Stop the Presses! the Global Establishment are censoring and punishing True statements!

The Radical Left are outraged at the way that, since the current Arrakis conflict erupted, any-thing regarded as in-any-way critical of CHOAM or supportive of the Fremen is being (officially as well as informally; and via much of the Western bureaucracy and media) multi-valently demonized, blocked, and actively-punished. 

For the PC/ Woke/ Radical Leftists, this is something absolutely new, radical, terrifying. 

Meanwhile, back in the real world, this is a minuscule incremental progression of a nearly 60 year and exponential trend of thought policing. 

Yet it is indeed significant that the ultimate powers of the totalitarian system have decided (because this whole thing has been contrived and managed), to drive a expanding-wedge into and through the middle-of-the-road versus the radical wings of the Establishment. 

It is a decisive step away-from the unified global Establishment that was in-power following the international coup of early 2020 - and a step in the direction of global chaos - reinforcing the multi-front world war three schemes (including, in order, Eastern Europe, Middle East, Far East) that have split the nations of the world. 

So there is a global ideological (plus fighting) war between The West and The Rest; and within the West an ideological war that is (presumably) intended to become a fighting war. 

As usual, pacifism is neither a real option nor desirable; because it would avoid two-sided war only at the price of passive genocide by one side of the other (after all, it only takes one side to make a war).  

All of this is inevitable and unstoppable in a post-religious, materialist world rooted in an ideology of negative values; a world that lacks even a theoretical belief in purpose, meaning, or transcendence of mortal life -- and which is therefore (for lack of anything else) easily-led by (because it has zero grounds from which to resist) selfish, short-termist and emotional manipulations. 

On encountering Glenn Gould playing Bach's Partitas - 1978 to 2024

 

A boxed set of Glenn Gould playing JS Bach's Partitas, obtained by mail order (uniquely for me) seared itself into memory as a key event in my life. 

This came near the beginning of my discovery of Glenn Gould, at a time when he was regarded with almost uniform hostility in Britain (insofar as he was known at all) - and most of his records were (to me) impossible to obtain (I got most of them when working or on holidays abroad - in the USA, Canada, Paris). 

The Partitas are associated with the long, hard winter of 1978-9; which I experienced in an unheated, drafty, seedy flat. But the association is a good one! It is of lying in bed cocooned inside a sleeping bag, inside another sleeping bag; with blanket and sheet below and four blankets above - listening to the first of these Partitas (and my favourite) the B-flat Major. 

And really listening - with total concentration, so that I was inside the music, following the mind of the musician note for note. 

The intensity with which I listened to my small collection (building to about eight LPs by the end of the year) Gould's Bach recordings at this time was something seldom matched throughout the rest of my life. 

What did I get from it? That's what intrigues me now. To some extent it was simply time spent sampling a higher world, and thus an enjoyably ecstatic experience in its own right. Yet the music also pointed beyond itself in a way that was partly inspiring, but partly frustrating. 

I might briefly return home at lunchtime to collects stuff for for, and listening to some Bach - maybe one of these Partitas, some of the Golberg Variations, or a prelude and fugue from "the 48" - and then I had to return to my lectures, practical classes, and dissections at medical school. 

But it wasn't just the problem of sublime aspirations versus worldly practicalities; it was much deeper - because, even with time, energy and opportunity to do whatever I wanted... Just what was it that I wanted to do, in consequence of listening to Gould play Bach? 

It was like having an answer, but not the question! 

All of this fitted with the general direction of my life; in that this was when I began reading Colin Wilson's The Outsider series and other manifestations of the 1950s movements, James Joyce's Ulysses and other works, discovering Jung; as well as performing (as a singer) and generally exploring classical music - including the late Romantics such as Wagner, Richard Strauss, and Mahler. 

It was a very "existentialist" period in my life!

I desired and sought the kind of life that I imagined Glenn Gould lived; one in which (as I supposed) intensity and ecstasy were normal and continuous.

Of course this was not really true. At least not in a qualitative sense. Gould surely lived that way more often and more completely than most people - but he did not inhabit a higher form of consciousness. 

Gould did not solve the core problem of this mortal life: nobody ever has, because it is impossible to do so! 

It took a long time, several decades, before I recognized that. 

Sometimes the obvious is the hardest thing of all to recognize - at least for modern Men. 

All of this, and more, was brought to memory in a kind of flashback, when I found the above YouTube posting of Gould's Partitas, began to listen with half-attention to the B-flat major; then found that I could not stop listening nor do anything else, until it had ended!

Did Sauron "recycle" power from the three recovered Dwarf Rings?

Thrain II (father of Thorin), last bearer of a dwarf ring (maybe before he inherited the ring from his father; or maybe it was concealed under a gauntlet?)

Apparently, Sauron reclaimed three of the seven dwarf rings (the other four seem to have been destroyed by dragon fire).

Sauron later offered to give one to Dain II Ironfoot, King under the Mountain; as reward for helping find Baggins the Hobbit. 

But Sauron may have been lying. 

After all, the dwarf rings "didn't work" as Sauron intended. They failed to subordinate the dwarvish race to Sauron's will. 

Instead; the dwarf rings seemed to increase greed and covetousness (already archetypical dwarvish vices), while making it easier to accumulate treasure by trade. That is: If a ring-wearing dwarf traded in lead, he would become wealthy in lead; likewise for silver, gems, or gold. 

As the possessor of "the last of the seven" to be un-re-claimed by Sauron; Thorin's grandfather Thror, said to his son Thrain: the ring needed gold to "breed" gold. 

So, what did Sauron do with the three dwarf rings he re-possessed? 

I see three possible options:

1. Sauron kept and guarded the three dwarf rings, to ensure that nobody else could get hold of them; in particular so that no dwarf could become wealthy and powerful enough to threaten (or, at least, to interfere-with) Sauron's plans.   

2. Sauron intended to use the three remaining rings as bargaining chips to buy the cooperation of dwarves. 

This is implied by Gloin's account of Sauron's messenger offering to give Dain (King under the Mountain) one of the dwarf rings as a reward for helping to find Bilbo and the (One Ring) rings that he allegedly had "stolen". 

