...Can be found at the Notion Club Paper's blog.
Excerpt:
In The Flame Imperishable, Jonathan McIntosh argues that JRR Tolkien's work was written from a background in Thomistic philosophy - which Tolkien absorbed during his childhood, especially; and furthermore that Tolkien's major work in the Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion was written such as to be compatible-with the basic principles of Thomism.
This, McIntosh proves!...
Tuesday 13 March 2018
"We are being programmed to think that what goes against nature is natural... It is our souls they are after."
How have we allowed ourselves to be driven down this path, persuaded to abandon real goodness and truth in the name of a demonstrably false goodness and truth?
I say demonstrably because practically every innovation we have allowed over the last 50 years, from on demand abortion to mass immigration to same sex marriage to the current push for transgender acceptance, goes against basic intuition.
Quite obviously in none of these cases should people be condemned or treated unfairly. However that is very different to normalising them all.
But we are being programmed to think that what goes against nature is natural, and that must affect our connection to real truth.
I mean it must affect us as in separate us from it, and that is the demons' intention.
It is our souls they are after. And they do not want us to be dragged kicking and screaming into darkness. They want us to choose it as light.
From William Wildblood at Meeting the Masters
I say demonstrably because practically every innovation we have allowed over the last 50 years, from on demand abortion to mass immigration to same sex marriage to the current push for transgender acceptance, goes against basic intuition.
Quite obviously in none of these cases should people be condemned or treated unfairly. However that is very different to normalising them all.
But we are being programmed to think that what goes against nature is natural, and that must affect our connection to real truth.
I mean it must affect us as in separate us from it, and that is the demons' intention.
It is our souls they are after. And they do not want us to be dragged kicking and screaming into darkness. They want us to choose it as light.
From William Wildblood at Meeting the Masters
Monday 12 March 2018
Paradox equals Polarity - because reality is personal not principles
Painting by William Arkle
We get ourselves tangled in knots about dilemmas of all sorts... we get to believe that Reality is 'paradoxical'; that is, we get to believe that life does not make sense (or that we are incapable of understanding the sense of it).
But I have never seen a paradox that wasn't the consequence of false - or at least unjustified - assumptions.
Especially the assumption that Reality ought to be capture-able in principle, laws, rules that (ought to) apply to all situations (and that the alternative would be chaos, or self-gratification).
No amount of counter-experience is capable of dislodging this assumption; which gives away that it is a very fundamental, primary and thus metaphysical assumption... we are assuming that Reality Just-Is organised by principles; and that persons must fit-into the principles.
But what if Reality is organised by Persons, instead of principles - what if the bottom line form of organisation is life and consciousness and the relationships between living-conscious individual entities?
This shouldn't be difficult to grasp - because it is, after all, pretty much what we all began by thinking, as young children. Suppose, then, that we were correct then and are wrong now? That Reality is about Persons and not Principles?
Is that so hard to imagine? It shouldn't be - unless you are blocking this understanding... but the fact is that you (like me) probably are blocking exactly this... Are resisting it, pushing it away because it seems childish, naive, simplistic, wishful... (like William Arkle's painting above seems to be).
Yet, as Christians, we have the incarnation, teaching and the example of Jesus that - in many, many ways - implies we should be doing exactly this. The fact that Jesus was incarnate God, that he taught with parables and animistic symbolism, that he had a family and gathered persons, that he loved and cared about people...
Focusing on the Fourth (and most authoritative) Gospel (the one written by The Disciple who Jesus loved); the whole thing, pretty much, is Personal - there is nothing much in the way of abstract Principles. The more important the teaching, the more Jesus seems to animate it or personalise it - make explanation a matter of relationships.
Our big problem is our alienation from our True Selves - that-which-is-divine in each of us... and indeed our actual hostility and opposition to our True Selves...
One who is alienated from the divine within exists is a state of profound self-distrust which extends to a fear of others who do trust their True Selves - the typical response is to imagine and seek a System of Principles to regulate everybody in all important matters - to regard this as ultimate morality. The Law becomes greater than any Person - only abstraction is really-real; and even God (the presumed author of that presumed Law) therefore becomes absorbed into abstraction...
Like most bad things (not all - but most) we bring disaster upon ourselves by our wilful, unrepentant, arrogant foolishness.
The True Answer is clear, simple, easily understandable - but, for our corrupt selves - that is exactly the problem with the True Answer!
Sunday 11 March 2018
Cleansing the doors of perception By Thinking - another take on Colin Wilson's 'intentionality'
Painting by William Arkle
Colin Wilson wrote extensively - from The Outsider-Religion and the Rebel (1956-7) about the need for a change in 'perception' - such that the disaffected and alienated modern consciousness could learn a more visionary, wide-ranging and meaning-full mode of perceiving reality.
One explanation he came to favour was related to the insight he derived from Husserl that perception was intentional; that in fact we 'grasp' reality actively... or at least we should do not. Perception should not be passive - and we should not merely accept the way that we perceive from 'society'.
But how to do this? Wilson wrote a lot about this, but somehow none of his suggestions really worked for me: certainly they did not work well-enough to induce any significant or lasting transformation of my consciousness.
A big part of this failure was my rejection of God in general, and Christianity in particular. But a further aspect was that I could not really understand how I might change, for the better, the way I perceived - trying didn't seem to help.
I now see that the best way to approach (which I think implicitly Colin Wilson did himself - to some extent - but did not explicitly understand it in the way I am outlining it here. The insight derived from Rudolf Steiner's early philosophical work culminating in Philosophy of Freedom (1894). Steiner developed a metaphysical description of knowledge that described it in terms of Thinking which is as a consequence of a Percept (sensory perception) and a Concept (idea) - it is the joining of a Percept with a Concept that enables us to know.
Extending Steiner; it is clear that valid knowledge depends on the Percept being joined-with a True concept; and access to True concepts is something that all men have when thinking with their True Self. The True Self provides valid concepts because it is divine - that within-us which is divine.
My point here is that we cleanse The Doors Of Perception (the phrase is from William Blake) Not by doing anything with our senses (as implied by Aldous Huxley in his book of that name, concerning his use of mescaline). Nor by simply allowing our natural spontaneous consciousness to emerge - by losing control (e.g. by drugs, trances, in sleep, in Zen, in psychosis... various of the sixties counter-culture ideas) because that is hardly conscious at all.
Not by changing perception or suppressing consciousness; but by developing thinking in the direction of further consciousness and purpose; which means thinking-from our divine Self.
As both Steiner and his 'disciple' Owen Barfield saw; this requires understanding how Jesus Christ made this kind of thinking possible: made it, indeed, Man's destiny, Man's proper path in being offered the opportunity to become more divine; to become God-like: a godling or child of God.
All that is necessary - but we need to be clear that the doors of perception can be cleansed, as Wilson stated more than sixty years ago - but cleansed indirectly, by a transformation and strengthening of thinking.
One explanation he came to favour was related to the insight he derived from Husserl that perception was intentional; that in fact we 'grasp' reality actively... or at least we should do not. Perception should not be passive - and we should not merely accept the way that we perceive from 'society'.
But how to do this? Wilson wrote a lot about this, but somehow none of his suggestions really worked for me: certainly they did not work well-enough to induce any significant or lasting transformation of my consciousness.
A big part of this failure was my rejection of God in general, and Christianity in particular. But a further aspect was that I could not really understand how I might change, for the better, the way I perceived - trying didn't seem to help.
I now see that the best way to approach (which I think implicitly Colin Wilson did himself - to some extent - but did not explicitly understand it in the way I am outlining it here. The insight derived from Rudolf Steiner's early philosophical work culminating in Philosophy of Freedom (1894). Steiner developed a metaphysical description of knowledge that described it in terms of Thinking which is as a consequence of a Percept (sensory perception) and a Concept (idea) - it is the joining of a Percept with a Concept that enables us to know.
Extending Steiner; it is clear that valid knowledge depends on the Percept being joined-with a True concept; and access to True concepts is something that all men have when thinking with their True Self. The True Self provides valid concepts because it is divine - that within-us which is divine.
My point here is that we cleanse The Doors Of Perception (the phrase is from William Blake) Not by doing anything with our senses (as implied by Aldous Huxley in his book of that name, concerning his use of mescaline). Nor by simply allowing our natural spontaneous consciousness to emerge - by losing control (e.g. by drugs, trances, in sleep, in Zen, in psychosis... various of the sixties counter-culture ideas) because that is hardly conscious at all.
Not by changing perception or suppressing consciousness; but by developing thinking in the direction of further consciousness and purpose; which means thinking-from our divine Self.
