For the second time in two years (and never before in my life), I have suffered moth attack - so that three out of five of my woolen pullovers have a ragged hole in them.
But how? I threw-out fully half my wardrobe and washed all the rest; we found a horrendous nest-origin among an old, semi-hidden box of wool and knitting needles; we wiped, hoovered, swabbed and sprayed - We felt safe...
But... Last week. Again.
Eventually under the wardrobe I found a small, felt, Tyrolean hat I had kept as a memento from childhood; and inside was an horrendous moth headquarters and fortress. It had lain there, secretly incubating for two years.
So now, at last, we are All Clear.
Or are we?...
Bruce Charlton's Notions
Wednesday, 4 January 2017
The Butterfly Effect is (metaphysical) nonsense with near-zero real-world relevance
Well, it is. And the reason is that the initial intervention is assumed to be uncaused - hence undetermined - while everything after that point is assumed to be determined (albeit in a non-linear fashion).
So, the flapping of a butterfly's wings is implicitly supposed to be uncaused - by the free will and agency of the butterfly; but from the moment those wings have flapped there is assumed to be no further agency, but events unroll inevitably (e.g. toward a hurricane somewhere else...).
This bizarre assumption probably comes from the origins of the Butterfly Effect in computer programming - including analogue computing: the programmer (implicitly assumed to be an undetermined agent) stands outside the system he is manipulating, but his set-up and interventions unroll deterministically.
In the real world, however, the validity of the Butterfly Effect depends on agency. In the first place, the Butterfly wing-flap may not be an act of agency, but may itself be a determined consequence of prior causes - in which case, the Butterfly wings do not cause anything at all - they are merely one link in a multi-factorial causal chain of unknown origin.
On the other hand, if the Butterfly Wing-flap was a consequence of Butterfly agency, hence uncaused; then we have acknowledged the reality of agency in the world, and cannot afterwards coherently assume that agency is necessarily absent from the system from that point (i.e. we cannot assume that the entirely of the system is deterministic if the programmer is not).
(In computer programming terms, if the initial programmer has the free will/ agency needed to set-up a deterministic system and set it into motion; then other programmers may be a part of the system and divert it unpredictably (because interventions were uncaused) - or further programmers may intervene from outside the system to make changes to the outcome.)
In a softer version; the Butterfly Effect is mistakenly used to refer to the ancient observation that small causes may have large outcomes, and large outcomes may depend on small causes; as in the old nursery rhyme 'For want of a nail' - which traces the death of King Richard III in the Battle of Bosworth to the lack of a single horseshoe nail.
But even here, the Butterfly Effect gets misused and generally misleads. What is valid about the Butterfly Effect is to explain one reason why empirical and statistical methods that work well over the short term become worthless, rapidly as the timescale is extended. The longer-term is therefore either unpredictable; or else requires the measurement of entirely different variables.
For example weather forecasting, in the UK, sometimes works well over a few hours or a day, based on measures such as wind speed and direction and satellite pictures (and predictive programming); but becomes useless over a few days, and is worthless for medium- and long-term forecasting. Medium/ Long term forecasting either can't be done at all, or seems to be done better by focusing on different measures; for example the activities and doings of the sun and moon, somewhat as Piers Corbyn does. And the worthlessness of standard weather forecasting methods for medium/ long term forecasting based-on wind etc is utterly unaffected by the use of ever bigger superexpensive supercomputers (which are periodically successfully demanded by the state funded forecasting services, and which never work because they never can work).
On the whole, however, it is clear that the Butterfly Effect has approximately zero real-world relevance or validity - whether defined strictly, or as the term is used in pop culture.
So, the flapping of a butterfly's wings is implicitly supposed to be uncaused - by the free will and agency of the butterfly; but from the moment those wings have flapped there is assumed to be no further agency, but events unroll inevitably (e.g. toward a hurricane somewhere else...).
This bizarre assumption probably comes from the origins of the Butterfly Effect in computer programming - including analogue computing: the programmer (implicitly assumed to be an undetermined agent) stands outside the system he is manipulating, but his set-up and interventions unroll deterministically.
In the real world, however, the validity of the Butterfly Effect depends on agency. In the first place, the Butterfly wing-flap may not be an act of agency, but may itself be a determined consequence of prior causes - in which case, the Butterfly wings do not cause anything at all - they are merely one link in a multi-factorial causal chain of unknown origin.
On the other hand, if the Butterfly Wing-flap was a consequence of Butterfly agency, hence uncaused; then we have acknowledged the reality of agency in the world, and cannot afterwards coherently assume that agency is necessarily absent from the system from that point (i.e. we cannot assume that the entirely of the system is deterministic if the programmer is not).
(In computer programming terms, if the initial programmer has the free will/ agency needed to set-up a deterministic system and set it into motion; then other programmers may be a part of the system and divert it unpredictably (because interventions were uncaused) - or further programmers may intervene from outside the system to make changes to the outcome.)
In a softer version; the Butterfly Effect is mistakenly used to refer to the ancient observation that small causes may have large outcomes, and large outcomes may depend on small causes; as in the old nursery rhyme 'For want of a nail' - which traces the death of King Richard III in the Battle of Bosworth to the lack of a single horseshoe nail.
But even here, the Butterfly Effect gets misused and generally misleads. What is valid about the Butterfly Effect is to explain one reason why empirical and statistical methods that work well over the short term become worthless, rapidly as the timescale is extended. The longer-term is therefore either unpredictable; or else requires the measurement of entirely different variables.
For example weather forecasting, in the UK, sometimes works well over a few hours or a day, based on measures such as wind speed and direction and satellite pictures (and predictive programming); but becomes useless over a few days, and is worthless for medium- and long-term forecasting. Medium/ Long term forecasting either can't be done at all, or seems to be done better by focusing on different measures; for example the activities and doings of the sun and moon, somewhat as Piers Corbyn does. And the worthlessness of standard weather forecasting methods for medium/ long term forecasting based-on wind etc is utterly unaffected by the use of ever bigger superexpensive supercomputers (which are periodically successfully demanded by the state funded forecasting services, and which never work because they never can work).
On the whole, however, it is clear that the Butterfly Effect has approximately zero real-world relevance or validity - whether defined strictly, or as the term is used in pop culture.
Tuesday, 3 January 2017
Notice of The Books of Unexpected Enlightenment by L Jagi Lamplighter
There are not many new novels that I enjoy these days (although I used to read recent fiction voraciously up to my early twenties) so I am always delighted to discover something that hits-the-mark; and I will always re-read any novels that I have enjoyed (often several times).
So I was very pleased to come across the Books of Unexpected Enlightenment by L Jagi Lamplighter:
http://www.ljagilamplighter.com/works/the-unexpected-enlightenment-of-rachel-griffin
(I will not be including any 'spoilers' in this notice (it is not a 'review') so that anyone who likes the sound of the books can discover what happens for himself or herself.)
There are three novels, so far, in this series; and I have enjoyed them all very much, with re-reads being even better than first time.
They are distinctly odd books, to me; I haven't come across anything of the kind before. They are light and humorous in tone, mostly - pitched at a Young Adult readership; but also very complex in terms of their magical and fantasy system ('hard' fantasy in terms of world-building); and they offer a lot of 'glimpses' of further vistas and back-stories (in the same kind of way The Hobbit does).
Many of the 'ingredients' of the books are quote explicitly, and indeed self-referentially, drawn from other fantasy works (such as the Narnia Chronicles and Harry Potter) - but the way they are combined, twisted and added-to creates an unique 'flavour' which I find very appealing.
The character of 13 year old magical schoolgirl Rachel Griffin provides the point of view, and she makes an unusually multi-faceted heroine for this kind of book; yet she reminds me of several 'tomboyish' young women I have from real life - both in my schooldays and as an adult. Rachel combines courage with romanticism, innocence with encyclopaedic knowledge, she is independent - yet very loving of family and devoted to friends.
Indeed, her character and the books are strange in that way that sometimes strikes me when I realise (for the umpteenth time, yet it is still rare) that women are different from men not just biologically but in some deep and existential fashion; such that it is like sharing a world with elves or some other 'species'!
(As a believer in Mormon theology, I regard men and women as complementary parts and the completion of the wholeness of Man (there is no generic 'human being'); and that we all are either a man or a woman, in essence and from eternity. So to know Man it is not enough to know men - that is incomplete; one must also know women.)
