This age of bespoke Christian spirituality

Romantic Christianity is the explicit acknowledgment that we live in an age - indeed, the first such in history - of bespoke Christian spirituality: in other words, each Man's religion must be "made-to-measure", because all of the "off-the-peg" spiritualties are unfit for purpose. 

"Explicit" is the key; because even the most traditional-minded and self-consciously "orthodox" and traditional Christians are, in-fact and in-deed, even when not acknowledged - arrived at by an unique path, with distinctive discernments, and containing unique elements. 

Traditional Christianity should therefore be defined in terms of what it aims-at; rather than what it actually is. It aims-at the kind of externally-defined and regulated religion of the past - it aims-at a Christianity rooted in subordination of the individual to the faith group, and obedience of the individual to legitimate authority. 

However; this aim is not achieved; because individual discernment must be, and is, deployed with a high frequency. 

This; partly because of the innate consciousness of modern Men; and partly due to the overall, deep and pervasive corruption (and trend towards more corruption) of all actual modern "Christian" churches.  

Beyond that - the aim is not good; because it is an attempt to become less conscious and less free. It is - in spiritual terms - the false and impossible attempt to become a spiritual child from a condition of spiritual adolescence. 

The proper aim of the spiritual adolescent ought to be spiritual adulthood; and that is to freely and consciously discern and choose our fundamental Christian assumptions - as well as to navigate a true path among the chaos and competition of institutional and personal life-style and organization.  

So; this just-is the age of bespoke Christianity - by duty as well as necessity. 

Christianity has-changed its nature. What was an off-the-peg warehouse for mass consumption of finished articles for broad categories of Men...

Is now an individual business; where each Christian must meet with the Holy Ghost in a personal relationship; to embark on a two-sided dialogue - a series of personal measurements and individual fittings; in order to develop a spiritual garb that is integrated, functional, beautiful, hard-wearing - and therefore unique. 

What does Jesus teach in the Fourth Gospel? - my renewed understanding and conviction

I have been re-reading the Fourth Gospel (in the Authorized or King James version) with intensity of engagement, and the large sweep of narrative - the miracles and the teaching - that runs from the third through the sixteenth Chapters: from meeting Nicodemus at night to just before Jesus's arrest. 

 

I am struck afresh and with great force what Jesus does and does-not speak of. Again and again Jesus explains who and what he is; and that he is asking to be believed, loved and "followed". 

(What "following" means is explained in the Good Shepherd section.)

Once his hearers know who Jesus is; they are asked repeatedly to love and follow him - and that is very much the focus and the core of the Gospel.  

Jesus apparently has great difficulty in communicating the simplicity of his message to the disciples; and only just before his arrest (at the end of Chpater 16) does Jesus seem satisfied that the disciples have at last grasped what Jesus has told them so many times.

 

Jesus does not talk about rules for living, does not talk of morality. Does not tell people how to behave in the details (or indeed the sweep) of everyday life. 

Indeed, this trait is very marked indeed. Jesus is hardly-at-all a moral teacher. When he refers to sin, he nearly always means death, and suchlike realities of this mortal life.  

And when Jesus speaks of "commandments" he essentially means to "love one another" (as he goes on to explain) and Himself - clearly a qualitatively different matter from the commandments of Moses. 

All this is very different from how Jesus is usually described. 

 

The shaping emphasis is on the life and world to come; not this mortal life and world - it is the post-resurrection reality that ought to shape our current goals and behaviours.

In other words; Jesus is usually talking about having brought a change in ultimate, "cosmic" reality; a change in the set-up of divine creation: new realities and new possibilities. 

 

Throughout, Jesus talks of his Father as a distinct person from himself: clearly with complete harmony between the two of them, but his Father absolutely as a real and separate person from Jesus himself; a person with whom Jesus has a relationship of the same kind as with the disciples, but vastly greater and perfected. 

Thus Jesus's message is cosmic; but the cosmic is personal - indeed a matter of many persons; because Jesus links God to himself, and to the disciples (broadly considered - not meaning some particular number of men); all those with whom Jesus shares mutual love.

Love is mentioned many, many times; and seems like the core term - a new and all-transcending principle of life - the new reality that Jesus made-happen. Reading this, one is immediately compelled to ponder this astonishing reality that Jesus has placed at the heart of creation  

The Holy Ghost, the Comforter, is described Jesus himself (not a separate person) after he will have ascended to Heaven - and who will be present to all who love and follow Jesus. The Holy Ghost is stated to provide - in a personal way - all that is required of guidance and knowledge.  

This is emphasized: everything the disciples need to know after Jesus has ascended to Heaven, will be provided by the Holy Ghost. 

 

Something that is very evident is that Jesus asserts the exclusivity of his message. That only by Jesus, via Jesus, can we attain resurrected everlasting life. There is no other way. 

This is asserted as a fact; although what that fact means is apparently very different from the usual way it has been taught in the centuries since - because the Fourth Gospel is utterly indifferent to any form of church. 

The gospel is all about relationships, and these relationships are personal - indeed Jesus declares (at some length, in detail) that they need to be the relationships of friends, rather than hierarchical or formal.  

 

But Jesus's insistence on the exclusivity of his role in salvation is absolutely hard-line. If resurrection is what people want, there is simply no alternative (when the time comes) to knowing and following Jesus.

The reason why is also explained; which is that those who reject Jesus do not want what Jesus offers. The monotheists (such as the Pharisees) want something altogether different from what Jesus offers: they are rejecting the new cosmic possibilities that Jesus brings. 

What this partial summary fails to do is to describe the power of this reading when I am able to give the engagement full and intense attention; the authority and conviction with which the words and actions of Jesus reach across the centuries; in which these words over-leap the vast complexity of "Christianity" that grew in the generations in-between Jesus and myself. 

Of course, yesterday and today is not the first time I have felt this (as I wrote previously) - but this was a fresh amazement - and evoked a fear that it might not be so!

...Leading-on to a new affirmation of faith and another experience of conviction; of direct validation. 

 

What Jesus is saying and offering in the Fourth Gospel is astonishing to me, breathtaking in its originality and radicalism.

For me it is something that I want deeply, something I therefore really want to be true! And the whole thing therefore hinges on whether I personally believe what Jesus is saying - whether I believe He was who he said, and whether I regard as true what he claimed. 

After which, according to the Fourth Gospel; I am told to turn to the Holy Ghost (that is; to Jesus himself, in person, as available to us here-and-now) to provide exactly that knowledge, and the comfort that derives from conviction of its truth.  

