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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The desperate appeal of deus ex machina

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

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

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

This may, of course, be true! 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That is the essential starting-point. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  

The basic error of New Age spiritual optimism

It was in its spiritual optimism that New Age spirituality was most deeply and dangerously in error - an optimism that derived from the middle 1960s hippie movement (or perhaps from the middle 1950s Beats/ beatniks).

The basic stance of this movement was that modern people had spiritually progressed beyond those of the past; that there had been and was ongoing a transformation and advance in human consciousness - with all kinds of new information, experiences, possibilities.

Crudely, but accurately, the New Age assumption was (and is) that the younger generations were spiritually better than the older. This was unwarrented self-congratulation, self-congratulation for one's actual defects! It was indeed spiritual Pride - which is one of the most dangerous of sins. 


I believe that New Age optimism is almost-completely wrong - or more exactly is based on a deep confusion (often a deliberate confusion).

Modern Man has a destiny, possible now but not in earlier eras; but that destiny has not been embraced - and was not embraced by the New Age, but was merely claimed to have been embraced, while the truth of the matter was a deepening materialism (especially political) and pleasure-seeking (esepcially sexual). 

They understood themselves to be people aiming high and achieving new heights; but in contrast, I see people who consistently and with great stubbornness refuse to aim high - who are reductive and disenchanted in all areas of life - at home, at work, in spirit, in church and other groups.

They are people who deny the fact that We, including the New Age people themselves, are more 'this worldly', more materialistic (reductionistic, positivistic, scientistic) than ever before in the history of Man - and it is getting worse.


When I look at the New Age movement over the past fifty years; I see supposedly-spiritual people who are either merely engaged in mundane, petty gossip and bureaucracy 'about' spiritual matters; and/ or people who engage in covert personal hedonism (usually sexual, and/ or financial exploitation) superficially dressed-up in a spiritual garb. 


Our current situation is actually one in which spirituality has been refused; for generation upon generation. This continues; and therefore our situation is getting progressively worse.

Each generation declines from the earlier, because the refusal of the necessity of spiritual progression gets more deeply entrenched.

When spiritual progression is necessary yet does not happen, the gap between where we are and where should be increases - it has increased from a gap to a gulf.

There is an ever-greater distortion of the relationship between our-selves and reality. New Age optimism is one aspect of this distortion.


We ought, therefore, to be pessimistic about the future unless or until there is a massive, qualitative, wrenching and world-shaking change in our basic spiritual stance; until we acknowledge the spiritual as primary at a macro- and micro-level.

This would, obviously, entail a transformation of human thinking. Which is not the kind of thing that happens without people noticing; it is not the kind of thing that happens gradually.

Of course transformation could not happen in a permanent way (not in mortal life) so transformation would be intermittent (perhaps brief, certainly unstable) - but at any given moment it either is, or is not.


The dishonest claim of permanent and solid transformation has been a plague of modern spirituality. While we ought to strive for the spiritual as much and as often as possible; the situation can only improve when people are clear about the times when they (and others) are Not attaining the primacy of the spiritual.

We must recognise that modern man had-and-has a destiny to become consciously spiritual - to become as spiritual as hunter-gatherers but to do so consciously. It is because such conscious spirituality must be chosen, voluntarily and in full freedom that we have not done it.

The spiritual has not happened. As things actually are, optimism is not just mistaken but harmful.


Despite New Age claims; Man's destiny has not even begun to happen at a societal level. The basic nature of our world is one of increasing evil consequent upon the fact that we have refused, and continue to refuse, to recognise the reality of the spiritual and live-by the reality of the spiritual - to make this our life-priority, to seek it to the best of our (limited) ability.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

The failed mission of Colin Wilson: why Non-Christian romanticism failed to persuade people to adopt more optimistic and positive metaphysical assumptions

From 1956 onwards; Colin Wilson identified the prevailing pessimism of the Western intellectual class - writers, visual artists, philosophers etc - and concluded it was rooted in negative basic assumptions concerning the nature of reality. 

Wilson went on to argue - I think convincingly - that if more positive and optimistic assumptions were instead adopted, then human life would be more enjoyable and worthwhile. Some other more or less influential writers said much the same - such as Abraham Maslow. 

This is a pragmatic argument - in the sense that it is not based upon the truth about the world (neither Wilson nor Maslow believed in the reality of God) but based on the assertion that life will be better if you believe so. The same type of argument was used by William James around 1900, Robert M Pirsig in 1974, or Richard Rorty.

But this did not happen. Pessimism prevailed. Mainstream basic metaphysical assumptions asserted (inter alia) that the universe, life and consciousness all happened by accident - and were not headed in any particular direction; the spiritual realm is a fiction, there is no soul, and death is annihilation.  

