Bruce Charlton's Notions

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In The Doctor's Dilemma, Bernard Shaw describes the world of medicine as it was in England until (ironically) not long after the time this play was performed in 1906  - which was a world where physicians and surgeons and apothecaries did - overall - more harm than good.

Then there was a period in the mid twentieth century - say 1925-1975 - when the numerous immunisations were developed for fatal diseases, surgery and anaesthesia greatly improved, and antibiotics, steroids, hormones and a host of other medications were discovered, and ECT was introduced and made safe in psychiatry.

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But it seems more and more like that 25-75 era was just a blip in the long term trend in history, of medicine doing more net-harm than good - because nowadays there are very few real breakthroughs, and these are swamped by new treatments that are worse than old treatments, and treatments that always cause side effects (as all treatments do) with extremely  little chance of benefit.

Furthermore, there is a vast apparatus is hype and invention of benefit, distortion of risk-benefit, and outright concealment of harms.

Some of the concealed harms involve such huge money spinners as cancer chemotherapy and radiotherapy killing people and causing dementia; surgery of the elderly causing dementia; antipsychotics causing demotivated Parkinsonism and being dependence-producing; antidepressants causing emotional hardening and being dependence producing (and both antipsychotics and antidepressants causing out-of-character violent self-harm and suicides); cognitive damage from statin drugs, diabetic drugs, and blood pressure drugs; plus of course the fact that hospitals are so unhygienic that they breed and infect patients with antibiotic resistant infections. I could go on.

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The common factor is mostly psychiatric - that many modern medical interventions damage the mind, and the functioning and structure of the brain - this is the main problem because it is deniable and easy to hide.

If Granny has a hip replacement and walks again, that is much more noticeable than the fact that when she eventually recovers she is demented and needs to go into a home.

If Peggy Sue has a period of nervousness and takes an SSRI 'antidepressant' which dulls the anxiety, that is noticed more than the fact she gets hooked and cannot come-off the drug due to severe withdrawal effects.

If Charlie is disruptive at school, gets a diagnosis of 'bipolar disorder' and treatment with a cocktail of anti-psychotics, anti-convulsants and what not - his disruptive behaviour certainly stop! - as effectively as if he was tied up on chains - but at the cost of making him zombie-like, with flattened emotions.

If Bert kills himself while taking psychiatric drugs that he did not need, then his suicide is put down to the fact that he 'needed' to take psychiatric drugs.

And so on.

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We now need to reverse the assumption we were raised-on; the assumption that any given medical intervention is probably effective unless proven otherwise; and revert to the skepticism of wise men in the pre-twentieth century era: that most medical interventions are mostly harmful most of the time (and the task is to find the few exceptions).

The difference is that now there are (still, for the timebeling) many effective and beneficial interventions 'on the books' (although not necessarily on offer); but due to the medicalisation of life and overtreatment of (non-) disease, these effective interventions are swamped - and their effect increasingly overwhelmed - by harmful interventions.

Because in medicine the rule is: when something does not good, it will do harm.

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Without any doubt, the most important book of the year for me has been William Arkle's The Great Gift - and also the other works by this theologian, philosopher and artist.

The Great Gift is available online

http://www.billarkle.co.uk/greatgift/text/wisdom.html

But I would recommend buying the book - which is a lovely volume (full of colour plates of his paintings), and still cheaply available.

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What is it that I have got from Arkle's work, mostly from close study of the writings, backed up by meditation on the paintings?

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

Well, I could summarize by saying that his insights have amplified Mormon theology at a number of crucial points; points which I personally felt somewhat lacking.

The main aspect is in relation to The Plan of Salvation - which is the CJCLDS's basic narrative description of what life is about:

https://www.lds.org/manual/the-plan-of-salvation/the-plan-of-salvation?lang=eng

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/deep-apologetics-what-blocks-repentance.html

Fully accepting the validity of the Plan of Salvation (which I do), what Arkle answers, for me, is why God wanted to establish the Plan of Salvation - specifically, what was God's main motivation?

