Spite is all around us; invisible, dominant: the fruit of resentment, fuelled by despair

Spite, spitefulness is a strong candidate for The Worst Sin (I've blogged on this often). 

Another word for (aspects of) spite is Schadenfreude - but this is more often treated as an amusing foible, trivialized; than recognized as among the worst of evils. 

Surely we can all, if honest, recognize in ourselves (and infer in others) this most evil of evils: a desire to harm others, to make others suffer: a motivation that will, at extremes, risk or sacrifice even oneself? 

Surely we have all felt an arising impulse that responds to awareness of happiness, beauty, moral decency, honesty in other people or the world around us... with an impulse of hatred, the urge to destroy it, to smash it. 

We observe perfection; and then a stab of desire to mar that perfection. The urge may even be yielded to, when "harmless" - as when we see a perfect reflection cast by a still pool of water... And then respond by smashing it to smithereens by hurling a rock into it! 

"Harmless" fun, maybe - a tiny lapse, in the scheme of things; no lasting harm done... Yet if we examine the motivations for such everyday (trivial) destructions, we may (if honest) find spite at the root of it.

Likewise for our actions against others. These may be rationalized as necessary, or because "he deserves it"; but at root, the motivation may be spiteful: "I want to see him suffer".  

Most people, most of the time, squash such vile feelings in themselves (and certainly try to forget them) - but surely we have all experienced them? 

And - if we have any insight or capacity to reflect - seen this in other people (including the best people, at times; including those we love the most), and perhaps been at the receiving end of it? 

People who cause trouble among groups of friends - break-up friendships, relationships, even marriages; who spread malicious rumours, mislead, misreport, life; who engage in "he said, she said" betrayals. 

And surely we have at least thought about doing such things ourselves?  

Spite is ignoble, it is despicable - but it is real.

It is found to some degree in almost everybody, and it is the master sin ruling some people (and many demons). It is seen all through human history, and all around us - yet, spite is hardly acknowledged. 

(Except, maybe, in stories about youngish children! Enid Blyton often included spiteful characters, named as such, in her stories - which is how I first put a name to it.)

It is regarded as more sophisticated and pseudo-intelligent to analyse spite in terms of other motivations - especially disguised forms of self-interest. So, the harming of B by A is likely to be described in terms of how harming B benefits A (perhaps indirectly, or over the long-term). 

But the point is not whether spite can be explained-away - Of Course it can! 

The point is to to Ask The Question. Is this spite?

We absolutely need to know whether whether spite is the real motivator behind behaviour; because if it is, then such behaviour cannot be appeased by fulfilling self-interest. 

And, like most sins, spite feeds on its own gratification. When infliction of harm brings gratification, then the infliction of more harm to more targets will probably follow.    

Spite cannot be bought-off. Spite will not be satisfied by less than suffering and destruction. 

Thus when spite is explained-away - this merely allows for the undetected and more effective deployment of more spite. 

And spite is a natural product of the besetting modern sin of resentment - with the dominant ideology of The West being the creation, encouragement, subsidy and protection of ever-more "resentment groups" defined in terms of class, sex, race, sexuality or... whatever*. 

And (in the West, the developed world) this is a world of despair (whether actual or incipient). Because nearly everybody lives-by the assumptions that reality has no purpose or meaning, and that human life is followed by annihilation. 

With such assumptions; existential despair is normal and rational; such that self-distraction from this (supposed-) reality has become perhaps the primary life goal.    

When we have so many people who fundamentally assume themselves to be victims, and who despair; the ground is prepared for the operations of spite - first directed against those who are most resented (i.e. the supposed "oppressors"); but soon (as the sin takes grip) directed against pretty much anyone who in any way irritates us. 

When the most spite-dominated people are also among the most powerful, wealthy, high status, and influential in the world - then we have.... Well, we have exactly what we see around us in the world of geopolitics, global strategy, and the international and national leadership class. 

This world of "Sorathic evil".  

A world in which anything that is (or seems to be) of-God, or Good; anything apparently manifesting the transcendental values of Truth, Beauty or Virtue. Anything wholesome, innocent, natural, spontaneous, care-free... Any such becomes a prime target for spitefully-motivated attack. 

Yet, up to now, spite is invisible. Trivialized. Explained-away. 

By refusing to recognize the operations of spite in ourselves - failing thereby to acknowledge and to repent its sinful nature; we thereby fail to recognize spite in others. 

So spite can be everywhere, dominant, and increasing - yet we choose to be self-blinkered against perceiving it. 

And until we are aware of spite; the operations of spite cannot be resisted - either in ourselves, or others. 

* Leftism now rules the West and much of the world; and Leftism is a negative, oppositional ideology built upon resentment, and depending upon continuing expansion of resentment. The so-called political "Right" (of all types) is merely a variant of Leftism**. This can be seen in its domination by resentments, but of a different inflexion; typically inversions of mainstream Leftism: e.g. resenting women instead of the Leftist resentment of men, resenting the Left-approved races etc. Of course, such motivating resentment is rationalized and explained-away on quasi-objective grounds - yet the actuality of resentment as prime motivator is sometimes revealed when spite-driven desires or fantasies are expressed; as well as by the relentlessly negative and oppositional focus of Rightist discourse (against, against, AGAINST!). 

**The only alternative to the Left is religion. All secularism, all atheism, all materialism is ultimately Leftist. 

H/T - This was stimulated by a comment from Avro G. 

Spite - in some ways, the worst sin

Spite is the desire to harm, hurt, upset, annoy or offend someone else - and it is a terrible sin because it is both insatiable and self-righteous.

A spiteful person sees happiness and wants to destroy it, on the grounds that it is smug, and it will be good-for those concerned to experience a bit of 'real life' - he observes with satisfaction the misery of others because they 'deserve it'.

Spite is worse than Schadenfreude because spite is active - spite is actually going to the trouble of causing trouble - expending effort, time and resources to create suffering in others.

Spite is ignoble, petty, babyish - whereas some people embrace the sin of pride and try to defend it as a good thing; nobody does this with spite, nobody makes a big thing about their own spitefulness - not least because it reveals their dependence on others.

That many of the highest status people in the world are primarily motivated by spite is extremely obvious; although - perhaps because of horror at the reality of this fact - people talk as if this was an extreme and outrageous suggestion. Yet surely our insight and personal experience tells us that spite is nearly universal to some degree; and the dominant passion, the prime motivator, the principal drive and source of energy for a significant number of people - including some of the richest and most famous, the most intelligent and educated, the most charming and beautiful.

Indeed, in my personal encounters with the elite, the mass media stars and celebrities; petty spitefulness is probably the major and most striking feature they seem to share in common.  

In sum; it is the spitefulness of an evil person that causes so much trouble for others. A proud spirit damns himself; but it is spite that motivates him to drag others down; it is spite that makes him a nuisance, a wrecker, a ruiner, a destroyer; it is perhaps spite that most distinguishes a demon from the general run of lost souls.


Note: I remember how, as a kid, we especially used to dislike and fear spiteful children. Perhaps especially those pretty, 'perfect' ballet-dancing type girls, the ones whom the adults thought of as especially 'good', and always believed - but whose greatest pleasure seemed to be asserting their superiority with barbed comments and insightful criticisms that you couldn't stop thinking about; and who quietly delighted in getting other children into as much trouble as possible, whenever a safe opportunity arose. And of course there were plenty of boy tormentors too - including the most dominant and 'popular' kid; who would terrorize, or make gangs in order to enjoy the misery of their victims. But, in general, spitefulness caused more childhood misery than almost any other cause - and it was a special bliss, a kind of paradise, to be among any group of kids that was free of such characters. 

Understanding the peck-plan - and how Sorathic spite is subverting the Ahrimanic totalitarian agenda

The plan is, apparently, to have the entire world population pecked as a supposed way of addressing the 'problem' of the birdemic. 

(Or, at least, the global masses are to be pecked - since we have no way of knowing whether the rulers are included.) 

The peck-agenda is multi-faceted; and seems to bring together several of the main mechanisms of the Establishment agenda for omni-surveillance and micro-control - and thus looks-like a further step in making The System more comprehensive and intrusive. 

Thus far, the peck-plan is evil in an understandably Ahrimanic way. It is 'business-as-usual' for totalitarian bureaucrats with their God/spirit/soul-excluding agenda of mere-materialism. 

Yet against this interpretation is the striking fact that the peck itself is a 'black box' of various poorly-tested traditional pecks; plus massive and experimental treatments with (versions of) something new, genetically-invasive, all-but un-tested, and therefore extremely hazardous... Thus the peck-plan includes something that is Not a peck, by long-established definitions; but instead a conjectural attempt at genetic modification.

