I'm taking a little break from blogging. I should be back in within a week or so.
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Novalis provides some insights into the kind of thinking Dr. Charlton frequently refers to as primary thinking or direct knowing (bold added):
72. On non-sensory or immediate knowledge. All meaning is representative, symbolic -- a medium. All sense perception is at secondhand. The more particular, the more abstract, one could say, the idea, the description, or the imitation, the less it resembles the object or the stimulus, the more separate and independent is the meaning. If the meaning did not need an external cause at all it would cease to be meaning and would be a congruous being. As such its forms can again be more or less similar and corresponding to the forms of other beings. Were its forms and their sequence to perfectly resemble the sequence of forms of another being then there would be the purest harmony between them. Meaning is a tool -- a means. Absolute meaning would be means and end at the same time. Thus every thing is itself the means whereby we can come to know it -- to experience it or have an effect on it. Thus in order to feel and come to know a thing completely I would have to make it my meaning and object at once -- I would have to vivify it -- make it into absolute meaning, according to the earlier definition. If however I were neither able nor willing to do this completely, then I would have to make a part of it -- specifically an individual part quite peculiar to the thing -- an element of the meaning. What would now ensue? I would acquire mediated and immediate knowledge and experience of the thing at the same time -- it would be representative and not representative, perfect and imperfect -- my own and not my own, in short it would be both antithetical and synthetic knowledge and experience of it. The element or meaning would be at once an element and a non-element, because through vivifying it I would in a sense have severed it from the whole. If I call the whole thing world, then I would have an integral part of the world in myself, and the rest of it outside myself. I would appear to myself in a theoretical respect, with regard to this meaning, as dependent and under the influence of the world. I would further, in connection with this meaning, be obliged to cooperate as an element of the world -- for otherwise I would accomplish my intention only incompletely in vivifying it. I would find my meaning, or body, determined partly by itself and partly by the idea of the whole -- by its spirit -- the world soul, and this so that both are inextricably united -- so that properly speaking one could refer neither to the one nor the other exclusively. My body would seem to me not specifically different from the whole -- but only a variant of it. My knowledge of the whole would thus have the character of analogy -- but this would refer in the closest and most immediate way to the direct and absolute knowledge of the element. Both together would comprise an antithetical synthetic knowledge. It would be immediate, and by means of the immediate it would be mediated, at once real and symbolic. All analogy is symbolic. I find my body determined and made effective by itself and the world soul at the same time. My body is a small whole, and thus it also has a special soul; for I call soul the individual principle whereby everything becomes one whole. I know myself to be as I will and will myself to be as I know -- because I will my will --because I will absolutely. Thus within myself knowledge and will are perfectly united. While I want to understand my will -- and particularly also my deed -- I notice that I also have a will and can do something without knowing about it -- further, that I can and do know something without having willed it. - from Logological Fragments I The Beatles' "All You Need is Love" would probably make sense to the ancient Greeks, but for Christians the expression must-needs be reversed to "All Love Needs is You."
