Francis Berger's Blog, page 43
September 4, 2023
Gnosticism: An Impotent and Meaningless Slur
A few months ago, I wrote a post in which I denounced Christians who employ Gnostic and Gnosticism to criticize or smear those who disagreed with them, particularly in matters of metaphysics:
Gnosticism has become a fashionable tarring tactic among some Christian bloggers. An efficient means to neatly – albeit restrictively and inaccurately – categorize the views of another. "Gnostic" not only brands, it also condemns. How convenient!
Disagree with something a Christian has expressed somewhere? Easy solution – call it Gnosticism. Confused or unsettled by the metaphysical assumptions a Christian has disclosed? Simple – write it off as Gnosticism. Unhappy with the Christianity a Christian espouses – piece of cake; label the Christian a Gnostic.
Great pigeonholing tactic there. What’s next? Resort to terms like racist and transphobe?
To all those who enthusiastically sling the Gnostic tar, I offer the following humble advice – up your game . . . seriously . . .
Here’s the thing, those who sling the Gnostic tar probably know – deep down – that Gnosticism is an empty and meaningless term, yet they utilize it anyway, primarily as a pretentious boo word to dismiss those who happen to hold different opinions or assumptions.
At the same time, Gnostic tar slingers seem oblivious to how vapid and laughable their use of Gnosticism comes off.
Thankfully, I’m not the only one who has caught on to this “impotent and meaningless slur.” The following is an excerpt from an article aptly called Gnosticism Schnosticism (bold added):
How is it, then, that this term “Gnosticism” has become a source of opprobrium? Some insights from Bruno Berard’s A Metaphysics of the Christian Mystery: An Introduction to the Work of Jean Borella:
Christian antiquity is unaware of any term Gnosticism designating a vast yet poorly defined religious movement; St. Irenaeus, for example, denounces “gnosis with a false name,” not gnosis itself. Likewise, “Gnosticism” identified as a single school of thought is unknown to the entirety of the medieval doctors and theologians.The word Gnosticism does not appear in any pejorative sense until the 17th Century, when it was used by Platonist Cambridge professor Henry More; it does not appear in French until 1842.There are no self-avowed Gnostics, nor any Gnostic school of thought marked by a clearly defined doctrinal corpus.No texts exist in the entire Catholic magisterium recording any condemnation of a heresy named gnosis or Gnosticism.
Gnosticism as a slur is a definitively modern thing. It was the creation of nineteenth-century German academics and, as is true of so much Prussian jargon of the time, tends to confuse rather than illuminate the matters being investigated. Gnosticism served as a catch-all term for a variety of heresies that existed in the early Church, none of which individually or as a whole had anything to do with gnosis per se.
Put simply, the term was nothing but a conjuring of the German intelligentsia. It speaks not to any extant group or creed in the early Church, but rather the German intelligentsia’s slide into heterodoxy and intellectual vacuity.
In connection with the above, Dr. Charlton noted the following in a comment section of my Gnostic Tar post:
I think that this common but ignorant use of gnosticism as a generic boo-word against Christians one disapproved-of; derives from the US political philosopher Eric Voegelin.
Voegelin was not a Christian, was indeed one of those who (mistakenly) regarded leftism as a Christian 'heresy'. He can have known very little about real-life historical gnosticism, because the relevant texts (Nag Hammadi library especially) had not been translated when he was writing.
Gnosticism Schnosticism picked up on the Voegelin angle too and expands on Dr. Charlton’s insight with the following:
It isn’t difficult to imagine we might be free of this bogus term if not for conservative political scientist Eric Voegelin, who made Gnosticism central to his political critiques. At best Voegelin’s definition is hazy, at worst incoherent. Modern Voegelin scholars provide us with the following definition, one that roughly track’s with Voegelin’s own in Politics, Science, and Gnosticism:
For Voegelin, Gnosticism was primarily a mindset characterized that 1) man was not responsible for the evil he finds in himself, 2) he has a right to blame someone or something else, and 3) his salvation depends upon his own efforts to correct the flaws in reality. Dissatisfied with present reality, the modern Gnostic can confidently hope that with increased knowledge he will be able to transform the world into his own image.
Note that there is nothing here that could not be said about the orthodox Christian. The Christian too finds himself amongst evils he did not cause, evils that are blamable on his first ancestor and unseen armies of darkness, and his salvation depends on his efforts to correct the flaws of reality, namely through baptism and the practice of the Faith. If by Voegelin’s own terms even the orthodox Christian is an enemy gnostic, then clearly the term is useless as an intellectual category, let alone one of opprobrium.
The more one is wrapped up in the knots of his analysis, the more one realizes that “Gnosticism” is simply any philosophy Voegelin doesn’t like. The subjects of his disdain are Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. From a Christian perspective, there is much to criticize in all these thinkers. But such criticism demands precision, for many of their trenchant complaints about modernity are felt and seen by the Christian as well. These men recognized that the “Western world lives in a period of nonessential existence.” Yet instead of pursuing the roots of this feeling, Voegelin writes it off as another stage of Gnostic advance. The very fatuity of his Gnosticism prevents Voegelin from investigating the roots of this alienation.
The Gnostic slur is frequently used by those who claim to be orthodox, with the general grip being that so-called Gnostics are bad/wrong because they deviate from what amounts to expert rule. The writer of Gnosticism Schnosticism has some interesting insights in this regard:
All this speaks to the servility and stupidity of modern conservatives. However much they may decry the effects of expert rule and ideological propaganda, they still accept as legitimate their ability to set the tenor and tone of our discourse. When conservatives call someone a Gnostic, they are accusing that person of deviating from expert rule and, as such, from respectability. The slur has no intellectual content. One is tempted to say that they themselves are the true Gnostics: convinced as they are that the tenets of mid-century conservatism and multiculturalism will somehow result in civil peace — but again, the term is bunk and shouldn’t be used at all.
There is only one appropriate response to the term: derogatory laughter. Whatever insights can be gained by the use of the term are obscured by its fatal incoherence. If you want to critique the modern world against ancient heresies, use an actual heresy. Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Albigensianism: all real and well-defined creeds that help explain the present age. The difference is that these heresies were real, not made up ex post facto like Gnosticism.
The article is a good one, and I recommend reading the whole thing.
Having said that, I must preface my recommendation by pointing out that the article is nestled in some rightist manosphere-type journal called Man’s World Magazine, which is about as fitting as you can get.
I perused the online content and discovered it included a manifesto -- of course it does! -- lauding the inevitable emergence of a phenomenon known as globo uomo (no I'm not making this up) :
The Globo Uomo is a new type of man. Or, rather, an old type of man reborn. In times past, his influence was felt across the world, in times to come, it will be felt again.
Globo, not because he is a globalist in outlook, but because his appearance is a global event. Everywhere, from the frigid wastes of northern Europe to the pampas of Argentina via the beaches of the Med, this new man is on the rise.
Handsome, stylish, physically fit, charming and witty, learned but disdainful of intellectual imposture and empty gesturing – the Globo Uomo is, in short, a man of refinement, but also a man of action.
And who is the Globo Uomo poster boy, you might ask?
That's why we've chosen Alain Delon as the face of Globo Uomo. Delon was not just a heartbreaker, one of the great sex symbols of 20th-century European cinema, but also a man in whose eye the cold flicker of a switchblade knife could be seen.
Whether he was raising hell as a French fusilier marin in Indochina, mogging Mick Jagger in front of the world's press, or defending himself from charges of political scandal and murder, Delon never looked anything but his best.
