Bruce G. Charlton's Blog, page 31

The Litmus Tests are really learning opportunities

The Litmus Tests to which I so often refer on this blog, are a mixture of old and new - they are continually being added-to. 

I first conceptualized them in 2020 in reference to the Birdemic and Peck, which were added onto much longer established Totalitarian Establishment strategies - such as pacifism, socialism, feminism and sexual revolution, antiracism, climate change etc. 

Since 2020 there have been further Litmus Tests, such as (especially in the UK) the war against the Fire Nation. And currently there is a Litmus Test with reference to taking sides in the civil war that is splitting the globalist materialists of the Totalitarian Establishment.

(Or apparently so - because the civil war may ultimately, at the highest level, be a faked show put-on to manipulate the masses.)   

It is pretty clear that the Litmus Tests never stop. As commenter Laeth has said; each new Test probes for different vulnerabilities among those people (and institutions) who had been able to hold-out against being assimilated into active support to the Totalitarian Agenda*. 

Thus the healthism of the Birdemic/ Peck led to the corruption of most of the the holdouts among mainstream Christian churches... Conservative Catholics, Evangelicals and Mormons that had resisted the sexual revolution; became wildly-enthusiastic about closing their churches and suspending activities until further notice; and imposing lockdown, atomistic social isolation, and habits of systematic interpersonal fear.  

Later; some of those who had successfully resisted the Birdemic manipulations, then joined with a nationally-orchestrated, media-constructed, Orwellian "two-minute hate session" against the Fire Nation - a two-minutes that has continued for three years, so far (and which is still actively attempting to create a self-annihilating all-out state of war, with the UK as prime target). 

The current situation wit hte new President in the USA is but the most recent Litmus Test. This has, like previous tests, been able to subvert and "turn" a significant proportion of those "holdouts" who had resisted the Birdemic and Fire Nation Tests. It seems that perhaps a majority of "based" online anti-woke, self-identified Christians; have gone all-in for an almost delirious combination of schadenfreude with this-worldly-optimism; the whole thing focused on various Antichrist-figures among the mainstream, totalitarian establishment. 

In one sense these Litmus Tests can be understood as an almost inevitable consequence of the increasing power of Satan and his demons and human servants within this-world - clearly, they will continue to win more-and-more souls to an more-certain (self-chosen) damnation. 

On the other hand they may perhaps be seen as tests allowed by God; because of the opportunities each one brings for a different kind of spiritual learning, and therefore spiritual development - an education in preparation for our post-mortal resurrected life. 

(Which education is, IMO, the purpose of our sustained mortal life. We each continue to live because we have more that it would be good - and perhaps essential - for us to learn.) 

However, I personally do not see the Litmus test as allowed by God nor as a divinely ordained method of spiritual education. Instead I see them as things that God cannot prevent, in this world as it actually is. 

My understanding is: The Litmus Tests originate variously, but become strategies due to their potential for evil and are sustained for that reason. 

They are not of-God; but God can and does (as always) make the best of the bad situations that result, because of his love for each of us, as His divine children. 

And we should take the same attitude of making the best spiritual use of the situations. We should regard the Litmus Tests as direct challenges - not to our peace/ prosperity/ comfort/ convenience; but challenges to our innermost spiritual freedom, the primacy of Christian love, and the requirement for absolute personal responsibility. 

The core part of this is realizing that, for all their geopolitical qualities, the Litmus Tests are Not primarily about material circumstances for large numbers of people in this-world - on the contrary; their true primary reality is directed at the free individual human soul; who always-can and needs-to discern reality in-and-for-himself; whatever the pressures and distractions of this material and social world.   

*Note: As I have previously said; the special significance of Litmus Tests, as with all temptations to sin, is that failure on even a single Test can be sufficient to induce a person to choose reject salvation and choose damnation. Therefore, it is a misunderstanding to express satisfaction that some particular person or institution has passed one, or several, or a majority of the Litmus Tests. In principle and in practice; even when just a single Litmus Test is failed, then that may be a sufficient basis for corruption and inversion of values. And this is made much more likely because the Global Totalitarian Establishment will reward and amplify any such failure; to convert passive acquiesce into active support.     

The scope of aphorisms

I have often recommended aphoristic writers. 

And I have (at least since I began regular blogging in 2010 - a year or two after I became a Christian) myself developed an aphoristic style of writing (as may be evident by comparing my earlier writing). 

So, I need no persuading of the virtues of aphorism. 

However there are limitations on the effectiveness and value of this type of writing. 

An aphorism only takes the reader so far and to an uncertain destination. 

