It definitely feels like we are in the late autumn period of the current era. Normally the collapse would take 100 years or more to fully play out, but with the birthrate collapse and rate of technological change it could be a quick 5-10 year collapse too.
A lot of interesting things to consider yet I stick to the Bible for the truth, future events, prophecy, etc as it is God breathed.
I do think in the whole of history, the times we find ourselves living in are the most evil and cruel. If these times are not at least a foreshadowing of the coming of the End of Days, I’m not sure what else would be.
Saul of Tarsus (a Judaean who was "Romanised" becoming Paul) appealed for a canon of the bible to the churches he had founded during the 50s AD, decades after the crucifixion of Jesus, but the gospels were not physically recorded and the new testament compiled until the 70s-90s AD. So we know that the earliest mentions of Jesus are Paul’s letters, written around 50–60 CE, two decades after the Jesus' death. Paul never met Jesus, so he must have heard a lot of stories about him - or he heard just a little, and since he was prone to hallucinations, he made up the rest. Mark is generally considered the earliest gospel, written around 65–70 CE, followed by Matthew and Luke in the 80s or 90s CE. John might also make it into the 1st century, as it’s usually dated to around 90–100 CE. The first of the four Gospels, by Mark, was written another two decades after Paul’s writings.
If the Jesus was crucified at about age 33 at his death in AD 28-30 (his birth occurred between 5 and 6 BC), and if it is assumed that Mark was of similar age at the time, somehow Mark finally got the itch to write about the Earth-shattering event that was the life of the Jesus and his divine awesomeness when Mark was into his 70s. What was he doing from the time he was hanging with the Messiah until then?
Later still, in 382, the Council of Rome convened under the leadership of Pope Damasus and promulgated the 73-book scriptural canon. The biblical canon was reaffirmed by the regional councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397), and not definitively reaffirmed until the ecumenical Council of Florence in 1442 (!!) Finally, because this still wasn't, oh I dunno, water-tight?, or because Martin Luther must've called their bluff, the ecumenical Council of Trent solemnly defined this same canon in 1546. So even though they were guided by "the holy spirit" or "God's breath," it still took several rounds before they could get it right. But that's okay, they finally did, so this one's the real deal and we should trust it implicitly as the unsullied word of God.
From Dr. Strangelove, directed by Stanley Kubrick:
Russian Ambassador: I've done as you asked. Be careful Mr. President. I think he's drunk.
President Muffley:
Hello? Hello, Dimitri? Listen, I can't hear too well, do you suppose you could turn the music down just a little? Oh, that's much better. Yes. Fine, I can hear you now, Dimitri. Clear and plain and coming through fine. I'm coming through fine too, eh? Good, then. Well then as you say we're both coming through fine. Good. Well it's good that you're fine and I'm fine. I agree with you. It's great to be fine. laughs Now then Dimitri. You know how we've always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the bomb. The bomb, Dimitri. The hydrogen bomb. Well now what happened is, one of our base commanders, he had a sort of, well he went a little funny in the head. You know. Just a little... funny. And uh, he went and did a silly thing. Well, I'll tell you what he did, he ordered his planes... to attack your country. Well let me finish, Dimitri. Let me finish, Dimitri. Well, listen, how do you think I feel about it? Can you imagine how I feel about it, Dimitri? Why do you think I'm calling you? Just to say hello? Of course I like to speak to you. Of course I like to say hello. Not now, but any time, Dimitri. I'm just calling up to tell you something terrible has happened. It's a friendly call. Of course it's a friendly call. Listen, if it wasn't friendly, ... you probably wouldn't have even got it. They will not reach their targets for at least another hour.
I love it. Always thought provoking. NF, you are very much in the stream of prophecy, merely articulating it. I don't know how it will play out, but I intuit too, centraization will continue, until it's total collapse.
Thank you; this is more hopeful than I thought it would be. As an Art Historian, I think Jung's understanding of archetypes is something we ignore at our peril.
I do believe it is tempting to subscribe to a sequence of events, and to view this sequence as a kind of determinism, yet I would point out that any kind of sequence is a way of looking at the world after an event has occurred. It is an attempt to rationally explain and present coherent history.
What events are included, and what events are redacted, as well as interpreted according to orthodox perspectives.