I confess, my reaction after reading that went something like this:
Man’s World aside, Gnosticism Schnosticism does a commendable job outlining why Gnosticism is a bogus and empty term, which harkens back to my earlier call for those who use the term to “up their game.”
I guess they could start by being more like Alain Delon who, records show, never looked anything but his best whenever he refrained from calling people Gnostics.
Gnosticism has become a fashionable tarring tactic among some Christian bloggers. An efficient means to neatly – albeit restrictively and inaccurately – categorize the views of another. "Gnostic" not only brands, it also condemns. How convenient!
Disagree with something a Christian has expressed somewhere? Easy solution – call it Gnosticism. Confused or unsettled by the metaphysical assumptions a Christian has disclosed? Simple – write it off as Gnosticism. Unhappy with the Christianity a Christian espouses – piece of cake; label the Christian a Gnostic.
Great pigeonholing tactic there. What’s next? Resort to terms like racist and transphobe?
To all those who enthusiastically sling the Gnostic tar, I offer the following humble advice – up your game . . . seriously . . .
Here’s the thing, those who sling the Gnostic tar probably know – deep down – that Gnosticism is an empty and meaningless term, yet they utilize it anyway, primarily as a pretentious boo word to dismiss those who happen to hold different opinions or assumptions.
At the same time, Gnostic tar slingers seem oblivious to how vapid and laughable their use of Gnosticism comes off.
Thankfully, I’m not the only one who has caught on to this “impotent and meaningless slur.” The following is an excerpt from an article aptly called Gnosticism Schnosticism (bold added):
How is it, then, that this term “Gnosticism” has become a source of opprobrium? Some insights from Bruno Berard’s A Metaphysics of the Christian Mystery: An Introduction to the Work of Jean Borella:
Christian antiquity is unaware of any term Gnosticism designating a vast yet poorly defined religious movement; St. Irenaeus, for example, denounces “gnosis with a false name,” not gnosis itself. Likewise, “Gnosticism” identified as a single school of thought is unknown to the entirety of the medieval doctors and theologians.The word Gnosticism does not appear in any pejorative sense until the 17th Century, when it was used by Platonist Cambridge professor Henry More; it does not appear in French until 1842.There are no self-avowed Gnostics, nor any Gnostic school of thought marked by a clearly defined doctrinal corpus.No texts exist in the entire Catholic magisterium recording any condemnation of a heresy named gnosis or Gnosticism.
Gnosticism as a slur is a definitively modern thing. It was the creation of nineteenth-century German academics and, as is true of so much Prussian jargon of the time, tends to confuse rather than illuminate the matters being investigated. Gnosticism served as a catch-all term for a variety of heresies that existed in the early Church, none of which individually or as a whole had anything to do with gnosis per se.
Put simply, the term was nothing but a conjuring of the German intelligentsia. It speaks not to any extant group or creed in the early Church, but rather the German intelligentsia’s slide into heterodoxy and intellectual vacuity.
In connection with the above, Dr. Charlton noted the following in a comment section of my Gnostic Tar post:
I think that this common but ignorant use of gnosticism as a generic boo-word against Christians one disapproved-of; derives from the US political philosopher Eric Voegelin.
Voegelin was not a Christian, was indeed one of those who (mistakenly) regarded leftism as a Christian 'heresy'. He can have known very little about real-life historical gnosticism, because the relevant texts (Nag Hammadi library especially) had not been translated when he was writing.
Gnosticism Schnosticism picked up on the Voegelin angle too and expands on Dr. Charlton’s insight with the following:
It isn’t difficult to imagine we might be free of this bogus term if not for conservative political scientist Eric Voegelin, who made Gnosticism central to his political critiques. At best Voegelin’s definition is hazy, at worst incoherent. Modern Voegelin scholars provide us with the following definition, one that roughly track’s with Voegelin’s own in Politics, Science, and Gnosticism:
For Voegelin, Gnosticism was primarily a mindset characterized that 1) man was not responsible for the evil he finds in himself, 2) he has a right to blame someone or something else, and 3) his salvation depends upon his own efforts to correct the flaws in reality. Dissatisfied with present reality, the modern Gnostic can confidently hope that with increased knowledge he will be able to transform the world into his own image.
Note that there is nothing here that could not be said about the orthodox Christian. The Christian too finds himself amongst evils he did not cause, evils that are blamable on his first ancestor and unseen armies of darkness, and his salvation depends on his efforts to correct the flaws of reality, namely through baptism and the practice of the Faith. If by Voegelin’s own terms even the orthodox Christian is an enemy gnostic, then clearly the term is useless as an intellectual category, let alone one of opprobrium.
The more one is wrapped up in the knots of his analysis, the more one realizes that “Gnosticism” is simply any philosophy Voegelin doesn’t like. The subjects of his disdain are Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. From a Christian perspective, there is much to criticize in all these thinkers. But such criticism demands precision, for many of their trenchant complaints about modernity are felt and seen by the Christian as well. These men recognized that the “Western world lives in a period of nonessential existence.” Yet instead of pursuing the roots of this feeling, Voegelin writes it off as another stage of Gnostic advance. The very fatuity of his Gnosticism prevents Voegelin from investigating the roots of this alienation.
The Gnostic slur is frequently used by those who claim to be orthodox, with the general grip being that so-called Gnostics are bad/wrong because they deviate from what amounts to expert rule. The writer of Gnosticism Schnosticism has some interesting insights in this regard:
All this speaks to the servility and stupidity of modern conservatives. However much they may decry the effects of expert rule and ideological propaganda, they still accept as legitimate their ability to set the tenor and tone of our discourse. When conservatives call someone a Gnostic, they are accusing that person of deviating from expert rule and, as such, from respectability. The slur has no intellectual content. One is tempted to say that they themselves are the true Gnostics: convinced as they are that the tenets of mid-century conservatism and multiculturalism will somehow result in civil peace — but again, the term is bunk and shouldn’t be used at all.
There is only one appropriate response to the term: derogatory laughter. Whatever insights can be gained by the use of the term are obscured by its fatal incoherence. If you want to critique the modern world against ancient heresies, use an actual heresy. Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Albigensianism: all real and well-defined creeds that help explain the present age. The difference is that these heresies were real, not made up ex post facto like Gnosticism.
The article is a good one, and I recommend reading the whole thing.
Having said that, I must preface my recommendation by pointing out that the article is nestled in some rightist manosphere-type journal called Man’s World Magazine, which is about as fitting as you can get.
I perused the online content and discovered it included a manifesto -- of course it does! -- lauding the inevitable emergence of a phenomenon known as globo uomo (no I'm not making this up) :
The Globo Uomo is a new type of man. Or, rather, an old type of man reborn. In times past, his influence was felt across the world, in times to come, it will be felt again.
Globo, not because he is a globalist in outlook, but because his appearance is a global event. Everywhere, from the frigid wastes of northern Europe to the pampas of Argentina via the beaches of the Med, this new man is on the rise.
Handsome, stylish, physically fit, charming and witty, learned but disdainful of intellectual imposture and empty gesturing – the Globo Uomo is, in short, a man of refinement, but also a man of action.
And who is the Globo Uomo poster boy, you might ask?
That's why we've chosen Alain Delon as the face of Globo Uomo. Delon was not just a heartbreaker, one of the great sex symbols of 20th-century European cinema, but also a man in whose eye the cold flicker of a switchblade knife could be seen.
Whether he was raising hell as a French fusilier marin in Indochina, mogging Mick Jagger in front of the world's press, or defending himself from charges of political scandal and murder, Delon never looked anything but his best.
I confess, my reaction after reading that went something like this:
Man’s World aside, Gnosticism Schnosticism does a commendable job outlining why Gnosticism is a bogus and empty term, which harkens back to my earlier call for those who use the term to “up their game.”
