Let me start off this post by saying that what I am writing here could be down to the pessimism of advancing years. On the other hand, I have felt something along these lines for most of my life without necessarily expressing it in the way I do now.
God has conducted an experiment that has failed. It could have led to a great expansion of consciousness but has collapsed into atheistic materialism and a retraction of consciousness. As the experiment has failed, he will bring it to a close.
Let me join in the fashion of blaming white people, or, as I would rather call them, people of European ethnic origin, for the woes of the world. White people have failed. They have failed by allowing leftism, which is basically atheism, to overtake them instead of incorporating some of its more useful beliefs into a predominately traditional worldview based on the reality of God and the importance of qualitative differences. And they are further failing by not standing up for and defending their culture for fear of criticisms of racism, sexism or whatever is the current cardinal sin. (On which point, please note that neither racism nor sexism can be real sins as, even if we take them for what their believers claim them to be and do not see them as sticks to beat the people most responsible for the creative good in the world with, they are only forms of deeper moral flaws, pride, hatred, egotism and the like. Which is why they are not mentioned in any traditional spiritual or ethical code of correct behaviour.)
It was the people of European ancestry who were behind the great experiment. They had reached a sufficient stage of intelligence, creativity and sense of individual self to bring about the leap forward in consciousness. They were behind the art and science that built the new mind which was a mind that could begin to interact with God in a positive sense. This is the real source of white privilege. It was an achievement unparalleled in the history of the world and advanced the human race considerably.
However, it has failed. Problems built into the experiment, which might have been corrected and ironed out had they been addressed properly, have developed to the point at which they have derailed the whole thing. One cannot discount deliberate demonic intervention either as these problems have been exacerbated by being encouraged. Atheism is foremost among them but there is also the perversion of the strong individual into the selfish egotist and the turning of innovation from creative, spiritually healthy channels to destructive and/or subversive ones. Give someone a box of matches. He can harness fire for useful purposes or he can burn the house down. We started to do the former but we are now busily engaged in the latter. It would be nice to think we could come to our senses but the process is clearly too far gone for that to happen. The experiment has failed and will be terminated.
But has it failed completely? I would say, no. The many benefits it brought about remain, certainly on higher levels of being where they have been built into human consciousness. And many individuals, probably many more than might be apparent from what we know, have moved on in their spiritual lives and developed the potential to approach God more closely than before. It may well be this was the real intention all along and that the collateral damage was expected. After all, we know that many are called but few are chosen. I am sure God knew exactly what he was about.
If the West has fallen, and it has, it is because of its own stupidity and complacency and substitution of an atheistic pseudo-humanitarianism for the true God. It had the opportunity to build on its Christian past by incorporating that into a new creative outlook but was seduced by materialism and false ideology into thinking it knew more than it did and could redefine reality. All that remains is for those who understand to hold fast to the original vision which will be made manifest in a higher world.
Europeans discovered the laws of nature by relating to the world as an "it" rather than "thou". From such a POV, the world looks godless. But we forgot the rearview mirror in the process. Leftism seems like the culmination of this progressive objectification, rendering our subjective experience arbitrary while technology reigns supreme. The West has not managed the task of marrying spirit with the scientific outlook. Meaning can only be rediscovered by recovering the "I-Thou" relationship to the world through Christ. The great experiment is indeed heading into the vacuum of nothingness. God wills it.
ReplyDeleteScience started as an attempt to understand God's creation. That's almost an act of worship. Then it became seduced by its own success.
ReplyDeleteI think the scientific eye got stuck inside exterior appearances. Understanding God's creation by cutting it into pieces, trying to find the secret in the tiniest particles enhances the details but loses oversight. You may decode the machinations of the universe, gather facts etc, but a religious consciousness entails starting from the whole to get the full picture. The good thing is that with Christ we get to keep the science (the natural law is the language of God written in the fabric of the universe), but with science only we lose sight of God. True religion doesn't have a problem with science as far as it goes as long as it doesn't supplant the qualitative domain of human life. But we are now paying for the great experiment in the corresponding loss of meaning.
ReplyDeleteI share your lugubrious instinct, but think you are on the right trail at the end of this post. The whole Creation was never meant to evolve into something divine. It is more like a school from which some of the students graduate and others flunk out, while the quality of the facilities and faculty slowly goes down, down, down. We need to judge Creation by its "graduates." Of course (lugubrious instinct reasserting itself here), the "school" may be degenerating to a point where it produces no authentic graduates, and at that point the "school" will have completely failed. At the risk of pushing this school analogy too far, it is possible that the ultimate failure of the "school" is inevitable because the poor students who flunk out will slowly make it into an institution where poor students win all the prizes.
ReplyDeleteI think your analogy is very good, however far it is pushed! It also occurs to me that in nature, not an original thought but pertinent in this context, sometimes many seeds are sown to produce just one plant or whatever it might be, human conception an obvious example but there are lots more.
ReplyDeleteThe school surely is degenerating and increasingly not fit for purpose. We'll see what happens to it.
Gee, you and Bruce are downers lately! But I don't blame you, and prayers for you both.
ReplyDeleteOn a different note, I finished your book, which I enjoyed very much, finding it very thought-provoking. I found several parts of it disagreeable or challenging, but then, if I hadn't, I suppose it would not have been as useful!
Just realists, Matthew! I'm glad you enjoyed the book. When you say disagreeable do you mean you disagreed with parts of it or it disagreed with you? Like a bad egg. I hope the former!
ReplyDeleteYes, the former. Lessons I didn't want to hear. (Not too many of them though.)
ReplyDeleteWilliam
ReplyDeleteYes, absolutely. I do fear for the shape of the forthcoming collapse, wondering if it will be a slow decline, or a long age of oppression where humans are refashioned and reshaped, or a more dramatic collapse.
Regarding intervention, I cannot interpret our condition without envisioning some form of adversary - there has not just been a decline, but reversals, deliberate inversions - we pretend lies are true to fit in, accept ugliness in our art and music, dismiss religious morality and celebrate its opposite. But perhaps this is just rationalisation, a way to shift responsibility.
Thanks for the post.
Thanks for your comment, James. Like you I don't know what shape the collapse will take, whether it will be dramatic or gradual, but the rate at which things are speeding up at the moment suggests the former to me especially when you consider that the world economies are held together with bits of fraying string today. But then we are not meant to know because that would remove the effectiveness of the spiritual test.
ReplyDeleteWhat I believe to be most important is that we set our hearts on eternal things. The world is collapsing and it can't be put back together. That is not pessimistic or defeatist because actually the world is not what really matters. All the things we love will always exist in their truer forms on a higher level. I have to remind myself of this when I see the terrible decline of everything built up in the West over centuries. But the good can never be truly lost. Only certain outward forms it takes.
And you are surely right. There is an adversary which is deliberately attacking truth through all the ways you mention. That is not to shift responsibility. The responsibility is ours. We didn't have to succumb to the evil influence and we have. But that does not mean that there is not this evil influence at work. But that again is allowed i believe because through it hearts are tested. It's like a winnowing process.