If Sauron's messenger was speaking the truth, then at least one of the remaining three rings was still available for this purpose. 

However, there is no reason to assume that Sauron's messenger was speaking the truth! It may have been that Sauron had zero intention of ever returning any ring. It may be that Sauron would have broken his promise...

Thus; if Dain had indeed cooperated with Sauron, and the hobbit ring-bearer had been found and the One Ring captured by Sauron; then it seems likely that Sauron would just have broken the "deal", and simply kept the dwarf ring.

3. A third possibility is that Sauron would be able to reclaim the power that he had invested in the three recovered dwarf rings, by means of destroying the three rings in some particular magical procedure.

This assumes that if Sauron knew how to put some of his innate power into a ring, he would also know how to get that power back again in process of destroying that ring. 

Presumably; because he had access to the hottest fires in Middle Earth in Mount Doom, what was technically possible to Sauron may not have been possible to anyone else.  

My best guess is that this third option was the most likely: i.e. that Sauron had, by the War of the Ring, already boosted his own power somewhat, by reclaiming much of what power he had put-into each of the three dwarf rings that Sauron had re-possessed. 

Note: The above information derives from The Lord of the Rings, especially Appendix A:III, and The History of Middle Earth Volume XII: The Peoples of Middle Earth. 

Why are ultimate choices clearer and simpler than before - despite these End Times of totalitarian value inversion?

If it is accepted that these are the End Times (in the sense I discuss) - and if it is recognized that populations in The West are pervasively subjected to an ideology of atheist-leftist-materialism via the mass media and the totalitarian state...

Then, one might assume that the situation is hope-lessly complex and confusing; and that an individual has near-zero-chance of navigating through that ocean of untruthfulness and deception which constitutes mainstream discourse. 

Yet - I would say instead that the ultimate things of life have never been clearer and simpler to people.* 

So clear, and so simple, that all individuals are able to make the discernments they need to make, to live their lives as they need to live them - if that is they desire; and to choose salvation - if they wish for it. 

Nowadays, the deceptions, confusions, insanity etc. are all so very extreme, and their rationalizations so ridiculous, as to be self-refuting at a very deep and irresistible level. 

Whatever excuses people make to themselves; many have decided to believe that which they know, deep-down and un-ignorably, is evil nonsense. 

What we are really up-against in these End Times, is not social conditions hostile to real values... We are up-against a dawning realization that not-many people desire that which Jesus Christ offers. 

+++

*This, because these are times of mainstream, top-down, encouraged (and increasingly mandatory) value-inversion; and we all have knowledge of true values built-into us and available for guidance via the Holy Ghost. Inverted values are not just incoherent, which incoherence cannot be hidden; but also we know that these official values are false. 

Yes, excuses for embracing inverted values are not just available but positively socially approved and supported... But we know this too. 

In a nutshell; even though the external world propagates and "proves" value inversions near-universally; nonetheless, our inner and real selves cannot-help but understand that this is false. 

And when we choose to ignore our intuition and subordinate our souls to external influences - our intuition knows this too.

The unpalatable truth is that we Already know what we need to know, and we Just Are responsible for our choices. 

Yet, evil choices must be made and re-made, so long as we live; and can be changed. And that imposes its own kind of pressure.     

Bluebell woods in Durham City

We visited the bluebell woods in Durham City today, as we do every year. 

The weather was a bit overcast, and the camera cannot capture the great sweeping carpets of bluebells under great beeches and oaks clad in their brand-new, golden-green leaves. 

But anyway - here's a flavour of late spring in my part of the world. 

Ahem - The Empire (in Star Wars) Was evil... Obviously!

Seriously guys: these are The Goodies in Star Wars? 

Over the years and recently, I've seen several "revisionist" arguments that The Empire in the original Star Wars trilogy of movies, was actually good. 

This is the conclusion of evaluating Luke Skywalker and his gang of rebels to be the real baddies; broadly on the basis that they are, at root, just the usual leftist-fantasy revolutionaries, as imagined by the 1960s US counterculture.

But this is nuts! Regardless of the nature of the rebels; The Empire was clearly depicted as a totalitarian regime, ruled by "demonic" (Dark Side) affiliated and control-motivated types. 

This specific error of discernment is worth noting, because it is one instance of a general phenomenon that is an increasingly frequent and powerful: defending Ahrimanic evil, on the pragmatic basis that it is not-so-bad as the changes being proposed; to the point of actively supporting that evil.

In this instance of Original Star Wars, which is from some fifty years ago when Luciferic evil had been strong for the last time in the form of the sixties version of hedonic "freedom" - the idea is that we ought to take the side of communitarian order against the chaos ensuring from individualistic self-expression. 

Nowadays; the Ahrimanic System is mostly defended against the spitefully-destructive Sorathic spirit of encouraging war, famine and disease. 

The snare is that it is natural and good up-to-a-point to defend that which is traditional, culturally-significant, and functional - which will include much that is virtuous, beautiful and true - against that which would remove it.

But only good up-to-a-point; because these are ultimately - from an eternal and spiritual perspective - secondary matters; and we therefore must be prepared to abandon them when resistance does more harm than good.

(I should be clear. To defend any-particular-thing which is good can itself become evil - when it leads towards affiliation to evil hence rejection of salvation. No matter how specifically good some-thing may be, there may come a point that it must be set-aside. Such is the nature of our life, task, and challenge in this mortal life.)  

The snare is that we are - in practice - offered a package-deal; in which the package is the net-evil Ahrimanic System, and we can only retain the many specific "goods" by sustaining net evil totalitarianism - and when such arguments from practicality become internalized and personalized into a spiritual affiliation to the side of evil.   

For Christians; this happens with their churches. 

There are always powerfully destructive forces at work against anything that is noble, beautiful and meaningful in the churches. 

