Bruce Charlton's Notions

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Metaphysics is the theoretical frame within-which everything is explained.

Leftism, political correctness is not really a religion (it has so few features of a religion, that such a description is misleading) - but it is a metaphysical system.

The word ideology is a partial, confused, incoherent synonym for metaphysics - indeed ideology is metaphysics for those who do not wish to acknowledge the vital role of metaphysics; who want to conceal that they are preaching metaphysics- who want their metaphysical system to be invulnerable because its existence is denied.

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For example the Left used Science against all religious metaphysical systems, but science itself had depended on a metaphysical system which (for example) regards truth as a virtue (i.e. Christianity or Judaism) - so by using science against religion, Leftism was destroying science: indeed, Leftism was destroying even the possibility of science.

http://corruption-of-science.blogspot.co.uk/

Specifically, the theory of evolution by natural selection was used to destroy Christianity; claiming that natural selection was empirically-validated science; when in reality natural selection is formally a metaphysical system: that is, an explanatory framework within which science may be done, but not itself a science.

(That is why the theory of evolution by natural selection formally cannot be refuted. Nor can it be supported.)

Leftism has used (and then discarded) various ethical principles to break-down Christian metaphysics - for instance Equality, or Justice, or Economics, or Freedom, or Democracy.

These are deployed as frameworks within-which reality is to be understood, explained, manipulated - therefore they are functioning as metaphysical systems (albeit small, feeble, partial, incoherent, fuzzy, ludicrous metaphysical systems) - but their real nature is denied, and it is asserted that these principles are derived from experience, knowledge, effectiveness... 

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When a new metaphysical system has been implemented, when a person or a culture is inside a new metaphysical system - then everything else is constrained by that system - what counts as knowledge, truth, beauty, virtue is defined; the possibility of motivation and purpose; almost everything is constrained by metaphysics.

There is no argument against a new metaphysics from observation, from experience, from logic - which is why the Left never learn.

(Metaphysics does not learn - it is that within-which learning is defined.)

They never learn because they are inside a metaphysical system while denying the reality of metaphysical systems.The fly in the bottle.

Once the new metaphysics is in place - reality is framed by it, evaluations are constrained by it,the battle is won. 

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Probably, Satan's greatest triumph has been the destruction of real metaphysics: purely free; but with profound and universal consequences.

Satan's greatest triumph has therefore been metaphysical - he is the most successful career philosopher in history (certainly, the most highly-cited).

And the triumph has been made possible by the mass media: the modern metaphysical system derives-from and is propagated-by and enforced-by the mass media.

http://addictedtodistraction.blogspot.co.uk/

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How should the modern metaphysical system be evaluated? The answer is - only from the basis of another metaphysical system.

All possible evaluations, criticisms, are based on metaphysical assumptions. So if we point-out that modern Leftism is incoherent, that assumes that incoherence is a problem - while for Leftist metaphysics, its own incoherence is not a problem.

If we point-out that Leftist metaphysics is unfit for use: leads to despair, has destroyed science and the arts and education, that it cannot motivate or provide meaning - then such critique is based on the metaphysical assumption that these are bad things; which Leftist metaphysics will not accept.

If, indeed, we point-out that Leftist metaphysics is almost-wholly negative and oppositional - and therefore must lead to a human life and society which is almost-wholly negative and oppositional; then Leftism merely responds that (from where Leftism is standing, which is implicitly inside its own metaphysic) that is just the way that things are - and Leftism is merely honestly reporting on the inevitable reality of the situation. 

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So Satan has the West in his grip, inside his metaphysics; and part of Satan's metaphysics is to cloak its own metaphysical nature - and to derive its (pseudo-) validity from what were previously regarded as sub-metaphysical domains such as science, politics, economics - even 'ethics' regarded as a free-standing discourse (i.e. 'ethics' when discussed without even an implicit reference to life's nature, purpose, meaning!).

The answer? A different metaphysics.

One can only fight metaphysics with metaphysics.

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But which metaphysics can beat the Left? Not a made-up thing, for sure. Satanic Leftism cannot be defeated at the level of philosophical discourse - of course not!

It can be beaten and will only be beaten by a metaphysics based on a realer, deeper, more motivated, more meaningful basis... 

In other words, Leftism can be beaten, and can only be beaten, by a religion.

And that is our choice - Leftism or Religion.

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If not Leftism, then CHOOSE YOUR RELIGION.

Simple as that. 

thoughtprison-pc.blogspot.co.uk

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Note added: The mantra 'choose your religion' is predicated on the fact that only a religion will work, only a religion is capable. Many have noticed that the traditional Western religion of Christianity is substantially a fake among those who profess it (i.e. self-identified Christians are mostly first Leftists, and only secondarily Christian). Others have noted that - as a matter of fact - the West is not re-adopting Christianity, and as a matter of probability there seems little chance that the West will re-adopt Christianity.  However, these facts and probabilities do not affect the argument that only a religion can combat Leftism - they merely suggest that there is little evidence for, and little prospect of, the defeat of Leftism by religion in the West. I is very simple: if people choose to reject religion, then they simply will not defeat Leftism.

It is interesting that, at root, so many groups of people - whether that be in religion or in politics, actually offer explicitly what they are able to give. It is a kind of basic honesty, that seems to bind even the worst people and groups.

I have commented on this in religion - it is surprising how little most religions offer their adherents. Christianity offers far more than any other major religion (as Pascal noted - the only coherent reason for not wanting to be a Christian is that you think it is untrue - otherwise it offers far more than any rival religion or ideology), and even within Christianity some denominations offer more than others.

This is surprising in the sense that I would have supposed that there would be a lying bidding-war between religions, each striving (or pretending) to offer a more wonderful life or afterlife than the rivals.

Somehow this doesn't happen.


For example, modern liberal Christianity might be supposed to be offering its adherents more than some traditional types - in the sense that there is no Hell, and no strict rules about sex, fasting, attending Church etc.

But in fact liberal Christianity offers its adherents nothing at all - no miracles, no answered prayers. no healings, no experiences of contact with the divine, no afterlife, no resurrection of the body...

The advertised fate of a liberal Christian is that same as that of any other secular modern person - a purely subjective 'god' and extinction at the point of death.


Something similar applies to politics. The secular Left parties are, of course, fundamentally dishonest - but they are strangely honest about what they offer and what they do not offer.

They offer a focus (ie. lots of talk, lots of bureaucracies, lots of taxes) on themes such as equality, diversity, inclusiveness and so on. By means of affirmative action - preferences according to sex, sexuality, race, religion, ideology - the Left indeed offer a bit of the actuality.

But interestingly Leftist parties do not offer greater economic efficiency and growth, better science and more breakthroughs, an impartial legal system, greater military power, civil peace and public good behaviour, control of borders... or any of the things that the Right offers.


Of course the Left does make an occasional, sporadic (and dishonest) claim to fix anything and everything - but over time, day by day, in terms of strategy and propaganda the Left hardly mentions such things, avoids the subject, changes the subject. It is very obvious indeed that the Left is not going to do any of these things, and the Left don't make any serious or sustained effort even to pretend that they will.

Why don't they just say they will deliver on such matters? Why don't they pretend they will do everything? Perhaps because they are averse to these other 'goods' - certainly they are uninterested by them, don't like the subjects to be discussed... but then, that itself seems to suggest that they do not want to be put into a position of lying about them.

It is as if even these habitual and fundamental liars are constrained by some basic truth: if and when the Left has ruined a society by imposing equality, destroying Christianity, wrecking the economy, subverting marriage, breaking-up families, and encouraging unrestricted mass immigration... or whatever - then they can at least claim that they were merely doing what they said they would do!

This explicitness is odd, on the face of it; because the Left do lie about many, many things, for years and decades, and they get away with lies because the Left is the mass media, and modern populations are addicted to the mass media. But there are some things that they don't lie about...


