Bruce G. Charlton's Blog, page 49

The Texas Sharpshooter rides again...

I have used the Texas Sharpshooter idea  to describe how modern pseudo-science does research that it gets paid for, then uses Public Relations and advertising to convince people that whatever-is-discovered is actually just whatever people most want and need. 

This applies to public policy, in its pseudo-moralistic manifestation. Due to the massive coverage and influence of modern mass/social media; and that so many people are so powerfully addicted to it, such that the media shapes almost-all mainstream public discourse, including among private persons - this kind of this is used to control public discourse. 

Some "issue" - which may be incredibly trivial - is launched as a matter of public concern; and then this is what great swathes of people talk-about, debate, moralize over - and expend ludicrous efforts and energies in wrangling over policy responses*.  

The result is that people are completely diverted from any concern with the human condition, and the nature of the cosmos; and wrangle over made-up mutually-contradictory nonsense, that could not possible make any significant difference to anything significant.

Such is "serious" discourse - especially among the professional, managerial, "intellectual" classes... Any danger of anything fundamental getting onto the agenda of life, is dealt-with by the extreme urgency of todays triviality. 

Examples abound - especially in "modern environmentalism" (i.e. nothing whatsoever to do with the world of nature) which is the subject (along with sex/sexuality) with which the chattering classes are most concerned. 

Recycling is maybe the biggest. Millions of people in the UK spend several hours per week ritualistically fussing over recycling, sorting rubbish into multiple categories, washing and sterilizing rubbish, driving to and from recycling centres with little packets of this or that; and scrapping functional technology for inferior electricity-consuming substitutes. 

All of which is entirely done for self-gratification and status within the community of like-minded. 

All of which Very Obviously has net harmful effects on the natural world - obvious if only people were able and willing to think things through. 

Piddling little environmental campaigns have been propagated across the nation, and taught in primary schools. Campaigns to make it illegal to provide grocery bags without extra charge. Campaigns to replace plastic drinking straws with paper. (An extreme emergency, apparently because polar bears got plastic straws stuck between their toes, or something.)  

Nutrition has become linked with environmentalism and thus with the totalitarian agenda - so that factory-made vegan "food" is now supposed to be morally supreme - seemingly because it enables the world to abolish/ destroy farming, then mammals (insects are OK), and perhaps eventually plants. Which must be a good thing...

It does not matter how trivial or stupid an issue may be, "people" can be made very concerned about it; to the point that it becomes immoral to consider the consequences or the larger picture. 

To "solve" a piddling pseudo-problem, enlarges the Real Big Problems. Just as every measure to "help" some victim group, always and systematically oppresses the whole of society.  

From the perspective of the ruling class; this is a manifestation of the Texas Sharpshooter, because it entails picking-out what They want to do anyway; then drawing a line around it and framing the resultant micro-policy as exactly what most needs to be done - now! 

The strategy is therefore to accumulate one after another such "imperative" micro-issue, towards the overall objective - whether that objective be the totalitarian system of surveillance, monitoring, control; or else the (more recent) destructive agenda working for societal collapse, escalation of war and lethal civil violence, famine, deadly disease, and toxic exposures...

The worst thing we can do is fight these idiocies, issue by issue - because that is exactly Their plan.  

The only positive response is to step back and understand where this is going, and why, and the supernatural (demonic) origins - therefore that the proper response is not "an alternative answer" but a completely different framework of assumptions concerning our-selves, other people, the world, the cosmos...

*This applies to politics, as well. 

Americans are *mental*, when it comes to politics

Americans are even further from the needful awakening than the rest of the West, because they (unlike Europeans or the Brits) continue to be optimistic about the possibilities of politics in general and elections in particular. 

This seems almost incomprehensible, but it does seem to be true - not least as evidenced by the sheer volume of discourse about the current Presidential elections. 

Amazing numbers of people including many commenters who regard themselves as sceptical, hostile to totalitarianism, aware, Red-Pilled - seem to have forgotten that a seventy-year-old DF has already been president once. 

During which term he failed to fulfil his primary espoused slogan-objectives (build the wall, drain the swamp); but instead led the nation and world into the birdemic-peck totalitarianism and the international chaos of "MLB" antiracism...