I'll try to explain in the following. Bear with me: In Ressentiment, Max Scheler juxtaposes ancient and Christian views of love to help clarify and define the unique qualities of Christian love. According to Scheler, the most important difference between ancient and Christian conceptualizations of love lies in the direction of its movement. Ancient Greek and Roman philosophers and poets deemed the essence of love to be an upward striving – a movement of aspiration of the lower, weaker, ignorant, and less-formed toward the higher, stronger, wiser, and more-formed. This upward movement of love is clearly expressed in all life relations in antiquity, including marriage, friendship, and social relations. It made clear distinctions between the “lover” and the “beloved”, with the former being the lower striver and the latter being the higher who is striven after. It finds its most lucid expression in Greek metaphysics, in which the most perfect form becomes the pinnacle of love that can experience no aspiration, striving, or need. Instead, the most perfect form becomes the prime mover who does not move but attracts, entices, and tempts other beings toward it. Thus, the essence of the ancient conception of love results in a great chain of dynamic spiritual entities all striving upward but never looking back. The process continues all the way to the deity, which does not love but represents the eternally unmoving and unifying goal of all aspirations of love. Within this framework, love is only a dynamic means through which to achieve an ultimate, static goal. From a different perspective, using the means of love, the ancients strove to attain the end of not having to love at all but instead become the ultimate principle that attracts all other love. Within this perpetual striving upward, the ancient Greeks regarded love to be a limited commodity that needed to be invested wisely and not wasted by condescending to the lower. Scheler observes that the Christian view of love turns the ancient Greek axiom on its head. Instead of the lower aspiring toward the higher, the Christian criterion of love has the higher stooping toward the lower, the wise to the ignorant, the rich to the poor, and so forth. Scheler notes that the Christian, unlike the ancient Greek, suffers no anxiety that he loses something in the process of looking back or looking below. On the contrary, the Christian harbors the pious conviction that his act of descending toward the lower not only ennobles him but that it earns him the highest good because it makes him equal to God – at least in action. For the Christian, God ceases to be the eternal unmoving star beckoning all life toward it like a beloved beckoning the lover and becomes instead a “creator” who creates “out of love”. The essence of the Christian God is to love and to serve through acting, thinking, and creating. The highest good for a Christian does not involve aspiring toward the prime mover who does not love but to align with the act and movement of Divine Love itself. Love itself and actively participating in the continuing expansion of love becomes a Christian’s highest good. Scheler writes: The summum bonum is no longer the value of a thing, but of an act, the value of love itself as love—not for its results and achievements. Indeed, the achievements of love are only symbols and proofs of its presence in the person. And thus God himself becomes a “person” who has no “idea of the good,” no “form and order,” no logos above him, but only below him—through his deed of love. He becomes a God who loves—for the man of antiquity something like a square circle, an “imperfect perfection.” How strongly did Neo-Platonic criticism stress that love is a form of “need” and “aspiration” which indicates “imperfection,” and that it is false, presumptuous, and sinful to attribute it to the deity! But there is another great innovation: in the Christian view, love is a non-sensuous act of the spirit (not a mere state of feeling, as for the moderns), but it is nevertheless not a striving and desiring, and even less a need. These acts consume themselves in the realization of the desired goal. Love, however, grows in its action. And there are no longer any rational principles, any rules or justice, higher than love, independent of it and preceding it, which should guide its action and its distribution among men according to their value. All are worthy of love—friends and enemies, the good and the evil, the noble and the common. Scheler defines the above as authentic Christian love. As such, he declares it to be free of ressentiment (resentment). Nevertheless, he is quick to admit that ressentiment can taint Christian love and subtly hijack it for its own purposes, most notably in pursuits like altruism. Scheler chalked up the difference between ancient and Christian views of love to the direction of its movement. Another possible way to conceptualize this is to consider the direction of movement as participation – the way in which men choose to take part, cooperate, and play a part in Creation. For the ancients, participation was largely a matter of using love to strive upward toward the goal of the unmoved mover who attracts all love but is attracted to nothing and loves nothing. For Christians, participation seems to be more a matter of loving and cooperating with a personal Creator who also loves. The only “end” so to speak is the expansion of love, through which Creation itself expands. Unlike the ancient deity, the Christian God actively desires that the lower become higher. Creation itself becomes a place in which to “raise up” gods. However, this raising up does not involve God attracting. On the contrary, in Creation, God enables this “raising up” by “condescending” to the lower, the weaker, and the unformed through love. Also unlike the ancient deity, the Christian God invites His believers to do the same because, contrary to what the ancients believed, such actions expand love and Creation rather than diminish it. To sum up, becoming like God meant something very different to the ancients than it does for Christians. For the ancients, becoming god-like entailed a perpetual striving upward in which love must always be aimed at something higher and never at anything lower. The case is the opposite with Christian love where Divine Love freely and willingly condescends to work creatively with the lower to expand love within Creation. Becoming god-like in Christianity involves participating in that Divine Love by treating love as a never-ending dynamic end rather than as a dynamic means through which to attain a static end. The god of the ancients was an unmoving idol; the Christian God is a loving parent. Note added: Scheler wrote Ressentiment from a primarily Roman Catholic perspective, yet he was able to detect and pierce the strains of classical philosophy that had flowed into Christian thinking over the centuries. In this brief post I would like to refer back to a passage Dr. Charlton shared in his summary of Christopher Bambford's distillation of Rudolf Steiner's core teachings.
