Bruce Charlton's Notions

The actuality of Leftist morality - and that it is inversion of the true, beautiful and virtuous - is revealed by describing the double-negative reality concealed by the pseudo-positive moral 'principles' used to justify Leftist evil. 

Here is the way it works:

To be a 'racist' is = not to be anti-white

To be a sexist = not to be anti-men...

You see the way it works? Leftism is oppositional, being defined as 'against' various 'evils'. Most of the Leftist 'evils' (often expressed as '-ist' or '-phobic') can accurately be described in a similar double-negative fashion:

Not to be anti-native inhabitants of a country...

Not to be opposed to biologically real, reproductively-adaptive sexuality...

Not to be anti-Christian... etc.

The double-negative formulation is a necessity for Leftism, since Leftism is indeed ultimately oppositional (opposing God and divine creation; opposing the true, beautiful and virtuous); thus its 'positive' content (i.e. what Leftists want) is protean and labile, self-contradicting and incoherent. 

After all, there are an 'infinite' number of ways of opposing The Good. 

To be morally excoriated by the Left, all that is required is to be against opposing the Good, in any particular respect.  

Added - Double-negative denialism

For the sake of completeness, and to include two of the biggest recent double-negative global crusades. What do accusations of denialism amount to? 

Climate denialism: Hatred of those people who do not regard carbon as the greatest threat to life on earth

Birdemic denialism: Terror of those who are not afraid of close proximity to human beings

 

Note: This idea was triggered by a post by William Wildblood, where he give a double negative definition of 'racist'. 

Over the past few years, since I spent a year or so multiply re-reading the Fourth Gospel ("of John") in isolation; I have often emphasized the covertly-deceptive way in which double-negative formulations have colonized and distorted our minds and motivations - both in Christianity and in mainstream modern secular 'leftism'.  

The internet is full of schemes and plans by which specific evils (you know what I mean...) might more-or-less-easily be resisted - individually or en masse. 

Yet this very seldom actually happens - either individually or en masse. 

And if they do happen-to-happen, it is never sufficiently intense or sustained enough. 

Rather than continually coming-up with new tactics - we need to understand why checklists are irrelevant if nobody want to follow them. 

It is not a matter of people desperately wanting to resist evil, but not knowing where to start, and seeking guidance...

It seems as if the problem must lie deeper than merely 'not knowing how' to resist evil.

The main problems are related to motivation - to the reasons (or rather the lack of reasons) people have for resisting evil; and this indeed cuts very deep. 

(Or would if motivation were not a problem - it is the very lack of depth that is the root of it.) 

In order to address the widest possible audience; those who describe how to resist evil usually present the problem in that double-negative form: Resisting Evil. 

That is: Evil is a negative, so resisting evil makes it a double-negative. 

The planners and schemers who seek to make something happen are compelled to focus on evil because there is no general social consensus about what is Good. 

For instance; the most general dissenting 'affirmation' is usually to campaign for more Freedom - yet Freedom is actually itself a negative: Freedom-from... some bad restriction. 

The 'fighting evil' discourse assumes a lot. It first assumes that people can indeed recognize evil - at least, when it is helpfully pointed-out. 

But why didn't the people already notice the evil - why did that have to have it explained to them? That does not bode well... 

It seems, indeed, to be the case that even gross and in-your-face evils - like kidnapping, poisoning and mutilating innocent children, or sexually grooming and abusing them - cannot be recognized as such by the mass of people; not they are called something 'good' by officials and the mass media, or 'protected' by the inverted values of Leftism. 

Surely if people need such extreme evil to be pointed-out and explained; then there cannot be any consensus that objective evil exists at all? 

So why would people be motivated to resist evil? 

But even when evil is recognized; people lack courage to think, say or do anything to oppose it - because evils are nearly-always backed up by Power, Status and Money. 

People are (quite reasonably!) afraid of opposing power, status and money; therefore they need courage to fight evil. 

And courage is just what most modern people lack: producing a fatally inhibiting combination of moral blindness with will-sapping cowardice.

Before evil will (not 'can theoretically') be resisted; Men must know good - and trust in something beyond this world of Power, Status, Money and lies. 

When Men both know and want good: that will be the time for plans and schemes and tactics...

But if then; plans/ schemes/ tactics would not be needed. 

When I began this blog on a frequent basis, in the middle of 2010, there was (supposedly) a new, vigorous, and intellectually-rigorous movement of the secular "Right" - variously termed Alternative/Alt Right, Neoreaction, and similar 

(The 'rump' of this movement is sometimes nowadays termed "based" - and can be sampled via this branch of Synlogos.) 

One of my earliest themes was that this movement was not actually "Right" but was just part of the Left; because they wanted essentially the same thing as the Left (i.e. optimal happiness and minimum suffering in this mortal life - the 'hedonic' calculus); and the secular "Right" therefore only differed in terms of their priority groups (eg. white native men) and the methods employed (e.g. new kinds of monarchy). 

Same ends, different means. But is the end that is definitive. 

I then argued that the only genuine alternative and opposition to The Left was religion. 

So, the truth was that the Left-Right axis was all-Left; and the only true axis of opposition was Left-Religion. 

For those who opposed The Left, I said; their only valid choice was: which religion? 

This has proved to be correct over the following decade, as evidenced by the fact that the self-identified secular Right are still merely negatively responding to what the mainstream Left are advocating or doing; much as 'fascism' did in the 1920s and 30s; . 

Since the Left is actually a negative and oppositional ideology; this means that the secular Right are a double-negative ideology. 