These attacks are (almost invariably for the past few generations) evil-motivated; whether the Luciferic evil of desiring permission and endorsement for one's own (often sex-related or sexual - sometimes materialist/ careerist) sins. Sometimes the attacks are motivated by sheerly spiteful pleasure of destroying that which is regarded as a source of Good. 

Yet (beyond a certain point) to pour time, energy and effort into resisting these many-pronged attacks sooner-or-later actually entails supporting an already net-evil social institution that is deeply integrated into the global totalitarian bureaucracy. 

In other words; to defend the church tends strongly to slide-into defending The Empire - which is exactly what we see with the revisionist interpretations of Star Wars. 

Because all large, powerful, ancient, mainstream Christian churches depend-upon The System for their survival; as well as because the churches are under continual attack from Luciferic and (increasingly) Sorathic forces...

Then we get the very familiar phenomenon of loyal and devout Christian church members who implicitly, covertly but decisively have abandoned their Christianity; and affiliated with Ahrimanic totalitarianism. 

"The rebels" usually are wrong and would make matters worse; however, The Empire is - by nature and intent - a machine designed for the damnation of Men; and we Must Not forget that massive fact! 

 

Saving us from what? The twin prongs of Romantic Christianity

From what does Jesus save us?

To simplify, one might first say Jesus saved us from death, by his offer of resurrection. 

And Jesus also saved us from an ultimately purposeless and meaningless mortal life - i.e. "alienation", by resurrection into that "second creation" which is Heaven. (Both are achieved by an eternal commitment to live by love.) 

Salvation from death and from alienation are the "twin prongs" of Romantic Christianity (the Christian, and the Romantic) - which are distinguishable, but which can be separated only by destruction of the valuable whole. 

In theory (as of here-and-now) we might be Christian or Romantic solely; in practice, in these End Times ruled by evil; unless both are present, then motivations are so enfeebled that we shall become corrupted into conformity with the demonic agenda. 

In stereotypical traditional societies (although not nowadays in The West) - this might be summarized as the first appeal of Christianity being different for those who live in expectation of death (e.g. in famine, war, or old age); than for those (adolescents and young adults, mostly) who are preparing for a functional adult life, and who are often afflicted by a sense of the pointlessness of mortal existence. 

In the past; alienation was often ameliorated by social palliatives - by those leaving their birth family becoming members of another close-knit group. hence the vitality of churches. But this alternative has been largely abolished by modernity and bureaucracy - and changes in human consciousness. Mostly, such communities are now experienced negatively: as intolerably oppressive, as exploitative. 

From here-and-now it seems that the answers of Christianity remain qualitatively the same; but have shifted from the material and external (e.g. churches, and the objective efficacy of religious symbolism and observances causally-linked to resurrection) to the spiritual - to inner commitments within the realm of thinking.  

Of course; to regard Jesus as Saviour is an instance of double-negative theology; and the underlying reality is that in a positive sense Jesus offered a possible basis for living well this mortal life; for a mortal life that escapes futility and gains eternal purpose and meaning from the expectation of resurrected life.  

In other words; both prongs of Romantic Christianity ought to arise from the same root; which is that we know with inner and intuitive sureness that our own individual reality is truly personal, and we have chosen to be part of divine creation - and that our part is eternally significant for the whole. 

Is Dale Carnegie the patron saint of the Based?

The "Right" or "Based" blogosphere, or Manosphere in its various manifestations - strikes me as the latest iteration of a theme of self-improvement that probably began with Machiavelli's The Prince; included Samuel Smiles (who coined "self-help"), Dale Carnegie's How to win friends and influence people, and many versions of the power of positive thinking ("every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better").

Nowadays there are many blogs catering to this theme, online podcasts and lectures, as well as books. 

The idea is to improve your own life - by key insights, or new behaviours - with "improve" being in some way that matters to you...

Maybe simply feeling better about yourself, getting more money and/or a better job, improving health and bigger muscles (+/- greater strength), defending against violence, surviving disaster, gaining the admiration of men, or getting more sex with more women.   

Self-help is implicitly rooted in secret knowledge; and this secret is always some key information about becoming clearer and more focused on what genuinely benefits you; and the key insight is about how to pursue your own self-interest more effectively. 

In a nutshell: the appeal is a promise of more-effectual hedonism. 

Well, all very understandable -

But what does this kind of stuff have to do with being a Christian?

...To do with following Jesus Christ to resurrection into eternal Heavenly life?

To ask is to answer. 

**

  

NOTE: The point of this post is expanded by that which follows it, below...

 

Trying to destroy The One Ring versus... everything else

Hey lads! Let's use the One Ring to fight Sauron!

One point about Gandalf's plan to destroy the One Ring by sending Frodo into Mordor; is that, on the one hand, it had potential to be decisive; while on the other hand it had a very low apparent chance of success.

By comparison there were many other high probability options of improving the situation a bit - but none of these could possibly affect the final outcome of defeat.

Short-termism and common sense was heavily in favour of doing almost anything except sending a Hobbit into Mordor; yet none of these alternatives would - even if they worked, and even in theory - be able to do more than delay the inevitable. 

Life's like that - at the microcosm and macrocosm; did we but recognize it. 

We could pour our efforts into small, but ultimately insignificant, improvements - or else we could make our best effort to do that one-thing which really has potential to be decisive. 

Of course, the first step is to discover that which has potential to be decisive. 

And that is something which nobody-else is going to tell you - just as nobody told Gandalf what might possibly be achieved. 

And it is something which will seem stupid, reckless, insane - or even evil - to most normal people: to that majority who cannot or will not see farther than whatever ameliorates some current problem. 

Once again: you are on your own. Once again: if you don't take responsibility, then the Good Thing will not be done.

But (after you have failed, and as all goes under...) you will have cast-iron excuses why it did not happen, why you did not take the tiny crazy chance of doing-the-right-thing. 

(Excuses that everybody will acknowledge as valid.)

With life; it's a matter of what you ultimately take most seriously. 

 

War and totalitarianism

When Orwell's 1984 was written, there seemed to be an obvious relationship between war and totalitarianism - such that (apparent) perpetual war was a condition of the continued domination of the leadership class. 

