Bruce Charlton's Notions

Fake Pennant events abound - through history, and now! 

A big one has recently happened with the obvious intent to provoke (another) war-front and escalate the ongoing world war III. 

So far, the Fake Pennant seems to be having the effect intended by its devisers. 

But all this is - for almost everybody in the world, as yet - a remote Geopolitical event; known only very indirectly, very incompletely, and with distortion, via the media. Yet most of us will, nonetheless, immediately and increasingly feel the strength of manipulation pressing upon us. 

(First emotional- then spiritual-manipulation). 

That is our first warning - when we take one step back from unconscious emotions, rendering them into conscious feelings; and recognize that we are being-manipulated.  

We can feel the externally-desired responses arising in us. We find ourselves spontaneously taking sides in a conflict between evils. 

What should we do? 

Become aware, then understand what is ongoing - and understand spiritually, rather than materially. 

As of 2023, all the Big Things of which we are made aware by the mass media are spiritual issues primarily - else we would not be getting so many Big Guns firing at us so loudly and often. 

Like all such things now; we are dealing with lies; and whatever truth there may be (and sometimes there is no relevant truth - some of the biggest lies are rooted in total lies) we should not become distracted by trying to do what we cannot possibly do: understand the true material causes of the material problem.

We cannot uncover the specifics of conspiracy; but we can recognize that something is not-what-it-seems. 

By the way the event is propagated in spiritual terms - which we know from self-monitoring, and noting and comparing the responses of rulers and of 'the masses' and known individuals; we can be sure that that there have-been and are elements working to generate and interpret a Fake Pennant event. 

The intention of a Fake Pennant can again be understood from 'self-monitoring'. Currently, the intent is to provoke cycles of resentment and fear to seek some kind of 'final solution' by destruction - some solution depending on the annihilation of the problem (e.g. particular people, or a particular place). 

For the remote masses, the intent is to provoke material fear and despair - rooted in the open-endedly horrific prospects of physical suffering, as war spreads between and within nations. 

Our job as Christians is to recognize that we are being manipulated into fear, resentment and despair; and to reject the validity of these spiritual responses as sinful. 

We cannot resist having these feelings altogether; but we can reject their validity - which is called repentance. 

This entails recalling (and affirming inwardly) that the real war of this world is (now as always) spiritual, not material. 

We should also take confidence from the truth that our own personal awareness, understanding, affiliations, attitudes etc. really make a difference in the real world; and that is exactly why they are being-manipulated so aggressively. 

Even just "noticing" what is happening spiritually; seeing through the lies and seeing the demonic 'at work'; by perceiving the workings of evil in oneself; has an immediate and positive effect. 

To understand and reject it - even more so. 

To transcend all this and take an inwardly God-aligned perspective - more so still. 

So there is much that each- and every-one can and should be doing. 

Of course, this whole thing needs to be done again and again! 

For instance, it should be relatively easy to accomplish when the problems are merely in the mass media; merely remote, virtual and conceptual. 

It may be much harder to accomplish when the problems become personal and experiential (as sooner or later they must, if the problem is really-real - or even if the problem is merely treated and regarded as real). 

Such is life... We are here to learn, and keep-learning, for as long as we are alive. 

Everybody loves geopolitical explanations! - at least, everybody in the mass media, and most people else where. 

And yet, using geopolitical analysis, which sounds hard-nosed, and (sort-of) objective... Everybody reaches a different conclusion!

This should serve as a warning, a Red Flag; that we are dealing with some-thing that is evil; and evil not by its usage but by its very nature. 

In other words; we engage in evil when we use and believe geopolitical discourse to discuss and analyze 'world events'. 

Geopolitics is wrong for two main reasons - or classes of reason. 

The first and most fundamental wrongness is that geopolitics is materialistic in its assumptions: geopolitics excludes the reality of God, creation and all that is of the spirit. 

Because these are excluded, and yet these are real and primary; geopolitical discourse misses-out most of what is most important. 

Secondly geopolitics is wrong because it has too many, too subjective, too imprecise, variables.

For a start; geopolitical analysis is based upon evaluating "interest" - in the sense of benefit. In other words, asking who benefits-overall from options X versus Y or Z. 

Yet this matter of what interest means, or what benefit is overall most important, is utterly vague and conjectural. 

Because we cannot perceive another's motivations, all such imputations are - at bottom - little more than guesswork and assumption; that can neither be confirmed nor refuted, because in practice all possible outcomes are compatible with all imputations of interest. 

Any person - and more so any institution, corporation, ethnic group or nation - has many things that might be called interests, many possible ways in which (we suppose) they might benefit (money, power, fame, sex...); and many more ways in which they might wish to avoid harms and suffering (poverty, humiliation, pain, confinement...). 

We can't ever be validly-confident concerning which interest is actually important, or most important, or how the various interests might interact? 

And there will surely be other genuine interests we do not know, have not thought about, or which we under-rate. 

This fundamental and fatal imprecision in geopolitics is compounded by further variables; two in particular - time-scale, and interest-group-boundaries.

Timescale

What is best in the short-term of here-and-now, is almost never the best possibility in the longer-term. Conversely, the best long term possibilities are nearly-always associated with immediate disadvantage or serious risk. 

So, geopolitical analysis has vast - and fatal - wriggle room in identifying self-interest and other kinds of interest; since almost any timescale can be used to 'explain' things - from the immediate and tactically useful, to many and various longer term and 'strategic' advantages... 

Ultimate long term benefit can be assumed for anything from days, weeks and months ahead, to years or even decades ahead; and such assumed benefit  can therefore explain almost any activity leading to almost any outcome.  

Interest-group-boundary

On top of all this, there is the question of who exactly is supposed to be benefitting? Such benefit comes at every level between extremes of the individual, and the entirety of the human population. 

Some specific individual (such as a monarch, president, or dictator); or also their family and minions? Or should it be assumed that some rival person or faction stands to benefit. 

Are we talking about a class (like Marxists)? or are we talking about a race or religion? 

Or maybe it is a corporation or some other social institution like a profession of a branch of government like the military?

At a larger scale - are we talking about a whole nation's interest; or maybe some larger alliance of nations? Or it is the globalist perspective that is being promoted - with multinational organizations?  

Or maybe the interest being sought is that of a secret cabal or conspiracy? 

I hope it is, by now, sufficiently clear that geopolitics is so imprecise and slippery a discourse that it can  explain anything in any number of ways; can blame anyone (or nobody) with equal pseudo-validity! It can impute almost any kind of motivations and intentions, across almost any time-frame.

