Bruce Charlton's Notions

I spent most of my 'professional life' as a theoretical scientist within the field of biomedicine; and what I sought (the lack of which motivated me) was a clear and simple understanding of whatever I sought to know; because only when an understanding was clear and simple was something truly understood - such that the explanation could be communicated, evaluated, or used within science. 

In practice; genuine understanding can only be reached when the situation has been made sufficiently simple to be clear; graspable in a single act of comprehension and not by some chain of reasoning. 

That way, when we are wrong, the fact can be discovered. Clear and simple error soon reveals itself. But for someone whose false-'understanding' is complex and cloudy... well, he can never be brought to a point when he realizes his mistake.

Anything short of this meant that I did not really understand, but was just taking-on-trust; and if I communicated something I did not understand I was just 'parroting' it. 

That's how nearly everything in the public realm - including the discourse of Christian churches - strikes me: like the sound of parrots quoting parrots. 

Participants in Christian discourse sometimes believe that this parroting is what a Christian ought to do - as a sign of reverence and trust. People quote-and-believe those who they have been told are authorities, using words they have been told are profound - and so forth. 

I am prepared to accept that parroting was an acceptable path, in the past; when traditions remained true. Indeed - mere-obedience to (not-understood) church authority was a 'safe path' to salvation in some times and places. 

This kind of behaviour rooted in un-comprehending (maybe un-conscious) institutional-obedience was one common way of good living; at times and places when 'the authorities', in particular the Churches, were overall well-motivated and God-seeking. 

But nowadays, when 'Christian'-churches are only truly serious about pushing the evil agendas of totalitarian globalists -- well, deference to any major Western institution (up to and including any major Christian church) is to choose obedient service to a master who has taken the side of Satan in the spiritual war of this world. 

Nowadays, we must know for-our-selves if we are to know at all. 

Sometimes people claim to understand what they are saying - but all this means is that they have a low bar for that claim of 'understanding'! 

Often, it is simply that people have stunned-themselves with deference to authority such as they cannot really pay necessary attention to what is being asserted. 

Or that they bewildered themselves with abstractions - so they cannot keep track of coherence. 

Or they may have terminated the process of learning by declaration of 'mystery' - yet without becoming clear what they mean by mystery - and that such primary assumptions are necessarily foundational, not expedient. 

Well, each ought to lead his life in accordance with his primary convictions... 

On the other hand, for Christians dishonesty is a sin, and dishonesty with oneself is one of the most dangerous of sins (a sin that surely leads to other sins, without a tendency for self-correction) - as we see all around us.

And at the root of such dishonesty often lies a false claim of understanding. 

Serhei's excellent and thought-stimulating guest-post yesterday brings into focus that there is an important sense in which Modern Men get what they want in this mortal life. So that the spiritual (indeed physical) state of 'slavery' cannot be enforced on a population without consent, but instead people must be induced to desire slavery - and indeed to demand it. 

Yet we need to recall also that the primary purpose of living this mortal life is educational; God provides us with the experiences we most need to attain and prepare for resurrected eternal life. The slavery of Modern Man is a spiritual evil. 

This is because - 1. Modern Men are meant - by our stage in development - consciously to choose freedom and personal responsibility - not unconscious, automatic obedience; and also 2. the failure to choose freedom is compounded since the masses have chosen subjection to evil Masters.  

In exploring this matter; I shall use a specific example of the birdemic-peck; and whether an individual chooses to believe and obey the official narrative; on the assumption that the birdemic-peck is an evil-motivated strategy of the demon-controlled Global Establishment.

Suppose I choose to reject the birdemic-peck, disbelieve it, not to cooperate with the wishes of the Establishment? What then? 

For the consequences to be spiritually-good; there must be a positive, spiritual, and 'Christian-compatible' motivations for rejecting the birdemic peck: good outcomes require good motives. 

(By 'Christian-compatible' - I mean such motivations as a commitment to truth, to real values and morality, or to genuine beauty.)

And then there must also be a conscious awareness that this mortal life is indeed for our spiritual teaching; and acknowledgement that (overall, sooner-or-later) we will encounter life-situations (life-lessons) from-which we are intended to learn. 

Therefore, when a personal issue, a choice, emerges in our life; it needs to be recognized with seriousness, a recognition that our choices matter - and not just for our happiness now and soon, but also as affecting our situation and divine creation and forever. 