My understanding is that this was a transitional reality - true only insofar as religion retainrd a residual power to motivate. Only when the motivation for war could be assumed, and in a strong "state" - could it be inferred that war would tend to lead to the totalitarian goals of omni-surveillance and micro-regulation. 

Yet, in the long-term sufficient national motivation has turned-out to depend on a strong national religion. And since religion as a primary motivator has disappeared from all modern industrial states (excepting the Fire Nation); there is no compelling reason why war would necessarily lead to an advance in actual totalitarianism. 

(And indeed, totalitarianism per se is an atheist ideology; so that the presence of a strongly motivating religion means that the increase in social organization and reduction in individual freedoms etc. becomes more of the nature of theocracy; than totalitarianism. But, being an atheist, Orwell failed to distinguish between totalitarianism and a genuine theocracy.) 

Indeed, in the absence of significant and positive national motivation; there are good reasons to suppose the opposite would happen: i.e. that war will nowadays lead to the collapse of effective totalitarianism with a progressive break-down of hierarchy, coordination, and control. 

Here-and-now: war leads to more chaos - not to an increase of imposed-order. 

This is because the situation of national war is ripe for corruption - for manipulation, exploitation, theft, sabotage. Strategic and coordinated prosecution of the inter-national war will will be overwhelmed by the much more immediate incentives of an intra-national war of each against all. 

Even when there are explicit, long-termist, positive national goals such as survival or conquest; even when there is a genuine external threat - the proximate human and institutional motivation will be to distort and misuse these goals as a rationale for selfish short-termism. 

And without religion, the tendency over time is that proximate motives will be the strongest. 

How Not to conduct a metaphysical enquiry! (Further responses added 3 May 2024)

Kristor, of The Orthosphere, is very good at expounding his own metaphysical assumptions (which are essentially those of Thomistic Roman Catholicism); but when it comes to making a comparative evaluation of different metaphysical "systems"... well, he just doesn't ever do it!

Kristor is an old internet pal, going back to the time before I was a Christian, and we interact affectionately offline. Indeed I would regard him as a pen-friend, a good person, honest and trustworthy and (so far, at least) On the Right Side in the spiritual war of this world!

But for more than a decade this matter of what it is to conduct a metaphysical enquiry is one concerning which I have been apparently (across multiple online interactions) utterly unable to get across my argument.

In a recent post; Kristor discusses the matter of whether reality is ultimately one (monism) or many (pluralism). By his argument, Kristor apparently supposes that he has logically rejected pluralism as in essence incoherent, therefore necessarily wrong. 

Yet what he has done in his discourse is merely to demonstrate that when someone has accepted the assumptions of monism - then swapped-out the assumptions that everything is one and replaced it with an assumptions of pluralism, the result does not make sense. 

I say again: Kristor believes he is conducting a metaphysical enquiry and comparing different metaphysical systems - but he is not. 

In actuality he is just expounding his pre-existing metaphysics, rooted in pre-existing assumptions (and I assert they are assumptions) concerning the fundamental nature of reality. And then Kristor is correctly demonstrating that his Thomism becomes incoherent if one was to introduce pluralism into it... 

Which is - of course - true! Pluralism does not (and cannot) cohere with an otherwise monist metaphysical system! 

Kristor's argument does not at all mean that pluralism is necessarily incoherent; for example when pluralism is one part of a different set of fundamental assumptions concerning the nature of reality.

I think the fundamental reason why I "cannot get-through" to Kristor on this matter, why we keep having the same non-argument over and again, is that he regards his own metaphysical assumptions as necessarily true; and this blocks his ability (and interest) in making any other assumptions - even for the purposes of philosophical debate. 

And perhaps Kristor regards his own assumptions as necessarily true because he does not acknowledge that they lead to any fundamental problems. 

For example, I think he does not acknowledge the ineradicable depth of the problem of explaining genuine free agency for Men in a reality conceptualized as created from nothing by an "omni-God". Nor do I think Kristor appreciates the ineradicable depth of the problem of accounting for the existence of evil in a reality wholly-created by a wholly-Good (and omnipotent) God.  

And, to speculate further! - I think Kristor does not acknowledge the depth of these problems, because he is satisfied by those abstract and complex "answers" provided by Thomism. 

And (to complete the circle) these are answers that themselves assume the metaphysical primacy of abstractions. 

(As examples; Kristor - following traditional RC teaching - assumes the fundamental and necessary truth of God's omniscience/ omnipotence/ omnipresence (etc) - and these are abstractions. Similarly; creation-from-nothing (ex nihilo) is assumed to be necessary, and that is an abstraction. More fundamentally; Kristor's understanding of God as God, is an abstract one: his understanding of God is in terms of the definitional necessity of God having certain abstract attributes - such as those above.) 

Although we can note that such a focus seems to date from early in the history of Christianity (albeit there is no evidence of it in the contemporary eye-witness account of the Fourth Gospel) we can still ask why is it that abstraction occupies such a fundamental position in Christian metaphysics? 

And our answer will depends on further assumptions regarding the nature of Christianity. For Kristor (and apparently for most Christians since some time after the ascension of Jesus) there can be no such thing as Christianity except from within the perspective of The Church (however that "The" is defined). 

For Kristor; "The" Church just-is Christianity; and this is not a matter for legitimately Christian metaphysical enquiry. To challenge or doubt what has been assumed for maybe 1900 years; makes no Christian sense: to do so is simply Not to be a Christian. 

To assume (as I do) that "being a Christian" is a primary reality that has no necessary link to any particular metaphysical assumptions; and no necessary relationship to any church in general or particular; does not for Kristor imply the legitimate possibility of further enquiry - but invites explanation in terms of ignorance, insanity or sin. 

This is related to other matters concerning what Christians ought to be doing, here-and-now. 

For Kristor; Thomism is just true, the nature of Christianity derives from the truth and necessity of the RCC; and therefore all legitimately Christian futures must build upon these. 

