Christian apology by a non-Christian

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

"I regard my work on alchemy as a sign of my inner relationship to Goethe. Goethe's secret was that he was in the grip of that process of archetypal transformation which has gone on through the centuries. He regarded his Faust as an opus magnum or divinum. He called it his 'main business', and his whole life was enacted within the framework of this drama. Thus, what was alive and active within him was a living substance, a suprapersonal process, the great dream of the mundus archetypus (archetypal world).

"I myself am haunted by the same dream, and from my eleventh year I have launched upon a single enterprise which is my 'main business'. My life has been permeated and held together by one idea and one goal: namely to penetrate into the secret of personality. Everything can be explained from this central point, and all my works relate to this theme."

A few things seem quite interesting in this. One is a notion of 'inner work' that connects to previous work and workers within our traditions. It seems to me wise not to lose sight of the fact that everything that we are, and have become, and perhaps can become, has historical roots in the work of other people. And those people were deeply, very deeply, involved in and concerned with spiritual and religious issues. This does not simply go away.

The second is just the notion of 'main business'. To have a 'main business' in life. To know what it is. To have a conscious relationship to it. It is relationship to the Great Ideas that give energy and juice to a man's life, and all the Christian ideas-symbols that have to do with transformation and realization and activity in the world are in no sense 'silent' though in people they might have gone underground.

Another is the very notion of 'personality'. Do we really have any insight at all to what we are speaking of when we refer to 'our personality'? We completely take it for granted just as we take our body for granted, or the ground we stand on. But 'personality' is a living vessel. It is a living thing in which we carry a living spark, and about that we know nothing. Yet it is this that moves the world. It is wise to pay a little attention therefor to 'personality'. A page or so back the notion of 'annulment of personality' came up. By losing track of how personality has been created through long and arduous processes, and how these processes are part-and-parcel of a tangible history with which we are rapidly losing our connection, brings forward the possibility of annulment of personality as a dangerous outcome.

And so 'spiritual work' is about 'becoming real' in a personalistic sense. How we become real and 'potent' and alive seems to me of paramount relevance.

[Harry Baird]

Gustav,

I'm aware that the broader conversation has, unfortunately with my assistance, been diverted into a narrow channel, yet, at the same time, even though I was enthusiastic coming into this thread, I no longer have the energy to participate in that broader conversation. I think, then, that it is best that I sum up my position and then withdraw from this thread, at least for the moment.

So: sure, I understand your "psyche" model, but, like many of us who have had similar experiences to myself, I find it to be inaccurate and even patronising, amounting in a sense to the assertion, "it's all in your head", whereas there are many resources which indicate that, despite modern interpretations, certain spiritual phenomena, in fact, originate externally to a person. In particular, I'm thinking of resources which find that spiritual entities experienced by "sufferers" are sometimes in possession of knowledge far beyond that which the afflicted people could possibly be in possession of themselves. Moreover, your "modern" approach entails that complex, experienced-as-foreign attacks upon a person actually originate within that person's own mind, a very peculiar notion, requiring that a person's mind not only acts against its own best interests, but that it constructs elaborate personalities and hallucinations in order to do so - I mean, really? Too, a certain author I've read has found that spiritual attacks upon themselves and their wards can be averted through certain physical actions, such as crossing running water or enclosing themselves in electro-magnetic fields. Why should a phenomenon confined purely to the "psyche" respond to such unexpected physical mechanisms? There is much more, but I think more pertinent is to point out that whereas I can offer evidence such as this, you, in contrast, seem only to be able to offer theory. You have offered no tangible evidence for your position, and, indeed, it is hard to imagine what evidence you could offer other than that you are incredulous of my own position, despite that I have good reasons for maintaining it.

But I am supposed to be summarising my broader position, so let me switch gears and focus outwards a little. You started this thread apologising for Christianity whilst not identifying with Christianity. I am in the same boat, only it seems that I am far more open to literal truth in Christianity than you are. I recognise the literal existence of spirits, both demonic and angelic, as well as the literal power of Christ. Too, I basically, perhaps with reservations, recognise the morality of the Gospels, despite that I might not live up to it perfectly. My main problems with Christianity lie in its theology, and in the lack of historical and scientific accuracy of the Bible. I don't know how much Christianity contributed to or hindered scientific, social and political progress - I'll leave that debate to those who have studied such things far more than I have - but I understand that you believe it was key; like Skip, I do at least question your belief. I also believe that Skip is right that Christ was most closely aligned with some sort of socialism, and in this sense I am wary of your own capitalist tendencies, especially to the extent that you understand such economic principles to be an outcome of Christian thinking or processes.

