"First impair the minds of Men"... How to make a convincing Virtual Reality/ Totalitarian System

My brother once reported to me something insightful he had heard from a friend: If you wanted to make a truly convincing computerized virtual reality system - you would also need to impair the consciousness of the user. 

In other words; there are two sides to a convincing virtual reality. 

On the one side there is the coherence of the virtual simulation; and on the other side there is the perceiving and interpreting mind of the 'user'. 

The insight was that no complex, real-time simulation can be fully, self-consistent when an alert and insightful mind is using it. 

But - if the mind of the user can be simultaneously impaired; then he can be totally convinced by an imperfect simulation. 

When the perceiving mind is unimpaired, then the deception is detected from the inevitable incoherence of any complex virtual world. 

Yet why is complex-virtuality necessarily incoherent? Ultimately, because it is a lie, and all lies are incoherent with reality. 

(Which is why one lie always leads to more lies. And why a 'cover-up' is always needed, and will itself always ramify.)  

This is maybe a deep explanation of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem. The only coherent truth is reality, therefore all models of reality are not true; therefore all models will be incoherent as experienced by the real human mind.  

To conceal the incoherence of virtual reality requires that the inhabiting-mind be simplified-down to the same level as the virtual world, and this simplification itself must be concealed... This is achieved by impairing the inhabiting-mind. 

The lesson is that if you want to make someone believe he really is dwelling in a virtual world; you must first impair his mind. One that is achieved, then he will live inside a simplified and incoherent model of reality without 'noticing' its simplification or incoherence; he will accept the model as reality.  

All of us now inhabit a virtual world, not reality. If minds were unimpaired, this would be obvious because the virtual world is grossly incoherent when measured against the reality of which the human mind is an exemplar. 

But in practice people inhabit this virtual world without realizing the fact, because they are mentally impaired. When, as inevitably happens, discrepancies are noticed - and the difference between virtuality and reality becomes evident; then these give-aways are rapidly ignored, denied or forgotten. 

In any case of disagreement: virtuality is regarded as primary. 

We can regard the socio-cultural changes of the past few generations as building upon the core deficit of atheism (or so feeble and superficial a religious conviction as to be de facto atheism) an incremental and multi-facteted mental impairment. 

The religions and churches integration into The System was necessary for this to work - and this integration happened incrementally, progressively, and very fully; so that by 2020 the churches served to reinforce, not contradict, the virtuality.  

This was apparently a demonic-strategy for preparing the world population to inhabit a fake, and evil, virtual world - without noticing the fact, and accepting the virtuality as reality. 

So, if we imagine ourselves to be collectively in the position of Ragle Gumm in Philip K Dick's novel Time out of Joint, or Truman in The Truman Show movie. But whereas Ragle and Truman had the mental capacity to take notice of the discrepancies and gross simplifications of their virtual worlds; Man in 2020-1 is too mentally impaired to suffer more than fleeting doubts and recognitions.

Every day, everybody is experiencing multiple moments when he sees-through holes in the virtuality; when the virtual world peels-back to reveal the real, when the real world pokes-itself-through the illusion. 

But because modern Man has no root outside the virtuality (and neither do any of the institutions to which he might look for external guidance - not even the Christian churches); Man has therefore no power of discernment. 

The multiple, frequent give-aways of fakery are experienced as just meaningless 'noise'; as evidence merely of the 'randomness' of a Godless universe without purpose. 

Thus, nearly the whole world is being deceived into self-damnation by an astonishingly crude, grossly incoherent, fake-reality!

Virtual reality the only reality: Modern culture has transformed mainstream human thinking into a computer emulation

An 'emulator' is a computer or software program that imitates, within itself, the functions of another less-complex computer system.

Human thinking has been transformed, simplified, cut-down-into into an emulation of the computer, media and bureaucratic systems with which modern mainstream Western Man interfaces, immersively.


Human thinking is what it is; the explicit systems of computers are something far simpler and extremely limited applicability - but, for many generations, Western Man has been told that the totality of human thinking is inferior to mathematics, science, logic - any and all aspects of thinking that are not science, mathematics or logic ought to be discarded and ignored (because they are unreal).

This attitude has formed an unholy alliance with the pseudo-scientific structures of bureaucracy, which likewise replace complex and implicit human thinking and behaving with simple and explicit organisational systems. Bureaucracy has now been extended down to a micro-level of behaviour monitoring and control; and sideways to link all the different bureaucracies into a single global system - corporations, politics, government, law, education, science, police, military, churches, and...

The mass media has evolved as an attention grabbing, addictive social system; operating mainly by simplifying, amplifying and manipulating emotional responses.

Social Media brings together these three phenomena - personal computer technology, the mass media and the bureaucracy to provide a 'virtual' environment that is immersive, addictive, interlinked. Human thinking interfaces with this virtual world; conforms to this world; emulates this world.


In effect - human thinking learns to create and run an emulation of the virtual world within itself. But this is only the first step of three.

1. Human thinking runs the computer/ media/ bureaucratic system as an emulation.

This is virtual reality.

2. In accordance with modern materialist metaphysics, the computer/ media/ bureaucratic emulation is grated priority, primacy and authority over human thinking.

Virtual reality becomes real-reality.

3. This becomes habitual; such that people forget that virtual reality is virtual, and deny the reality of the real.

Virtual reality has become the only reality. 

What is the biggest threat to Western Man? (What is our Tower of Babel?)

First I need to clarify that I am talking about the threat to our souls - or, the threat to our salvation; and that I am talking here about material means to the end of spiritual corruption.

And the main answer to this question is (in three words) The Transhumanist Agenda. In other words, the agenda working (by steps) towards a centralised system of complete technological observation, monitoring and control.

I am talking about the embrace and celebration of that vast and interconnected network of personal electronic communication devices from mobile/ especially smart phones, navigation devices, tablets, e-books, credit cards, smart TVs, ear pieces, the Internet of Things... the whole lot. Moving onto smart spectacles, and more-or-less implanted electronic and computational devices. And adding in the bio-manipulations - psychoactive drugs, potntially genetic engineering, modification of human bodies and brains etc...

This is not generally understood to be the worst problem or threat to Mankind; in fact this is (to a large extent) exactly what many people most want - which is exactly why it is the worst problem (as a problem it is invisible, denied, ridiculed).

The reason people want these things is because they are regarded as tools that are 'enhancements'. The danger is that the can be, and are being, used not as tools or enhancements but as personal-monitoring, reality-filtering, and ideological propaganda.

People already live (mostly) inside the mass media, which edits and structures their reality - and they seem to like it, to prefer this to real life. But even if they don't like it, even if it makes them feel bad - they are anyway addicted to it, and increasingly unaware of reality outside of the mass media/ officially approved persepctive.

http://addictedtodistraction.blogspot.co.uk

And this is the real and present danger.

There is, in our culture, a deep and visceral desire for magic; and this desire is a good and valuable compensation and yearning - however it is often perverted to a desire for 'super powers' that can be used the better to 'get what you want' - and this is probably why The Establishmet allows and indeed supports an infrastructure of Fantasy in TV, movies and fiction - and why so much of this is channelled through 'cool' Special Effects.

These inculcate passive, literalistic, wish-fulfillment fantasies that are connected (implicitly and explicitly) with the technological advances of the Transhumanist agenda. 'You too' can (first in imagination, later in actuality?) become an X-Man by genetic engineering; or get Bat/ Spiderman enhancements by novel technologies; or experience the spectacular other-worlds of Star Wars/ Trek...

At the minimum - the promise is of a 'virtual' reality in which these things will seem completely-real; which amounts to handing-over the entirely of our perceived reality to... whoever controls the virtual reality media; and serving whatever agenda they choose to implement.

Do people trust the mass media, big business and bureaucracy? At one level they don't; but they have been induced to ignore their legitimate mistrust by their greed for gratification here and now; by the hope or promise of a personalised virtual reality that can and will provide full control over their own perceptual world; and even (via drugs and genetic manipulations) control over their own emotional responses (unlimited and unconfined sex, adventure, power).

To agree to live in virtual reality would be a one way ticket to a world in which Men would be very-completely manipulated. Men would still be 'free' in their souls - but they may live a life when they were almost never aware of the soul's existence; and where they may be induced to doubt the reality of their true selves.

Hence the Tower of Babel comparison.

If it gets to the point where the virtual world is an incipient reality; then that would (I guess) be the point at which God would intervene to destroy any society which was on the verge of implementing it. Because God would surely not sustain (for Satan's benefit) a world in which the probability of chosen self-damnation for so many people (especially those brought up in it from childhood) was so very high.