Why? Because really to comprehend, we must see the workings of thinking. 

The ideal is not to present conclusions merely, but that the reader - through the process of reading - participates in the thought processes of the writer.

 

Therefore the best use of aphorisms comes when they are presented in some quantity, and in a sequence that represents the movement of the author's thought. 

When this is done well, a reader can get benefit from the journey - even when the destination turns-out to be a place he dislikes. 

**

Note: The first aphoristic text that grabbed me was Wittgenstein's On Certainty; which is derived from notes made on a few occasions; jumping around a problem, tackling it by rushes, from different angles. I can't remember Wittgenstein's conclusions, if any; but I appreciated the way he tackled the business. 

Is a real (or feigned) resurgence of Secular Right "common sense" politics, en route to the needful spiritual awakening?

There is, for a month, what superficially appears to be a resurgence of Secular Right "common sense" politics from the USA (i.e. a politics rhetorically rooted in national economic and societal self-interest); and this is depicted, by some if its supporters, as being the first step in a rebuilding of Christendom; - therefore a stage en route to the much-needed spiritual awakening. 

Putting aside that this Secular Right revival is, I believe, feigned not real - and that this will soon become evident - even if we were to accept it at face value, then is it "a good thing" spiritually?

We cannot expect any answer to this question from studying individual policies, e.g. by trying to infer an implicit coherent net-strategy behind the flurry of apparent contradictions*. 

As always we need to infer underlying intentions, motivations etc - which are rooted in the nature and affiliations of those persons and groups making the statements and policies.

If, however, we assume for the sake of argument that we are witnessing a genuine attempt to build a stronger secular society - a society that is clearing the ground of the self-hating and self-destroying post-sixties New Leftism; and if we assume that this is being done in order to promote the material well-being of nations - we can then ask from a Christian perspective whether, if it is intended and could happen, this would be A Good Thing?   

Would it be A Good Thing if the USA could become a stronger nation, characterized by enhanced military power; secure borders; enforcement of law and order; a more efficient, more meritocratic, more genuinely productive, and more home-grown economy etc...

Would this kind of material improvement actually be A Good Thing for the spiritual status of its people (and of the world)?  

On the surface, the answer seems obvious - that such a society would be preferable to what has been the case for the past several decades. 

But on the other side, we also need to look ahead: we need to ask whether a stronger and more cohesive, but still fundamentally materialist, God-less, acquisitive, consumerist, comfortable, better-entertained, techno-totalitarian society would really be A Good Thing? 

We need to ask whether this is what is most needed - here, now? 

Whether the vast human effort and attention, bribery and compulsion, involved in striving for such change to such a society, is not very badly misplaced? 

And most fundamentally to ask whether this is possible At All? Given all that we should have learned by-now, about the innate self-destructiveness and evil-tendencies of any and all such societies? 

After all, the strong, increasingly-Godless, rapidly-growing USA of the 1950s was exactly this sort of success story. 

Yet, even at that time, in the mid 20th century; it was clear to thoughtful and observant Christians and secular people alike, that it just would-not-do, and was inevitably doomed to go (more or less) exactly where it actually went.

There are many examples of such analysis, but one will suffice: Nihilism by Eugene Rose, later Father Seraphim.  

People here-and-now need to step-back from immediate, and substantially manipulated, emotionality; and instead consider such long-term, strategic, spiritual matters; because we can be sure that those who practice the dark arts of Geopolitics are already doing so. 

 

*Note: Those with memories that extend back more than a few months, ought to have learned that having some public figure speaking some or several specific factual truths, or refuting one or a few of the innumerable lies of mainstream Leftism; does Not amount to anything At All, in terms of indicating a trend towards a truthful, honest, more-Good society. When underlying metaphysical assumptions are poisonous, then debates over particular assertions are always utterly ineffectual. 

The lesson of so-called AI: Most of Man's "thinking" is just "thinking-about", like the abstract symbolic token-juggling of Artificial Intelligence

If you have ever experienced real thinking on a subject, you will know that this rare and relatively brief activity is qualitatively different from thinking-about the same thing. 

Once you have actually thought on a matter, you can recognize when others have not - but are merely parroting on that subject. And you will also be aware that most of your own speaking and writing is also a species parroting - even when it is a matter of parroting your own previous real-thinking... 

(This, by the way, is analogous to Wittgenstein's distinction between doing Philosophy, and the usual academic business of just "parroting" on the subject. It is what I mean when I say that I was only doing science from 1994 to 2015, although I was officially "a scientist" for some years on either side of that.)   

