Francis Berger's Blog, page 91

The Problem of Free Will in a World Where None Are Safe Until All Are Pecked

It is increasingly evident that the peck mandates and compulsory pecking have become the primary objectives of the birdemic. With this in mind, the global diktat of "none are safe until all are safe" has now evolved to the more specific "none are safe until all are pecked."  

The Establishment is briskly reorganizing and retooling the System in pursuit of universal, compulsory pecking. A quick scan of current headlines reveals the mechanisms of private-public partnership are swiftly clicking into gear to generate circumstances in which the peck will become unavoidable for most people.

Lock out measures are intensifying. Refusing the unpecked access to cafes, theaters, and museums is no longer adequate. More obviously needs to be done. Hence, schemes to deny the unpecked access to employment and basic social services are spreading across the globe quicker than the latest Greek letter "variant" of the birdemic.

I note the above not to scaremonger, but to draw attention to the ever increasing likelihood that we may all soon once again find ourselves in "un-free" circumstances in which we will be forced to choose rather than being free to choose.

Conversely, some of us may find ourselves in circumstances in which we have no choice at all other than to have the prescribed "choice" forced upon us. 

Either way, I believe it is crucial to recognize and understand the distinction between doctrine of free will and authentic spiritual freedom within the context of such "un-free" circumstances. 

Free will is only "free" if choices and decisions about external factors emanate "freely" from the internal and if a choice for Good is accessible. More plainly, being forced to choose between options that are externally thrust upon us by force and/or necessity is not an authentic exercise of free will because the exercise itself has been stripped of all spiritual creativity and dynamism.

There is nothing free or willed about being externally forced or necessitated into choosing between two evils without being offered the possibility of making a real external choice for Good.

If you are told you will lose your job should you not take the peck, you cannot truly exercise free will in any meaningful capacity because you essentially have been forced into making a decision regarding two involuntary, evil choices.

You don't want to be forced out of work (a coerced evil choice that immediately affects the material situation of you and your loved ones), but you also don't want to take the peck (a coerced evil choice driven by the obviously evil motivations of the ruling elite and their demonic overlords).

If you choose to be forced out of work, you may feel you are making the right choice from a spiritual perspective, but it would be a stretch to refer to this right choice as a display of free will.

At the same time, if you choose to take the peck to keep your job, but repent your decision, you may be making the wrong choice spiritually, but your sincere repentance ensures that you remain firmly grounded on the side of God and Creation.

Though the repentance is necessary and Good in itself, it would be too much to label it an exercise in free will because you were basically coerced into the sin for which you are repenting.

Free will only becomes authentic spiritual freedom if it is rooted in a purely internal, willed choice for Good. Moreover, that this choice for Good is made for the sake and value of the Good itself rather than as a mere means through which to choose the lesser evil when presented with nothing but evil choices.

For example, if a person chooses to follow Jesus and believe on Jesus, he or she is making a true "free will" choice because the decision itself is based on internal rather than external factors.

The individual is not forced or coerced into making an either/or choice with no option for Good, but freely makes the decision for the sake and value of the Good.

Put another way, the decision is inspired by the positives of following and believing on Jesus rather than on the negatives of not following and not believing on Jesus. 

Authentic spiritual freedom is the ability to actively and willfully decide what is Good and evil, and to decide this from the free heart of the Divine Self with Christ as its guide.

Something to bear in mind should any un-free, peck mandate circumstances arise in the coming days/weeks/months.  

Fifty and Over a Thousand

The two numbers represent milestones of sorts. 

The first refers to the half-century odometer click of age marking my birth on this day fifty years ago.

According to Victor Hugo, "forty is the old age of youth; fifty is the youth of old age." Though I don't quite agree with the first part of this observation - the old age of youth occurred somewhere in my mid-to-late twenties for me - I do believe fifty marks the beginning of old age.

Of course, in our youth-obsessed world - in which most modern people sincerely envision themselves windsurfing and bungee jumping at seventy-five - harboring this view of old age is anathema. The common consensus holds that fifty is firmly embedded in that nebulous cloud known as middle-aged, which at last check extended somewhere from the ages of forty-five all the way to retirement age.

As far as I'm concerned, that's all rubbish - particularly from a spiritual perspective. The truth of the matter is that the years between thirty and forty are middle-aged for most people. Anything after that is - at best - "late" middle age, but more appropriately "young" old age. 

