Bruce Charlton's Notions

Since I believe that the world is ultimately composed of Beings in Relationships; and that creation is held-together by Love - how should we, personally, relate to such Beings?

Our task, in this Romantic era of human development, is to become conscious of that which is unconscious - therefore the other Beings of created reality.

This means, becoming aware of the direct knowledge of reality, that is already in our thinking. 


We are in a position of un-consciously knowing by direct intuition (because we are each a part-of reality, and began by being passively immersed-in reality) but failing/ refusing to:

1. Make this implicit intuited knowledge conscious
2. Recognise the validity - the truth - of this intuited knowledge

We need therefore to learn (consciously) what we already know (unconsciously) and to know that it is true.

Thereby we re-establish contact with reality (such as we all had in our earlier development, as young children - and such as mankind had in earlier and 'tribal' forms of society) - but our thinking remains free, conscious - hence divine in quality.


We need to overcome our prejudice, as moderns or as traditionalists, that 'truth is compelled', that truth is enforced upon us - and especially by that which we perceive (by 'facts', by 'evidence'). But that is a child's understanding of truth, and that is to be a passive servant of truth.

Our destiny (should we choose to accept it) is to develop the same (divine) quality of thinking as God, en route to becoming a grown-up participant in creation: this quality of thinking is conscious and free, because to be free and actively-participative (not passive) it must be conscious.


So - how should we hope to relate to spiritual beings?  

Not by 'communication', not by something like seeing and hearing and conversing - because that would be to return to the passive state of child-like perceptual dependence.

(And, in fact, such 'visionary' experiences are anyway difficult/ impossible for many modern people without some degree of impaired consciousness - illness, exhaustion, drugs etc. And then the need for cognitive impairment casts doubt on the reality and validity of visions...)

We relate to spiritual beings as we should relate to the world as a whole; by becoming aware of what is already unconsciously present in our thinking, and by recognising the metaphysical validity of the resulting awareness.

The process is indeed self-validating - if we allow it to be.

Yesterday I was re-reading this-blog commenter 'Lucinda's excellent 2015 article from the Mormon Blog - Millenial Star. I certainly agree with the substance of what Lucinda says, but I noticed that there was a 'hang-up' in the comments about nomenclature.

For example, disputes about about the 'real meaning of Patriarchy; or (elsewhere) I have seem 'complementary' used as a synonym for 'de facto feminism'. I don't intend to quibble over this - but will make my meaning of these and other terms clear, as we proceed.

My general stance is that there was a long history of Patriarchy in human society, but around about 1800 there was a change in Western human consciousness (or human instincts) concerning the ideal way that men and women ought to relate - particularly in marriage.

This was a part of the Romantic movement in thought - and I regard Joseph Smith and the Latter Day Saints (beginning with the production of the Book of Mormon and the formation of what became the CJCLDS in 1830) as part of this Romantic movement.

My belief is that this Romantic movement in thought ought to have led to a new kind of dyadic (or complementary - in the original sense of that word) relationship between men and women. Mormonism bases this upon the solid metaphysical assumption that men and women are incomplete parts of the 'whole' human being; and that the divine ideal of the complete (i.e. fully divine) Man is a 'celestial' (i.e. dyadic and eternal) marriage of a man and woman.

This divine idea, then, ought to be reflected in our earthly ideals. However this has not yet happened.

In mainstream secular Western culture, we have instead had materialistic feminism; which is an incoherent, Leftist (hence destructive, evil motivated) perversion of the truth of the underlying spiritual ideal. Yes, we had the impulse for a New relation between men and women; but No - not feminism - which foments perpetual resentment and (even pragmatically) simply does not work. So not feminism - then what?  

What of Mormonism? My interpretation is that Mormonism was diverted by adverse circumstances first briefly into polygamy under Joseph Smith (multiple spiritual, not physical, spouses for men and women - intended to bind the Saints into a single extended family); then (under Brigham Young) into several decades of Patriarchal polygyny (plural wives for the senior Mormons) - and from about 1900 the current pattern of an ideal of eternal monogamy.

Current Mormonism is regarded as highly 'Patriarchal' by comparison with current secular norms; especially because only men are priests and there is an ideal of men as leading the household and women being mothers and homemakers. But spiritually there is a strong element of dyadic complementarity to Mormonism, which is evident by comparison with Conservative Evangelicals.

And ultimately this is related to the Evangelical concept of God as a man; while the Mormon God is a Heavenly Father and Mother. But the womens' role in the CJCLDS has always been much more important than in traditionalist mainstream Christian churches; with the Mormon Relief Society a very early feature, and a full range of 'parallel' women's organisations (and significant local, national and international positions of responsibility) within the church.

Thus, the true underlying position of Mormonism is that men and women are complementary 'partners' in their marriage. When this is made into a regulatory generalisation, into official guidance, it comes-out very much like Patriarchy; since on-average this broadly reflects the situation for the majority of men and women.  If we must have 'laws' then these must be 'patriarchal' - because the feminist alternative is much worse.

But in an ideal situation, the dyad of earthly spouses would be able mutually to find their own, perhaps unique, complementary compatibility; based on their own specific natures and dispositions, and the way that an individual marriage evolves over time - with age, with fortune, how many children or their absence, with diseases and disasters etc.

