How do we know what is going on behind the lies? By observing how other people think ('the law of projection')

We can know how other people think, despite that they are habitually dishonest and live-behind an edifice of lies, because we can observe their us of what some people have called 'projection'. In other words, people accuse others of behaving in the way they themselves behave.

Projection is a misleading term (false causality) if you understand the psychoanalytic reasoning behind it; but the actuality is straightforward enough: By and large, we understand other people's thinking in terms of how we ourselves think.

We could call this 'the law of projection'. 

But there is an extra spin on this generalisation - which is made very clear in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings: The law of projection applies primarily to evil.

In other words, insofar as a person (or institution) is evil - that is to say, is strategically working for the destruction of Good - their understanding is constrained by projection.

In other words, the evil can only imagine others as being as evil as themselves. In other words, we can recognise evil by the way of thinking, by the fact that their world view is constrained by imputing evil intentions to others.

The  evil cannot even imagine that others may be different from themselves, may not be evil.

Thus Sauron assumes that everybody will want to seize and use The Ring and never even considers that they would try to destroy it; Saruman assumes that Gandalf is also plotting to rule The West and keep the One Ring for himself - and so on.

In sum - evil cannot imagine Good - and cannot understand the rationale of Good: cannot predict the actions of the Good.

But, by contrast, Good can imagine evil - Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel, Aragorn are all able to understand and predict the behaviour of Sauron. But why? 

It cannot be merely that any Good person also contains evil aspects (and uses these to understand evil) - because the reverse also applies: any evil person also contains Good aspects, indeed often a great deal of Good and yet the evil are blinded to Good in others...

My guess is that although everyone is a mixture of Good and evil; the evil are blinded to Good, while the Good are not blind to evil. It is not the special virtues of the Good which make them wiser; it is the malformation of thought which is induced by evil intent. 

In sum; we can recognise evil firstly by its projection of evil onto others, and secondly (and more important) by the fact that it evil is constrained by this projection: evil cannot imagine Good in its enemies.

But, my point is that lies, no matter how comprehensive, do not obscure evil - we can see past the lies.

Projection is the New Normal! Or, how to infer what They are doing...

The handy psychological term "projection" derives from the nonsensical world of Sigmund Freud's psychodynamics - but, albeit for extremely different reasons than Freud suggested,  the actual phenomenon of accusing others of one's own motivations contains a great deal of validity. 

The reason for projection is that we use "our-self" - how we see the world, how we are personally motivated, what we are trying-to-do - as the basic model by which we understand "other people" and the world generally. 

Of course, knowing this phenomenon, it is possible to do otherwise - or even do the opposite; but the level of self-awareness in the managerial and leadership class of The West is... well, it is extremely low. 

The people running things are essentially either bureaucrats - obediently trying to please their bosses; or else psychopaths - self-centred and short-termist types - who don't care enough about other people to realize that they may be differently motivated. 

Therefore, unless they are continually watched and controlled; They will continually be giving themselves away, will repeatedly be revealing their real and underlying motivations, by their criticisms and accusations against others. 

That is what I mean by the term "projection". 

Examples abound!

During the birdemic - anyone who objected to the state bureaucrats and media Moghuls was labelled as a science denier; while the accusers were simply inverting or throwing-out a century of medical knowledge concerning epidemics and respiratory viruses. 

Those who objected to mass pecking with an unnecessary, ineffective and dangerous agent; were labelled as being dangerous gamblers with the public health! Parent who cared about the safety of their children, were labelled as selfish and short-termist - by those whose interests (money, jobs, status, promotion) was enhanced by pushing the peck. 

When the Fire Nation war came along; the inversions were legion. The Fire Nation were accusing of provoking the war, deliberate escalation, suffering massive casualties from "human wave" tactics, of imminently running-out of munitions, etc (continuing) - all of which were knowingly being done by the side making the accusations. 

More generally; They accuse anyone who notices, publicizes and opposes the explicit (UN Agenda 2030, Great-Reset) and massively-documented for decades global plan for totalitarian omni-surveillance and micro-control of everyone except an "elite" of (implicitly) wise and just leaders; variously, as "climate denialist" and as a "conspiracy theorist". 

In a nutshell; Their projections are an insight into their own natures, their motivations, their intentions. 

We can easily understand the way that They regard us, and regard the world, by observing that of which They accuse their enemies. 

**

Explanatory and Contextual Note: 

It might be asked how it is possible to escape from the accusation of projection - after all, it could and will be said that someone like myself is also projecting ("You are projecting!". "No, it's You who are projecting!... &c."- Maybe I am projecting even more and worse than Them! 

That is what inevitably (because intrinsically) happens to someone whose explanatory model goes no deeper than "psychology" - one who uses psychology as their ultimate and bottom-line explanatory model... Everything is ultimately reduced to "a matter of opinion", which itself reduces to whoever has the greatest power and influence... And we are back to square one! 

The "answer" is that we all need to become explicitly aware of our own most-basic (metaphysical - including religious) assumptions concerning the nature of reality. In public discourse, we can and should expect that such assumption be made clear. 

Metaphysical assumptions are the true bottom-line and ultimate distinctions; while psychology (or politics, or economics, or whatever) is only ever a proximate explanation; only valid insofar as the metaphysical assumptions are known, and are coherent. 

In this regard; They will not make clear their metaphysical assumptions, and will indeed deny the validity of metaphysics - stoutly maintaining all discourse on a surface and "sound bite" level of emotive manipulations and assertions about "evidence" and "facts" - which They can easily control. 

Projection is such a problem - here and now - exactly because the mainstream, official, mandatory modern discourse is a futile cycle of ungrounded assertions; that exclude metaphysics; and that operates entirely at the surface and proximate level, and with sound-bite (two step) logic. 

In a nutshell: the leadership/ managerial class are themselves slaves to projection because (by assumption) they see no deeper than psychology and its manipulations; and all possible depth is excluded by the anti-spiritual, atheistic materialism/ positivism/ scientism/ reductionism that permeates (and is enforced by) the whole official world. 

Leftist projection - why?

Leftists are always exceptionally prone to 'project' their own attitudes and motivations onto others. For example, the outrageously and explicitly hate-sputtering media-political elite Remain campaigners in the EU Referendum have been unrestrainedly and repeatedly attacking the pro-Brexit mass majority for running a hate-campaign.

(The fact is that the Remain faction had near-exclusive use of the public megaphone - so there was hardly anything of a 'campaign' - hate-driven or otherwise - of any type for the Leave faction.)

But why are the Left such blatant and unaware projectors?

Essentially because the psychological mechanism of 'projection' is that we use our-selves, our own minds, as a 'model' to understand and predict others.

To a significant extent, and spontaneously (although it can be overcome by recognition and effort): we cannot imagine others behaving in a way of which we ourselves are incapable; and, conversely, we cannot help but suppose that what drives us, drives everybody else.

The paranoid accuse everybody else of their own plotting and scheming; those without motives of altruism assume that everybody else is as selfish as themselves but hiding it; the constitutionally irreligious assume that the faith of others is a hypocritical fake.

