Bruce Charlton's Notions

The extended section when Jesus speaks of the Good Shepherd* comes halfway through the Fourth Gospel, and probably constitutes the heart of its teaching.

Here Jesus seems to be telling us the 'mechanism' by which he, personally, is offering us life everlasting; here he tells us by a long metaphor-parable just how-it-works.

It is about the Good Shepherd (and no other) saving his sheep from being killed; and we know from the rest of the Gospel that this means saving Man from death, by enabling resurrected life eternal in Heaven. The Good Shepherd leads his sheep through death to Heaven.

We hear about the two-sidedness of salvation: 'I know my sheep and are known of mine'. The Good Shepherd seeks us out, and we each recognise him.

On the one hand, fake shepherds (the hireling) cannot save. On the other hand, those who do not 'know' (believe-in, love, trust, have-faith-in) Jesus will not be saved.


What is led? The soul, after death. But why does it need to be led - why can't it find its own way to salvation? Because after death the soul becomes 'helpless', lacks agency - like a young child, a ghost, a sheep.

If unable to help itself, how then can the soul follow Jesus? Because - like a young child, or sheep - the dead soul still can recognise and love; and 'follow'.

Where does this happen? In the 'underworld'. Without Jesus, the disembodied, ghostly, demented dead souls wander like lost sheep - as described in pre-Christian accounts such as Hades of the Greeks, or Sheol of the Ancient Hebrews.  

But how does Jesus save the dead souls? Everybody has known Jesus as spirits in the premortal world, so everybody can recognise him in the underworld; but only those who love Jesus will want to follow him.

So loving dead souls are the sheep that can recognise Jesus: the Good Shepherd, they can follow Jesus, and Jesus can lead them to Resurrected Life Everlasting. 


Note: Souls that do not love Jesus will recognise him, but will not want to follow him. There are significant nuances to this, relating to love of 'neighbour' and the desires of individual souls; but that is the basic model. 

Further note: This seems to be very hard for moderns to grasp; they seem to think that Jesus ought-to save people even when they don't want it - should compel people to Heaven because that is what is good for them - and if Jesus does not do this, then he is wicked. 

But this attitude is totalitarian - based on the secular ideology of utilitarianism so beloved by the modern Establishment - who like to believe that (being wiser, cleverer and more virtuous people than the masses) they are 'managing' the world, 'for their own good'. 

But Christianity is based around the creative freedom and agency of each individual person. This means that nobody can be saved against their will; each individual can, if he wills, defy the wishes of God. Whether you regard this a a good thing (I do) it is a fact of post-mortal life - Heaven must be chosen. 

*John.10 [1] Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. [2] But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. [3] To him the porter openeth; and the sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out. [4] And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him: for they know his voice. [5] And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers. [6] This parable spake Jesus unto them: but they understood not what things they were which he spake unto them. [7] Then said Jesus unto them again, Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep. [8] All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers: but the sheep did not hear them. [9] I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture. [10] The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. [11] I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. [12] But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep. [13] The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep. [14] I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. [15] As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep. [16] And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd. [17] Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. [18] No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father. [19] There was a division therefore again among the Jews for these sayings. [20] And many of them said, He hath a devil, and is mad; why hear ye him? [21] Others said, These are not the words of him that hath a devil. Can a devil open the eyes of the blind? [22] And it was at Jerusalem the feast of the dedication, and it was winter. [23] And Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon's porch. [24] Then came the Jews round about him, and said unto him, How long dost thou make us to doubt? If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly. [25] Jesus answered them, I told you, and ye believed not: the works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me. [26] But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you. [27] My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: [28] And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.

If I am correct that the development of human consciousness will compel the collapse of civilisation, then it should be possible to say something about the kind of society that would eventually follow. In other words, I will project the nature of a society - here on earth, and with mortal Men - of Final Participation.

The present stage has been called the Consciousness Soul; and it is intensely individualistic compared with the societies of the past. In particular, our evaluations will be, need to be, and ought to be coming from our true selves; by intuition, primary thinking, direct knowing.


In the past, Group Selection of Men was a reality - we lived and died by virtue of our membership of groups; and this groupishness was an objective psychological reality. We could not help but regard ourselves as primarily members of a group - more exactly of nested groups: family, clan, nation etc. 

Groups that evoked the most powerful and courageous motivations would tend to prevail over the long term.

But in the modern era (beginning over the past few hundred years, and especially since about 1800) a new felt and experienced detachment developed (the evolution, from within, according to divine plan; of the Consciousness Soul).

Bottom-up, group-selected groups crumbled, because the mechanism that enabled group selection was removed. Modern groupishness is therefore top-down, necessarily coercive and imposed; it is totalitarian.

Therefore the war for the Consciousness Soul is between totalitarianism imposed-on the CS; and the stage that follows the CS - which is Final Participation. However, totalitarianism is self-destroying; so it will not last. We are concerned with what will come after.   


This means that the future of society will be based upon the cohesion of love: which means real, actual, effective, en-couraging love - of specific persons: family primarily, secondarily real and committed friends (currently so rare as to be almost extinct).

The society that emerges from such a bottom-up situation will presumably be the same in its structure as the societies that came before agriculture and civilisation. Low technology, probably illiterate, without strategic planning, no government, little differentiation of function except for that deriving from individuality, sex and age... Short lifespan, low density population, an immediate return economy of hunting, gathering and making for imminent use. In sum, a society much as (is believed to have) existed in the paleolithic era. 

What would be different is that while past societies were based upon the spontaneous, unconscious, groupishness of Original Participation; a state of 'immersive Being' --- the society of Final Participation would be one based on the experienced conviction that reality is to be found in the universality and objectivity of conscious thinking.