The same basic and overall honesty applies to the more Right Wing Left parties (all mainstream modern politics is extremely Leftist, by world historical standards, so it does not make sense to call mainstream conservative, republican, libertarian type secular groups 'Right' wing parties, they are merely slight less Left wing than their rivals: the only truly Right wing parties are religious parties that want to run society on religious line, i.e. ultimately according to religious priorities and evaluations) - and it also applies to idealistic secular Right wing theorists, self-proclaimed reactionaries, for instance.

I refer to these groups as basing their appeal on Common Sense: they are characterized by common sense policies on economics, the law, immigration - their claims are that they will make things more efficient, more effective, make their nations more secure and powerful, make their societies more peaceful, favour their own native people and races rather than other people and races etc.

The problem is this mainstream or idealistic secular Right wing politics is so deadly dull, boring, pedestrian, prosaic, small minded, selfish. In a word sensible! 


It really is. This is not an illusion. Secular 'Right' politics presents its vision of Life very lucidly (and honestly) as an ideology that drains away everything except... functionality. It offers a future of highly efficient nothing.

(Does this explain why people have a horror of sensible people and parties? That if the secular Right got what it wants, if we really were sensible in a secular world, people would mean nothing, life would mean nothing, Men would be just so many cogs in an abstract machine. In our personal lives, among those we love, we do not want people to be sensible about us.)


Mainstream (secular) Rightism offers more of what we have already had - especially a generation or two ago, when things were far more sensible than now - increasingly prosperous, powerful, rational, fair etc. social systems whose aim is... increasingly prosperity, power, rationality, justice etc.

The secular Right offers a nightmare of means but no ends. The vacuum of ends is indeed proclaimed as a virtue, as freedom, as individuality - there isn't even an attempt to claim that there is any point to the secular Right vision - its utter pointlessness is proclaimed as a benefit.

The West has been more sensible than any other society in the history of the world. We have had sensibility, and we have been made plausible offers of even-more sensibility - and we have rejected it: decisively.


So modern life is divided between these options - Common Sense versus Leftism - and Leftism has won. The public have decided that they prefer lying and nonsensical but very-slightly idealistic, very-slightly and very-vague Utopian Leftist dreams over the sensible, value-free, dead, dull functional efficiency offered by the Right - because even a glimmer of idealism is preferable to deadly, dull, functional efficiency; any values (however feeble) are preferable to no values.

There is no way out of this unless or until a truly Right party emerges (i.e. a religious party) which offers more than the Left to feed the ineradicable religious hunger in Men's souls. Eventually this will emerge - one religion or another will displace the Left, because the religions have so much more to offer - and in a broad brush sense, each probably religion delivers what it offers.


We will easily see this when it happens, there will be no doubt or uncertainty about what is happening, it will be an extraordinary shock - because the whole tone and content of public discourse will change utterly.

There will be a vision presented, and the vision of any religion is qualitatively different from any vision presented by modern politics. The concentration of discourse - the mass of what people talk and wrote and read about - will move to the divine, to the divine plan, and to the afterlife.

Suddenly the concerns of modern mainstream Western politics will seem pathetically dull, shallow, trivial when compared with the scale and scope of a religious perspective.



And this could happen very quickly indeed, in just a few weeks a religious fever could - and indeed will - sweep through the West.

It will happen quickly because there is nothing to stop it happening, no resistance to it happening, because the alternatives are so utterly feeble.

The devastation this will undoubtedly cause to the normal running of society will, quite suddenly, seem unimportant - people will be filled with, pumped-with, motivation and they will find it intoxicating and overwhelming - they will realize that the secular society is pointless.

When they glimpse a vision of purpose, and this vision begins to spread, they will embrace it, they will be fuelled by it, swept-up in it - they will want more of it whatever the cost - and the cost will surely be immense; but that will not stop it happening, because the idea will be that any cost is worth it.


The stability of the modern secular West is extremely feeble, requires continual vast and expanding expenditure of bribes and propaganda. The West is indeed 'metastable' - which means there is a much more stable configuration into which it could move at any point - and that configuration is religion.

All the main Western political and social trends are draining away stability, all the satisfactions of modern life are ephemeral, there is less and less motivation because there is less and less reason to be motivated.

The modern secular 'religion' (ideology) is that each of us is alone, life has no meaning, and when we die we are annihilated. Really, it is not difficult to offer more than that! Any religion offers more. Any religion could displace the West.


The question will be which religion, or religion, suddenly emerges - which will be the one or ones that suddenly sweep an particular Western nation or region or ethnic group - what will be on offer that suddenly makes secular politics - whether of the Left or secular Right -  seem trivial, shallow, pointless - which religion galvanizes people with a sudden motivation so strong that all the substitutes of the past two hundred years will be discarded with hardly a glance back at them,


I am not asking for speculation on which specific religion, or which various religions, will suddenly emerge and within weeks sweep aside two centuries of triumphant secularism - because in a metastable state nobody knows.

Also this process will not necessarily be good, may well leave things much, much worse than they have been. May be - in terms of health, happiness, comfort, convenience, pain and misery - an absolute disaster.


The religion that wins in some places, or in most places, may be a very bad one, by Christian standards.

But that will not stop it happening. Unworldly, non-rational mystique, magic, and religious idealism are utterly irresistible to alienated, nihilistic secular politics. Religion will spread like wild-fire, perhaps like fiend-fire - but the only remotely effective resistance to Hell-fire will be Heavenly Fire.


There is a message for each and every Western person:

Choose your religion, or else religion will choose you. 

As far back as my 2011 mini-book Thought Prison I have been saying that the primary decision (which few make) is to 'choose your religion'; any other decision is futile, since all other real and possible decisions end on The Left and therefore in support of purposive evil. 

But the choice of religion remains; and cuts across different religons and denominations. I think much can be gained by considering What You Want - given that God is both creator and loving parent, hence will try to give what we most want, within constraints of what is good for us and God's other children. 

So, it is reasonable to assume that we will get what we really want, therefore it behoves us to consider what that is: to give the matter some serious consideration. 

And I specifically mean: want across an eternal timescale; consider what we want for our-selves after biological death: That, I believe, is a key question, the answer to which frames this mortal life and affects our understanding of everything in it.  

For example, do we most want eternal peace, or to do stuff - to work?

Do we want bliss, or family living (like marriage, children, close friends - sociality)?

Do we want stillness, or creation?

Do we want deity, or Jesus? 

 

It is currently inconceivable that we in the West could have a government which regarded Christianity as the first and central principle of organizing life. A large majority of the population would oppose this, would indeed regard the idea as utterly monstrous.

And yet, of course, all long term stable and authoritative governments throughout history have put some religion as the first and central part of organizing all aspects of human life: politics was based-on religion.

Examples would include the Kingdoms of Ancient Egypt - which lasted 3,000 years, and the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire - which lasted 1,000 year; both of which were permeated by religion in their ideals - and often in their attainment.

The idea that decent government can be attained without religion is still just an idea - since what we currently have would neither be regarded as stable nor as government by people in the past.

It is very clear now that the Western elites want to destroy their societies - one way or another; the favoured methods currently seems to include (but not be restricted to) the destruction of marriage and family, chosen reproductive sterility with an ever-ageing population, and unrestricted mass inward-migration including a high proportion of dependents and aggressors.

But at the root of this is the negative decision to dispense with religion as the unifying aspect of government - and the utter failure to find any other positive principle with which to replace it. 

So the West is characterized by implacable hostility to real Christianity, and a focus on the permanent revolution of destroying the Christian legacy including inverting the transcendental Goods of Truth, Beauty and Virtue.

Since the Leftist project is in its essence negative and destructive, it will necessarily be replaced by some positive polity (at the point when the Left has so weakened the power, will and morale of the West in a particular place that some local religious group becomes by default more powerful, and is motivated to take-over). So we will get religion at the centre of politics again; the only question is which religion, and this will vary from place to place.

Trends are in place which often allow the outcome to be predicted in a particular situation; but there remains scope for summated individual choices to change the predicted outcome.

The most important political question of our day is therefore to determine which religion you, personally, would and should support as the basis of your government.

You can - of course - opt-out of the choice, and forgo even any possibility of influencing the outcome. But that is, in effect, still a choice: it is the choice to allow other people to decide which religion should be the basis of your country.

