Bruce Charlton's Notions

JB: If Man is conditioned by the environment, by what is already there, he can't be free; he can only be free if he is not governed by his environment. Of course man is always influenced by his environment, but if he is completely governed by it, then he is no longer free. 

Interviewer: But man himself is a part of the environment.

JB: Yes, but only in material terms, only in respect of his physical being. What I am concerned with is the part of myself which is not connected with the environment... 

When talking about freedom, one has to determine its foundations, and that can only be done by ascertaining its limits. We can say that freedom is possible, but freedom cannot come from the environment: it has to come from creativity... 

I said that freedom = creativity = man. And that freedom is achieved on the basis of the creative principle. And in that case, who else could be God except Man?

If we don't want to go quite this far; we could say that God is a 'generator'. 

From Joseph Beuys's interview with Achille Bonito Oliva, in Energy Plan for the Western Man (1990) writings and interviews compiled by Carin Kuoni. 

**

My comment:  

Here Joseph Beuys gets to essentially the same understanding of freedom/ free will/ agency that I reached (but some decades later). 

Genuine freedom of Man entails a divine concept of creativity. We are free only when we are being-creative, and creativity is an attribute of the divine. Thus man is, when free and being-creative, divine: a god.  

Freedom is not a physical but a spiritual attribute; and we cannot observe freedom if we deny the spiritual. 

Also, freedom's expression is spiritual not physical - that is, freedom may be found in thinking, but not (or not fully) in physical action; because physical action is always analyzable as a product of environment. 

This is an important insight for the Christian (here-and-now) because Christianity entails that he who is saved, the believer, the resurrected - is genuinely free: free to choose or reject salvation. 

Christianity is (or should be) built-around this absolute, existential, metaphysical freedom - yet such freedom is not satisfactorily explained by traditional theology, which sees God as utterly different from Man and the omnipotent creator of everything - leaving no room for other sources of divine creative freedom. 

Modern Man experiences absolute agency; but typically abuses (from the perspective of divine purpose) it in order (passively and unconsciously) to believe what could be termed leftist-materialism; which ideology then subverts freedom by denying God and the spiritual realm. 

Modern Man therefore chooses to regard himself as unfree - his action a product of the physical/ material environment, his thinking an irrelevant epiphenomenon... 

Hence Modern Man uses his freedom tacitly to assent to a totalitarian system of evil lies; on the basis that 'there is no alternative'. 

For Beuys as for myself; this creative freedom ought instead to be used creatively - as Beuys said "Everyone is an artist". 

(We are therefore free to deny our freedom: but this denial has the consequence that we then oppose God's creative goals.)

We can now see that this 'artistry' is to be in the realm of the spiritual, of thinking (it can be nowhere else!); and the intent is that it directed 'at-God', at the divine in a conscious way, to work in harmony with God's creative purposes expressed through the person of Jesus Christ. 

Man now needs to become aware of his God-nature, and of the nature and scope (and limits) of this God-nature; and that this life is (and is meant to be - meant By God to be) a struggle between those who deploy their creativity actively and in harmony with God...

And against that: those who remain unconscious, ignore or suppress their potential freedom, and passively-align with those who oppose God (i.e. spiritual demonic powers). 

The struggle of this mortal life is needed for us to learn... We learn by and from this struggle. 

[The fact of death is very much a part of the mortal living struggle; which means we should - consciously, actively -  take death into account in this life. Death - our death, and also death as an incisive event in world history and for all Men - is central to Christianity. Beuys wrote about this matter specifically, and I intend to quote some of his reflections on the matter in a later post.]

Mainstream, mundane modern consciousness could be summarized as a closed-loop comprising consciousness-of-consciousness - CofC - that is, Modern Man is aware primarily of his own awareness. 

From all else he is removed: consciousness stands between awareness and other Beings, and even between awareness and himself. This is an extreme form of abstraction - we are thinking about ourselves-thinking! 

Thus other-people, the world - even one's own living self! - these things are not experienced directly. They do not strike the observing consciousness as absolutely real. Thus we get the characteristic 'relativism' of modernity: exactly because nothing seems really-real. 

So, because nothing seem livingly-real, nothing is experienced as palpably alive - Modern Man inhabits what feels like a dead universe; and that deadness includes his own Being. (Leading to the common idea that consciousness is itself an illusion, or a functionless-epiphenomenon.) 

Knowledge in CofC is indirect - a matter of 'theories', of 'models' - concepts that have been (mostly) passively-absorbed with ideology; all soon revealed as unsatisfactory, all over-simplified and dubiously-applicable - yet models-of-reality are all we have inside closed-loop CofC. 

Lacking experiential contact with life, others, the self - Modern Man is easily persuaded that consciousness is separable from life... That non-Beings (computers, robots) are just-as-alive as Beings - hence the assumptions of Artificial Intelligence and sentient androids etc. 

The closed-loop of CofC lacks contact with creation, therefore consciousness decays entropically - needs continually to be sustained by stimulatory inputs. 