As both Steiner and his 'disciple' Owen Barfield saw; this requires understanding how Jesus Christ made this kind of thinking possible: made it, indeed, Man's destiny, Man's proper path in being offered the opportunity to become more divine; to become God-like: a godling or child of God.
All that is necessary - but we need to be clear that the doors of perception can be cleansed, as Wilson stated more than sixty years ago - but cleansed indirectly, by a transformation and strengthening of thinking.
New Arkle artwork online
William Arkle's son Nick has posted some new photos of his artwork online at the Facebook page.
Arkle painted in a variety of style - here is a selection from the new material using his 'mystically-charged-realistic' style:
Arkle painted in a variety of style - here is a selection from the new material using his 'mystically-charged-realistic' style:
And some in the 'pastel-impressionist' style
Saturday 10 March 2018
What is the purpose of old age?
According to modern Western culture the answer is: To Stay Young; but given that is impossible, to pretend to stay young (by simulating a youthful appearance and behaviour).
(The only praise ever given to an older person nowadays is that they don't look or behave as if they are old - they seem almost asif they are young... They could pass as younger - in the dark, with the light behind them...)
There is, in fact, no alternative to this indirect condemnation of ageing - because from a secular materialist perspective ageing is decline, and nothing-but decline - and that's just a plain immovable fact about-which nothing whatsoever can be done.
For mainstream discourse old age is degenerative.
The real purpose of old age is spiritual - objectively spiritual - hence necessarily invisible to secularism.
In reality, old age - properly considered - is developmental (not degenerative) it is an unfolding of purpose. From one positive purpose to another...
The development from mature adulthood to old age properly includes the following shifts of focus:
From material to spiritual
From current to eternal
From elsewhere to here
From evaluating to knowing
From complexity to simplicity
From social to universal
From motivation to being
From creativity to comprehension
From speaking to praying
From listening to meditating
...Thus from commun-ication to commun-ion
From teaching to answering
And from answering what is asked - to answering what is needed.
(The only praise ever given to an older person nowadays is that they don't look or behave as if they are old - they seem almost asif they are young... They could pass as younger - in the dark, with the light behind them...)
There is, in fact, no alternative to this indirect condemnation of ageing - because from a secular materialist perspective ageing is decline, and nothing-but decline - and that's just a plain immovable fact about-which nothing whatsoever can be done.
For mainstream discourse old age is degenerative.
The real purpose of old age is spiritual - objectively spiritual - hence necessarily invisible to secularism.
In reality, old age - properly considered - is developmental (not degenerative) it is an unfolding of purpose. From one positive purpose to another...
The development from mature adulthood to old age properly includes the following shifts of focus:
From material to spiritual
From current to eternal
From elsewhere to here
From evaluating to knowing
From complexity to simplicity
From social to universal
From motivation to being
From creativity to comprehension
From speaking to praying
From listening to meditating
...Thus from commun-ication to commun-ion
From teaching to answering
And from answering what is asked - to answering what is needed.
Friday 9 March 2018
Jesus made God explicit
Jesus made God explicit - and he clarified in his teachings that (from that time) things needed to be made explicit.
Jesus was himself God explicit.
So, from then, and only from then, could God freely be chosen.
(So long as God was inexplicit, God could not really be chosen - freedom, human agency, depends on explicitness.)
Jesus was himself God explicit.
So, from then, and only from then, could God freely be chosen.
(So long as God was inexplicit, God could not really be chosen - freedom, human agency, depends on explicitness.)
Thursday 8 March 2018
A Direct Christian understanding of sexual identity and sexuality
Since the sexual revolution is now the true socio-political divide (The Left being in favour, and those in favour being The Left) it seems clear that an understanding of sexual identity and sexuality is a core part of any viable religious understanding.
The only way of opposing the sexual revolution that most people acknowledge or understanding is as a part of church-teaching; and as obedience to church teachings. Yet, such knowledge is indirect.
What is needed, I believe, is direct, personal, experiential knowledge of sexual identity and sexuality. in other words, people need to know about sex in what might be termed a 'mystical', esoteric, or (I would prefer to say) intuitive way.
The problem is that most traditional mystical 'systems' regard celibacy as the ideal - this applies to the Eastern and Western Catholic Christian traditions, and to Hindu and Buddhist traditions - the mystical path is for 'monks'.
I can't go into the arguments about this here - but this is not the correct answer. Intuition does Not tell us that not-sex is higher than sex...
Celibacy is Not the highest ideal. Intuition tells us that celibacy is only partially human.
The error is seen in that the celibacy ideal seems to encourage loss of sexual identity, loss of spontaneity and creativity, loss of a coherent relationship between men and women and children - destruction of the family. It leads to a maiming rather than a completion. The ideal of celibacy thus, by another path, actually abets the sexual revolution.
What is instead needed is for people to address the nature of sexual identity and sexuality in a direct and intuitive way - to understand that sex goes very deep in our natures. Sex is not something to be transcended, but something to become transcendent.
It is possible to reach an intuitive understanding of sex that tells us, personally, why and how the sexual revolution is wrong, why it is anti-human, why it is a social and personal disaster. And this kind of understanding is necessary - nothing else will truly suffice.
We need to know for ourselves, and we can know for ourselves - that sexual identity and sexuality are objective metaphysical qualities. They are not something dogmatic which we merely obey, they are not something that is 'for the good of society'. They are not merely expedient towards something else.
The result is close-to (but not identical-with) many of the traditional dogmas, and against most of (but not all of) the sexual revolutionary doctrines.
But we cannot just be told these things, and should not believed them just because we are told them; there is no short-cut: to be adult and spiritually developed persons we need to know-for-ourselves and freely choose to live-by this understanding.
'The truth about sex' is an absolutely solid-and-mystical reality, that can be known by anyone who makes the effort with the right attitude.
Reference: Direct Christianity
The only way of opposing the sexual revolution that most people acknowledge or understanding is as a part of church-teaching; and as obedience to church teachings. Yet, such knowledge is indirect.
What is needed, I believe, is direct, personal, experiential knowledge of sexual identity and sexuality. in other words, people need to know about sex in what might be termed a 'mystical', esoteric, or (I would prefer to say) intuitive way.
The problem is that most traditional mystical 'systems' regard celibacy as the ideal - this applies to the Eastern and Western Catholic Christian traditions, and to Hindu and Buddhist traditions - the mystical path is for 'monks'.
I can't go into the arguments about this here - but this is not the correct answer. Intuition does Not tell us that not-sex is higher than sex...
Celibacy is Not the highest ideal. Intuition tells us that celibacy is only partially human.
The error is seen in that the celibacy ideal seems to encourage loss of sexual identity, loss of spontaneity and creativity, loss of a coherent relationship between men and women and children - destruction of the family. It leads to a maiming rather than a completion. The ideal of celibacy thus, by another path, actually abets the sexual revolution.
What is instead needed is for people to address the nature of sexual identity and sexuality in a direct and intuitive way - to understand that sex goes very deep in our natures. Sex is not something to be transcended, but something to become transcendent.
It is possible to reach an intuitive understanding of sex that tells us, personally, why and how the sexual revolution is wrong, why it is anti-human, why it is a social and personal disaster. And this kind of understanding is necessary - nothing else will truly suffice.
We need to know for ourselves, and we can know for ourselves - that sexual identity and sexuality are objective metaphysical qualities. They are not something dogmatic which we merely obey, they are not something that is 'for the good of society'. They are not merely expedient towards something else.
The result is close-to (but not identical-with) many of the traditional dogmas, and against most of (but not all of) the sexual revolutionary doctrines.
But we cannot just be told these things, and should not believed them just because we are told them; there is no short-cut: to be adult and spiritually developed persons we need to know-for-ourselves and freely choose to live-by this understanding.
'The truth about sex' is an absolutely solid-and-mystical reality, that can be known by anyone who makes the effort with the right attitude.
Reference: Direct Christianity
Purposive evil is complex and strategic... (And this is good news!)
Good is simple and immediate - in the sense that good ends are a consequence of good means; and goodness here and now is the route to good futures.
By contrast, we see more clearly Now, then ever before, that Purposive Evil is complex and strategic... Why? Because evil ends must incorporate good means.
(Purposive Evil refers mainly to Satan and the demons, and their human servants and personifications - and to a lesser extent to those in charge of the long term plan for the subversion, destruction, and ultimately inversion of good.)
If something approaching pure and immediate evil can be imagined - it would be utterly short-termist and self-gratifying; thus all evil in the world would be at war with each other and there could be No long-term increase of evil. Evil would, no doubt, to be found all over the place - including every human heart... But each little spark of evil would consume itself, and compete with each other spark. Evil would be a constant background but would not increase.