And since the Left's policies are already double-negative - e.g. anti-racism anti-men (feminism)  - the secular Rights policies are triple-negative anti-antiracism, anti-feminism...

Something like this explains the astonishing obsessions of the secular Right; who remain utterly focused-on everyday mainstream politics such as elections and the Twitter takeover by Musk (what!); but in this extra-negative way of opposing the destroyers instead of proposing positive creation; which the secular Right cannot do because they are secular.

The amount of internet-ink spilled over the Musk-Twitter business is especially gratuitous. Twitter is a Bad Thing, Musk is a Bad Thing - why discuss the business as if some Good would come out of it? 

The answer is: one regards this as a major issue, only when one is operating on the basis of mainstream assumptions of Good.

Just as the election-obsessives implicitly, by revealed-preference, believe (whatever they say) that we can vote our way out of trouble; so the Musk-Twitter obsessive believe we can Tweet our way to a Better World.      

So that Better means, for them, just more of the same stuff - but directed at groups they like. 

And they believe this because they have nothing better to offer. 

But what of the proper opposition to the Left: I mean The Religious? 

Well... In 2020 the major churches of the world - of (apparently) all religions and denominations - overwhelmingly made clear their convergence with the this-worldly and hedonic values of the Global Left: they made this clear by massive closures and cessations of their core activities. 

(It may be that the Government and Orthodox Church of the Fire Nation has since reversed that convergence with global Leftism: where that may lead has yet to be seen; but anyway, such a direction is not a possibility, nor desirable, for The West.) 

So the churches, of all religions, were revealed as just another part of The Left.  

So the situation is that even the Left versus Religion axis, which seemed a possibility back in 2010; is not a possibility. 

My hoped-for (albeit slender, pessimistic) possibility of a church-rooted religious revival to become culturally dominant; has since been revealed as a false hope. False, not merely because of the political weakness of the churches, but mainly because the churches do not even desire it, but instead seek assimilation to the Left (and as fast as the church leaders can persuade the laity).

Therefore; these times are far more desperate than the "secular Right" imagine; and far more desperate than church-orientated Christians acknowledge. Because (at least in The West - albeit the Fire Nation in the East may have chosen a different path of destiny) there is nowhere to turn in the world of powerful, high status, influential public discourse. 

We can neither vote-in a saviour (because none are available to vote-for, and because the bureaucracy-media control everything of social significance), nor can we engineer a way-out by participation in high-impact social media (because the medium is intrinsically evil-promoting; in form as well as its allowed-content).     

What we can do is at the individual level, not in institutions; is spiritual, not material; and is rooted in understanding correctly - which means honestly and with full acknowledgment of its scope - the nature of our situation and responsibility. 

I think we are all prone to critique, ridicule and dismiss the ideas of others by arguing purely negatively and without being clear of the assumptions from-which we are arguing. 

I've often done this myself, and indeed tend to fall-into it as a kind of Journalistic" default - to the point that I try to catch and halt this tendency, before it gets too established. 

Of course; one cannot always (e.g. in every blog post!) be re-stating one's assumptions; on the other hand:

1. It is obvious that most people do not even know what are their own assumptions; and

2. Even fewer people have subjected their own assumptions to the kind of critique that they so lavishly bestow upon other people. And

3. Even fewer people - having become aware of their own assumptions, and examined them critically - have found these assumptions to be solid to their own honest satisfaction over a prolonged self-critique*...

This is exactly why there is so much attacking of other people and their views in the modern world (including on the internet); and so little clarification of where that attack is coming from.

 When one's own views are unknown, incoherent, or feeble; and also if one's own person is very obviously flawed - then it makes sense to do everything possible to keep negative attention on the other chap and what the other chap is saying.  

But this is dishonest and incoherent. Therefore, unworthy of respect. 

*(This is, indeed, the entirety of the philosophical defense of modern mainstream ideology - the ideology shared by all people and institutions of wealth and power, all major participants in public discourse to the point that it does not even have a name for itself! I call it variously atheism-materialism-leftism-totalitarianism... but it-itself does not acknowledge any of these names, nor any other term, for what is By Far the most pervasive and enforced ideology in human history.)

 

So, I regard negative critique as so much blah blah - unless it is rooted in some, more or less explicitly known and acknowledged assumptions and motivations; some kind of evident self-awareness. 

This applies to critique emanating from what might be termed a Traditionalist Christian perspective, which can be almost any denomination or church - and indeed, almost the same negative critique may emanate from people/ institutions with very different assumptions - But this is not a strength!

After all, we get essentially the same "progressive" negative-critique of Christianity; coming-in from multi-national organizations such as the UN; from all Western Nations, and all the multi-national corporations and social institutions and the mass media - The Establishment. 

Negative critique is, mostly, merely negatively-motivated and ignorant-of-self; and even when it comes from multiple directions, it remains worthless. 

To be worth considering; negative critique must be in self-awareness of a coherent alternative and positive understanding. 

(Recalling that a double-negative is not a positive.) 

In short: we ought to demand (of ourselves, as well as others) If Not, Then What? 

I am sometimes astonished by people's blindness to the obvious fact that their whole lives are based on double-negative motivations; and that therefore they can only motivate themselves to get-through life, by maintaining a continuous state of frothing anger and seething resentment...

And then they develop a scheme of inverted values by-which this state of angry resentment is regarded as right, proper, praiseworthy!

Of course; in this totalitarian-secular world, where all major institutions are left-affiliated - double-negativity is inevitable, since that is the basis and nature of leftism. 

But, sadly, a great deal of Christianity (as well as other religions) is also mostly negative and oppositional in its theology, hence its motivations. 

