0 comment Saturday, December 6, 2014 | admin
In a recent post, I discussed the fact that the psychological worldview, as presented by the popular culture and the old media, has become a widely accepted, very influential belief system. It's also insidious in that most people have absorbed many of the core beliefs of this worldview without even being aware of it. Anybody who watches shows like Oprah, or reads any of the best-selling 'self-help' books, or who undergoes therapy or counseling for life problems, has taken in a good deal of the beliefs of the psychological worldview. Anybody who has taken social science courses in the last several decades has also imbibed some of these beliefs.
Many of those who have unconsciously adopted these beliefs also call themselves 'Christians', and may in fact be regular worshippers at a church. The pastor at their church may also preach messages full of the humanistic ideas with which the psychological belief system is saturated. This is particularly true these days, because so many churches are caught up in this 'seeker-sensitive' movement, with its idea that people (nonbelievers, casual 'seekers', spiritual shoppers) must not be made to feel 'bad about themselves.'
Most of the mainline churches today have embraced the messages of 'diversity', egalitarianism, race-denial, and ''social justice''.
Most of these established religious groups promote open borders and one-worldism -- although most people with even a rudimentary education should be familiar with the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel, and the idea that a one-world system is not in God's plan.
Those who have not even examined the facts are quick to condemn Christianity for the Babelizing of the Western world, yet how can anyone, with a straight face, presume that the church, any church, exercises that much influence over people, much less over the world's political system? No, all the commonsense evidence points to the fact that the world system is instead setting the tone, leading the way, while the churches follow along. Granted, the churches are wrong in this. They are derelict, having lost their way. They are quite literally the 'salt which has lost its savor', of which Jesus warned, worthy only to be discarded.
And if the churches are guilty of going along with the world political system, they are wrong because they are not being true to themselves, and to the message they are supposed to be preaching.
However, if the political establishment and the ovine followers who make up most of the citizenry are not being misled by the church, who is leading them towards the multicultist Babel?
I've said that most people in our society owe more to the pop psychology cult, and humanism generally, than to Christian teaching. I can just hear someone say: what does psychology have to do with politics or world affairs? It's just about people's individual lives and problems, not about politics or society. Well, think again.
Clearly, societies both help and hinder human growth. Because nourishing environments can make an important contribution to the development of healthy personalities, human needs should be given priority when fashioning social policies. This becomes increasingly critical in a rapidly changing world threatened by such dangers as nuclear war, overpopulation and the breakdown of traditional social structures.
Many humanistic psychologists stress the importance of social change, the challenge of modifying old institutions and inventing new ones able to sustain both human development and organizational efficacy. Thus the humanistic emphasis on individual freedom should be matched by a recognition of our interdependence and our responsibilities to one another, to society and culture, and to the future.''
[...]
"As the world's people demand freedom and self-determination, it is urgent that we learn how diverse communities of empowered individuals, with freedom to construct their own stories and identities, might live together in mutual peace. Perhaps it is not a vain hope that is life in such communities might lead to the advance in human consciousness beyond anything we have yet experienced."
[Emphasis mine]
Notice the emphasis on 'social change' ''modifying old institutions and inventing new ones...' -- all the leftist concerns. It could have been written by some leftist politico as well as by a social scientist. They are hand-in-glove.
In my personal experience (and yes, it's anecdotal) most leftists are immersed in psychological jargon and thinking. Very few ''progressives'' are Christians, even liberal Christians. Most, in my experience, are secular and nonbelieving, or else involved in New Age practices. That latter topic in itself is worthy of a whole post, with New Age thinking very focused on the idea of a 'one world' government and a blending of all races into some 'highly evolved' hybrid race. I say this as someone who was once very involved in this kind of thing. I know it from the inside, and I have friends who are still part of that subculture.
Marilyn Ferguson who wrote the bestselling Aquarian Conspiracy, said
There are legions of [Aquarian] conspirators. They are in corporations, universities, and hospitals, on the faculties of public schools, in factories and doctors' offices, in state and federal agencies, on city councils, and in the White House staff, in state legislatures, in volunteer organizations, in virtually all arenas of policy making in the country."
That is probably more true now than it was when she wrote it, 20-odd years ago.
What has this got to do with the psychological worldview? It intersects with the New Age philosophy. The latter is a blend of a hodgepodge of various Eastern religions (Hinduism, Taoism, ''Native American'' spirituality/shamanism, etc.) and the Western humanistic tradition of which psychology is a part.
What these systems have in common is the focus on the self, on self-actualization (whatever that means), and they both tend to promote the notion that Western morality, which emphasizes individual responsibility and a defined system of right and wrong, is ''negative'' and backward, un-evolved.
New Age beliefs (although those involved often shun that label) blend seamlessly with the beliefs promoted in psychology, particularlly 'transpersonal psychology'.
There is an emphasis on 'not judging' or not excluding anybody -- except Christians of course, because they are too 'separative' in the words of Alice Bailey, who wrote a number of New Age/occult books which are considered authoritative by many. Anything that separates, as Christianity does, is bad, according to this worldview.
Psychology as it is understood by most people has done more than any other philosophy to popularize the idea of nonjudgmentalism as the greatest virtue. The idea is that we are not to put moral judgments on people, or anything people do -- unless it can be considered racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, or species-ist. Then we are free to judge and condemn at will.
Otherwise, moral relativism prevails.
The idea that it's bad to be 'negative' about anything is also a very popular idea which is attributable to psychology and the social sciences. It's also an idea that is part of New Age thinking, which emphasizes 'positive thoughts'. (This system does not account for actual evil, or consider that being negative about some things is the only appropriate response.)
These ideas have wide exposure, especially among women who watch Oprah and other such shows. I allude to Oprah often as being a promoter of this kind of thing. She is a perfect example as she claims to be a Christian, yet publicly says she believes other 'paths' and religions are equally valid and true. She also promotes many New Age authors and their books, one recent example being Eckhart Tolle, a European New Age guru who has apparently taken in some gullible Christians.