In this sense, all solid and lasting marriages on earth must sometimes be complementary, when circumstances dictate; but for the Romantic view of men and women this is the ideal, not just a regrettable necessity. 

Dyadic marriage, with each man and woman forging a flexible and complementary, permanent and committed, relationship, is - I believe - the proper and truly Romantic ideal for modern men and women; on earth as we hope it shall be in Heaven.

An account, and pictures, of my own experience can be found at Exploring Ancient Archaeology in Northumbria.

I recently had a very enjoyable visit to Smailholm Tower, near to Kelso in the borders of Scotland. This is one of the finest remaining Pele (or Peel) Towers which are scattered across the borderlands and beyond (there are several within a few miles of Newcastle upon Tyne; and we are about 60 miles from the Scottish border).

Peles are essentially miniature castles, and the best defense against raiders during the era of the Border Reivers (lasting for a few hundred years up to the early 1600s). Smailholm was the 'ultimate' pele - verging on a castle; in that it had a superb vantage point atop a rocky outcrop, and a solid outer wall enclosing a 'barmkin' containing a feasting hall and some other buildings.

Whereas I get the impression that most peles were simply meant to be an overnight shelter against small, mounted raiding parties until help from the rest of the surname (clan) arrived in response to a signal fire. A solid oak door might protect the cattle etc. below, and access to upper levels only by a ladder and trapdoor above the beasts. Indeed, peles merge-into the lesser 'bastles' which are fortified houses, with a raised, defensible door up some external stairs (again, the animals were kept below).


Anyway, it was well worth a visit (thanks also to the informed enthusiasm of the manager, Paul), and contained much more than we had expected. The displays (concerning the Reivers, Border Ballads, and Walter Scott) were illustrated by crafted dolls, which I found surprisingly effective.


Smailholm was once well known from a passage in Walter Scott's Marmion, referring to a period of his childhood when he was convalescing in a nearby village, and how the tower stimulated his imagination. 

And still I thought that shattered tower
The mightiest work of human power;
And marvelled as the aged hind
With some strange tale bewitched my mind,
Of forayers, who, with headlong force,
Down from that strength had spurred their horse,
Their southern rapine to renew,
Far in the distant Cheviots blue,
And, home returning, filled the hall
With revel, wassail-rout, and brawl.

Methought that still, with trump and clang,
The gateway's broken arches rang;
Methought grim features, seamed with scars,
Glared through the window's rusty bars,
And ever, by the winter hearth,
Old tales I heard of woe or mirth,
Of lovers' slights, of ladies' charms,
Of witches' spells, of warriors' arms;
Of patriot battles, won of old
By Wallace wight and Bruce the bold;
Of later fields of feud and fight,
When, pouring from their Highland height,
The Scottish clans, in headlong sway,
Had swept the scarlet ranks away.

While stretched at length upon the floor,
Again I fought each combat o'er,
Pebbles and shells, in order laid,
The mimic ranks of war displayed;
And onward still the Scottish Lion bore,
And still the scattered Southron fled before.

From Marmion by Walter Scott

The West cannot be saved, because it is secular. And because The West has no religion, there is essentially nothing to save.

The West has no essence, is merely contingent - just a time-slice through an always-changing, self-subverting, and continually-inverted aggregation of attitudes, beliefs and practices. 

So culturally, the West is purposefully, strategically destroying itself - always, necessarily as a continuous process. 

And biologically The West is destroying itself: by choice the Western population have long since ceased to replace themselves; by strategy it is replacing its own population - and from existential terror (and deliberate wicked intent) this whole subject is taboo, denied, lied-about. 


The West is not even trying to save itself; indeed The West has self-destruction built-in, woven-in, pervasive. After all, how can you save something which so much wants to kill itself? Something which regards every effort to keep it alive as an aggressive act of torture. 

Take your eye off Western Civilization for just a moment and it will be swinging from the rafters with its own belt around its neck...


So long as The West has no religion, it cannot be saved; and there is only one possible religion for The West: Christianity. A Christian revival is the only hope. 

But there is no sign of this happening - all the large mainstream self-identified Christian denominations are primarily secular, hence are well down the path of killing themselves (where they are not already long-since dead).
 
Only (real) Christians can perceive this clearly; so what should Christians do? 

 
The choice is either a greater focus on politics and policies, on laws and society, on constitutions and systems... As our numbers and power ever-diminish, to argue harder and harder to reverse the juggernaut of secularism who have near-zero interest and knowledge of Christianity, but ever greater hostility towards what they suppose it to be?...

Or to switch attention away from politics altogether - to ignore the adverse oceanic tides of mass secular movements, and the corruption and dishonesty of most churches leaders, and instead to focus attention on bringing the message to persons, one individual at a time?

To be always fighting-against (and net losing), or to be positive for (and sometimes winning)?     


If we focus on the big picture - then being a Christian in The West is to be a miserable failure; but, if we focus on the person, then to be a Christian is to experience a deep and mostly hidden well-spring of courage, love, hope, meaning, purpose, belonging - secretly to be gloriously happy despite whatever happens on the surface.

It is impossible to exaggerate the difference that this makes to me, and to every Christian; it is an almost exact inversion of what it was not to be a Christian - when every pleasure was potentially available, nothing was forbidden - but never hope, never happiness.

