Wednesday 4 March 2015

Just how bad are things? And why are they SO bad? And what must we do about it?

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I regard things as very bad indeed. I recognise that this view is not generally accepted - most people would say that things are bad but not much worse than usual. But I regard that attitude as the final straw in clinching just how bad things really are.

What sets us apart from earlier societies is moral inversion; that the bad things are openly promoted as good by politicians, government agencies, the legal and educational systems and in the mass media.

Naturally this confuses people - since in the past people have usually been bad despite official exhortations to do good. In earlier times the officials were usually hypocrites, but paid lavish lip service to the importance of being and doing good - now they urge and reward and coerce people to do be bad, and attack good - while reversing the labels.

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What do I personally regard as the strongest evidence of things being extremely bad, in my country of England?

The high and rising addiction to the mass media, that people will not believe their own experience and knowledge but instead believe the mass media. The grossest example is the ignorance and denial and total lack of interest in truly massive, rapid and multi-faceted demographic transformation.

http://addictedtodistraction.blogspot.co.uk/

The collapse into sub-replacement fertility among the most intelligent, best educated and wealthiest people - the taboo against noticing this, discussing it, doing anything about it. 

That inverted and pathological sexuality are propagandised, and defended by draconian regulations, laws, and managed-mobs. Two landmark examples are the Jimmy Savile affair- where the most widely promoted moral exemplar of recent decades was revealed to be a monster of depravity; and the still unfolding revelations of industrial scale paedophilia in Rotheram, Oxfordshire etc.

Related to the last - that the British establishment does not just tolerate, but vigorously-protects systematic racism, violence, torture, mutilation, slavery and disciplinary-homicide when it occurs among recent migrants and immigrants.

http://thoughtprison-pc.blogspot.co.uk/

The fact that a majority of young, and a large minority of older, people practise and proudly-display escalating levels of permanent self-mutilation in terms of tattoos, piercings and the like.

In the public area of communications, people are dishonest nearly all the time. This applies not just to politicians and bureaucrats, advertising and the mass media; but equally to schools, colleges, science, medicine, law, the police, the military, and of course the mainstream churches. Every statement is hyped, spun, selective, distorted, designed to mislead and seeded with outright lies. The very discourse of our time, thus our capacity for reason, is rotten - and ineffective.

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That is a short list of a few of the things which most strike me and come to mind.

But how can this happen? How can all this be going on with either ineffectual resistance or tacit approval of the mass of the population?

There are many answers, and many factors contributing; but the deepest answer and underpinning reason is the lack of religion in the UK.

At a profound level, the mass of British people deny - correctly - any absolute legitimacy for themselves and their convictions; and therefore collude in an agenda of multi-pronged self-destruction.

People try but cannot convince themselves of the validity of any secular rationale for modern peace, prosperity and comfort - and in this they are absolutely accurate. Our unprecedented material well-being and amusements - based on the inherited gifts of past geniuses - does not justify anything; certainly selfish abundance does not justify the kind of tough, long-termist, explicitly discriminatory policies required to safeguard and sustain a complex civilisation.

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Bad things will go on happening, and will go on getting worse and more urgent, and will continue to be ignored, misinterpreted and forgotten; unless or until there is a mass religious revival - which would almost certainly require the emergence and intervention of some leader of goodness, genius and great good fortune.

Because these deep problems are a consequence of a national state of nihilistic demotivation which is both severe and widespread; religious revival, which should of course be a Christian revival, is the one and only and absolutely necessary basis for doing anything which is net-constructive.

(If we try to solve the major problems without religion, we will surely, one way or another or in many ways, end-up using the (un-repented) 'Boromir Strategy' of using the One Ring to fight Sauron. We will - like the secular Right - try to defeat the evil of Leftism and try to make a better world by fostering hatred, greed and pride - in other words, the weapons of The Enemy.)

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Of course, such pragmatic criteria are not a reason for becoming Christian - the only and sufficient reason to become a Christian is that it is true: objectively true and really real.

(If another, non-Christian religion was the subject of a Great Awakening, then realistically this would simply be a different form of societal demise - a different route to what would amount to the same destination: i.e. the collapse and replacement of Britain by something else.)

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In sum, the more bad things happen with the approval of the ruling elites and the badder they get, the more tempting it is to try and stop these bad things by arguing and organising against them - but that is a counter-productive waste of time.

In sum, as things stand, the United Kingdom does not deserve to survive, knows it does not deserve to survive,and that is why it is allowing and encouraging its own demise.

The answer is that we must deserve to survive; by having a higher goal, and being motivated by serving that higher goal: Christianity.

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The only strategic stance - at the general, socio-political level - which is not fundamentally a waste of time or counter-productive is Christian evangelism; to try and promote, in whatever way we can best think of, a religious revival.

I have not the slightest flicker of optimism that this is actually happening - but it could happen, so there is ample room for hope.

Start here and now and with yourself.

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20 comments:

Bruce B. said...

