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The Two Different Aspects of Creativity

7/19/2022

Excerpted from The Destiny of Man by Nikolai Berdyaev (bold added)

Creativeness has two different aspects, and we describe it differently depending on whether we focus on one or on the other. These are the inner and the outer aspect. First, there is the primary creative act in which the human being stands face to face with God, so to speak; and second, there is the secondary creative act in which he faces other people in the world.

The first aspect is the creative conception, the primary creative intuition, in which a human being hears in his mind the symphony, perceives the pictorial or poetic image, or is aware of a discovery or invention as yet unexpressed. In this primary act, the person stands before God and is not concerned with realization.

If knowledge is given to me, that knowledge is at first not an actual book written by me, not a scientific discovery formulated for other people’s benefit to be part of human culture. In the first instance, it is my own inner knowledge, still unexpected, unknown to the world and hidden from it. Only this is my real first-hand knowledge, my real philosophy in which I am face to face with the mystery of existence.

Then comes the secondary creative act that is connected with the human being’s social nature – the realization of the creative intuition. A book comes to be written. At this stage, the question of art and technique arises. The primary creative fire is not art at all. Art is secondary, and in it the creative fire cools down. Art is subject to law, and it is not an interaction of freedom and grace, as the primary creative act is. The human being, in realizing his creative intuition, is limited by the world, by his material, by other people. All this weighs on him and dampens the fire of inspiration.

There is always a tragic discrepancy between the burning heat of the creative fire in which the artistic image is conceived, and the coldness of its formal realization. Every book, picture, statute, good work, social institution is an instance of this cooling down of the original flame. Probably some creators never succeed to find expression; they have the inner fire and inspiration but fail to give it form. And yet, people generally think that creativeness consists of producing concrete, definite things. Classic art requires the greatest possible adherence to the cold formal laws of technique.

The aim of creative inspiration is to bring forth new forms of life, but the results are the cold products of civilization, cultural values, books, pictures, institutions, good works. Good works mean the cooling down of the creative fire of love in the human heart, just as a philosophical book means the cooling down of the creative fire in the human spirit. This is the tragedy of human creativeness and its limitation. Its results are a terrible condemnation of it. The inner creative act, in its fiery impetus, should leave the heaviness of the world and “overcome the world.” But in its external realization, the creative act is subject to the power of “the world” and is restrained by it.

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One Movie Cliché You Can Count On in Real Life

7/17/2022

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We've all seen films involving ropes, wires, and cords that tangle, catch, and snag on objects in the most unbelievable ways. In films, these tangles, catches, and snags lead to various outcomes such as saving the hero from plunging into a gorge or foiling a villain who gets unexpectedly tripped up as he moves to push the flashing red button that would unleash a nuclear catastrophe.

Having spent the last few months working in the garden and working around the house using all sorts of ropes, strings, extension cords, and hoses, I can confirm that the "rope/cord/wire inevitably gets caught on object" is a very real phenomenon that is not restricted to trite scenes in movies.

For example, if I am working with an extension cord, I can count on that cord wrapping itself around a tree or piece of furniture. If I am working with a garden hose, that hose will ultimately get caught up on any and all nearby objects rather than effortlessly move across the lawn. And so on.

So, if you ever happen to find yourself falling off a cliff or skidding toward a gorge, do yourself a favor and grab the nearest rope or wire. You can be assured that the rope or wire will wrap itself around something and, ultimately, save your life.

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A Pertinent Reminder About Motivation From Adam Piggott

7/16/2022

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Adam Piggott has written an incisive post in which he compares the motivations and strategies of Canadian truckers and Dutch farmers in their respective protests against the oppressive globalist policies of Team Satan.

In his post, Adam correctly surmises that the motivations and strategies fueling the Dutch farmers are of a different quality. Simply put, the farmers are genuinely defending their interests rather than merely protesting against having their interests infringed upon.