The purpose of the Earth and Men - what this world is essentially for - is the creation of relationships. And this is vital because only on Earth and among Men can Beings learn to love. I return to this passage again for two reasons: First, it is a reminder that God created this world as fit-for-purpose. Moreover, He offered us mortal life in it to serve a positive purpose. Second, it suggests that our experience in this world – despite its inherent temporariness, tribulations, temptations, and trials – is a great gift. Also, during the brief time we have in this world, we have the opportunity to accept, participate in, and expand this great gift – despite everything. More correctly, precisely because of everything! If we accept, participate in and expand the great gift in this world, then we will learn how to love. Once we have learned how to love, our purpose in this world will be fulfilled, and we be offered the choice to leave all temporariness, tribulation, and temptation behind. So be of good cheer and stop treating the world with nothing but resentment, scorn, and contempt! Satan had nothing but resentment, scorn, and contempt for God and Creation. He is now the Prince of this World -- but only of the part that refuses to learn how to love. Once we commit to learning to love, we overcome the disgust and anger the Prince's world generates in us and align ourselves with God's divine creative purposes in this world. So, create those relationships. That's what you're here for! And when you have created relationships, focus on co-creating love. Learn from the love that is cultivated. Strive to create more of it; then make it eternal. What can I say? The Archbishop is one of the very few within organized Christianity who gets it. If I didn't know better, I would swear His Eminence has been reading Romantic Christian blogs. Excerpted from this source (read the rest there; bold added here):
If you start from this evidence, you will understand that it is not possible to pretend that what is happening before our eyes is solely the result of profit-seeking or the desire for power. Certainly, the economic part cannot be disregarded, considering how many people have collaborated with the World Economic Forum. And yet, beyond profit, there are unstated purposes that stem from a “theological” vision – one that is turned upside-down, it’s true, but still theological – a vision that sees two opposing sides: the side of Christ and the side of the Antichrist. There can be no neutrality, because when there is a clash between two armies, those who choose not to fight are also making a choice that affects the outcome of the battle. On the other hand, how is it possible to recognize in your noble and high professions the admirable order that the Creator has placed in nature (from the constellations of stars to the particles of the atom) and then deny that man is also part of this order, with his moral sense, his laws, his culture, and his discoveries? How can man, who is God’s creature, presume to not be subject himself to eternal and perfect laws? Our battle is not against creatures made of flesh and blood, but against the Principalities and Powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, against the spirits of evil that dwell in the heavenly places (Eph 6:12). On the one hand, there is the City of God – the one Saint Augustine writes about – and on the other hand there is the city of the devil. We can say that in this era the city of the devil is clearly identifiable in neo-Malthusian globalism, the New World Order, the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, the European Union, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and in all those so called “philanthropical foundations” that follow an ideology of death, disease, destruction, and tyranny. And also in those forces that have infiltrated the institutions, which we call the deep state and the deep church. On the other front, we must recognize that the City of God is more difficult to identify. Even the religious authorities appear to have betrayed their role of giving guidance to the faithful, preferring to serve power and propagate their lies. The very people who ought to be protecting and sanctifying souls are scattering and scandalizing them, calling good Christians rigid fundamentalists. As you can see, the attack is on several fronts, and thus it is a mortal threat for humanity, striking at both the body and the soul. And yet, precisely at a time when it is difficult to find authoritative points of reference – both in the religious sphere as well as the temporal one – we see an ever-increasing number of those who are understanding, opening their eyes, and recognizing the criminal mind behind the evolution of events. It is now clear that everything is linked together, without having to dismiss those who say so as “conspiracy theorists.” The conspiracy is already there: we are not inventing it, we are simply denouncing it, hoping that people wake up from this suicidal narcosis and demand that someone put an end to the global coup. The operations of social engineering and mass manipulation have