*
If, as Christians (must) believe, Love is the most important thing there is - then of course Love cannot actually be defined (because that would be to define the more fundamental in terms of the less fundamental) but what can be said about it?
One distinction is to ask what kind of a thing Love is.
To which several answers have been given.
*
Modern culture regards love as a psychological state - but clearly that won't do; because psychological states are evanescent, and constantly changing - and have such individual applicability that they cannot convincingly be extrapolated to be the most important thing in the universe.
To regard Love as a psychological state inevitably trivializes Love; and is therefore intrinsically anti-Christian.
(...Which is why Love as a Psychological State has become so popular in secular modern culture - and why this belief has now been made mandatory, and why this belief in now imposed by coercive force. Modernity is Leftist, and Leftism is built-upon anti-Christianity.)
*
Classical medieval theology regards Love as something physics-like - something which (for example) keeps the stars and planets in their orbits.
This is much better, but such a way of sepaking (such a metaphor) strongly tends to make Love into some kind of impersonal force - something much like gravity or magnetism.
And thereby this renders God into an impersonal force. By regarding the universe as created and sustained, as held-together by Love, Love (if it was really real) becomes something we would expect to detect and measures with sufficiently sensitive instruments. And when this doesn't happen, we may lose faith in love.
Although this kind of abstract conception of Love would be appropriate for impersonal religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism, an abstract metaphor is the opposite of what is needed for Christians where God is our Father and Jesus is our Saviour.
*
My suggestion is that we regard Love as being about families - as a thing which happens primarily in families; ; and families as being organized-around the process of generation.
This means that the paradigm Christian Love is the love of husband and wife (where the marriage relationship is a sanctified sexuality); and the love of parents for their children; and the love between siblings; and the love between the whole network of such relations - the extended family, the clan, a 'people'.
All these are properly considered as different inflections of the same basic kind of thing.
*
The love is about 'generation' in the double sense that it is about (organized-around) the procreation of new generations and that it is about (organized-around) what binds different generations.
In divine terms, the emphasis is that all people have at least a parent-child relationship with God, and therefore sibling relationships with one another.
(And as well as this minimum Love, some people are united by different forms of more-than-this love - husbands and wives, brothers in families and so on.)
But this universal minimal Love of God for Father and all Men as siblings leads to the 'adoptive' aspect of Christian love (sometimes emphasized by St Paul)
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/adoption-as-sons-of-god-what-does.html
...Which I would interpret as implying, on the one hand, that the fullness of Love is necessarily a voluntary choice. We just are God's children and united by brotherly love, like it or not; but this real relationship may be acknowledged and embraced; or (perhaps dishonestly or ignorantly) denied and rejected: that is a choice.
And on the other hand, that the revelation of the sibling relatedness of all men means that there is a mystical 'transferability' between earthly families. In other words, earthly 'genetic' relatedness - such as the genetic links of a family, clan or a people - is ultimately superceded by a larger Heavenly concept of Christian sib-ship - universal Brotherhood and Sisterhood).
Which simply means that family is NOT reducible to genetics; and generation is NOT reducible to reproduction - they are of course about this things, but there is (vitally) much more to the concept of family and generation than merely 'science'.
*
What would this idea of Love as being about families and relational mean in terms of the physics of the universe?
The answer would depend on the basic metaphysical understanding.
One answer could be that Love 'works' to bind and run the universe in the sense that everything (everything) is alive (more-or-less alive); and that there is an affiliation between the living. So what we call gravity would be, in transcendental terms, something like an extremely weak and impersonal form of love.
*
Another answer could be that at least some of the 'physics' of the universe (basic matter, and what we recognize as the 'laws' of physics - what things are and how things interact) may be a 'given' - that is not a part of God's creation but something God works-within.
For example,it seems to me that Time just is linear and sequential - it can go faster or slower (e.g. along the lines described by Einstein, but not necessarily constrained by Einstein's discoveries); but there is nowhere outside of Time, and Time cannot be reversed - nor is Time travel possible (and any physics theory which states that such things can happen is ultimately wrong; no matter if such theories have some pragmatic value).
Thus Time is a constraint for God as for us, it is a 'given', something we live 'within' and within-which Love and Families and Generation happens.
And therefore Time (and by extension 'matter' and 'the laws of physics' are not a part of the economy of Love; but are the backdrop to the drama of Family Love which is the meaning and purpose of the Universe.
*
But however we fit families into all of reality (or all or reality into families) - families provide the vocabulary, the metaphor,the best and truest way of talking about Christian Love.
*
Thursday, 17 April 2014
Wednesday, 16 April 2014
The cognitive genome - the genome may be able to learn and direct evolution
*
Just passing on the fruits of a recent conversation with a knowledgeable scientist whom I respect and trust - about a major piece of work he is doing.
There is a very interesting and plausible new perspective emerging (with evidence from multiple places, and nobody yet having combined it) that the genome may be regarded as having 'cognitive' properties, due to the systematic inter-communication of genes - and that this is consistent with the ability to direct genetic change (mutations and other changes) in an adaptive direction.
This would be a major revision to 'the central dogma' of molecular biology (that information only flows from nucleic acids to proteins), and the standard description of natural selection as being based upon undirected (so-called 'random') mutations - the new idea is that (presumably as a consequence of natural selection) the genome functions somewhat like a 'brain' that models the environment, and responds by changing itself in a directed (and 'purposive') fashion that would be expected to enhance reproductive success.
This would mean that natural selection would not have to wait for undirected ('random') mutations to generate adaptive changes to the organism; but instead (or as well) the mutation process would itself be manipulated to make adaptive changes much more probable. The genome would itself be able to accelerate and direct evolutionary change.
Having heard the evidence, and knowing about systems theory as an explanatory model, I find this plausible as a possible biological mechanism. It may emerge as a better - more comprehensive - over-arching theory (paradigm) than the one we have now - or a significant supplement to it.
The question is - even if true - how important it is - and whether it has played a central role in evolution; or just applies to unusual and specific situations.
*
Just passing on the fruits of a recent conversation with a knowledgeable scientist whom I respect and trust - about a major piece of work he is doing.
There is a very interesting and plausible new perspective emerging (with evidence from multiple places, and nobody yet having combined it) that the genome may be regarded as having 'cognitive' properties, due to the systematic inter-communication of genes - and that this is consistent with the ability to direct genetic change (mutations and other changes) in an adaptive direction.
This would be a major revision to 'the central dogma' of molecular biology (that information only flows from nucleic acids to proteins), and the standard description of natural selection as being based upon undirected (so-called 'random') mutations - the new idea is that (presumably as a consequence of natural selection) the genome functions somewhat like a 'brain' that models the environment, and responds by changing itself in a directed (and 'purposive') fashion that would be expected to enhance reproductive success.
This would mean that natural selection would not have to wait for undirected ('random') mutations to generate adaptive changes to the organism; but instead (or as well) the mutation process would itself be manipulated to make adaptive changes much more probable. The genome would itself be able to accelerate and direct evolutionary change.
Having heard the evidence, and knowing about systems theory as an explanatory model, I find this plausible as a possible biological mechanism. It may emerge as a better - more comprehensive - over-arching theory (paradigm) than the one we have now - or a significant supplement to it.
The question is - even if true - how important it is - and whether it has played a central role in evolution; or just applies to unusual and specific situations.
*
Tuesday, 15 April 2014
Young people Don't Know What To Do with their lives - the modern motivation deficit
*
If you ask modern young people what they want to do with their lives, they will either not be able to answer, or give an answer that reveals they have no real answer.
Non-answers include travel, 'cool jobs', working abroad, taking a 'year out/ gap year', or further training and education (without any particular desire to embark on a vocation or profession).
Which is to say, nothing much at all.