Hence our addiction to distraction; Modern Man's requirement to be plugged-into mass and social media, to sensory and energy inputs. 

Hence MM's belief that death is extinction, annihilation. 

Because from inside the CofC loop the innate tendency is to cessation; CofC is self-experienced as slipping-away, as corrupting towards dysfunction, as dying.

The answer? Primary Thinking, Direct Knowing, Intuition... 

Yes; but the key is that  - instead of consciously-directing CofC and trying to make our-selves experience the world as real, alive and conscious; instead of learning some technique of meditation...

Instead of trying and training - which are just another kind of modelling, and still in the closed-loop - we need to be led by love. And love is not something that can be directed, or had by effort. 

Therefore we start-with love - some specific love we actually have for some specific Being... some entity (person, living-thing, grouping of persons etc) whom we already but unconsciously regard as alive. 

And from that love of the unconsciously-alive, the CofC-loop brings something new; which is consciousness of this love, and consciousness of the life. 

And this leads on to engagement, the two-way communication, the 'final participation' which is, of itself, a joining-with divine creation. 

One of the Big Problems of modern life (at least, many people regard it as a problem; although it is probably in truth a vital learning experience) is that nowadays Positive and Good motivations cannot be given to people. 

And external motivations are either bad, negative - or both. 

In general, the Godless aspiritual modern people in the West are very weakly motivated compared with the past- to the point that they do not even recognize (instead dishonestly deny) when their personal and direct interests are threatened, nor do they have even the courage to defend their children. 

It remains possible, however, to motivate people negatively and to desire harm. 

This is, typically, done by monolithic instruction and incentives from official bureaucracies (government, 'legal', 'educational', 'scientific' etc); combined with pervasive and coordinated propaganda from the mass (including social) media. 

There are plenty of effective negative motivations - e.g. based on fear, resentment, greed, lust. 

And there are plenty of motivations to affiliate with the side of evil - since purposive-evil controls (essentially) all Western and Global nations and institutions; and therefore access to money, status, power, influence...

Thus the typical 'motivated' modern person is atheistic and leftist - evil and negative: which is to say: affiliated to Satanic goals directed against divine creation; and exclusively focused on negative, oppositional purposes (such as socialism, feminism, antiracism, healthism, environmentalism etc) - sustained by negative emotions and sinful desires (two sides of a coin). 

What about Christianity - how does that motivate people?

We can see that it used to be possible - indeed normal - for Christianity to motivate people externally. That is, people were invited to participated in the life of a church - with its sociality, rituals, cohesion etc. 

But church seems to have little appeal to modern people; while the actuality (and indeed potential) of external religiousness has declined sharply; and for many months since 2020 has been absent - with churches closed and essential activities suspended (by the active choice of churches).

What this means is quite simple: anyone who wants positive and Good motivations for life; must find these for himself. 

This requires individuals taking responsibility and being active with respect to their own spiritual destinies. 

And not many people seem to be willing to do that? They want motivations and gratifications to be presented to them, or imposed upon them - requiring merely passive consent. And thus they choose negativity and evil. 

So we cannot supply motivations of the right sort. We may suggest - but at bottom such suggestions are for each to embark on a personal quest. 

How then can we encourage the individuals we love to take personal responsibility and an active spiritual role in life? 

How does God try to create a conducive environment for His children to do the same? 

Not easy, nor comfortable. 

Mostly, the sorry tale must be played-out to its bitter end; when the consequences of individuals and groups choosing to be motivated negatively and to affiliate with evil, become starkly apparent. 

And the choice is between despair and death, on the one hand; or, on the other hand, an active choice of salvation, resurrection, eternal life in Heaven.  

Sometimes... usually, people will only learn from harsh lessons.

I've said it before, but it's a hard truth to grasp and hold onto; that our terminal condition of being is caused by a twofold error/sin, and can only be escaped by a twofold correction/repentance. 

Our basic beliefs are false and evil, such that our good impulses and experiences are ignored, explaied-away or (increasingly) inverted in meaning. 

At the same time, our actual lived experiences are defective. We think in a crude and unsustainable way - which means that we seek and value experiences that are needed to perpetuate this defective consciousness. 

That is, we seek constant affirmation and stimulation to keep the wrong ideas going; and/or we seek to obliterate our consciousness of the wrongness of things - e.g. by intoxication and other forms of dulling or obliteration. 

Escape is yearned-for but in a mistaken form. We passively seek to have the answer imposed-upon-us; because only thus are we prepared to believe it. Yet, simultaneously, we are aware that all the answers within our kind of consciousness are merely hypothetical models; that we pickup and discard with high frequency. 

Modern consciousness is so obviously shallow, labile, provisional... defective that we have lost trust in our capacity to know. 

We disbelieve our-selves - because we hardly know our-selves. We have no direct and experiential contact with other people, or other Beings (including deities) that comprise the living universe; therefore all of these are unreal, and unmotivating. 