The Rachel Griffin books are therefore fantasy fictions from a woman's spiritual perspective in a way that is not the case for, say, Harry Potter - and in a totally different way from the large mass of anti-men fiction-by-women.
(Which itself isn't all bad by any means! One of my absolute favourite novelists, Barbara Pym, is very bitter about men - not for doctrinaire reasons, but as a consequence of her own unusual nature and experiences.)
Anyway, Jagi Lamplighter's Books of Unexpected Enlightenment are both light and entertaining reading, packed with adventure, incident, love and friendship; but they also have touches and glimpses of something distinctive and deep. Some people, like me, will find them quite special and endearing with a flavour all their own.
So I was very pleased to come across the Books of Unexpected Enlightenment by L Jagi Lamplighter:
http://www.ljagilamplighter.com/works/the-unexpected-enlightenment-of-rachel-griffin
(I will not be including any 'spoilers' in this notice (it is not a 'review') so that anyone who likes the sound of the books can discover what happens for himself or herself.)
There are three novels, so far, in this series; and I have enjoyed them all very much, with re-reads being even better than first time.
They are distinctly odd books, to me; I haven't come across anything of the kind before. They are light and humorous in tone, mostly - pitched at a Young Adult readership; but also very complex in terms of their magical and fantasy system ('hard' fantasy in terms of world-building); and they offer a lot of 'glimpses' of further vistas and back-stories (in the same kind of way The Hobbit does).
Many of the 'ingredients' of the books are quote explicitly, and indeed self-referentially, drawn from other fantasy works (such as the Narnia Chronicles and Harry Potter) - but the way they are combined, twisted and added-to creates an unique 'flavour' which I find very appealing.
The character of 13 year old magical schoolgirl Rachel Griffin provides the point of view, and she makes an unusually multi-faceted heroine for this kind of book; yet she reminds me of several 'tomboyish' young women I have from real life - both in my schooldays and as an adult. Rachel combines courage with romanticism, innocence with encyclopaedic knowledge, she is independent - yet very loving of family and devoted to friends.
Indeed, her character and the books are strange in that way that sometimes strikes me when I realise (for the umpteenth time, yet it is still rare) that women are different from men not just biologically but in some deep and existential fashion; such that it is like sharing a world with elves or some other 'species'!
(As a believer in Mormon theology, I regard men and women as complementary parts and the completion of the wholeness of Man (there is no generic 'human being'); and that we all are either a man or a woman, in essence and from eternity. So to know Man it is not enough to know men - that is incomplete; one must also know women.)
The Rachel Griffin books are therefore fantasy fictions from a woman's spiritual perspective in a way that is not the case for, say, Harry Potter - and in a totally different way from the large mass of anti-men fiction-by-women.
(Which itself isn't all bad by any means! One of my absolute favourite novelists, Barbara Pym, is very bitter about men - not for doctrinaire reasons, but as a consequence of her own unusual nature and experiences.)
Anyway, Jagi Lamplighter's Books of Unexpected Enlightenment are both light and entertaining reading, packed with adventure, incident, love and friendship; but they also have touches and glimpses of something distinctive and deep. Some people, like me, will find them quite special and endearing with a flavour all their own.
Monday, 2 January 2017
You, personally, are going to be tested - and soon. Be Ready
In CS Lewis's famous phrase from That Hideous Strength, which has become something of a 'meme' on this blog: Things are coming to a point.
https://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=coming+to+a+point
This means that more and more people are being tested, being asked to make a choice; and if this has not yet happened to you, then it is more likely to happen this year than ever before:
http://meetingthemasters.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/the-test-of-today.html
Almost certainly you are already deeply morally compromised, probably by dishonesty (by having engaged in deniable but deliberate misleading) - we all are compromised - but when things come to a point, you personally will be asked actively and explicitly to give support to something that you know to be wrong.
This (whatever it is) is not trivial (nothing is trivial). If you can get into trouble for not doing it, then it is important.
(You don't get to choose the battle ground. Your choice is simply whether to surrender, as usual, to go-with-the-flow. Or not-to-surrender. To refuse. That is as much as most people are given to 'fight' over. Nothing glamourous - simply saying 'no, I won't'. It is enough - it is everything.)
This moment, this choice and decision, will change you one way or the other - that is the test; that indeed, is exactly why you have been put into the position.
Probably, this is a decision which you will face existentially isolated, and in making the right choice and doing the right thing - if that is what you do - there will probably be little or no visible support from those with power and influence (that is the nature of our modern condition in The West).
The issues, your motives, and your position will be lyingly misrepresented to other people; your character will be slandered; and the lies and slanders will (on the whole) be believed and repeated.
Be Ready.
Think through this situation in advance. Inhabit it imaginatively.
I am not advising you how to 'fight' in the public arena; because that can't be done - also, you are almost certain to make errors. You will also be likely to say or do things that actually help your enemies and worsen your situation (whatever they most want you to do, advise you to do, will almost certainly be bad for your situation - and it may not be possible to find out what would be the best tactical alternative).
Repentance
One thing I would emphasise - which I think has been neglected - is therefore the infinite power of repentance.
1. You are already morally compromised by your decisions and behaviours of the past - consistency suggests that you 'might as well' continue as you have done... But repentance wipes the slate clean and gives you a fresh start.
2. You will make mistakes in understanding your situation - you know something is wrong, something is going on, that you have reached a point of decision; but it is likely that you misunderstand things due to ignorance and inability - your first, second. third etc attempt to formulate your situation is wrong or badly emphasised... It doesn't matter! - in an ultimate sense: simply repent your errors as they emerge, and try again to the best of your ability.
3. Just as you will misunderstand your situation, so you will make mistakes in action: you will say the wrong thing, do the wrong things, trust the wrong people and doubt those who are on your side. You will be foolish - people will mock you, you will feel ashamed... So be it. Repent your mistakes and foolishness, and bounce back.
I repeat: Christian repentance is a weapon of infinite power that cannot be defeated. No matter if it feels like You against The World - with repentance you cannot lose.
You Cannot Lose.
(Note - If you don't already know what is repentance; then you need to find-out. If you are not already a Christian; then you should make it a priority as of this very moment. It is, after all, the work of an instant to become a Christian; and the status is open to everybody, without exception, at any time or place. Nobody and nothing can stop you. And if you don't understand how that is possible - then you need to find-out.)
https://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=coming+to+a+point
This means that more and more people are being tested, being asked to make a choice; and if this has not yet happened to you, then it is more likely to happen this year than ever before:
http://meetingthemasters.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/the-test-of-today.html
Almost certainly you are already deeply morally compromised, probably by dishonesty (by having engaged in deniable but deliberate misleading) - we all are compromised - but when things come to a point, you personally will be asked actively and explicitly to give support to something that you know to be wrong.
This (whatever it is) is not trivial (nothing is trivial). If you can get into trouble for not doing it, then it is important.
(You don't get to choose the battle ground. Your choice is simply whether to surrender, as usual, to go-with-the-flow. Or not-to-surrender. To refuse. That is as much as most people are given to 'fight' over. Nothing glamourous - simply saying 'no, I won't'. It is enough - it is everything.)
This moment, this choice and decision, will change you one way or the other - that is the test; that indeed, is exactly why you have been put into the position.
Probably, this is a decision which you will face existentially isolated, and in making the right choice and doing the right thing - if that is what you do - there will probably be little or no visible support from those with power and influence (that is the nature of our modern condition in The West).
The issues, your motives, and your position will be lyingly misrepresented to other people; your character will be slandered; and the lies and slanders will (on the whole) be believed and repeated.
Be Ready.
Think through this situation in advance. Inhabit it imaginatively.
I am not advising you how to 'fight' in the public arena; because that can't be done - also, you are almost certain to make errors. You will also be likely to say or do things that actually help your enemies and worsen your situation (whatever they most want you to do, advise you to do, will almost certainly be bad for your situation - and it may not be possible to find out what would be the best tactical alternative).
Repentance
One thing I would emphasise - which I think has been neglected - is therefore the infinite power of repentance.
1. You are already morally compromised by your decisions and behaviours of the past - consistency suggests that you 'might as well' continue as you have done... But repentance wipes the slate clean and gives you a fresh start.
2. You will make mistakes in understanding your situation - you know something is wrong, something is going on, that you have reached a point of decision; but it is likely that you misunderstand things due to ignorance and inability - your first, second. third etc attempt to formulate your situation is wrong or badly emphasised... It doesn't matter! - in an ultimate sense: simply repent your errors as they emerge, and try again to the best of your ability.