But why Leftists especially? Leftists did not always project as much as they do now - the problem is mostly one of the past 50 years and the New 'cultural' Left of 'identity politics'. Nowadays the only knuckle-dragging sexists are Feminists, the only really serious racists are the professional Antiracists; the only significant class warriors are privately schooled and Oxbridge-educated scions of the upper classes.

The reason that Leftists are so prone to projection and can never perceive the fact is quite simply that modern Leftism JUST IS projection. If you subtract the projection from Leftism, there is nothing left over - or, at least, nothing from which you could build a political movement.

So there is no point in pointing-out Leftist projection - no point in pointing-out that the Leftist hate-accusers are the ones who are hate-fuelled - because that is simply how they see the world; that is how things look to them, from inside their minds, given the way their minds work; and Leftists will not stop seeing the world that way until they stop being Leftists.

Recognizing Final Participation - inspiration plus personal creativity

If we assume that because Final Participation (FP) is our destiny, what God wants from us at this stage of things; then perhaps it ought not to be impossibly difficult or rare. Perhaps we should expect to see Final Participation in our own lives; and in those of at least some people whose work is recoded in the public domain. 

Maybe the difficulty in locating Final Participation is in recognizing it as something genuinely different and new, and therefore misclassifying it under old categories - because the old categories are all we know.  

To clarify; Final Participation is an engagement with reality, in which we bring to bear our own creativity - to participate in creating. 

This could be participation with divine creation (this is what I understand to happen in Heaven); or participation with another person's created work - perhaps someone from the past. 

This can serve as an illustration - taking the example of JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (LotR). 

Two widely known categories of engagement with life, with works; could be termed 'projection' and 'channeling' - and I will contrast these with Final Participation.

Projection

Projection is not intentionally a participation, because it describes what happens when a reader of Tolkien projects his own concerns onto the book. 

This seems to be the usual practice of Tolkien mass-fandom. Except minimally; the projecting fan-reader does not experience what Tolkien himself felt or intended; but instead uses the book (selectively and distortingly) as fuel for his own interests. 

For example such a fan might read LotR as-if it were a "sword and sorcery" novel, being interested only by the fights, magic, monsters, spectacle etc; and either not-noticing, skipping-over or forgetting the other material. Or, to judge by the content of one genre of fan-fictions; quite a few readers even seem to read Tolkien in a subversive fashion, as fuel for their personal sexual fantasies.   

Therefor projection is not a form of 'participation' except very minimally, unconsciously, unintentionally; because the intent is to impose oneself upon the-other. 

Channeling

The ideal behind the form of participation I am calling channeling, is that the reader become so totally immersed in the work that he identifies completely with the author. 

This is a contemplative, not creative, ideally-non-participating form of engagement - because the ideal is that the reader be passive, absorptive, and reflective. The reader seeks to lose-himself-in the work 

This is, indeed, the form that has been called 'inspiration' and which used-to be (in the pre-modern era) the form that so-called 'creativity' took. The 'creator' was supposed to be a clear-channel for God/ The Gods/ The Muses - and himself to play no personal role in what emerged.

In other words; with channeling, with inspired work, the ideal is non-participation. 

This channeling is therefore a particular example of what Owen Barfield termed Original Participation - which is the primal relationship with the world of the child or the early tribal Man. It does have elements of participating; but only in the secondary sense that we are then (and almost fully) engaged with the world, with life, with other beings. But (when channeling works) we are so immersed in the flow of external things, that while our own participation in them is inevitable, it is intentionally minimal.  

Perhaps the ideal of the medieval sculptor working on one of the great cathedrals might serve as an illustration. He is contented to be anonymous, and forgotten, and to work in exactly the same style as every other mason - because his personal nature should 'stand-aside' and should not have anything to do with the product. I have heard of musicians (conductors and soloists) who regard their interpretations likewise: they try to identify so closely with the composer that they lose-themselves in the perormance altogether. 

In terms of Tolkien, this is perhaps the ideal of the best kind of literary critic of the old school: he attempts to expound Tolkien, and not to 'interfere' by interjecting personal views or evaluations. In particular, he is very wary of 'projection', which he regards as itself a gross and unscholarly error, leading to distortions such as anachronism.  

Final Participation

For an example of FP we need to go to Tolkien himself, in his writing of Lord of the Rings; and to that activity which he termed "subcreation". 

This - I suggest - is the relationship between JRRT and his 'source material' - which came from the author's engagement with his academic subject of philology (the language-focused study of old texts), and his other concerns such as mythology, and the matter of England. 

I believe that Tolkien not only had a deep immersion in his sources; but that he also went beyond immersion in his 'sources'. That is; JRRT went beyond the contemplative-passive processes of channeling, and brought his own creativity to bear on the material that he was experiencing from-within. 

There are innumerable examples. Tolkien's elves are rooted in Icelandic, Norse, Anglo-Saxon, Celtic material from his philosophical studies - the words for elves, their histories, their implications (as discussed by Tom Shippey in Roots and Branches); but Tolkien also brought a deep and intense personal interest and concern with elves - which he envisaged as an ideal type of certain aspects of Men; blessed with innate health and extreme longevity, greater love of the earth, greater skills and intelligence, and magical powers. 

And yet Tolkien felt a need to explain (to himself, primarily) how and why it was that elves were (more or less) estranged from, then replaced by, Men - who became rulers of this earth; despite that Men seemed inferior, overall. 

To generate acceptable answers to these (and other) questions about elves, problems about myth, England and so forth; Tolkien needed to go beyond existing material and theories: he needed to enlist his own creativity. 

I consider Tolkien's writing of LotR as a publicly-available example of Final Participation. 

In the first place JRRT was inspired by many, already existing, source materials; and had immersed himself in these materials so that he could, when needed or desired, 'channel'/ expound/ explain these materials in their own terms, in the context of the times and places of their composition. 

But in the second place Tolkien wanted to do more than just passively be-inspired-by; he wanted actively to generate something new by bringing to bear from-himself to participate with that which others had created.  

This was (pretty much) what he termed subcreation. 

To generalize, I think it would therefore be reasonably accurate to state that:

Final Participation = Inspiration plus Personal Creativity 

As such, examples can be generated from other areas of the arts, sciences etc. The pianist Glenn Gould did not just 'channel' Bach (as some have wrongly claimed), because, although he was steeped in Bach's creative mind and intent - Gould also added his own creativity, to make something participated. A synthesis, rather than recreation. 

A creative scientist of genius must, of course, build upon the valid science of his precursors; but as well as selecting from among the already-existing scientific literature that he deeply understands in its own terms (which might be said to 'inspire' him); and as well as extrapolating this work; the great scientist will bring something new, something original: from himself - in order to make a qualitative breakthrough.  

In sum; I hope the above might help make clearer what is meant by Final Participation; and to help recognize when it occurs in our own lives. 

Robert Graves as an extreme instance of "projection"

I have often written of Robert Graves, because - with GB Shaw - he was the first grow-n-up writer I engaged with after Lord of the Rings had opened the door to adult literature for me. Both Graves and Shaw were recommended by my father; Graves because of I Claudius and my burgeoning interest in history. 

I have - very gradually - come to realize that Graves was almost the opposite of what he claimed to be; but that his claims were believed (by me, and many others) because he was a superb (the word is intended descriptively) non-fictional prose writer. 