If the ancient paleolithic Original Participation society was based on instinct; the future society of Final Participation would be based on intuition.


There seem to be problems with this vision of the future. There is an economic problem, since efficient extraction of food and resources seems to be precluded. Hence the necessarily low density of sustainable population. Problems would be solved on a case by case basis, in accordance with individual circumstances - location, season, personnel etc.

But in FP, there would be no system or formula - answers would Not be the  same every time, nor the same for all people. People would Just Know what specifically to do here and now and for the best; whereas in OP people Just Did what needed to be done; without knowing why. All decisions would be made on this intuitive basis.

To move to this society can be resisted. It is a basic social situation that may (by the collapse of all possible alternatives) be imposed on an unwilling population who deny intuition and who damn themselves.

Or such a society may arise quite naturally from Romantic Christians doing the right things, making the right evaluations on the right basis; and rejecting the side of evil.

There is nothing the modern demon loves more than to ensnare people into discussing abstractions.

To trap one group of people inside an abstractions such as racism or climate change (two of the most successful) - and then to suck-in more people to analysing, reframing, by re-defining what racism and climate change Really are (or ought to be). The business goes on forever.

Now that the evil-abstraction-mongers control almost the entirety of the communications system - from the mass media, through publishing and retail; to schools universities and research institutions - intellectual Life seems to have become a continual 'defence' against being-trolled with ridiculous wicked nonsense (equality, diversity, feminism, white nationalism/ supremacy...) that 'cries out' for our immediate and personal clarification and correction...

Yet this never does any good, and the 'need' for it never ends...

And then suddenly death looms, and we realise that have wasted our lives discussing The Enemy's agenda...

Just exactly as They wanted us to...


Note: of course (as well as abstractions) there is A Lot of trolling with specific egregious concrete abuses against Christians (especially - and the not-sufficiently-Left more generally); and much of the anti-Left media do considerable harm (overall) by linking to these, and by thus maintaining a continuous, daily diet of Their agenda. There are some benefits from developing a critique of standard strategies of evil, by decoding and reframing news stories - for example. But overall - since This Never Stops - drawing continuous attention to abuses amounts to a (mostly-inadvertent) collusion with the agenda of the Enemy. Which is one reason why I try to avoid topical discussions here, especially of the "Look at this stupid/evil!" type.

Further Note: A double-negative is different-from a positive; because only a positive induces sustaining courage. We have a lot more double-negative propaganda than is good for us; and it doesn't add-up to anything substantive - as can be observed. Double-negative thinking, at best, induces fear-driven desperation - not courage. But sustained fear is susceptible to habituation (the same dose loses effect), and paralyses rather than energizes. That is why only 'religion' can save us; because Men are innately religious creatures. Without religion we are fatally and incurably maimed - but any saving religion simply must be believed. To plan an 'expedient' religion, 'designed' to save civilization, will fail with 100% certainty; will, indeed, make matters worse quicker.  

If Murphy's favourite hammer has had both its head and its haft replaced several times over its long lifetime - is this still Murphy's favourite hammer? Or is it really a completely different hammer?

I think the 'dilemma', here, is between what we feel, as an unexamined intuition ('it's the same hammer'); and the difficulty of framing an abstract philosophical justification for why it is indeed still the same hammer - despite that everything about it has been replaced.

Properly considered, this is a very deep question indeed; and unless we have a 'theory' that explains why it is still the same hammer, then our metaphysics Must Be wrong.

Because what applies to the hammer applies to persons: applies to specific men and women Christianly-considered. We know that nothing makes sense about anything unless we are the same person through time; yet we also know that potentially everything about us may change, probably should change, as we undergo theosis - as we progress towards deity.

Probably, nearly all of our microscopic body is replaced through life; and even the cells that do last 'a lifetime' (neurons, myocytes) were not there at conception. The entire body is presumably replaced at the chemical level. And the mind of a zygote, morula, embryo, neonate, child, adult, senescent person... well this may have transformed wholly and more than once; leaving aside the re-formation of death and resurrection.

One attempted solution is to posit an eternal and unchanging 'spirit' that persists through all physical and psychological changes. But this, I believe, rules out any fundamental change. All change is rendered superficial - while our core essence is static, by definition  - or else it would not be The Same. This renders theosis trivial - hence I reject it.

There is, however (you will not be surprised to hear) a metaphysical philosophy that can readily explain why Murphy's hammer is still his favourite, and why a person can have literally everything about him (body and soul) replaced (in the process of spiritual progression to full deity) - and yet he or she will still remain the same person.

Mormon theology is based on evolutionary development as a core assumption, which entails that Time is always included in any ultimate analysis, which means (to jump a few steps) that every 'thing' is 'defined' as an uninterrupted lineage, extending through-time.This is one of its great strengths.

So that fact that at two different cross-sectional moments, the same 'thing' may have Nothing in-common, does not matter.

This is an aspect of what I understand by 'polarity' based on process of '-ing'. Or, more simply, a conscious and explicit version of the spontaneous 'animistic' spirituality of children and hunter-gatherers; a metaphysics based on Beings and Relationships in Time. 


The above is based on a recent post at Junior Ganymede.

Some will not yet have heard the surviving lecture and Q&A session by William Arkle - Discovering your soul's purpose - given in (I think) Yeovil, Somerset around 1990, when Arkle was in his middle sixties.

This was delivered to the Wessex Research Group, which began in the 1980s as a New Age 'coalition'; as part of which lectures from many speakers were organised, recorded and later made available free online.

