Category Archives: Philosophy

The Proper Attitude Towards Truth

It exists, but is never fully knowable by humans

The Christian, or at least Christian-based attitude towards truth is that an objective truth exists, but is never fully knowable. Not by humans, that is. Only God knows the whole truth. However, truth is approachable. We can come close to it – or move away from it. We are called by God to come as close to it as we possibly can. As we say during baptism: “With the help of God, we will.”

Part of the age-old struggle against Christianity is to call this stance into question. It can be done in two ways. One is to insist that the objective truth is out there AND that it is knowable by humans. This is the enlightenment or “modern” stance. (The – usually unspoken – implication is that those who know the truth automatically have the right to rule over those who don’t – and be it only for benevolently guiding and protecting the latter.)

The other way to negate the Christian theory of truth is to deny the existence of an objective truth altogether. This is the “post-modern” stance. Ironically, this theory leads necessarily and immediately to the proclamation of an ostensible, incontrovertible “truth”, namely that there is only one driving force in society, and that is the will to power. (Everything else, including the Christian claim, is a clever ruse to cover up this will to power.)

Interestingly, the “modern” and “postmodern” stances complement each other: If there is no truth but power, then those who “know the truth”, i.e. “have the power”, have the right to use it no matter what.

Did anyone say “satanic”?

I was prompted to write the above after reading this. Thierry Breton, an EU commissioner, who unironically calls himself “the enforcer”, is going to the US to tell Big Tech companies to “join the [EU] code of practice on disinformation”. The author of the above linked article comments:

And who gets to decide the truth? Hunter Biden? Joe Biden? Dr. Anthony Fauci? Hillary Clinton and her totally discredited Russia campaign? I guess the answer of the day is Thierry Breton. As “The Enforcer”, he is apparently in a unique position to understand the truth about everything. 

When Pilate asked the famous question: “What is truth?” (John 18:38), Jesus chose not to answer the man of power.

Not to worry: We now have Thierry Breton.

Something smells of sulphur.

C. S. Lewis on “tyranny sincerely exercised”

Found here.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”

― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology (Making of Modern Theology)

The new brand of totalitarianism

Similar to fascism of old

Justo González in his book “The Story of Christianity” (Volume 2, p. 309), writes about the different “flavours” of fascism in the first half of the 20th century. There were many differences, but what united them was this:

“The glorification of war, dread of the free exchange of ideas, a totalitarian nationalism, and opposition to all forms of egalitarianism”

Today, we have the glorification of war (against Serbia, then Irak, then Syria, then Ukraine – and a denial that there is any glorification involved), dread of the free exchange of ideas (“cancel culture” – and a denial of its existence), a totalitarian globalisation, and a new form of racism (“whiteness is bad”), which is part of a “hierarchy of (alleged) victimhood”.

King Charles: a reactionary ruler

Our green, mystical monarch harbours a deep suspicion of modernity, science and freedom.

Article by Tim Black.

Excerpt:

The problem is that Charles’s ultra-reactionary worldview no longer provokes the ridicule it might once have done. Quite the opposite. Our political and media classes now seem in love with his reactionary rantings – albeit their more diluted versions. They may have no idea what Traditionalism means or stands for, but they certainly share his climate-change apocalypticism. They may not be yearning for a conservative revolution, but in the declinist ambience of Charles’s screeds and speeches, they see a dim reflection of their own green-tinged disillusionment with modernity. Their own disenchantment with liberalism and democracy. And so they have been actively calling for him to abandon the neutrality of his predecessor. They even claim that his views on the environment are ‘uncontroversial’ and that expressing them would not violate any constitutional protocols.

US president Joe Biden’s climate envoy, John Kerry, says he hopes Charles will continue to press for action on climate, claiming it ‘is a universal issue… not ideology’. ‘King Charles has been an environmentalist for 50 years’, opines the Washington Post. ‘Now is the time for him to make his case to the British people.’ Others have gone even further. ‘We are fortunate that our new king possesses a willingness to intercede in public life’, wrote one particularly excited ‘post-liberal’, just after Charles’s accession to the throne. ‘His instincts are good and just, and his decades-long critiques of globalisation, of our despoliation of our natural and built environments and our pell-mell rush towards the mythical horizon of progress have been tragically borne out by events’, he wrote.

This is what is most troubling. Not that Charles likes to think of himself as a 1920s-style conservative revolutionary, engaged in a project of often bizarre avant-gardist reaction. But the fact that these views chime so well with those of our political and cultural elites. His reactionary views, once the source of ridicule, are now theirs, too.