Arkle answers this by means of his inspired, intuitive, empathic ability to identify-with the mind of the Creator; which he seemed to attain partly by meditation and partly by his own artistic creation - especially painting.

Everything Arkle wrote is trying to explain his understanding of God's primary motivations over and over again - in different words, using different analogies, and via different media - and then 'unpacking' the implications of this understanding.  

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Here is one attempt, from the essay Wisdom in The Great Gift:

My understanding of this absolute form of wisdom depends on an ability I believe we have to resonate with the deep heart of our being into the deep heart of the Creator's being and feel, with that very deep sense of in-feeling, how the Creator felt towards creation before it began.

In other words one can learn to feel what it was that the Creator was longing for, aspiring to, or simply desiring, from the great work and the great effort that he has engaged in in what is known to us as creation. Now, if we can feel with all our deepest understanding, our deepest intelligence and our deepest perception, what it was that the Creator looked for, above all else, in creation, then, and only then, shall we be close to the absolute point of wisdom which I believe is in the absolute point of deepest desire in the heart of the Creator's being.

As I myself attempt to do this, I come away with the understanding that the greatest longing that was in the Creator's heart before creation, and which brought about creation and brought into existence the individual beings, who each of us is in the Creator's eyes and to one another, was the desire to have real individual friends, in the deepest possible meaning of that word. Friends to share his understanding, his joy and his wisdom within the context of real friendship, which creates a vital relationship between each friend and the other friend, from which ever-renewing possibilities and responses can grow.

My feeling is that the Creator first of all wished to bring into existence real and individual children, whose nature was based on a part of his own divine nature, but the characteristics of which were to be developed by each of those individual children as they grew up in the universes, or the universities, of his creation. They would develop in the nature of their own individual spirits, so that each of those children would become a unique individual child and then, hopefully, would become more than a child - would wish to grow into a mature condition which was not as a child to the Creator, but was as an individual being to the Creator.

Thus all these beings could each have creative relationships of friendship and gladness with one another and with the Creator. Not with the Creator as a special 'God' individual, who was not approachable as other friends are approachable, but He himself wanted to be able to befriend us and have a creative friendship with us as we befriend one another and have a creative friendship with one another.

http://www.billarkle.co.uk/greatgift/text/wisdom.html

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I really love some of the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840).

He often did near identical pieces - as above.

But what a difference in mood it makes having a man and woman contemplating the moon, as contrasted with two men - plus a slight difference in light and shadow!
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On the basis that Christ's work did two things: enabled resurrection and atoned for our sins:

1. We accept both resurrection and the atonement: happy, conscious, embodied life - Heaven.

2. We accept the atonement but not resurrection: happy, spirit life; impersonally absorbed into harmony with the divine - Nirvana.

3. We accept resurrection but not atonement: unhappy, conscious, embodied life,  - Hell.

4. We reject both resurrection and the atonement: a spiritual, witless, demented half-life - Sheol/ Hades.

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Note: In case it confuses people - I here adopted the (¡excellent!) Spanish practice of placing an inverted question mark at the start of a question, as a way of informing the reader that what is to follow will be a question. I did this is in order to emphasise the tentative and conjectural nature of this post - as something for the reader to consider, rather than my own considered belief.

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The publisher tells me that Addicted to Distraction: psychological consequences of the mass media - my most recent book - has started to sell a bit in the USA (by the standards of this kind of book): 300 copies last month.

http://addictedtodistraction.blogspot.co.uk

In hope of catching the wave - it would make me happy if any of you who have read the book would perhaps consider publishing a review online, however brief, somewhere or another - amazon, goodreads, your blog or wherever?

Thanks very much (just in case anyone responds).

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One of the main ways that purposive evil has created the prevalent mood of nihilistic despair is by subversion of metaphysics - this has been especially important in destroying the morale of the ruling elite - and creating the mainstream self-hating suicidal animus of public discourse for most of the past century.

