A very nice version of the Sussex Carol follows an excellent syncopated instrumental version of Christmas Day in the Morning; from a folk band called Magpie Lane; after a narrow ginnel off the High Street in Oxford, where they live. More of their music can be found here.
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The first performance of Sussex carol I heard was broadcast live (and rough and ready) on radio from The Etchingham Steam Band - with vocals including the first lady of Sussex folk music - Shirley Collins.
Nearly everybody nowadays (except young children, and maybe some residual tribal people) believes that the universe was originally unalive, and most of it is still unalive.
And this is a shared assumption among mainstream modern materialists, and all of the major Western religions.
The assumption that there was a time when the universe was just physics, biology came along much later - and consciousness later still.
The addition of God doesn't make all that much difference; because God is supposed to have created unalive physics first, then plants then animals; and only to have added conscious humans at the end of the process...
So that the unalive world of physics is still asserted to be the first and predominant reality.
Modern people - religious and atheistic - conceptualize themselves as islands of life (plus or minus consciousness) in a vast ocean of unlife.
This unlife-assumption is one of the iron chains that unbreakably binds modern Man's soul to the ideology of atheistic materialism. Because the assumed possibility - and even worse predominance - of unlife, negates the divine in ways that are crippling.
For instance, the unlife-assumption renders the individual here-and-now powerless whenever that individual lacks the material power to change the unalive environment.
the sheer mass of the unalive seems to be a colossal inertia, such that (with such a picture of reality in our minds) it feels like an individual spirit cannot overcome that mass.
If the physics world of the unalive is given temporal priority and spatial predominance (i.e. the unalive came first and comprises most of reality); then the spiritual is thereby rendered secondary in importance and minority on influence.
These assumptions make it very hard to believe, to convince ourselves, that the spiritual in me (e.g. here and now); can really affect the vast ocean of unlife in which I am supposed to be dwelling.
Little me thinking versus All That Stuff... How can "I" possibly make a significant difference?
It is so hard to believe, because it is so hard to understand - we can't make sense of it, with such a world-model we can't think of a plausible mechanism of action.
Thus, the context of a prior and predominant unalive universe; makes it very hard to grasp how "the individual spirit", - for example my own current conscious aspirations and commitments - really can and does make an ultimate difference to reality-as-a-whole...
Yet surely that is what Jesus taught as the truth? That what you or I think or want, here and now, can make an eternal and universal difference?
It seems to me that we need to drop the assumption of an unalive universe, and to return to that assumption with which we entered the world; the assumption of all reality being alive and conscious (to various degrees).
We need, therefore, to discard the "physics, biology, humanity" sequence of creation - whether that model comes from from the Old Testament, or from "science".
If we can then (and it is difficult indeed! Or, at least, I find it so) develop the original and true habit of regarding reality as alive, conscious, purposive etc - then Theism and Christianity begin to make understandable sense, we can grasp how the assertions may actually "work".
If we can recognize and discard the unlife assumption; can re-learn to think of everything as alive; and thereby relegate physics to the realm of more, or less, expedient models, but never "real-reality"...
Then I think we will find that claims and promises of Christianity can make a kind of obvious, "common sense".
After which clarity and grasp of understanding is attained; salvation becomes a simple matter of whether or not we personally want what Jesus offers.
Note: The above is a different and somewhat novel way of describing the "metaphysics of beings" that I have been propounding on this blog and elsewhere, for the past several years.)
We need to be sufficiently sure of our bottom-line convictions that they will serve strongly to fuel our personal motivation - so that we have the clarity and courage to aim at good; and to discern and navigate through life.
But we modern people, in this modern world, find it very hard to believe in - anything!
At least, we moderns don't believe in stuff strongly enough that we can be truly free, and choose God and divine creation, and have the courage to stick with this --- in the face of a world that continually subverts, ridicules, suppresses, persecutes... and even inverts such intentions.
We need true beliefs - i.e. beliefs that reflect reality (divine reality); and we also need to be subjectively sure about these beliefs in order that they can be positively motivating.
So how can we discover, and become sufficiently-convinced, by such things?
The short answer is "intuition" - but I need to explain what I mean by intuition.
For this I will here use the example of my earlier life as a scientist.
When I began learning science, in the "early" phase; it was learning "about" science; and I learned it in just the same way that we learn most other things about this world: we are told it we absorb it in terms of the assumptions that lie behind the functioning of our world.
And we generally believe what we are told, especially when it comes from socially-defined authority figures.
But such "early" learning is superficial and passive - and such beliefs are not strongly held, not least because they have never really been understood, and we have never invested anything very personal into them.
Consequently, these early beliefs concerning science were easily revised, modified, even reversed - when some "higher" authority said so.
So: this early kind of passive and external belief about science was only very weakly inwardly motivating, and was unstable.