(Gene therapy has never safely and successfully been done in humans. Although in the early 1990s it was touted as the Next Big Thing In Medicine, it has been tried and failed many-fold times over the past three decades.) 

This 'universal' genetic-modification peck-strategy is reckless and hazardous at a scale never before seen in the history of the world. 

Therefore, it may, quite plausibly, over the longer term (multiple iterations of this type of 'peck' are planned) - and likely by several lethal mechanisms - lead to some kind of (deniable) giga-death scenario.

But how this type of giga-death would pan-out (who would be affected, and in what way; and the consequences) is not knowable; not even approximately knowable --- Not only because death at this scale has never been seen, but also because so little is known about this type of treatment and the problems it will cause. 

My point here is that if the peck-plan was straightforwardly Ahrimanic in its intent - that is, about surveillance and control; then the peck itself would have been made as harmless and low-risk as possible. 

Indeed, a placebo peck would probably be the best strategy - since a placebo would allow the apparatus of surveillance and control to be implemented without adding unpredictable risks. 

But there is No Way that a genetic 'peck' with unknown and potentially massive hazards would have been allowed by genuinely-Ahrimanic leaders - let alone encouraged and enforced on a mass scale. 

This is one of the reasons I have come to believe that the Ahrimanic powers have already lost control of the revolution they initiated with the global coup of early 2020; and that there has already been a takeover by the Sorathic spirit. 

Takeover by the Sorathic spirit his happens spontaneously, because evil is corrupting - evil feeds upon itself, gets worse over time (as often seen in the greatest sinners of history; who usually started out not-so-bad). 

Thus when Ahrimanic evil successfully established a system of world governance in 2020 - it thereby opened the possibility of a more direct and short-termist form of 'negative evil'. 

This evil operates on individual, not at a System-level. The bureaucrats of Ahrimanic evil are typically seething with personal resentments (based on sex, sexuality, class, race, etc.). These personal agendas conflict with the effective operations of The System; and personal motivations need to be suppressed and over-ridden for The System to operate.  

Yet, because the System has such one-sided world dominance; evil-motivated individuals (whether demons, world rulers, national politicians, managers and officials, or low level operatives) are continually tempted towards abandoning the long-term objectives of strengthening and extending The System; and instead engaging in sheerly spiteful immediate acts of vengeance and destruction, directed against those they hate and resent.  

This short-term, selfish subversion is the temptation everywhere in The System; and it becomes easier to indulge and harder to control the larger and more dominant the System becomes. 

Also, Sorathic spite is so extreme a motivation; that those in its grip will even sacrifice their own well-being, and even their own lives, in order to torment and harm those individual, institutions or groups that they most resent. 

This means that normal methods of controlling individuals (through incentives and punishments) become ineffective when someone is consumed by destructive spite. 

And it is Sorathic spite that I perceive behind the genetic-peck. The Ahrimanic plan of the currently-named Great Reset is already collapsing under the subversive effects of Sorathic spite. This, indeed, may be the reason why it was decided at last explicitly to inform the general public about the details of the Great Reset.

This Establishment Plan has been known in outline and implicitly by those with insight for many decades, going back into the early 20th century when it was described by several authors including outsiders like Rudolf Steiner, Hilaire Belloc and CS Lewis; and insiders such as HG Wells, Aldous Huxley and George Orwell. 

But now, just as it has achieved its greatest success; the Ahrimanic Plan is under threat from within, by the subversions of many and dispersed Establishment functionaries and demonic overlords... 

So the Ahrimanic elites are (desperately!) trying to recruit support from the masses - at present by dishonestly pretending that the internal Sorathic threats are actually external threats from wholly imaginary power-groups of Christians, white sooper reamitists and the like. 

Obviously, this is counter-productive to the Ahrimanic agenda because it will encourage the Sorathic tendencies in the managerial and functionary class by rationalizing acts of vengeance and spite against the hated victim class of white, native, straight, men. 

And once the Sorathic stage of evil has been reached - there is no going back, because those in the grip do not want to go back. That's why these are the End Times. 

We've already got Ahrimanic transhumanism - how about Sorathic superpower war?

In October 2019 I posted a video of Terry Boardman in which he prognosticates about three major civilizational threats - war, transhumanism and envirnmental damage. 

Since then we have had the world government totalitarian coup of early 2020; which has used the birdemic to impose much of the transhumanist agenda - building on the work of the trans-agenda which had imposed reality-denial, insanity and destructive abuse of children at the highest levels. 

But what about superpower (US/ NATO, Russia, China) war - which TB regarded as the most imminent threat? 

Certainly this looks increasingly plausible. US military capability and dominance is being been deliberately demolished with extraordinary rapidity (removing decades of superiority); meanwhile it is clear that there are powerful influences operating in the US that both make and take every possible opportunity to provoke war with either or both of the superpowers. 

If a superpower war is being sought; then we would be foolish to regard it as being driven by 'national interests' - because there is no such thing, anymore. We have a single world government. National interests are just something to be manipulated - just 'office politics' - in this era of the single, linked-bureaucracy. 

What we are seeing is the demonic agenda continuing to morph from Ahrimanic to Sorathic; from the strategic objective of a global System of omni-surveillance and micro-control, to the short-termist, spite-driven evil of sheer destruction. 

When destruction of God's creation and all that is Good becomes the goal, it is hard to better a global superpower war; especially when the contenders are fairly evenly matched. 

Of course; many of the Ahrimanic controllers will initially try to resist such a war, because it would destroy The System. Last summer the controllers managed to channel the Sorathic outburst of violent antiracism into 'yet more bureaucracy' - but the fact is that it is easier to destroy than to build. 

Evil bureaucrats (who are currently the most powerful among the wicked or the world) may quite easily corruptible (by their own dominant fear and resentment) into a spiteful, vengeful, despairing destructiveness. 

The extreme vulnerability arises because the global Ahrimanic System is built-upon Leftist resentments that have been created and encouraged between classes (originally), sexes, 'sexualities', races, ethnicities, religions etc - and such resentments need only be one-sided to be effective. 

So we already have a System built in deliberately provoked resentments; all that is needed is for self-seeking resentment to be transformed to other-destroying spite - and then we have war: war at multiple locations and levels; from the superpowers down to the inter-personal.  

This transformation from resentment to spite is already happening; and is likely to increase (because this is being encouraged from the highest levels). It may suddenly increase very quickly, in a positive-feedback spiral. 

...Including the powerful/ wealthy/ famous/ influential evil bureaucrats turning-on each other, and on everybody else. 

Such a war may be perceived (by those with most influence, or who believe it is in their grasp) as offering massive immediate possibilities for grabbing power, wealth, sex or whatever They personally most want most. 

When time horizons shorten even further than already - then functional and sustaining structures will look like opportunities for parasitic looting and 'rape' of The System (in both general and specific meanings). An attitude of carpe diem among the evil Establishment would soon cause collapse of the already eroded social functionality; and when functional social structures collapse (in such an inter-dependent world as this) one failure will bring-down several others systems - spreading and accelerating.   

My point is therefore that some of the Establishment are clearly trying to trigger a superpower war; and that pressure is increasing; and if it does break-through it could soon become unstoppable and irreversible. 

But (again) we should not suppose that this is about old-fashioned national/ ethnic/ political self-interest - such an interpretation would grossly underestimate the evil of its real motivations.

When the world government is dominated by supernatural demonic powers; then merely human motivations are a false guide to action; and create wrong predictions. 

And when the dominant demonic influences become Sorathic, we can observe the unedifying scenario of the very-evil being overcome by the even-more-evil. 

When/ if this happens; the transhumanist 'controllers' who are trying to preserve their System of Damnation, will then superficially appear like the 'good side'! In comparison with the 'pure', destruction-seeking evil of the baddies who shape resentment into spite; to provoke, sustain and amplify a terminal superpower war. 

What can we do? The first and most important things are to understand correctly the primarily spiritual nature of what is happening in the world. Such an understanding (in individual persons) itself has a positive and creative influence. 

And this positive influence does not depend upon material systems of communications, but potentially works by spiritual means, by the direct and intuitive knowing between persons (and other beings) on the side of God, The Good and Divine Creation. 

The more we recognize the spiritual nature of phenomena, and discern clear the side of Good; the more powerfully beneficial will be the influence. 

God works to improve the spiritual state of the world through those who love him; but God can work only through those themselves meet him part-way. When we consciously discern and choose Good, all kinds of invisible but pervasive positive influences are made possible. 

"The exclusion of love" - the worst possible sin

"I know it's off the point", Havard interjects, "but I'd like to ask Williams what he would regard as the worst possible sin?"

Williams answers without a moment's hesitation: "The exclusion of love."

Havard nods. 

From "Thursday evenings" (an imaginative recreation of a meeting, closely based on documentary sources) in The Inklings, by Humphrey Carpenter, 1979. 