Life is cumulative, nothing is undone, we don't leave-behind past decisions - these are incorporated into what comes after...

Yet sub-optimal or bad choices can be turned to good, and right choices can be turned to evil. 

For instance; if a keen submission to the birdemic-peck plan is later repented, and a choice made to reject the agenda of global evil and instead to work in alliance with divine creation... Then this learning-from-experience will set a positive tone for whatever comes after.  

But if, in contrast, someone rejects the birdemic-peck propaganda but for the wrong reasons - such as a fear of damage to psychological or physical health - then this will constitute a commitment to another of the agendas of evil; and subsequent life will become increasingly health-fear dominated, and move in a selfish and hedonic direction... Perhaps towards intractable hypochondria; joining the mainstream-approved pattern of clinging to lifespan, and despair at the inevitability of death.     

One who chooses to submit to the birdemic-peck thereby accepts the "package" - the motivations and plans - of which it is a part (which is why this is one of the Litmus Test issues); which is explicitly (as well as implicitly) an agenda for de facto enslavement.

Thus slavery is chosen. 

But the significance of this slavery is primarily spiritual. It is in essence not a matter of you being subjugated to surveillance, confinement and micro-control of lifestyle. That is a means to the underlying spiritual goal of having you live in perpetual fear and resentment, self-hatred and despair...

A condition in which biological death is seen as annihilation of your-self...

Or else a continued half-life may be offered (and maybe sometimes actually given, under conditions) to those who consent to it; as an enslaved, ghostly spirit of evil perhaps; a 'computer download', or a life energized or extended by means of the predatory/ parasitic exploitation of human energies and vitality. 

In sum; physical slavery is chosen because it is a means to the end of spiritual enslavement - consent to a process of incremental value-corruption leading to self-damnation.

(Because all damnation is chosen.) 

The truth is that Christianity (properly understood!) says that this mortal life is of vital importance - and this importance derives-from the destination of personal, resurrected eternal life. 

But the idea that this temporary and sin-ridden mortal life is unimportant apparently entered Christianity very early; and I believe it came along with the idea that salvation is only available by means of each Christian adhering to stringent behavioural criteria (e.g. and especially, membership of and obedience to the requirements of The True Church). 

I regard this kind of (de facto) anti-Christian Pharisee-ism as ultimately a consequence of some early decisions to make (the one true) Church an essential mediator between each Man and Salvation; without which damnation was the default. 

It never was metaphysically essential for Christians to be obedient Church-obeyers; but there was a practical reason why churches became regarded as essential - which was that human individuality was much less in the early years (probably at least 3/4 of the years) of Christian history. 

Since individual Christians were essentially communal and social beings; in practice they had-to be Christians via churches.

But now, humans are individuals (like it or not) and it is not just possible but unavoidable that we each take personal responsibility for our faith, and behaviours. We can no longer obey external authority (such as churches) spontaneously and unconsciously; and we should not try to do so - precisely because we now Can take personal responsibility.

(*In particular, it is overdue that Christians ceased to spend their lives circling around-and-around a perpetual and unassuageable worry about their own salvation, sometimes returning to this theme every time they pray, like a hamsters trapped a wheel - or, worse, like being chained to a never-stopping treadmill of pleading, propitiation and rumination on the same theme. Read again the Fourth Gospel - is there the slightest indication that Jesus wanted us to live this way?) 

I am confident that the original teaching of Jesus Christ was that anyone who truly desires resurrected eternal life in Heaven can have it, after our physical death; through the simple means of following The Good Shepherd who will guide us to that destination; and - at that time - doing whatever is required of us to follow Him. 

This means that salvation is Not A Problem for those who want it, and 'believe-on' Jesus as The Way to achieve it. 

The difficult thing may be getting people to want it, or to believe the claims of Jesus as The Way - although the Truth about Jesus should become apparent after death, to anyone who really wants resurrection. 

When salvation ceases to be our primary concern; then we can and should focus on living well this mortal life; which (in a nutshell) means learning from the teachings, the life-lessons, that God the Creator will provide for each of us during the time He sustains this life. 

In other words; the importance of this mortal life is learning from it; and such lessons are important only because they have relevance to us (personally) for eternity. 

...After all, mortal life-lessons are not very important for someone whose individuality is extinguished by death - such as atheists on the one hand, and on the other those who believe the individuality is dissolved into 'the divine' after death. 