*
But mostly the desire is to pass the time in as pleasant a way as possible - hanging-out with friends, going-out for meals, 'partying' (intoxicating music, drink and drugs), sexual adventures and psychodrama, adopting a series of fashionable lifestyles and causes, 'cool' holidays and hobbies... that kind of stuff.
Which is to say, nothing much at all.
*
More important, most important, is the negative side: modern young people do NOT want to get married and do NOT want to have children.
They don't want to rule-that-out: not at all. They would like to have the option of doing that kind of thing, sometime or another - but they don't want to do it yet...
They would much rather delay doing it; because... well, because they have all this other stuff (see above) - which they do not particularly want to do (nothing they would sacrifice anything for!) but which, well, everybody else seems to be doing, and talking about, and communicating on social networks, and so on.
*
Of course everybody goes to college - but they don't go for the education, merely to pass the exams; and they don't want to pass the exams to do anything in particular - but merely to take the next step towards [see above].
As a rule, modern young people are not truly preparing themselves for a job/ role/ profession - although they say that this is the most important things to them (much more important than raising a family of course!).
(In fact there have never been many people - a few percent of men [I am among them] and less than one percent of women - who are genuinely motivated by their 'work'. A job just insn't the kind of thing that motivates many people.)
And although college life is highly sexualized, modern young people are not even trying to find a wife or husband - that would be altogether too uncool, gross, tacky, sad, lame, desperate.
And if they do college sports, then it is not for any goal but to keep fit (i.e. slim, tanned and toned to assist with sexual adventuring), or to pass time, find some friends, have something to talk/ boast about, whatever...
And if they search for the meaning of life, they do not look towards religion but towards self-help psychotherapy and spirituality - which helps pass time pleasantly and seamlessly supports the above lifestyle.
*
We live in a society where there is a very serious, perhaps terminal, motivation deficit - except the motivation to avoid doing the only things which actually can serve as real, powerful motivators: marriage, family, religion.
So in fact there is a social situation of less-than-zero motivation; because the most powerful motivation is to avoid those few things which are capable of motivating.
*
If you ask modern young people what they want to do with their lives, they will either not be able to answer, or give an answer that reveals they have no real answer.
Non-answers include travel, 'cool jobs', working abroad, taking a 'year out/ gap year', or further training and education (without any particular desire to embark on a vocation or profession).
Which is to say, nothing much at all.
*
But mostly the desire is to pass the time in as pleasant a way as possible - hanging-out with friends, going-out for meals, 'partying' (intoxicating music, drink and drugs), sexual adventures and psychodrama, adopting a series of fashionable lifestyles and causes, 'cool' holidays and hobbies... that kind of stuff.
Which is to say, nothing much at all.
*
More important, most important, is the negative side: modern young people do NOT want to get married and do NOT want to have children.
They don't want to rule-that-out: not at all. They would like to have the option of doing that kind of thing, sometime or another - but they don't want to do it yet...
They would much rather delay doing it; because... well, because they have all this other stuff (see above) - which they do not particularly want to do (nothing they would sacrifice anything for!) but which, well, everybody else seems to be doing, and talking about, and communicating on social networks, and so on.
*
Of course everybody goes to college - but they don't go for the education, merely to pass the exams; and they don't want to pass the exams to do anything in particular - but merely to take the next step towards [see above].
As a rule, modern young people are not truly preparing themselves for a job/ role/ profession - although they say that this is the most important things to them (much more important than raising a family of course!).
(In fact there have never been many people - a few percent of men [I am among them] and less than one percent of women - who are genuinely motivated by their 'work'. A job just insn't the kind of thing that motivates many people.)
And although college life is highly sexualized, modern young people are not even trying to find a wife or husband - that would be altogether too uncool, gross, tacky, sad, lame, desperate.
And if they do college sports, then it is not for any goal but to keep fit (i.e. slim, tanned and toned to assist with sexual adventuring), or to pass time, find some friends, have something to talk/ boast about, whatever...
And if they search for the meaning of life, they do not look towards religion but towards self-help psychotherapy and spirituality - which helps pass time pleasantly and seamlessly supports the above lifestyle.
*
We live in a society where there is a very serious, perhaps terminal, motivation deficit - except the motivation to avoid doing the only things which actually can serve as real, powerful motivators: marriage, family, religion.
So in fact there is a social situation of less-than-zero motivation; because the most powerful motivation is to avoid those few things which are capable of motivating.
*
The animated universe - everything is (more, or less) alive
*
A few weeks ago I came up with a metaphysical argument which stated that either everything is alive, or nothing is alive - and if nothing is alive, then no argument of any kind has validity - therefore everything is alive.
In other words, this argument suggests that we live in an animated universe - so that, for example, we move through a living world (even when our environment is made of glass, plastic and concrete) and when we look up at the night sky this is a window on life (not a distant view of dead things).
In other words again - reality is 'biology', and not only physics.
*
The usual assumption is that some things are alive (plants and animals) while others are not - but it has proved so difficult to hold this line that public discourse has drifted further and further towards being based on the nihilistic assumption that nothing is alive.
In biology, the focus used to be on life, and the interest was in the difference between living and non-living things. A boundary was never found, and indeed modern biology was honed at precisely the boundary since bacteriophages (a kind of virus infecting bacteria) were the primary 'experimental animal' in the genetic research of the mid-twentieth century. This change in perspective seems to have been influenced by the importation of physicists into biology - specifically as small book called What is Life? by Erwin Schroedinger.
Viruses are 'not alive' in the sense that they do not have a metabolism; and the focus in biology shifted from 'life' to 'replication' - instead of being defined by what was alive, biology was defined by what replicated: by whatever was subject to natural selection. The focus on the origins of life shifted from the first 'alive' entities to an interest in the earliest replicating entities. Indeed, modern biology ignores the question of what is alive.
*
Here we get to the point of 'what is a metaphysical argument?'.
In one sense a metaphysical argument is not affected by science; because metaphysics is the basic understanding of reality - how reality is set-up and structured - and science takes place inside metaphysics, and according to the assumptions of metaphysics.
So in discussing 'what is life?' in a metaphysical way we do not begin by defining life in a precise and scientific fashion - because that would pre-decide the metaphysics - because any actual science arose within some already-existing metaphysics.
Thus when Schroedinger asked What is Life? and began to answer the question in terms of replication, he had already defined life in terms of replication ad thereby included anything which replicated - even crystals, minerals and any propagating structure.
*
So metaphysics begins with 'common sense' - with the belief that some things are alive, and especially that people are alive.
But what is common sense on this matter? Children (all over the world, even in modern cultures, and throughout known history) seem to regard everything which is a defined form, anything which can be regarded as separable from the rest of the world, as potentially more-or-less alive.
Some things are certainly more alive than others, but a piece of clay which you have shaped into an animal may become alive, and even a clay pit may have a kind of life. Life either comes and goes in the same object - or else becomes greater and lesser without ever quite disappearing (rather like a seed or spore may lie dormant and apparently 'dead' for many years or centuries before being wetted and coming-alive).
It is hard to say what is not alive - to a child, pretty much anything is potentially alive or has a little but of life in it.
Much the same seems to be true of hunter gatherers - where it is called 'animism'. Hunter gatherers (and it is assumed all human ancestors lived as hunter gatherers within about the past 15K years) seem to regard everything as either more, or less, alive - and the more-alive things are assumed to be aware, and sometimes even consciously aware - 'sentient'.
Common sense apparently, therefore, is probably that aliveness is a continuous variable but never wholly-absent - rather than a dichotomous state.
*
But is the universe really alive?
Surely modern science has proven - by its success - that most things are not alive - for example that the mineral world (including outer space) is not alive...
And what difference does it make anyway?
*
The answers depend on whether you take seriously metaphysical arguments, and whether - in principle - you could be convinced by a metaphysical argument to change your view on anything. I find the above metaphysical argument to be compelling - that if we believe in life at all, then we must believe everything is alive to a greater or lesser degree (or, at least, we must believe that everything is potentially alive).