Decline of Christian faith during Covid

Some proof from the US

Chuck Baldwin is a conservative American Christian who has been heavily involved in politics in the past. He has recently written a piece commenting on a survey showing a sharp decline in faith among nominal Christians in his country: “America’s Pulpits Under Indictment: Let the Adjustments Begin!”

The findings of that survey confirm something I predicted based on what I learned from Gary North. When I saw how churches throughout the world, but particularly in the Western world, reacted to Covid, I predicted a further decline of faith. The clergy’s reaction was in principle identical to what they did, according to North, during the Plague or Black Death. Back then, they fled the towns for the countryside instead of ministering to the sick and dying. This cost the church a lot of credibility and paved the way for the Renaissance. The Renaissance was an intellectual movement that delved into the writings and philosophies of pre-Christian ancient Greece and Rome, looking for sources of truth other than the Bible. This ultimately led to thought centred on the human being instead of God.

The Renaissance in turn led to the enlightenment which first relegated God to a role of disinterested and distant Creator (so-called “Deism“), until essentially discarding God entirely. The “death of God” (Nietzsche) then led to the horrors of the French Revolution which, after having been defeated and staved off (just about) for a century (in which time the Industrial Revolution brought untold blessings to untold millions), led to the various horrific, ideologically driven mass slaughters by the millions in the 20th century, a phenomenon which essentially has to this day not yet abated.

During Covid, the clergy didn’t flee the towns. Instead, they locked the churches, implicitly declared their services “non-essential” and fled into cyberspace and Zoom services. They thus relinquished spiritual space, so to speak, which will now be populated by alternative beliefs of all sorts. They had been seeping in for some time, but this seepage is now becoming a torrent.

It will be interesting to watch how the churches recover from this blow.

Addendum: There is an interesting other recent survey with a somewhat contrary message: “Surprising Surge Of Young Americans Turn To Religion“.

Zero Hedge writes:

The story of religious trends in America has been one of increasing disaffiliation among younger generations. But a new study reveals an unexpected resurgence of faith among youngsters in a post-Covid era. 

Some young adults had an awakening during Covid as the entire world crumbled around them. They were in search of a higher power to get through the government-forced lockdowns and controlled demolition of the economy, as well as watching loved ones and friends contract Covid-19 that some federal government agencies believe leaked from a Chinese lab.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, a new study commissioned by Springtide Research Institute found about one-third of 18-to-25-year-olds believe in a higher power, up from one-quarter in 2021. The findings were based on polling data from December. 

Continue reading here.

However: Will the churches be able to offer these young people a long-term spiritual home?

Why do people think and act diametrically different?

Jeff Leskovar has some interesting answers

From Jeff Leskovar’s article (from 4th December 2021):

Individuals have three main parameters by which they constrain their decisions: property, time, and social hierarchy. Social hierarchies apparently exist to reduce conflict among individuals as do property rights by allowing individuals to know who should defer to whom with regard to each other and physical objects. An individual’s decisions are delimited by these three dimensions, time (time preference), space (property), and social hierarchy. Social hierarchy exists in the minds of individuals so it is like the imaginary plane in the field of mathematics.. We have the real dimensions of time and space along with the dimension of social hierarchy or status. These control the majority of human behavior in the quest for survival and reproduction.

Time preference and social hierarchy are fundamental to understanding the “why” of human action. Putting social hierarchy front and center is especially useful in political science, since politics is the pursuit of social status, as well because it explains why people seem to fall into two different political groups, the left and the right. This theory explains a long list of behaviors engaged in by the left but not the right. Here are some examples:

  • Declining to debate
  • Engaging in ad hominem or using other logical fallacies if they do attempt to debate
  • Becoming emotional if one disagrees with them
  • Refusing to grant the right of free speech to people they disagree with
  • Refusing to associate with people on the right
  • Unfriending people on social media because of political disagreements
  • Marching in the street
  • Living in big cities

Why do leftist seem to have no curiosity about how they may be wrong or why other people may have different opinions? Why do leftist always assume evil motives on the part of those who disagree with them? Why are leftists so hostile to people who disagree with them? Applying considerations of social hierarchy explains all those leftists behaviors and answers all the above questions.

The answer, in short, is that “leftism” is the modern version of tribal, collective, “follow the herd” (which actually means “follow the leader”) thinking, while everyone else to some extent use their faculty of reason to try to figure out what exactly is going on and act on it for their benefit. Both strategies of action are necessary for survival. But they are mutually exclusive. We can engage in both, but not at the same time.