Far from Christians regarding this mortal life as un-important; Christians are just about the only people who regard this life as genuinely important: as vitally important, everlastingly important; and important to both the individual and all the other 'inhabitants' of Heaven.   

(*Note added - see above)

Over at the Notion Club Papers; I have written a post about the problem of having read, and re-read, some thing we liked so much that we wish to continue inhabiting its 'world'. There are several possible responses to this craving for 'more of the same' - I discuss the potential of literary scholarship and criticism, philosophy, and fanfiction.  

A thread over at Project Avalon made me return, yet again, to the question of how the blanket mind-control system works nowadays? 

On the one hand, there was a decades-long strategic preparation of the masses - and especially the intellectual-managerial classes - to be ready to receive the control system. 

On the other hand, there are tactical and immediate mechanisms by which the control is directed at specific attitudes and beliefs. 

Also there is an underlying spiritual - or anti-spiritual - aspect to this system of control; on the other hand, it is instantiated by material means. 

And the system must be simple-enough to be fast and reliable; while complex enough to be not-too-obvious, and to have fall-back or back-up aspects such that a simple denial or specifci resitance does not allow anybody to escape the Matrix. 

There must also be sufficient complexity that the individual seems to see the same message, wherever he turns (rather than emanating from one locatable direction). 

So - does anyone want to make a try at encapsulating, with reasonable brevity, the nature and workings of our blanket mind-control system, as it is in 2023?

I was reading a review about all the things that are wrong and bad about the Ridley Scott movie Blade Runner and why, therefore it was Not a Great Movie. 

And when I got to the end, it struck me that the criticisms were factually correct but grossly missing the point. Indeed, I felt that the Arkhaven author ("Dark Herald") had loved the movie to begin-with, but then picked and picked at the movie's flaws, until he had eventually persuaded-himself that Blade Runner was Not great. 

But the point is that Blade Runner is great - or, at least, if any movies are great; then Blade Runner is one of them. 

For example, it is true to my own experience that Blade Runner did not make a huge impact on first viewing (I saw it on the first theatre release in the UK, without knowing anything about it)... This reflects its early mediocre box-office earning performance. 

Yet it is the power of the movie that it works on the imagination such that - for the first time ever - I returned to the theatre and watched Blade Runner again, just a short while later. 

I have watched and re-watched it over the forty-plus years since (at intervals of a few years, typically) - during which I discovered its troubled production, its last minute changes, the dissatisfactions of various people, that the director re-cut it a couple of times etc... I had many reasons to down-revise my original opinion - not least that I have changed, and most art-works lose their effect on repetition. 

And yet when I watched it again last year - I was again powerfully moved, and filled with thoughts and reflections afterwards. 

My point is that Blade Runner works - and if we do not consider it a 'perfect' movie, then maybe we need to think a bit harder about what we mean by perfection. 

What should be fascinating us is why - when it is so easy to pick holes and point at absurdities - Blade Runner still manages to pack such a charge - again and again? 

It would surely turn-out that those flaws must have something vital to do with its excellence; and therefore that our idea of 'perfect' in the sense of every component part being un-criticizable/ standing-up-to specific scrutiny... must have something seriously wrong with it. 

Therefore, the highest form of criticism - the only really valid form - would begin with the fact that Blade Runner is a great movie, and then help us to understand why. 

When it comes to Robert Jordan's fantasy series The Wheel of Time, then we are dealing with something much less successful and coherent of its kind than Blade Runner. Indeed, WoT is probably way-beyond the boundary of impossible to do successfully. To write a 14+1 volume novel (+1 = prequel), especially when each volume is so big... and when the author dies before 'completing' it... 

Well, I do not believe it can be done by anyone; and clearly not by Robert Jordan. 

I would also argue that such an entity can never be completed in the same sense a novel can be completed - thus The Wheel of Time becomes (after the first three volumes) more like a Soap Opera than a long novel; and - like a Soap - more concerned with finding new things to say and keeping-itself-going, then with reaching a satisfying and cohesive end.  

So, Wheel of Time is at a lower level of success in art than Blade Runner. Yet, The Wheel of Time was a hugely-loved and life-shaping work (at least in the USA - in the UK it is all-but unknown, hardly to be found in shops or libraries; certainly I never heard of it until after it had been ended). 

I eventually read Wheel of Time through 2017 (in the audiobook version, mostly); and was aware of all sorts of problems and annoyances. Picking-out flaws is like shooting fish in a barrel - I did not even think it ended well (which is, for me, usually a lethal problem). 

