Bruce G. Charlton's Blog, page 12

I'm currently delisted by Google...

I have long been fascinated by the machinations of the Google search engine - who also own the platform on which this blog is published. 

At present, I mean a few minutes ago; this blog seems to be delisted by Google - so that searching my name in quotes for the past week gives no return - zilch. I don't exist.  

By contrast, Bing, DuckDuckGo and Yandex all have me top-ranked. 

Yet Google's own blog statistics award me 638,334 page views for the past week - absurdly high, I know; but these are Blogger's own data. 

I can't fathom what They are up to except that it is clearly purposive, not "random"; nor do I worry much about it or what (if anything) it presages. 

But it is microcosmic evidence of the kind of self-contradicting, and therefore self-destructive, phenomenon that is happening, increasingly - in the mainstream-dominant domain of public discourse. 

There is an epidemic of spinner-throwing into works, sand-putting into gears; all over the place and at all levels - and this is just a slice of my share of it!

NOTE: The reason I mention this; is that this sort of thing didn't happen on the internet 25 years ago, but now it happens All The Time. Back in the 90s and 2000s you could search the internet, day by day, year after year - and invariably re-find something you had found before - plus lots of new stuff. Searches would return thousands, or millions, of results. Now it is normal not to find something you could find yesterday, or earlier in the day. And you can never find much of anything. As WmJas pointed out even if you search something like "Jesus Christ" or "the Beatles", which has trillions of web sources, you'll only probably get a few hundred results. I used to be able to find web references to almost anybody - family, old friends; now most people's names yield no returns at all. The search engine strategy seems to be two-fold - to censor returns (or charge for what used to be cost-free) and severely to limit the volume of results - the first requiring the second of course, but the limitation in returns is far more extreme than censoring would require. 

Further note: Next day. 

I am no longer de-listed, but come up number one on the search - restricted for the past 7 days. 

From Zero to Hero!

Like I said - no point in wasting time overthinking these things. 

In passing, when readers reported I was Not delisted - I wonder whether they had restricted the search to the past week - as I had? Maybe they didn't notice that? Anyway, I've italicized the phrase now, for emphasis. But it's too late, anyway...

The choice is between virtuality and metaphysics

Because of the nature of human consciousness, we inhabit a world where perceptions, facts, common sense, evidence etc are irrelevant; because what counts as perceptions, facts, common sense, evidence etc is shaped by our assumptions and interpretations. 
So, most people most of the time (and, apparently, some people all of the time) inhabit the virtual-world - virtuality as contrasted with what used to be called reality. 

People nowadays inhabit virtuality - especially wrt Litmus Test issues: the themes that most obsess and motivate nice people and leaders, the great moral "issues" of our time: antiracism, inequality, climate, the birdemic, wars and disasters in remote places and among strangers... 
All share the characteristic that they are virtual concerns, rooted in inculcating theoretical frameworks that take-up any and all possible facts as confirming evidence for the theories.  
Consequently; old-style reality is (as of 2025) simply not an option, because not available to choose - because that is not how our minds work.

Our reality depends on our fundamental assumptions about reality - i.e. metaphysics; so the answer to controlled-virtuality does not lie in more or different facts; but in disengaging from the nigh-infinite deluge of facts; and instead re-examining ultimate assumptions directly.   

Most people inhabit this world via perceptions, facts, common sense, evidence etc; but are typically unaware that the meanings of their world comes wholly from their assumptions, preconceptions etc -- which they are fed by the mass/ social media, bureaucracy, officialdom, teaching etc.  
So - as is well known in theory, but seldom experientially - people inhabit a virtual world. 
A world where people are unconsciously and pervasively fed assumptions and theories, interpretations - which they are told are rooted-in-facts and objectively true. And from these assumptions and theories they infer the meaning of old and new facts, past and future experiences. 
Which circular process confirms the assumptions and theories they have been fed. 
...e.g. They are fed that science is objectively the only valid form of knowledge - and that this is factually proved; they then interpret the facts of the world on that basis; and these facts (which are the only facts they recognise as facts) tell them that science is indeed the only valid form of knowledge. 
At which point; those who control the feeding, can decide that science is... whatever they want it to be.