And if we believe in metaphysical arguments, we must recognize that they are not legitimately affected by science - or more precisely that the in-practice decision to derive metaphysics from scientific assumptions is itself a covert metaphysical argument.
Schrodinger's hypothesis that the gene could be regarded as a physics-type (not alive) entity does not have any necessary metaphysical consequences - but in practice it seems to have introduced a habit of thought which led to everything, even human beings, being regarded as not alive - of humans (and all the rest of biology) being regarded as 'replicating entities' - and of the denial of many common sense ideas about the reality of the soul, life after death, consciousness and so on.
Biologists began by making a working hypothesis to frame their genetic research, and ended up becoming the frontline troops for atheism, nihilism, scientism and all the rest of it. Or else, considering that almost all biologists were already atheists, maybe the conversion of biology to physics was mostly an excuse, a rationalization, for atheism?
And anyway, it seems that the line between alive and not-alive, between old-style biology and everything else, was one which did not exist; therefore it was a line that could never have been held - even if biology has not been taken-over by the explanatory models of physics and chemistry.
*
But does it make any difference?
Well, ask yourself. Would it make any difference if you believed that everything you saw, heard tasted, smelled and touched was alive - or if, on the other hand, everything is really not alive - including yourself which thinks this thought; which is actually the modern mainstream view - epitomized by the idea that the mind IS information-processing, and could and probably soon will be downloadable.
Does it make any difference to regard the mind as in reality (bottom line) information processing, and human families as in reality (bottom line) replication of genetic information?
Well, yes of course.
How modern people behave, for example the fact that they prefer virtual lives to people, and that they replicate digital information rather than having babies, makes as much sense as anything does in a universe which is not alive - but this is psychotic behaviour if ours really is a living universe.
*
If the universe really is alive, but we are denying it, then we are insane.
But if the universe really is not-alive, and our childhood and historical belief that it was alive was merely ignorance, then nothing matters anyway - since nothing could, in principle, matter: mattering is something that would only have meaning in a living universe.
*
A few weeks ago I came up with a metaphysical argument which stated that either everything is alive, or nothing is alive - and if nothing is alive, then no argument of any kind has validity - therefore everything is alive.
In other words, this argument suggests that we live in an animated universe - so that, for example, we move through a living world (even when our environment is made of glass, plastic and concrete) and when we look up at the night sky this is a window on life (not a distant view of dead things).
In other words again - reality is 'biology', and not only physics.
*
The usual assumption is that some things are alive (plants and animals) while others are not - but it has proved so difficult to hold this line that public discourse has drifted further and further towards being based on the nihilistic assumption that nothing is alive.
In biology, the focus used to be on life, and the interest was in the difference between living and non-living things. A boundary was never found, and indeed modern biology was honed at precisely the boundary since bacteriophages (a kind of virus infecting bacteria) were the primary 'experimental animal' in the genetic research of the mid-twentieth century. This change in perspective seems to have been influenced by the importation of physicists into biology - specifically as small book called What is Life? by Erwin Schroedinger.
Viruses are 'not alive' in the sense that they do not have a metabolism; and the focus in biology shifted from 'life' to 'replication' - instead of being defined by what was alive, biology was defined by what replicated: by whatever was subject to natural selection. The focus on the origins of life shifted from the first 'alive' entities to an interest in the earliest replicating entities. Indeed, modern biology ignores the question of what is alive.
*
Here we get to the point of 'what is a metaphysical argument?'.
In one sense a metaphysical argument is not affected by science; because metaphysics is the basic understanding of reality - how reality is set-up and structured - and science takes place inside metaphysics, and according to the assumptions of metaphysics.
So in discussing 'what is life?' in a metaphysical way we do not begin by defining life in a precise and scientific fashion - because that would pre-decide the metaphysics - because any actual science arose within some already-existing metaphysics.
Thus when Schroedinger asked What is Life? and began to answer the question in terms of replication, he had already defined life in terms of replication ad thereby included anything which replicated - even crystals, minerals and any propagating structure.
*
So metaphysics begins with 'common sense' - with the belief that some things are alive, and especially that people are alive.
But what is common sense on this matter? Children (all over the world, even in modern cultures, and throughout known history) seem to regard everything which is a defined form, anything which can be regarded as separable from the rest of the world, as potentially more-or-less alive.
Some things are certainly more alive than others, but a piece of clay which you have shaped into an animal may become alive, and even a clay pit may have a kind of life. Life either comes and goes in the same object - or else becomes greater and lesser without ever quite disappearing (rather like a seed or spore may lie dormant and apparently 'dead' for many years or centuries before being wetted and coming-alive).
It is hard to say what is not alive - to a child, pretty much anything is potentially alive or has a little but of life in it.
Much the same seems to be true of hunter gatherers - where it is called 'animism'. Hunter gatherers (and it is assumed all human ancestors lived as hunter gatherers within about the past 15K years) seem to regard everything as either more, or less, alive - and the more-alive things are assumed to be aware, and sometimes even consciously aware - 'sentient'.
Common sense apparently, therefore, is probably that aliveness is a continuous variable but never wholly-absent - rather than a dichotomous state.
*
But is the universe really alive?
Surely modern science has proven - by its success - that most things are not alive - for example that the mineral world (including outer space) is not alive...
And what difference does it make anyway?
*
The answers depend on whether you take seriously metaphysical arguments, and whether - in principle - you could be convinced by a metaphysical argument to change your view on anything. I find the above metaphysical argument to be compelling - that if we believe in life at all, then we must believe everything is alive to a greater or lesser degree (or, at least, we must believe that everything is potentially alive).
And if we believe in metaphysical arguments, we must recognize that they are not legitimately affected by science - or more precisely that the in-practice decision to derive metaphysics from scientific assumptions is itself a covert metaphysical argument.
Schrodinger's hypothesis that the gene could be regarded as a physics-type (not alive) entity does not have any necessary metaphysical consequences - but in practice it seems to have introduced a habit of thought which led to everything, even human beings, being regarded as not alive - of humans (and all the rest of biology) being regarded as 'replicating entities' - and of the denial of many common sense ideas about the reality of the soul, life after death, consciousness and so on.
Biologists began by making a working hypothesis to frame their genetic research, and ended up becoming the frontline troops for atheism, nihilism, scientism and all the rest of it. Or else, considering that almost all biologists were already atheists, maybe the conversion of biology to physics was mostly an excuse, a rationalization, for atheism?
And anyway, it seems that the line between alive and not-alive, between old-style biology and everything else, was one which did not exist; therefore it was a line that could never have been held - even if biology has not been taken-over by the explanatory models of physics and chemistry.
*
But does it make any difference?
Well, ask yourself. Would it make any difference if you believed that everything you saw, heard tasted, smelled and touched was alive - or if, on the other hand, everything is really not alive - including yourself which thinks this thought; which is actually the modern mainstream view - epitomized by the idea that the mind IS information-processing, and could and probably soon will be downloadable.
Does it make any difference to regard the mind as in reality (bottom line) information processing, and human families as in reality (bottom line) replication of genetic information?
Well, yes of course.
How modern people behave, for example the fact that they prefer virtual lives to people, and that they replicate digital information rather than having babies, makes as much sense as anything does in a universe which is not alive - but this is psychotic behaviour if ours really is a living universe.
*
If the universe really is alive, but we are denying it, then we are insane.
But if the universe really is not-alive, and our childhood and historical belief that it was alive was merely ignorance, then nothing matters anyway - since nothing could, in principle, matter: mattering is something that would only have meaning in a living universe.
*
Monday, 14 April 2014
CS Lewis's The Four Loves - this re-reading it seemed wrong and confused
*
I took CS Lewis's The Four Loves on holiday to re-read for (I think) the third time - but this time I got stuck on it, it seemed wrong - and the 'climactic' chapter on Agape/ charity or the pure 'gift love' of God seemed particularly deficient, unconvincing, confused.