And if  they are, briefly, experienced as real and compelling, we doubt this insight and suspect the motivations. We cannot chose, because all choices seem feeble and short-lived conjectures. 

In the end, the only safe thing is to assimilate to the currently-dominant external inputs...

Therefore escape requires a twofold move: to know the reality of ourselves and divine creation, and at the same time to direct our feeble and sustainable consciousness to participate in our-selves, other men and the Beings that comprise reality. 

But this cannot be done be any technique or method - because these are aspects of the very Modern Consciousness that we wish to escape. This doing can only be accomplished by Love, which is the basis of creation. 

Since we intend to re-connect our consciousness with creation - this entails Love. 

And again we meet with false understandings; since the passive modern consciousness believes real love, or the highest love, to be universal an impersonal, abstract and ideal - whereas real-actual love is particular and personal, 'concrete' and particular. 

The notion of ideal, impersonal and universal love is indeed another evil-absorbed-hypothesis of modern consciousness. 

So we must start-from actual, 'given', specific love of a person or other Being: that is the only basis of genuine escape; of re-connection with reality and the sustaining power of creation. We need to be guided-by love; not attempting to guide love by using that Modern Conscious which is causing the problem.  

Not technique but love; and love as specific and 'personal'; together with the conviction that this is indeed the ultimate reality of this creation in which we dwell. 

Both together and at the same time.  

Cats are fussy eaters - prone to turn-up their furry noses at even sachet-treats of expensive, exotically flavoured food (beef and liver, poultry and lamb... mmm!). What a waste!

So, why don't cat food manufacturers actually make (or, at least flavour) their product with the things cats actually like to eat? Mice, spiders, pigeons, grass, bluebottles, mashed banana, little bits of debris lying on the floor? 

The problem is that the makers are trying to appeal to humans - not to cats; on the basis of "who actually buys the stuff?" So we get claims the food contains the kind of meat that people enjoy. 

A deeper consideration reveals that the proper question to ask is: "But who controls the purse-strings in a cat-inhabited house?" 

That query has a very different answer. 

We have a tumble drier with a "buzzer" alarm (five ascending notes with a needly kind of electronic tone) that tells you when the washing is as dry as you want it to be. 

So, you hear the buzzer, go to the machine, open the door to get the dry washing... and the alarm sounds again: triggered by the opening of the door. 

Get this: you are actually in the process of opening the door - and the alarm sounds to tell you to open the door...

What kind of person decided that it was a good idea to install such a mechanism? 

What kind of person then sits down to design a device to tell people to do something that they are actually in the middle of doing? 

What kind of consumer expert imagines that this will be a popular feature? 

What kind of a world are we living-in - that such things happen, yet nobody is called to account? 

Note: All text consists of quotations from Joseph Beuys, made in an interview with Louwrien Wijers, November 22nd 1979; published in Writing as Sculpture (1996). 

I have edited the text for clarity based on my understanding of what was intended - for which I take responsibility. Because although Beuys was fluent in English - he was not idiomatic; and often deployed German grammatical constructions - plus some personal terminology, and some from Rudolf Steiner. It is probably best to try and get an overview (Gestalt) of his meaning, rather than trying to build understanding from the accumulation of specific statements. 

Also, because this was a conversation the recorded and transcribed words benefit, I believe, from some re-arrangement, excision, and slight verbal expansion. 

My point here is to emphasize - and this surprised me considerably! - that Joseph Beuys was a serious, and tough-minded, hard-nosed, Christian; in his primary motivations, and his understanding of art, politics, society... 

And he was a romantic Christian, because he saw that (here-and-now) Christianity depends on the individual human being, personally choosing to take an active and conscious role in addressing the problems of mundane modern existence: materialism, meaninglessness, purposelessness - dead life in a dead world. 

And Beuys saw that the escape from dead-ly materialism was forward-and-through - and out the other side - by a spiritual repetition (individually, and socially) of Christ's death and resurrection.   

Christ is not symbolized: he is real! 

Christ is not a symbol for something else. He is the substance in himself. It means life, it means power - the power of life. 

Christ has already brought life. Without the substance of Christ the earth would already have died. 

So Christ is not a symbol of something... I always fear this application of 'symbols'. 

The most important power exists in Christ, in the elements and substance of Christ. He is a germination: the idea of the Son coming-out from spiritual entities (abstractly called 'God'). 

In the Christ element, the spiritual entities are showing the reality that this element also exists in humankind itself. We can speak of the human being because this element exists in him. 

The most important declaration of Christ in that Man is the spiritual co-operator*. This shifts the whole energy-problem to the spiritual abilities of the people, of humankind. 

Interviewer: When you say we do not need mediators between gods and people in our times, do you mean that this is a task we have to do ourselves, now?

Beuys: Yes, sure: certainly. 

And we can do it ourselves. But there must first appear, or should appear - and in fact appears already in humankind - a kind of interest to ask; and that is surely a necessity. 