demonstrated beyond any doubt that this crime was premeditated, and how it is consistent with a “spiritual” vision of the conflict that is now unfolding: it is necessary to take sides and fight, without giving in. The Truth – which is an attribute of God – cannot be cancelled by error, and Life cannot be defeated by death: remember that the Lord, who has said of Himself, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” has already defeated Satan, and what remains of the battle serves only to give us the opportunity to make the right choice, to choose to do those actions which place us under the banner of Christ, on the side of Good. I trust that this great work you are undertaking will soon bear its expected fruits, putting an end to a time of trial in which we see how the world will become if we do not turn to Christ, if we continue to think that we can coexist with evil, lying, and self-worship. After all, the City of God is the model of those who live in God’s love, self-control, and contempt for the world; the city of the devil is the model of those who live in self-love, conforming to the world and despising God. I thank you and bless you all. Joseph Harry Anderson (1906 - 1996) was an American illustrator who is best-known for his Christian-themed illustrations, most of which he painted for the Adventist Church and whatever the Mormon Church calls itself these days. His illustrations were also published alongside short stories printed in weekly magazines. Anderson's Christian-themed illustrations are mostly hit-or-miss for me, but the 2020 global totalitarian coup has certainly opened up new perspectives on his Prince of Peace. There's no end to the captions I could add to this image.  In yesterday’s post I pointed out that altruism is not a Christian principle or virtue. I also had the audacity to declare that it was objectionable for Christians to pursue and engage in altruism. In this post I’m going to kick it up a notch and illustrate why aspiring to altruism is a spiritual impossibility for Christians.
Put another way, Christians who involve themselves with altruism are involved with a principle that is utterly incompatible with being a Christian. People can be an altruists, or they can be Christians, but they cannot be both. The very notion of an altruistic Christian is a self-contradiction – an oxymoron par excellence. To begin with, altruism – in its purest definition – is an anti-Christian principle because it denies the reality of God. It thereby negates the first Christian commandment to love God. It also negates the second Christian commandment to love the neighbor because it rejects the spiritual reality of man. Those who engage in altruism do not practice Christian love, which is an act directed at the concrete, real, spiritual person – at the innermost reality of what makes a person a person. Instead they practice what Auguste Comte defined as the moral obligation to renounce the self to live for the other. Comte believed this total submission of the self to others was vital to the benefit and progress of society, which in Comte’s positivism supplants the role of God. In my post from yesterday, I included two of Dr.Charlton’s amplifications from Christopher Bamford’s distillation of Rudolf Steiner’s teaching concerning the purpose of mortal life on Earth. These were: This is creation. Our life on Earth is spiritual; this spiritual life is about love; and this love is creation. Creation is made-of love; and the aim of evolution is to develop this love and consciousness of love. Love among Men is not sufficient, but it is essential. The first commandment to love god, and the second commandment to love fellow Men are no longer, since Christ, possible to separate. Both are necessary for each other. As Dr. Charlton notes, since Christ, it is insufficient to love God exclusively or to love one’s neighbors exclusively. To be a Christian, to truly practice and “create” Christian love, one must love God and love one’s neighbors inclusively. The two cannot be separated, which renders the altruistic moral obligation to renounce God for the sake the other nugatory. Also, the second Christian commandment also calls on Christians to love their neighbors as they love themselves. Thus, self-love also becomes inseparable from love of the neighbor. A Christian who loves God and his neighbor must also love himself. Any Christian who does not love himself is incapable of truly loving God or the neighbor because he is denying the value and worth of his own spiritual essence. Then there is also the question of ultimate purpose. In a comment from yesterday’s post, William Wildblood asks the following (bold added): What is the purpose of altruistic action even assuming the altruism is genuine? To make the world a better place? To relieve suffering and spread happiness? That has nothing to do with Christian love which is directed solely to bringing a soul closer to God. In other words, Christian love is focused on spiritual ends. It is not well-meaning, it does not have good intentions and it is not benevolent. Christian love derives from God and seeks to bring everything