In sum; my belief is that if we do not voluntarily reject the promise of a virtual world of total perceptual control; then we will - for our own good - have even the possibility eliminated. At the cost of vast destruction, I presume.

And, so pervasive and embedded in modernity are the trends towards Transhumanism; that to reject the virtual world entails a radical re-conceptualisation of the human condition: a spiritual awakening as I term it

Non-negotiably so.

Bureaucratic virtuality synergizes with the mass media

I think it is pretty well understood by now that the mass media can and do manufacture a virtual reality (i.e. virtuality); and that as the media have increased in quantity and addictiveness (especially since the invention of 'smartphones' and social media) - this has de facto replaced reality for most people. 

In particular, the mass media virtuality effectively imposes a scale of priorities about life: what things are most important, that has absolutely Nothing to do with our actual individual lives of personal experience and common sense. 

Thus, here and now, the major global priority is a birdemic which would be invisible if it were not for the 'response' to it; warming climate change which would be imperceptible (if it even exists to a significant degree) if it were not drip-fed by propaganda, an antiracist agenda which is the inversion of reality, and a sexual revolution that claims 'equality' (in practice, superiority of esteem) for practices that everyone knows are not qualitatively 'the same as' biological sex and sexuality. 

But while the mass media role in creating a Matrix-world is fairly well appreciated; the role of the bureaucracy in doing the same is probably more important - and much less noticed and understood. Yet bureaucracy and the mass media, together, are the dominant (and growing) fact about modern life.

 

By The bureaucracy, singular, I refer to the fact that the bureaucracies of individual social-systems - government, law, the military and police, health, education, religion, science etc) are now all horizontally cross-linked to make a single bureaucracy - which indeed extends across the world. 

This is how it was possible to implement a global coup in early 2020. 

And the fact that the mass media is itself a part of this single bureaucracy is how the coup was concealed.

The way in which a bureaucracy creates a virtual reality was first made clear to me in 1994, when I was a lecturer in Epidemiology and Public Health, and worked in the Regional Health Authority as a research assistant to the man who went on to become the Chief Medical Officer for the UK. 

As part of my duties; I organised a conference on 'inequality' in health; and my public health boss gave a talk which stuck in my mind. The subject was how a subject like equality could (and should) be pursued through the bureaucracy. 

He described (as I remember it - I don't have notes) how the general conceptual area of 'equality' was first made into a strategic priority, by securing the necessary votes. But at that point approving of 'equality' was just a platitude without content. 

At first, he said - the subject of equality was made a recurring agenda item; which meant that every meeting would include some discussion of how 'equality' might be pursued - and this was a formal, mandatory discussion. I suppose this was the phase of raising 'awareness'.  

 

By this point, the strategic 'desirability' of 'increasing equality' has already been established as 'settled'. Yet at no point has there necessarily (or probably) been any broad, philosophical or moral discussion of 'Why' equality, what 'equality' means... whether the concept is even coherent?

Therefore 'equality' has already been made a strategic imperative before most people will even have noticed, and before the 'in practice' meaning of equality has been established

From this point onwards, all discussion is at the lower level of How? to increase equality; there is no longer any place for revisiting whether equality really is always a Good Thing, or 'how much?' equality is wanted, or how equality should be balanced against other strategic Goods*... 

From this point onwards the bureaucratic process is just a matter of defining operational measures and imposing them.

The next step in the bureaucratic process was therefore to operationalise the concept of equality - preferably in terms of specific, numerical measures that could be monitored, made the subject of 'targets'; and implemented in rules and laws. 

 

Thus is constructed the bureaucratic virtual reality - which we could formally consider a conjectural model of reality, created in terms of definitions and procedures that fit within bureaucratic imperatives; and we can see how exactly this has spread across the world over the past quarter century - but with a variety of strategic priorities. There is a virtuality of equality, others of human rights, climate change, QERTY sexual liberation (of various, often incompatible, kinds). 

There are many many such... 

And of course in 2020 we have seen the real-time development of a global bureaucratic birdemic virtual reality; which, like the others, has almost no relationship to real life; and where it does, this relationship has itself been manufactured by the virtuality. 

In other words, any apparent relationship between birdemic and experience (such as personally observable diseases and deaths) is mediated and constructed by the 'response' to the birdemic - by the definitions and classifications generated by the various bureaucracies; which in fact came-before, and and were only conjecturally related-to, any actual biological/ medical effects** of the birdemic.

 

What was never discussed in this lecture - and is outwith the scope of the bureaucratic perspective - is the Truth of bureaucratic reality. Because 'bureaucratic reality' is a selective, simplifed 'model' of reality, and all models (being selective and simplified) are necessarily incomplete, often biased, and may be almost-wholly false...

Hence, when bureaucratic-reality is enforced as real-reality - we have a 'virtuality' that is at least misleading, but in practice is manipulative. As can be seen all around us, now. 

And because the System controls production, validation and dissemination of information; we are not permitted to ask (in mainstream public discourse) whether what The System ends-up doing after all this bureaucratic development is good overall; or whether the operational definitions of 'equality' actually reflect the original common sense idea of equality. 

And 25 years later we know the answers - that there is no relationship between bureaucratic measures of equality, and real-life equality; and that bureaucratic equality is pursued without any regard at all for whether 'things overall', in real experience, are improved by it.  

 

The bureaucratic virtuality is indeed a demonic recipe for corruption and destruction; and when you add its synergy with the mass media - the process of evil is greatly accelerated. 

This is our world - now. 

* For example - research into 'health inequalities' was entirely focused upon (e.g.) health measures/ lifespan/ mortality differentials (i.e ratios) between social classes, sexes, races etc. The research took essentially zero account of (often) massive improvements in absolute levels of health/ lifespan/ mortality through time. This is important because many effective measures that improve health tend also to 'worsen' 'inequality' - as does mass immigration. As usual, leftism tends towards levelling down, on the one hand; and on the other, it perpetuates the same (supposed-) injustices upon which it then feeds as grounds for group resentment.

** In so far as there are any real effects - e.g. some places like Taiwan have been shut-down despite/ because-of zero detectable biological/ medical effects. Thus we see the single, global bureaucracy at work.  

Virtual reality and the mass media

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Virtual reality is the incarceration and insightless-ignorance of the really real.

Virtual reality is thus the world of the mass media; because for virtuality to convince, it must be confirmed by all available sources - so that, wherever we choose to turn, that 'reality' is confirmed; and it also is confirmed over time.

(Confirmed, that is, so far as we can tell.)

*

The mass media achieves this by its vast scale, its easy accessibility (indeed, the difficulty of avoiding it), its exclusive privileging of itself - and by its cognitive distortions.

The cognitive distortions of the mass media include a dream-like immunity to reality-testing. Mass media content never is tested against real-reality.

Instead, participants are addicted to distraction, and distraction displaces experience and evaluation.  Any menace to virtuality from reality is thwarted and dissolved by a continual throughput of attention-grabbing stimulation.

*

Participation in the mass media is a state of continuous delirious intoxication - any momentary awareness of real-reality is rendered first unstable, then impossible - to live in virtual reality is a permanent psychosis.

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Reality does not force itself upon us - it must consciously be sought and chosen

A lot of modern people who pride themselves on 'realism', harbour the delusion that - sooner or later - reality will force itself upon people. 

But this is not true. 

Unless reality is consciously sought and chosen; then people (both individually, as in masses or as institutions) will never awaken from falsehood to reality; but will instead merely move from one false understanding to another. 

Men of earlier eras who tried to live in a virtual world of falsity used to revert to reality. 

This happened because (in pre-modern times; to varying degrees in different ties and places) Man's consciousness used to live inside-of reality. 

Like it or not; that is how we were made and organized. Consciousness was not (as now) fully-separated from the environment. 

Men were immersed-in their environment; therefore the (real) environment had direct power to impose itself upon our awareness, spontaneously.

In pre-modern times, reality would become conscious spontaneously; and it took effort and choice to reject reality; and therefore there was a tendency for Men living in falsehood to revert to reality. 

However, nowadays, modern Man's consciousness is cut-off from reality. 

Modern Man is alienated. 

And it is exactly this cut-off-ness of consciousness that enables Men of the modern world to live - for decade after decade - in falsehood, in illusion, in a virtual reality.  

Ironically, modern self-described 'realists' often exemplify this cut-off-ness of modern consciousness from reality; by the fact that they reject the divine, the spiritual, the soul, life beyond death etc - all of which used to be spontaneously known - and quite obviously real! - to Men of pre-modern eras. 