Lewis describes the three lower loves of Storge (familial or familiar love), Eros (romantic and erotic love) and Philia (friendship) - and there is, as always with Lewis, much worthwhile among his comments and observations.
But I find that his need qualitatively to distinguish charity from the other loves has distorted the whole argument. For Lewis it is vital that God does not need to love us, that God's love is a pure (unmerited) gift - a one-way love, in effect; and this is necessary because Lewis's view of God is a being that does not have needs.
My own view is that God does not (of course not) 'need' human love for His original or continued existence; but I would say that God does 'need' our love in the sense of wanting it and benefiting from it, and being saddened by its lack. And indeed this is precisely why God created Man - because of this kind of 'need' (desire, yearning) for Man's love - freely given.
And in this sense, God's Love (agape/ charity) is very-close-kin to 'Storge' - or more exactly paternal/ parental love - indeed the Bible tells us this again and again right through to include the Gospels - and there is not much scriptural warrant for distinction of quality between God's love for us, and a Father's love for his children.
My feeling is that Lewis's sharp and qualitative and essential distinction between Agape and Storge is something imported into Christianity post hoc, along with the Classical Metaphysical view of God as an omni-entity (omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent) - since this kind of abstract and absolute entity is incapable of passions and needs.
So I would regard Love as in essence a single thing, not four things - with second order differences due to the entities between-whom there is love.
This is part of my 'Metaphysics of Christian Love' which I will describe soon - which tries to use Love as the ultimate, bottom line, metaphysical reality - thereby getting away from the physics-like descriptions which are usually posited by Classical Theology (such as Lewis's unclear and un-graspable description of Agape).
*
I took CS Lewis's The Four Loves on holiday to re-read for (I think) the third time - but this time I got stuck on it, it seemed wrong - and the 'climactic' chapter on Agape/ charity or the pure 'gift love' of God seemed particularly deficient, unconvincing, confused.
Lewis describes the three lower loves of Storge (familial or familiar love), Eros (romantic and erotic love) and Philia (friendship) - and there is, as always with Lewis, much worthwhile among his comments and observations.
But I find that his need qualitatively to distinguish charity from the other loves has distorted the whole argument. For Lewis it is vital that God does not need to love us, that God's love is a pure (unmerited) gift - a one-way love, in effect; and this is necessary because Lewis's view of God is a being that does not have needs.
My own view is that God does not (of course not) 'need' human love for His original or continued existence; but I would say that God does 'need' our love in the sense of wanting it and benefiting from it, and being saddened by its lack. And indeed this is precisely why God created Man - because of this kind of 'need' (desire, yearning) for Man's love - freely given.
And in this sense, God's Love (agape/ charity) is very-close-kin to 'Storge' - or more exactly paternal/ parental love - indeed the Bible tells us this again and again right through to include the Gospels - and there is not much scriptural warrant for distinction of quality between God's love for us, and a Father's love for his children.
My feeling is that Lewis's sharp and qualitative and essential distinction between Agape and Storge is something imported into Christianity post hoc, along with the Classical Metaphysical view of God as an omni-entity (omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent) - since this kind of abstract and absolute entity is incapable of passions and needs.
So I would regard Love as in essence a single thing, not four things - with second order differences due to the entities between-whom there is love.
This is part of my 'Metaphysics of Christian Love' which I will describe soon - which tries to use Love as the ultimate, bottom line, metaphysical reality - thereby getting away from the physics-like descriptions which are usually posited by Classical Theology (such as Lewis's unclear and un-graspable description of Agape).
*
The crucial importance of the heart - soft, open, warm, child-like
*
My internet 'fast' did not seem to produce any striking benefits in my spiritual status - but one thing that came to the fore was to re-experience the conviction that the greatest enemy to salvation is a hard, closed, cold and cynical heart.
This seems to be the most difficult thing to overcome; because it has such a high opinion of itself.
And it is a factor in many religious people, and it is (I feel) characteristic of many Christian denominations - perhaps especially in the public arena, in debate and dispute.
*
The hard heart shows itself in many ways:
The Right Man - the man who is - and always has been - right about everything (he sees himself as nobody's fool - others may be deceived, but not him!).
*
The Oppressed Woman - no matter how objectively privileged, she is being treated unequally when it comes to the good things in life: her situation is making her feel bad; and her sense of hurt is an absolute, metaphysical injustice which requires immediate remedy.
Other versions of this hardness of heart feel resentment in terms of their class, race, region, sexuality... in the end everything is evaluated and judged from the perspective of, and in terms of, this victim-status.
The Oppressed Woman is thus a variant of the Right Man - because, ultimately and as the bottom line, nothing is their fault.
*
The Cynical Adolescent - the hard-nosed sentimentalist, beady-eyed and harsh toned in criticism of others and a prickly crybaby in terms of sensitivity to the criticisms of others; sees himself as the subject only to science and logic but also 'passionate' about things which are exempted from this requirement. Sensation-seeking but lazy. Extravert but selfish. Fickle but moralistic. And so on...
*
The ultra-correct Christian - a man with a formula. The formula may be a model of church authority, a highly specific idea of tradition, a set of rituals, a way of reading scripture, some creeds or rules especially prohibitions and practices... Christianity is seen 'legalistically' - in Pharisaic terms. Christianity by committee. No need for Love - indeed no place for it.
**
In other words, I would much rather that people had soft, open, warm, child-like hearts and were wrong; than that they believed, said and did everything right - but had hard, closed, cold and cynical hearts.
I would much rather a child-like, simple, loving Christianity that is full or errors and inconsistencies; than the opposite.
And these opposites, precisely, may be the only actually-available options.
*
Love is primary - and can save from any situation at any time; but the rejection of Love is terminal - and often self-reinforcing.
*
I absolutely demand of religion that it be sweet - and no amount of correctness, toughness, power or courage can compensate for its lack; because a religion without sweetness cannot be truly Christian and can become utterly demonic, while sweetness will always have a door open to salvation.
*
My internet 'fast' did not seem to produce any striking benefits in my spiritual status - but one thing that came to the fore was to re-experience the conviction that the greatest enemy to salvation is a hard, closed, cold and cynical heart.
This seems to be the most difficult thing to overcome; because it has such a high opinion of itself.
And it is a factor in many religious people, and it is (I feel) characteristic of many Christian denominations - perhaps especially in the public arena, in debate and dispute.
*
The hard heart shows itself in many ways:
The Right Man - the man who is - and always has been - right about everything (he sees himself as nobody's fool - others may be deceived, but not him!).
*
The Oppressed Woman - no matter how objectively privileged, she is being treated unequally when it comes to the good things in life: her situation is making her feel bad; and her sense of hurt is an absolute, metaphysical injustice which requires immediate remedy.
Other versions of this hardness of heart feel resentment in terms of their class, race, region, sexuality... in the end everything is evaluated and judged from the perspective of, and in terms of, this victim-status.
The Oppressed Woman is thus a variant of the Right Man - because, ultimately and as the bottom line, nothing is their fault.
*
The Cynical Adolescent - the hard-nosed sentimentalist, beady-eyed and harsh toned in criticism of others and a prickly crybaby in terms of sensitivity to the criticisms of others; sees himself as the subject only to science and logic but also 'passionate' about things which are exempted from this requirement. Sensation-seeking but lazy. Extravert but selfish. Fickle but moralistic. And so on...
*
The ultra-correct Christian - a man with a formula. The formula may be a model of church authority, a highly specific idea of tradition, a set of rituals, a way of reading scripture, some creeds or rules especially prohibitions and practices... Christianity is seen 'legalistically' - in Pharisaic terms. Christianity by committee. No need for Love - indeed no place for it.