And yet... In the first place I kept reading/ listening-to WoT, right to the end (and the prequel). And, more importantly, I have - over the past six years - gone back and reread the whole thing at least once, and parts of it several times...

In other words, The Wheel of Time works - in its annoying way, it has won my affection and goodwill. 

Several of the characters have become like old friends - and archetypal for Life. Several of the events have tremendous and lasting power.  

A valid critique of WoT therefore ought to start with this fact: that it works; and the most important thing criticism can do, is help us understand why it works. 

This 'why?' understanding cannot be about such things as influences and influence. The Arkhaven retrospective on Blade Runner makes this mistake - talking of the cinematic precursors of the Blade Runner aesthetic (Such as Lang's Metropolis - which I find unwatchable), and its literary consequences (such as Cyberpunk novels - which I don't like). 

As experiencers of art; we don't (except as a very secondary activity) care about influences: rightly, because these do not make a work good or bad. 

Influences do not affect whether something works - or, insofar as they do, only by being a means to an end, subsumed within the effect.

Why then does Wheel of Time work? Why did Blade Runner? In both instances, I think we need to look outside the work itself, and consider the nature of the persons involved, and their motivations. 

The work cannot be greater than the artist, and the artist at the exact time he actually-did the work - greatness doesn't happen by accident; but by aiming high.

From reading interviews with Philip K Dick; it seems to me that director Ridley Scott cared very intensely about Blade Runner (which was adapted-from, or inspired-by, Dick's novel Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep?), had thought about it a lot, and put extreme efforts into the movie... In several aspects, Scott's efforts were way, way beyond that of any previous movie ever made.

Such motivations are the necessary background to the greatness of Blade Runner.  

I think the same applies to Robert Jordan. Jordan was, it seems to me, an interesting and thoughtful man; who was deeper than most modern writers, and certainly had greater inner goodness than most modern writers. 

Jordan's previous fiction was mostly of the 'hack' variety; and with Wheel of Time he was doing his own thing for his own reasons, writing his own book for the first time: he clearly regarded WoT as his magnum opus - and put his best efforts into it over many years.

Jordan's best efforts were not much directed at artistic form, or concision, or coherence - it was, for him, more a matter of putting-in as much of possible of things that interested and concerned him. The unexpected sales success of the series enabled him to do this, to indulge himself in this respect - to the detriment of the overall work. 

But it was that impulse which led to what is good about The Wheel of Time, and what sends its readers back over and again. 

Therefore; a valid critique that attempts to answer "why it works" should primarily be focused on these engaging aspects of WoT; and should refrain (except secondarily) from the easy but misleading activity of picking it to pieces... until we have eventually convinced ourselves (and maybe others) that it is nothing-but a sprawling-mess. 

The really interesting fact is that The Wheel of Time is indeed a sprawling-mess; but a worthwhile and appealing sprawling-mess!       

Colin Wilson said that Existentialism was an attempt to answer the question: "What am I doing here?"

Clearly, there is no answer to this is the mainstream ideology of The West (whatever we want to call it) because it assumes there is neither purpose nor meaning to anything; but neither is there any answer from traditional forms of Western Christianity - which focus, almost exclusively, on salvation as The Problem of life.

And for mainstream Christianity, salvation really is the problem, being terribly difficult and insecure; such that it (ideally) requires constant attention and unremitting effort. 

For a traditional Christian; we can never be sure of our salvation - and therefore a serious Christian can never get much beyond working on salvation. 

Yet when "What am I doing here?" is the question; salvation is not an answer. 

This, especially when salvation is uncertain and insecure, But even at best, salvation merely kicks the can, moves the problem along. 

Why is salvation not an answer? Because - as usually taught - salvation says that the job of this mortal life is... to be saved-from mortal life. 

In other words, we live in order to be rescued from living! What kind of 'answer' is that? 

The obvious problem is that this answer evokes the question of why we live this mortal life, if this mortal life is so fundamentally unsatisfactory that we need to be saved from it? 

Why does God bother placing us into this earthly mortal life At All; when the only point of life is to be rescued? 

Why not create us straight into the after-life?... 

Yet, even then, we will sooner-or-later want to know what is the point of the after-life. 

One who was created directly into Heaven might still (assuming he was a free agent) ask the same question of "What am I doing here?"

Answering the existentialist question therefore requires a very deep answer, if that answer is to be satisfactory. 

