Young people's vulnerability to radicalization in the West

Comes from the Wests own deep weakness and confusion in moral teaching .

Its not going to work to just "blame those who havva religion " Jung et al said we all have one so whose in denial? Kids want something more than whats being offered by the empty religion of "everything will work out if you do your own thing philosophy";  that is unaccountable godless selfcentredness".unsustainable eating theory.  Material world - where you can have everything, but eventually you us others  will find a huge hole in the centre.
Instead of taking our historical lead from Yahweh  that its OK to be angry,  we are in denial of it . Ideas have consequences and we are getting the consequences of crap ideas of convenience .Not dealing heathily with anger and frustration ( empty donuts) can lead to depression
Instead of potent Christianity we have turned its punchy practicality into woosy wobbling on moral matters.Its only taken a few short years for our kids to be not educated and innoculated ( how to think) in the great medicine of health and freedom that was the Wests for thousands of years before .

Anger cannot be a sin by definition because it comes forward as a natural response from being threatened . Adrenalin and all that . Social Darwinist s, morass relativists and sentimental post moderns  ( who only  think they are progessive Christians?)  are living in denial - both scientific and scriptural .
How can this be ? --we re all so rational here . Sorry but we are not as progressive as we like to think We like to think we use rationality here like it was bread  ( as we do with science)  .-- No that's fiction  when it comes to us / we/ them . We are really like Eve and Adam and are into naming causes other than ourselves ( Jung)
 We are blind to what we don't wanna see . Our houses of cards are full of strong single focused persons who we give permission to eat up us with our own pure and simple logic about sel and self interest . We become men weakened by their own pedantry and self willed compromises and confusion over what is really true . The truth can still set us free,  but only if we face it. .There is no ultimate power but the power we create -----or is there ?.We will find out one day .

There should not be any doubt about this new heretical teaching as Yahweh tries to talk to Cain about his anger lest he sin and kill somebody .

The God of the Bible is not on the sidelines,  he's just not being heard . People see but do not see,  hear but do not hear . Tell that in confession to your mother, or your partner sometime . Its the sort of metanoia, catharsis and tipping point  that might just prevent us going back to prison instead of the greater freedom we have had in kingdom theory for the last few thousand years . Luke 13 Be happy -think clearly and act succintly before the sun goes down . PM Turnbull is wrong to offer more endless experimentation --not a mugs game but its wasteful toy in the arcade where dumb wannabes wanna play.

Prison you say ? Well the daughters of Eve and Adam are telling us -- you don't protect us anymore . You allow us to roam the streets and commit active rebellion as if it were our God given right -- good for us like never growing up has been good for you? >You are the stupid ones ,,not us . You are the softies,  not us . We want what you had -families  fidelity and honor .   You never taught us any of that really . We would be happy just to have a better framework for marriage and the other than you offer . Islam does that .

Don't focus on the guns.  That would be to remind us how superficial unsubstantial and reactionary you are . Go listen to our hearts - they are yearning burning not to be grown up babies  like you are with your wars on everything 

Violence - who started it or who or what is going to stop it ?

People are angry and risk irrationality and the irrational and terrible acts that can follow  . What if all this careless targeting/badging of radicalization should really focus on anger and why its generated in the context. we don't have to know all the words and all the connections.
We need to know though basically why others are angry, otherwise their anger will only make us more angry and irrational too .  In my experience with youth prone to violence ( lot of us) it only takes one careless word from an adult like their parents about a group in our society ( be they teachers, preachers or media personalities) and some kid 's attitude to others can be completely ruined .
Violent words are rightly prosecuted in our legal system the same as violent acts. “ who started it?”
Who amongst us is free from guilt in this respect?   we all disobey the 8^th Commandment even if we do it oh so subtly.
 All we can do is talk to the tongue as a fire and ask for forgiveness.  The fire will burn but God comes with forgiveness and the way forward.  The family whose child went wild this week may need such help.

gods in their own right

Bill Shorten and his crew have got more than a  touch of meglomania . They are desperate . NEXT week  they want us to change marriage .  That place where 2 components make three components; and more; all competing and yet somehow called to work together . Chances are these myopic students will forget to mention children as Bill Shorten did this morning as he spoke of how HE thought something should happen . Maybe he thinks He's in the Senate where they expect to get their own way,,,, or else .
Religion can be ignored in favor of progressive thinking -SO  he seems to think , meaning we have to presume  that sentiment ( dissolving distinctions and definitions so that gays and aborigines feel better about themselves--- historic change in language just for them is truly " generous"  ) is the stuff of greatness in moral progress.( well if it works it might even be worth thinking about - we mostly know name changing WILL not work .  Most blokes from the bar up know these woosy sorts  need to grow up cause giving in to hard done by complaints is the road to softness of the brain .
Susan Neiman in her excellent book on Evil in modern Thought reminds us that religion AND political activity BEGIN where reason is missing .So whatever reasons CLINCH the deal for Labor they will NOT be enough .