So we are all surrounded by encouragements to base our lives on negativity, on oppositions; and to value only this...

What eventuates is a public, social, political, media world in a waxing-and-waning (but never-ending) frenzy of opposition to... something or another (mostly or wholly made-up, invented, manipulated)...

And this being resisted and opposed by Christians on a point-by-point basis; such that the end-result is a Christianity of triple-negation! 

(That is, group Christian life substantially consists of Christians opposing the secular-leftists, who are themselves motivated by one or many of the oppositional leftist ideologies such as socialism, feminism, racism, climate change, healthism, anti-Fire-Nationism...)

And public discourse is consequently oppositional in nature - consisting of ginning-up personal disputes, and escalating the interpersonal rhetoric; presumably in an attempt at avoiding self-awareness of the sheer flimsiness, feebleness and radical incoherence of one's own motivations.

This has been going-on for more than three decades even in science, and for more than sixty years in general culture; and so most people know nothing different. They apparently imagine that such spiteful scapegoating and schoolboy scrapping always has been the underlying nature of discourse on ideas, morality and the purpose of life. 

In such a world; a serious Christian who engages in public discourse will be corrupted by the process - one way or another: either by its becoming a demonstration of ritualized submission of Christianity to leftism; or else by him being dragged into the melee of name-calling, face-scratching and hair-pulling enacted as spectacle in front of a contrived media-cheerleading audience and its dopey addicts. 

Luckily for Christians, none of this is necessary. The powers of evil are very concerned to distract Christians from, or to deny, the spiritual power and effectiveness of the single soul. Very concerned to corral and corrupt the single soul, by insisting Christianity is only valid when engaged in group or corporate activity.  

Yet, on the contrary; any individual who achieves clarity in his thinking, clarifies thinking for Mankind. Any Man who is well-motivated, even for ten minutes!, creates a positive spiritual template for others. Someone that seeks and attains guidance from his real-divine self or from the Holy Ghost, makes it easier for this to be repeated by himself and others. 

All true thinking makes possibilities and alters the balance of powers. 

Why? Because although our experience is one of alienated consciousness and solitude, the fact is that all Men are spiritually 'linked' in vital respects - or, more exactly, Men share in a condition of inhabiting a "spiritual thought-world" - a world of mutual knowing and interactions.

Ancient tribal Men knew this innately - and lived by it; and we each personally spontaneously used-to know this as young children - we knew that some of our thoughts could be known by others, and that we could know the thinking of others; that we were never alone, that our dreams and thoughts potentially affected the world for better, or worse. 

CG Jung got it partly-right but distorted, with the Collective Unconscious - his basic point that we inhabit a kind of spiritual underworld was correct; and that this accounts for the very possibility of communication and knowledge.  

The personal is political; but not by material means (as leftists suppose) but because 'the spiritual' is public - potentially.  

In 'making the world a better place', or indeed in helping a neighbour; it is not just that we don't need to use the material mechanisms of human society - but that these mechanisms thwart betterment, and twist it to evil ends. 

The only proper reason for public discourse (like this!) is insofar as it contributes towards personal clarity and strengthens positive motivations. 

That work is done by the spiritual act of composition; as the benefit of thinking is done by the spiritual act of having right-thoughts. The achievement is at that point - and not by the later possibility of its physical spread and 'influence' of words, images, concepts...

We really do not need to worry about access to media or the levers of power; about accuracy or misrepresentation; about communication, about persuasion, about winning (fake) arguments! 

(Indeed we must not worry about such things - because such things work precisely by the corrosive effect of such worry. Worry about the material manifestation of communications is therefore a sin, that requires to be recognized and repented. Writers and other public discoursers need to be aware of this, or else the spiritual good of their activity will be undone, and they will be corrupted by their activities: as is so often evident.) 

We 'only' need to take care of our side of things! 

Anything we say that is right and Good will (insofar as it is helpful) be taken-up and woven into ongoing-creation by God. 

Anything we think right; any needful discernment, any repentance or other decision to reject an evil, will have its positive effect on the spiritual world. 

Since Modern man is blind and insensible; Our first and most important job is to become aware: to understand, become conscious, make the right choices and clarify our desire to follow Jesus Christ, for resurrection into Heaven, to live eternally and Sons and Daughter of God. 

Nothing is more important than this, nothing is more effective.

Everything we require for the job is supplied us; nothing else is needed that what we have and can get; and nothing external can stop us from doing the job. 

Insofar as it has any positive program (and in fact this is a double-negative, not a positive) the alleviation of suffering could be regarded as the focus of leftism - arising at its early roots in abolition, pacifism, socialism, feminism etc. 

My Glasgow friend, the writer Frank Kuppner, used to intone the phrase "Suffering? I'll show you suffering!" whenever some leftist, feminist journalist (invariably upper class, public school, Oxbridge educated; then straight into a prestigious and high profile newspaper job) embarked on yet-another account of the abuses, adversity and prejudices of her hellish life...

For modern people the problem of suffering in the world; and the socio-political intent to eliminate or reduce suffering (or, at least, the suffering of particular groups such as workers, women, or blacks), has come to seem The Primary problem of Life - the primary objective of life. 

Yet, suffering cannot coherently be made the centre of a moral system. And indeed 'suffering' itself is an incoherent abstraction of billions (at least) of individual responses to billions of different - labile, fluctuating and often utterly specific - situations. 

As so often, there is a colossal but unacknowledged and denied assumption at work here - that all these billions of adverse feelings to billions of specific instances and circumstances - can, should and ought to be considered together; and dealt-with by one or a few generalized socio-political solutions of the type that constitute leftist politics and ideology. 

