The events of the last year have underlined an important fact. It's something we already suspected but is now undeniable. Trust is dead. For a long time we haven't trusted politicians though that is partly because the very nature of democracy makes politicians inherently untrustworthy as they are always more concerned with vote-catching than anything else. Appearance is what counts and reality comes a long way behind. We haven't trusted journalists or the media for a while either as they are all seen to be in hock to the money and pursuing a good name in the eyes of the world. We trust politicians and the media less than ever but now we don't even trust scientists or the medical establishment. The Covid crisis has shown that all of these groups lie or avoid the truth (not entirely the same thing). Clearly, this doesn't apply to every member of these groups but in terms of them as groups, it certainly does.
Once trust has gone a society cannot sustain itself for very long. Its cohesion will unravel. That is what is happening now and the process is hurried along by the absurd error, so absurd it's hard to believe it wasn't deliberate, of multi-culturism in which incoming groups are given the same right to their own identity as the native population. This can only divide and separate. No longer was assimilation and respect to indigenous culture demanded of incomers. The process was actually reversed and respect to the incomers' culture was demanded of the indigenous. A society cannot last if it splits into component parts, each one vying for dominance. It must have something to unite around. The best thing is religion but a sense of national unity will also serve, and this sense of self is something most countries in the West have lost as they have given up their identity and history in order to allow new entrants to assert theirs. Why? It seems to me that if you want to come to a new country it is your obligation to adopt its ways and fit in with its traditions and culture. That was always the basic understanding but it has been abandoned over the last 2 or 3 decades. Welcoming new people is one thing but they for their part need to integrate fully and respect the ways of the country to which they have come.
What was presented to us as kindness has turned out to be weakness, the weakness displayed by a dying civilisation that had lost confidence in itself and disguised that loss as though it were compassion. But the result of that shallow and easy compassion is increasing chaos as structural safeguards to order are dismantled and thrown away. I would say that all of this comes ultimately from the loss of religion. When there is no sense of the transcendent, which is just a fancy way of saying no sense of God, then meaning and truth disappear to be replaced by greed and expedience. This is the world we have made for ourselves and we have done it out of crass stupidity. Warning voices have sounded for at least 100 years but we have ignored them. The result is the loss of trust.
This is not the whole story by any means. It describes the negative effects of wrong-thinking and bad decisions resulting from the giving up of faith but there is also an active attempt to corrupt and destroy that has gone along side it. This has involved the encouragement and stimulation of wrong-thinking, outwardly by certain thinkers, philosophers, politicians, artists and other in the public eye, inwardly by demons engaged in the attempt to return cosmos to chaos. But the 'mind viruses' released by these people have only been able to gain entry into human consciousness because our spiritual immune system has been so weakened. They then weaken it further and the process continues.
The only remedy for this is to regain trust. But this time it must be trust in God. The world situation has gone too far. There is no turning back from where we are now. These are the End Times when the poison has spread throughout the world system, unrecognised by most but no less deadly for all that. Those who want to be saved can be but you have to want it to the degree that you are prepared to give up this world. You are not going to be able to have the world or the good opinion of the world and God. You must choose which you want more and when you have chosen put all your energy and attention into living that choice. Put your trust in God and you will be given strength to sustain you during the inevitable coming difficulties.
The powers-that-should-not-be understand the importance of trust and have been harping on about the crucial need it for as they begin implementing their various long-term schemes for the betterment of the planet and humanity. "Trust us" has become a sort of secondary motto for them. How anyone can trust any worldly authority at this point is beyond me, but I suppose it's easy if you don't believe in God.
ReplyDelete@William - This business of trust is complicated. People say one thing, they think they believe one thing; and then do the opposite.
ReplyDeleteI am amazed by the high level of 'trust' there is in the authorities, given that they say something different and maybe opposite every few weeks or even days! In particular, I am amazed that most people still trust the good intentions of The Establishment - especially multi-national organizations like the UN/ WHO.