Larry Auster used to refer to your island as "The Dead Isle."

Bruce Charlton said...

@BB - Well,yes; but much of that kind of comment from Americans comes across as wickedly-motivated - by pride, hatred, spite, Schadenfreude... and bounces back to harm the person making the comment, rather than expressing hope, sympathy for, or helping the British people.

Leo said...

“…a mass religious revival - which would almost certainly require the emergence and intervention of some leader of goodness, genius and great good fortune.”

I was thinking you would write “which would almost certainly require a catastrophe of such magnitude as to bring people to their senses.” Cf. Luke 15:17.

In any event the British and America people, as well as the rest of the world, are increasingly in the same boat. It will take something very good or very bad to change the course of the ship.

Bruce Charlton said...

@Leo - But we have already had the catastrophe - indeed several of them; and they have made no difference whatsoever. Just more 'news' - something to gossip and tut-tut about for a few days...

Leo said...

Sometimes on an individual level the personal catastrophes have been enough to lead to repentance. Maybe the national catastrophes haven't been big enough. Or maybe the nations are past repenting.

Bruce B. said...

I think Auster was a lover of England and he wrote so much about it because it was so troubling to see what’s going on over there.

I feel instinctive loyalty towards England since that’s where most of my ancestors came from and the prototype American is an Anglo-Saxon Protestant. So I find it very sad to see what’s happening over there and very frightening to think we’re not far behind here in America.

Thordaddy said...

When one comes to Christianity from a place of radical autonomy then it is the sheer logic of worshipping The Perfect Man, i.e., objective Supremacy, that serves as the impetus for embracing a NOVEL "structure/order" so absolutely missing in the radical liberationist.

Anonymous said...

The religious revival is on the way, but it's not about Christianity. Sad.

Bruce Charlton said...

Comment excerpts from AB Prosper and my comments IN CAPITALS

Low fertility among at least part of the educated is nothing new, The monasteries and celibate priesthoods of the past often served the same role as IQ shredders.

YOU MAY BE CORRECT IN THIS SPECIFIC INSTANCE, BUT THE UPPER (AND UPPER MIDDLE) CLASSES PROVIDED ALMOST ALL OF THE NEXT GENERATION DURING MEDIEVAL TIMES.

There was of course the aspects that wealthier people had larger families but wealth and IQ are only weakly correlated in Feudal societies

TEH CRITICAL FACTOR WAS NOT FERTILITY - EVERYBODY HAD VERY LARGE NUMBERS OF BIRTHS IN THOSE DAY - BUT MORTALITY RATES. ALMOST ALL THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR WOULD DIE BEFORE MATURITY.

As for recovering the West, a cultural revival is whats needed, not a religious one. a religious revival will enable to keep our atomized nuclear family (maybe extended family) system running and that's great for the elites. Heck the Catholic church promulgated the idea to replace the identity of family and tribe with that of Christendom. It was done for noble reasons, to grow the faith and bring peace but like all noble deeds, the road to hell is paved with such good intentions

A CULTURAL REVIVAL IS IMPOSSIBLE AND WILL NOT HAPPEN WITHOUT A RELIGIOUS REVIVAL - IT IS NOT AN OPTION. SECUALR PEOPLE HAVE BEEN AGITATING FOR THIS FOR THE PAST FOUR GENERATIONS BUT THERE HAS BEEN BARELY A GLIMMER AND NO SIGNIFICANT TREND.

What the West needs and good for the common clay of humanity though is a greater focus on clan or tribal system and a revival of that ethos will do our psychologies and souls much good. We can retain some of the abundance our modernity brings us but folks should no longer be expected or even encouraged to live and work among strangers.

NOBODY CARES ENOUGH ABOUT THESE MATTERS FOR THEM TO FUEL ANY KIND OF CULTURAL REVIVAL - AT MOST A BRIEF, HATE AND GREED DRIVEN THEFT-FEST MIGHT RESULT, BUT THAT WOULD OF COURSE BE DESTRUCTIVE IN THE MEDIUM/ LONG-TERM - LEADING TO GANGSTER-THUG RULE - AND NOT A RESURGENCE OF CIVILIZATION.

Wolfie said...

Most middle-class young families I know curtail their family size due to the ridiculous house prices which force them to live in tiny homes with exorbitant mortgages, surrounded by Boomers in their large, empty, fully paid-up family homes.

The Boomers destroyed England.

Bruce Charlton said...

@Wolfie - That's not it. Throughout human history, the biggest (surviving) families were (on average) always among those who were wealthiest.

Nowadays, with the welfare state, anybody could have as many children as they wanted - no matter what their income, and none would starve, or go without shelter or education - nearly all of them would grow to maturity.

Mormons, even nowadays, exhibit a pattern of fertility where the wealthiest have the most children - and above replacement levels.

http://mormonfertility.blogspot.co.uk/

It is primarily a question of priorities.

ajb said...

