This 2000 word post constitutes the final section of seven for the Pamphlet, 21st Century Tract
Going forward from the date this final section is written in June 2021, I believe existing strategic pressures will accentuate what is becoming evident already. For example, in geopolitical terms the rise of atheist, Statist, oligopolist and ultra Materialist China.
But to discern the broad strategic flow of events, we must consider the most significant changes of recent human history. For example, the last 2 centuries have seen a fundamental shift in the living environment of the world’s peoples. Two centuries ago, most people lived in the countryside and gained their livelihood on the land. But today, the vast majority live in towns and cities, gaining their income from occupations associated with urban living. This has brought a marked paradigm shift in mindset – that is psychologically – from a sense of dependence on nature and the seasons to dependence on a man made environment with man oriented priorities, and man made agendas. Certainly in Western nations, the sense of dependence on a Supreme Being has been eradicated, especially after the devastation from two World Wars in the 20th century.
In addition the world has witnessed an exponential increase in global population from 1000 million people in 1800 to 7,875 million today. While the rate of world population growth is now slowing, the human population is still growing – not decreasing – despite Covid 19.
According to the website Worldometers.info consulted on June 19th 2021, births so far in 2021 are some 65 million while deaths are 27 million. The net increase in world population so far in 2021 is 38 million people, despite Covid 19. That fact alone should cause us to question the approach to Covid control taken by governments around the world. Such an authoritarian mindset by all governments according to one idea and with one type of response is unprecedented and could easily be the beginning of a one world approach exalting human control of people and planet – the classic mindset of all regimes and cultures which worship Materialism.
The top ten countries in the world by size of population are recorded as:
- China – 1,444 million
- India – 1,393 million
- USA – 333 million
- Indonesia – 276 million
- Pakistan – 225 million
- Brazil – 214 million
- Nigeria – 211 million
- Bangladesh 166 million
- Russia – 146 million
- Mexico – 130 million
At present, the technological, economic and military power of the United States remains pre-eminent. For example, the USA accounts for 39% of current annual global military spending, outstripping all other nations.
United States pre-eminence arises from a culture of Materialism which became embedded over the last 100 years. That Materialist culture is marked by the astoundingly successful influence of its apostles. Those apostles have had a phenomenal impact on our world today. A century ago this decade, the father of modern ‘public relations’ and ‘advertising’, Edward Bernays, wilfully [and wickedly] associated disassociated ideas in people’s minds. The impact of his thinking goes way beyond commercial activity and has critically informed [and warped] thinking and practice in both politics and the mainstream media too. Today’s American billionaires include Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, respectively the founders of multinational communications giants Microsoft and Facebook. They have decisively determined the nature of, and purpose to which, today’s ubiquitous communications technology is used [or abused].
But United States pre-eminence could well be ceded to China or to Russia, or both. China and Russia figure in the top 10 of the global population tables – along with a number of Islamic countries.
My ‘prediction’ is an assessment of the strategic tendencies already emerging.
Russia, for example, has massive natural resources, and an authoritarian government. Russia is also associated with 3 other populous States in the Top 10 above, as a member of the BRICS group comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Together they have over 40% of world population and their technological, economic and military potential is phenomenal and unprecedented.
China is beyond question Materialist in every domain of human activity. She has the highest population, although India is now expected to overtake her in the next 20/30 years. China’s vast population now needs to be supplied with goods after the manner of modern consumerism. As a rural based economy until the last quarter of the 20th century, the full weight of China’s population was not felt by the world. But today, China has emerged not just as the factory of the world, but as a world leader in technology. The increasingly likely origin of Covid 19 in the Wuhan Virology Laboratory is testament to China’s emerging experimentation with power; as is her recent military occupation of disputed islands in the South China Seas. The newly emerging Social Credit system and the inhuman oppression of entire people groups like the Tibetans and the Uighur Muslims testify to China’s total cultural and political subjection to the religion of Materialism.
China will become pre-eminent in this century unless the United States or Russia take drastic, direct action to curb and control her. Russia, however, has chosen alliance with China – but is that a pact like that of Stalin and Hitle in 1939, a convenient postponement of their inevitable future confrontation ?
Of necessity, Biden’s USA continues the policy begun by Trump to confront China’s expansionism. But is the USA willing to go to war to to prevent China taking her supreme place ?
The United States, however, is deeply divided politically and socially within. She also suffers from a crushing and escalating national Debt – a debt which cannot be controlled without serious internal economic and social consequences, and without fatally undermining her military/industrial machine. Can the USA really mount a successful military operation against a power which could field the largest armies in the world and whose urbanisation programme of the last 40 years demonstrates her phenomenal capacity for logistics and the successful implementation of large scale programmes ? Without imposing her will and her agenda in this decade, the USA will find herself ceding ever more ground to China until she can no longer resist Chinese supremacy.