Graves claimed to be primarily a poet, a lyrical poet; in opposition to those well-connected and socially-endorsed Apollonian versifiers of intellect and scholarship that Graves contemptuously dissected and vilified in his critical writings. 

But in truth, Graves was not a lyrical poet, and was instead exactly the kind of poet his writings rejected. He was an upper class, academic, uninspired clique "poet" - one of a closed circle of mutual admiration and log-rolling.

Contrary to his own claims; he expended great energy on un-poetic/ anti-poetic activities such as wire-pulling, self-promotion, image-management and the like. He acted a part of an impoverished wild and Celtic bard; yet was actually a wealthy and influential - and hard-working - bohemian Norman; doing exactly the kind of stuff that bohemian Normans had been doing for generations.     

Outside this group of not-poets, none of Graves verses have achieve the spontaneous endorsement and love of those who are a part of the (now extinct, apparently) tradition of English lyrics (i.e. the Palgrave's Golden Treasury tradition) 

Graves has several great qualities - including an unexcelled prose style. In a sense he was a great critic of historical poetry - although his judgement of modern (20th century) poetry was so wrong as to be inverted.

But Graves was fraudulent in his nature; he lived a lie. At one level (although nothing like so deep as he claimed) Graves wanted to be something he was not, a poet; but pretended to be it anyway, and worked to persuade as many others as possible. 

In this respect he resembles Charles Williams - although Williams was lower middle class, not a Norman. Williams wanted to be a poet but wasn't; and expended great energies on literary, critical and educational activity to persuade others to endorse himself as a poet. And yet also, he did not want to be a poet as much as he pretended to himself, because he dissipated most of his time and energy on hack works - apparently undertaken so that he could have extra income for a more self-indulgent lifestyle. 

In sum; Graves was himself exactly the kind of pseudo-poet, fake poet; whose verse is not divinely inspired but instead the consequence of scholarship and intelligence; skeletal structures decorated with borrowed or stolen plumage taken from real poets.  

Graves's critical strictures were therefore projection; he publicly excoriated in others his own unacknowledged faults, deficiencies. And by this means Graves concealed from himself (?) and others  - his own innate nature, origins, workings, status, and stature.  

Graves's great advantage over his fellow not-real-poets came from his prose non-fiction - works such as The White Goddess, his brilliant and calculatedly-dishonest autobiography Goodbye to All That, or his critical lectures and essays such as The Common Asphodel. 

Critical and historical prose by which Graves created a mythology of which he was arbiter, and by which he was defined as a true muse-poet. 

It is, apparently, all there, all explained, all in-place... except for some actual real poems!

**

The lesson I draw from this is general. It is, I think, easy to be misled by propaganda, including self-propaganda; and especially when it emanates from a ruling class who control so much of the social institutions, and whose members often operate in mutually reinforcing cliques and factions. This misleading can go even so far as inversion: such that what is supposed is the opposite of what is actual. 

A supposedly beautiful person, building, or piece of music may actually be soulless ugliness; an alleged truth-breakthrough of science or medicine may actually be a tissue of invention and calculated;  distortion; a promoted pattern of virtue in a person (or institution) may be actual evil of a very extreme kind.  

And such inversions are often achieved by implication and projection; by such double-negations. Those who are most self-consciously the opposite of Good, have insider knowledge of the workings of that which opposes good; and can therefore provide convincingly detailed analyses of the projected evils of their enemies.

Political leaders, for instance; very often do in actuality precisely those things that they vocally and theoretically eschew; and absolutely do not do anything effective to deter or suppress those phenomena they rhetorically oppose. 

This is why it is so often observed that those active in charities against specific abuses; often themselves engage in exactly these abuses - and indeed use the organization and resources of their charities the better to prosecute these vices. 

In such a world as we now inhabit, this phenomenon of projection is very general in the high status officialdom and media; to the point almost of universality. 

Consequently, it is vital to look behind the rhetoric; to observe what is actually done (and not done) and consciously to deploy our innate capacity of intuitive inference. 

When absurd projection becomes routine - People behave as if lies were specific, while truth is systemic.

The term 'projection' was originally given a false causal explanation in terms of nonsense psychodynamics; but the phenomenon is real, and the term is useful. 

People really do accuse others of their own faults, their own illicit desires, their own misdemeanors - and on the perfectly understandable grounds that their own character and behaviour is their 'model' for how the world works. 

So, projection may be perfectly sincere - the projector may really believe that his enemy is exactly the same as himself, as bad as himself - only worse, for not being the projector, because he is The Enemy. 

Currently The West, the global totalitarian leadership class; is accusing its enemies of its own evils all over the place, in an automatic and routing fashion, and without regard to plausibility. 

And getting away with it, being believed... Insofar as anybody really believes anything in this post-God culture: belief is now a passive, externally-driven, and labile state.

Believed because The System echoes back the lies from all directions; especially the mass media reflect back the evil assumptions and hostile projections of the political leadership. 

The masses realize that the leadership class are liars; and the masses even 'notice' (i.e. have pointed-out by the mass media) a few of the more trivial lies of their leaders. 

But the assumption behind all this activity is that liars are the exception among leaders; rather than the truth that only those who will lie to order are eligible for leadership positions. And that while there are specific lies devised, pushed and sustained by The System - these happen against a background of valid assertions, and good motivations. 

People cannot, or will not, assume that The System as a whole is evil motivated, or that it is anti-human. They cannot grasp (and find the idea too despair-inducing) that the leadership class uses the masses, cares functionally-nothing for any peoples or nations, for 'rights' or 'freedoms', for 'law' or 'peace'. 

Any such private sentiments (which are never strong in those selected for system-leadership) are stripped away (if not simply sold) by the realities of wielding and retaining power in an evil-orientated System.  

To notice such matters is regarded as cynical, conspiracy theorizing, and despair-inducing; because in a this-worldly sense all these are true. 

If this mortal life and world are all that there is - then it is needlessly cruel to point-out miserable truths - especially when nothing effective can be done to correct or better them them: at least, nothing in a mainstream, socio-political, materialist way. 

If mortal life is everything and socio-political reality is that we are ruled by heartless, selfish, and cruel people - then maybe it really is better to be unaware of the truth - better not to think about such things? 

This is the 'therapeutic' view of human life, a variant of utilitarianism (in which morality is calibrated against an hedonic calculus) - which traces ethics back to human psychology; and regards the primary duties as reducing suffering, and enhancing gratification.

If this life and world are everything, and yet that everything is hostile and cruel; then it is probably best to regard our discourse as a palliative therapy - the kind of terminal health care provided to those who who are dying, who cannot be cured - but can be helped to suffer less, and maybe experience a few more pleasures. 

In other words; the prevalent morality is one of: "eat, drink, and be merry; because tomorrow we die". 

In such a situation; one who points-out the situation - who increases conscious awareness of the miserable nature of life - is an enemy. 

Only if our world view is rooted in the eternal, and if we our-selves are confident both of our post-mortal salvation, a job-to-do while we still liv. Only when others may share this life-beyond-life if (and only if) they understand and choose spiritual truth... Only then is it worthwhile looking beyond the therapeutic perspective - and to matters of reality. 