 

Note added: I see that I failed to complete the circuit of the above description; because no matter how overwhelming a spiritual experience may be at the time of experiencing it - such conviction does not last. Almost immediately, the experience is subjected to doubts, and indeed is readily explained-away by all kinds of familiar materialistic/ scientistic arguments (just a dream, a delusion, wishful thinking etc.). That is the situation of modern man - and not by accident. As men who have become conscious of much that was once spontaneous and implicit; modern Men must consciously choose. We must decide whether or not to believe our spiritual experiences; whether or not to regard them as an intuition of ultimate reality. This is a free choice, and one for which we ought to take personal responsibility. Specifcially; we ought not to desire to be permanently overwhelmed by a conviction so powerful and lasting that we never get out from under it. Nor should we regard such inescapable experiences as the most valid. Because that would be to desire to be un-free and to evade personal responsibility. Therefore - to complete the circuit - I freely choose to believe as real that religious experience of conviction: I choose to make its validity a bottom line assumption for me. 

You are a dangerously confused victim of profound self-mistrust: If you don't trust yourself then who, and why?

In this weirdly inverted world, most people spend several hours per day "informing" themselves about what it going on in the world by means of the mass and social media, supplemented by face-to-face gossip... mostly about the agenda established by mass/  social media. 

 

But people neither remember not think about this stuff. They do not even try to make connections, to draw inferences - to make the effort to remember whether their sources proved to be honest and reliable. They don't even try to check whether what is being said makes sense!

In a profound way, people do not trust themselves to understand the world; and therefore open their minds wide to... well, to whatever the world is currently deciding to pour-into their heads. 

This self-mistrust is reinforced by several decades worth of widely disseminated propaganda that there is no free will, that we live in a simulation (or Matrix). 

 ...And that we are fed a diet of lies by those who desire only to exploit us. 

 

In other words; we are supposed to believe the self-confessed liars who desire to exploit us are telling the truth, when they tell us that they are liars who desire to exploit us! 

Clearly, this "Cretan Liar" strategy - telling people not to trust themselves and of liars repeatedly telling you they are lying - has mind-warping consequences if not transcended. 

It is a PSYOPS; the consequences of which are a kind of numbed passivity; motivation becoming little more than moment-by-moment "coping". 

This experience, which we all share, can be regarded as a colossal life-lesson; from which we can and should learn that we ourselves are ultimately the only trust-worthy source. And it then becomes our task to understand how this can be. 

Thus, to avoid chronic despair; we are forced, eventually, into recognizing that we must assume that our personal judgment is the only possible basis of any kind of knowledge - and then to develop an understanding which explains how this situation arose. 

How do we find ourselves in a world where we simply must derive our ultimate beliefs by some kind of intuitive act; and how can we expect that this will potentially lead to reality - to true knowledge...

What are the pre-requisites for such a system of knowing? How can it operate?  

These are questions to which we need to find answers in order to function - yet the externally-provided sources are all telling us (repeatedly) that they cannot provide such answers.

 

Such questions seem to me to lead to a very different set of assumptions that those we started-out with, or which are available from the literature. So very different that Men of the past would regard it as crazy - after all, how can one person overturn, or rather transcend, the wisdom of ages... 

Well, it might seem like crazy if it was not for the extreme and unrelenting craziness of the mainstream, of The Normal, of the way that most people think, talk and behave for most of the time - of the incoherences that they assert; and of the psychological consequences of this situation of endemic self-contradiction. 

We cannot ignore the craziness, and it affects us badly - and if we desire to escape this torment-trap we are compelled to take total responsibility. 

 

So, it can be seen that God is probably allowing this situation of official and mandatory insanity with some valid purpose: in order that we are strongly encouraged to do, that which it is most important that we do. 

 

There is a way out-and-up, and we can each discover it; but we can only each discover it for himself. 

The understanding imperative: Denial is not ignorance - and, anyway, ignorance is not innocence

Something that is hard to grasp and keep-hold-of, is that one vital action we should take is to become conscious of the spiritual war - the war between Good and evil.

(Or God and evil - in which evil is defined by that which opposes God, Good, Divine Creation.) 

 

At this stage in human development, we need to become conscious of much that was unconscious in earlier states of human development; and with consciousness comes choice. 

This is very important. Modern Western Man is grown to spiritual adolescence, and does not inhabit that ancient world of spiritual childhood in which the unconscious and spontaneous are dominant; and in which Goodness comes from obedience to legitimate authority. 

That is gone and irrecoverable; just as our own childhood is gone. 

Us, Now, must become conscious, must understand - and we do choose.

 

We choose, and have-chosen - and to deny this does not wash; because to suppress and deny knowledge of our choices is not to be ignorant; and even if we were genuinely ignorant, as of here-and-now ignorance is no defence against evil.

(Our world is ruled by evil, so that we must know it, and resist it, for and from ourselves - not by obedience to the authorities of our world, which are all net-corrupted - and anyway how can we choose which authority is good except from our-selves?)

(Anyone capable of describing or arguing that ignorance is a defence against evil, is already in-denial, is therefore not ignorant, nor innocent; and has therefore already-chosen - one way or the other.)

 

However, making an inner choice between Good and evil does Not enable us to transform ourselves positively in this mortal life. 

This was apparent even as long ago as St Paul - who said (e.g. in Romans) that knowing what is right does not mean we can do it - indeed, to be blunt, we cannot actually do what we want to do - no matter how much we want it.

Paul (as an ancient, in an earlier stage of development) saw Goodness externally, as The Law - and was clear that we could not live in accordance with The Law; no matter how much we desired it, no matter how much we strove. 

And since we cannot live by The Law we would all without exception be condemned by The Law - if not for some other supervening cause - which is Jesus Christ; who has exploded as false, the previously-assumed connection between Good Living and Salvation. 

 

In simple words; our task in life is not to become better people nor to improve society. 

Betterment and improvement is irrelevant to the fundamental reality of this mortal life.

This is mostly because there is evil in each and all of us; as well as all sorts of other interference to our behaviours coming from (e.g.) sickness, circumstances, ageing, and death.

 

But while this means we cannot make either our mortal-selves better, or this world a better place - even when we know how to do it; nonetheless, knowing and choosing is exactly what we need to do in terms of the resurrected life after death - it is what causes us to accept Christ's offer of salvation - and we carry the consequences of such choices into resurrected eternal life.  

As I said; it seems terribly difficult not to fall into the recurrent error of assuming that we can fundamentally, significantly, improve our-selves and this-world - terribly difficult to give-up on this futile - and indeed counter-productive - quest. 

As so often, we can find inspiration in Jesus of the Fourth Gospel, and what he expects of the people around him. He really doesn't seem to be trying to improve people's behaviour much, at least in terms of their actual outer-behaviours; Jesus seems to accept people that people will-be pretty much as they are... 

Yet Jesus does make tremendous efforts to help other people understand their ultimate and real spiritual situation. 

With this goal he performs symbolic miracles, and explains them both as parables and explicitly. He aggressively attacks falsehood and delusion, and sets out an alternative vision of a life that is Not Of This World; indicates by poetry and symbol what this eternal resurrected is like, and how to get there - and how to get there is very much about love.

 

And with respect to love, Jesus's approach is very much about the understanding that love is the essential. Jesus knows that love cannot be manufactured to order, and that we can't become more loving than we are; but we can and should recognize and affirm that love is primary and essential (because that is the commitment we must make if we are to follow Jesus to Heaven). 

