Thank you, Paul. I am a care home manager and this morning I received a message from the Department of Health & Social Care, sent by the Care Quality Commission, to tell me that I and my staff have to have both jabs by 11th November or we will lose our jobs. Enforcing vaccination through threats to one's job seems to me to be against international human rights law which outlaws coerced medication - yet this is now UK government policy and they are bringing in a law to make vaccinations mandatory for care home staff. This is state tyranny and I have written about it here on my blog: https://anthropopper.com/2021/07/26/freefall-to-tyranny/
Enjoyed that very much in common with your other ways despite the alarming revelations ! Stilling the mind and “thy will be done” have been my life for some years and continue to be so.
Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyin puts it this way: the way of the modern world is the way of reason is the way of dehumanization. So what we must do is cultivate not the mind, but the heart. For him, that was a complete life mission, a way of being. It was theological, of course, but it was also practical. It meant things like telling fairy tales and playing with your children and looking at ants carefully as they go about their work. We could all use a lot more of that kind of heart-cultivation, I think.
hey, it sounds like refusal of this vaccine could become the new monastic movement that's been called for. Your own property will be your cell. The practical question is how to pay bills, even just property taxes, under these circumstances.
Thank you Paul for at last identifying the Elephant in the room. I've been waiting for you to come to the topic of Covid over the past few months. I agree with everything you say, and I too felt we crossed a Rubicon, when our government introduced health Apartheid, last week. It appears to be widely supported as are all the other measures. Here is just an example: Last weekend in Leitrim, a small group of musicians were playing music at an outdoor venue. Apparently, a call was soon made to Shannonside, the local radio station by a "concerned " member of the public. The law was enforced and music was no longer heard on a street in Leitrim and probably won't be for a long time to come.
Paul, you will find a kindred spirit, and great intellect, in El Gato Malo, whose blog Bad Cattitude catalogues the intensifying irrationality of the "science" surrounding covid and vaccines. Here is one brilliant example: https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/science-is-a-process-not-an-institution. A recent post sums up the disingenuity surrounding the official stance toward vaccines vs. other cheaper, safer and more effective treatments: https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/a-covid-study-i-would-like-to-see. There is a dark cloud passing over the land, leaving suffering and death in its wake, and I'm not talking about a virus. This trio of essays by Connor Kelly lays out the situation with absolute clarity: https://leftlockdownsceptics.com/2021/07/collaboration-or-resistance-part-1-our-brand-new-shiny-fascist-state/. Your writing, like these others', is absolutely vital to the maintain of our societies' bearings in this difficult time. It is through our connections with and validation from one another that we can sustain the bright light of clarity, honesty, reason and compassion that define our common humanity. THANK YOU
As the crisis continues ( or is continued?), I think we're seeing more clearly what's at stake - and it's much more than public health, or even freedom of association. The Republic's ban on baptisms has been one of the most chilling aspects of its pandemic response.
Very thought provoking Paul. I am thankful for your articulation of this crisis, your vulnerability in sharing your new social status of 'leper'. A bell is being tied to the necks of the unwilling, marking them as unclean, marking them as sacrificial targets for our despair.... and the ancient drama repeats itself again and again. When will be learn?
My graduate work and practice as a therapist has been at the intersection of the non-religious and spiritual/religious impulses, and it has been powerful to see the trends we were watching 10 years ago come into full bloom now. There is a new priesthood, a new sense of taboo, a whole new super-structure emerging, all of it to fill the vacuum left by the old pieties.
When I personally sit back and observe nature I do see one consistent pattern: it always moves forward, evolving and adapting. My hunch, my sense, is that there is no way back to the old motto, the old 'Thy will be done'. What is emerging now is an anti-thesis to the old thesis. What will be the new synthesis?
I don't know. I don't think I will ever know. I have grieved that I will live a life witnessing a painful decline, and have accepted that my lot is to till the field for the emergence of a future synthesis. Our geological record and ancient myths tells the story clearly. The coming devastation will open space for the redemption to emerge from within the wound.
On an optimistic note the Machine has revealed its next move! The line of resistance is showing ever clearer beyond the fog. Maybe the space for resilience and adaptation exists in the smaller places? The places where neighborliness is still practiced, if even awkwardly.
"It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings." - Wendell Berry
With the public so willing, I'm convinced there will be no need for a Secret Police. Add in, Fr. Tony Flannery's comments this week to the bishops, and his choice of the words " playing into the hands of extreme anti vaxers", for those of us who will not subject our bodies to an experimental treatment, is another sign of where we're at . This from a so called liberal member of the Catholic church.
