Erosion of society -By Robert Fullarton Copyright 2017

Erosion of society

-By Robert Fullarton Copyright 2017

Its seems to me that the psychology of victimhood has been used to great effect in these recent years, over minorities and majorities, governments and societies, to look at the so-called oppressed and the oppressors and make such the dogma and the taboo of the age we live in. The taboo of course has reached such a farcical state that open-free debate, analysis and reason are road blocked with the common shibboleth of words, slurs and accusations coming from the stoked up fires of the socialist politic. One treads over one’s statements like walking over the shards of cut thread glass, and more appropriately the cut glass of a society being splintered and smashed beyond repair.

We see the degeneration and collapse of society, likewise as great minds in history saw their civilisation plummet to a cataclysm. Social injustice, moral decadence, deep division and the over extension of political power, all contributed to the collapse of the Roman empire, in its final form, Rome on many occasion broke down from senatorial democracy to out-right dictatorship, despotism and autocracy, many shifts and shapes of political power occupied the Palatine and the Capitoline hill, all the evils and ugly sides of human nature were exposed and deeds compiled in the accounts of its many great historians. But the empire reached its zenith and came to its nadir, its power was unmatched but its divisions could not be ignored and so the effects set in, entropy of culture, of faith in its way of life, not only came with the founding of Christendom under Constantine and Theodosius, but a moral and spiritual sea-change made the age old love of all things violent seek, a new way and a new way of thinking. Many had their eyes open to the common human love for violence and self-gratification, something beyond the immediate need and towards the greater good of a universal truth.

Western civilisation is in sharp-decline, its people are in self-doubt, they possess a sort of masochism over their own culture and history, they have bought and adopted the critiques of the continental Marxists and social theorists, that sought to demoralise and cripple the institutions of the western way of life, accusing institutions and traditions in effect, of being oppressive, inventing the persecutory ways of hardship, where none existed, pointing their fingers into the salty fresh wounds of history.

Today I see the media and such disingenuous, utterly non-democratic, vandalism in such groups Antifa as the living nightmare of an Orwellian horde of Zombies that seek to silence all opposition through base violence! The hypocrisy of course is too hard to see, its a sort of abstract painting that you stand back from to spot. I myself find the Black Lives Matters movement to be a sort of hate filled revival of the black panthers and the black supremacist movements of the 1960’s in the dark days of the abuses of African American people and the Civil Rights Movement. Indeed if Policemen have become gun-ho then and are the type to shoot first and ask questions after, then we must have strict prosecution and reform of the institutions of the American Armed forces. All lives matter, let us not point to skin colour and let us not dehumanise any person for their skin colour!

But this has gone too far, its hate for hate, I have seen the arming of young men on the television, as the media too has stoked the racial hatred, has pointed fingers and condemned men like drunken fanatics at a tavern brawl.

One cries racist, like one cries wolf, one just so happens to find racists everywhere these days, they are under our beds, hiding perhaps in wardrobes and certainly walking our streets, like bogeymen our of horror stories they are apparently everywhere!

You see I notice a common breakdown in the rational narrative of debate, topics, of assessing evidence and of course letting the past remain in the past, to repeat these mistakes will –if the media continues to milk the delicate matter- of course lead us down a bad road. Media power of course is omnipresent and that is one of the worst factors we face today, a media so greatly interwoven into our minds and lives, culture and society, with many spawns of one particular ideology, with roots that go inside your head and everyday police the “good and bad” thoughts inside your head, as akin to the power of God almighty himself. The corporate octopus is connected, is growing ever larger and is intent on taking you over until you too become a vassal and all businesses are subsidiaries to the colossal monster itself!

Now this is the sort of thing we don’t see in a democracy, but its the product of a sick-democracy that is coming to its final stages, when men are enjoying the fruits of past labours and endeavours, the complacency and comfort of such a society becomes, stagnant, becomes weak and the former diligence of great minds rusts under the self-flagellation of a masochistic society that is an apologist to its enemies and a accuser onto itself. Such a society divided will not stand and the signs are very apparent! The process of course has been inflated and proliferated by our ubiquitous and garrulous media, who have done much to censor and shut down free-speech and such is a sign of the collapse of democracy towards a sort of corporate and elitist tyranny. The prosecution of criminals and common human vandalism, of course faces roadblocks from political and ideological incentives, legal entanglements and social dissents, if the existence of constitutions and laws become farce then justice will be derailed and the safety of men threatened in these insane times of self-doubt and silence.

Too many have viewed “social justice” as the finality of good and evil in a sort of twisted dogma and invention of the post-war generations, but the pre-existing morals and lessons learnt from history and other civilizations prior to the western capitalist system, show the need for man to return to belief in objective truth. The words “in the beginning there was God”, may seem blasphemous to the 21st century rebel without a cause, but let us see how secular government will fare in the future as radical fringe movements along with mainstream socialist ideology erode the past, the history, morals and traditions of this society. Shall we have another society as terrible and abominable as the Soviet experiment or the Nazi regime, or shall we have something similar but one with another name, offering hope at first, but failing to provide and in turn showing its brutality, and known only when it is too far. Indeed only when the chicken is in the mouth of the wolf, does it cluck in hopelessness! The enemy within is just as dangerous as the enemy without!

Brandenburg and Prussia Part 2 Artwork

Brandenburg and Prussia Part 2

Artwork

On a day trip to Berlin’s Gemaldegallerie (Picture gallery) you will find a rich, collection of European artworks, spanning the 13th to 18th century, covering Dutch, German, Italian, French and English masterpieces, having been collected by the German Kaisers and previously stored in the old 19th century Bodemuseum of West Berlin.

I went there on a day trip from Potsdam to Berlin Hauptbanhof (the central station), on a trip through the beautiful, expanses of the Tiergarten, through Potsdamer Platz and unto the Kulturforum, where there are various museums representing a rich treasure trove of art works, crafts, prints, tapestries and old imperial artefacts can be found in both the Gemaldegallerie, the museum of prints and drawings and the Artisan museum (containing old crafts and pottery spanning the history of the Holy Roman Empire).