There is the immediate aspect of "What am I doing here?" - which demands an explanation for this mixed and mortal life on earth; and there is the deeper aspect of "What am I doing here?" - which concerns the fundamental reason for being as it applies to me, personally. 

I think I have said enough here to demonstrate why secular existentialism could never answer its foundational question; because the question arose from the unsatisfactoriness of this mortal life; yet secular existentialism excluded - by assumption - the after- and eternal-life which might, in principle, make sense of this finite and entropic mortal life. 

Secular existentialism excludes a priori any possible answer to "why?" questions.

The answer is that our personal life exists within God's creation (which has a purpose) and that we matter as individuals because God is a loving parent to us - whose primary concern is with individual persons.

Our mortal lives on this finite earth are therefore both part of the whole scheme of things and also individually significant - and the human condition has been set-up on that basis. 

So; to understanding 'why?' questions about our own mortal life, we must eventually discern an answer to "why?" God created creation. 

I am re-reading Colin Wilson's last substantive book - Super Consciousness: the quest for the peak experience (2009) - which serves as a summation of this area of his interest that began with The Outsider (1956). Wilson cites and describes a 'variety of religious experiences' - or Peak Experiences, in Abraham Maslow's terminology - in which there was an alteration of consciousness and a feeling of well-being, elevation, understanding. 

Looking at Wilson's accounts of these experiences through the perspective on the evolutionary-development of consciousness that I have derived from Owen Barfield; I see the reports can be understood as beginning with our normal, everyday, mundane, socially-functional "Consciousness Soul" state of feeling cut-off from reality, alienated and trapped in superficiality. 

Consciousness Soul is the implicit baseline from-which Peak Experiences/ religious-mystical experience emerge. 

From this baseline, and despite that Wilson did not recognize this distinction; these mystical/peak experiences of positive 'Super Consciousness' can be understood as falling into Barfield's two categories of Original Participation and Final Participation.  

Most of the mystical experiences described can be regarded as a kind of functional impairment, and these seem like a reversion to the Original Participation of early childhood and tribal-Man, by a selective suppression of those (more recently developed) parts of the body (especially brain) needed for the manifestation of self-awareness in the Consciousness Soul stage. 

In other words, this kind of mystical experience deletes consciousness of 'the self' as a separate entity from 'reality'. 

Examples include those reported experiences of William James and Ouspensky which were triggered by nitrous oxide (laughing gas); and the same applies to other consciousness-altering drugs. 

Others were associated with dream-like passivity; stasis of the body, fainting, or sleep - and mentally there are descriptions of  becoming blissful in emotion yet unaware of any thinking (stopping the exhausting and futile treadmill of thoughts, worries, plans...); the apprehension of Time is suspended or deleted. 

The kitchen and garden were filled with golden light. I became conscious that at the centre of the Universe, and in my garden, was a great pulsing dynamo that ceaselessly poured-out love, This love poured over and through me, and I was part of it, and it wholly encompassed me. (Cited pages 54-5)

In this Original Participation mystical state; problems are not solved so much as dis-solved; it is not a matter of 'knowing everything' so much as recognizing that knowledge does not matter. 

Other, less common, reports of higher consciousness states sound more like Final Participation. In this state, the description is of thinking not stopping, but conversely having vastly greater power and comprehensiveness, such that the experience is one of 'knowing everything' - of direct-knowing without need for perception or for reasoning.

My train of thought accelerated and vastly improved in quality... New and convincing ideas came into my mind in a steady torrent, flaws in my existing ideas were illuminated, and as I made mental corrections to the the diminishing gaps in the logical sequence were filled by neat, brand-new linking concepts which made a beautiful logical pattern. (Cited page 56)

I interpret this difference as being due to the Original Participation being what Rudolf Steiner called an 'atavistic' state, that is a reversion to an earlier developmental-state (childhood, 'tribal' Man) which is being-induced by a lowering of consciousness,; resulting in a temporarily 'delirious' impairment of brain function (by drugs, drowsiness, hypnosis, illness etc). 

While Final Participation is an enhancement of consciousness, the next 'evolutionary step' towards a more-divine, and more free and independent, mode of thinking; in which thinking is clarified and strengthened; and increases in scope and validity. 

This relates to the 'flow state' Wilson describes earlier from the work of Csikczentmihalyi; which is associated with increased, indeed the highest, levels of functionality.

