Bruce Charlton's Notions

Is the world going to end soon - with the annihilation of life, maybe the planet itself?

Some people think so; maybe including The Economist, who are the house-magazine of the Global Establishment (who are, I think we agree, already and increasingly demonically-controlled).


What could possibly count as 'evidence' for such an assertion? Well, there isn't any at all - not what we would usually call evidence; i.e. based on observation, measurements, predictive models etc.

How could we ever have 'scientific' evidence to predict an unprecedented, one-off event (assuming the annihilation of earth is indeed one-off, assuming the situation of earth is unique)? If our prediction was an extrapolation of what we already know, then this isn't much; and predictive models only include what are put-into-them, only include the assumptions; they can only predict what is predicted...

How could The Economist know, or at least think it knows, that this is a possibility worth mentioning, or that something is about to happen? Well, only by some kind of 'supernatural' knowledge - by drawing upon the knowledge of spiritual beings, perhaps. They might know that something was going to happen (e.g. that it was planned, or that the causal factors were already operating), or they might strongly suspect it, anyway.

How could You know what was coming, if anything? Perhaps by prayer, from the guidance of the Holy Ghost. But if you did know by such means; then you could not convince other people, and would be unwise even to try.

Each person would need to discover for himself. And that would mean asking, which would mean at least enetrtaining the possibility. And this is exactly what The Economist is doing.

So - since the visible representatives of Satanic evil are currently considering this possibility, maybe you ought to be considering it too?

Of course it isn't! Those who want perfect happiness, along with those who want freedom from all suffering, are seeking Nirvana, not Heaven.

Nirvana being just that: a place of unchanging bliss, in which time is not a factor and nothing happens. (Or, at least, we are conscious-of nothing happening.)

Nirvana is, therefore, a place in which the self, the person, awareness of individuality, is lost. Because there can be no awareness of oneself if perfect happiness and absolute freedom from suffering is required.

In Nirvana the individual is dissolved-into impersonal deity; experienced as a changeless state of simple being.


Heaven is altogether a different kind of place. It is a place chosen (as a permanent commitment) by those who wish to join the Good side in the spiritual war; it is the place where all participate in God's work of loving creation; it is a place of activity - in which motivations are Good, and all the inhabitants pursue these goals in harmony.

In harmony - yes; but harmony is more a matter of sharing (forever) a common goal, and dynamic harmony requires dissonance as well as resolution. Heaven is an endless, developing symphony; it is not a single chord (no matter how sweet that chord may be). 


Creation is dynamic and entails change, love is dynamic and happens between individual persons (God is a person, Jesus is a person, the inhabitants of Heaven are persons).

If loving-creation is the primary and eternal aim of Heaven, then max-happiness/min-suffering cannot also be primary.


One source of sub-optimal happiness would be that some persons whom we love will not choose Heaven; we will be saddened by their absence, at least to some degree.  We would prefer that they had chosen Heaven, but they did not. Our situation is by-that-much sub-optimal.

Another source of sub-optimal happiness is unrequited love. Especially when it comes to eternal spiritual marriage, it may well happen that our specific love for another specific person, and our desire to form a permanent dyad with them, is not requited.

Over the long term, presumably; adjustments are made and a better pairing emerges; but at least in the short term, it seems inevitable that happiness would be sub-optimal if we wish to marry another who does not wish to marry us - at least not for eternity.


In other words, the idea of Heaven as a place of perfect (= absolute and unvarying) happiness is a red-herring, a confusion, a case of mistaken-identity; or even a rejection of the actuality of Heaven and a preference for Nirvana.

In these End Times it is necessary to acknowledge that evil lying corruption is the New Normal. For maybe the first time in the history of the world, a large majority of the people (and certainly Far more numerically than ever before) have actively taken the side of Satan in the spiritual war.

Yet, at the same time I am absolutely Sure that there really is an awakening of a small minority of people - meaning that they have recently become aware of the triumph of evil, and that the rulers and majority of ruled are indeed insane. And without the current frenzy of gloves-off demonism, it would not have happened.

This awakening is largely a private and personal thing - it does not register statistically being swamped by the tsunami of cynical vileness; yet the sheer rapidity and size of this rising-tidal wave has been such as to shake some people into a recognition of what has been here for a long time, but previously almost undetected.