3. Just as you will misunderstand your situation, so you will make mistakes in action: you will say the wrong thing, do the wrong things, trust the wrong people and doubt those who are on your side. You will be foolish - people will mock you, you will feel ashamed... So be it. Repent your mistakes and foolishness, and bounce back.
I repeat: Christian repentance is a weapon of infinite power that cannot be defeated. No matter if it feels like You against The World - with repentance you cannot lose.
You Cannot Lose.
(Note - If you don't already know what is repentance; then you need to find-out. If you are not already a Christian; then you should make it a priority as of this very moment. It is, after all, the work of an instant to become a Christian; and the status is open to everybody, without exception, at any time or place. Nobody and nothing can stop you. And if you don't understand how that is possible - then you need to find-out.)
Sunday, 1 January 2017
Review: Brian Sibley's radio dramatisations of Tolkien's Tales from the Perilous Realm
I came across this little gem while browsing a list of JRR Tolkien Audiobooks available for download - it is a set of four dramatised radio programmes broadcast on the BBC in 1992. What filled me with anticipation was that they were done by Brian Sibley. When I approach Sibley's work I do so with pleasure and confidence that it will be sympathetic to the spirit of the original work, as well as creatively inspired. I wasn't disappointed... Continued at:
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/review-of-tales-from-perilous-real.html
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/review-of-tales-from-perilous-real.html
Meaning, Purpose, Evolution
Meaning:
One hot summer afternoon, 20 June 1921, Alfred Watkins was at Blackwardine in Herefordshire. On a high hilltop he stopped and looked at his map before meditating on the view below him. Suddenly, in a flash, he saw something which no one in England had seen for perhaps thousands of years.
Watkins saw straight through the surface of the landscape to a layer deposited in some remote prehistoric age. The barrier of time melted and, spread across the country, he saw a web of lines linking the holy places and sites of antiquity. Mounds, old stones, crosses and old crossroads, churches placed on pre-Christian sites, legendary trees, moats and holy wells stood in exact alignments that ran over beacon hills to cairns and mountain peaks.
In one moment of transcendental perception Watkins entered a magic world of prehistoric Britain, a world whose very existence had been forgotten.
John Michell - From The View over Atlantis (1969)
More at: http://albionawakening.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/michell-and-watkins.html
Purpose:
To recognise 'design' is to recognise meaning; and it is an essential thing.
Because if our lives, the world, everything isn't designed, then it has no meaning - and the only problem remaining is to explain why, then, we should ever have developed the widespread and resistant that there was or is meaning.
If the world is designed then there was a designer - and we are led to a creator deity (at this stage a deity, not necessarily a god - the deity might be some abstract principle of organisation, a force, the universal and necessary way of things...).
But for us to discern design and meaning is only one step - because Why?
For example: Why is there meaning, how come we, personally, can discern it truly - and what difference does, or should, this meaning make to us? What are the implications of the truth of design?
Thus meaning leads onto purpose - and those who wish us to regard life as purposeless will therefore always argue first of all that it has no meaning; and that life is some kind of a combination of mechaniscal determinism and statistical randomness - Life Just Happens - therefore it cannot have purpose.
On the other side, anyone who sees a meaning in life will, sooner or later, be prone to wonder what is its purpose. And for there to be any kind of a purpose to the whole things and ourselves in it, which actually matters - then we are led to a personal deity: a god who has some concern not just for setting-up a created universe but also for us as individuals, and our place in the scheme of things.
From this comes the secondary question of why this hasn't already happened, what is stopping it? This leads onto theories of the nature of God. It also leads to evolution ...
Evolution:
Evolution is about the change, movement, stages beyween then, now and the future; it is about the trajectory and nature of the difference between where we have been and where we are supposed to be going.
All coherent theology is evolutionary, because there is always a gap between what wee are and what we should be - requiring some kind of evolution to get from one to the other.
If we regard meaning pointing to purpose; then purpose points to evolution - we live in a reality which has evoluton built-in; and it would be useful to have some description of how this works: what evolution is like...
The most favoured and comprehensible description of evolution is that it is like growth and development; the transition from foetus to child to adult - the idea that this is a metaphor for the (intended, destined) evolution of everything: an analogy for the nature of reality.
Saturday, 31 December 2016
Tolkien and the Inklings/ Notion Club - does fiction recall real life?
I return to re-read Tolkien's novel-fragment The Notion Club Papers every year or so; and on the current encounter it struck me that - given the NCPs history of having been read-to The Inklings, as a light entertainment initially (later ripening to an extremely ambitious conception - perhaps the most ambitious work Tolkien ever projected), the very first significant incident of the book seems likely to refer back to an actual incident in an Inklings meeting.
What happens is that Ramer (who is substantially a Tolkien alter ego, being a philologist and science fiction/ fantasy writer) has just read a story to the Notion Club.
The club responds to Ramer's story with various jovial and satirical comments, the substance of which is that they much liked the story itself - which we don't know much about, but which apparently was set on another planet; but found the 'frame' describing getting-to and back-from this planet unconvincing and contrived, while the story itself had the ring of truth.
Indeed, some of the club members intuit that the story was not entirely fictional, in the sense that it seemed as if Ramer had actually 'been there', in the world he described.
Later, Ramer reveals that this is true - he has actually visited this other planet, in reality - but in a dream.
If we suppose that Tolkien was writing this episode based-upon an actual occurrence in an Inklings meeting, which seems likely; what story of Tolkien's might it refer to?
Continued at:
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/does-notion-clubs-fictional-response-to.html
What happens is that Ramer (who is substantially a Tolkien alter ego, being a philologist and science fiction/ fantasy writer) has just read a story to the Notion Club.
The club responds to Ramer's story with various jovial and satirical comments, the substance of which is that they much liked the story itself - which we don't know much about, but which apparently was set on another planet; but found the 'frame' describing getting-to and back-from this planet unconvincing and contrived, while the story itself had the ring of truth.
Indeed, some of the club members intuit that the story was not entirely fictional, in the sense that it seemed as if Ramer had actually 'been there', in the world he described.
Later, Ramer reveals that this is true - he has actually visited this other planet, in reality - but in a dream.
If we suppose that Tolkien was writing this episode based-upon an actual occurrence in an Inklings meeting, which seems likely; what story of Tolkien's might it refer to?
Continued at:
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/does-notion-clubs-fictional-response-to.html
Friday, 30 December 2016
The truth of Imagination - from William Wildblood
Excerpt:
More at:
http://albionawakening.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/imagination-is-vision.html
We currently live in an outer world where randomness and general purposelessness are the order of the day. Imagination takes us to an inner world of meaning where beauty is truth, and myth and fantasy are bridges into that world insofar as they recognise that there is something behind the scenes of outer appearance.
None of this means there is anything intrinsically spiritual about myth or fantasy or even imagination, but they can point to the spiritual. The world of myth and fantasy is a middle ground between the material world and the spiritual world, and that is why it seems more real than the former while, in its turn, is less real than the latter.
None of this means there is anything intrinsically spiritual about myth or fantasy or even imagination, but they can point to the spiritual. The world of myth and fantasy is a middle ground between the material world and the spiritual world, and that is why it seems more real than the former while, in its turn, is less real than the latter.
More at:
Religious *and* spiritual: Prejudicial hostility to non-normal states of consciousness, mysticism, magic, 'the occult' etc among (real) Christians
Many modern Christians, including real Christians, have a reflexive and inflexible hostility to 'Religious Experience' - that is, to anything like mysticism, magic or what they term the occult.
Such attitudes come-out, for example, in the visceral hostility to JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, and Harry Potter as being demonically-inspired and/ or tending to lead people into evil preoccupations and practices - such as conjuring spirits.
This particular mind set is associated with Low Church, Charismatic type Protestants (especially in the USA). Such people claim to be able to draw a sharp line between Religious Experience (such as speaking in tongues or faith healings: good) and Magic (bad), usually defined on the presence of key words or practices such as wizard, witch, divination and spells.
Similar - albeit 'less extreme' attitudes are also prevalent in a mind-set to be found among Western and Eastern Catholics of a Traditionalist type, and the more traditionalist, scriptural Protestant churches.
What this amounts-to is the belief that normal everyday consciousness is the only 'safe' way to be - and any form of altered consciousness - such as is associated with mystical, magical and occult experiences or knowledge - is to be avoided, absolutely (or rejected if it happens) as being likely to be of demonic origin.
