Bruce Charlton's Notions

One reason that we are fed a relentless diet of dystopian books, movies and TV - i.e. why this theme is so lavishly funded by The Establishment; is that consuming dystopian fiction demonstrably has zero benefit in terms of prevention (but instead facilitates actual dystopias by psychological and spiritual means); while portrayal of dystopias reinforces the bottom-line double-negative value system that is destroying modern Man. 

By the depiction of horror and misery is inculcated the (mostly-unconscious) idea that if-only these horrors and miseries were removed (or, at least, greatly reduced) then everything would be fine. 

The news reports and analyses of ongoing wars have a similar role and effect: indirectly pushing the idea that if-only there was peace; then everything would be fine...

(It should be noted that the same people who believe this kind of pacifism, are in-real-life nearly-always active in support of whoever is the worst side in those foreign wars that have been promoted and escalated by The West.)

Of course this idea that everything would be fine without war is not made explicit, because it is obviously absurd; but it is implied; often in a disguised form where the double-negative is presented as a positive. 

For instance "peace" - which is really the mere absence of war - is talked-about (written and sung-about) as if it was a positive concept, a positive value, an end rather than a means. 

This should be tediously familiar to anyone who has sampled the late 1960s-early 1970s pop and academic culture - ranging from ubiquitous "Peace" signs and symbols, through songs about peace phrased as if it were a positive thing, to academics working in "peace studies"...

Because, in a society without positive values, it is not just a safe-bet - but the only possible stance - to oppose some or another form of suffering as-if this was the was self-evidently the best possible belief and activity; the highest human value, the reason for our being, the purpose of life...

(And it can easily be inferred, and observed, that when the prevention of suffering becomes the highest value, we have an ethic of unbirth, death and suicide.) 

Indeed; it can be hazardous nowadays to espouse any positive goal for one's own life - such as a religion, or nationalism. This is increasingly regarded as dangerous, and a form of terrorism; unless it is religion or nationalism for someone-else, in some other-place. 

That's allowable, because it is conceptualized either as just-another double-negation, such as freedom-from-oppression; and is "altruistic" hence conforms to the supreme modern Western values of self-hatred and -destruction. 

If one takes a step back and considers; it really is inevitable that our culture is so fixated upon dystopias, exactly because that we have no motivating utopias; in other words, we fixate upon hoping to avoid dystopia, exactly because the double-negation of avoiding-dystopia is the highest value we can conceive as real. 

Genuine utopias have become (literally) incredible to modern consciousness, and rightly so; because modern Men acknowledge only this-world and mortal-life, and this-world is characterized by evil and entropy such that no genuine and positive utopia can ever happen.

This-worldly pessimism about the possibility of u-topia, then turns into this-world fear of dys-topia - and here we are. 

The sequence is almost inescapable, unless there is a profound reorientation of metaphysics. Unless (that is) we personally, and then culturally, acknowledge and believe-in the reality of post-death personal existence; then we cannot even begin to escape from the futile paradoxes of double-negative values. And we will continue to obsess over dystopias and wars.  

Christians do themselves, as well their cause, long-term harm by their habitual (addictive?) use of double-negative theology. Indeed there is a very influential branch of theology and Christian practice that has elaborated this into a vast systematic edifice (the negative path, or via negativa) - plus, this is the basis of much 'eastern' religious philosophy in Buddhism, Hinduism (and Sufism).  

I think we can see the collapse of double-negative thinking in the 21st century; because its lack of simplicity and clarity render it incapable of dealing with the protean and pervasive challenges to faith of this era, as emanating from globalist totalitarianism with its linked-bureaucracies of governance and mass media. 

Negative motivations are counter-productive, because when all is illusion then individuals are (in practice) rendered passively obedient to that which is dominant. And, anyway, the number and strength - and fluidity - of deceptions are now too great to be individually discerned, diagnosed and rejected. 

In a world where (for many or most people) it is a case of me-against-the-world: - my Christianity against a world of demonic- materialist ideology - it seems we must be clear in our own minds; if we are not to be confused and bamboozled, and simply worn-down to impotent exhaustion by the relentless and increasing weight of error and evil.

For us, it is a case of motivation, motivation, motivation! 

Thus, we cannot anymore be motivated by such double-negatives as the avoidance of sin - most Christians who imagine this is possible are simply denying their own vast scale of sinning in domains such as dishonesty, resentment, and fear. Avoidance of sin is now effective (hence valid) only when there is a primary positive impulse towards Good. 

But most people's idea of The Good is some notion of altruism/ unselfishness/ helping-others - which is another negative value. In a world based on utilitarian hedonism, where 'other people' live materialistically - 'altruism' reduces to me trying to 'make' people happy, which is impossible; so it ends-up with the negative goal of diminishing suffering. 

(In practice, altruism at the political level entails a small class of super-powerful/ super-privileged/ super-rich individuals pretending to administer the world on behalf of the 'oppressed' by monopolizing and confiscating all resources - supposedly because this globalist-establishment are the 'agents' of 'social justice.)   

We cannot (if ever Men could) be motivated by a desire for 'freedom' - because freedom is a negative value that only gains motivating-power for Good, when there is some existing positive motivation towards Good that is being thwarted. 

We cannot, if we intend to accomplish Good, be motivated primarily by obedience to any external authority or institution; because all such are so corrupted that in practice Goodness can only be discerned and practiced by the independent thinking of individual persons, and their autonomy of thinking. 

And that returns us to the primary of personal motivation. 

In other words; it is now imperative for Christian Good both that individuals are motivated to think for themselves and do-so, and that they operate from baseline assumptions that are positively-motivating - which means simple and clear enough to be effective. 

In practice; each must discover these for himself. They are not available off-the-peg and will not be the values that get-inculcated-into the passively obedient or non-conscious, routine-thinker. 

Since the problem is insufficient motivation, we need to begin from whatever positive and good motivations we already have; and follow these motivations through, with honesty and diligence to... wherever they will lead. 

The Big Problem is that so few people seem to have the motivation even to recognize a problem with The World Now. 

This could - in theory - be because the world is now so pervasively and persuasively evil that Modern men are helpless against its temptations... But that would be to assume God has failed to give Men a reasonable chance of salvation...

Alternatively, it may be that Modern men are of innately poorer quality than Men of the past; that a mass of Men (especially in The West) are innately more dominated by evil, more prone to evil - and feebler in their strength of Good motivations than before. 