The founders of the WRG were upper-class esoteric Christians such as Sir George Trevelyan, Canon Harold Blair and his son Nigel (who is usually present at the recordings); but their selection of speakers includes a much wider range of not-necessarily-Christian themes: Channelling, UFOs, Crop Circles, Atlantis, Ley Lines, Alternative Healing, Perennial (Eastern flavoured) Philosophy etc...

Their old website has been down for a year or so, and therefore Arkle's lecture was temporarily unavailable - but now a new website is emerging, and the lecture has just come back online.

I find this glimpse of Arkle's 'style' very valuable in many ways, and recommend it.

Q: If life after biological-death is real, how come we don't know about it for sure?

A: But we do know about it, every one of us - because such knowledge is inborn.

As young children, up to about age five, we knew that biological death was not the end; indeed it does not occur to young children that death would be extinction, annihilation, an end followed by nothing at all...

At about the age of five, there is often a realisation of death; of the fact that people die - that we may ourselves die and leave this world, or that people we love may die and be taken from us. But even then, death is seldom regarded as final.

How about knowing For Sure?

Well, what we do Not know for sure is what happens after death - since there are many theories (e.g. many variants of reincarnation, and many ideas of the nature of an eternal destination - underworlds, paradises, heavens).

This multiplicity of opinions concerning the exact nature of post-mortal experience may itself be a cause of doubting the reality of any kind of life beyond death. Many use this unsureness as a reason to reject their innate knowledge of survival.

Or, perhaps there really are a multiplicity of destinations, depending on the individual, and reflecting what exactly he or she most genuinely wants (as well as what is possible)? 

However, setting aside this uncertainty; we should recall the qualitative fact that everybody has a built-in assumption that death is Not the end.

If we at some point personally decide to reject what we already know, for whatever justification; we are of course free to do so. But we should not then 'blame' the deity for 'failing to have told us' the basic fact of the matter!

I have recently managed to buy perhaps the last ever reasonably-priced copy of JC Powys's last worthwhile (albeit crazy - but that goes without saying) book of essays - Obstinate Cymric (1947).

It includes an essay on Joyce's Finnegans Wake, which makes for an interesting contrast between two very different great novelists. Surprisingly, to me, Powys rates pretty FW highly, and specifically higher than Ulysses; whereas I regard FW as a shallow, tedious waste of time; whereas Ulysses, although mostly a STWOT, contains considerable stretches of wonderful prose.

But, (although I couldn't do it) it would probably be interesting to do a proper comparison of JCP's Glastonbury Romance, and Ulysses as two very different, worthy but failed, attempts at writing the Great Novel of the Twentieth Century. Both aspire to a kind of completeness of panorama; Joyce by going outward in all directions from the microcosm of three person's detailed perceptions and thoughts; Powys by distilling the macrocosm into persons.

I think of Joyce as pouring all his massive talent into trying to live wholly by-and-in Art. Plenty of others tried. All failed, although Joyce managed to succeed On paper - in the sense that he was able to write About people who lived almost-wholly inside Art. He couldn't remotely do it himself - and he was, indeed, rather a small and petty man. Which is the ultimate reason for his none-greatness as a novelist - he had the technique, but not the wisdom; could write like an angel, but had nothing to write about except his own resentments.

( A more recent version of the same combination as Joyce would be Saul Bellow.)

Powys had even more hang-ups than Joyce, or at least weirder ones; but he had a much larger and more complex soul and knew that the key issue of 'modern man' was his alienation; and that thoughtful Men yearned more than anything to re-connect with Life. Although Powys wrote very overtly about himself; he lacks Joyce's in-your-face-egotism, he is not motivated by petty resentments; Powys has that generous and appreciating spirit of the kind variously associated with Chaucer and Rabelais: he loves 'characters', eccentrics and odd-balls. 

So if Joyce tried to lose himself in Art, to write from inside it; Powys tried to produce Art by spontaneous inspiration by drawing it from The World. Joyce was a consummate craftsman; Powys certainly wasn't, nor did he wish to be.

It is always a fact of Art, when judged at the very highest level, that it is constrained by the Artist. Only a great person can produce great art; and most of the best novels are limited by the limitations of their authors, rather than by lack of artistry. Neither Joyce nor Powys could produce wrok of the first rank for this reason - but while Joyce was limited by his nature, and could accomplish everything of which he was (in principle) capable; Powys was limited mainly by his competence - he was capable of a great deal more than he could actually achieve.

England were horribly thrashed by Australia in the first test - and at England's 'fortress' of the Edgbaston ground in Birmingham. But - in a way - I was glad, because the selection of the England team was so horrible, that they did not deserve anything else.

England's Test selection in the 1990s was horrible, in the sense of choosing dozens of players, many debutants; often playing them just once, and without any idea whether they would have gone on to become good. (Not many players thrive at the highest level without undergoing a period of acclimatisation and learning.) And, naturally, poor results eventuated from poor selection.

Over the past few years, we have gone to a ridiculous opposite extreme, when players who have been performing terribly for more than a year still don't get replaced; while, by contrast, others who have played very well are dropped. When batters are played as bowlers and vice versa, when 'all rounders' are defined as those who are all-round inadequate at the basic disciplines of batting, bowling and wicket-keeping (especially the last). Meanwhile, the results have dropped back to the level of the 1990s; in particular (cushioned somewhat by the presence of one of the all time greatest bowlers: James Anderson.)


The explanation is that the Test team (and its coach and selectors) has become a gang; and players who fit-into the gang are retained no matter how badly they play for long periods; while those who (apparently) don't fit-in are ejected at the first excuse, or no excuse at all, to make way for the gang members to return.