It was the German art of Hans Holbein and Albrecht Durer that caught my attention and indeed were for me hallmarks of a holiday, for their artwork represented to me a transition in the revolution of painting. Such work contains photogenic portraits of rich Hanseatic Businessmen, politicians and Burgmasters, of the German kingdoms and duchies that made up the Holy Roman Empire of the 15th century. I particularly loved Holbein’s portrait of Georg Gisze and portrait of Anthony the Good, Duke of Lorraine. Gizse was a wealthy merchant in the Hanseatic League (a trade confederation that stretched from such cities as London, Copenhagen, Lubeck, Hamburg, Riga and Novgorod and helped to smuggle Bibles and reformation tracts abroad) and in this wonderful painting you can see Gisze in the finest clothes of the day, showing wealth and prosperity, this painting proclaimed the status of the trading elite of Germany. The intricacies of human detail are displayed, the silk robes almost shine on the canvass while contrasted with the wooden alcove, the table cloth and flowers, all adding to a very human, photogenic and revolutionary appeal to future patrons and public interest alike.

I find Holbein’s oeuvre chronicles the powerful and the rich of the 15th century, capturing the transitional changes that were consolidating in both Northern Germany and Northern Europe, as the reformation spread, as the interest in secular (non-religious) commissions increased, a very new and powerful realism of art was created, with portrait art taken to a new level in such a realistic appeal. Holbein chronicled the multi-faceted history of Germany, the reformation and infamously painted the court of Henry Tudor, as a collection showcasing the turmoil of the reformation, the chaos of a divided people and court, which comes out from the veneer of the apparently benign portraits.
I was rather taken by Albrecht Durer’s portraits of Hieronymus Holzschuher (A local politican of Nuremberg) and Jakob Muffel (Mayor of Nuremburg) which were both painted in 1526, a year before the greatest German artist and engraver died at age 57. I was drawn to the detail of these men, their faces, fixed gazes, and confidence. Durer was a very successful painter who had previously painted Maximilian I the Holy Roman Emperor, and had a reputation for quality, and for being in great demand to the wealthy and powerful of the time.

His work has a uncanny resemblance to that of his contemporary Leonardo Da Vinci, with his prints showing his versatility, great interest in all aspects of the natural world, the human body and the work of the Bible (with his fantastic series of prints on the Apocalypse of St. John). It has been said from Durer’s letters that he had started to become influenced and interested in the works of Martin Luther just prior to his death and that too had altered Durer’s craftsmanship and artistry in the way he viewed art, from the world around him and indeed in the metaphysical revolution that swept Northern Europe.

In the Gemaldegallerie I found there were a few paintings of Lucas Cranach the Elder, painter and supporter of Martin Luther. Cranach was another chronicler of the German Reformation, as Luther’s personal friend and painter, he was also the court painter to the Electors (rulers) and nobles of Saxony and Brandenburg, his works range from Biblical tales to portraits of royal hunts, with fine landscapes and castles to be seen in the background. In the gallery you can see Cranach’s copy of Hieronymus Bosch’s Last Judgment (one of my favourite painters, a mysterious genius who I believe has captured humanity in satirical pathos and comedy) here we have a triptych, three oak panels with Heaven on the left and hell on the right, with all sorts of scenarios taking place and with the God-man Jesus Christ descending from the luminous heights of heaven, as the veil of time melts away and the corrupt earth is shaken. The second coming is taken place as all people are assigned to the eternal fate based upon what they did, how they lived and what they believed while in corporeal form.

However I just cannot help laughing sometimes at Bosch’s work, (and I absolutely love the original last Judgment Triptych that can be found in Bruges at the Groenigemuseum) as a sort of powerful allegory of creation and where’s Wally satire piece, with all strange goings on, with all mankind’s quirks and mad ways on display. Flemish painter Pieter Breughel the Elder (the master of Where’s Wally painting) would take the allegory further with a more developed and biting satire, as a Flemish contemporary of the Dutch and German painters, he too captured the life, the people and the times of the reformation in his largely secular painting. At the Gemaldegallerie you can see one of his magnificent and hilarious, fabled paintings, titled Netherlandish Proverbs. This depiction of an apparently chaotic village, filled with a wide variety of eccentric characters, and assemblage of odd balls contains over 40 Dutch and Flemish proverbs and idioms that allude to the nature of the people and the times.

I have to admit from trips to both Germany and Belgium that my love for the Northern Renaissance outweighs that of the Italian one, greatly, I just love the power of Northern Art and what it represents to me as a northern European. I find Bosch, Breughel and Holbein speak to me as painters and chroniclers of the deep mystery and power of God and the passage of time through events! Having been raised a Protestant I also find myself feeling biased and respectful of the Protestant art or heritage of the period that developed the form and style of both portrait painting and landscape, to focus on the human form, with a new realism, capturing humanity and yet not devoid of the divine and the metaphysical in their oeuvre.

Societies Lack of general Faith -the examination of doubt and cynicism -Robert Fullarton

Societies Lack of general Faith

-the examination of doubt and cynicism

-Robert Fullarton copyright 2017

I was meandering through the confines of a local park, all alone, but reminded of a fact. I knew of a certain political figure once held in high esteem, and one which I too respected and admired. He was in the days of my childhood a man adored by most (in circles of liberal democracy) in the public at large and of course by my own parents as well. Over two decades scandals, have since emerged of this man’s private life, which tarnished and destroyed his integrity, as the image of the “great leader” had been tarnished and the “peacemaker” was subdued into the depths of the public’s despair and hostility. With such cases and many other on a comparable level, there is this sense of betrayal when ordinary people lose hope and faith with their own leadership. The sense of identity and purpose becomes twisted in the confusion after the scandal. I too have seen such scandals, whether they been with politicians or with the Catholic church. Men feel they cannot trust the leadership of their nation anymore, what is worse is the truth that men on a broader and more philosophical spectrum, feel the union between the peoples to have been diluted with a level of cynicism, of doubt and vigilance. Society operates on doubt, it does so by the rigours and ends of the press, it does so through its superficial love for all things entertaining, all things pleasurable and wholly utilitarian. Yet the deeper questions and hard lessons of are often ignored, by the cheap offerings of pleasure, the comfort of the moment, does not compensate for the deep answers and assurances of eternal questions.

