Bruce Charlton's Notions

(Continuing from: http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=mother+in+heaven )

Our contemporary problems require recognition of our Mother in Heaven (wife of our Heavenly Father, literal Mother of us all in our pre-mortal lives as spirits) - who is concerned by the minute details of her childrens' lives - such matters are the crux of things.

Having recognised her reality we surely cannot, and should not, continue to ignore or reject her?

When Feminism asserted that The Personal is Political this was an attempt at total thought-control and subversion by the political (paternal) realm - henceforth nothing was to be exempted from regulation by feminist ideology. This constitutes a theft from the domain of Mother in Heaven; whose concern is not ideological but whose concern is a consequence of the fact that she loves us and wants the best for us.

When ideologies - or even religions, even Christianity - seek to regulate the minutiae of life according to ideas, laws, regulations and the like abstractions and generalisations - then this is a theft from the domain of Mother in Heaven; it is a subversion of love by principles.

(It is ironic, but in no way surprising, that feminism operates by imposing a tyranny of crushing, one-sided paternalism into the maternal realm. Unsurprising because Feminism is rooted in hatred of Motherhood.)

Once we know that Mother in Heaven is real (which knowledge comes from personal revelation) then we cannot rest until we know her (which is not the same as knowing-about her). That is what Mothers want.  Mothers want to stay in touch with their children.

The centuries, millennia, of neglect and rejection of Mother in Heaven is a great sorrow to her, and a constant source of loneliness to us. She does not at all want worship; there is nothing whatsoever here about setting-up as a rival deity to her beloved eternal husband God the Father. What she wants is something altogether different - less public, formal, aesthetic - much more direct, personal and homely.

Mother in Heaven is complementary with our Father. The Father cannot adequately substitute for the Mother. What is natural and proper and fully-wholesome and requisite from the Mother; is totalitarian dictatorship - an iron cage - emanating from the Father.   

A Man appreciates, sometimes even understands, a Woman. But he cannot be woman, he cannot think it. At the conceptual level his truth is one that is external; empathy but not identity. Therefore for a Man or a Woman the opposite sex is necessary for wholeness; necessary and not an optional enhancement; but absolutely required.

Organised religion is necessary; and it just-is innately patriarchal. (If not, to the extent it is not, it very rapidly dwindles to extinction - always and without exception.)

That is a clue - Mother in Heaven is necessary as part of our Christian religion but not as part of official discourse. So our relationship with Mother in Heaven cannot truly be a part of religious dogma, public worship and communal praise, rites, rituals, sacrifices or whatever else may be regarded as more or less necessary for God the Father. She is not far off, but just over the shoulder; merely a whispers length distant.  

In sum, Mother in Heaven does not want our worship; she wants to know, to help, to comfort, to nurture, to teach, to advise, to share our living and to be involved; day to day. Nothing is too small a matter, nothing too individual, everything is significant. She has billions of children - each one of us endlessly interesting, always important.

For her there is no Big Picture - but billions of infinitely detailed miniatures.

The title says it.

The core reason why Leftism, Liberalism, Political Correctness and the Social Justice Warriors have been winning and winning and winning for fifty years and more - is their offer of Sexual Liberation.

The Left offers Sex - whatever you want, potentially unbounded, and religion does not: all religions are restrctive about sex - and the mainstream socio-political opposition to the Left (the secular Right) are perfectly clear that they want the sex more than they want anything else.

It really does not matter how psychotic life becomes in the West - how obvious are the absurdities of Political Correctness - how wicked are the inversions of truth, beauty and virtue... there will not be and cannot be a backlash against Leftism, except on the other side of a mass religious revival.

It is precisely because the Left absolutely and categorically refuses to be religious that we have Leftism.  No matter what happens, the West stubbornly and categorically refuses to be religious.

(I mean seriously religious - religious so that it makes a difference, so that it leads to significant self-sacrifice; not being 'spiritual' as part of a lifestyle, nor being 'liberally' or 'moderately' religious = primarily Leftist with religion fitted-around.)

The West refuses to be religious because of Sex - because all religions demand sacrifices when it comes to sex; and Westerners will not make these sacrifices.

Nearly everybody in The West has their own sexual 'thing' which they most hope for, and which religion would take away from them (or make them feel bad about) - sex before marriage, sex with lots of people, extramarital sex, sex with anybody or anything other than your spouse...

Most people don't ever get what they want, sexually, but they live in hope of it - and religion takes away that hope; takes away their 'right' to live-by that hope.

And that is intolerable to Modern Man. Modern Man will tolerate anything rather than that - including the collapse of the system which provides him with peace, prosperity, comfort, convenience and distraction.

Ultimately Modern Man will not get what he wants - because that is impossible in this mortal life, and that kind of wanting puts each individual at odds with every other human being, and the whole of creation.

I'm not saying that the one and only reason that each and every secular Western Person who rejects religion has done so because he will not give-up his or her 'rights' to some religiously-forbidden sexual possibilities.

Not quite everyone, there are probably a few exceptions, those whose rejection of religion is principled and un-self-interested and really-and-truly nothing to do with sex, not fundamentally based-on sex, not even deep down in their secret fantasy life...

Maybe you are one of them; but probably not. 

The Royal Family, as you rightly pointed out in your post, 'What Will Happen When the Queen Dies?'

 http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/what-will-happen-when-queen-dies.html 

have a tendency to polarise opinion.

Some see them as active agents of evil and willing participants in the ongoing dissolution of British culture and society. Others view the Sovereign as a genuine 'still point of the turning world', a bulwark of stability in the face of a collapse which would only career downwards at an even more breakneck speed without the Queen's restraining hand.

There is much, as you say, which is unknown about the aims and intentions of the inner circle of Royals. The truth, I feel, lies (as ever) somewhere between the extremes. There are, however, a series of storm clouds gathering vis-a-vis the succession.

The poet Kathleen Raine (1898 - 2003) had, I recall, a remarkably exalted view of Prince Charles and his role and destiny in our island story. She saw him as standing at the heart of what she called the 'Great Battle', a standard bearer and lightning rod for everything good, beautiful and true.

I've lionised Charles before on these pages to a gentle hum of disapproval, so I won't labour the point, save to say that his tremendous advocacy of Middle Eastern Christians has led some commentators (in The Catholic Herald notably) to speculate that he might be on the point of converting to Orthodoxy. Another potential reason, therefore, why he might find his path to the throne blocked.

I can certainly foresee a degree of tension between partisans of Charles and supporters of William. There is an apocalyptic French prophecy from the Middle Ages (I forget the source) which speaks of great troubles in France followed by a civil war in England sparked by a Sovereign's death and a dispute over the succession.

On that eschatological note, there are three monarchical restorations, I feel, which could potentially occur in the near future and shift the level of debate, due to the extent to which they could possibly be seen as prefigurations of the return of Christ as Judge and King. These restorations could come about as a reaction to political and economic collapse, as an act of defiance against tyranny or as a spontaneous realisation and insight into the spiritual significance and symbolic depth of the Crown.

