Francis Berger's Blog, page 70

Let's Practice System Distancing: The Abortion Edition

So, the System has released it's latest current thing communication . . . ahem, manipulation . . . which just happens to focus on everyone's favorite "hot-button issue" -- abortion. 

Let's get the obvious out of the way first. Abortion is evil. It is among the most grievous of sins. That is all. 

Now that we've cleared that up, let's concentrate on the System's latest current thing, which happens to be a leaked Supreme Court "opinion" draft that challenges the current abortion legislation in the United States.

News of the leak has, predictably, "lit up" the Christian/conservative blog world. Everywhere I look I see Christians and conservative revving themselves up for the next hot battle in the spiritual war. Some are vowing to take the fight to the streets. Others insist the leaked document is a sign of divine providence. A few have even suggested that the document represents a turning point in the spiritual war.  

I don't want to add any commentary to the "issue" itself. What I want to do is make people aware of this latest current thing provides the perfect opportunity for Christians to practice system distancing. (The opportunity does not exist for those who identify purely as conservatives because conservatism is wedded to the System by default and cannot exist without it.)

The first thing to keep in mind is this -- the System issued the communication and made sure news of it was widespread. This implies that the Establishment very much wants everyone to be acutely aware of the "issue" and to participate in the issue via the System in some way by thinking about it, writing about it, arguing about it, raising hopes about it, fighting about it, etc. Moreover, the Establishment wants everyone to "have a position" on the issue. They want people to become personally invested in this latest communication on terms the System dictates . This applies especially to Christians, for whom abortion is a big concern. 

Secondly, this newest current thing is a clear example of the System wanting people to listen to what it is saying about this issue here and now and to forget about what it is not saying here and now. And there are many things the System is not talking about these days -- the very same things it could not stop talking about mere weeks or months ago. 

Thirdly, these sorts of communications are usually released to foster hope in the System. The overall aim is to coax Christians and conservatives into thinking that the System still contains vestiges of real good, that it is capable of self-correction, that it can address "issues" that are important to Christians, that it has the potential to redeem itself and turn a corner. 

Fourthly, communications of this nature are meant to keep everyone fixated on external forces that are entirely out of our control. Instead of investing time and energy on aligning with God and Creation outwith the System, Christians are being lured into investing time and energy aligning with the external forces of System manipulation within the System. 

Finally, the primary objective of the System is mass damnation, and it will employ the most nefarious and deceptive means to assure this. 

I could go on, but I think I've made my point. I'm not arguing that we shouldn't care about abortion or that we shouldn't pay some attention to developments around this "issue".

At the same time, I think it is a mistake to become too invested in this latest "current thing". Moreover, I believe this latest piece of System manipulation offers an excellent opportunity to practice the spiritual imperative of system distancing, which I have briefly outlined here. 

To sum up, the best way to help the cause of the issue the System is currently promulgating is too keep your actions and thoughts about the issue largely outside of the System itself. 

They Can Still Impress . . . Sometimes

Anyone involved in university-level education knows how rarely students manage to do anything that inspires admiration or respect. The only amazing thing about university students these days is the banal and apathetic quality of their work. Nevertheless, every once in a while something manages to break through and impress. 

Case in point, a student presentation from yesterday. The presentation itself was uninspired and dull, but the nature photographs with which the student populated his PowerPoint slides were quite impressive. That the student took the photos was even more impressive. 

Below is an example. I don't know about you, but the image -- featuring a roe buck in a grain field -- ranks among the most beautiful wildlife/nature photos I have ever seen.

Note added: Of course, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that the photo is not actually the student's photo, or that he photo-shopped it, or that he had a friend hold a stuffed deer trophy head in the field to capture this image, but for the time being I'm going to assume the photo is authentic and enjoy the good feelings that stem from that. 

Pitchforks? Really?

When the people become aware of "such-and-such" or wake up to "what's really going on" or understand "this-and-that" or realize "whatever there is to realize", then the pitchforks will come out and, by golly, there'll be hell to pay!

I've come across quite a few of these "pitchfork" blog posts and articles over the past two-plus years, all gleefully promising a day of reckoning during which the masses will finally awaken from their stupor and rise up against the powers-that-should-not-be. 

I could be wrong, but I see nothing in my daily life or the greater world that points to any sort of pitchfork uprising. Complacency, compliance, and cowardice together with bountiful heaps of apathy, indifference, and denial are pretty much all I see. 

A day of reckoning -- replete with pitchforks -- may very well come . . . one day . . . but I personally do not believe it will. Or -- more precisely -- if it ever arises, it will not be an organic rebellion against the Establishment. Instead, it will likely be something the Establishment foments to use for its own purposes. 