For many years found Charles Williams's idea of the worst possible sin to be impressive - and yet also puzzling.

 (I later came-across the place where Williams gave this judgment, and from-which Carpenter derived the quotation; but unfortunately I have now forgotten where this was published.) 

Although for somewhat different reasons than Williams - I also regard "the exclusion of love" as a deep insight into sin, rooted in the ultimate nature of reality. 

For Christians; Love is - metaphysically speaking - the ultimate cause and reason for creation. 

Therefore, the exclusion of Love is the primary sin; because it rejects and opposes divine creation itself. 

This is important, because Men are easily distracted by more 'spectacular' and positive sins; but it is worth remembering that these are (in a sense) just a means to the end of the exclusion of Love. 

And also that the exclusion of Love may be at work - as a motivation, in the nature of Men or other Beings - even when spectacular sins are entirely absent. 

Many large and powerful aspects of modern life are a material embodiment of the exclusion of Love: such as bureaucracy in general, and social systems such as law, the economy, and mass media... 

The modern institution is a domain where procedures dominate. Love is excluded from operations ever-more-completely; and consequently an environment where (Love-less and Love-hating) cold, soulless, psychopathic, manipulative careerists thrive.  

And the worst of positive sins is probably spite; and that too can be seen as a consequence of the exclusion of Love. 

Where Love is present, spite can never work unopposed; but without Love, spite can become master. 

Forgive, but don't forget

Christians must forgive - for our own personal good, primarily. 

Unforgiveness is resentment - close-cousin to spite: to desire harm against another person or Being (harm even at the cost of our own suffering). And spite is probably the worst, most insatiable of sins. 

Failure to forgive will keep us out of Heaven, because we will not even want to dwell in Heaven - which is a place of love and without spite. Someone who prefers to sustain his own resentment - even on a single topic; and who will not accepts the cleansing grace of Jesus Christ to be purified of it at resurrection... Well, such a person has damned himself.

(Unforgiveness is not-to want-to forgive - forgiveness is the opposite.) 

Forgetting is not the same a forgiving - although forgiving (when effectual) puts an end to that grinding resentment which gnaws at the soul. When one has forgiven there is no particular reason to ruminate obsessively - therefore one may think on it less, or with less extremity... 

On the other hand, forgetting may be undesirable - we may need to learn. 

For instance; it may be right and desirable to remember when someone (or some institution) has lied to us. We ought to know liars, because (unrepentant) liars are servants of the devil; and therefore we may need to regard them differently. 

We need, for example, to recognize when someone (or some institution) is using language in order to manipulate us, and not to communicate truth. This means we are dealing with evil; and therefore it is desirable for us to remember that this is a liar. 

We must forgive the fact they have lied to us - because not to forgive means deliberately nurturing resentment - which will act on us as soul-poison. However, we should not forget the fact; because that They are 'a liar' is spiritually relevant and important.  

But what if "I can't forgive"? 

Well, that is never true - for forgiveness is the inner act of wanting to forgive - forgiveness just-is the recognition that we ought to forgive, and the willingness that we should be enabled to forgive. 

While we are on earth everything - including the human mind and body - is subject to change and mortality, and the limitations of our physical situation (the constraints of our body and mind). 

Therefore, the actual 'process' of forgiveness, which is eternal, comes only after our death - at the time of resurrection. 

Until then, what matters is our recognition and willingness.

Recognize that you must forgive and be willing to forgive - but do not try to forget matters of spiritual importance. 

Rumours of war - more Sorathic subversion?

On the one hand; we have the first ever global government; which has imposed the same mass oppression all over the world - disguised as birdemic sanctions  and based on nothing but lies, and impervious to knowledge/ facts/ evidence.

On the other hand; there is more talk of superpower war than I can remember for several decades. 

Could it really be possible that a world war would tear-apart all the carefully planned and elaborately constructed 'consensus' which has agreed upon a single ideology to be implemented by a coordinated, multi-agency plan?

How or why would there be a threat of war when the world has been 'unified' under a single totalitarian bureaucracy that encompasses all the functional social institutions? It seems irrational to build a world government, only to have it torn apart so soon after completion... Surely 'wiser heads would prevail'?

Yet we have this talk of war in high places, and with a casual quality about it all; as if nothing ore were being contemplated than a product marketing scheme. Does this mean that it is 'just talk' or that - for the people who now run things - war seems no different from their routine scams and lies. 

To me, this all looks like another Sorathic phenomenon, such as I have inferred before. As all the nations, major institutions, corporations and churches of the world have been conquered by The System of atheist-materialist-leftism - so evil evolves to a further and more extreme type which aims at destruction. 

And when destruction is the intent, and the only big thing there is to destroy is the global System - then it is the global System that will be destroyed. What else is there, after all other significant social institutions have already been destroyed or assimilated? 

...Destruction of as much as possible, as soon as possible - for which purpose a world war (or at least a superpower war) would be the surest route.

W.W. III would be primarily a spiritual war of a new type; even though it might be rationalized by the promise of material gain. Historical wars often evoked great human virtues (courage, love, loyalty, self-sacrifice...), and sometimes led to major religious revivals. So the further-sighted among the powers of evil were wary of wars for that reason. 

But such benefits of war seem very unlikely in 2021; because we have experienced several generations of mass religious apostasy and atheist public discourse; and the birdemic response imposed the largest/ most-rapid abandonment of religious practice in human history, which was eagerly implemented by the world religious leadership. 

So the world of 2021 has just demonstrated that spiritual and religious considerations mean almost nothing to modern Man - are, at any rate, utterly swamped by one-eyed irrational fears of illness and death... 

Therefore as of 2021 - it is unlikely that war will lead to courage or self-sacrifice. Therefore there is little to hold back those demonic powers who have become tired of the dull, strategic, long-termism of the prevalent bureaucratic/ Ahrimanic evil. 

By contrast, the ground has been prepared for those who are most motivated by immediate resentment and urgent destructive spite directed against first those they hate; then absolutely any-thing that is beautiful, true and virtuous. 

Ultimately against all that is divinely created. 

War, then, becomes a distinct possibility. Not war for any 'good reason' - although it could and would falsely be rationalized by what counts as good reasons in today's debased and incoherent world of media hype and corporate corruption. 

Instead war for bad reason - that is, war for no reason except the personal gratification of those who would be satisfied to see the destruction of that which they hate. 

After all, the populace have been trained by decades of political and media encouragement of resentment-based ideologies such as socialism, feminism, and antiracism - and these ideologies are now subsidized and enforced on an international scale. 

My guess is that the ground is prepared for war - whether this was intended or no. 

And if (or when) enough individual people with enough power or influence want to start a war, for whatever personal reason - then I don't see who or what would stop them. 

If it was at all risky or costly to stand personally against war - then who have we seen among the powerful of this world, that would have the higher principles and the courage to take risks or experience costs in order to 'do the right thing'? I know of none.    

When Men are motivated by little but fear, expediency and spite - and are (literally) incapable of consecutive thinking; it is easy for spite to get the better of fear and expediency; and then there will be a war; and one thing could easily lead to another until war encompasses the world. 

Once under way; a war based on vengeful resentment on all sides would not have any reason to cease until a very complete level of destruction had been reached - and could reach no stable end-point. 

In sum - although there is no good reason for war, that doesn't mean a thing. There was no good reason for smashing the world economy and destroying basic human interaction (forever?); yet it happened last year. 

There is no good reason for most of what happens in the world, now- yet it happens, with ever greater frequency and severity.  

Why, then, not war? It it, after all, far easier to destroy than to create: anyone can do it. 

Demonic spite and resentment, on the cusp of nihilistic destruction

The recent act of European energy-supply sabotage - taken in its actual context - impressed me as one of the most shocking and blatant acts of calculatedly nihilistic destruction of which I am aware. 

That 'The West' is (here and now) capable of such a thing, defensible only by ridiculous lies and absurd projection. Yet exactly that insultingly-ridiculous absurdity was solemnly asserted throughout the globalist mass media and by (not-) 'national' (not-) leaders; and (apparently) believed by the unfathomably idiotic masses of the West, including those most affected! 

Well... in such a world, nothing of evil is ruled-out; almost anything could happen - even when it does not materially benefit anyone (any human, that is - which is the clue). 

I always expected that if the side of God, creation and The Good ever came to threaten the 'progress' of atheist-materialist-leftism; then the ultimate response of the dominant Establishment would be self-destructive; an attempt to blow-up The Whole Thing, and/or bring it tumbling-down. 

So, what is stopping the powers of destructive evil? Why are we still here; why are you reading this?

Well, those humans who are utterly in thrall to demons and in positions of power, are still in a minority; and must work with the consent of a larger assemblage of the greedy, the depraved, the power-crazed and the stupid. 