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Note added: This post is focused on the decision of which religion you choose to support. This, of course, goes far beyond the scope of the adherents of a religion. It is possible (and such things have happened, quite often indeed) that a large proportion of the population support rule by religion X in preference to religion Y, despite that the adherents of religion X are only a small minority. 

Likewise, given the actual available choices and trends; it may be that atheists, agnostics, and various non-Christian religions would support Christianity as the basis for government, having made the judgment that:

1. There must be a religion as the basis of government; and 

2. Christianity is the best religion.  

Indeed, even if there is a large and powerful Christian awakening and revival (which there absolutely must be for matters to improve in The West), for Christianity to make a difference at the worldly and secular level would require at least the consent - if not active support - of a much larger number of people than the actual Christians. 

(Or, should I say, 'probably' the above; because there are unknown and unseen factors at work in the world - not least the possibility of direct divine interventions - and hope comes from the most unexpected quarters.)

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The problem is one that is easier to notice and feel than it is to prove, but I would suggest that it is something like this: that life in modern liberal democracies is to some extent thin or shallow. 

I do not mean that our lives are meaningless, nor that the opportunity liberal democracy uniquely gives to pursue our own conception of happiness is remotely misguided. On a day-to-day basis most of us find deep meaning and love from our families and friends and much else. But there are questions which remain, which have always been at the centre of each of us and which liberal democracy on its own not only cannot answer but was never meant to answer. 

“What am I doing here? What is my life for? Does it have any purpose beyond itself?” These are questions which human beings have always asked and are still there even though today to even ask such questions is something like bad manners.

What is even more, the spaces where such questions might be asked — let alone answered — have shrunk not only in number but in their ambition for answers. And if people no longer seek for answers in churches will they find them in occasional visits to art galleries or book clubs? ...

But what is interesting to me is that everything about these accounts is both of our time and runs against the assumptions of our time. The search for meaning is not new. What is new is that almost nothing in our culture applies itself to offering an answer.

Nothing says, “Here is an inheritance of thought and culture and philosophy and religion which has nurtured people for thousands of years.” At best the voice says, “Find your meaning where you will.”

At worst it is the nihilist’s creed: “All this has no meaning.” Meanwhile politicians — seeking to address the broadest range of people — speak so widely and with such generalities as to mean almost nothing.

Almost nowhere is there a vision of what a meaning-filled life might be. The wisdom of our time suggests that education, science and the sheer accessibility of information must surely have knocked such urges out of us. And the divide can be staggering...

I know that non-religious people do not like talk like this. And I know that religious people find it frustrating because for real believers the question will always be, “Why do you not just believe?”

Yet this latter question simply ignores the probably irreversible damage that science and historical criticism have done to the literal truth-claims of religion and ignores the fact that people cannot be forced into faith.

http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/features-may-2015-douglas-murray-the-wests-loss-of-faith

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Excellent diagnosis - terrible (non-) prescription.

What is the point of saying that we are painted into a corner without checking whether we really are painted into a corner? What is this nonsense about the probably irreversible damage that science and historical criticism have done to the literal truth-claims of religion?

Honestly, people really need to be able to distinguish between metaphysics and wissenschaft. Science and historical criticism exclude religion by assumption, therefore they can have nothing to say - and say nothing - about the truth claims of religion.

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No actual or possible discovery of science or history makes or could make any difference to the truth of religion. If  you don't understand this, then that is what you need to understand.

Don't keep on and on and on spouting nonsense - stop; analyze the nonsense and find out why it is nonsense.  

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And what is this straw-mannic stuff about 'literal' truth-claims? I have never come across a literal truth-claim from anybody that did not really mean something contextualized. Words need to be interpreted for intentions; especially when words are the end-product of chains of forced choices. Accusations of literalism are just a rhetorical device to discredit the opposition. Nothing at all is 'literally' true - in the sense that religion is supposed not to be literally true - certainly science is never literally true (even when uncontroversially regarded as correct).

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Sometimes things really are simple - this situation is simple.

“What am I doing here? What is my life for? Does it have any purpose beyond itself?” Do you really want to know the answers? If so, then choose your religion.

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Religions can't be invented to order, not real ones; so decide which existing religion is true/ truest, and then get on with it.

Get on with it as best you can.  

You may not get it right first time, or second time or even third time (we work by trial and evaluation, repentance and try-again), but you will at least be on the path, and moving broadly in the correct direction.

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Decades of secular conservative, libertarian, reactionary, reasonable, humane responses to the insane evil of primary antiracism have been utterly futile.

Logical analysis, humane reason, appeals to decency and moderation, appeals to national or personal self-interest, satire and mockery, attempts to usurp antiracism with other secular Left ideals such as compassion, alleviation of suffering, equality... all utterly ineffectual.

After all this, antiracist witch-hunts are more frequent and more severe than ever before.

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'Racism' remains undefined to a point way beyond absurdity, anyone is vulnerable, the consequences of antiracist mania very obviously extremely harmful...

But it makes no difference.

The scale, organization, duration and public/ police/ official visibility of child and other sexual slavery abuse 'scandals' unveiled after 'Rotherham' is off-the-map for Britain in known history - and these are a direct product of antiracism.

But nothing has changed after 'Rotherham' etc, things continue to get worse. 'Rotherham' is merely the tip of an iceberg of suffering, and fundamental national and personal damage from antiracism which will only cease with utter societal destruction unless it is defeated.

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Why does antiracism rule supreme and invulnerable to consequences?

In a nutshell because for the modern secular (which is Leftist) mind - in other words for the mainstream mass of people with power, influence, education, and authority - nothing is worse than racism. Thus, antiracism is the highest human value.

Antiracism trumps all. This is the situation.

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What can be done about this situation?

Well NOT trying to attack the moral primacy of antiracism - that will not work, this has not worked - it has indeed been if anything counter-productive.

(We have to assume that everything done so far is likely to be counter-productive.)

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So what is strong enough to beat antiracism?

Religion, obviously.

Not any religion - but some religions: a few traditional, patriarchal, monotheistic religions or particular groups (or sects) within those religions.

So that is it. Matters are very clear. Antiracism cannot be defeated as a primary goal but only as a secondary by-product of  higher goals: religious goals.

Therefore, if you believe it is vital to defeat antiracism as the primary moral value of The West, then you must accept that we must have Religion.

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Matters are not just simple but clear: there is a choice of possible Religions.

All you have to do is make your choice, and then live by it (as best you can).

Therefore, unless you are already an adherent of one of these religions; your moral priority (merely from the perspective of the necessity to defeat antiracism) must be to investigate these religions.

Socio-politically, nothing could be more important.

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(This is not the best reason to investigate and choose your religion; but it is one reason - and it is a sufficient reason.)

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Religion - that is where we find it; and there is no alternative.

So... Choose your religion, choose your denomination.

But then what? That is just to point yourself in the right direction of finding motivation - it is not taking one single step in actually becoming motivated.

Ideally, you find a denomination, find a church and ask to join that church - and be allowed to; participate as fully as you can and discover that doing so motivates you.

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But any of these steps may be blocked, or may fail to generate motivation - indeed, some find some, most or all aspects of participating in an actual church to be de-motivating.

This does not necessarily mean that person would or should leave that church - but it does mean that they must seek motivation elsewhere (and I emphasize must - because sufficient motivation is not merely an option, but a necessity for the good life).

What then?

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We will need to seek and make motivation outside the church (but in line with its teachings).

How? Here are some suggestions:

• Meditation  and/or Prayer - These require some learning; therefore time set aside, effort made over sufficient time. 

• Reading - scripture yes, but also (and perhaps mostly) devotional books, and in general reading which provide the right kind of motivation: novels, poetry, essays, drama. The principle can be extended to music and the visual arts.

• Tithe or donate some of your money (or time) to religious causes, especially specific churches - what kind of causes? Evangelism is perhaps the primary one, especially evangelism in the place you live; but also all manner of support for Christians in the efforts to live Christianly.  

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What you could be aiming-at is building in yourself a lively sense of the reality of God; a real sense of the living God.

That God is not just alive, and real, and out there - but also inside you.

