tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post8859268927889841127..comments2024-03-28T21:32:26.550+00:00Comments on Bruce Charlton's Notions: The intolerance of the Middle Ages - the future of RomanticismBruce Charltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-50920943422607106252015-06-11T13:04:26.566+01:002015-06-11T13:04:26.566+01:00Bruce Charlton said:
In philosophical terms this i...Bruce Charlton said:<br /><i>In philosophical terms this is first-philosophy - i.e metaphysics. To get where we want to go, we need to turn philosophy back upon itself, and examine the fundamental assumptions of modern consciousness. ... <br /><br />This is neither futile nor paradoxical - because we have separate ground to stand upon - the ground of the imagination. The lesson of more than two centuries is that Romanticism, the power of imagination, is too incomplete and feeble to replace modern consciousness; but it is different enough to analyse modern consciousness from a separate evidential basis - and I think this analysis can point-to the next necessary step.</i><br /><br />So what are the assumptions of modern consciousness?<br /><br />I think that they are based upon what we learn about how the brain(s) operate to create the *self*. In that regard it is tentative, in motion, and subject to change as we learn more. I think it is epiphenomenal, and I think Oliver Sacks has gone a long way to providing a basis for this amongst those who are curious about how the brain and the *self* are related and dependent through his experiences with patients who have suffered from various forms of brain trauma and malady. I think that the instinctive, emotional and logical aspects of thinking are not strongly integrated today - except in the realms of extreme political ideology and religion. We adopt many frames because we live fragmented lives with many identities and masks. Part of this is social because we relate and work with many people who are not a part of our primary cultural and/or religious background. We are actors, and we pick up the role and mask that fits the stage we are performing upon. The other aspect that shapes this is how much of our time is spent in reading, watching film narratives and subjecting ourselves to the voices of others through this. In fiction, characters - well written ones at any rate - become intimate. The thoughts we read become our interior conversation, and their dilemmas engage us in many ways including the stimulation of emotions and instincts. People in the Middle Ages did not have the luxury of the time to read very much, nor the wealth that permitted leisure or a library, and they most certainly did not have film - though there was the stage for those who lived in a large enough urban setting. Most people were too consumed with Red Queen issues, and their social experience was bounded to a small homogeneous community. Hence there was a strong alignment between thought, emotion and instinct. People did not experience life as we do.<br /><br />The imagination can certainly enables us to see and experience the world differently, but in this respect it is also part of what you would consider the problem. We imagine a great deal, but what is the content of those imaginations, and do we overload with too many divergent forms of imagination for the cohesion you refer to as that of the Medievals?<br /><br />I think that we moderns get caught up on the extremity of imagination as it pertains to creating intense states of emotional and instinctive reaction. We are addicts. It is an expression of Mouse Utopia. We idealize and expect fictional levels of stimulation in our relationships. But our spouses, children, friends and communities are not like that, and then dissatisfaction and alienation sets in. Aging is unacceptable, and yet we all age. Men resent that their wife's body is not what it once was, and that aging is taking away their own youthful vigour. Many become very angry in a world where fictional norms become embedded as expectations, and dissatisfaction is ever present except when high on extreme states.<br /><br />The silver lining is that extreme dissatisfaction usually leads to a crisis, and it is from such a crisis that the possibility of changing things up in a deep way becomes possible. Some few may be able to bootstrap themselves through imagining their better self without such a crisis. I would like to think that it is possible, but our addictions are very strong, and strongly reinforced; I am not optimistic.Nicholas Fulfordhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15779171820370486921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-49170597802129412592015-06-11T09:57:20.858+01:002015-06-11T09:57:20.858+01:00@Phil - To me, PC has an utterly different flavour...@Phil - To me, PC has an utterly different flavour than scholasticism. The Medievals, for instance, believed in static eternal objective laws. Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-1401921537181389732015-06-11T08:05:03.430+01:002015-06-11T08:05:03.430+01:00I wonder if the PC left have not in fact reverted ...I wonder if the PC left have not in fact reverted to identifying themselves with their thoughts. Their touchiness over 'offence' suggests they identify *totally* with their 'weltanschauung'. Or are they just being ironic?PhilRnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-25288070655192981452015-06-10T02:45:17.848+01:002015-06-10T02:45:17.848+01:00"A wrong thought could strike them as far mor..."A wrong thought could strike them as far more immoral than a wrong action."<br /><br />This is the crux of what modern people (including myself) cannot understand. Immorality means knowingly doing something which is wrong -- but how can anyone knowingly <i>believe</i> something which is wrong? If you know something is wrong, don't you by definition <i>not</i> believe it?<br /><br />I realize that in the preceding paragraph I might be accused of equivocating, conflating two senses of "wrong" (morally wrong vs. factually wrong) -- but when it comes to beliefs the conflation is justified. When it comes to beliefs, what moral duty could we have but to believe what is true and disbelieve what is false? How could it ever be morally wrong to believe something that is factually right, or vice versa?Wm Jas Tychonievichhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07446790072877463982noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-77928574753544907542015-06-09T13:15:53.033+01:002015-06-09T13:15:53.033+01:00@sykes - Ha! So you think Christianity is foundati...@sykes - Ha! So you think Christianity is foundational anti-Christianity without the coercive apparatus! <br /><br />I would guess you don't know about what Soviet Communism did to Christianity in what was, until 1917, the most devoutly Christian large country in the world? Not many people do know - I certainly didn't until just a few years ago - although Solzhenitsyn documented it. <br /><br />http://russiascatacombsaints.blogspot.co.uk/<br /><br />Communism (like Leftism in general) is originally and primarily anti-Christian. If you think about it is obvious; but non-Christian Leftists (of the 'secular Right' persuasion) like to pretend otherwise. One of the ways in which Leftism is anti-Christian is to pretend that Christianity is proto-Leftist. Try telling that to the Byzantine empire!Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-1288537583398664632015-06-09T11:55:22.147+01:002015-06-09T11:55:22.147+01:00In traditional Christianity, Heaven is just a way ...In traditional Christianity, Heaven is just a way station, a temporary inn for the saved awaiting the Last Judgement. The ultimate goal is a reformed, perfected Earth, a new Eden, which we will inhabit in our perfect, corporeal bodies. In this new Eden, there is no pain, strife or disease, just love and community. The lion literally lies down with the lamb. We have direct contact with God and know His love and love Him.<br /><br />Except for the God part, traditional Christianity sees the new Eden as a kind of communism without the Gulags and KGB.<br />sykes.1https://www.blogger.com/profile/10954672321945289871noreply@blogger.com