Destructive evil must still be cloaked in excuses and rationales - albeit the cloak may be flimsy and semi-transparent. 

These cloaking rationales do not need to be plausible by the standards of the past; because Men's minds - Men's thinking and insight - are by-now thoroughly corrupted by many decades of pervasive and rising materialism-atheism-leftism; willingly invited-into Men's hearts, and there nurtured.

But it is easy to see the cloaking process at work in the Western media (and, apparently, among the Establishment). 

Simply by talking incessantly about taboo possibilities, their shock and revulsion value is diminished by habituation. The once-unthinkable is actually thought; the once-undoable is modelled, and its pros and cons weighed. 

The clarity of stark moral simplicities is buried beneath (permitted) wrangling over (permitted) details, 'evidence' and rival models. 

The process is long-established in the media, in relation to all of the Big Lies upon which  the major strategies of evil are based (CO2 climate environmentalism, mass migration, antiracism etc). Stark, simple false assertions are buried beneath irrelevant quibbles over the 'validity' (and 'authority') of proximate 'data'. 

Anyway, there is no doubt in my mind that there is a powerful element in The West who are currently actively-engaged in the necessary 'manufacture of consent' among those with the necessary power; to escalate the Fire Nation versus West conflict into the most destructive possible conflagration. 

This goal of Mega-Destruction ASAP; is not 'for' any reason, other than that is what these individuals want; destruction is what gives them personal gratification. It comes from sheer spitefulness, triggered by their loss of global control. 

They do not need to gain from the destruction in terms of (for example) wealth, power, status or lust. They gain from the destruction of their 'enemies' - and that is enough. Such is the nature of spite. 

Indeed, when spite has mastery, individuals will self-harm, or even self-destruct*, in order to inflict suffering on those they most resent. 

(*e.g. This is seen in some suicides; and is indeed sometimes explicit in suicide messages or notes. "I'll kill myself, and then she'll be sorry." "You drove me to do this, and I want you to feel guilty for the rest of your life.")

The very fact that the Fire Nation has brought even a glimmer of hope to a world that - just two and a bit years ago - seemed to be caught inescapably in the grip of a unitary global totalitarianism that explicitly desired the full impoverishment, omni-surveillance and micro-control of nearly-all the population; is what fuels this spiteful destructiveness. 

We are seeing the very first movements of a tidal change against the core agenda of evil. Seemingly, the tide has actually turned, and events are (in totality, overall) moving against the totalitarian-progressive-leftist trend in several substantial parts of the world, for the first time in decades. 

This is, of course, existentially intolerable for those who have come to believe in the irresistible progression of their kind of inversional evil. 

They have had it all their own way for decades, but now - just as the world was in their grasp! - much of the world is turning-against them, defying their plans, opposing their values!

Materially speaking these are uniquely dangerous times. 

If the spiteful destroyers (at or near the top of power structures) get their way; we will soon (or today) begin to see acts of unprecedented destructiveness - designed to escalate rapidly and uncontrollably.

In my judgment; this will happen, unless those responsible are stopped from doing it. 

And the reason for stopping will have to be spiritual - since the world of material argument has been colonized and controlled by evil. 

In other words; there is currently an increased potential for spiritual growth among individuals in the West, as the spiteful become mastered by their destructive impulses, and as their cloaks of reasonableness and idealism become ever flimsier and more ragged.

I believe that this can be observed. It is part of things 'coming to a point'. 

The side of evil is getting more evil; and the side of good is separating-out, separating itself from evil goals bit by bit... and becoming more conscious of its own affiliation to God and creation. 

This divergence is observable on a month-by-month timescale - as can be seen from a comparison of the untruthfulness of leadership statements from either side. 

One side has incrementally built an empire of lies; lies built on lies, protected by ever-more (and more absurd) lies; with blatant projections of their own sins and motivations onto 'the enemy'. 

While the other side (remarkably!) has become more honest; and displays a increasingly balanced and complete understanding of the global situation, and the values and ideals at stake. 

All of which means that if mass destruction (of one kind or another) does Not happen soon; then things are probably looking-up, spiritually, for The World (if not for us in The West).  

Sorath is ascendant... But is Sorath a specific being?

I have recently blogged about the theme of Sorathic evil; which I adapted from some remarks of Rudolf Steiner - and which I first came across, summarized, in the work of Terry Boardman. 

Sorathic evil is here defined as a purely negative, short-termist and destructive kind of evil; ultimately motivated by resentment and hatred of God and all that is God's creation. 

I envisage Sorathic evil as a kind of end-stage (end-times) phenomenon; and one we may observe following-on from the recent and current Ahrimanic evil that denies the reality of God, creation and the spiritual realm altogether; and attempts to impose a wholly materialistic and scientistic, Global Total System of surveillance and control. 

This Ahrimanic evil takes a long-term perspective, aiming to maximize quantitative human damnation - and in pursuit of this goal includes necessarily various elements that are good; such as the bureaucratic virtues of obedience, thoroughness and hard-work. 

Ahrimanic evil aims to create a system of value-inversions (virtue becomes vice, while sin is encouraged and rewarded; truth becomes hate-facts and fake-news, while lies are science... etc.). This System will (by such means as law, media propaganda and corporate regulations) subversively 'process' people into a social structure that is anti-God, anti-Christian, anti-Good.  

But as Ahrimanic evil has become dominant and pervasive, and gets closer to completion (as is happening rapidly at present) so the stage is set for Sorathic evil. 

It will begin to be 'noticed' that The System still relies upon good-motivations (e.g. residual habits of thinking and behaving inherited from tradition and Christianity; or innate common sense evaluations and survival instincts as a consequence of human biology). 

When these tacit and implicit Christian (or Pagan) virtues are pointed-out;  and the Ahrimanic will begin to lose faith in their compromises. 

As The System becomes more 'total', and as Good agents are disempowered and suppressed) inevitably Sorathic zeal begins to focus on those aspects of the The System itself, that conflict with the aims of evil. 

Extremist and impatient Sorathic agents will turn-upon the plodding 'moderates' of evil; aiming to purge them. Indeed, by this point the sincere Ahrimanic agents will be among the least-evil of those who wield power and influence.    

Until that point, short-termist immediate evil cannot prevail; because it cannot self-organize. After all, Sorathic agents will fight each other whenever immediate advantage is to be gained from it.

However, when Good has been substantially destroyed and replaced with an evil-orientated and evil-permeated System; then there will commence a kind of natural selection among agents of evil. 

Sorathic agents that are more short-termist (hence destructive) will begin to prevail over Ahrimanic agents who are trying to be long-termist by clinging-onto virtues like obedience and pragmatic long-termism.  

And Sorathic 'gratification' is, at this extreme, sheerly spiteful destructiveness. A Sorathically-motivated being will destroy even when this takes hard work, and even when it harms the Sorathic being. 

(For a Sorathic being; cutting off your nose to spite your face is normal operational procedure.) 

Against such reckless, frenzied, destructive hate; the sensible, practical, self-seeking Ahrimanic 'moderates' will be helpless. 

For this reason I do not think that there can be a specific being of Sorath. 

Instead Sorathic evil is a kind of mass effect, the product of many spiteful individuals operating in a situation of advanced-evil where good agents have been dispersed and stripped of power. Individualistic spite will prevail. 

There cannot be a Sorathic 'leader'. Any attempt to plan and lead Sorathic activity, would be self-contradictory! After all; planning and strategizing of evil is Ahrimanic rather than Sorathic! 

Maximizing immediate short-term destruction is intrinsically opposed to optimizing long-term Systemic evil They are goals that cannot simultaneously be pursued - one or the other must prevail. 

In conclusion, I do not think that Sorath is a specific being, but a type of evil: the most advanced and extreme type of evil - therefore, one that cannot thrive until the ground has been prepared for it, by the success of Ahrimanic evil and its expulsion of Good agents from public discourse and practice. 

And the ground has, very nearly, been exactly thus prepared; and the ascendency of the Sorathic has already begun. 

Don't try to explain evil by self-interest - evil is malice (William Blake)

Those who say that men are led by interest are knaves. 

A knavish character will often say - 'Of what interest is it to me to do so-and-so?'

I answer - 'Of none at all, but on the contrary, as you well know. It is of malice and envy that you have done this: hence I am aware of you, because I know that you act, not from interest, but from malice - even to your destruction'.  

William Blake - from Descriptive Catalogue (re-punctuated and emphasis added)

So many people, so often, regard self-interest as the prime evil, and try to explain the evil in this world as due to persons and institutions motivated by self-interest...  

Everything gets explained that way; so people will seek-out why such and such an action benefits the person that did it. And when this isn't obvious, then remote and indirect self-interest will be wheeled-out.