The same applies to all such beliefs - and this accounts for almost all proclaimed political, social and religious beliefs. They are shallow, impersonal - and very easily redirected or reversed by a change in what "authorities" are currently-saying.
When I became a professional scientist, and began to do research; I entered an intermediate phase. I soon became much more discerning about what I believed, and more active in choosing who I would personally regard as authorities.
My own understanding became deeper; albeit in externally derived terms.
The doing of science became much more selective - but what I selected-from, and the criteria for regarding something as true; was something I assembled from that selective sample of what "authorities" stated.
I was not doing original or creative work in science; rather I was trying to be more professional, more discerning, and to do my work at a higher level than others.
At this intermediate level; the work I was doing was not really anything to do with "reality" - rather it was dictated by the scientific literature - and was a matter of filling in gaps, extrapolating from what had already been done - and refuting pieces of established science that were (I believed) refuted by better authorities.
It could be said I had "faith" in science as a process, as a social activity. This is analogous to most Christians "faith" in their church.
I changed my mind less often than in the early phase, because I was more motivated - but this motivation was very much bound-up with and shaped-by the professional scientific environment - which was regarded as the ultimate arbiter.
So, at this intermediate level; science was what the best scientists were saying (or had said) - and the intent was to become one of these "best" - and this was determined by the higher professional structures.
Such a vision of science is this-worldly, and its standards and motivations are of this-world - even if rather idealized within this-world.
The motivations are stronger, because of the personal investment in the process; but the motivation is still ultimately external - and when the external consensus of those I regarded as "best" scientists changed, then so would my own purposes and motivations.
I could (I hoped!) stand in a select company which I had partially chosen to ally-with; but I could not stand alone.
The highest level of science was concerned by transcendental ideals that looked beyond the scientific milieu; ideals to do with reality (not just the relevant scientific literature) and truth (not just professional standards.
At this highest level I was compelled to take personal responsibility for my beliefs; and might therefore need to "stand alone" when I thought that "the external world of science" (even of the best scientists, and by my evaluation) was wrong and misguided.
For these evaluations to become beliefs that were strong enough to motivate; I needed to have criteria for conviction that went beyond my interpretations of the external world of the professional scientific literature.
At this point, as may be clear, I had actually moved outside of the professional system of science.
I had come to recognize that science had its assumptions that were not really true; that it was a matter of models not reality; and that for science to be true and real, required that science be understood in terms of ultimate reality...
Which included God and divine creation, and myself as having some personal significance in this.
This was the point at which I developed sufficiently strong a personal motivation that I could, where I regarded it as necessary, maintain my convictions and direction without support from other scientists.
I was, in other words, innerly-motivated, and also (consequently) more strongly motivated.
This stronger inner motivation came from a different quality of conviction concerning what was true.
At the early and intermediate levels of science; I was dependent on external authority as expressed in external communications and externally-validated interpretations of these communications - i.e. my belief (hence motivation) was rooted the observations and theories to be found in some selective sample of the scientific literature...
To reiterate - this understands science as communications that are externally derived and externally validated.
At both early and intermediate levels; my convictions could be no different-from, deeper-than, or more-solid-than these external factors.
And when these external factors vacillated, or even apparently reversed - then there was no alternative but for me to revise my convictions.
This situation is demotivating! - especially when, by criteria external to science (and to do with truth and reality) science is being corrupted, as was very obviously the case.
(Science began explicitly to serve the needs of bureaucracy, careerism, politics etc. I could not fool myself other than that this really was corruption!)
For me to have a personal conviction and motivation in science; I needed to have an inner sense of truth and reality; what is more this inner sense needed to be direct, not a communication; needed to be self-interpreting - not dependent on observations and theories.
In other words "intuition".
Actually, I have put matters the word way around; because it was only after I had recognized that intuition was and ought to be the root of science, that I moved to the higher level.
What happened was that I would be thinking about something, working on something; when I realized that "this was it".
From the stream of superficial thinking and doing, there sometimes emerged, there was discovered, a solid sense of conviction and surety; a "this is it".
After a while, the intuition of "this is it" became the final validator of my work - unless I got it, and unless the sense of this-is-it was solid enough to survive repeated consultations; then I was not convinced.
Lacking such an intuition; I remained unsure.
I knew that "more work was needed".
But with this intuition, and so long as it lasted and was operative - I was highly motivated, and could withstand any amount of external contradiction.
To generalize from this specific experience; when we regard the external world as corrupt, and increasingly taking the side of evil; then unless we are to be drawn-into that; we need to move "above" considerations of the external, the communicated.
We need, I think, to operate from the kind of deep intuition I eventually found in doing science...
Because only this intuition can be the basis for us to be free and positively-motivated by something outwith "society" that is both solid and potentially real.
I remember the answer to this question from personal experience, from remembering my earlier self.