And, to be motivated, hope is essential. And the hope must be hopeful - hope needs to be as solid and as specific as is required to give you motivating hope. This probably requires knowing more about Heaven.

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From what I perceive, 2016 is indeed unfolding to be the year of reckoning which some have predicted - perhaps best understood as the year of choice; and more exactly the year of branching choices.

Starting from the triumphant domination of secular Leftism, it looks as if looks as if more and more of the Establishment are defecting from the programme - or are on the verge of doing-so, and as if the ruling cabal is afraid - very afraid - of a major backlash. Hence the global conspiracy of evil is trying to strike prematurely with their long-prepared plan of a mega-destructive World War III (starting in the Middle East); before the lower-level Establishment and the population of the West have been brought behind the idea.

The choices of 2016 can be seen as a branching system. Early choices are worth having - but only if the choices follow through (reasonably swiftly) will they do any more than somewhat delay the plan for comprehensive destruction of Good.

The first choice is:

Secular Leftism versus Not-secular Leftism

This is about as far as we have currently reached - a negative reaction against the prevailing trends.

Then there is a choice between:

Cynical nihilism versus Spiritual Awakening

Cynical nihilism is negative - and the Cynical Nihilist decides merely to operate on the basis of his gut-feelings, which he regards as subjective - so it is merely a kind of systematic selfishness. This is better than secular Leftism, because not actively suicidal - but CN is unstable and severely suboptimal. Spiritual awakening is therefore the way forward.

But spiritual awakening has happened before - eg. in the mid 1960s - and it is likely to be poisoned at source by the (Leftist) Sexual Revolution unless it leads to religion. So the next choice is either to retain the sexual revolution - leading to New Age spirituality or to reject the sexual revolution, which leads to religion (of one sort or another):

New Age Spirituality versus Religion

We know from experience the New Age spirituality leads nowhere, so Religion is the way forward. The next step is to 'choose your religion'. For Westerners this means Christianity of something-else:

Not-Christianity versus Christianity

If Christianity is chosen, at this point it refers to real Christianity, not Liberal Christianity - which is merely secular Leftism with some Christian top-dressing.

The re-adoption of Christianity by the West would be a major step in the right direction - but it would essentially be a 'rewind'; hence the question arises: would it be enough to prevent secular Leftism returning, just as it did in the past? I don't think so.

The next step is the most controversial - because there is a choice between one or many churches of Actually Existing Christianity - which is the world of the existing denominations, each of which claims (more-or-less) exclusivity and New Christianity - which does not exist and never has existed even conceptually except among a few specific individuals.

Traditional Christianity versus Evolution of a New Christianity

The evolution of a New Christianity would probably evolve from one or more of the existing churches - but not be exactly the same as any of them currently are; nor would it be any kind of Liberalisation or assimilation to secular norms.

New Christianity would be (would need to be) a correction of those flaws in past Christianity which were exploited by secular Leftism - and would indeed be a restoration of a Christianity closer to the intention of Christ and more in-line with the nature and purposes of God.

That, I believe, is the destined way ahead - that is what Christianity was supposed to do way back around 1800 at the start of the Industrial Revolution and the first outburst of Romanticism - the kind envisaged by the likes of the poets Blake, Wordsworth and Coleridge.

So, with New Christianity I am talking about Romantic Christianity.

So the final destination of 2016 would need to be

Romantic Christianity 

Which comes at the end of a many branched path of choices - so the chances of us getting to that destination seem remote; and anything less will - I believe - fail to suffice.

Nonetheless, any steps along that path would be very welcome - and we are currently seeing the first step being taken by ever more people.

We therefore now have a real chance; albeit a slim chance.

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The Political Right is divided into Religious and Secular - the Religious Right believe that society should be organized primarily on religious grounds with other aspects coordinated to that end; the Secular Right believe that some-other-grounds should be primary (economics, patriarchy, nation, race, efficiency - or whatever).

However, while everybody on the Religious Right is religious; some of the people on the Secular Right are also religious! And often the Secular Right supports religion.

But the Secular Right does not put religion as the highest priority - rather they aim primarily for a certain kind of secular order which yet leaves space for religion (I suppose the US Founding Fathers would be of this type).

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If you are on the Right and are also religious, how do you know which you are - where your primary allegiance lies?

One quick way is to evaluate yourself is reflecting on the two 'hot button' issues of the day for the Right: marriage and immigration.

If your main priority is to protect and support marriage (and the family), then your are on the Religious Right; however, if your priority is immigration control, your are on the Secular Right - even if you are religious.

*

For the religious Right, marriage - and by extension the sexual revolution in its many facets - is the primary battleground; for the non-religious, it is immigration and by extension the economy, and in general 'capability'.

*

I am assuming that any sane person recognizes without need for explanation that open borders mass immigration is socio-culturally lethal - but if you are still not sure where your first loyalties lie, suppose that you could choose between strong and decisive legislation in one year's time to support marriage (and families, and to roll-back the sexual revolution) with immigration control being delayed - or the opposite.

The answer may tell you whether your priorities for society are primarily religious, or primarily secular.

*

The reason this test is enlightening is that the answer depends on your diagnosis of the cause of the problem.

For the Religious Right the problem is 'spiritual warfare': that our society systematically violates common sense, natural law, and the religious perspective of life - and the main assault has therefore been by using sexual 'liberation' to batter-down and invert all other spontaneous and sanctioned forms of sexuality: it is an assault on our core system of evaluation and a violation of the heart. The consequence is endemic insanity - a populace so confused and so demotivated that they are destroying themselves both neglectfully and wilfully. 

But for the Secular Right, the problem is much less existential - much more superficial, simple and straightforward: the problem is wrong policies, introduced by self-interested, power hungry people. Fix the policies and you fix the problems.

So, there is a profound difference between Religious and Secular Right - one believes we are caught up by War in Heaven - the other that it is a matter of Wars between Men; one that the problem is of the soul - the other that it is a problem of incentives.

*


Note Added: It might be said about uncontrolled mass immigration that "at least" if we sorted-out that problem, then...

But from a Religious Right perspective we are a psychotic society, and that is why people cannot perceive the obvious lethality of OBMI - thus, we are a society so profoundly damaged in our basic understandings and evaluations that we could not possibly implement any major reform so that it produced net benefit: we would be certain to make matters worse.

How could such evil-intending lunatics as we are now, do anything beneficial without simultaneously wrecking a lot more stuff than we fix?

First begin to cure the madness, only then will good policy have any chance.

*

*
Find a religion - or if you are already Christian, then a denomination of Christianity - which warms your heart more, the more you discover about it; which focuses on what you consider most important; which (to put it bluntly) 'offers' that which you most deeply need.

And then see if it is true.

If it is true (using the standards of truth you sincerely believe are appropriate to evaluating a religion), then you are home-and-dry; but if it is untrue - then keep looking.

*

This is not so ridiculous a suggestion as it may seem! Because it is very striking that how little most religions offer as a reward. 

For example, you might imagine that liberal Christianity offers a lot - since liberal Christians have abandoned all the demanding and tough aspects of being a Christian - but it doesn't work like that at all!

With liberal Christianity you don't have to worry about Hell, but then liberals don't believe in Heaven either (if pressed, they will say that Heaven is an attitude of mind we may hope to experience on this earth, during mortal life). Liberal Christians pretty much  accept secular Leftist morality on the sexual revolution - so the church approves sex outside marriage and with a wide range of choices; but then sex has no religious meaning, no transcendental stability, no magic about it at all! Sex has gone from being sacred to being a diversion.

My point is that it might have been expected that liberal Christianity would offer its adherents everything they wanted, all at once; but it doesn't and indeed no religion does. From a perspective of fulfilling our wishes, all religions apparently give with one hand and take away with the other - you never gain license without losing power. You never destroy restriction without losing direction.

*

I am not (NOT NOT) saying that all religions are the same and therefore a matter of indifference! But I am saying that there is a kind of basic honesty about religions, by which they seem to end-up offering only what they can give.