The Boomer Business

 A current fashion among US bloggers seems to be engaging in a two minutes hate session directed against "Boomers" - which is that rather loosely-defined (last) Baby Boom 'generation' born on or after 1945; the oldest members of whom were active in the sixties counter-culture movements; and who are now retiring and dying. 

The idea is that this generation is actually the worst in history; but imagine they were the best; and therefore live selfishly and smugly in a state of unearned entitlement. 

The above statement is partly-true but significantly-false, and because of this the anti-Boomer movement does more harm than good... 

(But then, if that was not the case, then anti-Boomer jokes and memes would not be so popular, would they?)

The truth is that the Boomer generation were the worst in history up to that point. But the later generations were even worse, and have continued to deteriorate. 

Since the anti-Boomer satire comes only from the younger-than-Boomer generations; Boomerism is one of those 'beams and motes', or 'pot calling kettle black' examples of projection and displacement. 

Projection - because post-Boomers are criticizing Boomers for their own deficits; and displacement because doing so enables post-Boomers to avoid acknowledging their own - worse in the same direction - generational defects. 

It is also an avoidance of the Real problem in the world today, which is not about generations; but about the spiritual war between Good and evil, God and Satan - and the necessity to understand and discern-between these sides, and for each individual person to make a conscious choice which side he will take.  

Leftists always project - and so does nearly everybody, because nearly everyone is inside The System - all the time

Perhaps the most important insight anyone can have in these times, is to realise that The System is one and includes (to varying degrees, but qualitatively includes) all institutions, corporations, organised groups - all formal organisation of significant size, power, wealth.

Mainstream politics - which is very-nearly-all of politics - operates on the basis of false projections against Them; a false distinction between Us and Them - when the reality is that US and Them (all of the Uses and Thems) are part of the same System with the same, evil, overal objectives. (That is, demonic objectives - the goal of encouraging damnation of souls.)

Projection is the flipside of unconsciousness, of blindness about oneself - which is why it is so deadly an evil. Projection and self-blindness are the same thing; two sides of the sin called Pride - that is unrepentance, resentment.

Examples abound - the 'cynic' who sees through to the selfishness under all purported altruism, and who works as a well-paid functionary for the bureaucratic implementation of evil. All talented cynics sell-out, usually to become managers; in a complementary fashion - all successful managers are cynics - by their cynicism (pride) these are armoured against insight and repentance.

This pride is the root of modern zeal in the cause of nihilism; by these self-serving divisions into Us and Them - and the infinite dangers of Them which require and justify the extremes of repression.

Yet They are Us - not only psychologically, but in terms of actual functionality and organisation  - all Uses and Thems converge at the top to the exact same group of individuals. As a person rises through the layers of hierarchy, he comes together with the upper echelons of those who he previously considered Them - until the new Us becomes the people at the top, and the new Them is - everybody else in the world.

So long as we are in The System Us and Them are all that is; and the only motivation is to enhance the situation of Us at the expense of Them - it's a zero-sum game of hedonism: the game of Hell.

Anybody can, of course, step outside of The System and the closed hedonic world of Us and Them; but only by knowing and loving Jesus Christ and believing in (wanting, having faith in and hoping-for) his promises.

Then the whole, world, The System itself, is captured by God's great work of loving creation and transformed (as we ourselves will be transformed) into participation in everlasting 'play' (learning and making) of Heavenly Life Eternal - starting now.

Every mortal life is a failure - Don't cope with it: solve it!

Every mortal life on this earth has-been and will-be a failure, whatever you do. 

Of course! 

This has been known since ancient days by whoever is most thoughtful and honest. So we should acknowledge this from the beginning!

And then...?

And then solve the problem - don't merely "cope" with it by some combination of ignorance, wishful-thinking, gullibility, and projection - tactics that are so, so common (on-line as well as IRL). 

Ignorance and wishful thinking combined are what make many people (perhaps especially young people) believe that some person, somewhere, is living (or once lived) a life that Is A Success. 

Well, if you don't know enough about other people, gullibly assimilate whatever illusions you are told, or desperately need there to be examples of life-success - then you can make yourself believe anything is real and true - or at least possible. 

(And yes - "I was that soldier!") 

Furthermore, there are plenty of people whose way of coping with their own inevitable failure is to try and convince other people of their own successfulness...

By variously dishonest and distorted forms of direct and indirect boasting/ hyping - whether by spoken word, verbally, by image, through publicity, propaganda &c.

And then there is projection of one's own failure onto others. I mean that whole tedious discourse of pointing and naming "losers" and "retards" etc. - as if it any kind of answer existential failure, to convince oneself (or persuade others) that Somebody-Else is an even bigger failure that you-yourself certainly are...  

Okay - we're all prone to one or other such lapses; but the way-out from such futility and sin is to recognize that your mortal life is genuinely justified only in terms of eternity; not justified over the next few hours, years, or decades. 

And the justification of your life will be different from that of anybody else alive or who ever lived; because your environment, nature and experiences are utterly unique; hence your life-tasks or quest must be unique. 

The Answer is therefore to frame the problem from the perspective of your own unique situation in the context of everlasting life to come. 

That's the only basis for a valid and effective "answer" to your own (otherwise inevitable) failure. 

The "AI" Litmus Test Fail: Is it caused by a kind of Stockholm Syndrome? Projection? Managerialism?

I am intrigued by the Litmus Test failure of so many self-identified Christians to discern the grossly net-evil intent driving the current (post November 2022) wave of so-called AI. I want to understand it. 

"It's just a tool" - they say. Yes, and so are all the instruments of mass surveillance and population control "just tools"; from secret police and death squads, to smear campaigns, covert propaganda, and infiltration/ subversion. 

Of course, there are always potentially useful aspects to any tool, bureaucracy, technology - but so what? You can use thumbscrews to hold the door open, or a cosh as a paper weight. You need to ask - what are they designed for, how will they be used.  

The real questions at issue are things like: why did the global Establishment spend trillions of dollars on developing, launching, and implementing these "AI" technologies; what results are they intending to achieve from their investment; and what functions will they actually be deployed for, in the world as it actually is? 

Clearly; it is very important to some people with a lot of power and money, that these AI technologies be adopted and used very widely - whether they work well or not, whether we want them or not. 

Then, from our spiritual and Christian point of view we need to ask - honestly, and by learning from past experience - what will be the overall effect of mass usage of AI-technologies: what will they (on average) do to the way people think, Western society and its institutions, our attitude to the world, our aspirations?

Does the spread of AI technologies lead towards a more spiritual and creative, personal, loving and Christian perspective - or towards ever-more this-worldly manipulative materialism? 

To ask is to answer. 

 

The only honest conclusion from such questions regarding the evil provenance of AI, the fundamentally untruthful propaganda surrounding its emergence and spread (e.g. the word-concept "intelligence!), the coercive and totalitarian implementation - is that this kind of AI is a massive strategy designed to do harm of many kinds. 

Whether you personally believe you are personally exempted from general harm, that you can surf this wave of evil to your own advantage - well this is another matter altogether. 

But even if you can, and even if you actually do make the best of a societal state of waxing corruption (gaining more money, prestige, or power for yourself, perhaps?) - this does not excuse you when you argue in favour of what should recognized as a malign plan.