And, in sum, I hope it is clear that geopolitical analysis is a fake!

So, why do we all so easily and often fall into it (I do not exempt myself). 

The reason is that geopolitical discourse is ultimately a demonic temptation; and (as Jesus told us) we are all sinners! Many of us will fall tpo the temptations of geopolitics - especially when so many other people are doing it, all the time. 

Geopolitics is inescapable, because geopolitical discourse functions - at high levels of power, where people take such matter seriously, to justify anything to anyone. 

Consider a war, as an example. 

Geopolitics can appeal to the interests of people on opposite sides of wars, to all kinds of rival factions within those sides and crossing those side - and reference interest across all timescales*... 

Such that every-body and every-group (at least all with power) may simultaneously believe that he is pursuing his interests by starting a war, escalating a war, pursuing that war!  

Now; imagine that - behind all the geopolitical discourse was some person or group - call him Satan! - who wanted war, or societal destruction - starvation, torment, disease... Wanted these for their own sake, from sheer spitefulness, because they made him feel good... because that is his nature.  

"Satan" could pursue his destructive goals via geopolitics; by identifying powerful individuals and groups, and encouraging them all to pursue particular kinds of self-interest... different groups, different benefits, different timescales...  

So - in the end - lots of people and groups were following Satan's agenda of destruction; but each and all of them were under the impression that each was pursuing his own self-interest! (Various kinds of interest, over some various time-frames). 

Such is the nature our world - and increasingly so. 

We cannot cease to sin altogether; but we can recognize and repent our sins - and that is what we ought to do in relation to geopolitics. 

We can recognize that geopolitics is a fake discipline, that provides fake explanations to-order; and is therefore used to manipulate people towards underlying goals of which they may all be unaware. 

Because behind geopolitics lies the spiritual war of this world; and that (not geopolitics) is where we should be looking for explanations and guidance. 

*To clarify: those who desire to trigger, sustain or escalate the destructiveness of war; will typically try to work using individuals and groups on both sides of the conflict; agents who - using geopolitical arguments - can both simultaneously be convinced that war will be in their own interests - of one sort or another (power, money, religious), in one timescale or another (but - in war - usually short-medium term). 

The greatest novelty from the Global Establishment since the totalitarian coup of 2020 is surely war, specifically engineering and escalating world war III; presented as "a good thing" or even as an absolutely essential thing. 

This is a tough sell for the totalitarians! - because the kind of war which is being pushed-for will destroy all the (albeit incoherent) aims of the existing major-core leftists issues, by which the world has been changed. All-out, everywhere, world war - will put an end to Great Reset type 'concerns' about a climate 'emergency', the transagenda, antiracism... and all the rest of that kind of thing. 

All these leftist-evil-agendas depend upon the 'rulers' and their minions accepting, and living-by, the delusion that their pet projects will incrementally be implemented in a future society dedicated to this-kind-of-stuff. 

Of course, these pet projects are all in actuality socially-destructive in effect, and therefore can never really be implemented; because the more rapidly the agendas 'succeed', the more rapidly society will crumble - so the authorities will be unable to impose them. 

That awareness of the incompatibility of world war (2023 style) with new-left-totalitarianism is, however, blocked by continual propaganda and the continual construction of a virtual-reality; a 'virtuality' existing in a closed-circle of mutually-reinforcing mass-media with bureaucratic statements and rules. 

But war? It is indeed a very tough sell to convince bureaucrats and media moguls that a long-term, unrestricted, international war will be compatible with their cherished ideologies! Because it simply isn't!

Yet, remarkably, for the past year-and-a-half; they do seem to have been convinced! 

Convinced by a combination of multiple Total Lies with increased censorship, and levels of frenzied national-demonization not seen for a century... Indeed, recent demonization and persecutions of the Fire Nation and its citizens have been in some ways (especially financial and economic) never before seen anywhere or at any time in the modern era. 

The leadership/ minion class has not even noticed that the sanctions and measures imposed ostensibly to destroy the Fire Nation have, in fact and surely quite clearly, harmed the imposing nations - and that was their intention from the very start, which is why they continue to be escalated. By such means; the war has been used to accelerate the purposive-suicide of The West (the West being Satan's prime target in recent generations - even above the Fire Nation). 

So, the stupidity and obedience of the rulers and their minions turns out to be very great indeed; and they really seem not to have noted the gross and widening discrepancy between the bureaucratic-media version of reality, and what they can observe and experience for themselves!

But the longer the situation continues, and the wider the gap in realities, the more difficult it seems to be to sell a proposed war of unprecedented destruction as being (somehow!) helpful to the attainment of the totalitarian-leftist 'utopia' of Agenda 2030 and the Great Reset!

I think that this is what is going-on behind-the-scenes of the Western Establishment at present. 

All the participants are affiliated with evil, servants of Satan; but the mostly-evil Ahrimanic totalitarians are (at last!) starting to wake-up to the incompatibility of their ultra-controlled world-view with the chaos of wreckage and killing, favoured by of the more-wholly-evil Sorathic spiteful-destroyers. 

I personally do not want either of these groups to prevail! 

Indeed, the mostly-but-partly evil totalitarians vision of a world of omni-surveillance and total mind-control is spiritually even worse than a world of total war, horrific bodily suffering, and mega-death. 

Mankind has painted itself into this Satanic corner, by many generations of wrong and evil choices and decisions - and by continuing in these falsehoods. There are no good options for The World. 

Maybe we will be faced with a choice between supporting wholesale spiritual destruction (totalitarianism) or else supporting gross physical destruction (war)... certainly that seems like the way that Satan desires us to see things. 

I hope that - when the crunch comes - I will choose neither.  

We modern people substantially make our reality, thus choose our reality: just look around you! So primal/ childhood unconsciousness and instinct is not an option, not if we are to live as a human among humans. (And anyone who is genuinely prepared to hand-back the human ticket and live as an unconscious, instinctive animal, would not be arguing about it: just shutting-up and doing it.) 

Yes, but what reality do we choose? 

En mass, on-average, We choose The News.

That is reality... Whatever The News says is what-passes-for objectivity. Despite that The News is incoherent, labile and evil - it is the only reality we have... 

(We are, to some extent, allowed to select from-within The News - i.e. the approved media, the ones that are not blocked; we have that 'freedom'! We can therefore, each and all of us, be unique individuals; with our very-own choice and combination of official News-reality -- Yippee!)

But suppose we reject The News - what then? 

If we do not live in the world of The News, what other world may we inhabit?

