June 8 2019
IS ‘666’, THAT OMINOUS SATANIC SITUATION, IMMINENT?
I had a dream. Some prominent psychologists see dreams as important: Carl Jung comes to mind and today the author of the 12 steps, Jordan B. Peterson.
I had that dream last Sunday morning
Here’s what I saw in full color. Our entire school body, the University Prep school I attended for 8 years, was walking to the school building. There was a wide waterway in its path with a long bridge. The bulk of the students and staff were across when the bridge started to move to allow ships to pass, and preventing the laggards to cross. I was among those stuck before the bridge, seeing a vast array of fast moving ships, all cargo, sailing through the open channel at top speed.
Among the first group I had spotted my Latin teacher, who had scheduled a test that day that would determine my final mark: failing it would mean that I would not get my diploma. Let me add that I was not an outstanding student. I was highly nervous in my dream, emotionally upset.
Yes, I did pass the exam thanks to my Greek teacher whose better mark rescued me (the average was counted). This month, it is exactly 70 years that the last phase of my formal schooling ended. I now realize that the final exam, involving 6 languages and 7 science subjects, must have been the most traumatic event in my life.
So what sort of explanation is there for this strange dream? Here’s what I think.
I believe that we, as a society, face a similar traumatic situation, also a real test. The greater part of humanity will pass the bridge, and a small segment will be “Left Behind”. The reckless speed of the ships indicates to me that world events will highly accelerate. Matthew 24 relates how Noah and his family were “Left Behind”, another ‘ship’ image, while the sinners were taken away. Jesus added, (verse 39), “That’s how it will be when Jesus returns”: the Jesus’ followers will be left behind.
Is that the meaning of my dream?
So how do I tie this in with today’s circumstances?
David Brooks had an interesting article in the New York Times last week. He highlighted, “How technology reshapes consciousness.”
Here are some snippets.
“Over the past several years, teenage suicide rates have spiked horrifically. Depression rates are surging and America’s mental health over all is deteriorating. What’s going on?
David Brooks wrote that the answer starts with technology, and the sort of consciousness “online life” induces. He writes that when communication styles change, so do people.
Centuries ago, around 1500 AD a shift from an oral to a printed culture also transformed human consciousness. Once, storytelling was a shared experience, with emphasis on proverb, parable and myth and I may add, religious experiences, as everything was seen in a religious light. I remember reading a Martin Luther biography how he was caught up in a terrible thunder-lightning storm and deadly scared, vowed then and there to devote his life to serving God: so he became a monk.
At that time, Brooks writes, the printing press made life more a private experience, still enjoyed ‘en famille’, in the privacy of one’s home.
Today the shift from printed to electronic communication has similar consequences. Here people switch their attention and affection from bonds, such as from family and friends, basically to strangers and persons met ‘online’.
Yes, until recently most of the contacts a person had were with family and friends, a pretty stable situation. But now most of the attention a person receives comes from far and wide and is tremendously volatile.
David Brooks writes, “Sometimes these online posts go viral and get massively admired or ridiculed, while other times they can leave you alone and be completely ignored. Communication itself, once mostly collaborative, is now often competitive, with bids for affection and attention. It is also more manipulative — gestures designed to generate a response. People ensconced in social media are more likely to be on perpetual alert: How are my ratings this moment? They are also more likely to feel that the amount of attention they are receiving is inadequate.”
He quotes David Foster Wallace in that famous Kenyon commencement address, “If you orient your life around money, you will never feel you have enough. Similarly, if you orient your life around attention, you will always feel slighted. You will always feel emotionally unsafe.”
The internet has become a place where people communicate out of their competitive ego: I’m more fabulous than you (a lot of Instagram). You’re dumber than me (much of Twitter). It’s not a place where people share from their hearts and souls.
Of course, people enmeshed in such a climate are more likely to feel depressed, to suffer from mental health problems. Of course, they are more likely to see human relationship through the abuser/victim frame, and to be acutely sensitive to any power imbalance. Imagine you’re 17 years old and people you barely know are saying nice or nasty things about your unformed self. It creates existential anxiety and hence fanaticism and trauma caused by aftershocks of not being recognized: a victim of today’s Technological Society, the name of Jacques Ellul’s masterpiece.
Bit by bit; bite by bite; byte by byte.
It reminds me of James Comey and his opinion piece in the New York Times a few weeks ago.
Here’s an excerpt. “Amoral leaders have a way of revealing the character of those around them. Sometimes what they reveal is inspiring. For example, James Mattis, the former secretary of defense, resigned over principle, a concept so alien to Mr. Trump that it took days for the president to realize what had happened, before he could start lying about the man.
