Post a Comment On: Bruce Charlton's Notions

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.