Paul, Your way of connecting the dots is unsettling (not least to you) but so very helpful. The only way back to deep truth is by telling the obvious pieces of it in front of us -- despite offical denials and media fog. You comparison of Science and "Magic" was most helpful. Like all forms idolatry, such things offer the illusion of control or safety at the cost of deforming if not killing what we say we love (people, families, communities, much less the natural world), the very opposite of what should happen in the worship of and trust in the life-giving God of creation and resurrection. Victories of technical reason and control inevitalbly yeild "unanticipated" consequences which should precipitate fear of the true God (not a candidate for manipulation, flattery or lies) that is the beginning of wisdom. But repentance is not on the Faustian menu. More's the pity. So your Abby sightings are a light and testify to life and love the darkness has not and cannot overcome. Yet. Take heart.
"In the realm of facts science reigns supreme, in the realm of values we have to look elsewhere" J B Peterson
Science, with help from it's media bag carriers and expedient politicians, does us, and itself, no favours by conflating theory and modelling with scientific fact. A theory and the modelling derived from it are not "The Science" they purport to be. Maybe they're the best we've got, the best guess under the circumstances but to then shut down any attempt at questioning, never mind actual dissent, is rank totalitarianism.
Despite our faith in science it seems to me that we live in a dream, a narrative about meaning and value. But absent science, how far do you go with "other ways of knowing". You see the danger? Are we seriously expected to believe, to submit, to something as completely insane as a bloke in a dress is a woman?
"language and meaning are deeply networked, deeply public, and held in place by things like history, collective knowledge, linguistic precedent, logical consistency, and the contours of the objective world (i.e., truth). To claim total control over one proposition within such a network is therefore to control them all. For the state to attempt to grant monopolistic control over both the analytic and synthetic definitions of terms like “he” and “she,” to a privileged and exclusive class of language-users, terms perhaps no more fundamental to the human condition, would be, in essence, to attempt to grant control over truth itself."
Perhaps I am just a hopeless optimist but I think it is possible that what you're "feeling" -- and many have sensed such a shift in the metaphysical seasons -- is the looming collapse of the "Enlightenment order" (or, better, the crude spiritual pornography of the "American order") which is an unassailably good thing. I don't think the beast is as strong as it pretends to be, and I think that it is aware of this (happy to us) fact. The thrashings of its tail amid the death-rattles are dangerous but not completely deadly, and there remain many places where its writ doesn't run.
Thanks again and what was striking for me is how you end on “Do what thou wilt” and “Thy will be done”. As Bacon et al also felt, science was so glorious because it was doing both: restoring the lost Eden through the dominion also given to humankind in Genesis (and I believe the Hebrew for “dominion” in Gen 1:26 is quite masterly). In short, science was devised as a divinely sanctioned means of redemption, which I suspect is why its progressivism still has a powerfully religious feel. (I’m drawing here on Peter Harrison’s fascinating, The Territories of Science and Religion, Chicago University Press).
The plot thickens because the two imperatives of “thou wilt” and “thy will” rightly coincide in what you might call the divinised mind. “Love and do what thou wilt” was Augustine’s way of expressing it. There is a true perception here, for all that it is rarely truly perceived. Such is God’s reckless gratuity.
What goes wrong, I think, is that the scientific mind ceases to know that heaven is not a place on earth. It forgets the bigger, original story of life found on the other side of death, an end to history (as in direction and conclusion), we are sown a natural body raised a spiritual body, old things pass away and the new comes, as Paul wrote.
This amnesia is frightening because when human longing and desire, rightly for divine life, forgets it is for divine life, it throws its considerable powers into finding happiness on a material flatland that, in fact, it slowly, steadily consumes.
As I've read, I'm reminded of 7 Daniel and Revelation 13: beasts rising from the sea - and those beasts seem to represent different superpowers when each one dominated the whole world, only to be overthrown by the next one that rises.
This leads me to think, since Babel, God seems to keep the machine at bay with other machines (or beasts). I would be curious to hear your thoughts on this.
I grew up in a culture in which many people saw the anti-christ rising everywhere and expected his mark to be some sort of tattoo or chip (or now, vaccine passports). What we are experiencing has an apocalyptic feel, certainly!