I am raising the question of whether such explanations are actually the way that what we call events unfold.
Any individual awareness can only register a limited repertoire of sensory information, often selecting for importance based upon learned significance, meanwhile there are powerful currents moving that are not perceived.
Simply stated, the manifestations that both foreshadow and form events are never presented in any official history.
History as it is currently perceived, as an accurate model of events, can only be a rational construct, subject to limitations, and is questionable in a predictive capacity. What is interesting is the expansion of monolithic methods in greater society, and their fast track into standards of operating.
It is essentially true that this development has been advanced through changes and separations in human consciousness. It is within the perceptual field that monolith-ism arises as a definite feature.
In conclusion, I present the point of view that it is changes in the flow of life experiencing life that form the basis for manifestations in this reality. Therefore we return, when seeking to understand, to knowledge that was old before any abrahamic manifestation.
Thanks for the comment, Mike. I can see in the present era the scramble toward increased technological innovation as a means of exerting control over others; those who are insufficiently technological advanced get crushed by those who are. One can then, I think, apply that perspective to the past and project it into the future. But this touches on the concept of grounding mechanisms: on what basis is one to take in new information? How is one to assess what is true and what is false, and on what level? My approach is one of recursive prediction: I make predictions about the future based upon my understanding of the world and to the extent those predictions turn out to be wrong I update my model. I’ve used this approach for about a decade and it’s led me into some very specific directions such as Rothschilds control over the world central banks and the egalitarian ratchet effect. Everyone needs a grounding mechanism and there are definitely others out there; if yours is not one of recursive prediction, on what basis are you assessing new information? I agree with you that we are all limited, finite beings, and that the way things develop are ultimately outside of our conceptual frameworks, which are always limited and simplistic…
Does application of technology as an actual feature of life require a change in consciousness? There are different levels of skill required to perform different functions, example=driving a truck vs utilizing a hand cart. Therefore complex systems demand commensurate learning, but does this mean we are also looking at different levels of consciousness?
Suppose the answer is yes.
Then it becomes impossible to isolate consciousness from technology, so the question is, does this carry over into other human activities? Here is where notions of obvious progress become murky.
In political systems, for example, there has been zero actual evolution towards any kind of intelligent approach to the natural world. Certainly the case can be made that modern people are worse than their ancestors in terms of rapaciousness, callous disregard for other life forms, and sheer narcississtic greed.
In art most would agree we are experiencing a nose dive into abysmal quality and a crude, concrete way of thinking.
In religion we see a rigor mortis where there has been no development for centuries. No, adopting trendy social movements is not development, its cheap pandering to try to stay relevant.
Technology then, has to be examined in a view as to whether it is truly changing or simply becoming more specialized, and I submit that technology is severely overhyped and given far too much deference for this question to be fairly addressed.
Further, in imagining that technology is capable of truly transforming the human experience, we simply can look at tech when the energy that powers it fails...its pretty useless.
Since my measure of the direction of humanity is consciousness and awareness, I honestly don't see a species capable of "succeeding" at the dystopian goals set by those who steer this ship of society.
No ruling class, no matter how barbaric, and this one is pretty much there, has the slightest control over consciousness. This means they have no control over what forms and directions consciousness manifests, even as they squander every other possible achievement in the attempt to dominate and destroy it.
Therefore from my point of view, it is impossible to create a closed system where the ruling class goes rogue from the flow of life to become a calicified self justified slave society supported by technology.
Conditions of consciousness have supported and directed unprecedented monolithic organizations, yet this does not mean that consciousness is revealed or even directly served through monolithic development, rather that consciousness is set to manifest this, and manifest it will in order to fill this requirement.
Nothing here gives any promise of longevity for this manifestation.
I present this point of view as an alternative to the more standard event based theory that is considered to be factual and correct.
Been reading you for a long time NF, and I often chime in to argue this or that point, just to keep the discussion going, (I don't believe I am incorrigibly pedantic), but anyway, this time, I just wanted to let you know, Outstanding! Some of your best work, and that's saying something. Could take me 6 months or perhaps much longer before I can digest this one well enough to consider a worthy reply, by which time you'll have published many more things.