Modern people are indifferent to eternal life because it is pictured as "more of the same - but forever"...
As nothing more than a continuation of this-life, as it actually is experienced by modern people...
Which life is purposeless, meaningless; and ultimately isolated and disengaged.
Why, asks a modern Man, would it be regarded as good thing, eternally to continue a meaningless and purposeless existence?
In other words, when my personal Life is already pre-assumed to be something that Just Happened as a culmination of science and randomness...
When my life exists against a backdrop of "the universe is dead and going-nowhere and I am a brief-insignificant nothing within this vastness of time and space".
This is the official conviction of our civilization - taught from the highest to lowest levels, by those with greatest status and conferred authority.
And it forms the functional basis of all public and "objective" explanations and justifications from the major social institutions (politics, law, military, police, mass media, economics, science, medicine, arts, education etc, and also the churches).
When human life is regarded as as thus futile; its continuation forever seems to most people like a prospect that would be more of a torment than a thing to be desired.
In such a context, the core promise of Christianity has lost its appeal to the extent that most people think that - even if resurrected individual life beyond death could somehow be proved to be a real and genuine possibility - they wouldn't want it!
And would prefer the (supposed) assurance of a swift and painless death (i.e. euthanasia) followed by utter annihilation of consciousness.
Such is the depth of our modern sickness of soul.
Too deep to be touched by evangelism or apologetics - too deep to be touched even by the devout practice of any strict church Christianity.
Because the modern belief in purposelessness, and meaninglessness, and ultimate personal insignificance - is larger and more profound than our professed religions.
Until we - as individuals - are able to build our religion on a foundation of ultimate reality having a direction, personal meaning, individual significance that we can choose from ourselves; then we shall not escape the vortex of modernity.
Peoples' understanding of the world around them is substantially a matter of their explanatory models - to the point that experience and observations are essentially ignored.
For example, there is a model for how "democracy" works; then there is what actually happens. And people continue, decade after decade, to believe in the theory rather than their observations and experiences of what actually happens.
Same with laws and regulations: there is a model of what these are supposed to be aiming at, and are observations concerning how the law/rule is actually deployed in practice - which may be very different indeed, and yet the law/rule continues (usually successfully!) to be defended on the basis of the theoretical model.
Likewise with technology: there is the explanatory model of how some bit of technology is supposed to work - and then there are our observations about what it actually does... From which may sometimes be inferred that the bit-of-kit is not, and never was - and never could, be working in the manner of the model. "AI" is a topical instance of this.
Another example from medicine, is that once a drug has been marketed as an "anti-depressant", then people (doctors as well as patients) cannot seem grasp that drug's thus classified can and do cause depression (and suicide) in some patients.
The consequences of the Birdemic lockdowns and peck were another example of the same phenomenon - most people believed that theory that these "would help"; and apparently could not grasp that they would inevitably cause harm - even if they also helped (which, in the event, they did not).
But these are just specific examples: this way of thinking permeates our lives right down to the deepest levels. Consider ideologies such as feminism: people still talk about feminism as if it was 1880, and this was a new theory that "must work" and is intrinsically A Good Thing. A century and a half of actual personal experiences makes no apparent difference. (The same applies by close analogy to socialism or racism.)
Religions are the same as ideology in this respect. Once a model-of-realty of a religion is accepted; nothing could ever happen that would necessarily refute it.
And the same applies to people (like the recent New Atheists) who talk about the liberation of mankind from religion as if this was a new, untried theory of human happiness - that must surely work! When in actuality we already live (as did our parent, grandparents and back) in the least religious society in the history of the world, and it is continually getting less religious
We are back at that old favourite theme upon which I repeatedly harp: that metaphysics is prior to science; that theory is prior to experiment etc.
This just is the reality of human existence.
Totalitarian controllers are far more concerned about controlling the theoretical models by which we interpret the world, than they are about controlling specific "information" - because once the models are established, they cannot be refuted by any new information.
Once someone has assumed that there is no God and this is a purposeless and meaningless universe; nothing can ever happen to compel him to recognize the reality of God, purpose or meaning - everything possible can be explained away as random, the product of delusion or fraud - and so forth.
Once somebody has decided that their church is blessed by God and can never be corrupted and will last until the end of time/ Last Judgment - then no amount of corruption or evil done by that church and/or its members will make any difference to the assumption.
The lesson I draw from this is that we should be very careful what we assume!
Because upon our theoretical models of reality depend our experience of reality.
And we can only learn that which is learnable within the context of our assumptions.
Therefore; we ought, as a minimum, to become (as far as possible - which can only be known by sustained trying) explicitly aware of our own assumptions - of those "models" by which we understand and explain reality.
Current attitudes to "AI" are an example of the way that hierarchical power elicits compliance, by psychological methods and the hope of personal benefit.
