The Total Illumination of the World

SCHOLA AETII·FRIDAY, 14 JUNE 2019

That the world, and more specifically, Western civilization, is in crisis is something hardly anyone will deny. I would like to reiterate in this paper what I believe is at the heart of this crisis, because it is a peculiar feature of our time that the various groups and factions all disagree on what the crisis actually consists of. I claim nothing less than to have an explanation. And I ask the reader to be patient, because in order to explain the cause of the crisis, one has to go a long way. What I am not looking for is finding guilty parties. I am not a moral apostle, and this is not a detective novel in which a guilty party is revealed at the end. In a certain sense we are all to blame, we humans. Nor do I care about the search for guilty parties, because those who cause and promote this crisis do not understand the error of their own thinking. The motives here are also manifold. There are several layers of people who cheer on what is happening today, the ones at the top, and then several layers of followers, and each layer has a different level of information and does what they do out of different motives.

The problem is, very roughly speaking, a very fundamental error of thought that crept into human civilization a long time ago; probably without evil intent, or any intention at all. It was a certain, new view of the world, and this is, more or less, the view of practically all people of Western civilization, and probably very many people worldwide. I must put it this way: everything you dear reader know about civilization and human nature is fundamental and totally WRONG.

You must be willing to question everything that you have been taught to be true and correct in a very fundamental way. Simply put, the idea that we improve the world by bringing more and more light, order, peace and knowledge into the world is wrong.

HISTORY

Let me start historically. From today's point of view it is difficult and ultimately a little idle to ask oneself where exactly this thought came into the world, which I would like to describe here and reveal in its destructive effect. It has become relevant for world history in the creation of the God of the Hebrews. Yahweh. It is not my intention to demonize the Hebrews or their religion. Perhaps it was the Zoroastrians or other groups who first developed the thought. That is not significant. It is essential with in this religion the Hebrews had put a new thought into the minds of men.

One thing must be made clear: the character of the God Yahweh is completely new and different from all other religions before. I suppose the Hebrews who were constantly harassed at that time simply wanted a God who would be even better, even more powerful, even greater than the many gods of their powerful neighbors. It is extremely difficult for us to understand why this turn is so important because today, after 2000 years of Christianity and 1600 years of Islam, it goes without saying that there is an Absolute, an idea of the absolutely highest and ultimate good. That is the problem we have. Not the God Yahweh, not the religion of the Jews, Christians or Muslims. These have only been temporary vehicles of an idea. There is, so the idea says, an absolute, last good that can be achieved: by control, by order, by what I call illumination: the abolition of all darkness.

Here, too, the reader must let go of all prejudices, and that is very difficult, because we are all so strongly influenced by presenting the good as a singular. As something that is one, and that the dark, the chaotic is evil.

Yahweh has three qualities, and these are important to understand: he is omnipotent, omniscient and all-good. To be omnipotent means there is no limit for him. There is nothing to stop him, his power is endless. Omnipotence means that everything happens according to his will. As the Bible says, no leaf falls from a tree without Yahweh's will. Secondly, he is omniscient, he looks into every bedroom, every chamber, he knows all your thoughts and feelings. Nothing is private or hidden from him. Everything you think or feel is revealed to him, illuminated: apparently. And thirdly, the result is that he is always good. He never makes mistakes, he never makes errors, and his actions are never bad and therefore not to be questioned or discussed by anyone.

This excursion into religion may seem strange to you, but we must tackle the problem at the spiritual root. As I said, it is not a question of attributing guilt to certain religions. Because the idea is what I am writing here against, and religions are only one form of many forms in which this idea has been passed on. It means there is ONE good, not many definitions of good, and that good is attainable when a single power knows everything and controls everything. This is the new thought that came into the world then, and it is our problem today.