These modern (self-styled) 'realists' - like the rest of us - lack the ancient spontaneous and passive realism of consciousness; and mistake their unawareness of phenomena for the absence of phenomena.  

It is our consciousness that provides all the meanings and explanations for the stimuli and perceptions - which makes conscious-sense of the world around us.

All the meaning of which we are aware is therefore separated from reality; therefore (in modern Man) reality has no way of imposing itself upon consciousness.

So long as our consciousness is passive - reality cannot get at it. 

We can only know reality by consciously choosing it; by an active process.

Nowadays, we all consciously choose the reality that we believe, and in-which we dwell. 

The difference lies in whether we choose to discover and believe the one true reality; or one of the innumerable false realities. 

And in this world of now, dominated by evil powers; if we take the path of passivity, and decline to choose; then it is one (or many) of the false realities of which we will become conscious. 

True reality is something each must find for himself; and himself choose.

Virtuality versus Reality

We need a single world for the fake, virtual reality which The System of totalitarian media-bureaucracy is imposing and enforcing on us - and virtuality seems like a good word to hijack for the purpose, since it explains itself - being a condensation of virtual-reality: that manufactured and illusory world that is passively accepted by our senses as reality, familiar from the modern mass media.

The nature of our modern spiritual war is therefore one of Virtuality versus Reality. Our task in life is to distinguish the dominant, official, fashionable, and increasingly compulsory Virtuality which is lived-in by all institutions; from the eternal and universal reality that we can access as individuals who are each potentially in touch with the divine.

Reality is, in other words, nowadays only accessible by the individual prepared to stand apart, and prepared to acknowledge the reality of a divine and spiritual world. Whereas Virtuality is what modern Western people will passively absorb simply by being raised and working and functioning in society.

The great advantage of reality is that it only requires a minority of one, because each may know it directly and for himself; its great disadvantage that under current conditions it must be held despite being a minority of one, and in the teeth of universal worldly denial and condemnation - since so few are choosing it, so many and so powerful opposing it.

And the word 'choose' is accurate, because under current conditions and with Man's mind as it is; choice is mandatory - even when choice is denied. On the one hand passivity and unconsciousness lead to Virtuality, on the other hand reality is the spontaneous product of conscious and active living from one's true self - but both are chosen.

It is a feature of the modern condition that every possibility presents itself as a choice - matters that used to be regarded as brute facts - such as psychological and physical differences between men and women, or the impossibility of changing from one to the other - are now matters of choice. Matters of survival and sustained life were once regarded as fundamental, now a manufactured ephemeral virtuality of fake news, fake fashions and fake morality occupies the centre stage in the world and in most private lives.

Modern Man chooses; and has-chosen to reject facts and live by his choices: and this, multipled millionfold, is the basis of virtuality.

Anyone can choose reality at any time; but to do this he must recognise the basis and possibility of choice; and he must choose to stand alone in a very basic sense; alone in 'the world' of senses and publicly shared concepts; but in reality (which is spiritual) he is with God, and with all those who have also made the choice against virtuality and for reality.

Committee consensus is one big reason why people Really-Believe nonsense

Why do so many people - especially those in leadership positions - believe things that are false? 

Of course, the ultimate reason for rampant falseness is dishonesty - since the world is ruled by evil, and evil always lies. 

But proximately, how does it happen? What is the psychological mechanism by which so many people believe stuff that is contradicted at the personal level?... And also believe it to the extent of staking their own livelihood and lives on the truth of nonsense? 

One important answer is committee consensus. 

Although I hated and avoided committees throughout my 'career'; nonetheless I attended more than enough of them to recognize their cognitively-distorting effect. 

This is a psychological aspect of committees which comes on top of their objective deficiencies as a decision-making method; and the destructive evils of voting to make decisions. 

This is the way in which committees reach a consensus; which is then assumed to define reality. 

I have seen this innumerable times. A committee has to decide on some-thing that is - or should be regarded - as a matter of fact; but the actual reason for a decision pushes facts down to the level of personal opinions; and personal opinions are framed in terms such as in-group versus out-group, people you like/ are powerful/ from whom we want favours - versus the opposite.

After a while, the members of the committee often reach a conviction of the rightness of... whatever-they-have-decided; and that rightness has nothing to do with the real world - and everything to do with that psychological state of conviction. 

Then, on top, there is way in which committees integrate with the minutes and conclusions, the results and recommendations, of previous committees - such that the web of committee become the only valid reality.  

In other words; the system of bureaucracy operates on the implicit and unconscious assumption that there is no reality out-with the system of bureaucracy - no reality with-which to compare and contrast the committee world. 

And this assumption is all the more powerful for being implicit and unconscious (since it is so absurd that if examined explicitly it could not stand).   

Yet consensus can be, and of course is, routinely engineered by well-understood techniques. Yet those who are thus manipulated nearly-always deny that it has happened... Probably because personal status and power (and employment) is conditional upon committee consensus. 

At every level of modern society of which we are aware and in all major institutions; a committee stands at the apex of power. Therefore, there is no limit to the wrongness with which committees can - formally and officially - regard reality. 

Now that we (in the West, especially) inhabit a totalitarian world - the web of committees is global, and links all social institutions within the nation.  

Once that vast system has reached consensus on some-thing - there is a virtual reality of vast scale and complex inter-linkage to reinforce the virtual reality of consensus; there is no way-in for real-reality. 

Indeed; there is no way even to acknowledge the separateness of real-reality; thus no way to compare real-reality with the virtuality of consensus. 

Individuals have - en masse - made the choice that their own personal experience, reason, common sense are unreliable ways of knowing; and therefore need to be subordinated to committee consensus. 

And, once that choice has been made; belief becomes something external to be obeyed - not something for which any individual is personally responsible.  

And, once that 'something external' is a committee, functioning in a bureaucracy of their-committees - then we are in a world where committee consensus defines reality; and real-reality might as well not exist (without any regard of what yours or my personal judgment may say on the matter).  

Consequently; it is possible, perhaps normal, that the things everybody believes in terms of public discourse; are things that individuals do not believe. Yet they have pre-decided that independent personal discernment ought to be suppressed; therefore they absolutely believe whatever nonsense is committee consensus. And such individuals cannot - in principle, under any circumstances - ever take responsibility to abandon that committee-derived consensus reality; because to do that would we be evil, and dangerous.   

Why cannot political correctness defend itself?

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Political correctness cannot defend itself - it is continually doing things (like encouraging sustained mass immigration, destroying military and police capability, damaging economic growth, and bureaucratically controlling the media) which make its own extinction inevitable. 

But why?

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There are several reasons. 

One is the dishonesty and wishful thinking that is intrinsic to PC: the way that it confuses imagination for reality (believing that if you can imagine it - it really can be). 

But deeper than this is that for PC there is nothing to defend - no 'self' to defend.

*

Political correctness regards any current state as contingent and transitional and evolutionary; such that humans are an accidental product of history (and evolution) with no essence, continually changing. 

This is seen most starkly in transhumanism; whereby humans are regarded as wholly 'plastic' entities. 

The baseline reality - explicitly in transhumanism but implicitly for PC - is human gratification.

So that when humans become miserable due to societal changes, there are two possibilities: change the society or change the humans.

*

Since everything changes, is changeable and can be changed; there is no essence of anything to defend: nowhere to draw a line or to take a stand: no reason to take a stand.

No nation, civilization, society nor persons. Only processes.

*

For transhumanism, the focus is on changing humans - the focus is technical: by drugs, by implants, genetic engineering etc. 

For PC the focus is on changing society to make humans happy - but there is also a very strong focus on changing human minds; not so much by technology applied to the human organism, but by technology applied to the human mind: by totalizing propaganda - to the point of thought-control - the complete exclusion of contradictory expression.

*

So, for political correctness, there is always a belief in the fall-back position that if society goes against the aspirations of political correctness, then PC propaganda can change human minds, which are regarded as radically plastic, such that people still believe in PC reality despite whatever may appear to contradict it.

If the real-reality is that society has become progressively taken-over by non-PC forces that have been encouraged by PC, then the virtual-reality world can be made primary.

Real-reality will be ignored and suppressed and PC virtual-reality will fill people's minds.

This step has, of course, been reached in several communist societies in the past and in current existence - as depicted in a favourite Brezhnev era Russian joke:

*

Lenin, Stalin and Brezhnev were stuck in a railway train.