And, even give that all these assumptions were true and reflected reality; the resulting ethic of diminishing suffering is one that has many consequences which would be considered self-contradictory if clearly apprehended and comprehended. 

Because when reducing the suffering in this-life becomes the priority, it trumps life-itself; as with the mainstream acceptance and advocacy of abortion; where the priority is to reduce the suffering of the mother and or the child - even at the cost of killing the child. 

It is quite normal to express the ethic that it is better not to be born, than to be born to suffer; not to live, than to live in (presumed) great suffering - and this also justifies the grossly sub-replacement reproductive rates that characterize the entire developed world.   

It is quite normal to envisage a massive (but suffering-free!) reduction in global human population ("giga-death") as a mechanism for reducing global suffering due to some imputed cause or another; or even to save the 'suffering planet'. 

There is no great mystery to all this. Suffering (like pain, fear, humiliation or any other of its subtypes) is a consequence of many possible causes of many types; and furthermore is not a fixed quantitative result but varies according to attitude, explanation and treatments. 

A person can be - often is - made to suffer by evoking resentment against real or imagined persecution for supposedly class, race or sex (etc.) reasons. And then more people can be made to suffer 'vicariously' by empathic identification with (alleged, often fictional) supposed-instances of such suffering! 

The left has developed an 'economy' of suffering. Suffering can be imputed to some groups while others are blamed for that suffering; suffering can even be imputed to the planet, biosphere, ecosystem or environment. 

After a couple of centuries of expanding and permeating leftism, and especially since the explicit emergence of a leftist world government last year; Suffering is now Big Business.

Indeed, suffering is now the biggest of all world enterprises! With multiple and linked agencies and bureaucracies engaged in the identification/ creation/'raising awareness', validation, and allocation of suffering on one side...While on the other side is a vast and ramifying state-media-charitable-corporate apparatus for (allegedly) preventing and alleviating suffering. 

Leftism has become a global machine for creating, amplifying, and spreading suffering; even as it claims to be alleviating - or, at its transhumanist extreme actually abolishing - suffering. 

Modern Leftism is - insofar as it has any positive content - a meta-ideology of suffering. 

We can regard this 'meta-ideology of suffering' as an almost inevitable consequence of abolishing God, the spiritual and the after-life. 

If this mortal life really is our only experience - then its rationale can only be related to our current state of experience. 

The ideology of suffering has therefore been made public and socially-manipulative by the bridging concept of altruism; so that ethical persons are supposed-to-be concerned primarily to alleviate the sufferings of as many others as possible. (i.e. the philosophical system termed Utilitarianism.) 

But when the transcendental and spiritual have been wholly removed from public discourse and life (ignored, excluded, denied, forgotten); now we can observe an accelerating centripetal tendency towards short-termist certainty rather than long-term strategy; and a focus on the experienced-self rather than the inferred and alleged suffering of others. 

Therefore the terminus of the leftist ideology of altruistic is selfish negative impulsive hedonism. 

And the only way to be sure of avoiding suffering is to die (either immediately or as soon as suffering is too great) - die painlessly and quickly. 

Hence my prediction of a (imminent) mass epidemic of fear-motivated, resentful-spirited and despairing suicide. 

And this leads to damnation - not because it is suicide as such; but because such attempted self-annihilation was motivated by the sins of fear, resentment and despair; which amount to rejection or  denial of the reality and Goodness of our loving God the creator. 

However differently things used to be, the world is now simplified - Good and evil are increasingly without overlap, separating, diverging. 

There are those who affiliate with God and divine creation - and there is the opposite side: the mainstream, common, majority of atheist-materialist-leftist ideology that rules The West (and which apparently includes most self-identified religious people, including most Christians). 

All the leadership class and most of the populations are therefore leftists; which means that their motivations have no genuine positive agenda, but operate via oppositions.

(e.g. As of 2022, leftists - i.e. the entirety of the mainstream of Western public discourse and a majority of the population - oppose 'climate change', or are anti-racist, or keen to protect and promote sexual 'minorities', or eager to transform the world to 'prevent' the birdemic, hate the Fire Nation etc - typically they are all of these. All major policy strategies of the mainstream are primarily oppositional, negative in motivation - and adopting even one of them, is to join the leftist alliance.)

Opposition is easy because it is destructive in nature, therefore leftism is easy: therefore the lefter has triumphed over the less-left, and the trend is ever-leftward. 

Any kind or degree of subversion, destruction or inversion - of whatever is created, divine, of Good - is therefore a triumph of leftism.

Of course, this 'triumph' is itself a value-inversion. To re-label destruction as triumph is to invert the true nature of accomplishment. 

The global triumph of leftism is only real, because value-inversion has become mainstream and dominant.

Creation is difficult in this mortal life, which is dominated by entropy; even sustaining good motivations and effective functionality requires ability, energy, effort...

To make something new, useful, beautiful, happy, complex... these are difficult. 

But anybody - even the laziest and most talentless fool - can destroy what has been made; destroy to a greater or lesser extent, or even completely!

It takes talent and hard work to design a functional machine - but any fool can throw a spanner in its works, sprinkle sand into its gears, or smash it with a hammer... There is just one way to make it work; but innumerable ways to break it. 

The leftist West is now self-weakening rapidly. It can accomplish less and less of the positive, and that only at greater and greater cost (due to massively reduced efficiency and the diminished status of functionality). 

Indeed the West is not even trying to create, grow capability, produce that which is necessary...

Instead; the West's diminishing resources are being increasingly channeled into the infliction of destruction. 