Summary from: 'The Cyclic Reordering of Civilisations':
"It would seem that what’s thought of as a ‘collapse’ in modern terms is not really a collapse, but rather a period of dramatic change. In practice, a ‘collapse’ basically comes down to a shift from centralization to decentralization. [However] Empires would naturally try to preserve their centralized format because that’s the nature of an empire. Moreover, they would attempt to expand their operations when they are facing almost certain stagnation and contraction (which happened in the case of the Roman Empire) [edit: which would then bring about the collapse even sooner]."
In astrological symbolism, "centralization" is symbolized by Leo (the heart). "Networks" (i.e., the circulatory system in the body) are symbolized by Aquarius, the opposite sign of Leo. It's interesting to contemplate how this figures into the "centralization" theme you're addressing, in light of the theory that we're moving into the Age of Aquarius.
I started studying Jung, astrology, etc. almost 30 years ago. It's been a while since I've read Jung, more specifically his book/collection of essays titles "Aion," but might be high time to take it off the bookshelf and give it a re-read.
Nice comment, CHUCKY. You probably have a lot to teach if you’ve been studying Jung and astrology for almost thirty years. If you decide to write something on Jung/Aion, I would be interested in reading it.
Will do. I need to re-acquaint myself with the Jungian theories on this stuff…
Another good book from Jung is “Flying Saucers.” It’s a short book and one of his later ones; he discusses how UFO sightings and abduction stories are metaphors for people’s new (unconscious) conceptualization of “God” or something “higher,” post-war secularization and the decrease in the authority of the church, plus the feeling of being “forsaken” by God in the wake of two bloody world wars and all the attendant industrial-scale death & destruction of the 20th century having led to a crisis in faith. (It’s been a while since I’ve read that one, too, so hopefully my memory is serving me correctly…)
Interesting essay. As an infrequent visitor I hope you'll forgive my comment arriving a month after publication!
Some of the same themes have been occupying my own thoughts over the last few years. The Antichrist is clearly upon us and while, as of writing, I remain a reluctant agnostic, my sense of evil remains wholly intact. What we face today must be described using this simple but unfashionable 4-letter word. If it hadn't fallen out of fashion, demonic spokespersons for the Antichrist like Yuval Harari would not be able to get away with suggesting that the technological future will be so bright that 90% of us will simply not be required. The Enlightenment's promise of the betterment of man via science & technology is now threatening to go fully into reverse. So much for the problem of evil. I'd humbly suggest that the concern for our own age ought to be the problem of science.
Whilst millenarianism and the chosen folk Making Israel Great Again are important topics, it was your section on technology that was of most interest to me. I don't know if you have read Heidegger's writings on technology, he was influenced by Jünger's views. I've found him a difficult read, at least in translation, but I'd recommend at least The Question Concerning Technology in which he poses the (unanswered) question as to the nature of the essence of technology. Heidegger would have agreed with you that technological progress is as inevitable as it is inexorable. I believe Ellul, that heretic of the French Republic's unofficial state religion, would have too. Kaczynski presumably thought otherwise.
My own thoughts on the essence of technology have led me to see technology as a manifestation of a universal law which today lacks formalization. This law governs evolution, as well as other non-biological phenomena in which complex systems create stable states of ever increasing complexity. Rather than expand on this here I'll add a link to an interesting 2023 paper which covers this stuff, in case you are interested: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2310223120. Thus whilst individual technologies are the product of conscious human endeavor, technological progress itself is subject to the same law that governs Darwinian evolution.
"Perhaps humanity itself is simply the biological bootstrap for A.I. to take over the world or galaxy". Ah yes. James Lovelock called our new era the Neocene and mused that A.I. might keep us on as pets - or in a better analogy, as house plants lol. Human thinking is so anthropocentric that we cannot see ourselves as a mere point on the techno-evolutionary timeline. A Copernican revolution on our relationship with technology is long overdue. Who knows, perhaps such an awakening could finally bring us back to our senses.
Where does this leave us vis-à-vis the the End Times where humanity is finally subsumed by technology. Well, I'd wholeheartedly agree with Heidegger here. Only a God Can Save Us. https://www.ditext.com/heidegger/interview.html
Thanks for the comment, John. I've read Ellul and have a future post prepared on him, as well as multiple further posts on the fascinating Ernst Junger, and of course I've read Kaczynski (whose luddite views were wrong, even though he's an interesting writer). I have yet to read Junger's brother Freidrich Georg's take on technology, but he's supposedly even better than Ernst was and I have his main work, "The Failure of Technology: Perfection Without Purpose" (1949) to read.