Otherwise you are no better than a stereotypical war profiteer; one who uses his influence (fasle information, bribery, blackmail etc.) to cause, expand and continue destructive wars - so that you personally can do well out of it. Even if some war is good for you here-and-now, does not mean that war is good in itself - and you ought not to believe or say that it is. 

We cannot defend ourselves against evil unless we recognize evil. Apologists for "AI" are not just harming themselves but others in failing to acknowledge an obvious and major demonic scheme. 

Why, then, do they do this? I think the reasons are psychological - not spiritual. 

There is, I think, a kind of Stockholm Syndrome at work. 

I discern that some of the most vocal advocates of AI themselves actually fear AI; AI makes them afraid - and they respond by trying to make friends with AI - they take the side of AI, defend it against its critics. 

I think this befriending, like the Stockholm Syndrome it so much resembles, is fear induced - a response to a threat they perceive to be potentially deadly, and inescapable. 

(You cannot beat 'em, so you might as well join Them.)  

One reason I think pro-AI advocacy is often fear-induced, is that such people project their fear onto others - inappropriately, wrongly. They taunt that those who do not embrace AI are afraid of AI!

But this is patent nonsense in general and specifically. Fear of AI is far from normal - which is why so much propaganda must be expended on trying to generate fear (via innumerable mass media fictions about evil AIs, and AI dystopias).

In real life the overwhelming response to AI is on a spectrum from moderate irritation and boredom, to mainstream everyday careerist attempts at exploitation of "the latest trendy thing". 

Therefore such an accusation of fear is a dead giveaway, a projection onto others of something within oneself - often emanating from those who really feel, personally, threatened by replacement or oppression with AI technologies. 

For instance those who hope (like generations before them) to escape this fate by vaulting-over the threat into a managerial situation: to position themselves as expert and enthusiastic "AI managers" in their particular field. 

To adopt an accusatory or "therapeutic", stance to those who see the evil motivation behind AI is classic managerialism! 

The managerial way of dealing with dissent is that real world (and spiritual) problem is reframed into emotions... 

The problem is not the global Establishment-driven mandatory AI take-over;  the "real" problem is those who criticize or resist AI, or who decline to engage with it. "They must have something wrong with them". 

AI-resisters are assumed to be ignorant, weak, or frightened - and the managerial answer is they need to be educated, soothed, or mocked and shamed - until they fall in line, and do what is good for them.

If you regard yourself as a Christian, and are currently an advocate of AI - you are Missing The Obvious; and it is time to take a step back. It's never too late to repent, and all spiritual learning from experience is a positive gain. It's what we are here for, after all.     

 

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.

Christianity is (or should be) a religion of inequality

Equality is supposed to be 'a Good Thing', but isn't; as William Wildblood demonstrates in a forthcoming book - which I have had the privilege to read in manuscript.

As well as equality being a Bad Thing to aim-at; indeed, equality is not even a real thing. 

The word and concept of equality is, of course, very vague in terms of its actual (i.e. rhetorical) usage, which resembles an hypothetical black box, more than a useful category; but 'equality' can usually validly be reduced to an assertion of sameness... 

Either an assertion that some-particular-things are, or ought to be, The Same. 

But are things ever the same? 

Well, in some sciences, especially the physical science, science there has been an assumption of sameness among things like particular chemicals or atomic particles. Yet even here, the progress of science has usually been towards finding differences among things that were originally assumed to be the same: for instance all atoms were originally assumed to be identical - even between different elements and substances. And in biology, an assumption of sameness is much less frequent, and soon breaks-down, the closer we look. 

Perhaps the only genuine sameness is in mathematics (and formal logic), where the sameness is axiomatic and wholly abstract: a matter of definition. 

But mathematics is not the real world. 

What about in religion? Well, so far as I know, there has never been any actual, viable religion where all people are judged to be the same. 

In the past, human differences were often simplified (for practical purposes) into categories, or classes of Men - but even there, there was always provision for making distinctions. 

e.g. Priests may have been in a different category than non-priests; but priests were internally differentiated in many way - even down to the individual level.  

But what of a divine level? Again, it seems there has never been equality of divine regard of Men - but sometimes this has been simplified into categorical levels of classes of divine esteem; which often reflected social organization.  

So where does the idea of equality come into religion? Well, sometimes there is an equality of 'destination' in terms of post-mortal, afterlife fate. In some religions it seems that all Men will (sooner or later) end-up in the same situation. 

For instance, the Ancient Greeks and Hebrews seem to have regarded the afterlife of all Men as a an underworld of demented ghosts: Hades/ Sheol. 

Or the Eastern Religions Hinduism and Buddhism have sometimes envisaged all Men as sharing the same fate of eventually (after varying numbers of incarnations) being re-absorbed back into the divine, from which they came - at least, that goal was the same for all Men. 

Christianity has always divided the destinations between at least two (not-equal) possibilities: Heaven and Hell; and this has sometimes been elaborated by additional possibilities such as Limbo and Purgatory; and by differentiation of fates and roles within both Heaven and Hell (e.g. the circles of Hell, or the layered Mormon 'Heavens') - sometimes differentiation by categories of people, sometimes at the individual level. 

The main assertion of, and emphasis upon, 'equality' in Christianity is almost-wholly modern (coming after the emergence of political leftism, with is promiscuous talk of actual or aspirational 'equality'), and is related to God's supposed attitude of Love to all Men being absolutely 'equal'. 

But God's 'equal' love can only be entertained as a possibility either if Love is regarded in an extremely abstract way (because in real life, including in the Bible itself, love is always differentiated and selective) -- and/or if equality is redefined into a very vague notion that because God Loves all His children, this 'must' (or should) mean that God (somehow, for some reason) loves all his children in exactly the same way and to exactly the same degree...

This supposed 'equality' has been spun into highly abstract assertions of God's absolute and unconditional - therefore equal - Love; rather as if God's love was an evenly-distributed gas, or a radiation of completely equal intensity that bathed all Men without distinction. 

To my mind, this (frequent) attempt to express God's Love as equal and unconditional is probably an alien import to Christianity; either derived from politics; or apparently derived by back-projection from the (not Christian - but nonetheless held by some self-identified Christians) idea of post-mortal Men all returning to be assimilated-into the divine...

Maybe the argument hinges on the idea that if all Men end-up equally, then this happens because God regards all Men as the same. 

At any rate, these two ideas of the supposedly unconditional and universally-equal Love of God, and a Nirvana-like life after death destination of all Men - seem to go-together. 

For a Fourth Gospel derived and focused Christianity; I would regard it as obviously wrong to regard equality in Christianity as a Good Thing. 

Christians ought instead to be trying to understand God's plans for men in the most differentiated and individualistic way possible; much as the ideal attitude of earthly human parents to their children is one that recognizes each child as individual, unique; and needing (ideally) to be regarded as such in terms of their destined and best path through mortal life and beyond. 

Ideal earthly parents would not love all their children 'equally'. Neither would they love their children in a rank-order. Instead they would 1.) love all their children, and 2.) love and value each child in a particular and unique way to correspond with his or her individuality.  

In other words, it is high time Christians set-aside 'equality-talk'; and began to recognize that the traditional categories and classes of past-Christianity were an imperfect representation of what is actually - from God's point of view - an individual-level scheme of Man's salvation and theosis.  

