Bruce G. Charlton's Blog, page 32

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?   

JRR Tolkien's first good poem, and the beginning of the whole Legendarium

By Alan Lee

Over at The Notion Club Papers blog, I discuss the September 1914 draft of JRR Tolkien's Earendil poem; which I regard as his first successful poem, and which also (and by no coincidence) is concerned with his powerful and astonishingly creative response to the Anglo-Saxon word "Earendil". 

It was Tolkien's attempts to understand the meaning and context of this word, that first catalysed the vast mythology of his mature achievement. 

When the Earendil poem was first written, this work of decades was yet latent and unmade - but, looking back, it seems that the insight of his verse hovers on the edge of the process: "as a ray of light leapt over the twilight brim".

Big decisions every Christian needs to make in evaluating the Bible

I think most Christians, but perhaps especially Protestants, have experienced doubts about the role of The Bible in their faith. 

On the one hand, it seems to be the core evidence concerning Jesus Christ's life, work and his teachings. On the other hand; it also seems intrinsically unsatisfactory for so much to hinge upon A Book. 

There are just So many problems with this! So many questions that need to be answered, if we are to pin everything that is most important upon A Book. .  

Which particular question strikes each person as most significant varies. Since modern Man developed greater self-awareness and a compulsively questioning consciousness, matters which previous generations simply "took for granted" becomes doubtful. 

Modern Man exists (as a fact of his existence) in a mind-space outside his own culture, and indeed alienated from himself. This reality can only be avoided by not-thinking about it, by not-taking-responsibility - and - here-and-now, in a secular and materialist culture - not-thinking leads away from Christianity. As has been the clear trend for more than two centuries.   

There are, of course, matters of the constraints of communication, and relating to language, translation textual accuracy; and the problem of understanding meaning, when what is written is in the context a different culture with different expectations, knowledge and assumptions.  

For me, the most personally significant doubts are more fundamental; and begin with the questions of who compiled the Bible, on what principles, and with what authority to decide both the content and arrangement?

Even more fundamentally, how and why was the role of the Bible in Christian faith decided, and on what grounds?

My point is neither to assert that doubts about the Bible need to be fatal, nor to provide pseudo-objective answers to the multiplicity of problems; but instead to emphasize that the whole question of "The Bible" inevitably and unavoidably leads back to each individual person (you and me) making assumptions. 

We can choose to take our assumptions from external sources, but which external source, and which grounds for choice we find compelling, will itself entail assumptions. 

Personal assumptions are inescapable in both the aspects of being personal and being an assumption hence a choice - although this reality can be, and often is, denied!

The Bible does not make a Christian; rather the Christian makes The Bible, or rather A Bible. 

His Bible is another Mans Bible to very widely variable degrees, and in many various ways. 

Indeed, The Bible is optional to Christian faith*. A Man might follow Christ to resurrected eternal life without knowing The Bible; or this might be a choice.  

For me, all of this means that there is no objective basis for The Bible; and its usage and value are ultimately rooted in personal faith. 

And what doubts apply to The Bible, and the necessity for personal assumptions, applies (mutatis mutandis) to each and all of the sources of Christian knowledge, including the self-identified Christian churches, theology and philosophy, and such academic disciplines as history.   

In the end, I think we reach the conclusion that The Bible cannot be the basis of Christian faith; unless, and only in such ways as, we have personally assumed - and thereby made it such.

*It seems obvious to me that God the Creator and our loving Father would not have made a world for His children that depended upon each and every one of them having access to a particular book, and reaching a true understanding of that book. (Neither would God have made a world in which salvation depended upon the intermediary of a particular church.) The implication I find inescapable; is that the bottom-line of Christian faith cannot be any-thing external, but can and must be something that is some combination of that which is innate to every Man, and that which happens directly and unmediated between Man and God. Of course, this conviction renders the socio-political aspects of traditional Christianity untenable - which is the reason why so few will accept the obvious... I mean, most Christians are primarily and essentially interested and motivated by the socio-political possibilities of the religion.   

The anti-woke Right are being set-up for a bait and switch inversion

As I suggested a month ago* - I feel sure that pseudo-radicalism of the new US Presidential administration is merely a move in a within-Establishment civil war. The "anti-woke Right" commentators who are deliriously cheerleading the new government, and apparently investing their expectations and hopes in its success; are being set-up for a scam.

The anti-bureaucratic populism is a pose and a pretence - the reality is an inter-office, inter-agency predation, a squabble between branches of government over who gets the lion's share of state resources; and which aspect of the agenda of demonic evil shall be the priority. 

A blizzard of theoretical executive orders concerning domestic affairs is the bait; but all this smoke and mirror distraction will be swept-away by larger geopolitical events; and the switch will be begun by a fake pennant event that is intended to lead to a US commitment to participate in war in the Middle East.

