Bruce G. Charlton's Blog, page 25

How is it that successful, feted, mainstream Establishment people nonetheless regard themselves as "radicals"?

The phenomenon by which people who (perhaps) began life as cynical radicals or supposed-revolutionaries; later become successful and highly rewarded and decorated bureaucrats, managers, executives, politicians, and committee people - yet still regard themselves as radical - has been noticed (and sometimes mocked) for many decades. 

It was first apparent after those who had engaged in activism (demonstrations, sit-ins, etc) as students; later went on to join the Establishment, to gather prestigious jobs and positions, money, power, awards and medals (and, in the UK, titles such as Sir/ Dame/ Lord/ Lady)  - but often maintained their younger styles of self-presentation (hair, clothes, sexual lifestyle and the like); but always trumpeting their self-image as anti-Establishment, radical, leftist, altruistic, engaged etc. 

This is now so normal and near-universal as to be expected and largely unremarked. 

It is now so usual for Heads of Corporations, Professors and Presidents, doctors, lawyers, teachers, executives and managers express themselves as radical and leftist - that this has become mandatory and monitored; part of job applications and promotion procedures, and compulsory training...

Anyone who is not explicitly radical and anti-Establishment is indeed intentionally excluded from positions of high status, fame, power and wealth. 

As I said, when this is noticed it is usually to mock, or else to point-out the hypocrisy. 

Yet this phenomenon is, in truth, quite extraordinary and historically unprecedented; therefore we are dealing with a fundamental and significant phenomenon which demands a structural explanation.

To be clear: in the past Establishment people supported the Establishment. 

It is very strange indeed that in The West, now and for many decades Establishment people desire - and are indeed required - to subvert, destroy, and invert the Establishment (starting always with whatever is most good, or most functional, about the Establishment)!

This at first seems like a paradox or contradiction, for people to be destroying the basis of their own success; but it can be explained quite simply at a motivational level.  

If you imagine that you are a member of an alien civilization, "an alien", who is motivated by resentment against another civilization "the Establishment". 

Then it makes perfect sense for the alien to both do the best for himself here-and-now, within the Establishment, and also to do so in a way that tends to weaken and destroy the Establishment. 

Personal success is achieved by strategic destruction. 

If you regard yourself as an alien to the civilization that is your "host" which you fear and despise, then the best strategic route through life is to behave as a parasite that feeds-off the host. 

Although successful parasites weaken their host, and tend to destroy their own niche, and kill themselves; but if the parasite can evolve faster than the host and has foresight; then each parasite can be continually seeking new niches to exploit. 

For example, a path to success as a manager is to suck the blood from one organization to ones own advantage, then - just before the institution expires - move-on to vampirise another. 

That is precisely how the modern Establishment operates: both subjectively, in terms of their motivations - and also objectively in terms of the way that society has become structured as ruled by a managerial bureaucracy-mass media. 

(This is what lies behind the so-called "long march through the institutions" of the New Left. It was not achieved by tens of millions of middle class people all over the world following the blueprint of an obscure theoretician; but is the natural and inevitable consequence of implementing the inner motivations of the niche-seeking, parasitic post-1960s Establishment.)   

Such an explanation makes perfect sense of the self-image and actions of the Western ruling class. 

So, in what sense are the Western Establishment actual and conscious parasitic aliens - given that we are talking here about a large segment of the population?

My answer is, in the sense that the Establishment are atheist, materialist and hedonic in their fundamental nature and motivations - which means they are opposed to God, Divine Creation and Jesus Christ in the spiritual war of this world. 

In simple terms: by adopting ultimate assumptions about reality that are materialist/ spirit denying, creation-denying, god-rejecting, utilitarian - almost the entirety of the ruling class have joined the Devil's Party, adopted the world-view of demons, and are therefore quite naturally doing the work of Satan.   

The odd, superficially hypocritical and risible, apparently paradoxical, way in which cynical radicals develop into pillars of the Establishment while retaining their self-image and lifestyle as cynical radicals -- is actually a diagnostic symptom of the takeover of the West by those who are affiliated to the powers of purposive evil.  

It is from understanding things in this way that I conclude these are the most evil times in the history of the world. 

Notice: Barbara Pym continues

A decade ago-plus; I wrote a couple of posts about the English novelist Barbara Pym (1913-1980); and this is just to say I have continued to re-read these on an approximately two-year cycle ever since. 

