, must understand - and we do choose.

 

We choose, and have-chosen - and to deny this does not wash; because to suppress and deny knowledge of our choices is not to be ignorant; and even if we were genuinely ignorant, as of here-and-now ignorance is no defence against evil.

(Our world is ruled by evil, so that we must know it, and resist it, for and from ourselves - not by obedience to the authorities of our world, which are all net-corrupted - and anyway how can we choose which authority is good except from our-selves?)

(Anyone capable of describing or arguing that ignorance is a defence against evil, is already in-denial, is therefore not ignorant, nor innocent; and has therefore already-chosen - one way or the other.)

 

However, making an inner choice between Good and evil does Not enable us to transform ourselves positively in this mortal life. 

This was apparent even as long ago as St Paul - who said (e.g. in Romans) that knowing what is right does not mean we can do it - indeed, to be blunt, we cannot actually do what we want to do - no matter how much we want it.

Paul (as an ancient, in an earlier stage of development) saw Goodness externally, as The Law - and was clear that we could not live in accordance with The Law; no matter how much we desired it, no matter how much we strove. 

And since we cannot live by The Law we would all without exception be condemned by The Law - if not for some other supervening cause - which is Jesus Christ; who has exploded as false, the previously-assumed connection between Good Living and Salvation. 

 

In simple words; our task in life is not to become better people nor to improve society. 

Betterment and improvement is irrelevant to the fundamental reality of this mortal life.

This is mostly because there is evil in each and all of us; as well as all sorts of other interference to our behaviours coming from (e.g.) sickness, circumstances, ageing, and death.

 

But while this means we cannot make either our mortal-selves better, or this world a better place - even when we know how to do it; nonetheless, knowing and choosing is exactly what we need to do in terms of the resurrected life after death - it is what causes us to accept Christ's offer of salvation - and we carry the consequences of such choices into resurrected eternal life.  

As I said; it seems terribly difficult not to fall into the recurrent error of assuming that we can fundamentally, significantly, improve our-selves and this-world - terribly difficult to give-up on this futile - and indeed counter-productive - quest. 

As so often, we can find inspiration in Jesus of the Fourth Gospel, and what he expects of the people around him. He really doesn't seem to be trying to improve people's behaviour much, at least in terms of their actual outer-behaviours; Jesus seems to accept people that people will-be pretty much as they are... 

Yet Jesus does make tremendous efforts to help other people understand their ultimate and real spiritual situation. 

With this goal he performs symbolic miracles, and explains them both as parables and explicitly. He aggressively attacks falsehood and delusion, and sets out an alternative vision of a life that is Not Of This World; indicates by poetry and symbol what this eternal resurrected is like, and how to get there - and how to get there is very much about love.

 

And with respect to love, Jesus's approach is very much about the understanding that love is the essential. Jesus knows that love cannot be manufactured to order, and that we can't become more loving than we are; but we can and should recognize and affirm that love is primary and essential (because that is the commitment we must make if we are to follow Jesus to Heaven). 

And it seems very important to Jesus that all this be explicitly known... 

Jesus is saying, I believe, that the saving act is to understand and to make the right inner choice and determination - and, implicitly, to know that this is what we are doing. 

 

One thing I draw from this is that anyone who claims not to know about evil, who claims ignorance of who and what is evil - and hopes thereby to be regarded as innocent and not responsible - is actually lying.

Probably lying to our-selves - the evil aspects of our-self lying, and we have chosen to believe these lies - and then denying our knowledge that these are lies.

And lying is a sin that goes against God and creation; therefore must be repented - but when we are denying that we lie, then we are not repenting. 

 

The place I am going with this is to address the question of what we ought to do - here-and-now, 2024, in The West - to Fight Evil and Do Good?

We are prone to do many wrong things instead... To look for some external authority to whom we can pretend to hand-over ultimate responsibility. To seek a gang for support and defence and better attack. Or perhaps to make excuses for why we do not do better in reforming our-selves and the world. 

All the time missing the point, and failing to do what we must. 

 

And perhaps even arguing that doing what is demanded of us is secondary, unimportant, a merely "private" matter (something merely going on inside our heads...) - and that instead we ought to be fighting to reform the world in the socio-political arena. 

This being not just futile, but actively harmful - unless a consequence of understanding explicitly who to fight, why and how. 

Because, as with "resist not evil", merely to fight evil is to compound evil by double-negation - unless done in pursuit of positive Good.

The task of understanding what is going on at the level of the spiritual war of this world and in our-selves is endless, and very difficult - it is, indeed, a lifetime's work and cannot be completed. 

Yet understanding is possible, positive, and cumulative; and is indeed what is really intended by Doing Good - but not Good for our temporary mortal selves in this temporarily-inhabited, temporary world.  

Whatever the way we currently explain this process to ourselves, however we explain why it is needful, understanding is the primary Good we ought to be doing - the fight we ought to be fighting. 

And given the multitude of false ideas and wrong advice that circulates; this task is worthy.

 

As a reminder; we can think about what Jesus did for his disciples; which was mostly to help them understand. 

Presumably understanding is exactly what the Holy Ghost does for us now - if we ask Him. 

To ask is to be answered - so long as we ask the right question properly; and that is what we most need to be working-on. 