Liberal Christianity can alleviate worry about what might happen after death, but only by making death an extinction. Buddhism can alleviate the pain of attachment to this world, but only at the cost of making each reincarnated life a matter of indifference, merely a means to an end - and the end is annihilation.

And 'Heaven' - what is it? Some say a sensuous paradise, some say a bliss of absorption into timeless divinity, some say we retain our sexuality and live with our families, some say we lose our sexuality and are absorbed in worship...

*

The thought experiment is one putting aside doubts for a moment, and of saying: I can have what I want: here it is. Now what?

Why should this work, as I think it does? The reason is 'metaphysics'. Each religion is, in part, a metaphysical system- a description of ultimate reality; and metaphysical systems have an innate desire to be simple, comprehensible, and coherent. 

So whatever principle a religion places at the centre and as the focus of its metaphysical system will- in order to be believable - affect all other aspects of that metaphysical system: the principle will organise the metaphysics around-itself. 

Therefore, whatever a religion regards as most important will necessarily take what it needs from the rest of the religion; so, no religion offers everything, because to offer everything would be in fact to offer nothing (nothing except a string of utterly unconvincing claims).

For a religion to work, it needs a metaphysical system; and for a metaphysical to work it must be simple, comprehensible and coherent- and this happens automatically (no matter how much religious professionals try to stop it) ; and that metaphysical system can only convincingly offer one that at the cost of another thing: that is 'life' (as we call it).

*

It will, I think, be found that for most religions we would not want what they had to offer even on the assumption that they really do offer everything they claim.

But we may be fortunate to find a religion or a denomination that offers just exactly that thing which we most profoundly desire of existence; only better expressed than ever we could have done for ourselves.

Keep looking: what you want is probably there, somewhere.

(I am pretty confident I know roughly where that will turn-out to be; but you need to find it for yourself. )

*

First thing is that such a person needs to be prepared to work at finding an answer. modern people are often extremely lazy and distractible - and this is encouraged by our culture. If you are expecting a snappy answer, or a stepwise recipe - Forget It.

You have to be prepared to work at discovering the truth of Christianity At Least as hard as you have worked at your views on politics - which you have probably been discussing and reading-about daily for many years.

Religion is more fundamental than politics - and if you aren't prepared to work at it, then you are self-excluded from the truth; and you will have to accept passively being fed lies and distortions by the mass media and state bureaucracies.


OK - if you are prepared to grant the subject some sustained attention and thought; and you want to find-out about Christianity/ Jesus - then the first question to ask is about authority. What source would you believe on this subject?

As you are not a Christian and unsure about Jesus; there is no point in advising you to consult the Bible, since you have no reason to assume that any of it is true.

Likewise, it is useless to advise consulting a church, because in the first place why should churches be authoritative for a non-Christian? And in the second place (without begging the question) which church? (Especially as many or most self-described Christian churches are primarily leftist political organisations.)

Equally, there is no point in referring you to tradition, because you have already rejected the authority of tradition. Or theology or philosophy, because you won't believe it else you would not be where you are.

There is no point even in saying you should 'use common sense' - or base belief on 'your own personal experience', and start with that - because mainstream modern society operates in opposition-to and denial-of common sense and personal experience.

In sum - there are no short-cuts - the only viable way is the long way around and through. 


If not, then what?

If you are an ordinary, typical modern person; then the only conceivable place you can start is from  whatever is your own personal intuitive bottom line; whatever is solid and self-validating for you; whatever you personally and actually rely-on and build-on.

What is it that really matters most to you and would matter most even if you were alone on a desert island and could not communicate with anyone; what is it that you are prepared to believe, trust, have-faith-in and know in your secret heart to be true and good - even in contradiction of everybody, every organisation and nation?

This is your discernment, your inner-compass, your personal guidance-system.

You need to know you have such a thing, and you need to be aware of it - to know when it is in-operation and what it is telling you.


You then need to approach the question of Jesus/ Christianity using this personal guidance system to navigate, evaluate and choose-from the many, varied, contradicting sources of information.

It will take considerable time and effort, and only you can do it, and you must choose to do it; but this effort of inner discernment will work, and it will answer your questions.

The process will answer your questions to your own satisfaction (which is what matters) because it does not depend upon any external source of authority. It depends instead on what you already regard as the ultimate source of authority.

If religion means for you the idea of a real constructive change of life - rather than (just) a new set of beliefs in the context of exactly the same general way of relating to the world; then you probably need to fix your metaphysics.

Your metaphysics is, in this sense, your deepest and most fundamental set of assumptions about how reality is organized.

Getting this right does not, in and of itself, change you experience of being alive. But it is often the first and necessary step towards making that possible. And, for sure, some assumptions will pretty much sabotage any prospect of a significant and sustained enhancement of your life.

Fixing metaphysics has two aspects:


1. Negative
2. Positive


Negative - means to break bad habits, compulsions or unwarranted/ unnecessary convictions. Such beliefs include the assumption of insignificance - that that nothing really means anything. That all good things are subjective only. That all experiences - no matter how wonderful they feel - are ephemeral only- and will be terminated utterly by death.

That what you thin you know is rendered unreliable by the intrinsic inaccuracies of the senses, by the possibility of illusions, by the tendency towards delusions and wishful thinking.

That we will never know for sure that the whole world and all the people and things in it, and the sense we make of it - isn't just a kind of dream or nightmare.


Positive - means the possibility of building your life around assumptions of significance, meaning, purpose. These would probably include assumptions that you personally, and what you do or don't do, matter in the large scheme of things.

That life has a purpose, and that this purpose includes a role for you specifically. That things (significant in themselves) also add-up to something even greater.

And that you have the possibility of real and valid communication with other people, and things.


The thing we must recognize about metaphysics, is that the metaphysical framework is neither validated nor contradicted by experience. That modern metaphysical assumptions are not the consequence of knowledge, or science, or logic. That traditional or religious metaphysics have never been refuted nor disproved.
We can choose to change are metaphysics, and (by repetition and self-monitoring) work to make the new metaphysics a spontaneous habit.

Is metaphysics then all just a matter of arbitrary opinion?  Well, it can be  but it need not be.

1. We can examine our metaphysical assumptions to see whether they are internally consistent and coherent.

2. We can trace the provenance, i.e. the origin, of the metaphysics we currently hold-to and see whether we regard that source as good, reliable, trustworthy (for example, if the metaphysics comes from people whose motives or character we regard as bad, then there is a good reason not to accept their metaphysics).

3. We can explore and compare the consequences of different metaphysical systems and evaluate which we think is the most Good: that is, the most true, beautiful and virtuous.

In other words, we can approach metaphysics with the conviction that some systems are better than others, and deploy our deepest and most fundamental mode of evaluation to compare systems and choose that which is best; and choose to try and live by it.

There are no plans to remove the regulations on 'social-distancing' - the laws by which every person must (with a handful of exemptions) treat every other person as if ritually unclean.

And there is little apparent desire from people that this should change. People are self-policing at all times, including in private and outdoors.

I went on a walk in Northumberland during which I saw just six people in two hours - two of them were coming along the path towards us; and they laboriously stopped and stepped-back a couple of yards to let us pass without breaching regulations.

This was in the middle of a forest, in the middle of nowhere, with nobody else around; and the attitude of the interaction was clearly one of being polite and considerate - as if this was the proper way for human beings to interact, and as if anything else would be rude, aggressive and reckless.

You see how a Godless people are helpless putty in the claws of evil? They have (we British have) long-since embraced evil in our hearts; by our solid belief in the meaninglessness and purposelessness of life - and consequently the mass of people experience very little friction when asked to treat themselves and each other as plague rats.

As Steiner correctly said a century ago; atheism is a disease, a sickness, a disability (albeit chosen, self-inflicted) - and it is no stretch at all for a society of atheists to live by their belief that sickness is primary and disease is universal.

The lesson? There is no resistance to evil when evil is regarded as good.

If we are (personally, socially) to escape the universal self-damnation of actively preferring this demon-administered totalitarian world; awakening must come first. There can be no positive change without motivation and courage for the Good.

As I have been saying for a decade - atheism is not viable, atheism is despair and death; religion is essential, non-optional.