The secular modern is afraid to probe too deeply, because he is sure there is nothing underneath - all is surface. He is afraid to look ahead, because he has decided that will be nothing there. To him, all human lives are failures because they end in decline, suffering, and death - biography is tragedy (either unfulfilled promise or the disappointment of all desire).

His strongest principles are without foundations - and therefore will almost certainly be discarded when they become inexpedient, or even if they are not discarded then this will be an arbitrary gesture. His most profound yearnings can only be fulfilled in imagination - which is to say they will not be fulfilled, and are delusions.

He sees Christians as torturers because they talk of eternal life, and of the disciplined and constrained path which leads to it - and for modern man that means snatching away the pleasures which are all that make life bearable, and the hope of extinction which is all that makes life endurable.

For such a man, life equals 'existence'; eternal life equals eternal torment.


As Christians, we may be able to save someone, or more than one person, from this horrible existence; and the benefits are not deferred, not only after life and in eternity - but immediate, in this life, here and now and straight away.

Our resources are finite, our effort and enthusiasm requires realistic grounds for optimism. Therefore, let's stop monitoring and trying to turn-back the civilisational tsunami of secular nihilism - but ourselves drowning in pessimism.

And instead adopt the positive, optimistic, realistic goal of saving a few people: saving them into invincible joy.
 

 

“Like and equal are not the same thing at all.” ― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time (1961).

I've just finished reading (i.e. listening-to-the-audiobook-of) A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle; which is a US classic of children's fantasy, but which I never really heard of until fairly recently.

It is certainly a worthwhile book, with several very effective and enjoyable parts - although I found that, overall; it lost narrative pull as the book went on (it seemed to have too much explanatory exposition), it did not end fully-satisfyingly; and therefore I would not (at first reading) regard it as first-rate (not - for me - in the same class as The Hobbit, Narnia, Wind in the Willows etc.).

But an aspect that I much liked was the explicitly Christian and mystical element to the book; its presentation of Life as a spiritual conflict, its making of a loving (esoteric and eccentric) family into the main agent for Good.


However, the title phase “Like and equal are not the same thing at all.” jumped-out at me as a false statement, and representative of a belief that has (over the past fifty-plus years) been very wholly destructive of The West.

Perhaps naturally, this became one of the best known, most quoted, phrases from the novel.

For totalitarians, communists, socialists and nowadays the politically correct and Social justice Warriors; for things to be Equal' they must be The Same; so - since we (supposedly) favour Equality - then society must become homogeneous, which means totalitarian (since sameness requires an all powerful authority to enforce it).

'Eqaulity has been, for serious Christians, a Trojan Horse; a smuggled-in deception, later deployed to attack (and substantially destroy) the citadel of the faith - indeed equality has replaced Christianity in the mainstream churches. 


Wrinkle in Time (in characteristically modern, particularly American, fashion) tries to oppose this by drawing a distinction between 'eqality' which is good (e.g. because the US declaration of independence, quoted prominently and approvingly in the novel, says "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..."); and on the other hand likeness, alikeness, sameness - which are bad.

But we should recognise that all attempts to distinguish an ethic of equality from sameness will fail; do fail, have failed. 

So, the result is that all attempts systematically to promote equality, as an over-arching ethic, end-up by promoting sameness, and justifying totalitarianism - which is intriniscally evil.

If enforced sameness is an evil, then so is equality. 

Rudolf Steiner has some deeply suggestive things to say about this matter; in which he subtly asserts that the spiritual in life is to be found in exactly those aspects that are taken for granted - the backdrop of 'normal', everyday assumptions and experiences of things going well, not collapsing or exploding.

In a different way, he is making the same recognition that I came to in respect to the science of biology; when I realised that there 'must be' a vast positive, creative, purposive background in order that biology be possible.

This seems extremely difficult to describe with any precision; perhaps because it is the ocean in which we dwell; but it goes far beyond any specific instances (such as synchronicity) to notice that there are innumerable things that must 'go right' at every moment of every day; if The Whole Thing is not simply to collapse into chaos.

We should not really take for granted all the ways in which we don't die, and continue to perform innumerable functions and fulfil innumerable tasks (like walking down the street from one end to the other!).

As I say, it is to big and all encompassing really to 'explain' in the same way that we can explain smaller and more specific instances. But here are some excerpts from a lecture by Steiner (GA 181 - Berlin,5th March, 1918 - excerpted as Lecture 9 here) which may be helpful.

...A man was accustomed to take a certain walk daily. One day, when he reached a certain spot, he had a feeling to go to the side and stand still, and the thought came to him whether it was right to waste time over this walk. At that moment a boulder which had split from the rock fell on the road and would certainly have struck him if he had not turned aside from the road on account of his thought.

This is one of the crude experiences we may encounter in life, but those of a more subtle kind daily press into our ordinary life, though as a rule we do not observe them; we only reckon with what actually does happen, not with what might have happened had it not been averted. We reckon with what happens when we are kept at home a quarter of an hour longer than we intended. Often and often, if we did but reflect, we should find that something worthy of remark happened, which would have been quite different if we had not been detained.