Thank you, Paul. I am a care home manager and this morning I received a message from the Department of Health & Social Care, sent by the Care Quality Commission, to tell me that I and my staff have to have both jabs by 11th November or we will lose our jobs. Enforcing vaccination through threats to one's job seems to me to be against international human rights law which outlaws coerced medication - yet this is now UK government policy and they are bringing in a law to make vaccinations mandatory for care home staff. This is state tyranny and I have written about it here on my blog: https://anthropopper.com/2021/07/26/freefall-to-tyranny/
Enjoyed that very much in common with your other ways despite the alarming revelations ! Stilling the mind and “thy will be done” have been my life for some years and continue to be so.
Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyin puts it this way: the way of the modern world is the way of reason is the way of dehumanization. So what we must do is cultivate not the mind, but the heart. For him, that was a complete life mission, a way of being. It was theological, of course, but it was also practical. It meant things like telling fairy tales and playing with your children and looking at ants carefully as they go about their work. We could all use a lot more of that kind of heart-cultivation, I think.
hey, it sounds like refusal of this vaccine could become the new monastic movement that's been called for. Your own property will be your cell. The practical question is how to pay bills, even just property taxes, under these circumstances.
Thank you Paul for at last identifying the Elephant in the room. I've been waiting for you to come to the topic of Covid over the past few months. I agree with everything you say, and I too felt we crossed a Rubicon, when our government introduced health Apartheid, last week. It appears to be widely supported as are all the other measures. Here is just an example: Last weekend in Leitrim, a small group of musicians were playing music at an outdoor venue. Apparently, a call was soon made to Shannonside, the local radio station by a "concerned " member of the public. The law was enforced and music was no longer heard on a street in Leitrim and probably won't be for a long time to come.
Paul, you will find a kindred spirit, and great intellect, in El Gato Malo, whose blog Bad Cattitude catalogues the intensifying irrationality of the "science" surrounding covid and vaccines. Here is one brilliant example: https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/science-is-a-process-not-an-institution. A recent post sums up the disingenuity surrounding the official stance toward vaccines vs. other cheaper, safer and more effective treatments: https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/a-covid-study-i-would-like-to-see. There is a dark cloud passing over the land, leaving suffering and death in its wake, and I'm not talking about a virus. This trio of essays by Connor Kelly lays out the situation with absolute clarity: https://leftlockdownsceptics.com/2021/07/collaboration-or-resistance-part-1-our-brand-new-shiny-fascist-state/. Your writing, like these others', is absolutely vital to the maintain of our societies' bearings in this difficult time. It is through our connections with and validation from one another that we can sustain the bright light of clarity, honesty, reason and compassion that define our common humanity. THANK YOU
As the crisis continues ( or is continued?), I think we're seeing more clearly what's at stake - and it's much more than public health, or even freedom of association. The Republic's ban on baptisms has been one of the most chilling aspects of its pandemic response.
Greetings from another family of refuseniks.
Very thought provoking Paul. I am thankful for your articulation of this crisis, your vulnerability in sharing your new social status of 'leper'. A bell is being tied to the necks of the unwilling, marking them as unclean, marking them as sacrificial targets for our despair.... and the ancient drama repeats itself again and again. When will be learn?
My graduate work and practice as a therapist has been at the intersection of the non-religious and spiritual/religious impulses, and it has been powerful to see the trends we were watching 10 years ago come into full bloom now. There is a new priesthood, a new sense of taboo, a whole new super-structure emerging, all of it to fill the vacuum left by the old pieties.
When I personally sit back and observe nature I do see one consistent pattern: it always moves forward, evolving and adapting. My hunch, my sense, is that there is no way back to the old motto, the old 'Thy will be done'. What is emerging now is an anti-thesis to the old thesis. What will be the new synthesis?
I don't know. I don't think I will ever know. I have grieved that I will live a life witnessing a painful decline, and have accepted that my lot is to till the field for the emergence of a future synthesis. Our geological record and ancient myths tells the story clearly. The coming devastation will open space for the redemption to emerge from within the wound.
On an optimistic note the Machine has revealed its next move! The line of resistance is showing ever clearer beyond the fog. Maybe the space for resilience and adaptation exists in the smaller places? The places where neighborliness is still practiced, if even awkwardly.
"It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings." - Wendell Berry
With the public so willing, I'm convinced there will be no need for a Secret Police. Add in, Fr. Tony Flannery's comments this week to the bishops, and his choice of the words " playing into the hands of extreme anti vaxers", for those of us who will not subject our bodies to an experimental treatment, is another sign of where we're at . This from a so called liberal member of the Catholic church.
