Francis Berger

AI Is Anti-Personal and Anti-Spiritual; As Such, It Can Offer No Real Positives

2/22/2026

Despite everything, some self-professed Christians continue to publicly laud the merits of AI, claiming it will make people smarter, more efficient, creative, and wealthy, provided it is utilized effectively with good underlying motivations.

Ridiculous hype and exaggerated claims aside, AI has revealed itself as the most anti-personal and anti-spiritual technology ever developed. As such, it is immune to “good underlying motivations” and cannot be utilized effectively for any good purpose.

Thus, the perceived positives AI appears to offer are head fakes; spiritual deceptions, through and through. Unfortunately, there’s not much that can be done for those who fail to recognize this.

At best, they will learn the hard way; at worst, they will convince themselves that AI has indeed made them smarter, more efficient, creative, wealthy, or whatever and embrace such fake positives as proof of their sagacity.

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Information Saturation Has Proven More Effective Than Information Banning

2/21/2026

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My 14-year-old son recently began reading Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, a novel I was very fond of when I was his age. If memory serves me well, Bradbury’s tale of book-burning firemen served as the gateway to what became a mini-obsession with dystopian fiction during my early teen years.

At that time, and for a long time afterward, I was thoroughly convinced that totalitarian power structures depended largely on their ability to control and censor information. Put another way, totalitarianism could only exist if and when it had obliterated and outlawed all information that threatened its own narrative. The practices of past totalitarian societies—the National Socialist Kulturkampf or Soviet oppression —lent great support to this conviction.

Like most in the West during the Cold War years, I firmly believed that personal, spiritual, and societal freedom depended almost entirely on the free flow of information. Take that away, and totalitarianism of one form or another was guaranteed to follow.

I no longer subscribe to such views. On the contrary, current circumstances in the West have revealed that totalitarianism can establish itself quite effectively without obstructing or interfering with the free flow of information all that much.

Yes, censorship, bans, and witch hunts have occurred and still flare up occasionally; however, when it comes to information, the situation in the West today bears little resemblance to the hardcore repressive regimes of the twentieth century or those depicted by the likes of Bradbury or Orwell.

Instead of banning and destroying information, our present-day totalitarians saturate the world with it. Although it officially frowns upon and, in some cases, prohibits and sanctions certain books, texts, and information sources that go against its narratives, the current totalitarian power structures in the West allow access to such books, texts, and sources, provided the individual is willing to do the legwork to attain such knowledge.

A motivated individual in the West can find any book, text, or article written by anyone at any time without too much effort or interference and, notably, often without having to pay for it, which is an entirely different topia than the ones depicted in the most famous dystopian novels.

That should provide a pause for thought.

Present-day totalitarianism does not seem to fear secondary thinking in the same way its predecessors had. If it did, it would not permit the vast oceans of information sloshing around the world. Being able to access information that unmistakably reveals the corruption and evil of the current System has little to no effect on its power structures, operations, and functioning. On the contrary, subversive information usually serves to feed the System in some manner. More often than not, it seems to strengthen rather than weaken it.

Our current totalitarian world not only tolerates information, but it also actively promotes its proliferation and dissemination, the point of what can only be described as information overload. I am of the conviction that this active promotion of information overload stems from nefarious spiritual motivations.

The alienation of modern man represents near-total submersion in the representational world, made all the more acute by the ever-increasing disconnect between Reality and representations of Reality.

This disconnection marks the virtual obliteration of primary thinking in favor of secondary thinking. Put another way, for modern man, secondary thinking via externally received symbolic information is reality because he is virtually incapable of connecting with reality in any other way.

Modern man now regards the symbols, language, and other representations used to shape, fashion, give form to, or describe as reality itself, both de facto (as in matter of fact) and de jure (as in legally and officially recognized).

Simply put, information used solely at the level of secondary thinking is now synonymous with reality.

The war we are in is fundamentally a spiritual war, not an information war.