Try to observe systematically in your own life what might have happened had you not been delayed a few minutes by somebody coming in, though, perhaps, at the time, you were very angry at being detained. Things are constantly pressed into one's life which might have been very different according to their original intention. We seek a ‘causal connection,’ between events in life. We do not reflect upon life with that subtle refinement which would he in the consideration of the breaking of a probable chain of events, so that, I might say, an atmosphere of possibilities continually surrounds us.

If we give our attention to this, and have been delayed in doing something which we have been accustomed to do at mid-day, we shall have a feeling that what we do at that time is often — it may not always be so — not under the influence of foregoing occurrences only, but also under the influence of the countless things which have not happened, from which we have been held back. By thinking of what is possible in life — not only in the outer reality of sense — we are driven to the surmise that we are so placed in life that to look for the connection of what follows with what has gone before is a very one-sided way of looking at life. 

If we truly ask ourselves such questions, we rouse something which in our mind would otherwise lie dormant. We come, as it were, to ‘read between the lines’ of life; we come to know it in its many-sidedness. We come to see ourselves, so to speak, in our environment, and we see how it forms us and brings us forward little by little. This we usually observe far too little. At most, we only consider the inner driving forces that lead us from stage to stage. Let us take some simple ordinary instance from which we may gather how we only bring the outer into connection with our inner being, in a very fragmentary way.

Let us turn our attention to the way we usually realise our waking in the morning. At most, we acquire a very meagre idea of how we make ourselves get up; perhaps, even the concept of this is very nebulous. Let us, however, reflect for a while upon the thought which at times drives us out of bed; let us try to make this individual, quite clear and concrete. Thus: yesterday I got up because I heard the coffee being made ready in the next room; this aroused an impulse to get up; to-day something else occurred. That is, let us be quite clear, what was the outer impelling force. Man usually forgets to seek himself in the outer world, hence he finds himself so little there. Anyone who gives even a little attention to such a thought as this will easily develop that mood of which man has a holy — nay, an unholy — terror, — the realisation that there is an undercurrent of thought which does not enter the ordinary life.

A man enters a room, for instance or goes to some place, but he seldom asks himself how the place changes when he enters it. Other people have an idea of this at times, but even this notion of it from outside is not very widespread to-day. I do not know how many people have any perception of the fact that when a company is in a room, often one man is twice as strongly there as another; the one is strongly present, the other is weak. That depends on the imponderabilities. 

We may easily have the following experience: A man is at a meeting, he comes softly in, and glides out again; and one has the feeling that an angel has flitted in and out. Another's presence is so powerful that he is not only present with his two physical feet but, as it were, with all sorts of invisible feet. Others do not, as a rule, notice it, although it is quite perceptible; and the man himself does not notice it at all.

A man does not, as a rule, hear that ‘undertone’ which arises from the change called forth by his presence; he keeps to himself, he does not enquire of his surroundings what change his presence produces. He can, however, acquire an inkling, a perception of the echo of his presence in his surroundings. Just think how our outer lives would gain in intimacy if a man not only peopled the place with his presence but had the feeling of what was brought about by his being there, making his influence felt by the change he brings...

There is a lot of addiction around - and I used the expression myself in the title of a book about the Mass Media.

Addiction could be defined as a psychological response to captivity, by which the captive ends-up desiring and serving that which holds him captive.

(Somewhat, although not exactly - and from a different cause, like Stockholm Syndrome among kidnap victims.)


Addiction is an actual evil, because it is a choice. 

An addict is not just dishonest about his basic situation; but because dishonest he actively endorses and advocates his dependence as a good. An addict is morally-inverted and a systematic liar.

As when a heroin junkie extols the benefits of the drug (there have been several example in literature), and organises his life around the drug, and his primary aim becomes enhancing the experience of fixes - this justifying dishonesty, theft, violence, prostitution, even murder. 

A real addict does not want to be free of his dependence. And it is this quality which I seem to see all around me in the modern West - it is indeed characteristic of the modern West.


The typical modern is truly addicted to the Mass Media and Social Media - his life is organised by and around these.  He does not want to be free of this dependence, but will justify and advocate his state. He will expend tremendous time, money and other resources to enhancing these experiences.

And media addiction exhibits the classic signs both of craving and escalating dosage.When temporarily prevented from using media, there is mounting agitation - and the user takes a fix as soon as possible - immediately after the restriction or prohibition has been lifted.


More broadly, modern Man has become addicted to mainstream modernity itself. Many examples could be picked - addiction to politics, bureaucracy, fashion, and of course - sex. Modernity is literally and extremely addicted to sex.

Not, mostly, to doing sex - but thinking about it. Sexual reference and stimulus, sexual identity and preference, sexual advertisement and craving is everywhere, almost all the time, and escalating - but instead of acknowledging their dependence, and wishing to be free from it; moderns embrace their state of dependence.


There is no such thing as neutrality on any significant issue in Life; and when something is not regarded as bad it will be regarded as good.

When dependence is not repented, it will be celebrated: it will become addiction, and thus a sin.

The decisive problem of actually-existing political Nationalism - even in an ideal form - as a philosophy-of-life is that it entails a morality based upon a de facto assertion of the superiority-to-alternatives of a way-of-life; including that the likes of Theresa May as Prime Minister, Justin Welby as Archbishop of Canterbury, the UK military in the Middle East and Afghanistan, and major social institutions such as the BBC, the NHS and the legal system... need to be endorsed as being representative major facets of the current nation. 