A porter came to speak: 

"Bad news, Comrades, the train won’t move! The passengers are getting restless".

Lenin said: "Take the railway staff and subject them to a full Marxist education, that will do the trick".

The porter returned: 

"Bad news, Comrades, the train will still not move, the passengers are getting angry".

Stalin said: 

"Take the driver, fireman and guard and shoot them as an example to the others, that will do the trick".

The porter returned: 

"Bad news, Comrades, the train still won’t move, the passengers are starting to fight".

Brezhnev said: 

"Paint the windows black and tell the passengers that the train is moving".

*

Under political correctness we are now well advanced into the stage of Paint the windows black and tell the passengers that the train is moving.

*

And it works: the 'down the memory hole' phenomenon is only one extreme example of the phenomenon which includes selective reporting, selective emphasis, and slanderous insinuation and invention.

*

Also very important to PC is fiction and 'faction' (a combination of facts and fiction: i.e. nearly-all supposedly true movies, drama, reportage and TV). 

It is basic undergraduate psychology teaching that the human mind retains knowledge but forgets the provenance of knowledge.

Much of what we think we 'know' about things was actually derived from politically correct fiction, movies, soaps, art, pseudo-documentary and so on.

This is, indeed, the mainstay of PC propaganda. We are shown a blend of facts, fiction and fantasy, but we remember it all as facts.

*

Indeed, it has been shown that you can tell somebody a falsehood, and tell them explicitly that it is indeed a falsehood, yet the person are more likely than random to remember the falsehood but not the fact that it was false - so they remember explicit falsehoods as if they were facts. That is how memory works.

So a person can be set to learn some facts - some labelled true some labelled false - including the falsehood that the tallest mountain in the world is in Pakistan.

Then when that person is examined a few days later with a true-false test, they are more likely than chance to answer that the tallest mountain in the world is in Pakistan.

*

This phenomenon is going on all the time and is probably the most powerful form of indirect PC propaganda. 

Hundreds of violently shocking movies and TV programs about fictional racist militant white supremacist organizations leaves behind in millions of minds the 'knowledge' that RMWSOs are a real and significant feature of modern societies: people remember the (false) fact, but do not remember the fictional/ fantasy provenance of the information.

A blend of mostly facts with a few falsehoods in a memorable fantasy is therefore the most effective propaganda.

Human memory remembers the whole thing as factual, and does not discriminate between true and fictional elements.

*

But what PC neglects is that this level of thought control is only possible with a huge and pervasive mass media, such that the vast and universal diet of daily novelty actually drives-out natural human and community memories (a situation which was not possible in the Communist societies, where media was vestigial, and people retained a knowledge of real-reality based on personal experience).

PC defends nothing - not even its key instrument of social control. It sees no problems, it feels omnipotent. PC is built-upon blindness to real-reality and arrogance concerning the power of virtual-reality: and the greater the achieved success of PC the greater its blindness and arrogance.

At its moment of greatest triumph PC will be destroyed by unseen and ignored counter-forces

(Just as pacifism would only be safe in a world of 100 percent devout pacifists, and a single aggressor group could take-over all pacifist groups; so PC could only be safe in a 100 percent world of devout PC - and we are even-further away from that than we are from a world of pacifists.)

*

When PC destroys the growth in size and pervasiveness and attention-grabbing qualities of the mass media - as it surely will - when the media is taken-over by bureaucracy and made less efficient and less effective; when the media becomes more overtly PC; when it becomes centrally-regulated and censored of all non-PC elements; when the media comes under the control of intolerant non-PC groups that are favoured by PC - then political correctness will of course lose its ability to influence the population: will lose the ability to convince the population that 'the train is moving.'

Media-derived virtual-reality will melt-away, experienced real-reality will reassert itself.

And that will be an end of PC. 

* 

  

Actively extracting knowledge (not passively absorbing it)

The idea that Christians not only can but should absorb their faith (absorb from authoritative sources, of course - which begs the question of who decides what counts as authoritative before faith has been absorbed...); the idea that (for instance) we should surrender to priestly authority, to scripture, to tradition... This general attitude by which we are passive towards the divine (and its manifestations) is becoming not just undesirable but impossible.  

I find that my residual capacity passively, submissively to absorb faith from authority, has been shaken to the roots by the capitulation of all church authorities to the birdemic/ peck agenda, antiracism and/or 'carbon environmentalism'. 

As far as I am concerned; the 'Christian' church authorities have publicly and explicitly chosen to subordinate themselves to the totalitarian, leftist, atheist, anti-Christian) worldly powers - and have therefore surrendered all spiritual authority. 

Ultimately, there can be no absorption of knowledge, because all understanding is conceptual - and we personally must bring to life the concepts by which we understand life. 

This has always been the case, but in the past our concepts were widely shared - indeed, 'telepathically' shared - in the sense that individual consciousness was not fully differentiated from group consciousness.

Well it is now - and the group consciousness has been externalized to the mass media; so instead of the spiritual community of ancient times, we now have virtual reality.

As individuals we confront this manufactured and materialist virtual reality from our selves - and (looking out from our selves) we see that what were Christian authorities are now an integrated part of this global virtual reality. 

So - as Christians (or would-be Christians) we need to approach all sources actively, bringing our explicit ultimate-basic (metaphysical) assumptions to bear upon extracting the knowledge we need. 

This sounds (to the materialistic mind) exactly like wishful thinking, an 'echo chamber', and self-confirmation bias - and therefore no better than simply surrendering our souls to the overwhelming power of the totalitarian System (which is what the materialists have done - and which is the most short-term expedient tactic). 

But the difference is motivation. This is not something we need to (or should even try to) prove to others; but something that originates from our real and divine self. 

If we are personally motivated to know reality and to align our-selves with God's creation; then, as reality gets its meaning from our ultimate goal of resurrected life in Heaven, this attitude makes possible the active process of grasping truth from a vast mass of stimuli.

Therefore, we should not be seeking-out wholly pure, wholly true, wholly reliable, wholly trust-worthy sources - because in one sense they obviously do not exist; while in another sense this goal leaves-out that half of the process which we personally must bring to understanding. 

Instead we should approach people, institutions and media in an active spirit - selecting, focusing, extracting, analyzing, understanding, and applying to our own situation. 

We might watch, read, or speak-with almost any-thing towards which we feel drawn - and no matter what its overall tendency or most obvious attributes - we may get spiritual nourishment from it...

Or we may Not - it may do us harm! 

In which case we know this by our own response, by our own intuitive sense of negative evaluations; and we recognize the evil and stop the engagement.  

And try again. 

Because we are In this mortal life on earth; and providence will (sooner or later) bring us the experiences we need. 

We must - we ought to - engage with this world; in order to learn from our time here on earth. 

Of course, worldliness comes naturally to most people - and the problem is over-engagement, indiscriminate engagement, and harm-full engagement. But the answer is not dis-engagement - even as an ideal.  

We need the world - it is there for our spiritual benefit. But not as something in which we bathe and wallow, and from-which we absorb passively whatever it supplies. Rather we approach the world (each day, each hour) in a spirit of active and selective engagement; following our motivations and in a spirit of whatever enjoyment, excitement, curiosity we have in us. 

By my understanding, God is our Heavenly Parents; and God does not want their beloved children to trudge miserably through their lives as if they were nothing but an ordeal and a test. 

Our world (i.e. the world as we personally know it) is, overall, made for our benefit; and should (where possible) by approached with an attitude appropriate to the fact that it was created for us personally, and that we chose to participate in it. 

The world-at-large is indeed a place of evil triumphant; and therefore evil permeates all social institutions, inescapably. We depend on an evil System (a system of Evil Lies) for our very existence!

But a Christian who has an active faith in God as creator, and who knows himself a beloved child of God; has no reason to fear or be oppressed by this reality - because the only reality that ultimately concerns him is the reality of his own situation. 

For as long as God has chosen to maintain the life of a Christian, we can be sure that the Christian is in a situation from which he can benefit personally in the timescale of eternal resurrected life. 

Ultimately; all that any Christian ever needs to do, is to discern and learn-from his actual situation. 

That enormous fact ought to be enough rationally to sustain a basically positive, hope-full and care-free approach to daily reality.  

The aim of the world according to PC: harmony and novelty

*

In a sense, the core value of political correctness is fashion.

*

Fashion is not coercive, but everybody follows it (or, at least, everybody who 'matters').

So fashion is 'harmonious' - we all cooperate to make fashion, and we do so as a result of - well - propaganda I suppose. It is discourse (mostly the mass media) which informs and persuades people to follow fashion.