Such superficiality and doubt do not let the societal mind permeate or exceed the mundane, to ask the big questions, to take such leaps of faith, and sacrifice, where the noble virtues of chivalry, chastity, courage, loyalty and honour are bought and sold by the weight of one’s purse, or more rightly the lure of a new smart phone. Western society, consumes; is the consumer, for the consummation of great excesses, of great luxuries, previously unknown, of great abodes, of great automobiles and great health care coverage, of great access to knowledge and yet with emptiness of heart, emptiness of community spirit, poverty of meaning and yet all such as the empire of men is built upon the works of Aristotle and the splitting of the atom, the pantheons of knowledge seem frivolous and cannot conquer the deep and seemingly eternal divisions that consequentially have seen men play out the fantasies of grandeur and shown barbarism under a fancy new name. Of course the utopia sought by the reactionaries to the regime did not bring the so desired utopia of perfection, because the minds and hearts of men went on hating.

The terrible and tragic loss of faith in the Christian churches has of course been multi-faceted over the course of the twentieth and early twenty-first century. It partly happened through the attrition of ww1, the horrors of ww2, through a broad psychological rebellion against perceived conservative structures of authority and through the general desire of another generation to cling to all things pleasurable and temporal, after times of sparse material supplies, the time of plenty came, and in peace this slide unto unbelief became a torrent in time. The youth of “free love” rebelled against the government, church, family and law, and also against the moral understanding of old. The Byronic dream to have everything- to have no needs, to answer to no person- was ironically in reality a case for delayed misanthropy and disaster.

The modern media driven society of today was birthed in the self-centred, gluttonous, desire to make money, for the psychological tour de force that all people of every class could become famous, could make money and never suffer the exposures and hardships of the previous generations. The drive to make money, clouded the heads of many ordinary people, as sheer entertainment was promulgated and flooded into the senses of the masses.

Good living, recreational pleasure, entertainment and self-preservation have become the religious desires of the public, with all time allotted to these rituals, the superficial facade of the modern rigmarole, sees neighbour trying to better neighbour in the competitive spirit of consumer/capitalist society, sees the sheer pettiness and travesty of the law courts operating upon the petty system of legalism, with vitriolic acrimony and sheer apathy between neighbours on many tiers of the social order. Men still yearn for the perfect government like bears roughing up the bees nest for the honey. Such get stung in time. Likewise as the consumer consumes the corporate inflate in revenue, net worth, in sheer assets, in the expansionism of conquering the market on a global level- this plutocracy defines the age in which live, in our compartmentalised media empire, behind the entertainment and the celebrity there lies a businessman and a corporation. These changes have created walls of disparity between people, making the elite rich even richer and the poor far more considerably poorer.

Man as the accidental machine? Against the psychology of atheism by Robert Fullarton, Copyright 2016

Man as the accidental machine?

Against the psychology of atheism

by Robert Fullarton, Copyright 2016

Greek Thinking and Roman living these two facts can be attributed to modern western civilization and to what people collectively call “the west”.We have seen the emotional castration of our civilization, whose belief in inventing meaning does not relate to the reality and logical answer that there is a fundamental meaning underlying all things seen and unseen in existence.

The Greek Socratic method of rigorous analysis has been taken too far, with a minimalistic, reductionist pattern of reducing men to a chemical process, life to anarchic chance and hope to a nullified fantasy. Upon these presumptions there can be no terms for hope, law, order, happiness and especially meaning itself. No subjective invention of meaning can exist or survive after these consequences are discussed and concluded. Man’s identity is not reduced to the medical dictionary, nor is it grounded in the neuro-chemical processes the modern minimalist seeks in vain to achieve. All those who try to explain a rational, empirically based encounter with the supernatural or even explain the psychology of belief itself (and in this instance I am talking specifically about Christianity itself) are fought with vigorous objections based upon supposed technicalities of science in which many sceptics and secularists use with presuppositions, with biasness and without considering the kernel of the believer’s postulation. One digs deep into philosophy to destroy the very abstract basis of thought, argument and order, one digs up the ground beneath one’s feet to try to disprove that there is any rational power behind life and yet proclaims his own view to be rational.

Science has to have a point to make, it must have a conscious truth behind it, to which it all answers to, it is after all purely the fields of observation, method, analysis and deduction of what exists, they are the raw material of a scene in which any person would assume must have a master who attends to it, as a creator who is empty from his studio, we do not presume that the art studio itself is just a self-created mess, but one which is a paradigm of beauty with a reason to pursue, and with ultimately a master artist whose head is full of visions of breathtaking beauty and innovation.

Frankenstein has in this version, in this world, worked hard at making himself a monster, or more truthfully has denoted that he is no entity of choice,( including one of free will, creativity, a God made creation, one drawn to the powers of the creative and emotive processes -as well as the field of scientific analysis- but is a machine of the principa naturalis, of a blind unthinking process, in fact the contradiction states that he cannot even trust his own line of thinking, since he was accidently made by nothing, becoming some-thing, being mindless and suddenly one day bearing the credentials and powers of conscious thought and contemplation.

To use psychology as the coup de grace to theism is in reality the exposure of the modern secularist-materialist worldview, all men are prone to belief, none can be indifferent, none can escape the fundamental reality of a thinking creature called man, who posits thoughts and lives upon his beliefs, which he acts out in accordance with his beliefs and ultimately his actions are based upon what he believes. Yes I am stating that atheism is a religion and one which is different to all others, it is a dreadfully novel religion which came about from the processes of pursuing the Hellenistic civilization of rigorous analysis, critical analysis, scepticism, cynicism and individualism. Individualism too, can be bad, it promotes selfish interest ahead of the community, ahead of being a part of a conscious whole (I myself used to be one to expound on individualism and now have seen the other side of the coin!) and one who puts others before himself!