To approach an understanding of world, and Man, and nature; asks for a very individual methodology. An individual mentality or ability...

At present the churches avoid speaking about the possibilities of humankind using such soul-powers, will-powers; powers of thought; and intuition, imagination and inspiration - and to come with this kind of 'ability' towards such an understanding.  

We need to understand that to reach the earthly condition of materialism, and to get incarnated with this idea of death; there must be a resurrection...

The Christ spirit was related to the development of the idea of analysis [leading to materialism]. 

The whole range of philosophy throughout the Western world shows more and more this analytic way, and reaches a materialist consciousness. Thus it comes to death, like Christ. 

So, in the Western world there is a kind of repetition of the mystery of Christ's life and death. It ends with the fact that we now have a materialist understanding of the world. And because of this spiritual declaration of the material intention, materialism (as a whole) is a spiritual thing...

First the earth was dead in part; but Men have long been giving death to death - they have added death articles to death principles. 

So now our earth is dead! How can this death be surpassed, renewed, regenerated? That is the great question.

Only humankind can do this. Only. Nobody else. People must do it. Men are now totally responsible for the fate of the earth and for life on earth. 

We must see that all is alive - and surpass death. 

Solving the problem of life and death is the mission of the methodology of materialism. 

People have to die, in a way; have to feel what death means - have to reach the earth. 

Death belongs to life, you know! In the spiritual meaning, life is not possible without death. 

That sounds like mysticism, but is not, because this mystery is experienced by everybody. 

People have to have, and to develop, another understanding than the materialistic understanding - which is only looking for power to exploit, with a distorting and debasing understanding of energies.

Everything depends on us! 

It is absolutely necessary to see that everything depends on us; and that we can do it! 

Very easily we can do it - it is not so difficult to do.

The whole power exists with the people. But if the the people do not use it, then the regressive powers will get stronger. 

In future; we need the strongest of human spirits - those who are able to resist in the middle of the shit! 

Who live in the midst of things; and who feel that their own abilities can only grow in the midst of problems. 

Not those who want a kind-of weak environment with a kind-of 'spiritual feeling'... 

*Meaning - Man's cooperation with God has been necessary since the time of Christ, and is ever more necessary. This is clear from (too spread-out to summarize) remarks made elsewhere. 

If this mortal life is a time in which we need to learn from our experiences; much of this is likely to be retrospective. 

We may fail to learn at the time of experience; but often have further opportunities afterwards, in retrospect, by reflecting on our autobiographical memories. 

There are two common wrong ways of thinking about our past: To assume everything we did was right, or to assume everything we did was wrong! 

Some people refuse to acknowledge their own sin, error, weakness; and will always rationalize their past behaviour - excusing apparent weakness, error, sin as being necessary, unavoidable, compelled, "not-my-responsibility", a step on the way to something better, or... whatever. 

Such people see their whole life a basically-correct and integrated - therefore they cannot learn from experience. 

Experience is just grist to the mill of self-justification. 

Other people regard their present person as the only good; and their past as merely a sequence of errors that has nothing to do with Me. Here. Now. 

They refuse to acknowledge past errors: "That was not me! I was just a kid! I hadn't discovered God/ hadn't discovered who-I-really-am. I was weak (but not any more) - I was an addict (but have overcome it)... I am a different person now."

For such people, the present moment is all that matters, and they repudiate the past. Clearly they cannot learn from experience. 

To learn from experience requires both taking responsibility for past behaviour and choices, and also evaluating them as good or bad, right or wrong, strong or weak, loving or expedient... 

It means both acknowledging the unity of life (it was and is essentially me), and also the reality of learning, change, development (I really am different). 

Learning from mortal life therefore entails both continuity of existence, and transformation of the individual. 

What made these three books so very disappointing is that in all cases the authors were people who I first encountered in my teens, at an age when books made their maximum and most lasting impact. 

All the authors of the disappointments had previously published particular books that I greatly appreciated, and there had been a prolonged wait with expectations.

I had been hoping for some kind of a 'follow-up' that would provide me with something of the same quality and flavour I had received from the previous book; or at least be complementary. 

1. The Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien (1977)

I had appreciated The Lord of the Rings as no book before or since, having encountered it about a year before Tolkien's death, written to the author asking about its progress, and then waiting for four teenage-years for the publication. 

When The Silmarillion was published, I immediately bought it in hardback and took it to college as a special treat - yet I found it so dull and... wrong that I could not finish it; and did not do so for many years.  

2. Lila by Robert M Pirsig (1991)

This book came a decade and a half after I had been bowled-over by the author's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which had originally been lent me in 1976 by Bill Ryan on a month long Outward Bound course where he was a group-leader. I had bought myself a copy, another for the school library - and some as presents; I had exchanged a letter with the author, and published a critical essay. 