And it seems very important to Jesus that all this be explicitly known... 

Jesus is saying, I believe, that the saving act is to understand and to make the right inner choice and determination - and, implicitly, to know that this is what we are doing. 

 

One thing I draw from this is that anyone who claims not to know about evil, who claims ignorance of who and what is evil - and hopes thereby to be regarded as innocent and not responsible - is actually lying.

Probably lying to our-selves - the evil aspects of our-self lying, and we have chosen to believe these lies - and then denying our knowledge that these are lies.

And lying is a sin that goes against God and creation; therefore must be repented - but when we are denying that we lie, then we are not repenting. 

 

The place I am going with this is to address the question of what we ought to do - here-and-now, 2024, in The West - to Fight Evil and Do Good?

We are prone to do many wrong things instead... To look for some external authority to whom we can pretend to hand-over ultimate responsibility. To seek a gang for support and defence and better attack. Or perhaps to make excuses for why we do not do better in reforming our-selves and the world. 

All the time missing the point, and failing to do what we must. 

 

And perhaps even arguing that doing what is demanded of us is secondary, unimportant, a merely "private" matter (something merely going on inside our heads...) - and that instead we ought to be fighting to reform the world in the socio-political arena. 

This being not just futile, but actively harmful - unless a consequence of understanding explicitly who to fight, why and how. 

Because, as with "resist not evil", merely to fight evil is to compound evil by double-negation - unless done in pursuit of positive Good.

The task of understanding what is going on at the level of the spiritual war of this world and in our-selves is endless, and very difficult - it is, indeed, a lifetime's work and cannot be completed. 

Yet understanding is possible, positive, and cumulative; and is indeed what is really intended by Doing Good - but not Good for our temporary mortal selves in this temporarily-inhabited, temporary world.  

Whatever the way we currently explain this process to ourselves, however we explain why it is needful, understanding is the primary Good we ought to be doing - the fight we ought to be fighting. 

And given the multitude of false ideas and wrong advice that circulates; this task is worthy.

 

As a reminder; we can think about what Jesus did for his disciples; which was mostly to help them understand. 

Presumably understanding is exactly what the Holy Ghost does for us now - if we ask Him. 

To ask is to be answered - so long as we ask the right question properly; and that is what we most need to be working-on. 

The Opposite of The Litmus Tests: Four necessary positive metaphysical assumptions concerning the ultimate nature of reality

Four necessary positive metaphysical assumptions

A few years ago I suggested that there are several Litmus Test issues, which the demon-affiliated totalitarian Establishment uses to pursue its agenda of damnation (these agendas include the sexual revolution, climate change, antiracism and - more recently - hatred of the Fire Nation and its leader - and some others). 

It is necessary to reject these Litmus Test issues, if one is to avoid being absorbed-into the agenda of evil; however rejection of such specific evil strategies is insufficient; and indeed double-negative ideology (opposition to that which is regarded as wrong) is itself a part of the agenda of evil.  

 

What is important are positive convictions; or more exactly positive metaphysical assumptions concerning the nature of reality - positive assumptions concerning the nature of reality (i.e. positive metaphysical beliefs) suitable to underpin, explain and guide a positive purpose to this mortal life.

I think there are at least four such assumption that it seems necessary to affirm; if one is to avoid being (sooner or later) sucked-into taking side with the agenda of evil. 

 

But in the first place, I need to clarify that "being a Christian", in what has until recently been regarded as the normal and socially-understood fashion of Christianity, has proved itself to be utterly insufficient. 

(This despite that Christianity is ultimately The Truth; and that a purposive and meaningful mortal life depends utterly on following Jesus Christ to resurrection to eternal Heavenly life.)

As of 2024 in The West; that a person identifies as, and believes himself to be, Christian and publicly states his Christianity; that the is an active member in good standing of a major/ large/ powerful Christian church or denomination - or is a priest, pastor, scholar or leader of such a Christian grouping... is Not a valid discernment anymore. 

2020 confirmed this to me: that one could be a practising, devout "Christian" yet firmly on the side of the agenda of evil (first the birdemic/ peck agenda, later the antiracism "MLB" agenda).

2020 saw a stark exhibition of the conformation of "Christianity" (that is, Christianity as defined by the church of which one is a member, this including any and all major churches in The West) to willingly and enthusiastic subordination of (supposedly) core church doctrines and practices to the then-expediencies of the evil establishment totalitarian agenda.

 

So - If not, then what?  

I suggest (at least) four necessary positive metaphysical assumptions that are needed to stay on the side of God, divine creation, and The Good in The West of 2024. 

Of course there aren't really four - and that these are separable and sufficient; and of course such things cannot briefly be explained or justified in a blog post. 

What I am trying to do is suggest (to a sympathetic reader) the kind of positive assumptions that are now required; and that these fit-together (as would be expected if they were indeed true). 

 

Four necessary positive metaphysical assumptions

1. That there is God, who is a person not an abstraction; and with a personal relationship with Men; and that we inhabit God's creation. 

Without these assumptions there is no purpose or meaning to life, and the universe has no relevance to our-selves - so we might as well shut-up and accept whatever happens to be happening. 

 

2. That we inhabit a living, conscious, developing universe. 

I believe that we cannot allow any-thing to be not-alive - if materialism is allowed even a toe-hold on our beliefs, it will end-up by regarding the universe as unalive and purposeless. We are compelled to choose. Either everything is "dead" - as modern science assumes; of all is alive; and, if alive, conscious, purposive, developing (evolving) through time. 

Eastern (including "Platonic") concepts of reality as a kind of stasis, play into the hands of the powers of evil; which is very keen on promoting oneness spirituality, Buddhism etc - for their own reasons. 

In other words: creation is alive. It seems evident, when I think about it, God would have zero interest in creating a universe containing "inanimate" stuff (or indeed "fields" or "forces") of the kind familiar from physics. 

 

3. This mortal life ending in death is followed by continued and personal existence. 

In some sense our "self" is immortal. Otherwise, there is no point to this mortal life.    

 

4. That purposive evil is real.

We need to assume, and believe, that there really is purposive (hence personalized) evil in this universe. 

 

That is, we need to recognize that there is a side of evil; a side opposed to God, divine creation and The Good. 

And realize, too, that evil is indeed a "side" in the spiritual war; the opposition in the spiritual war. 

For many generations, many people have tried to do without (to deny, mock, trivialize) the reality of purposive evil - but as-of 2024 this leads to de facto affiliation with the agenda of evil.

 

Evil is Not, therefore, particular Beings; but it is the side in the spiritual war to which any particular Beings give their allegiance. 

There are - strictly speaking - no Good or evil people in this world. All are mixtures. 

Therefore: Nice people can be (and mostly are, in The West) on the side of evil; Nasty people may be on the side of Good. 

 

(And, of course. Good people may be nice, and plenty of nasty people are indeed evil! We need to know all this, if we are not to be fooled by the 24/7 propaganda emanating from the agenda of evil, as well as our own likely prejudices and misunderstandings). 