Culminating in a blatantly distorted and overturned election, after which he caved-in, failed, forfeited his honour.

Furthermore, since 2020 the world now knows, as a solid fact, that the US President does not run the USA. 

Yet all over the internet is expressed the delusional optimism on the self-identified "right" that a 78yr-old DF might - if elected - make a significant positive difference to the US and the world...

Rather than what seems obvious: that if DF is elected, it will be because elements within the global totalitarian leadership class want him elected, and (doubtless due to private deals and pressures) he is regarded as a sufficiently "safe pair of hands" to take forwards their agenda of evil. 

Such optimism, such "hope" is mental - but there it is. 

It seems that things will need to get even worse; before there is any possibility of genuine understanding of the primacy of the spiritual in the simultaneous suicide/ rabid-dog destructiveness of The West generally and the USA in particular. 

Superficial reformative changes "within The System" cannot be positively effective; but "at best" will sustain The System to increase the depth and extent of inflicting its strategic destructive evil. 

When things are bad, then things can only get better in the long term via getting worse in the short term - that is a rule of life - and this entails positive and voluntary acceptance: spiritual benefit cannot be imposed. 

The System is built for evil, and corrupted throughout - in all social institutions; by international and national laws, regulations, mass/social media, and social mores. 

Any genuine hope of positive social change must be led by deep change in individual persons; because there is no other possible source of good motivations. 

Thus from where we actually are, pessimism is simple realism. 

Things are probably already lost (many times over) and there can no guarantees of turning around generations of willing and celebrated corruption - and anyway, why should a serious Christian desire to save and strengthen the major source of strategic evil in the world today (or perhaps ever) - the engine and enforcer of global value-inversion? 

In such a context; to be existentially interested and engaged by politics, to grasp at straws of "not impossible" benefits, to pin any kind of hope on elections; is not just childish - but a profound act of irresponsible subservience to demonic powers. 

Life! The existential and the cosmological

Existentialism became increasingly evident in public (and, more, private) thinking through the middle twentieth century, with roots that were probably strongest in Nietzsche. It was a valuable - perhaps essential - consideration of "the human condition", of what it was like to exist. 

Yet it was partial, radically incomplete; because its assumptions were non-theistic, and "the world" was seen as unalive, and life as accidental, uncreated. 

So existentialism could not be made to work but led to pessimism and either despair or else (more commonly) the "bad faith" responses of careerism, intoxication, self-distraction...

"Cosmology" - in the sense of understanding Man's place in the cosmos - is likewise an essential consideration, and was (a few generations ago) a major subject of discourse. 

But, again, this went nowhere, and could go nowhere, because all possibility of purpose and meaning had been excluded by prior assumption: the cosmos was unalive, accidental, happening perhaps by "scientific laws" or regularities - but it had nothing to do with us, beyond providing the raw materials from which we happened to arise. 

Existentialism was mostly a matter of looking at the world from within, cosmological thinking looked at us (when it even considered human beings) from the outside  - and the two activities could not be integrated because their mode of thinking was alien to each other: the one worked from subjectivity as a given; the other took it as evident that subjectivity was something that (maybe?) went on inside people's heads, and had an effect only when it had led to action. 

After featuring in mainstream public conversation, books, media from the 1940s and into the 1980s; as the millennium approached such matters dropped out; and the age of materialism took almost complete control of Men's thoughts in the West.    

What we are supposed to do from here, is recognize the importance of such matters and that we cannot live meaningfully (that is, with a purpose that both comes from within each as an individual, and is harmonious with the purpose of "everything") unless we get such unfinished business back onto the agenda!

The old ideas were much better than anything now; but they all failed - and inevitably - because of their incompleteness - and this radical and insoluble partiality was a matter of fundamental assumptions. 

This is why we need to "start again" in a way that have never previously been necessary. And because of the actual situation we inhabit, this starting again cannot - certainly will not - be a group activity; nor can we get the answers we need from other people; and absolutely not from our actual culture. 

That's the quest and adventure; and that is something new and different in its very nature. 

We are compelled to take personal responsibility - and there are no excuses for failing to do this. 