So, at fifty I consider myself firmly entrenched in the realm of early old age. I greet this development with joy because I can now "officially" begin to distance myself from my youthful desires and worldly ambitions and dedicate myself more fully to spiritual matters, which, as Bruce Charlton has noted, should mark the true purpose of old age anyway. 

This doesn't mean that fifty marks the beginning of my withdrawal from the world, but that my activity in the world will be driven and flavored by a refined set of motivations and purposes that are quite different from the motivations and purposes that fueled me when I was twenty, thirty, or even forty years old.

Luckily, I am still in possession of (most) of my physical and mental faculties at fifty - hey, Leonidas was in his fifties when he fought and died at Thermopylae -  and I still possess a great deal of energy, but my utilization of these faculties and energy has changed and continues to change - and I regard these as changes for the better. 

So, Happy Birthday to me. Since I'm not all that comfortable with being celebrated, I'm going to commemorate the event by tiling a bathroom. In the evening, I'll have a nice dinner with the family. 

The second number refers to the number of posts on this blog, which at some point in the past month reached and surpassed the thousand mark.

The bulk of these thousand posts were written in the past three years after I shifted the focus of the blog from lame self-promotion for my independently published novel to a blog about spiritual learning. To this day, I am not exactly sure what inspired this shift, but it has proven to be immensely beneficial from a spiritual perspective.

A big shout out to Bruce Charlton, William Wildblood, William James Tychonievich, Kevin McCall, and Amo Boden for their support of this blog. Also, many thanks to Sasha at Synlogos and Islanti at New World Island for including this blog on their aggregrator sites. Extended thanks to other bloggers and aggregrators who have shared and linked my work through their pages. 

Lastly, a big thanks to my readers whose comments and insights have often added depth and dimension to my scribblings and have helped facilitate the spiritual learning I mentioned above.

Here's to a thousand more posts, God willing!

The Corporate Person and The Objectives of Long-Term Evil

I have reached the tentative conclusion that corporations, the concept of the "corporate person", and the inculcation of the corporate mindset in human consciousness are all direct causes of the interconnected, intertwined, technocratic global totalitarianism to which the world has succumbed.

More to the point, demonic forces have harnessed corporations, the "corporate person", and the inculcation of a corporate mindset to pull off the trick Satan had been trying to pull off since the beginning of history - the incorporation of everyone and everything in a system that is inherently opposed to God. 

When modern people abandoned God in favor of atheism, leftism, and materialism, they abandoned all notions of long-term thinking rooted in reality. Convinced that their experience of "reality" was confined to the boundaries of earthly lifespans, modern people adopted an exclusively short-term, hedonistic, fear/lust-based mode of thinking.

Long-term perspectives and objectives are the foundation of serious Christian thinking. Though serious Christians have short-term objectives and motivations, they understand the necessity of aligning short-term worldly aims with long-term spiritual aims.

Put another way, a serious Christian understands that the proper organization, arrangement, and subordination of short-term, temporal objectives against the backdrop of long-term, eternal objectives is a major task of mortal life. Moreover, that the alignment of the short-term with the long-term provides the framework for essential spiritual learning.

Without this frame of thinking, salvation, damnation, eternity, and heaven become utterly meaningless! 

By turning their backs on God, moderns have turned their backs on the essence of spiritual consciousness, particularly the essence of Christian thinking, which in terms of consciousness, was always rooted in long-term rather than short-term thinking. 

This mode of thinking inevitably seeped into all human organizations, institutions, and forms of governance, the operations of which also became rooted in short-term, hedonistic, fear/lust-based objectives (think profit-driven companies, society destroying governments, etc.). The purpose of mortal life degenerated from a spiritual orientation toward God and the long-term objectives of heaven and eternity to a worldview dedicated to squeezing all the kicks you could out of life before the meter ran out.

But here's the rub. Forsaking belief in long-term spiritual objectives does not equal the non-existence of long-term spiritual objectives.

Modern people have cast aside a long-term, spiritual mode of thinking.  Unfortunately, Satan has not. Preoccupied by purely short-term, worldly aims, modern people have relegated all long-term objectives to the Prince of This World who, in turn, has harnessed and weaponized the power of the corporate person to enslave the world.

