Bruce Charlton's Notions

Thus begins an extremely important post at Albion Awakening - and on this topic, which is one prone to so much misunderstanding, it is especially important to Read The Whole Thing...

I remember some 15-plus years ago realising that if such-and-such did not happen Now, then it would be Too Late. It did not happen - and so I stopped trying to make it happen; because even if it did happen it was, by now, Too Late.

This is a real thing - and those who don't recognise the fact are being unrealistic - perhaps by wishful thinking, or perhaps because they are pursuing a different covert agenda.

The people who stated 20 years ago that Global Warming would cause havoc UNLESS we acted immediately and radically to slash world CO2 levels; still have not withdrawn their demands, nor changed their policy - even though, by their own reasoning, it is Now Too Late...

The reasons is that the demand to reduce CO2 is merely a stalking horse for global totalitarianism - and it was really the mechanism for mass surveillance and micro-control that was wanted, and which CO2 control provided. It is seldom 'too late' for evil, since Good is susceptible to damage in this mortal life.

On the side of Good; it is never too late for a person to repent and be saved; but when it comes to human institutions, it is often too late to save them. I think this applies to many or most of the institutions of Western nations, and perhaps to most of the nations themselves, and perhaps also to the society of growth in production - which has been going since the industrial revolution.

Think of some of the Christian churches... it is obviously several generations too late to save Unitarians and Quakers; but it is surely, by now, at least several decades too late to save the other mainstream Western churches. If warnings had been heeded, and the right things had been done then - yes, they could have been saved; but warnings were ignored, and matters were made worse instead of better - and so Now it is Too Late...

There are many, and powerful, reasons to suggest that it is Now Too Late for these entities to be saved... not least because, overall, they have no effective desire to be saved; but indeed the opposite: their revealed preferences indicate a covert-but-active desire for self-extinction.

When an institutions is so corrupted that the entirely of its senior leadership and the bulk of its mid-level managers, and many of its low level employees are corrupt (that is: not even trying to prioritise the institution's specific functionality, or despising that functionality - and instead pursuing either some general ideology and/or short-term selfishness) - then the organisation is un-reformable, un-saveable - especially when that organisation is large.

There is a point of no return, a critical mass or tipping point, at which an institution or organisation is so thoroughly corrupted that it cannot find enough people within-itself to save-itself and must rely on external intervention; however, when the society as-a-whole is also corrupt; then there is nobody and nothing external to Do the saving...

If we regard Christianity as essential to the saving of The West; then - when it comes to institutions, organisations and nations - we long ago reached the point of no return.

That is the current situation. We can save souls, because for that it is never too late. But we cannot save that which does not want to be saved, and which will indeed fight against its own salvation and which wills its own extinction.

It is Just Too Late.

Note added: To be honest, I don't think the above is controversial. If you look around at the people who are pursuing Good goals (i.e. at least compatible with Direct Christian aims) in the worldly, materialist realm or on the fringe of mainstream public discourse; they are not trying to 'save' 'Western Civilisation', or any of the Western Nation States, or any of the major social institutions. Implicitly, they seem to recognise that this would be a waste of time at best - or more likely counter-productive (by strengthening groups that are net-evil). Those 'Christian entrepreneurs' etc. who are having a significant (measurable) impact on things, are doing so by trying to revive minority (relatively less-corrupted) segments of the rotten whole (e.g. forming 'breakaway' groups); or else are starting new and minority institutions, organisations, businesses, churches - with hope or intention to grow. 

The traditional thing to do in such times as these is to Look For Signs - to look towards signs of spiritual awakening, the fulfilment of prophecy, the next stage emerging... But it is likely that this activity will not apply this time around.

The idea of such signs is related to a passive understanding of the nature of the world, in which the world (including our-selves) is swept-along a path - is compelled. Yet it seems that this era is absolutely dependent on human choice; that there can be no compulsion of human agency... and indeed it is his insight which is crucial.

For example, mainstream modern people tend to be very keen to regard Reality as some-thing that compels; whereas a message of the Fourth Gospel of Jesus is that each Man chooses... that there is never 'enough evidence' to compel, and therefore we have an absolute responsibility for our own beliefs, our faith, our understanding.

In our hearts we know (or rather, we need to acknowledge) that each person sets-up assumptions which dictate 'what counts as evidence', and when evidence is found to be sufficient and compelling.

