“The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self--all your wishes and precautions--to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call "ourselves," to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be "good…We need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection… I think all Christians would agree with me if I said that though Christianity seems at first to be all about morality, all about duties and rules and guilt and virtue, yet it leads you on, out of all that, into something beyond. One has a glimpse of a country where they do not talk of those things, except perhaps as a joke. Everyone there is filled full with what we should call goodness as a mirror is filled with light. But they do not call it goodness. They do not call it anything. They are not thinking of it. They are too busy looking at the source from which it comes. But this is near the stage where the road passes over the rim of our world. No one's eyes can see very far beyond that: lots of people's eyes can see further than mine” - CS Lewis, Mere Christianity
Straight to the Point : Is Good Boring? Or, even Dumb? It can seem so…
Good people cannot as a rule understand wicked people. They do not wish to be wicked, and cannot understand why anyone else would wish to do so. American Christians cannot fathom the kind of wickedness that accounts for the bulk of the butchery in world history, born of the pessimism of dying races who will kill without compunction to delay the hour of their demise.
“Lonestar, now you see that evil shall always triumph, because good is dumb,” said Lord Dark Helmet in the 1987 lampoon Spaceballs.
(I disagree with him in calling the American Civil War a “Holy War”: if it was, it was a pure accident - there was no greater usurper or tyrant in all of American history than the hallowed Abe, who has a titan-statue on “holy ground” in DC; the war was libido dominandi towards the hither-to dominant South, and their rising economic power, where to put the transcontinental railway, hatred and misunderstanding of Southern culture, and (as an afterthought and rationalization), to free the slaves. That said, the South had its own sins, and dreamed of a slave-holding Empire extending to the Americas. But I digress. And you cannot explain or reason with those who disagree with this, as an article of their Civil Religion.)
All that is necessary for evil men to triumph, is that good men do nothing. - Edmund Burke
Which they too often do. Good people, as a rule, are “dumb”. Jesus remarked on this:
And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.- Luke 16:8
What is the meaning of all of this? What does it mean? Are we just left being Christian Cynics, or even worse, Premillennialists? Waiting on the Rapture? Letting the world go to hell, so we go to heaven? Or, worst of all, becoming a Progressive?
But then we would “go full Saruman” -
Alsop also inserted African drumming and a jazz ensemble between movements of Beethoven’s symphony. This is idiotic in more ways than I can list. What does it mean to be relevant? A woman once remarked to Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel that the prayer book didn’t seem relevant to her, to which Heschel responded that the point was to make herself relevant to the prayer book. Schiller was one of the universal geniuses who defined our era, and our job is to make ourselves relevant to him. Source
What if we can shift the perspective (inner) to such a strong and extreme degree that Evil begins to appear to be The Big Fat Dummy? And isn’t this, precisely, what Tolkien gives us in his Objet d’Art? For, as the reader (Tom Bombadil), we can see just how idiotic Sauron is, and not only that, know (Tis true without lying, certain and most true) just how toasted the Dark Lord is, from Page One. This goes doubly so for his pathetic minions. (Argue either way, from Greater to Lesser, or Lesser to Greater - this double pathway itself is frabjous - why are both approaches equally valid?).
When the Nazgul confronted Frodo at Weathertop, why didn’t they just kill him and grab the Ring? Instead they tried, slowly and delicately, to stab Frodo with a Morgul-knife and turn him into a wraith. He made it out because of his bravery and because of the Barrow-sword, but if they had been going for the quick kill, none of that could have happened. Frodo would have been dead in seconds. My take is that the Nazgul were forbidden to touch the Ring. If one of them were to hold the Ruling Ring, he would gain control over the Nine rings, and in particular his own. He could then rebel against Sauron and claim the One for himself. So their strict orders were to bring back the Ring in the hand of someone else. They prepared the Morgul-knife for this purpose: to turn the ringbearer into a creature that could be forced to cooperate, even while still holding the Ring. They were very carefully trying to keep him alive- which of course gave him the time to fight back. Source
We’ve been trying to hunt the Snark, here, for awhile. Maybe it’s more like the Jabberwock.
How about this, for a sketch? Another stab at it? Why not? We’re just getting warmed up!
Good appears to be Dumb; because (and insofar as) Appearance is Reality, Good is Dumb. But because (and insofar as) the leaven of the Incarnation/Redemption ferments Reality, Good is becoming less dumb, and Evil, far dumber, and the Revealing is happening. The Big Reveal is: Evil is getting more corrupt. And was, in principle, all along. But since more corrupt, weaker, and therefore, less. It is diminishing.