The blame lies with the coach, selectors and captain; and I don't see much hope until these are replaced. After every further, routine, truly appalling, batting collapse - the reprise is always on the lines of: "We won't panic; there will be no knee-jerk reactions" - which decodes as "We will continue to select 'the gang', and to exclude the capable."

Consequently I find that I dislike most of the current England Test players; either because they are part of the gang, or sometimes merely because they are undeserving beneficiaries of the anti-meritocratic policies.


Cricket (like baseball) is a very statistical game; and we live in an era when the use of  statistical analysis (the 'Moneyball' approach, so called from the superb baseball book) has reached new levels of sophistication. Yet - for the past few years - England selection doesn't just ignore, but actively contradicts what is known from statistics. The word for this is corruption; because corruption can be detected with confidence when personal factors outweigh merit, functionality, performance, and excellence.

As recently as a generation ago, England used-to-be one of the least corrupt of nations; a nation that exported integrity. This integrity came from the the middling people - the skilled working class and middling middle classes (the Nonconformists, in general).

But since the middle 90s (under the generic influence of Christian apostasy and Political Correctness) we have been corrupting as fast as our (always corrupt) Upper Class have been able to lead us, with the pervasive excuse of pandering to the underclass and the mass influx of recent immigrants (both of which the leadership encourage and sustain).

This has been enabled by the insignificant yet utterly 'converged' trainwreck that is current anti-Christian Nonconformism, and the sexualised and intoxicated hedonic materialism of British people generally. The middling people (in short, the Brexit supporters) remain the most decent of us; but they are gutless, gullible and distractable; as de facto atheists inevitably will be. 

Since Test cricket is a microcosm of Life; it is inevitable - as well as depressing - that the general tenor of national Life manifests in the way that the Test cricket team is managed. 
  
  

I've been listening to my penfriend Keri Ford's reading (in his inimitable, fascinating New Zealand dialect!) of John Cowper Powys's early (1915) essay collection Visions and Revisions on the Librivox site:

https://librivox.org/visions-and-revisions-by-john-cowper-powys/

Despite being so early in his oeuvre, this book is full of Powys's typically original and surprising insights (and his craziness, of course); and I have been especially bowled-over by his psychological understanding of Nietzsche - which makes sense of this strange yet compelling philosopher whom I have been reading (off and on, albeit mostly off) for some 35 years.

In a nutshell, Powys sees Nietzche as abnormally sensitive to suffering, and his project as a need to know the worst possible about Life, and to accept it.

So N. put forward and developed a series of ideas that he personally found to be the most horrible and horrifying aspects of his experience. He stated these as truths, explored their implications; then (in effect) Nietzsche challenged himself to accept, and indeed embrace, these distinctively personal horrors as positive Goods.

So, for example, the idea of eternal recurrence - by which every life, every specific event, is (supposedly) recycled and relived again-and-again forever; meant that everything that most horrified Nietzsche could never be coped-with, would become utterly intolerable; unless he was able to embrace it as not merely necessary but positively Good, indeed the best possible.

Ultimately Life as is, Just Is; and we must choose to Love it.

This strikes me as a similar end-point as was reached by Charles Williams in his essay The Cross; although CW reached his view from a 'Platonic' perspective that all time is present at all times, so that the worst that any human has ever suffered is always happening everywhere (e.g. Christ Is Being crucified as you read This; and again Now).

Nietzsche, as well as being a very strange and strangely-driven person; was an extremely rigorous thinker; who took a sadistic delight in following ideas through to unpleasant conclusions. But the sadism was ultimately self-directed - and led to insanity and silence (abetted by syphilis).

The reason N. was and is highly regarded as a philosopher, is that something very much of this kind was a genuine consequence of mainstream classical philosophy and theology; Nietzsche saw, and experienced, this unwelcome truth with absolute lucidity; which in turn (thanks to his unexcelled quality of prose) carries conviction.

The Answer to Nietzsche, as I understand it, is to regard the mainstream as erroneous; and to embrace instead some kind of developmental pluralism (as I have done over the past five plus years).

And this was, indeed, what JC Powys attempted to do, explicitly; although Powys failed to achieve it, and instead got stuck in a failed attempt at reverting to Original Participation*, ultimately because of his rejection of the reality of God as a loving Father and creator; which rejection stemmed from an awareness that this was what he most deeply wanted and knew must be true if his totally-despairing conclusion was to be avoided.

For Nietzsche; the fact that a properly understood Christianity was The Only Possible Answer, was sufficient reason to reject it - since this meant that it was too good to be true+.


*Note: Many Romantics over the past 200 years have attempted to 'revert' to an early childhood/ hunter gatherer state of unconscious, passive, immersive participation in The World - but it is impossible. Or, insofar as it is possible, it cannot be remembered, nor advocated - precisely because it is un-conscious and passive; it entails the obliteration of conscious thinking. People can only get back as far as totemism; which is the earliest and simplest phase of ordinary religion. Totemism (as of Australian Aborigines, or Pacific Northwest Amerindians) is a communal religious practice, that deploys symbols (the totems) and a fixed body of stories about-them; preserved in a ritual oral tradition. Powys describes his personal subjective totemism in considerable detail in his Autobiography. It involved daily observances (eg tapping his forehead against a specific stone, and praying to one of his deities) and extensive propitiation ceremonies (e.g. transferring fish from small drying puddles to larger volumes of water). 'Paradoxically' these imply the early stages of exactly the kind of mainstream, conventional church religion that Powys deplored; those temple religions based on ritual sacrifices designed to placate essentially-malign deities. Similar types of totemism were written about by DH Lawrence. It seems to me that to refuse objective external church Christianity, but advocate subjective individualistic internally-validated totemism, is to jump from the frying pan into the fire. This 'move' fails to solve the main problems of religion and instead exacerbates them, by privatising doctrine and practice.