Consequently, the Dutch farmers have clear strategic aims, care very little about things like "bad optics" or negative press coverage, and are willing to use force if necessary. It's a very insightful post, and I encourage everyone to give it a read.

Adam's post on the Dutch farmers is pertinent because it cuts through the garble surrounding events such as these protest movements and focuses on motivation. As Dr. Charlton routinely reminds everyone on his Notions blog, motivation is key.

Motivation is the "why" underpinning all action and thinking, and it strikes down to the very core of metaphysical assumptions, which is what makes discerning motivation so crucial in this time and place.

A seemingly "good" movement might actually be severely compromised or rotten to the core if the motivation driving the movement is not rooted in the Divine and in Creation. Conversely, an event or movement that appears optically bad in the media might actually be genuinely good if the motivations behind the event or movement align with God and Creation.

Either way, the only protests or movements that stand any chance against Team Satan are those that are firmly based in and draw their motivation from the reality of God and Creation.

Adam provides a pertinent reminder of this fact in the final paragraph of his post:

. . . for a secular nation to resist Globalism, it will need more than just the courage of those who farm the land. It will need to rediscover its sense of the Holy. Otherwise, in a secular world, the crushing weight of Globalism is inevitable.

And what applies to nations applies even more to individuals.

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John Field - Delightful Rondos

7/16/2022

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Earlier this week I was mired in a particularly mind-numbing job on the computer, and the only thing that saved from certain brain death was this delightful collection of rondos by John Field (1782 - 1837). Enjoy!

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"You Will Own Happy and Be Somebody" Was Not Much Better

7/14/2022

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Many rightist and/or Christian bloggers have picked up on the "you will own nothing and be happy" mantra associated with the Davos Crew's Great Reset agenda and have written many scathing posts (fittingly) criticizing its inherent wickedness and absurdity. By the same token, very few rightist and/or Christian bloggers have focused much attention on the wickedness and absurdity of the unofficial "you will own happy and be somebody" mantra that dominated the West from about the First World War to 2020. In fact, most rightist/Christian posts that oppose "you will own nothing and be happy" do so primarily from the perspective of unconditionally reinstating the "you will own happy and be somebody" ideology, which can also be termed "returning to normal".

In all fairness, I don't expect much more from the likes of secular rightist bloggers who blatantly reject the reality of the spirit and the divine. At the same time, I do expect more from self-professed Christian bloggers who claim to embrace the reality of the spirit and the divine.

Despite its many obvious material benefits, the "you will own happy and be somebody" mantra that saturated and dominated the West until 2020 presented Christians with a plethora of spiritual dangers and challenges. The twentieth-century world of mass media, mass communication, mass politics, mass marketing, mass production, mass consumerism, and countless other "mass" phenomenon that enormously powerful advertising agencies, marketing companies, public relation firms, education institutions, non-governmental organizations, high finance, and government policies vehemently promulgated effectively encouraged people to abandon all notions of the divine and ground themselves firmly in materialism and objectification.

Expressed differently, the "you will own happy and be somebody" ideology into which westerners allowed themselves to be indoctrinated was -- in many ways -- wrought with as much spiritual peril as the "you will own nothing and be happy" mantra the demonic forces -- or at least some of the demonic forces -- are trying to force upon the world. I would even go as far as to posit that "you will own nothing and be happy" could never have emerged if "you will own happy and be somebody" had not preceded it.

"You will own happy and be somebody" relied heavily on motivating the seven classic Luciferic deadly sins of lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. Owning happy and being somebody entailed being "free" to buy or do or be the things their demonic overlords demanded.

Hence, the "you will own happy and be somebody" ideology entailed turning away from God and toward egoism, pettiness, status-seeking, hedonism, expediency, immorality, debauchery, perversion, stupidity, dishonesty, fame-whoring, etc. But even Christians who resisted all of that were not immune to the seemingly more benign traps of pursuing an "easy life" of comfort and security with access to certain cultural privileges and pleasures in exchange for "going with the flow".