In the context of the already-existing Western culture; pragmatic arguments made no significant difference because believing and acting upon them they carried a penalty. First condescension and disdain - i.e. low status). Then material disadvantage; because professional success was optimized by conforming to the prevailing ideology, artistic and philosophical success to extending the successful trends. 

In a twentieth century context, when confronted with tough decisions - when long term possible benefit was blocked by immediate term disadvantage - pragmatic, un-rooted optimism was just too weak.

In other terms we can observe that the demonic powers were getting a grip on Western culture from even as early as the 19th century; and increasingly 'rigged' things such that pragmatic optimism was discouraged, yet unthinking, habitual pessimism prevailed. 

Pessimism was simply assumed and adopted spontaneously, while the onus of proof was on optimism. When the justification for optimism was merely pragmatic, then this was regarded as equivalent to admitting it was "made-up because I am too weak to face the bleakness of reality". 

Colin Wilson was cheerful by nature and largely immune to cultural trends, however this applies to few people. Most people will only be optimistic when they believe it is based on truth - on reality. 

Which means that when culture is more and more against us, we can only be optimistic when we believe in the reality of a loving personal God, and that joy and fulfillment are possible (and can be ours) outside of this mortal life and finite planet. 

The middle nineteen-sixties was the inflexion point of a vast and strategic psychic attack on Western Civilization

The style and persons included in this image are significant - 

particularly the gratuitous presence of black magician and British intelligence operative Alisteir Crowley - back row second from left. 

The cultural changes in the West that happened in the middle 1960s - especially in the UK and USA - were stark; and shocking at the time. 

Although still at a rural English Primary School; I was very aware of these changes, they impinged upon me. 

I now regard the middle 'sixties as the inflexion point of a vast and strategic psychic attack on Western Civilization, mounted (mainly) by means of the mass media. 

Up to the middle 60s the mass culture was very positive in tone; all about people opening their minds; about embracing everything with discrimination, welcoming the new, looking forward to the future...

Change happened suddenly; beginning in summer 1967. 

For me it was marked by the surprising change in our cultural leaders The Beatles with their Sgt. Pepper album - the change in their fashion, behaviour, style of music, beginning to espouse of "radical" politics and alien spiritual stuff.

Things very quickly began to go sour, to lose innocence and optimism...

From the cheerful primary colours and plastic miniskirts and bobbed haircuts and Union Jacks of "I'm Backing Britain; then suddenly it was all about dirt, long-hair, drugs, violent "protest", Indian gurus, the Vietnam War etc. 

From light to darkness; from us to them, from hedonic materialism to satanic spirituality. 

In retrospect; I think the whole thing was a strategic psychic attack. That is, an evil-motivated attack on a person's soul. 

People were first encouraged to open themselves and welcome the future; then when this was achieved - all kinds of sickly stuff was poured-in. 

From shallow relentless cheerfulness; suddenly it was about fear and resentment, the pseudo-seriousness of ignorant philosophizing about remote matters; and the hedonism took on a self-destructive quality as it styled itself as a revolutionary activity.   

This is a pattern: first encourage open and uncritical acceptance and positivity; then when this achieved take rapid and powerful advantage of it to attack with demoralizing despair. 

And the pattern has recurred in culture, or at least this has been attempted, several times since. 

For instance the UK Blair government in 1997 explicitly tried to replicate the sixties optimism and openness and fun ("Cool Britannia" - pass the sick-bag please....); before suddenly transitioning to massive bureaucracy, pervasive corruption, globalism and wars. 

...Which had always been the whole point and purpose of the exercise. 

Again: this can be understood as a psychic attack. 

And, as well as at the mass and cultural level; the same sequence happens in individual persons:

First get them to open-up, and drop their guard, and welcome everything because all-is-one, all-is-good...

Then pour-in the nasty stuff - which they will at first welcome (i.e. they will invite evil into their hearts...); and try to overwhelm and dominate - before they can understand what is going-on.  

This can be understood using Owen Barfield's categories of the child's and tribal Man's enchanted state of Original Participation - which is what gets aimed-at by the phase of open acceptance...

Contrasted with the modern condition; which is the alienated Consciousness Soul - cut-off from its earlier immersion in the spiritual and communal. 

The effect of the civilization and personal psychic attacks is either that the person remains open and gets overwhelmed by the torrent of dark influences - like the casualties of the 1960s. 

Or else, when the individual experiences the torrential inrush of dark side: the barriers of alienation are re-erected and strengthened.

This large increase of psychological-and social alienation is what actually happened overall in Britain post 1960s and after the Blair-era attempted replication. 

