Gentle Readers: In order to revive the best parts of our cultural legacy and protect any of it that still remains, the following summary of behavioral observations must not be shrugged off.

I have written, most recently here, about the mechanism social engineers use — specifically induction — to attract small segments of humanity to one or more behaviors that might never occur to the public on its own. The lures they use are ubiquitous in entertainment, in reports on crime, in electronic gaming, etc. And, more subtly, from authority figures; such as teachers, themselves indoctrinated in totally Leftist infiltrated teaching colleges.

Little did I know how old was my observation until Richard Fernandez wrote this on FB a few hours ago.

Thomas Aquinas had this notion of the “occasions of sin”, circumstances that brought the unwary close to a cave from which a lurking devil might spring out to get him. Occasions of Sin can be external (like people or places) or internal (like habits or passions).

Thomas advocated avoiding occasions of sin, a skill which constituted the virtue of prudence, the habit of anticipated situations that could lead to moral failure. In a world which regarded evil as real, defeating the Enemy was a serious endeavor.

“Poor devil, he never had a chance.”

(Fernandez wrote more on this that I only noticed as I was composing this essay. He might also have written it on Twitter, and it and a wider exploration may turn up shortly in one of his essays for pjmedia. Look for it if you don’t already follow him.) **UPDATED BELOW** because FB linking is unreliable.

Adding to this discovery is the circumstance that I noticed the following line from a story that surfaced this morning. The coincidence of this is what propelled me to force myself to write this.

The harm starts from the moment that a child adopts the belief that they were born in the wrong body.

Life in a war zone made me desist from gender transition—what will it take for others to buck the harmful idea of gender ideology?

Parents with young children have taken notice that their kids were coming home from public institutions with notions that, historically, never occur as frequently as we are witnessing today. And yet their concerns were and are not only ignored by those who run those institutions, but the FBI was sent to the homes of many such parents to stifle their protests.

It all suggests — to the point of brash, self-assured exposure — how deep and high is the rot.

So this is why I warned you all, at the top, not to shrug this off. Don’t do what I did. I now find it shameful I had not taken my own observations more seriously.

What I did was I kept thinking “Who am I to call others to notice what I see going on?” I’ve might have better contributed to the now wider countering efforts sooner. It was common sense that contributed mostly to my awareness, but we’ve been pounded by the same forces into second guessing our senses. Don’t let them get away with that any longer.

Now that the battle to stop such schemes is underway, after so much more damage to decency has transpired, I know I should have tried harder to stop the schemers from continuing their predations.

And so I write this admission and alert today. I pray it strikes a chord in you.

**UPDATE**

Wretchard T. Cat

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People who are arrested for commiting crimes or secretly evincing attitudes they are famous for denouncing are commonly regarded as ‘hypocrites’ (which they may well be) but their obsession with those subjects also suggests they’ve been thinking on those topics a long time.

Thomas Aquinas had this notion of the “occasions of sin”, circumstances that brought the unwary close to a cave from which a lurking devil might spring out to get him. Occasions of Sin can be external (like people or places) or internal (like habits or passions).

Thomas advocated avoiding occasions of sin, a skill which constituted the virtue of prudence, the habit of anticipated situations that could lead to moral failure. In a world which regarded evil as real, defeating the Enemy was a serious endeavor.

But ‘educated’ moderns, indoctrinated to think that evil does not exist and consequently that ‘occasions of sin’ don’t exist either possess neither the lore nor awareness to avoid or escape the terrible something which devours them. They are ripped up without even knowing why.

“Poor devil, he never had a chance.”