Paradigm Shift....

Part One

'I think the true agenda of the old is the agenda of the left: more fairness and less profit; more restoration and less development; community care, not more prescriptions; restoration of nature, not more harvesting from it; ……. investment in schools to teach the young, not prisons that let them languish; more friendliness rather than user-friendly electronics; and peace, not guns.'

This is a quotation from James Hillman's book 'The Force of Character', focussing on aspects of what happens as we age. It was written as Hillman was an ageing citizen himself, and was published in 1999.

When I first came across this quote recently, 'by accident', I thought that it would well serve to illustrate the point of 'the paradigm shift'. As I've read it over and over, I've started to feel that it's just not a very good piece of thinking by Hillman. Anyhow, let's see how we go...…

We can ask what 'the left' is in the first place nowadays, and probably enter a period of dumbfounded silence. In Britain at least. But I shall suggest that 'left' and 'centre left' are the meat of the majority of mainstream politicians in positions of power, along with most of the mainstream media. Their lead comes from the more 'radical left', which core is a small minority of the total population, but whose influence is highly disproportionate. Having clarified, slightly, what we are talking about, now let's check out Hillman's characteristics of 'the left' from twenty years ago.

More fairness, less profit: today's 'left' are in large part middle-class, affluent people, typical of those who appear on BBC Breakfast programmes. They have done pretty well for themselves, but like to make snide comments about others. They are scathing about and dismissive of the people formerly represented by the left, ie more traditionally working class folk, people who do useful jobs like plumbing. Especially scathing if the proles do things like vote for Brexit.

More restoration, less development: our modern 'left' is as keen as anyone else on advancing 'development' such as plastering wild places with windfarms, destroying countryside with housing estates, and the rest. More profoundly, they seem to have a disdain for western civilisation in general, despite being products of it themselves. 'Restoration' is counter to their game. The same goes for 'restoration of nature, not more harvesting from it'. Much leftist environmental thinking is shallow, sometimes misguided, based on abstraction, ideology and hysteria rather than cool reflection.

Investment in schools to teach the young: education, under the rule of new left principles, has little to do with true education. Instead, it is largely indoctrination. It does not teach children to think and feel for themselves. It aims to churn out good, obedient, 'responsible' citizens. Children who are immune from the perils of 'wrongthink' 1984-style. Children who know all about their rights, about LGBT, who feel guilty about destroying the Amazon rainforest. They are not taught to be aspiring individual miracles, but to be little social justice warriors.

More friendliness rather than user-friendly electronics. Wrong again, Mr Hillman. 'Leftist' ideas spread like viruses through electronics. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube. They work, not through saying anything constructive or intelligent, since they have little constructive or intelligent to say. No. Their main game is attempting to destroy the reputations and careers of anybody who is bold enough to disagree with them. Name-calling, insulting, accusations of being this '-ist' or that '-phobe' are their stock-in-trade. 'Hate speech' is their catch-all meaningless favourite. Nothing is too low for them to try and discredit their opponents. It's started with Boris Johnson now. So predictable, so tiresome, so poisonous.

Part Two

The past twenty years or so has seen a vast paradigm shift. I tend to date the time when it really took off to the coronation of Dark Lord Tony Blair back in the late 1990s. There was a time when 'the left' did indeed stand for fairness, and for that most precious quality, freedom of speech. No more. The opposite is true. It seeks to smother dissent by calling out its catalogue of vague, mis-used categories of political correctness. Just call someone a far-right racist Islamophobe. Call them out for 'hate speech', when you are the one doing the hatred. That's all you need to do, almost regardless of what the object of your tirades might really be saying.

There is nothing very novel or clever about what I have just written. As far as Tony Blair goes, even Wicked-pedia concurs. "Blair declared support for a new conception that he referred to as 'social-ism', involving politics that recognised individuals as socially interdependent, and advocated social justice, cohesion, the equal worth of each citizen, and equal opportunity."

Social justice = constant pitting of different groups of people against each other, fuelling endless and unnecessary tensions. Cohesion = enforced conformity, apart from for the 'liberal elite, who do whatever they want. The equal worth of every citizen = all are equal, except that some are more equal than others. Equal opportunity = equal outcome, manipulated by law if need be.