In a nutshell, such people are real Christians - and yet they are solidly against Religious Experiences, in the modern world; because these may be evil in origin or effect.
Such traditionalists will acknowledge that in theory Religious and mystical experiences may also be of divine or angelic origin (as is amply attested in The Bible, the early church, among Christian Saints of the past etc.). This might be taken to imply a middle path - of approving mystical experience but with caution; and indeed that is my own view of things.
But in practice, Traditionalists are prejudiced against Religious Experiences - by which I mean they pre-judge all claims of mysticism to be fraudulent or deluded unless-proven-otherwise; and in practice there never-can-be objective, public proof otherwise.
Such people will never actually be convinced of any proof of or evidence for the validity of mystical experience - at least not when mystical claims are made by people or groups they dislike - which amounts to people outwith their own denomination +/- a shortlist of other approved churches.
(Part of this is that they typically have an unexamined assumption that true Religious Experiences only happen to those of exceptional sanctity; and such people are extremely rare, especially in the modern world. Where they get this assumption, given the vast number of Biblical and real-life counter-examples - and the fact that Jesus came, and Christianity was founded, explicity for sinners - I can't imagine: but they clearly do assume it.)
I am sure that the Fundamentalist or Traditionalist prejudices against Religious Experience/ magic and mysticism is a very major error of modern Christianity; because Christianity is essentially a mystical religion, and if mystical aspects (whether they are labelled magic, occult or whatever) are excluded; then the faith is dead - becomes a mere matter of obedience to a bureaucracy or set or rules.
(Obedience to legitimate authority is a virtue - true; but I see not the slightest sign that Jesus regarded it as the primary virtue!)
Particularly damaging is that this prejudice against Religious Experiences implicitly consigns modern Christianity to operate within Modern Consciousness - which is of its nature materialist, reductionist and positivist. Indeed Modern Consciousness is a truly horrible thing; which drains contemporary life of felt meaning and purpose; so that the Christian who lives within it can have a faith only 'in theory' - because any validating mystical experiences will be rejected as demonic.
If ever there was a playing into Satan's hands, and doing just exactly what he wants: then this is it! - A Christianity which (from a secular perspective) has all the disadvantages of an absurdly magical foundation; yet vehemently rejects all possible experiential advantages of a magical consciousness!
So we get the weird spectacle of the adherents of a magical religion, with a magically validated organisation (i.e. a church), who spend their time reading and discussing magical events (in the Bible, lives of Saints etc), and performing magical rituals such as the Eucharist and Prayer... yet living within a distinctively modern and rootedly anti-magical discourse which expends great energy in distancing itself from any people who actually experience magic in the here and now and strive to live in a more expanded and sensitive consciousness than that of a modern bureaucracy!
In sum Christianity need to be spiritual as well as religious; and must not be squeamish or prejudiced against mysticism, magic, the occult.
Yes, this is a risk; but Life is a risk: intrinsically (Christianity takes a middle-way about pretty much everything except Love, Repentance and Forgiveness) - and the opposite risk of promoting a dry, legalistic, merely doctrinal Christianity is to advocate a mere corpse of Christianity.
Mysticism is, simply, a risk we have to take.
Such attitudes come-out, for example, in the visceral hostility to JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, and Harry Potter as being demonically-inspired and/ or tending to lead people into evil preoccupations and practices - such as conjuring spirits.
This particular mind set is associated with Low Church, Charismatic type Protestants (especially in the USA). Such people claim to be able to draw a sharp line between Religious Experience (such as speaking in tongues or faith healings: good) and Magic (bad), usually defined on the presence of key words or practices such as wizard, witch, divination and spells.
Similar - albeit 'less extreme' attitudes are also prevalent in a mind-set to be found among Western and Eastern Catholics of a Traditionalist type, and the more traditionalist, scriptural Protestant churches.
What this amounts-to is the belief that normal everyday consciousness is the only 'safe' way to be - and any form of altered consciousness - such as is associated with mystical, magical and occult experiences or knowledge - is to be avoided, absolutely (or rejected if it happens) as being likely to be of demonic origin.
In a nutshell, such people are real Christians - and yet they are solidly against Religious Experiences, in the modern world; because these may be evil in origin or effect.
Such traditionalists will acknowledge that in theory Religious and mystical experiences may also be of divine or angelic origin (as is amply attested in The Bible, the early church, among Christian Saints of the past etc.). This might be taken to imply a middle path - of approving mystical experience but with caution; and indeed that is my own view of things.
But in practice, Traditionalists are prejudiced against Religious Experiences - by which I mean they pre-judge all claims of mysticism to be fraudulent or deluded unless-proven-otherwise; and in practice there never-can-be objective, public proof otherwise.
Such people will never actually be convinced of any proof of or evidence for the validity of mystical experience - at least not when mystical claims are made by people or groups they dislike - which amounts to people outwith their own denomination +/- a shortlist of other approved churches.
(Part of this is that they typically have an unexamined assumption that true Religious Experiences only happen to those of exceptional sanctity; and such people are extremely rare, especially in the modern world. Where they get this assumption, given the vast number of Biblical and real-life counter-examples - and the fact that Jesus came, and Christianity was founded, explicity for sinners - I can't imagine: but they clearly do assume it.)
I am sure that the Fundamentalist or Traditionalist prejudices against Religious Experience/ magic and mysticism is a very major error of modern Christianity; because Christianity is essentially a mystical religion, and if mystical aspects (whether they are labelled magic, occult or whatever) are excluded; then the faith is dead - becomes a mere matter of obedience to a bureaucracy or set or rules.
(Obedience to legitimate authority is a virtue - true; but I see not the slightest sign that Jesus regarded it as the primary virtue!)
Particularly damaging is that this prejudice against Religious Experiences implicitly consigns modern Christianity to operate within Modern Consciousness - which is of its nature materialist, reductionist and positivist. Indeed Modern Consciousness is a truly horrible thing; which drains contemporary life of felt meaning and purpose; so that the Christian who lives within it can have a faith only 'in theory' - because any validating mystical experiences will be rejected as demonic.
If ever there was a playing into Satan's hands, and doing just exactly what he wants: then this is it! - A Christianity which (from a secular perspective) has all the disadvantages of an absurdly magical foundation; yet vehemently rejects all possible experiential advantages of a magical consciousness!
So we get the weird spectacle of the adherents of a magical religion, with a magically validated organisation (i.e. a church), who spend their time reading and discussing magical events (in the Bible, lives of Saints etc), and performing magical rituals such as the Eucharist and Prayer... yet living within a distinctively modern and rootedly anti-magical discourse which expends great energy in distancing itself from any people who actually experience magic in the here and now and strive to live in a more expanded and sensitive consciousness than that of a modern bureaucracy!
In sum Christianity need to be spiritual as well as religious; and must not be squeamish or prejudiced against mysticism, magic, the occult.
Yes, this is a risk; but Life is a risk: intrinsically (Christianity takes a middle-way about pretty much everything except Love, Repentance and Forgiveness) - and the opposite risk of promoting a dry, legalistic, merely doctrinal Christianity is to advocate a mere corpse of Christianity.
Mysticism is, simply, a risk we have to take.
Thursday, 29 December 2016
Any purposiveness in any part of biology ultimately implies the coordinated purposiveness of everything
Teleology in any part of biology (such as an organism, or species) implies purposiveness of the whole of reality: more on the metaphysics of biology
Bruce G Charlton
Continuing from:
https://thewinnower.com/papers/3497-reconceptualizing-the-metaphysical-basis-of-biology-a-new-definition-based-on-deistic-teleology-and-an-hierarchy-of-organizing-entities
If it is accepted that biology requires teleology, or purposiveness of evolutionary change; and that therefore ‘evolution’ is in its essence a developmental process (that is, an unfolding of changes towards a goal, analogous to the process by which a fertilised cell becomes a mature adult organism); then the ultimate implication is that all of the living world of biology is also purposive.
And, since the less-or-more-conscious living entities of biology cannot be qualitatively separated from other entities without apparently arbitrary assumptions, but rather life and consciousness are quantitative.
It follows that there is no wholly non-living world and no wholly un-conscious world. Instead the metaphysical assumption about the world must be that everything is living and everything is conscious – but with widely varying types and degrees of life and consciousness.
So a grain of sand or a drop of water are regarded as alive and conscious in some way and to some degree; but in a different way and to a lesser extent than a plant or animal. In other words, the whole of reality makes-up a web of inter-related entities.
The individual organism contains other sub-entities (for instance, and most obviously, mitochondria and chloroplasts – which have their own genes and considerable autonomy); the individual is not wholly separable from their family or group, the family merges into the species, one species into other interacting species; and the biological world with the chemical and physical worlds. Albeit that the interconnections are extremely various in nature and strength.
In such an interconnected causal web, there can be no isolated teleology; but the purposiveness of entities such as organelles, cells, multi-cellular organisms, sexes, species and ecologies must also be coordinated and unified. The teleology of any one entity or level of organisation implies the teleology of everything.
Because if one entity is regarded as unfolding in a developmental fashion towards a goal, then this implies a complementary development in the environment:
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/complementary-evolution-of-entity-and.html
But one complementarity implies another; because the first complementarity in turn implies further complementarities; organism and environmental complementarity implying multiple changes (e.g. if an animal is purposively evolving in a long-term fashion, then the environment must accomodate this if it is not to be placed at short-term reproductive disadvantage) - since complementarity is multi-faceted with 'environment' being a complex multiplicity (e.g. an animal's environment includes members of its own species, other animals, pathogens and parasites, plants both great and small, plus the inorganic world including perhaps water, winds, and light).
So the existence of any purposiveness, anywhere in the system, entails purposiveness in order to accommodate it; with mutual adjustments branching-out into in a causal network of coordinated teleological change.
If, therefore, we regard purposiveness as an essential aspect of biology (as seems necessary in order plausibly and straightforwardly account for the major aspects of biology), it seems that have ended-up with a purposiveness that applies to everything.
If we regard development (as in the development of the individual organism through its life span) as the ‘master metaphor’ of evolutionary change and biology itself; then we are apparently compelled to regard the changes of the totality of all things as likewise an unfolding process towards a goal.
(Note: From this conclusion, it can be understood why teleology has been so stoutly and uncompromisingly resisted by the mainstream dominant conceptualisation of biology as utterly non-purposive, undirected, algorithmic in operation - the view deriving from Richard Dawkins's Selfish Genes and perhaps most uncompromisingly articulated in Daniel C Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea - which has prevailed increasingly since the late 1940s and especially for the past four decades. This is the metaphysical assumption - which denies it is a metaphysical assumption! - that all biological evolution, all heritable longitudinal change both quantitative and qualitative - is caused by the undirected selection of undirected variations. From the atheist assumptions of this meta-biology, it is clear that any teleology, allowed anywhere in the system under consideration, will lead to the necessity for a teleology of the whole; which entails at least Deism - i.e. the reality of a creator deity.)
Bruce G Charlton
Continuing from:
https://thewinnower.com/papers/3497-reconceptualizing-the-metaphysical-basis-of-biology-a-new-definition-based-on-deistic-teleology-and-an-hierarchy-of-organizing-entities
If it is accepted that biology requires teleology, or purposiveness of evolutionary change; and that therefore ‘evolution’ is in its essence a developmental process (that is, an unfolding of changes towards a goal, analogous to the process by which a fertilised cell becomes a mature adult organism); then the ultimate implication is that all of the living world of biology is also purposive.
And, since the less-or-more-conscious living entities of biology cannot be qualitatively separated from other entities without apparently arbitrary assumptions, but rather life and consciousness are quantitative.
It follows that there is no wholly non-living world and no wholly un-conscious world. Instead the metaphysical assumption about the world must be that everything is living and everything is conscious – but with widely varying types and degrees of life and consciousness.
So a grain of sand or a drop of water are regarded as alive and conscious in some way and to some degree; but in a different way and to a lesser extent than a plant or animal. In other words, the whole of reality makes-up a web of inter-related entities.
The individual organism contains other sub-entities (for instance, and most obviously, mitochondria and chloroplasts – which have their own genes and considerable autonomy); the individual is not wholly separable from their family or group, the family merges into the species, one species into other interacting species; and the biological world with the chemical and physical worlds. Albeit that the interconnections are extremely various in nature and strength.
In such an interconnected causal web, there can be no isolated teleology; but the purposiveness of entities such as organelles, cells, multi-cellular organisms, sexes, species and ecologies must also be coordinated and unified. The teleology of any one entity or level of organisation implies the teleology of everything.
Because if one entity is regarded as unfolding in a developmental fashion towards a goal, then this implies a complementary development in the environment:
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/complementary-evolution-of-entity-and.html
But one complementarity implies another; because the first complementarity in turn implies further complementarities; organism and environmental complementarity implying multiple changes (e.g. if an animal is purposively evolving in a long-term fashion, then the environment must accomodate this if it is not to be placed at short-term reproductive disadvantage) - since complementarity is multi-faceted with 'environment' being a complex multiplicity (e.g. an animal's environment includes members of its own species, other animals, pathogens and parasites, plants both great and small, plus the inorganic world including perhaps water, winds, and light).
So the existence of any purposiveness, anywhere in the system, entails purposiveness in order to accommodate it; with mutual adjustments branching-out into in a causal network of coordinated teleological change.
If, therefore, we regard purposiveness as an essential aspect of biology (as seems necessary in order plausibly and straightforwardly account for the major aspects of biology), it seems that have ended-up with a purposiveness that applies to everything.
If we regard development (as in the development of the individual organism through its life span) as the ‘master metaphor’ of evolutionary change and biology itself; then we are apparently compelled to regard the changes of the totality of all things as likewise an unfolding process towards a goal.
(Note: From this conclusion, it can be understood why teleology has been so stoutly and uncompromisingly resisted by the mainstream dominant conceptualisation of biology as utterly non-purposive, undirected, algorithmic in operation - the view deriving from Richard Dawkins's Selfish Genes and perhaps most uncompromisingly articulated in Daniel C Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea - which has prevailed increasingly since the late 1940s and especially for the past four decades. This is the metaphysical assumption - which denies it is a metaphysical assumption! - that all biological evolution, all heritable longitudinal change both quantitative and qualitative - is caused by the undirected selection of undirected variations. From the atheist assumptions of this meta-biology, it is clear that any teleology, allowed anywhere in the system under consideration, will lead to the necessity for a teleology of the whole; which entails at least Deism - i.e. the reality of a creator deity.)
The Matter of Britain - from Geoffrey Ashe's Camelot and the Vision of Albion (1971)
I would strongly recommend Geoffrey Ashe's 1971 book Camelot and the Vision of Albion to all who are hopeful of an awakening of Albion - by rights, this book should be regarded as a classic of British history of ideas.
Here is a taste, which I have edited from pages 105-6:
Let us try to define the archetype which is constant throughout, the active ingredient in the spell.
The stories vary, but they always tend the same way. There were gods before the gods, kings before the kings, Titans before Olympians, Britons before English; and their reign was a golden age.
There was a profounder Christianity in the wave-encircled realm of the Celtic West, before the church as we know it.
Then the glory faded. Injustice and tyranny flowed in. Zeus usurped the throne of heaven. Prometheus was bound. The sea encroached. The Round Table broke up. Arthur succumbed to Mordred. The Saxons conquered Britain. The Grail was lost and the land became waste.
But the depths are formative. The place of apparent death is the place of life. The glory which was once real has never actually died.
Somewhere, somehow, Cronus or Arthur is still living, enchanted or asleep through the ages. The Grail is still in safe keeping. The visionary kingdom is still invisibly 'there', latent...
This is the British myth, of which at least a large part can be shown to descend from remote antiquity. I know of no fully developed parallel myth anywhere else.
As a poetic statement the British myth is indeed unique. But it is a statement of a broader psychological fact. It reflects a human phenomenon, a mode of thought and behaviour, that can be traced through the world in a profusion of forms: one of the strongest constituents in history, and one of the least recognised.
More at:
http://albionawakening.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/the-british-myth-by-goeffrey-ashe-1971.html
Here is a taste, which I have edited from pages 105-6:
Let us try to define the archetype which is constant throughout, the active ingredient in the spell.
The stories vary, but they always tend the same way. There were gods before the gods, kings before the kings, Titans before Olympians, Britons before English; and their reign was a golden age.
There was a profounder Christianity in the wave-encircled realm of the Celtic West, before the church as we know it.
Then the glory faded. Injustice and tyranny flowed in. Zeus usurped the throne of heaven. Prometheus was bound. The sea encroached. The Round Table broke up. Arthur succumbed to Mordred. The Saxons conquered Britain. The Grail was lost and the land became waste.