THESIS

I maintain, and here too I must ask for patience, that all the signs of the crisis that we lament or discuss today are not by-products of the development, or unfortunate, unwanted consequences, they are the actual OBJECTIVE, they are the very purpose of those who believe in this idea, who exist in ever different groups and movements, and whose effect hits us today in a kind of final stage. And that is all: extinction of species, destruction of nature, mass migration, world wars, gender madness, disintegration of families, materialism, nihilism and finally transhumanism - all this is not a side effect: it is the purpose itself.

To understand that, you have to see how those are thinking who are pursuing this cause. But what shall we call it? I can only describe it, according to its title, Total Illumination. It can also be described as "light" or "order". Here one has to understand one thing. It's not about seeing light or order as something bad. There has been this idea in the world for about 2500 years: First, the world is bad by nature. So, the natural, the naturally grown, is the evil. Nature is chaos, nature is the unguided, the uncontrolled - nature is the cause of evil. In religious terms, it was the concept of sin. Nature is sin. That is their first thesis. Second, it follows that nature must be reshaped with artificial plans, that is, nothing must remain as it is naturally grown, because ALL that grows naturally is sinful or bad, chaotic, imperfect, and the natural must be replaced by what is artificially made. The constructed is order, the world must be illuminated, brightened, and nothing must remain in darkness, for everything dark and natural is chaos; it eludes the planned world.

For a very long time this remains only on the level of religion. I say "only" in quotation marks, for this certainty has done enough damage. Crusades, Jihads, Inquisitions. It is the idea that the world is bad, sinful, damaged, and can be brought to a perfect utopia by illuminating all parts. In this religious phase, the ideal was still God. The God who sees you everywhere, in bed, at work, alone, he knows all your thoughts, all feelings, and every thought, every feeling can be a crime. It is the invention of the thought crime. I know that it will be very difficult for many people to perceive Moses and Jesus as the inventors of the most destructive idea of mankind, but that is the truth. It is not my intention to accuse Jesus, Moses or any of their followers of evil motives. That would be a complete misinterpretation of their actions.

People like Moses and Jesus when they postulated a God who knows everything and can do everything could not imagine what that would do. They knew neither Internet nor drones, no Stasi and no KGB, no technological surveillance by "Alexa" and smartphones, no fascism and no communism. They were probably sincerely concerned about the suffering of their fellow human beings, and they came up with an idea, an instance that would one day do everything well: their God. And this instance had just these qualities as a condition that everything would be good: he knows everything, sees everything and can do everything.

Historically, monotheistic cultures have been morally justified to do EVERYTHING. The one who has a God on his side, who knows every human being's thoughts, and everything natural is sinful, and only the world made by God, which is systematically ordered, is good, then that is no other than the invention of totalitarianism, that world view which Goering characterizes with the saying "with us only sleep is a private matter". That is what it is about.

THE IDEA

The idea is that there is one perfect world, one real society that can be created as a plan of salvation. At first it was a religious idea, although the followers of the religions Islam and Christianity soon no longer wanted to wait for God, but rather quickly moved on to want to create this perfect "godly" world themselves. If necessary by force. For if there is a plan of salvation, a single correct order, then by definition every contradiction is evil. It is the exclusion of any debate. Good is only one thing, and there are those who recognize it and there are those who do not. The world is divided into two camps.

The followers of this idea believe that one can order the world perfectly and justly; but for this all which has naturally grown must be overturned and destroyed, and in its place must come that which is planned, artificially made and consciously controlled. In the religious form this is God, or his governors, the religions. Christians and Muslims have quite quickly stopped waiting for God, even if they often talked about him: they see themselves as bringers of salvation, they themselves are the architects of the perfect world. Sometimes with persuasion, if that doesn't work, with violence. It doesn't matter whether the means are peaceful or violent. It is important that you understand the idea: they assume, it is possible to create a perfect world if all parts of the world are totally controlled, and this total control requires total illumination. Nothing must remain in the dark. Nothing may develop uncontrolled, unseen, natural. It was first attributed to God, but churches and Imams naturally worked "in the name" of their God.