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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

Is it worth expending time and effort on 'educating' strategically-dishonest propagandists like Stephen Jay Gould?

*

Yesterday I heard (in private) of yet another example of an eminent scientist who spent several years trying to educate Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002), on the assumption that he was a well-meaning but misguided individual who would be pleased if his mistakes were corrected - and whose public influence could then be brought to bear on behalf of truth rather than error.

Even just from people whom I have personally known, this activity of 'Educating Stevie' seems to have been something of a cottage industry among the more rigorous scientists and philosophers - Gould's daily post must have been a deluge of careful, friendly letters and offprints from major scholars earnestly pointing-out sources of better evidence by which he could correct his work.

*

How Gould must have sniggered, and rubbed his hands with delight at the thought of all that brain power being wasted in futile argument based on the false assumption that Gould was making honest mistakes - instead of engaging in deceitful propaganda.

*

Because of course Gould never corrected his errors, never engaged his friendly critics, continued to make false assertions, to ignore conclusive evidence and to use emotional manipulation and moral blackmail instead of logic.

SJG was indeed skillful and industrious in service to evil  - specifically to lies; and like all effective evil this was mixed with good; lies embedded in truths; vicious venom coated with smooth and pleasant prose - precisely in order that it could be influential.

*

Gould would engage in utterly unfair, go-for-the-jugular, character-smearing and reputation-assassination - but was himself exempted from tough attacks.

*

Why was this? I would say that one reason was that Gould was a man of the extreme Left, a Marxist - and his critics were men of the moderate Left - socialists, Liberals, Democrats, Labour party supporters - thus they were all on the same side.

The lying, incompetent Gould was therefore indulgently treated by the academic community as if he were an over-enthusiastic, impatient but fundamentally good-hearted teenager - and the adults were patiently waiting for him to grow-up and be sensible and reasonable.

*

The reality that Gould was deliberately wicked, strategically lying by seeding public discourse with self-serving errors, assassinating the characters of good men, encouraging the worst kind of mob thinking and blind self-righteousness... this reality seems to have been excluded from consideration on principle. Perhaps the critics actually denied - in the face of common sense and experience - that evil people exist? Or maybe they assumed such people existed only on the Right? But no matter how many times Gould ignored corrections, and re-printed and re-printed his lies in the face of overwhelming refutations, he was given another chance, and another.

*

The lesson I draw from this is that Leftism goes deeper and further than most people realize, and includes a much wider range of people - such that it is literally unthinkable for a prestigious and influential academic to abandon Leftism - because then there would be no place for them to inhabit.

To not-be of the Left, to be truly of the Reactionary Right (which includes being primarily religious) is to be professionally and publicly isolated in the world of today.

Yet unless you inhabit the Right, it cannot be thought that someone like Gould might genuinely be motivated by a desire to harm, including the desire to divert, annoy and waste the time of those better than himself in non-reality-based and futile attempts to argue.

*

When reasonable people, rigorous academics, claim that SJG, and his like, are well-intentioned but misguided, and deserve education rather than robust rejection, they are actually revealing not that the Leftist destroyers have good motivations but that they themselves, the rigorous academics, share the motivations of the subversive Marxists.

I am sorry to say this, but it is accurate: wickedly motivated lying Leftists get a free pass or kid gloves treatment because those who police them are merely dilute versions of the same type.

So the 'academic police', the 'good guys' are themselves wickedly motivated (Leftists), just as wickedly motivated as those they purport to regulate; and the argument between Gould and his critics is merely a matter of ends and means: the critics agree with Gould's goals, they merely quibble over his blatantly dishonest means. No wonder they never got truly angry with him, never treated him with the toughness he so abundantly deserved.

*

The phenomenon of Stephen Jay Gould is evidence of the sheer extent of corruption in science, academia and elite culture - a corruption based on shared Leftism trumping - in practice - considerations of truth; and so very extensive that it is hard to perceive an edge, hard to perceive anyone powerful or influential who is truly exempt.

*

The PSYOPS are to make people Lie: because this is a spiritual war, and they want us self-damned, not merely killed

Just an observation that seems often to be missed...

For Christians, lying is a sin; yet great swathes of people in many walks of life (especially the ruling and middling classes) are required to lie for their living. 

Yet hardly any Christians even remember that lying is a sin; and even-fewer emphasize it -- much preferring to focus on the spectacular stuff like torture, murder, rape, arson and theft (i.e. sins of which, non-coincidentally, most Christians themselves are innocent). 

Therefore lying is surely (it must be!) by-far the commonest and least repented of all sins. 

This explains the massive PSYOPS of recent years, which are based on Big Lies; which require systematic dishonesty; and which require more-and-more people to believe, and speak, and act-upon, and defend untruth. 

Most of the PSYOPS are attempts (apparently successful) to normalize and render invisible untruthfulness - including getting 'everybody' to ignore or deny The Obvious; and to 'forget' the deliberate sins and horrors of Mainstream-approved and -implemented policies. 

In an ultimate sense - thanks to Jesus Christ - sinning 'does not matter' to salvation: so long as it is repented. 

It is because we do not recognize untruthfulness, deliberate misleading, and dishonesty as sins; that they are not repented - and therefore become a form of chosen self-damnation. 

This is a major reason why, and how, They are winning the spiritual war. 

Information from known liars - what to do with it?