I never seem to tire of her early novels; and every new reading brings a delight all the greater for being sure and certain. 

My present encounter is to hear the main five of the earliest novels on audiobook - currently Less Than Angels - which would probably be a good first try for anyone interested in exploring her work; since many of the  major "themes" are there (these include High Church Anglicans, anthropology, middle-aged spinsters, "distressed gentlewomen", and curates) and a large cast of younger people as well. 

Pym's alter ego (there is always one in each novel) is this time a writer: the bohemian, thirty-something author of women's magazine stories. 

Pym is very much a minority and specialist taste as a writer; it's "comedy of manners", based on close observation of foibles and reactions in the minutiae of everyday living. 

Not much happens: a church jumble sale or a seminar on African languages counts as a Big Event. 

But for some people in certain mood; BP is just what is wanted - a real treat.  

What would be better than what Jesus Christ has to offer?

God is an answer to the problem of our existence in reality. 

The Christian God is a personal creator; and as such provides the possibility of purpose and meaning, if we choose to align with the divine. 

This God loves us each as a parent loves his or her child; and therefore we may have a personal role in creation - as a member of God's loving family. 

Jesus Christ is an answer to the problem of our life in this world. 

This actual experienced world is a mixture: life and death, creation and destruction, good and evil, joy and despair, love and fear...

Jesus offers the possibility of a life of creation, good, joy and love - forever and unmixed. 

It seems to me that Jesus's offer is the best I know of, that I can believe.  

It has one disadvantage, which is that Heaven lies on the other side of death: we must first die and be resurrected if Heaven is to become possible: if we are to be fitted for Heaven, and if Heaven and our-self is to become eternal. 

The only offer that I can imagine which would be better than that of Jesus is if it was possible to provide Heaven on earth now and without dying. 

I don't believe that this is possible. I believe that the nature of this mortal life and world is such that entropy, death and evil are always going to be present.  

But I imagine that someone who could believe that real, unmixed, everlasting Heaven on earth and on this side of death was a genuinely possibility; would probably prefer it to what Jesus offers.    

 

In search of courage/ motivation

Ever since I began regularly blogging some 15 years ago; I have cycled around this distinctively modern problem of demotivation. Modern Western people are strikingly lacking in powerful motivators, compared with earlier generations - and this is the reason why we are so lacking in courage, so cowardly. 

The deep reason is obvious enough - our atheism, materialism, our systematically built-in cultural assumption that there is neither purpose nor meaning to life.

In a word: our nihilism. 

In seeking to escape such nihilism, some people turn to ideologies - but (lacking a personal and loving God) these always turn out to be rooted in negative values - hence incoherent; and incoherence cannot provide us with strong and lasting motivations. 

This is why people just go long with (what they perceive - as manipulated by the mass media) to be "the flow". 

Lacking inner motivation, they seek to conform to externally structured and short-termist goals relating to personal gratifications. Lacking inner motivation and ultimate purpose, they have no reason to be courageous. 

The answer is, of course, Christianity - but exactly what this implies is unclear. 

All of the major Christian churches are, and nearly all of Christian discourse is, nowadays so overwhelmingly corrupt and distorted in emphasis; that to become "a Christian" is only a very small start down the path of discovering a strong, valid and good motivation for life. 

One problem is that Christians are told to seek the truth in "a church" (i.e. to discover and obey a/the "true" church) - yet Christianity is replete with discourses placed at a level of "idealization" and detached abstraction; such that whatever was resolved by such procedures could never motivate a flea - and doesn't! 

This applies to the vast structure of logic and legalism, complex doctrines and dogmas, wranglings over language and translation, ancient history and context; and endless bitter disputes over the valid structures of hierarchy and authority.  

Consequently, lacking strong motivators, the actual motivations of Christians are just "whatever is socially and personally expedient": whatever is most rewarding, least risky, and in-general easiest in their particular societal niche. 

The would-be Christian falls into such mire because he is told always to seek truth (and motivation) in some external and objective - yet always and necessarily human at the interface - persons and institutions. 

In other words, there is an assumption built-in (from the history of religion and culture) that truth is a thing-out-there, and that truth ought to impose upon us - our job being merely to let this happen.