It is important to understand that this is not about anything religious at all. It is about people who spread a view of the world. Whether they spread them by force or persuasion does not matter. As a result, the thought spread that what is created by man is better than what has grown naturally; the consciously ordered and controlled world is morally superior to the uncontrolled one. That is their view.

And that is wrong. It is worse than wrong, it is deadly. For about 2000 years it was still relatively inconsequential. Only when the modern technology came up, it became really bad. This perspective, the total order, ate itself into ever new structures of thought. At first, it transformed its form into what we call enlightenment. Here it got rid of its religious form; God was replaced by reason. There is only one rational life here, and one builds it up, through, you guess it, by illuminating everything, and controlling the illuminated according to plan. I know you ask, what might be wrong with that? We must go deeper here, we cannot go any shorter.

MODERNITY

So now we're in the modern age. People can read and write, books and journals are written, people become aware of their own society. Illumination makes a leap. Technology is developed, and it exploits nature without consideration. A destruction of nature of unimaginable proportions begins. Antiquity also knew this in parts. It is hardly imaginable today that North Africa was once forested and was essentially transformed into the desert it is today through centuries of shipbuilding (and other uses). Here is a small example: all of today's bare Ireland was once a forest. Ireland became the bare, forestless island we know today in several centuries of England's fleet building. Because the plan, the control of the world is without measure. As God is omnipotent, so now, secularly turned, man's action is excessive. He subdues the earth because everything made by man is better. Man is the measure of all things. The core sentence of evil, if you will.

It doesn't matter whether one is politically left or right. Everywhere the picture sticks, everywhere it is the model. Now we come to recent history. The 20th century. Here man as a species had for the first time the technical and organizational possibilities to manifest omnipotence and omniscience. Fascism and communism are the logical final stage of the idea. There is a centre, here the government, which sees everything through state organs, knows everything and can plan society perfectly. And as we know, things went really wrong.

The problem that the illuminators, the followers of the total order, still don't understand and don't want to admit: the total order didn't fail because it was wrongly approached, because total control should have been done differently somehow, but because the idea of total control ITSELF leads into chaos. And the cause lies in human nature. Man is a product of nature. He has the natural growth within him, the chaos, if you will. One can only lead man into a total order by destroying him. I think, with the leading figures who, let's call them "Illuminati" for the sake of fun, they always believe when things go wrong, if only they had MORE information, if only they knew MORE about people's most secret words and thoughts, if only they had MORE laws, more technical supervision and control, THEN they could create the perfectly just utopia. And whenever it fails, they react with more order, more illumination, more desire for omnipotence. Half conscious or perhaps fully conscious, today they see that everything natural, everything naturally grown, has to go. Thus they preach the totally mechanized world: man should live in an environment in which EVERYTHING is artificial, everything is made technically. Their utopia presupposes that there is nothing left in man's world that is not made technically artificial and thus controllable.

What you think and what you talk about: the Illuminati machine must know everything, because the more they know, the better the plan, the more perfect the control. This is the ideal: knowledge equals power equals perfect utopia. What started with the omniscient, omnipotent God and his plan of salvation which controls everything, became the human plan to know everything and from this knowledge to create the totally perfect human world. Everything which has naturally grown stands in its way. THAT's why the gender war against the sexes exists, that's why the fight against the family happens, that's why left and right are set up against each other, that's why Internet and Facebook, mobile phone and Alexa, European Union and globalism exist, that's why the Amazon forest is destroyed, that's why cities grow into infinity and eat up animals and nature literally, that's why mass migration exists, so that the grown identity expires. That is why new technologies are constantly penetrating our everyday lives. This is why all the supporters of total illumination have always had this moral furor: they are the perfect, the righteous, the elected of the perfect order. And those who see themselves chosen feel entitled to any possible means.