So this is what is meant by the paradigm shift. It's glaringly obvious, but it's a trick still missed by a good many folk, of my generation in particular. Think 'socialism', 'left-wing', and they still think good old Uncle Michael Foot, looking after the working classes. No more. When people addicted to labels use the expressions 'right-wing' and 'left-wing', I no longer have any idea what they are talking about. The terms no longer fit.

And this is, maybe, one of the reasons why I am going on about this stuff again - and again, and again. There is this element, of calling out those deceiving bearers of darkness, who clothe ignorance and the wish to control others in the language of acceptability. Just call yourself a guardian of social justice and all will be well. But it is also a lament. A lament for so many of my generation. People who supported, fought for, even, the end to discriminations when such an end was needed. Who like to think they helped to usher in freedom of speech, who played their part in overturning a good deal of censorship. But these are people who have now got lost, who are stuck in the old paradigm, and have been easy meat for a new and very different kind of social shaping under the umbrella of 'left wing'. A new paradigm, where overcoming -isms and -phobias is no longer a pragmatic move in the direction of a more humane society. Where these have become something else: dogmas, ideologies, capable of never-ending exploitation in the service of nefarious ends.

There was a time when those championing the freedom of the individual looked to the left. No more. The 'radical left', the social justice warriors, are singularly intolerant, hell-bent on silencing anybody who happens to disagree with them. They are the vanguard of the society portrayed in Orwell's '1984'. The parallels are chilling. So I lament those of decent heart and good intent, who have been duped. I should not feel overmuch sympathy: it is blindness and laziness that permit such deception. But once more I find myself walking alone, my past reconsidered, let go of, drifting away into mists of personal antiquity. So be it. Like the magic phoenix, we may always arise afresh, anew.

Postscript: OK. This morning I discovered that I have an ally in all this; there is a like mind. Vladimir Putin. He gave an interview in the Kremlin just before heading off to the meeting of big boys and girls, in which he said that western-style liberalism is obsolete. 'Obsolete' is the perfect word, and I think he is talking about the same things as in this blog piece. In fact he articulates things extremely clearly in this interview. So, thanks Vlad.

Photos: The British working class.
            Morrissey, a modern working class hero, that most rare of species.      

Western Civilisation and the Ivory Towers

Part One

It's been a sporadic yet persistent theme on Pale Green Vortex over the years: how western civilisation has, in my mind at least, often fallen short. Specifically:

- The prevailing scientific materialistic view of modern times. This is an extremely partial view of the universe, effectively disconnecting humanity from much of what it requires in order to discover its own deeper nature and purpose. To become properly human, we could say.

- The suppression and persecution of those who have stood up against the dominant paradigms of the time. Persecution of Gnostics, Cathars, 'pagans', witches, and any other type of heretic in the eyes of Christian authorities. In more recent times, orthodoxy has passed from mainstream Christianity onto a certain political elite, and our modern heretics are more likely to be those at odds with the whims of these ruling elites. We see the attempted silencing of certain individuals who dare to think outside the box of pseudo-liberal globalism with its various dogmas and creeds (climate change emergency, multiculturalism, etc).

- The way in which notions such as democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of the individual, have all too often proven to be a sham, a cosmetic veneer on a darker agenda. A dominant programme through the ages has been that of 'Empire'.

All of this still stands. The history of western civilisation is frequently messy, sometimes awful and painful to investigate. It is a deeply imperfect thing. I feel that the moment has come, however, to look at the other side of the coin. To emphasise the unique and most precious aspects to this imperfect thing. Qualities which it is well worth making the effort to cherish and preserve.

A most obvious example. Were it not for this 'western civilisation', I would not be sitting here writing this; and you wouldn't be sitting there reading it. Enterprise, ingenuity; freedom of the individual. OK, we all know about exploitation, colonialism, etc, in fact I'm sick and tired of hearing about them. As if no group of people ever behaved badly towards another group before. But amidst all this has run this thread of democracy and freedom, this other aspect to western culture.

It is within the context of this particular culture that I have been able to lead my own rather unorthodox life, sometimes not without some difficulty, but nevertheless fairly much as I have wanted. I haven't been locked away for it as yet. I have been able to research and investigate an entire range of subjects which have assisted me no end, thanks to printing and modern internet technology. All of this is the fruit of this western spirit; I am deeply grateful.