Behind The News is... Nihilism - nothingness, non-objectivity. 

You step outside The News, and you are on your own, mate! You will then inhabit a world where there is only your-word against the-world.

(Look around, and you will find many News stories with this subtext. They may even acknowledge that The News hates you, and wants you dead! [Actually They really want you damned - but can't say it within the materialism of The News.] The News may rub it in your face that They are trying to immiserate, hurt, maim and kill you... But then - what else is there? Leave The News and you are dead anyway!)

Or maybe you have a few allies - but then so what? Family and some friends is not The Economy. 

You don't have police, army, control of the laws, ability to print money; or the mass media to label you a disgusting, dumb, evil outlaw - and declare open-season on you. 

You don't have a linked-bureaucracy that extends almost everywhere and supplies almost everything. 

You can't live separate from The News; and if you even try and show any sign of succeeding, The News will stop you whenever it wants. 

Such is life. Such is life on the mainstream secular world-view - materialistic metaphysics - which everybody is taught and which is everywhere reinforced in the public domain - not mainly be statements, but wholly by assumptions. 

God, Heaven, the soul, the spirit, creation, reality of values - our whole public world is built and functions on the basis that none of these are real. In the bureaucracies which run everything nowadays; all rules and procedures exclude the reality of of God/ creation/ soul/ spirit etc etc. 

There is just The News, the objectivity to the current Establishment diktat - which is always a lie; or there is Nihilism, nothing, mere subjectivity - which is not even a lie.  

On the one hand we have belief in The News hence obedient service to purposive evil; on the other hand - if we reject The News - there is fear, leading to despair. 

Such are the choices in our materialist (God-excluding, Heaven-excluding, spirit-excluding etc) world view; and our world functions on materialist assumptions. 

Modern Men are  - for the only time in history - absolutely imprisoned by their assumptions, by their metaphysics. 

And - while Modern Men hold these assumptions - they have nowhere to turn but The News, nowhere to run but into Nihilism... no escape that is not worse than whatever they already have. 

We cannot escape - even in our thoughts! - because, according to our deepest beliefs; reality just-is The News backed by Nihilism. 

Our prison is absolutely secure, because it is self-chosen; and the cage is double-locked because we refuse to acknowledge that we have thus chosen, and continue thus to choose - day-by-day, minute-by-minute. 

So long as we personally (and culturally) exclude that extended reality of God, Heaven, the spirit, life beyond life etc; we shall necessarily remain trapped by the dilemma of The News versus Nihilism. 

**

If, on the other hand; we choose to acknowledge the reality of God, divine creation; if we choose the possibility of Heaven, and primacy of eternal spirit - then we are-escaped already. 

Having escaped - the task of our life, our purpose or destiny, can begin. 

But not until after we have escaped. 

My spontaneous aversion to England's Norman ruling class goes back a long way; and used to be so strong (in some respects) that until last week I had never been able to get myself to read (or watch an adaptation of) John Le Carre's famously excellent Cold War spy stories; often concerning the classic fictional character of George Smiley - and taking place in the world of the Normans.   

Having found the 1965 movie of The spy who came in from the cold to be thought-provoking and resonant; I then watched another movie, and the BBC TV series of Tinker, Tailor Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People - starring Alec Guinness; and also listened to some more radio play adaptations. A real binge...

I enjoyed a lot about these works, and have found myself stimulated in several directions. 

Yet at bottom I find the whole atmosphere of the social world depicted as alien. I dislike all of the characters - even Smiley -  who all seem to have blunted humanity and zero metaphysical depth. I've had enough for now!

Even the undeniable courage of these Normans, seems to be tainted with a suspicion that it comes from insensibility combined with sensation-seeking (e.g. through sex, drink, violence, sadism, self-humiliation, infighting, betrayal, snobbery etc - anything that rings your bell, to pass the time). 

Underpinning which is a weird sense of Norman tribalism - rooted in their assumed superiority to laws and rules intended for the little people - that destroys any possibility of genuine justice: and indeed any possibility of being personally affiliated to the cause of Good.  

(This combination is seen very early in Norman-English history, for example The Anarchy.)  

In other words; Le Carre's world (at least in these versions) is nihilistic and futile, and is inhabited by men and women who strike me as nihilistic at their very core. 

I assume this reflects Le Carre's own (considerable) strengths, and limitations, as a Man. In an interview I watched he was extremely intelligent, insightful and interesting - yet underneath I sensed... nothing. 

What I am talking about is something missing - something human that is missing*. 

It's as if, for Normans life is a game - but nothing more than a game. The game is arbitrary (war, seduction, snobbery, diplomacy, sport, literature, careerism - it doesn't matter) - but the game has neither meaning nor purpose; because for Normans there is none to be had. 

Each Norman plays a part, tries to play it well (or, at least, to sabotage the others) because that is the best way to fill-in time - but it is nothing more than a part which is played; and ultimately the game doesn't really matter, because nothing ultimately matters... 

*I assume that this deficiency, and the consequent blankness, is what David Icke et al are getting at when they call these people (and some other social groups as well - Normans are not the only ones) reptilians, lizard-people, or actual extra-terrestrials. I would assume, rather, that it is some mixture of an innate deficiency in the capacity for love; with varying degrees of demonic influence and control. 

If we assume that because Final Participation (FP) is our destiny, what God wants from us at this stage of things; then perhaps it ought not to be impossibly difficult or rare. Perhaps we should expect to see Final Participation in our own lives; and in those of at least some people whose work is recoded in the public domain. 

Maybe the difficulty in locating Final Participation is in recognizing it as something genuinely different and new, and therefore misclassifying it under old categories - because the old categories are all we know.  

To clarify; Final Participation is an engagement with reality, in which we bring to bear our own creativity - to participate in creating. 

This could be participation with divine creation (this is what I understand to happen in Heaven); or participation with another person's created work - perhaps someone from the past. 

This can serve as an illustration - taking the example of JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (LotR). 

Two widely known categories of engagement with life, with works; could be termed 'projection' and 'channeling' - and I will contrast these with Final Participation.

Projection

Projection is not intentionally a participation, because it describes what happens when a reader of Tolkien projects his own concerns onto the book. 

This seems to be the usual practice of Tolkien mass-fandom. Except minimally; the projecting fan-reader does not experience what Tolkien himself felt or intended; but instead uses the book (selectively and distortingly) as fuel for his own interests. 