Sheer lust for power combined with fast depleting, finite world resources is already leading to low level warfare between these highly Materialist super powers. It is conducted via the internet, and via penetration of the economies of the developing, poorer and therefore dependent nations. Far from disappearing, colonialism and imperial ambitions are very much alive. In this connection I must make one critical observation. In none of these 21st century powers is the lust for control challenged or offset by the Christian ethic and influence as it once was in the culture and institutions of the British Empire.
Instead, the dominant Materialist religion and culture of today’s world powers is persistently reducing human beings to mere units of production and consumption. This is especially evident in those countries which never had the Christian heritage of the English speaking countries. This reduction of the vast majority of human beings to mere ciphers is made worse by technological developments in Artificial Intelligence and the existing widespread dependence on computers. Computing technology has insidiously displaced the norms of human privacy and subjected us all to the requirements of intrusive and manipulative corporate control. No-one in their right mind would allow a complete stranger to enter their home and accompany them into every room, noting all they do and examining the contents of their private spaces such as financial transactions. But that is what computer companies do today !
For their part, the indigenous populations of the western nations have already lost all sense of the Christian God and doctrine. Convinced Mammon worshippers, their peoples are reduced to a lifestyle of production and consumption. Their Values are now geared around wants and desires. Mass advertising has taken its toll. Reality TV and game shows abound, as do films and shows about inordinate sex and violence. There is no respite in the modern ultra-connected world to escape the constant hype and stimulation of senses. Young people are now increasingly diagnosed with addictions to mobile phones and internet games. An entire generation has grown up and come to middle age without the slightest conception of the West’s Christian heritage. The dominant Materialism of our age is the only reference point for their values and thinking.
Everything today teaches us to indulge our physical senses, and there is absolutely no External Immortal Power either to love us or police us. Criminal drugs gangs control the suburbs of large American and European cities. Indeed, in Latin American countries like Mexico, drugs barons and their militias actually confront and fend off the legitimate forces of law & order.
Modern technology merely accentuates these problems. Communications technology spreads evil quickly and credibly. Its speed and immediate access to whatever we want fuels a psychology of greed. In the 1920s, the first Director General of the BBC, the Christian John Reith, had high ideals for the medium of radio believing a broadcaster’s task was to inform, educate and entertain. But today, the content of broadcasting media, be it television or internet, betrays the worst of human nature.
The sheer speed of modern technology actually feeds into a psychology of greed and conflict, not rational debate and illuminating thought. The way in which even traditionally respected broadcast media handle headlines betrays a mindset desperate to capture a larger audience by means of appealing to the lowest common denominator. Thou shalt not bear false witness has been consigned along with all traditional Biblical wisdom to the bin labelled “the wicked past” and is therefore irrelevant to creating the civilised world of tomorrow.
The ideological inclinations of the western Intelligentsia today are destructive of both moral fibre and a proper grasp on reality. Not only are the formerly Christian western nations under threat externally, but the exigencies of Materialism are destroying their ability to resist internal pressures. The conscious reconfiguration of the norms of our humanity according to the extreme individualism of western Materialism is unprecedented in the entire history of the human race. A leading activist for the British LGBT+ campaign recently called for “a new normal” at a commemoration event for women graduates of the University of Oxford. The activist suggested that Oxford should promote her “new normal” – academia must now be partisan.
Such talk – with its arrogant assumption about its normality and acceptability – has developed in the open and tolerant culture of former Christian countries whose intelligentsia has been conquered by new wave Materialist Doctrine. A mentality which expects the standard norms of our humanity to be reconfigured according to a partisan minority agenda and yet be treated as normal, is self evidently extreme. The complete detachment from reality which this represents is disturbing, and it bodes ill for the survival of that culture. This extreme individualism derides the very notion of “normal” according to what people traditionally know to be normal and acceptable. Worse, it treats disagreement as extreme and seeks to censor it by smears, reproach, and exclusion from all public platforms. It is the ultimate in anthropocenticity and God hate. It is the inevitable fruit of a self obsessed individualism which has perverted the fundamental perspective and norms of Christianity to its self centred ends.
Personal responsibility in the Christian paradigm has been perverted to personal interest and greed, while responsibility before God for the interests and welfare of fellow human beings has been perverted into an obligation before the State to condone the aberrant behaviour of extremist individualism.
The Christian tradition of the western nations is consigned to the Past. As the emergent extremism of the Self destroys western society from within, the ascendant acolyte nations of Enlightenment Atheism attack the western nations from without.
The conceptions of liberty arising from the English tradition of 1215 and 1688 have been eradicated, along with the Christian God. All present indicators and tendencies suggest the triumph of what Jesus Christ labelled “Mammon” in his strategic insight in Matthew 6,24.
But this assessment takes no account of one decisive factor:
Will God intervene ?