For evil to increase (which is the plan of Satan) then it must be woven with good over the short term to ensure the expansion of evil over the long term.
But this is a complex business - since it is desired (by purposive evil) that the proportion of evil should increase over the long term.
If we think of the admixture of good as the price paid for the long-term strategic triumphal expansion of evil - then part of the plan is that this admixture will increase in the percentage of evil as time goes-on.
So that in the early days of Leftism, it was mixed with considerable good (compassion for the poor, despised and enslaved) - so there were good socialists, even real and great Christian socialists... But after several generations the dominant Leftism has diminished and diminished the proportion of goodness until it is fuelled mainly by resentment, envy, despair... There is still goodness permeating and woven in - but as a much smaller proportion than five generations ago.
Abstraction is an evil - in an ultimate sense. (This writing, here and now, is an abstraction - and one can see the problem.) Because abstraction is a complex strategic tool - abstraction is dishonest about the ultimate nature of reality - it 'models' reality - for some long-term purpose... this abstraction (like evil) sacrifices short term goodness in pursuit of something long-term that is referred to as a good; yet that is not the way of goodness...
By contrast good is personal. Hence Jesus.
Anyway... my point here is that evil must be complex and strategic if it is to increase; and that this is a great weakness of evil.
We look around at the complex strategies of evil in the world today, and we are bewildered - and may feel intimidated by its sheer complexity and interlocking nature. What can we - such small and simple creatures - do against such an edifice?
Well, the real implication is the opposite. Evil has built this edifice slowly over generations because that is what is necessary for the expansion of evil in the world.
In sum - it is very difficult to be strategically evil. Simple good will destroy it; even simple evil will destroy it! The business of corrupting humanity to invert good and evil - such that we will reject salvation and embrace our own damnation... well it is is extremely difficult to manage, and innumerable things to to go-as-planned for it to succeed.
Thus evil is the part of global government, of international trade, of a single all-pervading and interlinked bureaucracy, of a populace locked-onto mass media 24/7... It is all terribly complicated, inter-dependent, terribly brittle.
Each individual person who is motivated by good can, potentially, inflict very considerable damage to strategic evil - simply by being good here and now; just doing the right thing - a tactic that is simple and obvious, and requires no Master Plan.
This is one message of The Lord of the Rings... Evil is a vast and complex network, the product of many decades of planning, organising, building... Good is 'merely' a couple of hobbits and their friends; doing good things in specific here-and-now situations (assisted by divine providence); and (yet) triggering avalanches of consequences destructive to the vast-and-imposing, but actually-fragile, edifice of evil.
By contrast, we see more clearly Now, then ever before, that Purposive Evil is complex and strategic... Why? Because evil ends must incorporate good means.
(Purposive Evil refers mainly to Satan and the demons, and their human servants and personifications - and to a lesser extent to those in charge of the long term plan for the subversion, destruction, and ultimately inversion of good.)
If something approaching pure and immediate evil can be imagined - it would be utterly short-termist and self-gratifying; thus all evil in the world would be at war with each other and there could be No long-term increase of evil. Evil would, no doubt, to be found all over the place - including every human heart... But each little spark of evil would consume itself, and compete with each other spark. Evil would be a constant background but would not increase.
For evil to increase (which is the plan of Satan) then it must be woven with good over the short term to ensure the expansion of evil over the long term.
But this is a complex business - since it is desired (by purposive evil) that the proportion of evil should increase over the long term.
If we think of the admixture of good as the price paid for the long-term strategic triumphal expansion of evil - then part of the plan is that this admixture will increase in the percentage of evil as time goes-on.
So that in the early days of Leftism, it was mixed with considerable good (compassion for the poor, despised and enslaved) - so there were good socialists, even real and great Christian socialists... But after several generations the dominant Leftism has diminished and diminished the proportion of goodness until it is fuelled mainly by resentment, envy, despair... There is still goodness permeating and woven in - but as a much smaller proportion than five generations ago.
Abstraction is an evil - in an ultimate sense. (This writing, here and now, is an abstraction - and one can see the problem.) Because abstraction is a complex strategic tool - abstraction is dishonest about the ultimate nature of reality - it 'models' reality - for some long-term purpose... this abstraction (like evil) sacrifices short term goodness in pursuit of something long-term that is referred to as a good; yet that is not the way of goodness...
By contrast good is personal. Hence Jesus.
Anyway... my point here is that evil must be complex and strategic if it is to increase; and that this is a great weakness of evil.
We look around at the complex strategies of evil in the world today, and we are bewildered - and may feel intimidated by its sheer complexity and interlocking nature. What can we - such small and simple creatures - do against such an edifice?
Well, the real implication is the opposite. Evil has built this edifice slowly over generations because that is what is necessary for the expansion of evil in the world.
In sum - it is very difficult to be strategically evil. Simple good will destroy it; even simple evil will destroy it! The business of corrupting humanity to invert good and evil - such that we will reject salvation and embrace our own damnation... well it is is extremely difficult to manage, and innumerable things to to go-as-planned for it to succeed.
Thus evil is the part of global government, of international trade, of a single all-pervading and interlinked bureaucracy, of a populace locked-onto mass media 24/7... It is all terribly complicated, inter-dependent, terribly brittle.
Each individual person who is motivated by good can, potentially, inflict very considerable damage to strategic evil - simply by being good here and now; just doing the right thing - a tactic that is simple and obvious, and requires no Master Plan.
This is one message of The Lord of the Rings... Evil is a vast and complex network, the product of many decades of planning, organising, building... Good is 'merely' a couple of hobbits and their friends; doing good things in specific here-and-now situations (assisted by divine providence); and (yet) triggering avalanches of consequences destructive to the vast-and-imposing, but actually-fragile, edifice of evil.
Wednesday 7 March 2018
Longfellow - a pure poet
A Psalm of Life
What The Heart Of The Young Man Said To The Psalmist.
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,— act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
Longfellow might well have been the first poet to touch my heart - since I was mysteriously affected by Hiawatha aged only about nine, and actually read the whole thing (as far as I remember); which left me a permanent romantic daydream for the northern Indians of the forests and lakes. Hiawatha is, indeed, an aspect of my personal 'golden thread' - which I have mentioned before.
Nature
As a fond mother, when the day is o'er,
Leads by the hand her little child to bed,
Half willing, half reluctant to be led,
And leave his broken playthings on the floor,
Still gazing at them through the open door,
Nor wholly reassured and comforted
By promises of others in their stead,
Which, though more splendid, may not please him more;
So Nature deals with us, and takes away
Our playthings one by one, and by the hand
Leads us to rest so gently, that we go
Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay,
Being too full of sleep to understand
How far the unknown transcends the what we know.
Longfellow is one of the most prolific of those 'pure' poets, whose fluid lyricism and magical-easy turn-of-phrase puts the efforts of so many more-complex verse writers to shame.
When that purity, that essence of poetry, is present - I ask for nothing more, but am content.
It is the rarest, and most precious of gifts a writer can offer.
The day is done
The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.
I see the lights of the village
Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me
That my soul cannot resist:
A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.
Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.
Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time.
For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life's endless toil and endeavor;
And to-night I long for rest.
Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;
Who, through long days of labor,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.
Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer.
Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.
And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.
Politically-correct censorship is a trivial issue when people have nothing substantive to communicate
Politically-correct censorship continues to grow - although it is far from new.
Wholesale censorship of public discourse to advance the Left agenda began in a big way in the 1960s in fields such as intelligence and immigration - and this has since extended into the private and personal domains, and shifted from negative-taboos to mandatory propaganda.
(Anyone who is not explicitly, actively, publicly, for the Left agenda is treated as being actively-against it. Now, not to love Leftism, and to communicate that love repeatedly and without limit - is to "hate" it. hence the invention and enforcement of 'hate crimes' and the significance of endemic accusations of hate.)
Honesty is now impossible in many areas of public discourse. Left-censorship has done its work - and some.
But - Left censorship is pushing an open door - because hardly anybody even wants to be honest. And sees no need to be honest; since communication is not about reality but about... well, mostly it's about feelings.
More significantly, in a post-God, post-Christian, anti-Christian world - there is no compelling reason for honesty; since at best 'truth' is merely expedient - a means towards the end of greater pleasure and less suffering.
Anyway... It is not censorship that is bad - but the fact that censorship is being used for evil ends.
When it comes to the current increase in Leftist censorship, it is the Leftism that is evil, not the censorship.
Until the fact of Leftist evil is recognised as a fact; PC censorship will continue to grow, as it has done for two generations.
But how can Leftism Now be recognised as evil when - for modern mainstream people - there is no such thing as evil?
