Bruce Charlton's Miscellany

The problem of Christian moral teaching in a secular, hedonist context

2012-01-29T08:12:00.004+01:00

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My general perspective is that modern Christian evangelism should (probably) focus on addressing the alienation of modern man, rather than on ethical issues - that what requires emphasis is the mystical, existential, even metaphysical aspect of Christianity, with sin conceptualized as being turned-away-from God rather than as a list of rules.

And the Christian mystical perspective being described not in terms of what makes you happy, but what is real and therefore productive of meaning, purpose and relation with the universe.

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For instance, that when an orthodox Christian looks at the stars he knows that the Heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament sheweth his handiwork;

whereas for a secular modern like Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes) the stars induce the cry:

"I'M SIGNIFICANT... screamed the dust speck."

This cartoon perfectly encapsulates the overweening spiritual pride and underlying utter nihilism of modern, secular man.

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I was led to this idea of focusing on the mystical partly my my own response, when an atheist, to Christian ethical teaching.

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Not by its own choice, Christianity has been brought into conflict with the modern world primarily on matters of sexuality and reproduction.

Naturally, therefore, among-ourselves, Christians must say NO to many things which the modern world first tolerates then encourages.

And this can be done rigorously, and through argument, since Christians share a belief in both natural law and revelation.

(Natural law being the spontaneous, instinctive human morality and spirituality - common to mankind).

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Yet, the fact the Christians must strive to resist modern sexual and reproductive ethics in their internal operations, does not mean that this can effectively be done in the social arena.

It is precisely the triumph of modernity that in the social arena there is no belief in, indeed denial of, not just Christian revelation, but even natural law.

Without even a common basis in natural law, how can specific matters of sexual and reproductive ethics be discussed from a Christian perspective?

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The answer is sexual and reproductive ethics cannot now be discussed from a Christian perspective - but only from a secular and hedonic perspective, concerned with this worldly individual happiness and misery.

Yet to discuss sexual and reproductive ethics from the perspective of what makes people happy or miserable, is precisely to reinforce the secular hedonic perspective.

Even if a Christian were to prove that, say, easy divorce usually led to misery - he could never prove that it always and necessarily led to misery, and the very act of evaluating in terms of here and now misery (or happiness) is precisely the evaluation used by the secular modern world; and precisely not the primary evaluation of Christianity.

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So Christians can merely say what they believe (answer NO whenever the matter comes-up), stick to what they believe (still say NO even when persuasion or coercion is brought to bear); yet decline to explain their sexual and reproductive ethics in terms of secular hedonism

- simply to state that this is how things are from a Christian perspective; in light of natural law and revelation.

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This is, of course, how other and non-native religions always have behaved in The West when trying to hold-out against pressure - not explaining; but instead saying, in effect 'it is not our custom', we cannot comply, we are commanded to refuse this.

And this has indeed proved far more effective than trying to fight coercion using the enemy's weapons.

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In sum, Christians need to internalize that we are living in an alien culture which cannot understand us.

When resisting that alien culture, there is therefore no way to explain the true reason for resistance; merely the fact of it.

Those who truly want to understand must first become Christian.

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Comparative religion from a Christian perspective - Kristor writes

2012-01-29T07:28:00.000+01:00

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From an e-mail by Kristor:

Comparative religion is useful to me in that it helps me limn the Religion of Adam, the religion naturally proper to natural man, which I take (and the Fathers took) to be Christianity.

The key thing is this.

If as a scholar of religion you approach Christianity as but one errant creature among many, as rather a taxonomist than a metaphysician, then you are on the road to Hell, or at least to nowhere (is there a difference between nowhere and Hell?)...

But if on the other hand you approach other religions as defective/partly successful & right approximations of the True Religion you are trying to discover and comprehend and practice, as rather a metaphysician than a taxonomist,

...why then you are almost bound in the course of your studies to arrive at the conclusion that orthodoxy – traditional Christianity, of whatever lobe of whatever “lung” – is the historical instantiation of that True Religion, and is thus the True Church...