In a crude form of emergency psychic self-defence; people became more less spiritual, more materialist - and bureaucracy grew and continued to grow. 

The naïve and brief utopian optimism about a wonderful future was replaced by dystopian fantasies ad the negative-fleeing escapisms of intoxication, the distractions of virtuality, fantasies of death as peaceful annihilation...

And as optimism became impossible (and spiritual hope was ruled out by atheistic materialism) the prevalent aspirations became and remained oppositional, negative: anti-men, anti-racism, anti-CO2 etc - a psychic world dominated by fear, resentment and despair. 

Part of the PSYOPS is to restrict options to these two - going back into a spiritual state of open-immersive passivity and oneness, like the early 60s; or going forward into a cut-off, impersonal, anti-spiritual, anti-human, anti-life-itself world - as with the current global totalitarian "AI" project. 

These psychic attacks continue...

Unless you personally are happy to pick and live-by one of these available and "approved" options - then you might to well to reflect on your underlying metaphysical assumptions that appear to make these two possibilities inevitable and exclusive.

You might do well to explore the only coherent alternative of which I am aware: which is something on the lines of Owen Barfield's Final Participation. 

Justin Welby - Archbishop of Canterbury: a four year retrospective...

I notice that it is now more than four years since Justin Welby was enthroned as Archbishop of Canterbury and 'leader' of the Anglican communion - which is the third biggest denomination of the largest religion in the world.

Throughout this time I have often commented on the chap - the collection of posts can be viewed via this link - and I thought, in particular, it was interesting to re-post one of my earliest evaluations - from 22 March 2013 - to see how well I was able to predict what was to come...

Much is made, by the media, of the supposed fact that Justin Welby - the Archbishop of Canterbury who was enthroned yesterday - is an 'evangelical'.

But, what does this really mean?

For example, what does it mean in contrast with his predecessor, Rowan Williams?

Well, both are Leftist bureaucrats first and foremost - but Williams was like a university administrator while Welby is more of a health service manager.

Furthermore, Williams was so hostile to Christianity that he would avoid talking about it altogether, if possible.

But Welby, being an 'evangelical' is quite happy to mention Christian themes from time to time - woven into his socialist propaganda.

So that is the definition of an evangelical - as applied to Church of England Bishops and Priests: an 'evangelical' is a Leftist bureaucrat who is not actively hostile to Christianity; while the others are Leftist bureaucrats, pure and simple - and mention Christianity only to discredit or invert it.

From Justin Welby's inaugural sermon:

http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/5038/out-of-our-own-traditions-and-into-the-waves-the-archbishop-of-canterburys-inaugural-sermon 

For more than a thousand years this country has to one degree or another sought to recognise that Jesus is the Son of God; by the ordering of its society, by its laws, by its sense of community. Sometimes we have done better, sometimes worse. When we do better we make space for our own courage to be liberated, for God to act among us and for human beings to flourish. Slaves were freed, Factory Acts passed, and the NHS and social care established through Christ-liberated courage. The present challenges of environment and economy, of human development and global poverty, can only be faced with extraordinary courage.

You see? The primary achievements of Christianity in 2000 years have been Abolition, Health and Safety, the health service bureaucracy and dole for most of the population.

The future of Christianity is fighting Global Warming, Fair Trade and making-Africans-smile.

What extraordinary 'courage' and liberation it takes for JW to articulate such counter-cultural sentiments!... Not.     

Yet at the same time the church transforms society when it takes the risks of renewal in prayer, of reconciliation and of confident declaration of the good news of Jesus Christ. In England alone the churches together run innumerable food banks, shelter the homeless, educate a million children, offer debt counselling, comfort the bereaved, and far, far more. All this comes from heeding the call of Jesus Christ. Internationally, churches run refugee camps, mediate civil wars, organise elections, set up hospitals. All of it happens because of heeding the call to go to Jesus through the storms and across the waves.

What is Welby's Church of England, anyway?

Well, apparently it is a really important part of the welfare state. It provides food banks (but I thought the poor were dying of obesity?); shelters the 'homeless' (to be 'homeless' is an official category which does not preclude someone having a 'shelter' such as a house or caravan - indeed being one of the thousands of 'homeless' selling the The Big Issue magazine is such an attractive job that it is hotly competed-for and has attracted Roma from a thousand miles distant to become 'homeless' in Britain); it educates millions - just like local governments; it provides financial advice (!).. and so on and drearily-on.

What is good about the C of E, apparently, is that it is almost as useful as the municipal council.