I see evidence of the influence of such ideas all around us, especially when I converse with women, or when I read popular magazines or newspapers, or watch TV. It is part of the air we breathe these days. It baffles me to think that some people believe Christianity is so influential as to take the blame (or credit) for anything in our society, good or bad. Christianity is very much marginalized these days, and the thinking I've outlined briefly here is what dominates the 'purpose-driven' churches and the 'seeker-sensitive' churches, which are everywhere.
Christians who read their Bibles know that Jesus Christ is 'the same yesterday, today, and forever.' So riddle me this: how is it that old-time Christians did not believe in open borders, miscegenation, one-world government, and 'nonjudgmentalism', while today's ''Christians'' are perfectly comfortable, in too many instances, with all of the above? Christianity has not changed; today's Christians are thoroughly confused and lost, in many cases.
The fault is not in the Bible or in Christianity. The fault is in the insidious worldview, based on humanism, based on the false notion that 'man is the measure of all things', which has captured the Church as well as the rest of our society. And the fault, insofar as it lies with Christians, is that they do not read their Bibles or develop and exercise discernment. They simply take in the world's poisons and don't even realize it.
Some are being led astray by popular authors and 'teachers' who are in turn peddling the trendy ideas of the world, not the truth. These false shepherds are to blame, but so are the gullible 'sheep' who follow them.
We can see the havoc that the influence of psychology has played in our judicial system, where every criminal is portrayed as either ''mentally ill'' or as a victim of society, or a victim of bad parenting. Everybody is a 'victim' these days, especially the worst among us. Many people have lost all concepts of evil these days; the obsession we have with trying to 'understand' and 'reach out' to everybody, even heinous criminals, is a very detrimental trend to our societal well-being.
We see this carry over to our attitudes about things like illegal immigration; the people who consider themselves 'enlightened' are oh-so-careful to try to understand and empathize with illegals, saying things like ''well, I would do the same if I were in their shoes. I don't blame them.'' The drive to 'understand' and explain away all illegal behavior, or just plain bad behavior, has no limits. We have to re-learn to judge and discern, and not simply understand and empathize and tolerate anything.
As Alexander Pope wrote in his Essay on Man:
Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
If it was true in Pope's time, it is even more rife now, this 'pitying and embracing' of bad behavior. We can't be judgmental; who are we to judge? We have to understand and reach out.
If we truly care about rescuing our society, and averting its impending demise, we need to look at the real dangers which beset us and which have rendered us a weak and morally slothful people, a 'nonjudgmental' people who are scared stiff of offending anyone.
And while it's easier to zero in on easy targets, and hard to deal with an amorphous target like a hazy belief system with no visible insitutions to blame, it's also less honest.
Many of those who have unconsciously adopted these beliefs also call themselves 'Christians', and may in fact be regular worshippers at a church. The pastor at their church may also preach messages full of the humanistic ideas with which the psychological belief system is saturated. This is particularly true these days, because so many churches are caught up in this 'seeker-sensitive' movement, with its idea that people (nonbelievers, casual 'seekers', spiritual shoppers) must not be made to feel 'bad about themselves.'
Most of the mainline churches today have embraced the messages of 'diversity', egalitarianism, race-denial, and ''social justice''.
Most of these established religious groups promote open borders and one-worldism -- although most people with even a rudimentary education should be familiar with the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel, and the idea that a one-world system is not in God's plan.
Those who have not even examined the facts are quick to condemn Christianity for the Babelizing of the Western world, yet how can anyone, with a straight face, presume that the church, any church, exercises that much influence over people, much less over the world's political system? No, all the commonsense evidence points to the fact that the world system is instead setting the tone, leading the way, while the churches follow along. Granted, the churches are wrong in this. They are derelict, having lost their way. They are quite literally the 'salt which has lost its savor', of which Jesus warned, worthy only to be discarded.
And if the churches are guilty of going along with the world political system, they are wrong because they are not being true to themselves, and to the message they are supposed to be preaching.
However, if the political establishment and the ovine followers who make up most of the citizenry are not being misled by the church, who is leading them towards the multicultist Babel?
I've said that most people in our society owe more to the pop psychology cult, and humanism generally, than to Christian teaching. I can just hear someone say: what does psychology have to do with politics or world affairs? It's just about people's individual lives and problems, not about politics or society. Well, think again.
Clearly, societies both help and hinder human growth. Because nourishing environments can make an important contribution to the development of healthy personalities, human needs should be given priority when fashioning social policies. This becomes increasingly critical in a rapidly changing world threatened by such dangers as nuclear war, overpopulation and the breakdown of traditional social structures.
Many humanistic psychologists stress the importance of social change, the challenge of modifying old institutions and inventing new ones able to sustain both human development and organizational efficacy. Thus the humanistic emphasis on individual freedom should be matched by a recognition of our interdependence and our responsibilities to one another, to society and culture, and to the future.''
[...]
"As the world's people demand freedom and self-determination, it is urgent that we learn how diverse communities of empowered individuals, with freedom to construct their own stories and identities, might live together in mutual peace. Perhaps it is not a vain hope that is life in such communities might lead to the advance in human consciousness beyond anything we have yet experienced."
[Emphasis mine]
Notice the emphasis on 'social change' ''modifying old institutions and inventing new ones...' -- all the leftist concerns. It could have been written by some leftist politico as well as by a social scientist. They are hand-in-glove.
In my personal experience (and yes, it's anecdotal) most leftists are immersed in psychological jargon and thinking. Very few ''progressives'' are Christians, even liberal Christians. Most, in my experience, are secular and nonbelieving, or else involved in New Age practices. That latter topic in itself is worthy of a whole post, with New Age thinking very focused on the idea of a 'one world' government and a blending of all races into some 'highly evolved' hybrid race. I say this as someone who was once very involved in this kind of thing. I know it from the inside, and I have friends who are still part of that subculture.