As with The Silmarillion, I disliked the feel of the book, it seemed a bit sordid rather than having the freshness and hope of ZAMM. And its argument contradicted some of my favourite aspects of ZAMM. I've tried re-reading, but still feel the same. Very disappointing, for sure. 

3. Seven Days in New Crete by Robert Graves (1949)

Robert Graves's I Claudius/ Claudius The God were the first grown-up novels I read after Lord of the Rings, when aged about 13 or 14. Soon afterwards I got The White Goddess (1948), and constantly consulted it, and brooded on it, through the following years. About a decade or more later I discovered in a biography that Graves has followed-up the WG - which is non-fiction (sort of..) by a novel that expressed the ideas; called Seven Days in New Crete. It took me ages to find a copy of this - but when I did, I was avid with anticipation... 

But, as you will have guessed, I was extremely underwhelmed - on several levels. For a start, it is a poor novel qua novel - never comes to life, is just rather boring. But more damningly, Graves apparently regards his 'New Crete' as a kind of utopia, where the White Goddess rules and is worshipped - as Graves advocated for real-life, and which I had found persuasive in adolescence. Yet his depiction of the Goddess-dominated world was completely unappealing, and without a trace of the romance that permeated White Goddess. In sum: a dud. 

Have readers had similar experiences of seriously-disappointed literary anticipation? 

The internet, like the mass media generally, is highly dominated by the USA; and most of the comment and analysis comes from the US. 

But - since 2020, when all the world was in policy-lockstep for the first time in human history - it should be obvious that we live in a global totalitarian system.

Yet too many US commenters, perhaps especially on the non-religious 'Right'; still assume that the USA is the root and origin of global power. 

The work of Mencius Moldbug/ Curtis Yarvin can be taken as an example: in which he puts 'the Cathedral' - the 'Ivy League' intelligentsia and affiliates, with HQ Harvard University - as the controlling ideological centre. 

Another common idea is that the US Supreme Court has been the most important factor in influencing long-term socio-political trends - and that is where the centre of power lies. 

Others imagine that the birdemic was a US-initiated and -sustained phenomenon*. 

But the present situation, in which (apparently) the US Supreme Court Judges are under siege; threatened by totalitarian-leftist violence egged on by the mass media; and leading US politicians and security agencies will neither acknowledge the fact, protect them, nor do anything substantive to discourage the situation... shows me that the USA is now a controlled nation - the US elites are middle managers for executives whose loyalties lies elsewhere. 

The US 'cathedral' is run in the interests of the globalists, whose affiliations are demonic and to do with the strategy of soul damnation. 

The premier institutions of the USA - whether President, Houses, Supreme Court, or Harvard - are all grist to the globalists mill; and will be destroyed as and when expedient for the globalists agenda. 

US national institutions are now - one and all - followers, not leaders. 

*Of the five current global Litmus Test issues (the four of 2020, plus the 2022 Fire Nation war) the US originated both the sexual revolution and antiracism; but that was in the middle 1960s. Control of these  agendas has since been lost to global institutions; such that the USA cannot now roll-back or step-away from them, even when they desire to - any more than other nations are allowed the choice to opt-out from The Plan. Or, at least, the solution lies at a far deeper and more spiritual level than that of politics, media, corporations and institutions. 

It was gradually accepted during the 20th century that the Americas were discovered by the Vikings; but it seems likely that before this date, Irish monks had made the journey, taking the same route. Here (in a ten minute video) Caleb Howells lucidly summarizes the main evidence (which I found convincing, as I stated in the comments!): 

Yet knowledge of the existence of the Americas was apparently forgotten in Europe by the Renaissance - or, if not forgotten, then withheld or suppressed. 

Rudolf Steiner made some interesting remarks on this matter in 1917:

A particularly good home for spiritual life, protected against all possible illusions, was Ireland, the island of Ireland, in the first Christian centuries. More than any other spot on earth it was sheltered from illusions; and that is why so many missionaries of Christianity went out from Ireland in those early times. 

But these missionaries had to have regard for the simple folk among whom they worked — for the peoples of Europe were very simple in those days — and also to understand the great impulses behind human evolution. During the fourth and fifth centuries Irish initiates were at work in central Europe and they set themselves to prepare for the demands of the future. They were in a certain way under the influence of the initiate-knowledge that in the fifteenth century — in 1413, as you know — the fifth post-Atlantean epoch [i.e. the 'modern' era - BGC] was to begin. 

Hence they knew that they had to prepare for a quite new epoch, and at the same time to protect a simple-minded people. What did they do in order to keep the simple people of Europe sheltered and enclosed, so that certain harmful influences could not reach them? The course of events was guided, from well-instructed and honourable sources, in such a way that gradually all the voyages which had formerly been made from Northern lands to America were brought to an end. 

Whereas in earlier times ships had sailed to America from Norway for certain purposes (I will say more of this to-morrow), it was gradually arranged that America should be forgotten and the connection lost. By the fifteenth century, indeed, the peoples of Europe knew nothing of America. Especially from Rome was this change brought about, because European humanity had to be shielded from American influences. 