This is exactly where we are, almost completely; and have been for some decades, increasingly. 
A world where everything is based on "evidence"; but what counts as evidence, and what that evidence is allowed to mean - is wholly a product of whatever officially -true theories have been fed into the cycle from the beginning. 
The interlinked "system" of media propaganda, officialdom, education, research etc is all about the theories - all about the deep assumptions and derived interpretative schemes by-which facts are understood. 
Once in place, the theories determine the facts, and the facts sustain the theories. 
So long as we stay at this level, there is no way out from virtuality; all labelled "escape routes" lead back inside...

The conclusion ought to be that we need to make our fundamental assumptions about reality without regard to perceptions, facts, common sense, evidence. 
Indeed, we must rigorously eschew any external, material, sense-mediated influence on our fundamental beliefs concerning the nature of reality. 
This exclusion encompasses nearly-all of what is traditionally regarded as religion; because churches, traditions, scriptures, theologies - all of these are aspects of those externally-fed interpretative schemes by which virtuality exists. 
And this means that at some point, sooner or later - unless content to remain in the virtual world; each person needs to step-back and to stop taking notice of external inputs and inculcated theories... 
Instead to consider directly - for himself and from himself - the nature of ultimate reality and the fundamental questions: answers to which determine... everything else.
This activity is called metaphysics. 
(If you don't understand - then just do it . Do it ASAP. Once you've done it, you will understand what metaphysics is, and how things work at that level.) 

As we now are; our actual and inhabited reality does not - it just doesn't! - depend on external inputs - perceptions, facts, common sense or any other such. 
It depends on our virtual-world metaphysics, which we have been fed under the disguise that it is objective fact. 
As of 2025; we should not seek reality from outside us - because only virtuality lies outside . 
We should, indeed, shun the external, and exclude the external from consideration; as a first and essential step. 

It's either metaphysics; or we shall continue to live inside virtual world - under control of its masters, and not even wanting to escape... Indeed, not even aware that there is anywhere else that we might escape to.     

We are born and live as young children with a coherent world view

It is strange to a modern mind, but makes obvious sense if this is the creation of a good and loving God; that our innate understanding of the world, which we spontaneously experience as young children, often (and ideally) seems to be more coherent than any of the others which come to replace it. 

In other words; a child's experience and explanation of reality makes sense and hangs-together better than mainstream modern materialism, and also better than the complex intellectual structures of religions. 

However, a vital element of this coherence is the mind of the child - the consciousness of a child (the way he apprehends, experiences, explains the world); which is different from the minds of those who come-up with alternative explanations. 

I have come to regard the young child's understanding as innate because God-given, part of divine creation - which is why it is true; so although different, other forms of understanding (e.g. among adults, and in various societies) ought to be compatible with those of the child. 

This innate understanding relates to the pre-Christian world, the not Christian world - or what I term Primary Creation: creation without Christ. 

A loving child in a loving family knows the goodness of God; and that this world is purposive and has meaning is implicit. 

Reality is personal - a matter of beings not things. And the world works in terms of the relationships between beings - in terms of desires, motives, etc. 

I don't think young children spontaneously think about "creation"; rather, they implicitly assume that the world is created by personal intentions - the world doesn't "just happen", is not random nor mechanical.  

But the child also has an implicit understanding of both entropy (change, death) and of evil that sometimes impinges upon goodness and happiness. He realizes there are threatening beings, that want to scare and harm him. 

The child also knows that he is involved in this, that bad things happen in part because of something in himself - e.g. it is because he thinks about them or dreams about them - that monsters and other threats are attracted, and may come. (It is because he got angry that his favourite toy was smashed.) Yet he cannot stop himself from thinking/ dreaming about monsters; cannot stop himself getting angry, spiteful...

This implies a knowledge of evil in himself. 

The child also realizes also that people and "things" change, and he does and may lose things and people from forgetting, breakages, destruction, theft, removal, death etc. 

And also that when these happen, or might happen; the child will also himself have something to do with it. 

Irresistible, irrevocable change is inside himself, as well as outside. 

The child's spontaneous "answer" to these problems would seem to be a wish for invulnerability for himself and those he loves; so that the bad things of the world do not affect him or his life.

A wish, too, to be free from those bad thoughts that attract trouble and misery.  

