Darkness

By C.L. Bruton

We live in a world of symptomology never identifying the underlying causation.  The Western Evangelical is not impervious to this disposition.  What does it mean to be saved?  What are we saved from?

• Language: English
• Publisher: C.L. Bruton
• Release date: Jun 21, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393928485

Book preview

Apprehension

21 Prove all things, hold fast that which is good†.  22 Keep back from every form of evil.  1Thessolonians 5:22HRB

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1 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are from Elohim; for many false prophets have gone forth into the world†.  2 The Spirit of Elohim is known by this: Every spirit which confesses that Yahshua Messiah has come in the flesh is from YAHWEH.  3 And every spirit which does not confess that Yahshua Messiah has come in the flesh is not from Elohim; and this is the Anti-Messiah which you heard is coming, and now is already in the world†.  1John 4:3HRB

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13 And you shall seek and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.  Jeremiah 29:13HRB

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Ours is the business of fact finding and checking always about the enterprise of verifying the accuracy of information we encounter.  Paul makes the distinction with his emphasis on the symbiosis even proximity of evil when we willfully disregard thoughtful scrutiny.  John goes on to stress the importance of policing even filtering inbound information with the added litmus that those resources must have made a proclaimed affiliation with TRUTH, YHWH otherwise theirs is duplicitous guileful noxious intel.  Jeremiah ties it all together as YHWH is TRUTH that which we are meant to seek if we are to avoid being defrauded. 

The tragedy of bad economic ideas is that once they grab hold of society’s imagination, it becomes nearly impossible to persuade people to abandon them.  Instead, the ideas must be... disproved by experience.  Thomas L. Palley, economist and author From Financial Crisis to Stagnation (2012)

If we are to move down this path we would do well to take inventory of who we are with respect to how we tend to interact with society around us.  As a general but reliable rule we can enlist Pareto’s Principal of 80/20 at an individual level.  Our very physiology echoes this.  When we exercise if we observe our bodies will invariably attempt to find a position or form that requires less of us a physiological self-preservation.  We more than anything have an obsessive need to know that the world around us makes sense giving license with no credit limit to ignore our own ignorance.  Our mental gymnastics occur over cognitive dissidence causing intellectual perspiration from our overexertion, from our struggle to make sense of the world.  Mentally, when we encounter input we tend to weigh this new information against our experience to determine if it is in fact true, better known as cognitive ease, with the emphasis on ease.

Our weakness our mental vulnerability, is our passion to be righteous even certain this is most often achieved through cognitive ease.  We will likely even predictably choose familiar, easy, or validation, what you see is all there is [WYSIATI].  Within cognitive ease there are 4 biases we will use to fill in the missing pixels.  Confirmation bias validates our preexisting belief(s) affording us the black & white of the halo effect where it is either all good or all bad.  Negative bias is where those events we perceive to be negative which attract more of our attention.  Impact bias is our inaccurate estimation of potential events.  Hindsight bias is the perspective that all is inevitable, I knew it.  These are all mental troughs in which we feed our illusions.  It could be said that cognitive ease is the reason we fear the unknown because we can’t be bothered to investigate it for ourselves.  What is the it?  Pick a chronic incurable disease.  For a double dose choose a chronic disease which has a high mortality rate. 

If we listen to John, Paul, even Jeremiah where YHWH makes us a promise to encounter TRUTH we will realize that logical reasoning in pursuit of TRUTH cannot be overcome by mental manipulation, fraud, or subterfuge.  Pursing YHWH, pursuing TRUTH is mental even spiritual diplomatic immunity.

Confirmation bias if we are honest is really little more than cherry-picking input to confirm preexisting beliefs or ideas.  How many of us either are or have been those people who hold our truth so tightly that the blood leaves our fingers turning our knuckles white leaving us incapable even unwilling to engage much less entertain an idea that in any way conflicts with our own paradigm?  How many of us argue over politics, global warming, the cause or the who behind 9/11.  Is it even the least bit curious how some topics have been taken of the table completely removed from scrutiny only to reside in the don’t ask, don’t tell of life?  Confirmation bias is our own natural biological even physiological mechanism of both defending and protecting our observable if ingrained, ideological, or emotionally charged views.  It is the flight of the fight or flight of the mental architecture.  Our unwillingness even refusal to engage in fact-checking is little more than self-inflicted indolence or neglect.  We largely suffer from faulty thinking by way of deception.  Some might think that this is what those in the lower IQ ranges undergo but they would be mistaken as even the most intelligent or rational people among us will outright ignore contradicting evidence.