In other words, souls have been saved, more souls are being saved; and we need to remember that every single saved soul is of infinite importance - because Heavenly life is eternal.

This will not affect the accelerating progress of evil towards ever more chaos, collapse, fear, resentment, spite, and despair - the material world is lost; our culture and civilization is doomed (including the economy, science-technology, health care, education and the rest of it). All of these are on the way out at a rate that is increasing by the day.

But these are secondary. One vital side-effect of the 2020 coup that we should not fail to notice, is therefore that it has never been easier to attain salvation and eternal life.

The contrast between the gift of Jesus which we shall all be able to choose after biological death, and the nihilistic hell which is all that this world has to offer, has never been more stark -- there has never been so little ambiguity All is being made black and white with no grey areas in between to confuse the issue. There have always been two sides in the spiritual war; but now that the side of darkness is so vast and so pervasive, even the tiniest gleam of light becomes blinding and visible from far-off.

That great weapon of blurring, confusion and misdirection that has seduced so many souls into unrepentant sin over the most recent generations has all-but disappeared.

It has never been easier to be good in our hearts; even as it has become all-but impossible to be good in our public actions.

I am in a minority of one. I am not like anyone else; and apparently very different from average - at an extreme of the distribution curve. This - both in personality and in behaviour.

Therefore I can't really advise other people, because they don't want what I want - or, at least, my advice would be theoretical, rather than empathic.

This comes-out when I am asked to recommend reading matter. I can either say what has been important for me (these are the things I blog about); but it is unlikely this will also be important for you. Or I can make 'generic' recommendations based on 'what most people - of our braod type - like'; but then, anybody can look that up for themselves, so it is not really 'my' recommendation. 

But, in an ultimate sense, we are all individuals: metaphysically and not by virtue of being 'different'.

And, if we accept the reality and goodness of God the Creator, and that God is our Father (or, more exactly, Parents) and each of us His child; then we do not need recommendations and would be unwise to follow them (unless the person recommending was someone with whom we feel a special affinity, and who knows us as an individual, and can therefore make an intuitive personal connection).

That God is both creator and loving parent means that we are not generic-human-beings, but His individual children; and therefore creation will be organised-around each of our needs - so far as that is possible. Your particular life will therefore be organised around your particular requirements - including what you 'should' read at any given time... So long as you are alert to this fact, and able to make an intuitive link, you can know this.

Furthermore, Jesus Christ is always present and available to guide us, as the Holy Ghost.

So, on the one hand the actual circumstances of our life are being tailored by the Father, and there is individual guidance from the Son. This powerful combination means that -- with the usual proviso that our mortal lives are meant as experience (to learn-from; and not to attain some kind of 'perfection'), and some degree of trial and error is inevitable during this changing mortal life -- you can always know what (or if) it would be best for you to read/ watch/ do at any particular time and circumstance.

Reading, like life-in-general, is therefore an unique adventure; a path which you should trail-blaze for yourself; and one that you can do anytime, anyplace, starting Now.

I have gradually realised that some of the authors with whom I share the greatest 'fellow feeling' are the aphoristic note-makers. For example: Pascal's Pensees, Novalis's Pollen and Philip K Dick's Exegesis. I have ordered a selection from Coleridge's Notebooks, so we'll see if that can be added to the list...

The main thing about these 'unfinished' works, is that they are the writer actively thinking and talking with himself, as honestly as he is able - and the kind of person who produces this kind of writing is someone who thinks and broods purposively for much of the time.


That is what I recognise and am drawn-to; because I am of this type and have met extremely few people who are like me in this regard.

This activity (ie. spending hours per day brooding and thinking) is the basis of what I would regard as the real and proper activity of Philosophy; and why I called myself 'a philosopher' in my scrappy-memoirs (which are not themselves, however, an example of this notebookish form).


I can remember when I first looked-at Pascal, in a secondhand bookshop in Cheltenham some decade ago. I opened the Penguin paperback, read a few lines; and simply felt: Yes.

I feel the same every time I look at it. In a sense, everything else (content, conclusions etc) is secondary to this affirmative affinity.  