This relates to the fascination for heroes - whether divine, demi-god, angelic, or "superhero"... what lies behind this is the idea that we may personally be transformed - while remaining our-selves - such that the bad things of life do not affect us personally, or those we love. 

If this were to happen, then we could live in the world without fear of pain, harm or loss; and this I believe is a daydream hope of young children. 

So far this is negative; but a child aspires to the positive as well. 

Especially if we recognize that a child spontaneously knows that the material is always spiritual, and nothing is neutral - all has meaning and relates to purpose. For a child; everything is personal and relational, and everything has resonance and depth and is important - nothing is mundane or trivial. 

Children's play and talk is full of fantasies, of wishful thinking and make-believe. And these are important to the child. 

It is here we should be looking to find spontaneous creativity. 

One common fantasy aspiration of childhood (which can stand for many others) is to fly - fly without wings and by will-power (again the "superhero" idea, or in the past some kind of spiritual being, were-being, demi-god or the like). 

This is a way in which a young child is creative, or proto-creative: wanting to expand his experience, especially in ways that lead to a new quality of experience. 

Hoping to do something of his own that adds to the world (adds to creation).

This lies behind the wish-fulfilling fantasies of being a superhero or a princess; of being unique, special, famous. This isn't merely trivial hedonism or conceit; because to a child such a possibility is creative, important - enlarging and changing the world for the better.   

It seems to me that - in terms of a young child's world - the meaning of what Jesus Christ made possible lies in the relationship between his understanding of everyday reality; and the world of his wishful thinking and fantasies. 

The work of Jesus impinged upon the already existing world; to offer a new possible reality; and this unique historical event may be recapitulated in the development of a child. 

Anyone who was genuinely wholly satisfied with "Primary Creation" - with the world as-is - would not be interested or attracted by Jesus's possibility of resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 

What such a person wants is to become something like an invulnerable superhero - a super-man (Ubermensch) who inhabits this world as it is, but is personally invulnerable to the entropy and evils that are intrinsic to Primary Creation. 

Resurrection and Heaven are, on the other hand, attractive to those whose child-like day-dreams are of a world - that is, a Second Creation - in which there is only love and no evil in ourselves and all other beings whom we love.

A world in which all change is good: the exciting possibility of growing-up. 

What Jesus offers is that instead of only living in this world but becoming invulnerable to its bad things; we can also inhabit a world where we have become all-good, there are only loving relationships, and happy day-dreams can become reality - with our help.  

That - in a young child's terms - is approximately what Heaven offers; above and beyond the wishes or hopes of pre-Christian and non-Christian understandings. 

Christians are badly mixed-up about Hope - with evil consequences

It seems to be a hallmark of the dangerous stupidity of Christians that they translate the injunction to Hope - as one of the core virtues - into a kind of dumb optimism about the people and social institutions of 2025. 

They "hope" that if they continue to believe, support and obey their leaders, national government, church, science and medicine etc; then this kind of undiscerning process of taking the side of evil and obeying it, on the basis that it "might" (hopefully) actually be good is A Good Thing. 

Good and also necessary because a "Christian" thing. 

The reasoning is that if a good thing is not certainly utterly impossible, then Christians ought to believe it - or, at least, say they believe it. 

Such Christians seem to spend most of their energies and efforts in lending assistance to evil-affiliated people and institutions; on the grounds that "there is always Hope!" that these might already are secretly good, or good despite everything, or change their minds and become good...

Especially if we "give them the benefit of the doubt" - who knows? 

So people continue (actively as well as passively) to support Western nations and social institutions - including churches - that once may well have been overall-good; but now are quite openly and aggressively untruthful and pursue value inversion... 

And all on the basis of what they call Hope!

Such Christians have set-aside the need to take personal responsibility for their discernments and judgments, and personally to make spiritual choices in this mortal life. 

Instead, what they actually do, is make more-expedient, more socially-acceptable, more personally-rewarding life choices on the excuse of Hope... 

Which as of 2025 means supporting organizations and groups that are overall explicitly evil in both their aims and methods. 

The problem with this "Hope" is therefore that it blocks thinking, discernment, judgment and personal responsibility - and dissolves the very purpose and meaning of life.

Not good.  

If not; then what?

Christian Hope is meant to be something very solid and sure; it is meant to be rooted our firm intention and belief in our own salvation. 