For instance; when people such as creative artists, artistic performers, athletes, and craftsmen sometimes attain their supreme performance. Sometimes called being 'in the zone' - they find themselves unerringly doing things they could not usually achieve, and with total confidence. 

Thus Original Participation reduces functionality, and constitutes 'time out'; whereas Final Participation is associated with the highest, most creative and adept, levels of functionality. 

Yet these two Super Conscious states - Final and Original: the one thinking, the other a cessation of thought; the one knowing without constraint, the other an indifference to knowledge; the one a flow, the other a suspension of time and movement; the one cognitive, the other contemplative... these states are not usually distinguished, are indeed generally conflated.  

I do, however, regard Original Participation as potentially-valuable - but mainly as a glimpse of alternatives, a 'holiday', a recharging process, a therapeutic rest. 

While Final Participation is - I hope - the ultimate state of God-like, Christ-like, divine consciousness in which - eventually - Christians will spend most of our post-mortal resurrected lives. 

As for the Consciousness Soul in which we Modern Men spend most of our mortal lives, trapped and cut-off form living and reality - I regard it as merely a transitional phase between Original and Final Participations - much as adolescence should be a swift transition between childhood and maturity; therefore I expect that 'mundane' consciousness will very seldom be experienced in Heaven - although it may be normal, or at least common, in Hell. 

One of the transformative resources of my mid-teen years was the Bristol City Record Library (with its fierce guardian librarian whom we nicknamed Tape, short for "Tapering Suit" - which suit was mustard in colour). 

This was a tremendous (free to borrow) collection of Classical Music LPs - plus a smaller, but very well chosen, collection of Folk Music - both of which I explored voraciously. 

From the Folk section came an LP called Flute for the Feis; featuring the Newcastle upon Tyne piccolo player John Doonan.

He had swapped this unusual instrument for the more usual flute, because he played a good deal for Irish set-dancing competitions (The Riverdance kind of stuff), without amplification - and the smaller and shriller instrument's sound carried better. 

You can hear how he had developed a remarkably effective and delightful playing method, in which the breathing is incorporated into the rhythm:

I think you will find the above version of the jig The Ace and Deuce of Piping to be a real ear-worm - in the best kind of way.

Doonan also featured on a strange, but surprisingly* compelling, collection of Irish music played on small instruments by a variety of musicians. Like Flute for the Feis, this was one of many inspired productions of the remarkable Topic Records company. 

(*Surprising because I do not usually appreciate folk - or any other - music played only on treble instruments, and generally feel the lack of a bass rather keenly.)

Considering this album features heavily the Jews Harp; it was not something I expected to enjoy; but when that smallest of small instruments is played by John Wright - then the instrument's limitations are forgotten, and a peculiar hypnosis affects me, such that I am forced to keep listening! 

Romanticism began to arise in the minds of Men from about the middle of the 1700s, in Western Europe - and has spread from there. What romanticism arose from, was Man's new awareness of himself and the world.

In other words, romanticism was a development (or an 'evolution') of human consciousness. 

But there was a double-edged quality to romantic consciousness. 

Men became aware of the wonderfulness of nature, and of the achievements and potential of their own thinking - but also of opposite tendencies. 

With romantic consciousness; at times, for moments or bursts, life seemed raised to a higher level. Various names were given such experiences: Sehnsucht, ecstasy, epiphanies, religious experiences, mystical insights, joy, peak experiences... these episodes were noticed, described and pondered for the first time.

There seemed to be a possibility that these best-of-times might be insights into ultimate reality; and might therefore become continuous and permanent - or, at least, frequent and long-lasting. 

Thus romanticism often led to great optimism, happiness, and the sense of potential for a larger and better life and world. 

However; there was the other edge to the sword of romantic consciousness; which was that - in practice - these periods of romantic ecstasy were brief and infrequent, could not be aimed at and achieved directly - and the opposite conclusion soon began to emerge that they were delusional. 

The everyday reality for everybody for most of the time (and, apparently, for some people all of the time) was of mundane consciousness; of life as commonplace, dull, shallow - pointless, purposeless, meaningless...

Society was so heavily-stacked against romanticism, that the most intensely romantic individuals often felt themselves to be 'outsiders' (to use Colin Wilson's term). And, even under the best imaginable social conditions; Man's life is unavoidably pervaded by change, decay, pain and disease

And, no matter what the degree of attainment was achieved; every life is always terminated by death. 

