Very little of what passes for ‘culture’ today, is anything more than a cult or a sub-culture. The political movements of our time have more in common with a bowel movement than any of the guiding principles they use as camouflage. The focus on the outcast, the downtrodden or the marginal has become so fetishised that the revolutionaries may soon have nothing left to capture.
Identity politics in the age of self-ID is an absurd inversion. Westminster palace was besieged last year by hordes of Muslim men, waving Pakistani and Palestinian flags, chanting we are British and we demand Britain respect Sharia law. Nicola Sturgeon claims to be a Scottish feminist in one breath, then defends the rights of convicted trans rapists and seeks to ban the advertising of alcohol (in Scotland!!!) with the next. Sadiq Khan. Michael Bloomberg. Bill Gates. Rishi Sunak.
We are surely beyond the saturation point?
But what to do about it?
Many people have come to view the world in a completely different light, since the Coronatarian moment. The evidence that the unholy alliance between corporate cartels and government has a newfound strength and confidence, and that it doesn’t care about us, was undeniably observed at almost every level of society. And I’d argue, particularly at the level of the working and (decimated) middle class.
Our society was literally dissolved by government decree and a cheap propaganda campaign.
And yet, in some ways, I think some good will come from this biomedical betrayal. If we’re honest, society was feeling pretty lost before the restrictions anyway. People would rather watch YouTube videos of some Californian Ted Talker quote-mining Buddhist texts than say hello to their neighbour in the park. They’d risk their health to have children, only to put them in full-time day care from 1 year of age and continue their illustrious career, which for many ‘strong-independent-women’, largely entails maintaining a fake smile as you colour in little cells on an Excel spreadsheet. Parents are sometimes so distant from their children, they’ll allow a 7-year-old to look at lesbian pornography online, for fear that they’d be some sort of bigoted tyrant if their child turned out to be ‘gay’.
Our currency is no longer money. Our ‘defence’ policy involves invasion, proxy wars and funding terrorism. Our ‘healthcare’ system makes us sicker, promotes abortion, sterilisation and euthanasia. Our ‘culture’ policies subsidise ‘art’ designed to assault and deconstruct all forms of beauty. Our planning and zoning policies are designed to keep housing scarce and claim to preserve character and beauty, while only building brutalist concrete filing cabinets for human beings. Our religious institutions, supposedly upheld by the monarchy, have failed so completely, that in the 2021 census, we see that Britain has already become minority Christian (ignoring first-past-the-post reasoning), with a distinctly Islamic future ahead of it, as the majority of Muslims are firmly in their most fecund years while the median English Christian plods toward a dreadful childless retirement.
The trouble with all this is not that Muslims are any kind of problem in themselves. It’s that human beings are religious creatures. And as the uniting influence of our culture has been steadily erased from our society, nothing good has taken its place. Only narcissism, and more recently, paganism.
The irony of Narcissus, of course, is that excessively focusing on one’s reflection leads to a total lack of empathy or self-awareness. Like the fish yet to discover water, most of us have been raised to disregard all culture and tradition as inherently tyrannical.
We shouldn’t be surprised at the acceptance of actual tyranny when there is no knowledge of the context in which we live. The truth of the world is that we live in the poetry of creation. We are fallen creatures, ejected from paradise for taking a bite of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Almost half of you reading this blog will have been walking around for years with an apple product in your pocket. How many of you ever stopped to ponder the iconography of the little apple with a bite taken out of it?
We are all carrying around little shrines that venerate the fall of mankind, and most of us are too zombie-like to notice it.
Or take Twitter. The evolution of the Twitter story is reflected in its iconography. It isn’t just Elon Musk dressing up like Satan for his profile pic that is a dead giveaway. When Twitter began life in 2006, it was quickly adopted by the verbal among us and heralded as the ultimate marriage of technology and democracy. A place where ordinary citizens could send their ‘tweets’ directly up the hierarchy, and publicly make their voices heard by politicians, journalists and public figures on the platform. In those days, the Twitter logo was their company name, represented as green slime. Amorphous and pond-like, representing the amphibious nature of a frog who doesn’t yet realise he’s a prince. Safely-rounded corners and relaxing tones of nature to signal a new tool for building paradise on earth. Yet, slightly repulsive, and monstrous, as any newly spawned hybrid creature ought to be.
Over the years Twitter’s iconography has evolved to reflect what its creators, superusers and guardians thought of it.
The bird of course is the opposite of the groundhog or rabbit in our recent reflections on symbolism. As creatures that unite the loftiest principles of heaven, with us mere mortals on earth, they have been seen by all faith traditions as messengers (both positive and negative) of the will of heaven. Akin to the pantheon of angels, the sheer variety of appearance and character traits of birds has shown us metaphorical application since Pagan times.