Find all the reason ss you like in the 5 minutes Bill shorten  will insist to run his debate - none of them will justify HIM and Tanya for forgetting to mention the children . Unintended consequences . 

Moral Compass or Moral Confusion

We all like to present solutions to others problems . Noone takes that more seriously now than- the reactionaries in government and the ABC. All  thanks to the inevitable failure of reactionary politics over the last 100 years,  
The Fabians have only the government to back their ideas .Noone else wants to put their money forward. Their tired old doctrines of "freedom for all"," pull it down" "it will all adapt and survive" : have no life of their own outside  biology ( unless you the reader want us to be limited to the animal in us ?)
Infact the downright condemnation of man ( He s not only an animal , he's determined by his genes and behaviur =subject to condemnation ) which they imply,  leaves only one alternative - governments must be good --( get a job with them and they will convert you/bless you? ?)Congratulations authors of "Utopia"!
If they aren't able to provide redemption all our hopes for the future are dashed and we would have to admit depression and defeat - the failure of the God of wise Progress.
No where is this symbolized better than  in the name changing , the name calling and the judging 
So deep is the confusion about what sin is and what intent means that even Luke Hodge is confused about what he is guilty of TODAY . he hurt somebody - doesn't seem to matter that he didn't mean to. He apologized , but we or he don't seem to know what for . If we can't play a game of football and judge it fairly,  what hope  have we in real life ?
Yes he hit someone,  but some other bloke who got $50 million to do the same in a ring - judging motivation is for you and God or it used to be .Some people even look good when they mean evil . Thats of course too deep for those linked into evidence based drips .  Progress (WGP ) may now mean It is NOW possible for man - gospel of progress has a way of legitimizing TODAY - if nothing else
This confusion  ( to judge others minds and bodies)-can't last without putting us all in jail -No new redemption now works in the West anymore .

Penecost thankfully is coming.   

Jumping at shadows

When the Wolf wins

We have either lost sight of what makes a wolf tick,  or we lack the ticker to fight him .
The latter is the real issue of our day . 
We have teeth,  but it seems to me , we are now as post moderns afraid to use them .
No I'm not saying we are predators par excellence . No we have something better - we have a brain to overide our impulses ."But the right to use our brain has been taken away - we must think naturally like our genes do .
We used to use our brains . We would say to ourselves " lead us out of temptation " That was written before we knew we started feeling that were controlled by genes and drugs. Thanks media

That was until some smart group of simpletons  said we are controlled by our genes .
Men are the worst --each 15  minutes they are brutally struck down with testosterone - something they are no longer encouraged to show self control over ..   the god within
This , if you believe it as so many half do , effectively means we are stuck . Look at us --stunned mullets in face of 21 Cops being beheaded.

Adrenalin can flow day after day and we do nothing but not sleep  .Our brains are overloaded with confusing messages from hypothalamus the TV and our aching knees .
We can inject serotonin but when why and to what effect/ .Its not natural so why try ?
With drip feeding from the determinists we end up thinking desperately on our feet and out in the street ( what ever happened to the brain and the talk of the insane of evil within ?) -
Like some lost souls we are left in the street asking the question we never asked in our heads  --how do we  control behavior ; or should I say others behavior . We're either on Valium shaking in the locked house or out there trying to kiss wolves.

This week our Parliament is being encouraged to lock up the wolves - anyone who says something nice about ISIS. and we call them fanatics when our moves are just as fanatical ( Santayana) . The problem maybe just as much ours and our medias as it is theirs . ( we refuse to admit what our psychologists know)

The author of the above said even if you oust one demon , nine will come into replace it . The Islamists are right . the only way to win this war is with the words first . A fair fight with words would at least show them we are not the wooses they see us as  . The wind has been carrying the words of war for centuries;  The extremists are no stronger than they were ten years ago - they can just see our unplugged woosy weaknesses so much better . A tough country has a tough mindset and we are running on a weak set that sees only barriers as safety .

Target the problem and you have some chance of solving the problem .Remove the status of the texts and you remove the impetus .

 In our law ,verbal assault is similiar to physical assault because one is often a precursor to the other . Woosy leaders everywhere who do not understand or operate in a proactive manner.

More http://blog.markdurie.com/2015/02/bearing-cross-letter-to-islamic-state.html

Whose afraid of death?

Everybody fears death ---because we have reason to fear and because we are made in the image of God ( which means we know we are guilty)  -  Some of the evidence is guilt itself ,  the excuses we make for our own behavior;  the shallow substance of anything good in us ;  The wonder of something good that is beyond us..........add more

One of Helen Garner's helpful comments of her life and experience ( featuring the man who murdered his three sons at Winchelsea on ABC Book club last night )  was her revelation that we sometimes don't know what we are rebelling against.  we neither tell ourselves or heed the few  who are honest about the nature of this fear . 

