I think a lot of people would agree with you, except that your use of "demons" as a corporeal, literal group (at least that sounds like what you're endorsing here in this post) sounds a little bit too much like David Icke for most people. This is my first time commenting here (and I will read through your backlog), but just for clarity's sake, do you believe that Hillary et. al. are lizard people? Also, since Trump is opposing some of this insanity, and yet himself is obviously pretty secular, where do you place him on the good-evil continuum?
This perspective seems very compatible with Lewis' Screwtape letters. Similar arguements supporting the demonic benefits of humans having long, comfortable lives in which their is a greater long-term potential to corrupt instead of losing the many souls who might otherwise repent spontanteously in a world collapse situation, at which point the mechanisations of crude evil would be nakedly obvious to the population at large. Sleep-walking is much more effective.
@Junger - The belief that demons are active in this world, and that there is a spiritual warfare between them and God, has been mainstream Christian belief ever since the beginning (just look at the New Testament) - and remains so among all real Christians. The description that most modern people know best is CS Lewis's The Screwtape Letters; which must be taken as a fictionalised account of reality.
So that is a given. Specific identifications of specific people is another matter - and not necessary since it is clear enough who is on which side nowadays.
So far as I can tell, *all* mainstream and influential political figures in The West are (on average, net) on the demonic side pretty strongly (and thus against Christianity as an organising principle for life) - although of course in each person there is a mixture of motivations and nobody is wholly evil (not least because that is an impossibility since it would mean the negation of everything).
@David - yes indeed; although as I said a couple of weeks ago, we cannot be sleep-walked *all* the way to damnation, but only to its threshold.
There will necessarily and always be a *moment* when the sight clears and reality is shown to every individual so that they can, will and must make a choice.
Of course, if you have gone through life (in effect) training yourself to reject Good - then even when (after death) you are shown it lucidly, and offered it on a plate, there will be a danger that you reject it and choose damnation.
This is (I believe) a greater risk in the modern West than ever at any time or place before - since the most ignorant and brutal pre-modern pagan of the past or elsewhere will innately have the common sense to take the gift of a good eternal deal when it is sure and certain - it takes a special kind of 'training' in inversion, to fail to perceive the obvious in the way that our civilisation now does.
(How this works can be seen among the dwarfs at the end of CS Lewis's The Last Battle, or in The Great Divorce.)
You nailed it, Mr Charlton. I expect I'll be writing a response post soon, I've been doing quite a bit of meditation on "my mission" and I think you've helped me find a way of explaining things that doesn't reek of narcissism.
This is why I have trouble getting on board with the "Remove Kebab" sentiment. While some speak out of righteous anger, many speak out of wrath. It is not a Papal-ordained movement that Deus Vult, but rather an excuse to indulge in despite and to raise up our own sins as virtues (celebrating homosexuality because the migrants go to the opposite extreme).
Also, Junger - for what it's worth, a major step in my conversion was realizing that ignorance, mental illness, and short-term self interest - while they explained much of what I saw in the world - fell short of explaining it all. I was eventually forced to conclude that there is a supernatural conspiracy of utter evil behind it all - that Uncle Screwtape is real - and that devils are very active upon the Earth.
I believed in Satan far before I came to have faith in God.
Great piece. It seems to me that the demonic is more simpler than I gave it credit for: it is simply that which wishes to lower all above it to its own level, which is pathological individualism through hubris. For this reason, our elites are like any other vermin. They infest and ruin, in order to make a comfortable environment for themselves, since they have already given their souls over to resentment, bitterness, rationalization and other weakness.
So, no need to fear all-out nuclear exchange, at least not until it's time to stick a fork in us.
I was preoccupied back in the '70s with what I took to be either the imminent collapse of Western Civilization or the shifting of power to the Second World or an ecological catastrophe. It seemed to me that some terrible thing might happen in the late '70s, the '80s, or the '90s.
On the other hand, during moments of youthful optimism and belief that there could be harmony between Christianity and scientific Utopias, I imagined that man could forge a truly mature civilization and bring on a long period of peace. The End Times would come as a reward.
I even had the music picked out for it. Not Bruckner for this Apocalypse, but soft tremoloing strings to evoke the long peace and a languid horn for the last trump:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erOEatu5aH8
(The string intro is cut off in this excerpt and the horn is less prominent, but it still conveys the impression.)
27 July 2016 at 06:46
Six years ago, and not long after I began writing this blog on a daily basis, I collected a set of posts into a mini book called The Decline of the West Explained:
At that time I was much preoccupied by the imminence of the collapse of Western Civilisation - and so were some other bloggers I used to read at the time. I realised that the Western civilisation must collapse, because it was based-up a false and mostly inverted understanding of reality; and because its leaders hated The West and did not do the things necessary for The West to survive.