 

Incipient Sharknado 1899 - by Winslow Homer

This famous painting by Winslow Homer from 1899, has commonly been mistitled "The Gulf Steam", when it is clearly intended to be the immediate precursor to the approaching water-spout (back, right) sucking-up the killer sharks (in the foreground), together with the boat and its oarsman - before spreading the giant carnivores liberally onshore, whence havoc ensues. 

I therefore propose Homer's picture should, correctly, be re-named Incipient Sharknado 1899.  

Laeth on the evolution of consciousness and the Final Participation of Jesus

Edited from this post and its comments: 
...‘wrt. the evolution of consciousness’ and "final participation"...  
The first bit that seems important to me is that [modern consciousness] is not a general state, by which I mean, it’s not defined by the age but it depends on the people. Not every human alive during the European middle ages had a medieval mindset, not every human alive during the axial age had an axial age mindset - but rather, specific places and specific peoples influenced by specific individuals varied greatly. 
And similarly, and more importantly, this is still the case, and is yet another challenge and part of the satanic plan to prevent modern consciousness from emerging from its womb: the majority of the world’s current population does not, in fact, have a modern mindset. 
As moderns we have to deal with this, in several different ways; though of course without the recognition of different types of consciousness, past or present, it is impossible to. 
Equally important, from my perspective, is this: I am very much convinced that the greats of the past and present, be they saints or prophets or artists, operated in a more evolved state of consciousness than their surroundings, and thus their work can help to bring our own consciousness forward. 
On the flip side, in every age there are those who, even though they have a more advanced consciousness, try to pull it back: in our case, the traditionalists are precisely that, and whether they are aware of it or not, and most are not, they are doing the bidding of hell. 
As a paramount and primary example of the positive side, I am convinced Jesus was, not only very well advanced in consciousness compared to his milieu, but really the only man to achieve Final Participation while in this life, and the raising of Lazarus is directly related to this. 
Final Participation will be a sort of synthesis of Original Participation, which was very much an embodied experience, and the disembodied experience of Mind that modernity achieved. so basically, we will have a body of flesh, but also the powers of 'the air', so to speak. 
The raising of Lazarus seems to me to be that: Full Mind raised in Full Flesh. that Jesus was able to do it before he himself resurrected tells me that he had already achieved Final Participation in life, but then went through death to open the door for the rest of us, otherwise he would have to do it personally for each one, like he did with Lazarus, which is definitely not the way. 
Why did he do it for Lazarus then? First because he was his friend and he loved him, and second because, speculating here, he had a specific mission for Lazarus.
**
I would only add, by way of explanation, that the evolution of consciousness can be understood as a development, analogous to the development of a human being from childhood through adolescence to maturity (with this scheme mapping onto human history, and the current "modern" consciousness as the adolescent phase". 
As with the development of a human being, such evolution is not a matter of improvement in goodness. Clearly, many (most?) people are "better" as children, especially as young children, than they are as adolescents. 
Yet we can, nonetheless, see that adolescence is a further ("higher" development than childhood, in terms of becoming more self-aware, which is a step towards higher agency and (however abused in practice) the possibility of greater freedom. 

We could say that a young child is immersed in his environment; and if this is a loving and "good" environment, then the child will spontaneously, passively (ie. by outer-influences) be substantially (but not completely) aligned with divine creation.
In other words, a young child originally "participates" in creation - hence this developmental stage of consciousness is called Original Participation. 
The adolescent, by his greater self-awareness, has the potential for greater independence from his environment; and this archetypally goes to the point of ceasing automatically to accept much of that which he absorbed as a child (good, as well as anti-good: that is, evil).
To become an adult in Final Participation of consciousness, the adolescent should voluntarily and consciously affirm the love, goodness, and truths which as a child he knew only unconsciously. He should, in ultimate terms, voluntarily and consciously choose to align himself - commit himself - to love of God, divine creation, following Jesus Christ to resurrection.