This assumption talks as if human experience, consciousness, awareness, intuition and insight - had not existence except as distractions. 

Actual people (particular human individuals) are edited out from it, except as a source of interference. 

The picture it accepts is one of a human passivity that excludes the essential "presence" in the description of our distinctive existence as living beings. 

What people don't realize is that this not how things are, but it is a theory of knowledge and behaviour and life and spirit. As long as we allow ourselves to assume such a theory, then we will always be alienated (because we are not actively participating in the process), can never know truth (because it is out there), and shall never be strongly motivated of our-selves - but only secondarily following some external source of guidance. 

Even when someone escapes (for a while) from the deadly assumptions of our civilization, and recognizes that the world is not out-there but participative; and that motivation must derive from our primary involvement in the creation of reality - then the actual daily/ hourly business of being motivated to Good remains a present problem...

But at least it is a real problem, in which we are primarily and personally concerned; and a problem that involves both us and the world; both us and God...

And, after all, this mortal life is a transitional phases - not a thing to be solved. 

What we should seek is the courage and commitment to keep engaged and keep learning; guided both from within and by our real and creative participation in divine creation. 

Ultimately, there is no possible division between inner and outer, subjective and external - reality is inconceivable without a basis that includes both. Yet at the same time we are not immersed in unity, but distinct beings. Our picture of reality should explain how this works. 

And like the knowledge itself, this is something that is learned by inner participation and engagement in creation. 

Learning this is not possible when the self is self-expunged; it is not something learned-from any conceivable external source.  

Our selves must be engaged and participate in the reality outside ourselves. 

Such knowledge is motivating because we personally and actively know it, and such motivation gives courage. 

Perhaps a womanly and procreative aspect of God is necessary for a solid belief in eternal life?

I am re-reading Geoffrey Ashe's fascinating study The Virgin (1976), which is focused on Mary, Mother of Jesus Christ (Ashe was a Roman Catholic) - but takes in the broader perspective of goddesses throughout history, in a non-hostile - indeed sympathetic - fashion. 

He makes the stimulating suggestion that a Goddess was primal in ancient spirituality, because she was the assumed basis of the procreative hence creative; and that some form of female deity is needed for Men really to believe in a life beyond life. 

The idea is that a supreme male deity cannot sustain belief in a full life beyond life. So that when the ruling Goddess goes; the afterlife becomes very partial, ghostly, and all-but irrelevant. 

Male deities could never bestow life of their own nature as the Mother had done. Zeus and his colleagues were immortal, but they did not transmit that quality to their human subjects... 

Through most civilized and semi-civilized lands... death ceased to be a passage to a future life... the dead were no longer pictured as significantly existing. They were reduced to feeble, bloodless shades in a gloomy underworld. For the Greeks this was Hades...

With the fading of the Eternal-Womanly, with her cutting-down or anathematisation, [for the vast majority, with extremely few exceptions] death had become the end with no prospect of rebirth. 

Israel's shift was similar... The Old Testament has no doctrine of survival or return... the dead become shades. They do down to an underworld called Sheol, The Grave.

The sole Israelite immortality is collective... God's chosen community...  

I think it likely that Ashe is "on to something" here. 

In the book; Ashe is preparing the ground for an attempted explanation of the rise of Mary the mother of Jesus as a more and more important focus of Christian faith - recognizing that this phenomenon cannot be accounted for by Scripture, or by the practices of the earlier generations of Christians. 

With Mariolatry (Ashe says) we seem to be dealing with some kind of deep and direct apprehension of spiritual reality, probably coming from grassroots, bottom-up, the "masses". Christian leaders and theologians seem merely to have been trying to explain and validate theoretically something that already was beginning to become important in practice. 

From my own experience; I find it striking that Mormonism included a very strong element of the "Eternal-Womanly" with its dyadic deity composed of Father and Mother in Heaven. 

And - perhaps in consequence? - the "Mormon culture of salvation" was (at least until fairly recently) probably the most vividly lived and believed-in form of Christian afterlife among the major Christian churches. 

The spiritually unsatisfactory and unconvincing nature of one-sidedly masculine, Christianity is something I find very striking. I mean the monochrome hardness, negativity, heartlessness, legalism and this-worldliness of Mary-rejecting forms of Protestantism is something I feel is very evident. It is one reason why England ceased to be "Merrie" with the reformation.

