Some weeks ago, I wrote about the interesting fact that ancient societies were able to predict (and prophecy) almost as a matter of routine - certainly divination was integrated into ancient societies at the highest levels; whereas now prediction (of many kinds, including supposedly-scientific, or statistical) seems to be getting worse with each passing decade.
Part of this is the high prevalence of dishonesty; so that 'predictions' (such as election polling, economic predictions, climate predictions) are in actuality merely rhetorical attempts to manipulate people; they are 'not even trying' to predict what will really happen.
But part of it is that the world is becoming dominated, more and more, by top-down Sorathic - that is chaotically destructive - evil.
This is relevant because destruction is much easier than sustaining and creating, therefore can be pursued simultaneously on multiple fronts.
An increasing domination by chaotic-evil, means that prediction becomes much more imprecise. When people are trying to make things better, or trying to follow a plan; then their options and methods are limited and therefore what they do will be relatively predictable...
But how can destruction be predicted? Destruction can crop-up almost anywhere in the world, from almost anybody, and may be effective in a very side range of forms.
So, we can know that (barring a cataclysmic change of global trends) things will continue getting worse in those parts of the world where the Evil Global Establishment have power; but the rate-of-change, and timescale of irreversible collapse, is impossible to predict.
"An increasing domination by chaotic-evil, means that prediction becomes much more imprecise."
ReplyDeleteSolid point that helps me understand why I struggle to rise above the vague "well, I'm not sure, but things are bound to get worse" level of prediction these days.
Another solid point concerning predictive models/formal predictions/forecasts, even if the people behind them were well-motivated and "really trying", they would be essentially working in the fog at this point despite their best efforts.
OT:
ReplyDeleteBruce, are you familiar with Martin Shaw? (A search of his name on your blog revealed no results.) He is a "mythologist", or someone at any rate who has done significant work in the field of myth and storytelling. He converted to Orthodox Christianity a few years ago.
Anyway, I'm mentioning him mainly because his name came up in a post Rod Dreher made that touched on Rod's new project to write a book about "re-enchanting" Christianity and going back to what he calls a Wild Christianity.
The connection with Romantic Christianity is clear. I think it is also likely that Dreher is not familiar with Charlton and the Romantic Christian gang.
It will be a much diminished book if Dreher fails to engage with your work, but at the same time, I suspect you would not want to be involved in his project. And I would tend to agree... Dreher has been good on the Rainbow Alphabet Soup issue, but has pretty much failed all other Litmus Tests, and is in general far too "normie" and milquetoast in his outlook and intellectual make-up to be all that interesting.
In any case, I thought I would post this here so Bruce and Co. are aware of it.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/martin-shaws-miraculous-conversion/
@Daniel - I'm afraid that corner of the media rather gives me the creeps. Ultimately; I regard it as shallow, pick-and-mix, professional journalism - a snare rather than a help in these times.
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