But look more closely at the Twitter bird and you’ll see some disturbing features. While it has been carefully crafted in the sacred geometry of the Golden Ratio, it resembles no actual species of bird. We cannot tell if it is a Peaceful Dove or defensive Robin. Its blue colour on a white background is often inverted, acknowledging duality. The bird appears to be taking off, aiming upward as it ‘tweets’, indicating the desire of the users to communicate ‘up the hierarchy’ of verified checkmarks. Yet the bird is grounded. It never flies. Yet, it has also been denied legs. Neither ascendant nor down-to-earth.
Except, in the Emoji movie. In that film, the Twitter bird does fly. And watching that film with my kids was the first time I noticed how disturbing and shockingly bizarre it was to see a bird fly with no eyes.
The Twitter bird is blind.
Consider the inversion that has taken place here. The eye of Horus at the top of the Egyptian pyramid indicated that the highest deity worthy of attention was attention itself. Their sky god was literally an eagle, the only creature with better vision than a human being that they knew of. Horus the falcon also represented duality, with his right eye the Sun, and his left the moon. Yet his power of great focus and attention gave him a natural position at the top of the hierarchy. One that any human could imitate, in principle.
In recent years, and most notably since the Trump ban and branch-Covidian censorship scandals, Twitter has come to epitomise the opposite of our most deeply held values. Proper attention (right worship), freedom of thought and speech (recognition of the divine nature of man), and the sacred freedom to share.
A blind bird, with clipped wings, making nothing but noise in a controlled environment. The blue-and-white duality represents nothing more than the narcissism of the virtue-signaller who imagines himself to be doing good works but aggressively @Atting and Doxxing people after the acrimonious battles of keyboard warriors are fought, often against faceless AI bots.
There could not be a more perfect metaphor to describe the current state of democracy in the West.
I would despair if we hadn’t all been here before.
I’ve been listening to Hesiod’s Theogony on audiobook this week, after reading that The Satanic Temple (in, I believe New Mexico?) has now started offering ritualised religious abortions. They will open a dedicated temple to abortion, this year on Saint valentine’s Day.
Their abortion ceremonies will ‘affirm’ the mother’s ‘right to choose’, and whisper soothing justifications in her ears as the abortionist plunges cold sterile utensils into her body, and severs and dissects the body parts of the unborn child.
Abortion is legal in New Mexico, free of any medical reason, until full term. So this clinic plans to end the lives of children as late in pregnancy as the day before birth.
Infanticide is nothing new. It has been practised by every pagan culture, throughout all of history. Ending rampant infanticide is one of the reasons that aboriginal Australians were treated so harshly by colonial authorities. The return of which, I’m sure, is one of the aims of the latest round of cultural Marxism in that great country.
Cronus (Cronos/Kronos) of Pre-Hellenic mythology was the twelfth son born of the union between heaven (Uranus) and earth (Gaia/Gaea). Like all good communists, he was the youngest, so therefore the most resentful of tradition and hierarchy. And logically, like all good communists, he used a sickle to castrate his father (cut the earth off from heavenly principles & truth).
The sickle he used was made of stone. A fascinating symbol applicable to the Marxist mind, and the biblical tradition. Stone is a symbol of truth, the appearance of human permanence, and memory. The sickle being a symbol of work and the worker (or the ungrateful employee).
After the revolution, he becomes a tyrannical King (obvs.), and marries his sister (yuk).
Like Stalin, Mao, and countless others, he fears rebellion because his guilty conscience informs him that he too will one day be revolted against. So to maintain his power, he eats all of his children.
Only, after a while, the natural spirit of the feminine and the earth get pretty sick of this repeated infanticide in the name of maintaining a temporary, vainglorious, power.
His wife, and mother earth, conspire to make Cronus eat a stone instead of his latest child. The women secretly nurture the baby Zeus to a magnificent manhood, whereupon he frees his devoured siblings from his tyrannical father’s belly, and wages war to restore the natural order of things.
Cronus doesn’t die. He becomes the God of the seasons and harvest.
The tyrants in power are having their day, but as sure as seasons pass, they too will reap their rewards.
So how should we proceed in this sick sad world of ours?
I’m dealing with it by drinking deeply from the culture and traditions that are true, good and beautiful. I have never taken them seriously before. Ut after watching my countrymen bang pots and pans together in the ceremonial deification of the National Health Service, I will try never to engage in improper worship again.
That means reading, learning, sharing and connecting, in preparation for the clash of the Titans.
Let’s all pay attention to the right things, and try to be more like Olympians, than Titans or Twits.
PS: Thanks for the pledges. If I get one or two more, I’ll be thinking about offering paid privileges. 🙂