I regard this 'worse Men' as the most probable explanation for a world full of Men who do not even want to be Good; but who instead legislate and enforce inverted-true values, such that great evil is now called great good - and praised, rewarded and accorded the highest status. 

In other words: I assume that God is as Good as ever, as powerful a creator as ever; but the 'quality' of pre-mortal souls available for incarnation into this mortal life is lower than in the past. A lot of incarnated souls nowadays are less naturally-good/ more heavily disposed-towards evil, compared with the past. 

And therefore (here-and-now) all the major (large/ powerful/ wealthy/ high-status) human institutions of The Hegemonic West (including churches) are net-corrupted; are overall affiliated to the side of evil in the spiritual war of this world. 

Quite likely - you and I are similarly misaligned and enfeebled compared with Men of the past - although I would not be writing, you would not be reading, this - unless there we had at least some motivation to be motivated for Good... 

However... What worked for our ancestors may not work for us: since we are worse, and so is The World. 

We need things to be simpler, clearer and easier than They did; if we are to be able to develop and strengthen our embryonic Good-motivations into something positive by-which we can navigate our path against the current of a hostile evil-world of apparently overwhelming strength and scope. 

 

It is important for people to realize, to acknowledge, that the global leadership class of 2023 - especially those of The West - are affiliated to evil; i.e. are allied with Satan and against God and divine creation. 

But making this acknowledgement is not sufficient to be Christian, because the Christian God is Good - and Good by (the best and highest) human standards  of Good - as exemplified and taught by Jesus Christ. 

In other words; to be Christian, we must also correctly understand how it is that God, the creator, who is wholly-Good - makes things, such that this world is ruled by evil Men who serve the agenda of Satan. 

In other words; we need to understand enough about the nature and motivations of God to make sense of the current fact of things-now being substantially under evil leadership. 

And there are (from a Christian perspective) right and wrong ways of understanding this.

As so often nowadays; this line of reflection almost immediately gets-down to fundamental assumptions concerning the nature of reality - especially the nature of God (in other words - to metaphysics). 

And as so often nowadays; such reflections operate as a stress test on some of the historical incoherences of Christianity - in this instance, the dogma that the Christian God is an Omni-God (omnipotent, omniscient, and creating everything from nothing).

When the Omni-God concept is made primary - then there is no real Good or evil; because everything is of-God. 

Our human ideas of Good and evil are then merely the delusions of Beings who have been made depraved and weak, and forced (for incomprehensible reasons) to dwell in the realm of an evil dictator - with the only goal the negative one of acknowledging our own depravity and that evil of our situation. 

Somehow; this acknowledgement of evil is supposed to be the only path to our personal salvation. And yet this (we must believe) was the only and best way that we (who are supposed to be completely made by God, in complete accordance with God's designs, and having experiences completely dictated by God or God's servants) can escape eternal torment.    

I have noticed that some of the Christians who pass the Litmus Tests of our time - and who therefore appear to be 'good Christians' - are doing so negatively rather than positively. In other words - such Christians recognize the evil of the Litmus Test issues - but only because they regard this whole world as essentially evil. 

Such negative Christians regard Men as essentially depraved creatures who inhabit a world that God has given to the rulership of Satan; and which Satan - who is a sadistic, lying tyrant - operates as a prison of torment.   

In other words; such negative Christians regard God as Good (in some ultimate and abstract sense) but one whose Goodness is morally-incomprehensible - because God (as an Omni-God, qualitatively utterly distinct from men) operates by values that are beyond human comprehension and empathy. 

Because if a Man were to treat his children in this way, he would be regarded as a moral monster! 

An analogy might be parents who deliberately choose to send their son to a boarding school whose headmaster is a sadistic tyrant, and who employs sadistic tyrants as teachers; and these teachers ensure that the most sadistic and tyrannical of the boys are praised and rewarded, and encouraged to torment the children at the school and expunge anything in them that is Good or joyful. 

Even more extremely; since these parents are 'omnipotent and omniscient' - we must assume that they might not have sent their son to boarding school at all, but chose to. And they might instead have picked a better Headmaster who had some Good motivations and employed a better staff and encouraged Goodness in the boys... 

But no! These parents chose to force their kid to inhabit torture-school...

And further - these parents must be regarded as having made their son such that he was by nature depraved, that he was corruptible by evil; he is set-up (by his creation-from-nothing) such that he cannot resist corruption.  

Such choices are de facto imputed to the Omni-God - and belief in Omni-God is then made mandatory for Christians... 

Negative Christians are driven to such extremes by their dogmatic adherence to the Omni-God. 

In the past, it was possible, indeed not unusual, for Christians who believed in an Omni-God to operate in a way that was inconsistent with their belief - and which instead focused on the nature, example and teachings of Jesus. 

But nowadays, because of the stresses of these times - the contradictions of mainstream, orthodox Christian theology have been brought to the surface, and confronted by a more evil world than ever before - a world in which the organized institutional 'Christian' churches have (almost-) all chosen to obey the totalitarian agenda of evil, and who actively-support many or most of the globalist-leftist Litmus Test issues. 

Yet to regard this world and Men as essentially evil is to reject that which is specifically Christian, and to adopt a Judaic/ Old Testament/ Islamic - or even quasi-Gnostic - view of God; as incomprehensible or even apparently evil by even the best human standards. 

(The Gnostics believed, in essence, that this world - and all 'matter' - was created and operated by 'the devil'; and was therefore wholly negative, operating only as a test to elicit a spiritual and other worldly desire. For the Gnostics, we Men could not learn anything positive from our experience in this world - we could only learn the negative lesson of its evil, and experience the desire to escape from matter into pure spirit. Meanwhile - for Gnostics - knowledge of God could only be negative ('negative theology') - we could say what God was not; but could state nothing positive and substantive about God. In other words; this is a double-negative theology - in which 'Good' is only the negation of evil. While there are no modern day Gnostics - it can be seen that this negative metaphysical attitude has been, and still is, a feature of many religions and spiritualities. This is also revealed by the commonly-expressed double-negative conception of salvation; which is so often described as as an escape from default-torment - e.g. "Jesus came to save Men from Hell".) 

It seems obvious to me that Christians - i.e. those who follow Jesus Christ - cannot (and should not) follow this path of regarding this world as created by God as a prison ruled by a tormenter; and of God's nature as utterly unlike even the best aspects of the best of of Men.

The test of these times involves both accepting that this world is indeed ruled by evil men who serve Satan; and also understanding that God is Good - and Good by the best standards of the best of Men in this actual world. 

