Francis Berger
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"Amnesty" Does Not Want You To Learn From Experience

11/1/2022

10 Comments

 
So, the "Amnesty" piece recently featured in The Atlantic -- a particularly egregious example of System communication if there ever was one -- has achieved its assumed secondary aim of triggering knee-jerk reactions around the internet, which got me wondering about what the article's primary aim might be.

My gut instinct tells me the System is working to get ahead of the rising swell of birdemic disillusionment, but at a deeper level I sense that the System is aiming for a more profound spiritual goal -- encouraging people to not learn from experience. 

Because evil utterly abhors people who are capable of learning from experience. 

The remainder of this piece is a re-post of a post I wrote back in February, 2020. I have also included the excellent audio version of the post featured on New World Island's YouTube channel:

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Evil Does Not Want You To Learn From Experience 

I am of the conviction that the primary purpose of our mortal lives is to learn, more specifically, to learn from experience. Our time in this world is fundamentally about the choices and decisions we make and the subsequent actions and thinking these choices and decisions inspire. Our ability to discern the benefits or consequences of our choices, decisions, and actions determines the quality and effectiveness of our thinking and our ability to learn from experience. Learning from experience entails a conscious aspiration toward good consequences and a determined avoidance of further bad consequences.

From a spiritual perspective, learning from experience can be boiled down to choosing Good over Evil. Good is everything that is aligned with God and Creation; Evil is everything aligned with Satan who works to undermine God and Creation. At its most basic level, a choice, decision, or action that is not aligned with God or Creation will generate bad consequences. The first step in learning from experience at the spiritual level involves recognizing and understanding bad consequences. The second step is repentance of the choice, decision, or action that led to the bad consequences. The third step involves ensuring this repentance positively influences future choices, decision, and actions in an effort to avoid further bad consequences.

But spiritual learning from experience is not exclusively about the negative, but also involves recognizing and understanding when choices, decisions, and actions are aligned with the positive, with God and Creation - that is, when we are aligned with the Good. It is also about being able to discern the benefits that derive from this alignment.

These benefits are not always explicitly clear, in the same way that the bad in bad consequences stemming from dis-alignment with God and Creation are not always explicitly clear. On the surface, bad consequences might appear good, and good consequences might appear bad. This suggests learning from experience is not always straightforward and that some lessons might have to be repeated many times or might take up great expanses of time.

Learning from experience is often painful. It often involves swallowing our pride - the humble understanding and acceptance that we were wrong coupled with the desire to turn the wrong into a right. At its core, the essence of learning from experience at the spiritual level is remaining open to and accepting of the reality that the main purpose of our mortal lives is to align ourselves with God and Creation. And this openness and the effort that should follow is paramount to our continued journey after our mortal life ends.

If learning is the primary purpose of our mortal lives, then it is only logical to assume that the forces opposing God and Creation work diligently to hinder and obstruct learning at every possible turn in an sustained effort to undermine God and Creation. The ideal world for evil is one in which learning - learning from experience in particular - is considered undesirable and unsavory - not worth the effort. But the world evil really strives to bring about is one in which learning for the purpose of aligning oneself with God and Creation is not only considered undesirable, but is made increasingly uncomfortable, and, in some cases virtually impossible.

This kind of world would first motivate individuals to callously dismiss all notions of God and Creation, thereby severing all true sense of the distinction between good and evil. It would then work to invert all notions of good and evil by presenting evil as good and good as evil. It would also reduce all semblances of good and evil to the hedonic level of pleasure and pain whereby all bad choices that create immediate, short term pleasure would be regarded as good, and all good choices that created immediate, short term 'pain' or discomfort would be regarded as bad. Any 'real' pain resulting from a 'real' bad consequence would be met with pride instead of humility, and defiance instead of acceptance, thereby negating any chance at true learning.

Evil does not want us to learn from experience because it wants to lock us in darkness and prevent us from approaching the light. Evil does not want us to continue our journey - and it accomplishes this rather effectively by obstructing our ability to learn from experience. 