We know that the human mind, your mind and my mind, is therefore an indispensable part-of objective reality; and, at the same time, reality really is objective: it is not something each mind makes-up arbitrarily. So, our experience is one which depends on human thinking, and also depends on the world being different-from human thinking.

Explaining this philosophically is not usually possible, because most philosophy includes assumptions which prevent such truth from being expressed. But we can understand things by regarding relations, relationships, as the primary and best 'true metaphor' for describing and explaining the world.

In our hearts we know that this is a world where everything is alive and also everything is a part of a universal consciousness - yet we also know that our own self stands apart from all this. So, we do not need to connect-up the world - the world already is connected, and always has been since God's creation.

Everything created is alive, purpose, conscious in some way... so this is our baseline; a reality of entities in relationship; and also a reality in which we are set apart, self-conscious. It is this unavoidable self-consciousness that leads to the matter (the problem) of salvation.

Because we each are also set apart; we each have an unavoidable role, decision, choices. For all the difference in size and power between our-self and everything-else (including God) - we cannot escape from the fact that each self has an unavoidable part to play in the great interconnected whole.

This means that life is not wholly 'given', but to a vital extent is a participation-between the individual self and everything-else. The problem of salvation; and the answer to this problem just-is provided by each individual person - he cannot avoid it.

You and I cannot avoid the problem of salvation; but we can - of course - deny it! We can deny that it exists as a problem, or we can deny that we each have any real choice in the matter. But these are de facto choices, in and of themselves, and we cannot hide from ourselves that such choices-have-been-made.

Some years ago I wrote about the high-Psychoticism Christian: the 'good Christian' who was not nice,  not sociable, conscientious, organised - who was impulsive, easily bored, bad at sustained endeavour; a man who nearly-always failed to follow-through on his resolutions.

And I later wrote about how such high-Psychoticism persons potentially have a vital role to play in Christianity - because for all its disadvantages; high-P is needed for creativity, and that integrity which depends on immunity to social conformity. 

I now realise that Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) is a great example of exactly what I meant.

Coleridge was a deep and devoted Christian, and had a wide and deep influence through his life and beyond - affecting Anglican practice and theology (via disciples) all through the nineteenth century. 

Coleridge was also a long term opium addict, a frequent drunkard; he all-but abandoned his wife (luckily she and the children were well looked after in the house of her brother in law, Coleridge's friend Robert Southey); and he passionately loved another woman (but entirely chastely).

His life was chaotic in the extreme, he was moody in the extreme, short-tempered, impulsive, inconsistent; he missed appointments and broke arrangements; he failed to finish (or even begin) nearly all of his large projects.

But Coleridge acknowledged and repented his sins; he regretted the way he was, he tried to reform but couldn't. He was what he was - he was made that way.

While what he did was nearly all flawed (requiring tremendous and sustained concentration - or else scattered notes, hints, scraps), and was far less in amount then he was capable of doing; nonetheless Coleridge was perhaps the most significant philosophical thinker of his time. As a conversationalist (or rather monologist) he was apparently supreme; and sometimes he was a lecturer of astonishing power - and thus sufficient of his great potential was somehow made available.     

Christianity has this great strength - and we must never forget it - that repentance is more important than behaviour; and by Jesus Christ repentance is available to everybody at ever time and in an inexhaustible supply.

Much of Coleridge's life needed repenting every hour of every day for decades - but that was not a problem - that well can never run dry. 

And thus Coleridge was a truly great Christian, although in many ways a bad man.

In this age, these end times, when institutions are corrupt and obedience and hard work are turned to evil ends; it is possible that only someone of the Coleridge type has the creativity, independence and courage to provide what is needed.

Not as a Christian leader, of course! That would be a disaster. But as an educator, clarifier, explainer, encourager, and as an inspirer.

In a post at Albion Awakening, I tackle a subject close to my heart and causal of the deep malaise of the modern condition - namely the rapid corruption of Romanticism from its Christian beginnings to a combination of radical politics, sexual revolution and make-believe.

Since Romanticism was the divinely destined direction for Western Man; this has been catastrophic over the past two centuries - with (on one side) serious mainstream Christianity rejecting imagination, inspiration and intuition - hardening into materialism; and (on the other side) mainstream culture diverging into the instinct-driven sexual revolution and the iron cage of pseudo-rational totalitarian bureaucracy.

As Owen Barfield first understood; one answer is for us to return to the source of true Romanticism - such as Wordsworth and Coleridge, and pick up the threads - and carry forward the Romantic project. And this is no hardship - but a delightsome task!