(understanding the Church as extending throughout the cosmos (and indeed beyond it),

...and thus ipso facto throughout all human history, so that Christianity simply must be present incipiently in shamanism and animism, and in high paganism of the Neo-Platonist/Pythagorean sort, as in high Hebrew polytheism (El & His Son YHWH plus his pantheon of angels);

...and so that it is present at least partially in any religion that succeeds at informing a virtuous life of true human flourishing, or at fostering wisdom (however “merely” practical that wisdom).

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We don't regard the good moments seriously enough

2012-01-28T07:39:00.000+01:00

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One insight I get from reading Thomas Traherne (1637-1674) is that we habitually ignore and downgrade the paradisal, the heavenly aspects of our everyday lives.

There are moments of sheerest delight, of perfection - yet they barely register, or we shrug them aside to get-on with something else, or we persist in looking-forward to something else.

Yet for the Christian these are foretastes and glimpses of Heaven.

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The moments should not, need not be, grasped at nor 'reflected' upon - they are permanent, and they will continue to do their work. However, they certainly ought not to be slighted, mentally-denigrated, shoved-down and subordinated to worldly concerns.

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That sitting with the family around the dinner table, chatting and laughing; that looking up to see Venus, the crescent Moon and Jupiter in a blazing line across the evening sky - that was not trivial, but one of the most important moments in your earthly life. To be treasured in eternity.

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Not even trying - the corruption of real science

2012-01-27T19:12:00.000+01:00

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This is the title of a 'book' I have 'finished' in the past couple of days - and sent to the publishers for consideration.

The title is pretty self-explanatory (I hope) - the 'book' is about the (utter) degradation of science by dishonesty.

(I say 'book' because it is only about 28,000 words - although even 28K is 'meaty' compared with Thought Prison.)

This is probably as good a point as any to gather views on the book, since it may help to give me an impression of how far I have succeeded in my aims - and any problems can easily be fixed at this stage.

So... if any of this blog's regular commenters would like to be what-I-believe-is-termed a beta-reader for this book, then please send me an e-mail.

(I'm not asking-for nor wanting a copy-editor nor a sub-editor - but rather a few descriptive impressionistic critical sentences.)

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Political correctness beats cosmopolitan Libertarianism: because sacrificial religion beats hedonic individualism

2012-01-27T06:37:00.004+01:00

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The complete and utter feebleness of libertarian ideas (I am speaking as an ex-libertarian) comes from the fact that they are up-against religion: the religion of political correctness.

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The 'secular right' agenda is lukewarm except where it is nationalist: cosmopolitan libertarians are simply not doing politics.

Because of the feebleness of their conviction, libertarians and right wing secular hedonists will sell-out as soon as they get a sniff of power, as soon as anyone offers to buy them off, or as soon as they are threatened.

Indeed, observation and experience shows that people will not sacrifice anything of significance to support sensible secular, materialist, pragmatic, libertarian right wing policies.

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(And anyone who imagines libertarians will sacrifice in support of their supposed ideals, should try sticking their neck out and getting into trouble in support of libertarian ideas, and just see how much effective support rallies to them... Libertarians idea of a bold political stance is to sign their names to a sternly-worded multi-author letter - although most will not risk even that...)

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By contrast, large numbers of religious folk will sacrifice comfort, prosperity, time, money and other resources to pursue their goals.

And the same applies, at a much lower level, to the Leftist religion of political correctness.

Political correctness is the feeblest of religions, as religion go; but any religion will beat no religion.

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Leftists will sacrifice quite a lot for their beliefs.

Albeit these sacrifices tend to be gradual, quietist and passive - and not to require courage; nonetheless, leftists sit for hour after hour in excruciatingly dull committee meetings (until all their opponents have gone), work hard to buy expensive useless stuff-that-Leftists-like, travel to the right places even when they are unpleasant and dangerous, read miserable newspapers, books and blogs - and watch despair-inducing socially aware movies when the world is full of enjoyable edification, they shell-out vastly in taxes and ask for more taxes...