Clearly, this desirable state of affairs is not achieved by everybody, and those who achieve it do so only intermittently and partially - except for Jesus Christ, who achieved it completely and permanently (in the three years of ministry, after his baptism, at any rate).  
Unlike the earlier stages of the evolution of consciousness (i.e Original Participation, and "modern consciousness" - also called the Consciousness Soul); to be-achieving Final Participation is therefore understood as an intrinsically good state. 
Final Participation can be achieved in this mortal life only-when - and always-when - we are consciously and voluntarily motivated by Christian love. This happens permanently after death, by resurrection, for those who choose that path.   

Another way of thinking of Final Participation is therefore that it is the divine mode of consciousness; divine in its many and unique forms of each particular Being (unique because shaped and constrained by the attributes of that Being, at any particular point in time, and its development). 

This is a Much more spiritually-dangerous world than most Christians seem to suppose

Most Christians are aware that this is a spiritually dangerous world, but grossly underestimate the dangers. The dangers of this world are ubiquitous - everywhere and cannot be avoided. 

There are no safe guides and there is no safe path. 

It is impossible to avoid dangerous churches, dangerous religious practices, dangerous writers; and there is no teaching that cannot (easily!) be misinterpreted and turned to evil. 

Therefore we should not worry about trying to avoid exposure to dangers, and should not waste time and energy on trying to construct or pick out a dry, safe path through the swamp of corruption. 

The discernment must be in our-selves, both in our hearts and in our relationship to divine guidance. The path these will find and direct us towards, is not a path of safety - but path of learning. 

Even on the best possible track; there will be trial and there will be error; and the errors need to be detected, acknowledged, repented. 

It is our-selves that we should be working-on, an inner task, suitable for free agentic beings -- and not trying to build around-ourselves a safe world, that will shepherd us toward salvation; as if we were (and ought to be) externally-controlled entities. 

For instance; we will go too far along a path, and need to turn back - and/or we will fail to take a direction we we ought - and thereby fail to learn a valuable lesson.

This challenging never ends, so long as we are alive... Life is a journey that brings-along situations to which we must respond.  

It is natural to seek safety, yet that is a regressive route that saps our innate strength. 

(And fear is a sin.)

We should instead be existentially-confident that God (who is the loving creator, and our Father) has "placed" us each in a situation where salvation is possible, and where we may learn and develop spiritually. 

Know that success is always possible - as long as we live we shall be challenged, and given chances and choices. 

After which... it is up to us. 

 

Romanticism: ecstatic, intoxicating, magic, enchantment

When a tortured romantic relationship goes bad... Hermione and Birkin from the movie of Women in Love

Romanticism has a bad name among most Christians, probably because it is regarded as being emotional and sensuous rather than metaphysical. 

This is likely due to the fact that we are emotional Beings - indeed, it may be that incarnation is a way of intensifying emotion and making it more effectual. If we consider actual examples of human greatness, from the lives of Saints, through great creators, and the examples of good and loving human relationships - all are bound-up with emotions. 

It is therefore rather strange and sinister when Christians become anti-emotional; but on the other hand it is clearly dangerous, and sooner-or-later evil, if emotion becomes primary: if we become sensation-seekers.

This is a real danger in a godless and materialistic society such as ours - indeed intense emotionalism has been, and still is among the young, probably one of the most alluringly advocated ideologies of these times and this place.  

In my later teens and early twenties, I was very much a seeker of this kind of emotion-seeking romanticism - although mine was of a distinctly highbrow type, focused on music, literature, and drama; as much as upon intense human relationships. 

I was very much taken with the ecstasies of musicians like Glenn Gould or Michael Tippett, the intoxicated prose of DH Lawrence or James Joyce, the magical dramas and poetry of Shakespeare and much else. In life; I was very keen on deep conversation, intense friendships and tormented romances. I sought to live an enchanted life. 

This "worked" as a lifestyle for a while, so long as it was fuelled by the vitality of youth - although the mundane dullness of most "normal" life was a continual problem - and my own energies and motivations were never sufficient to fill long periods or to overcome subjective adversities. 

But as time went by, there was a habituation whereby the ecstasies-etc. (especially the epiphanic intoxications of living in the moment) diminished in strength, I became disillusioned by their incompleteness and brevity and the fact that they led nowhere in particular (nowhere better); and the mundane become oppressive and unavoidable. 