Dishonesty is a sin. And perhaps the commonest, least acknowledged, least-repented, hence most damaging sin of the modern world. Habitual liars are unrepentant sinners.  

Information from known liars should be ignored, if possible. 

Such information should be regarded as false; but it is usually impossible (and not worth the effort when it is possible) to discover the truth behind the lies. 

But information from known liars cannot always be ignored. 

When the known liars have an agenda and enough power to advocate or enforce it, then they cannot be ignored; and because dishonesty is a sin, the agenda of known liars will be evil.* 

A decision must be made; and then whatever they are advocating or enforcing should be resisted. 

The point is (again) not to check the truth of information, because even when the presented information does happen to be factually correct; the interpretation of what it 'means', and the supposed-implications for action, will be dishonest - and in-line-with the liars manipulative agenda. 

This is, or used to be, simple common sense and normal human nature. After all, Mankind has always been troubled by liars and psychopathic manipulators at all levels of society. Men have developed ways of dealing with this, by instinct. 

But common sense and human nature have been subverted and confused over many decades; not least by the overwhelming prevalence of strangers, and very large and bureaucratic institutions such as governments, corporations and the mass media. 

At the end of which; the mass of people seem to have adopted a standard behaviour pattern of credulous obedience to all information from large bureaucracies - even when experience teaches (or, ought to teach) that these produce only dishonest and manipulative information.

Thus, in the modern world; information and guidance from the biggest known liars in the world is nonetheless assumed to be truthful and motivated by concern for our benefit; unless proven otherwise (and how could this ever be proven, when the biggest known liars control the availability of information, dictate permissible interpretations, and officially decide upon its 'authority').  

What could possibly go wrong? 

*Before I became a Christian, in early 2008; I experienced a politically-correct international media firestorm directed against me. 

What I noticed is that, although I had broken a leftist taboo and written of a 'hate fact' (i.e. that on average those of lower social class are significantly less intelligent than those of high social class); this was not enough for the media; who in addition lied that I had written other things I had not, even fabricating entire "quotes" that I had never said, nor anything like them; and were, as it happened, almost the opposite of what I had written. 

I did not understand the reason for this at the time; but now recognize that such gratuitous lying (i.e. lying without need) is absolutely typical of those who have committed to the side of evil in the spiritual war. 

This, I presume, is the sense in which Jesus said of the devil: "there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it". Such lying is a hallmark of evil. 

No Good Men

Most people are still operating under the assumption that there are 'Good men' - and that the problem is to find them, and get them to do what needs doing. 

But that is just an assumption; and there seem to be many areas of life, many aspects of social functioning, where there are no Good Men - or else (which is equivalent) the Good Men are very few, and there is no knowable mechanism for locating them (unless you already know so much about that function that you don't need them). 

For example; it is recognized among his supporters that President Trump has been - for more than four years - surrounded by incompetents and traitors to his cause. 

Opinion is divided as to whether this was Trump's fault, because of his own incompetence at choosing his team - and those who regard it as evidence of the deceptiveness and depth of the deep state/ Establishment, and their capacity for control or sabotage. 

What I have not seen suggested is that there are actually zero competent and honest people available at all, anywhere. 

 

Yet, that is what I believe to be the case - extrapolating from my inside experiences with science, academia and health services; and observing what the powers-that-be actually Do (while ignoring what they say). 

The are No Good Men*. 

For example; if you want a Good psychiatrist in 2021, then - so far as I know - you will not find one anywhere in the UK. If you want a Good epidemiologist - likewise. More obviously, if you want a Good politician, or any person in a senior managerial position - you are out of luck, because there are none.

The stunning example is, of course, the birdemic; which has revealed such cosmic levels of dishonesty, incompetence and lunacy as to dwarf anything I have ever heard about anywhere. 

After a year of this - essentially Nothing is known about the birdemic; Nothing At All, At Any Level. (Even-less-than-nothing is known about the claimed-to-be-protective birdemic peck since everything alleged about it has been post-coup.)

And there is No Good Man to ask. 

When everybody with power or influence is lying, manipulating, covering-up, sabotaging, grafting, shirking etc  - nobody understands anything, nobody can predict anything, nobody can control anything...  

There are many, many reasons for this - reasons genetic-biological, social, political, ideological, legal, economic and especially religious why the quality of personnel has gone down and down over recent decades. 

I have written volumes on the causes of worsening functionality among people. But there are so many adverse trends that the primary difficulty is knowing which are the main factors. 

Indeed, so far has the quality of personnel gone down, that it has destroyed our capacity to notice and measure the extent of this decline - since the people responsible for analyzing and quantifying personnel quality have declined equally fast. 

We are in a world with No Good Men in public discourse - there are No Good Men with power, status, influence or wealth. 

...None who are honest; and very few who are even minimally competent - but these don't count, because dishonesty destroys competence. 

We therefore live in a world where nobody in power knows what they need to know (and which, fifty years ago, they would have known); and a world where nobody can do anything difficult. And indeed even easy things are less and less well done, on a weekly basis. 

The only thing that Modern Men are Good-at are the demonic attributes; such as lying, evading responsibility, taking the easy option, lining their own pockets, and encouraging sins (especially lying) while being proud of it.