The contrast between what seemed possible, and what was actually attainable, led to existential angst, to a cynicism that often led to despair - and was fought-against by seeking either for selfish hedonic oblivion, trying to blot-out awareness of failure and futility. Or by seeking an end to all conscious suffering in chronically self-destructive behaviour, and by suicide (whether deniably-sought, or actively-committed). 

Romanticism was therefore a mixed-blessing at best, a curse at worst. Yet, because romanticism was a consequence of the development of consciousness, it could neither be suppressed nor ignored. 

Romanticism changed everything... Yet, there was and is no 'answer' to the possibilities and problems of romanticism within the bounds of this world.

On the one hand, we now have many experiences that create yearnings and expectations for a higher form of life; on the other hand, we cannot achieve these yearnings and expectations in our actual lives; due to the many social, psychological and physical (i.e. ultimately entropic) constraints of this world.  

The simple answer requires that we take-into-account a personal life beyond this life; and an afterlife that incorporates those romantic experiences of this life. 

In different words; we need to regard the romanticism of this mortal life as learning experiences directed at full attainment in an eternal life to come. 

Then, but only then, can we cope-with and learn-from our own romanticism; and render romantic experiences into a positive and inspiriting development of Mankind. 

Over at my Owen Barfield blog, I discuss why even an expert disciple and follower of Rudolf Steiner, can expect to find added-value in reading Owen Barfield.  

We were told a few days ago that starting from 23rd April 2023 - which is, significantly, St George's Day: the English patron saint) there will be Emergency Alerts broadcast nationally to all smartphone users by default. 

This is a pretty obvious preparation for... whatever "fake pennant" operation They decide is most likely to cause national panic, anger and despair. 

My best guess is that a fake-pennant pseudo-attack will be used to escalate the Fire Nation war - since that seems to be the specially-designated role of the UK puppet government in the Globalist Establishment strategies; and the ground for this is being prepared.  

So, after a little while, maybe a couple of try-outs - the country will be informed of some Big Bad aggression from the FN; told what to do; and while still gibbering in fear/ seething for revenge - the masses will be manipulated into full scale involvement in global war. 

But it could, of course, be a 'Climate' (Extreme Weather) non-event, another pseudo-epidemic, an imaginary rebellion, or indeed something as yet untried. 

The point is that, having implemented a system for generating flash-fear mob behaviour - It Will Be Used. 

Given the possibilities of manipulating a gullible population by some new trick; fingers will be itching to pull the trigger on it. 

And even if the system fails to evoke the kind of herd stampede behaviour desired; it will surely be repurposed to a high frequency harassment and propaganda tool.  

Now the politicians and bureaucrats are being given this shiny new toy - they will be mad keen to play with it. 

Very much of-its-time - and enjoyable as such.

The tyrannical puppets who administer the UK under orders from Sorathic demons; continue to paint an ever-brighter target on the British Isles -- with the recent official confirmation that They intent to send Mucky Missiles to attack the Fire Nation; despite... sorry, I mean precisely because the FN has inscribed a scarlet-line defining such an act as molecular-escalation entailing an analogous response.  

Not long ago; the Establishment used to tell us scary bedtime stories about how terr-ifying-rists might 'get their hands on' gamma-ray-emitting materials, embed into-them a powerful detonative substance, and 'hold to ransom' decent people by the threat of spraying emitting-debris into the surroundings. 

So now it is the Guardians themselves who are advocating and defending Mucky Missiles - something once considered beyond the pale - thereby performing a (deniable) attempt at civilizational 'suicide-by-cop'. 

(Almost as-if everything bad of which They accuse others; is in reality Their own Favourite Thing.)   

This act is absolutely gratuitous; having vast potential for destruction and zero possibility of constructive benefits; therefore naturally the announcement has been met with near-unanimous approval from the mass media - who have kindly Fact-Checked it, and discerned that there is nothing here to concern decent citizens. 

Move along folks... Down the memory hole it goes!

Modern Men are, like it or not, confronted by what is commonly called relativism; and emerges in the idea that every proposition is 'just' somebody's opinion - and that none are more valid than any other.

This is the deep implicit assumption of modernity - and leads to the totalitarianism of arbitrary (because not valid) behaviours imposed by terror, coercion and propaganda.  

Relativism is not just wrong, but incoherent - yet it is a response to the unsatisfactory nature of traditional formulations of objective knowledge. Traditional objectivity required an unthinking and automatic understanding of what-we-perceive; and when that understanding became contested and the necessary role of human consciousness in knowledge became evident; then this led first to idealism - when everything was in the mind. 