This means that even when (as is the case) materialist Nationalism is a lesser evil than the EU/ Globalism, and when it is the best-available-alternative - it is Not Good Enough. This, simply because it is a type of the modern pathology of spiritual and Christian-denying materialism/ positivism/ reductionism.

(Materialist Nationalism is, in fact, merely a slightly moderated version of the exact anti-Christian, spirit-denying agenda of the evil of demonic Globalism.)

Christian Nationism (i.e.Nation-ism) could be a name for something altogether superior and Good.

Let's say that Christian Nationism expresses the reality of a mystical England of which each Englishman is mystically a member.

This means that the materialist manifestations of nation (such as Theresa May, the BBC and the NHS) can be recognised for what they are - anti-nationists, strategically opposed to and destructive of the spirit of Christian Nationism.

I would add that ultimately the Christian aspect of Christian Nationism needs to be a Romantic Christianity. Why? Because the materialist, institutional aspects of Christianity are very-fully corrupted and anti-national.

Therefore the Christianity of Nationism must be Romantic - that is to say based in, derived from, a personal, spiritual, intuitive knowledge of the reality and Christian destiny of the nation of England; this is something that each must feel and know for himself, not least because there is no solid, clear, unambiguous, external source from-which such values can be derived.

Readers are invited to contribute their personal stories at the Notion Club Papers comments - preceded by a linked example from William Wildblood, to get you in the mood...

As the totalitarian society increases in power and scope on a weekly basis, we need to ask whether an underlying reason for totalitarianism is actually that this is precisely what modern people actively want for themselves, as well as others.

If we judge people by what they say, what they do, how they vote, whom they criticize and persecute - it becomes clear that modern people desire a totalitarian system of total surveillance and micro-regulation*. A wholly un-free society in which anti-social behaviour becomes un-thinkable.

And the reason that so many modern people want this, is that modern people want, more than anything else, to evade responsibility.

This is, I believe, an existential life-decision, that goes very deep. By their revealed preferences, we may infer that modern people want to regard themselves as helpless victims, want to be protected, want to be favoured systematically. They want Not to be blamed for anything; they want it never to be 'my fault'. They want always to be able to say 'I couldn't help it'.

And they want it to be the case that any person who does try to assert responsibility or blame, any person who believes in human agency and freedom - be punished, eliminated, silenced, reprogrammed. 

In a world where evasion of responsibility is primary, a totalitarian system promises the perfect excuse of being thought-controlled.

This desire to be able to plead helplessness goes all the way to the top, where individual responsibility is replaced by committees and votes; so that nothing can ever be pinned on anyone. It includes the vast, global, bureaucracy-of-everything - so that every nation, corporation, group and individual can always claim that their decisions and behaviours were compelled, that they were merely following orders.

In sum, modern man is a willing servant of the demonic spirit of Ahriman - this kind of cold, anti-personal, reductionist, pseudo-scientific, systematised evil is dominant. And, ultimately, it is dominant because of the decisions and desires of the millions upon millions of mainstream modern people who collaborate and make careers from The System.

Mainstream typical modern Man (say, the ordinary - female - middle managers in an institution) viscerally reject the reality of their own existential freedom, deny their responsibility for their own beliefs, claim helplessness against the evil-intending propaganda they so eagerly embrace and so diligently implement and defend.

These want a totalitarian system and assert themselves to be powerless innocents. But they cannot in fact evade responsibility for their positive choice of an evil system that claims to eliminate responsibility.

Because thought cannot really be controlled - to 'be' thought-contolled is therefore a decision; and all claims of oneself being thought-controlled and therefore not-responsible are a dishonest excuse. Anyone capable of making that excuse is lying. Humans just are free in their thinking.

Instead, these people actually-are actively-evil - they are in a state of willing evil upon themselves and upon everybody else. They will totalitarianism, and totalitarianism is intrinsically evil.

And this has been their choice, it is what they want.


*It might be asked how I know what most modern people want? My answer would be as above - I am simply assuming that what people want is what they say they want - as confirmed by how they behave - with a high (but not complete) level of consistency, and over several decades. 

Anyone who disagrees and says that modern people really want something different - e.g. want to be free and responsible and others to be likewise, want to live in a world that encourages and sustains human agency... well, such claims go beyond objective appearances, and are asserting deep knowledge of the hearts of Men below the surface and despite contrary actions.

I am simply suggesting that as we descend into evil totalitarianism, people are - broadly speaking - getting exactly what they want; and are therefore personally responsible for what they (and we) get. To put it differently - our problems go very deep indeed, and they are far more wide-spread; much much deeper and more pervasive than most people realise. 

The System has for several decades been much less efficient than it used to be, and is becoming very obviously less effective. And They are clearly Not Even Trying to maintain (let alone improve) the functionality of modern society - or else They would not always be pushing for the 'inclusion' of ever less-competent and less-motivated personnel.

But equally, They do not want The System to collapse. Instead, They want to transform it into an evil System: a System for making people evil. 


So, we can observe that while They could, if they wished, cause a global collapse any time They wanted (the world is so interdependent, the System is so brittle, their power is sufficient) - this does not happen.