I guess they could start by being more like Alain Delon who, records show, never looked anything but his best whenever he refrained from calling people Gnostics.
September 3, 2023
End of Summer Snapshots
Summer has always been a special time for me because I can distance myself from society for a few months and focus more on family and my private life without all the fuss, distactions, and commotion inherent in the remaining three seasons.
This summer was particularly fruitful and joyful in terms of contemplation, reflection, and thinking. Oddly enough, I could not transfer the bulk of these contemplations into my blogging, which left me dissatisfied and disappointed before I realized that the deeply personal nature of my thinking over the summer would not have translated into engaging posts, regardless of how hard I tried.
With that in mind, I’ll share some of the not-so-deeply- personal thoughts I had this summer and some of the activities and projects took on.
Retardo No More; Meet Richie Ricardo
The oddball rooster my neighbor gave me has not only settled in – he now rules the roost. Not only that, but he offers a surefire cure for ennui, apathy, listlessness, or epic Weltschmerz. All you have to do is watch him emerge from the henhouse at dawn.
The enthusiasm, zeal, zest, energy, and – ahem – lust for life with which this feathered being greets the day is truly something to behold.
He swaggers out of the coop like a matador but quickly transforms into the bull. He crows, dances, shuffles, ruffles, struts, poses, coos, and then – to the general chagrin and dismay of the hens, determinedly concentrates his whole life force on doing what he was hatched to do.
Unlike us humans, this rooster has no problems when it comes to discovering his true self, let me tell you.
The Little Ladies Have Begun Laying Eggs
A few of the fifteen pullets I purchased in the early summer have begun laying. I merged the two flocks a few days ago. Although the mature hens have been quick to establish dominance, they have accepted the younger ones without excessive fuss or the gallinaceous battle royal I feared. The cooler temperatures have allowed them to spend more time free-ranging in the rear portion of the yard that I fenced off specifically for them.
Chickenkeeping remains an immensely positive experience because it allows me to connect to and partake in another aspect of reality with a rhythm that reaches deeply into the movements of the day and the underlying force of life. I suppose I could say the same about the garden.
The Garden of Good, No Evil
Except for the tomatoes, plagued by some kind of blight early on, all the vegetables I planted this year have been successful. My learn-as-you-go approach to gardening is beginning to pay dividends, in terms of yields and other less-tangible benefits. As with the chickens, I relish the simplicity and honesty inherent in growing your own food. It’s still a challenge and a great deal of work, but it ranks among the best of challenges and the highest work.
On the topic of gardening, we haven’t utilized the greenhouse I built in the late spring/early summer nearly as much as we had planned to, but I imagine this will change as the temperatures decrease and the sun spends less time in the sky. I have no doubt the greenhouse will rise to the occasion when we use it to raise seedlings for the garden in spring.
Fence Project
In addition to the greenhouse, I spent about two weeks in July building a seven-and-a-half by nearly two-meter concrete block fence in the front yard, which turned out to be far more labor-intensive than I originally envisaged. The frequent rain didn't help matters. Anyway, I first had to dig out a roughly one-meter-deep ditch for the foundation, and then fill that ditch with concrete. The blocks followed. I had to glue these together using transparent silicon and then fill them with concrete after three rows.
A big selling point of this sort of fencing is the supposed precision of the blocks. The manufacturer markets this product by assuring potential buyers that assembling the fence is no more difficult than putting together Lego bricks. True, if the blocks were the same size and shape.
Sadly, they weren’t. Some were nearly a centimeter longer, shorter, or taller, which caused significant complications and frustration when it came to fitting the blocks together and coming out evenly at the end. Luckily, I had my father helping me, and the two of us somehow worked it out. The fence is far from flawless, and I still need to finish filling out the bottom with concrete, but it is level and improves the property aesthetics from the street.
The faux wrought iron gate my wife and I purchased is another matter. I thought I had run the gamut of cheap Chinese-produced crap in my life, but this gate – which takes the definition of flimsy to a whole new level – proved me wrong. In retrospect, we should have returned it immediately, but for reasons unknown, we decided to stick with it. Though it generally serves its purpose and looks okay-ish, I have decided it will only be a temporary fixture. I will relocate to the backyard and replace with a genuine wrought iron gate when I find reasonably-priced one.
Age, Old Age, Entropy
The time I spent with my parents - both in their seventies - triggered much thinking about old age and, more specifically, the purpose of old age. Dr. Charlton wrote an excellent post about this a few years ago. I don’t have much to add other than to say that at fifty-two, I am beginning to feel the effects of age, especially in the joints. Unlike most people, I consider fifty-two to be early old age rather than middle age, and I am adjusting my physical and spiritual orientation accordingly.
I Am Where I Wanted to Be and Want to Be
A big breakthrough for me this summer was the realization that I am exactly where I want to be; that the overarching movement of my life in the past decade has placed me in an optimal and positive spiritual situation despite or – more correctly – because of the thoroughly negative and evil developments currently gripping the world.
This summer was particularly fruitful and joyful in terms of contemplation, reflection, and thinking. Oddly enough, I could not transfer the bulk of these contemplations into my blogging, which left me dissatisfied and disappointed before I realized that the deeply personal nature of my thinking over the summer would not have translated into engaging posts, regardless of how hard I tried.
With that in mind, I’ll share some of the not-so-deeply- personal thoughts I had this summer and some of the activities and projects took on.
Retardo No More; Meet Richie Ricardo
The oddball rooster my neighbor gave me has not only settled in – he now rules the roost. Not only that, but he offers a surefire cure for ennui, apathy, listlessness, or epic Weltschmerz. All you have to do is watch him emerge from the henhouse at dawn.
The enthusiasm, zeal, zest, energy, and – ahem – lust for life with which this feathered being greets the day is truly something to behold.
He swaggers out of the coop like a matador but quickly transforms into the bull. He crows, dances, shuffles, ruffles, struts, poses, coos, and then – to the general chagrin and dismay of the hens, determinedly concentrates his whole life force on doing what he was hatched to do.
Unlike us humans, this rooster has no problems when it comes to discovering his true self, let me tell you.
The Little Ladies Have Begun Laying EggsA few of the fifteen pullets I purchased in the early summer have begun laying. I merged the two flocks a few days ago. Although the mature hens have been quick to establish dominance, they have accepted the younger ones without excessive fuss or the gallinaceous battle royal I feared. The cooler temperatures have allowed them to spend more time free-ranging in the rear portion of the yard that I fenced off specifically for them.
Chickenkeeping remains an immensely positive experience because it allows me to connect to and partake in another aspect of reality with a rhythm that reaches deeply into the movements of the day and the underlying force of life. I suppose I could say the same about the garden.
The Garden of Good, No Evil
Except for the tomatoes, plagued by some kind of blight early on, all the vegetables I planted this year have been successful. My learn-as-you-go approach to gardening is beginning to pay dividends, in terms of yields and other less-tangible benefits. As with the chickens, I relish the simplicity and honesty inherent in growing your own food. It’s still a challenge and a great deal of work, but it ranks among the best of challenges and the highest work.
On the topic of gardening, we haven’t utilized the greenhouse I built in the late spring/early summer nearly as much as we had planned to, but I imagine this will change as the temperatures decrease and the sun spends less time in the sky. I have no doubt the greenhouse will rise to the occasion when we use it to raise seedlings for the garden in spring.