And it will succeed; because Rudolf Steiner - in his early works, culminating in the Philosophy of Freedom - has done all the heavy lifting for us (with Barfield's later assistance).

The answer is there, waiting; the answer is coherent, beautiful and fruitful; and a world of wonders beckons! - if we want it; and assuming we each make the effort to know it intuitively: for our-selves...

Reality is universal and accessible - ultimately, in the fullness of eternity - to every single person directly; but only to individual persons... So that if or when a person insists that they personally cannot do this, and that he must therefore get his knowledge secondhand and indirectly by means of communications... well, this is a species of self-damnation.

Such is all-too-often seen among 'traditionalist' Christians of this age; their primary intuition is that they cannot intuit the truth; and therefore must receive truth only by communication from external authority.

Of course, here and now we have at best only a sliver of direct truth; and in the meanwhile must get most of it secondhand - but we must subject all significant knowledge to the test of direct apprehension. And only when we can get the question boiled-down to that which can be held in mind and apprehended as a single and simple whole; then can clear knowledge be available... so long as the mind may (at least momentarily) be stilled and focused.

Thus direct knowing. Thus the knowledge of the Holy Ghost.

And the sin of the Holy Ghost is to deny it.

All too many Christians are in exactly this state of sin. How?

Having once known some-thing directly, clearly and with intuitive apprehension by the Holy Ghost; they then deny and over-rule this knowledge; by favouring some lesser, secondary, communicated, complex information - whether derived from church authority, secular scholarship or mores, tradition, logic, or scripture.

I feel that it should not be necessary to spell everything out... indeed, the very fact that it has become necessary to state the obvious means that the obvious is not going to be accepted. But here goes anyway...

There are sins, and there is wickedness, and these are human universals and the only vital difference between people is whether a person repents or not.

But there are sins and wickedness - and then there is the work of demonic evil as it is manifested in human society; and that is often hard to distinguish; but sometimes it isn't hard to distinguish...

And when we are talking about systematic, organised paedophilia - then there it is, unambiguous, and absolutely characteristic - just the same phenomenon as we see linking and motivating the upper levels of the global establishment in politics, business, the mass media... and now the Roman Catholic Church.

This is not ordinary human weakness we are dealing-with, this is not a temptation that the vast mass of ordinary people experience; it is a demonic takeover and redirection of human institutions.

Where we find it, where we find evidence consistent with it, where the ideological links are in-place - there (and this we ought to know without having specifically to be told) we are dealing with the demonic in human affairs.

This isn't a matter for argument; and if argument is needed or demanded - then (so far as I can tell) you are on the wrong side already.

These are the End Times; and this is how things work in the end times. Things aren't complicated; they are all-too-simple, but so appalling that we refuse to believe them... and thus we are caught.

The spiritual Christian perspective is often sharply different from the mainstream hedonic materialism that generally (sometimes exclusively) dominates most people's everyday thoughts and behaviours - including my own.

But they often lead to opposite conclusions. For example, there is a very real and realistic belief that Britain is very close to becoming an overtly repressive totalitarian nation - since all the social institutions are working together to enforce conformity and repress any public expression of opposition.

For example, it has become almost impossible to speak in an advertised public forum for anyone who is regarded as of being against the leftist agenda. It is now a normal daily occurrence for such events to be refused by venues, or cancelled if they are initially accepted; and this is done with the cooperation of local government and the police. At a national level, those against the establishment agenda are refused permission to enter Britain - this has been happening for several years.

My point is that we are already living in a totalitarian country; but most people do not realise it. However, if (or when) things go further - then people will realise it. It will become impossible for many or most people not to realise, on an hour by hour basis, that they are under a repressive system of monitoring and control. 

Now, from a spiritual Christian Perspective, such a realisation would be invaluable! It would be at least half-way to an awakening. So, this is something to be welcomed - in and of itself.

But from a secular, 'right wing' anti-leftist perspective - such an awakening is only of value IF it leads to effective political action to resist and overthrow the prevailing socio-political Leftism.

A greater divergence than this is hard to imagine! However, repressive totalitarianism is - for exactly this reason - a test case of our seriousness about spiritual Christianity.

If we are serious that this is essentially a spiritual war we live in; and if overt and severe repression awakens more people to reality - then it would have to be - overall - if not actually a good thing; then, at least, better than what we currently have...