The current mass imposition of so-called "AI" (Artificial Intelligence) provides one potentially valuable learning experience, if it makes us realize (with shame) how much of our own mental activity is hardly superior to the kind of automatic and unconscious processing of these computer programmes.

The shame is that Man is free, hence capable of doing more than parroting. 

But computers are not Beings and cannot be free; hence they are always, only, and necessarily; forever stuck in the activity of "thinking-about" - by which I mean the whole business is symbolic and abstract, and the relationship of this token-juggling to real-reality is purely asserted; and the validity of the assertion purely conjectural*. 

(*This applies even when computers are used by spiritual Beings. such - especially- as demons; the computer cannot ever itself become a Being, because all Beings are eternally pre-existent, and cannot be made or destroyed. But a computer and its activities may be included within the scope of a the spirit of a Being; rather as (but in a material way) the water in our blood may be included in our own Being.) 

We can describe the business of thinking-about in terms of tokens; tokens that "represent" things, concepts etc, and the "thinking-about" is about making arrangements with these tokens. 

The tokens are supposed to represent reality, in some way; but there is no "participation" in this reality - the token is not that which it represents, and the processes of token manipulation are utterly separate from the reality that is supposed to be represented by it. 

No matter how much it may be claimed otherwise, the tokens and what happens to them, are not that which they purport to represent.  

But there is a kind of thinking which is involved in the actuality of that which is being-thought, a thinking that participates in reality. This is something I have tried to discuss in terms such as primary thinking, and direct knowing (and which is discussed in Rudolf Steiner's books Truth and Knowledge, and The Philosophy of Freedom). 

This participating thinking can be envisaged (although this description here is linguistic, hence itself, of course, a model) in terms of our thinking becoming the same as the thinking of other Beings; a sharing of thinking in real time. 

This is reality because thinking is real - so to believe the above we must also recognize that our thinking is potentially part of ultimate reality... Our thinking changes the world. 

But many/most people nowadays assert that our human thinking is itself only a symbolic activity, that our thinking is just another instance of token-juggling - and this elucidates why so many people are so completely confused by and about AI. 

Because they have decided that human thinking is exactly the same kind of abstract symbolic merely-representative activity as computation, then they can find no difference between thinking and the stuff that AI programs are doing.

But much/ most of what we modern Westerners call thinking, is indeed guilty as charged: merely symbolic, merely representative, merely pattern-making with tokens...  

And perhaps more so now than ever before, because of our ideology that this Must Be what thinking is, that thinking cannot-be otherwise - and to believe anything else is wishful thinking or delusional. 

Thereby, that non-participating, alienated, symbolic-representative understanding of the world which led-to, is-encapsulated-by, and is imposed upon Men by the current so-called AI - becomes habitual, and indeed mandatory, in public discourse. 

To think otherwise is partly a matter of assumptions, and partly of experience. If you have never experienced primary thinking, direct knowing, then it is easy to believe that it does not exist - or that it is just a self-deluded variant of that token-juggling which constitutes almost all of our personal, social, and professional living. 

And people probably never will experience the participating possible in thinking, if they are not motivated to do it; unless they invest a level of time, attention and effort that is extraordinarily rare - even, or especially, among the intellectual classes involved in science, academic, law, philosophy - and Christian theology. 

Note: A clearer understanding of the distinction between abstract-symbolic, token-shuffling thinking-about, and the participative possibility of real thinking, may be had from a careful reading of Owen Barfield's Saving the Appearances (1957). 

Courage without hope? Once possible, possible no more

One of the ideas of JRR Tolkien that seems to have influence far beyond the scope of his works, is that of the Northern idea of courage without hope. "Northern", especially in terms of the Norse culture of Scandinavia (including Iceland), and also the broader Germanic culture, including Anglo-Saxon England.  

It seems that the Northern style of paganism was one without ultimate hope, because only the greatest heroes could look forward to a continuation of martial life beyond death; but (in the Scandinavian religion) even these, and the gods themselves, were destined to be defeated and annihilated in the final battle of Ragnarok.

The quality that Tolkien, and others, admire about Northern courage, is that such Men would continue to strive and to fight, despite that they accepted the certainty of defeat. 

This kind of bleak, stoic, attitude of courage without hope, is one that is often advocated as suitable for modern Men; since our culture is also one without ultimate hope. 

Indeed moderns are without even the proximate possibility of a temporary persistence of life beyond death; as warriors training for that final, doomed-to-fail, battle.

Something similar might be asserted for the Hebrews of the Old Testament, who seem to have believed themselves all to be destined to a (literally) nightmarish post-mortal existence as demented ghosts in Sheol; yet who were apparently capable of extreme fortitude and striving.  