Fence Project
In addition to the greenhouse, I spent about two weeks in July building a seven-and-a-half by nearly two-meter concrete block fence in the front yard, which turned out to be far more labor-intensive than I originally envisaged. The frequent rain didn't help matters. Anyway, I first had to dig out a roughly one-meter-deep ditch for the foundation, and then fill that ditch with concrete. The blocks followed. I had to glue these together using transparent silicon and then fill them with concrete after three rows.A big selling point of this sort of fencing is the supposed precision of the blocks. The manufacturer markets this product by assuring potential buyers that assembling the fence is no more difficult than putting together Lego bricks. True, if the blocks were the same size and shape.
Sadly, they weren’t. Some were nearly a centimeter longer, shorter, or taller, which caused significant complications and frustration when it came to fitting the blocks together and coming out evenly at the end. Luckily, I had my father helping me, and the two of us somehow worked it out. The fence is far from flawless, and I still need to finish filling out the bottom with concrete, but it is level and improves the property aesthetics from the street.
The faux wrought iron gate my wife and I purchased is another matter. I thought I had run the gamut of cheap Chinese-produced crap in my life, but this gate – which takes the definition of flimsy to a whole new level – proved me wrong. In retrospect, we should have returned it immediately, but for reasons unknown, we decided to stick with it. Though it generally serves its purpose and looks okay-ish, I have decided it will only be a temporary fixture. I will relocate to the backyard and replace with a genuine wrought iron gate when I find reasonably-priced one.
Age, Old Age, Entropy
The time I spent with my parents - both in their seventies - triggered much thinking about old age and, more specifically, the purpose of old age. Dr. Charlton wrote an excellent post about this a few years ago. I don’t have much to add other than to say that at fifty-two, I am beginning to feel the effects of age, especially in the joints. Unlike most people, I consider fifty-two to be early old age rather than middle age, and I am adjusting my physical and spiritual orientation accordingly.
I Am Where I Wanted to Be and Want to Be
A big breakthrough for me this summer was the realization that I am exactly where I want to be; that the overarching movement of my life in the past decade has placed me in an optimal and positive spiritual situation despite or – more correctly – because of the thoroughly negative and evil developments currently gripping the world.
September 1, 2023
A Good Life is Not Synomous With Being on God's "Good Side"
Just a stray thought, but it occurred to me that many people equate having a good life with being on God’s good side. With all due respect to Father Christmas and the original Saint Nicholas, I’ll refer to this view of life as Santa Claus spirituality, replete with its naughty and nice list. If you’re a good little boy or girl, God will reward you with a good life; but if you’re naughty, God will go out of His to ensure your life is anything but good.
Before going any further, I suppose it would be prudent to define what constitutes a “good life.” It would also be helpful to know how God decides to bestow such good lives to those upon whom He looks so favorably. Conversely, it would also be insightful to understand how a bad life is de facto proof of God’s disfavor.
I mention this because most people equate good and bad lives with materialistic values. A good life is filled with comfort, health, security, wealth, status, respectability, image, hedonism, and possessions. A bad life is a severe lack of some or all of these things. Thus, having a big bank account and a lot of fun equals God smiling down upon me while being poor and miserable is a guaranteed sign of God frowning upon me.
The biggest problem with this shallow approach to spirituality is the smugness it breeds in those who live comfortable, respectable lives. People in such situations regard their lives as proof of having earned or deserved God’s good grace – minus the understanding that grace is usually defined as an unearned or undeserved favor.
Grace aside, the self-satisfaction and spiritual complacency of good-lifers often defies description. By regarding their “blessings” as evidence of God’s approval, good-lifers rarely, if ever, penetrate the surface of their ultimate reality and professed spirituality.
On the flip side, those who experience “bad lives” often obsess about being on the receiving side of God’s displeasure and regard any improvement in their superficial circumstances as evidence of winning God’s favor.
I’m not sure where I am going with this stray thought other than to say that the good life/bad life dichotomy that appears to dominate much of what parades around as spirituality sorely misses the mark of what alignment with God and Creation means.
Overly materialistic concerns about life situations should, at best, remain secondary, tertiary, or perhaps even vigenary considerations.
Before going any further, I suppose it would be prudent to define what constitutes a “good life.” It would also be helpful to know how God decides to bestow such good lives to those upon whom He looks so favorably. Conversely, it would also be insightful to understand how a bad life is de facto proof of God’s disfavor.
I mention this because most people equate good and bad lives with materialistic values. A good life is filled with comfort, health, security, wealth, status, respectability, image, hedonism, and possessions. A bad life is a severe lack of some or all of these things. Thus, having a big bank account and a lot of fun equals God smiling down upon me while being poor and miserable is a guaranteed sign of God frowning upon me.
The biggest problem with this shallow approach to spirituality is the smugness it breeds in those who live comfortable, respectable lives. People in such situations regard their lives as proof of having earned or deserved God’s good grace – minus the understanding that grace is usually defined as an unearned or undeserved favor.
Grace aside, the self-satisfaction and spiritual complacency of good-lifers often defies description. By regarding their “blessings” as evidence of God’s approval, good-lifers rarely, if ever, penetrate the surface of their ultimate reality and professed spirituality.
On the flip side, those who experience “bad lives” often obsess about being on the receiving side of God’s displeasure and regard any improvement in their superficial circumstances as evidence of winning God’s favor.
I’m not sure where I am going with this stray thought other than to say that the good life/bad life dichotomy that appears to dominate much of what parades around as spirituality sorely misses the mark of what alignment with God and Creation means.
Overly materialistic concerns about life situations should, at best, remain secondary, tertiary, or perhaps even vigenary considerations.
August 30, 2023
Death Returns, Alone
At the Gate of Tuonela - Hugo Simberg - 1898
August 27, 2023
The Spiritual State of Middle-Classdom and Its Destructive Effect on Christianity
This one is a bit of a rambler focusing on some thoughts I had while re-reading Berdyaev's The Bourgeois Mind and Scheler's Ressentiment.
Earlier thinkers, commentators, and writers called the middle classes the bourgeoisie, typically concerning its perceived materialistic values and conventional attitudes. Beginning sometime around the fifteenth century with the rise of the merchant class, the expansion and eventual domination of the middle class has left an indelible mark on human consciousness, particularly in the West, where it has essentially contributed to the mass despiritualization of what was once known as European culture and civilization.
Before going any further, it is necessary to stress that my use of middle class and bourgeois refers to something like Berdyaev’s definition of the term as a spiritual state, an orientation of the soul, and a particular mode of consciousness rather than clearly defined yet ultimately superficial set of social or economic conditions.
In my estimation, the rise of the middle class as a spiritual state and orientation of the soul was initially a positive movement in the development of consciousness because it liberated individuals toward greater self-determination, freedom, and the capacity for creation.
Such a movement should have ignited a deeper and more personal spiritual fire and creativeness within individuals. As such, the middle-class orientation of the soul should have been nothing more than a transition, transfiguration, and transformation inspiring man to seek a higher and deeper connection with other Beings, God, and Creation, as exemplified by certain Romantics starting the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The bourgeois spiritual state became poisonous when it ceased being a period of transition and “settled down.” More precisely, when it congealed into an errant state of consciousness and being.
Instead of liberating the spirit, middle-classdom succeeded in ultimately enslaving it via its obsessive focus on the external world, the temporary, the corruptible, and the mundane, all of which eventually extinguished the initial spiritual creativeness that birthed the bourgeois spirit toward the end of the Middle Ages.
Nikolai Berdyaev noted that the ripening of this middle-class mentality and state of consciousness enslaved human society at the very height of civilization. Sacred symbolism, noble traditions, and past beliefs in the spiritual and supernatural could not hem in nor set bounds on bourgeois concupiscence once it “settled in.”