'If Christ is to return,' as the theologian John Milbank puts it, 'then so too is Arthur.' The three countries in question are France, Russia and Logres. I'll come to Logres shortly, but first the other two points of the triangle -

(1) France, because of her centuries-old commitment to civilised values, especially in scholarship and the Arts; the longevity of her monarchy (496 - 1793), and her Christian witness and elevated status as 'eldest daughter of the Church' - and

(2) Russia, due to the spiritual intensity of her people (as reflected in Russian music and literature) and the idea of Moscow as the 'Third Rome', the true successor to Imperial Rome and Byzantium. Whether this claim is grounded in anything substantial or not, the very fact that it is made reveals a religious vision and an awareness of history way beyond the reach of most Western nations.

Logres is something different. It is the inner, spiritual side of what is commonly known as Britain. It is hidden, invisible, unmanifest - yet always there for discerning eyes to catch a glimpse from time to time. The writer Paddy Leigh Fermor, for instance, saw the ruined abbeys of post-Reformation England as the 'peaks of a vanished Atlantis drowned four centuries deep.'

It is C.S Lewis, however, who really sees beyond the screen of surface appearance in this sizzling passage from 'That Hideous Strength':

'It all began,' said Dr. Dimble, 'when we discovered that the Arthurian story is mostly true history. There was a moment in the Sixth Century when something that is always trying to break through into this country nearly succeeded. Logres was our name for it ... And then we gradually began to see all English history in a new way. We discovered the haunting.' 'What haunting?' asked Camilla. 'How something we may call Britain is always haunted by something we may call Logres. Haven't you noticed that we are two countries? After every Arthur, a Mordred; behind every Milton, a Cromwell: a nation of poets, a nation of shopkeepers. Is it any wonder they call us hypocrites? But what they mistake for hypocrisy is really the struggle between Logres and Britain.' 

Whatever our thrust and counter-thrust regarding the Windsors, it seems fair to say that they belong to Britain rather than Logres. They may well represent the very best of Britain, but there is a qualitative gap between Britain and Logres which they simply cannot bridge. They're not on that level.

Well then, who is? The Jacobite in me would plump for a restoration of the Stuarts and the return of the 'King over the Water' but that again would be to plant my standard on too low - too materialistic - a plane. Logres doesn't work like that. We would be best advised to turn to Lewis again and the continuation of the above-quoted passage, where Dimble asserts that there has been a 'secret Logres in the very heart of Britain all these years: an unbroken succession of Pendragons.'

This suggestion of a secret or alternative line of Sovereigns chimes well with similar motifs in other countries and cultures - the clandestine Merovingian bloodline in France, for example, or the Hidden Imam of Shia Islam. It ties in too with the universal myth of the Sleeping King, as recounted in this part of the world in the story of King Arthur and his Knights asleep in a treasure-filled cave, awaiting the hour of their country's greatest need, when they will wake and rise again to expel once and for all evil from her shores.

These themes, to my mind, have the ring of truth - not the empirical truth of an 'evidence base' but the truth of myth and story, which is an altogether deeper and richer thing, analogous to the 'Deeper Magic From Before the Dawn of Time' that Lewis writes of in 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe'.

It is this level of truth that Winston Churchill tuned into during the Second World War. He recognised in his country's story - its highs and lows, twists and turns and narrative ups and downs - a greater depth of truth than the shortfall in money, manpower and arms, which daunted so many. The 'evidence base' spoke of a prudent acquiescence to the inevitable and a necessary accommodation with the enemy. The 'story' (a la Arthur and Alfred the Great) sang of turning the tables and setting the odds at nought.

This is how Churchill won hearts and minds. He backed the story and built his strategy on that. He chose, in short, Logres over Britain.

Which begs the question, did Churchill himself belong to the hidden line of Pendragons? It is an entertaining thought. Let's leave the last word to Lewis:

'Some of the Pendragons have been known to history, though not under that name. Others you have never heard of. But in every age they and the little Logres which gathered around them have been the fingers which gave the tiny shove and the almost imperceptible pull to prod England out of her drunken sleep or to draw her back from the final outrage into which Britain tempted her.'

This piece of music originates as a movement from one of JS Bach's Partitas for solo violin - and as such is maybe the greatest single piece of music for that solo instrument. It is also well known in Busoni's transcription for piano - which is also one of my favourite pieces. Here it is done extremely well in a live performance by the Morosco Saxophone Quartet - a combination of soprano, alto, tenor and baritone saxes. Listen to the whole thing - the music is quite astonishingly inventive around a very simple repeating bass/ chordal structure (which is what a 'chaconne' is) - and the arrangement by a chap called Andrew Charlton brings out the variety beautifully.

The author Robert Graves (1895-1985) was one of the major influences of my teens - being the first grown-up novelist I read. Graves thought of himself as a poet and was best known during his life as a historical novelist (especially for I Claudius and Claudius the God set in Rome at the time of the Caesars).

But Graves's poetry seems lacking in warmth and spontaneity and his work is not 'well loved', his poetic reputation is not very significant, and he left behind no really good anthology lyric to remember him by. And, since the highly successful BBC TV series of the Claudius novels in the mid-seventies, his novels have fallen from public view and are no longer generally known.

It would probably astonish and appal Graves to know that his major influence has been via non-fiction prose: specifically the early 'autobiography' Goodbye To All That - which contains classic descriptions of trench warfare from the 1914-18 world war, and has been adopted as a kind of founding document of pacifist radical rebellion; and a strange book called The White Goddess which is the source for the major deity of modern neo-paganism (especially Wiccan witches) - the 'Triple' Moon Goddess (maiden, mother and crone).

For many years I used to carry Graves's White Goddess around with me - I still have the same Faber paperback 1961 edition (now with the cover detached). The book partly fed, and partly was  responsible for, my basic spiritual stance - which was a kind of non-realist pagan-flavoured veneration of the moon, trees, water, landscape - and the idea of 'poetry' as the basis of Life - right through until my mid forties.

Looking again at the WG , it is clear that I barely ever looked at the middle of the book - but read and re-read the first and last chapters. Indeed, I was almost indifferent the the attempt to document and prove Graves's various theses about pre-history and history. What made an impact on me was Graves's tone of voice: the 'superb' conviction with which he stated himself.

As so often in my reading, I was more impressed by the diagnosis than the prescription; Graves's diagnosis of the alienated spiritual malaise of modern times is spot-on, in a spiritual sense; and as powerful as any I have seen. His prescription - a (supposed) 'return' to worshipping the Triple Moon Goddess (as he imagines her) was never very convincing, especially as his descriptions of this supposed ancient religion were so utterly horrific.

By Graves's own accounts, the world of the White Goddess is repellent - so much so, that for once a psychological-sexual explanation seems to be correct: Graves made the White Goddess as a rationalisation of his own sexual life and preferences as they related to his poetic work. The idea is that the most ancient, natural and satisfying human society is a matriarchy in which a cruel and capricious ruling Queen has a series of sexual relationships with infatuated poets, whom she has put to death when she is tired of them. The poets gain from this arrangement the energies and inspiration to write their poems (for a short while).