A leading part in it was played by Irish monks, who as Irish initiates were engaged in the Christianising of Europe. In earlier times quite definite impulses had been brought from America, but in the period when the fifth post-Atlantean [modern] epoch was beginning it was necessary that the peoples of Europe should be uninfluenced by America — should know nothing of it and should live in the belief that there was no such country. 

Only when the fifth post-Atlantean [modern] epoch had begun, was America again “discovered,” as history says. But, as you know very well, much of the history taught in schools is fable convenue [false consensus], and one of these fables is that America was discovered for the first time in 1492. 

In fact, it was only re-discovered. The connection had been blotted-out for a period, as destiny required. 

Steiner seems not to have realized that Irish monks had themselves visited America; but does suggest that they knew of it and deliberately did not record or disseminate their stunning information about another continent to the laity. 

Steiner believes that this decision was made for good reasons; because it was spiritually-desirable (a matter of 'destiny') that Europe develop separately for another millennium before being exposed to the revolutionary knowledge of the New World. 

As I say, interesting...

A few months ago I published a post about Tolkien's creative process, and why it has such a powerful appeal for these times. The post retrospectively seems - on reviewing it today - to provide an important clue for how we ought to respond positively to these materialistic and mundane, dark and demonic, times. 

We all-of-us need to be subcreators in our own thinking. 

Naturally, I do not mean to suggest that we all (or even most of us) should be writing write fiction and poetry, nor painting and drawing, like Tolkien. Neither do I mean that this subcreation should take any particular 'public' form. On the contrary; our subcreation should not be done to impress or to influence 'other people'.  

I mean instead that we each of us have the capacity to subcreate in some way, and primarily in the world of our thinking. 

That-thinking may be helped by physical activities - such as writing, drawing, fishing or... whatever actually is helpful for you... But whatever that physical expression of subcreation may be - it should be a means to the end of subcreative thinking. 

It is in this realm of our subcreation that we are most likely to find personal meaning and purpose in reality - including our  everyday reality of totalitarian bureaucracy and propagandistic mass media.  

That is one meaning of Romantic Christianity - that (here and now) everybody needs to become a subcreator; and that we can only do this for our-selves.

Subcreation must be active and personal.  

And also that - if this is not already happening, in your own life - making subcreation begin to happen ought to be a major life-priority. 

It probably used to be difficult to imagine how such a situation as depicted could be an example of God's mercy for the people of the cities (rather than some idea of 'vengeance') and the world more generally; but I find now this destruction increasingly easy to understand as an act of mercy. 

A society, a civilization, can get itself into such a terrible situation of value-inversion that its public, official, approved and legally-enforced morality becomes the opposite of truth and goodness. And at the same time many of its people are so hollowed-out by Godlessness that, far from resisting evil, they regard evil as something to boast about - and indeed feel great personal self-satisfaction by advertising their own de facto affiliation to powers of darkness. 

The spiritual (let alone material) consequences of such a situation will be one of evil feeding upon itself and growing, such that the scale of evil escalates - with new horrors being  continually discovered, only to be surpassed. 

And there is no escape even in death; since the mass of people will die in despair, fear, resentment, pride or despair - consenting to, or actively desiring, appalling post-mortal situations for their souls (yet regarding these as desirable!).  

God's mercy for such a civilization may take the form of a swift and decisive termination of this positive-feedback cycle of evil - swift... but with the end allowing just enough time for a suddenly dawning realization of truth to offer the best possible (although, unfortunately, still remote) chance of repentance. 

I think it is important that we can at least understand how this may be so - such that if, or when, such a merciful situation ensues; we can realize what is happening, and act appropriately. 

I often read secular, non-spiritual, analyses of what is going-on in the world - in particular the motivations of the global, national and large institutional leadership class; who are now Very Obviously destroying world civilization. 

Such analysts exclude - by prior assumption - what I regard as the correct answer; which is that the underlying reason for the leadership class behaving the way they do, is that they are affiliated with the supernatural beings of purposive evil who oppose God: Satan, Lucifer, demons, devils... whatever you want to call them. 

Of course, it is always possible to explain anything using any model... so long as one is not too fussy about incoherence, and is prepared to add incremental complexity to account for exceptions and contradictions. And when an 'explanation' becomes complex - it ceases to 'explain' and becomes impossible to refute...

Thus, by my criteria that the increasing harm being done to world civilization should be explicable on the basis of simple, coherent and commonsensical motives - none of the usual attributed motives stand-up. 

My list of the major attributed motives for the upper classes 'destroying society' is - greed, psychopathy, incompetence and insanity. All are partly true, but none explain large and obvious features of our situation. 

1. Greed. The ruling class are greedy - for money and power, primarily. But this does not explain why they are so aggressively - and on multiple fronts - destroying the world economy (including food and energy), trade and social cohesion. 