**
In other words, I would much rather that people had soft, open, warm, child-like hearts and were wrong; than that they believed, said and did everything right - but had hard, closed, cold and cynical hearts.
I would much rather a child-like, simple, loving Christianity that is full or errors and inconsistencies; than the opposite.
And these opposites, precisely, may be the only actually-available options.
*
Love is primary - and can save from any situation at any time; but the rejection of Love is terminal - and often self-reinforcing.
*
I absolutely demand of religion that it be sweet - and no amount of correctness, toughness, power or courage can compensate for its lack; because a religion without sweetness cannot be truly Christian and can become utterly demonic, while sweetness will always have a door open to salvation.
*
Sunday, 13 April 2014
The Book of Job - obviously a fiction (not a history)
*
I have noticed that Christian apostates and anti-Christians in general, often focus their attacks on The Book of Job - above and beyond any other part of the Bible.
For example, when the mythologist Joseph Campbell was giving his most mockingly anti-Christian lectures, he would often provide a summary of Job which emphasized God's nastiness and highlighted an irrational and authoritarian message. CG Jung wrote a whole book about Job (which I fund incomprehensible). And Robert Frost wrote a glibly facetious 'Masque of Reason' which was a continuation of The Book of Job.
Yet - from the perspective of someone who is analyzing Christianity - it is surely tendentious to focus on Job of all the books in the Bible: because it is either the least-Christian or else the least-understandable section of the whole Bible.
*
For a start - Job is very obviously a fiction, a story, a fable, a myth - and it is not a history, an Annal, nor a piece of theology - the whole way it is written makes that very clear.
Furthermore Job is - in the Authorized Version - astonishingly beautiful as prose; although I personally find it vastly overlong as a narrative. But the sheer sensuous beauty tends to suggest that it was substantially an aesthetic work (like the Song of Solomon).
Thirdly, it is perhaps the least transparent, hardest to understand, most contradictory Book of the whole Bible. Job strikes me as a puzzle to which the key has been lost - it is as if we nowadays lack some link or fact which makes sense of the whole thing.
*
At any rate, for anti-Christians to 'pick on' The Book of Job is a bit of a giveaway - it is the dishonest rhetorical trick of picking on the least relevant, most ambiguous, and least central thread of an opponent's case, as a way of trying to discredit, rather than refute, their whole argument.
*
Note: That a person 'Job' really existed is irrelevant to the point I am making - just as the reality (or otherwise) of a Celtic 'warlord' King Arthur is irrelevant to the status of Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur as a fiction.
I have noticed that Christian apostates and anti-Christians in general, often focus their attacks on The Book of Job - above and beyond any other part of the Bible.
For example, when the mythologist Joseph Campbell was giving his most mockingly anti-Christian lectures, he would often provide a summary of Job which emphasized God's nastiness and highlighted an irrational and authoritarian message. CG Jung wrote a whole book about Job (which I fund incomprehensible). And Robert Frost wrote a glibly facetious 'Masque of Reason' which was a continuation of The Book of Job.
Yet - from the perspective of someone who is analyzing Christianity - it is surely tendentious to focus on Job of all the books in the Bible: because it is either the least-Christian or else the least-understandable section of the whole Bible.
*
For a start - Job is very obviously a fiction, a story, a fable, a myth - and it is not a history, an Annal, nor a piece of theology - the whole way it is written makes that very clear.
Furthermore Job is - in the Authorized Version - astonishingly beautiful as prose; although I personally find it vastly overlong as a narrative. But the sheer sensuous beauty tends to suggest that it was substantially an aesthetic work (like the Song of Solomon).
Thirdly, it is perhaps the least transparent, hardest to understand, most contradictory Book of the whole Bible. Job strikes me as a puzzle to which the key has been lost - it is as if we nowadays lack some link or fact which makes sense of the whole thing.
*
At any rate, for anti-Christians to 'pick on' The Book of Job is a bit of a giveaway - it is the dishonest rhetorical trick of picking on the least relevant, most ambiguous, and least central thread of an opponent's case, as a way of trying to discredit, rather than refute, their whole argument.
*
Note: That a person 'Job' really existed is irrelevant to the point I am making - just as the reality (or otherwise) of a Celtic 'warlord' King Arthur is irrelevant to the status of Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur as a fiction.
Friday, 4 April 2014
The Marriage question is Truth Serum for Christians
*
I have come across a better phrase than 'litmus test' or 'hot button' to describe key issues which divide the sheep from the goats, the real Christians from the faux Christians (aka 'Liberal Christians') - the phrase Truth Serum.
We have reached a situation when the question of marriage acts as a truth serum.
Since Liberal Christian is nowadays an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms - and since Christian Liberals are merely subversives and Fifth Columnists for the political Left; when a faux Christian is questioned in public about their attitude to marriage, their answer will reveal their status as either a Leftist or a Christian.
A Liberal Christian will never take the risk of being thought to favour marriage, but will always signal their primary allegiance to the Left, in terms which the Left can recognize as coming from 'one of their own'.
(Comments are closed for this post.)
*
I have come across a better phrase than 'litmus test' or 'hot button' to describe key issues which divide the sheep from the goats, the real Christians from the faux Christians (aka 'Liberal Christians') - the phrase Truth Serum.
We have reached a situation when the question of marriage acts as a truth serum.
Since Liberal Christian is nowadays an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms - and since Christian Liberals are merely subversives and Fifth Columnists for the political Left; when a faux Christian is questioned in public about their attitude to marriage, their answer will reveal their status as either a Leftist or a Christian.
A Liberal Christian will never take the risk of being thought to favour marriage, but will always signal their primary allegiance to the Left, in terms which the Left can recognize as coming from 'one of their own'.
(Comments are closed for this post.)
*
Untruths told to children: Pigs are *actually* very clean animals
*
Actually pigs delight in digging and wallowing in mud and muck, and will bury themselves up to the snout - and they are very smelly creatures. I once mucked-out a pig sty, and was at first almost physically overcome by the stench.
But we hardly see any pigs in most parts of England - presumably they are kept out of sight, or else inhabit East Anglia. So the untruth is unnoticed.
Why the error? It is a small example of the way that kids are (mostly falsely) trained to assume that everything traditional and common sense is wrong and nasty - to say that pigs really are dirty is treated like a kind of racism.
In passing, piglets, although cute to look at, from a distance, are the least cuddly animals I have ever held - it was like hugging a lump of wood; and they squeal blue murder as soon as picked-up.
*
A dirty pig. Does she look miserable?
Actually pigs delight in digging and wallowing in mud and muck, and will bury themselves up to the snout - and they are very smelly creatures. I once mucked-out a pig sty, and was at first almost physically overcome by the stench.
But we hardly see any pigs in most parts of England - presumably they are kept out of sight, or else inhabit East Anglia. So the untruth is unnoticed.
Why the error? It is a small example of the way that kids are (mostly falsely) trained to assume that everything traditional and common sense is wrong and nasty - to say that pigs really are dirty is treated like a kind of racism.
In passing, piglets, although cute to look at, from a distance, are the least cuddly animals I have ever held - it was like hugging a lump of wood; and they squeal blue murder as soon as picked-up.
*
Thursday, 3 April 2014
Living in the Past (or Fantasyland, or any other imaginative locus) - why is it so appealing?
*
Why is living in the past so popular a pastime?
I have done this for extended periods - different periods. In my teens it was something like Bath, Somerset (and the surrounding countryside) in 18th century Georgian Times; at another point it has been Concord, New England during the pre-Civil War mid-1800s; at another point it was the Scottish-English borders of late-medieval and Elizabethan times (the time of the Reivers and Border Ballads).
I read and thought so much about this times and places that my sense of them was not just visionary but tactile - as if I could feel it on my skin.