Yet, although materialistic romanticism is a dead-end - it cannot be ignored or suppressed, because our culture offers nothing better. Indeed Christianity offers nothing better - since the deeper into Christianity one goes, the stronger becomes the anti-romanticism: the crushing of ecstasy, and the fear of magical enchantment. 

The idea of Romantic Christianity includes a recognition that we are romantic creatures, because of our incarnation - and that this is a Good Thing, not just now, but forever. 

We ought never to accept, or regard as best, a Christianity that is mundane, disenchanted, dry, dull, anti-emotional - anti-the-physical. 

If we our wise, Christian practice ought to be romantic in its aims - and Christians need to beware of focusing on the supposedly-safe: the comfortable, the friendly, the "ethical", the political. Because (as of 2024) there is no safe way of being a Christian. 

Jesus was himself an intensely romantic, spontaneous, and emotional personage - who lived at a high level of engagement with reality (including spiritual reality) that our earthly attempts can only approach, and only briefly.

When God is depicted as is usual, as an abstract and philosophical entity, defined by attributes, and especially when God's "impassible" nature is insisted-upon (i.e. the assertion that God is incapable of "passions" or emotions) - then we are being dangerously misled (no matter how ancient and venerable such assertions may be!).  

If we accept, acknowledge, embrace our romanticism in a rigorous spirit; it leads towards theosis in this life, and resurrection in the life to come; and it is a partial guide to the deep nature of Christ's message and work.   

More on Miles Mathis

Ron Unz has done an analysis of the Miles Mathis phenomenon, which I considered in a previous post. 

Unz concludes that MM is not a man but a front organization, whose purpose is to discredit "conspiracy theorists" by making absurd claims, and that this organization was probably created, and is run by, the CHOAM secret services.   

I disagree with Unz's conclusions in several respects, which is why I felt stimulated to write this. 

While I completely agree that MM is wrong about most things, and (in particular) very slapdash and inaccurate in both facts and reasoning when it comes to supposed genealogies - 

I will stick my neck out concerning something of which I have no direct knowledge; and suggest that Mathis is not an agency but a real person, and a single person, and is pursuing his own agenda. 

This seems clear to me from the internal evidence of the writing, which has - throughout the vast volume - a very distinct and consistent personality. 

Furthermore; Mathis does say some important, interesting and original things; and demonstrates in the writing itself evidence of a creative and independent thinker - albeit with the kind of "self-absorbed" personality that often goes-with (and indeed generates) such motivated creativity.  

Mathis's basic perspective could be regarded as motivated by the true conviction that most of what we think we know, comes (very much) second-hand and via extremely corrupt (and indeed purposively evil) institutions and media. 

Therefore most of what we think we know (even at a very basic level of "facts") is either completely false and fabricated, or else so profoundly (and calculatingly) distorted by selectivity and suppression to be grossly misleading.    

This message is not just true, but extremely important yet very widely neglected. It amounts to the advocacy by Mathis of a far more autonomous and self-responsible way of relating to the world than nearly-always happens. 

To put forward such a perspective is indeed far more important than even multiple specific inaccuracies of factual assertion - which errors are in any case inevitable when dealing with events remote in time and place. 

One more thing. 

If it is true (and I expect it is true, but not of MM) that in some respects the intelligence organizations of the West are engaged in a strategy of trying to "discredit" conspiracy theories in-general by subsidizing and promoting "far out", false and/or absurd theories (Unz's example is "flat earth") -- then the intelligence services are (I am pleased to say!) making a Big Mistake!

Once somebody has learned Not to trust official and mainstream sources, and think for himself, he has learned something vital; and it does not much matter whether he "goes too far" and makes specific statements that most people regard as (or know to be) wrong. 

In other words, the important thing is Not to avoid being discredited by silly mistakes, but instead Not To Care about whether other people regarded you as having been discredited.

After all, it is by its control of public prestige that The System controls so much of intellectual discourse - we absolutely must escape this control, and that can only be done by ceasing to care about what They think of Us.  

There is a primary need for as many people as possible to escape the toils of The System and think things through for our-selves, taking personal responsibility for our understanding - on the basis of what we evaluate to be the most reliable sources of knowledge (and especially on the basis of personal experience from engaging with the world). 