That is, I believed, "the plan" - and it should be evident; although of course things may not work-out according to plan - a fake pennant event may misfire, and the free agency of human beings means that nothing is pre-destined.    

*Interestingly, I made a self-contradicting typo in the above prediction, which seems to have passed unnoticed (certainly by me!). On January 8th I wrote "Before this April (i.e. within less than a month of the new DT administration)" - "Less than a month" does not make sense, unless I meant before this March - and my recollection is that this indeed is what I intended. My understanding was that DT took over on 22 January (I may have been mistaken about this since the EOs began a couple of days earlier), so that means before 22 February - which leaves only a couple of weeks remaining for the "fake pennant" event to happen, if the prediction is to come true. 

Optimism and the ideology of progress: the Achilles Heel of Western Civilization

I have often commented on the absolute need and demand for optimism that is characteristic of our Western civilization. 

So much so; that many Western Christians have come to identify here-and-now, this-worldly, optimism with the virtue of Hope - which ought to come from faith and trust in God and the salvation of Jesus Christ that happens beyond death. 

So much so; that too many Western Christians refuse even to entertain pessimistic socio-political analyses, because for them pessimism about the future leads them to despair - which they rightly recognize as a sin. 

Their mistake is to suppose that the fault lies in the pessimism, rather than their own this-worldliness, their absolute demand to feel optimism. 

I will argue here that the ideology of progress, and the dependence on psychological optimism, are an Achilles Heel of Western civilization - which both explains and predicts the decline of real Christian faith: a faith that ought to be rooted in hope, not optimism. 

Historically, as the religion of Christianity waned, the ideology of Progress waxed; so that the one replaced the other as the dominant world view.

(The term religion ought to be reserved for religions with gods, spirits, another-world etc. Secular, materialist, this-worldly belief-systems - such as nationalism, communism and other species of Leftism - should instead be termed "ideologies".)  

This emergence of a "replacement for religion" of Progress was very evident, and much discussed, in the late 1800s and into the early decades of the 1900s - and it was so powerful a movement of thought that it hoovered-up and assimilated mainstream church Christianity. It also led to the Theosophical Society-derived, Hindu and Buddhist influenced, "New Age" spirituality of the past half century or so. 

Such a replacement of spiritual, other-worldly, religion by a this-worldly and materialist ideology; seems (in retrospect) almost inevitable - given the socio-political necessity for providing people in the Western nations with some sense of purpose and a basis for organization. 

This progressive expectation - this optimistic expectation - affected all the major Christian churches and denominations, especially those that saw (for some decades, at least) church growth - such as evangelicals both Protestant and Catholic, pentecostals, charismatics, Mormons... 

All were institutionally optimistic about continued expansion in numbers, growth in resources: outcomes of "success" that would be materially measurable. All looked towards some approaching this-worldly triumph, and socio-cultural dominance, or even takeover. 

Even that characteristic modern Western spiritual form called New Age, incorporated optimistic progressivism into its belief in reincarnation. 

Contrary to historical conceptualizations of reincarnation; New Age reincarnation provides grounds for optimism, being seen as an almost-inevitable process of learning, and consequent incremental increase in spiritual stature, with spiritual "progress" accumulating across many incarnations. 

New Age "Karma" will be the cause of this-incarnation constraints, and we may suffer set-backs from bad choices or bad-luck in our present life; but New Age Karma is essentially an optimistic process; building towards higher spiritual status.  

So - there are psychological (and consequently sociological) advantages to the modern spiritual ideology of optimistic progressivism. These include:

1. An expectation of change, therefore novelty and variety of life.

2. The expectation of something to look forward to, incremental betterment of the human condition; because things will improve - sooner or later, and all adversity is regarded as a set-back (e.g. the notion of "what does not kill me, will make me stronger").

3. Provision of a sense of historical direction, and therefore a basis organizing principle for one's life, and society. 

4. A belief that this Will Happen. That is, the implied (if not explicit) idea of "historical inevitability"; so that progress is something that happens to us, is imposed-upon us - and all we need do is respond accordingly; operating like a wave of positive change that we can surf into the future. 

   

However, there are (as is now evident) deep, inevitable, and ultimately fatal, problems with the ideology of progress, and a life built upon optimism. 

One is that by conflating Christian hope with optimism about this-world; Christians become vulnerable to despair when their life in this-world gets worse - and despair is something they are (rightly) told is a sin. 

Therefore, to avoid a despair which is actually a consequence of their secular and this-worldly ideology; such Christians refuse to be realistically pessimistic under any circumstances; e.g. deny the past reality and probable continuation of terminal decline in Christianity, and their church. 