At first, because most people agreed on the nature of reality, that seemed to work; but as disagreements about reality emerged, then idealism required to be bolstered by adding a requirement for cultural or national similarity, in order that there be cohesion and a shared world.

Western Man's self-consciousness continued to increase, until relativism emerged as an individualized form of idealism - each Man creating his own reality; and order and cooperation needing to be externally imposed. 

Relativism = idealism at the individual level. Everything is mind, and ultimately everything is My mind...

The contextual universe of relativism was (is) seen as fundamentally chaotic, with creation and 'order' as temporary and superficial phenomena imposed on a situation of increasing randomness (entropy). 

Nowadays, we can only overcome relativism by explicit means; by clarifying our primary (metaphysical) assumptions and (as it were) inviting others to consider them, and choose whether or not to share them. 

My assumptions include that:

1. There is - as a matter of fact, not principle - one creation, made by one God. 

2. This creation unfolds in sequential Time - which is not reversible, so that creation is cumulative.  

This means that creation is not arbitrary, because it is motivated by one God (given purpose); and made harmonious (given meaning) by the fact of being the product of one God; and because creation cannot be undone. 

Cannot be undone because of the sequential nature of Time; which is the case because Time is intrinsic to the Beingness of God: i.e. because God is a Being. 

And to be a Being entails Life; which entails Time, change, complexity, potential for growth and development, purposiveness etc (this list is not a definition of a Being - which is here assumed to be primary aspect of reality and cannot be further subdivided - but just pointing at attributes we recognize as characteristic of a living Being). 

Thus creation is continuous, and cumulative, and can be reshaped and added to - but none of this alters historical reality. 

The continuity of creation means that creation is harmonious both 'horizontally' (here-and-now) and 'vertically' (through Time) - and that these are inseparable.

It is this quality of creation which means that relativism is false. Some things are coherent with creation, others are opposed to creation - therefore creation is objective with reference to creation primarily, and secondarily with all aspects of creation, all that has-been created (and their creations).

That by which creation coheres is Love: and objectivity reduces ultimately to Love: Love of God primarily, and love of Fellow Man (including other Beings) secondarily. 

That is, the Two Great Commandments. 

Objectivity is therefore as real as Love, and of the same nature. One who rejects, or is incapable of, Love is necessarily a relativist; which is to say he rejects God and Fellow Men, and tries to live in his own personal world...

Which is another way of describing hell. 

The above question was asked me the other day; and it is a good question. 

After some consideration, I realized that the answer is that I use Steiner's names to acknowledge the substantial debt and origin of the concepts; and then I develop the idea.

I do not attempt to conceal the development - indeed I discuss it explicitly; but typically only when I first start making changes, and not at every subsequent usage (or, only by providing links). 

This seems wrong, lacking in rigour, to those who is operating under the conventions of scholarship in the humanities; where the ideal is to preserve without alteration the original meanings attached to terminology. 

But I am (or was) a scientist, and Rudolf Steiner regarded Anthroposophy as a "Spiritual Science".

In science, this is how concepts (theories, hypotheses, even specific entities) are often developed and used. Names are retained, but their meaning develops. 

Thus concepts/entities such as light, gene, electron, natural selection - all mean something different to later scientists than to their originators; and this is taken for granted because meaning is established by current usage, not by retrospective scholarship.

Science is about developing knowledge, so it is expected that definitions, theories, practices will develop - change their meanings.

So it is quite natural and unremarkable for me to get ideas from Steiner, and to modify them in this scientific spirit; just as it is natural for humanities-orientated scholars to define a new term, every time they modify an existing definition or a theory. 

This also fits with my attitude to Steiner's work as a whole. I disagree with most of what he said and regard it as wrong, and I regard Anthroposophists (and the Anthroposophical Society) as - usually - fundamentally misguided... 

Nonetheless, I regard Steiner as one of a handful of the most important thinkers of recent centuries; and have spent a great deal of time reading and thinking about his work (and his life). 

It seems strange to read and write so much about Steiner while regarding him as mostly-wrong; but, again, this is not unusual in science - where one may base a great deal of research on a particular paper (a finding, an hypothesis), or part of a paper, by a particular scientist - without having any concern with anything else he did. 

This, then, is what I do and have-been doing. It's useful to get such matters clear in the mind.