Marilyn Ferguson who wrote the bestselling Aquarian Conspiracy, said
There are legions of [Aquarian] conspirators. They are in corporations, universities, and hospitals, on the faculties of public schools, in factories and doctors' offices, in state and federal agencies, on city councils, and in the White House staff, in state legislatures, in volunteer organizations, in virtually all arenas of policy making in the country."
That is probably more true now than it was when she wrote it, 20-odd years ago.
What has this got to do with the psychological worldview? It intersects with the New Age philosophy. The latter is a blend of a hodgepodge of various Eastern religions (Hinduism, Taoism, ''Native American'' spirituality/shamanism, etc.) and the Western humanistic tradition of which psychology is a part.
What these systems have in common is the focus on the self, on self-actualization (whatever that means), and they both tend to promote the notion that Western morality, which emphasizes individual responsibility and a defined system of right and wrong, is ''negative'' and backward, un-evolved.
New Age beliefs (although those involved often shun that label) blend seamlessly with the beliefs promoted in psychology, particularlly 'transpersonal psychology'.
There is an emphasis on 'not judging' or not excluding anybody -- except Christians of course, because they are too 'separative' in the words of Alice Bailey, who wrote a number of New Age/occult books which are considered authoritative by many. Anything that separates, as Christianity does, is bad, according to this worldview.
Psychology as it is understood by most people has done more than any other philosophy to popularize the idea of nonjudgmentalism as the greatest virtue. The idea is that we are not to put moral judgments on people, or anything people do -- unless it can be considered racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, or species-ist. Then we are free to judge and condemn at will.
Otherwise, moral relativism prevails.
The idea that it's bad to be 'negative' about anything is also a very popular idea which is attributable to psychology and the social sciences. It's also an idea that is part of New Age thinking, which emphasizes 'positive thoughts'. (This system does not account for actual evil, or consider that being negative about some things is the only appropriate response.)
These ideas have wide exposure, especially among women who watch Oprah and other such shows. I allude to Oprah often as being a promoter of this kind of thing. She is a perfect example as she claims to be a Christian, yet publicly says she believes other 'paths' and religions are equally valid and true. She also promotes many New Age authors and their books, one recent example being Eckhart Tolle, a European New Age guru who has apparently taken in some gullible Christians.
I see evidence of the influence of such ideas all around us, especially when I converse with women, or when I read popular magazines or newspapers, or watch TV. It is part of the air we breathe these days. It baffles me to think that some people believe Christianity is so influential as to take the blame (or credit) for anything in our society, good or bad. Christianity is very much marginalized these days, and the thinking I've outlined briefly here is what dominates the 'purpose-driven' churches and the 'seeker-sensitive' churches, which are everywhere.
Christians who read their Bibles know that Jesus Christ is 'the same yesterday, today, and forever.' So riddle me this: how is it that old-time Christians did not believe in open borders, miscegenation, one-world government, and 'nonjudgmentalism', while today's ''Christians'' are perfectly comfortable, in too many instances, with all of the above? Christianity has not changed; today's Christians are thoroughly confused and lost, in many cases.
The fault is not in the Bible or in Christianity. The fault is in the insidious worldview, based on humanism, based on the false notion that 'man is the measure of all things', which has captured the Church as well as the rest of our society. And the fault, insofar as it lies with Christians, is that they do not read their Bibles or develop and exercise discernment. They simply take in the world's poisons and don't even realize it.
Some are being led astray by popular authors and 'teachers' who are in turn peddling the trendy ideas of the world, not the truth. These false shepherds are to blame, but so are the gullible 'sheep' who follow them.
We can see the havoc that the influence of psychology has played in our judicial system, where every criminal is portrayed as either ''mentally ill'' or as a victim of society, or a victim of bad parenting. Everybody is a 'victim' these days, especially the worst among us. Many people have lost all concepts of evil these days; the obsession we have with trying to 'understand' and 'reach out' to everybody, even heinous criminals, is a very detrimental trend to our societal well-being.
We see this carry over to our attitudes about things like illegal immigration; the people who consider themselves 'enlightened' are oh-so-careful to try to understand and empathize with illegals, saying things like ''well, I would do the same if I were in their shoes. I don't blame them.'' The drive to 'understand' and explain away all illegal behavior, or just plain bad behavior, has no limits. We have to re-learn to judge and discern, and not simply understand and empathize and tolerate anything.
As Alexander Pope wrote in his Essay on Man:
Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
If it was true in Pope's time, it is even more rife now, this 'pitying and embracing' of bad behavior. We can't be judgmental; who are we to judge? We have to understand and reach out.
If we truly care about rescuing our society, and averting its impending demise, we need to look at the real dangers which beset us and which have rendered us a weak and morally slothful people, a 'nonjudgmental' people who are scared stiff of offending anyone.
And while it's easier to zero in on easy targets, and hard to deal with an amorphous target like a hazy belief system with no visible insitutions to blame, it's also less honest.
Labels: Christianity, Death Of The West, Globalism, Liberalism, Moral Agnosticism, Moral Relativism, One World, Politics, Pop Psychology, Societal Decay, Therapeutic Society, Transnationalism
0 comment Friday, December 5, 2014 | admin
Another aspect of this pestilential 'niceness' is the moral agnosticism that usually goes along with it.
This seems to be an increasingly common problem in our society, and I think it is certainly a part of what ails us.
We've really taken to heart the idea that making a moral judgment or even a 'value judgment', in the namby-pamby social scientists' phrase, is to be avoided at all costs. We have to see everything in shades of grey, with ambiguities aplenty.
For example: two people of your acquaintance, both of them presumed 'friends' or at least people you purport to 'admire', are in a dispute. The moral agnostic 'nice' person makes sympathetic noises to both parties, and shrinks from making a judgment about which party is the wronged party, or which has right on his side. It may be that in rare instances, neither side is wrong, and neither is fully right, and it may be that the dispute is a mere misunderstanding or miscommunication which can be clarified by some detached third party stepping in and correcting the wrong signals.