Possibly that sums things up sufficiently. I welcome your response, if any, but will now respectfully step back from this thread. Thank you very much for the conversation.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

It is my understanding that the Grand Issue here---Christianity, a giant belief-system, the metaphysical underpinnings of it, the evolution of an epistemological system, questions of social organization, ethics, psychology, 'modernism' and what that means, the definition of 'meaning', and the confrontation with a scientific-materialistic model to indicate just a little bit of the magnitude of all this---is deeply contentious. The more that one digs into it, the more problematic and labyrinthian it becomes, and the more one finds that a great deal hinges on it. I think this is what fascinates me about it. I have years of study still ahead yet I do feel I grasp the size and dimension of the issue. Few others seem to. Everything that I have written in this thread is essentially 'experimental' and tentative and is only a means by which I organize my thinking and exteriorize it. I meant no 'offense' to anyone.

I really appreciate that you took the time to write, Harry.

I don't at this point see the possibility for continuing this thread since there is, apparently, no one else interested in it and it is turning into a blog! I hope that some part of it has been *useful*.

[Godfree]

I really appreciate that you took the time to write, Harry.

I don't at this point see the possibility for continuing this thread since there is, apparently, no one else interested in it and it is turning into a blog! I hope that some part of it has been *useful*.[/quote]

I also took the time to write Gustav , but you didn't respond ,,??
I am a non-christian , I find it very hard to relate to you or your thinking ,
are you really a non-christian , I find that hard to believe ,
I'm an Atheist , what are you , please , if you don't mind ,,
I would find the study of religion or the bible ,
only worth doing if i was gathering info on how to expose it's ignorance and stupidity ,
you seem to be holding it up as something to be respected ,
hence , Godfree concludes ,
you aint no "non-christian"

[Skip]

I got the impression that Gustav is aiming to be post-Christian, or xtian.2 or something like that: an archivist of the Christo-European knowledge-base and preserver of its value system.
I dropped out because of irreconcilable differences of perspective, and also because I don't really understand what either he or Harry Baird are on about.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

• What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
  Out of this stoney rubbish? Son of man,
  You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
  A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
  And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
  And the dry stone no sound of water.
  
  ---TS Eliot, The Waste Land.

_________________________________________________

Gustav, speaking in the third person of himself, writes:

There are a few elements to Gustav's interest and activity. He will make an effort to clarify though he has discovered, against his desire, that this particular thread and possibly this particular forum, is not one where his desired 'conversation' can occur and develop.

1) Everything that Gustav writes is, as he says, 'tentative'. Gustav starts from this basic position: 'the World' (which means 'our world') is in the grip of nihilism. Nihilism is a complex term and a complex state of being. It is even hard to define it because different philosophers define it differently and some actually understand it as a starting point for maturity. Without some grasp of what 'nihilism' is and importantly what it means for individuals, i.e. what it DOES to individuals, it is probable that one would be able to understand 'where Gustav is coming from'. But in the most simple terms let us say that 'nihilism' is the outcome of man's penetration into known and tangible reality, or knowable and tangible reality. It is in this sense becoming aware of the 'prison camp' nature of material restrictions, the penetration into matter in the 'sublunary world'. This encompasses---and this is important---a certain 'style' of thinking that proceeds from the 'scientific'. It is 'rationalistic', analytical, but also distinctly limited if only because it possesses no tools to understand all previous means of organizing perception about 'reality'. In this sense it functions as a 'cutting tool' and shears off from man his contact and interaction with 'the ineffable'. You could say 'metaphysical' and also 'transcendental', you could also say 'God' or 'Spirit' or 'connection to a Whole' and also to 'Meaning'. Even to establish this base requires, as Gustav understands it, about a month of study. But this issue, that of 'nihilism' and the distraught and confused condition it evokes in people (true, this is Gustav's opinion) is a 'very real issue' and indeed one of the most important issues of our age.