I have also not yet read Heidegger, although I have a couple summaries of his work - I find him intimidating because he's apparently an extremely wordy writer that takes simple ideas and needlessly complicates them. The excellent French/Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran commented in an interview about this: “The German influence in France was disastrous on that whole level, I find. The French can’t say things simply anymore….it’s the influence of Heidegger, which was very big in France. For example, he’s speaking about death, he employs so complicated a language, to say very simple things, and I well understand how one could be tempted by that style. But the danger of philosophical style is that one loses complete contact with reality. Philosophical language leads to megalomania. One creates an artificial world where one is God. I was very proud being young and very pleased to know this jargon. But my stay in France totally cured me of that.” My natural inclinations are to try to take complicated ideas and simplify them, make them easy to understand without losing the essence of the idea. So Heidegger, if what people say about him is true, has a style that is likely not going to be very congruent with my own.
With that said, from your second link I agree with Heidegger that we cannot simply summon a new God, it doesn't work that way. The best we can do is try to prepare a space open for His arrival if He does come. It can't be forced.
"..an extremely wordy writer that takes simple ideas and needlessly complicates them.."
I'd have to agree with that, it makes him borderline unreadable. I look forward to any future post you do on Ellul as I tried to finish The Technological Society but found it very hard going. Ellul's ideas are simple enough but I got the feeling his publisher was paying him by the word..
Great recap of the humanity's trail thus far. The logic explaining what and why it happened the way it did is sound -
I do disagree with the notion that technology and its advancement is inevitable - I do not dismiss Ted Kaczynsky's argument with such ease - though I also disagree with his idea that technological advancement always leads towards the same end - there's a fair amount of inevitability in his arguments, which I also disagree with.
As for the end of days bit.... much of what I see now around me does not appear to be organic - all scripted and orchestrated - a poor script at that, with even poorer acting still. Had the script been better and the actors played their roles with more skill, it would have been much more difficult to detect. Having said that.... most NPCs are on board - the mind control machines are working well. Mainstream news media is now in the form of 'independent' vloggers, but featuring the same entities with the same mind control mechanisms in play - in other words, the notion that the masses are waking up by turning away from the mainstream media is false - it's a fake 'awakening'.
When they really do wake up.... that would be very interesting to witness.
Amazing analysis! You did an excellent job of weaving everything together. I always save your stuff for when I can sit down and settle in with my full attention.
There are so many parallels between the Roman Catholic Church and the communist parties that it often makes me sick to my stomach. From the top of my head:
-supreme leader elected by a politburo (cardinals)
-censorship
-infallibility of the leaders
-heretics - rooting out the non-belivers, spies, in the homes,
-cancel culture
-genocides and mass murder of non-conformers
It goes on and on and on.
Catholicism - the belief that Jesus Christ is the Messiah and the kingship of 'God.'
Communism - the religion of Atheism and the supremacy of the party - simply Catholicism stripped down to the bare bones, and removing god to allow the psychopaths to rule in the open air.
And tellingly in the 20th and 21st centuries all of the western nations, and the Roman Catholic Church have allowed all communist parties to thrive. At no point did they go to war against an established - meaning approved - communist party.
Hi Ivan, the historian Tom Holland argues that communism, the French Revolution, and even secular atheists like Richard Dawkins all retain the ethics and worldview of Christianity even as they believe they are opposing it. Watch this little segment here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0gsPo2ilj8
Biblical prophecy and the book of revelation is the script they are using to enact this play on the world stage.
That's exactly it. They are cosplaying their way to Armageddon.
It definitely feels like we are in the late autumn period of the current era. Normally the collapse would take 100 years or more to fully play out, but with the birthrate collapse and rate of technological change it could be a quick 5-10 year collapse too.
A lot of interesting things to consider yet I stick to the Bible for the truth, future events, prophecy, etc as it is God breathed.
I do think in the whole of history, the times we find ourselves living in are the most evil and cruel. If these times are not at least a foreshadowing of the coming of the End of Days, I’m not sure what else would be.