Many recognize and understand the totalitarian push to control the narrative; however, they fail to discern that the core problem is the exclusive and obsessive focus on engaging with narrative through secondary thinking, thereby keeping consciousness firmly entrenched in representational reality as reality (or, in keeping consciousness locked in the Information Age and its related thinking).

Our present-day totalitarians are not simply striving to control information and secondary thinking; they want to ensure human consciousness remains trapped in a state of information overload and secondary thinking.

I suspect that at the deepest, most fundamental level, our totalitarian rulers and the demonic forces they serve welcome information opposition to their secondary-level information manipulations because it keeps human consciousness firmly fixated on representations as reality rather than on Reality.

Thus, keeping people engaged in information wars not only helps to distract from the spiritual war but also helps to hinder the further development of human consciousness.
Winning the spiritual war and connecting with Truth and Reality does not and cannot boil down to being informed, an essentially passive state in which one allows the external to shape, fashion, give shape to, and teach reality via representations presented and accepted as Reality.

I am not implying that the representational is dispensable.

On the contrary, it is vital, but only when we understand that it serves as a go-between and not a final destination. In this sense, the representations the good info warriors provide are far superior to the information promulgated by the likes of the WEF, which serves more as a go-nowhere rather than a go-between. Yet representations on the side of good can only do good if they are treated as intermediaries — that is, used to orient and/or connect to Reality.

That connection to Reality happens beyond the representational, in the realm of primary thinking — the realm of non-representational direct-knowing originating from and connecting to the primal self. Although representational, secondary thinking can inspire, motivate, and guide individuals toward primary thinking, it cannot substitute for primary thinking.

Present-day totalitarianism does not fear information; it fears thinking, especially the primary kind.

Note: Some of the above is a rehashing of previous thoughts on secondary thinking.

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Authentic Altruism is Impossible; Love Between Concrete Beings Is Not

2/16/2026

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A short time ago, I commented on a quote by Antonio Gramsci, a Marxist thinker and politician who died in Mussolini’s jails before the outbreak of the Second World War. Although I know little about Gramsci, he strikes me as the sort of twentieth-century figure who convinced himself that he was striving to make the world a better place for other people, all without the inconvenience of actually caring all that much about or genuinely loving other people.

Put another way, Gramsci strikes me as a typical twentieth-century sham altruist who doggedly maintained that he was dedicated to the collective without really loving or caring about anyone, not even those close to him.

In his Prison Diaries, Gramsci notes:

“How many times have I wondered if it is really possible to forge links with a mass of people when one has never had strong feelings for anyone, not even one's own parents: if it is possible to have a collectivity when one has not been deeply loved oneself by individual human creatures. Hasn't this had some effect on my life as a militant--has it not tended to make me sterile and reduce my quality as a revolutionary by making everything a matter of pure intellect, of pure mathematical calculation?”

Gramsci essentially answers his own question in the above.

No, it is not really possible to forge links with a mass of people, particularly not when one has never had strong feelings for anyone, not even one’s own parents, nor felt loved oneself. The attempt to forge links with a mass of people dissolves into abstraction -- into a matter of pure intellect, pure mathematical calculation.

Moreover, it would make little difference if one did experience strong feelings for individuals, yet still allowed oneself to be lulled into believing in the superiority of loving the masses more than one’s concrete relationships.

Here’s my thinking on the matter (revisiting some earlier notions on the subject) — forming loving relationships that can potentially extend into eternity is an overarching purpose of Divine Creation. Altruism is a perverted, misguided attempt to fulfill that purpose.

On the one hand, altruism is likely extremely detrimental to the True Self because it tends to activate and amplify false selves, thereby driving the True Self further from consciousness. On the other hand, altruism’s insistence that we place the Other above the Self forces us away from reality into abstraction.