*Added from the comments: Trump misunderstood the problem as being a group or organization of corrupt people, but the problem is the all-pervasive demonic influence of evil. It is literally everywhere, they have all sold their souls. There was nothing to root out or fix, etc. There is no group of people, or person, or anything that can be removed. This post clarifies it further - there were no "good people" to hire to replace the bad ones. Comment: I'm sure this is correct. Where DT was culpable - while in office - is in failing to state and explain this to the US public. However, since the election, and by DT's actions in exposing the mass-conspiracy of lies - the fact of No Good Men among the Ruling Class has been demonstrated starkly and explicitly (to those still capable of discernment). 

NOTE: Counter-examples of Good Men in public life are only valid if you know they are Good Men. Otherwise it is probable that you just don't know enough about them. 

This world of liars

It is the lying that I am so strongly aware of - and which so many people (most people) nowadays take completely for granted, and do not even notice. 

This is why I am sure that the world is more evil now than (say) 40 years ago: the prevalence of lying, the doubling down on lies, the suppression of truth. 

We don't need to know anything specific about what They are aiming-at, when we recognize their systematic untruthfulness. 

And when we recognize that the mass of people share in this, and do not regard untruthfulness as intrinsically evil. 

When this began in earnest in the middle 1960s, people used to tell themselves that the dishonesty was temporary, expedient, just a means to an end - the achieved revolution (class, sexual, race etc) - at which point the lies would be dropped... 

Now, they are quite contented that dishonesty be forever, since the state of revolution is permanent, the objectives of revolution perpetually redefined and open-ended... 

Now They have (apparently) 'got rid of Trump' by the biggest fraud in history (self-rationalized by the greater good) will they stop lying? 

Of course not! They now lie as-well/ instead about the birdemic, climate, sexuality, race etc etc. 

Satan is the Father of Lies; and by their lies we may recognize his children.*

* John 8:40-7 [Jesus speaking to the scribes and Pharisees:] But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham. Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God. Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me. Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not. Which of you convinceth me of sin? And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me? He that is of God heareth God's words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God. 

Deliberately misleading by choice of words is worse than outright lying

*

Some people seem to suppose that misleading others by cunningly-chosen words is not as bad as an outright untruth; but surely deliberate misleading is a multiply-compounded lie: first you lie by misdirection, then you lie about the fact that you were lying, then you lie to deny that this is exactly what you were knowingly doing as part of a plan to be able to deny the lie.

*

Furthermore, since this type of calculated deception is itself nowadays admired as managerial competence - even quadruple lying is celebrated as wisdom...

This constituting yet further evidence that we are living in times are quite extraordinary depravity.

*

Move along now.

Repent? Nothing to repent here, Ladies and Gentlemen.

Hurry-up, move along...

*

Luciferic, Ahrimanic and Sorathic evil reflect the societal hierarchy

If we take the three types of evil - Luciferic, Ahrimanic and Sorathic  (lustful-tormenting, systemic-bureaucratic, and negative-destructive) - we can see that this ordering is reflected in several ways, which are related. 

First it describes the ordering of dominance in history, secondly the degree of evil-ness, and thirdly it reflects the societal hierarchy of The Masses, The Establishment, and The Satanic powers. 

By societal hierarchy I mean that Luciferic evil dominates the Masses - who are evil in impulsive, short-termist ways; Ahrimanic evil is typical of the Global Establishment and its managerial-class servants - who regard Men as merely human resources towards abstract goals; and the Sorathic evil of negation, value-inversion and destruction of The Good is characteristic of the demonic overlords.

 

This leads to considerable mutual incomprehension looking upwards. 

The evil Masses simply cannot recognise the evilness of the Establishment-managerial class; they cannot comprehend that the Establishement's vast and comprehensive agendas, plans, schemes are a kind of evil. 

The Masses cannot see this as evil because it is so abstract, so impersonal. Ahrimanic evil has very little 'fun'; it is dull drudgery - meetings, tick-boxes and flow charts. 

 

And when the Global Establishment look upwards to their demonic overlords; they too fail to see that demonic evil is of a very different nature from the complex Ahrimanic, international, bureaucratic systems that are so laboriously, so tediously, being constructed at present. 

The abstract system-builders do not recognise that the demons are sabotaging cherished Ahrimanic goals of a transhumanist technocratic society of total surveillance and micro-control; by, on the one hand, encouraging Luciferic destructiveness among the Masses (riots, arson, beatings, murder); while on the other hand degrading efficiency and capability faster than the systems can be built. 

The cause of this Ahrimanic misunderstanding is always-increasing dishonesty. 

 

Ahrimanic systems depend on real information, and real information depends on honesty. Yet the Ahrimanic Establishment class are continually selecting, hyping, spinning and (where deniable) fabricating the 'data' upon which their own power depends. 

Claims increasingly outstrip attainment - decline is re-analysed into growth, failure is redefined as success. 

Thus the Establishment always overestimate the degree to which their plans are succeeding. 

 

Put bluntly, the Establishment do not know what is happening; they do not know because nobody in their systems is seeking the truth or speaking with honesty. 

Consequently, the Establishment suppose they have done well in 2020! 

They know they are richer; They believe they are more powerful; and They are confident that everything is going pretty-much according to plan - and infer that Their prospects are bright...

But such evaluations are based upon a tissue of falsehoods. 