But the depths are formative. The place of apparent death is the place of life. The glory which was once real has never actually died.
Somewhere, somehow, Cronus or Arthur is still living, enchanted or asleep through the ages. The Grail is still in safe keeping. The visionary kingdom is still invisibly 'there', latent...
This is the British myth, of which at least a large part can be shown to descend from remote antiquity. I know of no fully developed parallel myth anywhere else.
As a poetic statement the British myth is indeed unique. But it is a statement of a broader psychological fact. It reflects a human phenomenon, a mode of thought and behaviour, that can be traced through the world in a profusion of forms: one of the strongest constituents in history, and one of the least recognised.
More at:
http://albionawakening.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/the-british-myth-by-goeffrey-ashe-1971.html
Wednesday, 28 December 2016
The West is ruled by an evil-motivated 'conspiracy': The key, necessary insight of 2016
If there was a breakthrough in 2016 - if there was some kind of awakening, and potential turning point; it was a realisation that the major long-term problems of The West are not accidental, nor are they due to incompetence, nor a consequence of well-meaning but short-sighted and selective self-interest; but they are because The West is ultimately ruled by an evil-motivated 'conspiracy'.
In other words, at the highest or deepest level of global affairs, there is a dominant grouping that are primarily and strategically aiming to harm the world and its peoples.
The insight that, to a substantial and significant extent bad people are in power, they have-done and are-doing bad things on purpose, and they are planning to cause many more bad things to happen.
And therefore, if things are allowed to continue as they have been for the past decades; then (sooner or later) life will be made extremely horrible: dystopia created on Earth deliberately, and by the coordinated actions of people currently in charge.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=conspiracy
http://thoughtprison-pc.blogspot.co.uk
**
The next insight has not (yet?) been so widely appreciated; that the whole direction and fundamental basis of our world needs to change. And it is up to us - as individual; here, and now - to do it:
http://albionawakening.blogspot.co.uk
In other words, at the highest or deepest level of global affairs, there is a dominant grouping that are primarily and strategically aiming to harm the world and its peoples.
The insight that, to a substantial and significant extent bad people are in power, they have-done and are-doing bad things on purpose, and they are planning to cause many more bad things to happen.
And therefore, if things are allowed to continue as they have been for the past decades; then (sooner or later) life will be made extremely horrible: dystopia created on Earth deliberately, and by the coordinated actions of people currently in charge.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=conspiracy
http://thoughtprison-pc.blogspot.co.uk
**
The next insight has not (yet?) been so widely appreciated; that the whole direction and fundamental basis of our world needs to change. And it is up to us - as individual; here, and now - to do it:
http://albionawakening.blogspot.co.uk
Why is Lord of the Rings more real than real life? How JRR Tolkien and Owen Barfield together might have explained it (but didn't - so I did)
Excerpted from: http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/mythopoeia-by-jrr-tolkien-1932-or-1933.html
From Fantasy we come to appreciate the realities of our (primary, 'real life') world, but refreshed because we have come across familiar basics such as men and women, bread, stone, trees... in the magical and coherent context of a Secondary world.
The key to the value of Fantasy – here and now – is its contrast with the modern world.
Modern ‘reality’ is most deficient in the most important aspects of Life. We are alienated from the world - our Self is cut-off from experienced relationships with anything else: nihilistic solipsism is a constant threat.
And this is ever more so, because modern reality is, mostly and ever-increasingly, a mass media-generated ‘virtual’ kind of reality.
Thus modern ‘Primary’ reality is deficient in terms of lacking destiny, meaning and purpose for Life; in its ignorance, denial, or blind terror of ageing and death; in terms of regarding the Human Condition as a mixture of mechanical determinism and random chaos; in its regarding of the major virtues of Love and Courage as mere products of social-conditioning and evolution; and its understanding that Tolkien’s joyful ‘eucatastrophe’ – the unexpected ‘turn’ of events in a Fairy Story that snatches the Happy Ending from apparently-inevitable defeat – as merely statistical coincidence…
Fantasy may indeed be our only sustained experience in which these real-realities are encountered. But how is it that Fantasy may be able to supply what the Primary word so horribly lacks?
Our imaginative participation in an internally consistent world of wonders, provides us with stimuli, with perceptions, that do not automatically get plugged-into the subversive and inverting theories of modernism.
The magic and wonders of Fantasy quite naturally and spontaneously attach themselves to our built-in, universal concepts – those mythic understandings and interpretations of the ‘collective unconscious’, or our shared divine-endowments. And it is these universal concepts which enable us to apprehend and share reality.
More at: http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/mythopoeia-by-jrr-tolkien-1932-or-1933.html
From Fantasy we come to appreciate the realities of our (primary, 'real life') world, but refreshed because we have come across familiar basics such as men and women, bread, stone, trees... in the magical and coherent context of a Secondary world.
The key to the value of Fantasy – here and now – is its contrast with the modern world.
Modern ‘reality’ is most deficient in the most important aspects of Life. We are alienated from the world - our Self is cut-off from experienced relationships with anything else: nihilistic solipsism is a constant threat.
And this is ever more so, because modern reality is, mostly and ever-increasingly, a mass media-generated ‘virtual’ kind of reality.
Thus modern ‘Primary’ reality is deficient in terms of lacking destiny, meaning and purpose for Life; in its ignorance, denial, or blind terror of ageing and death; in terms of regarding the Human Condition as a mixture of mechanical determinism and random chaos; in its regarding of the major virtues of Love and Courage as mere products of social-conditioning and evolution; and its understanding that Tolkien’s joyful ‘eucatastrophe’ – the unexpected ‘turn’ of events in a Fairy Story that snatches the Happy Ending from apparently-inevitable defeat – as merely statistical coincidence…
Fantasy may indeed be our only sustained experience in which these real-realities are encountered. But how is it that Fantasy may be able to supply what the Primary word so horribly lacks?
Our imaginative participation in an internally consistent world of wonders, provides us with stimuli, with perceptions, that do not automatically get plugged-into the subversive and inverting theories of modernism.
The magic and wonders of Fantasy quite naturally and spontaneously attach themselves to our built-in, universal concepts – those mythic understandings and interpretations of the ‘collective unconscious’, or our shared divine-endowments. And it is these universal concepts which enable us to apprehend and share reality.
More at: http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/mythopoeia-by-jrr-tolkien-1932-or-1933.html
2016 - the year of ridiculous optimism
It seems that 2016 was the real 2012 - the winter solstice of which was supposed (by many of the New Age spiritual persuasion) to mark the inflexion point predicted by an ancient Mayan Calendar.
In contrast the redoubtable David Icke predicted several years ago that 2016 would be the crucial year, the beginning of a period of about three years when the odds would be stacked in favour of those wishing to overthrow the Global Establishment.
(The 'GE' being the demonic conspiracy to monitor and control everyone into a state that DI terms fascist slavery; but which I interpret as self-hatred, willed-personal-and-national-suicide, and ultimately self-damnation.)
Well, 2016 has indeed been a crucial year - the first such since 1967 (which was 49 years ago - or 7X7 years for you Pythagorean/ Platonist numerologists) in my personal experience.
By my understanding, such calendrical predictions are very approximate, and do not unroll according to any predetermined plan; rather they reflect the developmental phases in a destined (i.e. divinely intended) evolution of human consciousness, as mediated and modified by the vast complexity of human agency and demonic destructiveness.
So 2016 is the beginning of a period of possibility; when we are being given the clarity of vision to see what has happened to us and what is intended for us - and the chance effectively to say No: to take another path. The nature of that alternative path has yet to be chosen - and even the outlines are unclear; but it must be (because nothing else is wanted or could work) a path initially of spiritual awakening, leading on (at some point) to Christian religious awakening.
At any rate, I have been getting intermittent intuitions of, apparently, ridiculous optimism throughout the second half of 2016; intuitions which seem to validate what many other have written about and variously interpreted; that the mass of people (a majority, albeit perhaps not an overwhelming majority) have reached the point of recognising the malign intention of the ruling elites towards them and their nations.
So far things have not gone much further than this recognition and the new understanding that this is felt by very large numbers of people (and not just an insignificant and powerless minority). There has been a strong, and still growing-daily, backlash against this incipient awareness, from the Establishment and its organs of government, education, law and the mass media; but this anti-popular onslaught has brought the repression out into the open and undeniable - so it is probably feeding the movement it is intended to crush.
