Well, the great Christian teaching is that the national authority (like any collective) is inherently secular and true religion is always individual.
Society must be secular, because only the individual is eternal. While loving relationships between individuals can be eternal as well, the complex of relationships that make of society consist of many kinds of relationships of which only a small minority are loving or genuinely personal rather than "just business".
Society may be said to exist to secure the individual, and especially to allow the loving personal relationships, but it is instinctively a set of human behaviors for dealing with "the world", much of which is neither loving nor personal.
A special note with regard to politics (especially modern politics, in which the media tempts us with the falsehood that we really know public figures), only loving relationships can be personal. To hate someone (or have any other attitude other than love for them) is inherently 'dehumanizing' (more accurately, depersonalizing). When we see an entity as an obstacle or a tool (as all other motives than love would have us regard them), we must in some degree cease to consider them as a person whose own motives matter.
I don't say that there is anything wrong with sometimes seeing people this way (though I cannot state for certain that there isn't), as humans we have a limited capacity to mentally track more than a limited number of genuinely personal relationships (about 150, on average). To deal with anyone beyond that innate mental capacity, we need to think of them as something other than "people" (and as mentioned, it does no good to bother trying to think of anyone we don't love as a person, even if we assign the mental capacity to it).
By the by, I find something profoundly telling about the proliferation of those creepy EU masks, the blue face with scars around it.
Anyway, what I'm saying is that the existence of national or social issues already implies secularism. We should properly disdain the possibility of collective action (whether action by or towards a collective) being 'moral'. Our religion is how we treat other individuals, while our beliefs should affect what we regard as potentially effective in dealing with (or as) a collective, a proper understanding of our human limitations commends a completely 'amoral' outlook on social issues.
23 October 2018 at 11:17
It is clear, from reading newspaper headlines at the supermarket, that the Brexit process is in a phase of contrived political theatre, staged for the benefit of the gullible masses. But what is the strategy behind the Brexit pseudo-crisis: what is intended by those directing the play?
Immediately after the Brexit vote, for just a few days, there was the possibility (the danger - for the global Establishment conspiracy of demonic servants) that Brexit was about to become a righteous conflict, a showdown between two sides that (very broadly, very approximately) represented Good and Evil, God and the Adversary - with Brexit and Remain approximating for these. There was a 'danger' that Brexit might encourage and energise the ordinary, decent, middling people - and even that it might lead to a spiritual and Christian re-awakening...
Righteous conflict is Good, because necessary for Good: it is, indeed, what we most need, everywhere in this world. But the people of Britain failed this test, and soon allowed themselves to become re-absorbed into the fake conflict of mainstream politics - the same old faces; and mainstream politics has only one side in terms of ultimate objectives - and that side is evil in its various manifestations.
Because the people behind the current Punch-and-Judy show in the mass media do Not want a clear resolution to Brexit, either way. Although they certainly prefer Remain to Brexit; they want even more to have the UK (and everywhere else) locked-into a perpetual state of incrementally-escalating fear and resentment - because that is precisely the Hellish hope.
This plan seems to have gone perfectly: the Brexiteers feel cheated, because they have been cheated by being offered a fake Brexit-in-name-only which fails to include the prime reasons for Brexit - just like the EU but worse.
While the Remainers have developed their already-existing paranoid spitefulenss, and now hate and fear the tens of millions of Brexiteers even more than they did before. Because they now realise that the Brexit-people comprise a majority of the country that the Remainers pretend to rule, and that therefore their 'democratic' legitimacy lies in shreds. Yet, of course, the Remain elite cling to their power, with the increasingly obvious sham-excuse of protecting from 'racism' the newly arrived ten million-plus population of resident migrants whom they have invited to live in Britain - to live, that is, at the expense of the Brexiteers.
So Brexit has been shaped-into a win-win scenario for the powers of evil; and indeed this outcome was inevitable for so long as Britain remained a secular society that believes only in hedonic materialism.
Unless or until this spiritual fact changes, all political change and all stasis will continue to be turned to harm.
"The political theatre of Brexit: righteous conflict versus fear & resentment"
1 Comment -
Well, the great Christian teaching is that the national authority (like any collective) is inherently secular and true religion is always individual.
Society must be secular, because only the individual is eternal. While loving relationships between individuals can be eternal as well, the complex of relationships that make of society consist of many kinds of relationships of which only a small minority are loving or genuinely personal rather than "just business".
Society may be said to exist to secure the individual, and especially to allow the loving personal relationships, but it is instinctively a set of human behaviors for dealing with "the world", much of which is neither loving nor personal.
A special note with regard to politics (especially modern politics, in which the media tempts us with the falsehood that we really know public figures), only loving relationships can be personal. To hate someone (or have any other attitude other than love for them) is inherently 'dehumanizing' (more accurately, depersonalizing). When we see an entity as an obstacle or a tool (as all other motives than love would have us regard them), we must in some degree cease to consider them as a person whose own motives matter.
I don't say that there is anything wrong with sometimes seeing people this way (though I cannot state for certain that there isn't), as humans we have a limited capacity to mentally track more than a limited number of genuinely personal relationships (about 150, on average). To deal with anyone beyond that innate mental capacity, we need to think of them as something other than "people" (and as mentioned, it does no good to bother trying to think of anyone we don't love as a person, even if we assign the mental capacity to it).
By the by, I find something profoundly telling about the proliferation of those creepy EU masks, the blue face with scars around it.
Anyway, what I'm saying is that the existence of national or social issues already implies secularism. We should properly disdain the possibility of collective action (whether action by or towards a collective) being 'moral'. Our religion is how we treat other individuals, while our beliefs should affect what we regard as potentially effective in dealing with (or as) a collective, a proper understanding of our human limitations commends a completely 'amoral' outlook on social issues.
23 October 2018 at 11:17