 

If you consider that one of these four positive assumptions is unneccessary - or that there ought to be one or more further additions; you may wish to argue your case in the comments.

Suicide Pills will be welcomed by many/ most of the public, for at least three reasons

When (not if) the plan for mass free distribution of painless-suicide pills gets unveiled; it will be welcomed by many or most of the Western public - for at least three reasons:

 

1. Fear: Because so many people fear that they will suffer while dying. 

It doesn't matter that prolonged or extreme suffering is usually preventable - because some risk of a painful death cannot be eliminated... except by pre-emption. (Prevention is the best cure!) 

And 2020 shows how easily extreme fears can be whipped-up by the Establishment, and how resistant the most-terrified can be to reason or reassurance...

Probably because - in a world that believes death is annihilation - health has taken the place of religion (including for most churches); and current suffering (of almost any degree or duration) becomes regarded as an intolerable violation.

 

2. Altruism: Because some people regard the death of people such as themselves as a benefit for the world. 

"With me and mine out of the way; there will be more for everyone else."

Indeed, plenty of people claim to regard human beings as a plague on the biosphere - whose elimination would be better for all other living things... and much better for The Climate! 

Thus suicide is an expression of ultimate altruism! In a world where avoidance of suffering is the highest value - the best way permanently to reduce our carbon footprint, to walk lightly upon the earth, to minimize finite-resource consumption - is to offer our own death as a willing sacrifice to the goddess of environmentalism.

3. Despair: Because the mass majority are materialists who, at bottom, regard reality as purposeless and meaningless; and who therefore live only for the satisfactions of this-life. 

Such people have no strong reason to stay alive - because their life is going nowhere except death, and has no meaning except whatever comforting "delusion" they themselves try to invent. 

Therefore; as soon as life starts to go badly - overall; then why bother with it? 

 

For such reasons as the above; I suspect that plans for mass provision of painless suicide pills will find themselves pushing at an open door. 

Especially if the Western Establishment succeed in escalating the Fire Nation and Arrakis conflicts into all-out world war - with its high-likelihood of causing widespread violence, disease and famine; then the Western masses will be biting-off the hands of state-sanctioned death-draught feeders, in their eagerness to get hold of the medicine.

Indeed; it seems far more likely that the masses will protest against the ineffectiveness (or "inequity") of suicide pill distribution, then to protest against the Establishment encouraging suicide. 

A six year old child's understanding of solar eclipses

It is very important NOT to look at the sun during an eclipse - because the sun is (somehow) much MORE dangerous to your eyes during an eclipse than AT ANY OTHER TIME!*

..Presumably ('tho' the teacher didn't actually say this); when the sun is partly blocked by the moon, it focuses sunlight onto your retina like a magnifying glass onto an ant. 

 

*This is why an eclipse should only be viewed through at least five superimposed black and white photographic negatives, left-over from Teacher's holiday snaps.  

See also: Eclipse Facts by Frank J Fleming.

The therapeutic perspective on life runs so deep that we don't even notice; yet points (again!) towards mass suicide

It is deeply strange to contemplate the extent to which people believe that the main purpose of life is therapeutic - by which I mean, that people believe the main purpose of life is to deal with the problems of life. 

The fact of life and living is taken for granted, and the problems of living become the dominating focus. 

 

It's like asking: "what is the purpose of life?"; to answer: "striving to overcome misery and suffering". 

Yet - if this really was so: Why life in the first place? 

 

And yet, if you ask modern, high-status, kind, compassionate, and "enlightened" people; they would very likely state that some version of "striving to overcome misery and suffering" is the highest moral and ideal activity that they can imagine.

That - indeed - is the modern idea of what a "good person" would do. 

Twenty-first century "Christians" (if you can find one) would agree - and would regard Jesus as the best Man who ever lived exactly because he went around healing people, feeding the poor, raising the dead - and eventually set up a church that (allied with government), "made the world a better place" through taking practical action to overcome misery and suffering.

 

Apart from the philosophical/ theological/ ideological superficiality and weirdness of adopting a double-negative conceptualization of life and living - this is strategically-feeble as a motivator compared to some actual positive goal. 

And when the double-negative understanding of life and morality collapses; it often leaves-behind (the sin of) despair; because the realization dawns that if my life is striving to overcome suffering, then the only certain answer is death and annihilation of that life. 

 

In a world where death is understood as utter annihilation of the self; a life-focus on the alleviation of suffering is the precursor to a culture of death attained by suicide.   

The common attitude that Men in general, Western Man specifically, and people-like-us in particular, are a "cancer on the planet", likewise feeds the implication. 

 

And further; if anything like social apoptosis is going-on, such that the spiritually-defective are inclined to eliminate themselves; then the predicted mass distribution of Suicide Pills becomes not just rationally defensible, but something regarded as the highest kind of altruistic morality of which modern Man can conceive. 

     

The Great Gates of Wossit? by Mussorgsky - and other politically-corrected musical titles

First - from Pictures at an Exhibition - Mussorgsky's Great Gates of... Kviy, isn't it? 

 

Then, one of my favourites - Mozart's Praha Symphony:

 

That old popular classic warhorse: The Warszawa Concerto:

And that perfect synthpop single: Wien by Ultravox

In Case of War, take the Suicide Pills: When Social Apoptosis meets spitefully destructive totalitarianism

A few months ago I formulated the term Social Apoptosis as a model which may help to understand the way that Western Civilization is eliminating itself. 

The idea is that in the individual cells of multicellular organisms, or individual organisms in social animals such as humans; there are evolved mechanisms by which individuals (and probably groups of such individuals) delete themselves from society, by choosing not to reproduce. 

Such apoptosis can be understood as intended to pursue "strategic", long-term and overall benefit at the expense of short-term and individual benefit; so that the individual has some kind of built-in "programme" to sacrifice its own survival and reproductive prospects in order that larger goals may be achieved. 

 

Something of this kind certainly seems to be at work in Western Civilizations; both individually - where a majority of the native populations choose either not to reproduce at all, or to be subfertile (with much below replacement levels of offspring). 

Modern societies exhibit little in the way of what used to be regarded as natural instincts for self defense or survival - there is a much greater observable concern to avoid avent moderate or brief suffering and pain than to stay alive and leave-behind children. 

(The idea that it would be thought necessary to encourage people to defend themselves and their conditions, or to have children, would have seemed bizarre to most humans throughout history!) 

And apoptosis apparently also operates at a societal level, where whole nations (essentially all Western nations) have for some decades tolerated, and often enthusiastically embraced, multiple policies whose consequence is self-extermination - even when self-extermination is explicitly stated and aimed-at. 

 

Of course; there are many other external and top-down factors at work. But I feel that there would have been a great deal more in the way of mass resistance and refusal if it was not that so may individuals and groups apparently regard themselves are deserving of elimination. 

This widespread sense that "we" - as individuals and societies - deserve to be eliminated, meets with a leadership class that is increasingly motivated by a spiteful desire for destruction. 