Maybe the key metaphysical subversion was to create doubt in the reality and significance of the self ('consciousness', self-awareness, the ego, or 'I') - I mean that ultimate 'me' which comes underneath and before anything else I experience: that which I find when I dig-down as deep within my-self as possible.

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It has seemed obvious to almost everybody (adult or child) who has ever introspected, that the self is a reality, and that it has agency: the ability to choose, to evaluate, to motivate. The self is a cause - or so it seems to intuition.

Furthermore, this self is vital to most religions - certainly it is vital to Christianity; because without a self to choose Christ as Lord and Saviour, then there is no possibility of, or meaning to, Christianity,

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However, this metaphysical basis has pretty much been overthrown in mainstream modern intellectual culture - and certainly in public discourse.

The way that discourse is structured, there is no space for genuine autonomous choice, no place for the self to reside - merely an arbitrary and subjective 'belief' and an explanation for observed behaviour.

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Now it is vital to recognise from the start that metaphysics is the structure of reality as we understand it; and because it is the structuring principle of reality, then it cannot be proven or disproven.

Therefore, experience has no relevance to evaluating the truth of a metaphysical system, evidence from history or science has no relevance to the validity of metaphysics.

So, since the self is a metaphysical assumption; there is no evidence for the reality of the self - and there never can be evidence for its reality.

Neither can there be evidence against its reality; no actual or possible discovery of philosophy, history or science could possibly count as evidence against the reality and autonomy of the self.

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But the idea is general that 'modern science has proven' that the self does not exist, or is not a necessary hypothesis. Or something.

Modern people try to function on the basis that at the core of their being is... nothing. There is no core, the self is a 'projection' of higher systems.

So when a man looks deep within himself, and he finds his-self; then this is stated to be an illusion.

The proof? Because... science.

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What does this do to a man? To be told that his perception of primary inner reality is some kind of mistake. The idea that at his core is... nothing?

Well, it does things like confuse, bewilder, stun, paralyse, despair. It injects distrust into the deepest level of thinking. It renders thought helpless, unable to gain traction, unable even to begin to understand the world.

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Given that there is no reason at all to doubt the reality of the self/ consciousness/ ego/ 'I' - then why would anybody want to do this to himself, and to his fellow men? Why would such a pernicious metaphysical notion be propagated, become mainstream? What could be the motivation for inducing confusion, bewilderment, paralysis, despair?

The answer is - delight in destruction of the Good and the possibility of Good; in other words evil.

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The evil of subversive metaphysics is not a small thing; it is not a game; it is not an amusing way of passing the time; it is not a contribution to the intellectual environment: it is a very real, very pernicious evil - akin to gratuitous torture.

To act sinfully is bad, but may be inevitable; to deliberately choose to plan to induce others to act sinfully is much worse than doing the sin. The hands may be clean, but the heart is filthy.

To despair is a sin; but deliberately to induce despair is worse. Those millions of intellectuals - philosophers, scientists, doctors, novelists, dramatists, movie-makers, journalists etc - who have engaged in strategically-subverting the self, should forget about making excuses and repent what they have done.

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The great lie which we tell ourselves, which we allow ourselves to believe; which we convince ourselves it is necessary to believe - is that our fundamental understanding of reality must take into account not only our human nature, as we understand it, and our directly-experienced knowledge; but also *and mostly) a vast and open-ended quantity of hearsay evidence.

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By hearsay evidence on reality, I mean anything which we do not know for ourselves or from people who we have real reason to trust.

In other words, hearsay encompasses almost-everything we (think we) know: stuff taught us by institutions such as school or college or textbooks, that we experience vicariously in art, everything we learn-from the mass media.

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Much of what we regard as true was not even taught us as true, for instance something we read in a novel or saw in a movie (e.g. something about war, or other countries, or human relationships); but has become regarded as true simply by by the psychological process of our minds retaining the 'information' while losing memory of its fictional provenance.

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Is it remotely plausible that any genuine understanding of reality could embrace all these sources of information? - many of them candidly made-up, many of them lies and manipulations, many of them honest but erroneous?