back to God. Dr. Charlton picked up on this point and added (bold added): William W's question is worth bringing to mind in such discussions: "What is the purpose of altruistic action even assuming the altruism is genuine?" The problem with the world is that it in fundamentally unsatisfactory, ultimately because everything in it decays and dies. We need to evaluate ethical claims in the light of spiritual purpose that addresses this fact. To my mind, the desirability of any specific altruistic act should be evaluated in terms of being a means to some *positive* end - lacking which it is just 'moving deckchairs on the Titanic'. Short answer – altruism offers no positive end for Christians – not even in cases when the altruistic action is genuine. Though I have known this intuitively for quite some time, it was Max Scheler who brought the incompatibility of altruism and Christian love home for me via his short philosophical treatise, Ressentiment (bold added): Finally, the ressentiment character of modern humanitarianism is also proved by the fact that its leading spokesmen (for example, Auguste Comte) describe it as “altruism.” For the Christian conception of love, devotion to one’s fellow man merely because he is the “other” is as false and misplaced as the liberal-individualistic idea that we best serve the whole and the community by perfecting ourselves—according to the saying: “When the rose adorns itself, it adorns the garden.” In the Christian view, love is an act of a particular quality, directed at the ideal spiritual person as such, and it makes no difference whether it is the person of the lover or that of the “other.” That is why the Christian considers it sinful to renounce one’s “salvation” for somebody else’s sake! And therefore his own “salvation” is as important to him as love of his neighbor. “Love God and thy neighbor as thyself,” is the Christian precept. It is characteristic that a leading spokesman of modern humanitarianism, Auguste Comte—the inventor of the term “altruism,” which is a barbarism—takes offense at this postulate. He accuses Christianity of aiding and abetting “egoistic impulses” because it commands us to care for our own salvation as well, and he wants to replace this precept by the new positivistic commandment: “Love thy neighbor more than thyself.” He fails to see that Christian “love” is a particular kind of spiritual act, which is by its very essence primarily oriented toward the spiritual person (of God and men), and toward the body merely as its vessel and “temple.” Thus the relation to the other is not an essential characteristic of Christian love, and Christianity necessarily knows a “self-love” which is basically different from all “egoism.” Comte fails to note that it is incomprehensible why our fellow man should have a right to benefaction - since love, for Comte, has value only as a “cause” for good deeds—for the silliest of reasons: simply because he is the “other.” If I myself am not worthy of love, why should the “other” be? As if he were not also an “I”—for himself, and I “another”—for him! Comte ignores that his tenet is either a hyperbolical pathetic phrase or a nihilistic demand which destroys all vitality and indeed decomposes any structure of being! But the real question is how such a demand is psychologically explicable. There is a delusion which consists in mistaking for love what is really a peculiar sham form of love, founded on self-hatred and self-flight. In his Pensées, Blaise Pascal has drawn the classic picture of a type of man who is entangled in many worldly activities (games, sports, hunting, also “business” or unceasing work for the “community”), and all this merely because he cannot look at himself and continually tries to escape from the vacuum, from his feeling of nothingness. In some psychoses, for example, in hysteria, we find a kind of “altruism‟ in which the patient has become incapable of feeling and experiencing anything “by himself.” All his experiences are sympathetic, built on those of another person and his possible attitude and expectation, his possible reaction to any event. The patient’s own existence has lost its center and focus, he neglects all his affairs, is completely drawn into the “other’s” life—and suffers from it. He eats nothing or injures himself in order to vex the “other.” In a milder form, the same phenomenon occurs in the movement of “universal humanitarian love.” This attitude sometimes takes the form of a collective delusion, as within the Russian intelligentsia, especially the academic youth of both sexes, which likes to inject its morbid urge for self-sacrifice and self-flight into social and socio-political “goals” and then interprets its morbidity as “moral heroism.” The “social politician” who troubles his head about everything except himself and his own business (a type now increasingly frequent) is usually nothing but a poor and empty human being fleeing from himself. Nietzsche is perfectly right in pointing out that this way of living and feeling is morbid, a sign of declining life and hidden nihilism, and that its “superior” morality is pretense. His