A leadership class that demonstrates an implicit - and sometimes explicit - personal satisfaction at the suffering of individuals, and the decline of social institutions. 

 

One reason why unrestricted world war is now such a high probability, is this combination of a Western Civilization that feels it ought to be eliminated, and is motivated by the desire for elimination; with a totalitarian leadership class that would enjoy creating a situation in which this elimination would happen on a rapid and massive scale - accompanied by the greatest possible degree of human fear, misery and suffering. 

 

(While it is only The West that is ruled by a class many of whom are actively seeking destructive war on any excuse, or none; it only takes one side to make a war. Or rather, the only alternative to war in such circumstances, is passive acquiescence to being genocided.)

 

In a spiritual sense; this is understandable in terms of the elimination of religion, and indeed the reality of the spiritual, from the minds of modern Men. 

Our publicly operative metaphysical assumptions are utterly nihilistic; we are taught and believe that there is no purpose or meaning to our lives, or indeed to life itself. All is accident and determinism.

In The West it is fashionable, and publicly approved, to regard Mankind as a plague upon the planet - and the universe... 

The obvious conclusion is that we should eliminate ourselves. 

 

This is our situation here and now; and one reasons why the prospect of explosive and wholesale destruction seem to be increasing all the time.  

An implication of this spiteful-suicidal synergy is that The West will continue to destroy its own military capacity, even while trying to escalet wars on mutliple fronts. 

So "They" want war - but they are Not planning to fight a war... 

What does this imply?

 

To me it suggests that if, or when, They get the war they so much want, involving Western populations who deeply feel that they deserve to die; instead of trying to win the war by fighting - the leadership class will implement a mass distribution of "Suicide Pills". 

Thus there will be a war, and from fear and despair, encouraged by a monothematic propaganda onslaught; the Western masses will kill themselves in droves - the Suicide Pills enable the masses to kill themselves without suffering, and fear of suffering is the only thing that stands between many people and desired annihilation.

That is my prediction. Sooner or later we will be hearing about a plan to distribute Suicide Pills, freely, to the Western Masses - to be used "compassionately" in case of the third world war that is the leadership class's major current project. 

 

Of course, painless death will rather thwart the desire to inflict suffering - and the sadistic demons won't like it... 

On the other hand, the Master Agenda is that of Satan - and that is self-chosen damnation, of which a pretty reliable preparation is to die in deliberate and unrepented sin. 

To kill oneself in fear and despair (and, probably, in a state of seething resentment against God and Jesus Christ) is itself a rejection of Heaven, and the willed choice of Hell.   

Does advancing confidently in the direction of our dreams, lead to success unexpected in common hours?

I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. 

He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. 

In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. 

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

 From the Conclusion to Walden by Henry David Thoreau.

**

I can recall the excitement, and optimism for my life ahead, with which I read the above passage in my middle teenage years. It seemed like I was being offered a key to open the locked door of life - a life that, since adolescence, had become more sinister and oppressive in term of how most people lived it. 

I have since read many similar passages and extended arguments. The point may be summarized as asserting that if only we would adopt the right perspective, the right attitude to living, then the fundamental problems of life are soluble. 

Such statements remain common - although less culturally influential than they were up to the 1970s.  A more recent example is the work of Joseph Campbell - whose slogan of "follow your bliss" was saying very much the same as Thoreau.

 

Although there is no mention of deity - such statements do assume a purposive and benign universe; because built-in are such beliefs as that "more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him".

In other words, there is an implicit assumption that the proper attitude in ourselves will elicit from reality an appropriate response - we will "make our own luck". 

This is strictly nonsense on the basis of modern mainstream scientistic materialism; where the universe and Men's minds are alike the accidental and undirected products of random and determined processes. 

Yet something deeper and unreasoned continues to evoke a response and expectation that, indeed - despite "rationality" - we might perhaps make our own luck. 

 

Looking back, I would say that Thoreau's statement is false ultimately and overall - and that his advice does not solve the fundamental problems of life: it did not for Thoreau himself, nor has it done so for anybody else of whom I have knowledge. 

This is because the fundamental problems are life are consequent upon the inevitability, and ineradicable nature, of evil and "entropy" (by entropy I mean the innate tendency, operating through time, towards disease, degeneration, and death). 

And false because we are not only surrounded by evil and entropy in our environment; but these are both also operative within us - so that, even if we lived in an earthly paradise, we would carry evil and entropy into that paradise. 

 

On the other hand; although fundamentally untrue; Thoreau's advice is helpful! 

It is an attitude that can lead to a more fulfilling life - especially if (as was not the case with Thoreau) it comes to be underpinned and explained by faith in a creator God, who is our loving Father.

And Thoreau's vision may become literally true and eternal on the other side of death; if we choose to accept the gifts of Jesus Christ. 

Do not tie your salvation to material things (it is a demonic temptation)

It is a major error to conflate the future of Western Civilization (or of the world population as a whole) with Christian and spiritual matters.

This is a mistake. 

Of course; the material and physical realm always has spiritual implications, because it is ultimately spiritual in nature. But the directionality of that relationship is that the material is a sub-set of the spiritual, and the spiritual encompasses and interprets the material. 

So the material neither defines its own spiritual consequences, nor does the material drive the spiritual - unless we spiritually choose to make-it-so.

 

This means that we cannot track the spiritual condition of the world by monitoring its material manifestations - at least, not unless we have chosen to make the material primary. 

For instance (and this is a very important example):  

If we choose to make the material churches the primary factor in Christianity; then the material chuirch will indeed define the spiritual nature of Christianity.

What happens to Civilization; e.g. whether The System becomes Sorathic and motivated towards its own self-destruction and the destruction of everything else; or whether some nations step-back from this, to seek either a functional and Ahrimanic totalitarian system, or perhaps try (maybe succeed) to revert to a more "medieval" kind of theocracy with religion as primary... All this kind of thing is not spiritually primary. 

Such changes will very probably affect whether we (and many others) will live or die sooner or later. And will affect whether our lives our comfortable and perhaps interesting, or miserable and tedious...

But ultimately suffering and death are inevitable facts of this mortal life and world - so that all such distinctions (while important) are quantitative and temporary.

Nor is the main question about optimism or pessimism (red-, blue, white- or black-"pill", in the current idiotic jargon) - whether "things" are-getting, or are expected to get, better or worse on average, or overall... 

Christianity is primarily about the spiritual and salvation - thefeore not about some person's current emotional responses.

 

Christianity is about resurrected Heavenly life; and that is a matter of personal motivation: about what we want, and how much we want it.

The nature of the Civilization or System, whether it survives, is repaired, or destroyed - is dissociated from the values of individual persons - unless we each choose to make it the opposite. 

As of 2024; the powers of evil overall and substantially control much of the material world. A major aspect of demonic temptation to induce a willed embrace of damnation, is therefore to induce people to tie their salvation to material things (including churches).