For modern people, evil has no reality because Good has no reality - both are equally a matter of opinion - that is, of ephemeral feelings; and feelings are something that can - nowadays - be shaped and reversed with trivial ease.
As often, as always, present evil trends will continue until modern people awaken to God; because without God there is no compelling reason to oppose evil trends - especially when evil is packaged as cool, amusing, entertaining, convenient; and as ultimately heralding a virtual world better much than the real thing (nicer, with more pleasure, less pain).
That is what the (objectively-evil) Global Establishment are 'promising' - and for the typical two-dimensional modern materialist, censorship is merely one part of the Virtual Paradise Package Deal, on which they pin their hopes.
And all that we personally have to do - is to trust the devil to deliver on his promises.
Wholesale censorship of public discourse to advance the Left agenda began in a big way in the 1960s in fields such as intelligence and immigration - and this has since extended into the private and personal domains, and shifted from negative-taboos to mandatory propaganda.
(Anyone who is not explicitly, actively, publicly, for the Left agenda is treated as being actively-against it. Now, not to love Leftism, and to communicate that love repeatedly and without limit - is to "hate" it. hence the invention and enforcement of 'hate crimes' and the significance of endemic accusations of hate.)
Honesty is now impossible in many areas of public discourse. Left-censorship has done its work - and some.
But - Left censorship is pushing an open door - because hardly anybody even wants to be honest. And sees no need to be honest; since communication is not about reality but about... well, mostly it's about feelings.
More significantly, in a post-God, post-Christian, anti-Christian world - there is no compelling reason for honesty; since at best 'truth' is merely expedient - a means towards the end of greater pleasure and less suffering.
Anyway... It is not censorship that is bad - but the fact that censorship is being used for evil ends.
When it comes to the current increase in Leftist censorship, it is the Leftism that is evil, not the censorship.
Until the fact of Leftist evil is recognised as a fact; PC censorship will continue to grow, as it has done for two generations.
But how can Leftism Now be recognised as evil when - for modern mainstream people - there is no such thing as evil?
For modern people, evil has no reality because Good has no reality - both are equally a matter of opinion - that is, of ephemeral feelings; and feelings are something that can - nowadays - be shaped and reversed with trivial ease.
As often, as always, present evil trends will continue until modern people awaken to God; because without God there is no compelling reason to oppose evil trends - especially when evil is packaged as cool, amusing, entertaining, convenient; and as ultimately heralding a virtual world better much than the real thing (nicer, with more pleasure, less pain).
That is what the (objectively-evil) Global Establishment are 'promising' - and for the typical two-dimensional modern materialist, censorship is merely one part of the Virtual Paradise Package Deal, on which they pin their hopes.
And all that we personally have to do - is to trust the devil to deliver on his promises.
Tuesday 6 March 2018
What the snow shows - *rapid* technological decline
Last week, Britain was paralysed by a moderate snowfall. The snow was much, much less-severe than in 2009-10 and 2010-11 - when it was considerably thicker and lay for 3 months instead of a few days.
What does this show? Probably, that Britain's technological capability has declined significantly, even in the past seven years - this is rapid decline indeed!
I have written about this before, more than once - with the basic observation that The West has declined in overall technological capability over the past 40 years, since the moon landings.
Of course there have been considerable specific technological advances - notably in areas related to computation; but this is looking more and more like being due to a greater concentration on that area (because of its key importance in the plan for totalitarian monitoring and control) with decline in breakthroughs across most areas of science (and the near-total disappearance of geniuses).
Why is technological capability declining - and so fast? Well, it's not mystery at all. In fact there are so many reasons it is difficult to choose the most important. But in the words of my book on the corruption of science we are Not Even Trying to sustain, let alone improve, our technological capabilities to deal with real world problems.
Our social institutions and systems are all primarily - and still increasingly - orientated towards Non-functional goals - primarily towards Leftist Politically Correct socio-political goals. In other words, We can't do anything functional as well as before, because we are trying to do something else.
Just look at the self-descriptions of any and every major institution - whether it is political, legal, educational, research, teaching, industrial... look at the mainstream churches, the police, the military... look at the focus of the mass and social media.
They are all run by and for bureaucrats and in response to bureacratic imperatives. By now this has been built-into organisational laws, structures, regulations, practices - it is deeply internatlised, it is institutional.
Organisations don't respond to the natural world - such as snow; they are not orientated-towards dealing-with real life.
Instead - perceived problems are managed-away: they are dealt-with by changing procedures, by public relations, be campaigns of awareness and attitudes. By changing what is measured - by selectivity, bias, dishonest statistics... by saying one thing and meaning another, by deliberate misleading; and increasingly by just plain lying.
When the bureaucrats are happy - Job Done.
Nobody is primarily concerning with performing a function - therefore functions - like dealing with snowfalls - are badly-performed.
We are not trying to find people who are best at their jobs - but instead people of the approved sex/ race/ religion-non-religion/ sexual orientation.
We are destroying ourselves, for sure. We are not equipped to deal with Reality - and Reality will bite, one way or another, sooner or later...
But is this a bad thing? Well, in terms of functionality yes; in terms of peace, prosperity, comfort and convenience - a life without pain and suffering... All this are are doomed. The Western Nationals are all on a knife edge of collapse in face of anything out-of-the-ordinary...
But - again - is that a bad thing? What would be the actual alternative - where are trends taking us? Techno-totalitarianism is where we are going - fast. And the worst of it is that that is precisely where the great mass of people want to go.
People so much want the lifestyle of becoming human-things plugged-into the internet of non-human-things; that they are prepared to ignore the certainty that this is not actuyally happening for their benefit. Once human minds and bodies are fully-networked - the resulting System will NOT (to put it mildly) be implemented for their personal pleasure and profit, for their spiritual health and salvation...
So, given that the mass of people are battering down the doors of the Evil Illuminati to demand their own psychic enslavement, and the enslavement of everyone else - then the fact that The System looks like collapsing before this can be achieved is, surely, A Good Thing?
After all, if Britain cannot any longer cope with a bit of snow - then what chance the internet of things? What are the the prospects for the strategy of techno-totalitarianism? Not good, I would say.
My suspicion is that this is why there is such accelerating haste towards the secular Leftist agenda; because the hidden hand behind the Global Establishment are realising that their own across-the-board triumphs in sabotaging the social institutions of The West may end-up sabotaging their End-Game Strategy, before it can irreversibly be implemented.
Evil does have the intrinsic weakness of devolving to short-termist selfishness, and lacking any solid basis for cooperation. It was the inevitability of the orcs and the Uruk Hai - squabbling over spoils, killing each other, torturing for fun - that again and again defeated the plans of Sauron and Saruman.
But this does not get us off the hook, because if Plan A to take-over the human mind fails; then Plan B will kick-in - and this is blackmail.
Plan B is: Surrender and be damned slaves forever - or else - we will take away your smart phones...
In other words, SABDSF or else we will bring the whole System tumbling down - with massive human fear, suffering and death (which low level demons love, anyway).
And the Global Establishment could easily do this - it would be the work of minutes, and the effects would be irreversible in days...
Does anyone doubt the outcome of such a credible threat?
What does this show? Probably, that Britain's technological capability has declined significantly, even in the past seven years - this is rapid decline indeed!
I have written about this before, more than once - with the basic observation that The West has declined in overall technological capability over the past 40 years, since the moon landings.
Of course there have been considerable specific technological advances - notably in areas related to computation; but this is looking more and more like being due to a greater concentration on that area (because of its key importance in the plan for totalitarian monitoring and control) with decline in breakthroughs across most areas of science (and the near-total disappearance of geniuses).
Why is technological capability declining - and so fast? Well, it's not mystery at all. In fact there are so many reasons it is difficult to choose the most important. But in the words of my book on the corruption of science we are Not Even Trying to sustain, let alone improve, our technological capabilities to deal with real world problems.
Our social institutions and systems are all primarily - and still increasingly - orientated towards Non-functional goals - primarily towards Leftist Politically Correct socio-political goals. In other words, We can't do anything functional as well as before, because we are trying to do something else.
Just look at the self-descriptions of any and every major institution - whether it is political, legal, educational, research, teaching, industrial... look at the mainstream churches, the police, the military... look at the focus of the mass and social media.
They are all run by and for bureaucrats and in response to bureacratic imperatives. By now this has been built-into organisational laws, structures, regulations, practices - it is deeply internatlised, it is institutional.
Organisations don't respond to the natural world - such as snow; they are not orientated-towards dealing-with real life.