The false selves that fan altruism may be false, but false is not the same as non-existent. Thus, most “effective” altruism boils down to false selves insincerely placing other false selves above them. However, even our false selves abhor the abstract void that is the Other, but they tolerate it if it can provide egoistic benefits.

On the whole matter of the “other,” it seems that the only way an individual can establish and maintain contact with the Other is if they internalize Otherness within themselves.

Thus, altruism does not boil down to the matter of selves placing the Other above themselves — it exists in the non-relationship of Others, of one’s internalized abstract Other contacting an externalized abstract Other. Put another way, altruism is the non-relationships of non-existent entities.

The internal Other is not just another false self — it is the denial of all selves, especially the True Self. The same applies to external Other.

Altruism, then, amounts to little more than a void sacrificing itself for a void.

The principle of concern for the nothing and non-existence of the Other and placing that above one’s own Other, one’s own nothing and non-existence, all for the benefit of nothing and non-existence.

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Bureaucracy is Always Against You

2/15/2026

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Government Bureau - George Tooker - 1956

Bureaucracy is a cold, mechanistic, systematic, dehumanizing, and impersonal force that is, by its very nature, anti-personal, meaning openly anti-spiritual in its overarching operations and motives.

Make no mistake, as a cold, grinding, soulless mechanism of power, bureaucracy exists for the sole purpose of suffocating spiritual freedom, creativity, relationships, and orientation toward the Creation and the divine.

The totalitarianism it perpetually seeks—and often succeeds in establishing—is the centralized and dictatorial crushing of the individual spirit and any manifestation of spiritual culture.

Bureaucracy now has the world, and the West in particular, firmly in its cold, calculating grip. Those who regard it as good or necessary and willingly conform to bureaucracy from the depths of their internal spiritual landscapes commit the sin of voluntarily surrendering their freedom, creativity, and spirit to the very thing that candidly promises them with their spiritual destruction.

Those who view bureaucracy as legitimate authority or as something essential and unavoidable, perhaps even beneficial, have lost the plot and are likely irredeemable, spiritually speaking.

Such people have allowed themselves to be conditioned to value rules, laws, mechanisms, procedures, and the implementation of impersonal power over the spiritual nature of all human beings and all other Beings in Creation. They have sacrificed themselves and are more than happy to sacrifice you, given the chance.

Don’t give the bureaucrats or bureaucrat supporters the chance.

Everything in Creation is spiritual. That which we regard as the material is but an aspect or subset of the spiritual. As such, your individual spirit automatically overrules any material force that bureaucracy wields against you. In encounters with bureaucracy, your individual spirit is always the superior authority.

Let me repeat that -- in encounters with bureaucracy, your individual spirit is always the superior authority.

And always means always. No exceptions.

Bureaucracy may succeed in conquering you materially in mortal life; however, that is not what it is after. Above all else, bureaucracy wants your spirit. It wants to conquer you eternally.

Don’t hand your spirit over to bureaucracy.

That is part of your responsibility.

It really is that simple.

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My Wife Went to Saint Peter's Basilica . . .

2/14/2026

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. . . and all I got was this photo of Michelangelo's Pieta.

I have not had the chance to see Michelangelo's Pieta in person, but I was happy to experience it vicariously through my wife's recent trip to Rome.

My wife also attended a General Audience at the Vatican and saw the pope at a distance of less than a meter. Unsurprisingly, Leo is shorter in real life than one would expect.

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Freedom is Neither Random Nor Randumb

2/9/2026

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An excellent series of reflections and observations over at Laeth’s place today. I found the following particularly striking:

i find myself more and more at odds with both classical religion and mainstream attitudes to reality. the first one refuses to accept just how random and chaotic a world of true freedom is. the second refuses to understand it, and own it.

it is precisely because we are free that there is randomness (i act this way, you act that way, someone else acts another way, every single being, not just humans, acting all the time at cross purposes: the result is unexpected; cannot be predicted). and it is precisely in freedom and in freedom only that there is meaning. that's the fun. and the tragedy. can't have one without the other. and why would you want to.