The whole 'system' has nothing to offer anybody else than the Goddess/ Queen and her series of Poets - except the profundity and power of the resulting poems.

In other words, Graves's White Goddess is partly a 'projection' of the way that Graves 'needed' to be slavishly infatuated to a beautiful woman of strong but fickle conviction and preferences who despised him... in order to find the motivation to write poems - and partly, reciprocally, Graves's own life became modelled on this myth which he had created.

What I now perceive is a very sensationalist, self-dramatising, immature and adolescent psychology at work here - an apotheosis of the ignorant, hopeless teenage 'crush'. Which is no doubt why the scheme appealed to me! - and also why it has gone on to exert such deep influence on modern New Age/ feminist-flavoured, neo-pagan spirituality (which is, typically of modern cultural products, nothing if not adolescent in its framework and aspirations).

My current evaluation is that this book is well worth looking-into for its early and late chapters and the sense of the alienation of modern life. Furthermore, in its inchoate and trivial way, I think the basic instinct in favour of a truly female balancing influence on spiritual life is correct (including the criticisms of this being lacking in Christianity) - although the usual materialist way this feminine impulse has come through into current culture is perversely opposite to what is needed; and has made things vastly and intractably worse.

In the end, The White Goddess is deceptive in that it adopts a reductive, and 'explaining away' attitude towards myth (Graves delights in explaining myths as merely encoded history, and not magical or spiritual at all); and his view of a revived Goddess worship was - ultimately - a kind of self-conscious play-acting: Graves did not really believe in the reality of a White Triple Goddess, and there was always a playful ironic quality about his assertions, in line with its all being a literary conceit or rhetorical strategy.

The spiritual vision advocated in The White Goddess is purely this-worldly (e.g. there is no life beyond death, souls are not real, there is no creator deity), and related to the getting of this-worldly power (albeit poetic power) - meaning that Graves's is essentially a modern and secular world view: it is indeed neo-pagan - a Post-Victorian revivalist personal spirituality, and not truly a pagan religion (as he imagined it was).

The middle of the book is an impenetrable morass of pseudo-scholarly, but occasionally inspired, quibbling and pedantry. But if (as GB Shaw said) the essence of style is effectiveness of assertion, then Graves was a great prose stylist - and his prose never got better (more effective) than in the framing sections of The White Goddess. That is the secret of this book's enduring, albeit occult, success.

We live in a sex-addicted society: a society where the primary motivation is sex. So far, so uncontroversial.


It is not the narrowly-defined person who is addicted to having sex; but the person who organizes-his-life-around sex - such a person might never have had sex, but sex dominates his life like heroin dominates a junkie.

But then isn't this just our culture? Isn't the mass media sex-addicted - newspapers, magazines, social media; isn't almost all comedy, art, music? Public discourse generally?

And doesn't sex addiction characterize the micro-level of daily life inside almost all organizations, institutions, schools, groupings...

Of course, all is deniable - but not due to sublimation (the supposed channeling of sexual motivation into other domains), rather to self-deception.

Since the culture of sex addiction is 99.99 percent strategy, a long-termist vague plan/motivation with a small chance of payoff; then the fact that so much is underpinned by a sexual motivation is typically deniable - indeed it may be be non-transparent to the addict, who fails to perceive that their whole intricate world view - their politics, their style, their every choice - is ultimately organized by a sexual calculus.

How has this arisen and become established as the-water-we-swim-in in modern secular culture?


1. The decline of religion.

2. The denial of the power of sex.

Yet the culture of sex addiction has not turned out to be like a DH Lawrence novel in which sex has obviously displaced Christianity as a sacred and transformative/ transcendent overwhelming chthonic force...

No, it turns-out to be the opposite - we inhabit a culture which, while dominated by sex, simultaneously denies the power of sex; a culture which regards sex as 'merely' a lifestyle option, recreational, fun, a distraction, positive - a culture in which sexual desire is used to shape the society and at the same time which trivializes sexual desire, laughs at it!

(Except that to thwart the exercise of this lifestyle option is, in a non-religious society, a sin - a sin against the very core of a person's system of living. The denial of this particular kind of recreation is therefore an existential threat to person-hood. But this seeming contradiction is not a paradox: because unless the power of sex was denied, society could not neglect to take sex seriously, and would therefore structure society to control sex - which social control would constrain the power of sex to dominate society. Thus the society of sexual addiction is predicated upon a denial of the power of sex.)

The sex addicted culture arose partly by propaganda, was sped-up by propaganda; but sex needs no propaganda - sex is very powerful indeed; so powerful that nothing short of real, old-time religion can begin to tame or control it.

So the best way to create a sex-controlled society, is to deny that sex controls people.


Until the mid twentieth century, men and women were essentially never alone together unless chaperoned e.g. JRR Tolkien was allowed to give individual teaching to girl students, but only in his house with his wife present; not in his office, unchaperoned.

Then very suddenly all this stuff was 'discovered' to be not-a-problem after all, and chaperones were discarded (even in medicine - except specifically for examination of sexual regions), and workforces and educational institutions were integrated, and men and women were treated as identical interchangeable units.

And sexuality was officially not-a-problem - and any problems caused by sex were blamed on the individuals, bad individuals.

(Most obviously blamed on bad men. And of course the new assumptions indeed gave great scope to bad men. But it gives even more scope to bad women; becuase women - as females - have intrinsically greater power in the sexual arena; plus an intrinsic assumption of victimhood and associated sympathy - this being a mainstream doctrine of evolutionary biology. Originally, evolutionary realities had been subordinated to religious imperatives expressed through culture; but absent religion, biology rules culture, untrammeled.)

Consequently, because the power of sex was denied, and because sex really was a very powerful force, everything and every situation became sexualized - potentially or actually.


Officially and in principle there was not a problem; and at the same time, and again officially, all the above situations became a seething mass of harrassment, discrimination, coercive sexualization, menace, oppression and the rest of it.

So, in principle there was no problem with treating men and women as identical and interchangeable and in control of sex.

Yet in practice, the sexual problems were perceived as vast and almost intractable - requiring ubiquitous micro-supervision and a new, expansile bureaucratic apparatus of institutional and legal protections.

Furthermore, since the decline of religion stripped life of meaning and purpose and enforced alienation on an epidemic scale; sexuality became the major source of social energy, which micro-motivated social life - sexualization became pervasive.

Pervasive, yet always deniable. Because sex was (officially) trivial, hence it did not need to be controlled hence it expanded without constraint; and when sex becomes nearly universal, it becomes almost invisible and almost-wholly theoretical - and dissociated from actual physical sex.

Powerful because it is everywhere, potentially; yet weak because it is spread-out everywhere. 