 

They do not know - consequently they do not realise that they are in truth (and very obviously, to anyoneone outside of the System's deceptions) elaborately rubbing their hands and cackling with glee at fouling their own nests!

The Establishment suppose they are creating a global totalitarian society of law and order with Themselves at the top and outside, pulling the strings and collecting the rents. 

In fact, they have created (and are actively worsening) global spiritual chaos, collapse of morale and motivation, and a conflagration of fear and despair; which will surely accelerate, spread and consume the Establishment uncontrollably; like a wild-fire.   

 

They began by lying to the Masses while sharing reality with each other in secret 'elite' meetings and conspiracies; but this Ahrimanic 'Iron Cage' very swiftly evolved to a pseudo-system of universal and mutual propaganda and manipulation, in which the Establishment were themselves enmeshed. 

Now, everybody is lying to everybody else, 24/7. 

And then - the biggest lie - making confident assertions about what is going-on and what will happen. 

(And then lying about that.)

 

The only real winners of 2020 are the Sorathic demons whose agenda is merely negative, destructive, and aimed-at universal human self-damnation. 

The demons despise all humans, but especially those arrogant and foolish Men who believe they have outwitted, and are controlling, the demons. 

Fairy stories and legends are full of warnings against dealing with demons; but the Establishment made the Faustian bargain nonetheless. 

They invited evil into their hearts (which is the only way it can enter); made a 'bargain' with the Father of Lies, were (apparently) 'rewarded' by power and gratification in the short term; but in truth they were actually selling their souls literally, surrendering their wills - and this (sooner or later) becomes de facto irrevocable.

 

This is a spiritual war, and the stakes are salvation and damnation. 

There used to be several 'sides' in the spiritual war, but in 2020 the middle ground has all-but gone: there are only two sides. 

One side asks that we consciously choose to acknowledge God our Father and the Creator as Lord, if we wish to follow Jesus Christ to our 'reward' of resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 

That is one choice.

 

The other side offers some (more-or-less brief) up-front gratification in mortal life, as reward for being invited-into the heart. And for which it enforces a payment which is always the same, and is always exacted sooner than expected: enslavement, fear, resentment, despair and eternal misery. 

That is the other choice.  

Two choices only: either to have the next world as our chosen priority; or this world - but not both. 

Choose your religion - or else religion will choose you

It is interesting that, at root, so many groups of people - whether that be in religion or in politics, actually offer explicitly what they are able to give. It is a kind of basic honesty, that seems to bind even the worst people and groups.

I have commented on this in religion - it is surprising how little most religions offer their adherents. Christianity offers far more than any other major religion (as Pascal noted - the only coherent reason for not wanting to be a Christian is that you think it is untrue - otherwise it offers far more than any rival religion or ideology), and even within Christianity some denominations offer more than others.

This is surprising in the sense that I would have supposed that there would be a lying bidding-war between religions, each striving (or pretending) to offer a more wonderful life or afterlife than the rivals.

Somehow this doesn't happen.


For example, modern liberal Christianity might be supposed to be offering its adherents more than some traditional types - in the sense that there is no Hell, and no strict rules about sex, fasting, attending Church etc.

But in fact liberal Christianity offers its adherents nothing at all - no miracles, no answered prayers. no healings, no experiences of contact with the divine, no afterlife, no resurrection of the body...

The advertised fate of a liberal Christian is that same as that of any other secular modern person - a purely subjective 'god' and extinction at the point of death.


Something similar applies to politics. The secular Left parties are, of course, fundamentally dishonest - but they are strangely honest about what they offer and what they do not offer.

They offer a focus (ie. lots of talk, lots of bureaucracies, lots of taxes) on themes such as equality, diversity, inclusiveness and so on. By means of affirmative action - preferences according to sex, sexuality, race, religion, ideology - the Left indeed offer a bit of the actuality.

But interestingly Leftist parties do not offer greater economic efficiency and growth, better science and more breakthroughs, an impartial legal system, greater military power, civil peace and public good behaviour, control of borders... or any of the things that the Right offers.


Of course the Left does make an occasional, sporadic (and dishonest) claim to fix anything and everything - but over time, day by day, in terms of strategy and propaganda the Left hardly mentions such things, avoids the subject, changes the subject. It is very obvious indeed that the Left is not going to do any of these things, and the Left don't make any serious or sustained effort even to pretend that they will.

Why don't they just say they will deliver on such matters? Why don't they pretend they will do everything? Perhaps because they are averse to these other 'goods' - certainly they are uninterested by them, don't like the subjects to be discussed... but then, that itself seems to suggest that they do not want to be put into a position of lying about them.

It is as if even these habitual and fundamental liars are constrained by some basic truth: if and when the Left has ruined a society by imposing equality, destroying Christianity, wrecking the economy, subverting marriage, breaking-up families, and encouraging unrestricted mass immigration... or whatever - then they can at least claim that they were merely doing what they said they would do!

This explicitness is odd, on the face of it; because the Left do lie about many, many things, for years and decades, and they get away with lies because the Left is the mass media, and modern populations are addicted to the mass media. But there are some things that they don't lie about...