People follow fashion (merely) to belong; but to follow fashion is to belong; and the only (non-ceorcive) sanction is that if you do not follow fashion then you do not belong.

It all seems very mild; but it turns-out that this combination of reward and sanction is sufficient under modern conditions to ensure the domination and perpetuation of fashion everywhere and in everything.

*

So fashion is social harmonious, implemented non-coercively via discourse - and of course fashion provides novelty.

So, unlike traditional societies in which social harmony is static, often coercive and aspires to be eternal; and therefore has a tendency to be boring - fashion is dynamic and interesting because new and unfamiliar.

When we begin to get sick of fashion, and the novelty starts wearing off, fashion can either become more extreme in the same direction, or else a completely new fashion may be invented, or else a more-or-less-forgotten old fashion can be revived but with some twist, or several old fashions can be recombined.

*

Isn't fashion, therefore, an almost-exact analogy for the world to which PC aspires?

A world where everybody believes and wants the same thing - and so is harmonious and free from conflict and dangers; but also a world where the 'same thing' is continually changing (and progressing); and finally a world where all this is achieved (potentially) non-coercively by monopolistic control of discourse, of human communications.

*

Of course the world of fashion (and of PC) has nothing to do with real reality, but only to do with reality as perceived in human discourse - but this virtual world does go a surprisingly-long-way to seeming like real reality.

And of course discourse is only about humans, so it can only control human-caused harms and not 'natural' dangers - but it turns out that human perceptions of harms overlie and obscure reality to a surprisingly powerful extent.

So that discourse can frame and shape our perception of reality (because discourse fills the mind hourly, and what it fills the mind with is continually changing) - so reality seems plastic, and seems under human control.

So monopolistic control of discourse feels like it can almost control everything.

*

The only threats come when the would-be-monopolistic harmonious-yet-changing, mind-filling discourse is threatened with disharmony or when progress is threatened with statis or reversal.

This is why PC is so vicious towards dissent in discourse. Reality threats (starvation, disease, war etc) can be reframed with more layers of discourse.

Reality can 'do what it likes' without threatening PC, so long as discourse remains harmonious and changing - so long as 'fashion' is under control.

After all PC is about perceived reality, not underlying reality (which may or may not exist - PC is indifferent on this question of underlying reality).

*

But non-PC discourse is the real danger - because it threatens the seamless and harmonious integrity of perceived-reality itself.

Indeed, non-PC discourse - anything inharmonious with fashionable perceptions - is infinitely-threatening to virtual reality (after all, just one single loose thread might eventually unravel the whole carpet), non-PC discourse is the ultimate threat; and therefore political correctness is utterly ruthless in crushing and deleting non-PC discourse.

* 

Since we all already co-create our reality; which reality should we choose to co-create?

Things in the modern world, especially 'The West', are much-more wrong than most people (most Christians) realize - and wrong for fundamental (metaphysical) reasons. 

Modern Men already (and increasingly) participate in 'making' the realities they inhabit - they co-create reality. 

This has always been the case - but whereas it used to be unconscious, spontaneous, automatic - and therefore it seemed like reality was 'out there'; now our participation is increasingly conscious - that is, we choose the reality we inhabit. 

(This was shown, to my satisfaction, by Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield - and a similar perspective is well expounded by Stanley Messenger in the first 25 minutes of this lecture presentation: Virtual reality and the paranormal.) 

The evil consequences can be seen all around - but are mistakenly usually put-down to people rejecting 'reality' - in favour of believing subjective (or collective) delusions, illusions, wishful-thinking or whatever. 

But this analysis is (ultimately, at depth) a mistake - which is probably why it has no traction as a critique - because there is no objective reality that is 'free' from participation by consciousness, because all realities are (in a strong sense) chosen. 

Instead of asserting an objective versus subjective distinction of real versus false-virtual; we ought to replace 'reality' with 'divine creation' - and then evaluate our multiple, subjective realities as to whether or not our personal realities are harmonious-with, and seek the same goals as, divine creation. 

In other words; do we want to choose to become a committed member of divine creation; or to reject it and 'do' something else instead. 

1. We all co-create reality, and 

2. We all exert considerable conscious choice concerning the reality we co-create. 

3. Most people choose to participate in the mainstream reality propagated in a totalitarian fashion by government, mass media, major corporations and the major social systems (law, churches, health services, education, policing etc.). 

4. But this mainstream totalitarian system (which so many people choose to co-create and inhabit) is incoherent and unstable; and offers no meaning, no purpose, and no hope. 

5. Therefore, the apparently-'easy' option of joining yourself to the mainstream System; in practice (and increasingly) turns-out to be a PSYOPS: a continuously-destructive psychological manipulation that makes no sense, violates our instincts and intuitions alike, and results in a continually-dysphoric and increasingly-despairing mind-state. 

6. Yet all public discourse is, by-now, converged-onto the mainstream System - all sub-systems lead to the One Global System; all public groupings are densely interconnected-with, substantially controlled-by, The System -- Therefore the only alternatives to The System lie out-with The System - and are ignored, suppressed, denied, and attacked-by The System. 

How then can we discover alternatives... How discover the truth of divine creation?  

So, this is our situation - what confronts us. On the one hand, there is all the mainstream stuff, fed us by the mainstream (including churches); and on the other hand, the mainstream is evil, ineffective, misery-making, despair-inducing rubbish. 

Yet, if we want anything different-and-better; something which sustains (for instance) any or all of meaning purpose, life, consciousness, creativity, hope and love - then we will need to find-out about it for ourselves, using our own best judgment. 

And because we need to do this job in the face of almost universal opposition; therefore, our personal understanding of divine creation will need to be something we are really motivated to believe, some-thing we really believe! - something that we regard as really true, and also something we want to be true!

Only something as solid as this; will suffice in the face of such vast and pervasive opposition.  

The task therefore, should we choose to accept it, is to find-out each for our-selves about divine creation - from our experience, from sources we trust, from that kind of reasoning we regard as solid; confirmed by our deepest, strongest and most-enduring intuitions.

We need each to find-out about divine creation, and how we can live in harmony with it, and how - in our actual personal lives - we can seek its goals.  

And we need to find-out primarily with respect to our-own tough, enduring and inspiring satisfaction. 

Because anything less we will not be able to develop and grow; anything less will not suffice to resist, and to overcome in our hearts and minds the vast power and propaganda of the evil that is the mainstream, totalitarian, global System. 

  

Virtual-Closure, the birdemic, and its peck

The ideal was, presumably, that the virtual world created and propagated by the Global Establishment should be completely disarticulated from reality. 

This could be termed Virtual Closure; because it amounts to the ideologies of the official-media-corporate world becoming self-sealing, circular, self-generating. 

The virtuality no longer needs reality, is no longer affected by reality; there is no way-in for reality; reality cannot refute it. 

Perhaps the ideology of birdemic and its peck are best illustrative of Virtual Closure; since none of the major elements depends on reality in the slightest degree. Nothing about the situation could be affected by any 'revelation' of truth concerning how things really are; because none of it depends on truth - none of it has ever depended on truth. 

To start-with the most fundamental fact - it would not matter if the birdemic virus did not actually exist as a distinct biological entity- but was merely a new label for a collection of pre-existing respiratory illnesses. That may or may not be true - but even if it was certainly-true - it would make no difference. 

It would make no difference if the birdemic was real and had been genetically manufactured as an attempted (and, apparently, botched) biowep - and it would not make any difference whether the biowep escaped by accident or was deliberately released. 

Nothing would be affected if it was true that the official death numbers were strongly, or even grossly, inflated by the inclusion of other causes of death - nor would things be affected if (as official sources claims) the 'real' numbers were underestimates. The rates might be ten times greater or ten times less than stated - and who would care enough to alter our situation?  

The situation would not change if it was acknowledged that the birdemic 'test' is unfit for purpose and not-valid; nor if it was admitted that there are large numbers of false positives - even if it was confirmed that FPs are 100% in some situations...

What about lockdownsocialdistincingmasking policies? What if it turned-out that these were deliberate made-up lies? What if it turned out that everything is ineffective? No change. What if it turned-out that all the above are harmful (physically, psychologically)... very harmful for very large numbers - and what if this was demonstrated 'for sure'? Still no change. 

And the peck? Policies and attitudes would not change if/ when it turned out that the peck was an inert placebo, feebly effective with worse side effects - or even if it did no good but considerable harm. Even if it was documented to be the greatest health-destroyer in the history of the world; the basic state of things would be unaffected. 