We ought not to be un-sure about this, because the matter is in our own hands. Jesus made it possible; after that, it is our choice. 

Vague wishful-thinking Hope has no place in this - we ought to be thinking of salvation in a realistic way: do we want it, will we commit to it? 

But what about other people? 

In the first place we have no business hoping for the salvation of people in the mass or in the abstract ("people" reported in history books, or the mass media); and our feelings are only genuinely Christian when they relate to actual human beings...

Indeed, to those whom we love to at least some degree. (Bearing in mind that love is inter-personal - between human and other beings.) 

We can and should and do Hope for the salvation of those we love: and this is very important. 

Loving is, indeed, the single most important thing that we can do for them. 

But this Hope is rooted in the fact that the game is not over until it is over. 

In particular, no matter how deeply enmeshed and engaged in evil; those who currently reject salvation are allowed to change their mind at the very last moment - and perhaps forever.

It can be seen that this Hope has nothing to do with the necessity for judgment and discernment in this our mortal lives. 

We can, should and must evaluate other people, organizations, nations; in terms of whether they are good-affiliated on the one hand - or else opposed to God and divine creation. 

We need to make and act upon such judgments. Obviously we do! As Jesus did. 

And this has absolutely nothing to do with any claim that our judgment is fallible... Of course our judgment is fallible, in this as in everything! If infallibility were required we could never do anything, and neither would we choose to do nothing. 

To demand infallibility before judgment is incoherent; hence (even for this reason alone) evil.  

Genuine, strong Christian Hope is in fact a product of faith in God: faith in a God who is our loving parents, and who is the creator. 

But that is not sufficient, because for Hope to be real and for us personally, we need furthermore faith in Jesus Christ who made our salvation - resurrected eternal life in Heaven - possible to those who follow him. 

All genuine Hope therefore springs from our personal confidence in our own salvation. 

So, in this sense, and contrary to mainstream Christian teaching; we ought not merely to "Hope" for our salvation, because it is guaranteed us - if we make the needful commitment to live wholly by love. 

We should therefore live in sureness of our salvation. 

And Hope? 

Well, Hope is for those we love; and Hope is an ultimate aspiration related to their final choice and destination.

Hope is not a guide to our behaviour in this mortal life.  

We harm people by treating metaphysical errors with psychological palliatives

There is a very common psychological scenario in which someone is (or feels himself to be) motivated by high goals, then he is given "well meaning" advice that addresses mundane concerns. And the consequence is that the high-aimer feels misunderstood and alienated.   

For instance, somebody wants to change jobs or get married; and such risky (and perhaps genuinely misguided) behaviour is met by "well-meaning" pragmatic advice pitched at the level of probabilistic human psychology.

Perhaps advice about being cautious, not burning bridges, maybe by describing the kind of adverse scenarios that could be expected to eventuate - and so forth. 

In this situation; one person is operating at a higher level of aspiration and motivation than the other; and the attempt to drag him down to mundane cautiousness and matters of practical expedience may (quite accurately) be experienced as a profound misunderstanding - and the process leaves the high-aiming one feeling isolated.

This is a serious error of discourse. 

Yet, I'm sure we have all done it - and more than once. 

Especially because in our society, the mundane is equated with the only-real - and high goals seems imaginary and delusional - which indeed they may be... 

But the point is that even "obviously" mistaken, imaginary and delusional high aspirations need to be addressed at the same level - or a higher level. 

We should learn not to try and drag-down high aspirations to expedient pragmatism - even when (perhaps especially when) the aspirations are wrong. 

This situation arises in individual persons and at a societal level. For example; it describes public discourse concerning 1960s counter-culture - as it affected many millions of adolescents and young adults. 

The counter-culture included a great deal of manipulation and wishful-delusion; and was based on wrong metaphysical assumptions and included many selfish and hedonic intentions - nonetheless it operated at a higher than mundane level: a level of "idealism". 

When flaky and naïve 60s ideals were met with pragmatic and mundane arguments concerning the Real World and economic necessity, status and security - this was (rightly) experienced as an attack on idealism, and a dragging-down of high aspirations to the futility of barnyard materialism.

In dealing with high but wrong aims; we ought to eschew the temptation of shooting at the easy mundane targets - and consequently reducing the discourse to a level of mere survival and selfishness. 