To ask the question is to answer it.

So long as we insist that our understanding of reality, of the human condition, takes full account of the latest theories or 'findings' of (self-styled) science, of the latest reports of history, of the compelling pictures found in TV documentaries, of the latest and most viscerally-wrenching mass media themes - so long as we insist on including such 'knowledge' in our 'philosophy of life' - then for so long we will not have a valid or coherent philosophy of life.

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One 'secret' of the great mystics, is that their understanding of reality is direct. Their understanding is based on what they personally know by experience and by revelation.

And nothing else!

The great mystics do not find a place in their scheme of things for whatever topical and impactful 'evidence' they happen to have read, been told about, or seen depicted today or yesterday.

The great mystics will not accept hearsay evidence; and almost all of what we suppose to be evidence IS hearsay. 

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In the modern world, most of what we 'know' we do not know; because it is untrue.

Yet much of what we really do know, we refuse to believe because it conflicts with this vast ocean of fake knowledge.  

We judge validity by falsehoods - and reject the truth we need.

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The path to wisdom is the opposite. Our understanding of reality is limited to what is real; and what is really known to us is a very small proportion of what we say and think.

But that, and only that, must be the basis of understanding reality.

Thus our understanding of reality is necessarily going to look very partial; we will not be able to explain everything we are confronted-with (most although not all, of which will anyway be false); we will not be able to answer more than a small fraction of the questions and challenges that other people confront us with.

We will therefore not be able to convince other people that we are right.

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This state of affairs ought to lead us each to be humble about how much we know, but rock solid in what we do know.

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Actually, it is a loathing underpinned by fear - the combination producing the kind of venom most eloquently and savagely expressed by HL Mencken; but replicated in a watered-down form by the New Atheists, self-proclaimed Skeptics and the like.

This is not a matter of merely rejecting religion; it is the business of making anti-religion into a focus of life; of not merely not practising religion but wanting the whole thing stamped-out, once and for all; so that it will be gone forever,

The reason is quite simple: cynics live only on their pleasures, and religion wants to take them away - or some of them at least.

The cynic finds no meaning, purpose or permanence in life - mortal life is everything, and the cynic's own life is (of course) primary, and the present moment and near future are the most certain - and this situation is only valuable (only tolerable) insofar as it is pleasurable (or at least not an active state of suffering).

The worst thing that can happen to a cynic is to suffer - therefore cynics favour humane murder (euthanasia) for themselves and others; and quick, painless suicide on demand ('assisted' suicide) as the bottom line, safety net in life.

But for the cynic, living is a matter of getting-through life as best as may-be; and this is achieved with the assistance of pleasurable habits and pastimes - like alcohol and other drugs, good food, travel, sports; and sex, as and when the chance arises, with whomsoever is fancied, and involving whatever activities are most enjoyable.

Religion threatens this whole package of a maximally-pleasurable and minimally-suffering life - thus religion directly threatens the primary coping mechanism of the cynic, the whole cynical modus operandi.  

This is why cynics are hardline in their intolerance of religion - they correctly perceive that religion attacks their basis of existence; and for what appear utterly nonsensical reason! - yet a species of nonsense that carries extreme conviction and that most people find highly motivating - so that religious people will reject pleasures and choose suffering, in the name of their religion.

Terrifying.

For a real cynic, religion is something rationally to be hated.
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I have watched all the new series of Doctor Who featuring Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth incarnation of The Doctor.

I am very pleased to report that I found Capaldi to be a great Doctor, one of my top three with the Second and the Fourth. Whenever he was on screen and given decent things to speak and do, I was enthralled.

But the series as a whole was only partially-good. The problem was in the writing: specifically the emphasis, and the story arc of the series as a whole.

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Three episodes were excellent: Listen, Mummy on the Orient Express, and The Caretaker; several others were very good: Robot of Sherwood, Time Heist and Flatline. So that is half the episodes as good to excellent - a decent hit rate!