2) 'Christianity' is rife with imperfections and cannot ever be simply accepted at face value. Gustav is not at all in favor of 'fundamentalism' or 'blind faith' and condemns it in religious believers. Fundamentalism as such is the end of what can rightly be called 'true religion' and the first step toward nihilism: et sic sequitur. And yet he makes an odd claim: He says that the same or similar sort of fundamentalism operates outside of the specifically religious domain. Religious fundamentalism and 'rigid thinking' seems just to 'jump tracks' and Gustav is under the impression that the same 'style' of thinking functions, continues to function, among apparently non-religious sorts. He notes that atheist and theist lock horns in mortal battle but that, often, they operate within a very similar, closed-loop, thinking system. Gustav makes this assertion, true, but has not been able to adequately 'research' it. It is just a matter of his opinion at this time. But Gustav feels that both approaches, both forms of 'fundamentalistic thinking', actually miss the point and they [seem] to become merely a low-level and quite meaningless argument---a battle, a fight, a war---among low-level intellects, amid 'bad thinkers', certainly 'non-creative thinkers' when the Real Conversation occurs and must occur on another, superior level. It is a conversation that cannot be engaged in by 'just anybody' but requires seriousness of commitment and personal investment. The issue of 'personal investment' is paramount in all Gustav's discourse (Gustav tosses in pretentious academic terms like this all the time). Gustav maintains that 'You cannot really know life and this existence intellectually or academically, you can only REALLY know life by living it, by being in it with another level of commitment'. Gustav maintains that 'spiritual life' is not just 'organizing perception intellectually' but requires a 'jumping in with both feet'. Because this is so, and because people generally have very different aptitudes and needs and desires, he knows that only a person who has (lives) a spiritual life can be a conversant in the conversation about spiritual life. True, you could gain a great deal of academic knowledge about 'the varieties of religious experience' but it really wouldn't be knowledge---knowledge as Gustav would define it---about 'spirituality'. It is easy to see what he means by substituting other examples. You cannot know what it is to be a mountain climber or a diver just by reading the accounts. The one who really knows what climbing and diving are about are those who have done it. (Etc., etc.) This is really just an intuitive argument accessible to anyone.

3) Anyone who actually engages in spiritual life knows what Gustav is talking about. This engagement is with the 'soul'. That is, the body, the mind, the feelings, the intelligence. In short the totality of the person within his 'incarnated existence'. Why does Gustav toss in this term 'incarnated'? Because of what it literally alludes to: a life within a flesh vehicle and bound to all those limitations. Yes, but so what? Well, it is a huge part of man's work to 'carve out' conceptual and 'abstract worlds' and this is what Gustav calls 'our imagined world'. He alludes to the fact that tremendous things occur in that 'world' and so he places special emphasis on the term hoping, as it were, to stimulate others to think about it. This is the world of 'consciousness'. It is literally the 'space' where the miracle is occurring! The miracle of perception, of being, of understanding, of making choices about meaning, and essentially 'living on a higher plane' than mere brutality or [problematic word warning!] 'barbarism'. [And here he mentions, tiresomely and 'once again' the Mass Man and blah blah blah on he goes...]

4) When one engages in 'spiritual life' in our modernity, in our climate of nihilism and within the 'deadness' of matter (and meaning), one immediately is forced to 'reconnect' to all the previous associations and understandings, including symbolical and 'semiotic' representations, and it is Gustav's opinion that, as with CG Jung, all this material exists within us. Because our 'materialistic science' and the constraints of language and thought cannot venture into this realm (the mythic, the cosmological, the 'enchanted' if you will), we need another vocabulary. It is Gustav's opinion that, with some notable limitations, Jungian vocabulary offers many advantages. Essentially, when one engages 'spiritually' and internally, something rises to meet the call, if you will, to respond to the need...or necessity. Gustav knows this from experience. And Gustav knows many others for whom it is true. But be that as it may *something* arises from within our own being and 'guides' us on the 'spiritual path'. A path of orienting ourselves through our movement through our 'incarnated reality'.

5) 'Christianity' has deep and undeniable relevance here. In this sense 'Christianity', which includes both the most barbarous activity as well as the most sublime [man is always a terribly ambivalent or tortured being, nest-ce pas?] is psycho-material history of [Western] man's engagement in 'all these questions' for a long period of time. Gustav is always saying that 'our very personalities have been constructed through this process, in that cauldron, and this alludes to a whole OTHER level of study to verify this'. [Myself, I am getting fu*#ing TIRED of one level of study after another and I just want to FUC#ING watch TeeVee and drink a beer...but no! I have 'another level of study' to undertake!].

Gustav deeply sympathizes, BTW. But he knows too that a path of 'true knowledge' is a difficult and demanding one. But the long and the short of it is that we can only really understand the 'deep relevance' of 'Christianity' (a catch-word for so very much!) if we take the time to really understand what it is and how it has functioned at the core of our social and cultural life. But to do that one must learn to see beyond the terribly irritating fundamentalists against whom we all have good reasons to take a resisting position.