"The collapse into sub-replacement fertility among the most intelligent, best educated and wealthiest people - the taboo against noticing this, discussing it, doing anything about it."

Sub-replacement fertility is also the case in Japan, S. Korea, China, Vietnam, Turkey, Iran, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Ukraine, Russia, and so on. The fertility rate is actually significantly higher in the U.K. than in most of these countries.

JP said...

"the ridiculous house prices which force them to live in tiny home"

Whenever I see this I think about my great-grandparents who raised five kids in London -- then, the capital of the world! -- in a one-bedroom flat which had neither a washing machine, nor a dishwasher, nor a bathroom. Nor did they own the place. Nor were they relying on welfare payments -- great-grandpa worked for a living, and sent the kids out to work as soon as he could.

If you look at the houses built in the "baby boom" era in the USA, they seem absurdly small by today's standards. 1500 square feet and one shared bathroom! And yet the family would have four or more kids in it.

It is not at all about house size. As BGC says, it is all about priorities.

Bruce Charlton said...

@ajb - I can't see your point. My point is: sub-replacement fertility.

BTW more than a quarter of births in the UK are officially admitted to be from recent immigrants- the real number will be higher.

ajb said...

Bruce,

My point is that this isn't about England, or the United Kingdom, or Western Europe, or Western Civilization writ large - unless, of course, that is defined to include the entire world. Sub-replacement fertility is just what happens when people have access to effective, relatively safe birth control and don't have strong ideological or practical reasons for having large families. Raising kids is a lot of hard work - there has to be a very strong reason for having them. For the most part, people weren't selected to have babies but rather to have sex. What has to be explained isn't sub-replacement fertility, but rather the cases where, even though people have access to effective birth control and modern technologies, they still decide to have large families.

ajb said...

@JP "my great-grandparents who raised five kids in London -- then, the capital of the world! -- in a one-bedroom flat"

But to what extent did they choose this? To put it another way, if they had access to birth control like people have today, do you think the number would be the same?

Bruce Charlton said...

@ajb - I disagree. I think we ought to be surprised about sub-replacement fertility; and doubly surprised at people's attitude to the problem. This was not something which was expected to happen; and it is not well understood.

In particular the elite cult of childlessness or delayed and then tiny families overall represents an appalling set of priorities - a level of short-termist hedonism which in and of itself is sufficient to explain the covert (and increasingly overt) self-hatred and will of self-extinction on the part of the class (combined with an apparent desire to drag everybody else down with them, rather than simply hand over power and status).

This may account for the current dishonestly indirect - but purposive, active and clearly malicious - unrelenting subversion of monogamous, stable marriage and strong families.

Bruce Charlton said...

@ajb "But to what extent did they choose this? To put it another way, if they had access to birth control like people have today, do you think the number would be the same?"

Wealthy people in the past nearly always wanted to have many children, and made efforts to do so. And modern people are very wealthy by world historical standards - thanks to the welfare state they have bottomless pockets.

One key to all this is the truly massive scale of modern counter-propaganda against the normal and spontaneous desire of the majority of healthy women to marry young and start families in families whose stability is supported by the community. This vast river of multi-pronged propaganda in favour of the ideal of life as being an unmarried or divorced childless and chaotically-promiscuous middle-aged/ elderly middle manager must count as one of the cruellest hoaxes ever perpetrated on half the population.

ajb said...

Bruce,

I agree with many of the sentiments you've expressed here, but I think at bottom the theory has to encompass what is a global phenomenon. Are the Japanese elites, Iranian elites, Turkish elites, Chinese elites, Uruguayan elites, and so on, as or more self-hating than the British elites? Or consider the issue within Europe - are the Spanish elites and Italian elites more self-hating (1.3 and 1.4 fertility rates, respectively) than the British elites?

Or consider the situation historically. It's true that elites in Europe often had large families, and that they desired to do so. Yet, this was a highly Christian elite for the most part, and so (I would argue) they had strong ideological reasons for having large families. Consider the elites before the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire, where there were falling populations in the major cities. In large part this was because the people there - elite or otherwise - didn't want to have large families. It was this context into which Christianity was born, and it was in significant part for this reason (the ideological motivation for large families) that Christianity grew in influence as rapidly as it did.

Bruce Charlton said...

@ajb - I speak of what I know, but if you are asking me whether these other places are exempt from the same kind of causal forces as England, I would say probably not. The scope of the underlying problem apparently embraces almost all of the developed and half-developed world. I am not sure whether anywhere with sub-fertility is exempt from the malignant spirit of secular Leftism.

The only possibly exempt places may be some of those which also have very high fertility - but even some of these likely have sub-fertility among elites, when these are Westernized.

But it is a mistake to regard reported degrees of differences in sub-replacement fertility as significant - in the first place international statistical comparisons are seldom valid when methods, honesty and competence vary so much; in the second place that would be quibbling over trivial differences in what should be regarded as a gross (and fatal) pathology.