But in my experience, when judging conflicting ideas or individuals, there is a preponderance of right on one side. Of course, a flawed human being will seldom be completely blameless, but the fact of human frailty does not mean that we can never, ever discern who is right, for the most part, and who is wrong, who was the aggressor or instigator and who was the recipient of the aggression.
I tend to think it's moral laziness to refuse to try to discern, or to seek to walk a tightrope, privately uttering sympathetic words to each side separately, while taking a neutral stance publicly. Or is it cowardice? Or a selfish desire to maintain oneself in the good graces of both sides, while feigning support to each party in secret? If so, that's also duplicitous and insincere, which the Bible condemns.
To refuse to take the right side in every case in which it can be discerned is immoral, and yet somehow these days, this is the default position of many people. Might it also be that so many people are deathly afraid of taking an unpopular position, and being isolated or ostracized for it? We certainly see many examples of this attitude.
The Bible also speaks against double-mindedness and having a 'double heart', or 'speaking guile.'
Psa 12:2 They speak vanity every one with his neighbour: [with] flattering lips [and] with a double heart do they speak.
I find that when someone takes the spineless way out and tries to have it both ways, working both sides of the street, I lose all respect for that person.
This is especially so when the wishy-washy person turns a blind eye to someone's aggressive or cruel behavior because they 'like' the person. Usually this is the case when one party is socially popular or influential, and many people, being in awe of social influence or prestige, will give the person a pass on reprehensible or uncharitable or immoral behavior because of who they are, or because of their personal charm or social status. This is what the Bible calls 'respecting persons.' We are not to be 'respecters of persons' or to hold the offender's 'person' in regard.
But we are supposed to be respecters of truth.
Suppose one party gossips, maligns, and slanders another party, and perhaps bullies that person in direct or indirect ways. Do we continue to be friendly with the wrongdoer and the wronged party? Why would we do this? The bully or the slanderer is not a person who should inspire our loyalty or regard, yet many people will refuse to call out the bad behavior or shun the wrongdoer, preferring to turn a blind eye, trying to justify their moral agnosticism by saying 'but he's a nice guy, and he hasn't done anything to me.'
Again, I cannot respect the person who behaves this way, even though they may fancy that their behavior amounts to being an impartial or above-the-fray 'peacemaker' between the two estranged parties. Either we believe that certain actions are right, and others are wrong, or we don't. It appears many people don't want to be so 'controversial' as to believe unequivocally in right and wrong, and to support the right side openly. But we are supposed to take a side, the right side, whenever there is a moral conflict. We are not allowed to sit out the battle.
Many of the people I know are very fluid in their principles, being easily moved one way or the other, based on their feelings and emotions. For instance Christians who claim to oppose things like abortion or homosexuality or illegal immigration will, if they meet with a likeable individual who is an advocate of abortion, or a homosexual, or an illegal immigrant, will not be able to separate their liking for these individuals from their opposition to the actions of these individuals -- so what gets lost? The principles. If they meet a personable and charming gay activist, they will begin to say 'well, we mustn't be narrowminded. Times change.' Many people are swayed by the immigrants they meet and sympathize with, and soon say 'we have to make it easier for these people; the laws for immigration are inhumane.'
Most conservatives and Christians of a traditonal sort deplore the moral relativism or facile moral equivalency at which the liberals are so practiced, but it seems they too are falling prey to the tendency.
And in most cases, we are drawn in that direction by our personal feelings, through being charmed by certain individuals, or perhaps we are flattered at being drawn into the circle of a prominent or influential person, so we overlook or justify the bad behaviors this person practices, whether it's sexual immorality or social cruelty and arrogance.
'But this man does so much good! He gives to charity; he supports a lot of good causes.'
Or: 'he's a brilliant man, very intellectually stimulating, a great thinker, a champion of our side,' -- so they tolerate, or worse, justify his petty unkindness towards his 'lessers', and his belittling of those he sees as rivals, intellectually or socially or politically.
Where are the lovers of justice and truth and goodness? We seem to be, too often, respecters of persons, covetous of the social approval of those we admire or like, regardless of their moral worth.
This can apply on a national scale, with the idolizing of morally reprobate celebrities and amoral politicians, or with those we look up to in other, smaller spheres. We have our favorites and our little idols, and we are happy to turn a blind eye to the harm they do -- simply because we 'like' them. They make us feel good in some way, and we are hooked on 'feeling good.' Or they flatter us, and we feel grateful that they include us in their circles, so we happily cluster around and applaud their every pronouncement, regardless of its worth, in gratitude for their deigning to notice us.
In some cases, some rather sad people identify with some high-achieving or notable person, and vicariously partake in their successes, and that this person may be an amoral, self-seeking egotist or an immoral, deceitful manipulator matters not at all to their admirers.
It all seems to boil down to our loss of fixed principles and morality, with a loss of regard for truth and right and justice. It's all about who we 'like', or how we feel about something, rather than about the question of goodness and worthiness.
I've had more people giving me unsolicited statements about who they are voting for, and so often I am struck by the utter incongruity of their choices. People I would least expect to hear these statements from tell me 'I'm voting for Obama', or 'I'll vote for McCain', while giving no sound reason for doing so. Their choices seem utterly illogical, at least based on what they have said over time, or based on what they purport to believe in. When we cut ourselves loose from our moorings in reason, logic, or established principles of any kind, and behave according to our shifting feelings and moods, there can only be more irrational and morally derelict behavior.
I suppose it makes a twisted kind of sense, if we have outlawed judgements, to base our decisions mostly on personal feelings and whims, and on a sense of loyalty only to persons, not to solid beliefs as to what is right and what is wrong.
This seems to be an increasingly common problem in our society, and I think it is certainly a part of what ails us.