We ought to respect the aspiration for higher things - and sympathize with the instinct to reject mere expediency as the primary guide for life. 

We need to meet naïve idealism on its own level, or above. 

NOTE: This point was derived from re-reading and considering Chapter Four of William Arkle's A Geography of Consciousness. 

What blogging should be about - and sometimes is

Last week the "secular right" blogger ZMan - who I had been reading regularly for several years - apparently died suddenly of natural causes; and I find that has saddened me more than might be expected.

The reason seems related to this strange and recent literary form of blogging, which I have been reading for more than twenty years, and myself doing regularly for fifteen.

In particular to the distinctive relationship that may develop (inwardly, perhaps wholly in imagination) between a blogger and his readers - and vice versa.   

To read and get-something-from a blog, it really needs to be a personal thing - either frequent, or else extensive. This is because there needs to be a persona behind the blog; we need to be aware of a person behind the opinions. 

(On the flip side; for a blogger to sustain his work sufficiently; he must himself be motivated by the process of blogging - and by its opportunity for presenting miscellaneous ideas freshly, and without being subject to overview.)

And - while there obviously must be a significant degree of common interest to keep reading a blog; there need not be any very complete "agreement". For instance, several of my long-term favourite bloggers long-term have been orthodox and traditional Roman Catholics - people such such as Bonald at the Orthosphere, who I've been reading for a couple of decades. 

Instead there has to be some kind of basic affinity with the blog persona - but especially with the person we infer behind that persona. I say infer, because we don't need to know much specifically about the blogger "in real life" - so long as what we do know is honest and unpretentious.

I personally find it very irritating/ intolerable when bloggers are trying to impress me, especially when they try to stimulate may admiration or envy!  - no matter what other valuable qualities they have. And there are many such bloggers, and unfortunately their need to brag seems to feed upon itself, and get worse.

In other words, we keep reading a blog attentively because (to use an English phrase) we have come to believe that the blogger is Basically A Good Bloke. That is far more important than a close fit of specific convictions or opinions.

But, as the pretentiousness/ bragging aspects makes clear - bloggers change; and someone we begin liking may evolve into somebody we find intolerable - and so we bale out from readership. 

Beyond that, because blogging needs to be relatively high volume, interest is maintained by insights - and a good blogger needs to generate plenty of these to sustain attention. 

Blogging is, I think, mainly a stimulus; rather than a medium for conclusive argument. So, a blogger like ZMan kept me reading partly because he had many insights that seemed personal rather than (as with mainstream journalism) merely parroted; and partly because I found what he wrote stimulating.

Even though I often disagreed with it both ultimately and superficially; and even though I think his blogging was constrained by the constraint of monetization and pseudonymity, which prevented it from achieving the highest levels of the form.

(I have come to believe that professional writers very seldom generate first rate work, although they may produce a large amount of second and third rank work - furthermore I think all the greatest writers did something else, worked some other "job", before they wrote their greatest work. Writers who have done nothing but write as adults; never, I think, attain the highest levels.) 

I think readers usually judge a blog by its best, rather than its average, level - just so long as the gaps between the good stuff is not too great. So long as we retain our basic liking for the blogger - we don't much mind the duds. 

And in fact we cannot have the peaks without the troughs, as we see from the history of even the greatest artists. Even so supreme and natural and artists as Mozart, for instance, continued to produce dud operas and concertos even during his greatest phases of achievement and right up to his death. 

To do our best, we must take risks; and when we take risks we shall sometimes (or often) fail. And we can learn much from acknowledging our failures - but first the failures have t happen.   

At any rate, blogging benefits from a careless attitude of freedo-, and the ability to shrug-off those times when posts don't take-off or just don't gel.

As an example of a recent example of the kind of blog post I like best; here is (non-famous) blogger Irish Papist; with a very personal and honest, free-associational development of ideas on the theme: Everything comes back to religion. 

As often said: writing is thinking (or it can be); and here you can sense AP thinking as he writes; and share his excitement at the insights as they emerge from the exploration.

I've been sampling Irish Papist on-and-off for several years - long enough to have decided he is a Good Bloke; and from this assumption I find that he produces a stimulating post every so often, that seems to set off associations and notions in myself. 