That means inevitably that, in any given circumstance, those choosing one basic survival-strategy will deem those who at the same time choose the other strategy as either “stupid” or “evil”. “Stupid” because they don’t seem to see the danger they are in, or “evil” because they are endangering others – “knowingly”.

Leskovar doesn’t say this, but I think he implies that the “follow the leader” types are much less inclined to discuss their action than the “let’s think this through rationally” types.

In addition, there is a strong incentive for those close to the top of the hierarchy to prevent others from climbing higher. Thus their incentive is to make everyone else a) follow the leader(s) and b) do things that will make it difficult if not impossible for the leaders to be replaced by others. In other words: Leaders are inclined to enhance and support “follow the leader” type behaviour, which will surprise exactly nobody who stops to think about it.

Leskovar explains:

By making some basic simple assertions about human nature and society and then building logically from these statements we can find explanations for many puzzling features of human society, especially politics. These assertions are the following:

  • “Human society always has a natural hierarchy
  • In any moment of decision for human action there are two different fundamental heuristics that can be used to make that decision. One method of decision making is to observe what everyone else is doing and doing the same. The other is to observe reality and use reason to decide how to act at any given moment. These two ways of decision making are fundamental survival strategies. These can be restated as thinking for yourself versus following the crowd. One uses reason and the other does not.
  • It is a fundamental human drive to seek belonging in the group and to seek to rise in the hierarchy. Human decision makers weigh the potential impact on social status at all points in the decision making process.
  • The strength of that drive for status and social belonging varies among people with some having a low drive and others a high drive for improved status. The status drive seems to intensify in people as they rise in status.
  • It is natural to be disdainful of people of lower status and this natural reaction varies in its intensity among individuals. The amount of disdain correlates with the status drive meaning people with a high status drive are probably more likely to disdain lower status people with more intensity than those with less status greed.
  • People tend to worship those of higher status. The intensity of this varies among individuals and probably intensifies as status increases.
  • Since the pursuit of social status is a zero sum game with all gains in status meaning a relative decrease in status for others, people tend to want to prevent lower status people from achieving higher status. Envy is the emotion that tends to trigger action to prevent others from achieving higher social status.”

Leskovar was given an interview with Tom Woods recently, in which he pointed out something highly interesting (prompted here). Namely that ‘Christianity said to people: “Don’t treat the low-status people badly. They are all equal in the eyes of God.” That could have a big part in explaining the rise of Europe. For a thousand years or more, people at the top of the hierarchy were less likely to oppress low-status people. I think that is now going away, and I think we’re getting the fruits from that from this Covid thing, which was very oppressive.’

The host, Tom Woods, doesn’t explore this aspect further, but the whole interview is worth listening to nonetheless.

A German prophet

Heinrich Heine's vision of the 20th century conflagration was written in 1834

In his book “Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland” (“On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany) the poet Heinrich Heine (1797 – 1856), a German secular Jew who in his 30s turned to Protestantism, wrote in 1834 (see English translation below):

Das Christentum – und das ist sein schönstes Verdienst – hat jene brutale germanische Kampflust einigermaßen besänftigt, konnte sie jedoch nicht zerstören, und wenn einst der zähmende Talisman, das Kreuz, zerbricht, dann rasselt wieder empor die Wildheit der alten Kämpfer, die unsinnige Berserkerwut, wovon die nordischen Dichter so viel singen und sagen. jener Talisman ist morsch, und kommen wird der Tag, wo er kläglich zusammenbricht; die alten steinernen Götter erheben sich dann aus dem verschollenen Schutt, und reiben sich den tausendjährigen Staub aus den Augen, und Thor mit dem Riesenhammer springt endlich empor und zerschlägt die gotischen Dome. Wenn Ihr dann das Gepolter und Geklirre hört, hütet Euch, Ihr Nachbarskinder, Ihr Franzosen, und mischt Euch nicht in die Geschäfte, die wir zu Hause in Deutschland vollbringen. Es könnte Euch schlecht bekommen. Hütet Euch das Feuer anzufachen, hütet Euch es zu löschen; Ihr könntet Euch leicht an den Flammen die Finger verbrennen. Lächelt nicht über meinen Rat, über den Rat eines Träumers, der Euch vor Kantianern, Fichteanern und Naturphilosophen warnt. Lächelt nicht über den Phantasten, der im Reiche der Erscheinungen dieselbe Revolution erwartet, die im Gebiete des Geistes stattgefunden. Der Gedanke geht der Tat voraus, wie der Blitz dem Donner. Der deutsche Donner ist freilich auch ein Deutscher und ist nicht sehr gelenkig und kommt etwas langsam herangerollt; aber kommen wird er, und wenn Ihr es einst krachen hört, wie es noch niemals in der Weltgeschichte gekracht hat, so wißt, der deutsche Donner hat endlich sein Ziel erreicht. Bei diesem Geräusche werden die Adler aus der Luft tot niederfallen, und die Löwen in der fernsten Wüste Afrikas werden die Schwänze einkneifen und sich in ihren königlichen Höhlen verkriechen. Es wird ein Stück aufgeführt werden in Deutschland, wogegen die französische Revolution nur wie eine harmlose Idylle erscheinen möchte. jetzt ist es freilich ziemlich still; und gebärdet sich auch dort der eine oder der andre etwas lebhaft, so glaubt nur nicht, diese würden einst als wirkliche Akteure auftreten. Es sind nur die kleinen Hunde, die in der leeren Arena herumlaufen und einander anbellen und beißen, ehe die Stunde erscheint, wo dort die Schar der Gladiatoren anlangt, die auf Tod und Leben kämpfen sollen.