In such a world of sexually-addicted people driven by sexual energies, yet oblivious and indeed blinded-against the fact; the only 'problem' people are those who try to control, limit, restrain, and focus sexuality: i.e. the (few, remaining) religious.

Now, the religious are the only people who explicitly recognize sex for what it is - a vastly powerful force, a potentially overwhelming addiction, the major source of personal energy; thus something that must (if it is not to take-over) be shaped and clarified.

Hence the sex addicted majority regard the sexually-constrained religious minority as being sex-obsessed!

After all, if you are not religious, then what is there to worry about if sex does take-over everything, and if everybody (of all ages) does live 24/7 in a sexualized environment?

Indeed, the non-religious are grateful for their sex addiction - sex is what gets them up in the morning, dressed, and makes them go to work, and do work, and then leave work to socialize; sex makes them take interesting holidays and talk about them; sex keeps them smart and active and sociable.

If it wasn't for sex, most people would utterly lack effective motivation and would probably do nothing - they would have nothing to live-for...

(This can be seen embedded in modern society's attitude to ageing. Adult maturity, serious marriage and family - and even more old age - are feared and seen as 'bad things' insofar as they are all associated with reduced sexual attractiveness and/ or sexual activity. To be describe someone as 'hot' is regarded as a compliment - despite that the term implies apparent sexually availablility at least as much as it describes sexual desirability.) 


Not many people now live outside of this bubble of sex addiction; and the contrast is not between the sexually active and the celibate (most celibates are part of the world organized around sexual motivations); but between the world of sexual addiction and the family.

That is the polarity: sex-addiction versus the family

Thus the family has become the primary religious unit, and the primary anti-radical force.

The hippies were correct: a life organized around sex is the primary counter-cultural force, the force most profoundly and most powerfully destructive of society.

Hence destruction of the family has become the primary focus of nihilistic secular Leftism - at first covertly, but now explicitly.

And every strong family which to any significant extent 'holds-out' against the dominant radicalism of the sexual revolution, is nowadays necessarily a religious unit - although the religious nature of the forces which hold a family together may well be implicit and self-disguised, may be non-institutional and unarticulated.


(The above is a lightly-edited and re-titled repost from March 2013.)
(Clarification - Religion does not mean Christianity alone, but includes other religions, and includes strong non-institutional individual religiosity that shapes that person's life. All sex addicts are non-religious (even if they self-identify as religious); all non-religious people may be presumed to be sex addicts until-proven-otherwise (that is, until it is clear from their life choices that this is not so) - because it takes a very powerful life goal/ ideology to overcome sex addiction, and aside from religion there aren't many of these. But when a person really has a dominating, underpinning but non-religious and non-sexual life goal/ ideology, then the fact is very obvious indeed. Such people are rare and stand-out sharply from the norm, their behaviour is very different from average.)

Queen Elizabeth II is now ninety - what will happen when she dies?

Most people would say 'nothing much' - and that would seem to be the result of rational and evidential analysis.

But it may be that the Queen - over a period of more than 60 years and in many nations - is much more deeply woven into the world's destiny (for ill and for good) than we realise. It may be that the removal of this continuity (including psychologically) will have very great effects; not least because there are profound uncertainties about what will happen in terms of succession.

Nearly everybody assumes that her son will seamlessly take-over; but the transition cannot be seamless since Charles is (in various ways) ineligible for the throne by traditional standards, due to the Monarch's position at the head of the Anglican Communion* - and if Charles does, or does not, become King, then either way there will certainly be major implications and consequences in many areas. It has been quite usual in history for stable and solid monarchies to be followed by bitter, ramifying and spreading succession disputes**.   

Since we have little reliable knowledge about the realities of high politics, and continually underestimate the degree of corruption and evil at the highest levels, it is almost impossible for someone like me to know what has been going-on and what would happen on the Queen's death (and the people in a position to 'know' are, inevitably it seems, part of the corruption and therefore blinded by their own lack of discernment). We don't know what truly is the role of the monarch here and now - we don't know of the compromises and sordid deals that have been struck.

The Queen personally seems to be a sincere and devout Christian - yet she has presided over (and barely if ever criticised) one of the most appalling and complete moral and spiritual degenerations of national public life in the history of the known world: such that the United Kingdom is now a hollow shell of evasion, pretence, lies and indulgence; with no positive role, purpose or meaning whatsoever.

Either the Queen is herself an intrinsic part of the systematic corruption - or else her situation has been one of 'Shakespearian' tragedy of a kind seldom seen: the isolation of a single good woman surrounded by overwhelming demonic forces. I don't know which, and probably this will only be apparent as it happens or in retrospect.

England has a destiny, which takes the shape of a national story; and I feel that a sensitive and informed individual may be able to sense where this story is taking-us.

It may be that when the Queen dies, we will very suddenly realise that we are in the grip of an almost irresistible narrative which will sweep and tumble us into some very different situation than now - whether we like it or not. But, at present, I cannot intuit it.




Notes:
*I know this from someone who is deeply - and appropriately - knowledgeable on the subject. From his perspective, Charles's ineligibility to inherit the throne is clear-cut and definite.
**At least four plausibly strong/ influential sides in such a dispute spring to mind: 1. Supporters of Charles; 2. Supporters of Charles's son William; 3. Those who propose radical 'reform' or 'modernisation' of the constitution before making a decision; 4. Those who wish to abolish the monarchy.  

Many thinkers of the past commented that death was the primary problem in life - but this is apparently not the case for a typical modern person. How can this be?

The reason lies in the fundamental metaphysical assumptions of modern secular ideology: because the fundamental assumption is that the universe of everything is a mixture of rigid determination and randomness (don't ask me how!) and therefore death is merely to be expected: for moderns death is built-in and therefore 'not a problem'.

What IS a problem - a BIG problem - for moderns is understanding or explaining anything 'Good' - such as the values of truth, beauty and virtue; and also structuring principles such as purpose, meaning and relationships. What is a serious problem is why people (in a determined/ random, pointless universe) should be motivated to do anything, or even to exist.

How is this modern problem of 'nihilism', in practise, dealt with? First: it is not well dealt with - and modern societies are all demotivated and dying - both ideologically they are self-hating and biologically they are voluntarily going extinct by the basic failure to reproduce themselves.

But modern people nonetheless get up in the mornings, and do stuff, and mostly they try and stay healthy and alive  - so the question is why?

The answer is - I think - related to the fact that moderns live in a perpetual adolescence - that is, a perpetual state between childhood and maturity; rejecting the spontaneous instinctiveness of childhood and rejecting the responsibilities and overview and long-termism of maturity.

What adolescents live-by is - in a word - fashion. Fashion is what defines the adolescent group, against children and against adults - fashion comes from peer groups - it has no intrinsic meaning but is random variation - yet it is mandatory, motivating, and taken with total seriousness. And then it changes, and changes again, forever and with no ultimate aim or reason.