But some episodes were bad: the opener - Deep Breath was a very unsatisfactory introduction; Into the Dalek was the waste of a good idea, and the rest, including the Finale, just didn't work.

Plus, of course, Kill the Moon was The Worst. Doctor Who. Episode. Ever.

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The problem was, as so often in the revived Doctor Who: The Companion.

Structurally the series as a whole was a Chick-Lit Soap Opera with SciFi interludes. Several episodes were actually framed by Clara's tedious 'relationship', especially her annoyingly frequent phone calls. And when we weren't being tormented by relationship issues; we were much too often subjected to Clara's sophomoric and cliched analyses of what kind of person The Doctor really is...

The ratio of discussing The Doctor to actually seeing him in action was way too high (especially in the first episode).

I wanted to shout the old script-writing principle - Don't Tell Us: Show Us .

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Actually I liked Danny Pink - and would have been happy to see him as a Companion - the actor has a charm about him, and his interchanges with the Doctor in The Caretaker were very enjoyable - but he was pretty much wasted on Clara; being the butt of her off-the-peg 'feistiness'.

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In general, taking the story arc of the whole series - I think the basic problem is that the head screen writer Steven Moffat has caved-in to feminist critics, pandered to (real or imaginary) prime-time viewers; and focused on 'building-up' female-interest - to remake Doctor Who as The Clara and Doctor Show.

All this at the expense of showing us this brilliant new Doctor doing Doctor-type things.

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Well, plot-wise it seems we will at last be rid of this smug and pedestrian young woman companion - but unless the weaknesses of this series have been recognized, and the correct lessons have been learned, then the next series will be different but not better.

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I used to read great swathes of stuff about comparative religions and mythology; and they all assumed that the sacrificing of animals was something that human did naturally - as a universal aspect of human psychology.

But this never really convinced me, because I did not feel this impulse in myself - nor did I see it in others. I did feel and see an near universal impulse among humans to torture other creatures including other humans, but not to sacrifice them.

I have just come across an interesting passage in James E Talmage's book Jesus The Christ (1915) in his notes for Chapter 5:

NOTES TO CHAPTER 5.

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The Law in modern secular Western democracies is a good example of 'not even trying'.

It used be be assumed that 1. Laws should be moral; 2. Laws should be coherent.

If Laws are moral and coherent then it is Good to obey them (while acknowledging that Law is not the highest morality, and being both partial and systematic Laws sometimes are not moral and coherent - hence the need for God, Judges, and mercy).

But it is about fifty years since The West abandoned this religious concept of Law; and the real Law began to unravel. Now The Law is not even trying to be moral and coherent.

Now, Laws are not moral, because there is no morality - morality is contextual and contingent hence unreal; and Laws are not coherent, because coherence is not acknowledged as necessary, nor even as Good.

Now Laws are just Laws, and they are not based on anything solid, they are not a consensus, they can change open-endedly, the contradict each other, we are all doing illegal things every moment of every day, disobedience to many laws is openly advocated and praised... yet in some situations some people are supposed to obey some Laws... Or Else.

This is the situation- The Law is not trying to be moral nor is it trying to be coherent; and this situation is justified on the basis that there is no morality and no requirement for coherence; so fundamentally what is now called Law is a fake, that is only related to real Law at the level of evolving social institutions.

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Note: The situation of living under a fake system of Law is generally unnoticed because people do not discriminate between a real but imperfect system of Law- which has the correct and necessary ideals and aspirations but fails to execute them perfectly is has flaws and corruptions; and, on the other hand, a fundamentally fake or pseudo-system of Law, which cannot be described as corrupt or flawed because it lack any concept of purity or perfection. Between these, there is all the difference in the world.

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Christianity should not be presented as a matter of God doing things to Men...

But, instead, as a personal relationship between God and each Man...

And a relationship in which each Man's personal will, choices, and actions are a real and central and necessary part.

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Thus the human condition of incarnate, mortal earthly Life should not be presented as something done to us - not as a reward, nor as a punishment - but primarily as a (mutually-agreed) context for personal relationship.
 