Contrariwise; if self-interest is not obvious - or if the chain of explanation is disbelieved - then it is assumed that there was no evil but merely some inexplicable coincidence, or incompetence - bad things are confidently ascribed to the sheer 'randomness' and uncontrollability of things.

Those who do this are what Blake termed knaves - cunning, dishonest, deceitful, cowardly, traitorous. In other words knaves are themselves those who are motivated by malice, by spite, by their taking of pleasure in the misery of others.

Northrop Frye (in Fearful Symmetry p56-7) amplifies Blake's passage thus:

By turning away from the world to be perceived we develop an imaginative idleness which spreads a sickness and lassitude over the whole soul, and all vices spring from this... Murder is obviously an expression of the same death-impulse that suicide is, and all evil acts are more or less murderous...

This death-impulse, this perverted wish to cut down and restrict the scope of life, is the touchstone not only of all the obvious vices, but of many acts often not classified as such; like teasing, instilling fear or discouragement, or exacting unthinking obedience.

It is quite inadequate to call self-interest a motive of evil conduct, though the death-impulse may be disguised in that form. Self-interest implies a good deal of control: in all extreme vices there is a mania in which one is hagridden by a 'ruling passion'.

As so often, children understand perfectly that evil is spite and malice; it is only in a culture so sophomoric, so adolescent, so knavish as ours - that we claim to see-through the 'obvious (and true) explanation such as to regard evil as an expression of mere self-interest (most often specifically economic self-interest).

Yet self-interest is universal - and so is no explanation at all; especially in a world where 'goodness' is defined in 'utilitarian' terms of publicly-observable and quantifiable 'altruism' (e.g. raising money for 'charity') - such that altruism is itself the grossest form of self-interest. 

Furthermore, the focus on self-interest serves to disguise real evil; because the 'mania' that drives a 'hagridden' doer of malicious evil will often bring about his downfall - and in modern culture that makes him a 'victim', worthy of sympathy. Instead of seeing self-destruction as a hallmark of the murderous nature of true evil, it engages our sympathy - and thus we are corrupted.

This is vital to bear in mind when so much of modern evil is bureaucratic, such that responsibility for evil is eluded, and we seldom know even the identities of those whose malice drives the evil. But, whether we know them or not, we can be sure that they are there.

Can evil be 'pure evil' - or is evil always a misguided desire to do good?

This is an old Christian debate - as, as usual, the answer depends on metaphysical assumptions.


There is a traditional and respectable Christian argument that there cannot be pure evil, because evil is essentially the lack or 'privation' of good. This (strange) conclusion arises from the metaphysical assumption that God created everything, from nothing (ex nihilo); and God is wholly good; therefore everything that is - is good in an ultimate sense.

By this account evil is a misguided good. An example would be Adolf Hitler, who seems (when committing his greatest atrocities) to have sincerely believed (most of the time, anyway) he was doing good according to his own ideas of good.

To go further, by this account evil is a kind of insanity. People are simply irrational to suppose that they can oppose God; because, as they themselves are wholly elements of God's creation, they have no basis for opposing God's creation.

Therefore - from such metaphysical assumptions - there cannot be 'pure evil'. 

*

However, the Mormon Christian metaphysics allows for real evil, 'pure evil' - evil for its own sake.

God created from pre-existent stuff; and men were, in some essence, co-eternal with God - therefore Men can genuinely oppose God's creation from that part of them that was not created by God.

From such assumptions (which I personally hold) it is therefore possible to do pure evil; by purely opposing God's creation without any attempt to aid creation or any created entity - indeed to attack creation at the cost of expending effort, and indeed at the cost of one's own happiness, health, and life.

By this account the purest evil is not really such epic and infamous inflictors of human suffering such as Hitler - but spitefulness, and related sins such as envy and resentment.

This is the infliction of harm for the sake of inflicting harm - a child breaking another child's beloved toy; an internet troll writing something intended to annoy or wound; someone who says or does things specifically in order to 'wind-up' another person; or a political leader who acts to induce spite, resentment and envy in the population. 

Thus pure evil is something of which many, indeed most, people are guilty. And the most evil public figures are not those who cause the most death and destruction - but those who systematically stir-up spite, resentment and envy.

Spiteful fantasies of the suffering of enemies, are usually projections

Something that is very evident in the mainstream-leftist mass media, the alternative-"right" blogosphere, and among traditional Christians - is a tendency publicly to engage in (and advocate) fantasies of the suffering and destruction of their enemies.  

I don't expect better from leftists and the secular "right" - but I do expect better from Christians; in the sense that this kind of stuff is revealing of the individual embracing a fearful, resentful and spite-driven nature .

Fear, resentment and spite are all sins; and all besetting (characteristic) sins of our time and place - which is why this "revenge fantasy" stuff is so common, and so generally tolerated. 

Tolerated and indeed excused; on the basis that (from whatever point of view) the subjects of spiteful fantasies of suffering "deserve it". 

Which may or may not be correct, but is irrelevant; because the sin lies in the (apparently) un-repented (because publicly celebrated) indulgence of one's own fear/ resentment/ spitefulness. 

Of course, many of us (me included, for sure) are prone to this kind of sin; we are variously assailed by gnawing fear, brooding resentment, and fantasies of what horrible things we would enjoy happening to our enemies. 

And if we don't suffer from these sins, then there will be others - just as much sins, and just as prevalent and tolerated-approved! Such as dishonesty, and despair. 

After all, we are all sinners, as Jesus told us; and that's an intractable fact of this mortal life.

What matters is whether we acknowledge and repent the sins, when we begin to become aware of them...

And public propaganda and celebration of our own sins is the opposite - it is doubling-down on sin. 

NOTE: Doubling-down on sin in public usually makes that sin even more difficult to repent. It seems to be a common psychological trait that when we have made public commitments to sin, then (the sin of) pride deters us from publicly acknowledging (or even in private acknowledging, to ourselves and God) that we have made a mistake. This is why the demonic overlords have arranged society such that we are bribed and coerced into multiple public celebrations of value-inversion. But; no power on earth can prevent the repentance of a man who wants to repent and instead choose affiliation to God and divine creation.

NOTE ADDED: The problem of spiteful revenge fantasies is particularly acute and increasing, because the top-down-engineered descent of the world into destructive chaos provides almost daily temptations. Christians need to remind ourselves that "my enemies enemy" is not, thereby, my friend; and that overall spiritual good comes only from good motivations - and not as a by-product of evil intent. 

Why Sorathic evil is, and must be, the End Stage (The example of Saruman)

I have recently written about Sorathic evil - the purest, most negative and destructive form of evil; as being the direction in which the world is going, here-and-now. 

But, Sorathic evil may be hard to understand. We are used to explaining evil actions in terms of fulfilling personal desires - whether the 'Luciferic' desires of immediate gratification by lust or cruelty, or the longer-term 'Ahrimanic' desires of power and control. 

It seems hard to imagine why 'mere destruction' would motivate someone when they might instead fulfil their desires? 

 

Well, it does happen. Perhaps if we introspect honestly, we can recognise the Sorathic within ourselves, as at least a momentary impulse?

An example are those resentment-fuelled spite-fantasies directed against people that we hate, or even who merely annoy us in some way that gets under our skin. For instance; day-dreaming the wish that somebody we have come to regard as smug, entitled, arrogant, privileged - will suffer massive public humiliation, fatal illness, or agonizing violence. Or somebody who 'thinks they are beautiful' and you 'wish' they would suffer a disfiguring accident that would make them hideous. Or when the idea flashes into mind that maybe I should kill myself and leave an accusatory suicide note; so that he/she/they will suffer lifelong agonies of guilt ("That will show them!").

If you can recognise any or all of these scenarios, then that is an example of the Sorathic evil in you. What identifies them as Sorathic is that the primary satisfaction is in the misfortune of others, rather in gratification of oneself. 

Indeed, someone in the grip of Sorathic evil might plot and scheme, expend time, money and resources - and maybe even take risks to his own health and safety - in order to inflict harm on others. 

Cutting off your nose to spite your face is the proverbial expression of Sorathic evil - although this makes a paradoxical quip out of what is truly the worst kind of evil; and such mockery misses that this 'nose-cutting' is exactly the kind of thing that people will do, when in the grip of Sorath. 

Saruman, in the Lord of the Rings, begins the story as in the grip of typically Ahrimanic evil. Saruman is a very 'modern' figure in the world of Middle Earth; an industrialist with a mind of 'metal and wheels', who even talks in slippery, euphemistic, manipulative management-speak. He works by surveillance (the palantir) and seeks control; even going to the trouble of creating the race of Uruk-Hai; a more obedient and loyal kind of orc-Man, who will stick to orders.  