In one sense this is always 'idealised' and may bear little to no relationship to the actual historical life of the majority of the people - but in another sense this does not matter to the process; because this is not a matter of indulging in pleasures or avoiding pains - not a matter of wish-fulfilment in terms of an imagined paradise.
*
Rather, the appeal is much like living in a Fantasy-world such as that of Middle Earth or Harry Potter - or in some kind of situation abroad when not much is known about that country - the appeal is that the world imagined is wholly-meaningful.
Indeed A world imagined is a meaningful world, exactly because it is an imagined world - intended or not there is both specific-in-detail and general-inter-related meaning which comes from the fact of being imagined.
An imagined world cannot-not be meaningful.
*
And that is a clue.
Real Life is meaningful when imagined; not meaningful when not.
And for the world to make-sense in detail and overall - it needs to be an imagined world: produced-by and comprehended-by the mind of God.
*
Before I was a Christian, this imaginative identification felt like an actual need - because 'the imagined past' was the only truly meaningful world in my experience; since I became a Christian, such imaginations (such as Byzantium, late Anglo Saxon England, and the past 150 years of the Intermountain Western USA) are bracketed by the larger and more comprehensive imagination of God's universe.
*
Why is living in the past so popular a pastime?
I have done this for extended periods - different periods. In my teens it was something like Bath, Somerset (and the surrounding countryside) in 18th century Georgian Times; at another point it has been Concord, New England during the pre-Civil War mid-1800s; at another point it was the Scottish-English borders of late-medieval and Elizabethan times (the time of the Reivers and Border Ballads).
I read and thought so much about this times and places that my sense of them was not just visionary but tactile - as if I could feel it on my skin.
In one sense this is always 'idealised' and may bear little to no relationship to the actual historical life of the majority of the people - but in another sense this does not matter to the process; because this is not a matter of indulging in pleasures or avoiding pains - not a matter of wish-fulfilment in terms of an imagined paradise.
*
Rather, the appeal is much like living in a Fantasy-world such as that of Middle Earth or Harry Potter - or in some kind of situation abroad when not much is known about that country - the appeal is that the world imagined is wholly-meaningful.
Indeed A world imagined is a meaningful world, exactly because it is an imagined world - intended or not there is both specific-in-detail and general-inter-related meaning which comes from the fact of being imagined.
An imagined world cannot-not be meaningful.
*
And that is a clue.
Real Life is meaningful when imagined; not meaningful when not.
And for the world to make-sense in detail and overall - it needs to be an imagined world: produced-by and comprehended-by the mind of God.
*
Before I was a Christian, this imaginative identification felt like an actual need - because 'the imagined past' was the only truly meaningful world in my experience; since I became a Christian, such imaginations (such as Byzantium, late Anglo Saxon England, and the past 150 years of the Intermountain Western USA) are bracketed by the larger and more comprehensive imagination of God's universe.
*
Wednesday, 2 April 2014
Microaggression - an accurate term
*
Micro = a-millionth-of
I think that is pretty accurate - if someone performed a million "microaggressive" acts - like looking sideways at you, or failing to treat you as deferentially as you think you ought to be treated - then that would indeed be roughly equivalent to a single act of 'aggression' - such as a shove.
But it would take a long time.
If a man was "microaggressing" at you every five seconds, he would take more than two months to reach the level of an actual physical push...
*
Micro = a-millionth-of
I think that is pretty accurate - if someone performed a million "microaggressive" acts - like looking sideways at you, or failing to treat you as deferentially as you think you ought to be treated - then that would indeed be roughly equivalent to a single act of 'aggression' - such as a shove.
But it would take a long time.
If a man was "microaggressing" at you every five seconds, he would take more than two months to reach the level of an actual physical push...
*
How cancer research harms and kills
*
Cancer research has - like medical research generally - two basic categories: irrelevant pseudo-medical science, and pseudo-clinical randomized trials in reality designed for marketing.
1. Medical research funding has been doubling every decade for about half a century - consequently many biological and chemical sciences have re-spun themselves as 'medical' research on the most remote/ tenuous/ dishonest grounds.
In a nutshell, scientists pretend that their research has medical implications - sometimes they even convince themselves - but they really have no idea whether it really does, nor do they care - so long as grants are forthcoming.
(Because nowadays, 'scientific' reputation, and your living wage, depend on successful grant-getting. Actual real scientific discovery has nothing to do with it.)
This makes for mediocre/ bad science (because researchers are following the funding rather than the science) and zero improvement of clinical medicine - but results in a crowding-out of real (and much more likely to be helpful) clinical research.
It also has created a cadre of know-nothing and care-less fake 'experts' on cancer who are merely glib fundraisers and lab project managers - and who constitute the peer review cartel that controls the prestige, publishing, prizes and funding in the whole field.
*
2. A lot of 'research' money is spent on performing randomized 'therapeutic' trials - but these trials are actually designed, conducted, analyzed, published and pushed to enhance drug marketing.
And since the pipeline of useful new drugs has long-since all-but dried up; and since cancer chemotherapy has been little more than a decades long list of sickness producing and misery inducing failures; this means that almost all new drugs are inferior to the existing drugs - and some of them are dangerous without any serious prospect of benefit - and this means that patients in cancer trials are certain to be harmed (because all these supposedly anti-cancer drugs always have bad side effects) - and perhaps fatally harmed - and will have near zero-prospect of being helped.
*
But none of this matters to the armies of people whose livelihood and prestige depends upon designing, performing, analyzing, publishing and hyping ever-more of these pseudo-trials.
*
So this is how your charity money for 'cancer research' is mostly actually being spent - on shroud-waving extortion, institutionalizing self-serving dishonesty, damaging lives, and on actually harming people - including mortally.
*
Cancer research has - like medical research generally - two basic categories: irrelevant pseudo-medical science, and pseudo-clinical randomized trials in reality designed for marketing.
1. Medical research funding has been doubling every decade for about half a century - consequently many biological and chemical sciences have re-spun themselves as 'medical' research on the most remote/ tenuous/ dishonest grounds.
In a nutshell, scientists pretend that their research has medical implications - sometimes they even convince themselves - but they really have no idea whether it really does, nor do they care - so long as grants are forthcoming.
(Because nowadays, 'scientific' reputation, and your living wage, depend on successful grant-getting. Actual real scientific discovery has nothing to do with it.)
This makes for mediocre/ bad science (because researchers are following the funding rather than the science) and zero improvement of clinical medicine - but results in a crowding-out of real (and much more likely to be helpful) clinical research.
It also has created a cadre of know-nothing and care-less fake 'experts' on cancer who are merely glib fundraisers and lab project managers - and who constitute the peer review cartel that controls the prestige, publishing, prizes and funding in the whole field.
*
2. A lot of 'research' money is spent on performing randomized 'therapeutic' trials - but these trials are actually designed, conducted, analyzed, published and pushed to enhance drug marketing.
And since the pipeline of useful new drugs has long-since all-but dried up; and since cancer chemotherapy has been little more than a decades long list of sickness producing and misery inducing failures; this means that almost all new drugs are inferior to the existing drugs - and some of them are dangerous without any serious prospect of benefit - and this means that patients in cancer trials are certain to be harmed (because all these supposedly anti-cancer drugs always have bad side effects) - and perhaps fatally harmed - and will have near zero-prospect of being helped.
*
But none of this matters to the armies of people whose livelihood and prestige depends upon designing, performing, analyzing, publishing and hyping ever-more of these pseudo-trials.
*
So this is how your charity money for 'cancer research' is mostly actually being spent - on shroud-waving extortion, institutionalizing self-serving dishonesty, damaging lives, and on actually harming people - including mortally.
*
Why did God create Men? Thoughts from William Arkle
*
http://www.billarkle.co.uk/greatgift/text/thenatureofgod.html
From The Great Gift - 1976.
*
My own understanding is that the Creator, who is also God, is self sufficient in a sense. That is to imply that, although we need God, in every meaning of that term, God does not need us in the same way.
