Bruce Charlton's Notions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Timescale

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

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

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

Interest-group-boundary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Consider a war, as an example. 

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

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

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

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

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

Such is the nature our world - and increasingly so. 

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

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

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

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

We can all see how obvious other-peoples' assumption are - and how these are completely resistant to emerging evidence. 

(Such is a property of all assumptions: they are prior-to and "above" all possible evidence; because assumptions select and interpret all evidence.) 

This is particularly evident when it comes to large scale and abstract matters. For instance, geopolitical assumptions are indestructible, even across generations - especially when the assumptions are negative: as when it comes to be assumed that a particular nation (or national leader) is hostile, a threat, evil. 

Similar assumptions govern attitudes between some races - and these need not be symmetrical (i.e. one race may regard another as intrinsically hostile, but that feeling may not be reciprocated). 

Of course there is also an element of the self-fulfilling prophecy at work; but even without anything of that kind, such assumptions cannot be overthrown by experience.  

Yet, although evidence-immune, assumptions may be abandoned and replaced. 

And assumptions must be adopted in the first place - even when they are unconsciously socially inculcated. 

So - given that factual information is irrelevant - is there any valid basis by which particular assumptions ought to be adopted or abandoned? 

My answer would be several layered. 

First and most important is awareness...

As of here-and-now; assumptions ought to be (or become) conscious, and we ought to be aware that they are prior to evidence (because assumptions structure our choice and understanding of evidence). 

So we should not assert that our assumptions are obvious or inevitable; and should not suppose that our assumptions derive from factual evidence. 

Such a recommendation of what not to do, is easier said than done! I break it habitually, several times a day - yet in doing so I am making an error - with many ill consequences. 

But I still have not said anything about choosing between assumptions? 

The answer, as with all ultimate matters, is always a matter of intuition - which we cannot go beneath; but which we can recognize and acknowledge as the reality behind our engagement with the world. 

I think it could be said that (assuming we desire to be coherent) our assumptions need to fit our deepest and most solid intuitions. So, for a Christian, all further assumptions need to fit with that ultimate intuition (including the ultimate intuitions of what "being a Christian" actually means). 

Once we have identified our our assumptions; we should then choose whether we really do wish to retain them as assumptions - or else replace them with others - as we are free to do! 

It is a matter of admitting this necessary freedom as our own active choice, and of taking responsibility for its exercise. 

Anyone who was driven, by some inner compulsion, to read this blog in chronological order, from the summer of 2010 when I began to write on a daily basis (!); would rapidly discover that I have been expecting (therefore in a sense predicting) the collapse of our civilization - for most of the past 12 years!

Clearly, that has not happened! At least, not yet; and it is interesting to speculate why not. 

I am as sure now as I was then that our System is unsustainable; and for a multitude of reasons - that multitudinousness of individually-fatal stresses being why the civilization is inevitably doomed; since all causes cannot be addressed at once, or quickly enough -- even if there was a will to reverse the causes of collapse: which there is not.

Also because (and for the first time in history) a deliberate and strategic, top-down program for destruction of Western civilization.

This encompasses neglecting, worsening and denying 'natural' problems (such sub-fertility - which is itself a consequence of deliberately-encouraged religious apostasy and the exclusion of the spiritual from public discourse). 

...And gratuitously creating many new and individually-lethal System stresses (mass immigration, 'climate change', antiracism, birdemic-peck etc.).  

If this analysis is broadly correct; how, then, has the System survived? 

The answer I have gradually come to accept is that 'the conspiracy theorist' point-of-view is broadly true; in that most of the acute problems - apparent 'emergencies', and genuine catastrophes - are either permitted or actively-caused by the System itself. And therefore, when the System feels threatened - it simply stops causing these problems. 

It is relatively easy to stop creating crises, because people (on the whole) will only cause problems when encouraged, assisted and subsidized to do so. Thus, huge areas of national or local crisis can (if the will exists) be all-but eliminated - simply by removing the massive structures of positives incentives that have been their ultimate cause. 

The reason I took so foolishly long to recognize the self-caused nature of most crises and emergencies; is that I used to know (from personal experience) a fair bit about the people who were leaders at a regional and national level - and I realized that they 'believed in' what they were doing - believed that they were 'doing good' with their various lethal schemes. 

And therefore it seemed to me that National 'elites' were observably not conspiring actively to inflict social problems.   

Where I went wrong is assuming that the regional/ national leadership class were actual leaders. I did not then see that all their important instructions were coming-down from a much smaller, supra-national global 'elite' - which was the level at which strategic decisions were made. 

National governments and media, multinational corporations and large social institutions (such as the UK National Health Service) are just middle managers, just minions, just implementers of plans set at different levels. 

In other words, it is at the large - geopolitical - scale where the ultimate decisions are made and the ultimate causes of many problems set-into-motion. Vast areas such as 'the economy', 'finance', 'science'. 'health', the mass media etc. are managed to a very high degree. 

Visible, impacting, crises and problems in all of major social systems are mostly deliberately caused - but caused at a hierarchical level far above the level at which they are 'managed'. 

Thus the managers are often genuinely striving, in their minds - albeit dishonestly and incompetently - to address the problems... 