6) Gustav's 'arguments' seem to function on two levels. One is the 'inner level'. He feels that when one engages internally, one will inevitably engage with all of our internal, 'unconscious' content. The so-called 'archetypal patterns' and such. This is very subjective 'internal' work and involves the 'psychological' and really our really rather intimate understanding of our being in this world. It connects back to the womb, to the issue and problem and trauma of birth, our entry-point into this bizarre drama we are all living. We are bound by our 'biological-social context' and often it is these influences that determine us. Ah! Except here enters in another level of determining factor: consciousness. Our connection to a higher world, a world of higher concept but then also [potentially?] to the transcendental. To influences from areas within Creation we may not know anything about. "There are mysteries here, Dear Children", says pompous Gustav, "which we might do well not to negate and merely sweep off the board". Gustav wishes to 'validate' those who identify as Christians because he understands what it means to be engaged 'spiritually' and innerly. This is the peculiarity of his position which seems to confuse.

• "Is he a fuc*ing goddammed xtrian or IS HE NOT!!! "

He laughs when he hears this, true, but not without concern for the problem. He might say: 'The problem for modern man is to move beyond binary systems of thinking and to think in more complete terms'. But saying this he is aware that most people will not be able to do this. They will 'remain trapped' within those binary thinking systems that drive their perception.

The other level has to do with the education of the conscious mind: the education of the 'ego' as it were. Without going into too much detail Gustav feels that we are rapidly losing our historical connection with Our Traditions. It will happen that we will end up in an intellectual world that functions more in programming language than in humanistic elements. And he will further say that the Christian traditions, in the historical sense, contain a very great deal of the 'better' stuff of which man is capable and indeed represent the better possibilities of man. Making this case to 'acidic' non-believers is a tough one, especially if they also lack a basic liberal education. But those who have such an education, and who recognize the value of it, will generally, though a little uneasily, accept this point. Unfortunately, in rejecting a tout prix this terrible edifice of 'Christianity', one also cuts oneself away from 'the very best that Western man has conceived'. It is Gustav's opinion that the result of this 'cutting away' are tragic and will become evermore so as we 'progress' into a darkening future.

In the meantime, and no matter what, he is of the opinion that, somehow, we need to hold to the possibilities of communication, affect, love when possible, concern for others, concern for other's suffering and loneliness, and all those really important things and attitudes which we are able to distinguish as 'conscious beings'. Even if one does not *identify* as a 'believing Christian', Gustav notes that all the things we value and hold to (especially when they are on the verge of being taken away or disappearing) are *essentially* Christian.

Gustav recognizes how deeply DEEPLY contentious are all these issues. If only that, he wishes that others would see and understand just how much is at stake. And as is often the case he will throw in a popular song by a unique musical band who brought forth odd and almost alchemical songs which, somehow, contain deep and relevant meanings. Why does he DO this?!? some ask. Gustav does this because he is convinced that *meaning*, real and important meaning, is rarely assimilated intellectually. What we really understand and value is understood and appreciated by the totality of the self, and this is why music and art is relevant for us. 'The song that I sing' is a way of speaking about relationship to life, to existence, and sometimes our song is infectious. If it is 'the right song' it can literally move mountains (excuse the cheesy reference to scripture). And we no longer seem to know, at some basic, human level, just what is 'the right song'.

[Godfree]

The title had deceived me , I thought there was a chance to get real ,
clearly Gustav is not interested in a debate or learning what other people think ,
he is here to preach and dictate to us , if the title of this thread had been a little closer to the reality ,ie ,
A religious thread , By a Religious person ,
I would have known not to waste my time ,,!!!

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Gustav desires for other people to take the time to write out their ideas, if it should so please them. Gustav is not interested in 'debate' which really means argumentation. It is true in a sense that my writing is 'preaching'. But I suggest that so is all persuasive discourse.

See Richard Weaver's ideas about 'all language being sermonic'.

In Language is Sermonic, Weaver pointed to rhetoric as a presentation of values. Sermonic language seeks to persuade the listener, and is inherent in all communication. Indeed, the very choice to present arguments from definition instead of from consequence implies that one of the modes of reason carries greater value.

It is rather curious to see even advertising as an extension of the 'sermonic' and that in many different fields a 'sermonic' approach is taken. We all desire to communicate our values and to convince others of our perspectives. Skip spoke of 'irreconcilable differences' and Gustav suggests that 'our world' is one of stark polarity between 'irreconcilable differences' on a macrocosmic scale. Our life itself is one where we are 'strung between irreconcilable oppositions'. Somehow, now or at some time, we will have to bridge them...