The primary task for everyone who has not already done it, is to

Choose Your Religion.

Note - I would add that CYR is only a beginning; and having chosen, one must strive (daily, hourly) to put it first. The birdemic crisis has revealed that merely-self-identified religion (such as that of Bishops) is merely-atheism - indistinguishable in practice and under stress. 

This is a question asked at:

http://foseti.wordpress.com/2013/10/26/topics-of-interest

To which there is a short and very simple answer: 

The 'neo-' in neoreaction signifies 'not-'. 

*

If there ever was any serious doubt; every passing month shows more and more clearly that the neoreactionary, secular-right, alt-right, dark enlightenment movement are just a type of Leftism.

You can actually track the corruption of neoreaction, happening before your very eyes; in the going-down-the-tubes attitudes, style, focus and behaviour of individual bloggers. 

(If it looks like Leftism, talks like Leftism, and in general behaves like Leftism - that it is Leftism - not least because the rare Western non-Leftists stand-out from modernity like a beacon, or a sore-thumb.) 

*

Neoreactionaries dislike many aspects of mainstream Leftism, but not so much as they dislike religion.

Proof?

That the only real-life reactionary societies have been and are religious - and if reactionaries were serious about being reactionary they would simply choose their religion.

*

Instead they prefer the cut-and-thrust, snark-and-sarcasm of (characteristically Leftist) speculation on how, somehow, it might be possible to construct a sustainable non-religious reactionary society of a kind that never was seen (but which includes all they stuff they like best, and not the stuff they hate: no need for hard choices here!).

*

But why are neoreactionaries they so hostile to religion?

There are many possible reasons for being personally non-religious, as I know from recent personal experience (especially a reluctance to abandon your preferred freedoms derived from the Leftist sexual revolution); but the answer (if you cannot yet be religious) is to become a religious seeker.

It is hard to rationalise or even excuse anti-religiousness in anyone who wants their self-defined 'reaction' to be serious, or to be taken-seriously.

However, whichever anti-religious reason applies in each particular instance, the conclusion remains the same: neoreactionaries are more serious about their anti-religion than about their pro-reaction - hence the 'neo-'.

See also: http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/neoreactionaries-versus-religious.html  


**

But what about the cadre of supposedly-religious neoreactionaries? What indeed... What do they hope to get from this unequal alliance? Could be they are simply mistaken in their assumption of a possible synergy between tough-minded- this-worldly hedonism on the one hand; and religion on the other. Or it could be they are led astray by the daily excitements and distractions, the status fun and games, the guilty pleasures of swearing and salaciousness - and the opportunities and inducements to hatred and hard-line-ism 'in a good cause'?

*

What is the point in compiling, detailing and trying specifically to combat the never ending, ever-worsening examples of the sheer, delusional insanity of political correctness?

Surely, after what you must know of, from personal experience and via trusted sources, about (say) three of these witch-hunts; then you must know they are a not-going-away reality?

And surely, people must have reached that point... what, ten, twenty years ago? 

In 2010 when I was writing my first book on political correctness - Thought Prison (2011) - I refrained from providing examples of PC madness (although I knew, from direct personal 'insider' experience, of several) because it was long-since time to move-on...

We now know (don't we?) that political correctness, Social Justice Warriors, the the New Left or Cultural Left (whatever you want to call it) is not a temporary blip, it is not a pendulum swing to be corrected soon, it is not going away!

Unless and when it will go away, because of a massive cultural transformation; and this massive cultural transformation must be religious.

The transformation need not (perhaps probably, on present trends, will not) be Christian; but it will absolutely certainly 100% NOT be secular, nationalist, common-sensical, materialist-economic, or from a desire to preserve Culture.

We know (don't we, surely?) that none of these are powerful enough (here and now) to achieve the transformation needed.

And the transformation must be a transformation - sensible tweaks and adjustments will only make matters worse, because any temporary benefits in efficiency or productivity will surely go to those in-power (the Global Establishment and their puppets); and they will use the resources to fuel yet more, and more-rapid, PC. 

We also ought to know that a collapse of The System will not, of itself, be enough to end the totalitarian tyranny...  Although it may render The West open to more rapid and complete religious colonisation from elsewhere (if any such is viable).

Unless the hearts and minds of people change, the End Times will become obvious to those with eyes to see; and will proceed irreversibly to the end of all things on a timetable we do not and cannot know.

Currently, that seems by far the most likely scenario - but the only hope of its being delayed is if people stop being fixated upon the daily incidents of mass politics, disengage from fake participation in media events; and focus on the deep, religious causes and cures of our situation.

Because our real situation is religious, not political; spiritual not material; about damnation not suffering. 

My mantra remains what it was in 2011: Choose your religion: because TINA (There Is No Alternative).

The idea that we "ought" to do something was once largely unconscious - it was obvious what we ought to do, and to question it was incoherent.

But part of modernity is that we become conscious of such things, and all imperatives are met with a question of "why should?". 

Of course mainstream-mandatory atheistic materialism fundamentally excludes all possibility of an answer to the question of why ought we to think, say or do some-thing - because there is no purpose or meaning to reality, because reality is a combination of mechanical causality and randomness. 

But the ideology survives and thrives exactly because the "why should?" also dissolves the old imperatives of religion. Or, at least, it reduces them to the same level as the sound-bite emotives, and arbitrary but coercively-imposed assertions, of mainstream totalitarian propaganda. 

("Yes, I hear your detailed descriptions of God and his plans and what He wants us to do; but why should I want all that stuff? In fact I don't want it - but something else instead") 

Religion may describe the structure of a universe, or describe the underlying nature of God and Man and divine plans - yet, at the end of the day, "why should?" still stands. Because, even if one accepts that every-thing is made by God for some divine purpose, and even if human deviation from this destiny carries unpleasant or miserable consequences for us and/or other-people - such arguments are mere expediency, and does not address the question of "should" any more deeply than in our worldly mundane life. 

I mean that if rejecting God, or violating divine law, carries a horrible punishment - then this is not qualitatively different in terms of values from the totalitarian rationale of Do This, Or Else. 

If religious obedience is ultimately enforced by carrots and sticks calibrated against gaining putative pleasures and avoiding pain; this hardly amount to a superior system of values. It amounts to "God Says This, Or Else" - competing with "the government/ the police/ my employers says This Different Thing, Or Else. 

Both are threats. One may be a worse threat, or a greater bribe than the other; one is here-and-now while the other is asserted to be eternal - but at root they are just competing expediencies. Who is to say that choosing one is morally better than choosing the other, if the choice is a calculus of predicted relative pleasure? 

Is there any escape from the "utilitarianism" of an individual seeking happiness (of some kind, in some way)?

Why is it ultimately better to to take the side of God, rather than to oppose God? 

Is there any way of framing this question such that we are not merely kicking the can a bit further down the road? 

We have reached the point where the question of what we should do has been stripped of all unconsciousness and unquestioned habit -- and we are faced by a stark existential choice between basing our affiliation on personal expediency; or else choosing on the basis of our own value system. 

In other words; we either choose on the basis of what makes us happier (in the short- or longer-term according to preferences); or else we choose on the basis of what we think is right...

"Right" - while accepting that this choice is not something we can justify to others; and, because it is rooted in a personal preference, it is not some-thing we can say that others "ought" (objectively, universally) to do. 

(Others may be set-up differently, desire differently... have different preferences.) 

I am saying that our decision of what we ought to believe, think, do - has become a matter so deep and so personal, that the choice becomes a matter of ultimate personal responsibility; a choice rooted first in what we-are; and then in what we desire to-be.

Even the business of how we make this choice has become personal. Some people (most people) apparently prefer to hand-over this choice to somebody else - whether society, the media, a church, a party, some implicit or explicit "authority" - or whatever. 

It seems wrong To Me that somebody should eschew personal responsibility for ultimate choice of fundamental affiliation; it seems better that we be aware rather than unconscious of our fundamental choices; it seems better too that the choices be made clear and simple and easily comprehended by me, rather than complex and in-obscurity -- but of course all such "wrongs" and "betters" are again definitions that depend on ought!