According to Daniel Kahnerman, cognitive ease is both the cause as well as the effect of a pleasant feeling, a dopamine dump lending itself to a more favorable outlook toward the familiar and easily understood while the reverse is true as well at a unconscious level hardwired to our survival. 

What is one of the most colossally copious examples is the ‘church’ or western evangelical.  As a whole the western evangelical more than any other demographic experiences certainty at a level not observed anywhere else in these sheer aggregate numbers.  The duplicity emerges out of the unparalleled mammoth numbers posted in the schism column, 40,000 and counting.  This is a self-indictment of their professed certainty as more are suffering from faulty thinking than are ever correct no matter the schism you choose.  This cognitive bias is brought on in part by our inability to accept a known truth that we don’t know what we don’t know.  It is exacerbated when knowingly or unknowingly wander off into the Dunning & Kruger effect of the majority who carry a higher level of confidence while unknowingly engaging fallacious logic while the minority possess a position of right thinking. 

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The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects.  ~Francis Bacon

The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.  ~Leo Tolstoy

The illusory truth effect

It is a case for motivated reasoning. 

The Illusory Truth Effect:  believing a thing true when it is fiction never engaging explicit or conscious memory.

Incrimination through innuendo: Can media questions become public answers?

Implicit memory

Cognitive hacking of Psyops

Weaponized memetics

Our increasingly generalized condition of complete disorientation — is untenable.

Our ability to make shared sense continues to evaporate while the fragmentation of meaning and purpose endures forever abandoning good choices to anthropology while vanquishing TRUTH from our world forever. 

Illusion of truth allows the belief in fiction even in its defense to a degree that we shutter up to any possibility that it is a lie.  Familiar = truth. 

Knowledge Does Not Protect Against Illusory Truth found that the illusory truth effect is so strong that sheer repetition can change the answers that test subjects give, even when they had been in possession of knowledge contradicting that answer beforehand. This study was done to test the assumption which had gone unchallenged up until then that the illusory truth effect only comes into play when there is no stored knowledge of the subject at hand.[i]

Surprisingly, repetition increased statements’ perceived truth, regardless of whether stored knowledge could have been used to detect a contradiction, 

This is because the illusory truth effect largely bypasses the intellect, and even one’s own stored knowledge, because of the way we all reflexively select for cognitive ease.

Some examples where the illusory truth effect can be witnessed would be the notion that people wear toning shoes for fitness, take vitamin C for colds, Enron, 9/11, even Russiagate.  We are taking part 24/7 with the exception of sleeping.

Incrimination through innuendo: Can media questions become public answers? found that subjects can be manipulated into believing an allegation simply by exposure to innuendo or incriminating questions in news media headlines. Questions like, for example, "What If Trump Has Been a Russian Asset Since 1987?", printed by New York Magazinein July of last year.[ii]

You can understand, then, how a populace who is consuming repetitive assertions, innuendo, and incriminating questions on a daily basis through the screens that they look at many times a day could be manipulated into believing anything

The repetition leads to belief, the belief leads to trust, and before you know it people who are scared of the president are reading the Palmer Report every day and parking themselves in front of Rachel Maddow every night and letting everything they say slide right past their skepticism filters, marinating comfortably in a sedative of cognitive ease.[iii]

CNN producer John Bonifield was caught on video nearly two years ago admitting that CNN’s CEO Jeff Zucker was personally instructing his staff to stay focused on Russia even in the midst of far more important breaking news stories.

The War on sense making:  The science of modern propaganda has been in research and development for over a century. 

Implicit memory is unconscious remembering, where knowledge is brought straight from memory into action. When we decide to do something familiar, we do not think hard about it. We just do it. Implicit memory is used in this to help us act without having to resort to conscious thought.

We use implicit memory in singing songs, using keyboards, ride bikes, driving and a host of other common activities.  Implicit memory 'just happens' as we recall things unconsciously.  Propaganda utilizes priming to plant information for later influence.  Implicit memory can create an illusion of certainty. 

Implicit memory exploits familiarity

Priming is an intentional stimulus meant to influence near-term or future thoughts and actions without tangible connection without the knowledge of those being primed.  Example:  food ads on TV or end caps in groceries even heightened awareness of the car you just purchased.

The battles that count aren't the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself - the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us - that's where it's at. ~Jesse Owens

There are more microbes in the human body — a number estimated to be in the trillions — than there are stars in the Milky Way.

Invisible Microbes keep your vital organs — such as your brain, digestive system, and immune system — working properly.