This must have been what CS Lewis was getting at, in The Discarded Image:
When Lucifer rebelled, he and his followers were cast into Hell. But there were also angels who 'somdel with him hulde' : fellow-travellers who did not actually join the rebellion. These were banished into the lower and more turbulent levels of the airy region. They remain there till Doomsday, after which they go to Hell. And thirdly there was what I suppose we might call a party of the centre; angels who were only ' somdel in misthought' ; almost, but not quite, guilty of sedition. These were banished, some to the higher and calmer levels of air, some to various places on earth, including the Earthly Paradise. Both the second and the third group sometimes communicate with men in dreams. Of those whom mortals have seen dancing and called eluene many will return to Heaven at Doomsday…In Thomas the Rymer, it will be remembered, the Fairy brings Thomas to a place where the road divides into three, leading respectively to Heaven, Hell, and ' fair El.land'. Of those who reach the latter some will finally go to Hell, for the Devil has a right to 10 per cent of them every seventh year…
Or in The Hideous Strength:
But about Merlin?" asked Mrs. Dimble presently.
"Have you ever noticed," said Dimble, "that the universe and every little bit of the universe, is always hardening and narrowing and coming to a point?"
His wife waited as those wait who know by long experience the mental processes of the person who is talking to them.
"I mean this," said Dimble in answer to the question she had not asked. "If you dip into any college, or parish, or family—anything you like—at a given point in its history, you always find that there was a time before that point when there was more elbow room and contrasts weren't quite so sharp; and that there's going to be a time after that point where there is even less room for indecision and the choices are even more momentous. Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing. The whole thing is sorting itself out all the time, coming to a point, getting sharper and harder...
"Everything is getting more itself and more different from everything else all the time... Even in literature, poetry and prose draw further and further apart."...
"But about Merlin. What it comes to, as far as I can make out, is this. There were still possibilities for a man of that age which aren't for a man of ours. The Earth itself was much more like an animal in those days. And mental processes were more like physical actions."...
"No. I had thought of that. Merlin is the reverse of Belbury. He's at the opposite extreme. He is the last vestige of an old order in which matter and spirit were, from our point of view, confused. For him, every operation on Nature is a kind of personal contact, like coaxing a child or stroking one's horse. After him came the modern man to whom Nature is something dead—a machine to be worked, and taken to bits if it won't work the way he pleases... In a sense Merlin represents what we've got to get back to in some different way..."
Or, Mere Christianity:
When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less.
St. Jack, pray for us!
And what, pray tell, do we see around us today? Are Westerners, collectively, riding like Theoden at the Head of the Riders to Meet the Storm? Nope. We see the opposite. However, that dismaying thing itself becomes the deeper, truer storm. And we shift to Deep Time, Deep Space. We dig down deeper. Who are the real Riders? The real King? The real Fellowship? Surely, those who pay attention, and keep themselves unspotted from the World!
Alter cites Jason Goldman, who was an early figure shaping the Twitter censorship policies before he joined the Obama administration. Goldman declared, “free speech has become an obsession of the mostly white, male members of the tech elite” who “would rather go back to the way things were.” Alter also cites professor of communication at Stanford University Fred Turner who explains that free speech is just “a dominant obsession with the most elite… [and] seems to be much more of an obsession among men.” In arguing in favor of censorship, Alter engages in a heavy use of historical revisionism, claiming that “‘free speech’ in the 21st century means something very different than it did in the 18th, when the Founders enshrined it in the Constitution. The right to say what you want without being imprisoned is not the same as the right to broadcast disinformation to millions of people on a corporate platform. This nuance seems to be lost on some techno-wizards who see any restriction as the enemy of innovation.” Source
Reality is becoming Worse, and Worse. Excellent!
Mon centre cède, ma droite recule, situation excellente, j'attaque.
My centre is giving way, my right is retreating, excellent situation, I am attacking.
Message to Marshal Joseph Joffre during the First Battle of the Marne
This is the Big Reveal. It was so all along. We can now EXIT. We attack, by exiting. We must fight clear.
“So we come to it in the end… the great battle of our time, in which many things shall pass away.” - King Theoden
At last, we approach something approximating a perfect clarity. Sauron has to destroy the World, in order to possess it. Ringwraiths have to slave to Sauron, in order to be free. Sarumans have to betray their country, in order to preserve it. But this will not only kill them, it will be the means to destroy them in the long run, & they will be destroyed in the most devastating, ironic, and humiliating way possible for them to fear. In “winning”, they are losing. Sauron does not have the sense to call it a day and quit the tables while ahead. He is his own worst judgement. So gives God to every creature. This is the Reductio Ad Laughter.
“This is dangerous! We can’t think anymore in this country!” Zurawik whined, adding “I’m serious! We don’t have people in Congress who can make regulations, that can make it work.” “I think we can look to the Western countries in Europe for how they are trying to limit it. But you need controls on this,” the talking slap head continued. “You need regulation. You cannot let these guys control discourse in this country or we are headed to hell,” Zurawik further suggested. “We are there,” he added, further claiming that “Trump opened the gates of hell and now they’re chasing us down.” Source
Those who are not Against Him, are For Him. Say what you like about some people, but they have the right enemies. Excellent! The Holy Ghost is teaching them, secretly, I would dare even say, occultly.