Is Hobbes really alive? Or is this 'just' a delusion of Calvin's? (Plus, is Father Christmas/ Santa Claus really real?)

*

Is Hobbes alive, or is the whole thing in Calvin's imagination - and therefore a delusion?

Does it matter?

Or, is there another alternative - another way of framing the problem?

*

In the whole of Calvin and Hobbes strips (except for the episode when Calvin is tied-up and yet has had his hair cut) everything is explicable on the basis that Hobbes is just a stuffed tiger; and that Calvin is believing a falsehood when he assumes Hobbes is alive and sentient - that is to say Calvin is deluded.

The pseudo-sophisticated modern says that it doesn't matter - that 'the important thing' is that Calvin believes. The claim is that if Calvin treats Hobbes 'as if' he is alive, then this amounts to the same thing as Hobbes 'really' being alive.

*

But that is dishonest, because to the modern spirit, 'as if' belief is in practice regarded as a falsehood - more specifically a delusion.

So, for decades, Liberal Christian theologians (and Jungians, for that matter - such as Joseph Campbell) asserted that the 'literal' truth of the Virgin birth of Christ, his having been resurrected, that he was the Son of God... all that stuff didn't really matter - we could keep the Christianity (believe the symbolism) on the basis that we simply treated this 'as if' it was true.

Indeed, 'as if' was put forward as more intelligent, more spiritual, morally better than the 'literalism' of 'fundamentalists'.

But that isn't what happened! 'As if' turned-out to be just a step onto a slippery slope leading to atheism and anti-Christianity.

*

Thus, if we try to say that it does not matter whether Hobbes is really alive; and all that matters is whether Calvin treats him 'as if' he is alive - then this is psychologically a lie. It does matter!

On this basis I think we either have to say that Hobbes is alive, and Calvin is therefore right to love (and hate) him; or else that all this is a just a 'projection' of Calvin's wishes - excusable in an immature child (whose brain is not fully developed), but not in itself admirable, and indeed a kind of psychopathology.

Or we accept that Hobbes is alive: I mean really alive.

*

This would mean that Hobbes is really alive, but alive in some way and form that is not generally recognized by the simple categories of modern thought.

And I think this is true - indeed I think it must be true; and to deny it involves denying very deep emotional intuitions - to violate which tends to make us inhuman and evil.

*

I will give an example.

Supposing that Calvin and Hobbes ended by Calvin 'realizing' that Hobbes was 'just' a stuffed toy - and decapitating and mutilating Hobbes. This is a really horrible idea - but if Calvin really was previously operating on the basis of a delusion and has now come to his senses, they why does it sicken us so much?

We can then ask whether we are right to be sickened by this scenario - and I think the answer is clearly - yes.

Therefore, in practice, and at a powerful gut-level, we regard it as more-Good for Calvin to regard Hobbes as really alive, and to treat him as really alive, than the alternative.

*

Why then do we abandon this conviction for adults?

Ah! - now that is the real question!

The modern adult world has, for some reason, decided that it is best for us to violate our natural and healthy and wholesome knowledge about the genuine aliveness of our loved stuffed tigers.

Is that reason a good one? Not that I can see - on the contrary, the modern adult world's insistence that Hobbes is 'nothing but' a stuffed tiger' does truly catastrophic damage to our souls - wounds us, makes us less human, alientates us and induces that unassuageable despair which shows itself in so many aspects of contemporary life (including much religious life). 

Unless we have a world view which recognizes that Hobbes really is alive, and alive in a way and with a meaning which it is vital that we recognize, then we are lost - I mean literally lost.

**

Note added

So, I have argued - as a test case - that we must regard Hobbes as really alive, and that there is a profound violation by asserting the alternative. 

Christians who deny the aliveness of other gods, or - say - an African Fetich (who assert that these are necessarily and certainly delusional) - are therefore stepping onto that slippery slope of alienation and despair which The West has descended over the past several generations.  

Anthropologists who explain-away the spiritual events and entities of their subjects are likewise wounding themselves. 

To regard other-people's spirits and gods as (necessarily and certainly) psychological (delusions, manipulations, wishful thinking and the like) is a self-inflicted wound. 

*

For example, those who state that 'there is no Father Christmas' are doing perceptible violence to themselves. When I look at any such person, I see someone who is at least to that extent in a bad way, spiritually. And I mean a bad way spiritually. 

And this applies even if the person is a devout Christian - to the extent that they can bring themselves to assert that Santa is just made-up, they are embracing an evil falsehood. They have revealed their souls as significantly-darkened - and they further darken their souls by their skeptical pronouncements; and by any attempts to argue or defend their denials. 

This means that Father Christmas/ Santa Claus is really-real - and therefore that the problem is to understand the sense in which FC/ Santa is objectively, actually, independently real. 

*

This sense in which Hobbes and Santa are really-real can be conceptualized in various ways - none completely satisfactory, but some of them going back to Socrates and Plato. Usually, the general idea is that earthly and mortal knowledge is necessarily partial, distorted and labile - and/but is more-or-less-closely linked to a complete, clear and permanent knowledge in some other place, realm, dimension or state of existence - or residing in gods or God. 

(Without which there would be no possibility of knowledge at all - it is this underpinning which saves us from the nonsensical paradoxes and despair of nihilism.) 

And that 'eternal' reality is real, but we cannot (cannot) fully understand it. 

We know that this must be so, that reality must be real - but we cannot describe reality with precision or completeness.  

*

Thus, we must not - for our own sakes - reject any specific piece of knowledge merely because it is partial, distorted, labile or because we cannot explain its causality or how it fits in with other stuff that (we think) we know.  Because that rejection leads to the nonsensical nihilism of rejecting all earthly and imperfect knowledge by an irresistible and unstoppable slide down into to alienation. 

***


 

Is it "wishful thinking" to believe in continued existence after biological death?

It is more accurate to talk of “continued existence” after biological death, rather than an “after life” – because, while all pre-modern societies agreed that death was not the end; there was a very wide range of fates described. 

Even the post-mortal fate of “reincarnation” – which has probably been the majority view through the whole of history, due to its dominance in the East, as well as the earliest known societies – has multiple, and incompatible, sub-types. 

I find it very striking, and important, that most ancient and historical societies that believed in continued existence after death, anticipated a more-or-less miserable post-mortal fate – Sheol and Hades for example, or Ragnarok. 

This tells me that “wishful thinking” was certainly Not a major motivation through most of history and in most places; and to suppose it was is just a typical piece of modern self-willed ignorance and "projection": a consequence of our endemic incapacity for coherent thinking. 

And the Good News of resurrection and Heaven after death for those who followed Jesus Christ, was surely the single most powerful reason why Jews and early pagans embraced Christianity. 

If pagans or Jews came to believe that Jesus was divine, and that Jesus’s promises were true, then it was a “no brainer” to become a Christian because it was already assumed that there would be continued existence after death; and Christianity offered a far better continued existence than any other religion.

Note: The above came from a comment I made to a meditation on death by Bonald at the Orthosphere. Bonald responded to my comment thus: 

"Even Christianity and Islam only hold out heaven as a possibility, not a certainty. I can’t think of any religion whose idea of the afterlife matches what anyone would wish for". 