 

Yet the reality is that - at the extreme - the entirety of world civilization might collapse and Men suffer and die in their billions - yet (in principle) all souls might be saved. 

Or, at the opposite; the world might experience an unprecedented reduction in human suffering, an increase in human happiness, diminished disease and the extension of human life - and yet all the dying souls from this "Earthly Paradise" might (in principle) choose to reject salvation. 

First Things need to be put First - therefore be-ware and do not fall into carefully prepared soul-traps; spiritual snares built and maintained by demons.  

As near perfection... Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, by the Andrews Sisters analyzed by Fil from Wings of Pegasus

Regular readers will know how much I appreciate great singing; and in this respect I am finding Fil on the Wings of Pegasus YouTube site - to be a real education. 

He uses a computer tool to analyze recorded singing - past and recent - to see what is going-on from the perspective of sound frequency and timing. 

Here he turns his analysis tools to the appreciation of an absolute classic of virtuoso popular singing: the Andrews Sisters and Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy from 1941. 

 

We all "know" this version; but it repays close and repeated listening - not only for the singing, but the superb arrangement. 

But one of Fil's recurring themes - and how I first came across this channel - is to reveal that performances labelled and presented as if "live" are actually using pitch-correction or "autotune". 

More recently, he discovered that ultra-expensive "live" public perfomances in mega-stadia, may be using a lip-synched pre-recorded vocal by the star. 

 

Lots of similar treasures - and, as I say, there is incidentally a lot to learn about the techniques of singing. 

Also I find his unpolished, benign, carefully honest, somewhat rambling, presentation style to be very endearing.

 

Truth as a Christian virtue

Truth is a Christian value - indeed, without the historical influence of Christianity; then the seeking and speaking of truth would likely be a mere personal idiosyncrasy. 

It is therefore important that Christian theology explains why truth is a necessary virtue - absence of which is sinful, and needs to be repented. 

The dwindling strength and influence of institutional Christianity is a reason why truth has become perhaps the most neglected virtue. 

 

Probably also that churches have themselves failed to acknowledge and repent their own many and gross lapses from truthful values (lapsing almost invariably into expediency) - thereby destroying even surface credibility of their claims. 

For this reason; that truth is a Christian virtue is neglected in church teachings; and as institutions "Christian" churches have become almost indistinguishable from other social institutions in terms of the truthfulness of their public discourse. 

As usual with Christianity here-and-now; the Christian virtue of truth has become a matter for individual discernment and responsibility - and will often oppose the practice and statements of any particular Christian church.

 

(Also, to a lesser extent, the feminization of the West; since women are relatively more prone to untruthfulness, and less likely to be driven by truth as a value. Most, maybe all, virtues and sins differ in strength and frequency between the sexes. e.g. men are better at truth, while women are better at loving-kindness.)

Untruthfulness is therefore anti-Christian. However, untruthfulness is tolerated, even encouraged in some circumstances, in other religions - thus Christians should not assume that people of other religions or atheists/ materialists value truth as an ideal. 

Most such people don't even want personally to be truthful - their motives and goals are quite other. 

People cannot be Made good

So much of religious discourse through the ages revolves arouf the expectation or hope that people can be made good - that some external influence, some deity, can take Men and make them good. 

And yet this is impossible - conceptually impossible. 

 

Men can only be made to behave in good ways by an external influence; Men in and of themselves, as Beings, cannot be made good. 

If Men are given their due, as genuinely individual free agents - and not merely apparently free Beings, who are only apprently separate; but really just pseudo-subdivisions of the universe, of deity... 

If Men are recognized as genuinely individual free agents, then it is impossible realistically to envisage any process by which Men may be made good. 

 

(And if there were, why has it not already happened? Why bother making Men as they are, if Men really could be made good? That has always been the fatal objection to those who claim that real Men can be made good by external influence.) 

 

Indeed, so far as I know, the only claim to be able to make people intrinsically good is that by Jesus Christ; which involves: 

1. the collaboration of an external deity with the full consent; and 

2. the will of the individual person - and involves 

3. the literal death of that individual, followed by 

4. his subsequent re-making - in the process of resurrection. 

To make Men good by resurrection is therefore a complex, multi-step process of un-making, before a two-sided re-making. 

 

Whether or not even resurrection is conceptually coherent and plausible is perhaps a matter for individuals to grapple with; but it seems clear that anything short of resurrection in terms of simplicity is prone to multiple and lethal conceptual objections - no matter how much such a positive transformation of Men (and of the world) is yearned-for. 

But thinking of the problem of "making good Men" in this way, does at least give some individuation of why Jesus promised eternal life - not now, nor soon - but only on the other side of death; and a heavenly life that is not of this world. 

Why deterrence doesn't work anymore

For most of recorded civilized human history; mankind has been living in A System - but these Systems, like the organisms of biology, were overall orientated towards survival, growth, spread. This is why there is a degree of cyclical nature to history - despite that time is linear, and history never repeats because human nature/ human consciousness is changing and developing. 

But for the past few generations The System has become - for the first time ever - a self-consuming, self-destroying thing. Not, therefore, like a biological organism; but like a host that has been purposively and motivationally hijacked by a parasite without foresight: a parasite that will seek its own thriving until the host is killed.  

The partially-cyclical nature of history is broken in a world of Systemic value-inversion; and thus a world where self-hatred and suicide are baked-in. A world where the "bourgeois" and the "rebels" are two sides of the same coin - and where the "rebels" have indeed been created, shaped, controlled, and promoted to rulership by those who control The System.

All of this means that common sense is no longer operative; including such common sense motivations as deterrence* - or even expedience. Even the idea of "enlightened self-interest" - of medium- long-term selfishness as a prime motivator, is no longer operative - either at the individual or at the national level. 

This applies almost totally in The West; where leaders and the masses alike operate under a combination of extreme short-termism that - in practice - reflects primarily socially-manipulated and malleable attitudes; with a pseudo-long-termism that consists of Total Lies.  

Because the effectiveness of deterrence requires both sides to operate under the same motivational-system; then when the West is orientated against Systemic self-preservation; then the "common sense2 and historical power of deterrence is gone.  

As may be seen in the actuality and trends of geopolitics over the past couple of years. 

There is a still-escalating global conflict between the domination of various old-style self-preserving and traditional organism-like societies; versus the parasite-controlled and self/other destruction-orientated Western civilization. 

And, at present, it is unclear who will win this conflict - although it is much easier and quicker to destroy than it is to preserve and sustain.   

It is biologically difficult and rare to reproduce and raise a healthy organism to maturity, then to maintain it alive - and only a narrow range of options for achieving this; but it is simple and easy to organisms, and by innumerable effective methods.

*By deterrence I mean not only the military doctrine between nations or power blocs; but also the ordinary inter-personal deterrence that (in both types) tends to prevent initiation and escalation of hostilities, aggression and violence. As a relevant aside; deterrence is more-or-less effective - at least in the short-term - among almost all normal humans of the past - except for the genuinely psychotic. Which confirms that mainstream modern Man is literally insane.  