And this perhaps is what good blogging is about; and why regular readers come to care - at least somewhat - about our favourite bloggers; and miss them when they are gone.  

When nobody believes what everybody believes - more on Word Spells

In response to Francis Berger's comment on Word Spells in Christian theology
Maybe it's like this... 
If someone becomes convinced by the usual-mainstream-modern assumption that truth is objectively located in the external world ("truth is out-there"), and our job is just to perceive and recognize this external truth...
Then such a person never has to convince himself of truth. 
He feels more confident of some proposition only secondarily, not inwardly; e.g. by re-reading and reciting it, by propagating and defending it in public discourse. 

This way of thinking may explain how arguments that cannot really convince, become perpetuated over centuries. 
It happens because, when truth is out-there, reasoning does not even need to convince.
Indeed, nobody ever needs personally to be convinced! 

So we get a world (and this is our actual world, and the world of historical past) where everybody claims/ argues and acts-like they believe some-thing... some-thing that - inwardly - literally nobody believes!

Word Spells in Christian theology - We absolutely need simplicity and clarity concerning what it is to be a Christian

When "explanations" get complex or highly abstract, they become Word Spells, and people think a question has been answered when they have actually just been lulled to sleep. 
This is perhaps why questions asked of witnesses in court, and their answers, need to be short and simple. 
(But this is misleading if the assumptions behind the questions, the assumptions within-which the questions arise; are wrong.) 
That's perhaps functionally OK... if it works. 

But Word Spells may work only temporarily, or in certain contexts. For instance; the complex and abstract Word Spells of Trinitarianism were not designed to answer questions; but to stop Christians persecuting and killing each other in the early Christology disputes, by employing a kind of hypnosis. 
This, more or less, worked... for a while - until the soothing enchantment was broken by the rise of Islam 
(Which was, I think, substantially rooted in a clear, simple, rational rejection of the literal non-sense of Trinitarian Word Spelling.)  

Other initially successful examples of word-spelling include the crucial areas of the necessity for Jesus Christ, the nature of free-will, and the origins of evil - in a world that is defined as the product of an omnipotent and omniscient God who created everything from nothing. The traditional answers to these questions work insofar as they complexify and abstract; until the problem is lost-sight-of and/or the irrelevance or insufficiency of the answer is lost-sight-of. 

But in Christian theology, the traditional Word Spells clearly do not work anymore, and has not worked for several generations. 
Word-spelling comes with the price that everybody is then asleep or dazed, insofar as they are Christian. 
Since they are deeply and ineradicably confused and disorientated by the abstractness and complexity their theology; Christians are not strongly motivated. they are in a state of permanent uncertainty as to what they are supposed to have as their primary priorities and fundamental convictions and desires.
Therefore Christians have, by default, become passively-assimilated to worldly evil and; and now Christian churches support the Satanic totalitarian agenda - as became explicitly evident in 2020 and since.

Any viable answer must include a refusal and rejection of theological Word Spells; and the inexorable demand for simplicity and clarity concerning what it is to be a Christian, what is entailed by becoming a follower of Jesus. 
A suitable answer must, like any truthful answer, depend on valid assumptions concerning the nature of reality. 
But it must also be the kind of short, simple, and concrete answer that would be acceptable in a law court.  
**
Note: This post was developed from a comment I made at Francis Berger's blog.

Is life after death important? CG Jung's opinion

Jung in his shirmer phase - beside his mistress/ extra-wife Toni
Regular readers will know that I regard Christianity to be, in essence, Jesus's offer of resurrected eternal Heavenly life to those who follow him. Yet this is very far from being regarded as the core of Christianity. Indeed most Christians would disagree - both now and throughout the history of the Christian churches. 
The idea that we might want/ need/ expect eternal life after mortal death - especially first-and-foremost - is something that the modern mind sees as a bad thing; selfish, childish, indeed ridiculous. To the typical modern atheist-stoic; a desire or demand for life everlasting is seen as irrational; and a product of psychological deficiencies such as wishful thinking and/or cowardice. 
It is interesting to consider what CJ Jung - son of a Protestant Pastor; in late life probably a deist rather than theist, and not a Christian - had to say about life after death, writing in the middle 20th century and in old age. 