Adolescents - and modern people generally - live in and for this perpetual bubble of the peer group. And this tells them what to do - but not why, except that otherwise they will lose peer status and that is the ultimate catastrophe because no greater or more lasting reality is acknowledged.

Modern people therefore live in a state of perpetual rebellion and unending transition - and this is what motivates. Such as it - feebly - is. Adolescents get angry, get into fights, have infatuations, will take great risks - and so do moderns.

But such motivations point nowhere, and over time, they go nowhere - because (from that perspective inside which they dwell) there is nowhere to go.


(Note: Christians recognise that, standing above all this random churning, are the forces of purposive evil; which ensure that the net direction of the whole system is toward destruction of The Good. But most of the modern people inside the bubble of perpetual adolescent rebellion are unaware of the fact, and would deny the possibility or reality of evil even if they were made aware.)

April perchance I shall not see again,
Nor follow green-shod footsteps into May.
Or watch shy blossoms curtsying to rain,
Or thrill once more to Junetime's roundelay.

Yet I'll not mourn the migrant swallow's flight,
For nearer now the cosmic motions weave
New patternings to guide me through the night
Till constant morning breaks, and I believe

There is a further springtide, tranquil, blessed
That breathes upon all winters of the years,
That bears the balm of sorrows dispossessed,
And beams a light on all that life endears.

There shall I venture, marvelling as I go
At the four seasons, now an eternal One,
Pausing to warm my hands on summer snow,
Bending to shield a snowdrop from the sun.


From Wisdom from the Wilderness - a selection of philosophy and poetry, by Charles Ackerman Berry - (2000; Bohemia Publishing: Bristol).

My knowledge of this lovely poem (written from the depth of illness, as the author approached his death) comes via the poet's daughter who wrote me about her father's friendship with William Arkle in Bristol - around 1960.

Interested, I bought this self-published volume, and found several real lyric poems - of the early 20th century 'Georgian' genre (broadly similar in style to Walter de la Mare, WH Davies, Robert Frost - the spirit perhaps more like the older Longfellow) - in other words, CAB was born a generation or more too late, after Modernism has become dominant; consequently his poetry was hardly noticed.

Nonetheless real poetry is rare and real, and always will find those who want it - regardless of whether it was written out of its time. 

I remember being aged about 14 and being mildly mocked and teased for believing that Tolkien's Lord of the Rings was true - the person doing the mocking was the friend who had actually introduced me to the book, and he liked it very much. That was one thing, he said; but I actually believed it.

What I found so cutting - and this is why I remember the event - was that it was correct: I did believe LotR was true; and I was shocked to discover that this friend did not - it seemed like a betrayal, and indeed I did not regard him as a friend after that point.

For me, the main fact about the Lord of the Rings was that it was true. How exactly to explain that - to explain what 'being true' meant in this context - was a further question; but the truth was the main thing. Indeed, I have never come across a satisfying explanation of the way that LotR (for example) is true. I am not satisfied by Tolkien's own explanation with respect to Subcreation in his essay On Fairy Stories and the many other pieces in that tradition; I am not satisfied by the explanations based on Symbolism; nor by Jungian Collective Unconscious type explanations - even less by post-Jungian explanations of myth in the Joseph Campbell/ James Hillman style.

All these sell short the way in which LotR is true. On the one hand it is not literally true in any kind of fact-by-fact basis; but on the other hand it is solidly true in-and-of-itself in a way that is grossly under-sold by the explanations I have seen. These explanations are, indeed, not even the kind of thing that could be a satisfactory explanation - they are abstract schemes based on abstractions; whereas the truth of Tolkien is anything-but abstract - the opposite of abstract! It is something experienced.

In fact, given its role in my life over many decades, this inability to explain the truth of LotR takes on a decisive aspect - it points to a major inadequacy of metaphysics, a failure of the basic structure of thinking which I have assumed and lived-by.

If it was just the Lord of the Rings, that would perhaps be less significant; but the problem is more general. For example, the truth of Father Christmas/ Santa Claus. I really dislike hearing people say that Father Christmas is untrue - it seems like a shocking and shameful admission to advertise oneself as an unbeliever in so obviously and importantly true a phenomenon. Yet I seemingly can't explain how or why Father Christmas is true - any explanation I have known for the way he is true, grossly undersells the matter.

On the flip-side, there are many, indeed most, things in public life which it would be regarded as a mark of insanity to deny the truth of that do not strike me as true - things in science, history, common knowledge... They conspicuously lack that which Lord of the Rings has in such abundance - I know that LotR is true, and with them... I don't.

This is a long-way-round to my recent grasp of Rudolf Steiner's metaphysics (or, 'epistemology' as modern philosophers tend to call it) which I outlined yesterday -

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/my-understanding-of-rudolf-steiners.html 

- and its clear assertion that what is thought is reality: not a 'representation' of reality, but actually the same thing. In thinking we are participating-in the totality of universal truth.

This is metaphysics, so it is not the kind of question we discuss on the basis of 'evidence' - but (among many other attributes and consequences) this seems to me to be the solution to the problem of the truth of the Lord of the Rings. In reading (and thinking about) LotR I was - with great focus, concentration and clarity - thinking some of the truths of the universe; the actual primary stuff of creation was active in my consciousness.

But why specifically LotR? Surely all thoughts and all thinking have that characteristic? Yes, but not all things that we casually assume are thoughts and thinking, actually are thoughts and thinking. For me, clearly (assuming the metaphysical assumptions) there was something about Lord of the Rings that made it so I really, clearly, powerfully thought it and was aware of my thinking.                 

Of course the Lord of the Rings is true! - universally, and really true.    

What is the relation between total reality and the ideas of the human mind? Steiner asserts (and I think proves, given his assumptions) that the ideas of the human mind are the same thing as total reality (albeit a tiny and biased sample from that total reality).

By 'same thing' - he means identical with.

The modern positivist/ relativist skeptic asks why (on earth!) this should be?

Steiner's answer is that the creator deity made things so.

(This I infer based on assumptions that are not given clearly and explicitly in PoF - and this makes it harder to understand this book, and Steiner's whole system, than it was 100 plus years ago).

*

Total relativity is sampled by thoughts as they occur in the process of thinking. This reality is generated, as it were, automatically: it is what thinking does.

Steiner regards thinking as not just automatic but necessarily valid. This arises from the fact that the units of 'thoughts' are identical with the units of total reality (insofar as any 'unit' detached from an inter-related-whole, can be valid).

More specifically, reality comes to us cloven in twain - split between percepts (coming through the senses - external and internal) and concepts which we derive from the totality of reality.

Thinking matches the percept to its complementary concept - that is what thinking does - and then weaves these thoughts into understanding.

And this understanding is a microcosm of total reality.

(All this is given us - by the basic set-up of creation.)  

*

But Men are variably conscious of this thinking - because consciousness has different strength and different focus.

Hunter-gatherers and youngish children unconsciously accept the validity of thinking.