Paul, Your way of connecting the dots is unsettling (not least to you) but so very helpful. The only way back to deep truth is by telling the obvious pieces of it in front of us -- despite offical denials and media fog. You comparison of Science and "Magic" was most helpful. Like all forms idolatry, such things offer the illusion of control or safety at the cost of deforming if not killing what we say we love (people, families, communities, much less the natural world), the very opposite of what should happen in the worship of and trust in the life-giving God of creation and resurrection. Victories of technical reason and control inevitalbly yeild "unanticipated" consequences which should precipitate fear of the true God (not a candidate for manipulation, flattery or lies) that is the beginning of wisdom. But repentance is not on the Faustian menu. More's the pity. So your Abby sightings are a light and testify to life and love the darkness has not and cannot overcome. Yet. Take heart.
Thank you, Paul. Once again, every word resonates so strongly and makes such sense.
"In the realm of facts science reigns supreme, in the realm of values we have to look elsewhere" J B Peterson
Science, with help from it's media bag carriers and expedient politicians, does us, and itself, no favours by conflating theory and modelling with scientific fact. A theory and the modelling derived from it are not "The Science" they purport to be. Maybe they're the best we've got, the best guess under the circumstances but to then shut down any attempt at questioning, never mind actual dissent, is rank totalitarianism.
Despite our faith in science it seems to me that we live in a dream, a narrative about meaning and value. But absent science, how far do you go with "other ways of knowing". You see the danger? Are we seriously expected to believe, to submit, to something as completely insane as a bloke in a dress is a woman?
"language and meaning are deeply networked, deeply public, and held in place by things like history, collective knowledge, linguistic precedent, logical consistency, and the contours of the objective world (i.e., truth). To claim total control over one proposition within such a network is therefore to control them all. For the state to attempt to grant monopolistic control over both the analytic and synthetic definitions of terms like “he” and “she,” to a privileged and exclusive class of language-users, terms perhaps no more fundamental to the human condition, would be, in essence, to attempt to grant control over truth itself."
https://quillette.com/2021/08/04/the-incoherence-of-gender-ideology/
Perhaps I am just a hopeless optimist but I think it is possible that what you're "feeling" -- and many have sensed such a shift in the metaphysical seasons -- is the looming collapse of the "Enlightenment order" (or, better, the crude spiritual pornography of the "American order") which is an unassailably good thing. I don't think the beast is as strong as it pretends to be, and I think that it is aware of this (happy to us) fact. The thrashings of its tail amid the death-rattles are dangerous but not completely deadly, and there remain many places where its writ doesn't run.
Thanks again and what was striking for me is how you end on “Do what thou wilt” and “Thy will be done”. As Bacon et al also felt, science was so glorious because it was doing both: restoring the lost Eden through the dominion also given to humankind in Genesis (and I believe the Hebrew for “dominion” in Gen 1:26 is quite masterly). In short, science was devised as a divinely sanctioned means of redemption, which I suspect is why its progressivism still has a powerfully religious feel. (I’m drawing here on Peter Harrison’s fascinating, The Territories of Science and Religion, Chicago University Press).
The plot thickens because the two imperatives of “thou wilt” and “thy will” rightly coincide in what you might call the divinised mind. “Love and do what thou wilt” was Augustine’s way of expressing it. There is a true perception here, for all that it is rarely truly perceived. Such is God’s reckless gratuity.
What goes wrong, I think, is that the scientific mind ceases to know that heaven is not a place on earth. It forgets the bigger, original story of life found on the other side of death, an end to history (as in direction and conclusion), we are sown a natural body raised a spiritual body, old things pass away and the new comes, as Paul wrote.
This amnesia is frightening because when human longing and desire, rightly for divine life, forgets it is for divine life, it throws its considerable powers into finding happiness on a material flatland that, in fact, it slowly, steadily consumes.
I've enjoyed your writings, Paul!
As I've read, I'm reminded of 7 Daniel and Revelation 13: beasts rising from the sea - and those beasts seem to represent different superpowers when each one dominated the whole world, only to be overthrown by the next one that rises.
This leads me to think, since Babel, God seems to keep the machine at bay with other machines (or beasts). I would be curious to hear your thoughts on this.
I grew up in a culture in which many people saw the anti-christ rising everywhere and expected his mark to be some sort of tattoo or chip (or now, vaccine passports). What we are experiencing has an apocalyptic feel, certainly!