What They are doing is to corrupt The System as much as possible, without making it collapse.

In a paradoxical way - the ideal is a highly efficient and effective System - that is dedicated to evil; but a functional system requires competence, long-termism, obedience and other virtues. This creates a difficult balancing act, since the people in The System are ever less cooperative in maintaining it. As the corruptions of evil increase, the declining quality of the participants, and the deliberate corruptions of the organisation, will reduce and eventually destroy efficiency and effectiveness. 

On current trends, and with people as they are; our the future is either a totalitarian System dedicated to evil; or else The System will collapse, global chaos will ensue, and billions of people will die (probably including ourselves and our loved ones).

If we choose to maintain The System for fear of the alternative, we will probably (because this was our choice) ourselves become servants of evil - part of which will probably be voluntarily to perform actions that will further corrupt us (that is usually the way it seems to work). There is no way to opt-into a System of evil, but to opt out of becoming oneself more evil - the first choice is just the first of many such choices.

It therefore seems likely that our fear of the 'alternative 'of chaos, violence, starvation, disease and death; will be used to make us each, person by person, embrace purposive evil. Unless we die first, that is quite likely to be the real, underlying choice for most people, soon.

Indeed, it already is.

It may seem (to a traditionalist Christian) that Romantic Christianity is a soft-centred tissue of self-gratifying wishful thinking - an excuse to do whatever we happen to want to do, and pretend it is Christian.

But this is only the case if Romaticism is temporarily adopted, and is not followed-through. If Romanticism is adopted as a genuine principle, it has, on the one hand, the potential to be self-correcting. And on the other hand it has some tough and perhaps startling implications for the question of damnation.

The Romantic idea includes such aspects that Imagination may be a kind of knowledge, that intuition is the bottom-line, and that therefore each person must-and will make a personal and subjective evaluation and decision on all major issues.

But this subjective decision is also objective: that is, it relates to reality.

The implication is that the modern person has, in actual practice, in real life, and inevitably, made a subjective decision about major issues that is having and will have objective consequences.

Given what modern people assert about moral issues, and the nature of reality - for example modern mainstream sexual ethics, and the modern idea that this world is meaningless and purposeless, or the idea that morality is reducible to feelings - we need to take seriously that such assertions are genuine expressions of what many/ most modern people Really Think.

And if this is the case, then it seems probable that most people have already damned themselves, and have chosen not only to reject Heaven but actively to embrace Hell.

It has happened. Of course, this can be repented, then changed, at any moment - But that is exactly the current state of things.

Thus - Romantic Christianity is tough in a very individual and personal way; because we can no longer plead that we didn't know the truth, that we were misled by the lies of the mass media and bureaucracy - we cannot argue that we 'couldn't help it' and are not responsible for our personal judgements.

But We Are Responsible - here-and-now people have made up their minds and they are absolutely responsible for their decisions about fundamental matters.

Now there are No Excuses.

My experience of being a Christian is that questions arise and won't be squashed - or, if they are squashed, they fester.

I don't think this was a problem so much in the past, because the typical Christian lived in an environment - a social environment - which contained large elements of practice, such as ritual; and this could become the focus of the Christian life - such that unresolved questions were of rather trivial significance.

(In the past, individual consciousness was immersed-in group consciousness in a way that is impossible for most modern people. We have changed (evolutionary-development of consciousness), and consequently the world has changed; because our thinking is a necessary part of the world (The world is Our world) - there would be no knowledge of the world if thinking was subtracted from it; i.e. there is no objective world knowable in the absence of thinking.)

In other words, Christianity of the past was much more of a practice than a faith; and the practice was strongly - sometimes monolithically - prevalent and enforced in the immediate social environment; which we were each much more dominated-by. This is no longer the case, except maybe there is a lag among groups that are self-exiled from mainstream (such as the Amish), and probably less-and-less so even there.


At any rate, when I became a Christian my strong intention was (following the advice of CS Lewis) Not to get concerned about questions concerning theological minutiae and differences in church practice. But this was not possible. I was compelled, almost immediately, to make choices - within the Church of England I encountered the big differences in practice and belief of liberal mainstream and conservative traditionalism - e.g. did I attend or avoid Holy Communion administered by Priestesses? Protestant Evangelicals and Anglo Catholics - did I pray for the dead, make a sign of the cross, attend Eucharist as much as possible or a few times a year? One or the other, not both. Did I read the Authorised Version of the Bible, and if not then which of the hundreds of alternatives did I regard as correct?

When I looked beyond the Church of England I found similar divisions and compelled choices. There was no refuge without choosing one side, and rejecting the other - and then the question of what grounds am I making this decision.


So much of being a modern-day Christian sooner-or-later reduces to this matter of how to answer questions. And the dawning realisation that there is now way to avoid it - those that think they are avoiding it are merely self-deceiving, by hiding their own assumptions.

To say that one is indifferent is, of course, itself a choice; it is to say that such and such a matter is of trivial significance - which is to take a theological and church-order position. 

The situation is that honesty compels us to acknowledge that - in the end - everybody makes at least one decision that is an assumption, a personal decision made on grounds that cannot be justified except by further personal assumptions.