And what does it matter in the end? Nothing short of spiritual awakening will suffice. And that will not happen at the level of the masses but at the level of the individual. One person at a time. 

Only Spiritual Beings Have Human Experiences

"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience."
 
Pierre Teilhard du Chardin's indispensable insight regarding the nature of mortal human experience always springs to mind whenever I find myself contemplating the meaning of "life, the universe, and everything." The insight is incredibly straightforward, which means it is strangely susceptible to being misunderstood. 

Those who pursue spiritual aims often regard the material world in which human experience happens as essentially wicked and worthless. As such, the material world and physical human experience must be ruthlessly separated from the spiritual if the spiritual aspect of ourselves is to remain pure, whole, and unsullied.

This appears to be the general attitude of those who adopt the "human beings having spiritual experiences" approach to human existence -- an approach which tends to believe that the divine can only be valued when all that is human about us in this time and place is consciously devalued.
 
Although this "humans having spiritual experiences" approach to mortal life is vastly superior to a purely materialist/atheistic approach that rejects spiritual reality altogether, I can’t help but feel it misses the mark when it comes to the "reality" of human experience within spiritual reality. It misses the mark by undervaluing and underestimating the role human experience plays in the development of what we truly are -- spiritual beings.
 
One potential pitfall of the “human beings having spiritual experiences” is the motivation to denigrate lowly, “fallen” human experience in favor of pursuing a higher “spiritual experience” in mortal life. Within this conceptualization, the human being I am and the human experience I am having is devalued against the spiritual being I have – by the grace of God – the potential to become.

The conceptualization itself is not wrong, but it under-emphasizes one key point – we were spiritual beings before we became human beings, are spiritual beings while we are human beings, and will continue to be spiritual beings after we cease being human beings.

Thus, the purpose of human experience does not reside in aspirations to “become” a spiritual being. After all, there is no need to become what one already is.

Which leads to the following open questions: What kind of spiritual being was I before I became a human being? What kind of human experience must I – as a spiritual being – have in order to spiritually learn what I need to learn? What kind of spiritual being will I be when my human experience ends?

We are inherently spiritual beings who have chosen to have a human experience, which implies that the human experience is an infinitely valuable experience for us to have. Yet the value of the human experience is only properly understood if we know the reality of ourselves as spiritual beings.

If we know the reality of ourselves as spiritual beings, we can begin to understand and focus on those aspects of our human experience that will provide the learning we need to become the kind of spiritual beings we wish to be when our human experience ends in physical death.

If we do not know the reality of ourselves as spiritual beings, we run the risk of pursuing the needless spiritual aim of “becoming” a spiritual being instead of aiming to become a more developed spiritual being.

We also run the risk of turning our human experience into some sort of Matryoshka Doll game in which we constantly strive to remove every level of the “inferior” human experience in order to get to some sort of potentially “superior” spiritual experience.

The genius in Du Chardin’s observation rests not only in the awareness of spiritual beings actively having human experiences, but in the recognition that human experience is something that we, as spiritual beings, wanted to have.

Nevertheless, as du Chardin states, the human experience only becomes meaningful if it is lived by human beings who know themselves to be spiritual beings.

Where the Sword Drops

In Hungarian culture, the Turul is a sword-carrying mythological bird of prey symbolizing the founding of nation. Legend has it that the original Magyars followed the Turul to the area of present-day Hungary and decided to settle in the region after they witnessed the Turul drop its sword near the bank of the Danube where the city of Budapest would eventually be established.

Several Turul monuments exist in Hungary today. Among the most prominent is the Turul statue perched upon the summit of the Gerecse Mountains in the former mining city of Tatabánya, 55 kilometers west of the Budapest. The statue is visible from the main highway leading into Budapest, and I have seen it from a distance the dozen or so times I have traveled east toward the capital. 

Last weekend, the little hiking club that has formed in my village traveled to Tatabánya to hike in the Gerecse Mountains, which gave me the opportunity to finally see the monument up close. The hike itself was splendid. The trees here are sprouting, but the new leaves have yet to cast the forest floor in shade, which allows the young shoots, plants, and flowers to emerge and cover the forest floor in a fresh and comforting velvety green.   It took a little over two hours to reach the crest upon which the Turul monument sits. During the hike, my mind sank into a peaceful and contemplative mode of unthinking-thinking. Rather than consciously forcing myself to think certain thoughts, I granted my thinking room to wander -- or more correctly, room to settle -- on the sights and sounds of the forest as I passed through it. 

The Turul monument itself is rather impressive, but given the current state of the world, it left no deep impression on me as a national or historical symbol of Hungary.  Nevertheless, on the train ride home I found myself thinking a great deal about the Turul bird dropping its sword as an indication of having arrived at the homeland or, more generally, at the place to be.