Instead - perceived problems are managed-away: they are dealt-with by changing procedures, by public relations, be campaigns of awareness and attitudes. By changing what is measured - by selectivity, bias, dishonest statistics... by saying one thing and meaning another, by deliberate misleading; and increasingly by just plain lying.
When the bureaucrats are happy - Job Done.
Nobody is primarily concerning with performing a function - therefore functions - like dealing with snowfalls - are badly-performed.
We are not trying to find people who are best at their jobs - but instead people of the approved sex/ race/ religion-non-religion/ sexual orientation.
We are destroying ourselves, for sure. We are not equipped to deal with Reality - and Reality will bite, one way or another, sooner or later...
But is this a bad thing? Well, in terms of functionality yes; in terms of peace, prosperity, comfort and convenience - a life without pain and suffering... All this are are doomed. The Western Nationals are all on a knife edge of collapse in face of anything out-of-the-ordinary...
But - again - is that a bad thing? What would be the actual alternative - where are trends taking us? Techno-totalitarianism is where we are going - fast. And the worst of it is that that is precisely where the great mass of people want to go.
People so much want the lifestyle of becoming human-things plugged-into the internet of non-human-things; that they are prepared to ignore the certainty that this is not actuyally happening for their benefit. Once human minds and bodies are fully-networked - the resulting System will NOT (to put it mildly) be implemented for their personal pleasure and profit, for their spiritual health and salvation...
So, given that the mass of people are battering down the doors of the Evil Illuminati to demand their own psychic enslavement, and the enslavement of everyone else - then the fact that The System looks like collapsing before this can be achieved is, surely, A Good Thing?
After all, if Britain cannot any longer cope with a bit of snow - then what chance the internet of things? What are the the prospects for the strategy of techno-totalitarianism? Not good, I would say.
My suspicion is that this is why there is such accelerating haste towards the secular Leftist agenda; because the hidden hand behind the Global Establishment are realising that their own across-the-board triumphs in sabotaging the social institutions of The West may end-up sabotaging their End-Game Strategy, before it can irreversibly be implemented.
Evil does have the intrinsic weakness of devolving to short-termist selfishness, and lacking any solid basis for cooperation. It was the inevitability of the orcs and the Uruk Hai - squabbling over spoils, killing each other, torturing for fun - that again and again defeated the plans of Sauron and Saruman.
But this does not get us off the hook, because if Plan A to take-over the human mind fails; then Plan B will kick-in - and this is blackmail.
Plan B is: Surrender and be damned slaves forever - or else - we will take away your smart phones...
In other words, SABDSF or else we will bring the whole System tumbling down - with massive human fear, suffering and death (which low level demons love, anyway).
And the Global Establishment could easily do this - it would be the work of minutes, and the effects would be irreversible in days...
Does anyone doubt the outcome of such a credible threat?
Reading the Bible/ Gospels/ Fourth Gospel
Since I became a Christian and engaged with the Bible as such, I have not been satisfied with the usual ways of reading and understanding the Bible - and have felt compelled to devise a way that seems better. I'll tell you what it is, below - but the process is ongoing, has barely begun, is far from complete, and is not something I am 'hurrying'...
What I reject include the following: 1. Regarding the Bible as a single unified book which is all equally true and without 'error' - when error is defined as the falsehood of explicit statements; 2. Regarding the truth of the Bible as something that resides at a sentence by sentence ('verse') level (and certainly not a work-by-word truth); 3. Regarding the truth of all sentences/ verses as requiring knowledge of the whole Bible; 4. That all the New Testament is equally valid; 5. That all the Gospels are equally valid and tell a single absolutely coherent story (coherent at either/ both the level of the whole or part-by-part).
So much for some of the negatives - what then?
Well, I reach the above decisions on the basis of what could be termed intuition or discernment - as all such decisions must be and are inevitably made -- the difference being whether that knowledge of intuition is explicit, or denied; and with the conviction that explicit intuition is more reliably and powerfully discerning than is unconscious or denied intuition.
On this basis I regard the Fourth Gospel ('John's' Gospel - but when taken in isolation the Gospel of the Beloved Disciple) as the heart of the Bible on the basis that it uniquely claims to be the work of one of Christ's disciples, whom Jesus particularly loved; and I believe these claims. Then - on reading it (in the divinely-inspired 'King James' translation); I find a work of the highest level of beauty, profundity and coherence - a work which when considered as literature surpasses any other in the language in terms of beauty, profundity and coherence.
(Besides which Hamlet is a ragbag, Paradise Lost a sprawling mess and Wordsworth's Prelude a hit and miss mish-mash.)
So, I start with the Gospel of the Beloved Disciple, and with the conviction that this should be placed first in the Bible, first among the Gospels and should be at the heart of Christian understanding and life (all the rest being regarded in the light of this coherent work of genius and inspiration).
And I try to know the light of this Gospel; so that I may know the other Gospels, the New Testament and Bible, and the Churches and traditions, and possible Christian futures - all in its light.
I have made a start - but so far the process of understanding the Gospel of the Beloved Disciple is taking a long time - many, many months (going into years) of intermittent intense reading, and intermediate prolonged brooding.
Nothing is more important than this for me - but I am not in a hurry. Indeed, I don't see that such a thing could or should be hurried.
What I reject include the following: 1. Regarding the Bible as a single unified book which is all equally true and without 'error' - when error is defined as the falsehood of explicit statements; 2. Regarding the truth of the Bible as something that resides at a sentence by sentence ('verse') level (and certainly not a work-by-word truth); 3. Regarding the truth of all sentences/ verses as requiring knowledge of the whole Bible; 4. That all the New Testament is equally valid; 5. That all the Gospels are equally valid and tell a single absolutely coherent story (coherent at either/ both the level of the whole or part-by-part).
So much for some of the negatives - what then?
Well, I reach the above decisions on the basis of what could be termed intuition or discernment - as all such decisions must be and are inevitably made -- the difference being whether that knowledge of intuition is explicit, or denied; and with the conviction that explicit intuition is more reliably and powerfully discerning than is unconscious or denied intuition.
On this basis I regard the Fourth Gospel ('John's' Gospel - but when taken in isolation the Gospel of the Beloved Disciple) as the heart of the Bible on the basis that it uniquely claims to be the work of one of Christ's disciples, whom Jesus particularly loved; and I believe these claims. Then - on reading it (in the divinely-inspired 'King James' translation); I find a work of the highest level of beauty, profundity and coherence - a work which when considered as literature surpasses any other in the language in terms of beauty, profundity and coherence.
(Besides which Hamlet is a ragbag, Paradise Lost a sprawling mess and Wordsworth's Prelude a hit and miss mish-mash.)
So, I start with the Gospel of the Beloved Disciple, and with the conviction that this should be placed first in the Bible, first among the Gospels and should be at the heart of Christian understanding and life (all the rest being regarded in the light of this coherent work of genius and inspiration).
And I try to know the light of this Gospel; so that I may know the other Gospels, the New Testament and Bible, and the Churches and traditions, and possible Christian futures - all in its light.
I have made a start - but so far the process of understanding the Gospel of the Beloved Disciple is taking a long time - many, many months (going into years) of intermittent intense reading, and intermediate prolonged brooding.
Nothing is more important than this for me - but I am not in a hurry. Indeed, I don't see that such a thing could or should be hurried.
Monday 5 March 2018
But who was Les?
I have watched nearly-all of the movie Les Miserables, and have yet to recognise the eponymous hero, or discover why he was so sad - admittedly, I may have missed the reference; but this strikes me as a serious structural defect.
It reminds me of the days of Monty Python's Flying Circus where - at least for those of us who missed the early episodes - it was never made clear which of the gang was Monty (my guess is the tall one who did the funny walks); and we were not given even a glimpse of the Big Top...
While on the subject of errors and misrepresentations - it seems to have been all-but universal to misspell the name of that greatest of all pop-groups, The Beetles: such that all the many insect references in their work are missed or downplayed...
It reminds me of the days of Monty Python's Flying Circus where - at least for those of us who missed the early episodes - it was never made clear which of the gang was Monty (my guess is the tall one who did the funny walks); and we were not given even a glimpse of the Big Top...
While on the subject of errors and misrepresentations - it seems to have been all-but universal to misspell the name of that greatest of all pop-groups, The Beetles: such that all the many insect references in their work are missed or downplayed...
Sunday 4 March 2018
Jesus, Marriage and Family - an interpretation of the second part of the Fourth Gospel
There may be more of the subject of marriage and the family that is intentionally-implied by the Fourth Gospel than is obvious to most readers.
What the Gospel seems to be telling me, and I am not arguing this but stating it; concerns Jesus’s increasing involvement with the family from Bethany with Lazarus and Mary as siblings.
