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Sometimes, in the affairs of men, and the cycles of time, the often ignored, maligned, and dismembered pale body of Truth, shines forth with all the clarity and blazonry of the setting sun, though it strikes the level of the ocean flood as it dips below the waves. Further, the mere fact of its setting, prophecies and promises of its return at dawn, a greater splendor. Such is the fate of man, that Truth is clearest, when it is farthest off.
Like a glorious sunset through the windows of the decayed and haunted House of Usher, Truth illuminates us, communicates itself to to us, and changes us, even now in the waning days of the West. There is no Shadow, without the Light. The Shadow cannot say the same...it always Falls.
Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow Life is very long
Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow. TS Eliot, The Hollow Men
LinkThere is still Light, behind all the chiascuro...
What is to be Done, about our "System"? Lenin asked this question, and should have left it unanswered. There is no solution to our System. Or any System, as a naked System. It is a predicament, and not a problem to be solved. Our "System" is self-organized to avoid solving problems, including itself. This equals The World. The System is passing away. It's not going to be either stopped or fixed. It is perishing. It is God's will that it perish. Systems only matter, if they help man to the Kingdom of God. This System doesn't even do that, except indirectly and unwillingly, as every atom in the Universe must, no matter what.
And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.1 John 2:17
The goal of the System has become to finish its self-transitioning reassignment, into a more "perfect" System that perfectly cares neither for you, nor itself. It is a ruthless "wealth pump". The "Free Market" is designed to extract unearned wealth. It is neither "free" nor a "market". All capital is sucked up into gigantic accumulations. Look around at who has money left to build. As Rome fell, one landowner cornered the entire grain supply of North Africa, and Nero had to have him executed for the good of the state. When the devil (Nero) says "you've gone too far...", you've gone too far. Rentier economies (even of scale) are not economies at all. They are temporary wealth pumps, and Empires are the prime exhibit A of such (see JMG on this here, and here).
The US economy these days is an empty shell propped up by gargantuan flows of unearned wealth funneled in from overseas. We still produce considerable amounts of food and fossil fuels, but the colossal industrial economy that provided the winning edge in two world wars got offshored decades ago and most Americans, responding sensibly enough to the realities of an imperial economy, have pursued careers as bureaucrats, hucksters, and corporate flacks, not as farmers, builders, and factory hands. As the American empire implodes and takes the imperial tribute economy with it, Americans will have to produce most of their own goods and services again. To say that we’re very poorly prepared to do this is to understate things considerably.
Even the owners are not dedicated to "protecting" any System. If this method fails, another can be improvised (they think). Defending the System is unintelligible, since it is merely a means to the end, and has no purpose beyond beyond wealth extraction. There are no "principles" behind it, and there is even no "System": the System that exists, is a degenerated state of dysfunctional affairs, abstracted and classified for ease of use, tabulated for us, so that it can be justified and rationalized to those it hurts the most. It is a Potemkin Economy, and therefore, it is not an "economy" at all.
The Elites do not care about their own System, and they certainly do not care about those who they subordinate to it. They no longer even care to try to prop it up or window dress it. It is being extended, tweaked, and upgraded, solely in order to siphon, suction, and stripmine even more blood out of the proverbial turnip. They could care less what the System is, or was, or will be. When broken or no longer needed, it will be discarded, and a new "ways and means" brought forward. The purpose of the System is now (and perhaps always was), to batten onto the Host, evn if it destroys it. The Parasite wants to extract Life out of the Host, and put it into the Parasite. Desperation increases its suctioning. It cannot "let go". It's level of IQ is roughly that of an self-organizing swarm of rogue attack drones.
The Empire of the USG is self consciously preserving its own life, at the expense of its host (America). At this point, "preserving" the host, or "moderating" its tentacled-sucker reach, is inimical to its own self-survival (it thinks). The Host is still restless, still moving, somehow, so the snake has to squeeze hardest at the end, before it swallows the prey. One death grip is the same as another, a window of opportunity. They do not care about Democracy, Inclusivity or Equality (D.I.E.) or any of the other capitalized words they parade around, in the very slightest shred. The important thing that matters, is that wealth, power, and energy continues to transfer and concentrate. For a parasite, What else is there?
Their plan is to cannibalize the host. That is the evolving "System". Cannibalization. "The world is passing away..." Why is that? Because the serpent devours its tail. Evil gets what it wants, and destroys Itself. Such is "the world".
I do not pretend to know what They think "comes after", or just how they think they (the parasite), will survive the death of the host. Are parasites capable of thought? The Parasite sucks the Life out of the Host, instinctually. It doesn't need to think, therefore it does not.
This is the "world of coin", the "World" in a negative sense
We the host are allowing ourselves to be sucked dry, instinctually. The "I'm Sure They'll Think of Something" Fallacy (and the Pyschology of Previous Investment and Sunk Costs) plays a large role here. The lack of experienced moral agency grows customary. for the Host is getting feeble. Why does the Host still believe that the Parasite "means well", or that it will "think of something"?