This means that (in 2023) Christians are being compelled explicitly to reject the old error of the Omni-God in Christianity - failure to do so is pushing Christians towards a kind of double-negative pseudo-Christianity, in which God and the ultimates have more in common with the world-view of Judaism, Islam, or even the Gnostic...

In other words; we are called-upon explicitly to reject a type of 'Christianity' that demands (above all else) complete obedience to the incomprehensible and (to us ultimately depraved humans) apparently-immoral demands of all-powerful and abstractly inhuman deity.

Such a Christianity has no essential role for Jesus Christ as such - its theology and demands are wholly-derivable from God as-was before the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ: Jesus has been wholly-absorbed-into the Omni-God (as must all of creation be absorbed into an Omni-God). 

Such a pseudo-Christianity is an Old Testament religion (plus/ minus various Greek and Roman philosophical assumptions) - and such remains the case no matter what lip-service is paid to the importance of Jesus.  

In one version; Jesus has been absorbed into an already-existing Old Testament project, without any qualitative break or inflexion; in another version Jesus is just treated as-if he was simply God the Creator.  

To be a positive Christian in 2023 therefore entails more than just rejecting the temptations of the Litmus Tests on the basis that the world world is evil and God made it this way. 

We cannot negative our way out of trouble! 

Good comes from Good, not from a vast piling of evil upon evil. When Christians find themselves talking as if Good could come from evils, they ought to regard this as a reductio ad absurdum - and examine their assumptions that led to this non-sense! 

Christians need to be led by Jesus Christ, not by a pre-Christian conception of an Omni-God. 

A Christian in 2023 needs to detect and reject evil - yes!

But only as a means to the end of pursuing positive Good. 

**

Note added: The reader may notice that I emphasized 2023 throughout. Negative Christianity often worked well in practice in earlier eras - and this is also useful to understand. Firstly, Men had a different and more group-ish (immersive, passive, un-conscious) form of consciousness in the pre-modern era; and this resulted in society-wide forms of religion. The positive aspects of even the most negative theologies were therefore sometimes ameliorated by positive social practices - particularly those handed-down by tradition. One example would be that of Eastern Orthodox Christianity as found in the Byzantine Empire, or Holy Russia. As well as an ascetic and meditative monasticism rooted in negative theology; there were all kinds of ritual and symbolic practices that were part of everyday life and provided a counterbalancing of warmth, aesthetic satisfaction, colour, energy - often the veneration of Mary, the Mother of God was a particular route for this. Something analogous can be seen in some Medieval Roman Catholic societies of Western Europe. But things have changed - modern Men's consciousness is more autonomous and individualistic and consciously aware of things once taken-for-granted so that we must choose much that was previously spontaneous; automatically absorbed from society. Now (2023) there are no Christian societies that provide that kind of communal and primarily-motivating religious life. Each Christian is, in an existential sense, "on his own". Therefore the long-standing flaws of mainstream Christian theology have been unmasked. Thus life in 2023 is always and everywhere a testing-time for Christians; in ways that 1223, 1523, or even 1823 - were not (or not always).  

One of the most significant - and almost-never asked - questions about real science is: where do the new good ideas come from? 

Anyone can 'generate' new but false hypotheses - but where do the new and true hypotheses come from?

This key question has been obscured by several generations of focusing on the supposed ability of 'scientific method' (there is no such thing) to disprove false ideas. 

In other words, the ways of explaining science posit a double-negative method of eliminating-false ideas. 

But even if there was a method for disproving false ideas (and the history of science, of actual major scientific breakthroughs) suggests that there is no such method) that would not serve to do anything at all to generate the true ideas - the ones that are either confirmed by further observations and/or not-rejected by further testing.  

This is because the explanations of the value and validity of science are typically derived from within the basic (metaphysical) assumptions of science-in-general (or else some specific branch of science). 

Whereas in the first place this is an intrinsically invalid way of validating! - because there is no way that scientific research done on the assumption that the assumptions of science are correct, could ever validate the assumptions under which the science was done! 

One cannot simultaneously assume that assumptions are true, and also test those assumptions! 

But - although not a valid way of reasoning - this way of discussing science using scientific assumptions can indeed provide a coherent pseudo-explanation of how it is that false ideas get rejected; yet it does not even begin to touch the primary problem of where not-false ('true') ideas might come-from... 

Because, on the one hand there are an 'infinite' number of false ideas that might be proposed (and these might even be 'randomly generated' by a mechanical process of combination, extrapolation and interpolation of already-existing ideas. 

However, there is no imaginable way in which the one true idea could be found from among this infinite number of false ideas.

And even so this suggestion requires that already-exiting ideas already exist! Yet these need to have come from somewhere. So double-negative theories are often no more than kicking-the-can - leaving untouched the primary problem of where good ideas come from.

In other words; if a true idea is the needle, then there is a haystack of false ideas of limitlessly-vast size that would need to be searched in order to find that needle. 

Yet true ideas have-been found! 

Therefore, any hypothetical double-negative method of finding true ideas cannot suffice. 

What this argument tells us is that there must be a positive method for finding true ideas in science; and the history of science tells us that some of these true ideas have been substantially counter-intuitive, unnatural, non-obvious - as evidence by the fact that many decades, centuries or even millennia have elapsed before these true ideas were discovered.

Where does the needle come from? - or, if the good-idea needle is made up of component good ideas, then where did these components come-from? 

A valid and coherent positive answer to the question of where good scientific ideas come from also explains why such answers have been ruled-out; and the primary question buried by distracting and inadequate secondary theories of a double-negative type.   

The answer to where the good ideas come from is one that takes us out of science - as is indeed logically necessary - and into the realm of transcendental values: the realm of ultimate truth, beauty and virtue; but here (in science) with the emphasis on truth. 

And this is a spiritual-religious question: the matter of the nature of truth, beauty and virtue. We are not just asking about how Men can know transcendental truth when presented with it - which is a secondary question... 

What we are really asking is along the lines of: how can Men generate new transcendental truths? 

The generation of transcendental truth is necessary for science, but is not restricted to science; it encompasses all truths of all kinds. 

The origin of scientific truth is therefore seen to be a specific instance of the general matter of Man's capacity to discover any truth about any thing; when that truth is not already accessible and Man must create that truth. 

Creation! And with creation we have finally reached our destination; we have reached the bottom-line of explanation.

The discovery or invention of new and true ideas is a type of creation; and the matter of new good ideas in science can only be addressed within a framework in which creation is real, and also possible to Men.   