In other words; if religions really did manipulate the masses by offering to fulfil wishful thinking, then they could do a much better job of giving people exactly what they most wanted after death, and making this reward easier, surer, and more straightforward to obtain. 

If wishful thinking really was the basis of after-life claims; then it would be expected that religions would compete in offering better and better lives beyond death, on easier and easier terms. 

But this does not happen - to any significant degree, and not between the major religions.

This is one reason why I tend to believe that - in some overall sense - all religions are broadly accurate in terms of their claims for the after-life; because (within constraints) God gives people "what they ask for" or "what they want" after death. 

(What they want/desire provided subjectively, in his experience, for that person - not necessarily or usually in terms of what he wants for other persons: God does not sacrifice his children to each other. ) 

Damnation is therefore, in its essence, inducing an individual to ask-for and want damnation after his death; and annihilation is what (apparently) many or most modern people ask for and want, following death. 

De Profundis (from the depths... of illness); and a simple-coherent definition of gnosticism

I have been obliterated for the past couple of days by an URTI (upper respiratory tract infection) which is doing the rounds in my family, gathering strength as it goes; its main characteristics being a very painful throat and profound generalised malaise...

I couldn't be bothered to read, watch TV, or even listen to audible books - never mind write blog posts.

Sleep was the main activity; although on awakening I would invariably discover that a monkey had apparently been sandpapering the inside of my mouth and tongue, prior to using it as a latrine.

On top of it, a migraine began yesterday (mine usually last a few days), I awoke three times last night feeling wretched and needing medication; but there is a sense this morning that a corner may have been turned... at any rate, here I am writing again.

I shall pass on one gem that I encountered in a brief respite yesterday, while in the bath reading Geoffrey Ashe's King Arthur's Avalon. In discussing 'gnosticism', Ashe provides what I would regard as the only genuinely useful definition of gnosticism that I have met: that (to paraphrase) gnosticism was and is a Christian heresy that (implicitly) replaces Love with Knowledge.

This is simple, substantive and comprehensible enough to be useful; and fits very well with the conclusions I derived from my study and reflections on the Fourth Gospel.


However, while gnosticism was a heresy defined-by, and excluded-from, the historical mainstream Christian Church; Ashe's definition reveals a great deal/ the-majority-of historical mainstream Christianity itself to be gnosticism.

(This would explain why I have never been able to make any sense of the usual mainstream definitions and discussions of gnosticism; they were trying to make a distinction and draw a line; where there was in fact continuity.)

In other words, the labelling of heretics as gnostics would (mostly) seem to be an example of projection; of accusing others of one's own faults.   


In reality, gnosticism is a fault to which nearly all Christians have been prone, for the entire history of the faith; when confronted by the extreme simplicity of Jesus's teachings.

The distinction between love and knowledge is the distinction between the personal and the abstract (and reveals that these are indeed opposites). A focus on love implies a focus on relationships; a focus on relationship implies that Jesus and the Father need to be known as persons, not abstractions. And the whole meaning of creation needs to be seen this way.

In sum, our understanding of Jesus and his work, of the Father and his creation, needs to grow from a very 'anthropomorphic' way of understanding the world (because only persons can love); and that this has primacy over all abstractions.


(Of course writing 'about' this as a theme, as above, is itself an abstraction; but perhaps you can infer what I am implying...?)

Not all Christians want to follow Jesus

It is my impression that there are plenty of Christians through the entire history of the faith who do not want to follow Jesus to the resurrected (embodied) life everlasting he promised; but want instead to live a spirit life outside of time and space: they want some version of Nirvana.

They do not want a body - because bodies are dynamic, differentiated and localised, and represent a point-of-view; instead they want to be homogeneous, everywhere, and to see everything, all the time, equally, from everywhere without change. For them, anything other (or less) than this is incomplete, because personal.

Such people are motivated by a strong aversion to the human condition (past, present and in any possible future) mortality, to this corruptible, illusory and intinsically flawed world; in their hearts they regard this our life and earth as a mistake; something it would be better not to have been.

Their 'Heaven' is not this life raised to divinity; but something qualitatively-other than this life - hence the tendency to express what is Good in terms of denials and negatives; what it is not.


For such people, the ideal state is an eternal present moment; their ideal is perfection - which means no change; their idea of love is an unvarying state of absolute and complete and undivided being - which means no change.

They want happiness to be absolute and unalloyed; they want nothing of desire, variation, striving, or sorrow- because these are incomplete, and finite states.

They want an end to consciousness, self-awareness, to their own separation from divinity - they want to cease being a person - an 'ego', cease being aware that they ever were a person - to be assimilated back to divinity - without a residue to memory or hope, but instead an eternal bliss-full now.

Such people want nothing more than peace*; in the sense of absolute silence, stillness, cessation... 


What such people want is always expressed either negatively or as infinites and abstractions. They emphasise that mystery is the highest understanding, because their Heaven is everything Good all at once - there can be nothing to want, nothing unsatisfied.

The difficulty is this group who don't really want what Jesus offers, but something else, have probably included plenty of the most famous, prestigious, influential Christians: great theologians, contemplatives, saints, theologians.

I suspect that this misunderstanding, this projection of what such people want onto what Jesus actually offered, is a source of sadness but not surprise to Jesus himself. I think he will be disappointed but not angry - because this is just the kind of thing that people do, and in a sense can't help doing. 

What Jesus truly offered was simple, and can be known by anybody, anywhere at any time - by direct intuitive revelation meeting the desire of a true self. It can - and shall - be known (or at least offered for knowing) to every human spirit after death.


Only at that point will the people I describe realise that they never did want what Jesus came to bring us - but wanted something qualitatively different. They will find out that they never were followers of Christ, because they do not want to go where Christ went. Their hope does not need Jesus. 

I don't seriously doubt that God will give them what they want (if they continue to want it, when given the chance to understand accurately) - but it will not be the Heavenly Life Everlasting that Jesus made possible.

Their fate will be individually-tailored, but of the same kind ('Nirvana') as is sought more straightforwardly by the Eastern deistic and theistic religions.

That Heavenly destination and life will be for other people, who do want it; and who will therefore literally follow Jesus through death, through transformation and resurrection, to reach Heaven.

*When people wish for the dead that they will Rest in Peace - and mean by it the modern understanding of 'peace' - then perhaps they do not really want what Jesus was offering.

Sacrifice and Worship in terms of a personal universe

*
It is a key aspect of Christianity and several other religions that revelation informs us that the universe is ultimately personal. That is: the most important thing in reality is relationships (first with God/ gods, second with other people).

This is the exact opposite of the hard-line 'Gaian' spiritual view that people are nothing-more-than a destructive infestation of the planet/ universe - therefore it could be a good outcome if the earth survived as a biosphere, but all people were eliminated from it.

*

Much has been written over the past couple of centuries about Man projecting his own attributes onto God - as being the complete explanation for belief in personal deity.

Like all effective arguments, there is some truth in this one. God may be correctly acknowledged to exist, yet the understanding of his nature, his attributes may be false: indeed I think this has been the usual situation.

That is, the usual error throughout history has not been in denying the reality of God, but in misunderstanding God - and that is where projection came in.