We've really taken to heart the idea that making a moral judgment or even a 'value judgment', in the namby-pamby social scientists' phrase, is to be avoided at all costs. We have to see everything in shades of grey, with ambiguities aplenty.
For example: two people of your acquaintance, both of them presumed 'friends' or at least people you purport to 'admire', are in a dispute. The moral agnostic 'nice' person makes sympathetic noises to both parties, and shrinks from making a judgment about which party is the wronged party, or which has right on his side. It may be that in rare instances, neither side is wrong, and neither is fully right, and it may be that the dispute is a mere misunderstanding or miscommunication which can be clarified by some detached third party stepping in and correcting the wrong signals.
But in my experience, when judging conflicting ideas or individuals, there is a preponderance of right on one side. Of course, a flawed human being will seldom be completely blameless, but the fact of human frailty does not mean that we can never, ever discern who is right, for the most part, and who is wrong, who was the aggressor or instigator and who was the recipient of the aggression.
I tend to think it's moral laziness to refuse to try to discern, or to seek to walk a tightrope, privately uttering sympathetic words to each side separately, while taking a neutral stance publicly. Or is it cowardice? Or a selfish desire to maintain oneself in the good graces of both sides, while feigning support to each party in secret? If so, that's also duplicitous and insincere, which the Bible condemns.
To refuse to take the right side in every case in which it can be discerned is immoral, and yet somehow these days, this is the default position of many people. Might it also be that so many people are deathly afraid of taking an unpopular position, and being isolated or ostracized for it? We certainly see many examples of this attitude.
The Bible also speaks against double-mindedness and having a 'double heart', or 'speaking guile.'
Psa 12:2 They speak vanity every one with his neighbour: [with] flattering lips [and] with a double heart do they speak.
I find that when someone takes the spineless way out and tries to have it both ways, working both sides of the street, I lose all respect for that person.
This is especially so when the wishy-washy person turns a blind eye to someone's aggressive or cruel behavior because they 'like' the person. Usually this is the case when one party is socially popular or influential, and many people, being in awe of social influence or prestige, will give the person a pass on reprehensible or uncharitable or immoral behavior because of who they are, or because of their personal charm or social status. This is what the Bible calls 'respecting persons.' We are not to be 'respecters of persons' or to hold the offender's 'person' in regard.
But we are supposed to be respecters of truth.
Suppose one party gossips, maligns, and slanders another party, and perhaps bullies that person in direct or indirect ways. Do we continue to be friendly with the wrongdoer and the wronged party? Why would we do this? The bully or the slanderer is not a person who should inspire our loyalty or regard, yet many people will refuse to call out the bad behavior or shun the wrongdoer, preferring to turn a blind eye, trying to justify their moral agnosticism by saying 'but he's a nice guy, and he hasn't done anything to me.'
Again, I cannot respect the person who behaves this way, even though they may fancy that their behavior amounts to being an impartial or above-the-fray 'peacemaker' between the two estranged parties. Either we believe that certain actions are right, and others are wrong, or we don't. It appears many people don't want to be so 'controversial' as to believe unequivocally in right and wrong, and to support the right side openly. But we are supposed to take a side, the right side, whenever there is a moral conflict. We are not allowed to sit out the battle.
Many of the people I know are very fluid in their principles, being easily moved one way or the other, based on their feelings and emotions. For instance Christians who claim to oppose things like abortion or homosexuality or illegal immigration will, if they meet with a likeable individual who is an advocate of abortion, or a homosexual, or an illegal immigrant, will not be able to separate their liking for these individuals from their opposition to the actions of these individuals -- so what gets lost? The principles. If they meet a personable and charming gay activist, they will begin to say 'well, we mustn't be narrowminded. Times change.' Many people are swayed by the immigrants they meet and sympathize with, and soon say 'we have to make it easier for these people; the laws for immigration are inhumane.'
Most conservatives and Christians of a traditonal sort deplore the moral relativism or facile moral equivalency at which the liberals are so practiced, but it seems they too are falling prey to the tendency.
And in most cases, we are drawn in that direction by our personal feelings, through being charmed by certain individuals, or perhaps we are flattered at being drawn into the circle of a prominent or influential person, so we overlook or justify the bad behaviors this person practices, whether it's sexual immorality or social cruelty and arrogance.
'But this man does so much good! He gives to charity; he supports a lot of good causes.'
Or: 'he's a brilliant man, very intellectually stimulating, a great thinker, a champion of our side,' -- so they tolerate, or worse, justify his petty unkindness towards his 'lessers', and his belittling of those he sees as rivals, intellectually or socially or politically.
Where are the lovers of justice and truth and goodness? We seem to be, too often, respecters of persons, covetous of the social approval of those we admire or like, regardless of their moral worth.
This can apply on a national scale, with the idolizing of morally reprobate celebrities and amoral politicians, or with those we look up to in other, smaller spheres. We have our favorites and our little idols, and we are happy to turn a blind eye to the harm they do -- simply because we 'like' them. They make us feel good in some way, and we are hooked on 'feeling good.' Or they flatter us, and we feel grateful that they include us in their circles, so we happily cluster around and applaud their every pronouncement, regardless of its worth, in gratitude for their deigning to notice us.
In some cases, some rather sad people identify with some high-achieving or notable person, and vicariously partake in their successes, and that this person may be an amoral, self-seeking egotist or an immoral, deceitful manipulator matters not at all to their admirers.
It all seems to boil down to our loss of fixed principles and morality, with a loss of regard for truth and right and justice. It's all about who we 'like', or how we feel about something, rather than about the question of goodness and worthiness.
I've had more people giving me unsolicited statements about who they are voting for, and so often I am struck by the utter incongruity of their choices. People I would least expect to hear these statements from tell me 'I'm voting for Obama', or 'I'll vote for McCain', while giving no sound reason for doing so. Their choices seem utterly illogical, at least based on what they have said over time, or based on what they purport to believe in. When we cut ourselves loose from our moorings in reason, logic, or established principles of any kind, and behave according to our shifting feelings and moods, there can only be more irrational and morally derelict behavior.