Against this we have to set the understanding that if God didn’t have a purpose which included us, no doubt He would not have gone to all this trouble of bringing us into existence.
But to have a purpose in which we can play some part is quite a different thing from having an absolute need of us in the way that we have an absolute need of God.
*
In the way that a child needs its mother and father, we need God for sustenance and support of our own reality because our own reality rests upon the reality of God, and all our sustenance comes from that reality.
But in quite a different way, I believe, our God wishes us to come to life, to come to a full expression of our potential, our Divine reality, and that must be for a purpose which is not essential to the Being of the Creator, but which may be essential to a particular longing and delight in the heart of the understanding of that Creator.
*
In simple words, I think that the Creator wishes to have other individual divine Beings who can be His friends with whom He can share the content of His own reality, with whom He can enter into conversation, understanding and discussion about possible experiments in living, in trying to go beyond the understanding that God has already, which to us, at our stage of development, seems infinite, but this is obviously only a relative term, and is not infinite to the Creator’s possible understanding.
(...)
I believe that it is in the nature of all healthy spirits, all healthy individuals, to want to achieve spiritual goals. And those goals, when we look at them closely, are always goals which are impossibly difficult to reach.
They are goals which are endless goals; they are goals which are concerned with the ultimate perception of the most valuable and beautiful things which, when we reach them, will only incline us to look for more beautiful and more valuable things...
Therefore I think the Creator wishes to have friends, not only to share the delights of friendship with, but also friends who will help Him with the sort of exploration, the sort of experimental living out of life, which will enable us all to stumble upon new potentialities within that reality which we call the Absolute Divine Nature.
*
We can suggest that the Creator is aware that there are potentialities in nature which have not yet been fully actualised.
He also realises that He needs other beings to help Him to permutate, as it were, all the possibilities of the potentialities in that nature.
That is why He wishes to share His nature with us, and give us a nature similar to His own as an outright gift for us to use in our own way; so that each of us actualises it in a uniquely different way.
**
Note added:
My feeling is that Bill Arkle was making an extremely important point here. Something of potentially great value to all Christians - but perhaps especially Mormons.
That while on the one had God does not need for there to be Men, he very much wants for there to be Men; and that this desire is partly the desire for Children, and beyond that the desire for (adult) friends; and even beyond that - that Men have the potential actually to assist in the divine plan: that God can achieve things with the help of Men that could not be achieved (so well ) otherwise.
This implies that the creation and salvation of Man was not a gratuitous act; but part of a plan - a multi-phase and indeed infinite plan which is, in its bottom-line and ultimate nature - about society, about relationships, about love.
*
Ultimate reality is a personal-y thing; not a physics-y thing.
*
http://www.billarkle.co.uk/greatgift/text/thenatureofgod.html
From The Great Gift - 1976.
*
My own understanding is that the Creator, who is also God, is self sufficient in a sense. That is to imply that, although we need God, in every meaning of that term, God does not need us in the same way.
Against this we have to set the understanding that if God didn’t have a purpose which included us, no doubt He would not have gone to all this trouble of bringing us into existence.
But to have a purpose in which we can play some part is quite a different thing from having an absolute need of us in the way that we have an absolute need of God.
*
In the way that a child needs its mother and father, we need God for sustenance and support of our own reality because our own reality rests upon the reality of God, and all our sustenance comes from that reality.
But in quite a different way, I believe, our God wishes us to come to life, to come to a full expression of our potential, our Divine reality, and that must be for a purpose which is not essential to the Being of the Creator, but which may be essential to a particular longing and delight in the heart of the understanding of that Creator.
*
In simple words, I think that the Creator wishes to have other individual divine Beings who can be His friends with whom He can share the content of His own reality, with whom He can enter into conversation, understanding and discussion about possible experiments in living, in trying to go beyond the understanding that God has already, which to us, at our stage of development, seems infinite, but this is obviously only a relative term, and is not infinite to the Creator’s possible understanding.
(...)
I believe that it is in the nature of all healthy spirits, all healthy individuals, to want to achieve spiritual goals. And those goals, when we look at them closely, are always goals which are impossibly difficult to reach.
They are goals which are endless goals; they are goals which are concerned with the ultimate perception of the most valuable and beautiful things which, when we reach them, will only incline us to look for more beautiful and more valuable things...
Therefore I think the Creator wishes to have friends, not only to share the delights of friendship with, but also friends who will help Him with the sort of exploration, the sort of experimental living out of life, which will enable us all to stumble upon new potentialities within that reality which we call the Absolute Divine Nature.
*
We can suggest that the Creator is aware that there are potentialities in nature which have not yet been fully actualised.
He also realises that He needs other beings to help Him to permutate, as it were, all the possibilities of the potentialities in that nature.
That is why He wishes to share His nature with us, and give us a nature similar to His own as an outright gift for us to use in our own way; so that each of us actualises it in a uniquely different way.
**
Note added:
My feeling is that Bill Arkle was making an extremely important point here. Something of potentially great value to all Christians - but perhaps especially Mormons.
That while on the one had God does not need for there to be Men, he very much wants for there to be Men; and that this desire is partly the desire for Children, and beyond that the desire for (adult) friends; and even beyond that - that Men have the potential actually to assist in the divine plan: that God can achieve things with the help of Men that could not be achieved (so well ) otherwise.
This implies that the creation and salvation of Man was not a gratuitous act; but part of a plan - a multi-phase and indeed infinite plan which is, in its bottom-line and ultimate nature - about society, about relationships, about love.
*
Ultimate reality is a personal-y thing; not a physics-y thing.
*
Tuesday, 1 April 2014
Graph to show 38 milliseconds difference between predicted and observed slowing in simple reaction times with age
*
Circles and dotted lines are actually observed reaction times in three longitudinal cohorts aged 16-12, 36-44 and 56-63.
Crosses and solid lines show the predicted slowing of simple reaction times across a lifespan of 16-63 years old.
Shorter reaction times correlate with higher general intelligence (IQ) - so this means that actually observed 63 year olds were (38 milliseconds of sRT) more-intelligent than would be expected if they had aged at the expected rate.
Which probably means that the 56-63 year old cohort were significantly more-intelligent than the 16-24 year old cohort, when they were the same age.
http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/further-evidence-of-significant-slowing.html
Circles and dotted lines are actually observed reaction times in three longitudinal cohorts aged 16-12, 36-44 and 56-63.
Crosses and solid lines show the predicted slowing of simple reaction times across a lifespan of 16-63 years old.
Shorter reaction times correlate with higher general intelligence (IQ) - so this means that actually observed 63 year olds were (38 milliseconds of sRT) more-intelligent than would be expected if they had aged at the expected rate.
Which probably means that the 56-63 year old cohort were significantly more-intelligent than the 16-24 year old cohort, when they were the same age.
http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/further-evidence-of-significant-slowing.html
One of the best books I have ever read: The Glory of their Times by Lawrence S Ritter
*
Of course you have to like baseball - actually you have to love baseball (even if you are not an expert on it) - but given that qualification Lawrence S Ritter's The Glory of their Times (1966, revised 1984) is one of the very best modern books I have read - and I mean 'best' from a literary point of view.
It consists of Ritter's edited versions of interviews with twenty-six ball players from the late 19th early 20th century - describing in their own words their lives in and around baseball. I find it beautiful, completely enjoyable, funny, moving and just extremely interesting!
I probably read it about 9 years ago (not long after I got interested in baseball) and it has stayed with me - in terms of a strong flavour, an emotional memory and specific details - ever since. I am currently re-reading, and it is every bit as good as I remembered.
The Glory of their Times has stayed with me, therefore, in way that very few novels or plays ever have (and I speak as someone with an MA in English - thus pretty well-read in that field).
And this fact fuels a conviction - or rather two of them - that has grown on me over recent decades.