[Or is that too preachy for you? ]

Gustav would also suggest Godfree that grandstanding to the audience is in truth a tactic of preachers...and advocates too! Best wishes to you. I look forward to hearing more of your thoughts soon.

[Skip]

... differences of perspective. I have no quarrel with your [?his] purpose or belief system: I simply can't share that point of view. That makes me different and it makes communication difficult to the point of speaking foreign tongues - not polar opposite.

My only arguments have been with assertions stated as fact which I don't see proven, and with being categorized and interpreted.

As for preachment as communication, it works - but only as long as it holds the audience. You do know that most people 'mute' the commercials, right?

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

I get you. At the same time, at least I think so, my positions are also irreconcilable with many classic religious positions. That is to say 'the conventional, believing Christian'. Sort of a shame that the 'conversation' could not have expanded further with more interest from that camp. More response would have done it. Oh well.

[Godfree]

I get you. At the same time, at least I think so, my positions are also irreconcilable with many classic religious positions. That is to say 'the conventional, believing Christian'. Sort of a shame that the 'conversation' could not have expanded further with more interest from that camp. More response would have done it. Oh well.

English is becoming the common language , business and entertainment ,
English is the dominant language , whether you are German French or Irish ,
christianity sort of did the same thing , it followed the pioneers ,
or should we say they rammed it down the throats of the new world ,
and became the dominant religion ,
nothing to do with whether or not it is right , the best philosophy , even sane ,
just dominant ,
in parts of Africa today the idea that you should remove a young girls clit with a rusty old knife and no anesthetic ,
is still dominant ,
Gustav may choose to stay on his high horse and pretend he is dominant ,
in his world/mind he may be ,
Gustav may feel safe because he represents the dominant philosophy ,
but is it sane Gustav ,
is Assad sane ,
The pope for giving the green light to the crusaders , was he sane ,,???
absolutely without a doubt ,,NO ,,,not sane at all ...

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

"Man, if thou knowest what thou dost, thou art blessed; but if thou knowest not, thou art accursed and a transgressor of the law".

"The evil which I would not, that I do".

"For he that will say, I have a Will, and would willingly do Good, but the earthly Flesh which I carry about me, keepeth me back, so that I cannot; yet shall I be saved by Grace, for the merits of Christ. I comfort myself with his Merit and Sufferings; who will receive me of mere Grace, without any Merits of my own, and forgive me my Sins. Such a one, I say, is like a Man that knoweth what Food is good for his Health, yet will not eat of it, but eateth Poison instead thereof, from whence Sickness and Death, will certainly follow"

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

"We do not know how far the process of coming to consciousness can extend, or where it will lead. It is a new element in the story of creation, and there are no parallels we can look to. We therefor cannot know what potentialities are inherent in it. Neither can we know the prospects of the species Home sapiens. Will it imitate the fate of other species, which once flourished on the Earth and are now extinct? Biology can advance no reasons why this should not be so."

It seems to me that if we begin from the point of recognizing and highlighting 'consciousness' and 'awareness' and see, as I think we should, how deeply mired we are in ignorance of our own nature, our locale even, within a physical body we barely understand and with a 'soul' or 'psyche' which is incomprehensible to us, and here as we all are on a platform of existence which, if the *meaning* is really taken in, is overwhelming and utterly strange; if we can define this as a beginning point we might actually begin---merely begin!---to understand what we face, both as a distinct individual and as the race of human beings. I think too that if we are to realistically and maturely assess 'Christianity' we have to establish a platform for the consideration of it (and ourselves and indeed all things) that is distinct from it. And from this 'platform' we can then look backwards over the history we have lived, and national histories, and the history of empires, etc.

I attempt to point out 'to anyone who will listen'---

• ...and deliver my sermon to my soul... (from Sunflower Sutra by A. Ginsberg)

---that we simply cannot jettison our spiritual heritage even though, just like we look backward into the darker recesses of our own selves, the strange lives we have lived, the pains, the sins and crimes, the wounds we've received or inflicted (to focus more on the chaotic aspects), we have to assume responsibility for it all. I suggest that even the most superficial consideration of 'Christianity' will necessitate a realization of how deeply intermingled with our own selves 'it' is (or we with 'it') but that within this terrible confusion there are also glimmers of gems, but more than that a sort of 'map' of the way that Consciousness is coming to us, and the way that we will open up into Consciousness. It is, perhaps, the grandest theme that could be envisaged and discussed, put in these terms. If you accept---and I think I do accept---the Jungian view that we are really dealing in Symbols and that the Symbols contain Content and that the Content has to do with 'intimations of our own soul' and 'existential possibilities' for man, then we have a way of considering not only 'Christianity' but the religious impulse of man generally.