The late Roger Scruton, a staunch defender of the concept of the corporate person, noted the following regarding a corparate person's positive ability to maintain and execute long-term objectives in the world (slight editing and bold added): 

Let us return in thought, therefore, to the world of thing institutions, and try to discover what the individual lacks in that world. The primary thing that is missing, I believe, is the longterm view.

No obligation endures there-not even the obligations of love and friendship--beyond the lifetime of the individuals who undertake them; nor does any obligation exist towards those who are not present to reciprocate it.

The unborn and the dead are not only disenfranchised: they have lost all claim on the living. Their claims can be acknowledged only if there are persons who endure long enough to enter into personal relation, both with us, the living, and with them.

The true public spirit - the spirit from which civil society and all its benefits derives-requires just such a projection of our duties beyond the grave.

The care for future generations must be entrusted to persons who will exist when they exist: and if there are no such persons surrounding me, how can I have that care, except as a helpless anxiety?

I can enter into no personal obligation that will bind me to past and future souls, nor can you. Only a corporate person can enter such an obligation, and only through corporate persons, therefore, can the relation to the unborn and the dead be made articulate and binding. (Thus when, as in aristocracies, this relation is made articulate through the family, the family ceases to be the bond of present love, and becomes an institution, with a personality distinct from those of its members.)

That this relation to the unborn and the dead is necessary for the fulfilment of the rational agent is something that we should not doubt. For it forms the premise of self-justification.

The individual is justified by the knowledge that he did right by those who survive him, whom he never knew, and who promised him nothing; and equally by those who preceded him and bequeathed to him unknowingly their store of trust. In the broadest sense, then, the corporate person is necessary to the ecology of rational agency, and without it our aims will be as truncated as our lives.

Though I appreciate Scruton's insights regarding the positive potential of corporations and the corporate person, they are marred by the emphasis on this-worldly aims and an utter lack of understanding regarding the nature of spiritual creativity. Nevertheless, Scruton does touch upon something significant - in temporal terms, the corporate person can serve as a vehicle for Good in the long-term (despite the entropy and decay that is an intrinsic part of the world).

What Scruton neglects to emphasize is that it can only do so if it and the people guiding it are resolutely aligned with God and Creation - an alignment in which such long-term objectives are the default setting.

All corporate persons operating today possess long-term objectives, but none of these long-term objectives are aligned with God and Creation, which implies that all corporate persons operating today are directly under the dominion of Satan and are opposed to God and Creation.

Satan has usurped the true public spirit Scruton mentions, the spirit from which civil society and all of its benefits derive. While the people leading, managing, and working for corporations continue to be driven by primarily short-term, worldly aims, the corporations themselves have adopted long-term, negative spiritual aims that are directly opposed to the positive, long-term spiritual aims of Christianity.

​More specifically, the corporate person is now steadfastly dedicated to material enslavement, temporal destruction, and soul damnation.

Of course, modern people are oblivious of this. Having lost the ability to think in the spiritual "long-term", they cannot conceive of any force that would work toward long-term spiritual objectives, be these objectives Good or evil.  

Side Project Update

I know I said I was taking a break from blogging, but this an update rather than a blog post, so . . .

Anyway, I'm nearly done with the walls, but the lumber for the roof has been delayed and will not arrive for another ten days or so. As the photo shows, I still have plenty of brick work to complete, but not enough to fill ten days, which means this side project of mine has hit a snag in terms of expected completion time. I could start plastering walls, but it's usually best to leave that until after the roof is on. 

Though the lumber will be new, the bricks for this renovation are reclaimed bricks - the vast majority of which I had sitting around on my property waiting for a project like this. Some of the bricks I have used for the walls are dated from the nineteenth century. The bricks themselves are meant to be plastered over, which helps explain the lack of aesthetic appeal thus far.  Day Three - Raised walls nearly complete. Took out the window on the far wall and bricked in the space. New window will be on the near wall. Delay in lumber delivery for roof. Day One - Taking off the old roof.

Brief Blogging Break

I'm taking a brief break from blogging to let my mind lie fallow for a few days.  

I will return to posting early next week. 

Little Side Project

I am now officially on vacation from work. As usual, I will be spending the bulk of my time off completing renovations around the house. 