“But more often, proximity to an amoral leader reveals something depressing. I think that’s at least part of what we’ve seen with Bill Barr and Rod Rosenstein. Accomplished people lacking inner strength can’t resist the compromises necessary to survive Mr. Trump and that adds up to something they will never recover from. It takes character like Mr. Mattis’s to avoid the damage, because Mr. Trump eats your soul in small bites.
“It starts with your sitting silent while he lies, both in public and private, making you complicit by your silence. In meetings with him, his assertions about what “everyone thinks” and what is “obviously true” wash over you, unchallenged, as they did at our private dinner on Jan. 27, 2017, because he’s the president and he rarely stops talking. As a result, Mr. Trump pulls all of those present into a silent circle of assent.”
I see an analogy here. Bit by bit, bite by bite, byte by byte we are bitten and smitten by technology: can’t live without it: first thing in the morning, last thing at night, 24/7, at work or what used to be called, at leisure. I believe we all have fallen victim to this phenomenon.
It all started so simple: a landline telephone, then a mobile, then a smartphone, then internet, then twitter, then Facebook.
I believe we have now come to the point, “Does technology serve us, or are we serving technology?
Fact is that our world today is replete with manicured nature, with designer-babies and scientifically shaped chickens, quick maturing, lots, lots of meat.
How natural is nature anymore? Today we have little or no control over the Internet or the logarithm-controlled financial markets. It all seems that the forces of nature control them as well: everything is now a number-game, all controlled by digits, not unlike that infamous number: 666.
It looks more and more that we have arrived at an historic junction in human history: we are well on the way to leave that recently entered Anthropocene stage, the era dominated by the human race, to rush into the Technocene stage, the new period dominated by technology.
It seems to me that human nature, softened up by carbonized living, conditioned by television and electronic toys, is ripe for the machine-age, and has been perfectly prepared to surrender to the number game, with its very humanity at stake.
THE CLIMATE CATASTROPHE.
This also means that in no way are we ready to voluntary engage in measures to combat the Climate Emergency, which requires a world-wide effort involving sacrifices reminiscent of war-like conditions, depriving ourselves of all the luxuries, all the conveniences that has made us the most pampered people in history with 100 energy slaves at our fingertips.
The cruel reality is that we face an abrupt end to this unnatural universe we have fashioned. I believe it is too late to change. Humans are by nature inclined to avoid difficulties, and act only when the danger is so acute that immediate response is needed. Today it is questionable whether we are still capable to respond to the current challenge. As long as personal climate responsibility has not become ingrained in everyone’s daily living habit, politicians, always testing public opinions, will do nothing.
Add to this the now so prevalent techno-mentality that is robbing us of our human essence, and pronto, disaster knocks. More and more we have become psychologically cyborgs, extensions of the machine, where we integrate these devices into our mental functioning, into our social and emotional lives.
What is 666?
Many believe that the number signifies the inability of the Evil One – yes he exists! – to bring perfection, portrayed as 777. 1John 5: 19 should not be forgotten where it says that the Evil One calls the tune today. Jesus repeatedly calls him, “The Prince of this world.” (John 12: 31; John 14:30).
In these last days, whether this is next year or 20 years from now, given human mentality not to prepare for tomorrow, the end of humanity will come. This is not pessimism at work: that is the cruel reality. The number 666, says the Bible, will identify the person: not just 666, but any number, Social Security, Social Insurance, Pin, any word, as we drift toward a cashless society where universal control is in the cards.
Technically this is quite feasible; mentally this is already on its way, while psychologically we are being readied. Once the climate emergency is baring its ugly claws and only desperate measures dictate a possible solution, with famine festering, unimaginable unnatural disasters evident, ultra-strict rationing needed, the number rules.
What to do?
Jesus advised us to flee the city where control is most easily implemented. Re-read Matthew 24: it gives a true picture of the days to come.
Is that all the advice I can give?
Should we chuck all mechanical devices? Should we sell our urban properties and settle in the country? Should we give up our jobs which mostly are promoting the current destructive lifestyle?
I might as well say that we should quit eating, as our current diet requires 10-20 energy calories to provide us with one food calorie, which perfectly illustrates our current predicament.
During the war 1939-45 we had paper coupons for food and textile. Ubiquitous copiers today have put a stop to that: now eye-recognition and a secret number will serve as identification for rationing, which is sure to come: no number, no food. Not compliant with the Satanic Code? No food.
Sounds ominous? It is.
We are in this situation, which bit by bit, bite by bite, byte by byte, has become our death trap. There’s no escape. The only remedy is found in the Bible, in 2Peter 3: 11-14,
Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat! But according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells. Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless,