Bruce Charlton's Notions

Creative destruction was probably (in broad terms) the main mechanism of the industrial revolution; whereby a new and overall 'better' (more functional) industry displaced the previously existing form. 

Thus railways displaced canals, and roads displaced railways. Or TV displaced radio, then the internet and recording technologies displaced live TV. The later expands (grows) and (more-or-less) destroys the former. 

Creative Destruction might in principle, be a spontaneous phenomenon, but it can easily be shaped by lawmakers and the wealthy. 

For example, the canals and railways were built by private money -while the road network (for motor vehicles) was built by the state using tax money. Cars and lorries were thus subsidized in a way that railways were not. The internet likewise - although the manner of its creation and nature of its subsidy has been covert, and dishonestly presented.

The cancerous global bureaucratic takeover has been an example of Creative Destruction - by-far the largest ever. Bureaucracy grew and grew, and destroyed other forms of organization - such that only large institutions employing professional managers and administrators can thrive in the modern economy. Even small clubs, even families, are now subject to a growing-web of bureaucratic regulations.  

The thing is that Creative Destruction is not really 'creative' - the word creative is here merely a synonym for 'growth'. That which replaces is not necessarily better than that which is replaced, nor is it necessarily a product of creativity. 

The essence of the phenomenon is simply that the growth of one form displaces and thereby destroys another.

The sequence is that growth causes destruction. 

Growth comes first and destruction may follow. 

Because sometimes what went before does remain, but shrunken - most inland canals were commercially destroyed by railways in the UK; but railways were only shrunk by roads. Radio still remains in 2021, but with an importance greatly reduced now compared with 80 years ago. 

So the essence of Creative Destruction is in the sequence of growth 'causing' a tendency towards destruction. Growth +/- destruction.

But what we are seeing very clearly from early 2020 is a reversal of this causal sequence. 

Instead of growth ('creation') causing destruction, destruction comes first - and growth (creation') is asserted to come afterwards. 

This I term Destructive Creation because the idea is that destruction comes first, and creation of new forms may follow. 

However, what actually follows destruction is conjectural. There may be growth of some new form that replaces the old, or there may not be. 

An example of Destructive Creation is the self-styled sustainable energy economy. The generation of electricity by coal and gas is being destroyed by laws and taxes. Its replacement by windmills and other devices is conjectural, has not happened, and is indeed impossible. 

Personal cars powered by the internal combustion engine are being squeezed towards extinction by regulations and taxes; and urban road transport is being expensively crippled by 'bike lanes'. 

Vast resources in the current world are being devoted to destruction. But the replacements are conjectural, and may or may not happen. 

There will be (already has-been) a vast shrinkage of power generation - and therefore electric cars will not be possible for mass transport. Cars are being cleared to make way for bicycles etc; but the bicycles cannot functionally substitute for cars, so the net result will be reduced efficiency and effectiveness (then prohibition) of all activities that depend on mass usage of private cars. 

So, just as Creative Destruction actually amounts-to Growth first and for-sure... plus or minus destruction; so Destructive Creation really means Destruction first and for sure, then maybe (or maybe not) Growth to replace that which has already been destroyed... 

From 2020 we are seeing a decisive shift from Creative destruction to Destructive Creation, as announced by The Great Reset, Build-Back-better and Agenda 2030 of the UN. The new strategy is to to clear-the-ground of what is, allegedly to make-way for growth of what-is-to-become. 

But all that is certain is the destruction of what has-been and is. 

Thus the economy of the world has already been substantially destroyed on the excuse of the birdemic. Destruction is certain. 

But the assumption is that that which has been destroyed can and will be replaced by something, let alone something better, is wholly conjectural. 

Destruction is a fact; but the following Creation/ Growth is just a hope or a vague intention - or not even that... 

Another example is the cancel culture of antiracism. There has been (and continuing) a mass destruction of public arts, literature and media - a clearing of the ground of any-thing deemed to be 'racist' - which actually means anything of the past, of The West, by white men (or for any reason disapproved by Them - especially Christianity). 

The assertion/ assumption is that these creative works will be replaced by something as-good, or better. But this is conjectural - maybe it is not possible, maybe it never was genuinely intended; and meanwhile the only fact is destruction.  

The mentality of Destructive Creation is, indeed, a perfect mask for Sorathic evil: the 'purest' form of evil which is simply the spite-motivated destruction of all that is of God - divine creation, any-thing partaking of The Good.  

When, in 2020, the Global Establishment decisively shifted from the Creative Destruction of cancerous global bureaucracy; to using its new totalitarian powers to destroy; this was a symptom of Sorathic takeover. 

All talk of the Agenda 2030, Great Reset or Build-Back-Better - i.e. strategies that put destruction first, and assume future compensatory growth only conjecturally - is further evidence.

Here-and-now destruction is primary. 

That is the current nature of world leadership. Destruction of marriage, family, community, small business, village, and functional social institutions...

We also see destruction of the apparatus of world government; of the military, the police, and nations. Mass immigration and the mixing of heterogeneous populations is destructive by its nature - any advantages are purely theoretical, and almost certainly will not happen. 

Likewise the birdemic response, the peck, the antiracism agenda, the sexual revolution, the Climate Change agenda - all are massively destructive up-front and for certain. What comes after this wholesale and planetary destruction? Meh...  

The Global Establishment have-been and are investing colossal resources (many trillions of dollars) into destruction. That is their primary activity. 

Destruction is primary - and what happens afterwards... well 'They' do not know, neither do they care because whatever remains will merely, in its turn, become the subject of further destruction. 

Because to the Sorathic mind, destruction is self-justifying.  

One difficult lesson of these times is that institutions are finished - in the sense that they are irreversibly corrupted, no longer what they were (what they were, in some instances, even just a few decades ago); they no longer effectively (never mind efficiently) perform the core/ mission functions that are supposed to justify their existence - and indeed, have near zero interest in performing these functions. 

Overall-corruption is the case (to different degrees, but always to a significant extent) of all large institutions that are a part of the mainstream bureaucratic system - because in order to survive, they must satisfy a great raft of bureaucratic demands; and these bureaucratic demands are purposively evil - hence deliberately function-destroying (because evil is anti-creation, and pro-chaos). 

This is true of all large, powerful, wealthy, and high status institutions - and it is increasingly true even of many small institutions such as family businesses, farms, shops, clubs and churches. 

We saw from the birdemic (and globally antiracist, and protrans) year of 2020 how many of these small institutions willingly, indeed enthusiastically, supported and assimilated-to the globalist imperatives - going beyond minimum requirements, and maintaining requirements beyond the period of compulsion. 

What this means is that the corruption is irreversible, especially for the largest/ most-powerful etc. institutions, because it is very difficult indeed (and extremely rare) to turn-around any large institutions when it has been corrupted thoroughly for a prolonged period. 

And even less likely when this corruption is almost universal - so that forces from external corruption tend to sustain, and increase, inner corruption. 

And reversing of corruption is all-but impossible when there are extremely few individual persons who do not substantially share in the ideology of corruption - and when there are essentially zero individuals in positions of power who are not active in their desire for sustained and increased corruption.  

I regard the likeliest outcome as a general civilizational collapse (the giga-death scenario, triggered by one or many possible triggers - spiritual, biological and economic-political). 

But in the mean time, unless or until that collapse, the only realistic possibility of renewal at the institutional level is likely to be by creative destruction. 

Insofar as there is truth in the economic doctrines of 'free markets' and of improvement in efficiency by competition; economic growth seems to work very little by corporations improving themselves in order to better compete; and much more often by creative destruction - meaning de facto deletion of the old - less effective, less efficient institutions/ technologies/ industries/ firms - and replacement by new. 

(As when railways replaced canals, cars replaced horses, or the internet replaced print.)

So, when there is a seriously/ extremely/ long-term corrupt factory/ school/ hospital/ police force or whatever - this is unreformable. The inertia and corrupted motivations of established personnel and dysfunctional systems will oppose and overwhelm any gradual internal attempts at improvement. 

Therefore; the best way (and in practice perhaps the Only way) to improve the situation is by creative destruction: to abolish and renew. 

That is; the strategy should be for the uncorrupted to leave and (if possible) shut-down the corrupt institution altogether; and make a new and better institution - rebuilding from whatever is good, uncorrupted and properly-orientated personnel that remain. 

This applies to the corrupted major religions and specific churches, whenever they are large/ wealthy/ powerful, and are therefore integrated with the corrupting global bureaucracies. 

These churches are unreformable as-a-whole - and therefore need to be abandoned, and their Christian functionality rebuilt from what Pope Benedict XVI called a creative minority. 

In other words, there needs to be schism if the corruption of major churches is to be addressed effectively, and if their Christian mission is to be renewed. 

The real Christians need to leave the evil-corrupted majority; and rebuild new institutions. And this applies to all types and denominations of Christian: Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, Nonconformist, Mormon etc. - because all of these are converged to the Satanic totalitarian globalist agenda; and all are increasing in corruption: directed by top-down leadership and a majority of overall-leftist-assimilated (hence evil-affiliated) 'laity'. 

This creative destruction may or may not work - who knows the future? 

If it goes wrong, there will be an increase of destruction but without creation. It may indeed turn-out that All institutions are now inevitably corrupted to evil at this time and place in human history. 

In which case Christianity must revert (or rather, move forward, voluntarily) to a family-type and scale of organization.

But renewal by schism seems the only strategy with a realistic chance of achieving the goal of an institutional church that is net-Christian and affiliated with God, creation and Jesus Christ; rather than - as a present - net-anti-Christian/ pro-demonic. 

 

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The basic model for economic-growth-generating innovation is probably that of a genius generating a breakthrough causing 'creative destruction' - for example, when a new industry or technology all-but wipes-out an existing one.

This is what potentially may increase economic productivity (i.e. economic efficiency, how much necessary and useful stuff is produced per man-hour of work)

And when creative destruction does not happen, it may be that innovations tend to reduce overall efficiency: such as the internet.

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An example: education. Fifteen or twenty years ago I was reading many articles about how the internet would wipe out most residential universities and colleges; but there are more people in higher education than ever before.

And they are using the internet pretty much all the time - indeed, we now have the situation where students go and reside in the vicinity of a college yet most of students' 'teaching' comes from the internet, they spend most of their time using internet communications (including supposed teaching time time) and most of students' 'work' comes from the inernet.

If the internet has wiped-out anything in education, it is not residential schooling but education itself.

Thus, since the internet did not all-but wipe-out most residential higher education in a conflagration of creative destruction, instead it made higher education (even) worse.

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And that has been the general effect of the internet with respect to economic efficiency. The theoretical effect on improving efficiency has remained exactly that: theoretical - while any economic benefits have been overwhelmed by other factors. 

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It seems that there are very particular requirements for the kind of productivity-enhancing breakthrough that led to the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of modern societies based on growth and the expectation of growth.

The breakthroughs that enable the continuation of modernity must be big, frequent, relevant, and destructive to the status quo - if they are to overcome the powerful anti-efficiency trends which are also unleashed by modernity.

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My opinion is hardening that it is the mechanism of Creative Destruction, and not much else, which underlies the long terms economic growth of the past couple of hundred years (until the past couple of decades).

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/schumpeter-and-meaning-of-creative.html

And that Creative Destruction almost always depends upon specific human geniuses making qualitative breakthroughs.

(The breakthroughs ("creative") wipe-out the previous system ("destruction") - and that is how productivity increases.) 

And that, therefore, when there are not enough human geniuses working in the necessary areas, then economic growth stops and reverses (due to the intrinsic tendency for parasitic economic activity).

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For a few hundred years until the mid-twentieth century, there was an unprecedented concentration of geniuses in Europe and Britain (and their diaspora), generating an unprecedented frequency of breakthroughs in domains relevant to economic activity (production, trade and distribution of goods) - so that for a while economic growth outran the rapid and increasingly-rapid growth of parasitic activity (mostly in the form of bureaucracy) and standard of living per capita went up and up.

But that now the number of relevant geniuses has dwindled, the frequency of relevant breakthroughs has slowed to almost nothing; but the growth in economically parasitic activity has continued unabated indeed ideologically encouraged; thus there will be a crash, a collapse, a massive readjustment; and a return to (necessarily smaller scale, more-autonomous, less-developed, less-populous) zero growth agrarian societies.

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I don't think anything can be done to stop this happening - although it could be delayed rather than (as at present) accelerated.

Much could be done to help - mostly of a negative kind. For example ceasing actively to subvert and destroy the family and civil society (all institutional arrangements between the family and the state).

But the main decision to be made is to decide what kind of zero growth agrarian society we hope will emerge from collapse.

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The post-collapse society will be religious, because all such societies are religious, and there are two contenders able and willing to do the job.

That is a stark and simple choice, a forced-choice+; and it will be made by each individual - willy nilly, like it or not, no opt-outs.

(Forget that weird and unnatural historical mutant atheism; forget other religions; forget new religions: two contenders only. The relevance of the other options will be in choosing alliances; that is, which of the two main contenders they support.)

Then come the implications of that choice.

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+ The forced choice, if there is indeed any choice, is not about belief and certainly not about devout belief; but about which type of religious rulership to strive for, to live-in. 

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Joseph Schumpeter - 1883-1950 - was a political scientist and (whisper it not) economist, who coined the phrase Creative Destruction.

This seems a useful idea to me - what I get from it (not necessarily what Schumpeter meant) is that institutions are not reformed, they are replaced.

Of course institutions change - but who knows whether this is improvement or degeneration? How can one balance the advantages and the disadvantages, over the short versus long term - how can these be quantified and mathematically summed?

But sometimes institutions are replaced - the horse and cart was replaced by the motor car, the player piano was replaced by the gramophone, and so on.

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This came to mind in relation to medicine and doctors - the 'doctor' is a relatively recent, late 1800s, idea - i.e. the idea that there was a unified medical profession sharing a common education and qualification process.

Before doctors (in Britain) there were high status physicians (gentlemen with university degrees) who did not touch the patients (maybe felt the pulse) - sometimes did not even see the patient - and who wrote prescriptions. They were classically educated, learned, wrote papers and books, mixed in the highest circles... But there were not many of them outside of the capital cities and their major satellites.

Apothecaries who were middle class, apprenticed, and made up prescriptions and sometimes treated patients on the basis of speaking with them and visiting them (but not examining them).

Druggists who were upper working class retailers and medicine wholesalers (these were the forerunners of modern pharmacists).

Surgeons who also treated the skin (including dermatology and venereal disease), and who were middle class apprenticed craftsmen. (skilled manual laborers).

And a multitude of gentry (including priests) who treated the lower orders, and midwives (working class, semi-skilled - not formally apprenticed), and healers, cunning men, wise women and so on.

From the late 1700s there were a few high status 'man midwives' the first of which was William Hunter (from Glasgow) who had a degree, and became *enormously* wealthy delivering the babies of the upper classes (I seem to recall his fee was 100 guineas - 1.05 Pounds Sterling - per 'confinement'; at a time when the average wage was much less than a guinea a week).  This began to bring Obstetrics into medicine.

Physicians, surgeons, man midwives and apothecaries were unified as doctors in the medical profession as it evolved (changed) in the late 19th century.

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But medicine is now, again, falling apart - due to sheer size, as much as anything. There is a continual reduction in the skill, status, average pay, and so on.

The mess that is medical education is not reformable - although it does undergo continual change.

At some point, therefore, we will see 'Creative Destruction' and doctors will be replaced. Not the whole set of functions now done by doctors, but some of them, will in future be done by some other kind of profession or job - and that aspect of being a doctor will wither away to an insignificant level.

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Same with universities and colleges - higher education. The situation is so big as to be unreformable - at some point they (or some big section of their activity) will be replaced.

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One point I take from Schumpeter is that we waste too much time on schemes of reform - do they ever work, I wonder?

We would be better thinking how to start something new and different, with which to replace what is not working.

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There is a problem with creative people and the churches, because:

1. Creative people have a built-in tendency to change things - and some things in the church should not be changed.

2. Creative people typically have a personality type of the (moderately) high-Psychoticism type which is a shopping-list of mostly undesirable traits

http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/eysencks-personality-trait-of.html

For example, creative people are often not conscientious, which means that cannot force themselves to perform duties reliably, regularly, over a long period. They may lack empathy and be rather unconcerned by the opinions of other people. They may be impulsive, prone to tantrums and sulks.

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In sum, creative people are more than usually 'selfish' and usually not 'joiners' and find church membership to be more onerous, more irritating, more boring than do most people - exactly because they do not much feels the rewards of service, community, groupishness...

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Now, all of these can be moderated and tamed - by personal effort and by a structured environment - but only in degree.

The fact is that people high in Psychoticism - and thus creative people - are generally troublesome and generally not very useful to the running of the church. They tend indeed to be somewhat parasitic on the hard and dutiful work of others.

Since creativity is rare - it may seem that churches are better off without creative people since although there are not many of them, their potential for causing trouble is considerable.

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BUT.

The church absolutely needs creative people - at least it needs them over the long term - even though there are many examples of churches being damaged by the activities of creative people (such as theologians) the fact is that the complexity of the world over the long term means that there will always be unforeseen problems which the church must solve, and which can only be solved by creativity - which means by creative people.

Uncreative churches (and this is a problem of all churches without enough men, where women dominate, that are anti-men, where men lack scope - because most creatives are men, because Psychoticism is higher in men) will over the medium-long term decline and become absorbed into other institutions or become extinct, as a matter of certainty.

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Therefore, the church needs to retain creative people over the long haul (as it were 'on a retainer' - for when they are needed) - needs to keep creative people sufficiently within the church that they will consent to and indeed be motivated to work for the church in the way that (only) creatives can.

I mean deeply motivated - in the special way of creative people - which may mean an obsessive rumination on a problem, a process lasting years, even decades.

This degree of motivation cannot be imposed but must come from within - and it means that creatives must be inspired to work for the benefit of the church. They must be loyal - or, despite their many, frequent, minor disloyalties - their basic affiliation to the church must be maintained.

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This means that a wise church leader will often need to defend creative church members from expulsion, and from other sanctions which would tend to exclude creatives. And this means some degree of 'special treatment' which can be hard to justify - at least superficially.

But on a deeper analysis, it is not hard to justify, because there is a general principle which means that an individual should be treated as an individual - and a person who has a different make-up, nature, character, personality ought to be differently treated from the mass of people from whom he differs.

Yet, again this is hazardous - as 'special treatment' may be interpreted as a license for bad behaviour, which would itself lead creatives out of the church, or else give them the attitude that it is up to the church to accommodate whatever they happen to want.

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Furthermore, there is the matter of heresy.

Creatives will always be heretics - no matter how much they may try (and often they won't try!) to be orthodox, their heresy will show itself to the genuinely orthodox - indeed heresy is usually very obvious, which is why there is typically an inappropriate and self-destructive over-reaction against heresy.

(This has been the bane of Christianity since its foundation - overall, the reaction against heresy has done far more harm than heresy itself.)

A heretic disbelieves in whole or part the teachings of the church, or urges a significantly a different emphasis than the church, or adds to the church something distinctive... that kind of thing.

All creatives are heretics - yet there should be efforts to keep them in the church so long as they are not apostate.

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Apostates have turned against the church.

And no church can tolerate apostates - because they are a fifth column, eroding the church from within - a parasite, a cancer, a traitor.

(Of course, apostasy is usually covert and disguised - even disguised from the apostate - so must be a matter of judgment.)

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In other words, a long-term-viable church must (to some significant extent) tolerate heresy among its creatives  - otherwise it will not retain its creatives, then will have no creatives, and the church will die as a result.

And the church must not tolerate apostasy.

(Apostate creatives are indeed especially harmful - if their apostatsy becomes the focus of their creativity, they may tirelessly work at it for decades, focused implicitly on the destruction of the church, and the aiding of those who would destroy it.). 

Yet apostasy is not objectively observable in the way that heresy is; apostasy is a matter of motivation, hence inner. Man cannot know for sure another man's motivation - yet any viable church must make this judgment, and must act upon it.

So the justly-expelled apostate creative can, and often does, create trouble for the church - because there is no objective evidence of his apsotasy, and he will usually deny and conceal his real and destructive motivation (perhaps conceal them even from himself) - and may present himself as arbitrarily victimized or scapegoated for some other behaviour.

Yet despite all this, the church must not tolerate apostasy.

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A middle path is necessary - the church must not be subverted, but equally the church must retain and inspire creatives; orthodoxy cannot be imposed on all without excluding creatives, yet excessive license will leave apostates to flourish at the expense of the church

So, this is a tricky problem of the kind for which there is no general solution, but which may potentially be soluble by individual leaders of sufficient knowledge and wisdom and with personal authority - but not a problem that can be dealt with by committees, and certainly not by committee debate and committee-vote of the mass majority of conscientious and empathic people.

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Note: These reflections came from thinking about the relationship between the LDS church and Sterling McMurrin, as revaled for example in this interview:

PDF file: search the words sterling mcmurrin interview dialogue

McMurrin makes the distinction between heretic and apostate, and describes himself as a heretic but not apostate. That seems to be how he was regarded by the CJCLDS - since he was personally 'managed' by several Presidents of the church, and retained within its community as a loyal advocate - despite his many and large heresies. 

The particular interest of the McMurrin story is that the LDS is the most conscientiousness-requiring of all denominations in terms of the calls for missionary, administrative and labouring service made upon its active members; combined with a generally high level of economic-social functioning in 'jobs'; combined with typically large families in which men are enjoined to play an active role.

Combining all these heavy duties creates a stereotypical pattern of hyper-busy and hyper-organized behaviour among the most devout Mormons, which strikes a person of moderately high Psychoticism (such as myself) as nearly-intolerable at best and outright impossible at worst!

Yet, probably due to his Mormon family background, McMurrin was kept on the inside of the LDS and loyal; and a brilliant and very valuable book of Mormon theology was one result. But it took top-level interventions from several Prophets to achieve this.

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There is a neglected sense in which science and technology enabled the destruction of Christianity.

Most people argue that the antagonism was in the realm of explanations and beliefs, but an indirect and perhaps more powerful mechanism was via economics.

The argument involves several assumptions I have defended elsewhere, but it is quite simple.

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The main social and historical effect of science has been at the level of 'breakthroughs' or revolutionary science - especially those breakthroughs which lead to technological improvements in functional effectiveness and (especially) efficiency - improved efficiency equals the same function for less resources or more functionality for the same input.

Only breakthroughs really matter, because only breakthroughs can overcome the adverse societal factors which are present, and indeed tend to accumulate - thus the model of economic growth is something like Schumpeter's creative destruction: periodic revolutions, rather than incremental improvements.

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Breakthroughs are a product of creative genius: that is specific individual people characterized by a combination of high intelligence and high creativity (plus some other factors, including luck) - this it was the high concentration of creative geniuses in North Western Europe which underpinned the Agrarian then Industrial Revolution.

The Agrarian/Industrial revolution continued for a couple of centuries approximately, as breakthrough followed breakthrough - overwhelming the economically parasitic counter forces - which include Leftism, bureaucracy, and the mass media - and the consequent decadence and moral corruption which used to be regarded as an outcome of 'luxury'.

Genius enabled breakthroughs caused efficiency enabled growth of parasites.

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The state of permanent social revolution triggered by the Agrarian/ Industrial revolution was certainly a stress for Christianity in the West, but it was the long term and massive growth of economically parasitic counter forces which have brought Christianity to its present desperate state.

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But the whole process of breakthroughs-revolutions-parasitism depends on the breakthroughs of a small proportion of individual geniuses - and breakthroughs have dried up as the supply of geniuses has dried up.

(The reasons for the supply of geniuses drying up are multiple - and the topic of another blog: http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk and a book http://corruption-of-science.blogspot.co.uk.) 

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We are now seeing the process in reverse. Geniuses are now too rare, breakthroughs too few and infrequent, therefore economic efficiency is necessarily declining; but at present the economically parasitic counter forces still remain in-power - and of course they hasten these trends both by deliberate destructive policy and by their continued efficiency-sapping parasitic growth.

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So, the conditions which led to the destruction of Christianity have reversed, and religion will return to the West.

'Religion' will return, but not necessarily nor even probably Christianity - because, of course, Christianity must be chosen, and there are rivals.

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To gain domination over Arda, Morgoth had let most of his being pass into the physical constituents of the Earth – hence all things that were born on Earth and live on and by it, beasts or plants or incarnate spirits, were liable to be ‘stained’.
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Tolkien is here referring, it seems, to the reason why God cannot eradicate evil from a fallen incarnate world - because this would entail the destruction of 'everything' - since 'everything' had been stained by 'original sin'. Tolkien is also - indirectly - elucidating the necessity for Jesus Christ as the answer to this problem of a tainted world; the need for a new world, populated by new Men - a perfected world and Mankind which retains their identity, but cleansed of sin. 

These extraordinary times are made the more so by the stunning inability to see what is plain. We are living through the end of a great tradition and long history of Western Civilization; rooted in Greek and Rome, and, for some 1700 years, the Christian church - in its various forms. 

Insofar as this reality is known at all; it is experienced as a weight; and that weight can be felt either as an astonishing (but intimidating!) litany of unsurpassed achievements in human endeavor - or as, just, an oppression. 

On the one hand, such a long and astonishing tradition is stunningly impressive; yet on the other hand it has been overcome. 

Has been... This overcoming of Western Christian Civilization has already happened, and we stand at a point when the implications are being worked-out. Our world has moved from a long phase of collapsing, into its current phase of active destruction. 

Western civilization has-been overcome; yet the ideology that overcame it, which hates that heritage (of Classicism, but even more so of Christianity) does not acknowledge this fact - and indeed, with the right hand, presents itself as both steward and patron of exactly that civilization which, with its left hand, it is destroying as fast as possible.  

If there is a dominant ideological mode by 2022; that mode is untruthfulness, dishonesty, misrepresentation, lies - our world is built from lies, and by lies. 

The spirit of negation has triumphed over the spirit of creation; and (such is this mortal life) negation has the purer and clearer motivation, feels itself the more justified. 

The long history of Western civilization has greatness of creative achievement; and also greatness of horror - its motives always mixed, its triumphs always disputed. (Such is mortal life.)

But the spirit of negation which has, as a matter of fact, brought-down Western civilization, operates from a baseline assumption of absolute purity and coherence of motive; it demands nothing less than absolute perfection - and when it fails to find this, it destroys. 

Such is the ideology of negation - it is able to be and demand purity and perfection exactly because its sanction is destruction. 

The world has changed sides; everybody with power, status, influence is (more-or-less so, but always) of the party of negation*; hence (most of the time) nobody is questioning where this is going, what the destruction is supposed to achieve. 

Recent attempts to describe the goal of the party of destruction - the nature of the world being-aimed-at - are risible, and largely ignored. Nobody asks the ultimate purpose, everybody is engaged in the proximate work of 'clearing the ground' under the (vague) assumption that something not just better but perfect will spontaneously grow to occupy the ruins of The West; will (presumably) grow from the pure seeds of motivation possessed by the destroyers...  

When such 'where?' questions are being-asked; the right hand briefly brings-forward and points-at some goal of the Old West - like science, education, art - and the powers of negation briefly masquerade as steward and patron, guardian and sustainers of all that is good. 

They have, after all, long since taken-over all institutions (bureaucracies, corporations, organizations), all the social functions. Whatever remains of the long tradition of Western Christian Civilization is in their 'care'...

Yet as soon as the discourse moves-on, the directionless work of destruction recommences.

The world now stands-within this ideology of negation. 

Looking outwards from it at the collapsing ruins of tradition; it sees nothing but oppression, hypocrisy, failure. Against such a litany of injustice and disaster, their task is obvious - the necessity of destruction is clear. 

And no matter how much has been destroyed, there is (so far) always more yet to do; the spirits of negation feel that little or no progress has been made, since so much of Western Civilization, of tradition, still stands.

Hence the raging impatience, the urgency that characterizes those on the side of negation!  

So this is the shape of our times. A defeated civilization, the achieved triumph of negation, the zeal of destruction. 

Our choice would seem to be a broken tradition versus nihilism. 

But neither will do. The one is terminally ill and living in a hospice administered by those who would murder it; the other, the mass majority, are destroyers - fuelled by a morality of opposition and inversion. 

Against such a world, each of us can bring the alliance of our-selves with God. 

We can oppose both senility of civilization and the nihilism of negation by taking the side of divine creation, and a providence that works from individual souls rather than from the crumbling sweep of history or the accumulations of negative, oppositional, destructive power.

This can happen only if the base of activity is withdrawn from the arena, and if the mode of operation is lifted above the material. 

Its 'effectiveness', as a life-strategy, depends on our capacity to align with the divine, which depends on our motivation to do so. 

Success (or failure) we must discern and evaluate for our-selves - mindful that this-world is on the one hand 'only' the means to an end; yet on the other hand, so long as we personally remain alive, we have something of potentially eternal value to achieve. 

Since God is the creator - maker of this world, and our loving Father; we need not seek for this personal task:

Life will bring our work to-us. 

Our job (yours, mine) is 'merely' to recognize that task; then to choose well.

*Note - 'The party of negation' is more commonly known as Leftism - but it must be understood that as of 2022 all parties are Leftist; including not just all socialist, liberal, progressive parties, but all centre, moderate, right-wing, libertarian and officially-religious (including 'Christian' church) parties. This because Leftism is rooted in the anti-spiritual/ anti-Christian metaphysics of materialism/ positivism/ scientism and reductionism - which assumptions pervade and dominate the entirety of public discourse. 

*

The greatest weapon of the enemy is despair - it is against despair that we must fortify.

Yet not by false optimism.

Because false optimism does not work.

In a situation where realistic evaluation leads to pessimism about the outcome, where lies hope?

*

What seems futile is to hope that the mass of population, and all powerful institutions (including most churches) can be persuaded to abandon their path of suicidal, hedonic distraction.

Absent an almost-instantaneous switch to Christianity, any of the ruling elite who abandon secular materialism will instantly be thrown into a despair which is paralysing.

They will be denied their pleasures, their goals, their social status and support - yet they will have nothing to replace them.

(A grim satisfaction derived from the greater accuracy of one's world view will not be of any practical consoling value - certainly it provides near-zero motivation for most people most of the time.)

*

To reform a thoroughly corrupt and rotten 'institution' like the Church of England, state schools and universities, the legal system, political parties, the civil service, health services, or the mass media - to reform any these in a world of dominant and interlinked bureaucracy, and a world where a change of direction in any one place will be fought by all the other places... well, it really is inconceivable.

*

And yet we must hope for change. 

And I mean must: Despair is such an overwhelming sin that it sweeps away all virtue.

If reform is impossible (or, more accurately, something an informed and rational person cannot believe-in) then replacement is the only alternative.

Replacement, not reform.

*

The master theorist of this simple but unfamiliar perspective was, I think, Joseph Schumpeter:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=schumpeter

The idea was that economies grew mostly by replacement of large units - as when one whole industry (automobiles) replaces an other (horse drawn carriages and carts).

That human societal adjustment was not typically incremental but categorical.

*

On this basis, we can assume, realistically, that the current secular, hedonic society of nihilism and self-loathing suicide will not last, and will be replaced; and we can assume that it will be replaced by a religiously-based society - but we can also assume that on present trends that, in most places of the modern world, that religiously-based society will not be Christian.

The trends are against Christianity.

*

So, we have a situation in which we await a Schumpeterian period of 'Creative Destruction' in which we anticipate wholesale replacement of many or most social institutions - but most Christians in most places must realistically anticipate that the wholesale replacement will not bring in a Christian society.

And yet we must hope.

*

My conclusion is that Christians need to transfer their hope away from dying institutions that want to die. 

These are hope-less.

And instead channel their hopes to living institutions that want to live: no matter how small and powerless they may currently seem to be compared to the vast lumbering cancer-riddled dinosaur institutions which constitute modern socio-political life in the West.

*

Life in the dinosaurs is one of mutual parasitism - success comes to the tumours which can most efficiently feed on the masses of rotting flesh which they themselves have caused and are exacerbating.

Modern leadership therefore celebrates neoplasia, and admonishes us to join-with the most malignant metastases; to focus on first killing, then consuming, the dwindling supply of healthy, living tissue

*

This metaphor of malignancy seems to capture the weak-strength, the effete-vigour, the docile-domination displayed by modern bureaucratic 'leadership'.

Modern leadership is a matter of organizing the forces of destruction more effectively to exploit the destruction they themselves create and continue.

Replacing a modern leader with another who is more 'effective' is usually akin to a malignant transformation; in which a slow-growing local tumour - that might take many years to kill you - undergoes swift evolution into an invasive, metastatically seeding and rapidly-lethal sarcoma.

*

The message of hope is not to cling to delusive optimism, not to seek by persuasion to reform suicidal institutions which do not want to be reformed.

Much of my life has been a serial (typically delayed) realistic recognition of the fact that things have now gone too far - and a withdrawal of hope from institutions, organizations, professions, groups that have now, one the whole and in overall tendency, abandoned their proper role and embraced self-destruction.

Realistic hope therefore depends on each of us finding at least one alternative group of at least some people who, one the whole and in net effect, embrace life not death, proper function not parasitism, creation and making not novelty and decomposition, Heaven not Hell.

*


Clarification:

Lest I be misunderstood.

I am not advocating the utopian, impossible, unreal idea of quitting the evil bureaucracies of modernity - bureaucracy is in fact the world in which we all live, even when we do not work directly for a bureaucracy - bureaucracy, hence our complicity in evil-motivated institutions, is inescapable.

But I am stating that we must learn not to place hope in these institutions, not to hope that they will become self-reforming, or be persuaded to become good from the inside, or even significantly better.

Indeed, we must not 'give them the benefit of the doubt', as if they were basically well-meaning. If in doubt, we should assume (on the basis of past experience and organizational inertia) that they are always (except by accident) up to no good - any and all bureaucratic 'initiatives' are to be considered destructive (unless preceded by explicit repentance). 

Nor am I suggesting that we must join any or every group in which we have hope (that may, or may not, be possible, to varying degrees) - most of our hopes will necessarily remain theoretical and at-a-distance.

But if we cannot or do not join an institution in which we have hope, we should try to support it; and also I think we must endeavour to find at least one or two, or some group of, people with whom we can ally, meet, speak face to face. 

*

*

Being himself a creative genius of a high order, Tolkien felt a temptation of pride which was perhaps greater than for most.

In his depiction of the elf Feanor - he showed how pride can destroy everything which the greatest creative genius can achieve, and more.

*

Feanor was by far the most gifted among the gifted race of elves: as a scholar he invented the written script, as a craftsman he created many wonders but especially the Silmarils: three indestructible jewels of beauty unequalled by any products of human art, in which the light of the Two Trees was captured.

Gandalf said that, above all else in the world, he would wish to see the incomparable hand and mind of Feanor at work at the height of his powers.

Even the greatest of 'the gods' (except for 'the One' creator God - Eru) - the premier Archangel Melkor (later re-named Morgoth, by Feanor) could not match Feanor's creative genius, and coveted the Silmarils above all.

*

Yet Feanor's pride, his possessiveness concerning his own creations, was such that it led to many disasters for the elves: failure to restore the light of the Two Trees (after Morgoth had them destroyed), mass disloyalty, dishonesty and disobedience among the Noldor elves for generations, slaughter of the Teleri and destruction of their wonderful ships, betrayal and death of Noldor kindred, fruitless wars in Middle Earth with huge suffering and death for many centuries, exile from the care of the Valar - most of the major tragedies of the Silmarillion stories.

And all stemming back to the pride of Feanor.

*

Tolkien depicted the same process at many levels, from Melkor himself, to the first and primary Fall of Man into the worship of Morgoth (unpublished in his life but described in the History of Middle Earth Volume X), to the second Fall of the men of Numenor (who developed the most powerful technological civilization ever in Middle Earth), to individual examples such as Sauron and Saruman (minor gods or angelic figures), to Boromir and Denethor.

In Tolkien's world, as in ours, prideful creative genius often leads first to astonishing achievements of power - else there would be no temptation - then to ruin and loss.

For Tolkien, there is no creative achievement so great that it cannot be undone and reversed by pride.

*

And yet - we live, now, in a society which esteems and promotes pride - indeed depends upon pride for its very sustenance.

Of all the many moral inversions of political correctness - this is the most serious, the most damaging, the most damning.

*

It is a deep truth that we co-create The World: not just 'our' world, not just subjectivity, not just the world 'as we personally perceive it... But that we co-create the objective world*. God is the creator; Man lives as part of God's creation; and Man co-creates reality in the context of God's primary creation.

(We co-create The World including the world of 'science' - which is rooted in the false assumption that the whole truth of reality can be made the subject of a discourse between humans, which discourse ignores/ excludes human consciousness.)   

When our creativity is un-conscious - which it nearly always is - then it is un-free. 

Our un-conscious creativity is passively swept-along by external influences. Here-and-now this means that our un-conscious creative activity is being-manipulated. 

 

Because Modern Man chooses to be un-conscious of his co-creating; he can be and is manipulated in his activities by those Beings who are conscious of the reality of Man's co-creating, but who oppose God's work.

Our creat-ing is, in actuality, being-manipulated into destruction; into the destruction of divine creation. Human creation has been turned-against God's creation. 

That is the meaning of the prevalent and increasing value-inversion of these times. When Man's values are inverted - so sin is seen as virtue, ugliness beauty, and lies are truth - then Man's creative activities have-been turned-against God's primary reality. 

Man's un-conscious, manipulated creat-ing is then made destructive of divine creating.

 

In a nutshell: When Man is un-conscious of co-creating reality, he is un-free; and (thus self-blinded, thus self-made helpless), has-been manipulated into destruction --- Then, Man has joined-with Satan in the destruction of divine creation, of God's plan for our salvation and thesois, and of the Goodness this makes possible. 

 

And, since God is Love; therefore un-conscious Modern Man has joined Satan's mission against Love - his intent to dis-place and re-place Love with sin (e.g. pride, fear, resentment, despair, and their wages of death as chosen-annihilation of the spirit). 

 

But when Man's co-creating is conscious and freely-chosen; then we cooperate with God in the work of divine creation; we change the (objective, real) world: for the better. 

Therefore - unless we are objectively to aid in the Satanic work of destruction  - we must become aware of our work of co-creation; and we must choose (voluntarily, from our freedom) to work with God, to work on God's side. 

And doing this will, In Fact, make a better creation: a better world.

 

*This may best have been explained in Owen Barfield's book Saving the Appearances. The above post was stimulated by my reading (in a particularly intuitive mode of thinking) a strange and inspired lecture by Rudolf Steiner, from 1919.

That Jesus Christ was incarnated, embodied, ought to be a decisive clue from Christians that the world of (unembodied) spirit is inferior in terms of divine possibility. 

Yet clearly this mortal incarnate life of ours, now, is intrinsically flawed and not viable. 

Thus mortal life should be understood as a time of learning and choice - essential for resurrection, but transitional. 

If the body is considered to be bounded-spirit; we can see that boundedness has advantages in terms of the capacity to operate from our-selves.

...In contrast to a discarnate spirit which interpenetrates, and is interpenetrated; influenced and influencing - immersed in a world of other-spirits.  

It therefore seems that incarnation is necessary to personal and individual creation; and in the world of pure spirit there are only the two possibilities are going-along-with divine creation - or opposing it. 

Traditionally 'the angels' - who I regard as never-yet-incarnated spirits of Men - divide between those angels who serve divine creation and are willing conduits of God's creative will; and those demons who oppose the divine. 

Mortal, incarnate Men (such as you and me) have a positive creative potential beyond angel or demon; we can (because of incarnation) contribute-to - actually add-to - divine creation from our unique-selves; because of the freedom that is associated with incarnation. 

Man's creation is always (at least implicitly, even when without awareness) associated with Love: Love of God and fellow Man - it is Love that harmonizes individual creativity with the creativity of other Beings and with divine creation.  

By contrast, demons cannot be genuinely creative; but can only simulate creation. Having determined to reject Love and oppose the divine; all demonic thoughts and actions and other activities will necessarily be dissonant and destructive to divine creation and to the creating of others. 

But demons themselves cannot even have their own ideas! Thus demonic ideologies are always double-negative in form; like socialism, feminism, antiracism, environmentalism. Such 'ideals' merely oppose some supposed injustice or wrongness (which is actually some obstacle in the path of self-gratification); and have no genuinely creative alternative or aim. 

Because to be genuinely creative means to be an agent capable of creation (which requires incarnation) and also harmonious with existing divine creation. So demons merely oppose, while demon-affiliated Men cannot create positively, but only act selfishly (i.e. from their unique selves, but necessarily in conflict with other unique selves).

 

This is why Good and evil are not symmetrical; Good has many possibilities denied to evil; while evil has the easier 'job' of subversion, destruction and inversion - and indeed evil is incapable of anything else. 

It is up to each of us to see-through the disguises and simulations of evil pseudo-creativity; otherwise we will become unwitting dupes of the anti-God agenda. 

People like to believe that it is A Good Thing to destroy evil; but this is only true when the motivation to destroy evil is positive. 

That is, when the motivation to destroy evil is Good. 

(As your mother told you: Two wrongs don't make a right! - they really don't.)

If some-thing evil is eliminated - but there is not a motivating Good reason for doing it; then there will be a bad motivation; and there will be net harm in the world.

(One way or another.)

You cannot get good out of evil intent; and the desire for destruction as such, on its own is an evil.

Only when the desire for destruction is a means to the end of Good (that is, in harmony with God's creative intent) can destruction be justified. 

Consider the example of hatred of some evil thing - lets say an evil organization or government or dictator. Something really evil. 

It is right to hate evil - therefore (surely? one might assume) it would be A Good Thing to destroy it?

But not necessarily so. 

There are (think about it...) many, many examples from history when an evil institution or person has been destroyed - by revolution, conquest, assassination -  and what came after was worse. Sometimes much worse. 

Indeed, this is usual. 

The reason that such outcomes are usual is that Good motivations - and I mean real Good motivations - not pretend Good motivations that are just disguises for resentment or malice - are rare. 

I think you would find that good outcomes from destruction occur only when the destruction is a means to a genuinely Good end. 

This is important because nowadays there are - at least so I believe - no genuinely Good motivations in public discourse or politics in the West. 

I mean that none (not one) of the institutions, parties or persons who are engaged in the public realm, and have power to destroy, have genuinely Good motivations. 

Therefore, necessarily, destroying things in The West will turn-out badly, one way or another... 

(There are many, many such possibilities for how things will - whether predictably or not - go wrong.) 

This is yet another example of: Be careful what you wish for! 

Re-reading the final pages of Brandon Sanderson's marvellous 'Mistborn' fantasy-fiction trilogy; I realised that the author was describing an example of Polarity.

(No spoilers follow - except in the most indirect and abstract, non-narrative sense.)

From the primary forces of Preservation/ Order and Ruin/ Chaos there can be no real creativity - not from either individually (Preservation leading to crystalline stasis; Ruin to a Brownian motion of homogeneous disorder).

But while Preservation and Ruin are indeed distinguishable polar opposites of Creativity; it can be seen that Creativity is more than any possible combination or alternation of Preservation and Ruin. Creation uses both Order and Chaos to create.

But Creation is itself something more than can be captured by Order and Chaos - creation is an uncaused cause, a primary purpose.

Creation (as it were) stands-behind Preservation and Ruin, directing them in the process of creating towards the goals of creation.

*

There is an analogy (and a fundamental identity) with the limited explanatory power of the process of evolution by Natural Selection. Natural Selection can Preserve, and it can Destroy, but not Create.

Natural Selection operates by Preservation of functionality - sieving-out the deleterious consequences of undirected genetic change (Destruction) - i.e. mutation-selection balance, or balancing selection. And it produces adaptations by Preservation of the rare reproductively advantageous mutations thrown-up (un-intentionally) by forces leading-to mutation/ Destruction.

But this is not Creation - it takes for granted that Creation has already-happened.

*

A further example is in the Natural Selection based models of Creativity itself - such as those of HJ Eysenck or Dean Simonton in their discussions of genius. They regard the creative process as an undirected ('random') generation of ideas (perhaps produced, as in Eysenck, by partial brain/ mind pathology - by loose associations characteristic of psychotic/ dreamlike thinking)...

So Destruction/ 'free association' (supposedly) produces multiple ideas, from-which a process of Preservation (such as the analytic and rational processes of high general intelligence, or practical implementation and observation of consequences) then selects the minority of ideas that are useful/ 'true'.

But, a closer metaphysical examination of these assumptions reveals that this is not a genuine creative process (unless we have already decided, as an assumption, that it is the only possible explanation) because it rules-out the purposive nature of creation, which is intrinsic to the concept.

(Modern Biology indeed rules-out 'teleology' as a basic assumption.)

In particular, to explain genius creativity with only natural selection makes it an undirected, 'random', motiveless, inhuman procedure - and it also makes the evaluation of genius into an analogously 'random' process.

Since the selection process is necessarily imprecise, and indeed merely selects the best-reproducing idea in particular circumstances over a finite timescale; there is no valid means of knowing which concepts are right and which are wrong - a different answer will emerge in each different situation; and an answer that seemed correct for hundreds of years (Aristotelian Physics, Newtonian Physics) is always liable to revision or rejection (Einsteinian Physics/ quantum theory).

In the end, creativity and genius has been re-conceptualised away - it is just absorbed into the account of ongoing Natural Selection of everything, all the time.

*

To conclude; the reality is Creation, and Preservation/ Order and Destruction/ Chaos are merely some of its components. To quite Owen Barfield, they can be distinguished but not divided; and if they are divided - if they are treated as separable - this will be false.

(Unless we have a priori made the metaphysical assumption that it must be true; whatever the consequences.)

We can see all around us, more clearly than for many generations, the extreme cleverness of demonic destructiveness. And They are indeed extremely clever. But they are not creative,

Tolkien understood that when he made Morgoth - his Satan - brilliant at the arts and sceinces of ruination. So long as The One had created something, morgoth could usually ruin it, and turn it to evil purposes. Thus he made orcs from elves, trolls from ents (probably), balrogs from angelic maia and so forth.

But never did Morgoth perform any act of primary creation such as Aule did in co-fashioning the dwarves or Elbereth the Ents  - which would need him to be in harmony with, and thus able to shape, the originative creativity of The One.

The demonic powers have been working relentlessly over the past decades, indeed centuries, to destroy most of that which was overall-good and necessary; and replacing them with ideologies based on resentment and short-termist pleasure-seeking. And now, with a cleverly-timed blow ("coup") they have dealt a wrecking blow at the material basis of survival for the billions of inhabitants of this planet.

Since their aim is that as many as possible will choose damnation; my best guess is that they hope to induce widespread fear and despair (these being sins) - and also encourage a range of other sins as the delicate creative structures collapse and (real!) plagues, famines and wars begin to bite. 

I think they believe that the populations of the world have been reduced to a sufficiently corrupt and depraved level that the reactions to stress will be negative, in this way. In the short term, they are happy to encourage minor or fake virtues such as 'altruism' that they know will collapse like a pack of cards under duress, because based in little more than-virtue signalling and 'niceness'.

However, their scheme may backfire; if many people recognise this situation for what it is - a spiritual war - a great battle between Good and evil; and recognise that a spiritual war takes place in the minds and hearts - but especially the hearts - of individual people, and those they genuinely love; and that this will all be weak, counter-productive and ineffectual unless rooted in the solidity of Love of God and the following of Jesus. 

In other words, in order not to be co-opted to the vast work of destruction and damnation - we need each to be in harmony with the creative love of God. Only you can do this for yourself, and yourself is the place you must start.

Not many people believe (as I do) in the evolutionary-development of human consciousness. If this is true, our current situation is unique and unprecedented, and we can only move forward to something fundamentally new (i.e. Final Participation).

I would like to contrast this with two other alternatives being put forward: New Culture and Benedict Option.


New Culture is a term I am coining here to describe an archetypal 'American' kind of positive thinking, can-do, we-will-win attitude; which is that we need to tackle the evils of Establishment Leftism by building a new culture, politics, economy...

This involves detaching ourselves from the mainstream (so as to cease supporting them with our money and life efforts) and instead to build a new Western Christian culture. This involves creating and expanding alternative mass media, re-booting the arts and sciences, distinctive financial institutions, new political parties and alliances, new forms of employment and community...

Rebuilding the Whole Thing on a new basis.

What is distinctive is that that this is a positive and creative programme - and that it intends to be a money-making, powerful culture: more profitable, more technologically capable, more militarily formidable etc.


What are the problems? The first is practical.

Since New Culture is a head-on attack on the Establishment, and since the Establishment is much more powerful at present - it is hard to believe that the Establishment would not be able to nip it in the bud - by expansion of what is already happening: media censorship and propaganda, lawfare and bureaucratic harassment, economic attacks from deplatforming, blocking the use of finance and software, deniable/ official physical attacks on persons and destruction of property etc. Just more of what we already have.

But these may be overcome - especially as the Mainstream is incrementally destroying its own efficiency and capability, and this suicide is not easily reversible.

The bigger problem is that the New Culture is a materialist plan of reform and reconstruction; it is positivism, reductionism, scientism - it is just another version of this-worldly utilitarianism; whose appeal is primarily a promise to enhance the health and happiness of the population, to minimise suffering and misery.

New Culture is essentially a type of Modernity - one that claims to be more sustainable because more efficient and effective. New Culture requires the vast apparatus of division of labour, specialisation and coordination of function; it requires the way of thinking that goes with such a world view: it entails a preservation of the global trade, managerialism and bureaucracy which go with the industrial society.


The Benedict Option came from the traditionalist Roman Catholic philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue, 1981) and from an idea in the sci-fi novel A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M Miller (1959) - and is based on an analogy between the current situation and that prevailing in the collapsing Western Roman Empire from the early 400s AD.

The argument is that Western Civilisation was preserved mainly in remote, cut-off monasteries and among hermits. The intention is that traditional forms of Christianity might cut themselves off from modern, Western culture - in small scale, minority societies - and survive until such a time that they can prove seedbeds for a re-birth of Western civilisation at some point in the future.

Thus, while the New Culture is positive, constructive and creative in intent; the Benedict Option is negative, preservative and defensive in intent. The idea is that there is an irreplaceable body of culture (based mainly on a fixed corpus of divine revelation) that must be kept intact and pure; and from which future societies may draw.

There are, again, practical difficulties - in that modern Leftism is demonically motivated in a way that post-Roman paganism was not; so that Leftism seeks-out and destroys its enemies. It would be presumed that no monastery, no hermit, would be allowed to exists in defiance of the Mainstream Establishment - but would be (one way or another) subverted, destroyed or inverted by the dominant power and propaganda structures.

But assuming these problems could be overcome; even as an ideal, there are problems with the Benedict Option. One is that the desirability of a reversion to traditionalist religion is not generally acknowledged.

Another is that it may prove impossible. The Benedict Option is based on a cyclical model of history; but if history is linear (as I believe) then there is no reason to believe that we can ever revert to an earlier stage.

If the modern post-industrial-revolution growth-orientated societies really are something new and unprecedented; if the problems of modernity (i.e. endemic and growing suicidal self-hatred; manifested by chosen anti-natalism and sub-fertility, and an active, subsidised program of native/ white/ Western population self-replacement) - then our main problems are likewise unprecedented, and there is no reason to suppose that what worked 1600 years ago will work again now.


So, I find myself left with the third alternative of Final Participation by means of Romantic Christianity - which is a positive and creative programme (like New Culture) - but a minority and social-transforming intention like the Benedict Option.

And unlike both: it is non-abstract and instead personal, being based on love; which I take to be a phenomenon that is real and strong mainly in families and marriages.

Romantic Christianity implies a bottom-up, family-clan basis for social organisation - such as I believe is the situation in Heaven. That is why it is called 'Final' Participation - it is the mortal, temporary, partial, corruptible attempt to live on earth the the same loving and creative participation with God that Christians hope to live in Heaven.

At any rate, FP requires that we set-aside generalised plans, programmes and blueprints for the future.

We need to start with a person-by-person Christian awakening, work on developing our own faith and consciousness; and... well... see what emerges from that on a small scale (at a personal, loving and familial level).


I think if we can develop anything Good, as 'raw material'; then we can rely upon God to ensure that this is amplified and disseminated as widely as necessary. After all, word of mouth is potentially an exponentially accelerating process of amplification (one person tells two, who tell four etc.).

Therefore we do not need the mass media and propaganda systems of the modern state; nor do we need the formal, hierarchical, sub-specialised institutions of tradition. We do not need a New Culture or the defence and preservation of Monastic preserves.

We just need each other - God Within and the Holy Ghost.

ANA. Tell me where can I find the Superman?