Active civilizational destruction can be exploited for a short time, as a type of looting; but when one is already the wealthiest, most powerful class in history it does not make sense to kill the goose that is laying you so many golden eggs. 

Active, strategic, repeated self-destruction (i.e. of their own sources of power and wealth) by the leadership class did not happen in historical civilizational collapses. Something extra is at work now. 

2. Psychopathy. Psychopaths are people who lack empathy, are selfish and short-termist, and manipulate others for their own satisfaction. 

Plenty of the ruling class are of that type - yet psychopathic rulers do the same to each other that they do to everyone else. Therefore a government of psychopaths must self-destruct with infighting. 

Further, psychopaths do not not stick to long term plans. They will always put 'me, now' above the objectives - so strategies would be abandoned whenever expedient. Whenever we observe a long term, cumulative social trend - we should recognize that this cannot be explained by psychopathy.   

3. Incompetence. Because gross incompetence among the ruling class has become so prevalent and is rapidly accelerating, it must contribute to ongoing civilizational destruction. 

But incompetence leads to errors in many directions whereas the current civilizational destruction is all due to leftward 'errors', and over several generations. 

Furthermore, there is no reason why incompetents should 'double-down' on their mistakes - even when this makes their own lives immediately harder - in the way that happens routinely nowadays. 

No: incompetence is real and worsening, but like psychopathy it is not strategic. 

4. Insanity. It seems quite common for analysts to attribute insanity to world leaders. Mostly, this is unthinking name-calling - because the attribution is combined with contradictory motives that would not coexist with insanity. 

Nonetheless, so increasingly bizarre, contradictory to common sense, obviously harmful and self-destructive are the behaviours of the leadership class, that they are often called insane: as if the individuals concerned were in the grip of false and impossible private delusions, hearing mad voices prompting weird actions, and/or experiencing disjointed and distorted thinking processes. The insane lack 'insight' into their own insanity, and are incapable of 'reality testing' their ideas - which also seems to fit. 

The transagenda is probably the strongest evidence for insanity among leaders; because such an obviously-false and destructive set of ideas has never been seen before - yet is already a worldwide, officially/ legally mandatory, mass media promoted, bureaucratically-enforced set of rules and mores; and the 'insanity' continues to increase month by month. 

But while insanity does potentially supply a measure of long-term consistency of motivation - thus of strategic, directional change - genuine and motivating insanity is not a large-scale and coherent group phenomenon, nor does it spread widely and rapidly. 

Insanity further lacks the self-promoting/ other- manipulating and other-exploiting aspects that are so prevalent in the ruling class.  

Therefore, assuming one believes in the reality of the demonic; the affiliation of the leadership class to the interests of personal, purposive, evil-beings - seems like the simplest, most common-sensical, coherent and predictively-valid of the explanatory models available. 

Note added: To summarize the above argument; it is hard to explain what is going-on on the basis of human motivations, but easy to explain it on the basis of demonic motivations (assuming one knows something about what these are). 

Indeed, the most coherent alternative 'master-hypothesis' to demonic affiliation is probably one or another version of the idea that the ruling classes are (to a greater or lesser extent) literal aliens. 

To attribute control to aliens has the advantage of explaining why the ruling classes are acting strategically against their own interests - and indeed against their own survival. 

To my mind; the alien hypothesis is, at root, mostly a speculative and secularized version of the reality of demons. But the main difference is that demons seek the damnation of souls; while the posited aliens seem to have attributed to them the same kind of motivations as human rulers - greed, psychopathy, incompetence, or the 'insanity-equivalent' of being alien and therefore weird.  

Today we were eating a packed lunch in Northumberland while listening to Test Match Special on BBC Radio Four Medium Wave - as England closed-in on a famous victory over New Zealand, chasing the unlikely total of 270-plus in the last innings - when, as usual, it was interrupted at 12 midday by that ancient British institution: The Shipping Forecast. 

This was read by a continuity announcer called Neil Nunes who has an even-deeper bass, more velvety-textured, voice than Morgan Freeman; which I thought readers might enjoy sampling:

You may have noticed (if you have noticed anything since 2020!) that evil nearly-always wants to take a round-about and deniable route to its desired outcomes. 

This can get pretty complex - especially when (as I assume) different kinds of demons are engaged in misleading each-other. 

Thus - the Climate Change scam/lie is mostly about the bureaucratic totalitarian ("Ahrimanic") demons using CO2 (trade mark Gas-of-Life) as a rationale for the worldwide surveillance, monitoring and control of humankind - partly by means of creating a much smaller world economy that is susceptible of such micro-management.

But the demons of destruction ("Sorathic") approve this scheme because (in destroying 'non-sustainable' practices) it will grossly shrink and cripple the world economy; and inevitably will cause the Giga-death of billions of the masses by starvation (amplified by disease and violence).  

The totalitarian demons thus used the Fire Nation invasion as a (more-or-less) plausible excuse to accelerate their 'Green Energy' programme by inflicting severe oil-starving and trade-sabotaging 'sanctions' on their own nations (under the pretense that this would harm the Fire Nation!... ROFL). 