Yet these freedoms which, though battered and bruised, are characteristic of one side of western civilisation, are fragile. Over the past decade or so, I have seen them attacked and eroded again and again; it's a process which I see accelerating and growing more vicious as the days pass. It is as if we are fast approaching some kind of Armageddon, and power-mongers are desperate to close down our hard-won and precious freedoms. They are freedoms which some take for granted, and others simply do not appreciate. Other cultures extant today do not enshrine these values to the same extent, to my knowledge at least. Our freedoms are worth cherishing, and fighting for if need be.

Part Two

That I not only spent three years studying at Oxford University, but came out with a high grade degree, is news which receives a variety of reactions from the unprepared, all of them inappropriate, and reflecting more the assumptions of the individuals concerned than anything about this type of university.

I occasionally receive bulletins, magazines, newsletters, by post and online, from the university and from the particular college I attended, Hertford. I frequently wonder about cancelling the whole lot; but then I consider some more, and continue. It's called 'what's the enemy getting up to now?'.

Oxford has long given up any pretence at being a centre of higher learning. Such status was always a little doubtful, but now it's transparent. Instead, the university is devoted almost entirely to cultural programming and social engineering. Brainwashing on behalf of the elites, mind-control of the plebs. Some readers of this blog would, I suspect, find it a real eye-opener to see what bilge is put forth in the name of 'edyookayshun'. It reads like a leaflet for the globalist paradigm, hating things like Trump and Brexit with the same insistent venom as does the BBC.

My most recent post discussed the magic twins of dorje and bell, and the mess which can ensue if one or the other goes missing. But what happens if both of them go absent at the same time? This is the moment when we need to creep along the corridors of academia, climb the dark winding stairway to the top of the ivory tower, to discover who and what are lurking there.

The May edition of 'Oxford Alumni' magazine contained an article written by one Amanda Power, Professor in Medieval History at this august centre of learning. It was entitled 'Should Notre Dame be restored?' "Most people have assumed that the cathedral should be lovingly restored" the article gurgles on, "but should we let it stand as a symbol of the damage that our climate denial and environmental entitlement have already caused the planet?"

And so it drones on. And on. And on. Is there no end to the expiation of guilt that certain elite sections of society require from its western inhabitants; a guilt that is unique to this particular culture, I suggest, and is its Achilles heel. The majority of academics are oblivious to what they bring to their 'academic studies', the monsters that lurk in their own swamp. In this state of ignorance they are easy meat for promoting agendas, all the while thinking they are being brainy and 'objective'. And doesn't our Professor in Medieval History get the irony of her wailing and bemoaning the awfulness of western culture as it has rolled down the centuries? That, without this particular culture, she wouldn't be doing what she's doing, sitting smug and righteous in her academic privilege. She would be nowhere.

Note the not-very academic and objective language used by our medieval historian: 'climate denial'; 'environmental entitlement'. The comparing of climate change sceptics to holocaust deniers is a topic gone into so frequently, I'm not going there now. But this is the great one, really. Climate change science is not done and dusted. It isn't. It isn't! It's only the lamestream media, ideologically invested politicians, and idiotic one-eyed academics who say so. You don't have to be a bloody conspiracy theorist to see that, either. The info is all out there, not difficult to find, but folk dependent on their BBC/Guardian world won't go there, it's too threatening.

I was at least pleased to see that the article received a goodly number of robust rebuttals from less blinkered alumni in the 'Comments' section.

Part Three

I hadn't intended to do this; in truth, it's a bit of a rant, and I am not proud of that. Nevertheless, if it succeeds in pointing out how most academia should not be revered, or taken very seriously at all, then it might be worth it. This is actually the subtext of my years at Oxford. I witnessed first-hand how academia is, in general, populated by people who are not to be hugely respected. Lots of active, clever brains, but working within a small, pre-organised box. I needed to come out of university and into the alternative culture of the 1970s before I encountered people who I could take seriously. So I have this advantage: academics can't pull the wool over my eyes.

This month, June 2019, I received another missive from Oxford, my online 'Hertford College News'. In this, we were encouraged to watch the TED talk delivered by a college alumnus, one Carole Cadwalladr. In this talk, apparently (I'm not intending to actually watch it...), 'She digs into one of the most perplexing events in recent times: the UK's super-close 2016 vote to leave the EU.'