The same basic and overall honesty applies to the more Right Wing Left parties (all mainstream modern politics is extremely Leftist, by world historical standards, so it does not make sense to call mainstream conservative, republican, libertarian type secular groups 'Right' wing parties, they are merely slight less Left wing than their rivals: the only truly Right wing parties are religious parties that want to run society on religious line, i.e. ultimately according to religious priorities and evaluations) - and it also applies to idealistic secular Right wing theorists, self-proclaimed reactionaries, for instance.

I refer to these groups as basing their appeal on Common Sense: they are characterized by common sense policies on economics, the law, immigration - their claims are that they will make things more efficient, more effective, make their nations more secure and powerful, make their societies more peaceful, favour their own native people and races rather than other people and races etc.

The problem is this mainstream or idealistic secular Right wing politics is so deadly dull, boring, pedestrian, prosaic, small minded, selfish. In a word sensible! 


It really is. This is not an illusion. Secular 'Right' politics presents its vision of Life very lucidly (and honestly) as an ideology that drains away everything except... functionality. It offers a future of highly efficient nothing.

(Does this explain why people have a horror of sensible people and parties? That if the secular Right got what it wants, if we really were sensible in a secular world, people would mean nothing, life would mean nothing, Men would be just so many cogs in an abstract machine. In our personal lives, among those we love, we do not want people to be sensible about us.)


Mainstream (secular) Rightism offers more of what we have already had - especially a generation or two ago, when things were far more sensible than now - increasingly prosperous, powerful, rational, fair etc. social systems whose aim is... increasingly prosperity, power, rationality, justice etc.

The secular Right offers a nightmare of means but no ends. The vacuum of ends is indeed proclaimed as a virtue, as freedom, as individuality - there isn't even an attempt to claim that there is any point to the secular Right vision - its utter pointlessness is proclaimed as a benefit.

The West has been more sensible than any other society in the history of the world. We have had sensibility, and we have been made plausible offers of even-more sensibility - and we have rejected it: decisively.


So modern life is divided between these options - Common Sense versus Leftism - and Leftism has won. The public have decided that they prefer lying and nonsensical but very-slightly idealistic, very-slightly and very-vague Utopian Leftist dreams over the sensible, value-free, dead, dull functional efficiency offered by the Right - because even a glimmer of idealism is preferable to deadly, dull, functional efficiency; any values (however feeble) are preferable to no values.

There is no way out of this unless or until a truly Right party emerges (i.e. a religious party) which offers more than the Left to feed the ineradicable religious hunger in Men's souls. Eventually this will emerge - one religion or another will displace the Left, because the religions have so much more to offer - and in a broad brush sense, each probably religion delivers what it offers.


We will easily see this when it happens, there will be no doubt or uncertainty about what is happening, it will be an extraordinary shock - because the whole tone and content of public discourse will change utterly.

There will be a vision presented, and the vision of any religion is qualitatively different from any vision presented by modern politics. The concentration of discourse - the mass of what people talk and wrote and read about - will move to the divine, to the divine plan, and to the afterlife.

Suddenly the concerns of modern mainstream Western politics will seem pathetically dull, shallow, trivial when compared with the scale and scope of a religious perspective.



And this could happen very quickly indeed, in just a few weeks a religious fever could - and indeed will - sweep through the West.

It will happen quickly because there is nothing to stop it happening, no resistance to it happening, because the alternatives are so utterly feeble.

The devastation this will undoubtedly cause to the normal running of society will, quite suddenly, seem unimportant - people will be filled with, pumped-with, motivation and they will find it intoxicating and overwhelming - they will realize that the secular society is pointless.

When they glimpse a vision of purpose, and this vision begins to spread, they will embrace it, they will be fuelled by it, swept-up in it - they will want more of it whatever the cost - and the cost will surely be immense; but that will not stop it happening, because the idea will be that any cost is worth it.


The stability of the modern secular West is extremely feeble, requires continual vast and expanding expenditure of bribes and propaganda. The West is indeed 'metastable' - which means there is a much more stable configuration into which it could move at any point - and that configuration is religion.

All the main Western political and social trends are draining away stability, all the satisfactions of modern life are ephemeral, there is less and less motivation because there is less and less reason to be motivated.

The modern secular 'religion' (ideology) is that each of us is alone, life has no meaning, and when we die we are annihilated. Really, it is not difficult to offer more than that! Any religion offers more. Any religion could displace the West.


The question will be which religion, or religion, suddenly emerges - which will be the one or ones that suddenly sweep an particular Western nation or region or ethnic group - what will be on offer that suddenly makes secular politics - whether of the Left or secular Right -  seem trivial, shallow, pointless - which religion galvanizes people with a sudden motivation so strong that all the substitutes of the past two hundred years will be discarded with hardly a glance back at them,


I am not asking for speculation on which specific religion, or which various religions, will suddenly emerge and within weeks sweep aside two centuries of triumphant secularism - because in a metastable state nobody knows.

Also this process will not necessarily be good, may well leave things much, much worse than they have been. May be - in terms of health, happiness, comfort, convenience, pain and misery - an absolute disaster.


The religion that wins in some places, or in most places, may be a very bad one, by Christian standards.

But that will not stop it happening. Unworldly, non-rational mystique, magic, and religious idealism are utterly irresistible to alienated, nihilistic secular politics. Religion will spread like wild-fire, perhaps like fiend-fire - but the only remotely effective resistance to Hell-fire will be Heavenly Fire.