We arrive at an understanding of Men that must account for individual Men operating as genuine creators; in a sense that is associated with the attributes of a god. That is a generative source of creation, a source that does not depend entirely upon inputs for its output. A source that can make something new which is not merely caused by prior inputs...

Thus we arrive at a conceptualization of the creativity of real science as necessarily part of a theistic world view.  

Far from science being opposed to 'religion' or excluding 'god' - it turns-out that the reality of scientific discovery depends on the reality of god. 

Interesting, that - isn't it? And it suggests an immediate reason why real science has disappeared (to be replaced by bureaucracy) except as a rare, individual and amateur activity. 

As god has been deleted from public discourse - so has science... 

And so have all genuinely-creative human activities - as described by the term genius. (Whether in science, the arts, philosophy or anywhere.)

An age which genuinely, as a matter of assumption, denies god; is also necessarily an age that has destroyed its capacity for generating the new good ideas that are the basis of creative science; and indeed where real science of any kind is impossible; and indeed where real truth of any kind is impossible - and where real beauty and virtue are also impossible. 

(This is the nature of The System.) 

Truth is now lost... just like that needle, buried somewhere in the limitless haystack of error and falsehood. 

**

Note added: It took me a (worryingly?) long time to reach the above conclusion; having to un-learn so much conventional wisdom first. I eventually did so in course of writing my last significant scientific publication - although now I would take the argument even further in the same general direction. 

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. 

I have often repeated my belief that demotivation is perhaps the biggest negative reality in the world today. Its causes are obvious enough - in that 'religion' has been Man's primary motivation throughout human history; and a world without God defaults to much lower-level motivations of a selfish nature, which mutually conflict - and invariably weaken due to repetition, habituation and boredom. 

Finally the nihilism of Godlessness leads to the ultimate demotivated state (and self-damning sin) of incurable despair. 

For a few generations after religion was discarded but before it lost its cultural and psychological effect; there was a partially successful attempt to replace religion with nationalism and/or socialism - which initially had positive goals that could provide some social coherence and meaning. But these motivators always weakened as the implications of no God, no spirit, no afterlife began to become fully accepted and assimilated. 

We now find ourselves in a world with no positive purposes and instead only a range of futile, incoherent, negative oppositional projects - e.g. trying to 'eliminate' the birdemic, sexism, racism, climate change, and the various *'phobias'.

Or, for a minority; opposing these oppositional projects - by protesting in favour of 'double-negative' goals eg. against censorship, cancel-culture or other recent negative restrictions. Others are against mass immigration; against the destructive and mutilating 'trans- agenda, against the closure of churches... All valid values; yet multiple double-negative motivations cannot replace an over-arching positive one. 

As for positive motivations; there are now only a sequence of micro-motivations, to be taken-up and set-aside in a open-ended series and going nowhere in particular. 

Little things like hoping to go abroad, visit some particular person; and in lots of little ways return to (semi-) 'normal' life by eating-out, sitting in cafes, going to a bar, driving a car, attending the cinema or a lecture, resuming a sexual life... whatever. 

Even the known-to-be-unsatisfactory delusional life goals of the past few decades - like a 'rewarding career' - are now destroyed as genuine possibilities; although people still pretend to be interested by them. Perhaps the only currently-valid long-term job option is to join the growing hierarchy of the secret police, or rise to seniority among the burgeoning concentration camp guard bureaucracy. 

But this is a downward spiral leading to civilizational collapse, and the better that people 'cope with' the new totalitarian world by pursuing ever-more-micro gratifications - the faster it will spiral down towards destruction. 

Because without strong motivation there is no courage - as can be seen in the world leadership in all the different institutions: government, politics, the media, the churches, law, medicine, science, education, the police and military etc. They are all unprincipled cowards because none have a strong and primary religious motivation. 

Without motivation, no courage; without courage only expediency - and in the totalitarian world expediency leads (by various but converging routes) to the Satanic agenda against God, divine creation and all that is Good.  

The only escape is to find motivation in the divine - and the only realistic motivations must be rooted out-with the Global System - which means rooted in the life beyond life. 

Courage needs hope, and hope needs faith - which must become our first priority. 

If faith is not first, it is nothing. The first commandment for a Christian is to love God - and God is our Father, the creator. 

The only escape from the self-destroying System is to follow Jesus Christ, and he leads us through death to resurrected life eternal. 

If we are to have the hope that provides motivation and courage to do anything Good; resurrected heavenly-life eternal must be the destination. It should be the source of all strong motivation.  

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 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. 

There are just so many ways in which modern culture is actively subversive, inverting values and corrupting behaviour - that to focus upon any in particular is to invite failure. 

Special attention paid to a specific response to a specific problem (which will usually result in the need to do something quite complex and effortful) - opens us up to a weakened and distracted response to the many other simultaneous problems. 

If we take a single-issue approach to dealing with our sins, in a world where there are So Many sins, we will end-up chasing our tails. Even if we weed-out one form of sin by great effort, meanwhile the others will have grown unchecked*. 

What is required is that values we live-by, be rooted in some source of real and true values that is autonomous from the mainstream culture. 

In other words; when Western civilization is become an ocean of corruption in which we must swim - because its corruption has invaded all institutions; we can no longer lead a Good life by the double-negative strategy of avoiding evil; but only by the positive strategy of pursuing Good. 

And to do this requires living in accordance with a source of Good that is independent-of, and uncorrupted by, our civilization.  

Then it does not matter what that culture is - past, present or future; nor what is does to us - because so long as we are rooted in reality and truth, we can recognize and repent whatever is corrupting, subversive or value-inverting. 

The traditional way for this to happen, was that the individual would obey the guidance of a religious group (typically a church) that was autonomous and Good. 

But now there are no churches or other religious groupings that are both big-enough and autonomous from the subversions of culture nowadays - and which can be relied-upon to remain autonomous for as long as we may need them. 

To be rooted-in a church, is therefore merely to be rooted in a variant of the mainstream corrupt-culture. 

The other way is for each individual to 'obey' the guidance of some internal source which is both Good and autonomous. 

Is this possible? Is there a source within-Man that is sufficiently autonomous of the evils of culture, and also Good? 

For me, the answer is Yes - because this is a matter of metaphysical Christian theology. 

In other words; my fundamental beliefs concerning the nature of God and divine creation assume that God is Good, and we are God's children - and therefore we each have within us that which makes God Good.

In other words we each have in us (because we are God's children) a True and Uncorrupted Self which is in harmony with divine creation, and from-which we can be guided towards that which is Good.  