But for me; this version (as I regard it) of Christianity has deep metaphysical problems, that require better metaphysical solutions (or else, Christianity will continue to disappear). For me; "modernity" has been - in part - an increased conscious awareness of the unsatisfactory nature of traditional Christian (e.g. monist, omni-God, abstract) understandings of human freedom and the origins of evil. 

I regard metaphysical awareness and enquiry as non-optional, as absolutely necessary if Christianity is to avoid (what I see as) the long-term, relentless, and accelerating trend of either explicit or de facto apostasy; which (for me) was made evident in 2020 - when all the Christian churches (including RCC) willingly (and without later repentance) subordinated themselves to the globalist agenda of totalitarian evil. 

So! These apparently trivial interpersonal debates between myself and Kristor - or, failures to debate, as I regard them - are like the tip of an iceberg of differences; that I regard as ultimately sustained by a deep and long-term problem of wrong metaphysical assumptions about Christianity being instead regarded as necessary and true metaphysical assumptions. 

Note added: 

Kristor responded to this post here. 

@Kristor - I - like you - reject "radical ontological pluralism" - as being incoherent - so everything you say about that subject is (I'm afraid) irrelevant.

Instead, you can and should assume that I regard every single theologian of the past as significantly in error; and that there really is nobody else who has the same metaphysical assumptions as I do.

You are candid enough to acknowledge your assumption that since I am in a minority of one, therefore I must necessarily be wrong - so (from your perspective) there is no point in wasting time on finding out what I do believe!

I don't blame anyone for ignoring anything - we are each responsible for our own salvation, primarily. But I personally believe that this attitude of seeking truth in (some kind of) consensus of past and status, is both anti-Christian (in the sense of being opposed to what Jesus said and wanted), and (here and now) a guarantee of choosing the wrong side in the spiritual war of this world.

(We are not so alone nor so ignorant as you assume! Much true knowledge is born into us as children, and God has ensured that each of us has sufficient wit to discern his own salvation - with the personal guidance of the Holy Ghost. God would surely not have been so foolish as to depend upon each and every person getting good guidance from his external social environment!)

But, there again we are up against utterly different basic assumptions! Yours is that anything true and important on the subject of Christian theology has already been said - and therefore truth should be sought among external authorities.

My assumption is that the prime reality of our life of salvation and theosis is rooted in a personal relationship between ourselves and Jesus Christ, and that we not only can but must (post-mortally if not before) take personal responsibility for our ultimate choices.

You complain that I do not explain myself in the comments sections of blog posts. True enough! I have given up on that mug's game!

Instead; I have written hundreds of blog posts (as well as the Lazarus Writes mini-book) over the past decade, explaining and re-explaining my metaphysical assumptions and arguments from as many different angles as seemed helpful - and as simply and clearly as I am able.

I have also addressed the specific critiques you make. But I expect you would not find my points acceptable - exactly because your basic assumptions are so completely different.

(For example, your discourse takes place outside of Time/ Time-less/ in simultaneity of Time (sub specie aeternitatis); whereas I assume that Time is (as it were) intrinsic to reality (because the pluralism of primal reality is made of Beings, and Beings are living and "dynamic" conscious entities). Therefore, for me, all fundamental explanations require allowance for Time. This has many consequences. For instance, I believe we began with pluralism, with many uncoordinated entities; and God's creation - which is happening in Time - has-been and is progressively imposing "unity" or cohesion upon that primal "chaos". For me, this explains why both oneness and pluralism, creation and chaos, are part of our mortal experience.)

It's all there, on my blog, for anyone who is interested - of which only a handful of people have been, but those few seem to understand me accurately enough. And if someone is Not interested - well, that's his business, but not mine. After all, my main motive in writing so many hundreds of posts per years, is to clarify and critique my ideas for my benefit. The readers are mostly just looking over my shoulder.

In sum, you have clearly set-out some of the Many reasons why you do not want to engage with what I actually believe. You feel no Need for it, and already assume I Must Be wrong.

While, on my side, my unique theology has happened only because I have already (to my own satisfaction) known and rejected that which you regard as true.

What I am saying is that our decisions rule-out any genuine metaphysical discourse - which explains why this has never actually happened!

While it only takes one side to make a war - it takes at least two people to have a metaphysical discussion!

Merlin reads The Hobbit (1974)

I review the 1974 abridged Hobbit by Nicol "Merlin" Williamson, over at The Notion Club Papers blog. 

Healthism, survivalism, dependence, and totalitarian control

Healthism is one of the Litmus Test issues for Christians, in the sense that Christians need to be clear that there are more-important things than health and longevity, including survival. 

Health cannot be the life-priority for Christians - if it is, they simply cease to be Christian. 

This was the underlying problem with Christian churches and the birdemic of 2020 and the peck mania that followed: not so much that it was a fake and a lie from the bottom upwards; and not that the whole thing damaged net health more than helping; nor even that it was a means to the end of (necessarily evil) totalitarianism...

The underlying problem was that "health" (and "health" by narrowly materialist and secular definitions) was made the over-riding priority of the churches. 

Religion was simply put onto indefinite hold. 

All this is understandable - as is the desire for Christians and their cultures to survive; yet it is sinful, nonetheless... and requires repentance. 

And even four years later, when the social pressures and sanctions are very much diminished, there is little or no sign of repentance from the Christian churches for their behaviour in relation to the birdemic and peck - more often the opposite. 

As the engineered collapse of civilization approaches, the pressure for survival increases: our own personal survival, and more insidiously the survival of our loved ones, or culture. 

It's not that survival is a bad thing; but that the situation has-been, is-being, engineered such that Christians are encouraged to prioritize survival as First Thing and at any price - including the abandonment of Jesus Christ.

Then there is the "addictiveness" of health and health services: we crave ever more of them, and also we need them. 

Yet it is a plain fact that modern medicine, drugs and procedures, research and marketing, professional structures of personnel, health services in general - are all a part of The System; all incorporated into the global totalitarian regime - which is evil of its nature. 