This note-taking thinker is a definite, albeit rare, Type; as much as the scientist, poet or fiction writer - and will be the covert driver of those activities: for instance of the poetry of Novalis, the Fiction of PKD, or my science (which was mostly theoretical).


(I may recognise the type, but don't always feel a personal affinity: Nietzsche and Wittgenstein are instances of this. They are my type, but mostly on a different wavelength.)


And it is why I have found blogging (of the type I do) so congenial; because it is only one step removed from my primary work: those reams of handwritten notes I have generated through writing every day for the past (what?) forty-plus years - yet almost never looked-at a second time. 

In one sense these notebooks are the meditative-laboratory for my published and disseminated writing; in another sense the public work is secondary to the notebooks; which are The Real Thing (despite that nobody ever will see them, nor would they be of any interest).

The clearest example of this 'real thing' can be seen with PKD's Exegesis compared with the novels he published in the final eight years of his life when he was making notes for it. For one who can appreciate the Exegesis (and is reading from a shared primarily-Christian perspective with PKD, which essentially None of his critics and editors are); it can easily be felt that the notes are primary and the novels (such as Valis - which is a fictionalised version of the notes) are derivative and lesser.


I am not saying that journal-type notes are superior works-of-art to poems, novels, essays; because they certainly aren't. Not even close! They will always be a (tiny) minority taste.

And indeed where they are not - as with Pascal - they are usually adopted pretentiously and grossly misunderstood by people whose nature is extraverted and whose content is externally-derived.


Art is a public activity, by intent; and journaling notes are not - or, ought not to be. The purpose is different. In a nutshell; what I value in these works is evidence of another person whose thinking is endogenous. In finished art is is difficult to impossible to tell whether the writer is generating or channelling the material - and it is almost always the latter.

For example, skilled journalists, critics, popular non-fiction writers take-in material, subject it to standardized-processing, then spew it out. The result may be superficially and temporarily impressive - but is deeply and over the long-term, debilitating. Such writing (for instance much 'travel writing' is a kind of trick - parasitic upon the genuine thought of others.

(The same applies to what passes for science nowadays; most of the most-influential of which is written by agencies who employ glibly-articulate quasi-journalistic hacks and PR merchants to do the job.)


To get back to PKD's Exegesis - this brings out another aspect of this kind of work; which is that it is not done to impress others, nor to satisfy the needs of socialization. Dick was, apparently, a bit of a chameleon in his social interactions; with a tendency to say and behave in ways to gratify the company. This meant there was a considerable gulf between the spontaneous incoherence of his notebooks; and the adjusted and filtered versions of these which appeared in everyday conversation.

Indeed, most of us are like this; we adjust what we say to the person we are speaking with. Sociality is primary. Yet when real, hard, honest thinking is being done' the unfiltered original may have an interest and validity - perhaps greater than the (more-or-less) bowdlerised versions of the ideas that we show to other people.

So a journal written to be shown to other people - like those of Thoreau and Emerson - may well make excellent literature - as these do. But such 'public journals' lack the special quality of genuine, personal notes; when the writer's audience is himself.   

Assertions of spiritual war against the truth of Christianity and the Heavenly resurrection that Jesus offers; will inevitably be regarded as sick, paranoid, persecutory delusions by the dominant, mainstream, secular-materialist majority. That, or regarded as dishonest manipulation, insanity, or sheer foolishness.

Since the spiritual realm is denied reality in all power-full public discourse, since Christianity is seen as Nothing But a socio-political phenomenon - then any damage to Christianity from the totalitarian Global Establishment will only be regarded by the mainstream as collateral damage, accidental to some other prime purpose...

But if spiritual war is real, and if The Enemy is indeed behind the successful 2020 international coup and current-escalating systematic subversion of social cohesion (e.g. Project Fear, Project Resentment, Project Despair) -- then Christianity will be the true (albeit deniable) focus of all major political change. 


By this analysis; the Main Thing about the past few months has been the closure of the Christian churches, the cessation of their core activities. This has been a devastating blow against actual Christians.

This strategy has been most effective against the Catholic churches that were historically the most interwoven with 'the State'; churches which are built around the priesthood, ritual, symbolism and specific consecrated buildings (churches, cathedrals, monasteries, temples etc); since it is the material side which is easiest to suppress.