The outbuilding in the photo above has two distinct parts. The smaller part, which resembles an outhouse, is actually a miniature smokehouse in which the previous owner smoked and cured meat and sausages. The larger part served as a sort of workshop. Over the past five years, I have used this building primarily as a shed to store bicycles, tires, gardening tools, etc. As the photo shows, the building is a bit run down, but its structure is quite solid. 

My overall plan is to raise the walls a little higher, cap building with a brand new roof, and then freshen up the exterior with a fresh coat of render. I removed the clay tiles and beams today. Tomorrow, I'll start laying bricks. If all goes well, I should have the roof up by the weekend or sooner. 

Do Modern People See Themselves as Subjects or Objects?

Contemporary human consciousness has essentially abandoned God and is firmly rooted in atheism and materialism. This holds particularly true for populations that comprise what was once collectively known as Christendom. Cut off from a meaningful awareness of God, the bulk of people alive today have, in essence, cut themselves off from a meaningful perception of themselves as primarily spiritual beings. 

This lack of spiritual awareness has eviscerated what it means to be a human being, what it means to be a person, and what is means to have personality. Moreover, it has exenterated the essence of human community and communal human institutions and associations.

Personality not only forms one of the cornerstones of Nikolai Berdyaev's philosophy, but also serves as the bedrock of his metaphysical assumptions concerning the nature of God and freedom. In Slavery and Freedom, Berdyaev describes personality in the following manner: 

... personality is defined above all not by its relation to society and the cosmos, not by its relation to the world which is enslaved by objectivization, but by its relation to God, and from this hidden and cherished inward relation it draws strength for its free relation to the world and to man. 

The image of human personality is not only a human image, it is also the image of God. In that fact lie hidden all the enigmas and mysteries of man. It is the mystery of divine-humanity, which is the paradox that cannot be expressed in rational terms. 

For Berdyaev, personality is defined by its awareness of and relation to God. Without this awareness and relation, personality ceases to be personality and becomes something else entirely: 

Personality is a subject, and not an object among other objects, and it has its roots in the inward scheme of existence, that is in the spiritual world, the world of freedom. Society on the other hand is an object. From the existential point of view society is a part of personality, it is its social side, just as the cosmos is a part of personality, its cosmic side. Personality is not an object among other objects and not a thing among other things. It is a subject among subjects and the turning of it into an object or a thing means death.

According to Berdyaev, personality is a subject, while society exists in the object world. At the same time, society is a part of personality and this social side is important to personality. Nevertheless, society being a part of personality is very different from personality being a part of society. While the former is tenable, even necessary, the latter is neither and eventually leads to spiritual death. Though personality is a subject, it is also communal; more specifically, personality strives to form community and communion with personality beyond itself: 

Personality is communal; it presupposes communion with others, and community with others. The profound contradiction and difficulty of human life is due to this communality. 

Berdyaev touches upon something extremely important in the passage above. Personality, that part of our humanity that forms and is aware of our own spiritual nature and uniqueness, exists entirely as a subject. Furthermore, it is aware that its existence is "a higher value than the world order and the harmony of the whole, than abstract being." At the same time, personality seeks communion with others during mortal life, primarily within the framework of society, which exists in the object world. The difficulty Berdayaev refers to centers upon establishing this communion of subjects without allowing this communion or the personalities involved to slip down to the level of the object world.

At first glance, what Berdyaev proposes appears impossible, but if we consider his definitions of subject and object as aspects of consciousness, the communion of subjects in the object world moves from being something completely unattainable to something that is at least spiritually possible:

Personality contains the universe within it, but this inclusion of the universe takes place not in the sphere of the object world but in the sphere of the subject world, that is to say of existentiality. Personality is aware of itself as rooted in the realm of freedom, that is, in the realm of spirit, and from that source it draws the strength for its conflict and activity. This is the very meaning of being a person, of being free. 

Berdyaev argues that personality can operate at the subject level in the object world as long as it remembers that it is rooted in the realm of freedom and spirit and as long as it does not surrender this subject level awareness of itself to the object world.

As mentioned at the beginning of this post, modern people have lost all sense of personality - of their innate relation to God. As a result, they have lost all connection to themselves as subjects and all intuition of being rooted in the realm of freedom and spirit. In a nutshell, they have lost the very meaning of what is means to be a person and of what it means to be free. In Berdyaev's own terminology, they have allowed themselves to become objectified - to be relegated to the level of an object among objects, the level of a thing among things. 