I suppose it makes a twisted kind of sense, if we have outlawed judgements, to base our decisions mostly on personal feelings and whims, and on a sense of loyalty only to persons, not to solid beliefs as to what is right and what is wrong.
Labels: Justice, Moral Agnosticism, Moral Relativism, Societal Decay, Traditional Morality
0 comment Sunday, November 2, 2014 | admin
The story of the British ship HMS Bounty and the infamous mutiny, which has been told in books and in several Hollywood movies, is one that has for some reason fascinated me over the years. I haven't read the book on which the movies were based, but I've seen three versions of the film: the one with Errol Flynn, then the Clark Gable version, and the Marlon Brando version. There was a more recent film with Mel Gibson I believe, but I ignore more modern movies.
In my college anthropology class, we spent some time studying about the Bounty, mainly in the context of the 'Founder effect' as seen in the Pitcairn Islanders, who were the descendants of the Bounty mutineers and the Polynesian men and women who went with them to Pitcairn.
I suppose the story was fascinating to me in that I found it hard to envision how a group of English sailors could simply blend with a group of South Sea Islanders. The two peoples and their ways of life seemed so profoundly different, to me.
What could motivate them to do such a thing?
Here, The Narrator, who blogs at Signals From the Brink, writes a very interesting essay on the HMS Bounty, the mutiny, and the resulting Pitcairn Island society. He makes a novel analogy between the Mutiny and the present Western crisis.
There are various ways of describing and understanding the unfortunate turn many in Western Civilization have taken over the past century. Comparing events to "revolutions" and the course of specific nations to the Titanic striking the iceberg are common (engaged in by this writer as well). But every now and then a new perspective may help better see the possible causations as well as the potential remedies/outcomes to our plight.
"History repeats itself" we are told and sure enough that seems to most often be the case. More than that, specific historical incidents seem to foreshadow events on a greater scale and era.
Such an event is the Mutiny On The Bounty. (I should state that I�m no expert on the subject and that my casual interest in it was sparked by viewing the 1984 film �The Bounty�.)
That mutiny, wherein a group of men from a civilized Western nation, having temporarily grown accustomed to a leisurely life of hedonistic nihilism on a tropic Island, rebel against their commander when faced with returning to a orderly and disciplined, (Western) way of life, has a general theme which can be applied to our current situation.''
It's a fascinating piece. He makes a case that the mutineers acted of their own accord to rebel against the Western (and I would add, Christian) society into which they were born, and to start a new life of 'noble savagery' with their newfound Polynesian companions. As history has shown, the paradise went awry fairly early, as such efforts always do, especially when 'diversity' and culture clashes are built-in.
An overview of the Pitcairn Island history is here, at this Seventh Day Adventist website. The Adventists brought their faith to the mutineers' descendants, and though the article notes that there are only small numbers of Adventists there now, they don't even hint at the troubled nature of the society on Pitcairn, which is dealt with here in a Vanity Fair article. It seems that the Christian veneer of the Islanders was rather skin-deep, and the sexual mores of the people seemed to follow the kind of anything-goes approach to sexuality so admiringly cited by anthropologists like Margaret Mead, who wrote of the casual attitude to sex in the South Seas. From the VF article:
Headlines around the world had focused on the criminal case: Pitcairn�s cloud of vice. But a more dramatic story lay buried in the thousands of pages piled high on a table partly shielding the Privy Council lords from the commoners facing them.
For most of its history, Pitcairn lived with a secret sex culture that defined island life. Adultery was not just routine but pervasive, as was the sexual fondling of infants and socially approved sex games among young children. Incest and prostitution were not unknown. The criminal charges stemmed from a longtime island practice of "breaking in" girls as young as 10.
The legal case had dragged on for eight years and threatened the island�s survival. Sharp divisions existed over Mother England�s fairness in forcing the weight of English law onto a tiny population as isolated and lost in time as Pitcairn�s. Colleen McCullough, the Australian author of The Thorn Birds and wife of a well-known Pitcairn descendant, harshly criticized the British for prosecuting what even the Foreign Office grudgingly conceded was a "cultural trait." She said, "It�s Polynesian to break your girls in at 12."
Typical liberalism: "who are we to judge other cultures? If pedophilia is 'their culture,' who are we to judge? So say the multicultists.
This National Geographic article also deals with these scandals, and the 'cultural differences' rationalization.
As The Narrator says in his essay,
This hedonistic utopia was, ironically, founded by people of low character and no qualms about disloyalty and lack of honor or restraint. It�s not difficult to imagine how well that worked out.
Bligh addressed the temptations to which they had yielded in his published account of the mutiny in 1790, writing:
"It will very naturally be asked, what could be the reason for such a revolt? in answer to which, I can only conjecture that the mutineers had assured themselves of a more happy life among the Otaheiteans, than they could possibly have in England; which, joined to some female connections, have most probably been the principal cause of the whole transaction.
The women at Otaheite are handsome, mild and chearful in their manners and conversation, possessed of great sensibility, and have sufficient delicacy to make them admired and beloved. The chiefs were so much attached to our people, that they rather encouraged their stay among them than otherwise, and even made them promises of large possessions. Under these, and many other attendant circumstances, equally desirable, it is now perhaps not so much to be wondered at, though scarcely possible to have been foreseen, that a set of sailors, most of them void of connections, should be led away; especially when, in addition to such powerful inducements, they imagined it in their power to fix themselves in the midst of plenty, on the finest island in the world, where they need not labour, and where the allurements of dissipation are beyond any thing that can be conceived."
It would appear that the combination of their isolation from civilization and perhaps the character of the founders of this 'utopia', they inevitably degenerated.