Modern Man (older children and adolescents) became aware of the separate (and radically incomplete) realities of percepts and concepts; and becomes aware of the metaphysical assumptions of deity, creation, Man's make-up and thus doubts the validity of thought - notices that these assumptions are not compelled (and therefore denies them).

Future Man (mature adults, of whom there are apparently very few) will become conscious of thinking as valid - as reality itself.

*

So thinking actually is in itself a microcosm of reality. But what of the incompleteness and bias of thinking? How can each person discover these inaccuracies, and correct and improve their thinking - to make a more complete and representative sample of reality? And why should Man do this?

Further assumptions - that Man is made by God to-do-this, because Man's destiny is to become more divine. God has knowledge of the totality of reality: Man's destiny is to approach ever closer to this condition.

So Man is set-up with innate and spontaneous impulses to seek knowledge; to correct, make more consistent and complete knowledge. Furthermore, deity purposively assists this process, by many and various means.

*

The message of Philosophy of Freedom is therefore to restore confidence in the truth of thinking. Thoughts are real and true, they are indeed identical with ultimate reality. We should not waste time on doubting thoughts and thinking - but we should strive to be aware of them.

We should instead consciously seek to increase experience by exposure to the most helpful percepts. Don't waste time on doubting deity - accept that you dwell in a created universe, you were put into that creation and the whole fits together - communicated directly and reliably. Work towards the fullness of knowledge and increase of deity.

(If a Man was - after vast aeons of experience perhaps - to attain total knowledge: what then? Would he merge with deity? If so, then what would be the point of the whole protracted exercise? The answer is that Man would become a different deity - different on the basis of having a unique set-up, and different in the linearity of experience.)

The common distinctions between subjective and objective, spiritual and material, imagination and common sense are collapsed - all these are obliterated in thinking: if some-thing can be thought (really thought) then it is real and true.

*

But consciousness is what enables us to be aware of thinking, and consciousness may abstract from thinking, may create abstractions from thoughts, may create models from these abstractions.

Modern consciousness has fallen into many bad habits of abstraction; bad habits of abstracting artificial concepts from thoughts, and manufacturing abstract model systems from these abstractions.

These are not real - most of what is in modern consciousness is not real. Our automatic, unthinking consciousness, automatically misreads thinking.

To repeat: Modern Man automatically and habitually fails to observe thinking and instead focuses on abstracted, detached, modelled (hence unreal) phenomena. What consciousness is telling us are our thoughts and thinking, are not our thoughts and thinking but instead abstractions and models.

*

The test of un-reality is that we cannot think it!

Contrariwise - anything and everything we can and do think is real - including anything we can imagine and think.

So - The problem for modern Man is not Thinking but Consciousness.

What Modern Man needs to do (must do, if he is to fulfil his destiny) is to redirect consciousness away from percepts and concepts and onto thinking. To do this we need to be aware of what we are doing wrong with consciousness.

We think in truths: our task is to stop ignoring the fact. 

*
In 1894 Rudolf Steiner published a book Die Philosophie der Freiheit variously Englished as The Philosophy of Freedom (PoP), The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity and Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path.
The book can be read online at:
http://www.rsarchive.org/Books/GA004
Or listened to at:
http://www.rudolfsteineraudio.com/POSA/posa.html

Unreflective, naive realism is the past: religious traditionalism - it accepts what is given and relies on not-thinking about it. And then those who reflect and think deeply and become wise are led to a conscious recognition that what is given is true, real and therefore necessary.

Modern people who do not consciously think are therefore on 'the Right'; and so are those who follow-through their thoughts to their conclusions.*

But the mass majority of modern intellectuals, however, think a little bit but never through to conclusions. They reflect a little, but never about their own assumptions. They are - in a word - sophomores: that is, wise fools - or, actual-fools who superficially appear, and believe themselves to be, wise.

They can see what is wrong with the status quo but not what is wrong with their proposed solution; they know the obstacles in the path of achieving their goals but not the reason for those obstacles or that their goals may be incoherent or evil; they can see what makes some people miserable in the short term, but not what leads to a fulfilled life for most people in the long term.

The Left make much of the egalitarian economics of redistribution - of taking from the minority and handing it to the mass majority; but never do the sums to find out how much more this would give to the minority. Socialism as an international movement growing through the 19th century was built upon the desire to alleviate the poverty which the elites had noticed for the first time after the industrial revolution (after the industrial revolution had objectively alleviated that poverty - but had also brought the poorest into concentrated groups in towns) - but socialism relied on the sophomoric mindset that believed redistribution would solve poverty; but nobody did the sums which showed this was grossly impossible, and that egalitarian socialism would certainly and mathematically lead not to universal plenty but universal poverty.

Nowadays the Left focus on the supposed plight of 'victim' groups who have for the past fifty years been systematically and explicitly granted preferences and privileges by multiple laws, regulations and openly in bureaucratic and private discourse. This is in order to address some specific inequalities  (maybe personal, maybe statistical) which are usually the consequence of common sense justice - justice therefore needs to be redefined. The answer to be imposed is 'equality of outcome' as defined by group membership - i.e. quotas - regardless of individual differences. The consequences of equalising outcome by quotas on group membership can be seen with the eyes, as well as reasoned - but the sophomoric Left will neither acknowledge the obvious nor will they think through the implications of what they advocate.

The Left (whose ultimate motivations are evil, and whose ruling elite are deliberately engaged in a - highly successful - strategy of long term subversion, destruction and inversion of all that is Good) have heir pitch exactly calculated. Unreflective people are portrayed as dumb, but anyone who actually thinks rigorously through to conclusions is engaged in 'meaningless metaphysics' and is an ideological apologist for fascism.

The sophomore is thus equally impatient with the naive and with the learned - he is happy with his partial, superficial and distorted little bit of knowledge; his little bit of knowledge makes him feel superior to the masses, but he despises the truly wise because feels no need for any more knowledge because his little bit gets him what he wants (here and now, in the short term, according to his superficial and corrupt desires).

The sophomore regards himself as a kind of perfection of balance - enough knowledge to be superior to the masses, but not so much as to lead to hard work and dealing with troublesome consequences: he feels himself to be both prestigious and pragmatic; with enough learning to justify his authority, but not enough to risk being expelled outside the pale.

We live in a world where sophomores rule - they rule government, the mass media, the mainstream churches, law, the military and police, education, science and everything else.

A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing; and that word 'dangerous' to a sophomore, sounds cool! He likes to think of himself, and be though-of by others, as 'dangerous' - although he actually is a timid, conformist, unprincipled coward in all serious situations (just being pragmatic, you know; saving himself for the really important conflicts...).

Every wise man must pass through the phase of being a sophomore - but unless he recognises it as a phase, he may get stuck there; as have the entirety of the Western ruling class.

Any sophomore is bad enough... But a whole class of smug, self-satisfied sophomores in charge of everything is lethal.


*Note added: This is common knowledge - Uneducated people, unexposed to mass media or mass education, are naturally conservative; and so are experts when it comes to the area of their expertise. Radicals are drawn from those whose knowledge and skills lie in-between ignorance and expertise. 