If one believes-in a real-divine self, and that this True Self can be 'consulted' for guidance; then that potentially solves the problem of living in a corrupting civilization where that corruption includes the churches. 

Furthermore, in principle, each of us can deal with problems of corruption on an individual, case-by-case basis; rather than by - as with traditional religions - seeking generic solutions to particular classes of problem, or following general guidelines such as laws or prescribed practices. 

It all seems to depend, in the first instance, on whether one believes this source of inner guidance is real/ true/ possible.

*It is possible that a person may be dominated by a particular besetting sin, which needs to be weeded-out before anything else can be done - alcohol or drug addiction is an example. But we should not pretend that dealing with a single sin makes someone overall a better person - assuming that the sin was already repented. 

I mean that what is vital with a besetting sin is repentance. Reform of a sin is good, in and of itself; but only Good overall when it is indeed Good overall! 

Reform may, or may not, be possible in a particular instance; but it is at best is preparation for a subsequent change in overall attitude to life.

Something I used to speculate about as a young child, was what it would be like to be on The Wrong Side in a war - and to know that you were on the wrong side. I used to feel thankful that (as I supposed) such a thing could never happen to me; and that 'my' side had been, and always would be, the Right one.

This is, I suppose, an innate and spontaneous tribalism; which is rooted in a kind of 'biological' loyalty that in fact defines 'right' as 'us' - so that 'we' are always in-the-right - whatever happens. 

But, of course, we do not now live in a society structured around mutual loyalties within families and (more broadly) clans - but pretty-much the opposite; and our officially-dominant social ethic is an inversion of biological affiliations. Primacy (for the Western Man) is given to the alien, the other, to what I am Not; to whatever opposes family, reproduction, and indeed basic functionality. 

So, the deep structure of the ruling leftist ideology of The West is that 'we' are innately on The Wrong Side; even as this ideology itself originates and rules specifically in The West.

Thus a contradiction - as usual when we are dealing with evil. Evil is rooted in lies and manipulations, therefore it deals-in contradiction, revels in it!

And anyone in The West, especially if a white man of biologically-functional sexuality - knows with one part of his fractured mind that he is always on The Wrong Side; even as he knows that he is always on the side of 'right' only when he pursues policies predicated on self-hatred, personal and familial suicide, and promotes whatever and whoever is most alien and 'other'. 

'Doing-good by self-harm' - might be the motto for the likes of us - and certainly the self-harm done on our behalf (by The System) is invariably immediate, primary and definite - while any supposed-good is remote, conjectural, and vague to the point of invisibility. 

Then there is the wrongness of our goals in war; which are nowadays to impose the inverted-values of the Global Totalitarian System (and its financial, economic and legal tools) upon any who resist in any way. 

For instance, a current explicit goal of wars is to ensure that as many as possible of the youngest possible children (everywhere in the world) are sexually corrupted and opened to maximal exploitation; and are poisoned, mutilated and biologically-neutered - and that no society should be able to opt-out of such imperatives.  

So now we all know what it is to be on the Wrong Side, and to know it...

Consider the 'justifications' for recent and current wars compared with the past. In the past wars were to defend the homeland (especially women and children): now it is a matter of covert policy to oppose marriage, families, reproduction and the innocence of children; and of explicit moral principle to send women to be killed on the front lines. 

In the more recent past, other wars were justified on the basis of ethnic, religious or national interest - nowadays, it is asserted that we are going to war for the benefit of 'other people' about whom little or nothing is known (except via the media, government officials, and other known-liars), and about whom (until the war began) nobody in The West had any traditional care or concern. 

Thus, the narrative is that our motives must be pure and the reason must be impartially-just; exactly because 'we' ('we' meaning, in practice, 'you' - i.e. the subject-masses) have nothing to gain and everything to lose from war. 

We are nowadays paying, fighting, and dying for the asserted 'benefit' of others - not ourselves. 

(And when there is such profound ignorance and actual-lack of genuine care of these others 'on behalf of whom' we are supposedly acting; then the fact of war actually causing gross harm, instead of benefit, is easily ignored.) 

Modern war is highly abstract and ideological; therefore something approaching the complete inversion of past war - in terms of its justification and what is supposed to motivate. The modern motivations and justifications are naturally, therefore, a combination of the arbitrarily-manufactured, and the opposites of what used-to motivate war. 

The prime casualty of abstraction and inversion is enfeebled motivation - and indeed this is the most demotivated society, ever. Western motivations are now so shallow and so weak that they can almost-instantly be manipulated and pointed in any arbitrary direction - by crude media-bureaucratic propaganda. 

And these System-imposed-motivations are mutually contradictory hence net-destructive; so that the masses are utterly disempowered by first their demotivation and secondly by the gross and self-destroying incoherence of what feeble motivations the leadership class do posses (which are shorter-and-shorter-termist and careerist in nature; plus the gratification of increasingly-corrupted sexual desires/ fantasies at the highest levels - plus fear). 

Consequently, the West is ruled by negative, oppositional weakness - and that rule is increasingly totalitarian and dominant exactly-because the subject-masses are even-more negative, self-contradicting and demotivated. 

Consequently, the trend is for more chaos, greater weakness, gross untruthfulness - masking deliberately-induced collapse. 

(In brief; I think that many of the plans and schemes have the proximate and materialistic Plan A of increasing the power and wealth of some few, specific members of the ruling humans; but if/when this does not happen Plan B supervenes, which is the spiritual imperative to destroy Good and increase chaos. This is ultimate; because The System is ruled by demons, by supernatural entities, whose ultimate goals are negative-spiritual - not positive-material.) 

We know we are on the side of Wrong... Then what is to be done? - especially considering that a negatively-motivated Global Strategy is easy to accomplish; since it is relatively facile to destroy; while it is difficult to create.  

Clearly, the single most vital response is understanding; to see-though the fake-justifications to the evil motivations beneath. 

Without such understanding, nothing Good can be achieved. 

But when the odds are so heavily stacked in favour of evil, and when evil is anyway far easier to accomplish than good; then even knowing we are on the side of wrong does not translate into large-scale, organized, 'systematic' opposition to that wrong-side. Because when we are engaged in an inverted conflict, then such opposition actually increases motivation and cohesion on the side of evil. 

As usual in these times; the proper consequences of seeing-through lies and discerning evil is first of all the spiritual result of thinking and knowing truly - and to achieve this should not be underestimated, since it is the prime way in which we personally contribute to God's creation. 