For example such a fan might read LotR as-if it were a "sword and sorcery" novel, being interested only by the fights, magic, monsters, spectacle etc; and either not-noticing, skipping-over or forgetting the other material. Or, to judge by the content of one genre of fan-fictions; quite a few readers even seem to read Tolkien in a subversive fashion, as fuel for their personal sexual fantasies.   

Therefor projection is not a form of 'participation' except very minimally, unconsciously, unintentionally; because the intent is to impose oneself upon the-other. 

Channeling

The ideal behind the form of participation I am calling channeling, is that the reader become so totally immersed in the work that he identifies completely with the author. 

This is a contemplative, not creative, ideally-non-participating form of engagement - because the ideal is that the reader be passive, absorptive, and reflective. The reader seeks to lose-himself-in the work 

This is, indeed, the form that has been called 'inspiration' and which used-to be (in the pre-modern era) the form that so-called 'creativity' took. The 'creator' was supposed to be a clear-channel for God/ The Gods/ The Muses - and himself to play no personal role in what emerged.

In other words; with channeling, with inspired work, the ideal is non-participation. 

This channeling is therefore a particular example of what Owen Barfield termed Original Participation - which is the primal relationship with the world of the child or the early tribal Man. It does have elements of participating; but only in the secondary sense that we are then (and almost fully) engaged with the world, with life, with other beings. But (when channeling works) we are so immersed in the flow of external things, that while our own participation in them is inevitable, it is intentionally minimal.  

Perhaps the ideal of the medieval sculptor working on one of the great cathedrals might serve as an illustration. He is contented to be anonymous, and forgotten, and to work in exactly the same style as every other mason - because his personal nature should 'stand-aside' and should not have anything to do with the product. I have heard of musicians (conductors and soloists) who regard their interpretations likewise: they try to identify so closely with the composer that they lose-themselves in the perormance altogether. 

In terms of Tolkien, this is perhaps the ideal of the best kind of literary critic of the old school: he attempts to expound Tolkien, and not to 'interfere' by interjecting personal views or evaluations. In particular, he is very wary of 'projection', which he regards as itself a gross and unscholarly error, leading to distortions such as anachronism.  

Final Participation

For an example of FP we need to go to Tolkien himself, in his writing of Lord of the Rings; and to that activity which he termed "subcreation". 

This - I suggest - is the relationship between JRRT and his 'source material' - which came from the author's engagement with his academic subject of philology (the language-focused study of old texts), and his other concerns such as mythology, and the matter of England. 

I believe that Tolkien not only had a deep immersion in his sources; but that he also went beyond immersion in his 'sources'. That is; JRRT went beyond the contemplative-passive processes of channeling, and brought his own creativity to bear on the material that he was experiencing from-within. 

There are innumerable examples. Tolkien's elves are rooted in Icelandic, Norse, Anglo-Saxon, Celtic material from his philosophical studies - the words for elves, their histories, their implications (as discussed by Tom Shippey in Roots and Branches); but Tolkien also brought a deep and intense personal interest and concern with elves - which he envisaged as an ideal type of certain aspects of Men; blessed with innate health and extreme longevity, greater love of the earth, greater skills and intelligence, and magical powers. 

And yet Tolkien felt a need to explain (to himself, primarily) how and why it was that elves were (more or less) estranged from, then replaced by, Men - who became rulers of this earth; despite that Men seemed inferior, overall. 

To generate acceptable answers to these (and other) questions about elves, problems about myth, England and so forth; Tolkien needed to go beyond existing material and theories: he needed to enlist his own creativity. 

I consider Tolkien's writing of LotR as a publicly-available example of Final Participation. 

In the first place JRRT was inspired by many, already existing, source materials; and had immersed himself in these materials so that he could, when needed or desired, 'channel'/ expound/ explain these materials in their own terms, in the context of the times and places of their composition. 

But in the second place Tolkien wanted to do more than just passively be-inspired-by; he wanted actively to generate something new by bringing to bear from-himself to participate with that which others had created.  

This was (pretty much) what he termed subcreation. 

To generalize, I think it would therefore be reasonably accurate to state that:

Final Participation = Inspiration plus Personal Creativity 

As such, examples can be generated from other areas of the arts, sciences etc. The pianist Glenn Gould did not just 'channel' Bach (as some have wrongly claimed), because, although he was steeped in Bach's creative mind and intent - Gould also added his own creativity, to make something participated. A synthesis, rather than recreation. 

A creative scientist of genius must, of course, build upon the valid science of his precursors; but as well as selecting from among the already-existing scientific literature that he deeply understands in its own terms (which might be said to 'inspire' him); and as well as extrapolating this work; the great scientist will bring something new, something original: from himself - in order to make a qualitative breakthrough.  

In sum; I hope the above might help make clearer what is meant by Final Participation; and to help recognize when it occurs in our own lives. 

I hope the title is largely self-explanatory. 

In this mortal state we all live in an entropic world, among many evil Beings; the tendency towards death is endemic, omnipresent, cumulative - and therefore we will always die, sooner or later. 

What sustains us alive in face of this constant tendency to change, corruption, disintegration, degeneration and disease - is that we are each a part of God's creation. 

Thus life is a continuing and moment-by-moment divine gift of God; continual, that is, for so long as God sustains it - until God's creation is overwhelmed by evil acts, or inevitably/ eventually by entropy. 

In a basic and overall sense, therefore, it is not God that kills us; and also we may be killed against God's plan for us, against personal divine destiny (especially when acutely overwhelmed by evil intent). 

However; while we live, it is God that is keeping-us-alive. 

Yet God may withdraw His creative sustenance; and then we will soon die from evil or entropy. 

God is keeping us alive for His divine, creative purposes; including the hope that we will choose salvation when we die (and thereby escape both entropy and evil, by entering the second creation); and will learn the spiritual lessons that would most benefit us while we live.  

Those who have been sustained alive for unusually long periods, into extreme old age; might therefore assume that this is for the purpose of our divine destiny; either in hope we shall chose salvation, or in hope that we will learn some-thing God regards as important for us. 

A comment by Francis Berger yesterday included the significant statement that wrong questions rarely, if ever, lead to right answers. 

This is important, because the opposite is so often assumed: for instance, the idea that it doesn't much matter what is our question, because all paths will eventually lead to the truth. Or the related idea that a good way to lead someone to follow Jesus, is to encourage him to ask questions - and answer each of them as they arise. Another version is the idea that the open arena of public assertion, counter-assertion and debate, will tend to lead (by a kind of natural selection) to the emergence of truth. 

But if wrong questions do Not lead to right answers; then these common assumptions are dangerously false. 