My understanding that: 1. the raised-Lazarus is the author of the Fourth Gospel – renamed the Beloved Disciple; 2. that the episode of Mary of Bethany anointing the feet of Jesus with spikenard was a mystical marriage ceremony; and that 3. Mary Magdalene is the same person as Mary of Bethany – renamed after her marriage to Jesus.
While there seems no way I could prove these Three Assumptions, and what I believe follows-from them; for me they cohere wonderfully with the subsequent events of the Fourth Gospel. Indeed, they raise it even higher to a supreme importance in all Scripture.
The following are not intended as argument or 'proof', but as illustrations of how the three assumptions cohere with the events of the Fourth Gospel; when I read it in what I regard as my best frame of mind.
1. Jesus is emphatically described as loving both Lazarus and the Beloved Disciple; but we do not hear of Lazarus’s fate, by that name.
2. The Beloved Disciple does not abandon Jesus after the arrest as do the other disciple (Jesus being now Lazarus’s brother-by-marriage).
3. The Beloved Disciple and Magdalene are present at the foot of the cross, where Jesus requests that his mother be cared for by the Beloved Disciples family (of whom Jesus is now a part).
4. Mary Magdalene first finds the empty tomb, and she is the first person to speak with the risen Christ. She immediately touches him.
5. The last episodes of the Fourth Gospel include the implication that the Beloved Disciple will live until the Second Coming – which is possible since he has been raised from the dead – I believe he was probably literally resurrected. (This chimes with the Pharisee's desire to kill Lazarus, but apparently not being able to.)
If my Three Assumptions are accepted, then Chapters 11-21 of the Fourth Gospel take-on a marvellous extra dimension of which the above are only a part.
I suppose that these facts were not mentioned explicitly because they were known to the intended readers, at the time of writing - and (more important) that the Forth Gospel throughout (and necessarily) is written in a style in which the most important things are implied rather than stated.
To unlock the Fourth Gospel entails the reader attaining an empathic identification with the intent of the Gospel... but then this applies to all Scriptures, if they are to be understood as divinely-inspired.
That is; God must help us to understand Scripture - each, individually, here-and-now. Nothing else will suffice; and one person's understanding cannot replace nor stand-in-for another person's.
But what became of Mary Magdalene? If she is as important as I have said, then why is her fate not mentioned? The answer is that her fate must be mentioned; but that the 'message' is not being recognised. My best idea concerning an implicit reference to Mary's fate is the exchange of words with Mary at the tomb. This may imply that she would join the risen Jesus after he had ascended. “Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father” means, therefore: stop touching me just-now – we will be able to touch one another when I am ascended (after all, it wasn't forbidden to touch Jesus - Doubting-Thomas was invited-to. My inference is that Mary touched Jesus in some fashion as a wife would touch him - but this was not correct or appropriate until after the ascension: until after their ascension.). Then Jesus describes his ascension “unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and to your God.” Such a very specific form of address (the reiterated symmetry of my-your) is appropriate to the wife of Jesus; in the sense that God has become (by mystical marriage) Mary's Father ‘in Law’, and 'her' God – in the same kind of direct and personal way as for Jesus. So, we are being-told (by her brother) that Mary Magdalene ascended to God to be with her divine husband - and Lazarus perhaps did not know exactly when or how this happened, but certainly that it did happen.
What the Gospel seems to be telling me, and I am not arguing this but stating it; concerns Jesus’s increasing involvement with the family from Bethany with Lazarus and Mary as siblings.
My understanding that: 1. the raised-Lazarus is the author of the Fourth Gospel – renamed the Beloved Disciple; 2. that the episode of Mary of Bethany anointing the feet of Jesus with spikenard was a mystical marriage ceremony; and that 3. Mary Magdalene is the same person as Mary of Bethany – renamed after her marriage to Jesus.
While there seems no way I could prove these Three Assumptions, and what I believe follows-from them; for me they cohere wonderfully with the subsequent events of the Fourth Gospel. Indeed, they raise it even higher to a supreme importance in all Scripture.
The following are not intended as argument or 'proof', but as illustrations of how the three assumptions cohere with the events of the Fourth Gospel; when I read it in what I regard as my best frame of mind.
1. Jesus is emphatically described as loving both Lazarus and the Beloved Disciple; but we do not hear of Lazarus’s fate, by that name.
2. The Beloved Disciple does not abandon Jesus after the arrest as do the other disciple (Jesus being now Lazarus’s brother-by-marriage).
3. The Beloved Disciple and Magdalene are present at the foot of the cross, where Jesus requests that his mother be cared for by the Beloved Disciples family (of whom Jesus is now a part).
4. Mary Magdalene first finds the empty tomb, and she is the first person to speak with the risen Christ. She immediately touches him.
5. The last episodes of the Fourth Gospel include the implication that the Beloved Disciple will live until the Second Coming – which is possible since he has been raised from the dead – I believe he was probably literally resurrected. (This chimes with the Pharisee's desire to kill Lazarus, but apparently not being able to.)
If my Three Assumptions are accepted, then Chapters 11-21 of the Fourth Gospel take-on a marvellous extra dimension of which the above are only a part.
I suppose that these facts were not mentioned explicitly because they were known to the intended readers, at the time of writing - and (more important) that the Forth Gospel throughout (and necessarily) is written in a style in which the most important things are implied rather than stated.
To unlock the Fourth Gospel entails the reader attaining an empathic identification with the intent of the Gospel... but then this applies to all Scriptures, if they are to be understood as divinely-inspired.
That is; God must help us to understand Scripture - each, individually, here-and-now. Nothing else will suffice; and one person's understanding cannot replace nor stand-in-for another person's.
But what became of Mary Magdalene? If she is as important as I have said, then why is her fate not mentioned? The answer is that her fate must be mentioned; but that the 'message' is not being recognised. My best idea concerning an implicit reference to Mary's fate is the exchange of words with Mary at the tomb. This may imply that she would join the risen Jesus after he had ascended. “Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father” means, therefore: stop touching me just-now – we will be able to touch one another when I am ascended (after all, it wasn't forbidden to touch Jesus - Doubting-Thomas was invited-to. My inference is that Mary touched Jesus in some fashion as a wife would touch him - but this was not correct or appropriate until after the ascension: until after their ascension.). Then Jesus describes his ascension “unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and to your God.” Such a very specific form of address (the reiterated symmetry of my-your) is appropriate to the wife of Jesus; in the sense that God has become (by mystical marriage) Mary's Father ‘in Law’, and 'her' God – in the same kind of direct and personal way as for Jesus. So, we are being-told (by her brother) that Mary Magdalene ascended to God to be with her divine husband - and Lazarus perhaps did not know exactly when or how this happened, but certainly that it did happen.
Saturday 3 March 2018
Why won't people acknowledge the nihilistic dead-end we live in?
If you try to speak to anybody about the kind of things I discuss on this blog - you won't get far: indeed you won't get anywhere.
And the difficulty is that there is not just one reason for this, but many reasons - mutually reinforcing, like a Roman shield-wall: when one reason is eliminated, another reason steps forward to take its place; and there are many such reinforcements.
It is clear enough that we in The West are on a track to disaster - indeed multiple, linked disasters of damnation, population replacement, civilisational collapse - with mass civil and international wars, epidemics and starvation.
Indeed, it is likely that much of this is unavoidable. Yet by-and-large, people don't care; or prefer not to think about it. After all, we are all bad at prediction, and maybe it won't happen - or won't happen until we are dead and gone (such a hope is one I hear commonly expressed among the elderly).
Probably the core fact is that people don't want to think about things. And this objective of never thinking is easier for them then ever before - with the ubiquity of mass and social media. Observing the behaviour of people as they go about their business, it is clear that not thinking is a major motivation.
And the attitude is - why bother? Why bother thinking when the end point is despair? This despair is multi-faceted - the deepest and most existential level is the despair of death being annihilation; the belief that after we die nothing remains of us.
(Is anybody really convinced by the non-sequitur that we continue to live in other people's memories? This is not so much false as irrelevant.)
So the mass of people find their life to be rising from nothing and disappearing into nothing. And the same annihilation is the fate of everything in this world which they care about... their family, friends, their village or nation, the arts and sciences, and their churches... all are destined for annihilation of one kind or another.
All possible hopes are therefore focused on our mortal lives - and as culture and everything crumbles around us (or rather, is gleefully demolished and the process labelled progress); our mortal lives have narrowed to a focus on getting pleasure and avoiding suffering.
And since anything we personally might do to improve things in the long term will always increase our personal suffering in the short term - without any guarantee of making any positive difference after all... Why bother?
This sense of Why Bother, What's the Point? is the root of one of the most prevalent and denied of modern sins - cowardice: both physical, and moral.