Even as the Western powers are consumed by their own evil; and as their capacity to create good - and even to sustain functionality - declines with increasing rapidity; they can easily destroy - internally and externally, at home and abroad...

Destruction is so easy that the powers of evil can attack simultaneously on multiple fronts. 

...As I write, leftist-motivated Western powers are seeding and nurturing chaos across the globe and in many nations; destabilizing, pouring fuel onto conflagrations; breaking complex systems of design, production, and maintenance; snapping webs of trade, transport, distribution; threatening, lying, blackmailing and bribing; encouraging hatred, resentment and despair. 

What can stop them? 

Well, the first thing is that there is no cohesive desire to stop leftist destruction. We would have to want to stop leftism, and do something else instead. 

The West is leftist here-and-now, and getting more-so. The mass majority are invested in one or several left-agenda items, therefore resistance is neutralized and cooperation widespread.

In the short-term it is nearly-always pleasanter or more expedient to join the left-agenda, than to oppose it; even when its long-term lethality has been recognized. Selling-out has become the single major career path for those with talent and the capacity for hard-work.

  

It is a snare and delusion to suppose that those who oppose the leftist-agenda can succeed in stopping and reversing it. It is too easy to destroy, too hard to sustain and build. 

Anyway, two wrongs don't make a right: double-opposition is futile. 

The problem is not what we shouldn't, but what we should do. 

So, first (before anything else) we must want to stop leftism because we want something-else more - want that something-else as the highest priority in our own life. 

Since this world makes destruction easy, and this mortal life is dominated by short-termism and expediency; the only conceivably effective answer is when people live with their hopes fixed beyond this mortal life and world; and with faith that to dwell eternally in such Goodness is personally achievable. 

Work it out...

Some people have noticed that the current global totalitarian system is more like fascism than communism, specifically in terms of its relationship between the state and the corporations. (In the sense that communism has every-thing nationalized, and included in the state system, while in fascism the state and corporations are aligned by a single, compulsorily-enforced ideology, but not ownership...)

On this basis, it is being said that we live in a fascist system; here-and-now, in 2021... 

Well, I am tempted to say "I wish!" - because what we actually have is far, far more evil than any of the fascisms. 

A form of economic ownership and state-corporate relationships was hardly the defining feature of real-life fascism, as it briefly existed in mid-twentieth century Italy and Germany! 

Fascism was characterized ideologically by being a secular, explicitly-leftist movement that was also strongly anti-communist (which meant, mostly, anti-nationalization). But hardly anybody notice that aspect of fascism (except for the owners of corporations, hence their support for fascism when it was the most viable alternative to communism) 

Positively fascism was a dictatorship motivated by militaristic nationalistic pride. 

The country was to be run on military lines, and the country was to be celebrated and glorified. That was was people saw, and liked, about fascism - and where it scored so heavily over communism. 

The motivations of fascism were comprehensible, human, and non-paradoxical - whereas communism was - like mainstream modern leftism - negatively, oppositionally, motivated. The communist atrocities and purges were all 'against' something (the bourgeois, the Kulaks, the Jews, reactionary saboteurs...); whereas fascism was motivated by nation-building. 

Of course, communists have since tried to reframe fascism as mainly 'about' racism. That clearly was not the case - but it is a telling projection; because if the communists had been running fascism, then it certainly would have been about racism!

In other words, to the communist-leftist mind, the only way to motivate people is in opposition; thus they cannot even imagine the kind of positive national pride that was crucial to the (brief) success of fascism. Communistic leftists can only suppose that nationalism was a mask for oppositional racism directed against some particular groups or groups.

Nationalism, including fascism, offered a kind of halfway house - a positive (but temporary) alternative to religion; briefly uniting the country around its positive celebration. 

Nationalism/ Fascism still used habits of thinking and motivations derived from the Christian era - but as a secular society, it had no way of renewing these resources - so all nationalisms, everywhere, weakened and declined - and it has not proved possible to revive an effective nationalism anywhere in the world for several decades.

By this analysis, in 2021 we have something new and unprecedented.

What we have is nothing like fascism - except in the double-negative way that it has enlisted the mega-private corporations by Not nationalizing them; and by (for mow...) coopting their interests in the totalitarian world government (public-private partnership).

What we have is much more like communism than fascism - especially The Establishment's uncritical/ warm feelings towards the communist dictatorships of past and present. But this 21st century leftism is post-communist; and has shed the economic focus of Marxism.

(No more nationalization of banks, media and corporations! Come and sit at the high table! So the billionaires are kept wealthy, and 'happy'...). 

Gone, too, now - are any positive notions of building a utopia; indeed, any attempt to represent a positive vision of the future sound like one of the fictional nightmare dystopias. We now have the implementation of post-1960s New Left oppositional-identity politics, which grew in the USA and is anti-nationalist, anti-military, anti-white, anti-men, anti-working class (aka. 'white nationalists') etc.  

Consequently, They keep the masses focused on rotating negative, oppositional scares and crusades; without mentioning where all this is supposed to be going... 

Anyway; the main point here is that what we have now is not fascism, neither is it communism - but is something new and different. 

We have a regime built almost entirely on negative and oppositional motivations. We have a populace who do not require heavy-handed violent and physical coercion; because they are so profoundly demotivated, passive and short-termist; that they will believe and go-along-with almost anything that is suggested by their state-media-corporate rulers. 

We have a world government of state-media-corporate rulers, we have a world ruled in conformity and global masses who are acquiescent to this totalitarianism ... yet there is no clear, simple, comprehensible positive ideology in which they are ruling. 