This civilisation was cemented by the lambasting works of the so-called enlightenment philosophers, who demoted life to an accidental process which was followed up by the likes of Darwin, Marx, Freud, Nietzsche and Sartre and many became ideologically driven, however much of the secularism was promoted by the belief in a monistic universe, that is the philosophy of atheism and the belief in secular society.

Dread has been the final word of the promoters of a supposedly “dead and unintelligible universe”. Such have deconstructed the forms of order upon which a society is based upon, a real Christian society for instance is based upon Christian action, its nexus is upon the paradigm of Christ, upon eternal life, upon eternal peace to one’s neighbours and harmony with God. One’s actions are the fruits of one’s beliefs.

Psychology is not a means for promoting the secular-atheist belief system but instead should be the mirror in which men know their own limitations, know of their bad nature in action and need for salvation and hope.

Such exists the imperfections of our thought patterns, with the limits of our reaches, in depth, in abstraction, in semantics, in epistemology (knowledge) in the abolition of metaphysics and failure to comprehend who God is and what his power concludes and entails. We do not comprehend eternity in its wholeness but only summarize a square inch of thought, usually based upon a biasness to remove God from the picture and from the heart of life.

Most civilizations both before the Modern Greco-Roman religion of progress and those present here today outside of it, have a basic belief in a supreme being of sort, and have a sacred view and belief of both creation and its origins, they do not give themselves to the rigour mortis of worshipping the mere material of creation, their order of thought and culture comes from their belief and worship of their god or gods, for them it is a top to bottom ordered structure. The cultural anthropologist knows this, the implications of destroying belief destroys culture and ultimately makes man made laws akin to God centred truths, in such we have made our morals open to be compromised, because we question everything unto death, and as Kierkegaard stated, “we doubt everything to death!” It is not that the fact dies but merely understanding dies in the process of a utopian riddled world (who pursues Marxism, environmentalism, scientism etc) to replace the God centred life, actions and claims of Jesus Christ.

The world will know no other outside of the man who stated “love your enemies, forgive your enemies, do not repay evil for evil, turn the other cheek to he who slaps you!” The world will know no other from the man who stated he rose from the grave so to give us life beyond death, to know God, to be forgiven and ultimately become a creature of a new creation. Christianity is unique among the world’s faiths in that it is the only one which states you can know the creator himself, that he wants to have a relationship with you and that he personally became part of the creation, stepping in to save his people from the contamination of sin and showing them the way unto perfection.

The attrition of the body is for the glory of the soul! Let us not believe life to be a sham or the sliver of life of between the poles of darkness

All go into the dark nonetheless, but we must have confidence, certainty and happiness that we shall emerge from the other side for where the light shines bolder and more beautiful than ever before. All that exists surely is a fraction of what is contained beyond the pale of our mortal sight!

Reflections on the rough and tumbles of the Road -Diary- PART 1 By Robert Fullarton

Reflections on the rough and tumbles of the Road
-Diary- PART 1 By Robert Fullarton

Copyright Robert Fullarton

There are times in life when we cannot see clearly our position and what we should act upon. Sometimes unfortunately we may make the wrong decision and it may come at a terrible cost. It seems, as though the crime is unforgivable and that we are irredeemable. But to be honest, what are we to do? Are we to stand still, falter and surrender to despair? Such is the spiral staircase that can lead us as low as self-harm and even suicide. What good would such actions do for either the individual or their family?
Our weaknesses are all too clear to see in certain moments and in other moments our strengths come alive and we may be surprised! Perfection is unachievable in this morally ambiguous life, even when our heart desires to do the right thing, we may find ourselves doing the wrong thing yet again. It is the case of “I do what I ought not to do!”

You often have to go against the grain in a life of flattery, seduction and false appeal. But alas we may have a very “real moment” or “moment of purity” out from this become more than what we are or more of what we were made to be and “born to be”! But which of us can extend such “purity” in the longevity of a lifetime. The rash, fluctuating of mood, short, spare and tactless person will fall short in time, it is the diagnosis of the human species but the prognosis is an entirely different matter altogether.

A Christian has to tread a fine line often in this life between puritanical religiosity and worldly decadence. But all is clear in love, for those who love, for those who display mercy in heart and action to people who are in desperation or even those who do not deserve it. This is the radical love the Christian exemplifies and perpetuates. This is what we have been called to do by the Christ, because it is the truth and he is the point of reference, for which the hearts of men are tested, measured, given definition and exploration.
Again I do what I ought not to do my body battles my spirit, my carnal nature embattled my new identity in Christ, my temper runs short, my tolerance expires and the pride of a world full of competition and bluff veers me off my course, from my original intention to a calamity of weakness and exposure.

What do I do? Have I not crashed my vehicle into a ditch? I am now baring the spiritual scars and pains I have inflicted upon myself and perhaps upon others. Where do I go and who do I go to? We moderns have given too much faith and time to the psychiatrist and the councillor, whom we pay to offer us “feel good” mantras, passive assistance and new age religion. Despite what may be in vogue with certain circles. I never found such help to be of much use and I unfortunately dabbled in such muck! The crises of the time changes, but it is nonetheless a crises for which a humble heart and believing mind can come to terms with.

Through many times and many days, many minutes, seasons, years, months and tests, both up the ladder at the bottom of a spiritual dung heap, I know that I need the assurance of God. I asked myself who is the one who made it so? Knowledge is partial, it is the insatiable thirst that a finite mortal nibbles at the infinite, struggles to comprehend it and relinquishes to non-believe because the answers come to a non-sequitur of unbelief, cynicism and partial knowledge when it comes to all things, the omnipotent power to know all things alludes mankind in the age of sub-atomic science.
I have thought to myself who made me think and drove my instincts and desires to the formulation of a plan, towards a relationship and indeed it was and is “God who loved us first” and who loved us before we knew him. Religion is stone deaf genuflection without response, without the intricacies of depth, boldness, profundity of love and sacrifice that Christianity is in reality.