"A great number of educated readers today will immediately reject unread any literary or scientific book that appears with a claim to being philosophical. There has hardly ever been a time when philosophy has enjoyed less favour than now… 
 
"Questions of the most general interest, and which therefore have been widely read, one does not go too far in saying that philosophical works are read today only by people in the profession. Nobody bothers except them. An educated person not in the profession has the vague feeling: This literature contains nothing that meets my spiritual needs; the things dealt with there do not concern me; they are not connected in any way with what is necessary for the satisfaction of my spirit... 
 
"In contrast to this lack of interest, there stands an ever-growing need for a satisfying view of the world and of life. What for a long time was a substitute for so many people, i.e., religious dogma, is losing more and more of its power to convince. The urge is increasing all the time to achieve by the work of thinking what was once owed to faith in revelation: satisfaction of spirit.
 
"The involvement of educated people could therefore not fail to exist if the sphere of philosophy about which we are speaking really went hand in hand with the whole development of culture, if its representatives took a stand on the big questions that move humanity.
 
"One must always keep one's eye on the fact that it can never be a question of first creating artificially a spiritual need, but only of seeking out the need that exists and satisfying it.  
 
"The task of philosophy is not to pose questions, but rather to consider questions carefully when they are raised by human nature and by the particular level of culture, and then to answer them.
 
"Our modern philosophers set themselves tasks that are in no way a natural outgrowth of the level of culture at which we stand; therefore no one is asking for their findings. But this philosophy passes over the questions that our culture must pose by virtue of the vantage point to which our classical writers have raised it. We therefore have a philosophy that no one is seeing, and a philosophical need that is not being satisfied by anyone."
 
From The theory of knowledge implicit in Goethe's world view by Rudolf Steiner - published in 1886. 
 
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1985/GA002_c01.html
 
Note: This passage (from 130 years ago! - yet more than ever applicable) struck home - specifically the passage I have rendered in bold.

Substituting a spiritual Christianity for 'philosophy' (into which I have retranslated Wissenschaft, which the original translator had - I think misleadingly - rendered as 'science': it means c. systematic knowledge) - it is tempting to try and create the need for which Christianity is the answer.

Tempting... but this is futile and will be resisted. The starting point must be to consider the questions that are raised by human nature, and to answer them.

The main 'questions' are - I think - related to feelings of alienation, meaninglessness, futility and despair - how to solve these deep and demoralizing problems.

These all lead to a consideration of Christianity if pursued honestly and rigorously (and we can do no more than induce people to a serious consideration) - the (difficult) task is therefore to encourage people to be honest and rigorous about their spontaneous spiritual needs.

The primary form of communication is having the idea (a true, real idea - let's assume), clarifying it in the mind; the secondary form is writing it in my personal notebook - by the time it gets published (as a blog post or in some other form) this is the tertiary level.

But wait! (I hear you cry...) surely the internet is the first, not third, level of communication - since the preceding levels have been private, and there was not even an attempt to 'communicate'?

Well, it is easy to fall into that way of thinking because it is normal and habitual in our materialist public discourse - but my metaphysical assumptions are that there are super-sensory means of communication which are primary; such that I cannot have a real idea except that this came from the totality of all real-and-possible ideas accessible to all humans - the source of all true ideas.

And by grasping and clarifying this idea it is strengthened and made more available to all, by supersensory and unknown paths. These may be entirely imperceptible, or may be more consciously known by roundabout pathways that appear as synchronicities (that is, purposefully managed by deity, but appearing as if these were coincidences).

At any rate, I believe that the proper attitude for a person such as myself - whose main trade is in ideas - is so far as possible to be relaxed about the matter of dissemination: just concentrate on thinking and then 'put the ideas out there' in some way, shape or form... They will find their own level, and (whether directly, or by chains of influence) will sooner or later reach any people who want or need them.

Not forgetting that a man thinking, or - even more so - jotting notes in a journal, is itself a dissemination of ideas so long as those ideas are True, Real and Good.

And if the ideas aren't T R & G, then much better that they were not disseminated.

If I take the past few weeks as a time-slice - the main things I am reading have been mostly reflected on this blog:

1. Major theme: I am exploring the Romantic Metaphysics tradition (I just made-up that name) of Coleridge, Steiner, Barfield and Arkle - by various combinations of slow intensive reading, listening to bits read aloud (this applies mainly to the Steiner, which is available in this form - but my Kindle will read aloud any book, albeit in a robotic and badly-emphasised fashion) and almost random dippings-in by impulse. A bit of Traherne.

2. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - yes... I'm afraid I am listening again to this as an audiobook - from the beginning. And loving it.

3. Tolkien - dipping mainly, but I re-read The Notion Club Papers (nth time), and looking through bits of the History of Middle Earth, and favourite parts of Lord of the Rings; listening (in the car) to Smith of Wootton Major. I tried to listen to The Children of Hurin read by Christopher Lee, but did not like the work or the reading of it.

4. Again in the car, I listened to the funny stories and verse of a Northumbrian farmer - about farming life - called Henry Brewis - who issued three CDs in the 1990s.

5. I have watched a couple of Shakespeare plays on DVD and read in Sam Johnson's and Coleridge's Shakespearian crit.

6. Read various poems from Palgrave's Golden Treasury.

7. Tried to read A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay, but gave up 1/3 of the way through from lack of interest.

8. Bedtime reading aloud (to my wife) - Finished one Miss Read 'Fairacre' novel by Miss Read, and started another - in between got more than halfway through RL Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey (a re-read, maybe fourth time including talking books?) but it didn't work terribly well read aloud and unedited.

9. Family listening in the car - Terry Pratchett - finished Small Gods, am most way through Soul Music.

10. Ground to a halt in listening to an audiobook of the Emerson biography by Robert D Richardson - a book I used to love to the point of obsession, but I now find Emerson too annoying with his multiple proto-progressive views (supported strongly by the biographer).

11. Not much scripture - mainly the Gospel of John.

12. Continuing my rather slow progression through Terryl Givens's Wrestling the Angel account of Mormon theology.
*

Probably more - the large number of works is mainly a reflection of my rather desultory current habits, as I drift from one thing to another...

The reason for so much 'audio' reading is that I listen to books - or cricket - while doing cooking and other kitchen chores.

(When I say 'cooking' I should really write 'food preparation' - of which I do a lot which is necessary and also something I am happy to do for the family; although I very seldom really cook anything. I don't hate it, and I like mealtimes and getting drinks and snacks etc for the family members - but cooking does not give me any intrinsic satisfaction. I have never made a meal I was 'proud of'.)

When we visited Stratford we saw a shop (now closed down) which called itself Much Ado About Toys - which, in a town chock-full of Shakespearian references, struck us as the lamest of the lot.

But when we tried to do better we found it impossible. - i.e. When we tried to make a name for a Toyshop that was a pun on a sufficiently well-known Shakespearian phase that was actually better than the lamentable name of Much Ado About Toys... we utterly failed.