The only way to combat our natural cowardice is by faith in a larger perspective; the kind of faith that leads people to do the right thing (as they understand it) regardless of the probabilities of outcomes. Because they see the small, seemingly ephemeral events and decisions of life as being part of larger and permanent things.
There is an extremely high prevalence of lying in public life. In all major institutions - lies are the meat and drink of communication. There are some true sentences spoken and written - because effective lies need to contain facts - but every paragraph is dishonest, tendentious, deliberately misleading. A modern executive, manager, official, leader, spokesman... cannot speak for five minutes without lying.
The lying is thus another facet of cowardice: modern people are lying cowards, cowardly liars. And why not? - when dishonesty and compliance lead to more pleasure and less pain, as they generally do in a corrupt society?
There is a stark choice, and we are all faced with it; of living within society and outwith it. But modern society has occupied almost the entirety of the material world; so where could we go?
The answer is simple - that living outwith society means living in the larger world of God. To escape materialism and that which controls the material; we can only turn to the spirit. When the mundane has nothing to offer - we must inhabit the transcendent. When our every word and action is constrained and coerced - we need to dwell in our thinking.
And we need to know, with inner surety and confidence, that God, the spirit, the transcendent are all real and of prime importance - and that thinking makes a difference.
That knowledge is the most precious gift we could have - and attaining it should be the objective of everybody; it is the single most important thing in Life.
And the difficulty is that there is not just one reason for this, but many reasons - mutually reinforcing, like a Roman shield-wall: when one reason is eliminated, another reason steps forward to take its place; and there are many such reinforcements.
It is clear enough that we in The West are on a track to disaster - indeed multiple, linked disasters of damnation, population replacement, civilisational collapse - with mass civil and international wars, epidemics and starvation.
Indeed, it is likely that much of this is unavoidable. Yet by-and-large, people don't care; or prefer not to think about it. After all, we are all bad at prediction, and maybe it won't happen - or won't happen until we are dead and gone (such a hope is one I hear commonly expressed among the elderly).
Probably the core fact is that people don't want to think about things. And this objective of never thinking is easier for them then ever before - with the ubiquity of mass and social media. Observing the behaviour of people as they go about their business, it is clear that not thinking is a major motivation.
And the attitude is - why bother? Why bother thinking when the end point is despair? This despair is multi-faceted - the deepest and most existential level is the despair of death being annihilation; the belief that after we die nothing remains of us.
(Is anybody really convinced by the non-sequitur that we continue to live in other people's memories? This is not so much false as irrelevant.)
So the mass of people find their life to be rising from nothing and disappearing into nothing. And the same annihilation is the fate of everything in this world which they care about... their family, friends, their village or nation, the arts and sciences, and their churches... all are destined for annihilation of one kind or another.
All possible hopes are therefore focused on our mortal lives - and as culture and everything crumbles around us (or rather, is gleefully demolished and the process labelled progress); our mortal lives have narrowed to a focus on getting pleasure and avoiding suffering.
And since anything we personally might do to improve things in the long term will always increase our personal suffering in the short term - without any guarantee of making any positive difference after all... Why bother?
This sense of Why Bother, What's the Point? is the root of one of the most prevalent and denied of modern sins - cowardice: both physical, and moral.
The only way to combat our natural cowardice is by faith in a larger perspective; the kind of faith that leads people to do the right thing (as they understand it) regardless of the probabilities of outcomes. Because they see the small, seemingly ephemeral events and decisions of life as being part of larger and permanent things.
There is an extremely high prevalence of lying in public life. In all major institutions - lies are the meat and drink of communication. There are some true sentences spoken and written - because effective lies need to contain facts - but every paragraph is dishonest, tendentious, deliberately misleading. A modern executive, manager, official, leader, spokesman... cannot speak for five minutes without lying.
The lying is thus another facet of cowardice: modern people are lying cowards, cowardly liars. And why not? - when dishonesty and compliance lead to more pleasure and less pain, as they generally do in a corrupt society?
There is a stark choice, and we are all faced with it; of living within society and outwith it. But modern society has occupied almost the entirety of the material world; so where could we go?
The answer is simple - that living outwith society means living in the larger world of God. To escape materialism and that which controls the material; we can only turn to the spirit. When the mundane has nothing to offer - we must inhabit the transcendent. When our every word and action is constrained and coerced - we need to dwell in our thinking.
And we need to know, with inner surety and confidence, that God, the spirit, the transcendent are all real and of prime importance - and that thinking makes a difference.
That knowledge is the most precious gift we could have - and attaining it should be the objective of everybody; it is the single most important thing in Life.
Friday 2 March 2018
Ralph Waldo Emerson and the failure of Romanticism
I am listening to Ralph Waldo Emerson's Essays on an audiobook; and re-reading Carlos Baker's excellent group-biography Emerson among the Eccentrics (1986) - and I am struck by the great sadness that Emerson could have been exactly what Christianity needed, what The West needed - he had all the literary equipment, all the spiritual insights, and a sweet yet impressive nature...
Yet he incrementally turned against Christianity and instead was a precursor of the New Age movement. He pioneered the vacuity of Spiritual But Not Religious.
This was a tragedy, because Emerson was in the right place at the right time - and really nobody else of his stature has arisen that was able to do what Emerson could and should have done.
Why did he fail? well he started off in the wrong place - Unitarianism, which could not last. And he was seduced first by the sexual revolution (not in practice - but in spirit) and then by Leftist politics... the usual story.
Ever since, the West has been stuck pretty exactly much where Emerson left us - between dwindling traditional Christianity and rampant secular Leftism; and has failed to move forward.
What a shame...
Yet he incrementally turned against Christianity and instead was a precursor of the New Age movement. He pioneered the vacuity of Spiritual But Not Religious.
This was a tragedy, because Emerson was in the right place at the right time - and really nobody else of his stature has arisen that was able to do what Emerson could and should have done.
Why did he fail? well he started off in the wrong place - Unitarianism, which could not last. And he was seduced first by the sexual revolution (not in practice - but in spirit) and then by Leftist politics... the usual story.
Ever since, the West has been stuck pretty exactly much where Emerson left us - between dwindling traditional Christianity and rampant secular Leftism; and has failed to move forward.
What a shame...
Why the 'conspiracy theory' slur is so effective
The answer is given in the first paragraph of that wisest, most insightful of tragi-comc novels - The Screwtape Letters, by CS Lewis (1942):
There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.
When we talk of true conspiracy theories and devils, we are talking of the same thing - the devils are the true, the ultimate, conspirators.
The commonest error is to believe they do not exist. This is a natural consequence of Modern Metaphysics - a set of basic assumptions concerning reality.
At bottom, when pushed, most modern people (and all of the Global Establishment, and nearly-all of the people close to them - the rules, those of great fame, wealth, status, power) believe that reality is a mixture of random and wholly determined.
(This is incoherent - which is how we know for sure that Modern Metaphysics is false. Nonetheless, it is what almost-everyone believes.)
In short - our standard, mainstream, near-universal metaphysics is nihilism - the assumption that nothing really matters.
Thus - the standard view - taught in schools, implicit in the mass media and all official discourse etc - is that there is no responsibility for anything; because either it is directly caused by something else, or else it 'just happens'.
From this angle, conspiracy is not possible, because there cannot be an origin for conspiracy. Either bad things happen by chance ('cock-up, not conspiracy'); or they happen because of long (and ultimately circular) chains of causation.
Determinism actually means that nobody or nothing really causes anything; because there is no origin of causes - everything is a cause and also a consequence of everything else: there is no uncaused origin.
Morally - everybody is a victim and an oppressor, both - just trapped in a web of causes.
There can be no conspiracy, because conspiracy requires agency; and mainstream metaphysics denies agency.
The other error Lewis described was to 'feel an excessive and unhealthy interest' in devils.
In terms of conspiracy theories; this means that people believe in devils but not God.
Probably this accounts for the mass of people who are interested in conspiracy theories. Their error is metaphysical - they believe in demons (or aliens) that are evil of intent; but they do not believe in the reality of God as ultimate creator, and as good.
So you get the mass of atheist conspiracy theorists, whose moral scale goes between evil demons/ aliens/ Illuminati at one extreme - and the masses of ordinary people at the other extreme; and the intention of the evil ones is to enslave and exploit the masses - probably also to torment the masses from sadistic pleasure.
The masses merely want to be 'left alone' to have a life of peace, prosperity, comfort, convenience, enjoyment and fun...