There are those claiming that it is Revolt or Die. While I respect the vitriolic, incisive firebrand Karl Denniger for his searing logic, there is no longer an option to fix the system, either way, even by revolt. A revolt or revolution or rebellion, would help finish us off. We cannot progress out of this, automatically, and yet it is wrong to be a Slave (or worse, a Zombie) inside the System. On the "other other hand", we cannot be delivered even by a swift Apocalypse, disguised as Revolution. Both options are wrong for the Christian, and even more problematic than what they claim to be "fixing".
The thinking Christian is called to find a third, creative, free, intelligent response. Progress or Apocalypse will not do what they are intended to, and will in fact, never work. We need to resist, not comply and not revolt. Resistance is not being digestible.
The Third, creative option which transcends either Compliance (Progress) or Revolt (Apocalypse) is a gift one gives one's self. It is the creation of something outside The System. One goes outside the "city walls" of the false binaries, into the wilderness, under the stars. This is the only authentic revolt against the totalitarian Technosphere or Technopoly. Christians are uniquely suited to this, of course:
And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. Romans 12:2
Under the sign of Pisces, the Christian was a Fish, solidly "in the world", but not "of it" (he had scales and gills, and lived under the divine Flood of grace). The Age of Pisces may pass, but the truth it taught, the adaptive spiritual evolution, will never go out of style.
So, we now we are positioned to arrive at an answer to our question, why (after all this suffering previously) do we have to confront Saruman in the Shire? Why is it so personal? After all, hobbits are going to suffer and die! After all we've been through...Why?
These are (above all), not just theological questions, but eschatalogical questions. It is also Theodicy. It is existential, and very personal.
OK, let me say a few things about art now. If you didn’t like what I said about war, maybe you’ll like what I say about art. I can’t speak for other artists, but I’ll tell you why I think I became an artist, and what I have been trying to do as an artist. I haven’t been trying to stop any wars. Or to pacify the human species. I don’t know how to do either of those things. And I am not a fan of propaganda. I confess, I have engaged in it from time to time, but mostly what I’ve been trying to do is deprogram minds, starting with my own. We are all, by the time we realize we exist, the products of programming, ideological conditioning. I believe it is the job of artists to undo that, or at least to marginally interfere with it. That’s what art, and artists, did for me. They introduced me to my mind. My programmed mind. They forced me to think, and to see, and listen. They taught me to question, to pay attention. They dared me to deprogram my mind, and provided me with the tools to do it. OK, sure, some mind-altering drugs also helped, but it was artists that introduced me to those drugs. Then they introduced me to the monster I’ve been fighting. I have been fighting this monster, in my art, in my mind, and out in the world for as long I remember. You have to fight it everywhere at once. To fight it in your mind, you have to fight it out in the world. And to fight it out in the world, you have to fight it in your mind.
The Classical European project was aimed at precisely this disruption of Evil, by making it less mechanical, more conscious, piquant, poignant, tragic, and (ultimately) giving it a kind of Apollonian restraint. Classical Christian culture went farther (paceGary North), and baptized it, subjecting it to sublimation through the Kingdom of God. The goal was not to eliminate Evil entirely (this is a peculiar modern delusion), but to overcome it enough so as to make possible the flourishing of the unique person in the Kingdom of God.
We live in a time where Evil is no longer consciously disrupted, but rather set free & enhanced.
So, why are we asking, Why do we have to go outside that Evil, to regenerate it? Saruman came to the Shire, because Evil flows into whatever it can and will.
To diagram our predicament, in terms of whole "System", is to answer our question of "Why" this has to happen! J. Tainter has even demonstrated that increasing complexity (at some point) induces collapse: you cannot rely upon the arm of Flesh. Fuhgeddaboudit!!! Hyper-complexity eventually generates counter productive decay.
Inevitable decay is the law of the "World". Evil has to be destroyed. It also has to "endure" for the sake of spiritual development. So you get these "cycles".
We are currently living out a particular phase of a certain cycle, and there are other bigger and smaller cycles. We can't muscle our way out with the binary: Endless Progress or Apocalypse.
As the crisis of our advanced, industrial, agnostic, secular, hyper-complex civilization deepens, many will turn to the Second Religiousness characteristic of the death phase cycle of a Culture-Idea. You will see more of this in the future:
I think it’s a big mistake to leave religion and to leave the Christian faith out of your political messaging, especially if you want to reach the youth. I think that we’ve been brainwashed to believe that if we preach the Gospel, if we call upon our Lord during our speeches, if we speak proudly and openly about the fact that we’re Christians, that we’re then going to scare away the youth. I think the opposite is actually true. I think there is a moral vacuum that’s either going to be filled with climate insanity or woke nonsense or some other subversive left-wing ideology, or it’s going to be filled with the Holy Spirit. So, you have two choices, and I think that people are looking for truth. People are looking for answers and the best gift that you can give someone is to point them in the direction of the truth rather than to dance around it and sugarcoat it, which I think is what we’ve been doing in Northwestern Europe for a long time and look where it got us.