+ This, in turn, implies that Nietzsche was saved, that he chose Heaven not Hell. Because when, after death, Nietzsche learned that Christianity was really true, not TGTBT, he would certainly have embraced that truth; and done so with a joy and gratitude that we can scarcely imagine.      

Joan Sutherland makes - to my ear - the most beautiful sound I have ever heard from a human being; on top of which her technique and upper range are unsurpassed; and (perhaps most importantly) her musical phrasing is gorgeously lyrical. Just singing this stuff is a major achievement, but there is a level beyond. 

Like a lot of Italian Opera, Caro Nome is mainly a vehicle for the singer - although it comes from Verdi's Rigoletto which is a powerful, pathetic (i.e. full of pathos) and indeed (to my mind) horrible melodrama.

It starts out quite innocently, as a simple - rather banal - tune; but that is just to lull us. Once it gets-going with elaborating and decorating the melody...

And Sutherland saves a treat from the end, the 'walk-off' high note with the most extraordinary trill, that demonstrates what I mean by Sutherland's musicality of phrasing. Most professional singers would be more than happy simply to be able to do a straightforward trill (and many can't) but Sutherland rounds-out with... well, listen. 

I am now sure that our 'civilisation' is going to end soon; and also that this is a necessary thing because of the great evil that we are attempting (satanic transhumanist totalitarianism).

There is not the critical mass of well-motivated and courageous people necessary to salvage society - indeed, there are not enough such to be called a 'mass' - which is another way of saying that very nearly everybody is on the wrong side.

There isn't much awareness of this; partly due to two sins masquerading as virtues: these are clutching at straws and giving the benefit of the doubt to the powers of evil.


An example of clutching at straws is the pathetic belief that people who are on the 'moderate' wing of the wrong side will somehow 'save us' - even though these people do not even want to save us. Examples would be Donald Trump and Boris Johnson.

All Christians know that Hope is a virtue; and fake Christians may use this to defend their own delusional refusal to acknowledge what they, deep down, know to be the case. Consequently, they embrace the lie of virtuality - which is just about the worst and most anti-Christian thing that they could do. 


This also links to 'the benefit of the doubt' - which is the justification for failing to acknowledge the reality of purposive evil, even as it stares you in the face - often because evil dishonestly, and however incoherently or implausibly, claims good motivations.

This is most evident when a new leader arrives at an institution or in a bureaucracy. Despite that all leaders of all significant social institutions are actively evil and that bureaucracy is intrinsically evil; there is always a call to give the new bass 'the benefit of the doubt', and 'a chance'.

But there is no doubt (or no grounds for reasonable doubt). So, what this means in practice is to collaborate in evil under the pretence that it might actually be good. 

Even worse, nowadays, even when agents of evil state exactly what evils they are intending to do, and make clear their own wicked reasons for doing it; too many people nevertheless excuse their own compliance with such evil will - on the grounds that 'They don't really mean it...'.


At root; such excuses are merely thinning disguises either for moral cowardice, or for sharing the objectives of the virtuality.

And its about time that serious Christians recognised them as such. In such times we need to know our enemy - even, or especially, when that enemy is almost-everybody-else, and when the enemy is treacherously pretending to be a friend.


Note: I suppose that it behoeves me to state what - if not clutching at straws nor giving the B. of the D. to servants of evil - I suppose that Hope really is... My answer is that Hope is ultimately the faith, belief and trust that we will (by love) personally attain to eternal resurrected life in Heaven, as promised by Jesus Christ; and (inextricably related to that), that this world is God's creation, with all that entails.

JC Powys (1872-1963) - opening sentence of Obstinate Cymric (a collection of essays published in 1947)

**

The last twenty-eight years of his life, John Cowper - a good deal of a defiant invalid, resorting nervously to his eternal cigarette and often subsisting on such detestable fare as milk and raw duck eggs [to ease his duodenal ulcer] - lived in almost uninterrupted retirement in Wales. 

He strove with what stubbornness there was in his fluid make-up to persuade himself he was Welsh! Since the second year of the century he had fallen deeper and deeper under the spell of a race-illusion more harmless than Hitler's but quite as irrational.

However, characteristically, Powys delighted in identifying himself with a conquered race.  

In reality his ancestry for many generations had been predominantly English; and the traces for the Celt in his character and disposition are extremely slight. And his long seclusion among the mountains and his intensive study of Cymric cultures resulted in little or no change in his real outlook.

Edited from John Cowper Powys: Old Earth Man, a critical biography by HP Collins, 1966, page 170.

**

This kind of race-illusion is a sub-species of the life-illusions, or secret fantasy identities, that many - or most people apparently harbour and live-by. The difference (as usual with JCP) is the uninhibited, self-conscious way that Powys wrote about such matters, and his cheerful assertions that that they were indeed illusions - or self-delusions.

My understanding is that these are ways in which people try to cope with that alienation which is intrinsic to the materialism of the modern age. They (we, most likely) elaborate a parallel world, generally of a more child-like, primitive, spontaneous, immersive, unselfconscious, natural or rural kind - some inner attempted version of what Barfield terms Original Participation.

Indeed, Powys pursued this quest for Original Participation with greater and more sustained intensity than any other writer I know of. he was indeed one of the most thorough-going Romantics in history. So his many and varied books (the autobiography, the major novels, essays, philosophy, diaries and letters) give an unsurpassed, and extraordinarily detailed, account of his successes... and the limitations of his success.