But even if you are a low church Protestant or unaffiliated Christian; you should bear in mind that the three largest international denominations are Episcopal (i.e. administered by Bishops): The Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Anglican. So, if not an actual majority, still a very large proportion of the world's serious Christians have-been and are severely affected by the recent suppression.

And even the most low church/ home church Protestants are severely affected by the rules against gathering, and the physical separation of all (middling, respectable) people; because of course, there are many exemptions. No Christians are to be exempted, in the end. It's just that the Powers of Evil have to start somewhere; and the converged Establishment leaderships of Episcopal churches make them an easier target.

There it is pretty much a case of Job Done. The Christian churches are here-and-now at the lowest ebb in their history. Next, the Powers of Evil will move on to suppressing the other social manifestations of Christianity: meeting, Bibles, prayer, teaching, theology. Wedges will be inserted; divisions made and widened; Christian set-against Christian... 


In a nutshell, if you agree with me that serious Christians are to be found spread across many denominations (including, I assert, many of those regarded as 'heretical' or 'cultish' or in some way unsound by the mainstream - distinctions which I believe mainly served the corrupt, now utterly discredited, church leaderships); then serious Christians should not let Them drive a spiritual wedge between Us.

At the spiritual level, it really is Us against Them: Us being all serious Christians of all kinds; Them being Satan, the demons, the Global Establishment who serve them, and the mass Godless majority who obey them, and believe whatever they are being told today...

(Some souls have been sold, the majority surrendered.)


And the war is spiritual.

We must therefore discern Good from evil (because the mass majority as well as leadership are on the wrong side). But, on the one hand, Christians should Not discern on the basis of those Political Categories by which They are dividing Us (class, sex, race, sexuality)...

While, on the other hand, we should not be manipulated into supporting evil by the fact that our discernment is spiritual rather than political.


The refusal of serious Christians to be spiritually divided from brothers and sisters in Christ on the basis of spiritual categories means opposing any political agenda based on these categories.

Do not get drawn into the Boromir Strategy!

You cannot use the One Ring to fight the Dark Lord, who made it. You cannot use political categories such as aristocracy, patriarchy, nationalism or race/ism to fight the Left; because ultimately all primary politics is of-the-Left: on the side of the Dark Lords. 


Again: all those who discern primarily by Political categories, are on the side of the Enemy - even when they favour those categories that are (apparently) against the Leftist Establishment.

The primary battle of the spiritual war is to assert the primacy of the spiritual.

I match-up JRR Tolkien's developing genius with the evidence from photographs - over at the Notion Club Papers.

My evidence: Boris and Trump - who are ostensible conservative-republicans. Supposedly our saviors from disaster.

Those who oppose the Left agenda were told that the last elections were vital to win - or else.  They were won...

But who could deny that exactly 'or else' has-happened, is-happening, and continues to get worse?  That The West is in a terrible, and terminal state? We are in the midst of the greatest disaster - politically, socially and spiritually - for centuries; and in scale, rapidity and unopposed effectiveness - the worst in the history of the world.

Actually-existing politics is a snare, a delusion, a time waster, a sin.

All mainstream politics Without Exception is 'controlled opposition': a football league 'contested' between teams all owned by the same consortium.

If you don't recognise this yet, then I don't see what possible evidence ever could possibly convince you...

That is what most Christians covertly hope for.

And it's a realistic hope to strive for. Because such a hope is for a world that is not 'wholly happy', nor should we hope for a world 'without suffering, disease, decay and death'. Such is impossible in this mortal earthly life; impossible because it is Not what this world is For.

(Hence not just impossible, but undesirable - a negation of what our lives are properly about.)


But I do hope for a world (my life, this actual world) as-wholly-as-possible meaningful and purposive; a world of experienced-relationships with God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost...

A world where the spirit is acknowledged as really-real...

A world where (as many as possible) lives are lived in expectation of Heavenly resurrected life...

A world where we each aim to experience and think and learn; where we strive consciously to choose that which is Good.


All that is quite possible - if we want it.

Not as a 100% permanent achievement - because this world is not made to be permanent, nor are our lives intended to be 100% anything - we are, after all, here to learn: change is part of the structure.

But it is possible that such a world as I describe can be our conscious, recurrent, hourly aim.