You will also see more of the kind of bizarre "death wish-shadow projection" recently evinced in the student riots on elite campus. As James Howard Kunstler puts it, looks like our kids can't take too much more Modernity, & its driving them nuts (His 5-3-24 entry).
According to conventional economic thought, this is an absurd situation. You have commercial spaces begging for tenants, you have customers eager to spend money, you have people out of work who would be delighted to find a job, and you have budding entrepreneurs who would be just as delighted to rent spaces, open businesses, provide goods and services, and hire employees. The law of supply and demand would seem to mandate a rush of new businesses. Yet nothing of the sort happens, or has happened for many years. Why? The answer is lenocracy...The bigger picture, though, is the slow unraveling of the worldwide lenocracy that props up the United States both as global hegemon and as a mythical fairyland of absurdly extravagant consumption. Link
Samantha Biggers, on Chris Martenson's site, explains.
At this point, there is simply no way for the infrastructure to be fixed before there are increasingly major failures. Even if an emphasis on launching repairs today, it would be a long time before things were up to par.
The writing is on the wall for America, if by America (or the Shire) we mean Sharkey's Mill and post industrial late stage capitalism. The World has to perish. The Shire is not Sharkey's Mill, but there it stands, and it has to come down. Saruman is not the Mayor, just the usurper, and yes, There Will Be Blood (hopefully not much, and not of our initiation).
Asking Why should lead us to an answer that transcends the question....
If asking "Why?" doesn't help you transcend fear and even the framing of the question, you need to stand things on their head, by standing on your own. Our ability to question the gigantic flywheel of Cosmic forces, by standing outside the Zeitgeist and giving our Eternal No, demonstrates that within the human soul is a force that is superior to The World. This force is Christ : "I have overcome the World."
These structures enforce what isn't allowed and superficial compliance, but they can't force what actually makes a society functional: the convictions, hopes and values that inspire individuals to marry, raise a family and pursue self-expression via achievement. What actually happens in societies controlled by the Surveillance State and Surveillance Capitalism is decay and decline, as young people abandon ambition, marriage and raising children by lying flat and letting it rot, expressions of young people in China that speak to youth everywhere where compliance is more important than individual liberty. Link
How do we resist the world? How do we not be digestible? What ensures Victory? Even in defeat?
One wakes up. One notices.
And any foreign government that acts to discourage or repress the worst aspects of humanity is labeled a “depraved autocracy,” while encouraging mankind to live in actual depravity is called “freedom loving” and “democratic.” Link
Or,
History tells us that political leaders, in their pursuit of collectivism, never reverse the trend. They instead ride it all the way to the bottom, then bail out, if they can. Link
Scary? You bet. But we have to finish waking up. We only wake up enough to go back to another sleep. Because our Christ has overcome the World. This is precisely what He has overcome - our lack of overcoming, the perversity and widespread return of Evil, etc. Why else would He tell us this?
These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. John 16:33
Is it just a matter of bucking one's self up? Well, it is that, at least. But it is much, much deeper. We turn to the Lovers of Wisdom, for some insight.
William Desmond suggests that, ‘One might think of the absurd as a surd: an excess that is elementally at work; that enables something other to itself’ that ‘is at the boundary, or beyond’ (Desmond, 2018, 312 – emphasis Desmond’s). This can also be the ultimate “crossing” point where our having come to be (as originally sourced, not self-originating beings), comes again to nothing as it must do for all mortal creatures. For Desmond, however, a sense of coming to nothing is something we may experience in perhaps more extreme living situations or encounters as ‘like a return to zero in which we can refresh our interface with creation…a breakdown, but in the breakdown something more original breaks through (ibid., 313 – emphasis Desmond’s);1 yet if these ‘zero’ experiences are “extended” to the ultimate moment, the “actual” zero point of being/nothing, life/death, the moment of maximum meonic contraction, ‘lessness’ or smallness, nevertheless ‘something more original breaks through’ and the ‘problem’ of how nothing can come of nothing, the problem incidentally of all infinite regressions, is “solved”: there is no nothing; there is an ‘interface’ with creation itself. If so the concept of meonic expansion is the necessary corollary to the meonic contraction with meonic denoting something like an energia or “active principle” which can perhaps help to aid our understanding, especially at these boundary points where our language itself begins to break down as it grasps towards that which, as we speak about it temporally, must still transcend us, into that beyond-the-temporal which is both before and after us. Link
When Evil destroys what is Good, things contract into the Seed Form of manifestation that is Life, before the final expansion of New Creation. This Life, Light, and Love is the embodiment of that which is Unmanifested. This is the Secret Fire. The Secret Fire only blazes higher, as the Darkness deepens. It is not Light that is alone in the vast Dark, but Dark that feeds the blazonry of the Light (see Jacob Boehme).
It is precisely when things are Darkest, that we should expect the "Second Coming of Christ", in our own soul. Christ is deathless, not just immortal, and we are safe, and not just saved. The Shire must be threatened, in order that all be fulfilled, and Christ be All in All. We need not fear to lose even a leaf of it. But to know that forever, one must pass through the Ablution of the Scouring of the Shire.
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