Before I was a Christian, I tried (more than once) to grasp and implement Powys's ideas in my own life. But I could not make them work; and Powys himself did not really make them work (as can be seen in his diaries).

This was an important lesson: for me really to be a Romantic, I must be Christian. But/And also - to be a Christian, I must be a Romantic - in a way that includes much of the spirit that drew me to the philosophy of JCP.

The crucial difference is that living-by-illusion, is transformed-into living-towards-reality.

This is the vital question asked by William Wildblood at his blog.

He concludes:

Death is the summation of life and should be completely accepted. If you submit to God's will in this matter and resign yourself to his keeping in humility then whatever you may or may not have done in your life you will be all right. The creature is returning to the Creator and that is a tremendous thing to be faced with a sense of awe but also wonder and excitement. It is only the person who rejects his Creator who need fear death.

My impression is that the mainstream attitudes to death are:

1. I never want to die and I won't think about it. I will do everything in my power to stay alive.

And/ Or:

2. I want to die quickly and painlessly, with total annihilation of consciousness, as soon as I stop enjoying life.

The main agents of hope are technology. On the one hand massive technologies of life support and intensive therapy to sustain life - many people wanting to 'live forever' (at any cost, even if as only a brain, or a computer download).

On the other, escalating propaganda and demands for a comprehensive bureaucratic system to provide painless killing on demand (euthanasia).

It may be helpful to consider God (the creator, the creat-ing) as, from our perspective, a polarity.

We know God directly and personally in two ways - from outside and from inside: that is, we know God from inspiration (e.g. of the Holy Ghost), and from intuition of the divine within each Man.

The idea of polarity is that both external and internal divine elements are always necessarily present, because we are dealing with an active 'process', ongoing through time; and the polarities are twin poles of that process, generated-by that process.

So God (the divine) is not a structural, separable thing (which would be static, dead, unmoving), but God is a person - and as a person God extends through time.

And we are involved-with God by our inheritance as children of God: we each are, in essence, divine - so we too are (abstractly) processes through time.


We have the divine within each of us (the True Self) and God is also outside of us (as persons, in God and in Men). So there is a kind-of Divine Web - of individuals divine selves in relation with all other divine selves.

In other words, fundamentally, reality is beings in relationships.

As Man has developed to become more conscious, he begins at one pole by being 'inspired' primarily by external sources of divinity; and as Man grows in consciousness he is supposed-to move, voluntarily and by choice, to the other pole of living primarily from personal intuition of his True Self.

This is also a movement from passivity to activity; from being-controlled to being free. 


So, the completeness of divinity is always when external divinity meets with inner divinity; but in a child or in early Man the external source of divinity was primary; and each man was unconsciously, passively driven-by the external. In such a situation, obedience to the authority of external divinity was the primary virtue; and the primary sin was to rebel against divinity.

As Man's consciousness grows (partly by development in his mortal life, partly at a species level and through human history) he becomes more aware of the distinction between himself and external deity. At a certain point (the culmination of spiritual adolescence), he experiences the reality of separation between external deity and the True Self.

At this point, experience of the polarity of deity is lost; because the experience is a static 'moment' of awareness, insight, 'enlightenment' - an epiphany - the truth of which is true in an abstract cross-sectional way (at a particular moment, 'outisde' of time); but the experience of separation from divinity is untrue in terms of life really being longitudinal, experienced through time.

The reality is that the dynamic process of polarity is always the case - and each man is always a meeting between external and internal divinity; but a snap-shot experience of a dynamic process is a 'frozen moment', in which the dynamic and reciprocal relationship is lost.


Man's divine destiny is to move from the child-like, un-free pole of external and passive immersion-in deity, to the free-agent, grown-up pole of working primarily from our own inner divine True Self. But because these are poles, both sides are always actually present.

So, the divine world begins as dominated by God, with Men as little-conscious (and other even less conscious beings), unconsciously and spontaneously (almost wholly, albeit never quite fully so - because this is a polarity) doing what God directs; and through time moving towards a situation in which some Men are much more powerfully conscious, and have chosen to live in mostly from their own inner divinity.

Instead of being unconsciously and passively directed-by God; such men have consciously and actively chosen to work from their independent agency and with God.

And this is the evolutionary movement from inspiration (primarily, not entirely, external divine guidance) to intuition (primarily, not entirely, inner divine guidance).


When we consciously choose to live primarily from the polarity of our True (and divine) self and with God, this is to become our-selves divine (albeit in a much less-continuous and less-able way than the creator). We become active participants in the process of creation.

And at a personal level, we become something more like God's grown-up 'adult' children; and friends (or 'junior colleagues') of God in his work of creation.


This is the plan of creation. God loves all his children - both the young one, the grown-up ones, and the (many) adolescents somewhere in between. But God certainly wants and hopes to have other 'adult' divinities with whom to relate in a loving and comnpanionable fashion; because grown-up divinities are working mainly from their unique selves.

When at least some of God's children choose to grow-up and join with God in the work of loving creation; divine creation becomes an harmonious interaction of increasing complexity and richness, as compared with the original and lesser situation of unitary, top-down control.


In sum, God wants us to participate, actively and consciously, in the process of creation.

And to do this we need to become more conscious, and by this consciousness to choose to live primarily from our inner divinity.

Yet, because of polarity, because inspiration and intuition are poles of the same single process; this inner motivation is necessarily harmonised with all other external sources of divinity.

Thus the universe of creation coheres.

 

In the current Ashes, Australia are fielding the three convicted cheats - ex-captain Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft.