I would add that the rise of this bourgeois concupiscence was the direct result of the missed opportunity or wrong turn that occurred during this period when man failed to turn back toward God and Creation after he had successfully distanced himself from sacred symbolism, noble traditions, and past beliefs in the spiritual and supernatural.
His task at the time should have been the transfiguration of the sacred symbols, noble traditions, and past spiritual beliefs – a transfiguration that should have arisen from man’s newfound capacity for freedom and love, leading to a burning spiritual fire and a new epoch of spiritual creativeness.
This failure of consciousness – this missed opportunity – has allowed middle-classdom to solidify and dominate consciousness as a spiritual state, a state that, ironically enough, lacks any semblance of spiritual fire and creativity. Instead of drawing man closer to his true self and Creation, middle-classism has successfully driven a wedge between man and reality and estranged man from his spiritual nature. Middle-class man essentially denies the eternal and puts his trust in the temporal.
Middle-class spiritual consciousness is not limited to the obvious and least-interesting materialist wedded to the earthly joys and comforts of life; it includes higher types who strive to be “spiritual defenders and guardians,” benefactors of humanity, and organizers of the world. This higher type of middle-class consciousness has been the most harmful to the world and Christianity.
Once again, middle-classness should not be construed as an economic or social situation or position but as a spiritual attitude toward the situation or position. The most characteristic feature of this spiritual attitude is self-satisfaction at being oppressed by everything temporal, tangible, and external and lauding this oppression as a sign of goodness, magnanimity, and, in the case of middle-class Christians, as a sign of perfect alignment with the Will and Authority of God.
Christians within the grips of middle-class consciousness value the will to power, comfort, wealth, business, social position, mediocrity, and well-being over aspiration to holiness and, notably, to genius. Middle-class Christians stress the importance of earthly might, earthly power, and earthly happiness.
Bourgeois consciousness is dominated by everything that enters from the outside and oblivious to everything that attempts to enter from within. Like their non-Christian and anti-Christian counterparts, middle-class Christians cannot exist without some form of outward or external authority. Whenever they succeed in overthrowing or overcoming some external authority, they quickly implement some replacement and readily submit to it.
Deep down, they cannot accept that they will one day die; thus, their answer to death is legacy. They focus on what can be secured and left behind in the world rather than on what they will ultimately take from the world.
Berdyaev went as far as to suggest that the bourgeois spirit is “nothing but the rejection of Christ; even those whose lips confess him may be the first to crucify him anew.”
Thinkers like Nietzsche and Carlyle were cognizant of the triumph of middle-class mediocrity as an orientation of consciousness; however, they sought their solutions by harkening back to Greece, Rome, or Byzantium, or sought to seek values that denied the will to spirit in favor of the will to power.
The German philosopher Scheler was one of the very few to note that the great denouncers of Christianity as a vehicle of slave mentality and slavish values were denouncing the bourgeois spiritual state and orientation that had permeated Christianity rather than Christianity proper. The destructive effects of the middle-class spiritual attitude had penetrated Christianity so deeply by the nineteenth century that even Nietzsche – the great anti-Christ – failed to clearly distinguish one from the other.
Bourgeois consciousness deadens and despiritualizes everything it touches. Being externally orientated, it is oblivious of and has little use for thinking and consciousness that could set it free. Instead of raising man above his external environment, middle-class Christianity seeks to enslave man and entomb him within it via an all-consuming concentration on organizing existence according to temporal aims and motivations.
I’ve come across Christian blogs whose writers are so wedded to this bourgeois orientation that they dedicate nearly all their efforts to conjuring fictional societies and then explaining how they would organize their little throne and altar kingdoms, right down to minute details such as tax laws.
We are experiencing the death throes of middle-class consciousness as a spiritual state of being. This applies to both secular and so-called Christian middle-class consciousness. The civilization that spawned it cannot and will not endure because it is aligned against God and Creation and is destructive of eternity. Material means cannot defeat or survive the bourgeois condition – only spirit can.
What sort of spirit can rise above the middle-class spirit? Berdyaev suggests it will be the spirit of the pilgrim – the re-embracing of the knowledge that we as Christians are but travelers and not settlers in this world. We are called to act in the world and society, but our actions and everything connected to them – our relations, our domination of our environment, our aims and ambitions – can only serve spiritual ends if they transcend the blind obedience to the laws and commands of the society and world in which we act and tap into a deeper, inner spiritual source.
This requires a re-examination of our highest values, aims, motivations, and values; a re-examination of our deepest metaphysical assumptions that will permit us to take that opportunity middle-class consciousness missed and begin orienting our souls to the essence of Christianity – the freeing of man from fear, slavery, and despair so that he may use his immense spiritual powers to finally answer the call of God via creativity.
Earlier thinkers, commentators, and writers called the middle classes the bourgeoisie, typically concerning its perceived materialistic values and conventional attitudes. Beginning sometime around the fifteenth century with the rise of the merchant class, the expansion and eventual domination of the middle class has left an indelible mark on human consciousness, particularly in the West, where it has essentially contributed to the mass despiritualization of what was once known as European culture and civilization.
Before going any further, it is necessary to stress that my use of middle class and bourgeois refers to something like Berdyaev’s definition of the term as a spiritual state, an orientation of the soul, and a particular mode of consciousness rather than clearly defined yet ultimately superficial set of social or economic conditions.
In my estimation, the rise of the middle class as a spiritual state and orientation of the soul was initially a positive movement in the development of consciousness because it liberated individuals toward greater self-determination, freedom, and the capacity for creation.
Such a movement should have ignited a deeper and more personal spiritual fire and creativeness within individuals. As such, the middle-class orientation of the soul should have been nothing more than a transition, transfiguration, and transformation inspiring man to seek a higher and deeper connection with other Beings, God, and Creation, as exemplified by certain Romantics starting the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The bourgeois spiritual state became poisonous when it ceased being a period of transition and “settled down.” More precisely, when it congealed into an errant state of consciousness and being.
Instead of liberating the spirit, middle-classdom succeeded in ultimately enslaving it via its obsessive focus on the external world, the temporary, the corruptible, and the mundane, all of which eventually extinguished the initial spiritual creativeness that birthed the bourgeois spirit toward the end of the Middle Ages.
Nikolai Berdyaev noted that the ripening of this middle-class mentality and state of consciousness enslaved human society at the very height of civilization. Sacred symbolism, noble traditions, and past beliefs in the spiritual and supernatural could not hem in nor set bounds on bourgeois concupiscence once it “settled in.”
I would add that the rise of this bourgeois concupiscence was the direct result of the missed opportunity or wrong turn that occurred during this period when man failed to turn back toward God and Creation after he had successfully distanced himself from sacred symbolism, noble traditions, and past beliefs in the spiritual and supernatural.
His task at the time should have been the transfiguration of the sacred symbols, noble traditions, and past spiritual beliefs – a transfiguration that should have arisen from man’s newfound capacity for freedom and love, leading to a burning spiritual fire and a new epoch of spiritual creativeness.
This failure of consciousness – this missed opportunity – has allowed middle-classdom to solidify and dominate consciousness as a spiritual state, a state that, ironically enough, lacks any semblance of spiritual fire and creativity. Instead of drawing man closer to his true self and Creation, middle-classism has successfully driven a wedge between man and reality and estranged man from his spiritual nature. Middle-class man essentially denies the eternal and puts his trust in the temporal.
Middle-class spiritual consciousness is not limited to the obvious and least-interesting materialist wedded to the earthly joys and comforts of life; it includes higher types who strive to be “spiritual defenders and guardians,” benefactors of humanity, and organizers of the world. This higher type of middle-class consciousness has been the most harmful to the world and Christianity.
