Emergent Dislocations

I’ll make no bones – and a few readers right up front here will stop and turn away at this – and I will say that the cause of the UK heading presently more and more towards political and social dislocation – and not amongst naturalised Britons or amongst second and third generation descendants of immigrants – but amongst the proud and stiff-necked Anglo-Saxon race – the reason the UK is heading towards ever-mounting conflicting pressures which will shake it and weaken it and maybe will also have serious retrograde effects on us all here – is because our proud stiff-necked Anglo-Saxons amongst us have lost sight of those sentiments which generate and offer due honour to God.

Laugh you may; this is part of the problem.

The demographic map reproduced on the following page below shows very clearly that the English; and those who in Wales were duped by the English; were the ‘culprits’ who elected us out of the EU. In England –apart from in London which voted Remain – the whole country is coloured blue for sorrow. The comfy and insular well-off, who think they have done well, and who are so comfy and well-off that they have lost any ability to share and to care, and who see their own concerns and their own welfares as trumping in every detail and all aspects any consideration for issues other than those that darken their own doors.

This has been the net effect of the effectual teaching of all our art, media, commerce, education, and recreation for the past thirty or forty years now; there is one single theme in it: it is ok, and good and true ever to vote up oneself; period. Our sporting heroes are no longer just celebrities; they are ‘role models’; persons whom we are invited, encouraged, to emulate. Likewise it is the same with the successful in show-business, acting, arts, commerce – as if wealth and fame and social success were in some way a Holy Grail, and the key to a fulfilling and a happy life.

These things are our idols now. These people who ‘star’ in our lives are our heroes – our gods even? There is alongside this slush of infatuations a lot of talk about ‘excellence’ and ‘achievement’ in commerce and in sport and art and science and technology; there are awards for this and diplomas for that – like for the lion in The Wizard of Oz.

(But that’s a fairy tale and real life is not like that is it) (Is it?)

And what’s the nub of all this? It is this; that principle has wilted and died – in public life and in sport and in etc, etc, etc. Principle has been surpassed by worship of and desire for money; by concern for welfare of The Economy; by what might be termed a celebrated animalistic vitalism which launches into prominence the knowing, and the slick, and the roguish; the feckless and the callous, sometimes even the violent and the wicked; and this trend day by day

is extending to include the backstabbers and the treacherous and the wholly self-obsessed among us.

But principle has been a last vestige to survive; there have been recent penumbra years in which a public person has had to appeal to principle and to do lip-service to principle because the ‘nation’ had retained an echo of principle; as a lingering ostensible respect for such naïve quaint ideas and their adherents. Who now halts to let a funeral go by?

But like the east coast of Norfolk this hollow effigy of respect has now been washed away – by the tide of – of what? – what might be the causes of this erosion of civic principle? Well there’s a series of volumes to be written about that!

But well before principle suffered and fell by the wayside, belief was – was it murdered? – there were certainly people who were out to murder it. Or was it consigned to an attic with Rochester’s wife or Dorian Grey’s old age? Or maybe God just got so fed up at being laughed at and ridiculed he lit out of town?

Possibly it was all these three reasons and more. The Hitchinses of the world did their best to undermine in the minds of less securely-based persons the foundations they had thought were solid. The science buffs have convinced many of us that there are no gaps wherefrom any ‘God of the gaps’ might peep through like Wee Willie Winkie in his nightgown.

Every night and day on Radio and TV the debates ramble on; bearing the premise and the axiom that because The Church and other groups of worshipping people have been less than Christian or whatever – but again the secular persons have been no less badly behaved – then somehow God is responsible for their misconduct. And so they tick God off; and then bin him as a has-been.

Their logic is not good. They seem to argue that all Christians or whatever don’t need God after they have confessed their faith in Him; because they ought thereafter to be perfect and to behave perfectly. God has somehow waved his Phoenix-feather wand over them and dropped some fairy dust on them and bingo! – all’s right with the world for them for ever an ever amen.