My two cents. Mainstream materialist assumptions about reality are essentially devoid of meaning. Stuff happens, sometimes according to some physical/natural laws, sometimes not. There is no big “why” behind why stuff happens. It simply happens, often quite randomly, perhaps even chaotically.

Classical Christian metaphysics posits an Omni-god as the big “why” without actually providing any meaningful or coherent explanation for the “why.” Thus, randomness or chaos cannot exist in classical Christian metaphysics because it also defines God the big “how,” “what”, “where,” “how,” and “who.” Put another way, classical Christian metaphysics leaves no room for the sort of authentic freedom beyond its rather contradictory doctrine of free will. Thus, what we perceive as randomness or chaos is our limited and obtuse interpretation of Divine Will unfolding.

The assumptions Laeth shares align with mine and offer another way forward. What we perceive as randomness or chaos is the commotion of all the Beings in Creation simultaneously and continuously expressing their uncreated freedom and the subsequent interactions of these expressed forms of freedom. What appears as random is actually expressions of freedom rooted in consciousness/intelligence and driven by motivations, including but not limited to desires, aspirations, commitments, love, and fear.

Laeth concludes:

that's the whole point. we have to participate in making meaning. not 'find' it. we have to make it. God makes it for himself, not for us. what he did is give us an opportunity. why would i want him to pilot the ship for me. it's enough that he gave me a ship. the point is to become more like him, not less.

the other side of the coin is mainstream atheism, which looks upon the often chaotic results of freedom and concludes that there is no meaning. what a stupid and unwarranted conclusion. just another type of cope. to refuse responsibility.

randomness is a product of free beings acting (and acting requires purpose, hence, meaning). now, the result of course is often chaotic. it has to be. but that just means improvisation is one of the skills (perhaps the main skill) we're meant to master here. but most people want a script, i suppose.

Read the rest in the link above.

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Not Having a Career Worked Out Well (For Me)

2/6/2026

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I wanted to be a writer when I was young, so much so that I barely paid any attention to starting or maintaining a career in anything else. Luckily, employment prospects were bleak after I graduated from university in Canada, so I would have struggled to launch a career even if I had had the burning desire to do so.

I worked in restaurants or on construction sites mostly because there wasn’t much else available. I also took on some driving and delivery gigs here and there and had a stint working as a bookstore clerk. I also taught ESL in Europe for a couple of years.

Oddly enough, being “underemployed” didn’t bother me too much. Since I wanted to be a writer, I made that my priority. Instead of a career—which was hard to come by anyway—I settled for “work”—that is, any job that would provide enough to live on and, more importantly, the time and space needed for writing.

That state of affairs proved satisfactory until I began to accept that I would probably never become a successful writer. I must have been about thirty or so when I accepted this. Minor publishing successes aside—the odd published short story here, the occasional snippet of an article there—my work never broke through in any meaningful way. And there I was, a failed, wannabe writer with nothing but joe jobs on his resume.

That having a career might be good didn’t occur to me until I was in my early thirties. It was around then that I entered the education field and became a high school teacher. However, I couldn't regard the job as a career, no matter how hard I tried. After a year in the system, I realized I would never have any ambition to climb the ladder. At best, teaching would be little more than a steadier job. Just work. Something I did to pay the bills.

I spent a little over a decade working in high schools before taking a job as a university instructor. Although I was presented with opportunities for advancement almost immediately at the university, I experienced no desire to work my way up in the organization. To me, it was work. Nothing more. And it has remained that way for the ten years I have logged in my current vocation.

Oddly enough, my aversion to career-building has not been financially detrimental in the long run. Sure, I could have made more money; however, as it stands, I have no debt, own a house and car (paid for in cash), and experience little financial stress. If anything, the lack of a career taught me to be frugal and creative. It has also undoubtedly saved me from many distasteful compromises, (essentially) meaningless attachments, and countless ego traps.