Once again, middle-classness should not be construed as an economic or social situation or position but as a spiritual attitude toward the situation or position. The most characteristic feature of this spiritual attitude is self-satisfaction at being oppressed by everything temporal, tangible, and external and lauding this oppression as a sign of goodness, magnanimity, and, in the case of middle-class Christians, as a sign of perfect alignment with the Will and Authority of God.
Christians within the grips of middle-class consciousness value the will to power, comfort, wealth, business, social position, mediocrity, and well-being over aspiration to holiness and, notably, to genius. Middle-class Christians stress the importance of earthly might, earthly power, and earthly happiness.
Bourgeois consciousness is dominated by everything that enters from the outside and oblivious to everything that attempts to enter from within. Like their non-Christian and anti-Christian counterparts, middle-class Christians cannot exist without some form of outward or external authority. Whenever they succeed in overthrowing or overcoming some external authority, they quickly implement some replacement and readily submit to it.
Deep down, they cannot accept that they will one day die; thus, their answer to death is legacy. They focus on what can be secured and left behind in the world rather than on what they will ultimately take from the world.
Berdyaev went as far as to suggest that the bourgeois spirit is “nothing but the rejection of Christ; even those whose lips confess him may be the first to crucify him anew.”
Thinkers like Nietzsche and Carlyle were cognizant of the triumph of middle-class mediocrity as an orientation of consciousness; however, they sought their solutions by harkening back to Greece, Rome, or Byzantium, or sought to seek values that denied the will to spirit in favor of the will to power.
The German philosopher Scheler was one of the very few to note that the great denouncers of Christianity as a vehicle of slave mentality and slavish values were denouncing the bourgeois spiritual state and orientation that had permeated Christianity rather than Christianity proper. The destructive effects of the middle-class spiritual attitude had penetrated Christianity so deeply by the nineteenth century that even Nietzsche – the great anti-Christ – failed to clearly distinguish one from the other.
Bourgeois consciousness deadens and despiritualizes everything it touches. Being externally orientated, it is oblivious of and has little use for thinking and consciousness that could set it free. Instead of raising man above his external environment, middle-class Christianity seeks to enslave man and entomb him within it via an all-consuming concentration on organizing existence according to temporal aims and motivations.
I’ve come across Christian blogs whose writers are so wedded to this bourgeois orientation that they dedicate nearly all their efforts to conjuring fictional societies and then explaining how they would organize their little throne and altar kingdoms, right down to minute details such as tax laws.
We are experiencing the death throes of middle-class consciousness as a spiritual state of being. This applies to both secular and so-called Christian middle-class consciousness. The civilization that spawned it cannot and will not endure because it is aligned against God and Creation and is destructive of eternity. Material means cannot defeat or survive the bourgeois condition – only spirit can.
What sort of spirit can rise above the middle-class spirit? Berdyaev suggests it will be the spirit of the pilgrim – the re-embracing of the knowledge that we as Christians are but travelers and not settlers in this world. We are called to act in the world and society, but our actions and everything connected to them – our relations, our domination of our environment, our aims and ambitions – can only serve spiritual ends if they transcend the blind obedience to the laws and commands of the society and world in which we act and tap into a deeper, inner spiritual source.
This requires a re-examination of our highest values, aims, motivations, and values; a re-examination of our deepest metaphysical assumptions that will permit us to take that opportunity middle-class consciousness missed and begin orienting our souls to the essence of Christianity – the freeing of man from fear, slavery, and despair so that he may use his immense spiritual powers to finally answer the call of God via creativity.
August 26, 2023
If Necessity is the Mother of All Invention, Then Freedom and Love is the Mother of all Creativity
One way to think about necessity is to consider it as everything needed for biological life "to live" – and as nature and external natural forces seemingly beyond one’s influence and control.
Nietzsche summed this up quite well in one of his aphorisms noting that a rumbling stomach quickly dampens man’s awareness of himself as a spiritual being. The aphorism also reveals a stark dichotomy that has burdened man’s consciousness recently.
We are fundamentally spiritual beings, potentially divine, made in the image of God, yet everywhere we are constrained by nature and its biological processes, including entropy and death.
A part of us yearns to transcend the natural world as another part of us incessantly struggles with the necessity of biological necessity of survival. The former seems to beckon from within while the latter batters us from outwith.
This apparent dichotomy has led to a bifurcation of reality into the natural and spiritual realms within consciousness.
It is worth noting that this divergence is primarily a problem of consciousness, not reality. The natural and the spiritual are both part of Creation, with the former being a subset of the latter.
Thus, it is probably closer to the truth to view everything in the natural world as essential parts of the spiritual world. The two worlds we perceive are deeply connected through spirit.
The necessity the natural world imposes upon us is also profoundly spiritual because of the significant challenges it presents. Will we allow a rumbling stomach, a headache, heartache, or other ailment to derail us from awareness of our true selves as beings, or will such occasions inspire us to seek learning and meaning that may help draw us closer to our true selves?
The key to this question lies in freedom and creativity. At one level, we may respond to the challenge of necessity through invention by employing our creativity in the natural world to limit, overcome, control, manipulate, or influence the natural world in ways that benefit us biologically. Such inventive creativity is pragmatic. In a nutshell, down-to-earth.
There is nothing inherently wrong with such creative invention as long as the awareness of the spiritual reality of the natural world remains intact. The problem is it often does not.
Thus, necessity not only becomes the mother of all invention but confines such invention to the natural world in consciousness, thereby reducing man’s awareness of himself as a spiritual being and the reality of Creation. Within such consciousness, man strives to become a master manipulator of the natural world rather than a co-creator in Creation.
If necessity is the mother of all invention, then spiritual freedom and love must be the mother of all Creation.
Invention may alleviate man of the apparent tyranny of the natural world and its seeming determinism, but it is only meaningful if it helps draw man closer to the reality of spirit, that is, to the reality of man’s innate ability to self-determine regardless of the seemingly deterministic pressures of the natural world and its necessity.
Revisiting Nietzsche’s aphorism, invention responds to the necessity the rumbling stomach imposes by inventing agriculture, mass food production, refrigeration, etc., but these wonderful inventions can become potentially harmful if they begin to blind man to the reality of himself as a spiritual being.
Creativity can also respond to the rumbling stomach via invention, but it does so from spiritual freedom and love that has transcended the rumbling stomach long before it conjures forth the invention that will satiate the necessity the rumbling stomach imposes.
Put another way, man’s freedom via invention lasts only as long as the stomach remains satiated. Man’s freedom via creativity understands that man’s true being remains free to love and co-create regardless of whether the stomach is satiated. Seen this way, overcoming necessity is always a matter of spirit rather than nature because nature is fundamentally a part of spirit.
Nietzsche summed this up quite well in one of his aphorisms noting that a rumbling stomach quickly dampens man’s awareness of himself as a spiritual being. The aphorism also reveals a stark dichotomy that has burdened man’s consciousness recently.
We are fundamentally spiritual beings, potentially divine, made in the image of God, yet everywhere we are constrained by nature and its biological processes, including entropy and death.
A part of us yearns to transcend the natural world as another part of us incessantly struggles with the necessity of biological necessity of survival. The former seems to beckon from within while the latter batters us from outwith.
This apparent dichotomy has led to a bifurcation of reality into the natural and spiritual realms within consciousness.
It is worth noting that this divergence is primarily a problem of consciousness, not reality. The natural and the spiritual are both part of Creation, with the former being a subset of the latter.