Saul of Tarsus (a Judaean who was "Romanised" becoming Paul) appealed for a canon of the bible to the churches he had founded during the 50s AD, decades after the crucifixion of Jesus, but the gospels were not physically recorded and the new testament compiled until the 70s-90s AD. So we know that the earliest mentions of Jesus are Paul’s letters, written around 50–60 CE, two decades after the Jesus' death. Paul never met Jesus, so he must have heard a lot of stories about him - or he heard just a little, and since he was prone to hallucinations, he made up the rest. Mark is generally considered the earliest gospel, written around 65–70 CE, followed by Matthew and Luke in the 80s or 90s CE. John might also make it into the 1st century, as it’s usually dated to around 90–100 CE. The first of the four Gospels, by Mark, was written another two decades after Paul’s writings.
If the Jesus was crucified at about age 33 at his death in AD 28-30 (his birth occurred between 5 and 6 BC), and if it is assumed that Mark was of similar age at the time, somehow Mark finally got the itch to write about the Earth-shattering event that was the life of the Jesus and his divine awesomeness when Mark was into his 70s. What was he doing from the time he was hanging with the Messiah until then?
Later still, in 382, the Council of Rome convened under the leadership of Pope Damasus and promulgated the 73-book scriptural canon. The biblical canon was reaffirmed by the regional councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397), and not definitively reaffirmed until the ecumenical Council of Florence in 1442 (!!) Finally, because this still wasn't, oh I dunno, water-tight?, or because Martin Luther must've called their bluff, the ecumenical Council of Trent solemnly defined this same canon in 1546. So even though they were guided by "the holy spirit" or "God's breath," it still took several rounds before they could get it right. But that's okay, they finally did, so this one's the real deal and we should trust it implicitly as the unsullied word of God.
A self-authenticating text would be better.
whatabeginning.com
From Dr. Strangelove, directed by Stanley Kubrick:
Russian Ambassador: I've done as you asked. Be careful Mr. President. I think he's drunk.
President Muffley:
Hello? Hello, Dimitri? Listen, I can't hear too well, do you suppose you could turn the music down just a little? Oh, that's much better. Yes. Fine, I can hear you now, Dimitri. Clear and plain and coming through fine. I'm coming through fine too, eh? Good, then. Well then as you say we're both coming through fine. Good. Well it's good that you're fine and I'm fine. I agree with you. It's great to be fine. laughs Now then Dimitri. You know how we've always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the bomb. The bomb, Dimitri. The hydrogen bomb. Well now what happened is, one of our base commanders, he had a sort of, well he went a little funny in the head. You know. Just a little... funny. And uh, he went and did a silly thing. Well, I'll tell you what he did, he ordered his planes... to attack your country. Well let me finish, Dimitri. Let me finish, Dimitri. Well, listen, how do you think I feel about it? Can you imagine how I feel about it, Dimitri? Why do you think I'm calling you? Just to say hello? Of course I like to speak to you. Of course I like to say hello. Not now, but any time, Dimitri. I'm just calling up to tell you something terrible has happened. It's a friendly call. Of course it's a friendly call. Listen, if it wasn't friendly, ... you probably wouldn't have even got it. They will not reach their targets for at least another hour.
I love it. Always thought provoking. NF, you are very much in the stream of prophecy, merely articulating it. I don't know how it will play out, but I intuit too, centraization will continue, until it's total collapse.
Thanks William.
Thank you; this is more hopeful than I thought it would be. As an Art Historian, I think Jung's understanding of archetypes is something we ignore at our peril.
I do believe it is tempting to subscribe to a sequence of events, and to view this sequence as a kind of determinism, yet I would point out that any kind of sequence is a way of looking at the world after an event has occurred. It is an attempt to rationally explain and present coherent history.
What events are included, and what events are redacted, as well as interpreted according to orthodox perspectives.
I am raising the question of whether such explanations are actually the way that what we call events unfold.
Any individual awareness can only register a limited repertoire of sensory information, often selecting for importance based upon learned significance, meanwhile there are powerful currents moving that are not perceived.
Simply stated, the manifestations that both foreshadow and form events are never presented in any official history.
History as it is currently perceived, as an accurate model of events, can only be a rational construct, subject to limitations, and is questionable in a predictive capacity. What is interesting is the expansion of monolithic methods in greater society, and their fast track into standards of operating.