But too if we follow Jung ('we' may not, of course!), it might be considered true that as we jettison the possibility of a transcendent understanding of self-in-the-world that we cut ourselves off from the possibility of certain forms of nourishment that come to us through 'the spiritual'. I guess a hard-core materialist-atheist would not be able to understand any *value* there, since there is no *there* for such a one. But the Jungian view is that we are actively invoking a dark present, a 'psychotic' present actually, as we dig down deeper into 'rationalism' and the 'doctrinairism' that defines our age, our way of being in the world. Myself, I think we are aware---if science fiction visions reveal prognostic truth---that we recognize that we enter the era of the controlling machine, and that as things progress we will be evermore connected to a machine that will have the capacity to monitor us in very intrusive ways. The recent NSA revelations point very clearly to the 'dark present' that is developing. The 'lord of the sublunary world' in this sense is psychotic man, a man possessed by demons, or his demon, or everything that demonism represents. This is not a pretty picture of 'the human possibility' but a dark foreboding of what is developing.

Interesting, is it not, that still the problem and the challenge of 'consciousness' is even more acute as we are slowly, but increasingly rapidly, awakened by the omens of the Dark Lord that surrounds us. This is the 'logical outcome', really, of the Christian vision. The Fallen Angel has so much power in our world, but he cannot be located in any specific place. He really is the genius loci or 'the presiding spirit of the place'. The peculiar thing is that, without a countervailing 'spirit' or helper, we are powerless in our world. I don't suppose this means that we are powerless in immediate senses. There are so many things we can do freely. Well, up to a point. But isn't it true that as the walls close in (unless I am alone in this) we have the frightening sense that dark things, not bright and happy things, are there in our future.

If it is true that the future is fabricated in the unconscious and then is 'materialized' in the outside world, we seem to be constructing a diabolical world. And one contributing factor, if not the contributing factor, is no sense at all as to how to define a 'spirit of light', some 'creative spirit' of unity and wholeness.

The agonizing question is, of course, if the notion of 'God' or the Transcendent---in this sense, for us, 'Christianity'---is itself the harbinger of the dark present-future that seems to be forming (given symbolic form in numerous dystopic sic-fi visions), such that if we did away with it we would secure the bright, happy future we desire; or is 'Christianity' and all the images of wholeness it represents something that we need to very seriously consider and reconsider from another, more mature, viewpoint?

After all, no one wants to be associated with the creation of a 'demonic present' and machines that can invade even your secret thoughts and intervene in them or alert the 'appropriate authorities'. We cannot even see ourselves as participants in that, can we? It is always 'the other' who creates the darkness that impinges on us. But this is not so! We are deeply complicit and complicity is the grand secret!

'Jesus' and genuflections and little candles in the church and religious reflexes and rhetoric and dogma-volcanoes will do NOTHING, in se, to bring a man to consciousness as we might define it, nor consciousness to man. About that we know so very little, it would seem. Even a very average person can see how inanely most people approach and live life and how decidedly unconscious most are. The unconscious man evokes, in fact, a controlling Lord to organize his affairs, and this is true on all planes of existence.

Getting hopped up with destructive adrenaline and smashing the pretty idols will do nothing, not now, to alter the present course. Whatever your preferred brand of unconsciousness, or oblivion, or idealism, or atheism, or doctrinairism, or fundamentalism, the present you are creating inside yourself becomes the world you live in blaming others.

[Replace the second person with first person personal pronouns, naturally!]

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

I have this image of hitler having to personally apologize to every one of is victims, having finally grasped the full significance of what he has done - reconciliation is possible but it has to be earned.

It is a topic somewhat beyond my scope but then not entirely. The first thing has to do with 'complicity', a most interesting theme. If I understand things correctly, and I may not, the logic of anti-Semitism arises from the very essence of the anti-religious and anti-Christian position. I admit that this is a very complex issue and the complex issues are the ones that are the most challenging and give us the most grief. But I think it can be basically described like this:

The Jews, 'God's chosen', who are also the authors of that branch of Judaism known as Christianity, established and insisted upon a notion of a God or transcendent entity that presides over life. One might describe it in different ways but the core fact that is held to is that there 'exists' a conscious force to which man owes his allegiance. Essentially this seems to mean that man's will is beholden to God's will, or another level of will, or a Higher Will, and that all of history and indeed existence, if seen through this lens, must serve a Will that is distinct from man's own 'biological' or egoic will, his personal will, the will of his desire. But at a certain moment, through 'positivistic' science and currents of philosophy, the notion of a transcendent God with a will distinct from man's will, and with 'designs', etc.; and also with those 'earthly representatives' and institutions that work in the world to 'convert' men to service to a 'higher purpose', was seen through, was determined to be 'false', was determined moreover to be a charade, a false front, a sham, illusion, a lie.