Bolstered by this rubbishing of God and by this maligning carte blanche the people of God – who are in some small way striving to try a little bit to emulate the God of their worship and indeed attempting well-doing in their lives – the nation in the past 10 or so years has run riot and roughshod over religious belief.

(Specifically it has been Christian belief attacked to be frank; because other forms of belief in God are in these days less wise to attack and to do so would have fearful consequences. Nonetheless, the Christian God having been put to bed by so many of our Anglo-Saxon wiseacres, it follows that those same Anglo-Saxons consider the job on God in general done and dusted))

In his stead there are seen from time to time soppy sloppy ‘humanist’ type bandwagons – very often offering nothing more than gestures and lip-service – like a sentimental song or a general and Politically-Correct honorific reverence for a civic or social group or an event, or maybe for an individual.

Maybe it’s the case that God did get fed up with being thought a fairytale and a wuss and so walked out on us?

The very mush and blancmange we despise seeing religious persons enthuse over we are happy to indulge in our secular homage to socially and culturally prominent persons, events and groups. This enthusiasm has become our very inferior ‘social cement’; and it has replaced any religious attempting of right conduct; of paying due reverence to God; and to the tenets to strive to adhere to.

To do honour to God has become for us too long a game. It demands patience and resignation, fortitude and acceptance; resilience and bravery; whereas the secular homage is a dazzling passing frieze of new people, new products, new groups, wheezes, novelties, and such.

Yes, we have our own sunshine ‘Happy Gilmours’ and ‘Forrest Gumps’ amongst us, who obtain followings simply by their clownishness or by their attention-seeking antics.

The other side of the coin to this secular sentimentalism is that secular adoration of animal vitalism which I spoke of above; our copying of words that the ‘cool’ say and our replicating the deeds they do.

Well there is a great quantity of material I can add to illustrate what has happened here in the UK and where we appear to be heading. There is the erosion of value in general; so that almost each small and local social cluster has its abominations and shibboleths – there are no longer any generally-agreed values and their objects. And these abominations and shibboleths change quickly for their revellers; and to no rhyme or reason, excepting that which fashion and novelty throw up.

There is the general absorption of people into a general chatter of conversation; mostly vacuous and tittle-tattle, like a large rolling ocean wave crossing thousands of miles of water without other than winds and currents to give it direction; and to no purpose but to break and dissipate on a distant shore.

There is the general absorption in things and in obtaining/replacing things – and the turnover in things is astounding. Items once treasured by another generation are found for pennies in recycling outlets; once-treasured not so much for their monetary value as for the attainment of having obtained them and the pleasure and life-enhancement they gave.

All things, buildings, products and goods, services, jobs, fame, usage, quality; are considered temporary and upgradeable from or as quickly to be gone as superseded. Little that people who are not rich obtain these days is durable, solid, tasteful, pleasing to the eye, used to the full, of quality; instead the next replacement is soon on-stream and away go the past’s lesser versions.

In summary it is like an undergraduates’ term-end party going on all day every day – excepting those hours employment robs us of. No thoughts elsewhere; no thoughts for tomorrows. Sad and miserable indeed

Thus one is experiencing a dislocation in many social institutions and in general expectations beginning to take its effects. The authority of government is one item. It is being undercut: the idea of The Public Good also. A wider awareness of the world and of history, of being in-touch with a more grounded understanding of human life, of its basic needs and its best manifestations; all these have been obscured and even obfuscated.

Ours is becoming more like a fortress mentality; as if gated communities of the mind. Our ideas and ideals are complacent and narrow; they are shallow and unable to stand up without prejudice. There are groups of people finding a voice who can do little but harm to you and to me and to themselves. The cage has been shaken; and the kind and the cruel awoken. Where this will go? Who knows?

The original article can be found at our blog: http://blog.anomalistdesign.com/274-2/