This process of objectification has immediate knock down effects on the communal presuppositions of personality. Instead of a communion of subjects - or a community of subjects in which society is a part of personality - the process of objectification has downgraded communal life to the level of objects in which personality is absorbed wholly into society and its object world.  

By willingly and actively severing all meaningful connection to the transcendent, modern "natural" people have grounded themselves in atheism, leftism, and materialism. Without an awareness of their own intrinsic connection to the Divine, modern natural people have lost all sense of personality and have, thereby, lost all sense of what it means to live in freedom and in spirit - to live in the reality of Creation.

Berdyaev refers to this as objectification, the process through which subjects lose their sense of reality and begin to adopt un-real perceptions of themselves as merely objects. In The Beginning and The End, Berdyaev notes that "Consciousness not only orients us in the midst of this world, not only gives out light, but also creates a great quantity of illusions." The denial of personality - of the divine aspect of "natural man" - is a testament to the greatest illusion consciousness creates, and it is by this illusion that most contemporary people have to chosen to live. 

Later in The Beginning and The End, Berdyaev states:

In objectivization we may find only symbols, but not basic realities. The objective spirit is only a symbol of spirit. The spirit is real. Culture and social life are symbolic. There is never reality in an object: in an object there is only a symbol of reality. Reality itself is always in the subject.... 
 
Modern people believe themselves to be subjects, but they without a belief in God, they have allowed themselves to become objects, and they live exclusively within the unreality of the object world. 

Grain Harvest

The grain harvest is in full swing here in Hungary. Wheat, rye, and oats are the three most common grains in the fields around my village, though I have at times come across barley as well.

The weather has been ideal for grains, which means the yields have been bountiful this summer. Here's hoping my home vegetable garden brings abundant yields as well. 

The field below - complete with large round hay bales - is not far from my house. I have always been enchanted by harvested fields dotted with hay bales. Don't ask me why. 

The Devil Is Not The Polar Opposite of God

Polarity is not a commonly-discussed theme in Christianity, which is a shame because I believe the further development of Christianity depends on a deeper, intuitive understanding of the nature and reality of polarity.

If Christians think about polarity at all, most tend to conceptualize it as an arrangement of extremes, with the Devil at one end and God at the other. Though this conceptualization is understandable, it misses the point entirely, as Nikolai Berdyaev explains in his The Divine and The Human (bold and line breaks added):

Man seeks to find refuge from the tormenting question of evil in the realm of neutrality, and by doing so seeks to conceal his treachery to God. 

But in a deeper sense there is no neutrality; the neutral is on the surface. It might even be said that the devil is neutral. 

It is a mistake to assume that the devil is the polar opposite of God. The pole which is the direct opposite of God is again God, the other face of God; extremes meet. The devil is the prince of this world and takes cover in neutrality. 

One way to interpret the passage above is to recognize man as the other face of God and to regard the core of Christianity as the potential meeting of these extremes. 

Speaking Forcefully and Carrying an Even Bigger Stick

I had a hunch that Delta Force was coming, but I hadn't anticipated that it would appear this quickly.

Oddly enough, what the French are currently up against is already old news in Hungary where discrimination against the unpecked had been official government policy for the better part of a month. That policy has been suspended here for the time being, but I'm sure it will make a comeback soon.   

Anyway, the latest developments in France have made it clear that the Establishment are looking to ramp up their Big Stick Diplomacy when it comes to the peck.

Up to now, I would say the Establishment had spoken loudly and carried a big stick concerning the peck. The approach got them far, but not far enough.

So they are beginning to speak more forcefully and carry an even bigger stick in the hope that this intensified approach will get them even further - perhaps as far as their stated objective of pecking every individual in the world because, you know, none are safe until all are safe. 

Today it could entail being locked out of pleasures, recreations, and amusements. Tomorrow it might involve being barred from "necessities" like employment, health care, public transport, banking, etc. 

And if that isn't enough, then you count on the Establishment speaking more forcefully and carrying an even bigger stick . . .

I'm no fortune teller, but I get the sense that we are nearing an inflection point.

Remain on the right side if or when the inflection point hits - especially if you find yourself asking, "Why not?"