If, instead, truth is to be known by asking the right question; then this frantic business of challenge and response needs to stop; and people should instead be thinking about the questions they are asking - why they ask this question, what assumptions it is based-on, what kind of answer they seek, and what they propose to do with an answer...

Instead of comparing and critiquing; we need to focus primarily on asking the one right question. 

The business of a spiritual or philosophical quest - indeed the whole business of mortal life itself! - takes on a transformed complexion when we recognize that the question is more important than the answer; and that wrong questions don't lead to right answers, no matter how many times they are multiplied.

We shouldn't "crack our brains" puzzling over answers - but over questions. 

A properly-formed question will answer itself; and in ways that we understand immediately (although implications of the answer will unfold through time). 

Furthermore; this explains why we cannot rely on external authorities to supply us either with questions, or with answers - since we our-selves must fully understand the question, in order fully to understand the answer.

If we do not do it for ourselves, it will not be done. 

The above data suggests that this combined effort from the UK Government and Bishops was effective, to the tune of increasing the increment of already existing declining church attendance by an extra 25% approximately. 

When I became a Christian shortly before 2009, the Church of England had about a million a week attending church (from a population of around 60 million); and by 2022, without lockdown this would have been expected to have declined to about 810 thousand.

Whereas - thanks to lockdowns, masks, abolished sacraments etc - the actual decline was to 605 thousand. 

So, apparently, the anti-church birdemic measures successfully deleted a couple of hundred thousand church attenders - as if adding about a dozen extra years of decline...

Of course, the rate of decline of the CofE has been so fast anyway, that it is headed for extinction within a generation. 

And this numerical decline does not take into account the fact that most of church attenders in the CofE, as in all the other mainstream self-identified Christian churches, have explicitly taken the anti-Christian side (of global atheistic totalitarian leftism) when it comes to the decisive Litmus Test issues.

Causal trends are established; it is too late for reversal to be possible; and the organization is ruled and staffed (overwhelmingly) by generic politically-radical bureaucrats, whose actions betray very obvious hostility to religion. 

Indeed, we are seeing the unfolding 'karma' deriving from multiple wrong decisions made several decades ago - again, the same pattern and trends are seen across all the churches. 

My conclusion: The future of Christianity in the UK will either be located outside the churches, or else there will be no future. 

AI - so-called Artificial Intelligence - is (just) the latest version of a phenomenon I have spent most of my working life understanding and arguing against: that phenomenon appears in various guises including bureaucracy, voting, statistics applied to understanding, quality management, guidelines...

I have given-up on trying to explain why all of these are wrong when used to make decisions, to achieve insights, to monitor and regulate practices, in government. 

I have given-up; because it has become evident that the belief in such technologies is a matter of faith; it is an expression of deep and self-destructive (as well as socially-destructive) ideals. 

Their wrongness is innate and objective, and can be proved - but first we need to understand these phenomena - and extremely few genuinely wish to understand. 

(If you are sufficiently interested to make the effort, word search these on this blog and read the links. But, really, this stuff would not need explaining; if Men were properly orientated.)  

Most people are happily under the spell cast by these technologies/ methods  and their apologists. They believe because they want to believe; therefore they are strongly resistant to understanding. 

This is a civilization that is killing itself; and one major manifestation of this 'death wish' is that people persist in seeking some kind of technological or methodological technique of making judgments. 

Thus; people under the spell of AI are obviously enchanted by the idea that we can have computers/ machines/ systems which will make judgments, do learning, create poems/ pictures/ stories, discover, 'implement' values, organize people etc. etc. 

Behind such claims, and the eager credulity that welcomes them, there is a not-so-covert desire for human self-annihilation. A lot of people apparently want to hand-over all the highest, greatest, most divine aspects of being a Man - and they are prepared to give their faith to anyone who claims that this can and should be done. 

Because all this is ultimately a matter of faith. 

We now have a world of bureaucracy, with most major decisions made by voting; because that is where people have put their faith - their ultimate faith! 

People's faith is to believe - without any coherent logic, or honest 'evidence', and contrary to vast experience! - that bureaucratic organization and voting are superior to the judgment of individual human beings. 

And so the world is organized; and whatever happens to the world, that faith remains intact. 

Our desire to be rid of human judgment is, at root, an expression of our rejection of God.

This is why it is so pervasive, why it is a matter of faith, and why it will destroy us. 

We cannot be awoken from a spell that we have chosen to succumb to. 

Note added 30 Sep 23: It strikes me that with the advent of AI we have (as it were) officially entered a world in which public discourse consists of parroting: of uncomprehending computer-parrots speaking to other parrots (some computers, some 'humans') who cannot comprehend the parroted stimuli (because, strictly, there is nothing to comprehend), but which generate even more parroted responses... On and on, until the night comes. 

What I look for in evaluating the 'success' or 'effectiveness' of an 'ideology' or religion or any kind of spiritual activity; is that it is strengthening. 

All the rest of the indices are pretty useless as of 2023; although they may well have been valid at various points in the past. 

A thriving institution is nowadays, nearly-always, merely a measure of its approval rating with the global totalitarian regime, since The System sustains only what advances its agenda of evil - and will otherwise keep an institution small and weak (in material terms), when it does not assimilate or destroy it. 

Therefore indices such as expansion, growth of numbers, profits, new building, approval ratings or viewings, increased influence, greater status (prizes, awards, prestige...); such things mean little more than that one is an insider-to-evil. 

That something is measurably life-changing is of somewhat more relevance; but only when the induced change is for the good. 

There are plenty of life-changing events, artifacts etc that are merely increasing conformity to the agenda, or corrupting people into greater acceptance and approval of sin. 

It is much easier to make people worse than to make them better. For instance it is easy (given enough resources) to increase peoples' fear, resentment or despair; but very difficult indeed to improve their lovingness, courage, and transcendental hope. 

Much the same applies to some-thing that improves happiness, gratification, satisfaction, motivation. 

This is again somewhat closer to where we want to be; yet in the world as it is now, most things that make people feel better and more energetic are bad-things that will lead then to a much worse situation. 

Such is clearly the case for the 'liberations' and 'rights' of the sexual revolution: short term people feel better, have more fun - but long-term: nihilism. Or any modern political movement that engages peoples and sets them to work. At first there is a sense of community, belonging, a mission... But pretty soon 'activists' become among the very worst of people; characterized by shame, guilt, self-hatred, self-destructiveness... 

Desirous of escape, insensibility, death, and their own (plus general) destruction. 