But also there is a basic trust that the birdemic has been and is a major and deadly world catastrophe- despite their own experience, and wholly on the basis of trusting the media and government. Then that the peck is genuinely necessary, and genuinely intended to save the world; because people trust the authorities when they say they are trying to restore the world to the 2019 normal...
But strangely the same people ignore the authorities when they say that there will never be a return to normal because... XYZ. People will not believe that (even) the *official* figures show the biredmic was Not a deadly global plague by comparison with several recent, unnoticed pandemics.
(They won't even believe that 'pandemic' just means a new infectious disease that spreads widely, and the term applies to Non-dangerous diseases - and that these happen all the time!)
So strong is their trust in the benign intentions of authority, that people will not believe the authorities when they state their strategic intent (great reset etc).
It's as if a child is so trusting in the love of his parents that he knows when they are kidding, when they making a joke about what terrible things will happen to the kids if they are naughty, like "If you keep eating those sweets, you will explode!". The evil strategies are treated almost as if they were this kind of joke.
People will say that they don't trust - for example - Bill Gates; but in practice they believe almost everything he says, except when he says things like we need to reduce the world population by billions. A year and more ago his statement that everyone in the world must take his company's peck was treated as a joke - then when it began to happen it became a necessity - ultimately because the people trust BG's good intentions, as if he were their parent.
I wonder if this is real trust or just because people can't be bothered to think for themselves or else find it incredible to believe the authorities should be deceitful - despite endless evidence that they are. A mixture of laziness, fear, incredulity and lack of responsibility. I imagine people also just shrug their shoulders and think what else is there? That's why faith in God is so vital. You then know there is something else. There is also a real and absolute standard of truth.
ReplyDelete@William - I agree that it is certainly a very strange kind of thing - neither real trust, nor genuine mistrust.
ReplyDeleteBy contrast, my understanding is that the masses in communist countries genuinely did Not trust their authorities. Their cynicism about the motives of the Party was very extreme. This was probably one reason why these regimes required extreme terror and violence to impose their will.
By contrast, the modern West requires very little in the way of coercion or threats to make us obey - and this is partly because we are Not cynical about the motives of our rulers.
For example, when I worked in universities it seem obvious to me that the management were indifferent to real science and good classroom teaching (why wouldn't they be? They know nothing about these things, and their pay, conditions and promotion are unaffected by them).
So, when management (usually operating on the basis of government instructions) introduced schemes to monitor and control scientific research and teaching; these schemes would therefore be harmful - and (obviously!) ought to be opposed resisted by those who really do care about good science and good teaching.
But my attitude was regarded as weirdly negativistic. It was regarded as decent, normal 'common sense' to assume that the management always had good intentions unless conclusively and 100% proved Not be be the case - which is, of course, never possible!
People in The West seem to feel the same about authority in general. Only a nutcase assumes that our national or global leaders might actual have evil motivations. I suppose a century plus of positive propaganda about the sham of 'vote processing' called 'democracy' must take some of the blame.
It seems to me trust in institutions is almost gone. The only institution left with any trust is our media. No-one believes the government. No-one believes the church. Typically, few trust their employer. Even government statistics are ignored, unless media proclaims their truth. Any trustworthy person or institution is the subject of venomous lies. Dishonest leaders are boosted by fawning praise (which may be revoked at any time) The media can break any institution or individual almost at will, even whole nations may be destroyed, at least in the eyes of a media-believing public.
ReplyDeleteWhat will it take to pop our media bubble, for us to lose trust in our media? I do not know. I would like to think, when trust is lost, we will rip the scales from eyes and the masks from our faces and rush into the street to embrace one another. But I do not think we will. Trust in each other and our institutions is gone and cannot be replaced. When trust in media is gone, we will be in the condition of savages thrust together in a city.
Our civilization is on life-support. We are a brain-dead body. We seem alive, though our eyes are closed. Our basic functions are coordinated by machine. It seems that we may wake up and speak at any minute, but we don't.