English:

Christianity – and this is its most beautiful merit – has to some extent calmed that brutal Germanic pugnacity, but it could not destroy it, and when once the taming talisman, the cross, breaks, then the savagery of the old fighters, the senseless berserker rage, of which the Nordic poets sing and say so much, will rattle up again. That talisman is rotten, and the day will come when it collapses miserably; the old stone gods will then rise from the lost rubble, and rub the thousand-year-old dust from their eyes, and Thor with the giant hammer will finally leap up and smash the Gothic cathedrals. When you then hear the rumbling and clattering, beware, you neighbouring children, you French, and do not interfere with the business we are doing at home in Germany. It could go badly with you. Beware of starting the fire, beware of putting it out; you could easily burn your fingers on the flames. Do not smile at my advice, at the advice of a dreamer who warns you against Kantians, Fichteans and natural philosophers. Do not smile at the fantasist who expects in the realm of appearances the same revolution that took place in the realm of the spirit. The thought precedes the deed, like the lightning the thunder. The German thunder is admittedly also a German and is not very agile and comes rolling in somewhat slowly; but it will come, and when you one day hear it crack as it has never cracked before in the history of the world, then know that the German thunder has finally reached its goal. At this sound the eagles will fall down dead from the air, and the lions in the farthest desert of Africa will pinch their tails and cower in their royal dens. A play will be performed in Germany, against which the French Revolution would only seem like a harmless idyll. Now, of course, it is quite quiet; and if one or the other is acting somewhat lively there, just don’t think that they will become the real actors one day. They are only the little dogs that run around in the empty arena and bark and bite at each other before the hour appears when the throng of gladiators arrives there to fight to the death.

We Are Trapped in a Truman Show Directed by Psychopaths

The danger we are currently in, and how to avoid it

Article by Jim Quinn.

Excerpts:

“Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World. Within the next generation I believe that the world’s rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.” – Aldous Huxley – Letter to George Orwell about 1984 in 1949

“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution” ― Aldous Huxley

[…]

The first task was to instill fear into the masses through fake videos, fake medical experts spewing fake “facts”, denying the reality masks, social distancing, and locking down the world did not stop a microscopic virus, while suppressing treatments which were clearly safe and effective (ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine) and forcing Fauci’s remdesivir and ventilators on patients – insuring their deaths. Truman’s life was built upon lies, deception, and fake narratives, controlled by a tyrannical director putting on a show to please his bosses and maximize profits. We are experiencing the same reality today.

[…]

“Whereas the truth is that the State in which the rulers are most reluctant to govern is always the best and most quietly governed, and the State in which they are most eager, the worst.” ― Plato, The Allegory of the Cave

“Most people are not just comfortable in their ignorance, but hostile to anyone who points it out.” ― Plato, The Allegory of the Cave

The State is run by an eager group of psychopaths who are hell bent on destroying our civil society and common culture on behalf of globalists attempting to implement their Great Reset agenda, and enforcing it through technological surveillance, mind control through propaganda messaging, and strict management of the daily plot via mainstream media and social media censorship of the truth. As Plato contemplated fifteen centuries ago, most men will remain in their cave, believing shadows presented by their overlords is reality, never questioning their servitude or seeking the truth.