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This is an invitation to any Mormon who reads this and lives by the Word of Wisdom to summarise - in their own words - their understanding the role and rationale of these rules for living in the LDS faith.

(Or,if you prefer, e-mail me personally hklaxnessatyahoo.com).

Fully accepting that the WoW rules are necessary for exaltation - I am asking whether the WoW should best be seen as a necessary worldly expedient, or as something fundamental and permanent (or as something else).

By 'necessary worldly expedient', I mean that these rules are necessary here and now and in the world as it is (perhaps as a foundation?) - but not a deep or fundamental or eternal matter in relation to the Plan of Salvation.

Or is the WoW is something more symbolic, or perhaps deeper than this?


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I have read a couple of books about Rudlof Steiner (1861-1925) the Austrian philosopher and founder of Anthroposophy, and made some effort to sample from some of his scores of books.

I have known of Steiner's for many years - indeed I once visited a friend whose parents ran a Steiner residential home for mentally disabled adults, and it seemed like an excellent institution. Most recently, I have engaged with Steiner's work a little more deeply due to reading Owen Barfield - CS Lewis's best friend, and an Inkling.

Anyway, I think I have now read enough to form some kind of evaluation of Steiner; enough to know that I don't really want to read much more - because I have not got much benefit from him.

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In the first place, I am convinced Steiner was a real genius. The account of his life makes clear he was a man of really remarkable understanding and ability and creativity - and a gifted leader.

Furthermore, he had an extraordinary spiritual capacity - and an unusual one, in that his spiritual insights seem to have been more or less continuous, and happening in clear and alert consciousness, with full retention of his very logical and thorough analytic intellect.

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I was surprised to find that Steiner was a Christian, or at least believed himself to be.

In his early forties he had a born-again, personal experience of the central importance of Christ's life and death to the history of everything and the future of man.

Aside from that minimal Christian core, much of the rest that he believed about Christ was... idiosyncractic; but I would say that he was a devout Christian of sorts, for the last main part of his life.

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But the solid core of insightful Christian mysticism in Steiner, and his range of contributions to alternative medicine, education, horticulture and what-not - are diluted and swamped by all kinds of complicated and systematized details which he regarded as spiritually validated.

A vast quantity of sheerly arbitrary and silly stuff, on every topic under the sun and beyond it, makes-up the bulk of what Steiner wrote (and spoke in thousands of lectures) - mainly in the last 20-25 years of his life.

(I could not summarize this, and even to think about writing about it is embarrassing - if you don't already know, then look it up for yourselves.)

So what went wrong? How did a spiritual genius, and a Christian, come up with this stuff?

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I think it was because Steiner devised a method.

Spiritual insight was natural to him, and needed no forcing; but Steiner wanted to be able to train everybody else in this method - so he seems to have taught and used a way of 'spiritually' generating answers to any question he wanted to know, or which anybody asked him, on any subject.

Steiner treated himself as if fundamental knowledge of reality was something 'on-tap'. He would merely need to enquire, and out-it-came like a ticker-tape: pedantic, literalistic, systematic, dogmatic stuff - fact upon fact upon fact - filling dozens and dozens of turgid books - take-it-or-leave it.

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In the end, Steiner made it almost impossible to do anything but accept him as an infallible prophet, or reject him lock-stock-and-barrel.

I enjoyed both books about Steiner, and would recommend them - they were by Colin Wilson and Gary Lachman; but I did not enjoy it when I then turned to Rudolf Steiner himself, and read (or tried to read) the man himself.

My conclusion is that Wilson and Lachman have read Steiner, so I don't have-to.  

I am convinced that there are many genuine, inspired insights scattered through Steiner's work - and that he was basically a very good man; but frankly, sifting through the reams and reams of turgid nonsense is just not worth the effort.

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From Christopher Tolkien's glossary to Chaucer's Nun's Priest's Tale: 

Medieval English possessed special negative forms of some common verbs; see nys, nas, nere, noot [ nys from ne is, is not; nas from ne was, was not; nere from ne were, were it not; noot from ne woot, I do not know]... 