Christianity is Jesus Christ, Christianity is about relationship, remember no other world faith, states that you can have a personal relationship, knowledge or access to the presence of God and that God has three persons in his oneness and can be known in return. It is wisely and wonderfully described as a betrothal, an engagement and a marriage, beyond the mists of time, beyond this world, beyond our weaknesses and all the seduction of the world can throw at us and it is also the only faith which has redemption and forgiveness at its centre!

NIGHT a book review- Part 2 By Robert Fullarton

NIGHT a book review- Part 2

By Robert Fullarton

copyright Robert Fullarton 2016

To speak on the story of Wiesal is to examine the theological, philosophical and spiritual dilemma of existence in its entirety. C.S Lewis had pointed out before that he had bemoaned and accused the creator, even in a state of disbelief about the creation being so “cruel and unfair” and yet later stated “where did I get this idea of it being “fair” and “unfair” from?” Lewis speaks upon our judgements and perspectives that may be both unrealistic, inaccurate and incomplete in their pronouncements and presumptions. From the existence of human conscience, we have the innate and intrinsic sense of distinguishing between good and bad behaviour, but we must go further and see them as being attached to a spiritual truth, for which all behaviour has its nexus and its kernel, a point of reference if you will, where all adheres and obeys, being sustained in perfection.

The notion of goodness and badness always had an intrinsic worth, and a sense of meaning to ancient civilizations, in their fear and respect of what lay beyond the partiality of the observable human world. Today the power of such moral force has been degraded to modern terminology, wilfully nailed shut with political innuendos and scepticism but the moral universe of man was seen by the ancients to be partially known in what was seen and fully known in what was unseen. For without a reference point, no belief system or perspective can have credence or soundness to it.

Basically the belief in an afterlife was and has been the belief that all things are left unfinished and are to be resumed or attended to, after the partition of death, that life itself has no answer in itself, and of itself but in something outside it, beyond it and something more profound than the world we live in, there is the source that brings complete unison and wholeness. The pantheist believes all things to be god, but cannot give a justifiable or viable answer to the belief and notion of what good and evil really are, and of course the intrinsic reality of morality that exists in man is denied. Do we not have a natural idea of what justice demands?

Civilizations were built upon codes of conduct, reprimand and edification. Good and evil to be honest is lived out in the minds and hearts of men every day in many situations. In one man’s heart there is a revulsion and a heartfelt response to the cause of a moral catastrophe and in another person there may exist a shallow sadism to the suffering of the first man. The drama gains breadth of power because, it has been described and declared by the Theist (and the Christian Triunetheist) to be an issue concerning the metaphysical, on the spiritual wholeness of truth, one that concerns all major questions, as the enigmatic answers to the riddle we call creation.

I had not planned on writing an essay on theology or on Christian apologetics in regards to this book review, but I felt that the more I wrote, the more I got thinking on the matter and it seemed to me that this book cannot be given a mere conventional review or be dismissed in a typically modern way, using the scholar’s high-brow misunderstanding of what is at stake. Wiesal’s book and Wiesal’s experience, cannot be wistfully or flippantly dismissed, but must be examined for the individual reader. For me personally as a Christian it is the age old story of what humans can do given sufficient means and excuse to do so. What is stated by Wiesal is clear to see in the narrative, what is implied or assumed carries though the reader’s mind as the assumption and conclusion of the generation, it came further to unbelief in God, no longer was such unbelief a thing for the upper classes, the intellectuals and elite of the day but was to penetrate all levels of the social stratum. Man in the post-war western world for the greater part became comfortable in the secular society but more disillusioned, more dis-orientated than ever, his religion became the creed of communism, capitalism, scientism and even environmentalism. Ancient answers and beliefs form the Judeo-Christian faith went ignored, but men without orientation, with a diluted moral source both aspired to and later abhorred the consequences of extreme liberality, of the unimpeded nature of man, that was and has been growing.

The world today is the menagerie from which the wild animals are set loose upon each other, silent voices, in great terror can only watch on with premonitions as the first tremors begin, the ideologies, the nature of man reaches full force and then the earthquake comes to its devastating conclusion, ripping through all, it tears the ligaments of the social orders to shreds, pitches neighbour against neighbour and the talk of God only reaches a whisper in the obscure believer, as sighs and groans in human hearts tower unto an atmosphere of sheer terror.

This was what Wiesal wrote about, this was what Wiesal experienced and this is what Wiesal could not understand and still cannot to this day, for to divorce your understanding of the natural and the supernatural, means that life cannot have order against chaotic forces, cannot have definition or reason to begin with it. The common understanding or connotation of rationality and rationalism is a long unknown misnomer of human understanding for which grants dramatic irony to the man who believes in accidental chance but accords all things to a system of luck -he without knowing it is conditioned to believe in the notions of justice, fairness, good behaviour, bad behaviour, freedom and fortune etc- but has no idea why he uses such terms. The verbiage of enlightenment still hangs and drifts as not an antidote to the terrors of the inquisition but as an alternative that gives men free-reign and an unhealthy level of pride to make man aspire “above the mount of God and the flaming stones”, where one then states “I created myself.” These are the ramifications; this is the fullness of the chaotic end of order.

Christianity is about relationship with the creator, it is about the fullness of knowing and living with the spirit of God and it is about the changing of our nature into a nature of moral perfection, of physical perfection and the knowledge of spiritual truths and therefore it matures into an everlasting species, of moral perfection and everlasting life. For the Christian believes that the separation between man and God is not one purely of ontological and metaphysical proportions, but of moral differences, which need to be resolved in the nature of humanity. That is why and how Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection makes sense to me and is a perfect example of all that can be attained and lived as the separation between God and man is abolished. The night is truly horrific but men must come out from underneath the dark hideouts of the world and see the fullness of day for themselves.

NIGHT by Elie Wiesal, a book review. part 1..by Robert Fullarton

NIGHT by Elie Wiesal, a book review. part 1

on human suffering and faith.- by Robert Fullarton

I recently read Night by Eli Wiesal, a renowned Noble prize winning author of more than forty books. It touches on the well-known familiar story of the holocaust and ancient history of the Jewish people, the diaspora and the devastation caused indirectly through Jewish assimilation in Europe.