But I regard the conceptualization of courage without hope to be a modern, anachronistic, and fundamentally untrue characterization of the attitude of ancient Men. I regard the conceptualization as flawed by failing to take into account that ancient Men were much more groupish in their consciousness, much less individual. 

Ancient Men were not alienated, did not experience themselves as cut-off from other people, the natural world, and the world of spirits and gods. 

On the contrary, they seem to have experienced life as spontaneously immersed in the consciousness of these other Beings. Their awareness, and their actual perceptions, included other Men, animals, plants, spirits and gods - and the dead were, at times, directly experienced as being present and active.  

My understanding is that this spontaneously immersive and diffusely-aware consciousness, this connectedness to other including spirits and the dead, meant that ancient Men could not be without hope in the way that modern Men routinely are. 

We Moderns are spontaneously alienated from "the world" from our adolescence; and we are kept in this state of genuine hope-less-ness through adult life by both implicit and explicit metaphysical assumptions of our culture. 

We Moderns are not just alone in a dead universe, we mostly believe that our consciousness is a mere by-product of brain functioning; we are taught that the only communication is via signals, symbols, words and images; all of which are distorted, manipulative, and prone to misinterpretation -- so we can rely on nothing to be true. 

We are even taught that our inner subjectivity, our stream of thinking, is cut-off from our own minds and bodies; as well as isolated from every-body and every-thing else -- so our self-awareness and -experience is trapped and helpless, a mere prisoner inside the brain-box.  

Our culture both asserts, and has these assumptions built-into public discourse - mass media, official communications, laws, rules and regulations; that the universe happened without overall purpose or meaning, that the material is the only reality, that there are no gods or spirits; and that human life is a merely contingent product of prior material causes. 

We are said to be no more than a "random" combination of genes, developing in an accidental environment, and bounded by a death which entails complete destruction of body and mind. 

Thus modern Man is hope-less, disconnected, and alone in an utterly futile universe that lacks purpose and where values are merely temporary expedients; conventions made-up to motivate people duing their brief existences and to make society possible. 

Therefore, ancient Men were never hope-less in the way that is normal for modern Man. Their courage was, indeed, rooted in a spontaneous, unconscious and inevitable sense of connectedness to a purposive and meaningful reality - innate assumptions that were far more powerful than even the most nihilistic religious conceptualizations. 

In modern Men, as we see all around us; hopelessness leads inexorably to cowardice; because there is no reason at all for Men to be courageous in the nihilistic world of Western Culture.   

What makes Good good?

All Christians believe that God is Good and loves us. 

But what does this actually mean? 

What does it mean to be Good? 

In particular; is Good a matter of preference merely, as modern materialistic ideology would have it. Are Good and evil "relative" and interchangeable? 

What this "relativism" of values seems to mean in current Western/ Globalist culture, in an underlying and implicit way, is that what matters are peoples' feelings (or more exactly, some peoples' feelings) - especially their "hedonic status", i.e. whether they are happy or suffering. 

What counts as Good is what is believed to lead to happiness, while evil is whatever causes suffering (or is asserted to cause suffering) - and Good and evil can therefore change places according to the cause of gratification/misery in the current situation. 

It should be noted that this modern Western hedonic morality as the basis of values, is rooted in the assumption that we can objectively know, and indeed measure, the hedonic outcome of choices... 

The assumptions that we know and can quantify other-people's state of happiness; and that we understand the relationship between present action and future emotions - including in large numbers of people; and that that we can predict the major psychological consequences of material actions.

These assumptions seem to me nothing but wishful-thinking at best; and most often sheerly-obvious nonsense...

Nonetheless; these are among the assumptions upon-which modern mainstream morality and values are based.  

  

Or is there instead some objective basis to Good and evil? By "objective" I mean here to ask: is there something about the nature of reality that distinguishes Good from evil? And if there is something objective about Good - what is it? 

Traditional orthodox mainstream Christian theology has it that God is Good because God created everything from nothing, because God is "omni" in nature. 

This is the argument of monotheism, something that this type of Christian shares with Jews and Moslems, and which is rooted in an assertion that God is Good because there is nothing else. 

In other words, by this argument, God is Good because God is everything, so that it is irrational, meaningless, to believe otherwise. Because there is nothing else but God - to be evil is meaningless, futile, insane... evil (by this account) has nowhere to go, and nothing to believe-in. 

The obvious objection to the monotheistic omni-God argument; is that if God made everything, is everything, controls and knows everything - then this abolishes the difference between Good and evil. 