You may not like trucker protestors and you may not like LME traders and you may not like Russian oligarchs, and that’s fine. That’s your prerogative. But understand that the Rubicon has been crossed in the last few mere months and that the rules based world order that we all lived under for our entire lives is gone. It’s over. The vast majority of people you talk to won’t understand this and most will get angry if you suggest it. They’ll look to the MSM to “explain” what “actually took place.” There they may not fully agree but they’ll take their word for it. Why? Because it’s too hard to consider the truth. The truth is that your net worth is zero. My net worth is zero. All of our net worth is the property of the financial institution that holds it. The land we own is the property of the state (wherever that may be held) should they choose it to be so. All we will need to do to keep it is to keep in their good books. Don’t step out of line. Money will soon fall into this category when CBDCs are issued. We will be allowed to use it for the purposes they deem suitable. Source
As I’ve remarked, the End or Doom of the War of the Rings will make for Strange Bedfellows. Truth is Stranger than Fiction, so it’s going to get pretty weird. We are approaching an Inflection point.
The Rohirrim, riding to Gondor’s Aid have Chosen The Lesser of Two Evils. In Reality, because of the occulted working of the Leaven of Good (which penetrates the Holon of the Cosmos), they are making a Virtue of It: Beyond Hope, is another Virtue, and so though they are Beyond All Hope, what is Beyond that Hope does not disappoint. Some energetic state of Being and configuration of Reality corresponds to the miraculous, impossible virtue that appears to their souls, in that moment, at the rim of Ruin, at the Doom of all they hold dear.
In the gathering and towering Darkness and Despair, as they push South to Gondor “to keep their oaths”, Tolkien gives us the Apotheosis of Northern Paganism, Baptized, as it should have been.
And hands it to us: Narsil, re-forged in the house of Elrond.
The Dumbness of Good, if it presses on into the Dark Cloud of God’s Unknowing, begins to encounter something beautiful, strange, and even fey.
The Reality is, Good is not relatively dumb, compared to Evil, in the long run. It is dumb relative to Evil in the world of Mammon, a world which is diametrically opposed to God, but which (in some weird way), is a first step into the invisible worlds. This is why Satan is known as the Prince of the World. A Christian has to step back from Mammon, and then step forward two steps through it. Taking one step forward into the World of Mammon, with no momentum to sidestep its spiritual influence and take the other step, only makes you conform to the world, and leaves you incapable of transforming it.
But take heart! Many are noticing something interesting, in this hour that Evil is exalted. Mammon’s Triumph has created a Flabby-Happy-Dumbness that is revealing the deepening spiritual stupidity at the base of Evil’s cunning.
The model of political discourse in which public-policy ideas are relevant because they are prestigious and prestigious because they are relevant is the mode of discourse fundamental to the ordinary liberal pundit’s frame of reference. Ideas outside this cycle do not matter and cannot be either relevant or prestigious. They are not “ideas.” Source
In other words, Mammon will be revealed, not only AS Mammon, but also, as incompetent Mammon. Mammon is incompetent even in his area of expertise. How long, do you think, will The Empire be able to Destroy the Village of Free Speech, in Order to Save It? Realistically, now? And when do the Circular Firing Squads start? How long before a General Collapse of all seemingly Eternal Institutions, occurs, due to Entryism and Infiltration? And, All God’s Chilluns Got Guns.
Let Mammon go. This Mortal Life, also. They are going to sacrifice even the Golden Calf, on the altar of Ideology, in order to save their souls, for 24 more hours. Pay it no mind. Live not by Lies. Do not conform, in this way. Lay low in the tall grass, dissemble, conform outwardly, but do not conform inwardly. Even to being dismayed or in despair, a deeper conformity.
For us, who have grown staid over time, even this most moderate path of resistance will be not be easy to set out upon. But how much easier it is than self-immolation or even a hunger strike: Flames will not engulf your body, your eyes will not pop out from the heat, and your family will always have at least a piece of black bread to wash down with a glass of clear water…It will not be an easy path, perhaps, but it is the easiest among those that lie before us. Not an easy choice for the body, but the only one for the soul. No, not an easy path, but then we already have among us people, dozens even, who have for years abided by all these rules, who live by the truth.
Instead, by darkness and night, in the blessed quiet of Faith, we can pursue the Permanent Things…which, in the long run, will matter. Matter, not Mammon! It was never “Matter” that should have been the dirty word, but the false god of the world.
What though Death (seem to) triumph?
Is it only a Dream, that vision Tolkien had, Good Restored and Re-Baptized, Triumphant, beyond Faith, and even Hope, and entering the territory of energetic Love? Of the Reunion of the Opposites, The Divine, and Mortal Man?
The rule of no realm is mine, neither of Gondor nor any other, great or small. But all worthy things that are in peril as the world now stands, those are my care. And for my part, I shall not wholly fail of my task, though Gondor should perish, if anything passes through this night that can still grow fair or bear fruit and flower again in days to come. For I also am a steward. Did you not know? - Gandalf