Life invisible

The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) reports somewhere between 30% and 50% of drugs to treat serious diseases are counterfeit. An alarmingly increasing number of us who use online pharmacies may be at risk for taking fake drugs

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19 O YAHWEH, my strength and my fortress, and my refuge in the day of affliction, the nations shall come to You from the ends of the earth and say, Our fathers have inherited only lies, vanity, and there is no profit in them†.°  Jeremiah 16:19HRB

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The relatively new discovery of the microbiome even epigenetics is an invisible world that impacts our lives more than all others.

...The church, the state, the school, the magazine, think they are liberal and free! It is the freedom of a prison-yard."

~ Henry David Thoreau, I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau

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18 But the path of the righteous is as a bright light going on and shining till the day is established. °  19 The way of the wicked is as darkness; they do not know at what they stumble.  Proverbs 4:18-19HRB

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Spiritual darkness is incarceration of the mind; the requisite superpower indispensable for liberation is TRUTH as only YHWH can save us.  Within the evangelical the main event is and has always been sin.  It is a bait and switch, a hoax where the cause has been exchanged with the effect.  Sin is the effect while deception is its cause.  Sin, the main event, is little more than tobacco science, chronic disease management by symptomology, the process of predicating a protocol based on one’s symptom(s).  What is troublesome is when we observe this philosophy having leeched its way in to mainstream religion.  When we observe a pastor of what we know as a healing ‘church’ either in a brick & mortar or digitally what we are surveilling is little more than an extension of the medical industrial complex within the embrace of the symptomatic approach to illness leaving off the underlying causation. 

Hippocrates: Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food

The irony if we are unaware of the world’s most nefarious weapon, deception it might come as a surprise that doctors have no understanding of nutrition.  Most of us would agree that we don’t know what we don’t know.  This is not deception as deception is a great deal more systemically heinous. 

More often than not deception requires an antagonist, a would be willing or otherwise neophyte of satan.  Next, acting as satan’s agent this villain would knowingly or unknowingly engage in an act of deception which is most commonly recognized as a fraud by those other than the one being duped.  The venue with the greatest influence is the theater of words where we find its most evil villain, miss or disinformation.  Ours is a target rich environment.  One particularly ripe example among the low hanging fruit is the unemployment rate presented by the BLS as an exact percentage, 7.8%.  The economists never say just shy of 8% or a little more than 7% they instead give us an exact numerical representation of unemployment to the tenth of a percent.  The precision of the numerical representation is covered with the pretense of meaning like a chicken fried steak is covered with gravy only it is meaningless possibly less.  Deception leaves us impoverished.  In this case we now know less than we did prior to our having been in receipt of this number because now more of what we ‘know’ has a higher content of untruth.  Deception leaves us with more information and less TRUTH.  The declining marginal utility of numbers of economics is so precise because of its implicit falsity.  Misinformation is fraud meant to deceive always leaving its hearer cognitively attenuated. 

Kruger & Dunning unlocked the vile depravity of deception when they described that 60% of the population are too stupid to know they are stupid all the while believe their truth to be ‘the’ truth when in fact they are completely incompetent as they present a level of confidence and self-assurance that far exceeded the subject matter experts.  This is deception that place where we are deceived to such a degree we would fight to the death over what we believe to be truth when it will never be so.  Deception’s most malignantly lethal contagion like a flesh eating virus occurs where patient 0, the initial deception, induces faulty thinking that if left unresolved will not only lower mental acuity but intellectual immunity moving forward adversely affecting all choices like deadheads in the river eventually making it impassable.  Deception’s benefactors lack the humility at an ever diminishing rate of return to ever encounter the self-awareness necessary to entertain that they don’t know provoking an inquiry.  A most excellent example of this is observed in the world of certainty, the religious theater of the evangelical where there have been more than 40,000 schisms whose divergent theologies are over mint and dill.

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23 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithes of mint and dill and cumin, and you have left aside the weightier matters of the Torah judgment, and mercy, and faith. And these things were necessary for you to have done, and these things you should not have forgotten.  Matthew 23:23HRB

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What is egregiously inflammatory is their testimony against themselves, their self-indictment that they all with utmost incontestable certainty believe their theology to be ‘the’ theology while the other 39,999 are mistaken.  It is a longitude that is devoid of mercy and replete with intolerance.

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1 In that hour the disciples came to Yahshua, saying, Who then is greater in the kingdom of Heaven?  2 And having called forward a little child, Yahshua set him in their midst.  3 And He said, Truly I say to you, Unless you are converted and become as the little children, not at all can you enter into the kingdom