This can be learned from Miles Mathis's example, if we choose to focus on this fundamental aspect of his work; rather than getting distracted by his many, and often wrong and bizarre, conclusions - only perhaps a few of which are genuinely correct. 

It is what he does, more than what he says, that makes MM a potentially valuable writer. 

This is a faithless age: the Big Problem is the apostates, not the religious

However it may have been in earlier eras, nowadays and for several generations the problem of evil is one of apostates, not the religious. 

This seems so obvious that I am surprised it needs saying, let alone arguing - but it does. 

Both atheists and the traditionalist-orthodox Christians are very keen to pin the blame for "the world, now" on religion: 

The atheists blame religion-per-se - as when they say that the cause of most wars, or cruelty, is "religion". 

While among the religious the blame is fixed upon some-other-religion (usually one or both of the major monotheisms), or else on heretics of their own denomination (e.g. for Roman Catholics - Protestantism, and vice versa - or some particular variant such as Mormonism).  

But a little thought and attention would reveal that nearly always the grouping who support and promote evil are apostates - either those who have explicitly abandoned their religion, those en route to abandonment; or those whose religion is superficial and feeble, and whose affiliation is essentially non-religious (i.e. to race, ethnicity, nation etc).  

I am not-at-all saying that "religion" (in general or particular) is blameless for evil in the world today; but that this is a faithless age in which the religious conviction, hence impulse, is weaker than at any point in world history.   

Religious explanations of the present evil are therefore secondary and relatively superficial.  

NOTE: I do not regard Satanism as A Religion, since it is opposition to God and divine creation. To take the side of the devil and demons is very common, and near-universal among the Western/ Globalist ruling classes - but this is a negative definition. Evil is ultimately opposed to all religion, although evil will expediently use any religion - as it will use any ideology but especially that of Leftism - to oppose God and creation. 

What is "The West" for? From William Wildblood

Any civilisation worth that name must be organised around spiritual principles. 
From ancient Egypt to Greece to India, and even Rome when it began, God or the gods were at the centre of life, formed the culture and gave meaning to the civilisation. 
For the West that organising principle was Christianity which was the greatest expression of spiritual understanding there has been. In fact, all the other expressions might be said to be from the outside looking in. 
Only Christianity really comes from the inside. That, of course, is the meaning of revelation. Christianity or, better put, Christ is the greatest revelation of and from the spiritual world. 
There really is no doubt about this. Christ is the only religious personality utterly without flaw or limitation. 
The West existed for the expression of Christianity. 
That is what gave it its greatness. Not uniquely for there were many tributaries but the main river into which all these tributaries fed was Christianity. 
Some people think the West is defined by science and has reached its greatest state following that pursuit but even science arose in a Christian context with natural philosophers seeking to understand God's creation. And whether it has reached its apogee pursuing science or sunk to a spiritual nadir is a question worth pondering. 
When the West started to abandon Christianity it lost sight of itself.

From William Wildblood's blog - Read the whole thing.
**
In this post, William W encapsulates the nature of our current situation. The West has declined profoundly, and is dying before our eyes and in real time. 
And the West has become, overall and by motivation, the main force for evil in the world today. 
Why? In a nutshell; because the West exists for the expression of Christianity, and when the West started to abandon Christianity it lost sight of itself. 
Consequently, our rapid and comprehensive decline is both inevitable and necessary - necessary because without its reason for existence, the West has become a dreadful monster; destroying the world by striving to impose its suicidal "Western values" everywhere, even as it consumes itself through self-hatred. 

For the West now, as always and at root, it is all about Christianity. Only in Jesus Christ can there be valid and sufficient answers; and there can be no good excuses for avoiding this topic, no matter how un-promising it seems. 
The question is not whether or not Christianity, but yes Christianity and then to discover and create what Christianity truly means for us personally, here and now. 
Avoiding the catastrophic errors of the past: finding the means of an experienced living faith, a strong faith - the possibility of a Christian life among pervasive corruption. 

This is not idle speculation: we must have an answer - for our-selves if not for our society. 
Otherwise, the default continues to be willed-annihilation, on a global scale.