Unfortunately, most people quickly discovered they lacked the resources to "own happy and be somebody". Luckily for them, Ahrimanic forces made themselves readily available.

For most people, "owning happy and being somebody" amounted to little more than the Ahrimanic financing and funding of indoctrinated and/or self-chosen Luciferic sins and passions via perpetual debt servitude. Instead of "owning happy and being somebody" most people ended up actually "owning unhappiness and being nobody".

Simply put, "you will own happy and be somebody" was a demonic open-world strategy for damnation. Despite its material comforts and benefits, it was an inherently evil and startlingly effective form of despiritualization because it successfully turned the masses away from the primacy of the spiritual and grounded them firmly in the external, objectified world.

Of course, the open world strategy could not have worked if the masses had not invited the strategy so willingly and actively into their lives -- but the masses did invite the strategy in. Moreover, they incorporated "you will own happy and be somebody" into their internal frameworks, obstructing the communication lines between humanity and the divine. Stripped of all inner spiritual resources, most modern westerners are defenseless against the external forces in which they are completely submerged.

If "you will own happy and be somebody" was a demonic open-world strategy, then "you will own nothing and be happy" is its counterpart demonic closed-world strategy. Though the means differ, the end goal remains the same.

With this in mind, Christians should be extremely wary about the yearning to simply return to the "normal" of "you will own happy and be somebody". More specifically, Christians should recognize that returning to "owning happy and being somebody" offers little in the way of spiritual reprieve. On the contrary, returning to the "owning happy and being somebody" mantra could end up being more spiritually lethal than the "you will own nothing and be happy" mantra could ever hope to be.

I do not believe we will return to any sort of "own happy and be somebody" ideology in my lifetime (I am fifty years old). At the same time, I don't believe the Ahrimanic "you will own nothing and be happy" mantra can succeed. This gives me hope because the totalitarian world the Ahrimanics envision would result in mass spiritual death.

All the same, the semi-totalitarian world of "owning happy and being somebody" also inflicted its fair share of spiritual death. At best, it was a lesser evil -- but lesser evil is still evil, not good.

Nevertheless, the forced move away from "owning happy and being somebody" could backfire on the Ahrimanics. The masses were more or less content or at least manageable under "own happy and be somebody". How they will respond to "own nothing and be happy" or "face imminent destruction as the entire System collapses" is anyone's guess. In the best-case scenario, these potential developments could lead to mass spiritual reawakening and re-spiritualization.

Wouldn't that be something?

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Shifting Fear From the World to God Does Not Solve the Spiritual Problem of Fear

7/12/2022

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Some Christians understand that fear has been the driver of world events since 2020. They are perspicacious enough to comprehend that evil forces have utilized and continue to utilize fear as a form of social control and spiritual sabotage. They quickly discern that this perpetual state of living in fear the demonic forces have fomented in modern people is un-Christian.

At the same time, these perceptive Christians believe the spiritual problem of fear can be solved by shifting fear. Instead of fearing the world, they argue, Christians should get back to fearing God.

Christians who air such beliefs are not referring to fear in the reverential, awestruck, wonder sense of the word, but to the flat-out, shit-your-pants, terrified sense of word.

Why? Because they understand that fear controls people. Thus, people should fear God above all else and allow themselves to be controlled by Him rather than fear the world and be controlled by it.

That makes sense, right? Sure, but only if you believe fear and control are major components of God’s divine plan for humanity.

Unfortunately, many Christians believe exactly that, which helps explain the logic behind the idea that Christians must aspire to live in fear of their loving, heavenly Father.

Moreover, Christians must regard such fear as a high value and good because it allows them to put their complete trust in God and primes them to obey His every command.