Nobody cares if the whole birdemic stuff was stage managed by global leaders; nobody cares if these leaders grabbed historically-unprecedented power via the birdemic; nobody cares if they consequently became much richer than anybody ever from the power grab; nobody even cares if the world-rulers are Satan-worshippers who abuse their power to engage in the vilest sins, preying upon the masses, tormenting millions and billions for their own gratification... 

In other words; anything or everything might be real and true; and it be 'proved' with whatever 'evidence' anybody might ask-for - anything might be actual but still the virtual would survive and continue to dominate. 

Perhaps if all-the-above were simultaneously revealed?... 

But no, because 'proof and evidence' for any one thing depends on the validity of other-things; and the other things are (in this instance) all free-floating fabrications.  

So we are stuck with it - stuck with The System; it is un-reform-able, un-improve-able overall. A self-healing, self-propagating web of untruth...

What we can, should and must do (for the sake of our immortal souls) is to recognize and acknowledge reality - because reality is God's creation but Virtual Closure is an instrument of the devil.

The choice is between virtuality and metaphysics

Because of the nature of human consciousness, we inhabit a world where perceptions, facts, common sense, evidence etc are irrelevant; because what counts as perceptions, facts, common sense, evidence etc is shaped by our assumptions and interpretations. 

So, most people most of the time (and, apparently, some people all of the time) inhabit the virtual-world - virtuality as contrasted with what used to be called reality. 

People nowadays inhabit virtuality - especially wrt Litmus Test issues: the themes that most obsess and motivate nice people and leaders, the great moral "issues" of our time: antiracism, inequality, climate, the birdemic, wars and disasters in remote places and among strangers... 

All share the characteristic that they are virtual concerns, rooted in inculcating theoretical frameworks that take-up any and all possible facts as confirming evidence for the theories.  

Consequently; old-style reality is (as of 2025) simply not an option, because not available to choose - because that is not how our minds work.

Our reality depends on our fundamental assumptions about reality - i.e. metaphysics; so the answer to controlled-virtuality does not lie in more or different facts; but in disengaging from the nigh-infinite deluge of facts; and instead re-examining ultimate assumptions directly.   

Most people inhabit this world via perceptions, facts, common sense, evidence etc; but are typically unaware that the meanings of their world comes wholly from their assumptions, preconceptions etc -- which they are fed by the mass/ social media, bureaucracy, officialdom, teaching etc.  

So - as is well known in theory, but seldom experientially - people inhabit a virtual world. 

A world where people are unconsciously and pervasively fed assumptions and theories, interpretations - which they are told are rooted-in-facts and objectively true. And from these assumptions and theories they infer the meaning of old and new facts, past and future experiences. 

Which circular process confirms the assumptions and theories they have been fed. 

...e.g. They are fed that science is objectively the only valid form of knowledge - and that this is factually proved; they then interpret the facts of the world on that basis; and these facts (which are the only facts they recognise as facts) tell them that science is indeed the only valid form of knowledge. 

At which point; those who control the feeding, can decide that science is... whatever they want it to be.

This is exactly where we are, almost completely; and have been for some decades, increasingly. 

A world where everything is based on "evidence"; but what counts as evidence, and what that evidence is allowed to mean - is wholly a product of whatever officially -true theories have been fed into the cycle from the beginning. 

The interlinked "system" of media propaganda, officialdom, education, research etc is all about the theories - all about the deep assumptions and derived interpretative schemes by-which facts are understood. 

Once in place, the theories determine the facts, and the facts sustain the theories. 

So long as we stay at this level, there is no way out from virtuality; all labelled "escape routes" lead back inside...

The conclusion ought to be that we need to make our fundamental assumptions about reality without regard to perceptions, facts, common sense, evidence. 

Indeed, we must rigorously eschew any external, material, sense-mediated influence on our fundamental beliefs concerning the nature of reality. 

This exclusion encompasses nearly-all of what is traditionally regarded as religion; because churches, traditions, scriptures, theologies - all of these are aspects of those externally-fed interpretative schemes by which virtuality exists. 

And this means that at some point, sooner or later - unless content to remain in the virtual world; each person needs to step-back and to stop taking notice of external inputs and inculcated theories...

 

Instead to consider directly - for himself and from himself - the nature of ultimate reality and the fundamental questions: answers to which determine... everything else.

This activity is called metaphysics. 

(If you don't understand - then just do it. Do it ASAP. Once you've done it, you will understand what metaphysics is, and how things work at that level.) 

As we now are; our actual and inhabited reality does not - it just doesn't! - depend on external inputs - perceptions, facts, common sense or any other such. 

It depends on our virtual-world metaphysics, which we have been fed under the disguise that it is objective fact. 

As of 2025; we should not seek reality from outside us - because only virtuality lies outside . 

We should, indeed, shun the external, and exclude the external from consideration; as a first and essential step. 

It's either metaphysics; or we shall continue to live inside virtual world - under control of its masters, and not even wanting to escape... Indeed, not even aware that there is anywhere else that we might escape to.     

It is because our reality is co-created by us, that we are vulnerable to manipulation by the virtual realities of The System

The introduction to a talk Virtual reality and the paranormal, given by Rudolf-Steiner-expert Stanley Messenger in the 1990s, provides a concise account of how it is that Men are so vulnerable to manipulation by the evil-intending fakery of the Virtuality imposed upon us by officialdom and the mass media. 

The point is that when we are born we do not know the world - we only experience 'impressions'; but soon after we begin to add (from ourself) the conceptual basis that we need to understand and to know. 

Because we are each different, distinct (ultimately in soul, also in our genetics and bodily composition) - each thenceforth has a different reality. But our society-environment encourages (demands!) that we assume that there is one perceived reality, universal. So we are already - even as children - living on a false basis: i.e. that the world is the same for everybody. 

We ought to awaken to the realization that we are co-creators of reality - yet people almost never do so; and instead double-down on the belief that there is one reality - and that reality is imposed upon us from externally. 

Because of this error (or self-lie) we are open to be manipulated by external power - almost without limit; since a sufficiently powerful pervasive, incentivized external power can compel upon us false conceptions by-which the sensory impressions get interpreted and understood. 

The way-out is to understand what is happening; and that we intrinsically co-create our reality - and therefore that when the reality imposed upon us is evil, we absolutely need to choose a different reality. 

In different words; we need to understand and reject the evil concepts we have absorbed from evil motivated externals; and to replace these with God-orinetated concepts to which we have acces from our own partly-divine natures and the guidance of the Holy Ghost. 

Then we will understand and know 'the world' by co-creating in a way that is aligned with God's intentions - instead of the Satanic motivation that we (as of 2022) absorb from our environment whenever we remain un-conscious and passive. 

How to cure an addicted society

*

Modern society is addicted to distraction - to the mass media: to sex, drugs, news, soaps, fashion and celebrity.

Withdrawal from these makes people feel bad, makes them feel (sometimes) that life is not worth living, that they are lonely, that people are bored by and disrespect them.

*

So is there any incentive to give-up the addictions, and go through an unpleasant withdrawal?

Only if what awaits you on the other side of withdrawal is better than being an addict.

*

To give-up addiction to distractions entails believing that if you were not distracted from reality, and became aware of reality; then reality would be better than the distractions. 

But if a person believes that reality is dull or horrible - if they believe that reality actually is one or another life of distraction - then they will not attempt to give-up their addictions.

*

So, to give up addiction to distraction, a person must believe that real reality is better than the virtual realities of a life of distraction.

What is real reality? Christianity.

Is it better than a life of distraction? Yes it is. And not by a little.  

*

Reality is not a bitter pill (nor is it a 'red pill'!) - reality is a deep joy.

It is not that there is 'nothing to be afraid of' from reality - there is plenty to be afraid of.

But it is, despite all, a deep joy - the deep joy: reality is the deep joy which makes-real all other joys (and without-which all other joys are subverted into virtual realities).

*

Suppose that Mankind crossed a threshold of consciousness from around the millennium... (Steiner and Barfield)

Rudolf Steiner and his 'disciple' Owen Barfield wrote about their conviction that - from around the year 2000 - Mankind would inevitably go-through a progressive process of transformation of consciousness. This had two aspects: 

First the inevitable transformation of consciousness, which meant that Men would create their own 'reality'. 

Second, the open question (which neither Steiner nor Barfield lived to see answered) of whether this transformation would merely happen-to Men - who would remain passively unconscious of it; or else whether Men would consciously and by choice participate in the co-creation of 'reality'. 