The trad-orthodox definition of evil is more a matter of "Good is God" than "God is Good"; because (by this account) there is ultimately nothing except God and that which is wholly made by God - and God has been defined as Good. 

Apparent differences between Good and evil can therefore only be illusory, or temporary... But, even then, it is unclear why God should make or allow such illusions. 

(Indeed, it is unclear why the omni-God should do anything at all - since everything that has happened, is happening, or could happen - is all God Himself and his own 100% God-made creation. Creation seems to change nothing essential, to have no purpose or direction; because everything always was/is/shall-be.) 

Therefore, if we regard Good as relativistic, we just get a kind of this-worldly hedonic therapy, in which anything and everything is "justified" by assertions that it will make "people" happier, or less miserable. 

Or else, by trying to make Goodness identical with an omni-God, by asserting that all-is-God and God-is-Good; we end up actually abolishing the distinction between Good and evil. 

Anyone evil is then insane by his opposition to the only actual reality... Yet even this statement does not stand, because God must have made that person the way he is - i.e. insane.

The omni-mono-God philosophy explains nothing because it explains everything!

And such a conception of God seems especially antagonistic to Christianity; which must surely have an essential place for the divine Man Jesus Christ, and his doings at some point in history; and for the necessity of (in some meaning) "following" Jesus.

For a Christian; Jesus must make a difference, and that difference must be deep, cosmic, temporally-located, crucial. 

My own views on this subject have been expounded scores of times on this blog; but I will focus on the major objection to it. 

My understanding of Good: If God is a Being (or indeed two Beings - Loving Heavenly Parents) who found-themselves among a multitude of other Beings; and if this God began creating at some point in time; and if this creation is founded upon Love...

So that creation is something like "the purposive and mutually loving relationships between Beings that were previously and otherwise mutually unloving, lacking in shared-purpose"...

Reality is therefore a growing creation in an environment of chaos...

By this "model", Good is defined as God's project of creation; and evil is some kind of opposition to this project (anything other than joining with the project of creation - is may be any kind of opposition, from trying to exploit creation for selfish reasons, or trying to destroy creation). 

In theory, there is also the alternative of opting-out from creation. 

By my understanding of Good; Beings such as ourselves find-ourselves in an ongoing divine creation; and we need to decide whether we are on the side of creation or not.  

Good is the decision to join with God's creation. 

Opting-out is the decision Not to join with creation. 

Evil is the decision to oppose creation. 

Main objections to my understanding: Some things that some people find wrong with this scheme, are that I regard God as "just" a Being (actually two Beings) among a multitude of other Beings; that God's creation had a beginning and has therefore not been eternal; that God is finite in knowledge and power...

And that Good is only one among other rational possibilities. 

By my understanding; to be evil is to oppose the project of divine creation; but that opposition need not be irrational. Evil may be short-termist, evil will be un-loving, and may be manipulative, sadistic, spiteful... 

But evil need not be irrational (evil is only irrational when it denies the reality of divine creation). 

By my understanding: There really is no compulsion to be Good, because Good is one side in the spiritual war arranged around the actually-existing reality of divine creation. 

There is indeed One God, in the sense that there happens-to-be one divine creation, and this was an is the creation of God. 

There is one creation which is that we know, and which includes all other Beings that we can know. One creation within-which we and other Beings find-themselves when they become self-aware, when we/they become "conscious" of reality and their places in it among other Beings, and having relationships with these other Beings.  

Such matters could have been otherwise, but were not otherwise: this is reality - this is the situation within-which we exist.   

To loop back to the original incoherent ideas that Good is relativist because choice is rational and real; or else that Good is objective and necessary because there is mono-omni-God creating everything; I would say instead that Good is objective because God is The Creator; but the choice of Good versus evil is also real, has consequences that may be permanent, and it is a coherent choice to choose evil - even when the reality of one divine creation is acknowledged. 

By my understanding: To choose Good is to choose to affiliate with God's objectively real project of creation, and this project is built from love, because creation is the product of love.

Any Being capable of love is capable for choosing to affiliate with creation.

But evil may be a coherent choice, because creation takes place amidst continuing chaos - and continuing chaos is termed "death" (by the Fourth Gospel" and is spiritually-analogous to the scientific-material concept of "entropy". 

Evil is not entropy, but coherent evil entails an ultimate commitment to entropy and chaos in preference to divine creation, because entropy/ chaos is all that would remain when evil has done its work...

After evil has worked through to its conclusion; there would be a world without creation, which is a world without love; and that would be the return to a pre-creation world of mutually un-conscious and unloving Beings; i.e. the end state of evil would be Beings uncomprehendingly existing in a situation that has no coherence and no direction.