This was a schoolboy taunt directed at people who made extreme but vague aggressive statements of intent with no plan and nothing to back them up. The implication was that such threats were empty...

I feel much the same about the pseudonymous chickenhawk culture warriors who are always encouraging other people to start "fighting" the mainstream culture of materialist atheist leftism.

Because the essence of the situation is precisely that there is no army on our side, nobody to fight With. And so no point in encouraging others to Join-In, because we are each on our own - or, if lucky, having a handful of family or close friends.

That is the fact of the current situation, it's where we start from.

This makes matters simple. We simply need to decide what we personally should do.

And Then Do It.

Inequality is a dishonest word - because it merely means difference; but by calling difference inequality, a path is opened towards a moral inversion.

Because difference is a fact - no two things are the same (not even snowflakes or grains of sand - leave aside human beings or social situations). By relabelling difference as inequality - that which is a fact, is inevitable, and is Good - is instead made into an ineradicable problem...

It is a 'discovery' of modernity that difference is everywhere (except in abstraction! - such as mathematics... and of course that is one source of error) - and the change in human conscious of modernity has shown more and more differences; but this knowledge has been poisoned by moral inversion.

The fact is that we should expect differences wherever we make a comparison - and should regard it positively.

And this includes religion - in the sense that we are all God's children, and all children are different - and a good and loving parent loves the differences between his children (and does not, therefore, try to shape them all into identical outcomes; but rather to encourage each to develop into his or her unique good-ness - his or her unique (and uniquely contributing harmony) with God's creation and plans of salvation and theosis.

Not all differences are the same in nature - e.g. the difference between men and women is of a different nature than the difference between brothers - but these differences are real and ineradicable and Good.

At Albion Awakening; John Fitzgerald has some thoughts on Robin Hood as a model for how modern 'SaxonChristians' might survive and thrive under the yoke of the vile Norman-Leftists.

As a kid, I found RH and his merry men an inspiring model; and in my mind they were associated with the Hiawatha type forest Indians of North America - it was mostly that free, woodland, Arcadian lifestyle I yearned for. There is also a political aspect; in the Robin is the real English folk hero, the people's choice - as contrasted with Arthur, who has a rather more upper class and mixed appeal.

Of course, such characters are prone to be hijacked, and turned against their proper meanings. For example, Robin Hood is made into a proto-socialist; or else the Sheriff is made the 'goodie'...

Anyway, John has something new and true to say about this vital myth of Albion.

There will be a brief hiatus in my attention to this blog - during which commenting is suspended, and comments temporarily hidden.

William Wildblood wrestles with this question at Albion Awakening - and makes some constructive suggestions.

My own angle is that the whole human being is only to be found in the ideality of permanent, indeed eternal, marriage between a man and a woman; in a complementary dyad: each couple being an unique perfection of growth in love.

That perfection needs to be recognised as the ideal, even though (very) seldom (or never) fully attainable in mortal life.

It is our divine destiny as Men - but, of course, must ultimately be embraced only in the full freedom of choice, and with knowledge; hence at an advanced stage of post-mortal life. 

It was forty years ago that Colin Wilson made me recognise explicitly something I had unconsciously felt for about five years; which was that ordinary everyday human consciousness is essentially worthless. A life spent at that level was not really being lived - it was a mere automatic behaviour. From then onwards my main and recurring focus in life was attaining a higher consciousness.

But in this I was hampered, thwarted, by my irreligion. I believed that reality had just-happened, was not 'created'; therefore reality had no purpose... and this deep nihilism always unravelled any attempt I made to find meaning in my experiences of higher consciousness.

I might often respond with intense happiness and aliveness to beautiful countryside, and after Wilson I might acknowledge that this kind of 'peak experience' was what life was about; but ultimately I regarded this as something that happened only in my mind - and that the countryside was just a stimulus to this pleasurable state (and  this stimulus was contingent - just an accidental product of my makeup and experiences).

(And when my mind ended, with disease or death, so did the reality and significance of this experience.)

If only - I now think - I could have gone on and read A Geography of Consciousness by William Arkle; the foreword to which was my introduction to Wilson. Yet that book is very difficult. And I was immune to anything which I felt was an attempt to prove the reality of God to me - that raised all resistances.

If only I had read Arkle's Letter from a Father, perhaps things would have been different? (and this was nearly included as an Appendix to GoC, as Wilson's introduction explains...) - Because there Arkle doesn't argue but just assumes the reality of God, and has him explain what he is trying to do with creation.