It's not perplexing! It's only perplexing because you've got your over-sized academic brain stuck in the sand. Anyhow, it seems that Carole has it all sorted. 'A barrage of misleading Facebook ads' placed by pro-Brexiteers is the culprit, we are informed.

It was a vote, the majority elected to leave the EU, end of story, get over it. If it were the other way round, such a theory would be ridiculed as a 'conspiracy theory'. It is the reaction to the Brexit vote, with so many people showing up as bad losers, that is the real threat to this country, not leaving the EU. It is here that our hard-won and shaky freedoms are endangered. People unwilling to accept the democratic process when it doesn't go their own way. It's as simple and as childish as that.

Also this month turned up 'Oxford Alumni' again. There is some very important research being carried out, I am informed. "A group of Oxford researchers have seized on the divisive nature of Donald Trump and his inauguration ceremony to examine how different emotional responses to public rituals can effect group bonds."

Don't forget, folks, this I one of the planet's top universities. And that there are people out there getting good money for doing this stuff....

'Divisive': it's one of those words, really. Its meaning in the dictionary in front of me is 'tending to cause disunity and dissension.' Neutral, really: a statement of an objective reality. Some things just cause disunity, it's part of how the universe works. Its connotation over time, however, has become negative: 'intending to cause disunity and dissension.' Trouble-making; perverse enjoyment of creating schism; polar opposition to new age-y harmony and light.

'Trump' and 'divisive'. How often do those two words turn up in the same breath? The guy's just that, apparently, a cosmic troublemaker. And in the hands of a Jeremy Corbyn, the word 'divisive' reaches its nadir. As part of Corbyn's own divisive behaviour during Trump's recent visit to the UK, he recently complained about Trump's 'divisive views on trade, immigration, human rights, and climate change.' In the hands of a Jeremy Corbyn, the word takes on its vulgar modern meaning: 'divisive' simply means something or somebody I disagree with. Discussion, debate, difference of opinion, become divisive. Thus we arrive at the state of 'forced consensus' and modern totalitarianism.

Trump's views on 'climate change' are fluid, but not divisive. He just happens to disagree with the orthodox views which, as mentioned above, are lies. That 'the science is decided', and that there is 'scientific consensus'. This is all untrue, and you don't need to be a master detective to find that out. But disagree with this piece of charlatanism, and you will be called 'divisive' and worse.

A blog friend recently commented that I should propose a few solutions to some of the ills I write about. In truth, I feel no obligation to do so; a difficulty is a difficulty, and the first step is facing up to that possibly unpalatable reality. In this case, however, there is a simple solution: academics should begin to be proper academics, not lackeys to a toxic socio-political programme. And academic institutions should do the same. Piece of cake, problem solved. The only thing is that it most likely ain't gonna happen. Academia, journalists, establishment politicians, 'far-left activists', legacy media 'newspapers' and television channels: they are all the same thing, really. Fully paid-up members of the same club, the same international mafia. Part of the One Real Conspiracy. Just remember that the next time you read that 'research has shown…..' or 'scientists have discovered.....' Don't be impressed, don't be impressed.
     

Dorje Chang and Idiot Compassion

Part One

Dorje Chang - or Vajradhara in Sanskrit, though I always prefer the sound of the Tibetan. He is the Adi-Buddha, the Primordial Buddha. Dharmakaya. He is everything and nothing at all. In his being all dualities are resolved, all paradoxes swallowed into a single form of beauty. Neither Oneness nor Multiplicity can get a hold, both turning out to be simultaneously phantoms and mirror-image aspects of reality.

The bell and the vajra: these are Dorje Chang's twin symbols, the magical implements that he wields, his weapons of gnosis. One in each hand, typically crossed in front of his heart, just to emphasise their centrality to all that he is.

The primordial consciousness of Dorje Chang splits into these twin aspects, these two arms, bearing the bell and the vajra. The one becomes two, and the two becomes one. The eternal dance of reality, the inseparability of spirit and world, of heart and mind, each a mirror of the other.

The primordial consciousness, the godhead if you will, split and sundered into two. Between them, the vajra and bell encompass everything. They are the great divide, into duality, but just one small step from Buddha.