The Big Question, then, is whether this insight erodes faith, or becomes the acknowledged basis of faith; and that depends on how we regard the nature or reality.

Do we really-believe that reality is such that an individual really can know a thing directly and without evidence -- or do we instead believe that the fact of everything reducing to unsupported assumption means that nothing is knowable, and life is just a sequence of flexible, expedient, arbitrary assumptions.   

At a deep level, here is the bright-line-sharp distinction between being a Christian and being a secular mainstream leftist.

...Is discussed at the Notion Club Papers blog.

God's Big Project is Making Heaven (which is mostly Populating Heaven).

But why did he do this?


Well, what is the Christian Heaven? It is a family of God's children.

Why would God want a family? Well, why does anybody want a family - because a good family is an environment of love. So first of all, God wants to live in an environment of love.

God does not need this environment in order to survive, but wants this in order to be happier. From God's point of view Heaven is a place for joy, not a place for survival. I infer from this, that for us too, Heaven is meant for our joy - and not, therefore, as our only hope of survival.

(To be clearer - I regard it as an error to conflate the happiness of Heaven - for those who want it; with the idea that Heaven is our only possibility of eternal life. 'Mere' eternal life can be had otherwise than Heaven.)


I assume that when Jesus talked of his gift to us of Life Everlasting, in the Fourth Gospel, he meant to imply much more than mere personal survival after death - because the bulk of  the Fourth Gospel is taken up by poetic/ symbolic descriptions of the qualitatively-enhanced nature of this post-mortal and Heavenly life.

So, firstly, Heaven is made as a better environment for God; better than the alternative of (more or less) relative solitude. And then it is made as a better eternal, post-mortal environment for Men.

(But not for all Men; only for those Men who want it, who freely and consciously choose it.)


Having made a place, and decided it is to be like a family; what then do people actually Do in Heaven? What could possibly be a sufficient occupation for eternity?

Only, I suggest, a job that is both open-ended and intrinsically gratifying - a job that never gets finished, but which is satisfying all the way and at every stage.

The only such work is creation, in its many and various modes. And for creation to be lastingly satisfying, the 'products', the outcome-of-creativity must be eternal.


So if you and I are to be creating forever, this means we must participate in the divine work of creation - because only that is eternal. We must become co-creators with God: we must become gods alongside God. 

To clarify, God is the primary creator, we God's children. The plan is that some, at least, of us will rise to become 'secondary creators' within the primary creation; but this secondary creation becomes itself a part of all creation. God's creation is ongoing and increasing all the time; and our personal creative contributions to this are woven-into the eternal fabric. 

This means that, as well as being a family, Heaven could also be called a 'collegial' situation in which some (at least) of God's children have themselves fully grown-up to become immortal (resurrected) gods. Heaven requires gods as potential colleagues, as full collaborators, in the everlasting, ongoing work of creation.


In sum, the making of Heaven is the making of a situation in which everlasting life can be a permanently fulfilling activity; a place, therefore, of love and creation.


Note: These musings are derived from the early parts of William Arkle's booklet Equations of Being.

(It seems that) In the developmental history of Men, there were three broad phases of how the ultimate deity was regarded: Orinially God as Mother; then - for most of recorded history - as Father; and - now and in the in future - Parents.

Hunter Gatherers seem to regard 'God' as (or, since it is not fully conscious or articulated, as if) a nurturing Mother; who provides all that is needed; and gives birth to all Beings. This goes with a passive and responsive attitude to the world - God as everywhere and Men as children.

Agricultural societies (and traditional sedentary societies - from at least Ancient Egypt until the Industrial Revolution in the West) generally have a masculine concept of God, or the supreme god; and this especially applies to monotheisms. This was the case for the early centuries of Christianity, and until the past several generations.This goes with a Kingly image of God, with religion as rituals and laws; and Men as subjects.

From the period of modernity (and especially since about 1800) I believe that the understanding of God is destined (supposed) to be as Heavenly Parents - Mother and Father in a celestial marriage, as a distinct but inseparable dyad - a polarity. This is - I think - the proper future and correct understanding of God: as Heavenly Parents.


This is explicit and officially sanctioned in the Restored Gospel of Mormonism, although in practice - so far - Mormonism has been as much (or more) Patriarchal as mainstream Christianity; and there is very little reference to Heavenly Mother or to the dyadic nature of God.

However, my interpretation of this, is that it is a temporary and merely-expedient distortion caused by the rise to dominance of materialist-leftist and socio-political feminism; which (as a strategy) tries to subvert the assumed male nature of real-God and replace it with an insincere female image of not-really-God (i.e. 'liberal Christianity' in its various forms).

Another distortion is the (only semi-serious, not truly lived-by) idea of restoring tribal ideas of God as Earth Mother - a pantheistic idea of non-purposive Goddess divinity; which owes much to an eclectic partial-assimilation of Hinduism and Buddhism. As well as being undesirable (an attempt to become spiritually children again); this is impossible due to the large changes in human and societal evolution: it just will not happen.  


Another distortion is the abstraction of God. Instead of regarding God as an incarnate person (of whom the resurrected Jesus was the filial image); the process began soon after the ascension of regarding the sex and personhood of God as childish anthropomorphism.