1. Much of the best literature is outwith the usual categories of novels, plays and poems.
2. Much of the best literature is the product not of great writers, but one-hit-wonders.
As a further example, Akenfield by Ronald Blythe is a somewhat similar book to GotT - in the sense that the meat of it consists of edited interviews with inhabitants of a composite East Anglian English Village circa 1968 - providing a portrait stretching back about a hundred years of oral history.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/akenfield-and-tippett.html
Blythe has written a lot of other good things, but Akenfield really stands out.
English-speaking literature is in fact full of these (usually) one-off 'non- fiction' first rate classics - The Compleat Angler by Izaak Walton, Brief Lives by John Aubrey, The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton, Walden by Henry Thoreau, Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome, Ceremonial Time by John Hanson Mitchell, to mention a few favourites.
I would take a dozen of these and their like in preference to the output of any specific big name novelist you could care to name, whether great or minor.
*
Of course you have to like baseball - actually you have to love baseball (even if you are not an expert on it) - but given that qualification Lawrence S Ritter's The Glory of their Times (1966, revised 1984) is one of the very best modern books I have read - and I mean 'best' from a literary point of view.
It consists of Ritter's edited versions of interviews with twenty-six ball players from the late 19th early 20th century - describing in their own words their lives in and around baseball. I find it beautiful, completely enjoyable, funny, moving and just extremely interesting!
I probably read it about 9 years ago (not long after I got interested in baseball) and it has stayed with me - in terms of a strong flavour, an emotional memory and specific details - ever since. I am currently re-reading, and it is every bit as good as I remembered.
The Glory of their Times has stayed with me, therefore, in way that very few novels or plays ever have (and I speak as someone with an MA in English - thus pretty well-read in that field).
And this fact fuels a conviction - or rather two of them - that has grown on me over recent decades.
1. Much of the best literature is outwith the usual categories of novels, plays and poems.
2. Much of the best literature is the product not of great writers, but one-hit-wonders.
As a further example, Akenfield by Ronald Blythe is a somewhat similar book to GotT - in the sense that the meat of it consists of edited interviews with inhabitants of a composite East Anglian English Village circa 1968 - providing a portrait stretching back about a hundred years of oral history.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/akenfield-and-tippett.html
Blythe has written a lot of other good things, but Akenfield really stands out.
English-speaking literature is in fact full of these (usually) one-off 'non- fiction' first rate classics - The Compleat Angler by Izaak Walton, Brief Lives by John Aubrey, The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton, Walden by Henry Thoreau, Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome, Ceremonial Time by John Hanson Mitchell, to mention a few favourites.
I would take a dozen of these and their like in preference to the output of any specific big name novelist you could care to name, whether great or minor.
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Individuation - Jung's idea
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For CG Jung individuation was the purpose of life.
It is hard to be exact about what he meant by this - it was a lifelong process of self-creation and self-therapy - a project of re-making the worldly self in conformity with the inner self.
The inner self has an unique aspect - the individuality - and a common aspect shared with other people - the collective unconscious of archetypal forms and stories.
Well, all this gives people something to do with their lives - to 'work on themselves' - and it is quite possible that doing so makes people feel better than otherwise. But of course it isn't going anywhere and it doesn't provide any link with anybody else - life becomes a matter of 'memories, dreams. reflections'.
(Which is the title of Jung's purported autobiography - mostly a highly-selective work written by Aniela Jaffe with a propagandistic eye for Jung's posthumous reputation - it also happens to be far more enjoyable and interesting than anything Jung ever wrote by-himself!)
So, Jung's project is on the one hand radically inadequate - leaving all the fundamental problems un-addressed hence un-solved; and on the other hand, radically selfish (not to mention idle).
Yet Jung's project ought to be part-of a viable, satisfying, therapeutic, engaging religion in the modern world - partial for sure, but that part worth having.
Lacking-which we have religion as social control; something external, coercive, alienating - something that boils-down-to do this: don't do that.
*
For CG Jung individuation was the purpose of life.
It is hard to be exact about what he meant by this - it was a lifelong process of self-creation and self-therapy - a project of re-making the worldly self in conformity with the inner self.
The inner self has an unique aspect - the individuality - and a common aspect shared with other people - the collective unconscious of archetypal forms and stories.
Well, all this gives people something to do with their lives - to 'work on themselves' - and it is quite possible that doing so makes people feel better than otherwise. But of course it isn't going anywhere and it doesn't provide any link with anybody else - life becomes a matter of 'memories, dreams. reflections'.
(Which is the title of Jung's purported autobiography - mostly a highly-selective work written by Aniela Jaffe with a propagandistic eye for Jung's posthumous reputation - it also happens to be far more enjoyable and interesting than anything Jung ever wrote by-himself!)
So, Jung's project is on the one hand radically inadequate - leaving all the fundamental problems un-addressed hence un-solved; and on the other hand, radically selfish (not to mention idle).
Yet Jung's project ought to be part-of a viable, satisfying, therapeutic, engaging religion in the modern world - partial for sure, but that part worth having.
Lacking-which we have religion as social control; something external, coercive, alienating - something that boils-down-to do this: don't do that.
*
Monday, 31 March 2014
Deep sea divers - a metaphor of mortal earthy life
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The Platonists have it that on Earth we have glimpses of the ideal Heavely realm of perfection, but we see it only through a glass, darkly.
Another idea is that we recall our pre-mortal existence but only through a veil of forgetfulness - the veil being translucent, not transparent - us perceiving only shapes and shadows.
But maybe our mortal life down here is most like being a deep sea diver; our light swift spirits encased inside a protective suit; slowly pushing-through a dense medium; held-down by leaden boots; peering-out through a thick, barred porthole - and the divine communications faint and distorted by having to reach us via a long, thick, rubber tube...
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The Platonists have it that on Earth we have glimpses of the ideal Heavely realm of perfection, but we see it only through a glass, darkly.
Another idea is that we recall our pre-mortal existence but only through a veil of forgetfulness - the veil being translucent, not transparent - us perceiving only shapes and shadows.
But maybe our mortal life down here is most like being a deep sea diver; our light swift spirits encased inside a protective suit; slowly pushing-through a dense medium; held-down by leaden boots; peering-out through a thick, barred porthole - and the divine communications faint and distorted by having to reach us via a long, thick, rubber tube...
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Mainstream Right wing journalism
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Some modern Leftist lunacy is noted, described and analyzed in terms of causation - there is an implicit and unspecific appeal - demand, even - that this-time, now, 'we' do something about it (really do something about it).
Perhaps there is a momentary lift of spirits from reading robust and witty polemic; and a flicker of optimism that now 'we' know about it, and understand what is going-on - then 'we' can work together to... well... put a stop to this kind of thing, and do some other and better kind of thing... or something.
Trouble is that there is no we - just a handful of individuals who are recurrently being set-back and demoralized by the repeated recognition that there is no 'we' but only (to all intents and purposes) me.
So yes to analysis and understanding causation - but we, or should I say me - are going to stop pretending there is a we, and stop vaguely-hoping that we will do something about anything.
Witty polemic doth not make a we.
*
Some modern Leftist lunacy is noted, described and analyzed in terms of causation - there is an implicit and unspecific appeal - demand, even - that this-time, now, 'we' do something about it (really do something about it).
Perhaps there is a momentary lift of spirits from reading robust and witty polemic; and a flicker of optimism that now 'we' know about it, and understand what is going-on - then 'we' can work together to... well... put a stop to this kind of thing, and do some other and better kind of thing... or something.
Trouble is that there is no we - just a handful of individuals who are recurrently being set-back and demoralized by the repeated recognition that there is no 'we' but only (to all intents and purposes) me.
So yes to analysis and understanding causation - but we, or should I say me - are going to stop pretending there is a we, and stop vaguely-hoping that we will do something about anything.
Witty polemic doth not make a we.
*
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