But secondly, genuinely Godly-opposition needs to be about 'doing-Good' rather than the 'double-negative' of 'opposing-evil'. 

And Good can (as a strong generalization) now only be done by individuals doing very specific and personal acts of Good with other individuals - aiming for spiritual benefit primarily. 

This is not easy to discern, and the possibility may arise only seldom; but we should aim to be prepared and fortified for when such an occasion presents-itself - as it surely will, sooner or later.   

I reject (because it is untrue) that double-negative understanding of the work of Christ which is expressed in terms of his saving us from a punishment that God imposed.

The work of Christ should be understood in terms of what he positively did for us: what he enabled, and taught, and demonstrated.

Jesus made it possible for us to be free, as well as Good - recognising that values based upon passive, unconscious obedience to external authority (of any kind, even when that authority is truly divine) are insufficient.

To be ours, to count to our credit, to be worthy of full sons and daughters of God; values must come from-within - that is from our selves - and from our real, true, divine, eternal selves; and be freely chosen.

Christ both made this possible by a cosmic effect - by which his incarnation, death and resurrection changed the universe - and also by his life-as-teaching he showed us how this works in practice.

Jesus was the first and only complete 'primary thinker' - whose thinking was of reality, was fully participating in creation and was intrinsically creative.

Jesus did not passively follow external rules or laws (which can never be more than approximately or averagely right, which match only imperfectly with experience) - but acted directly from his divine nature; knowing the specifics of each situation and doing the one-thing-needful.

This is why the responses and actions of Jesus could never be predicted; yet always were perfect, unique and correct (but we recognise this only after they have happened).

Thus we can understand the work of Jesus in terms of allowing and implementing (gradually, incrementally, at first very imperfectly - and far from completed) the development of real Freedom - which is the agency of the real self.

Which is eventually to know and freely-choose Good in the way of divinity - which is to say to be Good consciously (in full self-awareness), actively and from-our-selves.

A while ago I wrote a little book about the corruption of science for which I devised the title Not Even Trying - with respect to scientists and truth. 

But, except at the highest levels - where the agenda is actively evil -  the strategic and inbuilt attitude of not even trying to perform one's designated function; is absolutely normal, mainstream in The West. 

Mainstream politicians of all ideologies and parties claim to favour economic growth, or military strength, or law and order - but none of them are trying to achieve these at the level of strategy - no matter how much low and micro-level efforts are put into such goals. 

In practice, all positive working level initiatives are long-term undermined and overwhelmed by the middle managerial indifference to designated functionality. 

Thus an individual doctor or nurse may have genuine concern with the health of patients, but health systems are not even trying to improve the health of people - but instead pursue a mixture of middle managerial power-seeking and careerism with the deep agendas of totalitarianism, or spiteful destruction. 

Or consider transport, which is mostly by roads. At the low level and short-term of businesses attempting to establish good deliveries and logistics, there may be a genuine focus on functionality. 

But local and national politicians and the civil service are not even trying to improve transport; instead using their control of resources and regulatory means to degrade and close roads and slow communications; and to render vehicles inefficient and ineffective - especially by means of the fake-environmental agenda linked to "carbon" and "climate change".  

And above this level are the Western-based global establishment whose evil agenda is conscious and deliberate; who are now not even trying to enable their supposed totalitarian policies to operate. "They" are instead using the overall power to create generalized chaos by multiple means: mass migrations, race war, inter-national war, the destruction of agriculture and international trade, encouragement of disease and mass poisoning etc. etc. 

 

What we have is a world where those who have power, wealth, high status; are not even trying to use these resources to attain positive functional goals. 

Yet they are not instead, as through much of history, instead using their control of resources for long-term self-enrichment of their clan or people. We are not dealing with "normal" human incompetence , errors, or mere corruption. 

Instead, there is a profound malaise of values. 

There are active, double-negative, inverted ideologies at work and dominant; which is exactly why such trends are not self-correcting but instead robust and still-increasing. 

What we are witnessing is, in other words, the all-but unopposed (because invisible or denied) triumph of evil on a very large scale...

Evil in the hearts of Men is always present; but now it is manifested in allegiance to a multi-level Satanic alliance in opposition to God... And to divine creation.

Because, ultimately, it is Men's opposition to divine creation which leads to deliberate dysfunctionality and bureaucratic indifference - to the phenomenon of Not Even Trying to perform one's designated role.  

At present, it seems that there are no primarily Christian nations in the world.

(With the probable exception of the Fire Nation - but none in The West) 

Therefore - all nationalism is evil: as are all secular polities. 

In other words, the only good nationalism is one that is secondary to Christianity. Which means that the nationalism must function within Christian priorities and a Christian framework. In other words, to be good, nationalism must be part of a Christian theocracy.  

Yet, I believe that a Christian theocracy is not desirable in the West (as well as being in practice almost-certainly impossible). 

This undesirability/ impossibility of Western theocracy is for reasons I have discussed ad nauseam on this blog, to do with the changed nature of Western Consciousness - that is changed motivations, a changed mode of thinking, a changed relationship to divine reality etc.  

Western people don't want it, cannot be made to want it, will not choose it, and would not tolerate it if it were imposed. So that the result of trying to impose theocracy would not be a Christian society, but merely secular totalitarianism using Christianized language and excuses. 

In the Western World now, the nationalists are would-be totalitarian bureaucrats, exponents of Ahrimanic evil (whether they espouse "Christian values, or not). 

The nationalists oppose the globalists who are Sorathic agents of spitefully destructive evil. 

And that is the choice within the political arena. A choice between variants of the dominant globalist destroyers, or a backlash of nationalist totalitarians: there are no Good choices available.  

Disillusion is not wisdom; because dis-illusion (as the name implies) is a double-negative - not a positive - value; and Good comes only from a positive affiliation to God and divine creation. 

At present I perceive increasing numbers of disillusioned totalitarian bureaucrats among the national leadership class - people who have noticed that their worked-for totalitarian New World Order is being destroyed by strategic chaos imposed by the dominating multi-national globalists. 

So we are getting (and indeed have been getting, since around the millennium) some of the more intelligent and insightful adherents of totalitarian-Ahrimanic evil embracing a nationalist agenda to some extent. Putting themselves forward as a "common sense" alternative to literally-insane inversion of the Sorathic globalists. 

But nationalism is evil. Historically, nationalism arose after the decline of Christianity: nationalism was the ideological basis of the first truly secular states.  