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil, that put darkness for light, and light for darkness, that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! (Isiah 5:20)

And greater woe unto them who fall into this trap and refuse to learn from experience because they are allowing themselves to be misled from the very purpose of mortal life itself.
10 Comments
David Earle link
11/1/2022 22:14:19

I read the title of this post in my "narrator" voice and it didn't immediately click why.

Perhaps I should get around to making more of those videos.

I have my own personal "best of" compilation of posts from Romantic Christian bloggers, but Wildblood's latest post made me curious as to what you and others would consider your best ofs.

Reply
Francis Berger
11/2/2022 12:37:04

@ David - Good question. I never thought about my posts in that way, so I couldn't tell you off the cuff. Sounds like a good rainy day project though.

Reply
jorgen
11/1/2022 23:40:35

If the peck pushers want forgiveness the first step for them is to take a sword and commit seppuku following the Samurai method. After they attempt to redeem their honor by commiting ritual suicide then I will consider forgiving them for all of .5ms and decide against doing so.

Reply
GunnerQ link
11/2/2022 00:21:56

"...which got me wondering about what the article's primary aim might be."

Choir practice, most likely. We know the media organs exist specifically to distribute Narrative talking points. A lot of their supporters are getting nervous about having supported Coof. The idea of amnesty will reassure the faithful.

And the howls of we dissidents at the idea, while fully justified, might pressure doubters to stay within the Hive for safety.

Reply
Francis Berger
11/2/2022 12:38:47

@ GunnerQ - One thing I am sure of -- it's disingenuous.

Reply
Lady Mermaid link
11/2/2022 01:46:35

The synchrony fairies are out on this All Saints Day as I just opened posted about the notion of forgiveness on New World Island.

As I stated, the devil is inverting the Christian notion of forgiveness to overlook serious wrongs or deny learning from experience as you state. The excess mortality rate and sudden deaths of healthy 30 to 50 year olds cannot continue to go unnoticed. The system leaders are becoming afraid.

Christians need to beware of the upcoming trap to use mercy as an excuse for wrongdoing. The Amnesty article is blatantly unrepentant. However, even if Oster was truly remorseful, does mercy completely override justice? I've discussed further thoughts on New World Island.


Reply
Francis Berger
11/2/2022 12:50:23

@ LM - "Christians need to beware of the upcoming trap to use mercy as an excuse for wrongdoing. The Amnesty article is blatantly unrepentant."

Yes, I agree.

Despite his open confession toward the end of the novel, Raskolnikov is not exempt from punishment at the end of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. And as Dostoevsky makes clear, confession is not repentance.

I did not read the "Oyster" article with any degree of thoroughness, but what I did read struck me as very "oyster-like" - tough on the outside, hiding something slimy within. And no confession of anything, really. In essence, the author's chief argument was "hey, mistakes were made and we were all stupid, but we are, after all, just stupid humans prone to make mistakes so let's just put all of this behind us and pull together so we can face the next current thing as a gloriously unified force of stupid humanity" -- or something of that nature.

I don't think there is much merit in arguing over fine points the author never raises, which, apparently, is what the article aims to do.

However, there is merit in seeing the thing "for what it is" and learning from it.

Reply
bruce g charlton
11/2/2022 08:41:43

@Frank - You are dead right. This is a standard mangerialist manipulation - an 'off the record' never-quite admission of perhaps some accidental error, in a few details...

What would, of course, be required is an explicit, full and detailed acknowledgment of error - and, in this case, of malign intent (because it was there).

This would then need to be made public in a sustained campaign of information, at the same kind of level by which the error was propagated; and would need to be officially recorded and brought up as a recurring agenda item in order to ensure that bureaucratic-systematic lessons were learned from it.

Of course, none of this will happen - not even slightly - and there will be no official record of any error at all. The system will officially have learned nothing, and will therefore repeat the errors again.

Reply
Francis Berger
11/2/2022 12:52:08

@ Bruce - "never-quite admission of perhaps some accidental error, in a few details..."

That puts it well.

Reply
lea
11/6/2022 03:37:57

Too much actual learning and possibly effective course-correction might put the managers out of a job at some point, and clearly that can't happen!


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