But there is something of this in all of Christianity. 

(And this defect has not-at-all been ameliorated, let alone cured, by the dominant trend towards secular materialism in all the Christian churches, which comes-in on the back of leftist ideology. Spiritual problems can only be made worse by "liberalization" - which is actually and always covert apostasy.) 

Insisting upon the non-sexual nature of God does not work either - this is just an attempt to escape contradictions absences and by raising abstractions; which has the effect of confusing people - and thereby impairing motivations.

Furthermore, the idea and ideals of ultimate transcendence of sexuality point away from Christianity (rooted in Jesus, the divine incarnate mortal Man) and towards Oneness spirituality, where (eventually) every-thing merges with everything else - in a timeless stasis.   

The problem is that it does not really make deep theoretical and theological sense to insert Mary alongside the (masculine) Trinity; and she is therefore always accorded an ultimately secondary and intercessionary" role in creation - no matter how central is her position in everyday worship (eg. devotion to the Rosary, or Marian icons). 

But even worthwhile degrees of habitual lifestyle and provision of psychological comfort are insufficient motivations in a world so dominated by evil-affiliated institutions. 

In our unavoidably self-conscious era; these inner contradictions about Mary have become nigh-lethal to strong Christian faith - as is evident all around us.

 

This is why I regard Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Mariolatry as "on the right lines" but ultimately insufficient and unsatisfactory. 

And, as Ashe described , this requisite kind of development can only come from directly apprehended knowledge - it is not already existent. 

To emphasize: what is required is not something that can honestly be derived from existing Scripture, theology or history.

Furthermore it needs to arise bottom-up; which means from individuals, not institutions.  

If modern Men are to grasp and retain the needful structuring-focus on resurrected eternal life; if we are to live-by knowledge of Heaven; then we will need explicitly to discover and embrace what will be new truths of eternal verities concerning women in relation to creation and salvation. 

Let me be clear - Traditional Christianity is now always and all-the-time dishonest

By my evaluation, traditional Christians are being consistently dishonest about what their faith actually entails. 

They talk and write that real Christianity is about humble obedience to the obvious and necessary truth of that external authority which is The Church. 

Meanwhile, all the time, top to bottom they are making personal subjective choices. 

They have chosen their church, chosen to regard it as the real church, the true church, the necessary necessary church. 

They have chosen the evidences by which they argue for all these - they have chosen how to interpret these evidences. 

They have chosen which among the leaders and administrators and practitioners of their church they will regard as true and worthy of obedience - and conversely they have chosen which voices are heretical, wicked, foolish etc. 

They have chosen what is vital and significant among sins and virtues, and one a daily basis they choose how to live their Christian lives among the almost limitless possibilities. 

These are just facts about religion, about Christianity, here and now, as it actually is. They have been and are exercising personal choices all the time. 

And speaking and writing about the need for humble obedience to the obvious truth of their Church - as if that was possible - makes any difference to the facts. 

It is therefore dishonest, in-denial, and grossly misleading. 

To have an honest and relevant discussion, it is first vital to acknowledge the realities -- and the reality is that not a single person in The West actually practices the humble, obedient, Church-led religions so insisted-upon by Traditionalist Christians. 

They do not, and neither does anybody else - and it is impossible. 

Such plain facts of Christian living ought to be the agreed and basic starting point; if what is desired is coherent and helpful discussion.

Motivational speakers, or writers - Edward Dutton on Jonathan Bowden

I recently read my old colleague Ed Dutton's biography of a "radical Right" political figure called Jonathan Bowden (1962-2012); which has just been published. 

I had never heard of Bowden until after he had died, and was not interested by what I discovered. His ideas were seemingly derived from the same kind of (fundamentally deficient) "based", "reactionary", nationalistic, Nietzschian, this-worldly and hedonically-calibrated non-religious sources as are always knocking about on the internet - ideas capable of generating a little bit of light, but no sustained heat.

So it seems that JB was not an original or coherent philosopher - it was not what he said that made him distinctive, but how he said it. 

What was of general interest about Bowden, as Dutton presents him, is that he was an orator of genius, a live public speaker who was capable of inspiring and motivating people in a remarkable way - so that those present retained the influence for a long time afterwards.

It seems that the inspirational effect was sufficiently objective that Bowden has developed a posthumous following, based upon videos of his speeches.  