The most valid - although still incomplete - benefit seems to me to be strengthening in the cause of Good. The strength can be most readily seen negatively, in terms of Not being enlisted into the agendas of totalitarian evil - of passing the Litmus Tests for example. 

Conversely, the utter uselessness of most institutions, churches, religious systems, spiritual disciplines (such as meditation) etc. can now be clearly seen by the fact that the organizations and their adherents fail the Litmus Tests en masse; that they always go-along-with whatever current evil-policy is being pushed; they always believe what the Establishment currently most want them to believe; they are self-blinded-against, uninterested by, and in-denial-of whatever is truly important and most-threatening in the world (preferring instead to focus on imaginary threats and Total Lies). 

It is harder to discern, and measure, positive strengthening in others - without a direct (and loving) personal relationship; but it is necessary to have such strength in order to pursue Good, and to live by one's destiny, in a world endemically evil. 

Such strengthening is what we should seek for ourselves.

Because to be useful here-and-now, as-things-are; it seems to me that our choices of affiliation, religion, spiritual practice - whatever - need not only to be abstractly (and overall) correct by our best evaluations...

But - if our beliefs are to be of real use, they must also be personally (and, if this is possible, institutionally) strengthening. 

Without positive strength, however right our religion, we shall be lost - if indeed it has not already happened. 

I have been contemplating again (albeit not yet re-reading) the highly suggestive series of World War I lectures by Rudolf Steiner entitled The Karma of Untruthfulness - which might be translated as "the spiritual consequences of truth-indifference".

One of Steiner's core ideas is that the Great War was a direct consequence (i.e. "karmic" outcome) of the preceding decades of "untruthfulness" - untruthfulness being a highly-useful term that encompasses deliberate misrepresentaions, distortion, cover-ups, and all forms of ignoring realities; as well as outright lies.   

Well, I suppose that there has never been a time in history when there have been so many, such large Untruthfulnesses, so widely believed as Now. And by Steiner's understanding (and my own) this must and shall have very large and negative "karmic" consequences - at every level at which untruthfulness is propagated and believed: from the global and national, down to institutional and individual. 

This is inescapable. Untruthfulness has been built-into so many civilizations, societies, institutions and lives; that its consequences are unavoidable; and are-being, will-be encountered for considerable time to come.

What this means - initially for each of us as individuals, but also for every form of organization, corporation, bureaucracy - is that the quest for truth; leading toward explicit repentance based-on understanding of untruthfulness; ought to be a primary and core activity of every life.

No matter how 'truthful' you currently regard yourself (e.g. by comparison with 'other people'); there is A Lot of work for you to do! 

In doing the work of truth, we not only benefit our-selves (spiritually), but (because right-thinking is a kind of power) we benefit every-body, and every-thing, else. 

Over at my Notion Club Papers blog, I review a recent book that focuses on the Tolkien Phenomenon (and Tolkien Industry) as it developed over the past decades since the publication of The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings. 

I recently watched yet another (this time video) presentation on the wonders and dangers of the "new" kinds of AI ("Artificial Intelligence") - and yet again felt that this phenomenon mostly reveals how degraded, and unhuman, has our world become over the past thirty years...

Degraded, bureaucritized, dehumanized, and de-skilled to such an extent that mediocre simulations can 'replace' people without very much loss of discernible quality... 

Which just goes to show that when creativity and judgment are systemically excluded, personnel are systematically degraded, real human contact is displaced by the virtual, and quality is driven sufficiently far down - then computers can (almost undetectably) substitute-for the resulting output. 

The three professions of which I was member have, in reality, long since ceased to exist; but this can now be seen objectively since they are perpetually "on strike".

Striking means hurting the general public (i.e. patients and students - because nearly all scientists are employed by educational establishments) - ostensibly as a (stupid, self-destructive) way of trying to persuade monopoly employers to give them more pay and better conditions. But in actuality, most as a futile way of venting general frustration at their meaningless and purposeless existence.  

Professionals don't go on strike because it hurts the people who they (supposedly) exist to serve. 

So that the endemic state of strike demonstrates that doctors and academics/ scientists no longer think of themselves as professionals - and are making a public demonstration of that established fact. They think of themselves as they actually are: bureaucratic functionaries whose core responsibility is to improve their position within their particular bureaucracy...

Current 'industrial action' is invariably directed against the public, rather than the managers! The strikers always cooperate, never resist and refuse, whatever bureaucratic nonsense the managers currently are imposing. While patients and students suffer; these medical/ academic/ scientific employees don't really want to hurt the managers, or alienate them - because it is managerial favour they are seeking.  

And the particular bureaucracies of the National Health Service and UK universities are merely sub-departments of the single, cross-linked global-bureaucracy - The System, The Matrix - so most people are in exactly the same situation, and behave with identical servile, short-termist, stupid selfishness as the ex-professionals - so lets not hear any arguing from assumed superiority! Whatever apparent superiority currently exists in other jobs is merely temporary and situational.

In other words - because of multiple laws and regulations relating to employment, taxes, subsidies, 'safety', racism/ feminism/ sexual-stuff/ disability, sanctions, 'climate'-drivel and so on, and on, and ever-increasing; all large employers are de facto a single employer; and all those who work for them are generic functionaries - whose job is to do: whatever the managers tell them. 

Therefore, except temporarily, there is no difference between a doctor and anyone else who works for the NHS (nurse, therapist, cleaner, porter, shop assistant etc); and no difference between someone who works for the NHS and someone who works for any other large government department, multinational corporation, NGO - or whatever. 

And therefore the doctors 'job' is to do - whatever his bosses currently tell him is his job. Same with academics: same with scientists. 

There is no essence to their work - only obedience. 

Very-nearly-all of the ex-professions that I was a member of, now actually do jobs that have almost (or actually) zero overlap with what these professions did fifty years ago. 

They are all doing different things; because they are doing what managers tell them to do.

And the managers do what the politicians (and media moguls) tell them to do; and the politicians do what the real rulers tell them.

This is how the world wags...

Such is life - such it has been for a couple of decades at least - and, although officially denied, such reality is becoming clearer with each passing year. 

Modern adult Men are not spontaneously religious or (seriously) spiritual - and we are trapped in the alienated state of purposelessness and meaninglessness by our fundamental assumptions concerning the nature of reality. 

Any Westerner who is a real Christian, has had to achieve this by his own efforts. 

Whereas, in the past, it seems that God imposed his reality upon most people; and it took effort to reject God; nowadays we must make the effort. 

The same applies to much that is true: it does not come naturally. 