So we get the idea that God is not really either male or female, but both-or-neither. This leads to a sexless abstraction of God's person. And leads to the idea that the sex of mortal Men is just a temporary aspect of mortal life (just as mainstream Christians usually regard marriage as merely an expedient of mortal life, dissolved at death and without any equivalent in Heaven) - and that after death we will move-on to becoming de facto sexless.

(I regard this tendency to abstraction, sexlessness and not-incarnation of God, as the deep reason why mainstream Christians have found themselves unable coherently to defend real marriage against the mind-warping yet officially-mandatory literal-insanity that is SSM and the trans-agenda - and whatever is planned to come next...)


Anyway, to pull the argument together; my contention is that the truth and future of Christianity is to regard God as a dyad of Heavenly Parents - and to regard the sexes - man and woman - as ultimate, metaphysical realities, which underpin all of creation from eternity.

Lots of religions 'offer' Paradise as their goal or reward; only Christianity offers Heaven.

So Christianity is a 'better deal' IF (of course) it is regarded as true, and if Heaven is what you want (in which case, God offers Paradise as an alternative).

But what is the difference between Paradise and Heaven? 

Paradise is the perfect place for passive enjoyment. It is like a permanent (and perfect) holiday; a place where all the things that happen to you are enjoyable. A key is that phrase 'happen to you' - in the sense that Paradise is about things happening-to you.

Whereas Heaven is about active participation in the work of God's creation. It is therefore about becoming a god - in Christianity this happens by following Jesus through death and 'out the other side' to become an immortal resurrected Man.

Note: Some Christians regard Heaven as if it were merely Paradise - this may be due to a misunderstanding, or because Paradise is really what they would prefer. After all, not everybody wants to grow-up to become a god - and I see no reason why God would not make provision for such preferences. So there are also permanent children in Heaven, for whom Heaven is Paradise - and these may perhaps outnumber the grown-up gods.

I associate CS Lewis with the Top-Down strategy for becoming a Christian - the suggestion for What To Do when you want to become become a Christian but aren't yet a Christian.

Lewis's basic idea is that you start out by 'going through the motions' or (less charitably) 'pretending' to be a Christian; and the rest will follow.

So, for instance, you might start praying, reading scripture regularly, or attending church (he suggests the nearest church of your birth denomination - which made sense up to c.1955 but nowadays would be pretty hazardous in most cases). The idea is that by developing good habits on the surface, your deep convictions will be trained to follow.

If this works, then by all means do it! But I suspect that modernity has inoculated many people against any and all such surface approaches, because it has ensured that all information will be systematically misinterpreted. Plus leftist-materialism has so permeated all institutions that church services and scriptures (in new translations and commentaries) alike have been corrupted to work (overall) against Christianity - e.g. by presenting the religion as primarily 'about' social justice or the environment.

My alternative idea (expounded multiple times on this blog) is for individuals to discover and examine their own most fundamental assumptions about reality - their metaphysics.

These might include assumptions that there is no soul, that the spiritual realm is imaginary, that all talk of life after death is wishful thinking, that reality is a mixture of blind determinism and accident etc. Such assumptions (which are very common, but unfounded) will usually block conversion, so they probably need to be addressed.

By 'examine' these, I mean they should be made clear and brought before the intuition, the imagination - to see whether we really-and-truly and whole-heartedly endorse them as necessarily true... and if not, what instead we do endorse.

Such a process will, I think, lead most people to Christianity if pursued honestly and diligently - and will do so in a Bottom Up fashion, by building Christianity upon the foundations of what we feel-and-know to be true metaphysics.

A blogger describing his childhood memories, recalls Clevedon, Somerset, as a place he regarded as 'the most boring seaside town in all England'; and I would have to agree.

For me, as a school-kid, living just a few miles away - it was the dullest of all nearby destinations. It had a kind of grimy, life-sapping quality - despite being beside the sea (the beaches were terrible, the rocks dull), and having a pier (just depressing). The shops seemed lifeless - although I recall a secondhand bookseller where I once purchased a book by Ralph Whitlock on the history of English agriculture.

Therefore, you can imagine how incongruous it seems to discover that Clevedon has a set of Romantic connections that matches almost anywhere of its size, excepting perhaps Keswick. These began with that Architect of English Romanticism Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who spent considerable time in his early marriage living in Clevedon - and Clevedon was where his beloved son Hartley was born.

Coleridge indeed moved house from Clevedon to Keswick - so perhaps he was the factor that made a place a 'magnet' for romantics - at any rate, later on the greatest Victorian poet and Arthurian, Alfred Lord Tennyson, used to visit; probably because his great friend (subject of In Memoriam) Arthur Hallam is buried there.

Then JRR Tolkien chose to spend his honeymoon with Edith in Clevedon, of all places! And just a few years later CS Lewis spent some holiday time there with Mrs Moore and the houseold (who had a family connection with the place) - as documented in his published diaries.

Altogether a mystery! Had there been a magic about Clevedon, that had been destroyed or dissipated by the time I knew it? Was I merely insensitive to its subtle vibes? Or is it just a series of coincidences that the place was a magnet for Romantics?

But then, there are No Coincidences...


Note: recent readers of this blog may not know that there exists an incomplete, lighthearted, childhood autobiography (to which I sometimes add) called Lucky Philosopher.