criticism, however, does not touch the Christian love of one’s neighbor: it does touch an essential component of modern “love of mankind,” which is in effect fundamentally a socio-psychological phenomenon of degeneration. In the Fourth Gospel, Christ instructs us to love one another, which points to the real purpose of the Earth and Men - what this world and our mortal lives are essentially for – the creation of relationships from which Beings can learn to love. Bearing this in mind, it becomes quite clear that altruism can teach Christians nothing about love. Quite the contrary. The only thing altruism can teach Christians is how to abandon spirituality and submit to materialism, reductionism, positivism, and atheism. Once a Christian willingly and actively submits to altruism, that Christian stops being a Christian because it is spiritually impossible for a Christian to embrace altruism and remain Christian. No wonder the System demands that Christians be altruistic! So, it turns out that the whiz kid fraud at the center of the most recent collapsed crypto-trading Ponzi scheme – a microcosm of the broader and all-encompassing control and scam macrocosm known as the System -- was involved in something called Effective Altruism, which describes itself as a research field and community that aims to find the best possible ways to help others and then put these ways into practice.
Sounds good, right? Before wading further into the fraudulent whiz kid’s much publicized, pre-scandal altruism and benevolence, it is worth evaluating the motivations and background behind this apparent love of mankind and yearning to make the world a better place by helping people. Whiz kid was the second largest political donator in the US behind Uncle György Schwartz. His parents are law professors at a prestigious citadel of darkness; both have heavily participated in political lobbying. His aunt is the dean of the school of health at another citadel of darkness and is also connected to the WEF. His brother ran a non-profit focused on “guarding against the birdemic”. Whiz kid and his family members are all clearly and deeply connected to a variety of System apparatchiks in various System sectors, including healthcare, politics, finance, education, and law. Unsurprisingly, the whole family is actively involved in all the Litmus Test issues, to the point that the whiz kid apparently used his company as a front through which to launder money via Ukraine. I don’t know about you, but do any of these people strike you as the sort who honestly strive to help people and make the world a better place? Does it look like any of them sacrificed their interests for the sake of others? If anything, the whiz kid and his extended family offer a clear glimpse of some of what lies behind the System’s obsessive promulgation of altruism as the highest of all virtues and moral obligations. Regardless, modern people generally embrace altruism as a high virtue, moral obligation, and guiding principle. Many consider it a high expression of love; for some, it represents the highest form of love. When the media broadcasts an individual or organization that is working to place the interests of others above its interests, modern people tend to regard such individuals or organizations as noble and virtuous. Contemporary Christians are no exception here. Most Christians think altruism is an innately Christian principle and virtue – a principle and virtue that the secular left hijacks, corrupts, and retools to serve its nefarious purposes. Within this framework of contemporary Christian thinking, the disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others is an inherent Christian “good” toward which all Christians should aim. Yes, leftists and atheists often abuse the principle, but this abuse should not deter Christians from practicing altruism properly; nor does it negate the Christian “goodness” contained within the principle. In fact, one of the best things a modern Christian can do is demonstrate the correct spirit of altruism and show the secular, atheist what selfless service to others means and how it “should be done”. And Christian Effective Altruism – the same thing the Ponzi scheme whiz kid supported but with a Christian twist – offers the contemporary Christian the perfect avenue through which to do just that (bold added): Service to others is a pillar of Christianity. Jesus taught that helping those in need was one of the most important aspects of life for just about anyone. Jesus went as far as to suggest that people should help others as much as possible. For example, Jesus praised those who would give so much to the poor that they themselves became poor. With such strong emphasis on helping till it hurts in the New Testament, one would expect to see Christians today putting altruism, or producing a positive change in the world, at the forefront of their lives. The world in which Jesus lived was vastly different from the world today. Life was centered on one’s own community, and people had limited knowledge or ability to communicate with the rest of the world. Helping others in the ancient world was probably a