Thus evil is a possible and coherent thing to desire.   

In other words, by my understanding, divine creation is incomplete and (in principle) vulnerable to evil, and to entropy; or, this would be the case without the Second Creation of Jesus Christ. 

Primary creation of God is of-itself therefore incomplete and contingent; and Jesus Christ is therefore essential to the triumph of Good. 

But the triumph of Good is not the imposition of Good across all that exists - it is a Second Creation that consists of Beings that are only and wholly Good. That situation called "Heaven". 

This is why Christianity is the only coherent religion; and why Jesus Christ is and was essential. Jesus was Not essential to the primary divine creation; but Jesus is essential to the indomitable and eternal triumph of creation - in Heaven. 

   

Power corrupts. Worship of power corrupts also

The insight that "power corrupts" (with or without the addendum "and absolute power corrupts absolutely") was an insight that emerged only from the end of the nineteenth century - as Tom Shippey notes in his analysis of the subject in JRR Tolkien: author of the century. 

In ancient and medieval times, power was not regarded as corrupting, but instead was thought to reveal the nature of its wielder. Power did not of itself corrupt a good Man. 

Yet by the middle 20th century the idea that power of itself actually makes all people worse (even when they started out good) was a truism - evidenced all around us, and around the world.  

My understanding of this phenomenon of corrupting power; would include that it was related to the emerged of the characteristic modern consciousness; a consciousness that is alienated - cut-off from God, the world of spirits and the group-mind of Men. 

Modern Men are existentially detached from The World in ways that were not possible in the remote past. 

In ancient times, a power-wielder was innately embedded in a social and spiritual world, such that to a significant degree he could not help but express the values and will of this broader world and its perspective. In other words; ancient Man was not a detached being, therefore responsibility for his power was always somewhat dispersed, and power was (spontaneously, unconsciously) wielded in a "groupish" way.  

(Exceptions are usually due to pathology, to some form of insanity.) 

Only in more modern times, and gradually, has power been able to interact untrammelled with the self-centred and selfish nature of a power-wielder. The corruption of power operates as a kind of feedback loop, within the alienated self. 

A further development has been the way in which power became embedded in bureaucracy, in The System - so that it is seldom very clear to what extent a leader actually has power. 

People typically are only given power when they are regarded as being the kind of person who will "do what they are told"; and those who do not obey, are rapidly got-rid-of So that many apparently powerful people feel themselves to be, and indeed seem to be, almost helpless in the face of constraints of a systemic nature. 

If, as many people say, the US President is "the most powerful person in the world"; then the world has recently seen a situation in which the US President was known and acknowledged to be mentally incapable of wielding power; and yet things carried on much the same. 

This suggests that when an individual is said by official sources to be wielding power and making decisions; then it is probable that this is untrue: it is an expedient illusion propagated to the public; perhaps in order to conceal who, or what, it is that is really making the decisions and deciding the strategy. 

This may be done for various reasons, including evasion of responsibility, or making effective resistance to power more difficult. 

But another reason for pretending some person has power, is that an image of the powerful individual tends to induce a worship of power in many people. 

George Orwell was very sensitive, perhaps over sensitive, to this. Writing in the 1930s and 40s - he saw this worship of power as a common attribute of the intelligentsia - of academics, functionaries, authors, artists, commentaries, journalists etc. 

Orwell's usual target was the radical left, including its literary lions such as GB Shaw or WH Auden. Such might, for example, delight in imagining details of the retribution to be wrought "when the revolution comes". Including the supposition of an attitude of calm, unyielding, masterful objectivity with which "necessary measures" are inflicted. 

But he saw analogous worship among figures of the right, including (for instance) Nietzsche, political theorist James Burnham, and the Roman Catholic converts such as Hilaire Belloc - who Orwell believed admired their Church mainly because of its potential or actual power. 

Among intellectuals, power worship is evident in the brutal relish (even sadism) with which such persons describe, or fantasize about, the forcible exercise of power - the overmastering imposition of will. 

There is, indeed, an almost-sexual gratification evident in this kind of vicarious triumphalism - a quality of self-stimulation in the writing, which (when noticed) becomes often embarrassing, and disgusting. 

The power worship that Orwell described almost a century ago is, of course, still endemic among intellectuals across the board of political and religious affiliation; and in much greater volume due to the expansion of the mass and social media. 

Power worshipping fantasy is easy to find, and hard to avoid among intellectuals; apparently because it soon becomes habit-forming, addictive, seemingly a compulsion; and few are immune to it. 