Ed describes him as a "shaman" - to emphasize the strong magical spell that JB cast on his listeners. 

The other striking aspect of Bowden was that he was a long-term and wide-ranging self-aggrandizing liar about almost everything to do with himself. 

This was very extreme; and while his friends and colleagues realized that Bowden was prone to exaggerate and fabricate; apparently none of them realized the sheer scope and depth of his dishonesty. 

As well as all kinds of stuff about a constellation of false academic qualifications and intellectual attainments; perhaps the strangest lie was a highly elaborate construction about being a wealthy and successful businessman, with a wife and four (or five) children. 

Bowden provided people with all kinds of everyday details and specifics about the family's history and current doings - when the reality was that Bowden was never married, never had a job - and subsisted on a very small income from his father and benefits, probably never had a girlfriend, and lived alone in a rotting caravan. 

This strange story makes me think about the role of motivational speaking, and by extension writing - the considerable extent to which we seek, and rely upon this...

And how there are some people who are exceptionally gifted in this direction; and in ways that seem to depend extraordinarily little upon their actual attainments, or the content of what they are saying. 

On the one hand, it is striking how highly valued is this ability - how grateful people are, for being stirred-up and given confidence and direction. 

And on the other hand, how little substance is needed for this to happen - or even how that substance may be vague, impossible, or incoherent.   

It seems a fact about humans that we desire to be inspired by others - no matter or unworthy or flimsy are those chosen - none of which seems to make a difference to the intense loyalty and affection that are directed at those capable of doing such inspiring. 

As Dutton analyses it; this is what Max Weber termed "charisma" in a leader - and charisma can, to some extent, be associated with a variety of adverse and undesirable experiences and personality traits. 

Nowadays, charisma is mostly artificial and manufactured by the machinery of advertising, public relations, propaganda and saturation mass media coverage; so that someone without any exceptional degree of genuine charisma can be passed off as a "shaman"...

(Just as the public can successfully be manipulated to react to very ordinary-looking actresses and actors, pop stars or other public figures; as if they were truly beautiful, handsome or sexy; or can be induced to regard mildly-competent, socially-conformist and ideologically-mainstream pundits or writers; as if they were towering intellects, path-breaking radicals, or creative powerhouses...) 

But there is also such a thing as real interpersonal charisma - that does not depend on anything except human presence and the human voice - and this "real thing" was apparently what Jonathan Bowden had in spades. 

Lady Day

It seems worth noting that this is Lady Day  - March 25th, officially the Feast of the Annunciation, commemorating the day that Jesus was conceived on his Mother by the Spirit of God. 

Lady Day was greatly celebrated in Merrie England, and was indeed - until 1752 and the imposition of the Gregorian Calendar, when it was moved to the 6th April - the first day of the New Year.

Coming four days after the Vernal Equinox, Lady Day has the same kind of astronomical basis as Christmas has in relation to the Winter Solstice - and thereby links with natural religion. 

England in the Dark Ages and Middle Ages was known for an especially high degree of devotion to Mary - probably something that came via the Celtic Church, with its many links to Constantinople; but was powerfully sustained over many generations. 

It was a day for various kinds of religious celebrations, and also a day on which fairies might be seen; suggesting a distinctively Celtic harmony and synergy of the pagan and Christian forms. 

Lady Day is timely because such matters are much on my mind; in particular the question of the underlying spiritual reality (rather than the theological superstructure) of Christian devotion to Mary - which strikes me as overall a Good Thing, however critical I am of most of the details.

Devotion to Mary seems like a corrective to the abstractions of orthodox monotheistic Trinitarianism, and a heart-warming of Christianity - as well as recognition of a fundamental and metaphysical reality. 

It also seems like a part of England's destiny and the destiny of the English; in some rather obscure way, that I think needs elucidation and therefore deserves a greater effort of understanding.   

We Are Not Alone, objectively - but subjectively, we are alienated

The alien Marvin (the Martian), asserts objective reality 

Modern alienation is a very real thing: which is to say the experience of being cut-off from God, reality, this world, other people... is inescapable as a subjective experience, and this has profound religious, social and political consequences. 

Yet alienation is an inwardly-caused phenomenon. Alienation is not a reality imposed by the external nature of things.