2017 is therefore a moral test for The West. We will be given the chance to escape certain doom, and take another path; but that other path will involve most people in significant personal sacrifice in terms of material goods, comfort, convenience, and so forth. The moral test is whether people are prepared to pay the necessary costs for a better future, or whether by clinging to their addictions and distractions they will embrace the down-slide into despair, self-hatred and chosen damnation.
This is not yet decided, and at present all possibilities lie open before us; and the choices are becoming clearer by the day. What is coming is a test of honesty, courage and love.
If we fail it, as a culture, then we will (as a population) have no serious cause for complaint about what happens after. But if we pass the test, then The West will be reborn with a positive spiritual and religious future; a life of meaning and purpose directed at becoming more-divine - and of course this is available only at the usual price of 'blood, toil, tears and sweat', payable in-advance, up-front, here-and-now.
In contrast the redoubtable David Icke predicted several years ago that 2016 would be the crucial year, the beginning of a period of about three years when the odds would be stacked in favour of those wishing to overthrow the Global Establishment.
(The 'GE' being the demonic conspiracy to monitor and control everyone into a state that DI terms fascist slavery; but which I interpret as self-hatred, willed-personal-and-national-suicide, and ultimately self-damnation.)
Well, 2016 has indeed been a crucial year - the first such since 1967 (which was 49 years ago - or 7X7 years for you Pythagorean/ Platonist numerologists) in my personal experience.
By my understanding, such calendrical predictions are very approximate, and do not unroll according to any predetermined plan; rather they reflect the developmental phases in a destined (i.e. divinely intended) evolution of human consciousness, as mediated and modified by the vast complexity of human agency and demonic destructiveness.
So 2016 is the beginning of a period of possibility; when we are being given the clarity of vision to see what has happened to us and what is intended for us - and the chance effectively to say No: to take another path. The nature of that alternative path has yet to be chosen - and even the outlines are unclear; but it must be (because nothing else is wanted or could work) a path initially of spiritual awakening, leading on (at some point) to Christian religious awakening.
At any rate, I have been getting intermittent intuitions of, apparently, ridiculous optimism throughout the second half of 2016; intuitions which seem to validate what many other have written about and variously interpreted; that the mass of people (a majority, albeit perhaps not an overwhelming majority) have reached the point of recognising the malign intention of the ruling elites towards them and their nations.
So far things have not gone much further than this recognition and the new understanding that this is felt by very large numbers of people (and not just an insignificant and powerless minority). There has been a strong, and still growing-daily, backlash against this incipient awareness, from the Establishment and its organs of government, education, law and the mass media; but this anti-popular onslaught has brought the repression out into the open and undeniable - so it is probably feeding the movement it is intended to crush.
2017 is therefore a moral test for The West. We will be given the chance to escape certain doom, and take another path; but that other path will involve most people in significant personal sacrifice in terms of material goods, comfort, convenience, and so forth. The moral test is whether people are prepared to pay the necessary costs for a better future, or whether by clinging to their addictions and distractions they will embrace the down-slide into despair, self-hatred and chosen damnation.
This is not yet decided, and at present all possibilities lie open before us; and the choices are becoming clearer by the day. What is coming is a test of honesty, courage and love.
If we fail it, as a culture, then we will (as a population) have no serious cause for complaint about what happens after. But if we pass the test, then The West will be reborn with a positive spiritual and religious future; a life of meaning and purpose directed at becoming more-divine - and of course this is available only at the usual price of 'blood, toil, tears and sweat', payable in-advance, up-front, here-and-now.
A genius dies - Richard Adams, author of Watership Down
He lived to the age of 96 - a 'good innings' by any standards - and was hale and hearty until very recently.
I have read only his Watership Down, and autobiography - not fancying the other fictions; but I regard Watership Down as a truly great book, right up there at the pinnacle of the Fantasy genre:
https://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/brief-review-of-watership-down-by.html
I have read only his Watership Down, and autobiography - not fancying the other fictions; but I regard Watership Down as a truly great book, right up there at the pinnacle of the Fantasy genre:
https://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/brief-review-of-watership-down-by.html
Tuesday, 27 December 2016
Thomas Sowell retires! (Aged 86)
Thomas Sowell has retired at 86, and before there was any decline in his excellent standard of journalism.
Back in the middle 2000s - before I became a Christian, turned against economics and cast-off my residual Leftism - I probably rated Thomas Sowell more highly than any other active public intellectual; and would rather have met him than anyone else alive.
I read a lot of his books (which were all worthwhile, and some of them had a permanent effect on me); including his autobiography A Personal Odyssey which is a fascinating document in so many ways.
So, this is the end of an era.
Back in the middle 2000s - before I became a Christian, turned against economics and cast-off my residual Leftism - I probably rated Thomas Sowell more highly than any other active public intellectual; and would rather have met him than anyone else alive.
I read a lot of his books (which were all worthwhile, and some of them had a permanent effect on me); including his autobiography A Personal Odyssey which is a fascinating document in so many ways.
So, this is the end of an era.
RUL - Residual Unresolved Leftism - Any person or organisation that is anti-Christian (that is, not explicitly pro-Christian) is objectively Leftist in effect
Diagnosis is easier than treatment. A fair number of authors, even some in the mainstream, are able to diagnose the main problems of The West; but extremely few of them are able to make valuable recommendations for how to 'treat' the sick patient - and the reason is typically Residual Unresolved Leftism.
In other words, people suppose they are free of false and unfounded assumptions; but in fact there are Leftist assumptions built-into their understanding, and which negate their ability to see what needs to be done.
To put it another way: the study of fundamental assumptions about the nature of reality is metaphysics; and it is metaphysics which is most often and characteristically flawed in modern discourse.
And because there are unwarranted assumptions at the metaphysical level, then everything built upon these foundations is vulnerable to the insecurity of the foundations.
In particular, the most idealistic anti-Establishment cultural critics fail to perceive that Leftism is at the very root of that which they most deplore in modern life: the pervasive dishonesty and manipulation of public discourse; the iron cage of bureaucracy; the international global elite; the pacifist warmongers; the pseudo-egalitarianism of exploitative corporate power; state propaganda' bribery and soft-terror, the corruption of education; the systematic inculcation of fear and resentment between sexes, races, nations; anti-environment fake environmentalism, and so on.
Idealistic people who genuinely want to address these problems and who raise awareness of the problem; almost-always make matters worse in practice, because of their RUL.
And it turns out that the essence of RUL is usually very simple indeed! It is denial of the reality of a personal creator God. That is the root of Leftism, and it is the main form of RUL that subverts nearly all would-be idealism in Western politics.
The Counter-Culure may be, often is, spiritual or even deistic (allowing the philosophical possibility of an impersonal creative force or principle); but it is atheistic with respect to a personal creator God.
Specifically, since it is the only such religion of The West as a culture; anti-Christianity is the main form of RUL among political radicals, whether they self-identify as Left, Right or neither.
This large scale and pervasive failure is - probably - due to a failure to discriminate between Christianity and the Christian Churches; a failure which is, of course, encouraged by most of the Churches themselves (each of whom claim to be the only repository of true or real Christianity).
But we have reached a point in history when the difference between being a Christian and the institutional actuality of most of the large, powerful, wealthy self-identified Christian churches has become near-crystalline in clarity.
There is (in the West) an absolute and un-dodgeable necessity for effective cultural analysis to be pro-Christian - even (or especially) when it is actively anti- most of the actual Churches that self-identify as Christian.
Because the mainstream Christian churches have been becoming weaker, smaller and more corrupt for many decades; and because their membership (and, even more so, leadership) are so comprehensively and deeply complicit in Leftism (such they they base their version of Christianity upon secular cultural-inculcated Leftist assumptions that they treat as unarguable, while supposing they are doing the opposite) - it is quite normal, almost universal, for radical cultural critics and activist to be anti-Christian.
Yet this anti-Christian RUL always-and-inevitably delivers would-be radicals (whether they imagine themselves of the Right, Left or apolitical) back into the hands of the Leftist Establishment, into indirectly supporting the status quo of an ever-more dominant elite global conspiracy of evil.
Leftism, as a mode of thinking, is behind all the distinctively self-destructive tendencies of the Left and Leftism is the creed of the global Establishment of evil - but to do anything positive to rectify this situation, we absolutely need to understand that Leftism is first-and-foremost anti-Christian: that is the foundation stone.