Although there is plenty of the naked and raw power worship of the "crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women" type; this impulse may be somewhat concealed by euphemism and pseudo-therapeutic affectation. As when the cruel exercise of power is enjoyed, but self-excused by the pretence it is done "for their own good", or "the greater good". 

Power is an unavoidable reality of this world; as Tolkien recognized. We cannot opt-out of the subject.  

As usual with sins, the sin of power worship occurs at the level of motivation - and I mean real motivation, not manufactured rationalizations. 

We must judge motivations; yet motivations must be inferred - they cannot be proven from "evidence, or by "logic". 

The dominance of power worship in oneself, or another person, is therefore a matter that each must discern and judge for himself, as honestly as he is capable of doing. 

And few of us are spontaneously true witnesses to our own motivations - it takes an effort. 

Antichrist phenomena - an Eastern Orthodox perspective from Metropolitan Agafangel

Who will be the Antichrist? - by Metropolitan Agafangel (25th January 2025)
The Antichrist will be accepted first by those who are waiting for him - under one form or another and for one reason or another. There are many such people who are waiting, but they all wait differently... 
The question is where, in what way, does the Antichrist appear before gaining power over the whole world? ...
For atheists, the Antichrist may be a leader capable of bringing order to the whole world. He can begin his activity as the president of any country or, even, a superpower (say, the United States), he can begin with any high position —at least, even with the Secretary General of the Communist Party of China (the general secretaries of the CPSU still dream of world domination, in the USSR, Stalin was an exemplary predecessor of the Antichrist, although he didn't succeed in taking over the whole world, he did get a "sixth of the earth"). 
Thus, the first period of the appearance of the Antichrist will be his coming to power in some significant and known field—political, social, or religious. Having ascended to one of the peaks of diverse earthly power and, according to legend, having participated in the construction of the Jerusalem temple, the second period of the Antichrist's activity will begin — this outstanding, talented, charming and intelligent man will begin to expand his power and unite in himself the key powers of authority, that is, to seize power over the entire world and in all areas... 
Ideally, the Antichrist will unite in himself the expectations of the coming of "someone great" for all peoples and religions. This is how Satan will be allowed to act...
The Antichrist will come when a type of the Soviet-communist system will be established throughout the earth — defined as democracy, but in reality — dictatorship and total slavery — physical, electronic and spiritual. 
This new order will be led by the finally united secret world government, referred to as the Scriptures as the "gates of hell," which, led by the Antichrist, will fight the Church of Christ (Mt. 16.18) — that is, the last remnant of genuine faith on earth. 


I first learned something of the idea of the Antichrist from Fr Seraphim Rose, at the time when I was strongly engaged with Eastern Orthodoxy. 
While I have moved a long way from the assumptions of Orthodoxy, and I nowadays regard the Antichrist actuality in a "soft and flexible" sense rather than literally; I continue, nonetheless, to be impressed by many of the distinctive insights and emphases - and there seems to be a powerful general truth about their idea of the Antichrist, which has very general applicability. 

One take-home message of this line of thinking for me; is the relative unimportance and potentially lethally-misleading quality of a spiritual evaluation based upon actions; and therefore, by contrast, a renewed belief in the vital importance of basing ultimate and crucial evaluations upon my discernment of underlying intentions, motivations, and spiritual affiliations. 
(Not, therefore, evaluations taken second-hand from external authorities - unless these pass an honest test of intuitive examination.) 
Given Man's innate craving for this-worldly flourishing; we are all-too-eager to seek and find a this-worldly saviour (whether personal, institutional, ideological/ theological - or whatever); and we are all-too-willing selectively to grasp at the straws of particular actions - and not-notice, ignore, or suppress our awareness of those dissonant qualities that reveal an anti-Christian underlying spiritual commitment.

In some Orthodox theology; it has been prophesied, and I fully expect this to be accurate, that it shall in practice prove impossible to convince most people that the various Antichrists (whether persons, institutions, strategies, policies or whatever) - that somewhat-closely simulate some Christian attributes; and actually a guise of demons enlisted in the Satanic anti-Christian project. 
And if all these Antichrists were (more or less) rolled-up into the single figure of a global Antichrist (which I personally do not anticipate will happen) - i.e. Satan wrapped in a cloak stolen from Christ - then the same will apply: the Antichrist would be accepted as some kind of representative of Christ, if not a returned Jesus himself. 
Although the Kingdom of Christ is Not Of This World, but lies beyond death - all too many people (including too many Christians) so much crave an earthly saviour, that they are most of the way to being fooled even before the Antichrists begin their deceptive works.       

Why can't our life have a "magical" or transcendent quality at all times?

It seems like, even when life is going well, we cannot experience it at the best and highest level "on demand". 