Truth does not overwhelm us, but needs to be sought and won. 

We must not only meet God 'halfway' - but must, indeed, do most of the work! If (for instance) a modern man wants to perceive God in this world, to know God is real, or to know this world as a creation - he will need to work at it: and this work will quite likely be hard and long: he will need to be persistent.

This is the flip-side of our freedom. 

Because we are not spontaneous/ passively-absorptive; we are free to accept or reject, embrace or ignore. 

This applies to knowing God as to our politics and ideology - we Just Are responsible for our beliefs; and responsible in ways that did not apply in the deep past, or even the relatively recent past of a couple of generations ago.

(We may yearn to provide the kind of "good-values environment" for our children that will enable them, passively and spontaneously, to assimilate Christianity as natural - but usually even this is denied us. And even when it is achieved during childhood, and the child grows surrounded by good-influences; the effects seldom survive adolescence, or early adulthood. In 2023 and The West; sooner or later, every real Christian must do it for himself - or else not really be Christian, like the 100s of millions of devout Churchgoers who actively and fundamentally support the agenda of totalitarian evil.)  

The point we need to grasp is that God has not retreated, creation is still as present as ever (even in a modern city) - the blockages are in us. 

We are the problem. What prevents us knowing God is inside ourselves. 

And this is why it is so difficult! When the blockages are in our own basic assumptions about reality (i.e. our 'metaphysics'), our own habits of thinking, our unconsciously absorbed wrong-values etc; then only we can remove these blockages! 

When we are unable to perceive most of reality, are unable to comprehend the obvious, are dedicated to inversions of the truth and goodness - and when all chance of cure is blocked; then nobody can do the job of correcting these problems except ourselves. 

That is what it means to be free. 

It is seldom easy to removes one's own blockages; it usually takes time, effort, and repeated attempts. These blockages, including the most devastating, are hard to discover; because so common, so accepted, such 'common sense', so (apparently) supported by 'science'. 

(Only if you really dig-down to your own deepest assumptions; or maybe notice and take seriously that these blocking ideas are actually modern and local,rather than eternal and universal; are you likely to discover them, and recognize that they are Not necessary-truths.)  

And the process is not only unsupported by other people who are satisfied with a blocked-life; others will often discourage such efforts, and punish the consequences. 

In 2023; to live without a common-blockage is to live in ways that seem stupid, crazy or evil to the majority who choose to remain blocked, and who have decided not to make the significant effort to remove blockages. 

On the other hand - nobody and nothing can stop you removing the blockages, and perceiving real-reality - if you thus choose. 

That also is the nature of freedom. 

I have little doubt that for most people in the modern world, evil is defined in terms of inflicting suffering upon other people. 

Modern attitudes to abortion and euthanasia suggest that the infliction of suffering is regarded as worse than killing*; and even the grossest harms of the transagenda - mutilation, poisoning, physical suffering of children - are 'justified' in terms of supposedly reducing mental suffering. 

Christians - or at least, strongly self-identified Christians - have often felt the same way; despite whatever contrary lip-service they pay to Christ's Kingdom being "Not of this world". 

As well as personal hopes, there has been a vast and complexly-abstract theology purporting to explain how this-world is to be "redeemed", re-made in ways that include the elimination of all suffering - or indeed assertions that the resurrection of Jesus Christ has actually already improved this world by ways including the reduction of suffering.

(i.e. The common Christian belief that there has been less suffering in the world because of Jesus than there would have been without Jesus; or that there has been less suffering in Christian societies than in non-Christian.)  

The belief that suffering is the worst evil is certainly sincere, heartfelt - and indeed seems often to overwhelm people with an urgent craving for the elimination (or at least substantial reduction) of suffering in this world; or to overwhelm them with despair that this is no so, and that suffering continues.

So far as I can tell, the only answer to such a conviction, to this state of being overwhelmed by the horror of suffering that afflicts so many people; is to stay with the conviction and take it further, until you come out of the other side. 

The only convincing answer is to imagine - as fully, realistically, and honestly as possible - what kind of a world there would be, or would Not be, if the elimination of suffering really were the primary value. 

Because Not Being is, indeed, the destination of a morality that intends to eliminate suffering in this world, as this world is constituted - which is, a world in which entropy rules, and death will always eventually prevail.  

How it is that the imperative of Not Suffering interacts with our actual mortal world to produce an ethic of Not Being, is something that each person needs to work-through for himself; because humans have an infinite capacity for resisting arguments they do not want to be true. 

Nonetheless; such is the insight that awaits anyone who allows himself to step out-from that state of being overwhelmed, and either frenzied or paralyzed, by the pervasiveness of suffering. 

I think that only then can we properly understand what Jesus Christ actually offered Mankind; which was not directed at this world, but at another. 

Jesus is indeed reported as saying as-much, many times, in the Gospels; but that other-worldliness, that fulfilment in Heaven and only in Heaven, that Second Creation, needs to become the basis of our Christian understanding.

*This is true, even though the amount of evil is commonly measured in terms of dead bodies: e.g. the evil of Hitler or Lenin-Stalin is asserted or compared primarily in terms of the numbers of people they deliberately exterminated. Political power, nowadays, is mainly rooted in the authority to define whose suffering matters the most; because this suffering (and its purported alleviation) is the basis of most of the major leftist agendas such as socialism, feminism, prohomosexualism, the transagenda, and antiracism. 

The Litmus Tests* may seem crude and formulaic as a way of discernment applied to a person or institutions; but in reality they are almost the opposite. 

The Litmus Tests include the birdemic-peck 'healthism' agenda; support of the opponents of the Fire Nation in the ongoing war; antiracism; pro-sexual revolution; CO2 Climate-change/ warming; and any other form of leftism such as socialism, environmentalism, equality, diversity, libertarianism etc. 

The Litmus Tests refer not so much to specific beliefs, but to the core agenda items of the global totalitarian System, which - properly understood, from a Christian perspective - is evil in its intent -- i.e. the dominant System ultimately seeks the damnation of souls; which requires that (in the end) each soul desires and chooses to be damned. 

Therefore, to fail a Litmus Test means to be subordinated - in at least one major aspect, although typically many or most of the tests are failed - to the external ideology of evil. 

When somebody, or some institution, supports one of the Litmus test agenda items; this is evidence of value-inversion; which is evidence that they are self-subordinated to the dominant external agenda. 

In a sense, from the perspective of making an overall evaluation of somebody's (or some organization's) affiliation in the spiritual war of this world; this affiliation tells us all we need to know: Are they on the side of God/ divine creation/ The Good -- or are they opposed? 