I share the above not to criticize careers per se, only to note that not having one has served me quite well personally.

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Anguish

2/3/2026

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I sometimes include a few snippets of commentary on the paintings I feature here, but I don't think I need to say much about this well-known piece by the otherwise little known painter, August Friedrich Albert Schenck (1828 - 1901).

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Love in a Time of Monsters

1/31/2026

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“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters.”

The quote above comes from Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937), a Marxist philosopher who was also a founding member and one-time leader of the Communist Party in Italy. I happened to stumble upon it today and started thinking about interregnum periods in history and people like Gramsci, who were vigorously active during such times.

Gramsci’s observation immediately struck me as ironic. I doubt he intended it to be self-referential; however, through a historical lens, it is difficult to ignore that Gramsci was clearly among the monsters of his time, together with the fascists whom he vehemently railed against until his untimely death in a Mussolini prison in 1937.

The old world of Gramsci’s day began dying—or died, take your pick—after the First World War. The struggling-to-be-born new world emerged right after the treaties were signed. It did not take long for the monster to appear.

However, there were plenty of monsters in the waning old world order, too. In particular, the psychopaths who willingly sacrificed an entire generation of young men to gain a few yards of blood-soaked mud. Nevertheless, at least the old world maintained some semblance of deference to spiritual matters. The new world monsters were a different breed. They rejected spirit and embraced the will. Their struggles to establish a new world took destruction to a whole new level, eclipsing anything the old world managed to achieve.

As I pondered the quote some more, I found myself wondering if we were living through an interregnum period of sorts. I suppose we may be; however, I tend to see our current circumstances as more of a no man’s land, devoid of any real or meaningful choice for this-worldly good in the form of politics or culture. In that sense, it definitely fits Gramsci’s description of a “time of monsters.”

Although partisanism still pretends to be alive and well, I get the sense that every global politician is working for the same office, albeit with varying aims and goals. Some desire an ordered, patient form of destruction; others have been given marching orders to foment chaos at every turn. The conflicts and squabbles they display to us are merely office politics—entirely irrelevant because the office itself opposes all that is good.

On the one hand, this challenges our overall attitude to temporal affairs. After all, we all want to be “for” something, which inevitably entails being “against” something else. Most people want to make things better for themselves, their families, and the world at large, at least in their minds. However, if we choose between the options currently being offered, we will only be choosing between monsters and choosing to side with one monster over another. Struggling against a specific monster or all monsters will not save us from becoming monsters ourselves (a hat tip to Nietzsche’s famous and overused abyss quote).

On the other hand, current circumstances should make it far easier for us to focus on spiritual and relational matters based in love at a concrete level, particularly with those close to us, including the Divine, which is where our primary focus should be, regardless of whether we are in an old world order, a new world order, or something in between.

At the end of the day, all else is abstraction. Any other focus lures us into the land of monsters.

As I continued to ponder Gramsci’s quote, I found another block of text attributed to him that connects directly to what I have expressed in the paragraph above. Very illuminating and worth reading (bold added):

“How many times have I wondered if it is really possible to forge links with a mass of people when one has never had strong feelings for anyone, not even one's own parents: if it is possible to have a collectivity when one has not been deeply loved oneself by individual human creatures. Hasn't this had some effect on my life as a militant--has it not tended to make me sterile and reduce my quality as a revolutionary by making everything a matter of pure intellect, of pure mathematical calculation?”

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Forget Reaction. Try Problem, Creation, Solution Instead

1/27/2026

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Dr. Charlton has posted some incisive observations on the topic of reaction—more specifically, on the perils of reacting to narrative peddled via the mass media, politics, and such. Bruce concludes (extra bold added):

In a nutshell; when we react to anything we know of, or think we understand, only or mainly via officialdom and the mass media; we absolutely need to bear in mind that there is a vast range of possible realities, and in reacting to one, we are always assuming another.