All this I still regard as very obviously correct - however, looking back I can see that I made a serious error in my understanding of the motivation of the leadership class. I assumed back in 2010 that the evil Establishment wanted to make The West collapse as soon as possible - but that collapse was being delayed by the residual goodness and common sense of ordinary people.
The problem with this view is that there is not much to stop the evil Establishment from causing collapse quickly - they lead all the major social systems; and it is much easier and quicker to destroy a complex system, than it is to create and sustain it. Therefore, if the evil Establishment wanted as a priority to cause the collapse of The Western Civilisation, it would certainly have happened a long time ago.
I now perceive that the evil Establishment want to delay collapse for as long as possible - compatible with the corruption of as many people as possible.
Six years ago, I did not properly understand that the evil Establishment is essentially a demonic conspiracy - a mixture of a small minority of actual immortal and not-human demons, a larger number of their obedient (sometimes posessed) human servants who self-consciously agree with the demonic agenda and are working to destroy the Good; plus a considerably larger proportion of proud, foolish, envious, psychotic, shallow dupes (e.g. most national leaders) - who are doing the work of evil for selfish expedience's sake, but under a (thin) self-deceptive pretence of do-gooding (e.g. pursuing one particular good at the expense of destroying the general good).
In other words, I did not properly appreciate that we live in a state of spiritual warfare, and that the war is not about civilisations, but is ultimately about about immortal souls.
*
The fact is that modern Western civilisation is extremely bad for souls - Indeed, it is the most effective mechanism for corrupting Men that has ever been achieved in the whole of human history!
This is because The West (as it is now, overall and on average) serves demonic interests, so obviously the demons don't want to destroy it!
On the other hand, the demons know that The West cannot be sustained on its current basis (where so many of the humans in elite positions are filled with self-hatred and the desire for their own annihilation) - but, while it lasts, the evil Establishment wish to maximise the corrupting effect of the West on the whole of Mankind.
This is what lies behind the current demographic tides and torrents. The West is dying by self-chosen sterility, but the world population increasing massively; so the demonic strategy is to spread the Western corruption to the rest of the world as much as possible, by population mixing and ideological trade - and the current main mechanism is mass migration.
From the demonic perspective (which is currently dominant and almost unopposed in The West) the primary purpose of mass population migration is to corrupt the migrants with Western values; the secondary pupose is to create - among both migrants and natives - a society supercharged with sins (that is, with unrepented, revelled-in sins): a world of fear, hatred, envy, pride, aggression, greed, sadism, dishonesty, resentment, despair... and so forth.
And the strategy of mass migration has been a wild, runaway success story, in achieveing these soul-corrupting objectives - so far.
Soul corruption - not economic collapse - is the strategic purpose of mass migration. It will of course also cause economic collapse, social collapse, destruction of all that is good in The West and so on - but that is not the point of mass migration from the demonic perspective. The point is to harm and corrupt the people on both sides (natives and immigrants alike); and to create a society characterised by fear, hatred and despair, a society which embraces sin and does not repent it.
That is why The West has not yet collapsed - not for any good reason, but for the bad (demonic) reason that the longer The West (as it is now) continues, the greater the potential for corruption of Mankind.
*
Of course, eventually, the collapse will come, it will become impossible to stave-off - and no doubt the demons will greatly enjoy the spectacle of mass starvation, disease, killing and suicide - especially among their most loyal human servants. But that will be delayed until as many people as possible have been induced to reject the salvation of Christ and to will their own damnation.
The demons' task is a difficult one! - because Jesus made it so easy for us to attain eternal, resurrected life - we merely need to accept his gift and 'repent' (which means to acknowledge the reality of God's created order). But to look around the modern West is to perceive how many, many people assert that they do not want salvation because they regard it as evil - and that they instead endorse a world in which divine order is inverted.
(The modern Establishment imagine that they personally live (in Nietzsche's phrase) 'beyond' good and evil - creating their own morality, aesthetic and value-system - but actually they have merely inverted good and evil in some aspects of life: aesthetics and sexuality in particular.)
The lesson is that we need to focus on the fact that - from the perspective of purposive evil - modern spiritual warfare is not about civilisations but about souls.
And for as long as a civilisation serves the end of corrupting souls - then it will be sustained, and collapse will be delayed.
"Why hasn't The West already collapsed?"