simple affair consisting of giving to beggars or local organizations that helped the poor or sick. It is therefore understandable that the altruism espoused in the Bible was simple and local, with an emphasis on quantity (ie. sacrifice). Today’s world is much more complex and global. Helping others is, therefore, also more complicated, with countless possible options. It would be a mistake to assume that Christ would advocate to limit altruism to your own community or to directly helping the sick or poor if he were alive today. The fundamental message of Jesus’ teachings of altruism was to help others, or improve the world, as much as possible. In the Twenty-First Century, this requires a scientific approach that uses research and reason to optimize outcomes. Christians today have not been heeding the call of Christ to make a sincere, robust effort at helping people. We sacrifice little and help others based on the benefit to ourselves rather than to society. Only by practicing effective altruism, can we live up to Christ’s expectations. By utilizing scientific principles, we can determine which actions are most worth pursuing, and which should be relegated to a lower priority. Tools such as randomized controlled trials and surveys make it possible to estimate the effectiveness of various interventions in helping others, guiding our actions with evidence and compassion. Listen, Christians who believe that sounds even remotely Christian needs to seriously re-evaluate their understanding of what living up to Christ’s expectations really means. I’ll cut right to the chase. Altruism is not a Christian principle or virtue. Moreover, it never was. Leftism didn’t hijack altruism from Christianity and corrupt it; Christianity absorbed altruism from leftism. Unfortunately, this absorption has severely distorted, contaminated, and misrepresented authentic Christian love. There are many problems with altruism. For the sake of brevity, I'll focus on the simple fact that it was Auguste Comte, the founder of positivism, who coined the term! Comte’s concept of altruism derives from the French autrui, (other, or other people), which in turn comes from the Latin later, meaning other. Comte's ethical doctrine of altruism is rooted in the insistence that individuals are morally obligated to put the interests of others above their self-interest for the sake of society. Here’s the kicker – Comte rejected metaphysics and theism outright. He did not believe in anything spiritual. Instead, he believed in the sociological law of three stages in which his positivist stage – a philosophical system that accepted only that which could be scientifically recognized or proven via logic or mathematics – represented the pinnacle of human development, ranking far above the necessary yet inferior theological and metaphysical stages of social development (both of which needed to be abandoned). Though Comte denied the reality of God and Creation, he valued the social utility of religion; so much so, that he ended up creating a secular religion, aptly called The Religion of Humanity. I have rambled on about all of this because I have spent the last couple of days thinking about a recent post on Dr. Charlton’s Notions blog. The post was a succinct and penetrating summation of “what is best, deepest, and most important about the work of Rudolf Steiner” as provided by the late editor-in-chief of Steiner books, Christopher Bamford. The following lists the main points:
This is creation. Our life on Earth is spiritual; this spiritual life is about love; and this love is creation. Creation is made-of love; and the aim of evolution is to develop this love and consciousness of love. Love among Men is not sufficient, but it is essential. The first commandment to love god, and the second commandment to love fellow Men are no longer, since Christ, possible to separate. Both are necessary for each other. Dr.Charlton’s post on Bamford/Steiner raises many vital questions that require immediate reflection. Among these, one struck me as particularly significant: Since our life on Earth is spiritual, and the purpose of this life on Earth is the establishment of relationships through which to learn how to love – to cultivate love via consciousness – then what “sort” of love should people be aiming for, learning, and cultivating? The answer is simple. Christian love. True Christian love. The kind that does not include altruism -- effective or otherwise! In my previous post I redefined SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) to more accurately reflect what they actually are – Sorathic Destruction Goals.
My redefinition is based on the understanding that the Sustainable Development Goals underpinning the global push to restructure and reset the world are all lies stemming from the Big SDG that serves as the foundation for all SDGs and related global altruistic movements. What is this Big SDG? The Big SDG is the Father of all SDGs, and the Father of Lies is the father of all SDGs. And big SDG upon which all other SDGs are based is the Big SDG of Satan Doing Good. |
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