It is essentially true that this development has been advanced through changes and separations in human consciousness. It is within the perceptual field that monolith-ism arises as a definite feature.
In conclusion, I present the point of view that it is changes in the flow of life experiencing life that form the basis for manifestations in this reality. Therefore we return, when seeking to understand, to knowledge that was old before any abrahamic manifestation.
Thanks for the comment, Mike. I can see in the present era the scramble toward increased technological innovation as a means of exerting control over others; those who are insufficiently technological advanced get crushed by those who are. One can then, I think, apply that perspective to the past and project it into the future. But this touches on the concept of grounding mechanisms: on what basis is one to take in new information? How is one to assess what is true and what is false, and on what level? My approach is one of recursive prediction: I make predictions about the future based upon my understanding of the world and to the extent those predictions turn out to be wrong I update my model. I’ve used this approach for about a decade and it’s led me into some very specific directions such as Rothschilds control over the world central banks and the egalitarian ratchet effect. Everyone needs a grounding mechanism and there are definitely others out there; if yours is not one of recursive prediction, on what basis are you assessing new information? I agree with you that we are all limited, finite beings, and that the way things develop are ultimately outside of our conceptual frameworks, which are always limited and simplistic…
Does application of technology as an actual feature of life require a change in consciousness? There are different levels of skill required to perform different functions, example=driving a truck vs utilizing a hand cart. Therefore complex systems demand commensurate learning, but does this mean we are also looking at different levels of consciousness?
Suppose the answer is yes.
Then it becomes impossible to isolate consciousness from technology, so the question is, does this carry over into other human activities? Here is where notions of obvious progress become murky.
In political systems, for example, there has been zero actual evolution towards any kind of intelligent approach to the natural world. Certainly the case can be made that modern people are worse than their ancestors in terms of rapaciousness, callous disregard for other life forms, and sheer narcississtic greed.
In art most would agree we are experiencing a nose dive into abysmal quality and a crude, concrete way of thinking.
In religion we see a rigor mortis where there has been no development for centuries. No, adopting trendy social movements is not development, its cheap pandering to try to stay relevant.
Technology then, has to be examined in a view as to whether it is truly changing or simply becoming more specialized, and I submit that technology is severely overhyped and given far too much deference for this question to be fairly addressed.
Further, in imagining that technology is capable of truly transforming the human experience, we simply can look at tech when the energy that powers it fails...its pretty useless.
Since my measure of the direction of humanity is consciousness and awareness, I honestly don't see a species capable of "succeeding" at the dystopian goals set by those who steer this ship of society.
No ruling class, no matter how barbaric, and this one is pretty much there, has the slightest control over consciousness. This means they have no control over what forms and directions consciousness manifests, even as they squander every other possible achievement in the attempt to dominate and destroy it.
Therefore from my point of view, it is impossible to create a closed system where the ruling class goes rogue from the flow of life to become a calicified self justified slave society supported by technology.
Conditions of consciousness have supported and directed unprecedented monolithic organizations, yet this does not mean that consciousness is revealed or even directly served through monolithic development, rather that consciousness is set to manifest this, and manifest it will in order to fill this requirement.
Nothing here gives any promise of longevity for this manifestation.
I present this point of view as an alternative to the more standard event based theory that is considered to be factual and correct.
Been reading you for a long time NF, and I often chime in to argue this or that point, just to keep the discussion going, (I don't believe I am incorrigibly pedantic), but anyway, this time, I just wanted to let you know, Outstanding! Some of your best work, and that's saying something. Could take me 6 months or perhaps much longer before I can digest this one well enough to consider a worthy reply, by which time you'll have published many more things.
Thanks Martin, I appreciate it.
