Post a Comment On: Bruce Charlton's Notions

For a long time (maybe 250 years?) it was implicitly recognised that a major task of the writer was to clarify, that is to make clearer, the human condition. And the human condition was The World - the writers vocation was a 'worldly' task.

The assumption was that the world was muddled, ambiguous, confusing; and therefore a writer ought to dig beneath the surface to reveal its underlying true nature.

This clarification-role was especially the case for non-fiction writers - for many philosophers, essayists, 'public intellectuals' - but was substantially the case even for fiction writers such as George Eliot and Charles Dickens, playwrights such as Oscar Wilde and Bernard Shaw, and even poets such as TS Eliot or WH Auden.

I have written hundreds of such 'decoding' articles myself - purporting to look behind the obvious in science, medicine, psychiatry, the media... and tell the reader what was 'really' going on.  

But here-and-now, things are clear already; things have come to a point; it Has Happened. Good and evil are separate and diverging - now it is a matter of choosing sides...


The important things are as obvious now as ever they will be. So there is no genuine role for a writer who looks behind the obvious...

By 'things' I mean the important things are obvious (important in terms of the human condition) - I don't mean the specialist minutiae that bombard the modern citizen. These can be clarified (science stories, news stories, health stories, the nature of new laws and public personalities...) but, really, who cares? What does it matter?

All Men have sufficient innate judgement to know without being told what is true and false, beautiful and ugly, virtuous and evil in this world we live in - because these are Now So Obvious.

But of course, most people make the wrong choices: choose dishonesty, ugliness and immorality - defend, advocate and reward these evils. The big question is not, therefore, what lies behind or beneath the obvious surface of thing - the big questions are: How come Modern Man does not perceive the obvious? How come so many Modern Men choose the side of evil?


The hope of a Christian writer is to make a positive difference to some of his readers. Among potential readers, there are some who already agree - they may be encouraged and that is worthwhile, but the difference a writer makes is not crucial.

At the opposite extreme, there are those potential readers who know the nature and identity of Good, and have rejected it. But not much can be done about them. They don't want what Jesus offers; and it would be a waste of effort for writers to address such people. We should follow the example of Jesus in his ministry; and set aside such hardened cases. 

The hope of a writer is therefore not to clarify, and he cannot convert a hardened opponent; yet he wants to do more than preach to the choir... What then?


My hope is to address the reader who knows - but unconsciously the evils of the modern world; the hope is to bring this implicit, nagging, unaware discernment of reality to the surface, and to affirm its validity.

My belief is that most people are equipped (as a result of our divine origins as children of God) with a true inner guidance system, that can potentially be checked and affirmed with revelations from the Holy Ghost. This can be termed intuition - or direct knowing.

The situation is that this is in-place, and operating, in many people - but many are unaware of this; and of those who are aware, many ignore their inner promptings because they have assumed that intuition is merely social conditioning or wishful thinking.


In sum, the hope is to enable people to feel, know and acknowledge the validity of their own intuition... That is, to become aware of the ongoing workings of their real, divine self; and to recognise that this is a better guide to virtue and wickedness, beauty and ugliness, truth and lies - than is the mainstream indoctrination by the mass media, education system, 'science', law and the other official sources - including most self-identified churches, most of the time.

I address people who already know that we are in a culture war, a spiritual war; and in this war there are two sides. (If they don't already know, then it cannot be proved to them - because they have chosen to resist acknowledging the obvious.)

A choice of side must and will be made - and among those who have chosen the side of God, my hope is to suggest how someone who has chosen Good may proceed to live; given the realities of an ever-more corrupted world.

Note: The recent blog post on the sexual revolution illustrates, I believe, the adverse consequences of failing to know, feel and acknowledge the validity of their intuition. Our destiny was and is to become more consciously intuitive - but this destiny has been widely ignored or refused. In other words, most people know intuitively - but unconsciously - the wrongness of the sexual revolution. My hope is that people may first become aware of these intutions of sex and sexuality; and secondly that people will recognise the validity of such intuitions - which further means understanding something of why (and under what circumstances) intutions are valid.