It does not matter what idea is given to the followers of the middle and lower levels. For the socially empathetic it is explained by the discrimination that created by the natural inequality of people; for the conservatives it is explained by the need for a strong government to control dangerous individuals. The religious are warned against disbelievers and heretics. Environmentalists are told that control is necessary for nature conservation. The capitalists are promised even higher profits if they illuminate their citizens via Facebook and smartphone. The technology enthusiasts are promised fantastic new technologies. The entrepreneurs profit from the ever-increasing exploitation of man and nature. Each group has a different reason to dominate the world: to illuminate it, to know everything, to leave nothing in the dark and thus control everything in the end. You grab everyone's fear and encourage each group with its own ideal. Everything that has grown naturally must be removed so that the totally artificially made, the totally synthetic and totally controlled world can be created.

CRITIQUE

The question here, my criticism, is not a very moral one: how humane such a society would be. My critique is quite different: the idea doesn't work. It cannot be sustained in the long run because it contradicts human nature. And we see it. To want this utopia, the totally enlightened and totally controlled world, it doesn't work; on the contrary, to strive for it creates with every new attempt ever worse destruction, ever more suffering and death. Almost all react today with this thought planted in our instincts, if we only know more, have more information, are illuminating the dark even more, then we can create an even better plan of control. Today this idea of total illumination has become a philosophy of death. The man who lives in balance with the chaotic, wild nature, which exists outside AND INSIDE of himself, that natural life is to be abolished. Instead a human being should take his place, in a world which knows only artificially made things and systems. Gender, origin, identity, culture, age, language, history, abilities, experiences - all this must be stamped and destroyed in order to make room for the just utopia of equality and total arbitrariness. And it creates madness because it goes against the nature of man himself. It is the cause of the apparent spread of insanity and hysteria. It is the suppressed shadow sides of human nature that the all-illumination does not endure and we are mentally destroyed by it. A world without risk, without surprise, without any spontaneous feeling, without the possibility to prove oneself or to fail, without secrets - that is not life, but death.

Life, nature is wild, chaotic, dangerous - and therefore beautiful. Also terrible, but that is the price is to be free: it needs darkness. The Internet, for example, has today created a self-illumination of mankind that surpasses all previous levels of illumination. We are in an uninterrupted collective monologue, in a continuous navel-gazing. Everything that was once private, that grew in the gracious shadow or that could try itself out, is immediately pulled into light. Who can exist in such an all-illumination? Who can protect himself from madness in a world in which every utterance made 10 years ago is presented to him as a tweet, as a video, as a photo? How can one live if this total illumination of life continues? If this development continues like this, one day nothing will be private anymore. Neither technically - because everything said is recorded - nor morally, because every private word is judged by moral apostles. The plan to abolish all darkness is so difficult to abandon is because the idea is so seductive. That Facebook knows everything about you is convenient in some ways, but on the whole it's terrible because there's an authority here that knows more about us than fascists or communists ever dreamed of.

To let go of this delusion will be difficult, perhaps not at all mediable for humans. It requires a considerable leap of thought to realize that it is precisely this excess of order and control, this excessive desire to know everything, to want to illuminate everything that awakens in us insanity and destructiveness of unimaginable proportions. With it goes an ever more delusional, compulsive hypermorality, born of the hypersensitivity that the all-illumination produces. It can be seen everywhere. And everywhere they call for more control, more order, more illumination of the world. Just a little more, then everything will be fine. This is a recipe that has been misleading us for 2500 years. Precisely because it sounds so good, because it is meant so well, it is so difficult to criticize it, so difficult to part with it internally. The pursuit of total illumination only leads to one thing: the fall into total darkness, and the work on the perfectly controlled artificial world inevitably leads to the insanity of self-destruction. We see it all around us.

Humanity has to learn to overcome the fear of the Chaos in the human heart, and to let go the zeal to control others, born out of this fear. The survival of humanity may depend on our ability to learn this.