This is seen in organizations, when management talk about "owning" change.
The desired change (i.e. currently, the implementation of "AI" technologies) is presented as (and may actually be) inevitable.
Therefore the choice presented to those upon whom change is being imposed; is either to suffer the (asserted) humiliation of being compelled kicking-and-screaming into compliance - and thereby having one's helplessness revealed to all and sundry...
Or else "owning" the change; which means accepting its inevitability and adjusting one's own psychology to embrace the valuation that "this change is good!
Or, at least, that the change can be made good...
Or, at least such change can be made good for-me".
The psychological appeal is obvious - instead of being visibly subject to miserable compulsion, one who "owns" the change can pretend to be in control of the process - and happy about it!
And - by pretending the change is good - one can (with a superficially clear conscience!) make the best of it for oneself - in pursuit of money, status, attention, sex... or whatever motivates.
One who "owns" change can "ride the wave" - be a cool surfer! instead of one upon whom the wave crashes.
Indeed, "owning change" is almost wholly to the short-term and this-worldly benefit of those who can perform this psychological act; which is why the process is so common as to be nigh universal.
Owning change is just seen as common sense - making the best of the inevitable...
Pretending to oneself that evil is actually good - until we actually do believe that evil is good...
And surely nobody can be blamed for doing that?
Experience > Knowledge
Reality > Truth
Thinking > Feeling
The above are notations or summaries of what may be chosen as ways of understanding the human condition, including mortal life; on the basis of metaphysical decisions. The intent is that the first term is distinct from and superior to the second - but that the second is usually preferred.
Mots people focus on "knowledge" - including, nowadays, the debased forms of information or even "data". I am suggesting that these are secondary forms, without participation. Knowledge is "about" something, and the tendency is to regard it as abstract and separable from the person who knows.
But I am saying that the only real knowledge is in (or from) the experience of the knower - all knowledge includes the subjective, the knower. Knowledge is not all in the knower, but always includes the knower.
It could be stated that what we "really" known must always be a matter of our experience.
Truth is only a partial view of reality; because reality is what-is, whereas truth is a description of what-is.
This relates to my conviction that the most fundamental philosophy is metaphysics - which is concerned with the nature of basic reality.
Any stated metaphysics (any philosophy) is, of course, secondary and therefore a description of something, not the something itself.
But underneath that ought-to-be a direct experience of reality.
That personal experience should the basis of the knowledge that is metaphysics.
(Against this is the idea that the most fundamental philosophy is epistemology - the philosophy of "knowledge"; which is often focused on asking what are the valid criteria of knowing, or how can knowledge become objective. I regard epistemology as a blind alley. )
Having said that personal experience is primary, and that experience of reality is the basis of that philosophy I aspire to; the question arises as to the nature of that experience.
What kind of experience is sought? Well, here I am suggesting that it is a kind of thinking, rather than a kind of feeling.
Although having said that, the kind of thinking includes feeling... In other words, the ultimate activity is not the sort of mundane "voice in my head" thinking in which most people engage most of the time that they are awake and conscious.
Neither is it intense unthinking feeling; of the kind that most people regard as powerful emotions - the feeling that is driven by some external event or input; and that "overwhelms" us.
Instead I am attempting to describe a feeling-thinking (a feeling-reinforced thinking, perhaps?) attaining its objective of experiencing reality in a direct and primary way independent of words, or pictures.
What I hope to get across is that we should regard conscious and purposive thinking (a particular kind of thinking) as the situation in which we may experience reality directly.
This conviction (which I derived from Rudolf Steiner, with modifications) is very different from many or most religious or spiritual ideas about where and how we may encounter truth; and different too from mainstream scientistic-materialism.
It is neither the subjective and passive revelation or imposition of truth in traditional religions - requring obedience to legitimate church authority...
Nor is it the idea of truth as objective and out-there (something established by experts that we can only passively obey)...
Nor is it the "my truth" subjectivism of new Age affectations - I say affectation because nobody remotely lives up to it, but instead New Agers are relativistic about their spirituality which is regarded in a "lifestyle" way, while being serious and objective about the truths of current-leftist politics (which they regard as mandatory; and opposition to which is the only "evil" they (in practice) recognize and oppose with vehemence.
(A New Ager may be relativistic about which religion is true, or "anything goes" concerning the validity of spiritual practices such as acupuncture, crystals, channelling, meditation etc; but highly objective and very coercive in their opinions about "right wing" politicians, or "fundamentalist Christians" - and what ought to be done with/ about them!)
The idea that we need to experience reality, and that reality may be experienced in thinking; is therefore something qualitatively different from any of the mainstream perspectives. I can only point it out as a possibility. Whether you (or anyone else) chooses to adopt such a point-of-view, is (and can only be) a matter for individual spiritual responsibility. A matter of your ultimate freedom.