Thus, it is probably closer to the truth to view everything in the natural world as essential parts of the spiritual world. The two worlds we perceive are deeply connected through spirit.
The necessity the natural world imposes upon us is also profoundly spiritual because of the significant challenges it presents. Will we allow a rumbling stomach, a headache, heartache, or other ailment to derail us from awareness of our true selves as beings, or will such occasions inspire us to seek learning and meaning that may help draw us closer to our true selves?
The key to this question lies in freedom and creativity. At one level, we may respond to the challenge of necessity through invention by employing our creativity in the natural world to limit, overcome, control, manipulate, or influence the natural world in ways that benefit us biologically. Such inventive creativity is pragmatic. In a nutshell, down-to-earth.
There is nothing inherently wrong with such creative invention as long as the awareness of the spiritual reality of the natural world remains intact. The problem is it often does not.
Thus, necessity not only becomes the mother of all invention but confines such invention to the natural world in consciousness, thereby reducing man’s awareness of himself as a spiritual being and the reality of Creation. Within such consciousness, man strives to become a master manipulator of the natural world rather than a co-creator in Creation.
If necessity is the mother of all invention, then spiritual freedom and love must be the mother of all Creation.
Invention may alleviate man of the apparent tyranny of the natural world and its seeming determinism, but it is only meaningful if it helps draw man closer to the reality of spirit, that is, to the reality of man’s innate ability to self-determine regardless of the seemingly deterministic pressures of the natural world and its necessity.
Revisiting Nietzsche’s aphorism, invention responds to the necessity the rumbling stomach imposes by inventing agriculture, mass food production, refrigeration, etc., but these wonderful inventions can become potentially harmful if they begin to blind man to the reality of himself as a spiritual being.
Creativity can also respond to the rumbling stomach via invention, but it does so from spiritual freedom and love that has transcended the rumbling stomach long before it conjures forth the invention that will satiate the necessity the rumbling stomach imposes.
Put another way, man’s freedom via invention lasts only as long as the stomach remains satiated. Man’s freedom via creativity understands that man’s true being remains free to love and co-create regardless of whether the stomach is satiated. Seen this way, overcoming necessity is always a matter of spirit rather than nature because nature is fundamentally a part of spirit.
August 25, 2023
Professions as a Gateway to Alignment With Evil
To be accepted as a professional today is to publicly declare one’s willing alignment with System promulgated and endorsed evil. It really is that simple.
The System blocks any individual from entering or advancing in any profession until it secures that public and willing declaration. Virtually all professions depend heavily upon the System, entailing that individuals seeking to become professionals must abide by the rules the System dictates.
The rules I am talking about do not refer to the standards, guidelines, procedures, regulations, or laws specific to given skilled trades, occupations, pursuits, careers, or vocations but to the public declaration that one is willing to totally comply with and adhere to whatever evil the System happens to be pushing at any given time.
Evidence of this is everywhere, and the System spares no profession or professional of this duty. Doctors, athletes, journalists, researchers, educators, lawyers, politicians, artists, writers, entertainers, accountants, bankers, insurers, and all the rest must publicly declare their alignment against God and Creation or risk being “de-professionalized”. The same applies to service jobs and blue-collar vocations. Individual entrepreneurs are not spared the whip. Those wishing to go into business for themselves, minus the willing and public declaration face an uphill battle every step of the way.
None of this is all that surprising if you examine the origins of the word profession, from which the verb profess is a back-formation. The early 14-century word professen meant to take a vow, particularly within a religious order, while the Medieval Latin professare – from professus – meant avowed; that is, literally having declared publicly, which connects to the Latin profiteri “declare openly, testify voluntarily, acknowledge, make a public statement of.”
The 12th-century word professioun again referred specifically to vows taken in religious orders, but the modern definition of a profession as an occupation one professes to be skilled in stems from the 15th century, the idea being that the profess-ion to be skilled in an occupation is synonymous with a solemn declaration or vow like the ones taken by those wishing to enter religious orders in earlier centuries.
I remember a time when professionalism denoted following a set of ethics and standards within a given vocation. At a baser level, professionalism also implied skill, dedication, integrity, and competence. More recently, professional also referred to getting paid for doing something, as opposed to the amateur, who, more likely than not, practiced free of charge.
To return to the original, religious meaning of the word profess, the current demand to profess alignment with System anti-God and Creation aims is a clear example of value inversion replete with catastrophic spiritual consequences. Attributes like competence, integrity, and skill are no longer demanded of professionals. Nor is adherence to any authentic un-inverted ethics and standards.
To be considered a professional today requires one thing and one thing only – the willing and public declaration to align with System-promulgated and endorsed evil. Do that, and the monetary rewards associated with the given profession are granted. Refuse the public vow, and the rewards are denied and punishments ensue.
So, what is one to profess if one is a professional or aims to become one? More to the point, what has one professed when one is active within any profession within the System?
Something to think about.
Hopefully, it will lead some to rethink professionalism and lead them to repentance. Ideally, it may even lead some to retract their profess-ions and begin professing something else entirely.
The System blocks any individual from entering or advancing in any profession until it secures that public and willing declaration. Virtually all professions depend heavily upon the System, entailing that individuals seeking to become professionals must abide by the rules the System dictates.
The rules I am talking about do not refer to the standards, guidelines, procedures, regulations, or laws specific to given skilled trades, occupations, pursuits, careers, or vocations but to the public declaration that one is willing to totally comply with and adhere to whatever evil the System happens to be pushing at any given time.
Evidence of this is everywhere, and the System spares no profession or professional of this duty. Doctors, athletes, journalists, researchers, educators, lawyers, politicians, artists, writers, entertainers, accountants, bankers, insurers, and all the rest must publicly declare their alignment against God and Creation or risk being “de-professionalized”. The same applies to service jobs and blue-collar vocations. Individual entrepreneurs are not spared the whip. Those wishing to go into business for themselves, minus the willing and public declaration face an uphill battle every step of the way.
None of this is all that surprising if you examine the origins of the word profession, from which the verb profess is a back-formation. The early 14-century word professen meant to take a vow, particularly within a religious order, while the Medieval Latin professare – from professus – meant avowed; that is, literally having declared publicly, which connects to the Latin profiteri “declare openly, testify voluntarily, acknowledge, make a public statement of.”
The 12th-century word professioun again referred specifically to vows taken in religious orders, but the modern definition of a profession as an occupation one professes to be skilled in stems from the 15th century, the idea being that the profess-ion to be skilled in an occupation is synonymous with a solemn declaration or vow like the ones taken by those wishing to enter religious orders in earlier centuries.
I remember a time when professionalism denoted following a set of ethics and standards within a given vocation. At a baser level, professionalism also implied skill, dedication, integrity, and competence. More recently, professional also referred to getting paid for doing something, as opposed to the amateur, who, more likely than not, practiced free of charge.
To return to the original, religious meaning of the word profess, the current demand to profess alignment with System anti-God and Creation aims is a clear example of value inversion replete with catastrophic spiritual consequences. Attributes like competence, integrity, and skill are no longer demanded of professionals. Nor is adherence to any authentic un-inverted ethics and standards.
To be considered a professional today requires one thing and one thing only – the willing and public declaration to align with System-promulgated and endorsed evil. Do that, and the monetary rewards associated with the given profession are granted. Refuse the public vow, and the rewards are denied and punishments ensue.
So, what is one to profess if one is a professional or aims to become one? More to the point, what has one professed when one is active within any profession within the System?
Something to think about.
Hopefully, it will lead some to rethink professionalism and lead them to repentance. Ideally, it may even lead some to retract their profess-ions and begin professing something else entirely.