• Positivism: a philosophical system that holds that every rationally justifiable assertion can be scientifically verified or is capable of logical or mathematical proof, and that therefore rejects metaphysics and theism.

'Positivism' in this sense can only focus on immediate and tangible 'facts'. The effect of positivism is large indeed. In fact it has invaded all our thinking. 'If it cannot be seen and quantified then it cannot be said to exist'. And certainly some invisible Lord of Creation who is yet 'outside' of his creation, invisible, intangible, metaphysical to tangible physics---transcendent---is to be seen as one of the more grotesque of human self-deceptions. The logic runs that if one succeeds in doing away with this false notion of an 'invisible transcendent' to which men owe allegiance and service (in the sense of sacrificing their personal will to a 'greater will'), that such a one will emerge from self-mystification and superstition into the clear light of (reasonable) day, and when this is done en masse the whole world will emerge from obscurantism into a new era of freedom and reasoned intelligence. This is more or less Enlightenment philosophy in a nutshell unless I am not understanding things correctly.

To understand modern 'nihilism', with which we are all infected to varying degrees (a truly modern ailment), one has to understand the evolution of ideas toward that of the highlighting of 'scientific positivism', and we are all children of that particular 'ism' even if we don't understand how. However, and perhaps without understanding the full consequences, such a 'positivism' holds to a very active idea-set. Once one has started the process of disconnecting, as it were, man from the transcendent (again a 'will' that enters man's world as distinct to man's distinct biological or personal will and is usually described and symbolized as coming from 'beyond', and in any case from 'higher metaphysical realms' not immediately intelligible), one disconnects from all the Idea Constructs, not the least being the notion of 'the human being' and 'individual personality', that have come into the world quite specifically through those persons and institutions that have moulded culture and idea for all of European history. The ramifications of the 'process of severing' are huge. Our 'meaning systems' (thought which focusses on 'meaning') is intimately bound up with transcendental metaphysics, and indeed the very notion of 'sovereign person' is, in our culture, an essentially Christian construct. Those descriptions of what one begins to sever away from are super interesting, it seems to me, especially for people who desire to understand 'the present'. But it is beyond the scope of this post.

But once we have done away with the notion---and by 'notion' I mean something that you would be able to actually believe in and an idea that functions at a more basic level in your mind, in your life, in your body, indeed in all your dealings---once you have done away with the notion of a 'transcendent God', you have no more use for 1) the people who are engaged in 'service' to this so-called 'transcendent', and 2) the idea-systems, the value-systems, the meaning-systems on which those people dealt and focussed. Then, those people and those institutions and those values---who have had the rug pulled out from underneath them---sort of float there for a second or two of historical time before they simply crash down to the ground in a confused heap of historical rubble.

(Naturally, shoveling them into industrial ovens is the logical next step.)

Then there is no longer even the 'notion' of a higher authority or a meaning to which men owe allegiance, but only those powers and forces that man can define 'positivistically' and more or less 'prove' with good, scientific reasoning. Then, no one can recur to the notion of an Authority which bequeaths authority, or authority which must justify itself to (the notion of) Authority. Authority reverts, quite strictly, to temporal power; to systems of management; to systems of ownership and distribution; to systems that manage the flow of Idea and Information, that mould and guide perception, that 'oversee' and feed and 'satisfy' appetite, desire, imagination, emotion. Now, 'the world' is seen as just a conglomeration of disparate facts; now the world is atomized and can only be seen (imagined) as a huge but still essentially limited conglomeration of discreet 'events'. It sort of goes without saying that all erstwhile notions of 'sanctity of person' or 'unique personal value', and in fact the whole notion of a person's service to a Greater Ideal (since such ideals are bound up with the transcendent which has been jettisoned), is undermined. You are undermined. You have no real value though you may still make some weak protest about 'human rights'. None of this matters. No one really listens and anyway all the meat has gone out of the message. 'You' are now just one among millions of biological units who either serve the Cultural Machine of production and distribution or are inimical to it and whose 'discourse' (values, ideals, sense of meaning, etc.) simply has no relationship to the system being constructed.