Wiesal however is more keen to emphasise the philosophical implications and the personal events, with the aftermath that has come to both his life and the world at large. His preconceptions on life have been separated and shattered like the hopes that he and the people of Sighet in Romania gave that “things could not possibly get any worse” or stoop any lower.

Each man and woman’s worst fears were confirmed, it was and has been another collective, truly refined display of human nature without prohibition, deterrence of will and force. It is the examination of what human beings possess given significant room and excuse to commit what man is capable of perpetrating on a massive and previously unknown scale.

Wiesal the optimistic and intelligent youth, the student of the Talmud, the reader of the Kabballah, the dutiful son and seeker of God in contemplation comes out of the book having been hardened, de-sensitized and made cynical after all that has happened and can possibly happen in the worst of all possible situations. To be honest however it must be stated that both Wiesal, his family and even the villagers of Sighet were warned and had opportunities to avoid what was coming and escape the “night” that would fall upon them. One man had prophetically escaped a death camp and came to tell them all what was coming their way -which gives it a distinctly contemporaneous feel to our generation and to those past where an eerie warning goes unheard and where a dreadful disaster comes upon a scoffing and incredulous people- with biblical like proportions and with typical ignorance this man was laughed at, for he could see what they could not, for he knew what was coming in the future and that the fires of persecution to the north were coming south, when Hungary actively involved itself in the persecution and the rounding up of Jewish people into hands of the WaffenSS.

Wiesal waits for the “rescuer” or the “deliverer” in the classical sense of the meaning, but the deliverer does not come, at least in the sense that Wiesal had assumed for and hoped in. His expectations are flattened and all that he has been taught and has valued is set aside as a void of meaning engulfs him from within.

He declares both God and man to be dead, as he recollects the very paces he took with his father through the selection process, between life and death, between camp labour and a burning pit. His descriptions of the camp are almost otherworldly, filled with judgments, hellish moments, here men act with a demonic passion for the system of brutality that can be in the hearts of men. Who can Wiesal trust and love in this world of betrayal, murder, survival, brute force and labour?

Truly his "night" is compared to that of what was called a dark night of the soul as St. John on the cross once termed it, or is it a realisation of what can happen and inevitably will happen in the wild house, that is mankind, perhaps if man is left to his desires he will inevitably destroy himself (to be ripped in two) or be subdued by the forces of evil that are bent on falsehood and destruction. Was Wiesal's world an idealistic shelter which kept him from the horrible reality that exists in its terrible manifestation. Perhaps one can argue that Wiesal was shocked and disturbed from within, after what had happened as his expectations were so high and so great that the experiences were beyond anything he could give understanding, reason, clarity or justification to. Wiesal's books are his long witheld expression, his breath that came after the trauma. Wiesal however could not see a reason or a redeeming factor or even a principle behind all that had happened and that is why he had declared "God and man to be dead." In part he is a spokesman for those many other people, both men and women who overtime, fell away from faith in God. In this book it is ever more poignant because he envelops the theme of the “chosen people” and he is just a 15 year old boy whose innocence has been stolen so soon in calamity that he cannot understand, nor does he even have ample time to think it over and so he comes to bewail for his people and think to himself in one powerful scene “where is God?” when a young boy with the “face of an angel”, hangs upon the gallows, with his face baring no suffering but silence and even peace. Then strangely there comes the thought in his head “he is there upon the gallows”, with the boy, (this infamous line is one of the most moving in the whole book). This book asks the honest questions each generation should ask (particularly those who want to ask why a good God would allow so much suffering to exist to those who are innocent of such circumstances).

This is the toughest inquiry for the believer and the non-believer alike, but it is nonetheless a truth and a fully rounded truth that needs to be addressed and which I would like to address further with this book review in the next part

NOTES:

 Does not man have a lot to answer for...and examine the way man treats man..its a pretty terrible legacy..one in which we all have a possible impetus to do bad. That's reality.

Christ and the Ideologies Part 1- By Robert Fullarton Copyright 2016

Christ and the Ideologies

Part 1- By Robert Fullarton

Copyright 2016

The world is the energetic "beehive" of mass activity, a world of legal and political webs, law courts where people often shamelessly sue for the least concern, where the acrimony and insinuation of "rights" give reign to hypocritical lambastings of those who try speak openly against the agenda of the day (of course I speak about Christians on this matter who are shot down and silenced for their volition). Ours is the volition and the determination to be different, live a way of life so alien to the contemporary world, to the conventional person that we are an anomaly to them, as our faith is an anomaly to the world. To love an enemy, is that not an affront to our human nature, to those who mock us, do we not stun them with our defiant love?

Ours is the city (I allude to the western Roman-Graeco civilisation to being a metropolis) made of stacked cards, a tin hut, glassy screened enigma covers our eyes and "protects" us the naturally ravaged world and the excesses of humanity. Ours is the age of unrelenting pride for the ideologies of human making. Socialism is the hypocritical distribution and hoarding of power from one class unto another, it fails fundamentally because it has not and cannot remove the corruptibility of man, man's heart needs to be remade and his mind renewed, one must also relate to the fact that "war between the classes" is the foundation of Marx's manifesto (and I have read it for myself), no peace can be spawned from the hate filled seeds of such a foundation (likewise I can compare it with Muhammed's teaching which promoted, licensed and encouraged war between those who accepted his message and all who refused).

Likewise hedonism is the baseless storage of pleasure onto the human "bottomless pit", no matter how much one consumes, the ephemeral pursuit of pleasure is fleeing before those whose eyes glow before the attractions and the failing lustre of the world. One needs enough height to wade through the shallows of the human nature and enough depth to pluck the answers from the bottom, before one surfaces to the top. A fundamental change is requisite as all is not what it seems in the world, there is so much more than what we see, but our time, is the fallible creed of the impetuous, of the unmoved, of the comfortable man whose life is but the longevity of base desires, without a knowledge or desperate thirst for the spiritual. Ours is the blindness of life, that mechanically continues without sight of meaning, for what we continue for, strive for and without the epic purpose the believer, gives all and everything unto.