We were all spontaneously and involuntarily (and most unconsciously) immersed in "everything else" at the early phases of our existence - and that is the primary reality of divine creation. 

It could be called a complete web of "interconnectedness" - except that "connect" assumes that we begin as separate, and must overcome separateness by connecting. The reality is the opposite - we begin as only partially separated in our awareness from the oneness of divine creation. That is the baseline.  

We modern Men are now alienated because in the course of human development we have each cut ourselves off from that spontaneous immersion in "everything else": the barrier arises from within us. 

That barrier which cuts-off modern adults can be, and is at times, dissolved (or demolished); for instance by dreaming sleep, mental illness and brain disease, intoxication - or sometimes by meditation.

But all of these make us dysfunctional, and none of them succeed in restoring the natural spontaneity of an earlier phase of consciousness.

The earlier phase of spontaneous immersive consciousness is like the childhood phase of development - such that once an individual has developed beyond childhood, childhood can never wholly or healthily be re-established.

In other words; we should take the cut-offness of modern alienation as a fact-of-life and the basis for further developments - yet we also need to bear in mind that the ultimate reality is, as it always was, one in which we are naturally and inescapably immersed in reality - including the reality of the divine, of the universe, of other people. 

Therefore we do not need to "re-connect" because dis-connection is not the problem. 

Instead; the problem is in our own consciousness - which is "stuck" in a phase that denies the reality of its immersion in the whole of divine creation. 

What we need to work-on is our own personal consciousness of reality: we need to become conscious of that we we are currently not conscious. 

Modern Man usually denies the reality of that of which he is not spontaneously conscious - such as the divine. (That is: we deny the reality of God because we Moderns are no longer spontaneously and continuously aware of God, as was once the case.) 

I am saying that we need, instead, to acknowledge the reality of our connectedness-to/ immersion-in the divine; and from that conviction strive to become conscious of the actuality of this link.

Acknowledge reality: then strive for awareness of that reality...

To put it differently; we Modern men have (under God's will) developed alienation, which is an increasing individual independence from the whole - and this development has happened because this is also a greater freedom and agency*. 

In other words; the "universal" awareness that was once spontaneous and inescapable, is now voluntary and chosen.

What is needed is not a return but a development. So, this voluntary and chosen acknowledgement of connectedness to other people/ the world/ God is a new thing - a deliberate step forward - not a surrender or relaxation backwards..

A doing, not an undoing.

Because new, the needful awareness is subjectively experienced differently from the old childhood or child-like consciousness - we need to be self-aware, aware of our own awareness. 

This is not under compulsion nor necessity; this is something that we are aware that we have-chosen (and that it could have been, could be, otherwise). 

From such a perspective, all looks different. We know what we know via our subjectivity - that is; our subjectivity is part of all possibilities of knowing. 

Subjectivity makes everything possible, and a change in the nature of our subjectivity affects everything. 

So a deliberate attention to developing consciousness makes a profound difference to everything - including our experience of Christianity.   

**

*Modern alienation is therefore meant-to-be just a phase; en route to a higher - more developed, indeed more divine - form of consciousness. 

There can be no political "Right" - so, what instead?

I have often noted that there can be no political Right that is genuinely distinct from the Left; unless it is rooted in religion. 

In other words, what people call the Right (including the "far Right" - whatever that may be) are from a Christian perspective and at root, just a type of Leftism - that is, they are all this-worldly and aiming at hedonic outcomes (i.e. human psychological gratification).

I believe this is true, and consequential; but whereas 15 years ago I saw religion in terms of a church, now I regard it as unavoidably personal: Romantic Christianity. 

So how then does religion work as an alternative to the pervasive Leftism? 

The answer is that the real alternative to Leftism is much, much more radical than anything ever dreamed of by any kind of The Right. 

The Right tries to keep what it likes from our Leftist Western civilization, and eradicate what it does not like; but Romantic Christianity recognizes that this process must cut very deeply indeed to eradicate the roots of evil - so deep, indeed, that our kind of civilization seems inconceivable. 

What would happen instead is also inconceivable in detail and at large - except that it would be more like a family than a state. 

However unsatisfactory this individualist/ romantic world view may seem to be, especially to those whose ideology continues to be socio-political and group-ist in nature - it does seem to be the only positive (Christian) possibility; given the nature of way that human consciousness has developed.