These were regarded as the three major people most responsible for a scheme illegally to sandpaper one side of the cricket ball - which is a way to make the ball swing (i.e. swerve) as it goes through the air. Bancroft was caught on camera doing this (with yellow sandpaper), although trying to hide what he was doing; and the thing eventually came-out. The scheme had been discussed in a team meeting, and the was agreed by Smith, the captain; and Warner taught Bancroft 'how to do it'.


During the course of uncovering - the cheating was morally compounded by initial, bare-faced, dishonest denials of any wrong-doing. And then (crocodile-) tearful (pseudo-) remorse only after it was clear that the evidence of cheating was absolutely solid. Eventually, the players served various periods of bans, and are now back in action as before.

If you think this episode is insignificant; I should make clear that Steve Smith is the best batter in the world at present, and is solidly en route to becoming the second best batter in the entire history of cricket (after another Australian, perhaps the most famous Australian ever - probably the most outstanding team-sports player ever: Sir Donald Bradman). Warner is the best opening batsman in the world at present, Bancroft is more of a rookie at the top level.


It is important to remember that this was not a spur of the moment action, but a group planned scheme; and when caught doing it, the response was not to 'come clean', nor even to say nothing, but to lie.

Another fact has been neglected - Warner taught Bancroft to do something that had clearly been done before, presumably by Warner; and the kind of thing that the whole team would have known about. It is a strong inference that this was just the latest episode in a longer-term program of systematic cheating by the team. 


Cricket (as a sport) seems unable to understand this episode, and unable to formulate the correct response.

At one extreme, the partisan Ashes crowd in Birmingham are roundly booing all the cheats at every opportunity.


Quite reasonably, most people regard booing as unsportsmanlike, and tending to spoil enjoyment.  It seems right that great achievement (such as Smith's literally great performance on the first day of the match) should be acknowledged with polite applause, not boos; even if not with enthusiasm.

At the other extreme, the commentators and journalists are... ambivalent. Presumably because the cricket professionals want to see the best players actually playing (which is fair enough); the cricket professionals seem to have adopted an attitude is that the lads 'made a mistake', but now have 'served their time' - and we should now forget about the whole sordid episode (which attitude is wrong).

Consequently, there are calls for Smith to be allowed to become Australia's captain again (at present he has a permanent prohibition against becoming captain). And Durham County Cricket club (my local First Class team) employed Bancroft as their overseas player and captain as soon as his ban was finished.


What the cricket professions seem unable to recognise is that the fact of someone have been engaged in a carefully planned scheme of cheating tells you something important about that person's nature, as a person.

It tells you that that person is A Cheat.

The denials of wrongdoing, until the evidence became undeniable, tells you that that person is A Liar.


To know that a person is both A Cheat and A Liar is to know something very important about that person. Because it is a matter of personality, of character.

Many people are cheats and liars, under pressure, on the spur of the moment; but only a subset of cheats are cold-blooded. Some cheats try and get away with stuff; but when the cheating comes to light they apologise (even if they may not admit their culpability) - but others (like these) will brazenly, calculatedly lie.

Of course these are young men, and young men may change as they mature. That is true. But these events are still fresh, and in the absence of anything that looks like repentance (quite the reverse) we must assume that these are basically the same people now as they were when they cheated.

Certainly, there can be no presumption that these are now changed men, simply because they have been punished!

So although it seems fair to allow the players to resume their careers, and this will benefit the sport; that does not mean they resume with 'a clean slate'; because now we know things about these young men that we should not ignore. 

Taking this into consideration, it is surely wrong to give any position of responsibility or leadership to someone known to be a liar and a cheat.


This episode is typical of a general problem in our society, which comes from a very deep error. That error is to regard life in legalistic terms; and therefore to ignore what used to be common sense about human character and behaviour. In law, a person is punished, and then it stops and the law has (officially) no further concern - but in life that may be very unwise. In law a person's guilt of a specific crime begins with a presumption of innocence - but in life we need to take into account what we know of a person. 

People used to know without having it spelled out that past behaviour predicts future behaviour; or that (often) behaviour derives from character. Nowadays, quite the opposite; there seems to been some vague idea that punishment has a moral effects of purifying character. (As if ex cons were moral exemplars.)

Some things that a person does, tell us that here is a person who does that kind of thing. A just punishment is a punishment - it is not primarily or necessarily a deterrent, and it certainly is not a way of reforming someone. Indeed, to have been punished for a crime is a strong predictor of that person repeating the crime - simply because he has proved that he is the kind of person who will commit that kind of crime.


Those who have been (justly) punished (as here) are (in general) worse people than those who have not done things that needed to be punished.

This is, surely, what getting to know somebody is all about. We have got to know important things about these Australian players, and perhaps also the team they played-for. And this is not something that should be forgotten or ignored - even though the players may continue to succeed at the highest level.

It is not uncommon for someone to be highly talented, even a genius, and also at the same time a liar and a cheat. Surely that isn't too difficult to understand?

For most of recorded history institutions came first, and the individual had to fit-into, or fit-around institutions, as best he could. Not so here and now: all institutions are dying.

Nowadays, anything done to save institutions will contribute to killing them.

We can debate why all institutions are dying; but my inference is that it must be due to deep and purposive reasons. I am becoming ever more convinced that this is ultimately part of the development of human consciousness and therefore an aspect of divine destiny.


However, the powers are evil are, of course, using the situation to their net-advantage; so in context of materialist modernity the decline of institutions confronts us as overall A Bad Thing.

Things would have been very different had The West not taken the path of secular, hedonic materialism, had the West chosen Romantic Christianity...

But we did what we did: and here we are.