Many of us (myself included) are dependent on exactly this System of medical provision. In effect, as populations, we are "addicted" to that which only the System of Evil provides. 

Sooner or later; many people will come up against this stark reality: the reality that our continued health depends on a System controlled (Ultimately) by demonic powers, and orientated to damnation. 

There is little or nothing we can personally do to avoid such dilemmas (or which health is only one or many) because they operate at a civilizational level. It is delusory nonsense to suppose we can live outwith The System; and if we are not separate then we are a part of it. 

But we can be aware of the dilemmas - those unavoidable choices between God and Health; between First Things and Second Things, and recognize them when they happen. 

And since we cannot always do good, then we absolutely must repent the evils that we choose. 

   

Every mortal life is a failure - Don't cope with it: solve it!

Every mortal life on this earth has-been and will-be a failure, whatever you do. 

Of course! 

This has been known since ancient days by whoever is most thoughtful and honest. So we should acknowledge this from the beginning!

And then...?

And then solve the problem - don't merely "cope" with it by some combination of ignorance, wishful-thinking, gullibility, and projection - tactics that are so, so common (on-line as well as IRL). 

Ignorance and wishful thinking combined are what make many people (perhaps especially young people) believe that some person, somewhere, is living (or once lived) a life that Is A Success. 

Well, if you don't know enough about other people, gullibly assimilate whatever illusions you are told, or desperately need there to be examples of life-success - then you can make yourself believe anything is real and true - or at least possible. 

(And yes - "I was that soldier!") 

Furthermore, there are plenty of people whose way of coping with their own inevitable failure is to try and convince other people of their own successfulness...

By variously dishonest and distorted forms of direct and indirect boasting/ hyping - whether by spoken word, verbally, by image, through publicity, propaganda &c.

And then there is projection of one's own failure onto others. I mean that whole tedious discourse of pointing and naming "losers" and "retards" etc. - as if it any kind of answer existential failure, to convince oneself (or persuade others) that Somebody-Else is an even bigger failure that you-yourself certainly are...  

Okay - we're all prone to one or other such lapses; but the way-out from such futility and sin is to recognize that your mortal life is genuinely justified only in terms of eternity; not justified over the next few hours, years, or decades. 

And the justification of your life will be different from that of anybody else alive or who ever lived; because your environment, nature and experiences are utterly unique; hence your life-tasks or quest must be unique. 

The Answer is therefore to frame the problem from the perspective of your own unique situation in the context of everlasting life to come. 

That's the only basis for a valid and effective "answer" to your own (otherwise inevitable) failure. 

Halldor Laxness and Taoist Christianity

Having been tipped-off that the 2007 Halldor Laxness biography by Halldor Gudmundsson had been issued in paperback and Kindle; I bought myself a copy to re-read. 

Although I did not much enjoy the biography, because Laxness was such a "high psychoticism" kind of genius as to make uncomfortable company with prolonged contact, it has set me to re-read (for the fourth or fifth times) my two favourite among his novels: The Fish Can Sing, and Christianity At Glacier (re-issued as Under the Glacier).

(Both superbly translated by Magnus Magnusson - a name very well known to all Brits aged above fifty; for his role as quizmaster of TV "Mastermind".)  

The Fish Can Sing of 1957 is better literature, indeed a near-perfect novel; while Christianity at Glacier rather falls-apart structurally, as Laxness's mental powers began to wane; but both are well worth reading as imbued with "spirituality". 

In TFCS the spirituality is Taoism - in a Western manifestation, yet sincere and pervasive; and made tragic by awareness of its unsustainability beyond childhood. 

In CAG, it is "Christian" - or rather an examination of the Christian, an exploration or striving-towards a new/different kind of Christian spirituality. 

(Laxness was born into the tepid Lutheranism of Iceland in 1902, for a few years became a very keen  Roman Catholic (considering ordination); before discarding all this for USSR-focused Marxist materialism in the middle 20th century - then returning to a stronger and stronger spiritual focus from the later 1950s - re-assuming Roman Catholic practice in his last years.)

By the time of CAG, Laxness clearly rejected the symbolism and ritual of institutional Christianity; and seemed to desire a kind of Taoistic Christianity in which the religion was absorbed-into everyday life, without being made explicit in public discourse. 

I think this is what he wanted; although he didn't achieve it - perhaps due to confusion over what Christianity ultimately is (i.e. not-of-this-world and about post-mortal resurrected life).    

More exactly; what Laxness wanted from Taoism does correspond pretty-closely to Barfield's Original Participation, the primal spirituality of young children and the earliest cultures of nomadic tribal people - which is, in a sense, naturally Christian - in that such people will (when available) choose salvation quite spontaneously and unconsciously.

But Taoism is the attempt to make a symbolism or "model" out of Original Participation - which must fail because anyone self-conscious enough "be a Taoist" is too self-conscious actually to be a Taoist! The spiritual adolescent cannot choose to think as a young child, or hunter-gatherer.  

What might a Taoist Christianity be like? Well - it is a type of Romantic Christianity. One in which Christianity is not spoken of; and in which there is not participation in Christian-themed public discourse. 

(When compelled to converse on spiritual matters, the "Taoist" becomes poetic, enigmatic, obtuse, surreal, deliberately misleading...) 

Starting point: Modern Man is in a situation of existential freedom, because we need consciously to choose that which was once spontaneous. 

Furthermore, this conscious freedom is primarily in the realm of thinking, so that the hardly-thinking spontaneity of the young child or tribesman is replaced by a freely-chosen and explicitly-thought mode of being. 

So an actual Taoist Christian (rather than the Christianised Taoism that Laxness often reverts-into) would be lived in awareness of the living, created world of many Beings; a world of Good and evil and entropy; and a world in which we are called-upon consciously to discern and affiliate with the side of Good/ God/ Divine Creation. 

We would not be striving for Taoist immersion in the present moment, or for Taoist indifference to values and choices; because a Christian recognizes that this life is transitional and temporary; and properly aimed-at Resurrected eternal Heavenly life. 