We are not going-towards any-particular-thing - or maybe, we are pretending to go-towards dozens of particular but incompatible things, each pretense being maintained for a few hours, days or weeks... Then swapped-out for something else equally temporary and insincere. 

The obvious but ignored fact is that we now (obvious since early 2020) have a world government for the first time, with an international scope for action...

But that government is not aiming to build anything in particular; instead it is being used* to destroy itself - partly by setting each against all; and partly by Just Plain Destruction... Stopping great swathes of the economy, stopping human interaction, stopping... almost everything. 

Just Plain Destruction. 

Not-doing, Stopping, Preventing... these are the huge facts of these times; and these times are fundamentally un-like any time or place before, ever. 

*'Used' by whom? By the evil supernatural forces of evil - Satan, and the demons of destruction.

Reversion to traditional roles cannot happen (without net-harm) because men and women are now - at this stage and phase in the development of our consciousness - meant-to-be (and are) much more unique as beings, than was taken account of in the 'intellectual soul' (i.e. traditional-classical-medieval) ways of thinking. 

*

A while ago I wrote a post advocating that modern Christians should self-identify by wearing a cross or something similar.

But today I realized that this is, or soon will be, unneccesary.

Because the degree of self-identification among non- or anti-Christians is becoming so clear and obvious that Christians will soon be identifiable merely by exclusion.

*

Devout adherents of other religions have often self-identified in the West - ultra-Othodox Jews, Moslems, Sikhs, Hundus and so on.

So that is easy.

But it is characteristic of the late stage of secular cultural Leftism that anti-Christians are increasingly marking and labelling themselves as such: typically by their inversion of the transcendental Goods of Truth, Beauty and Virtue.

(The transcendental Goods of Truth, Beauty and Virtue are not - of course - distinctively Christian; but they are intrinsically Christian. Therefore any deliberate, proud, public flouting of any of them is with a high probability self-labelling as anti-Christian - in the absence of self-labelling of being a member of another religion. )

*

Anti-truth is proudly displayed in the use of plastic surgery and bodybuilding drugs - to project lies about a person's age and aptitudes.

To the extent that a person advertizes their enthrallment to fashion they display their inauthenticity, their subordination to prevailing dishonesty above timeless truth; their willingness to mould themselves in accordance with worldly norms.

Anyone who deliberately deploys technology (make-up, hair dye, clothing) and ingenuity (to assemble these) such as to display an image that is (say) fifteen years younger than their true age, is very probably not Christian.

*

Anti-beauty is projected by the proud advertisment of self-mutilations of various types - tattoos, piercings, deliberate uglification with make-up or dye, drunkenness, intoxicating drug usage...

(Of course, a person may mutilate himself and repent to become a real Christian. And they may have been multilated by others - perhaps when young. It is never too late to repent. But Natural Law (as a component part of Christianity) is incompatible with the un-repentance involved in the proud and deliberate display of self-mutilations.)

(And of course being ugly is normal for humans, since beauty is rare and evanescent. It is deliberate uglification, purposive desecration of beuaty, which is sinful, hence anti-Christian.)

*

Anti-virtue is typically (although not excusively) displayed in terns of public, proud, displays of allegiance to any of the tenets of the sexual revolution - whether specific, or a general and indiscriminate sexualization of appearance or behaviour.

Furthermore, anti-Virtue nowadays includes public displays of Leftist markers; since we now realize that Leftism is inrinsically anti-Christian.

(This was not always the case, and in the past there were real Christians who were socialists, for instance - but for the past several decades (at least) Leftism has evolved to exclude Christianity.)

So all manner of Leftist causes may be marked and proudly displayed - whether banners, posters, books, badges, dress styles, or whatever - and these can be used as indicators that the user has a very low probability of being Christian.

*

In conclusion, the small minority of Christians will - before much longer - be able to recognize each other by a double negative: simply as being the only ones who are not clearly self-labelled as not-Christians.

*

One important factor in this era of things coming to a point, is the distinction between good and evil becoming ever clearer even in our own hearts - and even within Christianity. Among which, the very longstanding errors and false emphases of Christianity are being exposed mercilessly.

One such error can be seen when comparing the Fourth Gospel with Luke's and especially Matthew's Gospel's - and is related to the idea of Jesus as Messiah of this world, of being a socio-political saviour of his people. And the idea that this will be evident in terms of Jesus, and then of Christianity (and the purported institutional continuation of Jesus's mission) being a positive influence in the development of this world.

It is normal now - and has been from not long after Jesus died - to claim that Jesus made The World (this mortal life) a better place; just as it is common from the enemies of Christianity to claim the opposite. And often to claim this better world as the main 'benefit' for Christianity, the main reason why people should be Christians*.

But in our time, with our pervasive materialistic world view; the arguments for Christianity have become almost entirely this-worldly. And, to make this appealing to the mainstream masses, the effects of Jesus Christ are seen in terms of Christianity promoting the values and outcomes that are currently mainstream.


This can be seen in yesterday's Queen's Speech. Elizabeth II is Head of the Church of England - officially responsible for appointing the bishops who ordain the priests; so that having Christian references is normal and mandatory in her annual address; the question is: what are these Christian references, and what do they imply?

This year, the nature of these Christian references shows clearly the ways that the spirit of Antichrist is at work in this era, here and now; such that references to Jesus and to the Christian churches are framed in social terms quite alien to the spirit of the Fourth Gospel.