And the range of possible realities extends from nothing at all having happened (total fakery), through levels such as the event being real but staged or permitted, to the event being factually (more or less) as described - but the interpretation of that event being dishonestly manipulative.

All we can ever know for sure is that (as of 2026) the official story is always false - but we can seldom know in what way false; so our reactions may be being manipulated in ways we do not detect, and may therefore do more harm than good.

I am firmly convinced that the issue of reacting to/being manipulated by topical news events, media narratives, and political incitements is paramount to Christians, spiritually speaking.

To begin with, it is crucial to consider that reaction amounts to little more than obedience to some external stimulus.

Yes, obedience because the actions others—in this case, the System and its mass media—utilize are usually little more than commands, incitements, enticements, and provocations. They demand a response, expect a comeback, and yearn for a backlash, all of which a reactive perspective is more than willing to supply in spades.

The commanded, incited, enticed, and provoked are not genuine actors but reactors. The script they choose to follow is not their own. They speak lines penned by others and move across the stage following directions that are not theirs.

If action is the pressing of a button, then reaction is the pathetic movement of the button returning to its original position after having been pressed.

Every reaction to incitement, enticement, and provocation is obedience to a command. It is the admission that I have allowed my thinking, action, and conduct to depend entirely on the thinking, action, and conduct of another.

A true Christian cannot allow his actions to be mere reactions; nor can he act in a way that serves only to incite, entice, and provoke others into reaction. To do either lowers him to the level of his enemy – to the mundane, average, predictable, and common ways of thinking, acting, and being.

True Christian thoughts and acts are not and cannot be knee-jerk responses or compliant responses to outside forces. True Christian thoughts and actions transcend reaction and all reactive activity. They grow organically from the depths of inner being and turn the incitements, enticements, and provocations on their heads.

Creation is not reaction. As such, it never feels like a reaction because it obeys nothing external and rises above the actions of others – far above the reach of even the worst of incitements, enticements, or provocations.

The System is calibrated to trigger negative spiritual participation, primarily through lies, deceit, and manipulations that aim to provoke a reaction. Reacting to System manipulations may look and feel like positive spiritual action, but it is not.

The actual act remains within the System domain; the re-action is primarily a Pavlovian response. Reaction assures the System of the effectiveness of its conditioning and manipulations. The more we react, the more assured the System becomes.

Jesus instructed us to turn the other cheek. Modern man interprets this as pacifism. A terrible error. Turning the other cheek signifies the transcendence and transfiguration of a reactive state.

The person striking you on the cheek expects a reaction. He anticipates your striking back. He does not anticipate the turned cheek. His “model” of reality shifts. He finds himself in an undiscovered country, suddenly uncertain about what may come next.

Christians talk a lot about transfiguring themselves and reality; however, they cannot transfigure anything in a reactive state. Why? Because reaction is not genuine action.

Reaction is not doing. Reaction is having things done to you.

Reaction defies transformation because it keeps you locked in the faux reality of determinism. The only thing the reaction confirms is how impossible it is for you to have made any other decision or performed any other action.

The System loves that sort of thing.

The urge to do something must motivate Christians to act, genuinely act, rather than merely react.

The root of such motivation is in thinking that aligns with Creation.

David Icke coined the term problem, reaction, solution to describe how the Establishment manipulates people through its System and mass media. The Establishment promotes an urgent problem through its channels, waits for the pre-programmed/pre-conditioned reaction, and then happily provides the “solution” to mollify the reaction.

As far as I have been able to discern, the only viable way to avoid reactive behavior and thinking and the whole problem, reaction, solution paradigm is to align thinking with God and Creation via love.

Thus, instead of reaction, we should focus on creation (which entails creative thinking and being that aligns with God’s creative purposes).

Problem, reaction, solution? Forget that gerbil wheel.

Try this instead.

Problem, CREATION, solution.

Note: The bulk of this post comprises excerpts from previous posts on this topic.

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