The problem with this approach is simple – it utterly fails to address the real spiritual problem of fear. Although this line of thinking acknowledges fear as a spiritual issue, it reduces the issue to a matter of misapplication and refuses to view fear as something that must be overcome.

The core of the problem then isn’t fear itself, but what you fear. Thus, worldly fear is bad but fear of God is good. Fearing the world is vice, but fearing God is a virtue.

Here’s the snag. Satanic forces use fear to govern the world. Demonic power thrives on fear. Think about how the demons and their minions have employed fear in the past two years alone.

They have used it to drag people down to lower levels of consciousness, often down to the lowest level of animal consciousness where nothing but survival matters. They have invoked fear to strip man of his dignity and to drag man away from his higher spiritual faculties and potential for spiritual creativity. They have instilled fear to distort and poison thinking. They have promoted fear to fill people with the terror of possible suffering. They have promulgated fear as a high virtue and as a perfectly sound justification for social destruction. They have demanded obedience via fear. They have administrated fear as an excuse to dehumanize and oppress. And they do all of this because they know perfect fear casts out love. A world stripped of love is the foundation of Satan’s kingdom – totalitarianism.

With this in mind, do you honestly believe that our loving, heavenly Father considers fear to be a high virtue or desires us to fear Him?

Have considered that this injunction to fear God might be an example of a misguided attempt to communicate with God?

If fear lowers the dignity of man, then how could fear possibly increase the dignity of God?

After all, if Christians fear God, then they also fear Truth.

The problem of fear is the first spiritual duty of every Christian, and it cannot be boiled down to a matter of where it is applied or to what Christians fear. The spiritual problem of fear is a matter of victory over fear.

God cannot control us, and he does not want us to fear Him. He wants us to overcome fear. He wants us to be able to control ourselves in freedom.

He wants us to overcome fear because overcoming fear is the only path to perfect love, spiritual freedom, and spiritual creativity. And none of that can happen as long as we choose to live in fear -- yes, even in fear of God.

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The Bigger Question is Why Do Modern People Desire Their Own Self-Destruction?

7/10/2022

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Why are people unable to acknowledge evil among their leaders?

Dr. Charlton probed this pertinent question earlier this week over at his Notions blog and arrived at a rather somber conclusion:

But people remain self-blinded to even explicitly stated evil, such as the Agenda 2030 or Great Reset... We are at a point when those with the greatest power and of evil intent, can publish detailed evil plans... and the masses will refuse to take them seriously.

What are the mass motivations behind such willfully self-destructive mass attitudes?

In the end, I am forced to admit that the only plausible explanation is that people desire their own destruction; that evil finds a gullible audience among the masses exactly because the masses have taken the side of evil - and in an ultimate sense, want for themselves what their evil leaders want to do to them.

In a post from 2020, I speculated that a Hanlon's Razor ethos has displaced modern people's capacity to perceive and acknowledge the existence of supernatural evil. Granted, the propensity to "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" does not offer a definitive or comprehensive answer to Dr. Charlton's question, but I sense that it does help to at least partially explain why people remain self-blinded to evil:

Modern people often employ Hanlon's Razor when criticizing or lambasting their elected political officials. Malice is rarely addressed, at least through officially-sanctioned channels, and nearly all seemingly malevolent actions and decisions are peremptorily written off as stupidity or incompetence.

But there is more to it than that. Much more. Meandering speculations about Hanlon's Razor aside, I sense modern people do not recognize Ahrimanic evil as evil for the simple reason that most sincerely view bureaucracy as a force for good. Modern people know bureaucracies - organizations, committees, political bodies, corporate boards, etc. - are crammed with flawed, fleshy yin-yangs who are often tempted to commit 'bad deeds', but they do not believe that this makes the forms of bureaucracy evil in of themselves (for example, think of those who steadfastly defend abstractions like democracy).