*

In daily life, we often observe that people assume that other people are like themselves; so a person who plots and conspires will see plots and conspiracies all around him - and so on.

So, a person who  himself lives in a social world where leaders demand sacrifices and abasement and in general 'mindless grovelling obedience' from subjects, will see God as having these attributes; especially if he himself would want such things from his subjects. 

Indeed, there have been many Fathers who treat their children as their subjects. God is seen as a King more than as a Father - or, more accurately, as a bad King who exploits his subjects; rather than God as a Good King who is Father to the Nation and who loves all His children.

*

If we see the universe ruled by a loving Father who wants us, as individuals, to grow to be more like himself - tyrannical behaviour does not make sense - except as an expedient concession to societies and individuals who simply cannot envisage anything being otherwise.

*

Yet, if we can imagine ourselves as a truly, wholly loving Father; we can ask whether (or why?) we would want such behaviours from our own children - on the assumption that we want our children to grow-up; grow-up to become autonomous, wise, free, loving friends - on as much the same level as ourselves as possible.

Our guidance on these matters comes from the revelations of scripture - which in the Old Testament show God struggling with very imperfect societies and people - and quite often being attributed the motives of a tyrant (i.e. being attributed the motives of demanding bloody sacrifice and abasing worship). But then we have the example of Jesus - who is a picture of His Father, and explicitly claims to complete and replace previous revelations - doing nothing of the kind. But in contrast working at the level of (what might be termed) friendship rather than tyranny.

*

Jesus is presumably showing us, in his own behaviour, that it was a mistake - it still is a mistake - for God's children to regard their Father like an earthly tyrant who demands sacrifice and abasing worship and abject obedience because he is primarily motivated by Power not Love; that this is an insult to God's love, an insult to His deepest motivations; and indeed it works to thwart God's deepest hopes for us.

Of course, our loving Father forgives us for this dreadful way in which we (His own children) attribute to Him all kinds of our own limitations and faults - by far the worst of which is our deficiency in Love.

But it is a sin for us to do this, and it is something that needs His forgiveness; and it is something that at some time or another we will have-to understand as mistaken and wicked, and that we will have-to repent.

*

The literally delusional nature of that resentment which motivates so much socio-political action

The thing about paranoid and persecutory delusions (that is; beliefs that are false, strongly held, powerfully-motivating, in practice irrefutable), is that they cannot be contradicted by further knowledge or experience. 

Once a person has decided that X is "out to get them", is-harming or will-harm them in some way; then the whole cognitive apparatus is orientated towards collecting evidence based on this assumption. The assumption shapes the entire realm of facts, interpretation and theory. 

This delusional mechanism happens at the individual level; but also the long-standing, and sometimes all-consuming, resentments of history are understandable in this way. e.g. In the world today one race may attribute its low socio-economic situation to the effect of racism; while another race infers the reality of massive and worldwide racism despite occupying the highest socio-economic status and power. 

Once the assumption of racism, or sexism, or "fill-in the word"-phobia has been made, and once a person (or race/ sex/ orientation) builds its motivational system around racism - there is no possible empirical evidence or argument that can shake this delusion. 

In a very fundamental sense, it does not matter whether there is some or even a great deal of truth to the delusion of being-persecuted. The point is that the delusion is a psychological and motivational fact, for which reality is an irrelevance. Once established, a change in reality does not change the delusion. 

Therefore, when delusional thinking underlies political movement (as it so often does), when one group is delusionally-convinced of the hostility of another; then there can - in principle - be no political solution to the problem. 

Even a "final solution" of eradication of the perceived threat will fail; because it will turn-out that the threat has not, after all, been eradicated - but continues in some covert or crypto- form! The currently influential concept of implicit racism is a clear example... Even after all perceptible racism has been eliminated, racism nonetheless remains - and all the more threatening because of its invisibility.   

I have termed these "theory of mind" delusions; because they are based on normal cognitive processes (i.e. they are Not psychotic) and instead are rooted in a false inference concerning the intent and motivations of others - but this false inference cannot be corrected by evidence, because other people's minds are not transparent, and can only be inferred indirectly. 

What this means (as I - apparently - never tire of saying!) is that recognizing and critiquing the basis of underlying assumptions is of extreme importance. 

We all base our understanding upon assumptions of a metaphysical kind, that can neither be proved nor refuted; therefore we have a profound individual responsibility to examine our own baseline assumptions about the world with respect to coherence, and "good-ness" - because some assumptions sustain a good life and society, while others are deeply and incurably pernicious in their effects.

And ultimately the spiritual victims of that resentment which is rooted in delusional thinking, is the resenter himself; because resentment is a sin that must (like all sins) be repented if we are to want to choose salvation. 

(...Because we cannot carry our resentments into Heaven, which is a place motivated only by Love: we must check our resentment in at the door - permanently. One who does not want to leave-behind all sins, does not want Heaven - but something-else instead.)

(...And, resentment is an especially pervasive and dangerous sin to modern Western Man; because it is widely inculcated, engineered, encouraged, rewarded - sometimes mandatory.)

In sum: theory of mind rooted assumptions are inevitable and ubiquitous forms of thinking; what makes an assumption "delusional" is essentially that it is an evil model of reality.

Even when delusional thinking has some factual basis, it is an evil; because it is a spiritually-false orientation of life - a projection of attention and motivation onto "other people" that denies our absolute personal responsibility for our own salvation and theosis.  

The harm of such delusions is primarily spiritual and related to eternal post-mortal life; although the material harms caused by this trap of thinking during this world and life may also be colossal.

 

What is music, what is song, what is poetry? Tones

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If music came first (as many say) - then music is not what we think.

Not melody, nor harmony - certainly not rhythm.

But tones - or even just one tone.

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If the psalms of the King James Bible are song - yet are not metrical, nor do they rhyme - nor are they alliterative.

Then song is a mode of vocal production - in tones rather than speech.

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If poetry was originally a mode of performance, a presentation - yet it was not specific words (was memorized, was a paraphrase); then - minimally - it was words vocally produced in tones.

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What is characteristic of these forms is that the unit is the breath length.

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What is a tone? Hard to define, easy to detect.

At our railway station (which is a national hub) - around a decade ago and for several months, maybe a year or two - there used to be a female announcer that provided information on the public address system.

And she sang everything: that is to say she spoke everything in tones - not with a tune of any specific kind, but vocally produced on a note, various notes.

This is, indeed, the easiest, most natural method of vocal projection  - as a way of making yourself heard over distance.

(A mother calling her son's name for him to return home - she sings it on two descending notes roughly a minor third apart Jon - ny...  Jon - ny... )

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Therefore chant - that is to say (merely) speaking words using tones (and absent any specified sequence of tones) - is perhaps the spontaneous way of addressing a group; and of addressing divinity; and therefore (perhaps) chant is behind music, song, and poetry.

Chant-based music, song and poetry would necessarily be characterized by breath-length units - some words would be given extra individual importance or stress, and the specific identity of these stressed words would then be important (and un-paraphrase-able) as part of their meaning - and we have arrived at poetry.

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Strange that the primary form of public vocal production should nowadays be known only in its elaborated and professionalized versions of composed songs - except for the glimpse provided that female station announcer on the public address system, who spontaneously used tones as the natural and appropriate method of addressing the public.

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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.