In the end, those with an 'excessive and unhealthy' interest in conspiracy theories, uncontextualised by an understanding of God, are merely hedonists. Their bottom-line, ultimate complaint is that the conspirators make most people more miserable... and the anti-conspiracy atheists want people to be happy.
That's about it! The global conspiracy aims to privilege the conspirators at the cost of reducing the average level of human happiness...
So, in the end it all devolves into wrangling about what socio-political System will provide the greatest pleasure and the least suffering - claim and counter-claim, evidence and refutation, assumptions of intention and denials... Their Establishment system is sub-optimal - but our Alternative system leads to a higher average gratification...
The wrangling never stops and vere advances; because who really knows which System leads to maximum gratification?
And, in the end, who really cares? By this account, we will all suffer and die, anyway; whatever the system. And plans for universal happiness (the 'utilitarian' project) always end by deciding who most matters, which person or group has priority. It always ends in a pleasure-grab by one 'worthy' group at the expense of another judged less-worthy...
So, in a world of atheism and hedonism, a world where people do not believe in causal agency; it is effective and substantially correct to label someone as a conspiracy theorist when they try to explain the Big Picture.
Effective because any explanation that tries to establish responsibility will fail in a world where the metaphysical assumptions are nihilistic. Substantially correct, because a world of devils without God makes no sense.
What does make sense is what is true: our world is the creation of God, who is good - and in this world there are real devils, demons and their servants - who conspire to oppose the goodness of God's creation.
The reality is Spiritual Warfare; and all true conspiracy theories are rooted in that reality.
There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.
When we talk of true conspiracy theories and devils, we are talking of the same thing - the devils are the true, the ultimate, conspirators.
The commonest error is to believe they do not exist. This is a natural consequence of Modern Metaphysics - a set of basic assumptions concerning reality.
At bottom, when pushed, most modern people (and all of the Global Establishment, and nearly-all of the people close to them - the rules, those of great fame, wealth, status, power) believe that reality is a mixture of random and wholly determined.
(This is incoherent - which is how we know for sure that Modern Metaphysics is false. Nonetheless, it is what almost-everyone believes.)
In short - our standard, mainstream, near-universal metaphysics is nihilism - the assumption that nothing really matters.
Thus - the standard view - taught in schools, implicit in the mass media and all official discourse etc - is that there is no responsibility for anything; because either it is directly caused by something else, or else it 'just happens'.
From this angle, conspiracy is not possible, because there cannot be an origin for conspiracy. Either bad things happen by chance ('cock-up, not conspiracy'); or they happen because of long (and ultimately circular) chains of causation.
Determinism actually means that nobody or nothing really causes anything; because there is no origin of causes - everything is a cause and also a consequence of everything else: there is no uncaused origin.
Morally - everybody is a victim and an oppressor, both - just trapped in a web of causes.
There can be no conspiracy, because conspiracy requires agency; and mainstream metaphysics denies agency.
The other error Lewis described was to 'feel an excessive and unhealthy interest' in devils.
In terms of conspiracy theories; this means that people believe in devils but not God.
Probably this accounts for the mass of people who are interested in conspiracy theories. Their error is metaphysical - they believe in demons (or aliens) that are evil of intent; but they do not believe in the reality of God as ultimate creator, and as good.
So you get the mass of atheist conspiracy theorists, whose moral scale goes between evil demons/ aliens/ Illuminati at one extreme - and the masses of ordinary people at the other extreme; and the intention of the evil ones is to enslave and exploit the masses - probably also to torment the masses from sadistic pleasure.
The masses merely want to be 'left alone' to have a life of peace, prosperity, comfort, convenience, enjoyment and fun...
In the end, those with an 'excessive and unhealthy' interest in conspiracy theories, uncontextualised by an understanding of God, are merely hedonists. Their bottom-line, ultimate complaint is that the conspirators make most people more miserable... and the anti-conspiracy atheists want people to be happy.
That's about it! The global conspiracy aims to privilege the conspirators at the cost of reducing the average level of human happiness...
So, in the end it all devolves into wrangling about what socio-political System will provide the greatest pleasure and the least suffering - claim and counter-claim, evidence and refutation, assumptions of intention and denials... Their Establishment system is sub-optimal - but our Alternative system leads to a higher average gratification...
The wrangling never stops and vere advances; because who really knows which System leads to maximum gratification?
And, in the end, who really cares? By this account, we will all suffer and die, anyway; whatever the system. And plans for universal happiness (the 'utilitarian' project) always end by deciding who most matters, which person or group has priority. It always ends in a pleasure-grab by one 'worthy' group at the expense of another judged less-worthy...
So, in a world of atheism and hedonism, a world where people do not believe in causal agency; it is effective and substantially correct to label someone as a conspiracy theorist when they try to explain the Big Picture.
Effective because any explanation that tries to establish responsibility will fail in a world where the metaphysical assumptions are nihilistic. Substantially correct, because a world of devils without God makes no sense.
What does make sense is what is true: our world is the creation of God, who is good - and in this world there are real devils, demons and their servants - who conspire to oppose the goodness of God's creation.
The reality is Spiritual Warfare; and all true conspiracy theories are rooted in that reality.
Wednesday 28 February 2018
No children!
From Junior Ganymede:
What to make of this pattern? It is significant, for sure - not a coincidence.
In so far as children are a stake in the future, this is important; but the ruling elites who do have children are also actively-wrecking the world that their children will inherit (not least by ensuring that they will be vilified, persecuted, parasitised minorities in what were their own countries).
And this is just the tip of an iceberg of chosen sub-fertility - implicitly willed extinction - which affects almost the entirety of Western populations (apart from a few traditionally religious subgroups).
It is also just the tip of an iceberg of anti-real-marriage, anti-family, anti-biology - pro-extra-marital promiscuity, pro-sexual revolution, pro-hedonism...
It is decadence, it is nihilism, it is despair. It is positive, deliberate, strategic evil.
We knew all this already - and we know the cause; but demographics provides the most objective data that illustrates it.
- Emmanuel Macron, the newly elected French President, has no children.
- German Chancellor Angela Merkel has no children.
- Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has no children
- British Prime Minister Theresa May has no children.
- Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni has no children.
- Holland’s Mark Rutte - no children
- Sweden’s Stefan Löfven - no children
- Luxembourg’s Xavier Bettel - no children
- Scotland’s Nicola Sturgeon - no children
- Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission - no children.
What to make of this pattern? It is significant, for sure - not a coincidence.
In so far as children are a stake in the future, this is important; but the ruling elites who do have children are also actively-wrecking the world that their children will inherit (not least by ensuring that they will be vilified, persecuted, parasitised minorities in what were their own countries).
And this is just the tip of an iceberg of chosen sub-fertility - implicitly willed extinction - which affects almost the entirety of Western populations (apart from a few traditionally religious subgroups).
It is also just the tip of an iceberg of anti-real-marriage, anti-family, anti-biology - pro-extra-marital promiscuity, pro-sexual revolution, pro-hedonism...
It is decadence, it is nihilism, it is despair. It is positive, deliberate, strategic evil.
We knew all this already - and we know the cause; but demographics provides the most objective data that illustrates it.
Spoiled priests (and nuns) - any other examples?
I wrote a post about spoiled priests (and nuns) about six years ago:
My impression is that few people have done so much damage as spoiled priests - who brought 'inside knowledge' of what they attacked.
Many were talented, learned, charming, eloquent, energetic, excellent writers - which of course only made them vastly more dangerous when they crossed over to serve the dark side.
If we add to them the numerous less famous priests, pastors, monks, friars (especially them!), bishops, archbishops and a Pope who were to a significant and crucial degree covert apostates (mostly in the sense of re-writing traditional Christianity to suit modern sensibilities) - then it can be seen that these foes masquerading as allies, these wolves in lambs' clothing, constitute just about the most important servants of evil outside of Communism (from which they were, of course, not distinct).
**
Check out the whole thing, including comments - and see if you can suggest further examples of the type - think of this as doing a public service for this blog's readership.
My impression is that few people have done so much damage as spoiled priests - who brought 'inside knowledge' of what they attacked.
Many were talented, learned, charming, eloquent, energetic, excellent writers - which of course only made them vastly more dangerous when they crossed over to serve the dark side.
If we add to them the numerous less famous priests, pastors, monks, friars (especially them!), bishops, archbishops and a Pope who were to a significant and crucial degree covert apostates (mostly in the sense of re-writing traditional Christianity to suit modern sensibilities) - then it can be seen that these foes masquerading as allies, these wolves in lambs' clothing, constitute just about the most important servants of evil outside of Communism (from which they were, of course, not distinct).
**
Check out the whole thing, including comments - and see if you can suggest further examples of the type - think of this as doing a public service for this blog's readership.
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