Agreed with your thesis about the Tower of Babel - a couple of related notes & resources:
Major urbanisation and centralization took place leading up to the collapse of the Tower of Babel - @ 3:30:
https://youtu.be/NurrWE8XX0U?t=210
Summary from: 'The Cyclic Reordering of Civilisations':
"It would seem that what’s thought of as a ‘collapse’ in modern terms is not really a collapse, but rather a period of dramatic change. In practice, a ‘collapse’ basically comes down to a shift from centralization to decentralization. [However] Empires would naturally try to preserve their centralized format because that’s the nature of an empire. Moreover, they would attempt to expand their operations when they are facing almost certain stagnation and contraction (which happened in the case of the Roman Empire) [edit: which would then bring about the collapse even sooner]."
https://energyshifts.net/the-cyclic-reordering-of-civilization
In astrological symbolism, "centralization" is symbolized by Leo (the heart). "Networks" (i.e., the circulatory system in the body) are symbolized by Aquarius, the opposite sign of Leo. It's interesting to contemplate how this figures into the "centralization" theme you're addressing, in light of the theory that we're moving into the Age of Aquarius.
I started studying Jung, astrology, etc. almost 30 years ago. It's been a while since I've read Jung, more specifically his book/collection of essays titles "Aion," but might be high time to take it off the bookshelf and give it a re-read.
Nice comment, CHUCKY. You probably have a lot to teach if you’ve been studying Jung and astrology for almost thirty years. If you decide to write something on Jung/Aion, I would be interested in reading it.
Will do. I need to re-acquaint myself with the Jungian theories on this stuff…
Another good book from Jung is “Flying Saucers.” It’s a short book and one of his later ones; he discusses how UFO sightings and abduction stories are metaphors for people’s new (unconscious) conceptualization of “God” or something “higher,” post-war secularization and the decrease in the authority of the church, plus the feeling of being “forsaken” by God in the wake of two bloody world wars and all the attendant industrial-scale death & destruction of the 20th century having led to a crisis in faith. (It’s been a while since I’ve read that one, too, so hopefully my memory is serving me correctly…)
No Jewish kingdom has lasted longer than eighty years. Bibi has three years left until the expiration date hits.
Interesting essay. As an infrequent visitor I hope you'll forgive my comment arriving a month after publication!
Some of the same themes have been occupying my own thoughts over the last few years. The Antichrist is clearly upon us and while, as of writing, I remain a reluctant agnostic, my sense of evil remains wholly intact. What we face today must be described using this simple but unfashionable 4-letter word. If it hadn't fallen out of fashion, demonic spokespersons for the Antichrist like Yuval Harari would not be able to get away with suggesting that the technological future will be so bright that 90% of us will simply not be required. The Enlightenment's promise of the betterment of man via science & technology is now threatening to go fully into reverse. So much for the problem of evil. I'd humbly suggest that the concern for our own age ought to be the problem of science.
Whilst millenarianism and the chosen folk Making Israel Great Again are important topics, it was your section on technology that was of most interest to me. I don't know if you have read Heidegger's writings on technology, he was influenced by Jünger's views. I've found him a difficult read, at least in translation, but I'd recommend at least The Question Concerning Technology in which he poses the (unanswered) question as to the nature of the essence of technology. Heidegger would have agreed with you that technological progress is as inevitable as it is inexorable. I believe Ellul, that heretic of the French Republic's unofficial state religion, would have too. Kaczynski presumably thought otherwise.
My own thoughts on the essence of technology have led me to see technology as a manifestation of a universal law which today lacks formalization. This law governs evolution, as well as other non-biological phenomena in which complex systems create stable states of ever increasing complexity. Rather than expand on this here I'll add a link to an interesting 2023 paper which covers this stuff, in case you are interested: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2310223120. Thus whilst individual technologies are the product of conscious human endeavor, technological progress itself is subject to the same law that governs Darwinian evolution.
"Perhaps humanity itself is simply the biological bootstrap for A.I. to take over the world or galaxy". Ah yes. James Lovelock called our new era the Neocene and mused that A.I. might keep us on as pets - or in a better analogy, as house plants lol. Human thinking is so anthropocentric that we cannot see ourselves as a mere point on the techno-evolutionary timeline. A Copernican revolution on our relationship with technology is long overdue. Who knows, perhaps such an awakening could finally bring us back to our senses.
Where does this leave us vis-à-vis the the End Times where humanity is finally subsumed by technology. Well, I'd wholeheartedly agree with Heidegger here. Only a God Can Save Us. https://www.ditext.com/heidegger/interview.html
Thanks for the comment, John. I've read Ellul and have a future post prepared on him, as well as multiple further posts on the fascinating Ernst Junger, and of course I've read Kaczynski (whose luddite views were wrong, even though he's an interesting writer). I have yet to read Junger's brother Freidrich Georg's take on technology, but he's supposedly even better than Ernst was and I have his main work, "The Failure of Technology: Perfection Without Purpose" (1949) to read.