August 23, 2023
Dreher Inadvertently Reveals Everything That Is Wrong About "Heaven Over Budapest"
The other day, I briefly commented on Hungary’s drone cross by noting:Quite an impressive scene. Enough to make Christians in other parts of the West teary with joy and awe.
Unfortunately, an impressive scene is all the sky-cross really is. Though Hungary's rulers enjoy carrying on about the nation's Christian roots, heritage, and culture, they rarely, if ever, regard Christianity as primary in their decisions.
Among the teary-eyed Christians from other parts of the West whom the sight filled with joy and awe was none other than Rod Dreher, one of my steadfast “go-to” guys whenever I am looking to confirm everything that is wrong about contemporary Christianity.
In an article in some online mag called The European Conservative – which qualifies as the most epic oxymoron in modern usage – Dreher spews forth the following unsurprising and predictable gushing drivel:
Your faithful diarist went out on the Feast of Stephen—and saw something like a miracle. Seriously.
Sunday, August 20th was the Feast of St. Stephen, the first Christian king of Hungary, coronated in the year 1000 with a crown sent by the Pope. It is also one of the three official national Magyar holidays. This year I received an invitation to watch the fireworks over the Danube from the terrace of the Carmelite monastery where Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has his office. I stood with a crowd of partygoers oohing and aahing at the spectacular blasts illuminating the city below.
When smoke from the final explosions was still dissipating, a swarm of drones coalesced over the Danube in front of the Parliament. They formed the Hungarian coat of arms. Then, dissolving, they came back together in the distinct shape of the Crown of St. Stephen.
And then, the final image of the day: the drones came together to form a cross of light over Budapest. I took the video above with my smartphone.
It nearly brought me to tears.
I texted the image to a Spanish Catholic friend, who was both shocked and delighted. He said that the only similar drone sky-art his own government would likely muster would be an LGBT Pride flag. It’s true in contemporary America as well. Liberalism’s successor ideology—wokeness—also has a successor religion: the religion of the rainbow, not the cross.
A short while later, I saw Prime Minister Orbán moving through the crowd. I stopped him to thank him for the cross in the sky.
“It was okay?” he said.
“Better than okay,” I said. “Thank you again.”
It was right to thank Viktor Orbán. This is his doing. This is what it means to have a leader who is a Christian and not ashamed of it. This is what it means to have a leader who believes that the faith that was inseparable from the founding of the nation is vital to its survival.
Dreher lives in Budapest now and is a verified true believer in Orbán as a Christian leader. I have lived in Hungary for over seven years, am of Hungarian heritage, am married to a Hungarian, speak the language, and know the history and culture of this country far better than Dreher could ever hope to know them, and all I can say is this – Dreher is dead wrong about Orbán and the drone cross, which is exactly as it should be when you stop to consider the kind of Christian Rod Dreher is.
I’ll make this very simple and brief. Orbán is a master politician who insincerely panders to the somewhat sincere but incomprehensibly confused reverence for tradition, religion, and nation ingrained within the Hungarian masses.
In this sense, the drone cross hovering over Hungary’s capital after a spectacular fireworks display honoring the founding of the nation exemplifies the glitzy shallowness of Orbán’s pandering, which invests heavily in putting on shows reflecting what people want to see and hear while simultaneously undermining the very values and fabric it professes to defend.
Orbán is not the sole culprit here. The Hungarian masses are also to blame. Ooh-ing and ah-ing over what amounts to an external symbolic spectacle is no substitute for an authentic, internally-lived religion.
Orbán has hooked Dreher in much the same manner he has succeeded in hooking most Christian conservatives – by effectively mirroring back everything said Christian conservatives want to perceive, all without doing any of the things that have been mirrored. I was impressed by Orbán for a little while myself, but when you live and work at the ground level in this country for a few years, you gather enough experience to know that Orbán is not all he professes to be.
Orbán as a defender of freedom and individual rights? Sorry, Hungary’s ruthless manipulative birdemic restrictions from 2020 to 2022 proved otherwise. Of course, none of that bothers Christian conservatives like Dreher who had no qualms whatsoever about lining up, getting pecked, and publicly attacking and shaming all who did not mask up, socially distance, and get in line for the pecks.
Orbán as an anti-immigration bulwark defending the West? Sure, he built a fence, but do you know what happens to the illegal migrants who climb the fence? They are stopped and sent back over the border to Serbia where they are free to try their luck again. Sooner or later, any migrant wishing to get past the fence will get past the fence.
Oh, and Orbán just announced that he will be importing several hundred thousand guest workers from places like Indonesia, the Philippines, and Mongolia to work in the mostly foreign-owned factories or to drive buses and trucks. All legally, of course. Several hundred thousand in a nation of fewer than ten million. Imagine several hundred thousand over many years. And don’t even think about using the “they’re only guest workers” argument. Germany did that. How did that work out for them?
Orbán a defender of the family and family values? Sure, if importing labor from other countries to undermine the already ridiculously low wages in Hungary counts as defending the family.
How about Orbán’s generous baby-making schemes to encourage Hungarians to have more kids by offering grants and loans for houses? Well, the demographic collapse continues unabated, and the drive to make housing more affordable has resulted in real estate prices tripling or quadrupling in most places around the country in the past six years, effectively making housing unaffordable for young couples. Hungary also has the highest inflation in the EU, particularly when it comes to food.
Orbán as an anti-woke/anti-EU crusader? Funny how the great crusader has aligned his country with virtually all the System’s globo agenda items, most notably the climate crisis, WHO-related treaties, and anything involving exploiting the Hungarian working class for the benefit of big, multinational corporations.
And this is just the material stuff. I haven’t even gotten to spiritual matters.
Suffice it to say, Orbán panders to the externals of Christianity, which works wonders for Christians like Dreher who exist purely on Christian externals. For Christians like Dreher, Christianity is all on the outside. Don’t believe me? Ask old Raymond to show you his cool Christian tattoo.
For such externally positioned Christians, the faith begins and ends with church attendance, culture, nations, and civilizations. Christians like Dreher exist entirely on the ever-evaporating surface of Christianity, which is why they become so embarrassingly sentimental and hopeful when someone like Orbán comes along and arranges some drones in the form of a cross above a city.
Christians like Dreher will never get beyond the external stance of reaction and resistance. And by stance, I mean just that. A stance. A pose. A posture. With nothing whatsoever backing it up.
It is this stance that people like Orbán pander to with their bigger, more impressive stances, posturing, and posing. So much posing and posturing about resisting without ever really resisting anything at all.
It’s time to move past external spectacles and displays that promise to defend the externals of Christianity.
It’s time to move inward and nurture the internals of Christianity. Forget being against something all the time and make the move to be "for" something all the time, or at least for as much time as possible.
That "for" something is not out there, so stop looking for it out there.
August 21, 2023
Game of Drones - Cross Edition
Hungary is one of the few places in the West where it is still possible to temporarily decorate the cityscape sky of a capital with a cross. Yes, a cross. This sight -- captured from yesterday's St. Stephen's Day celebrations in Budapest -- has become a regular feature of the August 20 festivities here. Several hundred drones swarm the sky to create various images, including St. Stephen's crown and the miraculous stag. The cross has closed the show for several years now.
Quite an impressive scene. Enough to make Christians in other parts of the West teary with joy and awe.
Unfortunately, an impressive scene is all the sky-cross really is. Though Hungary's rulers enjoy carrying on about the nation's Christian roots, heritage, and culture, they rarely, if ever, regard Christianity as primary in their decisions.
All the same, they love showing the world how Christian they are and how important Christianity is.
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