Made-up evil nonsense in the mass media - Just who are they trying to convince?

There are nested agendas at work in the world; a hierarchy of evil, in which each level has a different aim, and each manipulates and misleads and manipulates the level below. 

Only at the very top level (i.e. supernatural and demonic) is the ultimate agenda of spitefully-destructive Sorathic evil being consistently pursued - but all levels below are some mixture of delusional and merely-servile. 

The mainstream mass media are some levels below the apex; and their delusional servility has by now become extremely obvious to any honest observer capable of learning. 

At the level of the mass media and its controllers, there is an absolute conviction that they define reality. 

Although this belief is delusional, this is not completely false; because the mass media do indeed define reality for the leadership class and most of the mass of Western People - as was blazingly evident in 2020 with the birdemic of spring, the antiracism agenda of the summer, and the giga-peck agenda over the next months and years. 

What the media said was in imposed lock-step, and most of the world believed whatever the media was currently saying; utterly regardless of its nonsensical incoherence. 

But since early 2022 the world has diverged; and while nearly-all Westerners still believe almost everything the mass media spouts; the rest of the world does not: and ever-increasingly it is irrelevant what the West believes. 

Because the mass media operates inside a delusional bubble, they cannot comprehend that there are major matters on which it does not matter at all what beliefs the media can impose on the infinitely-gullible Westerners. 

The rest of the world in general, and the Fire Nation in particular, have long-since worked out that the mainstream mass media is always wrong and evil about everything than matters; and the more unified and strident their statements, the wronger and more-evil the underlying agenda will be. 

As a specific and current example, when it comes to responsibility for the recent massacre in the Fire Nation; it simply does not matter what the Western media are spouting in unison, nor what gibberish the majority of Western idiots can be made to believe: all that matters is what the Fire Nation believe. 

The mainstream, globalist mass media are absolutely sure that if only they can launch and sustain monolithic campaigns of malicious lies, then they have defined reality for the world - or at least everyone who matters in the world.

But the West had made itself capable only of self-destruction.  

Meanwhile anyone, anywhere-else in the world, who desires to accomplish something - is getting on with it; and the only (slight) attention paid to the globalist mass media is to learn what is for-sure 100% un-real and intentionally-evil.

Romanticism is the best life. Or, pretense without participation - failing to fool yourself

Looking back and surveying memories; there are periods of my adult life when I seem never to have experienced participation. 

I mean those memories (characteristic of childhood, especially) that have a special and "romantic" quality. For example the visual memories that of are surrounded by a literal hazy glow; that seems to represent the experienced reality of us being part of the scene. The haziness represents that entities are not separate objects, but entities are instead concentrated or condensed from a single reality-field. 

(You might say barriers between entities are "permeable" or that entities are "connected" - but actually it is more that entities were not separated in the first place - that it is the separation which is secondary and illusory.) 

But it strikes me that there were long periods (extending up to a few years) throughout  my adult life when my memories indicate that I did not experience this - when my memories are wholly mundane. 

It is as if I remember that something happened, but in memory I am observing from the outside, as a mere description - I am not "in the scene", and indeed memory says I was not really in my life at these times. 

And these periods when genuine participation was apparently absent, now seem in retrospect to be times when I was off the "destined" spiritual path of my life. 

Analyzing the phenomenon; I seem to need both to personally to have the right attitude, and to be in the proper situation. 

When I was not in the proper situation - for instance when I was pursuing the wrong aims or with the wrong people, or in the wrong place - then no amount of striving was able to induce that sense of participation. 

In a basically-wrong situation - the harder I tried to attain romantic participation the more mistakes I made, the wronger the things I did. 

Furthermore; even when I was in the right situation and properly aimed; there were situation in which I was deluding myself... 

I mean, the things I "wanted" would need that I be an impossibly different person; or would need to inhabit a non-existent place or time (maybe somewhere else I could not go, or a time in the past and gone)...

For example; after becoming a Christian, I was sometimes drawn to types of Christianity that were fundamentally alien to my nature; that were, it now seems, based on a fantasy about what kind of person I would like to be but was not, and life-circumstances that I felt would be preferable but did not actually exist (and in which, even if they did exist, I would not be able to function). 

All this has to do with a lack of intuition - to do with a superficial and external scheme of myself and the world; a fantasy scheme that, while appealing in a day-dreaming way, lacked positive and deep inner endorsement. Also, for which a deep inner endorsement simply could not be manufactured; instead only a kind of fake conformity and public support.

I seem to detect exactly this faked inner-endorsement in most of what I read from most self-identified Christians. 

I do not believe that they intuitively believe that which they publicly affirm. It rings false. I infer they life in the same kind of superficial conformity to external structures and systems that I myself professed, and which memory now reveals was inauthentic.  

I suppose that some people must live for such long periods (maybe all their adult lives?) without that "romantic" quality of experience I describe above. Maybe this happens because they have the wrong aims, or are in the wrong place, or among the wrong people... 

Whatever the cause; because they are off the proper path of their spiritual destiny, they are like I was for those months or years in which memory indicates that I was not really "in" the world. 

Perhaps they rationalize this situation as Real Life, or Necessary, or even as Best? 

This may explain the active hostility to romanticism that is so prevalent.

The idea that romanticism is either outright evil, or at least liable to lead to evil: the insistence that the Good Life - the Christian life - ought to be lived at the secondary level of my memories "about" things, and to eschew those hazy, participative memories of being "in" my life and world.

Or that romanticism is deluded, a day-dream, people fooling themselves...

Whereas my memory tells me that it is romanticism that is reality, and the mundane is when people are fantasizing and telling themselves lies...  

Self-lies which, deep down, they don't themselves believe, and which consign them to the mundane and the secondhand in life. But they dishonestly respond to their endemic and self-inflicted alienation by refusing to acknowledge their own unbelief - and by scorning the romantic.   

I can't think of any arguments that would persuade such people. As usual - it is down to intuition applied to fundamental assumptions. Either we intuitively know that romanticism is right and best - or we don't. 

NOTE ADDED: Why is this important? Well, it is not necessarily important too all people, all of the time; but it becomes important for some people when (on the one side) their faith is not strong enough to resist the many temptations from all around, to put the values of this world above eternal resurrected life in Heaven - or (on the other side) to regard this mortal life as ultimately futile, or essentially negative in its potential.  

Fight, Fight, Fight is only a variant of "If only everybody would just be Nice"

Things are much worse than most people think! That is clear from the "If only" conversations and writings that seem to have plagued the world for hundreds of years at least. 

So many people though history have pointed out that "If only" people would just be nice, kind, reasonable, sensible, or whatever - "then" how much better this world would be...  

Yes indeed; but the Whole Point is that People are not thus, and show no signs of significant improvement in their natures.

A variant of this are the appeals for people to Fight this, that or the other. "If only" a few people would awaken to their own power, band together, organize, vote, Fight - "then" we could win. "Such exhortations are always, whether explicitly or implicitly, about "us" and what "we" could do if only we would Fight.  

