Tuesday 30 August 2016

England leads the way down... now back up?

When Ralph Waldo Emerson visited England in the middle 1800s, coming from New England, he was shocked at the comparative degradation - greater extremes of wealth and poverty, materialism and spiritual corruption.

Within a generation, the US had caught up and surpassed England, but England led the way down.

The spiritual condion in England is now very low indeed, so low that most people do not notice, or assume being spiritual is the same thing as being nice, or feeling pleasure. Standards of honesty in public discourse, especially the media, goverment and corporate communications, are so low that participants cannot believe they could be otherwise (despite that these changes have been so rapid and recent) - the corruption of people has been very complete.

This is not subtle. Drunkenness is normal, skin mutilation is extreme and proudly displayed and admired, addiction is amost universal, actively sought and stoutly defended (most damagingly to 'smart' phones).

There is a highly sexualised and narcissistic public space, with middle aged and elderly people leading the way. Everyone strives to appear as a permanent youth - attention seeking is equated with self-respect.

The degree to which purpose and meaning are weakened is hard to exaggerate: these neccesities strike many people as dangerous.

Civilisational collapse is spiritual, and transcendental - the inversion of virtue, loss of beauty as an aim, and habitual and enforced dishonesty.

That is where we are. There is almost nothing hopeful of positive spiritual awakening that is overt and public.

Yet things don't add up to being as bad as they ought logically to be. The cities are filled to the sky with soul sapping architecture, but people flock to the countryside and appreciate the old and good. There are many micro-kindnesses and decencies against the grain.

So there is realistic hope of awakening from insensible decline. Brexit showed that a comfortably large majority are wanting to get off the down escalator leading inexorably to national despair and self-destruction.

As yet, they have not recognised that the true battle is spiritual not political. We are fighting for the soul of England, not a set of constitutional arrangements.

But the nation is ageing and being replaced, the energies are ebbing; so there is only a few years remaining as a time window. Spiritual revival is urgent, as well as necessary.

The agenda for evil is blatantly obvious to those who have a soul and can join the dots, but there aren't many such. Evil is out in the open, state susidised, celebrated and taught in schools - everywhere...

Its goal is pretty clear; and there is no effective institutional opposition. None.

What is needed  - and indeed the only option - is individual not collective. It is a multitude of individuals waking up and deciding to try and do what they know to be right and true, in a spiritual sense.

What to do is quite simple to perceive from intuition, common sense; and recognising evil and when it is trying to manipulate your emotions and control your behaviour.

Psychologically it is putting aside fear, and embracing love and courage as ideals. Spiritually, being eager to repent errors and your own wickednesses (past and present).

From now, we actually must speak out, in pursuit of Good mainly, and to refuse evil... not to cooperate with its agenda.

(Don't bother with critique, argument, proof - these are a negative vibe - merely descending to join the materialistic mainstream.)

And knowing that you matter as an individual is crucial and a fact, not arrogance. Every individual soul is wanted by both God and the devil. Evil goes to vast lengths to achieve the damnation of one Man. Your attitudes, your behaviours matter and have massive significance in the spiritual realm - which is the realm that matters.

In spiritual terms your life is an heroic quest, plain and simple, and you are only defeated when you give up.

The time is soon when English people will recognise this fact, and each will choose in his heart.

England led the world into spiritual degradation by the wrong choices of the past - people seem to be defeated but retain the power to rise and hope - hope for a life lived in an eternal context and where success is spiritual...

We English are near the bottom, but are now in a position to initiate and lead the climb out from the pit. The decision is not difficult, so long as you realise the sheer scope of your life, and its extreme importance, and that it has a purpose and meaning at the spiritual level; and that the spiritual level is primary and real compared with the temporary illusions and impressions of materialism.

There is a kind of spiritual law - ultimately and over the long haul: What you give out, you get back. People attract their own luck and get what they most deeply want. Therefore we must be positive, warm hearted and confident (and repent our inevitable failures).

That is it, really. Simple, easy and guaranteed effective.

3 comments:

John Fitzgerald said...

Superb, Bruce. Passionate and perceptive. This is the overtly spiritual perspective that Colin Wilson should have, nearly but never quite adopted.

William Wildblood said...

Yes, I echo what John says. An inspired call to arms!

Andrew E. said...

Bruce,

The Kinks, visionaries?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuGFlP5Duuw