But very likely I needed to go the long way round to this insight...

I believe that JRR Tolkien suffered what could be termed a 'nervous breakdown' in 1945-6; after taking-up the Merton Professorship of English Language and Literature in June of 1945, and at exactly the time when he was writing the Notion Club Papers (NCPs). The Notion Club Papers is therefore itself an indirect source of evidence about Tolkien's state of mind.

This period of 1945-6 was also associated with an apparent marital crisis, during which Tolkien (with his son Christopher) and his wife separated for some weeks. The evidence suggests Tolkien's psychological problems were building-up to become severe by December 1945, peaking in March and April of 1946, and resolving in July of 1946.

My impression is that this breakdown was mostly a matter of anxiety and depression brought-on by overwork and stress.

My guess is that the nervous breakdown experience of late 1945-1946 had a permanent effect on Tolkien - and that the effect was beneficial to his writing. On the one hand he was able to write with increased emotional depth. More speculatively; it is possible that the experience of his 'self-therapy' in writing the Notion Club Papers was able to give him surer access to altered states of consciousness, especially dreams, and these provided a source of other-worldly sub-creative reality to the Lord of the Rings.

Without the nervous breakdown of 1945-6, and without the experience of writing the Notion Club Papers - The Lord of the Rings would have been a different, and probably lesser, book.

Read the evidence at The Notion Club Papers blog...

Some metaphysical reflections after re-reading Charles Williams's The Place of the Lion.

...We are confronted by a reality which we must apprehend each for himself by intuition; and in which our individual salvation depends on a directly attained knowledge; and personal freedom, agency, choice...

The reason (as I understand it) for this necessity is that Man's divine destiny is linear, sequential, non-repeating - although with some cyclical aspects; so that history resembles a spiral.

Salvation is individual - we are Not converging onto a single 'type' but rather we ultimately are aimed-at becoming our-unique-selves And fully-harmonised with the divine purposes.

To make this possible, God has taken care that every specific place, hour, day, lunar month, year, and era are different - so that each individual human life may be provided with the experiences best-suited to its spiritual progression (then; it is up to each of us to learn from these experiences).

On the other hand, it is only from the repetitions and regularities of life that we are able to learn. So we get both...


Read the whole thing at The Notion Club Papers...

Modern Man regards the moon as trivial - except for its gravitational effect upon tides - which I personally regard as mysterious, since I have failed to understand the 'explanations' of how a gravitational pull can cause a high tide on the opposite side of the earth.

Of course, I personally regard the Moon as a living and conscious being; and have done so for a very long time, although in the past I would vehemently have denied it!

Astronomically it is very mysterious - why is the Moon the same size as the Sun (when seen from earth)? Why does it rotate on its axis at the same rate as it orbits, such that it always has the same face towards us? Why is our moon The Moon) so big, relative to the earth - compared with other planets? How did it get there at all (assuming that the current explanations are indeed the arrant nonsense they seem to be).

A mystery indeed.

It is implausible, impossible, that the Moon could have no effect other than its tides - yet what is that effect? What is the effect that moon light (and its lack) has upon our minds? What is the significance of the Moon's phases?

In sum, what is the Moon's role in human salvation and theosis; why was it placed, and made as it is?

I have a feeling that I already know the answers to such questions, as inbuilt but unconscious knowledge - and I would very much like to make this knowledge explicit and conscious!

Loyalty is a virtue, is indeed the primary virtue in many societies - but it is a minor virtue for a Christian. Therefore, when a Christian finds that loyalty is becoming his primary motivation - he can be sure that he is being corrupted away from Christ.

The original, traditional and ancient, loyalty was properly to an individual person (the the 'liege lord'); and the idea of loyalty to an abstraction - such as an organisation, the personnel of which are completely replaceable - is a development, and a weakening of the original.

Too many Christians have been more loyal to their church, abstractly conceived, than to their faith - but this loyalty is being tested more and more strongly with every passing year and the corruption of large and powerful Western Christian churches is being revealed as more and more extreme.

This is a test of Christian faith, and a necessary test. We ought not to 'complain' about it - because it reveals our own lack of faith.

It used to be possible (in many times and places) to be a passive Christian, and treat a church as if it was itself the abstract and incorruptible perfection of faith. The church was regarded as intrinsically and necessarily and essentially pure, regardless of the people in it.