But there is a possibly Taoist flavour to the idea of recognizing and appreciating our actual, living experiences - here-and-now - as opportunities for spiritual learning - rather than this-worldly betterment.   

Maybe something-like this was where Laxness was pointing in Christianity At Glacier? Maybe that accounts for the special flavour, quality, and appeal I get from the book? 

Francis Berger on the "Socio-Sexual Hierarchy" discourse

I would recommend reading Francis Berger's recent analysis of why the "Socio-Sexual Hierarchy" discourse is so abhorrent - especially among self-identified Christians. 

Berger captures most of the many reasons why I find the whole thing so stupid, and embarrassing! 

Embarrassing, because I don't think those who write this kind of material realize how unintentionally and unflatteringly self-revelatory their stuff is. 

In one sense because "real men" (of the kind being hyped) don't go-on in this way, and indeed would find it "gay". 

It is so excruciatingly whiny, short-termist, hedonistic, unrealistic, and entitled. 

And so very un-Christian! They state that it is all about finding a wife; but everything about the actual discourse howls a craving for maximal promiscuity, with low cost and no strings.

Creepy. 

The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff - the 1977 BBC children's TV adaptation

I recommend watching the (legiondary?) 1977 BBC adaptation of Rosemary Sutcliff's The Eagle of the Ninth classic children's novel. 

This comes from that seventies Golden Age of serious children's TV; which probably began with the 1969 version of Alan Garner's The Owl Service and perhaps reached its peak with the original script of The Children of the Stones also of 1977, although there were further superb series after that.

From where we now are; The Eagle comes across as deep and powerful; with a genuine sense of the strangeness-but-coherence of the world-view of another time and place. 

The Roman soldiers' religion (Mithraism), and the Celtic and the Pictish religions are all presented sympathetically, memorably, and dramatically. The Roman soldier's code and the Britons warrior's code are distinguished, but brought together with mutual respect. 

Indeed; that is perhaps the underlying theme. The development of mutual respect between enemies. 

(There is also a dignified and chaste love story, as sub-plot - which explores a similar but different theme.)

From our perspective in 2024; the style is measured and uncompromising. Long, ambitious, uncanny scenes; that depend on the strong script and good acting. 

The Eagle of the Ninth requires a more active participation from the intended child audience than does adult drama nowadays. 

And the show is thus more rewarding: in a word better! 

God's problem in a universe built from love (and what Jesus Christ was needed-for)

If, as Christians believe, love is indeed the most important "thing"; that, in some sense, creation is "made-from" love - then I can imagine the first stage as God's love of the (already-existing) Beings of reality.

A state in which these Beings are only-as very-slightly self-aware as babies or infants, and they inhabit something-like a warm ocean of parental love. 

Each Being "bobs-around" in this warm ocean of God's love; which (like good and loving parents with a baby) brings to the Being what it needs, and takes away what it does not. 

This primal love is mutual (as love must be) - that is, parents and babies love each other (and must do, for the relationship to "work" as it ought). But from the babies' point of view, they "have no option" but to love the parents - because babies can conceive of no alternative.

From God's perspective; this primal situation "works", and every-Being is happy, with a barely-aware bliss in the present moment. 

But happy only because every Being is passive; and passive because un-self-conscious and therefore unable to conceive of anything other than the present moment. 

I think we need to understand that God yearns for love of a kind that such spiritual-infants do not provide: the love of an ideal marriage, or the ideal love between parents and their grown-up children, or the love between ideal adult friends.   

What God desires, and what is the basis of creation in the first place, is that as many as possible of these beloved divine babies become mutually-loving divine friends. 

This entails that spiritual babies grow up to spiritual adults; adults who each choose, from a condition of self-awareness and freedom, to develop a mutually-loving relationship with God.

This requires that the love that makes creation needs to change, to move-from the immersive and passive love between parents and infants; and move-to the voluntary love between self-aware adults.   

Unless we understand this yearning of God (and traditional Christianity does Not understand this) - then we cannot understand why God was not content to leave creation in its primal, passive, unaware stage. 

We cannot understand why the risk was taken to make Men self-conscious and free. 

We cannot understand why Jesus Christ was necessary. 

And if we ourselves, that is God's children, do not ourselves yearn for something more than to be barely-conscious beings - passively bobbing-around in the ocean of God's love; then we will not want what Jesus Christ made possible. 

(We will instead desire something like "Nirvana": to return to the primal infant spiritual state of a blissful passive awareness only of the present.)

What Jesus Christ made possible is for each of us fully and permanently to grow-up into adult Beings; adult Beings who can eventually enter into an adult and relationship with God: a relationship of freely-chosen mutual love. 

PP-Love versus UU-Love (i.e. Personal and Partial Love v Universal and Unconditional "Love")

Love is the major and ineradicable constraint on the Christian possibilities of this mortal life. 

By which I mean that it is the intrinsic limitations of our ability to love in this-life; that mean "Heaven on Earth" is not just difficult but impossible 

It is the limits of our ability to love that - to various degrees - constrain our ability to live a Christian life.

Our love - here on earth - is always and necessarily, due to the presence of evil and entropy - Personal and Partial. 

Our capability for love is incomplete, and often very incomplete; and the strength and endurance of our love is sometimes (or often) weak - so that the pressures and evils of this-world are capable of overcoming the strength of our love (sooner or later). 

And the partial nature of our love greatly limits the possibilities of goodness. For instance, love is needed for proper motivation; and our will-power and choices will be wrong if they are not motivated by love.  

Furthermore, some individuals are more loving than others, and some have more powerful love than others; so that some individual people are capable of only rather weak love of only a few persons or other Beings - perhaps loving just one single person, or animal. This does not prevent such a person from following Jesus to Heaven. 

(Only one who was incapable of love, or one who refused to love, would be unable - as well as unwilling - to attain salvation.) 

Furthermore love just-is, by its nature, personal - in the sense that real love is between particular Beings. This can be illustrated by the Fourth Gospel where, in every instance that it is mentioned, Jesus's love is personal and particular. 