In the end; the only coherent way I can think about "ought" is that it depends on choices; and For Me the fundamental choice is whether to take the side of God, or Not. 

But even that choice depends on multiple other and linked choices to set-up that choice - regarding the nature of God, my relation to God... and so-on and so-forth. 

Taking sides is where the buck stops - but it is individuals who, one way or another, make the choices by which sides are taken, and indeed what are the sides that we might choose to take. 

Ultimately ought reduces to something like Thus I Choose - and I also choose (like it or not) to take the consequences of my choice, whatever they may turn-out to be. 

It is a major error to conflate the future of Western Civilization (or of the world population as a whole) with Christian and spiritual matters.

This is a mistake. 

Of course; the material and physical realm always has spiritual implications, because it is ultimately spiritual in nature. But the directionality of that relationship is that the material is a sub-set of the spiritual, and the spiritual encompasses and interprets the material. 

So the material neither defines its own spiritual consequences, nor does the material drive the spiritual - unless we spiritually choose to make-it-so.

 

This means that we cannot track the spiritual condition of the world by monitoring its material manifestations - at least, not unless we have chosen to make the material primary. 

For instance (and this is a very important example):  

If we choose to make the material churches the primary factor in Christianity; then the material chuirch will indeed define the spiritual nature of Christianity.

What happens to Civilization; e.g. whether The System becomes Sorathic and motivated towards its own self-destruction and the destruction of everything else; or whether some nations step-back from this, to seek either a functional and Ahrimanic totalitarian system, or perhaps try (maybe succeed) to revert to a more "medieval" kind of theocracy with religion as primary... All this kind of thing is not spiritually primary. 

Such changes will very probably affect whether we (and many others) will live or die sooner or later. And will affect whether our lives our comfortable and perhaps interesting, or miserable and tedious...

But ultimately suffering and death are inevitable facts of this mortal life and world - so that all such distinctions (while important) are quantitative and temporary.

Nor is the main question about optimism or pessimism (red-, blue, white- or black-"pill", in the current idiotic jargon) - whether "things" are-getting, or are expected to get, better or worse on average, or overall... 

Christianity is primarily about the spiritual and salvation - thefeore not about some person's current emotional responses.

 

Christianity is about resurrected Heavenly life; and that is a matter of personal motivation: about what we want, and how much we want it.

The nature of the Civilization or System, whether it survives, is repaired, or destroyed - is dissociated from the values of individual persons - unless we each choose to make it the opposite. 

As of 2024; the powers of evil overall and substantially control much of the material world. A major aspect of demonic temptation to induce a willed embrace of damnation, is therefore to induce people to tie their salvation to material things (including churches).

 

Yet the reality is that - at the extreme - the entirety of world civilization might collapse and Men suffer and die in their billions - yet (in principle) all souls might be saved. 

Or, at the opposite; the world might experience an unprecedented reduction in human suffering, an increase in human happiness, diminished disease and the extension of human life - and yet all the dying souls from this "Earthly Paradise" might (in principle) choose to reject salvation. 

First Things need to be put First - therefore be-ware and do not fall into carefully prepared soul-traps; spiritual snares built and maintained by demons.  

Because they can - is the short answer.


That modern Western women are often attention junkies seems clear by their chosen behaviour - their clothes, hair, self-mutilations - the whole way they 'present themselves'... which shows that they strive to get attention; especially from men.

And this attention is sexual.


The 'attention' sought is mostly short-term, causal, superficial... the admiring glance, the second glance, the mild flirtation. Harmless, just fun, one might suppose? This is the affirmation of individuality in the mass context of the anonymous city. Attention is tangible evidence that you 'stand out' from the crowd, are an individual, are desirable to 'men'.

And when women seek more attention, they usually succeed - which is why the process is addictive.


Modern Western women mostly succeed in getting sexual attention because - so long as they are healthy - it is easy when they are young. This for straightforward biological and reproductive reasons: young and healthy-looking women are all desirable, all attention-grabbing. Some more than others, of course - but all young healthy women will attract attention.

So most women start with a baseline of un-earned attention simply by virtue of what they are when young: to men they are potential mates to be evaluated, to other women they are potential rivals. Thus the appraising glance, the second look, the atmosphere of flirtation.

And if young women want it they can get more, simply by sending out cues of 'sexual availability' which men are hard-wired to respond to - hence the use of revealing clothing, or signals such as tattoos and piercings, and the bold glance and confident self-presentation -  which are interpreted by men as signals indicating a higher probability of low cost, no strings sex.

(Sluts always get attention; and a lot of modern women have noticed and taken this lesson to heart; and apply it to varying degrees.)


Of course, women may not be doing this consciously, they may deny that this is their intention, and they may be honest in this denial; but this is the reason for the extra attention.

And when more and more women are doing this, it creates an escalation of signalling, an 'arms race' among young women - to be 'the one' who grabs and holds most attention in a crowd. Anyone who opts out of the arms race becomes almost invisible in the crowds of modern life.

(In early human life, in small groups, every young healthy women was like a goddess due to sheer rarity value - she did not need to do anything at all: but simply be. Indeed it was her transcendent role to 'be'. As the poet Robert Graves put it: Man does, Woman is.)


So even young and beautiful women compete for attention nowadays, and because sexual advertisment is very effective at getting attention (attention from men, and also from other women who intuitively perceive a rival) then unless it is prevented by some internal restraint or external prohibition there is an innate tendency for women increasingly to sexualize their self-presentation - because if attention is the goal, then more sexualization works.


As women age into middle age - through their thirties - they progressively lose this unearned attention which is bestowed by evolution, and such women may start to complain they are 'being ignored'.

In reality, this 'being ignored' is merely a loss of biological privilege. (Welcome to the real world!) But in a secular and nihilistic world where community is broken down, and stable familes are increasingly rare; the loss of the daily thousand self-affirmations of casual attention is experienced as an existential crisis.

So middle aged women dye their hair to make it look younger - or maybe 'go blond', escalate the use of makeup, and start to dress more carefully to maximize their sexual assets.


And it works! They do indeed get more attention.

Perhaps for a while they get more attention because they accurately simulate the appearance of a younger women; but after a while they get more attention because they are giving-off signals of sexual availability - because the way men are 'wired' by evolution is that a middle aged (or elderly) women who is presented herself to enhance or simulate her sexuality, may be offering the chance of low cost, no strings sex.

Such signals are hard, perhaps impossible, to ignore - even when they are ignored or deplored. Hence the extra attention. For women; if you don't want to be ignored - and if that is your main objective, then the easiest and most effective actions is to make yourself look (more or less) like a slut - a woman of 'easy virtue' as they used to say.

(The woman need not deliver on what her appearance seems to promise - the advertisement of sexual availability may not be honest - but meanwhile she will get the attention she craves.)


In the end, women find themselves in an addictive cycle. In order to retain the unearned attention of their youth - or, as they may put it to themselves, in order not to 'be ignored'; from their thirties and continuing for longer and longer into the fifties, sixties, maybe even beyond - many modern women engage in escalating and un-discriminating levels of sexual signalling.


This is most obvious among single women and the divorced and those married women looking for affairs or new husband - but the addiction has infected even happily married women; who hate to 'be ignored' (as they perceive it) in the prevailing highly-sexualized social environment - and feel compelled to present themselves in a sexualized way.

This is experienced as 'empowering', revitalizing. It is socially admired. Instead of accepting their mature role as a 'mousy', ignored, middle aged housewife - faithfully devoted to family and community; middle aged women may suddenly dye their hair, or 'get a tattoo' - and experience a sudden increase in attention - especially from men - and all too often they misinterpret the real, underlying nature of and motivation for this attention. And other women will praise them (at least to their faces).


In the past, this arm race of sexual signalling was prevented by strong social norms - mostly enforced by the peer group of women - against even young women's behaviour. But especially middle aged women were sanctioned for presenting themselves in a sexualized way, or trying to simulate youth (the English expression for such behaviour was 'mutton dressed as lamb).