Never has this fact been truer than during this covid pandemic reality show directed by our Christof – mass murderer Anthony Fauci. The willful ignorance of the masses was assumed by the covid controllers who cast shadows of fear and death on the cave walls of the locked down extras in this well-orchestrated reality show. Using a purposefully misleading PCR test to vastly overestimate “cases”, paying hospitals to classify all deaths as covid, and having the propaganda professionals at CNN, MSNBC and Fox showing Covid Death Counters on their screens 24/7 to terrify the masses into compliance was the Covid Show.

Once the fear level was ramped to eleven on the control dial, the producers of this show introduced the miraculous Big Pharma vaccine antidote to save the day. Their script was so believable they were able to convince over 5 billion members of their captive audience to inject themselves with an untested, unproven genetic therapy, that didn’t prevent you from catching, transmitting, getting sick, being hospitalized, or dying from the Fauci funded Wuhan lab produced virus. But, as a dramatic twist to the tale, it seems the “vaccine” causes myocarditis, blood clots, infertility, miscarriages, heart attacks, cancer, and sudden death.

Despite the obvious dangers and failures of these “vaccines”, those bullied into getting jabbed became so comfortable in their ignorance, they were easily persuaded to hate the unjabbed and wish for their deaths. Orwell’s “Two Minutes of Hate” was extended for over a year and continues to this day. Rather than think critically and question why annual flu cases averaged 35 million per year prior to 2020 but dropped to near ZERO during the covid “emergency”, the cave dwellers lashed out in anger at anyone questioning the plot, because to admit they were duped would destroy their self-esteem and decrease their virtue signal credits.

The annual flu didn’t disappear. Covid was the annual flu, with a multi-billion-dollar marketing campaign. This wasn’t a pandemic, but an IQ test, and most people failed miserably. But the critical thinking unvaxxed are still considered the enemy of the state, especially since they have been proven right.

[…]

Christof discovers Truman sailing away from Seahaven in a small boat, as he has overcome the fake conditioning of fear instilled in him by the man who supposedly loves him but traumatized him about the sea by faking his father’s death while at sea. Christof chooses to almost drown Truman by creating a violent storm to deter him from discovering the truth. Ultimately the storm ceases and his boat strikes the wall of the dome.

This is exactly how our controllers treat the ignorant masses. They feed us stories designed to make us fearful and compliant to the exhortations of their paid experts. Paid to lie. Paid to misinform. Paid to persuade people a dangerous concoction is “safe and effective”. The evilness of using Sesame Street characters to convince four-year-old children they need this Big Pharma gene altering toxic brew, even though essentially ZERO children on earth died from covid, is a testament to the greed and malevolent impulses of those in power. Vast amounts of ever-increasing advertising revenue are what kept The Truman Show on the air for thirty years.

[…]

Smart phones, smart cities, and smart streets are nothing more than code for spying on you and controlling you. Truman finally understood his liberty was his to choose and not Christof’s to give. There is a small minority of Americans who are realizing the same thing after two years of totalitarian measures designed to take away our freedoms and liberty. The question is whether enough will exit this tyrannical government produced show to make a difference. The future of mankind literally depends on the answer to this question.

[…]

As Huxley noted decades ago, technology has just provided our civilization with a more efficient means of going backwards. Technology is being used by our controllers to monitor our movements, communications, and to surveil, distract, and amuse us to death. It is no longer a force for good, but a means to control us. They plan to use technology to disarm their citizens through increasingly authoritarian regulations, sold as keeping us safe from mass shooters.

Their climate agenda isn’t about the climate, but about complete control of the masses. When government and their social media attack dogs monitor the citizens for “hate speech and misinformation”, and dole out retribution at their whim, our system is profoundly broken and extremely warped. They are supposed to answer to us. But these megalomaniacs have much bigger agenda.

[…]

Armed revolution is a non-starter, as the oligarchs have far more firepower, and the dissenters are unorganized and scattered. A form of ‘Irish Democracy’ where a silent dogged resistance, marked by the withdrawal from society, belligerence to authority and non-compliance with government dictates by millions of ordinary people would accomplish far more than rioting and armed revolution. Millions have already practiced a form of Irish Democracy by not masking, not social distancing, not getting jabbed, and taking control of their own health decisions.

[…]

The more people who disassociate from their fake world, the weaker they get. As their hold on our lives weakens, they will lash out.

[…]

The beast isn’t as strong as it portrays. It’s broke and its empire of debt is crumbling.