I have also not yet read Heidegger, although I have a couple summaries of his work - I find him intimidating because he's apparently an extremely wordy writer that takes simple ideas and needlessly complicates them. The excellent French/Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran commented in an interview about this: “The German influence in France was disastrous on that whole level, I find. The French can’t say things simply anymore….it’s the influence of Heidegger, which was very big in France. For example, he’s speaking about death, he employs so complicated a language, to say very simple things, and I well understand how one could be tempted by that style. But the danger of philosophical style is that one loses complete contact with reality. Philosophical language leads to megalomania. One creates an artificial world where one is God. I was very proud being young and very pleased to know this jargon. But my stay in France totally cured me of that.” My natural inclinations are to try to take complicated ideas and simplify them, make them easy to understand without losing the essence of the idea. So Heidegger, if what people say about him is true, has a style that is likely not going to be very congruent with my own.
With that said, from your second link I agree with Heidegger that we cannot simply summon a new God, it doesn't work that way. The best we can do is try to prepare a space open for His arrival if He does come. It can't be forced.
"..an extremely wordy writer that takes simple ideas and needlessly complicates them.."
I'd have to agree with that, it makes him borderline unreadable. I look forward to any future post you do on Ellul as I tried to finish The Technological Society but found it very hard going. Ellul's ideas are simple enough but I got the feeling his publisher was paying him by the word..
And yes, deicide has consequences.
Being "forced" is the way of Judas. Patience, grasshopper.
Excellent post.
Apart from...
The Zodiac chart shown, its missing the 13th constellation and age.
The year is missing a 13th month.
There were 13 tribes....
13 Families....
That old Gregory with his gregorian chanting.....has been upto some devilish work throught the centuries..
cheers
Michael.
Great recap of the humanity's trail thus far. The logic explaining what and why it happened the way it did is sound -
I do disagree with the notion that technology and its advancement is inevitable - I do not dismiss Ted Kaczynsky's argument with such ease - though I also disagree with his idea that technological advancement always leads towards the same end - there's a fair amount of inevitability in his arguments, which I also disagree with.
As for the end of days bit.... much of what I see now around me does not appear to be organic - all scripted and orchestrated - a poor script at that, with even poorer acting still. Had the script been better and the actors played their roles with more skill, it would have been much more difficult to detect. Having said that.... most NPCs are on board - the mind control machines are working well. Mainstream news media is now in the form of 'independent' vloggers, but featuring the same entities with the same mind control mechanisms in play - in other words, the notion that the masses are waking up by turning away from the mainstream media is false - it's a fake 'awakening'.
When they really do wake up.... that would be very interesting to witness.
Amazing analysis! You did an excellent job of weaving everything together. I always save your stuff for when I can sit down and settle in with my full attention.
Thanks Simon.
You’re welcome!
There are so many parallels between the Roman Catholic Church and the communist parties that it often makes me sick to my stomach. From the top of my head:
-supreme leader elected by a politburo (cardinals)
-censorship
-infallibility of the leaders
-heretics - rooting out the non-belivers, spies, in the homes,
-cancel culture
-genocides and mass murder of non-conformers
It goes on and on and on.
Catholicism - the belief that Jesus Christ is the Messiah and the kingship of 'God.'
Communism - the religion of Atheism and the supremacy of the party - simply Catholicism stripped down to the bare bones, and removing god to allow the psychopaths to rule in the open air.
And tellingly in the 20th and 21st centuries all of the western nations, and the Roman Catholic Church have allowed all communist parties to thrive. At no point did they go to war against an established - meaning approved - communist party.
Hi Ivan, the historian Tom Holland argues that communism, the French Revolution, and even secular atheists like Richard Dawkins all retain the ethics and worldview of Christianity even as they believe they are opposing it. Watch this little segment here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0gsPo2ilj8
Which was discussed further in this post: https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/the-egalitarian-ratchet-effect-why
Regarding Catholicism itself, you may appreciate this post: https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/how-globohomo-skinsuited-the-catholic