So at the end of this litany of socialist triumphs, we perceive that the C of E is 'transforming' society in exactly the same direction and by exactly the same means as Leftists everywhere - it is part of the precisely same project as the United Nations, Western governments, the civil service, the NGOs...

But all of these are aggressively atheist - so how come Welby is arguing that All of it happens because of heeding the call to go to Jesus? 

And why does Welby suppose it requires the CoE to go through storms and across waves to do this kind of stuff, when all he is asking the church to do is to float along with the mainstream current of secular Leftism?

The theme of the sermon is 'courage' and 'be not afraid'; but none of this stuff requires courage - rather, it is precisely what The Politically-Correct Establishment propagandizes, rewards, enforces.

What really would take courage, but what Welby of course never mentions, is to use his enthronement speech to make a clear Christian statement of opposition to the sexual revolution.

It is the opponents of bureaucratic Leftism and the sexual revolution who need to be told: be not afraid; because they are the ones who are afraid (and with good reason).   

There is every possible reason for optimism about the future of Christian faith in our world and in this country. Optimism does not come from us, but because to us and to all people Jesus comes and says “Take heart, it is I, do not be afraid”. We are called to step out of the comfort of our own traditions and places, and go into the waves, reaching for the hand of Christ. Let us provoke each other to heed the call of Christ, to be clear in our declaration of Christ, committed in prayer to Christ, and we will see a world transformed.

(He means, of course, a world 'transformed' into a socialist utopia.)

But does this man know anything about the state of Christianity in 'this country', this England? If so how could he be optimistic?

Does this man understand words? Does he know the meaning of 'optimism'? Or does he think optimism means the same as 'hope'?

If he does not understand the word he is an ignorant fool, and if he does understand it but misuses it then he is a liar - or perhaps insane.

Happy Easter! (22 March 2013)
 

Evaluation (12 October 2017): I wuz right! Welby combines dishonest mendacity, servility, and managerial incompetence in exactly the manner expected from an over-promoted Leftist ideologue. Thus, he fits seamlessly into the modern British Establishment.

Philosophy without God is just self-help - or self-harming... (Colin Wilson and William Arkle)

This struck me as I was considering Colin Wilson's discussion of the prevalent pessimism in philosophy - worse in the past 200 years, but always prevalent.

Most philosophy is an act of self-harm, insofar as it devalues life; insofar as it has the view that it would either be better never to have been born, or that life may be pleasant or unpleasant, but ultimately makes no difference to anything...

I have always affirmed Colin Wilson's basic optimism - but in a not-created world and absent a creator who is good and who loves us; I would have to admit that the pessimists are correct!

Because CW avoided metaphysics, his discussion operates at the level of feelings. He argues that our happiest and best, most meaningful feelings are correct about life - yet in the deepest analysis, if these are just feelings, then that basic situation is a pessimistic one.

In contrast is the Nobel prizewinning author Samuel Beckett, whose work is an act of self-harm, directed at harming others - designed to make life pessimistic, to persuade that despair is the rational response to this world. The read Beckett with seriousness is the psychological equivalent of slashing one's own wrists, or drinking poison.

Of course we want to be happy and optimistic (at least, we want this with a part of ourselves) but this happiness must be True. To mean more than just a fleeting emotion, flickering in the mind of a finite being; happiness needs to derive from Good news about Reality. Otherwise the situation would be that Beckett is describing reality correctly; and Wilson's denial of pessimism is merely a way of feeling, and perhaps functioning, better - in what is otherwise an intolerable universe. 

So philosophy is only about what we feel unless real-life really-is Good.

For William Arkle his optimism was based on his knowledge (and awareness) of the fact that this is a created reality, and the creator is our loving Father - so reality is designed-around each of us, and what we most need.

Furthermore, Arkle is convinced that we personally chose to be born into our lives. So - with these underpinning convictions - we have an essentially 'optimistic' situation, in which our life is has purpose, meaning, is specifically what we need; and this actual life (its situation) was specifically chosen by our-(pre-mortal)-selves. Therefore William Arkle's philosophy is more than just about feelings.  

What 'evidence' does Arkle have? Quite simply: intuitive conviction. Arkle asked basic questions of reality, and knew the answers directly. He asked - is there God, is this reality created - answers came yes. Then, he knew by direct apprehension that this God was Good, and loved him. Looking around at life - he recognised meaning and purpose everywhere and in everything. 

Arkle might have been happy merely because he was optimistic by nature - as was Colin Wilson. The two men were indeed good friends, and would have long conversations together, keeping in touch from the 1950s into the 1990s. And on the surface, they were saying similar things.