There is a message for each and every Western person:

Choose your religion, or else religion will choose you. 

The father of lies - and the nature of our public world

John 8:44 Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.

Christianity is very rare among moral systems in prohibiting lying as a general rule; and I think this relates to our more deeply-rooted understanding of this sin.

Secular discouragements against lying are based around the inexpediency of dishonesty overall and in the long term. A lie is mostly committed because it is expedient to gratification in the short-term - so the lie needs no 'hedonic' justification (assuming one gets-away-with-it).

But a 'system' in which the individuals are dishonest is inefficient, and may be ineffective. So even mainstream secular authorities try to encourage and enforce honesty among the workforce - at least under most conditions (unless where subordinate is instructed to lie by a superior). 


This is most clearly seen in science. The value of science for increasing human happiness and diminishing suffering absolutely depends upon scientists seeking and speaking truth. But in any specific circumstance, it is nearly-always expedient for a specific scientist (or any person 'using' science) to be expediently dishonest - whether at the level of exaggeration of hype and spin, by selectivity and distortion - or outright fabrication and public denial of what one (secretly) believes to be correct.

Therefore, since Christianity ceased to the basis of motivation for scientists and Western society (gradually, but very completely over the past three or four decades); science has become more and more dishonest because there was no reason Not to be dishonest, and innumerable (hourly) reasons to be as dishonest as one can get-away-with...

Until science ceased to be science - and became assimilated as a part of the bureaucratic structure of mainstream, modern, Leftist culture.


My point is that dishonesty is one of the major tools of evil. If the sexual revolution has been the battering ram by which the powers of evil have corrupted, the insidious expansion of dishonesty has been what made this possible; and the increasing severity and pervasiveness of dishonesty in Western public discourse has been perhaps the single largest manifestation of the triumph of evil.

A Christian cannot do much about the mass of public discourse; but my impression is that Christians themselves are insufficiently aware of the evil of dishonesty; and this has been a major cause of the corruption and apostasy of those Christians who have resisted the lures of the sexual revolution.

This happens at the group level of churches and denominations, and at the level of individuals. What may start with 'public relations', publicity, advertising, consciousness-raising, damage control... spirals to become vast structures of systematic dishonesty. Examples would include the notorious 'cover-ups' of churches in relation to sexual or financial abuses.


But at an individual level there are innumerable Christians whose jobs require them to be increasingly and ever-more-extremely dishonest. Yet this plain fact of life is seldom mentioned, seldom reached awareness, is therefore seldom explicitly repented - and my impression is that many apparently-devout Christians (in high esteem among their peers) are in fact living-the-lie to such an extent as to invalidate their faith. 

Such is the nature of these times. In our era, unrepented sins cannot be held in check - held constant; but (under the pressure of our culture) rapidly get amplified to overwhelming levels.

A modern Christian 'examination of conscience' would do well to highlight the problem of dishonesty - because this is likely to be neglected and unnoticed; and dishonesty is one of those sins that acts as procurer and facilitator for all other sins.

Start with dishonesty and you will soon end-up with all-the-rest.  

Every lie, every failure to be honest, is an act of homage to the devil.

Who is worth listening-to, and why?

*

This is a big question - the question of discernment; that is perceiving or feeling the difference between Good and that which is destructive of Good.

When it comes to people in our personal experience, if they are obviously nasty at first encounter then we might well try to avoid them in future - but there are those whose intentions are malign yet who 'charm' us, or place us under a kind of glamour - or upon whom we 'project' good qualities for whatever reason...

Then it is usually time and experience which provides the correct answer.

*

Mostly, however, it is advice - we accept the judgement of others, and avoid X or follow the teachings of Y because we were advised to...

But which 'others' - who advised us?

If most advice is followed back to its source, we cannot find a source or else the source cannot account for the basis of his judgement. The source is often the Mass Media - which is 1. evil and 2. a source founded neither in common sense nor experience but unfounded assertion.

*

The path of wisdom is, I think, to ignore all advice except when its provenance is known and approved and relevant.

However, this is considered an aggressive act. There is a general expectation from the givers (or inflictors) of advice that their advice be followed - or if not that you should be able to provide some 'good reason' for rejecting it.

The reality is that all advice should be rejected unless there is a good reason for following it. The opinion of some 'random person' is worthless at best and may be actively malicious.

*

This is the case across the board. The fact that somebody is your manager, or has a job as a scientist at a famous university, or whatever - means nothing in and of itself - or should mean nothing - unless you have decided that this provenance is authoritative.

This is particularly relevant to 'research'. My conviction is that published research means nothing. We have zero obligation to 'believe' or act upon published research - because published research is of zero intrinsic validity.

The modern world of professional research is full of careerism, status-seeking, money-grubbing hype and spin - in other words the world of research is essentially dishonest; and why on earth would anyone believe anything which emanated from a society characterised by dishonesty?

There is no obligation upon us to provide 'reasons' why we reject some or another bit of research - on the contrary, there would have to be solid reasons for us to accept it. We do not have to prove the dishonesty of 'researchers' by specifically documenting and testing their statements - on the contrary they have to prove their honesty to us.

When we read a Mass Media report of research the problem is compounded - the Mass Media is orthogonal to truth - what they say has zero detectable relationship to reality - so a media report of science is invalidity squared; an actively dishonest account of essentially dishonest communications...