But typical modern women, and the mass media culture, do not enforce modesty and restraint. Instead our corrupt and morally-inverted society celebrates showing-off, attention-seeking: mere celebrity is celebrated.

To be unnoticed is to be despicable and despised

(I have heard middle aged women express real anger and resentment against those who do not join-in the attention arms race - who 'let themselves go' and accept the withdrawal of unearned privilege.)


This attention addiction is, I believe, the main basis of the ever-increasing sexualization of Western society over the past 50 years; and it was a natural and inevitable consequence of secularization and the removal of social norms that limited public sexual displays among women.

The process of societal sexualization has little or nothing to do with actual sex - the environment is highly sexualized, women are displaying, men are responding to these displays; marriages are delayed and broken, families are not had or abandoned under the pervasive pressure of 24/7 bombardment with sexual signals, of social life experienced as swimming through a sea of sexualization...

Meanwhile there is not much actual sex for most people most of the time - and never enough of it to build a life around (that being intrinsically impossible, a chimera) - and fewer and fewer children are born.

Western society spirals towards self-chosen extinction.


The sexuality of women is indeed a powerful social force - and any society which does not recognize that as a fact, and control this force, is doomed; as we are doomed.

At present each women is 'liberated' - i.e. allowed, encouraged, to manage this nuclear force of female sexuality entirely for herself. It is like giving a machine gun to a kid!

The problem is that the weapon of female sexuality will be used if it can be used without cost. Even with majority restraint, a minority can cause immense problems, and set-off an arms race.

Liberation is socially toxic: obviously so.

Female modesty just is a matter of general societal concern - and must in some way be externally regulated for the good of everyone.

There is no arguing with 'must' - but there are a wide range of possible means, some far preferable to others (some ways of controlling female sexuality are relatively benign, others are loathsome - the current Western secular attempts are both loathsome and ineffectual); and how best to regulate female sexuality is the proper topic.    


Note added: It is my conviction, presented many times elsewhere on this blog; that problems such as the one described above can only constructively be solved on the other side of a mass Christian revival. Any attempt to solve such problems in a secular context, starting from where we are now, will almost certainly do more harm than good overall - because (here, now) our motivations are corrupted, and this corruption will out in attempts to address structural social problems. 

The thing to bear in mind is that when there is a problem (such as modern sexuality in general) which is obvious, and which contravenes basic common sense and traditional wisdom - there must be very powerful forces maintaining that problem. 

This means that attempts at reform must overcome strong resistance, which means that reform must be powerfully motivated - ie. reform must tap-into strong, widespread and fundamental human emotions.

In the modern and secular context, such strong, widespread and powerful emotions are almost entirely negative and selfish - for example: pride, envy, resentment, hatred, Schadenfreude. This seems obvious among the secular right wingers who advocate 'reform' in the sexual arena - either their motivations are too weak for them to succeed, or else their motivations are bad. 

Only religion is capable of being both a sufficiently powerful and also good motivation as the basis for the tough work of reform. And of religions, only some few. 

So, as in most things here and now, the first choice is to choose your religion. (And the choice of adequate religions, known to be sufficiently powerful, is in fact very limited indeed - indeed for the West the choice is practically limited to two broad and obvious categories.)

And if you cannot choose a religion, then (no matter how severe the problem - and indeed the more severe, obvious and simple-to-solve is the problem) it is probably best to do nothing: because no matter how bad things are - they can always get worse. 

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Why should young women at the peak of their reproductive potential aim to get married and have children and care for them?

What are the answers of modern secular society?

That marriage and kids are a big risk - and this is perfectly correct: many things can go wrong, and some of these things are devastating.

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So, if you want to avoid the risk of being very unhappy, don't get married, don't have children - and if you do make such choices - then make sure (legally and psychologically) you can walk away from them quickly and easily and without being blamed: otherwise they are is too great a risk.

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Or if you must aim at marriage and children - then at any rate wait.

Our society says, implicitly, 'youth is for getting more education - not for marriage and children'.

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The secular, psychological, biological arguments for getting married and having children when a young adult are weak and unconvincing to modern individuals.

And rightly so - they are weak and unconvincing arguments.

If your life is defined by optimizing gratification (minimizing suffering, increasing enjoyment) then it makes no sense to have children.

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The only compelling reasons to choose to get married, have children and care for them when a young adult are transcendental/ supernatural/ religious reasons: the essence of human life must be conceptualized as other than (and more than) the psychological/ biological/ economic.

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Nowadays, the only groups who choose to have more than two children per woman on average, whose women marry and begin childbearing when young, who generally stick by these responsibilities, are devout adherents of orthodoxly supernaturalist religion: whether Jewish, Christian/ Mormon, or Islamic.

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Indeed it is either dishonest, incompetent or unfounded speculation to propound a materialist, secular, hedonic basis for having marriage and children as the basis of society.

Because if knowing and understanding the actual world is to have any effect on beliefs and aspirations - then it is crystal clear (as clear as it ever will be, as clear as it ever can be) that the rationality of mainstream modernity implies not getting married, not having children, and making the state of marriage and sustained childcare a matter of choice - a lifestyle option to be discarded (like a house, a car or an insurance policy) if or when they interfere with the main purpose in life - which is to avoid suffering and to increase gratification.

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In sum: there is no coherent positive reason to choose marriage and children as an organizing principle in life except on the basis of religion.

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[Note: This argument ought to have the force of a reductio ad absurdum against secularism - however, mainstream modernity instead prefers to embrace the absurd as the basis of human existence. Hence the nihilism of the West.]

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This year the ?premier living US Science fiction writer - Orson Scott Card  -  was subjected to a hostile (and lying) international campaign for expressing plain Christian teachings (Card is a Mormon - demonized for expressing standard Christian doctrine).

Now Duck Dynasty, apparently the highest-rated non-fiction cable TV show ever, has been ended because its main protagonist expressed traditional Christian ideas (despite that the show is about the fact that the participants are devout Christians).

(There are other examples of the same thing from the USA, UK and Western Europe - but these two are the most famous.)

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Two observations.

First, both OSC and Phil Robertson were treated as if the expressed views were 'their' views'; but they are simply expressing the official views of devout adherents of their religion.

Therefore it is the religion - Christianity - which is being persecuted; not the specific people.

This means that Christianity is not tolerated anymore. Christian persons or groups are not allowed to practice, defend or proselytize their religion. And this rule is only enforced against Christianity; but not enforced against other world religions.

It is therefore a fact that the USA, UK and Western Europe are now, not merely secular societies, but specifically anti-Christian societies.

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Secondly, although the plainly-stated, explicit, un-exaggerated 'officially validated' views of OSC and PR are in and of themselves offensive to the Politically Correct Thought Police - in actual fact the views attributed to OSC in the Mas media were vile lies and inventions.

This shows that the Leftists of the Mass Media are gratuitously evil - they lie without even the excuse of need, they revel in hatred and in generating hatred.

We are dealing here, in the phenomenon of current Political Correctness, with a very advanced form of evil - a point when the corruption of the individual people of the Mass Media has led them to abandon their rationale and wallow in their own ability to get away with their own wilful wickedness without regard for consequences.

The situation has, in other words, become very unstable and dangerous; since the behaviour of the Western ruling elites is getting ever-more destructive and less prudent.

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Our world has become dominated by Leftist politics to such an extent that nothing else matters.

No matter how much profit you make for your bosses, no matter how famous and well-liked you may be, if you are a Christian then you are a marked man and living under a sword of Damocles.

At any moment, almost anyone in the Mass Media can expose your Christian views if for any reason they wish to; and generate a wild hate campaign against you - fuelled by whatever lies they choose to make-up-and-tell.

And the population at large is by now so depraved by their media addiction that they cannot or will not take one minute to check whether the hateful lies of journalists and pressure group hacks are true: the masses want to believe hateful anti-Christian lies, and they make darned sure they are not going to be made to reject them by mere facts.

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So, unfortunately, the depiction of society in my book Thought Prison

http://thoughtprison-pc.blogspot.co.uk

proves to be accurate, and is continuing to unroll exactly as expected.

Let us hope and pray I will turn-out to be wrong about what happens next.

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