What the globalists call the "far Right" - or populist Right, often tacitly supported by a majority of Western population - are actually "local totalitarians": those who want to have what they regard as a strong, productive, efficient nation - more like the Western societies of the middle 20th century. 

This agenda would entail some sensible and common sense controlled and reduced immigration, a degree of meritocracy (instead of "inclusion" or "equality"), a protected and planned economy, coherent laws, effective military and police etc. 

Sounds great, you say? Not so.  

From where we are now; such a society is not just impossible, but would anyway be evil - because inevitably totalitarian. 

It would not have Christian foundations, would not be organized in accordance with God's will and divine creation, nor would it be Christianly motivated. 

Therefore what we would actually get would be a version of "the Great Reset" - but on a national basis; and without the self-destroying elements such as "sustainability", antiracism, and the rest. 

At best and temporarily, such a society would assert justifications that are this-worldly, and utilitarian. But since such abstractions are both humanly-feeble and irredeemably subjective - very soon selfish, short-termist corruption among the leadership class would inevitably take-over. 

(Which is why They are keen on the idea!)

What I am saying is that "nationalism" is a delusion or a deception for The West, arising only as a consequence of in-fighting among the demon-serving ruling class. 

Serious Christians should be wary of falling into the trap of supporting nationalism - since it will inevitably be unmasked as local totalitarianism - hence intrinsically evil. 

The main problem of the modern West is the inversion of sin; which is that the traditional sins (especially sexual, but also pride, envy, greed etc.) are not sins, but instead virtues. 

And the reciprocal invention of new "deadly sins" that are not sins, such as (the actual current usage of) racism (seemingly now regarded as the sin of sins - unless the recognition of traditional sexual sins as sin, is even worse). 

But value-inversion is made worse by a legalistic understanding of sin, in terms of categorical lists with operational definitions. This is literal rending of sins is necessary if any "sin" is to be made the basis of our totalitarian System.  

For example; the not-sin of racism is a specific concept referenced in bureaucratic strategies, regulations and laws - operationally defined in measureable terms; such as specific words, or percentages of personnel (pre-divided into good/ disapproved and bad/ being-promoted races); and by mandatory active participation in defined antiracist initiatives and actions (e.g. mass genuflecting, parades and speeches, display of posters and flags etc.). 

So, although the not-sin of racism is supposed to be a thought-crime, a wicked motivation; in practice it gets operationalized in quasi-objective terms: you are guilty of racism by saying or writing this taboo, or by failing to join with that ritual, or in terms of percentage "representation". 

In strategic spiritual terms; this legalism and literalism represents the reduction of (imperceptible) spiritual conceptualizations of sin, into a controllable material manifestation; in a world where official and public discourse recognizes only "the material" as real and significant. 

By the sustained operations of actual social reality; the populace are trained to regard the legal and bureaucratic definitions of detectable and measurable material manifestations of sin, asif they Just Are the sins themselves. 

In other words; because society treats sin legalistically and objectively in categories; that is how people habitually, unthinkingly, moralistically regard the reality of sin. 

 

Of course; what I have described as the current materialist-totalitarian reality of values; is a simple inversion of the old religious system of values, which was dominant from the medieval era until recently - which also regards sin in a legalistic and categorical way. 

Sins were conceptualized in terms of categorical lists of behaviours that would send someone to hell, unless he specifically repented each of them. Repentance was often understood as going through the entire list of one's sins, and repenting them each and specifically - before being allowed-into Heaven. 

(I find it bizarre to suppose that the whole world of creation and our-selves can thus be cut-up into discrete chunks, some of which are sins! My understanding is instead that reality is only validly divided into separable Beings; but sins are part of the continuous field of divine creation - they can be distinguished in terms of emphasis, but cannot ultimately be separated and divided.)  

Such a linear and sequential procedure of repentance might need to be done during mortal life (e.g. by confession and absolution) or afterwards (for instance in a Roman Catholic purgatory, or the "toll-booths" of Eastern Orthodoxy).

In practice; such a way of thinking and behaving was so dominant that people also came to believe that only these categories of official sins were real or significant sins. 

Consequently; many of the besetting sins of modernity - such as dishonesty, existential fear, and resentment - became invisible, ignored, denied. 

So that habitual and expedient exponents of untruthfulness (such as nearly-all modern managers, politicians, bureaucrats; and professionals such as teachers, doctors, lawyers, the police and military, and church leaders); will mislead, be dishonest, and outright lie systematically and for-a-living - on a daily, or even hourly, basis - while having a clear conscience! While regarding themselves as good-people, including Good and exemplary Christians. 

One side-effect of this categorical way of thinking about sin has been that people come to regard themselves and others as not-sinners (and other people as sinners) - the world of Mankind being divided into sinners and the Good. 

Such people regard themselves as basically good human beings; so long as they refrain from the listed sins (or the worst of them, at least) - or else repent them specifically. This leads to a sense of self-righteousness that is a gross distortion of the realities of our mortal life. 

On the other hand; the ubiquity of some of the listed sins can lead to a sense of despair and helplessness; and other people react-against this by asserting that if a sin is universal, or very common - then it can't really be a sin! - and is simply being used by religion to control the population. 

This also applies to modern value-inversion - for instance when white people are officially regarded and regard themselves as inescapably racist, and therefore experience inescapable white guilt - rendering them demoralized and obedient to those who offer rituals of expiation.

  

My point is that - from the Fourth Gospel Christian perspective which I believe is true - legalism and categorical description is a basically mistaken and itself-sinful way of thinking about and conceptualizing sin. 

From Jesus's teaching, we are all sinners all of the time; because we are not wholly-and-always motivated by Love. We are thereby misaligned with God's creative will, hence all of us (as we are) are utterly unsuited to dwell in Heaven. 

But this is Not a cause for demoralization, demotivation or despair; because Jesus has said that all who follow Him shall be resurrected to eternal life in Heaven.

The best way to think of sin is very generally; as whatever would prevent us (as individuals) from accepting the gift of everlasting life. 

We may each have one or more besetting sins that we find difficult (or impossible) to give-up in order to enter Heaven - but this is ultimately a matter of not loving Jesus enough, not wanting Heaven enough. 

If we love and desire above all to follow Jesus Christ; if we take the side of God and divine creation in the spiritual war, and wish to participate in creation eternally - then quite naturally we will repent, shed, leave-behind any and all sins (named or unnamed) in order to attain our deepest desire. 

If we desire to be re-made (i.e. resurrected) such that we become motivated only and always by love eternally - then sin is just the name for anything and everything which would prevent that process of re-making. 