Anyone who accepts, defends, follows, actively advances any of the Litmus Tests - has placed his motivations, thinking and actions under external control from those powers who oppose The Good.

This matter of external control is very significant. 

Because the world (here, now) is so pervasively and top-down corrupted by evil; all powerful external influences are evil. 

Therefore; to be externally-motivated - including by any large or mainstream church, of any denomination) is to be a part of the agenda of evil.  

(This is evil. Evil is Not about niceness or good works or devoutness... Evil is about taking the side of Satan against God. Simple as that. One on-the-side-of Good is Good; no matter what his personal sins - because anyone on the side of Good will/ must have repented his sins; will know, acknowledge, and reject his sins. That is what it means to "be Good".)

Such is the nature of Litmus Tests: they function as an index of whether some person or group has chosen subordination to fundamental, ultimate, external control. 

As of here-and-now; only one who seriously seeks to detach himself from external control can be on the side of God, divine creation and The Good. 

Such a detached person may Not be on the Good side - because he might choose evil from his own inner motivations; but only a detached person can affiliate to Good. 

In our totalitarian and media-saturated world; only inner evaluation and motivation can be a source of commitment to the motivation of Goodness. 

We are Good as individuals - from our inner choices - or not-at-all. 

Affiliation to any external authority is to subscribe to one, more, or many of the negative, incoherent, and oppositional Litmus Tests; and this represents a decisive affiliation to the work of Satan. 

Note added: It should not really be necessary to say so; but maybe it needs saying anyway: that the state of someone's soul now - e.g. affiliation to the Satanic agenda, as evidenced by Litmus Test failure - does not mean that they will choose damnation at the last. Indeed; I think it almost certain that an individual person is only sustained alive for as long as he is judged capable of repentance; which means that where there is life there is hope. However; the same does not necessarily apply to institutions/ groups/ corporations - including churches. Whereas there are many (including recent) examples of individual persons (and, presumably, other Beings) who seem very likely to have repented and chosen salvation despite previous servitude to evil - and done so very late, very near to death; there seem to be none among recent institutions. This may be because the kind of corruption that afflicts most modern institutions is one that excludes the ultimacy of the kind of "presiding spiritual Being" that used-to stand-behind traditional institutions (variously conceptualized as patron saints, angels, and the like). I would guess that so long as there is a presiding spiritual Being, then repentance is possible. But when there has been a hollowing-out, bureaucritization, self-subordination of an institution to external influences, then there can be no basis for repentance. 

Most people, probably nearly everybody who contributes to mainstream public discourse, are on-board with the Establishment-woke-totalitarian agenda - especially when it comes to the sexual revolution, antiracism, carbon-climate and the other Litmus Test issues that provide the means for top-down strategic socio-political implementation. 

Precisely because they put The Agenda first and central in their value systems, these people - who are, I stress, most people: "normal people", Nice people - as well as those with managerial roles and leadership responsibilities - are unable to judge quality. 

Not just un-willing, but un-able. The ability is gone, drowned, dead. 

They cannot see when people or institutions have failed to reach even the bare minimum of (what should be) acceptable standards of functionality or ability.

They cannot see when some venture (project, movie, war, policy...) has been a catastrophic failure - and are very likely to celebrate it's exemplary success.  

They cannot see when someone is a bad actor, a not-scientists or hopeless engineer, a rubbish artist or mediocre musician; they cannot tell when a corporation is not just failing to be be good but actively becoming bad; they cannot even notice when political parties or managers are actively (and by many devices) engage the in destruction of nations, organizations, institutions over which they have power. 

It is futile to argue to with such people, or to try and convince them. We need to understand that this is a case of cannot: they cannot discern good from evil, truth seeking from gross lies, they regard deliberate ugliness as a higher form of beauty; they regard whatever is most fully leftist as intrinsically high in quality. 

The totalitarian-woke agenda is at the root of their sense of being, their motivations, their world view - and anyone who tries to discuss values as realities will be regarded as vile, loathsome, and so stupid that they ought never to be listened to. 

If or when anyone attempts to apply discernment of quality, or to seek the true, virtuous or lovely - and gains the slightest rational or emotional traction - they will feel a kind of slippage of the mind, will become overwhelmed by a suffocating sensation, convulsed by visceral disgust, nausea and loathing, such that the urgent and absolute need is to stop the assault, silence the perpetrator, slander and destroy. 

It is impossible to overestimate the severity of this condition. Utterly useless, embarrassingly incompetent people, groups and companies can and shall be praised to the skies as paragons of brilliance and originality - and every expression of this crazed ridiculousness will be carried on a tide of warm, fuzzy, floaty, feel-good peer-solidarity -- the more inverted the expression, the more wonderful the feelings. 

Welcome to mass and social media - and the mass human intercourse so completely enslaved to it - of  2023! 

This is what it means to be in thrall to Satanic values, inverted-values; an anti-system of valuations that are motivated by opposition to God, divine creation, and The Good. 

At the time of the late sixties and early 1970s; there was a general feeling that - even if the specific content of the counter-culture (e.g. mysticism, radical politics, 'mind-expanding' drugs, astrology, tarot, magic, neopaganism andwitchcraft, crystals, geomancy, flying saucers etc.) was not valid, and was risky to health and sanity; such activities might well serve as a first step towards a genuine answer to the problem of alienation and totalitarian bureaucracy (The System).   

But this did not happen, and instead the counter-culture became the New Age, and converged with mainstream-leftist socio-politics; usually by embracing the sexual revolution through its continual mutations, and then picking the wrong side with later Litmus Test issues that were being used strategically towards the totalitarian world government that eventually emerged into the open in early 2020. 

There were what, at the time, sounded-like reasonable and plausible arguments as to why the negative critique of The System, and the attempt to achieve an integrated wholeness of personality, were beneficial in themselves and would tend towards even better things. Experience, however, showed that in general this was not happen, is not happening. 

The reason is quite simple, which is that socio-political movements such as the counter-culture are operating at a relatively superficial level, beneath which are metaphysical assumptions concerning the nature of reality. 

When these assumptions (which are usually unconscious, and/or regarded as being empirically-derived - e.g. from 'science' - rather than the assumptions they actually are) are such as to sustain the totalitarian-System, then that is what will emerge; no matter how seemingly radical may be a person's surface opinions and lifestyle.   

That, I believe, is why the sixties radicals became the bureaucrats of the 80s, 90s and into the millennium. And why this process continues.