But evil is a downward path - unless there is repentance: and that path has a slippery slope. 

Ahrimanic evil (while it lasts) retains some Good - insofar as order is better than chaos - and requires virtues such as prudence, hard work, loyalty, obedience...

When Saruman is defeated, he has a chance for repentance; but rejects it. Stripped of power, he refuses to recognise any wrongdoing. 

In particular (and this is amplified in the posthumously-published notes of Unfinished Tales) Saruman is spitefully-motivated against Gandalf. By the end of Lord of the Rings, Saruman has come to exemplify Sorathic evil - since he lives in order to hurt Gandalf, and - by proxy - the hobbits who Gandalf loved and cared for. 

The Scouring of the Shire is a representation of how the brief interlude of Ahrimanic evil administered by Lotho Sackville Baggins, gives way to a frenzy of destructive Sorathic evil when Saruman arrives. 

At first under Lotho - trees were felled to fuel furnaces; later under Saruman ('Sharkey') trees were felled because this would make the hobbits miserable. At first the rivers were carelessly polluted by the outflow of productive industrial processes, but later they were polluted because it would render them hideous... 

Evil as a means to an end, as a by-product; was replaced as evil for its own sake.

 

In his final speech, Saruman reaches the end-point of Sorathic evil when he deliberately courts death by stabbing Frodo in front of the army of hobbits. 

Having reached a point where he cannot destroy the Shire, Saruman tries to saddle the hobbits with a legacy of guilt and regret for having vengefully committed 'deicide' ('god-murder'; in that Saruman is a minor god; a maia or angel).  

But Frodo is protected by his mithril mail, and pardons Saruman - thwarting even his intended indirect 'suicide by cop' and inflicting a further wound of obligation upon the wizard. Yet this act of mercy only increases Saruman's resentment. 

The end-stage of Sorathic evil is despair, and the only perceived 'solution' is suicide. 

Thus Saruman (semi-deliberately) goads Wormtongue into killing Saruman; and thus the wizard 'finally' achieves his own death by that means.

 

Looking at Saruman's descent into Sorathic evil, it is striking how very small, how petty the wizard has become compared with the proud, powerful, 'wise' administrator of the grandiose, world-dominating schemes of his Ahrimanic phase - just a few months earlier. 

And indeed, Sorathic evil can only tend towards being small and petty, because it becomes less-and-less capable of the deferred gratification needed for making and sticking-with complex, long-term plans and manipulations. 

From this we can see that evil cannot go straight to the Sorathic extremity - without rendering itself ineffectual.  Lucifer and Ahriman are needed in the earlier stages to break-open the Good and allow the Sorath in*. 

 

Thus Luciferic and Ahrimanic evils alternate until they have created a situation of vulnerability where Sorathic destruction can take-over. 

On the other hand, the descent from Ahrimanic into Sorathic evil may be very rapid indeed - some historical examples suggest that it may happen in just day, or even hours - so that great tyrants may die suicidally while wishing the like destruction on everybody and everything else ('after me the deluge' - as a desired outcome). 

At the societal level, we reached the threshold of Sorathic evil within only months of the triumph of Ahriman...

 

In the West, we had the Luciferic promises of the 1960s - of a world of unrestrained hedonism; leading incrementally, decade by decade, to the Ahrimanic global prison of 2020 with promises of a world of omni-surveillance and totalalitarian-control (a system, apparently, pioneered in China to be rolled-out everywhere else). 

Yet, such was the triumph of evil and the feebleness of spiritual opposition in this atheist, materialist, leftist-corrupted world; that as the year reached its second half there was already evidence of merely, pettily destructive Sorathic frenzy - with violent riots, destruction, arson, terror, rape and murder; being not just officially funded, organised and defended; but publicly-advocated and approved. 

At a micro-level the brief "all in it together" spring solidarity of March-May devolved into the masked mutual hostility and informer-culture of the summer onwards. 

This happened even though such a spread of chaos erodes the very basis and capability of the global coup and its carefully-constructed Ahrimanic System!

 

The Sorathic spirit can also be seen in the apparent-gratuitousness of using surveillance and control technologies and enforcement for crushing society, church, education, sports, theatres, music, cinema, museums, singing and dancing - and finally Christmas.

In a single year has been wrought a truly colossal destruction of Culture. 

A genuinely Ahrimanic spirit would be subverting and using Culture to monitor, manipulate and control the population... Ahriman would exploit Culture to 'keep people happy' (in a bread and circuses fashion) while explicitly and covertly feeding them pro-System propaganda. 

But the Sorathic spirit of resentment and spitefulness is ever-increasingly getting the upper hand, and engaging in dysfunctional destruction for its own sake. The Sorathic spirit is destroying the Ahrimanic apparatus in all its aspects (including police and military functionality) - destroying, but not replacing. 

 

Because the world is so advanced in evil; such a Sorathic destruction of The System is not any kind of liberation, but a progression of evil delivering the world into chaos: a world of end-stage Sarumans, pursuing personal, petty grudges spiralling downwards into the finality of despair and suicide.  

(And a despairing, or spitefully-motivated, suicide is - surely? - a choice for damnation.) 

So, although the Luciferic, Ahrimanic and Sorathic types of evil fight each other, this conflict is not a negation - but the advance of evil; because evils don't cancel, they synergise. 

 

We cannot defeat Ahriman with Sorath, one cannot be played-off against the other - but only with God. 

If The Ahrimanic System is destroyed by Sorath, then we would be in far worse spiritual situation than if The System remained. 

Yet such a Sorathic collapse looks like a distinct probability for 2021...

 

If we want to resist Sorath spiritually - in our-selves, in our societies; this can only be achieved from a base in The Good. 

If we want Good (i.e. Godly) outcomes; the negative can only be defeated by the positive. 

The only true enemy of Sorath is Jesus Christ.

*I got this phrase from Ama Boden. Thanks!

Double-negative values lead to self-justified spitefulness

Depicting a world of institutionalized spite...

The other day I was musing upon how intelligence work seems to attract and encourage the worst kind of people, and develop the worst kind of habits - probably because it is (from the late 19th century at least) almost-wholly engaged in destruction.

For instance, the rationale of "national interest" is used to excuse even the vilest of destructive practices; which are then denied, lied-about and/or blamed on others - which is a perfect set-up for generating extreme corruption of individuals and institutions. 

One example of what is apparently a very common activity was described in an earlier post; whereby the British were successful in fomenting dissent in the German-occupied Denmark of WWII; the aim being to use-up more German resources. The mechanism for this was that the Danish peoples' lives were made deliberately much more miserable, and their sufferings greatly increased. 

This is an example of double-negative values in action - values that are reducible to opposition to something-bad (or, at least: something defined as bad); or negating the negative. 

The values of modern Western civilization are entirely double-negative - there are no public values that are rooted in the support of some positive value - such as the traditional "transcendental" values of truth, beauty, and virtue. 

When the West discarded and did not replace its religion of Christianity; a moral system of double-negations was the inevitable outcome.  

Because ultimately destructive; a double-neg morality attracts, encourages, and makes-habitual an attitude of spitefulness - and this is exactly what we find...

So that much public (and private) moralizing here-and-now is, very obviously - once you are aware of the possibility - spitefully-motivated; it's "highest" goal being to inflict misery and harm on some person, institution, nation, or cause that is regarded as "bad", and thereby deserving of it.   

Yet, as I've often said, spite is one of the very worst of sins; one of the most advanced forms of evil.

Resentment is one of the premier besetting sins of the modern West: resentment-based leftist ideologies are our highest values; our most praised motivators. 

I mean ideologies such as class-war, feminism, antiracism, climatism etc; which are officially devised, propagandized, promoted, rewarded, enforced - through the totalitarian apparatus of law, media, and the state and private bureaucracies. 

The latest and dominant AI-dolatry is, evidently, substantially resentment based; and spitefully/ destructively motivated. 

(Consequently; Schadenfreude repeatedly invades the quasi-objective "technological inevitability" pro-"AI" rhetoric.)  

Action aiming at the spiteful destruction of something we resent, is therefore currently one of the most powerful of motivators - sometimes even to the paradoxical extent of sustaining actions of great courage (courage being itself a virtue). 

For instance a war motivated by resentment and the spiteful desire for destruction of the enemy (an enemy who may in fact be superior to oneself); may nonetheless inspire virtuous altruism, self-discipline, acceptance of hardship, and valour.  

Or when intelligence services - typically deployed in the subversion, immiseration and destruction of better men and nations; yet, sometimes, evoke exceptionally courageous behaviour among their operatives such as "spies". 

Nonetheless, and bearing in mind that un-repented evil is not a static state but feeds upon itself and increases; it can easily be observed that when organizations are negatively, destructively, motivated - then, no matter their supposed justification - they are intrinsically-corrupt.