It is not that I wish we had a life after death. In fact, I would prefer not to foster such ideas. 
Still, I must state, to give reality its due, that, without my wishing and without my doing anything about it, thoughts of this nature move about within me. 
I can't say whether these thoughts are true or false, but I do know they are there, and can be given utterance, if I do not repress them out of some prejudice. Prejudice cripples and injures the full phenomenon of psychic life. And I know too little about psychic life to feel that I can set it right out of superior knowledge...
I lend an attentive ear to the strange myths of the psyche, and take a careful look at the varied events that come my way, regardless of whether or not they fit in with my theoretical postulates. Unfortunately, the mythic side of man is given short shrift nowadays. He can no longer create fables. As a result, a great deal escapes him; for it is important and salutary to speak also of incomprehensible things. 
Such talk is like the telling of a good ghost story, as we sit by the fireside and smoke a pipe. What the myths or stories about a life after death really mean, or what kind of reality lies behind them, we certainly do not know. 
We cannot tell whether they possess any validity beyond their indubitable value as anthropomorphic projections. Rather, we must hold clearly in mind that there is no possible way for us to attain certainty concerning things which pass our understanding.

From Memories, Dreams, and Reflections by CG Jung 

Jung seems confident that ideas concerning life after death are in the realm of anthropomorphic stories we tell-ourselves, and therefore cannot in principle be understood in terms of truth to reality. 
Nonetheless Jung feels that there is a psychological reality to life after death - and he personally cannot-help but regard an afterlife as something that will happen to him. 
Such a perspective seems only to have been a genuine possibility as a relatively brief transitional phase; possible only for those who were raised religious, became atheist in adolescence or young adulthood, then came to value psychological (or social) aspects of religion as helpful (or indeed necessary) for an integrated and fulfilling life. 
In considering what is objectively real and knowable; Jung's perspective makes the same assumptions and exclusions as natural science - therefore its conclusions are inevitable: and Christianity becomes nothing more than a potentially therapeutic fairy-tale - something that it may make us feel better, if we believe it. 

In a word: for Jung, as for many other modern people, religion is, at best, a palliative. 
He would have said that (for many people) it is "good to believe" - and by "good" he meant good for our health and happiness, here-and-now. 
This (I think) is what underlies the common assertion (something we heard a lot from Prince/ King Charles - for instance) that "faith" is a good thing; while atheism is (usually a mistake, because is makes many people ill, miserable, dysfunctional. 

Jung may argue that life after death is important; but its importance is confined to how we are feeling in life before death. 
Life after death exists as an idea, and its reality relates to the role that ideas have in human functioning. 
(For Jung, this included a collective unconscious that was part of - and accessible to - all humans, and extended through many generations. Yet the nature and value of ideas in the collective unconscious ultimately and inevitably cashed-out in term of human mortal lives; human happiness or misery, health, social functionality and the like.) 
Life after death therefore is excluded from any cosmic role; it cannot have anything to do about solving the fundamental problems of existence - the problem of evil, and the problems of entropy (disease, degeneration, death). 
Life after death by Jung's account can affect what we think about such matters; it is a matter of adjustment to immoveable realities - it is a therapeutic understanding of religion.

As I said, Jung did not, apparently, seriously identify himself as a Christian; but here are plenty of people who do self-identify as Christian and who have a closely similar understanding of life after death. 

Paging Boromir! Anyone who approves of (real or imagined) "4-dimensional chess" strategies in politics is on the side of evil

Let me explain what's really going-on...

There has been, I notice, another and severe outbreak of 4-dimensional chess attribution among political commentary in relation to the current US President's foreign policy. 

I would suggest that politics when it is Good is actually very simple.

Whenever politics actually is, or aspires to be, complex, nuanced, multi-faceted - then we should know that we are confronted with our old friend the Boromir Strategy. 

Under all the rationalizations it's just another case of: Hey lads, let's use the One Ring to fight Sauron! 

It's not that the US President and his gang couldn't or wouldn't play some kind of 4-D chess game; but that insofar as they do operate thus - then they objectively are on the side of evil. 

And those political commentators and analysts who approve such modes of operation are part of the pseudo-alternative, but in fact totalitarian Establishment-allied, "Boromirosphere"...

They are doing the work of Satan; however they may self-identify or self-present as one of the Good Guys.