I was born in the United States, spent a great deal of my life in Canada, later lived and worked in the US again, and moved to the northeast of England for a short time. I have lived in Hungary, which is the country of my heritage, since 2015. Like the ancient Magyars, I have spent most of my life wandering in search of a homeland. Though I had not actively followed a massive bird of prey carrying a sword, I realized that I had always been waiting for a sword to drop somewhere in this world to indicate the place for me to "be". 

Well, it appears the sword has indeed dropped. My current personal circumstances and the place in which I find myself have become home. I will wander no more. But the dropped sword has little to do with grand historical notions of nation or culture and everything to do with small personal notions of place and relationships. Whatever I have left to learn in this life will be learned in the place I am now.

When my life in this world ends, I will wait for Christ to pick up the sword. The place in which He chooses to drop it will indicate my eternal homeland -- the place I truly yearn to "be".  

The Common Good Today Is Neither Common Nor Good

Much of the unprecedented evil that has flooded the world since 2020 has been enabled by individuals heeding the call to act for the common good -- but what exactly is the common good today? 

Well, the common good since 2020 has been neither common nor good. I would go as far as to say that all notions of the common good have morphed into uncommon evils.

As far as I can tell, the common good possesses no real proper of existence of its own. At best, it strikes me as an abstraction that inverts the spiritual imperative of "personally" acting for the good of one's neighbor; more specifically, acting for the good of a concrete being. Even more specifically, acting for the spiritual good of the concrete being. Hence, acting for the common good should be largely a matter of being spiritually motivated to act at the level of personal relationships for primarily spiritual purposes.  

Contemporary conceptualizations of acting for the common good do not involve the spiritual good of concrete beings but the supposed material well-being and safety of abstractions. Ironically, those who have acted for the common good in the hope that it might secure the well-being and safety of the community have actually aided in achieving the opposite. 

For example, adhering to the global diktat of none are safe until all are safe has kept no one safe. Subscribing to various green initiatives and movements has not made the planet any greener. Embracing the sexual revolution, alphabet people rights, and the trans agenda has not made society better. Supporting the country of the blue and yellow horizontal stripes has not improved the geopolitical situation. 

Divorced from its original spiritual foundations, contemporary rallying cries for the common good are nothing more than justifications for endless forms of slavery -- most prominently spiritual slavery. 

It's time to drop the common good inversion and see it for what it truly is -- uncommon evil. 

What we need instead is uncommon good -- good that is personal, spiritual, and concrete. Each of us needs to discover this uncommon good for ourselves. We also need to personally discover how we might be able act for the uncommon good once we have determined what it is.

If nothing else, we can focus on thinking the uncommon good. In fact, thinking the uncommon good might just be one of the most powerful actions we can take.     

Overcoming the Allure and Impact of the Bombshell

The word bombshell has two distinct connotative/metaphorical meanings in English. On the one hand, it is often used to describe a very attractive woman. On the other hand, it can also be an unexpected, surprising event or news that turns out to be unpleasant. In my mind, these non-literal definitions tend to blur together to create a condition in which one is drawn toward an event or information that surprises in the negative.
 
I mention this because the word bombshell has been thrown around a great deal in the past two-plus years. These days the word relates to shocking and sensational news rather than to beautiful women. The implication behind a "bombshell report" or a "bombshell study" is simple -- the information contained in either is bound to rattle people to their cores and perhaps even get them to reconsider their previously-held convictions and beliefs.
 
Alternative media sources have been dropping bombshells all over the internet since the 2020 global totalitarian coup, but nothing has managed to rattle the masses. This leads me to believe that the masses are largely immune to non-System-endorsed bombshells and only respond to the sorts of bombshells the System endorses and promotes via its usual mainstream channels.
 
System-endorsed bombshells include the litmus tests -- the birdemic, the peck, the racial agitation movements, the trans agenda, etc. -- and any other external event or news that can be elevated to the status of "the current thing."
 
Non-system-endorsed bombshells -- such as independent medical studies revealing unpleasant data about the peck -- have no real bombshell effect because they rarely attract the masses and, thereby, rarely manage to shock them. On the contrary, nearly all end up being duds at the mass level.
 
This reveals much about what we can expect from bombshell reports, stories, and studies going forward. Anything the System controls will hit with great impact. Whatever the System does not control will have little, if any, impact at all.
 
This holds especially true at the level of personal experience. Those who rely on the System for bombshells will deny whatever sudden, unexpected, shocking event or information they experience firsthand. They will not allow anything to challenge previously-held convictions or beliefs.
 
Those who are surprised and shocked by sudden, unexpected events they experience at the personal level may drop previously-held beliefs and begin ranting and railing against some aspect of the System, but very little of this ranting and railing will expand the force of the non-System-endorsed, personally-experienced bombshell.
 