Vajra: masculine, head, thought; sun, day, wisdom. Being, Siva.

Bell: feminine, heart, body, feeling; moon, night, love. Becoming, Shakti.

The sounding of the bell, the wielding of the diamond-hard vajra: this is also the call, the invitation, for kundalini. It is her wake-up call, for her to arouse from her slumber and uncoil herself. She, sacred serpent of the one-in-two and the two-in-one.

Wisdom and compassion entwined is how the Buddhist texts put it. Sounds a bit abstract and heady, that's all. Maybe better to think of it as Siva and Shakti, in ecstatic embrace, simultaneously in eternal union and everlasting separation.

Part Two

As above, so below. As in the figure of Dorje Chang, so in the affairs of human beings. This is the essence of mystical perception and experience. It is a trickle-down, and a trickle up, I suppose. Sacred correspondence. The individual needs to align sufficiently with 'higher reality' in order for that higher reality to begin to flow into, within, and through their being.

In this case, the task is to mirror the totality of Dorje Chang, along with the great union of vajra and bell, in the lives of human beings, both individually and collectively. To aspire to see the diamond wisdom of vajra and the great love of bell in tandem is a worthy road map for human endeavour.

"Compassion without understanding is not compassion." The words jumped at me the moment I heard them spoken. It is a quotation steeped in wisdom. It speaks of Dorje Chang, of the inseparable nature of the bell and vajra. For they are inseparable, two mirror reflections of the singularity of Dorje Chang and of each other. One without the other is useless, or worse, destructive, quite possibly disastrous. Incompleteness imagining itself as whole: tragedy.

"Compassion without understanding is not compassion." These were not the words of a great Buddhist sage, a Nying-ma lama in rich attire addressing an audience of devout followers. Nor of any other wise teacher or guru with a woolly beard. They were spoken, during her 'prelude talk' to 'Borderless' entitled 'Changing my mind on immigration' by Lauren Southern. A talk, by the by, during which she possesses the dignity and humility to do what many-a so-called great guru is incapable of doing: to admit that maybe she got things a little bit wrong.

"Compassion without understanding is not compassion." Rather less charitably, I refer to it as 'idiot compassion'. It is an insight reflected similarly in the old proverb 'The road to hell is paved with good intentions.'    

How so? How can it be? Surely 'compassion' is a good, great, and wonderful thing. Depends. As once noted, you can use a knife to spread peanut butter on a slice of bread, or you can use it to stab someone and kill them.

Scattered across the posts on Pale G.V. are references to the obverse: understanding, or at least thought, without heart or feeling is not wisdom. Much of the academic world is filled with people of this type, who end up creating all manner of ridiculous proposal. That gender is a purely social construct, for example. This is 'idea' totally devoid of heart, soul, intuition, common sense, decent eyesight. Try the simple 'clothes-off' test for starters. Or, if that's not your cup of tea, watch a top tennis match between two women, followed by one between two men.

Yet because, oh wow!, they happen to have got a job at some university or other, these academics are well placed to have their stupid theories and theorems taken seriously. Dragon's head, snake's body (with due respect to all snakes out there).

But it's the same with compassion that lacks understanding. In the context of 'Borderless', it's a matter of good-hearted but blind sentiment driving a European immigrant situation which all too often benefits neither immigrant nor indigene. Promoted enthusiastically by people carried away by words and sentiment, without a serious care for the complex and sometimes heart-breaking consequences of their proposed actions.

Who 'open borders' immigration does benefit are folk who singularly lack compassion, but who have a well-developed 'understanding' of what will help their own dark, self-serving ends. But heart without understanding can be applied to other circumstances typical of western cultures as well, where the enthusiasts for political correctness in its various forms, victim culture, are doing less of a favour to society than they delude themselves they are doing.

Compassion without understanding provides the fuel for the wolf in sheep's clothing who stalks the corridors of politics and power. If there are dark forces at work behind the scenes, nefarious beings rolling out programmes intended to disempower, then 'compassion without understanding' provides the perfect fuel for such endeavours. Entire populations will unwarily sign up to attitudes which they believe are for the great benefit and betterment of humanity, while nothing could be further from the truth.

A little picture of Dorje Chang on the bedroom wall, and a daily check that both vajra and bell are intact, polished and gleaming brightly together, might go a long way...…