Repentance is the word for our agreement to having stripped-away and left-behind all that would otherwise prevent resurrection into Heaven.  

It is really very simple. 

Christianity is a positive (not double-negative) religion; it is opt-in (not a matter of passing a test); God is our loving parents (not a judge administering laws), Christianity is a family (not a monarchy). 

We are not meant to worry over sin! Jesus came to save sinners - we need to focus primarily on the saving, not the sins: we will know the sins in consequence of our desire for salvation. 

If we understand Jesus's teaching in the way it was intended and exemplified (and which can be confirmed here-and-now by the guidance of the Holy Ghost); 

and if we therefore base our faith on positive love and the choice of following Jesus Christ to Heaven -- 

then we know that everything important about "our sins" will be recognizable clearly and simply, and we will know what to do, and we will do it - when the time of choice arrives. 

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.  

It seems to be that most people are negatively-motivated - for example by fear, loneliness, pain, boredom, resentments - from-which they seek relief, seek to escape. 

Insofar as they have an aim; it is for a place of ease, release, comfort, security (in practice; freedom from worry) etc. A place without suffering - including that nobody-else suffers (so that we will not suffer empathically from their suffering). 

The problem is that there exists no permanent answer, no permanent escape, in this mortal life - because everything is temporary, nothing lasts, every-thing ends - there is disease, degeneration, decline, and death. 

Therefore negative motivations in this life ultimately point-towards 'death' (or some simulation of death) - when death is primarily desired to be loss of the self, loss of thinking, loss of consciousness, loss of caring... as the only permanent possibility of escape from suffering. 

When there are positive goals; it is sooner-or-later realized that nothing in the world, nothing in this mortal life on earth, will suffice; because (again) everything is ephemeral, nothing is permanent. 

This is a deep problem. 

What emerges is some variation on the pattern of seeking short-termist palliation in this life, maximizing immediate pleasure/ fun and minimizing current pain/ angst; but trying not to think about the inevitable future - which future is regarded as inevitable annihilation of our awareness/ destruction of all that is us... 

(So we won't be there to suffer the future, anyway.) 

The reasoning is that if life is ephemeral, if decline is inevitable, if death is annihilation; then it is rational to make the most of my life here-and-now, rational to regard the rest of the world as existing for 'my' personal benefit; and try to forget about the future, other people, anything that might interfere. 

In other words; the 'logic' of the situation - the way to be motivated - is oneself to 'be a psychopath' - while trying to persuade others to be altruistic. 

That is; inducing other-people to live for other-people and for the future - so that these others will be amenable to here-and-now psychopathic exploitation.  

In practice; psychopathy requires an incapacity for love - an innate human deficiency. 

Therefore, people who are capable of love are (spontaneously, 'viscerally', for reasons they can't necessarily understand) appalled at such 'worldly' reasoning - and they cannot or will not take this path to embrace psychopathy - or, if they do try to become psychopathic, they will find themselves unable to adopt the requisite 'heart-less' attitudes, and will be tormented by guilt for their actions. 

(A common combination in the world today - it seems to me.)

Instead of taking the worldly path; people may reject The World. 

They may conclude that this-world is useless at best (everything temporary) and evil at worst (because of the expediency and success of psychopathy; of exploitation, parasitism, predation).

Such people may instead embrace the ancient ideal of trying to ignore this-world and focus on the-next: live now for the life to come after death. 

But such an ideal makes this mortal life worthless - indeed worse than worthless - because this is a world of illusion, cruelty, suffering... many bad things. 

The bad things spoil this world, while any good things are temporary (and perhaps illusory anyway).  

Thus; to live for the next world points towards death as something which is desired as soon as possible. And someone who really believed this, would not be alive to tell anyone else about it. 

Consider: Someone who really believed this world was illusion and pain, would not be concerned with morality - indeed he would have no value-preferences for truth, beauty or virtue - since values are merely part of the illusion.  

One who really lived for the next-world would not be concerned about converting others to his belief, or persuading others of his rightness and their wrongness.

One who really lived for the next world would do nothing to sustain himself alive - would, in fact, die within days at most. 

What instead we get (and have had for some thousands of years, apparently) is people who argue for the primacy of the next-world, and who try to prove that it is "better" to live indifferently to this world and be focused on the life-to-come... And many other absurd and incoherent variations on this theme. 

What this tells me, is that just as there is something in most people that rebels-against and is revolted-by the ideal of living as a psychopath; so there is something in most people that values some-things about this mortal life - and cannot write it off as wholly illusion and suffering.  

This is intuition at work in us.

What intuition tells us is that this mortal life should- not either be wholly-accepted nor wholly-rejected; but this-life needs discernment. 

Some of it is good and some is evil, some genuinely ephemeral, other parts can and should become eternal; and we need to know which is which, in order to embrace good and reject evil. 

We need discernment in order to know what to keep, and what to leave-behind...

(In Christian terminology to know what is sin, and what can be carried-through to Heavenly life.) 

Such discernment would need to be comprehensive and accurate, because if this mortal life is valuable we need to preserve some of it for eternity, yet we also need to know what is wrong - or else we would be carrying-through into Heaven the evils of this mortal world, so it would then not be Heaven!  

And yet sufficient discernment is impossible: because there is way too much that needs to be discerned rightly in this world! 

At any given moment, every person is wrong in some ways (probably many ways) about what is good and evil; and there are more and more problems and issue presenting themselves every hour of everyday.  

Although we have both inner-and outer-guidance that leads us towards correct discernment; this operates by trial-and-error, and across time. At any particular moment - we will always be confused and in a state of error. 

Yet another double-bind!... We can neither accept nor reject this world. We must, it seems, discern within this world; yet we cannot sufficiently discern. 

We need Heaven, but cannot find our own way to Heaven. 

This was the situation until the advent of Jesus Christ.

Jesus can be considered a way out from this double-bind; because Jesus was uniquely able to discern his way to resurrected life eternal! 

This was possible, indeed perfectly natural and spontaneous, for Him - because he was in perfect harmony with the purposes and methods of God and of Heaven. 

Because Jesus 'did it' we can do it as well, by following Him. 

After our mortal death, Jesus will be there to will lead us through all necessary discernments about what to take and what to leave-behind. 

All that we need to do is follow Him, and agree to whatever is necessary. 

Which means we must want to follow Jesus. 

A way of saying this; is that we must 'love' Jesus. 

Only that! But that is necessary.