And this institutional-corruption will attract spiteful people, so that the self-justifying evil will increase with time. 

And this false and hypocritical pseudo-morality is intrinsic to our atheist-materialist ideological system.

We cannot expect, nor shall we get, anything better; until after Western Men acknowledge the reality of God, and embrace the offered-gifts of Jesus Christ. 

Since this seems highly unlikely - presumably such matters will continue to worsen; and imposing some of the most evil of all sins, shall therefore continue to be global policy.

Because, in our totalitarian society, the tendency is for all social institutions to become essentially like the intelligence services; i.e. rooted in the prevalent value-inversion and rationalized by double-negations.   

Me, Here, Now; and the development of human consciousness

Assuming, as I do, that I was placed into my situation by God - and am sustained in my daily life by God; then (to a sufficient degree of exactness) the present circumstances of Me, Here, Now include exactly what I most need to learn. 

This applies, also, to the general social circumstances. In spite of the many evil choices made by so many people (including myself); this actual life is continually being 'turned' by God such that its experiences (its 'lessons') are well-suited to teach us what we (collectively and individually) most need to learn. 

We don't have to have an explicit (nor an expressed) explanation of these circumstances, nor do we need advanced knowledge of what we are supposed to learn. Instead, we are repeatedly being engineered into micro-situations that present just the sort of choices we most need to make: choices and situations which tend to elicit from-us what we most need to think, say, or do. 

It is primarily a matter of individual discernment and situational awareness; and the first step towards that is to acknowledge the need for discernment, and that the needful discernment must be individual. 

William Arkle and the secret of living (Romantic Christianity)

Backwell Hill House, where William Arkle and family, friends and many animals lived in the 1970s - an ex-Claretian novitaite house, the former chapel can be seen as the tent-shaped structure on the left

I first encountered William Arkle in 1977, in the context of a thirty minute documentary on his life and work broadcast by our local BBC television company. I can remember very little about it; but it evoked in me a suspicion or hope that Arkle was someone who actually lived the kind of life I personally (you may, of course disagree!) regarded as near-ideal.

When I found a copy of A Geography of Consciousness later in the year, this was confirmed for me by Colin Wilson's introduction* - clearly CW (who knew Arkle as a friend) was fascinated by Arkle's 'success' in actually living his life in a 'higher state of consciousness'. Arkle (to a significant, albeit not fully or perfectly) succeeded in Doing what Wilson could only write about.

This I take as the fact on which I proceed, my starting-point. For Me, over a span of more than forty years, William Arkle has been a very rare example of living life in the kind of way (qualitatively distinct, but not as flawless or perfection) that I believe life ought to be lived, and which I aspire to live. My interest here is my failure honestly to understand the basis of Arkle's success.
  

Because, in trying to learn from Arkle, however; it seems that both myself and Colin Wilson made the same mistake - which was, quite simply, leaving-out God.


For Arkle - at the centre of his 'system' was God, God the creator, and furthermore a creator who was our loving Father. Arkle's 'Romantic' system was built around this core; yet I wanted Arkle's success in living but without Arkle's God.

I (like Colin Wilson) implicitly regarded Arkle's God as just wishful thinking; as a God he had invented to aperfom a function he wanted performed in his belief system. Having disposed of Arkle's God, which - being unreal - could clearly have no necessary role in Arkle's life; I then proceeded to try and learn fro the rest of Arkle's system.

In effect, I was hoping to get the benefits of living in the successful way that I regarded Arkle as having achieved; while eliminating the source and core of Arkle's system - which was God (I ruled-out God in general, except for 'deity' conceptualised in the most abstract and impersonal way; as well as regarding as rather silly and pitiful God in the particular 'loving Father' understanding of Arkle).


In a nutshell, I wanted Romanticism without God; and it led me in the same direction as those many others who have sought Romanticism without God from the days of Byron and Shelley to contemporary examples of Romantics such as Woody Allen or Francois Truffaut. Or, in a much more positive way, Colin Wilson himself.

For 200 years our culture has been full of examples of people who (apparently sincerely) espouse the Romantic life, but are unable to live it; people who can research and talk about Romantic themes; but who live (in their consciousness, in their souls) much like everybody else and often-enough live worse.

So myself, Colin Wilson and many others wanted Romanticism, but did not believe that God was real - and we did not achieve Romanticism in actual living. Meanwhile there were examples such as Arkle or William Blake of people who did achieve Romanticism in actual living; 'yet' apparently insisted on basing it upon Romantic conceptions of God that struck me as obviously 'made-up'.


My understanding of this phenomenon is that those who seek Romanticism are those afflicted by alienation; by the modern sense of feeling cut off from life, and who are plagued by a sense of meaninglessness, lack of a purpose that fulfils our creativity and also unites ourselves with other and the world.

Like many/ most modern people from adolescence onwards; we begin with the assumption that there is no God, never was a God; and that all talk of personal Gods who care about us is either delusionally-pitiful wishful thinking; or else a dishonest means of manipulating others.

And we do not 'notice' that (by eliminating all possibility of the reality of God, and in particular the kind of God that Arkle speaks-of) we have already made assumptions that inevitably will ensure that our lives will fail. And fail by the very criteria we ourselves have chosen.


(Not everybody will share my feeling about Arkle's success in living - this makes no difference to my point. My point is that despite Arkle's being my own idea of a successful life; I nonetheless failed to 'notice' that God was necessarily central to it. I unthinkingly, arrogantly, supposed that I could have the superstructure without the foundations!)


It was not until I first allowed the possibility of God, then the possibility of Arkle's concept of God; that I could proceed to seek whether or not this was in reality true. Then I discovered that it was true.

Only now can I really understand Arkle 'from the inside', in a way which explains the primary cause of my long-term interest in him. Only now can I benefit from his example; in changing my own life for the better.

It turns-out that successfully-lived Romanticism requires God; furthermore it requires the kind of personal God that Arkle knew; and it turns-out that this God is real.

It turns-out that in practice Romantic Christianity is the only Romanticism. Arkle has been telling me this for decades - but only recently have I been willing to hear him.


*An excerpt from Colin Wilson's Introduction to A Geography of Consciousness:

I would place the author of this book among the half dozen most remarkable men I have ever met – and I suppose this would include some of the most eminent writers and thinkers of our time. This book which I am introducing is not an easy one; I suppose I may as well be frank and say that in parts it is extremely tough going. But I think it is an important book, and my aim in this introduction is to clear away some of the difficulties.

Let me speak first of the author, William Arkle. Like most writers, I receive a fair amount of correspondence from strangers. And since I write about questions of human evolution and the nature of human consciousness, many of these are from occultists and people with theories about how man can become a god overnight. Very often, the writers send me manuscripts and explain indignantly that publishers are too materialistic to understand the importance of their work.

But it is usually pretty easy to see why publishers are not interested. The manuscripts are often full of important ideas; but they are never properly thought-out, with consideration for the reader. And I always find myself reflecting that it is a pity that the intelligent people are so often egocentric and lacking in self-criticism, while the sane, decent, healthy people are so often mediocrities. There are very seldom exceptions to this rule.

In 1960, William Arkle sent me a reproduction of one of his paintings, and it was certainly a striking painting; it was an abstract, geometrical sort of landscape with abstract human figures, a little like Wyndham Lewis’s. The colours were all very light, yellows and greens and reds. But although it was striking, it was not, in the last analysis, a good picture.

It is hard to explain this except to say that in spite of its abstract nature, it lacked real complexity. The letter that accompanied it talked about spiritual values and so on, and it was clear that this is what the picture intended to express.

Arkle lived in Bristol, and he invited me to call and see him if I ever came through. I seem to remember that I assumed he was probably a man in his fifties. My guess was that he had probably started life in the Church of England, tried a few evangelical sects, and ended up by producing some occult religion of his own. In 1961, my wife and I were driving to Blackpool to the Long Playing Record Festival, and it seemed a good opportunity to call on the Arkles.

So we found our way – after some difficulty – to a large house in Royal York Crescent, with a fine view over the valley. And we were met by a tall, good-looking man in his early thirties, with a clean cut face of the Charlton Heston type and a lock of hair on his forehead that made him resemble that Sargeant drawing of Yeats that can be found in the Collected Plays. I was introduced to his wife Elizabeth, who did not look in the least dreamy or mystical; in fact, she looked one of those cheerful, healthy girls that Shaw put into early plays. I was not surprised to learn she loved horses.

Bill and Liz Arkle - probably early 1950s

The enormous house belonged to them, and I discovered that they made a living by buying houses, re-decorating them themselves, and then letting them as flats. It seemed fairly strenuous work for a visionary, but apparently it solved the basic problem of making a living. And neither was I surprised to learn that he had been an engineer and served in the navy towards the end of the war. There was something about him that suggested that he was not one of these subjective, egocentric people who find the practical work unbearable.