This transition is desirable (and part of God's plan) because it brings Men closer to the divine - as free agents who can potentially contrinute to the ongoing of creation. But such a more-divine consciousness could either be angelic (true, and working with God) or demonic (untruthful, and in opposition to the reality of divine creation) 

 

To recapitulate, this approximately-millennial transformation of consciousness would represent the culmination of a centuries-long transition from a time (back in the middle ages) when Men understood objective reality to be 'out there' - something which was perceived by the senses...

To a situation where Men would no longer find objective reality 'out there' and would need to take up the job of consciously being co-creators of reality; by means of their own thinking. 

A transition, that is, between reality being present in The World, and being present in thinking. 

 

It is vital to recognise that while the transformation of consciousness is inevitable - something that just 'unfolds' as part of the development of the species (according to divine destiny); what situation this threshold-crossing leads-us-to; is a contingency that hinges-upon whether the transition is conscious and chosen, or whether it is unconscious and passive. Whether we 'make it happen, or whether it just happens-to-us. 

Both Steiner and Barfield prophesied what kind of thing lay in store for Mankind if Man did not consciously and voluntarily embrace the trasition, through the choice of developing our spiritual knowledge (based on a kind of intuitive thinking, or direct knowing). 

Steiner (for instance) set out the consequences in a 1918 lecture The Work of the Angels in Man's Astral Body; while Barfield wrote about it philosophically in Saving the Appearances and in a more explicit, science-fiction sexual dystopian form in Night Operation. 

 

Let us assume (as I believe is true) that Mankind did indeed cross just such a threshold of consciousness gradually and over the past several decades - then we can see that the Steiner/ Barfield model can make sense of where we are now; and what we ought to do about it. 

We can easily see that modern Man in 2020 is living in a self-contructed reality; a 'virtuality' in which the masses passively imbibe Man-made lies and inverted-values from The System - emanating from a global bureaucracy including governments, the mass-media and official sources such as the legal, health and educational sub-systems. 

And Christians can easily see that this 2020 virtuality is demonic in nature: such that, in choosing to remain unconscious and passive, Mankind as taken the demonic path described prophetically by Stainer and Barfield. 

 

So Men no longer root their knowledge in personal experience and common sense. Due to the development of consciousness, these have become regarded as merely subjective, too labile; and are therefore too weak and unmotivating to overcome the imposed virtual world. 

Modern Man in 2020 instead passively and unconsciously accepts a 'made'-reality which is imposed-upon him, top-down. 

Indeed, so far has this process reached - that in here-and-now we can see that the masses do not even check the claims of The System - but will accept, internalise and defend blatant falsehoods and contradictions asif reality. 

And, because Men remain unconscious and passive and rejecting of the spiritual; we remain also spiritually-isolated and alienated from a world which we perceive as dead, meaningless and without purpose. 

A world of inverted values, compulsory falsehoods, crushing inhumanity; and the near universal prevalence and increasing dominance of fear, denial, resentment and despair - is the natural, inevitable, consequence. 

 

The answer to the current horrors of our post-threshold-crossing virtual world is also provided by Steiner and Barfield; which is that Men need consciously to accept their active role in the co-creation of reality with God. 

(In other words, what I have termed Romantic Christianity, based upon intuitive direct knowing.)

This can, in principle, be begun by anybody at any time - however, the fact that this active, conscious, Christian spirituality has been so delayed (since it first became possible in the late 1700s) means that in the first place Men are living under a weight of false metaphysical assumptions that have been uncosnciously absorbed and passively accepted. 

Also that there has been a tremendous amount of accumulated societal damage over 250 years; which must be overcome but cannot be fully reversed - and which will lead to severely sub-optimal outcomes, compared with what 'might have been'. 

 

Nonetheless, what we need to do is clear - and the rewards for doing it are immediate...

We can experience participation in God's ongoing creation - that is, we can experience the universe as alive, conscious and purposive; and ourselves as unique individuals with a special destiny even in this mortal life* 

And who may also (if we accept the offer of Jesus Christ) lead to an harmonious world of relationships with those who also accepted Christ's offer (i.e. Heaven). 

 

*Albeit the rewards and accomplishments will be, like everything in mortal life, incomplete and temporary - needing to be done and redone, over and again, as long as our mortal lives continue.  

The New World Order and political correctness

*

From Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works by Hieromonk Damascene - pp 696-8.

"Today (in 1982), some New Age circles speak of "The Plan" for a "New World Order," which would include a uni­versal credit system, a universal tax, a global police force, and an inter­national authority that would control the world's food supply and transportation systems. In this Utopian scheme, wars, disease, hunger, pollution, and poverty will end. All forms of discrimination will cease, and people's allegiance to tribe or nation will be replaced by a planetary consciousness." (...)

"Never has there been more talk of “peace and security” than today. One of the chief organs of the U.N. is the Security Council, and organizations for “world peace” are everywhere. It men do achieve finally a semblance of “peace and security,” it would seem to contemporary man to be a state like heaven on earth – a millennium. The practical way to do this is to unite all governments under one. For the first time in history such a ideal becomes a possible goal of practical politics – a world ruler is conceivable now. For the first time, the Antichrist becomes an historical possibility." (...)

"With the establishment of the European Union, the creation of the Euro currency, the control of former Eastern-bloc countries by Western financial interests, the advances towards a cashless society, the formation of an international criminal tribunal by the United Nations and NATO, we see what appear to be the forerunners of such a one-world system. Some of these developments are not necessarily evil by themselves. Taken together, however, they help to set up a global apparatus which can make way for the rising religion of the future."

***

The Western elites have long since embraced the idea of a New World Order, global government, dissolution of national boundaries and so on.

The rationale is hedonic: prosperity and peace..

And if not prosperity, then at least peace...

And if not peace, then at least pacifism.

*

Political correctness is the 'religion' of such folk - or rather the spirituality, or if not that then the perspective on life and the human condition.

PC is (presumably) supposed to synergize with global government - the ethical system of multiculturalism and diversity combining with a mixed word without border - all under the 'benign' leadership of democratically elected... and so on.

*

When Fr Seraphim Rose died in 1982 it certainly looked as if world government was the trend - and since then there has certainly been an expansion of global bureaucracies.

Yet the reality is that governments - both national and international - have lost control.

Stripped of the means of effective government by political correctness; national and international governments are mostly Brezhnev-style corrupt bureaucracies - engaged in a propaganda of denying reality (by means of replacing experience with virtual reality via the mass media) and simply relabelling what happens as desirable - re-interpreting trends asif they were beneficial to the cause of global peace and prosperity.

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So the real trends are now running against global governance by the Western elites, and the proponents of a New World Order are reduced to aspirational statements and cheer-leading chaos (in order to justify their salaries and status).

Instead of an actual world government, we have a bunch of grafting charlatans pretending to be a world government.

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What went wrong for them? What happened to their dreams of power?

Political correctness: that's what happened.

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PC is the Achilles Heel of the would-be international Leftist dictatorship.

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Even as PC justifies the global elite in their takeover of all and everything, at the same time all and everything is being ever-more-rapidly subverted by the chaos caused by PC - perhaps above all the truly massive demographic transformation and population movement which the world is experiencing.

Vast population growth in undeveloped countries, decline in developed countries and international migrations of populations - such as we are experiencing are 1. approved of by PC, 2. uncontrollable by PC-approved mechanisms, and 3. utterly destructive of governance.

PC can do nothing about all this (except prevent the subject being mentioned, the problem being analyzed, or action being taken) and responds by approving-of, pointing out the potential benefits of ... whatever happens.

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(What - you haven't heard about the impending and unstoppable demographic cataclysm? I am not surprised. It is no accident. Rest assured that the ruling elite have no plans to do anything about it.)

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So rather than world government, we have a world bureaucracy and a world mass media engaging in depicting in virtual reality what they want to happen, rather than what is happening; and - when this fails to convince - in the creative re-labeling of 'apparent' chaos, violence and impoverishment as actually nascent order, peace and prosperity.

Merely broken eggs en route to a vast and delicious global omelet.

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When Fr Seraphim Rose died in 1982, who would have thought it!

International dictatorship sabotaged by its own scruples!

Maybe PC is not such a bad thing after all - insofar as chaos is preferable to totalitarianism.

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What to say to kids about fantasy

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Kids read and watch vast amounts of fantasy and make believe - many kids, (and I was one) find the world of fantasy more appealing than this world.

Indeed, it seems that this world - for all its distractions and excitements - is simply not enough.

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Kids want so much for the fantasy to be real.