The phrase 'willy nilly' still contains one: 'will I, nill I' or whether I wish it or wish it not.  

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The usage appears in Arwen's tragic words beside Aragorn's death bed:

I must indeed abide the Doom of Men, whether I will or I nil: the loss and the silence.  

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While almost the whole of the World is quietly sleepwalking into Hell (and wholly by their own choice - not because they are forced to go there); the biggest of all threats to the success of Satan's plans is the impatience of his most radical and aggressive young slaves, servants and followers.

The biggest threat to the success of Satan's Big Plan is that the sleepwalkers will awaken before they reach their destination; and the most likely way that that will happen is if there is revolution, war, chaos, mass suffering...

Yet, as the forces of darkness get more and more power; this is exactly what Satan's minions want most desperately to inflict: and they want it NOW!

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Reining-in these young, radical, fire-brands is going to become harder and harder - since they know that The System is covertly on their side, and that they can have all the fun of destruction, of exacerbating and enjoying the opportunities of decline, and of pretending to be brave but suffering minimal personal risk - having, indeed, a high chance of both immediate personal gratification and also eventual establishment embrace.

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But Satan does not want the sleepwalkers to be woken - because in the long term it is much better for his Big Plan that things be kept soft, comfortable, indefinite, mildly hope-ful for as long as possible; until it really is too late; and then (but only then) will the minor demons and their servants be allowed a field-day - granted (for a while) complete license to slake their vile desires on Men and Women.

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So, I think we may soon see something which has not been seen for two generations in The West: serious repression of the ultra-Left: a crack-down on the preachers of extreme radicalism and revolution.

For fifty years, the Far-Left have been cosseted and indulged and given status, security and glory; they have functioned as an avant garde for the mainstream progressives - but if they now come to be regarded as threatening the ultimate success of the Big Plan by waking-up the sleepwalkers, then we can anticipate seeing these personnel on the receiving-end of some very tough punishments.

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Unless, that is, the Adversary himself (and his senior lower-archy) themselves become impatient, and cannot any longer bottle-up their lust for mass misery, torture, starvation, death and destruction.

This is quite likely - as short-termism is natural for evil; one of evil's most potent weapons.

In which case all that and more will happen, in a trice.

And then, the sleepwalkers will - some of them - suddenly awake; and more of them will repent before it is too late.

The horrible truth seems to be that the best 'hope' of the West may be Satan's itchy trigger finger...

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This plays out daily in the sham debates of the mass media.

Those in power - i.e. the mass media and their Leftist servants (in other words, the Progressive Establishment, the Mandarinate, those with power and influence) demand to be interpreted with nuance - and impose unilateral nuance on the debate.

In practice, this means those in the power structure debate so that they are judged by strictly legalistic interpretations of their precise words - interpreted with an assumption of their good motivations.

This framework is imposed by the mass media

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The Progressive Establishment refuse to be judged by any except good motivations (which have been inferred from innumerable previous acts and trends) - it is regarded as simply crazy talk from 'conspiracy theorists' to assume that the power-holders' motivations are bad.

Yet, if the debate is structured by this assumption of the good motivations of the Progressive Establishment - then they must always be allowed 'the benefit of the doubt'; and since doubt can always be manufactured - therefore the Liberal Establishment have pre-won every debate: their victory is built-in...

(Because the mass media controls the debate, and the mass media is the origin and focus of modern New Leftism, Political Correctness, Progressivism.) 

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Leftist politicians have pre-won every issue they care to raise - in the public arena - so long as there has been a lawyerly choice of wording for everything they say.

In other words, so long as Leftist politicians speak legalese, the mass media will always win their debates for them.  

It is the ability to communicate in lawyerly - ie. deniable -  forms of words which explains the domination of the political system by lawyers.

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Opposition to Progressive Leftism is, on the other hand, judged not by the legalistic wording of its arguments - but by its inferred motivations: by its assumed negative motivations.