We are often  mistaken about who the enemy is: we  maybe individually our own worst enemy; and not much help to others . 
  We are even a hindrance to men and women in great need because we haven't faced our our real needs -Ourselves being mirrored back to us by face of others  --"Takes one to know one" as we say here 

We  need to confront these things -

1. Knowledge of our own great potential for evil 
2. The pathetic nature of our care for others
3. The way we carry around a burden of guilt and fear and project the nature of that burden onto others 

We have reason to fear our own  death and the true judgement of our lives .


Without , I hope,  being too smart , let me offer you my own reflections  on the way into and beyond this very dark place.

• That, however good we or our friends are or have been,  we have failed to live up to the potential we have been given . We have done wrong. we think wrong, and still do

• That ours is an unweeded garden just as any other

• We deserve nothing but our Creators rejection
•  The fear of that rejection  maybe stopping us from doing the one needful thing - the moving on from here - facing the reality of our own deep sinfulness.

So , our only hope is to cling to Him who offers the only real place of rest and renewal  from these realities .   ( Its all in the prayer book )

What good can a good pedant DO ?

 Human nature is pretty scary.  'The wolf can , not only be a pedant, but that pedant can be up there at the top of the tree ".  It is said with some truth that .... If you can't DO... you teach and if you can't teach, .. you preach , if you can't preach ( and don't know HOW to DO things to test your grasp of the big picture ) you risk becoming a pedant . I used to say that  if you can't be a good lawyer ,you may be able to continue your profession and become a professional pedant correcting and controlling word traffic at the ABC.  I'm inclined , after seeing UTOPIA , to  not generalize so wildly. Some of the real reporters in the ABC  do a great job as RN , Utopia, Kath, Blake and Mother &Son 2 name just a few shows    
Sitch and Co in  UTOPIA ABCTV have proven, quite perfectly ,that not only can you be a pedant at the ABC, but you can be a very productive and professional one - make em eat their words son!   While Sitch makes mince meat of the simple  nonsense that flows from above  there is some hope for this country ;Our leaders have adopted the dumb making idol of positivism ( find your own word )  and they don't even know it . The new religion,  while rejecting the old for ITS apparent unreasonability (A quite logical observation about Christianity )is itself , quite clearly  unreasonable .You don't wanna hear the other side of the story. Progressives want only one kind of reason to rule - the positive stuff  . How did we get to agree to performance bull like that so well portrayed in Utopia  and get led by those leaders who cultivate crap. Its a world where  negative reasoning (which often avoids culdesacs by highlighting choice and 'other possibilities" the bad new s before the good news  ) is rejected because its " you are not being positive" .  We may ,as applied practical scientists. have  lost our jobs to the meeters and greeters , one siders ,name-callers, pregressives and worry warriors,  but at least when we go home from the battle, and  know we are not alone . 
I wish it wasn't so because the wonder of the program is that it shows how hard it can be for people who want to do the job and challenge the limits of public and private benefit and the boundaries between and beyond the machine ,  the natural and the ultimately the beautiful image , 
Its a tragedy of our modern education and training system that graduates in environmental engineering never get to cut it where it counts because of the name calling and second rate science produced on the good name of conservation and environment.( some biology degrees are just not enough or  appropriate)  If you don't love physics and chemistry ( the basis of how it works ; not biology which is descriptive )you can't sell it to the "thems that do "audience -   .People who can't cope  with more than one equation at a time will be for ever meeting ( 1st edition Utopia was real) , moving on ( not making decisions or quickfizzers of ones ) and making the audience do the same.  The pedants comfort zone 

Hope the polys watching realize that they must resist the cultivation of more bird nests for these flighty birds and forest feeding animals.These people who occupy chairs but who will soon be on their own.( the image) You see faith in the new too is unreasonable as Whitehead tried to point out long time ago . Why don't you run a meredescription.blogspot.com test on all the research you are now funding Mr Hockey / Mr Robb?  That would be more prophetic than the reactive productivity commission.  Reform the system .Reform the ABC  Aim high . Employ people who study the basic science and know how things actually work.  Don't let those who think they know the names of the problem try and solve them ( the species list is more than symbolic - its a book that closes doors instead of opening them)  such name calling is quick and short and appelaing but not whats needed to run a clever country . Start believing again in the public service because  the private driver pedant is killing the cultivation of the image of what a good public outcome looks like ( bigger picture than private and somewhere beyond the flat ( concrete ) and the basic ). 
Only by training people properly in house can WE hold a proper public -private debate and restore young people to the jobs that helped make planning work and AGAIN give them a job  building one the most livable cities and places in the world