The principles by which conservatives assert the primacy of institutions are Not Really True; and ultimately they know it. It becomes harder every year to assert the primacy of institutions, no matter what grounds of authority are asserted for this; those authorities crumble.

The attempted fusion of transcendental good with bureaucracy - which underpinned the agrarian-era state, guilds, professions and the like; does not work anymore - because it is not (and never was) really true.

Likewise the absolute necessity of specific rituals, specific lineages; the unique and vital power of symbols... all these are chronically dying under the sustained critical eye of increased consciousness. 

More exactly, as Pascal remarked 400 years ago in his Pensees; the truth and primacy of institutional truth was a contingent product of lack of thought, lack of consciousness; it was a product of unexamined good habits - now gone, as soon as examined, as soon as questioned.

And good (virtuous, beautiful, true) new or restored habits cannot 'consciously become unconscious'; cannot become, again, unexamined-hence-solid.

So we have flawed institutions, institutions that lack objective authority; we know all-too-well that they rest upon contingent factors, open to interpretation, dependent upon human consciousness - that is not stable nor functionally agreed; not dependable.


But neither are institutions reformable. To try and reform existing institutions in an age of dying authority and objectivity, is like trying to rebuild a leaky ship with rotten boards...

We knock-out the bad old planks, and hammer-in newer ones; but the replacement planks are already defective; and will rapidly burst free of their nails, or bodily splinter from their intrinsic weakness.

Thus although progressives claim to reform institutions for the modern era; their changes are invariably destructive. Because when the whole public world is going rotten, there is nothing good to repair-with.


This is our Catch-22: In this post-institutional age; conservatives are wrong because institutions cannot be conserved - and therefore never are actually conserved; while progressives are wrong because institutions cannot be reformed - and all attempts at reform are always destructive.

We are damned if we do, and damned if we don't.


When institutions have 'had their time' - when they are no longer sustained by the quality of Men's minds - they Will Not survive.

The question then becomes: If not - Then what? If not institutions, then what will be the principle of organisation?

I have elsewhere stated that this must be 'family', but not biological families held-together by links of genetic descent - these (like institutions) depend upon the spontaneous, unexamined, habitual behaviours that are now impossible. It would need to be 'transcendental' families - families in a religious sense; that religious sense being known as real, objective, and permanent.

And we are so very far from such a situation; that it seems likely our dying and destruction has still a long way to go...

I don't suppose many will recognise the above picture - but it had something of an iconic status in and around the city of Bristol when I was a schoolboy in that vicinity. It held pride of place in the city museum and art gallery and was on the cover of a small popular history of Bristol we had at home.

Yet/ And, the painting is actually a kind-of pastiche - an apotheosis of the Look and Learn illustration school although without the historical accuracy for which L&L strove. Also, I can't explain why the 'church' in the top right corner looks exactly-like the Wills Memorial Building, begun only some years after this picture was painted... maybe Board had seen the plans?...


The painting is The Departure of John and Sebastian Cabot on their First Voyage of Discovery, 1497 - and was done by a rather obscure artist called Ernest Board in the 1900s - indeed, it seems to be the only good painting he ever did.

Because this is a good painting; very pleasing in its details, colours, composition - the epitome of 'pageantry' to my mind; albeit (as was the case with the departure of Cabot) on a small scale. And a subject worthy of depiction - since Cabot discovered North America, and therefore is deserving of a significant share of the (surely?) excessive adulation given to Columbus.

In Bristol - a great and ancient city that nonetheless feels itself rather short of claims-to-fame - Cabot is still remembered; mainly through a strange eponymous tower built in a landscaped park shortly before Ernest Board's painting was done - and likely associated with its commissioning.

Presumably, the late-Victorian Bristolians had decided to emphasise their Medieval-Renaissance origins at about this time; by means of new, Gothic Revival, art and architecture.

  

It may be worth restating yesterday's argument in the opposite direction, by explaining how sexual im-morality goes against Christian salvation.

To recapitulate very briefly; I am Not using the traditional argument that sexual behaviour is immoral when (and because) it transgresses a Christian code of behaviours. Ultimately (and despite whatever pragmatic or expedient necessity) all such codes (or laws) are a verbal summary; with all the intrinsic limitations of such.

I am here trying to explain the wrongness of sexual immortality in terms of the ultimate reality of-which all possible codes are a summary.


The argument starts with assumptions of the nature of Heaven; and of the resurrected life in that context. My assumption is that the  life - after mortal death - is one of creative activity in a context of loving families.

Therefore sexual immorality on earth is that which expresses and/or trains-us-in behaviours hostile to our desire for Heaven.


The Heavenly life Jesus made available for us is to be had for-the-wanting (by 'following' Him) - therefore the problem is in the wanting.

If we don't want Heaven, we won't have it - and some forms of life and behaviours are hostile to our wanting Heaven.

For example promiscuity. A person who wants to have multiple, short-term, pleasure-orientated sexual relationships with many people does not want the life of Heaven; because Heaven is not like that.

Instead Heaven is a place of eternal faithfulness. You can work-through other examples for yourself.


It is really quite simple. If your chosen and approved life on earth is one that goes-against the life of Heaven, if your personal commitment is to forms of sexuality that are Not a part of Heavenly life; then, when it comes to the eternal choice of life after mortal-death, you will (at least very probably) reject Heaven.

You will not want what Heaven actually is.


Note: of course this whole argument depends upon one's conception of the nature of Heaven; on what one believes Heaven Really-Is-Like. Therefore, it becomes of prime importance to know this. If you don't currently know, with the inner confidence of direct and personal knowing (divine revelation  and intuitive experience), then I suggest learning about the nature of Heaven should become your priority in life.