Implicitly, I suspect that Wilson did have similar beliefs to Arkle - but he was not aware of them, and did not state them explicitly. Therefore, Wilson's work can reduce to self-help - to advice on how to be happier and more optimistic.

But the fact that Arkle stated his fundamental assumptions meant that his happiness and optimism were linked to, and derived-from, ultimate reality by means of stated assumptions. Thus Arkle, unlike most philosophers, broke-through from self-help to metaphysics. 

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

*

Excerpts from his first statement:

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

*

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

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

*

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

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

*

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

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

*

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

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


*

...The House of Bishops is very wise. 

Comment: no comment. 


*

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

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


*

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

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

*

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

Comment: This is why he got the job.


*

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

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


*

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

*

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

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



*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Mass Modern Man is living in the present

It is very striking to observe how Modern Man lives in a perpetual present - in the sense that the future has all but disappeared and people think only a few weeks ahead at most. Consequently, all ideas of future utopia (or even any conceivable future world) have gone - and Mass Man cannot even recognize that he lives in a version of dystopia. 

The past has also lost all reality, being continually redefined for reasons of expediency or simply to reinforce the conceit of moral superiority. Clearly, there is no sense of a real past if it can be destroyed, forgotten, inverted at will. 

The present view has dispensed with all attempts at coherence, common sense is regarded as an oppressive evil, personal experience and observation is either merely misleading or else requires to be interpreted in light of concepts from The Establishment (the linked global bureaucracy, world government, mass media). 

Each day, Modern Man wakes-up to be informed of reality by mass and social media - who present their versions of 'science', 'statistics', and 'expert' analysis and advice in general. This (here-and-now) is the truth about the world - and it is a truth which is defined & redefined daily, hourly, moment-by-moment - as required.

There is no other truth, and no source of officially good and legitimate authority other than this present truth - which encompasses (by re-shaping, deleting, adding-to) past and future, continuously. All other claims of truth are not just 'fake' but evil - therefore other truth-claims must be suppressed, and the people who make them must be suppressed. 

Suppression is simply a means to the end of eliminating them from the current, today's, official truth  otherwise truth claims have no autonomy - have no real-reality. 

(Thus, a truth claim may be moved from the fake-evil provenance to official validity - or the other direction - without a problem; because truth is just for today. Identical forms of words that were officially evil-fake 'hate fact' last week, may this week become authoritative-mandatory - or the opposite. This is not regarded as a problem because today's-truth is the only truth. Today's distinction between good and evil ideas or people is the only valid distinction.) 

The characteristic mood of 20201 is therefore a peculiar combination of hedonistic optimism and fearful despair - and today's particular combination of optimism and fear, optimism and despair is unique, evanescent and compulsory.

It seems that most people in the West, including most self-identified Christians, have accepted the above arrangement as being real-reality; and as such have rendered themselves passive slaves of the linked global bureaucracy, world government, mass media - and foes of God.

 

 

Fight, Fight, Fight is only a variant of "If only everybody would just be Nice"

Things are much worse than most people think! That is clear from the "If only" conversations and writings that seem to have plagued the world for hundreds of years at least. 

So many people though history have pointed out that "If only" people would just be nice, kind, reasonable, sensible, or whatever - "then" how much better this world would be...  

Yes indeed; but the Whole Point is that People are not thus, and show no signs of significant improvement in their natures.

A variant of this are the appeals for people to Fight this, that or the other. "If only" a few people would awaken to their own power, band together, organize, vote, Fight - "then" we could win. "Such exhortations are always, whether explicitly or implicitly, about "us" and what "we" could do if only we would Fight.  

Yes indeed; but the Whole Point is that (here and now, in "real" life) people don't and won't fight.

Or, at least, they will fight only when they are compelled by the government, get paid, or attain high status for fighting. Although some people will fight without reward; from their pleasure in destruction, bullying, and infliction of pain.  

And therefore (because their motivations are bad) people will only in practice fight on the side of evil - because, in terms of spiritual virtue: motivations are what matter.  

What's more, even if people could be well-motivated to fight on the side of God and Good; who exactly would they fight? 

The answer is that those who fought for Good would need to fight those on the side of evil. 

But things are much worse that most people think; and those on the side of evil are not a handful of Dark Lords and elite lieutenants, the elimination of whom would win the spiritual war; but instead those on the side of evil is... Almost Everybody. 

If you really (rather than merely rhetorically) were to fight, fight, Fight; then your would nearly-always start by fighting your family and friends, moving on to neighbours and colleagues, very soon including almost-everybody... those involved in almost-every social system: those responsible for food, water, energy, building and repair, trade and transport, retail etc. - as well as police and the military.  