SEE NO EVIL, HEAR NO EVIL - The ruthless media of the modern world and those who oppose it By Robert Fullarton, Copyright 2015

SEE NO EVIL, HEAR NO EVIL
-The ruthless media of the modern world and those who oppose it

By Robert Fullarton, Copyright 2015

I just cant bare to read the papers these days, nor can I bare to watch certain news stations. The facts and realities have dug deep into me, that the media is biased, beyond belief, because it is driven by the pursuance and acceptance of a certain philosophy or way of live. I have seen that certain names and faces remain in both print and on air for the mere support that they give to the belief system of the popular media and such work for the media, for life. Let me be blunt to state the obvious, that those who promote, pursue and adhere to the liberal/secularist values and beliefs of the modern dogma of secularism, are basically permitted and given licence to speak, given speech and credence over the populace. One side of every coin, every situation and argument is roughly given, I see this in the unbelievably politicized media, that with sheer enormous levels of self-righteousness daub and accuse others of evil, why they themselves ironically have pursued doctrines of human rights often against the life of those who are disenfranchised or have no voice of their own. The clichés of the media are tiring to examine, they believe that since the state churches have fallen, that they have replaced them as the voice and conscience of the people. Perhaps there are times when one loves a good crusading journalist in exposing injustice, but the sheer arrogance and universal belief in the media at large and in its assumption that it is the people’s mechanism for revealing corruption in the systems of government and that it is the voice of reason and the standard holder of truth, such is untrue. You can see the changes in western society and you can count the results of such governments, their policies and impositions and you can wonder, why societies have become destabilised and why there is much fragmentation in law, order and identity.

Of course there was a time when the governments of Europe were rigidly conservative, harsh in their sentencing, harsh in their treatment of social minorities and standard of welfare, but there is the extreme in its polar opposite. Have we gone to the polar opposite? Great is the social guilt that has been forged by the media, they have done much to propagate the “sins of the father” myth, that the peoples of today are guilty for the crimes of long deceased forebears for the colonisation, abuse, slavery and control that was exerted over other races and peoples in the name of empire and monarchy. I do believe more honestly that these were the actions of humans (who in every civilization behave likewise and have if one studies one’s history) who were following their human nature to reckless levels of power. Give one tribe power over the other and civil war erupts, when there is an unfair disproportion of power between one and the other you have bloodshed (this is and was the story of the peoples of former Yugoslavia). I am basically stating that human nature has within it the excesses of violence ready to perpetrate given reason or excuse. Such is not isolated to one race, people, ideology or time period, it is universal and found right throughout the human race as a whole.

The result of such a myth of great emphasis on social guilt, came with the liberalisation of Europe and with it the secularisation of its institutional core. I do not believe that a Europe de-spiritualized is something to celebrate, for it is a Europe without meaning, without identity, without true objective moral standards, For where did we get our moral standards? The origin lies in the practicalities and the conscious adherence people have given before to the Judeo-Christian faith, for which whether one likes it or not, the philanthropy of western civilization found root in, to make life more immensely comfortable, with the demarcation of the classes, poverty has been largely tackled, the identity of charity and community, welfare and justice have root in Christian chartists and abolitionists like William Wilberforce who bravely opposed and legislated the abolition of the British slave trade against the huge financial costs that it had apparently brought in. But such was done in the belief behind such moral works. Today’s media is sceptical, critical and legalistic, it has no function save but to opine one belief system and I am afraid that such is one of Marxism, with western benefits. As one person honestly called it “Capitalist Marxism” that it is a colossal hypocrisy, one of pursuing ideological goals for people, with the business class at the top of the sphere, so much is about the appearance of things, and how the rulers of the world, with the media, crusade for justice and yet oppress counter opinion from publication and power. They have forged their dogma of human rights and borrowed inspiration (whether they like to admit it or not!) from the Judeo-Christian religion (which adheres to loving  one’s enemies, to breaking distinction between peoples and for living charitably towards others, and treating the poor with respect and honour) such are only a few examples, but such makes sense and seems obvious to even the crusading journalists. They have however taken on board ideals of Marxism, utilitarian philosophy and the ideas of relativism (propounded by dangerously deluded men like Nietzsche, Freud and Sartre).

The dogma of human rights has replaced the old state church and filled the vacuum of belief, because man’s, beliefs are at the heart of his life, they shape him into who he will become. The difference between good and bad lifestyles have their origin in the belief system of the person and the people (such was even seen on a collective scale with the messianic worship of Hitler as saviour, redeemer and deliverer of the German people) and they can on the long-term create havoc on every level and rung of the social ladder. Consider this, the widespread and well circulated idea that there is no such thing as absolute truth, what will you get in the end, you will find the bottom of the floor ripped open, you will find the severing of all roads, the nonsensical haemorrhage of the mental functions of the whole, acting in full chaos. You will have chaos, operating out in full capacity because man believes that there is no absolute justice, love, life, standards of behaviour, measures of prohibition and identity. What is reality to the world these days? The subjective trends, the fickle fashions and mortal habitations of human behaviour are indulged in because a new belief-system, dogmatic in its core is in circulation.

Nietzsche had declared that metaphysics (the philosophy of religious thought) had died and preached a trans-valuation (or substitution) of moral beliefs and encouraged us to doubt, question and even abandon such beliefs (when he did this he had the Judeo-Christian faith in mind, with a ranting discourse that was foaming with the hatred of a pastor’s son in opposition to his roots, family and tradition) for a new belief system. Today the legalistic framework of the western world, does echo the disturbing promulgations of Nietzsche’s belief system (and it is as non-compos mentis as the teacher himself) and is the enacting of shrewd, loopholes and legislation (that amended previous legislation) to grant greater leniency and yet greater expanse for man to do what he wants without prohibition. The removal of spiritual prohibition and belief (I mean in the Judeo-Christian faith) has been celebrated in, by those who lived under the abusive power of state religion (which is not the same as what Christ preached and taught) who have come out in open rebellion against the often, (but not always) smothering traditions that kept previous societies in a staunchly conservative mind.