Of course, at the heart of the Christmas story lies the birth of a child: a seemingly small and insignificant step overlooked by many in Bethlehem. But in time, through his teaching and by his example, Jesus Christ would show the world how small steps taken in faith and in hope can overcome long-held differences and deep-seated divisions to bring harmony and understanding. As Christmas dawned, church congregations around the world joined in singing It Came Upon The Midnight Clear. Like many timeless carols, it speaks not just of the coming of Jesus Christ into a divided world, many years ago, but also of the relevance, even today, of the angel's message of peace and goodwill. It's a timely reminder of what positive things can be achieved when people set aside past differences and come together in the spirit of friendship and reconciliation.

This false idea of Jesus as primarily, essentially, the agent of overcoming differences and division, of offering a blueprint for harmony and understanding, and of instituting a society of peace and goodwill; is a modern version of the same error and distortion seen when Jesus was regarded as a Jewish political leader; whose primary mission was to inaugurate a new way of living on this earth and during this mortal life.

Whereas, in reality Jesus was essentially addressing the individual person; and any social changes were secondary to that person coming to believe-on Jesus, have faith-in and love-for him; and desiring to follow Jesus through death to resurrected life everlasting in Heaven.


The influence of Jesus, of Christianity, on this world and mortal life is therefore via the effect of transforming individual minds by the love of Jesus and the expectation of Heaven.  

The error of regarding Jesus's mission as primarily political is even more harmful now than it was at and around the time of Jesus's life; because we have (as a society) lost our ability even to acknowledge the reality of the spiritual - and this is also the attitude of the Establishment Christian leadership such as the Queen, Archbishop of Canterbury and Pope Francis.

I call this the spirit of Antichrist, because the idea of Antichrist is to be a fake Christ who uses Christian language and concepts but whose covert motivations are evil; the spirit of those who affect to be on the side of God while operating on the side of Satan. This is done by incorporating selective aspects of Christianity with a false emphasis, and by leaving-out the essence. (Plus, of course, by lying.)


So, the actual religion of the 2019 Queen's Speech is, unsurprisingly, Leftism: we have a Leftist fake Christianity of social reform, and an overt Leftism of that modern 'climate' focused pseudo-environmentalism that has become merely an excuse for a wholesale, Global totalitarian power grab:

Since the end of the Second World War, many charities, groups and organisations have worked to promote peace and unity around the world, bringing together those who have been on opposing sides. By being willing to put past differences behind us and move forward together, we honour the freedom and democracy once won for us at so great a cost. The challenges many people face today may be different to those once faced by my generation, but I have been struck by how new generations have brought a similar sense of purpose to issues such as protecting our environment and our climate.

Here we have it, the Antichrist spirit; where it turns out that many 'charities, groups and organisations' are involved in (supposedly) promoting peace and unity around the world; with a special endorsement for that most immediately threatening evil of putting-aside-differences (ie. enforcement of sameness and elimination of borders) that is being pursued under the excuse of 'protecting our environment and our climate' [sic!]).


In sum, the Queen is explicitly making an equation between the aims of Christianity and the aims of mainstream charities, groups, organisations, environmentalists and climate change activists.

In other words, since Christianity and Leftism are being regarded as amounting to the same thing, and both are to be pursued by the same strategy of promoting peace and unity. Therefore, in practice: pursuing Leftism is claimed here also to be promoting Christianity. And the Christian message is transformed into eliminating inter-societal and inter-personal differences/ imposing uniformity of thoughts, attitudes and behaviours/ empowering international agencies with total powers of surveillance and control etc.

Thus we see the spirit of Antichrist at work. And, as always, the greatest danger is the failure to discern it; the failure to perceive that - whatever the Christian language - evil is the true motivation.


*Note added: Jesus came to offer the new possibility of resurrected Life Everlasting - which is the positive meaning of the double-negative theology of saving us from 'sin' - where 'sin' is being understood as 'the mortal condition', which is itself being understood primarily (but not wholly) to be death. That was what Jesus did, what his life and death was for; and Jesus succeeded completely in this objective with nothing of it left outstanding or still-to-do. And the further things that Jesus came to do are contingent; being secondary to this primary completed act of Jesus, and contingent upon the human individual and his circumstances, and to the society at that time and place. Of course, becoming a follower of Jesus necessarily affects your life and this world, but that is not the point of it. Nor can such societal effects be made into a checklist, code, blueprint or System - separable from the souls of specific Christian individuals.  

Frederick Nietzche is generally known as one of the most vehement and radical foes of 'Christianity' - certainly he described himself as such in his last main book The Antichrist. 

Yet as I read Nietzsche's argument in The Antichrist now; it seems to be directed against mainstream, modern, Establishment materialist Leftism - against 2020 systemic totalitarianism triumphant - rather than against Christianity as I understand it.

Indeed, read this way, The Antichrist is a brilliant exposition of the dominant reductionist and secular negative- ideology that has infiltrated, subverted, inverted and (since the global church closures of least year) all-but destroyed institutional Christianity. 

Nietzsche's criticism's of Christianity are characteristic of modern, mainstream, secular, bureaucratic Leftism: The morality based on resentment; the incoherence of equality; that mass inculcation of 'pity' which is designed to paralyze with guilt; and to induce self-hatred, nihilism, despair and the desire for death (eg. abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide).  

Nietzsche's assumption was that there was only 'this world' and he failed to recognize that, if true, this negated all possible justifications for Life of the kind he sought. His diagnosis of Ahrimanic evil was exact and prescient. 

But - at the time of his final dementia and mutism - he had not recognized that his alternative of a morality of Life (by which he meant individual spontaneous instinct) was subhuman, selfish, destructively short-termist - and by nature and merely atavistic, regressive and Luciferic. 