The evil that rules this world, controls all these, and the other (politics, media, law, education, health,. arts, science...), social systems - so all-of-them is exactly who and what you would need to Fight. 

And even supposing you were able to inflict significant damage on Them; by destroying The System; you would certainly cause the sooner (rather than later) collapse of Western Civilization*. 

Things are much worse than most people think; and even if people and this world were utterly different from what they actually are - the dewy-eyed optimism of those who exhort us to Fight reveals their naïve ignorance of how bad things actually are, how pervasive and (in its various, or specific manifestations) overwhelmingly popular is the agenda of evil. 

Realistically; there is no basis for optimism: that is, there is no basis for believing that the world can or will become significantly better than it is now. 

But for a Christian this is not a counsel of despair, because Heaven is not of this world, and Jesus Christ's promises are of resurrection for those who follow Him - real Christianity is not a programme of socio-political reform. 

In other words: the cure for despair is not optimism but hope; not group belief in a high probability of amelioration or improvement but the personal certainty of salvation. 

*Of course, the underlying motivations of the fight-fight-fight brigade are often (apparently) selfish or in service to evil. Some are using this rhetoric to "make a buck", to build a business, build a cult around themselves, support the "party"; others are paid shills or state-employed agents provocateurs. Others are just LARPing as tough guys. But some are, no doubt, sincere but misguided - and they are the focus of the post.  

Political optimism is an Antichrist phenomenon

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where lies hope? A Schumpeterian analysis

*

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

Yet not by false optimism.

Because false optimism does not work.

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

*

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

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

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

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

*

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

*

And yet we must hope for change. 

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

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

Replacement, not reform.

*

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

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

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

That human societal adjustment was not typically incremental but categorical.

*

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

The trends are against Christianity.

*

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

And yet we must hope.

*

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

These are hope-less.

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

*

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

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

*

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

*


Clarification:

Lest I be misunderstood.

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

Thus hope is in opposition to optimism. 

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

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

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

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

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

Our task is therefore to live from this transcendental root. 

This task is not easy - but it is possible. 

Dealing with fear by personal thoughts of faith and love; not via groupism, nor with optimism, pride, or safety-seeking

People always want to know "what to do" - and this need is used to manipulate us.

Because all the standard available notions of "doing good" and improving-the-world are long since captured and put to work for strategic evil...

But, of course, we really do need to know what to do! 

There's always a lot of the sin of fear about; it is infectious and people also have a tendency to seek it (a misplaced sense of "duty" to face the "reality" of "the worst" (in practice, "the worst" as interpreted and presented by the mass media) and overcome it. 

Chronic, existential fear isn't something that can be avoided or eradicated (at least, not for those capable of the experience). 

Yet we do genuinely need to overcome; we need to deal with fear; so we need to consider how to deal with it.

Typical wrong ways of dealing with fear include optimism - adopting a belief that the feared thing cannot or will not happen; or pride - that if it does happen, I personally (and my gang) can overcome it. 

Another wrong way is to seek safety from the feared - to flee it, or defend against it. 

These are bad ways of dealing with fear; because they are negative, they try to use one sin to fight another. 

Thus - optimism is dishonest, pride is this-worldly, safety is impossible in this mortal earthly life... 

Others fight fear by trying to build protective alliances, "groups" - with the implication that fear is something we collectively intend to defeat, sometime in the future, so long as we can persuade or coerce other people to join un in the fight...

But fear needs to be fought immediately - not in the future, and this means fought by each person as-he-now-is, and individually. 

We must take personal responsibility to do what is needed, without delaying for conditions to improve.  

The first faith required is that God would not leave us without the necessary resources. So anybody and everywhere can do what is needed - it's a matter of knowing what. 

Also, the answer will be (must be) for individuals and not dependent on social factors, will be immediate, can be consciously adopted - and is a matter of free action. 

The answer is therefore going to be neither hard nor abstract - and shall be within anyone's grasp who chooses it. 

Since we know that the answer must be possible to happen individually, immediately, and therefore directly. 

It's pretty well-known among Christians that we should fight fear with love and faith (a loving kind of faith, faith in the ultimate power of love).

But people get hung-up on exactly what such action means in practice, here-and-now...

For instance; faith is usually weak, and often weak because external in source, self-contradicting, and neither grasped nor inwardly endorsed. 

Faith will not overcome fear unless is real and strong to us personally, which means experientially. 

And of course Christian faith needs to be in God the creator, known as personal, parental, and good (not, therefore, faith another kind of God with other characteristics) 

Love is the basis of divine creation; and love cannot be dictated - therefore to be effective for good, love must be genuine. 

We can only make a positive difference for that which we really love. 