An interesting side bit of trivia is the linguistic degeneration. The descendants developed a kind of bastardized English or pidgin dialect:
...an amalgam of 18th-century English and Polynesian that the old-timers still use among themselves. This pidgin language was developed as a way for the English sailors and the Tahitians to communicate, and it features some words I could discern, such as musket (gun), and others I couldn't, such as tin-tola (girlfriend) and wettles (food). Brenda helped translate.
Len: "Nava bin doun Gudgeon fer long time." Brenda: "No one has been down to Gudgeons in a long time."
Len: "Mebe gut sum good side fer clime Down Rope." Brenda: "Maybe there's some good climbing at Down Rope."
Could this be the kind of change we will see in our English language? Will our descendants, if they speak English at all, speak this kind of dumbed-down pidgin dialect?
The Narrator's point is that the mutineers chose their fate; they knowingly decided to abandon their people.
There is no doubt that those outside groups who would wish us harm today have encouraged and cheered on that percentage of us who seek to mutiny against Western Civilization in favor of a multicultural hell. But the fact is it takes a willing participant to be led. And sadly there are not only all-to-willing followers amongst the disloyal, but leaders as well.
In the end we must be careful in our duty of defending the honor or our people, not to deify them or absolve them from the treachery that many of them so willfully engage in.
To be clear, this is not an advocacy of abandoning the resolve to expose the activities of those who might wish us ill, but rather a call for a little more focus on the inward development of the qualities that are needed for the difficult task of preserving and nurturing our people and their civilization back to a safe harbor. We need to once again champion the virtues which established our great societies but which have, of late, fallen out of favor. And part of those virtues was the belief that every man is to, ultimately, be held accountable for his own actions regardless of circumstance or whatever outside influences might have swayed his behavior or actions.
It is indeed a question of character. Some men have poor character and give heed to whatever impulse happens to strike them, while others remain true and honorable no matter how enticing the deceptive voice whispering in their ear is.
There has been a mutiny on the HMS West, and those who remained true to their own have been set adrift. But we must keep hope, for upon reflection of past events we can see the inevitable fate of each group based upon the path they have chosen.''
One or two of the commenters think The Narrator's analogy is not truly apt, because we in the West have not instigated a mutiny; instead we are having it imposed by outsiders against us, or being manipulated into embracing a destruction of our way of life and our people. I suppose there's truth in that, but still, I think the Narrator's point is worth considering, too. But are we to be the mutineers, refusing to follow a derelict captain and a corrupt and oppressive system, or are we the mutiny-resisters? Are our 'leaders' the mutineers against the legitimate order, setting a course to their own misconceived multicult utopia, with unwilling passengers on board?
I've often wondered, myself, why our society and our era has been so vulnerable to these manipulations. Every generation has its malcontents and traitors and those who want to tear down the existing order. In a healthy age and a strong society, those people are ignored and given no legitimacy; people in general are not led astray by them. Why is our age and why are our people suddenly such easy prey?
We've discussed all kinds of factors: the media and its enormous power, the prosperity of our time which makes us soft and hedonistic, the loss of our Faith, and of course the influence of subversive outsiders whose interests conflict with ours. Ultimately, though, are we all just pawns, or do we have the ability to discern, to reject the manipulation, and to choose for ourselves?
And if we still maintain that this situation was forced on us, by guile and manipulation or by force, then does this amount to a plea of helplessness and an abdication of responsibility? Or are we still strong enough in ourselves to assert our own will and act in our own interests?
In my college anthropology class, we spent some time studying about the Bounty, mainly in the context of the 'Founder effect' as seen in the Pitcairn Islanders, who were the descendants of the Bounty mutineers and the Polynesian men and women who went with them to Pitcairn.
I suppose the story was fascinating to me in that I found it hard to envision how a group of English sailors could simply blend with a group of South Sea Islanders. The two peoples and their ways of life seemed so profoundly different, to me.
What could motivate them to do such a thing?
Here, The Narrator, who blogs at Signals From the Brink, writes a very interesting essay on the HMS Bounty, the mutiny, and the resulting Pitcairn Island society. He makes a novel analogy between the Mutiny and the present Western crisis.
There are various ways of describing and understanding the unfortunate turn many in Western Civilization have taken over the past century. Comparing events to "revolutions" and the course of specific nations to the Titanic striking the iceberg are common (engaged in by this writer as well). But every now and then a new perspective may help better see the possible causations as well as the potential remedies/outcomes to our plight.
"History repeats itself" we are told and sure enough that seems to most often be the case. More than that, specific historical incidents seem to foreshadow events on a greater scale and era.
Such an event is the Mutiny On The Bounty. (I should state that I�m no expert on the subject and that my casual interest in it was sparked by viewing the 1984 film �The Bounty�.)
That mutiny, wherein a group of men from a civilized Western nation, having temporarily grown accustomed to a leisurely life of hedonistic nihilism on a tropic Island, rebel against their commander when faced with returning to a orderly and disciplined, (Western) way of life, has a general theme which can be applied to our current situation.''
It's a fascinating piece. He makes a case that the mutineers acted of their own accord to rebel against the Western (and I would add, Christian) society into which they were born, and to start a new life of 'noble savagery' with their newfound Polynesian companions. As history has shown, the paradise went awry fairly early, as such efforts always do, especially when 'diversity' and culture clashes are built-in.
An overview of the Pitcairn Island history is here, at this Seventh Day Adventist website. The Adventists brought their faith to the mutineers' descendants, and though the article notes that there are only small numbers of Adventists there now, they don't even hint at the troubled nature of the society on Pitcairn, which is dealt with here in a Vanity Fair article. It seems that the Christian veneer of the Islanders was rather skin-deep, and the sexual mores of the people seemed to follow the kind of anything-goes approach to sexuality so admiringly cited by anthropologists like Margaret Mead, who wrote of the casual attitude to sex in the South Seas. From the VF article:
Headlines around the world had focused on the criminal case: Pitcairn�s cloud of vice. But a more dramatic story lay buried in the thousands of pages piled high on a table partly shielding the Privy Council lords from the commoners facing them.