The only notion of heaven most modern Westerners are willing to consider is a temporal one. Contemporary bureaucratic structures, policies, and frameworks are the only means through which this temporal heaven can be established. What does this temporal heaven, this-worldly utopia comprise? A greener planet. Universal basic income. Increased international cooperation leading to eventual one-world governance. And so forth. Any threat to this vision of material heaven must be dealt with swiftly and severely, and it must be dealt with swiftly and severely exclusively through bureaucratic means.

Modern people do not recognize Ahrimanic evil as evil because they wholeheartedly believe that Ahriman is a force for good. The rejection of God and Divine Creation leaves no other option. Heaven on earth will not build itself. Such a goal requires an intricate network of plans, committees, management, data, laws, rules, regulations and everything else Ahriman comprises. And any perception of malice in this great project will be attributed to stupidity and incompetence. After all, how could those who strive to build heaven on earth possibly possess 'real' malice or be 'really' evil?

Well, if one rejects all belief in supernatural evil, then those who strive to help build heaven on earth can't really be malicious at all. At worst, they are stupid. Or incompetent. Or both.

But evil? To most modern people, the very notion is incomprehensible.

The observations above address the willful self-blinding and the decision to side with evil (which is not really evil, but good) to some degree but do little to explain the desire for self-destruction so prevalent among modern people.

With this in mind, Dr. Charlton’s post about the inability or unwillingness to acknowledge evil raises an even more pressing and pertinent question:

Why do modern people desire their own self-destruction?

As with willful blindness to or willing siding with obvious evil, I believe the answers lie in the spiritual/metaphysical.

Simply put, like the leaders/System they embrace and follow, modern people are ultimately motivated by evil, not good.

That may seem like a blanket statement, and in many ways, it is. Nevertheless, I believe the core of this blanket statement is true; and I will attempt to explore some aspects of it in my own clumsy way in future posts.

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The Implications of "They Never Learn"

7/8/2022

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Every day I encounter the following observations in some form or other:

Politician X did this, and it didn't work, yet he is doing the same thing regardless. It's obvious he hasn't learned from his mistakes.

Or . . .

The central bank has learned nothing in the past ten years! They continue to pursue the same policies.

Or . . .

It's obvious this corporation has learned nothing concerning their latest woke campaign. They're losing money, yet they insist on keeping up with it.

Or . . .

Studies have shown that these sort of interventions and measures rarely if ever work, yet Global Organization Y continues to pursue them regardless. When will they learn?

And so on . . .

Among other things, this erroneous line of thinking assumes that the elites running and managing the System are sincerely working toward good, or are doing the best they can but are fallible and are earnest to learn from their mistakes and the consequences of their actions.

At worst, it assumes that the elites adhere to things like common sense, laws, regulations, and constitutions, but that greed, corruption, and power often clouds their judgment, leading to missteps and blunders that obstruct their capacity to learn.

Either way, this "they never learn" approach is mired in fallacy because it assumes three morally and spiritually fatal errors:

The elites are blind to their mistakes and would fix them if they became aware of them.
The elite are positively motivated to learn but -- mysteriously -- cannot.
The elites are too stupid to learn from their mistakes.

Considering these points and everything that has transpired in the past two years, it is quite clear that the people entrenched in the "they never learn" camp are the ones who are incapable of learning -- not the elites.

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Order is Not the Ultimate Purpose of Creation

7/7/2022

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Many Christians believe that order is the primary purpose of God's Creation. This line of thinking posits that God's ex nihilo creativity is a little more than a grand exercise in "ordering". From nothing, God created order. Whether this nothing was actually nothing in the literal sense of the word or a gaping void or chasm in the chaos sense is debatable and largely a matter of assumptions. All the same, most Christians consider order to be the ultimate goal of Creation.

Within this conceptualization, order ranks among the highest "goods". Thus, God is order and whatever is against God is chaos and disorder. Those "with" God work to maintain order, while those who oppose God work against all semblances of order. Thus, man's role in Creation is to yield to God's "order". More specifically, to obey God and capitulate to His will, which entails man "knowing his place" and respecting and perpetuating God's order via total submission to God.