And as for action - the false assumption of our materialist civilization is that action must be physical to be effective; whereas if action is to be individual and immediate - then such action needs to be known as spiritual not physical; and thinking recognized as (potentially) an action that affects divine creation. 

So it is possible for any person to do positive good for whatever and whoever he really loves, and almost instantly; by thinking upon the subject on the above lines. 

But the needful will probably only click, and happen, pretty briefly...

Because the conditions necessary are rather delicate. And what it is that happens is known primarily by direct apprehension; rather than indirectly via images, words, concepts and the like...

Description and communication come after the needful has happened, and will be approximate at best - that should be expected, and not regarded as a weakness or refutation of what has happened. 

All of which also needs a kind of faith in the way that "things work" in divine creation  - by love and spiritually - also, faith that God will take notice and incorporate what brief yet significant good we may accomplish in such ways. 

 

The implicit modern religion of Transhumanism

Transhumanism is not ridiculous - not something to be disposed of with a sneer - rather, Transhumanism is the implicit religion of modern, secular Leftism - it is mainstream and near-universal in the West - it has great power and reach - it underpins the main assumptions of public discourse and policy.

In sum, most modern Western people's actual lives and opinions are based on the Transhumanist belief that Man can, will and should transcend his humanity -- and that the nature of humanity, as it has existed so far, should be considered as a set of defects and limitations that need to be transcended.

Transhumanism is an incremental outgrowth of the secular religion of progress - it sees itself as the optimistic alternative among modern secular Leftist ideologies.

What is Transhumanism? -- well, it is a network of beliefs that people can/ will - sooner-or-later/ and should:

1. Always be happy - never suffer (except insofar as they wish to)

2. Never be ill, never age

3. Never die - there will be no ageing (see above) and death will be infinitely postpone-able - the person will be open-endedly repairable or restoreable - death will be reversible

4. Be able to improve intelligence, personality, strength, capacity for pleasure etc - beyond anything yet attained by any human

5. Be able to change sex, make new sexes, abolish sexual identity and the need for sex itself - or redefine and modify them endlessly

6. Wholly detach reproduction from sex - be able to make babies, perfect babies, without intervention of parents - to bring them up perfectly without 'need' for families

7. Go beyond historical levels of human wisdom, goodness - achieve a higher morality (which will be effortless and universal)

and so on...


None of these things have actually been achieved, indeed in many ways we are further from achieving them than we were a few decades ago - as human capability dwindles and hype increases...

But the core idea is to live-by the belief that such things could-happen - and therefore we should behave asif they have-happened.


Capability dissolves good and evil - because good and evil are subsumed within pleasure/ pain - and when good is pleasure, and pleasure is psychological - then goodness become the technical problem of ensuring pleasure (and abolishing pain) and removing any obstacles to this - and any 'moral' factors which interfere with this can and should be engineered-away.

Human nature is something to created and recreated - the purpose of Transhumanism is, after all to transcend the human; so the core project is not to make humans happier but to go beyond humans - the idea is that humans should build something better than humans - where better is seen in terms of the hedonic axis of pleasure/ fulfillment versus suffering/ misery, such that any human, biological, historical limitation on positive emotional states can and should be removed.

Because, from the Transhumanist perspective, to think otherwise is to want, and to enforce, pain, suffering and misery on oneself and others. And that is evil.


The basis of Transhumanism is that human limitation is the primary problem in life, and human capability is therefore the primary good for humanity; and more capability is better - because (and this is key) any problems that may arise from capability should/can/will be solved by more capability.


Name your problem, and Transhumanism has a solution: Loneliness? Solved by manipulating emotions, perhaps pharmacologically but ultimately genetically - so you cannot feel lonely anymore (i.e. human nature will be re-engineered to become immune to the problem).

Or technology will provide everyone with a perfect virtual social world - psychologically-indistinguishable from the real social world, and completely satisfying and available without limitation. (Meanwhile, the necessary work and reproduction will be done by other means.)

And people will never get fed-up of these solutions, because that fed-up-ness too will itself be engineered-away.


If you happen to believe or feel that the above approach is wrong or wicked or pathetic - then that too is something which can - and probably should - be edited-out -- because it is obstructive at best, evil at worst.

In the end, all reasons for misery and conflict will either be solved in reality, or else we will be re-engineered so as to case caring about them - so 'problems' will cease to be perceived as problems, 'limitations' will cease to be felt as limiations.

And this will not be boring, because boredom will become a thing of the past -- we will be satisfied with what we have, and the possibilities of novelty are open-ended - everything can be change; life will be an endless play and adventure - with all the thrills but none of the risk -- That is the Transhumanist hope, or promise.