For most of its history, Pitcairn lived with a secret sex culture that defined island life. Adultery was not just routine but pervasive, as was the sexual fondling of infants and socially approved sex games among young children. Incest and prostitution were not unknown. The criminal charges stemmed from a longtime island practice of "breaking in" girls as young as 10.
The legal case had dragged on for eight years and threatened the island�s survival. Sharp divisions existed over Mother England�s fairness in forcing the weight of English law onto a tiny population as isolated and lost in time as Pitcairn�s. Colleen McCullough, the Australian author of The Thorn Birds and wife of a well-known Pitcairn descendant, harshly criticized the British for prosecuting what even the Foreign Office grudgingly conceded was a "cultural trait." She said, "It�s Polynesian to break your girls in at 12."
Typical liberalism: "who are we to judge other cultures? If pedophilia is 'their culture,' who are we to judge? So say the multicultists.
This National Geographic article also deals with these scandals, and the 'cultural differences' rationalization.
As The Narrator says in his essay,
This hedonistic utopia was, ironically, founded by people of low character and no qualms about disloyalty and lack of honor or restraint. It�s not difficult to imagine how well that worked out.
Bligh addressed the temptations to which they had yielded in his published account of the mutiny in 1790, writing:
"It will very naturally be asked, what could be the reason for such a revolt? in answer to which, I can only conjecture that the mutineers had assured themselves of a more happy life among the Otaheiteans, than they could possibly have in England; which, joined to some female connections, have most probably been the principal cause of the whole transaction.
The women at Otaheite are handsome, mild and chearful in their manners and conversation, possessed of great sensibility, and have sufficient delicacy to make them admired and beloved. The chiefs were so much attached to our people, that they rather encouraged their stay among them than otherwise, and even made them promises of large possessions. Under these, and many other attendant circumstances, equally desirable, it is now perhaps not so much to be wondered at, though scarcely possible to have been foreseen, that a set of sailors, most of them void of connections, should be led away; especially when, in addition to such powerful inducements, they imagined it in their power to fix themselves in the midst of plenty, on the finest island in the world, where they need not labour, and where the allurements of dissipation are beyond any thing that can be conceived."
It would appear that the combination of their isolation from civilization and perhaps the character of the founders of this 'utopia', they inevitably degenerated.
An interesting side bit of trivia is the linguistic degeneration. The descendants developed a kind of bastardized English or pidgin dialect:
...an amalgam of 18th-century English and Polynesian that the old-timers still use among themselves. This pidgin language was developed as a way for the English sailors and the Tahitians to communicate, and it features some words I could discern, such as musket (gun), and others I couldn't, such as tin-tola (girlfriend) and wettles (food). Brenda helped translate.
Len: "Nava bin doun Gudgeon fer long time." Brenda: "No one has been down to Gudgeons in a long time."
Len: "Mebe gut sum good side fer clime Down Rope." Brenda: "Maybe there's some good climbing at Down Rope."
Could this be the kind of change we will see in our English language? Will our descendants, if they speak English at all, speak this kind of dumbed-down pidgin dialect?
The Narrator's point is that the mutineers chose their fate; they knowingly decided to abandon their people.
There is no doubt that those outside groups who would wish us harm today have encouraged and cheered on that percentage of us who seek to mutiny against Western Civilization in favor of a multicultural hell. But the fact is it takes a willing participant to be led. And sadly there are not only all-to-willing followers amongst the disloyal, but leaders as well.
In the end we must be careful in our duty of defending the honor or our people, not to deify them or absolve them from the treachery that many of them so willfully engage in.
To be clear, this is not an advocacy of abandoning the resolve to expose the activities of those who might wish us ill, but rather a call for a little more focus on the inward development of the qualities that are needed for the difficult task of preserving and nurturing our people and their civilization back to a safe harbor. We need to once again champion the virtues which established our great societies but which have, of late, fallen out of favor. And part of those virtues was the belief that every man is to, ultimately, be held accountable for his own actions regardless of circumstance or whatever outside influences might have swayed his behavior or actions.
It is indeed a question of character. Some men have poor character and give heed to whatever impulse happens to strike them, while others remain true and honorable no matter how enticing the deceptive voice whispering in their ear is.
There has been a mutiny on the HMS West, and those who remained true to their own have been set adrift. But we must keep hope, for upon reflection of past events we can see the inevitable fate of each group based upon the path they have chosen.''
One or two of the commenters think The Narrator's analogy is not truly apt, because we in the West have not instigated a mutiny; instead we are having it imposed by outsiders against us, or being manipulated into embracing a destruction of our way of life and our people. I suppose there's truth in that, but still, I think the Narrator's point is worth considering, too. But are we to be the mutineers, refusing to follow a derelict captain and a corrupt and oppressive system, or are we the mutiny-resisters? Are our 'leaders' the mutineers against the legitimate order, setting a course to their own misconceived multicult utopia, with unwilling passengers on board?
I've often wondered, myself, why our society and our era has been so vulnerable to these manipulations. Every generation has its malcontents and traitors and those who want to tear down the existing order. In a healthy age and a strong society, those people are ignored and given no legitimacy; people in general are not led astray by them. Why is our age and why are our people suddenly such easy prey?
We've discussed all kinds of factors: the media and its enormous power, the prosperity of our time which makes us soft and hedonistic, the loss of our Faith, and of course the influence of subversive outsiders whose interests conflict with ours. Ultimately, though, are we all just pawns, or do we have the ability to discern, to reject the manipulation, and to choose for ourselves?
And if we still maintain that this situation was forced on us, by guile and manipulation or by force, then does this amount to a plea of helplessness and an abdication of responsibility? Or are we still strong enough in ourselves to assert our own will and act in our own interests?
Labels: Death Of The West, History, Libertinism, Moral Relativism, Multiculturalism, Utopianism, Western Decline