And there is no neutral stance possible on this matter: one is either pro- or anti-Christian.
Therefore, the lesson of Residual Unresolved Leftism is that any person or any organisation that is not pro-Christian is anti-Christian, hence objectively Leftist.
NOTE: Being pro-Christian is the minimal necessary pre-requisite for being a good cultural critic; but it does not, of course, make somebody a good cultural critic! Most Christians are ignorant of, or uninterested by, cultural analysis; most cannot express themselves; most have been badly misled by the pervasive modern environment of Leftist deception - the totality of which is grossly underestimated by nearly everybody. But lacking a pro-Christian foundation, all cultural criticism will be objectively Leftist - even when it is trying very hard not to be.
The idea of RUL was inspired by Owen Barfield's notion of Residual Unresolved Positivism - which I discussed here:
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/the-demotivating-effect-of-residual.html
In other words, people suppose they are free of false and unfounded assumptions; but in fact there are Leftist assumptions built-into their understanding, and which negate their ability to see what needs to be done.
To put it another way: the study of fundamental assumptions about the nature of reality is metaphysics; and it is metaphysics which is most often and characteristically flawed in modern discourse.
And because there are unwarranted assumptions at the metaphysical level, then everything built upon these foundations is vulnerable to the insecurity of the foundations.
In particular, the most idealistic anti-Establishment cultural critics fail to perceive that Leftism is at the very root of that which they most deplore in modern life: the pervasive dishonesty and manipulation of public discourse; the iron cage of bureaucracy; the international global elite; the pacifist warmongers; the pseudo-egalitarianism of exploitative corporate power; state propaganda' bribery and soft-terror, the corruption of education; the systematic inculcation of fear and resentment between sexes, races, nations; anti-environment fake environmentalism, and so on.
Idealistic people who genuinely want to address these problems and who raise awareness of the problem; almost-always make matters worse in practice, because of their RUL.
And it turns out that the essence of RUL is usually very simple indeed! It is denial of the reality of a personal creator God. That is the root of Leftism, and it is the main form of RUL that subverts nearly all would-be idealism in Western politics.
The Counter-Culure may be, often is, spiritual or even deistic (allowing the philosophical possibility of an impersonal creative force or principle); but it is atheistic with respect to a personal creator God.
Specifically, since it is the only such religion of The West as a culture; anti-Christianity is the main form of RUL among political radicals, whether they self-identify as Left, Right or neither.
This large scale and pervasive failure is - probably - due to a failure to discriminate between Christianity and the Christian Churches; a failure which is, of course, encouraged by most of the Churches themselves (each of whom claim to be the only repository of true or real Christianity).
But we have reached a point in history when the difference between being a Christian and the institutional actuality of most of the large, powerful, wealthy self-identified Christian churches has become near-crystalline in clarity.
There is (in the West) an absolute and un-dodgeable necessity for effective cultural analysis to be pro-Christian - even (or especially) when it is actively anti- most of the actual Churches that self-identify as Christian.
Because the mainstream Christian churches have been becoming weaker, smaller and more corrupt for many decades; and because their membership (and, even more so, leadership) are so comprehensively and deeply complicit in Leftism (such they they base their version of Christianity upon secular cultural-inculcated Leftist assumptions that they treat as unarguable, while supposing they are doing the opposite) - it is quite normal, almost universal, for radical cultural critics and activist to be anti-Christian.
Yet this anti-Christian RUL always-and-inevitably delivers would-be radicals (whether they imagine themselves of the Right, Left or apolitical) back into the hands of the Leftist Establishment, into indirectly supporting the status quo of an ever-more dominant elite global conspiracy of evil.
Leftism, as a mode of thinking, is behind all the distinctively self-destructive tendencies of the Left and Leftism is the creed of the global Establishment of evil - but to do anything positive to rectify this situation, we absolutely need to understand that Leftism is first-and-foremost anti-Christian: that is the foundation stone.
And there is no neutral stance possible on this matter: one is either pro- or anti-Christian.
Therefore, the lesson of Residual Unresolved Leftism is that any person or any organisation that is not pro-Christian is anti-Christian, hence objectively Leftist.
NOTE: Being pro-Christian is the minimal necessary pre-requisite for being a good cultural critic; but it does not, of course, make somebody a good cultural critic! Most Christians are ignorant of, or uninterested by, cultural analysis; most cannot express themselves; most have been badly misled by the pervasive modern environment of Leftist deception - the totality of which is grossly underestimated by nearly everybody. But lacking a pro-Christian foundation, all cultural criticism will be objectively Leftist - even when it is trying very hard not to be.
The idea of RUL was inspired by Owen Barfield's notion of Residual Unresolved Positivism - which I discussed here:
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/the-demotivating-effect-of-residual.html
Book of the Year 2016 - What Coleridge Thought, by Owen Barfield (1971)
Probably the main intellectual event of 2016 was my engagement with Owen Barfield's book on the philosophy of Coleridge. This is one of those books which requires (from me, at least) a very intense engagement - because it is working at a metaphysical level; challenging fundamental assumptions regarding the 'structure; of reality.
At any rate, it took me many days of reading and note-taking - and I wasn't able to keep up the necessary level of intensity the whole way through; so I shall need to return and re-read again before too long.
I have written a number of blog posts concerning what I got from the book:
https://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=coleridge+barfield
But the main thing was the idea of polarity as a way of understanding-by-imagining the basis of reality; and the necessity of imagination as the indispensable way of understanding. In turn, this enables me to explain to myself how it is that Life changes, unfolds and (in that sense) evolves according to a divine destiny that includes the free-will or agency of Men.
This isn't something I can encapsulate here and briefly; but as always with metaphysics, there is a great liberation and excitement from knowing what are one's own (previous) assumptions and that they are not entailed but assumed.
It was also valuable to understand that the failure of all British (and Western, generally) spiritual awakenings over the past two centuries since Coleridge is explicable in terms of the failure to fix our constraining metaphysical assumptions; this failure foredooms all attempts to escape our culture's trajectory towards ever-more complete alienation, despair and self-chosen damnation.
At any rate, it took me many days of reading and note-taking - and I wasn't able to keep up the necessary level of intensity the whole way through; so I shall need to return and re-read again before too long.
I have written a number of blog posts concerning what I got from the book:
https://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=coleridge+barfield
But the main thing was the idea of polarity as a way of understanding-by-imagining the basis of reality; and the necessity of imagination as the indispensable way of understanding. In turn, this enables me to explain to myself how it is that Life changes, unfolds and (in that sense) evolves according to a divine destiny that includes the free-will or agency of Men.
This isn't something I can encapsulate here and briefly; but as always with metaphysics, there is a great liberation and excitement from knowing what are one's own (previous) assumptions and that they are not entailed but assumed.
It was also valuable to understand that the failure of all British (and Western, generally) spiritual awakenings over the past two centuries since Coleridge is explicable in terms of the failure to fix our constraining metaphysical assumptions; this failure foredooms all attempts to escape our culture's trajectory towards ever-more complete alienation, despair and self-chosen damnation.
Sunday, 25 December 2016
SO, it's Christmas
What better time - waiting to open the presents - to sit down and write a blog post?
The big event for me (in the public realm) this year was probably starting the blog Albion Awakening with John Fitzgerald and William Wildblood - here is John with a wonderful meditation on Kingship in his own life and the works of G Wilson Knight, and GWK's writings on Shakespeare:
http://albionawakening.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/g-wilson-knight-shakespearean-prophet.html
William has an inspiring post which re-awakened that special feeling about Jesus Christ, which all Christians experience from time to time, and which we would hope to experience all of the time. William's route to understanding the centrality of Christ went through various phases which, in the end, seem to have deepened his faith:
http://meetingthemasters.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/christmas.html
Happy Christmas.
The big event for me (in the public realm) this year was probably starting the blog Albion Awakening with John Fitzgerald and William Wildblood - here is John with a wonderful meditation on Kingship in his own life and the works of G Wilson Knight, and GWK's writings on Shakespeare:
http://albionawakening.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/g-wilson-knight-shakespearean-prophet.html
William has an inspiring post which re-awakened that special feeling about Jesus Christ, which all Christians experience from time to time, and which we would hope to experience all of the time. William's route to understanding the centrality of Christ went through various phases which, in the end, seem to have deepened his faith:
http://meetingthemasters.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/christmas.html
Happy Christmas.
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