Embarrassing, eh?...

Any suggestions?

(The prize is brief and obscure mention of your name/ pseudonym on this blog. The judge's decision is final.)

Added June 8:
The ceremony: 
And the winners are - second runner-up is Toybalt by JB; runner-up is All is but Toys by Nathaniel - And the winner is... Play's the thing from Crosbie.


Here is your Prize...


Thank you ladies and gentlemen - and goodnight!

It seems hard to live up to, a morning like this one! Cool, but clear and crisp and filled with new leaves and birdsong. My emotions are mostly gratitude and unfocused excitement.

Yet there is also a kind of angst, a superstitious, grinding worry inside my chest that Life is trying to get me to drop my guard so that it can slip in a knockout blow.

How wrong that attitude is, how demonic - that we poison our own bliss by a concern that implies that God would make that kind of world for his children.

(It makes a powerful artistic trope, perhaps, but art is less than God.)

In seeking to free myself from this species of corrosive despair I find my thought most healed by thinking about the clear and luminous insights of William Arkle - In just a few years his direct and intuitive understanding of the divine and human condition has become central to my convictions and aspirations.

From Arkle's essay A Cup of Day.

http://williamarkle.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/late-prose.html

Arkle's text is very slightly edited - his words are in italics; my comments and summaries are in non-italics:

This early morning feeling is that 'My cup runneth over'. But we must not try to catch and hold-onto all the overflowing drops of experience. We cannot 'waste' life; so long as we attend to it - so long as we are here, now, and listening to the divine communications.

All that is really valuable will come back to you when it is needed. It really will!

This is part of the game of life which requires forgetting and letting-go with good grace and a sense of the unimportance of one's self.

Be one with the big fearless love which smiles on everything from its sense of the everlastingness and completeness which lies behind all living reality.

We think we can lose but we can't! There are safety nets around everything, since all comes from perfect love.

If we trust in the love of the creator, our divine parents, then that is the proper basis for living. (Not by terror, not by superstition, not by grasping and gripping - not in despair.) God, surely (and we can discover this for ourselves, if we seek it from divine communications) wants us to be things like hope-full, positive, active, alive, loving, creative, intelligent, aware - whenever possible.

We will, indeed, fail and fall - but by Christ's gift of repentance we will always be caught by those safety nets!

And when joy is not possible, we can endure faithfully in absolute confidence of our Heavenly Father's love - so we can know (with certainty) that, in the end, all hurts will be healed; and our lives become greater than we can curently imagine - except in glimpses.

A secular society is one such as all Western societies, where public discourse is not framed by a religious perspective and priorities.

In such a society mass immigration is a win-win strategy for the demonic powers because in itself it will (by various means, both direct and indirect) tend to subvert residual Christianity - but perhaps most powerfully by being both symbolic of the underlying despair of secularism, and in its effects encouraging an enactment of the 'death wish' for cultural suicide and individual self-annihilation.

The win-win aspect is because in public discourse secular opposition for mass immigration in this context can only be based upon material and psychological selfishness (since that is the only possible bottom line basis of all secular morality which denies the 'transcendental realm) - in other words, opposition to immigration is based upon the wish to preserve (or enhance) personal wealth and this-worldly happiness. Therefore it will attain political motivation and power by encouraging variants of greed and hatred.

And - a neglected aspect - mass immigration to The West is a win-win for Satan (in the large majority of instances) because it is economically and psychologically motivated and leads to the corruption of the immigrating population by secularism (eg. the evil effects of a pervasive mass media, the destructive effects of economic dependence, and a victim mentality which is deliberately inculcated by The Left in host nations).  

In sum, mass migration into the West destroys both Western Christianity and the Christianity of the migrants.

However, a distinct category is the other factor in world population movements, which concerns what might be termed religious migrants, who remain observant or even intensify religious observance in The West; and who seek to expand their religion into The West.

It is interesting to speculate, from a Christian perspective, why God has allowed this to happen - and the most obvious answer is that (to God) any religion is preferable to no religion; any religion has more potential for human salvation (we are not primarily talking about human health, wealth or happiness) than the currently dominant Left-secularism of The West.

So, given the mass apostasy and anti-Christianity of The West - and its subversion of even Pagan common sense and natural decency - the best available option is some other religion rather than the utter despair and inversion of The Good which is characteristic of all secularism on average and in the long run.

None of this is inevitable. If the West chooses to embrace Christianity again, then (and only then) the Western Peoples would find the loving motivation to deal with the phenomenon of mass immigration in the only non-Satanic way it can be dealt-with - by working not for human mortal comfort and convenience, but from the eternal and divine perspective.

Metaphysics are your fundamental assumptions. These are chosen: they were chosen by you (although you probably weren't aware of choosing them, but just passively accepted them).

Fundamental assumptions are chosen - but they are not arbitrary; because the assumptions have consequences. You can choose whatever you want to believe - but sometimes you will not be able to make yourself live-by these chosen beliefs; and other times you will live by them (including thinking by them) such that they lead to nonsensical and therefore self-refuting outcomes.

The trouble is that in a world where people have stopped thinking- and when their assumptions lead to incoherent, nonsensical conclusions, instead of sorting-out their metaphysics - they just stop thinking (easier to do than ever before in human history - due to the ubiquity of mass media and social media).

Anyway - my point is that if you have certain (very common) assumptions, then you will either have a nihilistic, hope-less and despairing world view --- or else you will have to stop yourself thinking about anything serious.

There are innumerable commonly-held assumptions that lead to this: that Man has no free will, that the world is either random and unpredictable or else rigidly predetermined, that nothing exists except what has been described by 'science', that morality is a matter of opinion, that beauty is wholly in the eye of the beholder... oh, there are dozens of such.

 Indeed, most of people's primary assumptions nowadays are of a type that lead to nonsensical or incoherent conclusions - so it is futile to complain about the low standard of rational public debate when rational debate is only possible on the basis that people are able and willing to examine and revise their assumptions when they lead to absurd outcomes.

Because perhaps the most absurd modern metaphysical assumption of all is that metaphysics is meaningless and all decisions should be made on the basis of 'evidence'!

Whereas (as quickly becomes apparent in any disagreement) unless there is agreement on metaphysical assumptions then the cannot even be agreement on what counts as evidence, leave aside the matter of evaluating the strength of evidence...

Song of the Sea (2014) is a really lovely animated movie; lovely in its visuals, music, voice-acting and the story. It is made with a sureness of touch that scarcely puts a foot wrong. There is beauty, sadness, peril and joy. And it has an inspiring and resonant ending.

There is a double aspect to the movie, which has a dominant mythic and fairytale element - and also a modern, psychological parallel plot which I must admit pretty-much passed me by until after I had finished watching and my son pointed it out. I think I was so swept-up by the main story that I had no attention left over.

BTW: I would advise you NOT to watch the 'trailer' - which gives-away about 3/4 of the plot.