I do not want to minimize Shoah by attempting to reduce it to a simple description, but it has seemed to me that the annihilation of the people who brought and 'enforced' the Idea of a transcendent 'God' to which man owes allegiance, who established this as a presiding idea, on the other end of History when such an idea is one men laugh at and even if they do not laugh have no effective or real line-of-connection any longer to such a transcendent force, that this people will necessarily be seen as expendable. Indeed, in a certain light, they 'must be gotten rid of' since their idea represent an 'infection' that has to be cut away. (Anti-Semitism is, seen in this light, a far more complex phenomenon than is generally assumed.)

Despite the post-war ideals of Freedom and Democracy and whatever else, in actual point of fact the Process of disconnecting from Authority in the sense of 'the transcendental' as source of directive for man, has only increased. Or is being perfected is a better way to put it. Nihilism is the state (not so much the 'philosophy') of having been stripped of sense-of-value and of 'meaning'. People require meaning at the base of their life as a sort of foundation on which to build all other aspects of their life: economic, social, interpersonal. So 'nihilism' is the condition in which we live when 'all that' is brought into question or undermined. But at the extreme of mechanization of society and life in a 'pure positivistic sense' there is really no need for the Individual or the person (and his 'personality'): one exists to serve The Machine which in fact means everything that is not personalist. (See: Personalism and this Essay on Personalism).

'Complicity' is having overt or secret links to that in which one is complicit. 'Hitler' was not, really, responsible for the German catastrophe. It is in a sense 'incorrect view' to see that history, and our present history, in this way. An entire people became complicit in a very strange---we generally describe it as 'diabolic' don't we?---collusion of interests, temporal powers, dark but rationalistic ideals. So, in this sense, if there is a 'God' who desires to 'save us' or who will 'judge us' in any sense, it is not exactly the individual who is to be judged, but rather an entire movement within culture. Or, the unraveling of individual complicity is part and parcel of understanding of 'what went on' and what, now, is 'going on'.

In this light, it is interesting to consider the question of our individual complicity in our culture and our 'world' and to, somehow, understand how we may also be caught in nihilistic webs, which is to say, essentially, currents of fatigue and powerlessness, of weakness and confusion, also currents that may go against the 'transcendent will' and that, essentially, serves temporal power and perhaps 'illegitimate authority' without really understanding what it does because it no longer has conceptual tools.

Then---if one has gone this far!---one can perhaps begin to understand what it really means to be in service to Dark Powers; to sacrifice hard-won sovereignty, to squander 'moral capital' and to participate in the creation of a dark, mechanistic world.

Echoing Kayla's words: How do we really 'reconcile ourselves' with existence itself, in our present?

[Skip]

A big yellow ball of burning gas - around which the cooling mudball, to the surface of which my trillions of fellow creeping crawling swimming hopping flapping loping flopping groping fleeing soaring chasing stalking slithering burrowing sorrowing sighing bleeding dying fellow creatures and I so precariously cling, hurtles in the unimaginably vast darkness of space - sends radiation through an oxygen-rich refracting atmosphere to the photovoltaic array in my back yard, feeding the storage batteries, as it also ripens the last of my tomato seeds, bundled in delicious juicy pulp, and coaxes open the few remaining petunia corollas. The tiny feathered helicopters that dart about them all summer have gone, along with the purple Cessnas and red-winged Lears, but those Canada jet liners are still drilling their young in formation flight.
Two more sunny days, and I’ll have stocked the woodshed with cut-up pieces of a highly efficient energy-storing device that grew from the ground, ready for inter-stove combustion to keep us warm all winter. In an adjoining compartment of the hive, my hoary, creaky, yet amazingly durable mind-mate is clitecky-clacking at a keyboard – poem? flame war? ordering a game for us to play on dark November afternoons? Chlorophyll fades from deciduous leaves, leaving them to reflect light waves of the 700-600 nm range to my retinas; the low-altitude air currents swirl condensation over the fields, swaying tall white plumes of daisy aster. Soon, all will be covered in layers of microscopic white crystal doilies.
Caustic acid is busy dismantling the complex molecules of aged curdled milk and baked paste of grass seed in my digestive tract; an infusion of Camellia sinensis steams near my multi-jointed phalanges with opposable fifth digit. I’ve just swatted an exquisite miniature flying machine, with barely a flicker of regret before my attention was claimed by a fat furry purring machine that keeps overflowing onto my mouse pad.
As dark, mechanistic universes go, it could be worse.

On the other hand, when I give myself permission to despair, it's for the grandchildren who will undoubtedly grow up under the tyranny of ignorant bible- and bankbook- thumpers.