Albeit; among managers 'addressing' a problem does not mean solving or eliminating the problem - it means 'responding' to it; doing some-thing that can plausibly (i.e. plausibly to managers) be argued to be a 'positive' and helpful response, within the constraints of careerism and bureaucratization.   

Anyway; setting aside nuances for the sake of clarity; while the System or Western Civilization is indeed doomed to collapse; I have often been fooled by deliberately-caused crises and emergencies, into believing that the collapse was imminent - whereas, because the acute crisis/ emergency (whether of the economy, finance, health - or whatever) was deliberately-caused - the crisis/ emergency could later - when it had cause the desired results (and, at least, up-until-now) just as easily be cured. 

So much for the surface...

Deep down, however; the longer the System persists while continuing to be degraded; and while its efficiency, effectiveness, and self-regulating honesty are all incrementally being-destroyed - the more that the depth and breadth of eventual/ inevitable collapse will continue to increase. 

So the 'good' news is that Western civilization has not collapsed yet; but continues along its paths of value-inversion, mass spiritual damnation, and the active pursuit of evil goals...

The bad news is that - when it does happen, and it will - the collapse of The West will now be far worse than it would have been a decade ago. 

True neutrality with respect to any question concerning values is not a possibility, and never has been; yet degrees of 'official' neutrality used to be conceded, and commonplace - as pragmatic realities in public life. 

While every person and nation will almost-inevitably take sides over any particular question - at least overall, and to some degree - it used to be allowed that people and nations could stand-apart from conflicts, and remain un-declared. 

Even during the massive conflict of World War II, there were several neutral counties in the heart of the conflict (Switzerland) or on its border (Spain, Sweden). 

And, as recently as a couple of decades ago; it used to be quite normal for people or nations to opt-out of taking sides on questions of value in public life. 

This is no longer allowed in The West; because the powers on the side of evil are now dominant, their evil is more advanced; and They have forbidden neutrality. 

Each and every person (with no allowed exceptions) must now - publicly and with a display of enthusiasm - actively participate in celebration and promotion of Litmus Test issues relating to sex, sexuality, antiracism and so forth. 

All must take the side of evil (called good, in the official system of Western inverted-values) - or be attacked as an enemy. 

Anyone - any single individual - who opts-out and tries to be neutral in any of the Litmus Test issues; may be punished by the full force of global media and public opinion mobilized against them; exclusion from work, removal of financial services, demonization of status - and many other possible punishments (officially imposed, and unoffically allowed and encouraged), without limit to severity or duration.  

We are seeing the same phenomenon in relation to the Fire Nation* war. No Western nation has been allowed to remain neutral on this issue - even Switzerland and Sweden have been compelled to abandon long term principles of neutrality. 

Furthermore, active participation in the war is also being compelled - until recently by participation in war-sanctions. And currently by mandatory military participation through sending weapons to the battlefront. 

And this military participation must be done publicly, proudly; and backed with explicit aggressive statements. 

Presumably the next step will be sending military personnel from all nations - with no opt-out allowed. 

This is not about military effectiveness - because from such a perspective it makes no sense. It is about ideological - hence spiritual - allegiance. 

Western nations are being compelled into active support for an open-ended campaign aimed at existential annihilation of the Fire Nation; either its destruction, fragmentation, or vassalage. 

Nations are being forced (by their puppet-'leaders') into making themselves existential enemies - not only of the FN, but of an alliance that (increasing month by month) includes the two most populous nations in the world, and indeed most of the world's population and land mass. 

Those who do not paint a target on their own backs by choice (like the UK did thanks to its cravenly-servile US-obedient leadership); will have it done for them, at the point of a sword.

In other words; the ideology of annihilation of the Fire Nation serves as yet-another factor in the suicidal self-destruction of The West - and all its (compelled-) allies, such as the North East Asian vassal-states of the USA, who are now actively and rapidly being prepared to operate as agents of their own destruction. 

In sum, underneath the cover of fake Geopolitical reasoning and led by the dominant Western power; the whole world is being set-up for an all-inclusive world war - the first ever - which will be sustained for as long as possible, and with as much all-round destruction as possible. 

Such a war will (if it happens) serve the dual purpose of lethally damaging Western civilization, and doing something similar to all those who - in any way - dissent from the Western-leftist-atheist-materialist ideology of the globalists. 

For a Christian; the vital matter is to recognize and remember that this is primarily 'just' the latest and biggest material manifestation of the long-established spiritual war; and that we need to discern and understand what is really going-on in terms of ultimate spiritual values. 

Not, therefore, to become distracted by merely proximate, materialist explanations of the war in terms of Geopolitics, economics, or even of ideology. 

These are merely means to an end; because evil is about damnation, that is about spiritual and eternal death - therefore not only, nor mostly, about physical death.

Note: Anyone confused by any of the terminology I use, here or elsewhere, should do a word-search on this blog (i.e. using the Search box on the upper left extreme corner).  

Fake Pennant events abound - through history, and now! 

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

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

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

(First emotional- then spiritual-manipulation). 

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

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

What should we do? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To understand and reject it - even more so. 

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

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

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

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

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

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