The thing to recognize about Transhumanism is that it does not have any respect for human nature as it is - it sees nothing 'sacred' in humans as they are; indeed humans as they are are seen as on the one hand arbitrary, contingent products of natural selection - which could easily have been otherwise, and which are - anyway - simply optimized for average reproductive success under average ancestral conditions...

Why on earth should such a bundle of historical chances be preserved?

And further than this, human nature as it is is seen as a major problem - if not the major problem - because on the one hand we are full of aggression, hatred, sadism, spite etc - while on the other hand we are vulnerable to pain, misery, despair, terror and all manner of sufferings. Both sins and the vulnerability to sin can and should be deleted.


To understand Transhumanism, and understand its visceral appeal and its almost universal influence on modern values - one needs to appreciate, to experience for oneself, this intoxicating sense of liberation that comes from regarding Man as nothing but the contingent product of natural selection... 

One needs to feel the sense that every problem by progress can be solved by more progress - including that any insoluble problems can cease to be regarded as problems

- so that subjectively (so far as he knows) Man attains through progress nothing less than absolute freedom, and complete happiness - forever.

Now, the fact that this is not actually happening is irrelevant so long as the people who have implicitly bought-into Transhumanism, and made it their core belief and hope (typically without knowing the word Transhumanism, nor even thinking-about the subject)... none of this matters so long as the adherents believe that it is going-to happen. 

My feeling is that Transhumanism is immune to argument - it is a circular system (as are all viable metaphysical systems) but it is dependent on optimism - it feeds upon itself, but that self is fueled by the hyper-reality of the mass media.

So, at present Transhumanism is sustained by the fact that people live mostly in the virtual world of the mass media, where mass media reality feels realer than real reality. 

When the mass media crumbles and collapses, when the major social systems such as the economy, law, science, medicine, police, military collapse (as they will, because we, as a culture, are 'not even trying' to maintain and sustain them - we are trying to do various other things but are not trying to maintain functionality - indeed, we have long since ceased to regard reality as real)... when these collapse, so will the psychological basis for Transhumanism collapse.

Transhumanism is the objectification of subjectivity - it is the belief that subjectivity can be engineered at will and without limit to become absolutely gratifying - it is the belief that subjectivity is everything. 

If and when objectivity re-asserts itself, when objectivity become impossible to ignore - Transhumanism will evaporate with no trace left behind - it will seem no more than a group-insanity, no realer than the other mass delusions which beset our civilization in relation to sex and sexuality, economics and law, education and medicine - none of which are amenable to discussion or refutation - all of which are themselves versions of the triumph of subjectivism.

Of course, people can retain their subjectivism in the face of anything and everything. The ultimate subjectivism is indeed that of Satan - who pits the subjective self against the whole of reality, and chooses to prefer the self. And Satan cannot be persuaded. 

But the pervasive mainstream Transhumanism of modernity is a much shallower thing - dependent on  an 'optimism' that is itself dependent upon very specific and unsustainable levels of escalating engagement with the mass media; and a consequent mind-set which takes for granted fundamental technological progress in capability and efficiency without troubling itself about the sources. A mind-set consumed by virtuality, subjectivity, hype and spin. 

However, the real, underpinning sources of actual objective techno-progress are all going-going-gone -- all of them.

The foundations are gone from under the post-industrial revolution system of capability. The edifice of modernity is become a house of cards balanced on sand - the whole being sustained by self-delusions. 

And the surface hope of Transhumanism is continually being undercut and undercut, by the deep daily reality of Godless cumulative nihilism and despair. 

Techno-optimism and the capability of attaining it as a reality is continually being eroded by endemic Western self-hatred; and by the mostly-covert but increasingly obvious, cultural wish for escape from the modern situation by some kind of painless suicide into a suffering-free, blissed-out, eternal nothingness... 

(But the possibility of that, is itself is not solidly believed.)

In sum, Transhumanism is much more powerful and pervasive than generally realized - it is a real factor in the behaviour of modern Man. It facilitates many of the most deeply damaging trends of our culture -  but Transhumanism itself prevents the possibility of its own attainment; for which thanks be to God!

(Note - for a deeper understanding of Transhumanism, its causes and its consequences, read That Hideous Strength and/ or The Abolition of Man by CS Lewis.)   

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The anti-Christian effects of superstition, propitiation, sacrifice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That is a measure of how serious an error we are making; how serious a sin it is to feel constrained against expressing - even to ourselves - our happiness, hope, confidence.
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Note: On this view, Christ as a propitiation and sacrifice is a matter of getting all that stuff out-of-the-way; of telling us not to worry about it any more because Christ has utterly and permanently taken care of it.