(Of course we will keep failing. It doesn't matter - ultimately. Repenting our failures, and trying-again; we will learn. And such learning - unlike human memory - is eternal.)

And that is what most matters.


We should not be satisfied with less than an Enchanted Christianity.

This crisis not going to end, so long as evil has power; because for Satan and the demonic powers the destruction of Good never ends. And here, now, evil dominates in this mortal world; on this earth.

It will continue to get-worse; until some action (very big, purposive, and Good) makes it start getting better.

It will Not start getting better by accident nor by 'natural' processes (such as 'the market' or simply collapse). So long as motivations are evil, Things will continue to get worse.

Evil does not defeat evil. So don't suppose or hope it will...

There is always more Good to be destroyed - because every created being (or 'thing') is a creation of God - and therefore Good in origin and essence.

As Tolkien saw for Morgoth; he could only continue until everything created had been destroyed, then destroy himself - returning reality to primal chaos. That is the only end-point.

However, that cannot Now happen since Jesus. (Tolkien's world was set before Jesus.) Evil cannot triumph because Heaven is free from evil and immune to evil.

However, evil can corrupt and destroy all that is not of Heaven, and thereby reduce the scope of Heaven (motivated by sheer negative hate, spite and resentment); but evil Cannot corrupt or destroy Everything.

What The World regards as good, including the highest good, is now actively evil: not least because it is always in practice framed negatively, as being 'against' something.

And modern morality is built on Big Lies, reinforced by dishonesty and calculated misrepresentation at every level; as everybody knows who has even considered being truthful all the time about everything. Genuine honesty is not just blocked and threatened and punished; but actually regarded as evil in itself: as in the influential concept of a Hate Fact; i.e. something true but (by definition) only articulated by an evil person).

The ultimate modern 'evil' (at least this week...) is racism; which is now/ in practice/ officially 'defined' (i.e. actually used) in a way which is both dishonest and (obviously) evil; incoherent yet deployed with focused spite; motivated by resentment and destructive hatred against all that is genuinely Christian.

The corruption of modernity has proved to be so powerful as to sweep away or assimilate all alternatives excepting the personal (not church) Christianity 'of the heart' - which is itself, indirectly, a kind of evidence for the unique truth of (specifically) Christainty, and a strong clue to the proper nature of that Christianity.

So, although this really is the worst-of-times; it is also a time in which is is possible for us consciously to learn and know reality more exactly than any before; and therefore to make a deliberate choice in its favour.

In some ways I am grateful. In some ways this is the best of times...

Almost every day I receive clear reminders and convincing evidence of both the reality-of and the difference-between Good and evil. And the absence of God from public life means it is ever-more-obvious what is the source of Good.

So real that these days God genuinely seems almost 'objective', palpable, and pressing on my awareness - although of course invisible to nearly-all; denied, ridiculed, and ignored by nearly-all...

For me; it's probably easier to stay Christian now, and to keep the faith; than ever it would have been in the past. 

I don't agree with the current meme that the Solstice is the start of summer the season; clearly it's already part-way through. One giveaway is that this is Mid-summer's Day and Night.

Another is to look-around at what is happening, has happened, in the natural world: the spring flowers have gone, the trees are in full leaf; spring has been over for at least some weeks.

This error reflects the modern mind. We are happy to live by astronomical observations of a pretty advanced kind; because the solstices and equinoxes could neither be detected nor predicted until the later 100s AD. It needs The Authorities and Instruments to tell us about such matters (with any degree of precision).

Yet we are ignorant and uninterested and mistrustful of things we can actually observe for ourselves - like looking at flowers and trees; we have no faith in our own personal experiences.

Also, the error is revealing of our inability to perceive that seasons are not of equal length, nor do they occur at the same times in all places, nor are they at exactly the same time each year.

All of this we could know for ourselves; yet there is a very modern desire to conflate astronomy, geography and annual variation under one, top-down, officially dictated-in-advance date.

How characteristic this is of our mainstream current weaknesses, credulity, passivity, shallowness.

Note added:

Midsummer is quite something up here in the far North. If not land of the midnight sun; we are land of the midnight "Nautical Twilight"... I was up with a migraine a couple of nights ago; and I heard the birds' dawn chorus starting at 03:20 - although the sun didn't officially rise for another hour-plus.