We sometimes experience the "romance" of this-life, a magical moment, or even magical hours and days; but this state does not become continuous - nor can we have this magic whenever we want it, nor even when we may feel we most need it. 

There are always mundane periods, and these may be normal; there is of course suffering, illness, ageing, and the prospect of death all around and about. But even when we are not immediately affected by such things, life may be experienced as mundane; that is dull, everyday, trivial, niggling... just stuff that happens. 

And sometimes, oft-times, we cannot snap ourselves out of this, nor can we do anything that genuinely works in attaining that magical and romantic state we may desire or even crave. 

The question is whether this inability of ours is something that might in principle be overcome. The question is whether or not it is theoretically possible that "life at its best" could become everyday life? Whether and/or when we feel most trapped in everyday life, or most in need of elevation and enchantment - we could learn how to rise from that dull situation to live life at its best, again?

I think we tend to go one way or another, and end-up claiming something that is untrue or impossible. 

Mainstream secular materialism has it that this life is really mundane; and that the romantic and magical is illusory, a temporary subjective aberration merely - and this is also the view of "oneness" spiritualties such as Western Buddhism. 

On the other side are claims that the romantic, magical, enchanted life of "higher consciousness" can (and should) become either permanent, or else available on demand - perhaps by some kind of spiritual self-improvement, or by practice of some kind of technique, method, skill - or maybe by adoption of a right attitude. 

But the basic idea is that this-life in this-world could and should become a paradise. 

For me, neither of these one-sided extremes are valid. It is an evil form of despair to assume that the bad things in life are real and the good experiences are illusory. Yet, there is nothing solid (just wishful thinking and unsubstantiated claims and rumours) to indicate that it is possible to live a magical life at all times or on demand - nobody ever seems to have done it. 

Christianity is the only form of understanding that I know, which takes both sides into account - both the reality of the romantic, and the inevitability of the mundane; and which goes beyond them.

Jesus Christ knew that paradise is real but temporary, and never available "on demand" because of the nature of this life and world (which is both entropic and evil); therefore the only really-real and actually possible paradise is by resurrection to life in Heaven, which lies outside this world, beyond our "biological" death. (And which, of its nature, can only occur by personal choice.) 

Only Heaven is "romantic" on-demand and eternally; and that only because Heaven has left-behind both death (entropic change) and evil, which are intrinsic aspects of this-world. 

It is exactly because Heaven on earth is real, that Jesus was able to create Heaven and make it possible for us to want and choose Heaven; and it is exactly because we cannot have a permanent or on-demand Heaven in mortal life and on this earth, that Jesus enabled resurrection and created the sustained and everlasting romantic-reality of Heaven.   

Has the world become better or worse since the time of Jesus?

Has the world become better or worse since the time of Jesus? The question is worth raising because people have believed and said both. 

Some people assume that Jesus made the world better, and that things were improved by the life, death, resurrection of Jesus. 
They assume especially that Christian societies are better than not-Christian societies - so that the conversion of more people, the Roman Empire, and many nations, to the Christian religion; led to an improvement within those societies - and consequently (probably) the world. 

Other people (apparently especially in Medieval times) regarded the time of Jesus Christ as the source of once for all revelation, and an unique spiritual impulse; so that the further away in time the world went from the ascension of Jesus, the more the world declined - the worse the world became... 
Until eventually the world would become so evil that this would lead to the end times, and the second coming, judgment day etc.
   It seems that there is no objective way of resolving such questions, because there are no agreed criteria for quantifying and summating the goodness of the world; such that we could measure and compare whether the world at one time is overall better or worse than another.
When goodness was equated with obedience to a particular church, then it seemed possible to measure - in the sense that the size and power of that church, and the devoutness of its members, was in principle quantifiable. 
But such an equation now seems untrue. It is recognized that churches may be wealthy and populous while becoming increasingly corrupted; and that devout people who obey their churches rules, may well be un-Christian, or anti-Christian in their motivation. 

More deeply; there is the matter of whether the work of Jesus Christ - what he did, how he changed the cosmos - had anything directly to do with the spiritual state of large numbers of people in the world...
We could ask whether the work of Jesus is not about The World as such, and only very partially about material and measurable things; but is instead primarily about spiritual matters, and the post-mortal fate of persons. 
If Jesus's work is primarily individual, spiritual, and about resurrection; then any effect on the world at large will be secondary to the implications-of, and a long and complicated way downstream-from, various individuals choices to follow Jesus. 
Perhaps the proper question is to ask whether Jesus's work was - in its essence - of this world, or Not of this world?