This line of thinking is not intrinsically "wrong", but I believe it can be severely limiting when misconceived and misconstrued, especially when set against the development of human consciousness. For example, what does yielding to God's "order" and submitting to God mean? Moreover, is this the end purpose of God's Creation?

If order was God's ultimate purpose for Creation, then He could have surely created perfect order, and He could have maintained it eternally. If we follow the biblical account, He did just that, but Satan and then later man under Satan's influence rebelled against God's order. Since then, God continues to sustain some sense of order while at the same time "permitting" various degrees of disorder, apparently with the hope that man will recognize "his place" and submit to the Divine Order once again, if not in mortal life, then in life everlasting. Either way, man is doomed to experience nothing but chaos and disorder unless he "bends the knee" to God's order -- in both the "structural" and the "command" sense of the term.

Or something like that.

The problem with these sorts of conceptualizations is they leave little room for deeply positive, meaningful definitions of realities like freedom, love, and creativity.

Imagine the ex nihilo from which God created as primordial chaos rather than nothing. Imagine this primordial chaos as the home of eternal beings existing in a state that could be described as "purposeless freedom".

The beings within this primordial chaos are fundamentally free but lack the "environment" and "conditions" to utilize this fundamental freedom for anything purposeful. They cannot create; they cannot form relationships with other beings; they face no challenges; encounter little in the form of stimulus. They are like people stuck in rubber dinghies in the middle of an endless ocean -- as free as can be but with little to do other than gaze up at the sky.

Through Creation, God provides the environment and the conditions for purposeful freedom. The beings God "creates" into Creation have the opportunity to "purpose" their primordial freedom. Instead of being stuck in a dinghy in the middle of an endless ocean, "created" beings within Creation exist in a complex network of connections and relationships with other beings, each capable of exercising their fundamental freedom within the boundaries of Creation.

While in Creation, beings have the opportunity to "aim" their freedom. Despite the limits of physical necessity, beings can harness their innate freedom for spiritual aims. Simply put, they can "purpose" their freedom.

The quality of these aims and goals depends on the quality of the beings. Those of lower spiritual quality aim for exclusively material aims and goals. Those of even lower spiritual quality aim to relinquish freedom altogether. Others use their freedom to intentionally oppose God. Those of higher spiritual quality will "purpose" their freedom for God.

The highest and best way to purpose freedom in Creation is not through submission to order but through creativity. God did not create Creation solely to have beings yield to its order but to present opportunities for beings to add to the order and expand it creatively.

Within this design framework, order does not take precedence over creativity; creativity takes precedence over order. God's Creation makes purposeful freedom possible but leaves the motivations behind the purposeful freedom in the hands of the beings themselves. Put another way, beings are more or less "free" to do what they like with their freedom within the parameters of the world and mortal life, but the highest "expression" of purposeful freedom remains the choice to be "free with God".

How beings choose to "purpose" their freedom comprises the bulk of spiritual learning in this world and mortal life. God ultimately desires that His "created" beings choose to be "free with Him". Expressed differently, that His "created" beings will actively align their freedom to be in harmony with His and choose Heaven where this purposeful freedom -- as creativity -- may continue unhindered by the pressures and limitations of entropy, death, and sin.

But not all beings purpose their freedom toward God. Not all want to be "free with God". Some prefer to be free without God. For most, purposeful freedom is a burden, and they unconsciously long for a return to the primordial chaos of purposeless freedom. For others, the idea of purposeful freedom is an abomination, and they long to completely "disorder" and destroy God's Creation, thereby negating the potential for purposeful freedom and creativity altogether.

The "order" in God's Creation is significant because it makes choosing purposeful freedom "with" God and creativity possible, but it is not -- in and of itself -- the end goal of Creation.

At least not as far as I understand it . . .

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