Yes indeed; but the Whole Point is that (here and now, in "real" life) people don't and won't fight.

Or, at least, they will fight only when they are compelled by the government, get paid, or attain high status for fighting. Although some people will fight without reward; from their pleasure in destruction, bullying, and infliction of pain.  

And therefore (because their motivations are bad) people will only in practice fight on the side of evil - because, in terms of spiritual virtue: motivations are what matter.  

What's more, even if people could be well-motivated to fight on the side of God and Good; who exactly would they fight? 

The answer is that those who fought for Good would need to fight those on the side of evil. 

But things are much worse that most people think; and those on the side of evil are not a handful of Dark Lords and elite lieutenants, the elimination of whom would win the spiritual war; but instead those on the side of evil is... Almost Everybody. 

If you really (rather than merely rhetorically) were to fight, fight, Fight; then your would nearly-always start by fighting your family and friends, moving on to neighbours and colleagues, very soon including almost-everybody... those involved in almost-every social system: those responsible for food, water, energy, building and repair, trade and transport, retail etc. - as well as police and the military.  

The evil that rules this world, controls all these, and the other (politics, media, law, education, health,. arts, science...), social systems - so all-of-them is exactly who and what you would need to Fight. 

And even supposing you were able to inflict significant damage on Them; by destroying The System; you would certainly cause the sooner (rather than later) collapse of Western Civilization*. 

Things are much worse than most people think; and even if people and this world were utterly different from what they actually are - the dewy-eyed optimism of those who exhort us to Fight reveals their naïve ignorance of how bad things actually are, how pervasive and (in its various, or specific manifestations) overwhelmingly popular is the agenda of evil. 

Realistically; there is no basis for optimism: that is, there is no basis for believing that the world can or will become significantly better than it is now. 

But for a Christian this is not a counsel of despair, because Heaven is not of this world, and Jesus Christ's promises are of resurrection for those who follow Him - real Christianity is not a programme of socio-political reform. 

In other words: the cure for despair is not optimism but hope; not group belief in a high probability of amelioration or improvement but the personal certainty of salvation. 

*Of course, the underlying motivations of the fight-fight-fight brigade are often (apparently) selfish or in service to evil. Some are using this rhetoric to "make a buck", to build a business, build a cult around themselves, support the "party"; others are paid shills or state-employed agents provocateurs. Others are just LARPing as tough guys. But some are, no doubt, sincere but misguided - and they are the focus of the post.  

Beaconsfield, Berkshire - the most impressive literary town in England?

If you had asked me last week what was the most impressive literary town (not city) in England; I would probably have said Keswick, in the Lake District - despite that the major figure among Lakeland writers - William Wordsworth - was born and resided nearby, rather than in Keswick itself. 

But I now realize that the prize must go to Beaconsfield (pronounced "Beckonsfield") in Berkshire. 

I should have noticed the fact years ago, but had not made the connection until I began listening to the audiobook of Terry Pratchett's authorized biography "A Life with Footnotes". 

I had not clocked that Pratchett was born and raised in Beaconsfield; but I knew that GK Chesterton had been a long-term resident, and that Robert Frost had also lived there while he was in England. Already a very impressive trio!

But when I checked the relevant page in Wikipedia I was reminded that Enid Blyton had also resided in that small town; along with a large number of other eminent authors including Edmund Burke, Benjamin Disraeli, and Alison Uttley. 

While Beaconsfield's roster probably does not match Concord, Massachusetts (Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott...) in terms of literary significance and influence - it is nonetheless probably unbeatable in the UK. 

Or is it? 

Any other suggestions?

 

The literally delusional nature of that resentment which motivates so much socio-political action

The thing about paranoid and persecutory delusions (that is; beliefs that are false, strongly held, powerfully-motivating, in practice irrefutable), is that they cannot be contradicted by further knowledge or experience. 

Once a person has decided that X is "out to get them", is-harming or will-harm them in some way; then the whole cognitive apparatus is orientated towards collecting evidence based on this assumption. The assumption shapes the entire realm of facts, interpretation and theory. 

This delusional mechanism happens at the individual level; but also the long-standing, and sometimes all-consuming, resentments of history are understandable in this way. e.g. In the world today one race may attribute its low socio-economic situation to the effect of racism; while another race infers the reality of massive and worldwide racism despite occupying the highest socio-economic status and power. 

Once the assumption of racism, or sexism, or "fill-in the word"-phobia has been made, and once a person (or race/ sex/ orientation) builds its motivational system around racism - there is no possible empirical evidence or argument that can shake this delusion. 

In a very fundamental sense, it does not matter whether there is some or even a great deal of truth to the delusion of being-persecuted. The point is that the delusion is a psychological and motivational fact, for which reality is an irrelevance. Once established, a change in reality does not change the delusion. 

Therefore, when delusional thinking underlies political movement (as it so often does), when one group is delusionally-convinced of the hostility of another; then there can - in principle - be no political solution to the problem. 

Even a "final solution" of eradication of the perceived threat will fail; because it will turn-out that the threat has not, after all, been eradicated - but continues in some covert or crypto- form! The currently influential concept of implicit racism is a clear example... Even after all perceptible racism has been eliminated, racism nonetheless remains - and all the more threatening because of its invisibility.   

I have termed these "theory of mind" delusions; because they are based on normal cognitive processes (i.e. they are Not psychotic) and instead are rooted in a false inference concerning the intent and motivations of others - but this false inference cannot be corrected by evidence, because other people's minds are not transparent, and can only be inferred indirectly. 

What this means (as I - apparently - never tire of saying!) is that recognizing and critiquing the basis of underlying assumptions is of extreme importance. 

We all base our understanding upon assumptions of a metaphysical kind, that can neither be proved nor refuted; therefore we have a profound individual responsibility to examine our own baseline assumptions about the world with respect to coherence, and "good-ness" - because some assumptions sustain a good life and society, while others are deeply and incurably pernicious in their effects.

And ultimately the spiritual victims of that resentment which is rooted in delusional thinking, is the resenter himself; because resentment is a sin that must (like all sins) be repented if we are to want to choose salvation. 

(...Because we cannot carry our resentments into Heaven, which is a place motivated only by Love: we must check our resentment in at the door - permanently. One who does not want to leave-behind all sins, does not want Heaven - but something-else instead.)

(...And, resentment is an especially pervasive and dangerous sin to modern Western Man; because it is widely inculcated, engineered, encouraged, rewarded - sometimes mandatory.)

In sum: theory of mind rooted assumptions are inevitable and ubiquitous forms of thinking; what makes an assumption "delusional" is essentially that it is an evil model of reality.

Even when delusional thinking has some factual basis, it is an evil; because it is a spiritually-false orientation of life - a projection of attention and motivation onto "other people" that denies our absolute personal responsibility for our own salvation and theosis.  

The harm of such delusions is primarily spiritual and related to eternal post-mortal life; although the material harms caused by this trap of thinking during this world and life may also be colossal.