(Some of the stupider bureaucrats seem also to have believed that these 'sanctions', plus exclusion of leaders from the international elite club of demon-possessed snakes and zombies; would rapidly bring the militarily and raw-material mighty Fire Nation to its knees and under control of the Global Establishment; preparatory to doing the same - sometime down the line - to the productive and populous Earth Nation.)

You can see the cleavage opening between the waning totalitarian-demons and the waxing destroyers; in that (after only three months!) the totalitarians have suddenly realized that the economic-trade collapse wrought by the climate-emergency-inspired oil-sanctions will very quickly and completely disable, then destroy, the complex surveillance-monitoring-control capability of the bureaucratic states... 

(With the end of Agenda 2030/ Great Reset and all those other grandiose globalist strategies.) 

But why the roundabout route, why bother with deniability?

Partly, because people may react-against and fight overt evil. Albeit, the Godless masses are now so incapable of thought and addicted to distraction - and the intellectual classes so inverted in their values - that they might well go-along - enthusiastically! - with explicit plans for their own annihilation; as with population replacement and enslavement to 'the other' under the diversity ideal. 

But mainly because the demons want us to desire our own enslavement and/or destruction. 

All the evil that is done to us - up to and including starvation, disease, violence, and death - needs to be regarded by the victims as deserved, "for our own good", for the greater good; or for some other kind of abstractly 'virtuous' reason such as the QWERTY-trans/ Green/ healthist/ feminist or other leftist ideology (now widely advocated as having transcended God, and the need for God).

But, because God is merciful and desires that we are saved; only by Men desiring their own damnation - or, at the extreme of resentment, suffering and fear, by despairing and regarding God the creator as an evil tormentor... Only thus can our death be made an effective route to damnation and Hell.

By contrast; if most people were to notice, acknowledge and understand what is going-on behind the lies, deceptions and deniability - then this insight into evil will lead to an increased likelihood of salvation after death; and also a higher likelihood of people learning and developing spiritually during this mortal life. 

This is what the Beings of purposive evil seek to avoid by pursuing deliberately bad outcomes by roundabout, deniable and plausibly-'virtuous' roundabout routes

Therefore, those who remain unconscious, passive, and who refuse to see evil - actually bring down suffering upon themselves. 

The demons know that the mass of self-blinded folk will never blame the guilty, and will instead seek well-meaning excuses for the result of Satanic motivations. 

The more such people suffer and despair - the more assured is their damnation. 

And, contrariwise; our best possible spiritual defense against the domination by evil Beings; is to be alert, aware and honest - and strive always, wholeheartedly, to understand the truth behind the deceptions. 

Yesterday there was (apparently) a 'platinum' Jubilee which was intended to celebrate 70 years since Queen Elizabeth was crowned.

This elicited what strikes me as distinctly tepid (mostly top-down, institutionally-led) celebrations - a half-hearted affair; at least compared with what I recall from the 'silver' (25th) Jubilee of 1977. 

And rightly so. 

Queen Elizabeth has been about a mediocre a monarch as humanly possible; which - in times as we have experienced over the past 70 years, and given that her primary role ought to be as Head of the Church of England; "defender of the faith" - makes her a Bad, because indifferent, Queen.

She has presided-over, facilitated, and done absolutely-zero to prevent - the extreme corruption and near-annihilation of the third-largest Christian church in the world. 

The monarch has even yielded the power to appoint archbishops and senior bishops to... The Prime Minister! 

Taken together, The Royal Family have themselves been supreme exemplars of much that is worst in modern life - especially in terms of commercialization, greed, vanity, degradation of position, conformity to leftism, sexual infidelity and perversion. 

The Queen never 'spoke-out' against any of the horrendous laws or political principles that have been inflicted on her subjects; she never publicly defended English or UK national sovereignty; she never used her (in theory, extensive) 'veto' powers to deter or block the worst evils and the most harmful appointments.

She passively went-along-with all that was worst in the world. 

Against that litany of neglect and self-interest; we are assured that Elizabeth (unlike any others in her family) is privately a devout Christian. If so: well and good, and the least we ought-to expect from a major Christian church leader. But the Queen is a public personage. 

But then after all, the Queen is a Norman; a member of that alien class that has (mostly) ruled England (later Scotland and Wales) for a millennium. 

In those many hundreds of years of misrule and exploitation, there have been a bare handful of Good monarchs - and none to match the Saxon Alfred. 

Instead; there has been a near-continuous procession of mediocrities; and selfish, spiteful, lustful, aggressive, self-indulgent and/or outright psychopathic individuals - nearly-always prepared to sacrifice their people to their ambitions and pleasure, and their nation to their affiliation to power elites. 

So long as England (and nowadays, the world) is plagued by the globalist, incompletely-human, Norman-derived Upper Classes; the honest Englishman will seldom have good reason to celebrate the rule of any monarch.