This means that (in this mortal life on earth) our loving motivations are always particular; and (given the nature of our lives) this means that we are required to do many/most things for which we are not motivated by love at all. 

(And without love, there will not be Good. For instance, prayer or meditation not motivated by love, will do not Good - and may do harm.)

Indeed, we are all ineradicably prone to all kinds of un-loving attitudes against other people, animals, plants and "minerals"; from regarding them as un-alive and un-conscious, to desiring to manipulate and exploit them for selfish - or other - ends; to desiring to inflict harm from resentment and spite. 

Thus, real love is personal and during the earthly life it is partial; so that we cannot as mortals "live by love". 

Furthermore; this problem is not solved by reducing the actuality of real love to abstractions; e.g. by declaring that the "higher" love (the best, or really-real love) is Universal and Unconditional.

People try to evade the constraints of actual love in this mortal life, by declaring that love ought to be, and can be, Universal - so that we love everybody and every-thing; and that it should be Unconditional - coming from-us, all the time, in all situations, regardless of persons or motivations. 

UU-Love is just something else than real love - it  is neither Christian, nor Good. UU-Love is, indeed, associated with Oneness spirituality - which is not Christian but derives either from pagan sources (such as Pythagoras and Plato) and/or from "Eastern" religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism. 

That which is universal and unconditional is not love, at least not for Christians; because real love is personal, between Beings; and not, therefore, the kind of thing that can be had by decision, declaration, or on-principle.

Heaven is a place or state in which love motivates all thought and deeds. That love is indomitable, permanent, and it remains personal in nature. But in Heaven, we love all the persons (all the Beings) in Heaven. 

That's what makes it Heaven - at resurrection, every Being has left-behind all that is not of-love  

(Loving not-equally, of course - e.g. the wholly-loving mortal Jesus loved some men and women more than others.)

As Christians we need not be ashamed-of, nor try to conceal, that our love in this mortal life on earth is PP-Love. 

Nor should we be tempted by that fake love which masquerades as Universal and Unconditional. 

After all; if a state of complete love of all were possible on earth; then the salvation offered by Jesus would not have required that we first die, then be resurrected to Heaven!

By the 1960s, the Romantic Impulse became too strong to suppress, and was instead re-directed

Romanticism began in the middle to late 1700s, among a few - mostly upper class - individuals in Western Europe; and progressively spread in its influence through the general population of The West.

I regard this as a surface manifestation of a development of human consciousness, which is ultimately divinely initiated, and innate to our mortal incarnations. 

Therefore the underlying impulse of Romanticism is an inescapable reality, that must have some effect of some kind. 

The powers of evil (including within the Christian churches) quite rapidly managed to separate Romanticism from Christianity; and diverted it into this-worldly and hedonic channels. 

The world was divided into (and between) the Classical and the Romantic; the mundane and the ecstatic; The System (which included the Christian Churches) and individualism - the joyful-useless and the functional-necessary...

Unacceptable choices: an insoluble dilemma.  

This was very evident by the 1960s, when the Romantic Impulse had become very strong and much more widely-prevalent in the Western Populations (and elsewhere). 

The sixties counter-culture (which continued into the early 1970s) could not be suppressed, therefore needed to be diverted - and it was. 

Into sex, drugs and rock-and-roll - that is, into short-termist and destructive hedonism. 

And, in particular, into the sexual revolution; which began as intentionally destructive of marriage and family, and has continued to being destructive of health and sanity. 

It is important to recognize that - although the Romantic Impulse was real, and in a sense irresistible - it was the mainstream culture that directed the counter-culture. 

It was The Establishment that channelled the Anti-Establishment - The System that chose and promoted and sustained the individuals and institutions who epitomized and theorized the 60's "rebellion". 

I don't mean that the Whole Thing was planned and managed in every detail, and that there were no spontaneous and sincere actors at all! - but we ought to recognize that the The System strategy succeeded. 

The strategy succeeded in channelling Romanticism away from positive Christian directions (and also channelled Christians away from Romanticism); and into self-destructive and socially-destructive directions. 

The double whammy was that non-Christians were damned by their explicit rejection of Christianity; while Christians were damned by their (willing, un-repented) participation in The System. 

Plus: a fair bit of Romanticism was also re-absorbed into The System, and thereby made dull, mundane, bureaucratic... 

It is hard to believe how Romantic (and genuinely individualistic) was "nature" and "self-sufficiency" in the middle 20th century - when now the fake-distortions of "environmentalism" and "climate change" are spouted 24/7 by the most turgid and mind-controlled of globalists, civil servants, and multinational corporations. When now all this is part of the totalitarian "vision" of the Great Reset, and United Nations Agenda 2030!

This is an index of the success of The System's channelling of Romanticism. 

(Which is evil's triumph over allegiance to God.)

The underlying Romantic Impulse is still at work, and indeed more powerful than ever; but since the sixties has progressively become a tool of The System. It cannot be suppressed, therefore Romanticism it is distorted and turned back upon itself. 

This strategy is sustained by all the major social institutions; including the "Christian" churches - who are now absorbed into The System, in all necessary System-significant respects. 

The impossible choice offered is between the soul-destruction of mundane bureaucracy and functionality; and the soul-destruction of hedonic short-termism. 

But if as Christians we think for-, and from-, ourselves; we need-not choose between Romanticism and Christianity; we ought instead to do what Christians always ought to have been done: and choose both.

This is perfectly possible, for anybody who desires to do it; but entails escaping from under the distortions and errors of centuries - especially including those whose effect is to trap Christians in the impossible dilemma of Romanticism v Christianity. 

Which is a pseudo-dilemma that has been set-up and sustained by Satan et al - not God. 

A recently published account of a lecture Tolkien gave on The Notion Club papers

A sketch by JRRT of the building where he lodged at Stonyhurst

A brief but interesting account of a lecture from March 1946, by Tolkien in Stonyhurst school and discovered by Oronzo Cilli, is given over at my Notion Club Papers blog.