7 Comments -
I think a lot of people would agree with you, except that your use of "demons" as a corporeal, literal group (at least that sounds like what you're endorsing here in this post) sounds a little bit too much like David Icke for most people. This is my first time commenting here (and I will read through your backlog), but just for clarity's sake, do you believe that Hillary et. al. are lizard people? Also, since Trump is opposing some of this insanity, and yet himself is obviously pretty secular, where do you place him on the good-evil continuum?
26 July 2016 at 07:53
This perspective seems very compatible with Lewis' Screwtape letters. Similar arguements supporting the demonic benefits of humans having long, comfortable lives in which their is a greater long-term potential to corrupt instead of losing the many souls who might otherwise repent spontanteously in a world collapse situation, at which point the mechanisations of crude evil would be nakedly obvious to the population at large. Sleep-walking is much more effective.
26 July 2016 at 10:45
@Junger - The belief that demons are active in this world, and that there is a spiritual warfare between them and God, has been mainstream Christian belief ever since the beginning (just look at the New Testament) - and remains so among all real Christians. The description that most modern people know best is CS Lewis's The Screwtape Letters; which must be taken as a fictionalised account of reality.
So that is a given. Specific identifications of specific people is another matter - and not necessary since it is clear enough who is on which side nowadays.
So far as I can tell, *all* mainstream and influential political figures in The West are (on average, net) on the demonic side pretty strongly (and thus against Christianity as an organising principle for life) - although of course in each person there is a mixture of motivations and nobody is wholly evil (not least because that is an impossibility since it would mean the negation of everything).
Is that clear enough?
26 July 2016 at 11:55
@David - yes indeed; although as I said a couple of weeks ago, we cannot be sleep-walked *all* the way to damnation, but only to its threshold.
There will necessarily and always be a *moment* when the sight clears and reality is shown to every individual so that they can, will and must make a choice.
Of course, if you have gone through life (in effect) training yourself to reject Good - then even when (after death) you are shown it lucidly, and offered it on a plate, there will be a danger that you reject it and choose damnation.
This is (I believe) a greater risk in the modern West than ever at any time or place before - since the most ignorant and brutal pre-modern pagan of the past or elsewhere will innately have the common sense to take the gift of a good eternal deal when it is sure and certain - it takes a special kind of 'training' in inversion, to fail to perceive the obvious in the way that our civilisation now does.
(How this works can be seen among the dwarfs at the end of CS Lewis's The Last Battle, or in The Great Divorce.)
26 July 2016 at 12:03
You nailed it, Mr Charlton. I expect I'll be writing a response post soon, I've been doing quite a bit of meditation on "my mission" and I think you've helped me find a way of explaining things that doesn't reek of narcissism.
This is why I have trouble getting on board with the "Remove Kebab" sentiment. While some speak out of righteous anger, many speak out of wrath. It is not a Papal-ordained movement that Deus Vult, but rather an excuse to indulge in despite and to raise up our own sins as virtues (celebrating homosexuality because the migrants go to the opposite extreme).
Also, Junger - for what it's worth, a major step in my conversion was realizing that ignorance, mental illness, and short-term self interest - while they explained much of what I saw in the world - fell short of explaining it all. I was eventually forced to conclude that there is a supernatural conspiracy of utter evil behind it all - that Uncle Screwtape is real - and that devils are very active upon the Earth.
I believed in Satan far before I came to have faith in God.
26 July 2016 at 16:09
Great piece. It seems to me that the demonic is more simpler than I gave it credit for: it is simply that which wishes to lower all above it to its own level, which is pathological individualism through hubris. For this reason, our elites are like any other vermin. They infest and ruin, in order to make a comfortable environment for themselves, since they have already given their souls over to resentment, bitterness, rationalization and other weakness.
26 July 2016 at 16:36
So, no need to fear all-out nuclear exchange, at least not until it's time to stick a fork in us.
I was preoccupied back in the '70s with what I took to be either the imminent collapse of Western Civilization or the shifting of power to the Second World or an ecological catastrophe. It seemed to me that some terrible thing might happen in the late '70s, the '80s, or the '90s.
On the other hand, during moments of youthful optimism and belief that there could be harmony between Christianity and scientific Utopias, I imagined that man could forge a truly mature civilization and bring on a long period of peace. The End Times would come as a reward.
I even had the music picked out for it. Not Bruckner for this Apocalypse, but soft tremoloing strings to evoke the long peace and a languid horn for the last trump:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erOEatu5aH8
(The string intro is cut off in this excerpt and the horn is less prominent, but it still conveys the impression.)
27 July 2016 at 06:46