They ask: But is it real?

(If not real here and now, is it real at some place and time, or could it become so?)

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So there is, on the one had, this world - which is not enough to satisfy the human spirit; and, on the other hand... what?

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There is the perspective which says nothing.

That this life is real and all there is, fantasy may be nicer, but it is make believe and exists only in your mind.

And if you don't like this life, then that's tough - your life will be a miserable waste of time.

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What can this perspective advise? There is only one thing: you must try to enjoy this life: it is absolutely imperative.

You must cease to yearn for the impossible, and make do with the attainable. The attainable may seem crumby - but that is all that is on-offer.

Grab and hold as much attainable pleasure as you can cram-in; don't waste a moment, fill your life with it (and use attainable pleasures to displace dissatisfaction and the yearnings).

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Yet if this advice succeeds, then all it achieves is to convert a miserable waste of time into a pleasurable waste of time.

Is that what we should tell our kids?

Is it true?

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For much of my adult life, especially the decade c 1998-2008, I was a sort-of Jungian; which was in fact not much different from the above.

As well as Jung, I  read deeply in James Hillman, Joseph Campbell, Daniel C Noel - and sampled 'new age' writers widely.

Although this Jungian view claimed to have solved the problem of meaningless this life versus meaningless fantasy, in fact the problem was still intact.

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The Jungian view has it that everything is psychology - nothing is outside of psychology - but psychology is shared.

Reality is wholly subjective, because the mind 'creates' everything; but not solipsistic exactly because the mind is (in some way) shared between people.

So, for Jung and his followers, everything is as-if. Fantasy is just as real as this life; but neither are realer than ideas in human heads.

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But if my own imaginations are inadequate for life, then so is Jung's psychology; because it merely expands the scope from my psychology to human psychology - but does nothing to affect reality - because reality is regarded as a product of psychology.

In effect, Jung says that delusional reality is the only reality, but asks us to be happy about this because at least the delusion is (to some extent) shared among all humans.

We are not alone in our delusions...

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Talking with a child makes one realize that while such tortuous abstractions may (apparently) satisfy adult intellectuals - they do not satisfy the basic human craving for reality.

Children want to know 'but is it real': they are at root not satisfied with make believe, even if that make believe can be sustained almost indefinitely by the abundance of modern media.

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A thought experiment.

Suppose you love The Lord of the Rings and were totally absorbed by it on first reading. Suppose you feel that the fantasy world of Tolkien is more real than this life.

Would it be enough to spend your whole life reading LotR?

Okay - you would get used to it, habituated, it would lose its effect...

But, supposing your memory was wiped between each reading; such that each time you read LotR it was like the first time and undiminished?

(Something of this type happens in certain forms of brain damage, and might in principle be possible with some technical interventions.)

Would that be enough?

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Ah, but you would know at the back of your mind that LotR was fantasy...

Suppose that that knowledge could be removed; suppose you dwelt in LotR as you read it - like an alternative or virtual reality, and unaware of the fact?

(Technically, this might too be possible - insight and awareness disappear in some psychotic illnesses - so they should be able to be abolished artificially.)

SO - you can read and re-read Lord of the Rings each time as fresh as the first, and this is taken to be this world in which you dwell - is it enough?

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Well, is it enough for the creature who actually dwell in Middle Earth? The Hobbits, Men, Elves, Dwarves, Ents?

Is Middle Earth enough for them?

Obviously not.

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So when a child yearns for the reality of fantasy, and implicitly recognizes the inadequacy of this life; in fact the fantasy is not itself an answer.

So this life does not satisfy, and the fantasy would not satisfy even if it became our own life (or was apparently our own life, by some kind of technical intervention - some kind of subtle brain damage).

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The child's yearning, sparked by fantasy, in in fact a profound statement of the human condition; and a heart-felt recognition of the inadequacy of this world, and of any imaginable world, to our desires.

At this level the problem is inevitable and insoluble.

The problem can, indeed, be solved only at a transcendental level; and in a manner which cannot be understood.

Just as any actually imaginable fantasy would leave us yearning; so we cannot imagine what would satisfy our yearning to be ourselves-yet-transformed in a world which was like this-world-but-transformed.

Yet that is precisely what we yearn for; and nothing less could or would ever satisfy.

That is what the child's question 'but is it real?' is telling us.

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Political correctness as pastoral idyll

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I think I perceive the roots of political correctness in the dreams of pastoral idyll - which happens to be one of my favourite dreams; a genre to which I am intensely susceptible.

The pastoral idyll... It is in Shakespeare's Love's Labours Lost and As You Like It - or before that in Robin Hood in the Greenwood; it is in the Romantics such as Wordsworth in the Lake District; it is in Emerson and Thoreau beside the slow Concord River or in a hut by Walden Pond; it is in (to name a contemporary favourite) John Hansen Mitchell's Scratch Flat - it is in real life too, especially between jobs and duties and on the best kind of holidays - time out of life.

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What is pastoral? And what (for Heavens sake!) could it have to do with the crushing totalitarian bureaucracy of political correctness?

The short answer is: dreaming of a life free from care, a life where nothing really bad can happen, but where we are harmlessly diverted by diversity.

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Eden on earth.

A life where we sink back into a kind of animal consciousness of the present - which (so far as we perceive) is a perpetual presence: such that although we may be mortal creatures, we are not aware of our mortality.

A wish to stop being self-conscious: to stop being human, indeed - to become part of the environment (and not an observer and manipulator of the environment).

And perhaps this is indeed how life actually was - much of the time - among simple hunter-gatherers. It is possible that this really was so.

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Both pastoral and PC imagine a life where our environment is benign.

There are no serious harms, nothing to disturb us.

An equality of difference (like Robin Hood and his Merry Men).

Yet not boring, not static: the pastoral idyll is diverse in the diversity of nature. Seasons, the multitude of plants and animals, the changing weather, contrasts of day and night (see Thoreau's Journals).

But all is good, all is for our potential benefit (if we could but perceive them properly, as we are supposed to). All things hold lessons for us, if we can rightly perceive them.

In the pastoral idyll we are each of us gods - we create ourselves and our own world, by the spirit in which we approach it.

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To live in an eternal present, with no past and no future, and eternity conceived as just more of the same; and death as unconscious - not something actually experienced because not part of life.

It is a trance-like, indeed dream-like state, aspired to.

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The shared features of pastoral and PC are therefore a benign environment including a diversity of stimuli (all of which are edifying).

The difference - and it is such a huge difference as to obscure these similarities - is that pastoral is a natural environment; while for PC the environment is wholly designed.

But both aspire to a universal acceptance that avoids any need for coercion of individuals: both pastoral and PC assume that in a benign environment, conflict will be dissolved.

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The gulf between pastoral and PC is the disillusionment which stands between the romantic era and moderns. The romantics believed that reality was good if properly approached; moderns are nihilists for whom there is no reality, and for whom good must be made not found.

Animists believe that the environment is benign, like a loving parent; but for PC the environment must be controlled to make it benign. Or rather, the perception of the environment must be controlled so that it will seem good.

At one time, for a while, nihilistic moderns believed that they could - as individual gods - self-create their own universe (the creative genius as cultural exemplar); but moderns lack this faith in their own capacities. They have found that (for whatever reason) it simply doesn't work.

And to be utterly dependent on oneself to provide meaning and purpose led to solipsistic despair.

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(To know that one created one's own reality, and that failure meant nothingness, no form, no meaning (nausea)... this is too overwhelmingly insecure a state to be ignored. It pressed continually upon life, interfering with living. This was existentialism, and it was too horrible to contemplate.) 

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So, since the individual seemed unable to create reality, this must be done by society.

Everyone must cooperate with everyone else in this task upon which everything depends; everyone must combine to create and maintain the illusion of purpose and meaning up to the singularity when we forget that it was a created illusion and it becomes inescapably perceived reality: as real as anything can be and with no perceived alternative.

And, to be secure and dependable, this cooperation must be managed, it must be controlled, formal, systematic, and human-proof.

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Political correctness aspires to an idyllic state that is fully immersive and lifelong; a virtual reality which is (according to modern metaphysics) subjectively indistinguishable from real-reality - real-reality which, anyway, is assumed to be a childish illusion, like the pastoral idyll.

PC regards itself as a mature illusion, not a childish one. The idyll of political correctness is not, therefore, an adventure playground of forests and rivers; but instead a wholly-managed, totalitarian bureaucratic state that guarantees benign diversity, among which we are free to move un-self-consciously - careless of past, future and eternity.

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