In other words, Nietzsche had not got beyond a negative critique based upon unexamined assumptions. The development of human consciousness means that the Luciferic is unattainable (even if it were desirable) and the Ahrimanic inevitably defeats it. Thus the German National Socialists (who revered Nietzsche, and issued Zarathustra as a Bible-equivalent) began with a philosophy of Life; but inevitably ended with escalating bureaucracy. 

This failure of the Luciferic is why the actual effect of Nietzsche on the atheistic anti-Christian culture which followed, has been to lead towards the Sorathic world of spiteful destruction - a program of civilizational/ national/ personal annihilation - instead of his hoped-for fantasy of pagan strength, courage and dominance.   

What Nietzsche should have done (and perhaps would have done - given more time; and an intuitive recognition of such realities as God, creation and life beyond mortality) was to move on from his negative critique of historical-actual church-dominated Christianity, to apply his creative insights - his direct-knowing - to remaking Christianity instead of trying to destroy it. 

As things stood; Nietzsche was using a double-standard - applying his 'methods' only against Christianity; and not against the assumptions from-which he critiqued Christianity. 

Nietzsche's own method, if thoroughly applied, would have led him back to Christianity - but Christianity of a very different nature than the one from which he began. 

Also, as I have said before, I think it likely that Nietzsche was himself 'saved' - i.e. that after death he chose to follow Jesus Christ to resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 

Why? How? Well, in a nutshell, what Nietzsche had against Christianity was that he believed it was not true. 

If when, after death, Nietzsche discovered that Christianity was true; then a Man of his creativity and honesty - and with his passionate human motivations - would likely have chosen active, eternal, interpersonal Life in Heaven; rather than the anti-Life lies, ugliness and sordid sins of Hell; or the living-death, un-conscious, blissed-out passivity of Nirvana.  

It really is amazing how so many modern people cling to a world view that offers them literally nothing!

...A world view that describes a universe without purpose or meaning - where things happen only from some mixture of rigid determinism with randomness. 

A human life that comes from nowhere and ends in utter extinction; and where 'morality' is (somehow!) both a thing that has no objective basis and gets made-up and changed at will - yet at the same time is overwhelmingly important, such that anyone who breaks "today's taboo" deserves to have his life destroyed. 

Clearly, nobody could actually want such a world view to describe reality; yet (probably) a billion and more people operate on that basis (whatever superficial religiosity they affect) - presumably because they have become convinced that it is and must be true. 

This is the nature of sin for modern Man. 

Sins are the consequences of turning-away-from, rejecting, God's creation and destiny for the world and oneself. 

Modern Man is hardly aware of 'traditional sins' - especially not those related to sex. He is also unaware of his own habitual and strategic dishonesty, unconcerned about greed, sloth, etc.

But modern Man is made miserable by consequences of sins such as loneliness (alienation, cut-offness from life and the world), fear (angst, mistrust of the universe), and despair (hopelessness). 

Modern Man does not recognize these as sins - but he is made deeply miserable by them; and one might have supposed that such intractable misery would lead him to seek relief in the positive and optimistic world view of Christianity.  

Instead, however, modern Man seeks relief from what he perceives as a multitude of specific miseries - with tactics such as forgetting-himself by immersion in work or social life (travel, tourism etc); in relationships and thoughts of sex. 

And especially the mass media; and in a therapeutic attitude to life ('healthism') that hopes for relief from (a multitude) of physical and psychological problems, from a range of medical and other therapeutic sources (including psychotherapies and social engineering). 

The globally-mainstream atheist-materialist world view is a kind of Leftism for this reason: its morality is rooted in the double-negative purpose of alleviating-suffering - my means of a vast spectrum of socio-political, inclusive of 'health', interventions.  

One of the deepest and most urgent reasons for opposition to religion, is that religious restrictions and prohibitions are regarded as interfering-with these above tactics for alleviating the miseries of life - thus the fear that religion would make life unbearable. 

In sum: People have painted themselves into a corner where they have pre-defined life and reality as futile; and then they are trying to prevent themselves from remembering and realizing this! 

Understandably; these tactical palliatives are not fully effective all of the time. Distraction is unable to make life feel worthwhile, given the underlying and pervasive conviction of hope-less-ness.

Yet it is a fact that this whole 'modern problem' is self-created; because we each choose our own fundamental convictions (i.e. our metaphysical assumptions) - or else we choose not to choose, and to accept whatever society feeds-us! 

Either way; whether we acknowledge our own choice, or passively choose to follow orders - ultimately our choice is still our personal responsibility. 

 

So, the situation (as I well recall it from the decades when I was a believer in the mainstream modern world view) is of being-in a nihilistic situation, in which - once nihilism has been internalized and accepted as reality - there is apparently no possible theory or evidence that can convince us of anything better. 

Because, in a purposeless and meaningless universe, nothing means anything, and everything means nothing. 

What is a possible escape from this inevitable despair, and to a better world view?

That is the situation of one important type of the potential modern convert; and I think it can be seen that The Church (any church) - with its mandatory and complex "package deal" combination of beliefs and doctrines, requirements and rituals - is not an answer to the modern Man's deepest and most intractable problem. 

What modern Man actually needs; is a different fundamental set of assumptions, regarding the nature of reality (i.e. a different metaphysics). 

If Christianity is to be recognized as a possible and valid escape from known-sin and into positivity and hope; then it needs primarily to be concerned with the world-view of the individual Man; and this needs (certainly initially) to be distinguished from the package-deal offerings of any actual or potential Christian Church-ianity. 

In other words; modern Man needs to be able to look-out-from his alienated despair and perceive a pure, simple, clear and metaphysical Christianity.   

A choice of Church may, or may not, come later. 

But metaphysics is the first and essential step.