Thus, the non-System-endorsed bombshells will continue to explode. They will explode through the "the bombshell reports" released through non-System endorsed sources, and they will explode at the level of personal experience as people face sudden, unexpected, and unpleasant events and news. Yet none of these explosions will make the slightest bit of difference to the masses unless they are "picked up" and magnified by the System itself.
 
This makes me think there are some lessons to be learned when it comes to post-2020 bombshells:The only “real” bombshells have been System-endorsed bombshells. Only the System has the power to rattle people to their cores at the mass level.Non-System-endorsed bombshells have been and will continue to land as duds at the mass level unless the System decides to promulgate them as its own bombshells.Non-System-endorsed bombshells should not shock or surprise us if we have been using intuitive and spiritual discernment since 2020.Bombshells experienced at the personal level should be approached as opportunities for spiritual learning, regardless of whether or not they are connected to the 2020 global totalitarian coup.To sum up, much can be learned by overcoming the allure and power of bombshells in this time and place.  

Support New World Island

The New World Island blog aggregator that features the circle of Romantic Christian bloggers with whom I am proud and honored to be affiliated has recently posted an audio version of Dr. Charlton's book: Lazarus Writes: Reading the Fourth Gospel in Isolation. 

Why not check it out?  

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Christianity: Skin-Thinking Versus Heart-Thinking

So, Rod Dreher has decided to get a Christian tattoo and has offered the following explanation for his decision:

"I found that I wanted somehow to feel in my skin, for all the days left of my life, the truth that JESUS CHRIST CONQUERS."

Here is the tattoo:  ​Like his tattoo, everything about Dreher and his faith is on the surface, superficial, showy, and external. He wants to "somehow" feel Christ on his skin but doesn't seem interested in feeling Christ in his heart. 

Instead of heart-thinking (to borrow Dr. Charlton's term adapted from Steiner), Dreher is quite content to remain in the mode of "skin-thinking".

And practically everything about Dreher reflects this mode of skin-thinking -- from his panicked, hysterical response to the birdemic to his endorsement of the Hungarian prime minister as a bastion of Christian conservatism (despite the latter implementing the same draconian, oppressive birdemic measures and peck regime implemented the world over).

Symbols are never reality, and they only mean something if they reflect a deeper reality.

This is particularly true of Christian symbols.  

I wish Dreher the best of luck.

No One Held a Peck to Your Head

Never forget that you are dealing with spiritual wickedness that glories in deception and despair. They will tell you that you have no choice, then blame you for making the very choice they made you feel you didn't have. It's the coercion that is the clue. 

Vox Day recorded the observation above on his blog today in response to a clip of the Australian PM insisting that pecks are a personal choice; hence, people who allowed themselves to be pecked did so of their own free will and must, therefore, assume total personal responsibility for the choice they made. Here's the clip: You see, it's all about making an "informed decision" leading to "informed consent." The lockdowns, threats, coercion, degradation, stigmatization, incessant media fear campaigns, humiliation, denial of inalienable rights, curtailments, lies, deceptions, manipulations, job losses, denial of services had nothing whatsoever to do with any person's ability and right to make that informed decision.  

There's no mandate, see? Only rules and the rules apply to everybody: What if you suffered side effects? Reactions? Death? Hey, the choice to "follow the rules" was all yours. People like this demon-serving individual had nothing to do with it.

As I have noted before, the matter of choice regarding the peck is primarily a spiritual matter:

Getting people to willingly and actively choose their damnation has been the dominant theme of the birdemic since 2020.

Yes, there has been much persuasion, propaganda, and pressure -- and yes, there have been manipulations and machinations aplenty.

Terror tactics? Sure.

Bold-faced lying and devious dishonesty? Certainly.

Coercion? Oppression? Harassment? Arm-twisting? You betcha!

What about straight-up force?

Though there has been some compulsion here and there, evil has generally avoided the blatant use of force whenever possible for the simple reason that it wants to ensure the choice is yours.

Evil has generally left some room for choice, even when it has mandated and compelled. Granted, the choices it tends to offer barely seem like choices at all -- penalties, fines, job-loss, etc. -- but they are choices all the same. 

Because they don't want to make the choice for people. They really don't. They want people to make the choice themselves. And they want people to own that choice.

To get back to Vox Day for a moment -- he has consistently been among the (very) few bloggers who recognize and understand the spiritual implications of the peck agenda and the birdemic. Kudos to him for that. 

Note added: Choices can be repented, especially choices made under coercion, but I imagine evil is banking on a majority of such choices remaining un-repented. Even better, such coerced choices could become a fertile breeding ground for resentment, rage, and despair.  ​