*

In a world, an environment, which we know is permeated-with and motivated-by dishonesty - the default must be disbelief - and a disbelief far more radical and wide-ranging than usual.

Actual lying is obviously a big problem with the Mass Media and some individuals such as politicians, officials, managers, administrators, advertisers, sales and marketing people and bureaucrats generally - since these are compelled to lie on pain of losing their jobs and suffering other harsh sanctions.

But many or most people will be as dishonest as they can get away with - for example they will say one thing in order to make you believe something else, by choosing their words carefully - and in order to make their dishonesty deniable; and indeed to blame other people for having misunderstood them.

*

This is perhaps the biggest problem in modernity, deniable dishonesty - and one cannot always be on guard. And people and organisations express a great deal of self-righteous indignation when they are disbelieved on the basis of their known track record of selectivity and false emphasis designed to mislead - the attitude is:

'Just because we often lied/ distorted/ selected/ hyped in the past doesn't necessarily mean we are lying now!" - and on that basis we are supposed to believe them.

Yet the right to be believed is, properly, something which is earned, over time, by truthfulness.

*

Aside from truthfulness, there is wisdom - which is rare; and there is motivation - who is well-motivated? Because it is only worth listening to people who are well motivated.

How to we know this?

Time, and the heart. It is relatively easy to fool and manipulate people in one short interaction - especially when the content of that interaction is controlled by the manipulator. But repeated, and free-ranging interactions, with gaps between, can reveal many examples of deception - and provide something of an antidote to charm and glamour (especially if you witness the charm and glamour being deployed on another person - or switched on and off!)

*

This is why in traditional societies teaching involves prolonged and unstructured and multi-situational personal contact between master and apprentice - nobody can keep up an act under such conditions, so people get to know each other.

What of modern conditions? Something similar applies. Frequency of interaction across a wide range and over time - and judging with gut feelings, the head and - most importantly - the heart: these are ways in which we come to know, and perhaps to trust, another person or institution.

*

Writers who always (by their own account) have a Great Time

There is a very great deal of untruthfulness in the world today! More than there was even as recently as forty years ago - although, of course, there has always been a good deal of lying and even more misleading - even in the most honest places (which used-to include England). 

In everyday social life there are some people who claim always to have had a Great Time, whatever they have been doing - at a play or concert, a party or holiday. By their own account - their lives are one fun thing after another. 

The valuation is not accurate - as you realize if you ever happen to observe them in such situations. Indeed, nobody who was not in the grip of chronic hypomania could possibly regard their own life in the way they claim to! 

Such people would be outraged if accused of lying, or even exaggerating, their own responses - yet, in their own way, each is systematically misleading other people about the nature of reality. 

We, as social listeners, need to realize that such people are not speaking accurately; and the same applies to writing.     

Social media has greatly increased the amount of Having A Great Timers among writers; just as, on the opposite pole, there are many more high-volume pathographers - indeed the same person may alternate their accounts of themselves, oscillating between accounts of exaggerated happiness and misery. 

Although it is true that a false impression is being deliberately created; the audience are complicit - because the audience wants to believe that a life of continual fun is possible, and achievable by themselves. 

And this is the basis of the exploitation: the apparently-hypomanic social media "influencer" is in some sense "selling" the method by which the audience expect to have as much as fun as the influencers appear to be having. 

And this claim-hope forms the basis of whatever is "for sale".   

But what applies, in a crude and rather obvious way, in the world of social media; also applies in the world of "serious" writing: of theology, philosophy, and spiritual writing generally.

Some authors (and these include some of the best, as well as most of the worst) project a personal of Having a Great Time; and describe their own exquisite responsivity to place and situation, to books and music; their intense and frequent religious experiences, their ecstasies and transcendental exaltations*. 

And readers need to recognize that this is as false and misleading an artefact; as contrived a construct; as the over-acted excitements of social media influencers. 

I did not recognize this as an adolescent; but (to an amazing extent) took authors at their own evaluation and projection. 

It was a valid learning process to realize (eg. from further experience, critical analysis, or biographies) that literally nobody I have ever known of - IRL or by writings - ahs "solved the problem of living" in the way that so many such imply that they have.

This insight has been vital in realizing that there is no solution to the problem of living in this mortal life and earth; and that attempts to emulate constructed authorial personae do more harm than good.   

It's a kind of laziness (to which I am also prone) to try and pick-up a purpose and meaning of one's own life in any second-hand, or emulating, kind of way. 

Certainly we can learn from other people - but we'd be wise to learn from what is true, rather the fantasies they try to convince us are true. This involves acknowledging that almost everybody with whom we interact is not just habitually and by social-conviction dis-honest, but is making no serious or sustained attempt to be honest. Especially not about their own motivations and responses.  

If we can sustain this realism; we might then be able to learn the right lessons, and make the right choices, relevant for our unique actual life and situation. 

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*Some other writers adopt a chronic and pervasive pessimism and/or affectation of misery - which, if sincere and chronic, would have long since led them to obscurity and death; rather than the fame and esteem they bask-in. Schopenhauer and Samuel Beckett spring to mind. This negative propaganda has only ever been popular among a sub-sector of upper class (or would be upper class) intellectuals... But that's another story.