They deny even the possibility that their church may be annihilated (whether by destruction, or by assimilation into some other institution or system) - because such a possibility would lead them into despair. 

The absolute necessity for optimism therefore renders modern Western populations (including most self-identified Christians) dangerously vulnerable to manipulation and external control, by any societal (or spiritual) powers that can affect their psychological state. 

At first people are manipulated into supporting almost any socio-political ideology that offers them an optimistic world view, that offers a feeling of participation in an inevitable trend...

But eventually, having been disappointed over and again, and having lost faith in a better this-world to come; then these people will be manipulated into despair - and by their own assumptions they will be trapped in this despair. 

In effect, such people will lose faith in God and will cease to believe in salvation, because they demand to feel optimistic about an inevitably better future in this-world. 

Such people will see their own pessimism as evidence of God's failure (or non-existence) to make this-world a progressively better place. 

And they will regard eternal salvation beyond death as merely a pitiable (and dubious) second-best compensation for what they regard as Jesus Christ's failure to ensure an always-improving mortal life and world. 

It can be seen that the ideology of optimism and the expectation of progress has been a highly successful long-term demonic strategy. 

Our only hope of hope, is our-selves to abandon the demand for optimism; which includes understanding and experiencing that the true object of Christian hope is located beyond the grave...

Such hope being situated safely out-of-reach of our current psychological feelings concerning the likely prospects for an improving mortal life on this earth. 

Groups of people (e.g. a particular sex, religion, empire, nation, ethnicity, or social class) are never the root of The Problem

A good deal of human discourse is - and maybe always has been - ranged around arguments over which group of people are most at fault for the state of things? 

That group-at-fault may be very large - one of the sexes, for instance; or may be variously small - a particular religion, empire, nation, ethnicity, or social class. 

The thing is, there are so many candidate groups; and loads of evidence for all of them as being a problem, or even a Big problem - so there is constant and unresolvable dispute about which particular group is the worst.

What this amounts to is a search for the source of the major problems of the world; that special group which is the origin of the problems caused by most or all the other groups across the spread of history.

The point of this search for the origin, is the hope that when the source is known, then a solution will become possible... If the Big Problem can be located, then maybe it can be isolated, and its threat eliminated? 

So alluring is this prospect, that the project to discover the root-evil group continues; despite many generations of futility and failure - and no solid example of successful positive transformation consequent upon elimination of a particular group. 

Some of these problem groups are nonsensical projections, others are identifying a real and serious problem - by which I mean a real spiritual problem. It is a major aspect of the extremity of spiritual evil in these times that large groups have been (and are being) made evil by the sin of resentment. 

Many groups have been corrupted by resentment, to the point that resentment becomes the primary (or even sole) cause of their group-cohesion and motivation. 

Indeed, there may be nothing in common between the group members, except for the shared focus of their resentment. That is indeed the nature of The Left as of 2025: leftism has become nothing-but a collection of shared resentments. 

And, once a resentment-based group has been created, then there is the further spiritual problem that it leads not just to counter-measures, but to counter-resentment; such that a resentment-fuelled groups leads to the development of another group who "resent the resenters". 

And thus the problem compounds, and the search for an original group source of The Problem, and a remedy; instead spirals into a maelstrom of increasing mutual resentment.  

Why does this happen, and why does it happen so much here-and-now? 

It happens because ultimately humans are being manipulated by demons - because a world of humans that cohere by resentment is one that spiritually benefits only the Satanic strategy of human damnation - no matter what the (temporary) material outcome of inter-group conflict might be. 

And humans are more easily manipulated by demons here-and-now because we have (as a civilization) excluded the spiritual perspective from public discourse; including having denied the reality of the demonic - so that only human causes are regarded as permissible explanations for human problems.

(Spiritual explanations are regarded as necessarily false, because impossible.) 

The situation is strongly encouraged by the dominant Western ideology that regards "correctly-directed" resentment (e.g. anti-nationalist-globalism, socialism, feminism, anti-racism, anti-anti-semitism) as a virtue, not a sin; and which encourages resentment as a core human motivation by all means possible (state propaganda, media propaganda, laws and regulations etc).

Resentment is therefore a besetting sin of this era and place - because it is a sin that has been culturally-inverted into a virtue. 

Christians absolutely need to break out of this demonic cycle of group-resentment, on the basis that it is spiritual poison. 

As I've often said before: the reasons Christians are commanded to forgive in all situation is a spiritual (not practical) imperative; rooted in the fact that the opposite of forgiveness is the sin of resentment. 

Forgiveness is not about the evils of other person, or the other group, no matter how very evil these may be; it is instead about an evil in ourselves: We forgive sins in order that we ourselves do not fall into resentment.