Since it is pre-decided that Leftism has good motivations; opposition necessarily has bad motivations (or else they are ignorant or insane, and can be ignored).

The actual arguments of the opposition do not need to be considered (nuance not needed), because it has been pre-decided that their motivations are wicked (or dumb or crazy).

Therefore the arguments of the opposition are not considered - but the opposition is simply treated as as bad people who want bad things (or else labelled as ignorant or insane, and out-with the scope of legitimate debate).

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This is modern public discourse.

Nuance and the assumption of good motivations for us - but you will be treated as wicked, dumb or crazy and your arguments will therefore - naturally, be ignored.

You will be managed as 'a problem', not debated.

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What is the point of participating in this?

None that I can see. Good stuff can only happen outside the public arena, out-with the mass media.

Good people with good ideas must either build-up their own channels of communication - mostly face to face and/or person to person - and essentially ignore the mass media; or else good people are absorbed into evil; fuel the mass media; take-up their pre-assigned parts of demons, knuckle-draggers and lunatics whose defeat has already been scripted.

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These Ladybird Books published from 1959 onwards made a big impact on my childhood - both capturing country landscape as I experienced it, and sensitising me to see and feel more.

You can see that the illustrations are quite literally Works of Art - done by CF Tunnicliffe who was a Royal Academician, and who clearly took infinite pains to capture in microcosm the special atmospheres of English country life; as well as providing the basis for an education in nature. Each picture is a poem.

If you are English, or love England - then these are books you should own. Although located at the crux between traditional and modern (1950s) life, and depicting both - their spirit is in fact timeless.

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This is no joke. At every level and in every way, the strong trend has been to encourage and praise people for putting-off the real things of life, and expending ever more years in 'preparing' for... life.

(And then to retire from life as soon as possible!)

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Most obviously this applies in formal education and job training. The minimum school leaving age goes up and up, the average school leaving age goes up even-faster; the proportion of people at college is vast and still increasing - the length of time they spend at college, accumulating 'qualifications', is also high and rising.

When, eventually, formal education finishes people spend longer and longer periods getting even more training for jobs. By the time you 'qualify' you will be well onto the down-slope...

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(I have known many scientists who spent fifteen years gathering qualifications and experience to do 'their own' research: PhD, years and years of post-docs, moving here and their, pretending enthusiasm for what bored them - but when they were finally (late thirties) appointed to a permanent position, they had either forgotten what science was; or else discovered that they were never supposed to do their own research into what fascinated them - but do whatever 'other people' currently decided ought to be funded. I have known doctors who have done two undergraduate degrees, a doctorate, and more or more time training and training to become some kind of specialized surgeon perhaps - studying and working all the hours God sent, moving around the country, around the world, rootless - and when they were eventually appointed to the job of their dreams in their late thirties... discovered didn't like it and quit.)

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In personal life, there is a very strong social ethic to put-off getting married, and to put-off having children - it is regarded as bizarre and almost wicked for a middle class or upper class woman to marry and have a family at age twenty; for men to want to marry at this age is regarded as just insane (or extremely low status).

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The idea that we ought to get-on-with the important things of life, is something that hardly comes up - but then, of course, for modern culture the 'important things' are actually what we are supposed to do when putting-off the real things - high living, partying, travel, getting drunk, experiencing multiple friendships and love affairs, gathering sexual experiences, exercising and body-building, sky-diving and bungee-jumping...

That is the Ideal Life, in a secular society - and what a miserable, shallow, corrupting, worthless thing it is. (I speak from experience - as a chronic putter-offer.)

Think about the real motivations of the people who actually want that stuff for you and for your loved ones!

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Don't be fooled! Don't put-off life, and put-off life, in order to to prepare for life!

Get-on-with what is really important (and if you don't know what is really important, get-on with finding-out) -  

Get-on-with it! ... not impatiently, nor desperately, but as soon as you reasonably can!

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http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/intelligence-probably-declines-by.html
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