However today the Marxist ideologue has influenced the western media to believe in, propagate and pursue doctrines of liberty, rights and supposed freedoms, going further off charter and off the course of the old Judeo-Christian faith which the western societies supposedly adhered to. A sort of Frankenstein of the power-holders has come about, akin to the failed social experiment in Soviet Russia, the utopian ideology that all peoples, creeds and classes can be kept under one banner, whether it be multi-culturalism, liberalism, humanism and social democracy. The legalistic operations are working over time to hush and silence those who oppose such a social experiment and those who quite obviously state that this operation will and has failed. I personally believe that the modern, western ideology is destroying our identity, destroying the law, order, the control and the harmony of these states into a speechless codex of rules, under the pretence of freedom (one is free so long as one agrees, acquiesces and does not speak out against the hypocrisies of governments and the powers of the media who go against public opinion often for the pursuance of their secular-liberal belief system). Of course a convenient slogan is at the ready for those who (even with good intention) speak out against the inconsistencies and appeasement that exists. Today there is an appeasement akin to the western nations, who allowed Hitler to systematically rise in power, ideologue and fanaticism, this went unchecked and was even encouraged, but the libel of the media is so demented that those who speak out against this appeasement, are bullied, shouted down and given feeble excuse. You see our media, wants to push the agenda that all people, no matter what the background, belief and lifestyle can live together under the western dogma of liberalism and rights.

There are today those who would with great passion and with scary levels of deception, desire to destroy the beloved rights of the western world view, remove its liberties, leisure’s and benefits and replace them with sheer medieval despotism. If such an ideology were to conquer the west, then we can expect the dark ages to be akin to a renaissance in comparison with what will come after. This of course is the ideologue I speak of which brandishes the knife and exalts the bomb above the precious nature of life in its whole. If we continue to be a part of a “see no evil”, “hear no evil”, society for the unspoken, frustrated people, who are kept in legalistic limbo, then we will continue to decline, on the national level, but always as individuals we have a conscience, a choice, a heart, a brain, a soul (despite what, they say and I speak as a Christian) to live and believe in opposition to what the powers of the world believe has died. 

The Light dwells even in the darkness and the darkness has yet to overcome it!!

The Deconstruction of Man by Robert Fullarton Copyright 2015

The Deconstruction of Man
by Robert Fullarton
Copyright 2015

We have always wanted to hear from the one who “made the heavens and the earth” after and in the time when men can no longer govern themselves whatsoever. When natural destruction and entropy has come like the recoiling of the earth in agony, then the plot of human history and moral actions come to a conclusion. Men like art itself needs judgment. We need critical judgment, which comes from an absolute standard, with a measurement of code and composition.

A good painting often contains a sublime quality which speaks to our tastes, commands our attention and intensifies our imagination. Each object in the world has definition, for we know what we study, we have given a name to each object, whether it be inanimate or animate in nature. We observe life from in our consciousness and make decisions, not in blind illusion or delusion but all things are composed in the rational mind of choice, we view planets and burning stars beyond a billion solar masses, but they do not look up us with conscious minds.

We are the one’s who make determinations about beauty and moral judgments about mercy, altruism and empathy to others. Such exists despite the modern religion of progress and the reductionist schools of thought that have placed man’s thought and life in a textbook definition and therefore devalue the status of humanity to that of mere elevated barbarism.
I do not believe in the religion of progress nor do I give science the religious sphere of hysteria and devotion. We have heard before and right through history that each human being has a “heart shaped box” as the mathematician Blaise Pascal once stated.

All peoples and societies worship one thing or another, it is the crowning passion of a person’s life, where his heart lands after he has thrown it out in front. Even the cultural anthropologist has to admit that society in its core and man in his instincts right back to pre-history has been naturally inquisitive to the supernatural. This curiosity was seen in the early art forms of early societies. I do not believe that science naturally equates atheism, but a belief system or philosophy that comes from the inert choices of the individual. A man’s life is ultimately made up of his choices, that form a long chain of events unto the conclusion of his life.

The futurist dream of scientific perfection that began at the dawn of the twentieth century floundered like a lead balloon in time, from the sinking of the Titanic, through the world wars and the dropping of the hydrogen bomb, man witnessed with cinematic fear and trembling his propensity for destruction, as the media has the ability to hone in on the great levels of destruction on the world stage, but yet it offers no real solutions, other than to pander on negative tones and observations.
The west has benefitted immensely from the epitome of the Christian Gospels. Where else has the work of charitists, philanthropists and abolitionists come from but the moral power of the life and examples of Jesus Christ himself?

Our ridiculous modern pursuit and obsession with the technicalities of human rights have transformed our continent into a legalistic, bureaucratic, web of hypocrisy and single-minded thinking. One will be abused and hated for having said “one has found the truth” or “knows the truth.” It is tragic to think that when the people have been released from the limits and entanglements of the powerful state church (which were both good and bad honestly) that a rejoicing of the generations should commence in a mass abandonment of our traditional core, absolute morality and identity.

I know that in the past horrific things have been committed by those claiming to do the “work of God” but we know that one’s actions betray the true sentiments of the heart. One must practice what one preaches and it boils down to choice, it boils down to the freedom and the power of being a creature with a free-will.

People gravitate in a curious magnetism to where their beliefs exist, men seek to be fulfilled, but often do not fully know the deep reasons for their pursuit and their deep existential tension that lives beneath the layers of societal appearance. The deconstruction of man shall continue, because we are lead through the appeals and enticements of the modern machine in all its seductive force. Laws do not change hearts and recycle men into examples of near-perfection, only a radical alteration of the way we view the fundamentals of life can do this, and this requires the work of the one “made the heavens and the earth.” Meaning is essential to living and the quality of its core, we must not simply exist, but live beyond the life before us into hereafter and this requires a lofty effort but great love exists in the one who made the heavens and the earth.