(Because it is assumed that the one absolutely reliable area of direct divine intervention in this mortal world, is for God to ensure that the leaders of this church are always and under every circumstance essentially pure and true; never corrupt and false...)

An organisation was thereby regarded as better than actual people. This is a common modern belief, associated - in the twentieth century - with bureaucratic totalitarianism; on the tacitly-assumed basis that individuals are always corrupt; but when Committees follow Procedures, then Good can be made routine, reliable and objective. 

The falseness of this hope should have been obvious - but is not obvious, it is very far from obvious to many or most people - including most Christians; and therefore the test continues, and continues to become more extreme.

It seems to me that, so pervasive is this test, that it is a high priority for our God to confront us each with the choice; to put us into a position where faith and loyalty are in stark conflict so that we are compelled to choose.

This seems to be a lesson that we must learn, hence cannot avoid (although we can, of course, continue to deny it - and to insist that there cannot ever be a real conflict between loyalty and faith - but that is also to choose).


Note added: If corruption has not yet come to the leadership of your church, then it must be that that church is distinct from the current mainstream. In future, purity and strength of faith will only be maintained insofar as a church is pretty-much cut-off from communications with the social systems of politics, the economy, education, employment law etc - because the bureaucratic requirements for participation in the mainstream are corrupting - ever more comprehensively and intrusively, and by design. Benefits are available only with strings attached; these strings bind to the mainstream; and the mainstream is ever-more-explicitly anti-Christian, pro-evil. 

My Albion Awakening co-blogger and penfriend William Wildblood has an interesting post at his Meeting the Masters web pages, reflecting on the period of his early life when he experienced communications with these Masters.

Assuming that, like me, you accept and believe Williams account of his experiences - these raise very interesting questions.

At one level, William can provide us with some basic but solid experience-based information about spiritual matters, about how 'things' are organised in mortal life on earth.  For example, his Masters were once Men like us, and this should be an inspiring and encouraging thought.

This 'structural' aspect is, perhaps, the most valuable aspect for us - because much of the information was very specifically directed to helping William and his friend Michael. William was 'naturally', from an early age, a far more spiritually inclined person than is usual in the modern West (and certainly far more so than I am) - and he dedicated himself to this as a priority. Only later in life did William become more integrated to the mainstream, mundane, workaday world. Whereas my life path has been almost the opposite; and I have never detached myself from 'the world' - nor do I have plans ever to do so. 

But the way that help was given is also of interest - in that there was a clear requirement for William's individual choice and effort. As described in his book Meeting the Masters (2012) and on the blog, there was a fair bit of him trying, failing, acknowledging failure, learning from the experience...

All this fits with the general nature of the way things are 'set-up' in human life; and helps confirm that this is the basic model for mortality - that we live to learn, that we learn by experience, there is no end to this learning... But we are watched-over, we do have divine help available.

I was certainly stimulated by Oswald Spengler's 'Decline of the West (1918) when I read it; and found the book to be rich in insights. It is indeed seminal.

But I would have to say that I regard is as essentially wrong.

The wrongness is of two types: the use of biological growth and development as the primary metaphor for cultural change; and the model of civilisational change being cyclical.

The biological metaphor is essentially wrong because it leaves-out the religious element - which I regard as primary among cultural drivers (nothing is more powerful for human cultures than religion, nothing more lethal than the lack of religion).

Once religion has been omitted, then biology - in the form, mainly, of sex and sexuality - does indeed become primary; but only in the context of a terminally doomed situation.

The cyclical model is essentially wrong because human history is primarily linear - and in its most vital aspects never repeats. So the most vital thing to consider is the linearity; and it is only against this unidirectional-unfolding that small cycles may be observed.

Christianity recognises this directionality and purposiveness to human history - and all Christians really ought to have this as a built-in metaphysical assumption - Time is linear, sequential, and without exact repetition.

(However, many Christians have-been and are confused by their metaphysical assumptions that God is outside Time as well as Space. But at any rate, the sequential linearity of Time certainly applies to mortal life on earth - bounded at each end by the first and last Men; by creation and the end of things.)

In sum - Spengler is certainly worth reading; and some of his successors and emulators likewise; so long as it is borne in mind that they are all, basically, wrong!

In which I develop an idea from John Michell about how and why we Britons ought to be taught about our deep history, at a formative age, in an intuitive narrative form, when it might ground and shape our imagination.