I asked him some years ago for a biographical sketch, and I may as well quote what he sent me: ‘Born 1924. After school, trained in engineering for the navy. After demobilisation, I had a strong urge to go to Art school which I did for two years. But I did not finish the course as I felt strongly that the attitudes to painting that I was being taught were not right for me. ‘My first marriage broke up as I left Art school. I was reading a lot of mysticism and esotericism generally and developing meditation and the ability to tune my nature, as it were …’

Later in the same letter, he says: ‘I married Elizabeth about 1952 (it is typical of him not to be sure of the date – he wrote 1953 and then changed it) and this helped me to integrate properly with ordinary life and widened my interests (and responsibilities).’

Certainly, the remarkable thing about him is that he is so integrated with ordinary life – considering the completely otherworldly nature of his basic vision

Letter from your Heavenly Father (Part Four - your weakness)

*
My Dear Child,

You have sometimes wondered why it is that you can never get life 'sorted out'.

No matter how much you strive and study, no matter how thoroughly you ingrain good habits, you retain weaknesses of will, of resolution, of attitude. It takes very little to set you back - sickness (physical or mental), bereavement, loss of status, betrayal, a temptation that happens to strike your Achilles heel - even a casual slight from a stranger can leave you brooding for hours.

And you have noticed that even the most admirable humans - the most virtuous, creative, intelligent, altruistic, courageous people of whom you know - have serious and significant weaknesses - pettiness, conceit, spite, lust, gluttony, moral blindnesses... there are no exceptions, and if you think there are that is only because you do not know the whole truth.

Since you know my nature, you will also know that that this situation cannot be an accident. But while your weakness is 'part of the plan', and because 'the world' is so much stronger than you are it is in that sense inevitable that you will sometimes (perhaps often) succumb to your own weakness; you must not jump to the opposite extreme of supposing that I actually want you to yield to bad temptations!

You have before you the example of my Son, Jesus Christ, to show that the ideal for Men in their mortal lives on earth is to be tempted, and to learn from being tempted, but not to yield to any temptation. That is the ideal for which you must strive.

But of course you cannot achieve it. Jesus Christ was able and willing to resist all temptations, but you are not.

So why have I placed you in such a situation? One where you are 'set-up' to fail?

The answer is quite simple - you are on earth to learn, and this is the only way you can learn. The Only Way.

And I regard your learning as of such overwhelming importance that, although it pains me more than you can understand fully, I am willing to see you struggle and fail and struggle again - against impossible odds; because by this you are (whether you realise it or not) becoming more truly adult (more grown-up) and gradually evolving towards that higher state of divinity when you can inherit more fully your intended status and role as a Son or Daughter of God.

So I do not require perfection from you, indeed I am not worried by your failures so long as they are acknowledged as failures, so long as you keep striving, and so long as you do not give up hope.

You see, although I set up this situation of striving against impossible odds - of trying, failing, learning and trying again - I also provided a solution which renders you sure to win in the end.

All this applies IF, and only if, you wish to participate in my plan for Mankind to become gods of the same order as myself - you can, as I have previously explained, opt-out of the plan without penalty. I cannot force anybody to grow-up, and would not wish to force them - you can remain a child, or become un-self-consciously happy in Nirvana if you so choose.

Only if you actively oppose my plan by attacking my other children, and trying to subvert their spiritual progress, will I - reluctantly - apply active punishments to you; but even these sufferings I may need to impose upon you are intended to bring you to a recognition - which can only be your own free choice - of the consequences of your action, and encourage repentance.

The 'solution' by which you will win in the end, and by which you cannot be defeated by life, no matter how often or how badly you fail to rise to the challenges of the world, is known as the Atonement of Jesus Christ. What this does, what it enables, is essential to the plan.

It is the Atonement of Jesus Christ which means that no matter how badly you mess-up your life; your life will be a 'success' in the sense of making real and permanent spiritual progress, so long as you accept the gift of the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

To accept this gift it is useful but not essential, to know about Jesus Christ and what he did. The gift of Atonement is for everyone (alive and dead and in the future) - and it is applied after your death. You will be given a clear and sufficiently complete knowledge of your situation, including the role of Christ, and you will be made the offer of acknowledging the reality of the situation (this is the essence of repentance), and being washed clean. You simply need to accept this offer.

You are probably wondering what, then, is the point of knowing about this offer during mortal life? The answer can be put into a single word: hope.

If you know and understand the loving concern I have for you, and the loving gift of my Son Jesus Christ, this will give you the hope you need to keep striving for good despite failure - it will enable you to learn the most possible, it will make your success certain and your progress assured.

So hope is not an emotion - or not just an emotion - it is knowledge.

And, if it was not clear to you before, I hope this knowledge of your hope is now clearer to you - and that therefore your hope will become invincible, indestructible; immune to the onslaughts of your inevitable weakness.

Because when your hope is understood to be based upon your failures, and merely requires that you acknowledge failure as failure; then it has been placed beyond reach of circumstance.

From your loving Father in Heaven

*

Conceptualising Sin - and The Fall

Sin could usefully be defined as 'the condition of mortal life' - since that encompasses its two main aspects of wrong behaviour and death.

The Fall was therefore, primarily, moving into the condition of incarnated mortality - with its consequent inevitability of both death, and those behaviours that are a consequence of being imperfectly aligned with the divine will.

Reading the Fourth Gospel, we can see that the term 'sin' refers to a wider range of phenomena that more recent usage - in particular it is used sometimes to mean death; and by death is meant the ghostly, half-existence of demented souls that have been severed from their bodies, and wander 'witless' in the underworld that the ancients termed Sheol or Hades (later translated and reconceptualised as Hell).


The Fall refers to the choice and decision made by all of us mortal Men to leave the child-like, unfree, un-conscious Eden-paradise of our immortal pre-mortal spiritual life; where we were immersed-in God's will and lacking in personal agency - hence unable to act otherwise than in harmonious accordance with divine motivations.

When we became incarnated, we increased our free agency; but at the cost of becoming separated from God's will. Mortality (as a state) is characterised by change, corruption, disease and decay - as well as inevitable death.

Thus, no mortal Man (except for Jesus) has been fully aligned-with God's creation. We are all, therefore, 'sinners' in the dual sense of being not-fully-aligned with the divine will, and also destined to die.


However, The Fall is sometimes rightly described as a Felix Culpa - a blessed transgression; because it enables us to attain a higher level of divine nature.  

Only after being separated from our previous state of unconscious immersion God's will; are we are (potentially) able to make the free choice of aligning ourselves eternally with God's will; and after mortal death, as resurrected eternal children of God, then actively-participating in God's work of ongoing creation - as ourselves gods.

 (i.e. Small 'g' gods, working within God the creator's reality.),

(All this is made possible by our mortal incarnation, but we are free agents, so it is not guaranteed. Indeed, in the modern West, it looks like only a small minority are choosing to choose salvation and resurrection.)


At the same time, because we are not-fully-aligned with God's will in this mortal life, we will inevitably think, say and do many things that are opposed to God's will: that is, we will inevitably commit 'sins' in the more common usage of the word.

Those familiar lists of behavioural sins (e.g. the behaviours proscribed by the Ten Commandments, or the Seven Deadlys - or mortal and venial sins; or the Scriptural prohibitions from Paul's letters) can be understood as broad categories of behaviour that tend to be characteristic of those who are not-fully-aligned with God's will.

Behavioural sins (such as these lists) are therefore Not to be taken as 'sin-itself' - which is subjective; but observable 'signs' that are typically 'correlated-with' actual sin - sin itself being the mortal state of being unaligned with God's will.


The specific focus of these familiar 'behavioural correlates of sin' tends to be on those behaviours that are either especially tempting, or especially destructive of society in general or church order in particular. That is the reason why sexual correlates of sin are so prominent.

And this focus certainly seems to be necessary - in the sense that we can now observe the subversive effects of removing such restraints. The outcome has been moral inversion: i.e. the worst of all possible outcomes: the one most likely to lead to self-damnation.

However, on the flip side, there is a relative neglect and softness of attitudes to other types of more 'private' sin; such as envy, spite, cowardice, dishonesty and bearing false witness - which are in themselves probably more dangerous to the soul.


In sum; we are all Fallen in the sense that we will all die; and because our mortal lives are never fully-aligned-with God's creative motivations. And the inevitable difference between God's will and our own will leads to many thoughts, words and deeds ('sins') that are a consequence of this disharmony.

And the cure for sin - both mortality and behavioural disharmony - is on the other side of 'biological death'; when we may choose to be resurrected to Life Eternal in a condition of everlasting harmony with the divine work of loving-creation.