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In sum, Leftists acquiesce in sacrifice of their own long term security and prosperity, their peace and comfort, sacrifice their own childrens' health and happiness, and the H&H of future generations in pursuit of their self-loathing and self-destroying ideas such as multiculturalism, unrestricted mass immigration, egalitarianism, affirmative action, 'democracy', world government, moral and aesthetic inversion, wholesale propaganda.

In general, real leftists trudge through life under a burden of near paralyzing, un-assuageable and self-stoked guilt which they do their best to amplify and spread - so they certainly feel as if they are sacrificing.

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Yes, political correctness is indeed a sacrificial religion - albeit an atheistic religion of this-worldly nihilistic materialism; from which there is no escape except into distraction or oblivion - albeit the feeblest and most depraved of religions: but religion it is.

When the leftist religion is matched-against a devout, theistic and other worldly orthodox traditional religion it is, of course, utterly crushed - sooner or later, unless it can corrupt the theistic religion to worldly hedonism.

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(The success of leftism derives from its power to corrupt enemies, not from intrinsic strength.)

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But libertarianism is the ideology of minimal sacrifice - it is precisely the ideology of those who want-to-do what they want-to-do, nothing else: and they want it now.

This is why political correctness (as we see all around us) wipes the floor with its right wing enemies.

When a sacrificial religion - any religion, even a feeble one - is pitted-against the mere self-gratifying, individualistic, guilt-shrugging, 'glass bead game'-playing of intellectual, libertarian, cosmopolitan secularism - there can be only one winner.

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Simon Hughes blows a fuse over the doosra

2012-01-26T23:04:00.001+01:00

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*DELETED*

- Oops - this post was intended for my cricket blog, but was inserted here in error. Anyone interested in the esoterica of spin bowling can go to:

http://the-doosra.blogspot.com/2012/01/simon-hughes-blows-fuse-over-doosra.html
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A turn of the tide? What to watch for, pray for

2012-01-26T07:34:00.001+01:00

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Repentance.

I've said it before, and here it is again.

It is self-deluding to scan our environments, comb the mass media, for signs of hope, for a turn of the tide - if we neglect to watch for repentance.

For a spiritual renewal of society (a Great Awakening) repentance must be the first step.

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There must be a recognition and repudiation of wrongness - then there must be a recognition of our own implication.

(Not, for example, a primary focus on blaming.)

To say: This is wrong, we were wrong.

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You think you see a glimmer of hope? A leader speaks of Christ? But have they repented? When our leaders begin by repentance and tell us just what it is they repent; then we will know they may be serious

(Repentance is necessary, not of course sufficient, deception is possible. Antichrist will surely repent - partially. But piety without repentance is bogus.)

If they repent their own role in the collapse of our society then they may be serious, they may represent a turn of the tide.

Otherwise not.

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(And this is not something subtle - a leader who repents... that is not something one sees every day.

(But I have seen it - Margaret Thatcher publicly repented socialism; the entire US political class repented racism - and has never stopped doing so, even when it became clear that un-religious, unilateral, specific and immoderate repentance had led to evil.

(Whether repentance led to good or not, because of repentance, these were deep, lasting 'religious' movements, not merely political expediency.)

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And that is a thing we should pray for, when asked to pray for The Queen, The President, all those in authority. We should repent our own collusion, we should pray that our leaders also repent. Only then may God have mercy on us (until then it can only be a stay of execution in hope of repentance).

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The Queen gave a strong Christian message in her speech to the Commonwealth this year -

http://tinyurl.com/c7gwx8t

- but the focus was unclear: it was perhaps coded.

I await repentance.

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We are to become little children - Thomas Traherne

2012-01-26T07:04:00.000+01:00

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Thomas Traherne (1636-1674. Anglican priest) - Third Century, Number 5

Our Saviour's meaning, when He said, He must be born again and become a little child that will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven is deeper far than is generally believed.

It is not only in a careless reliance upon Divine Providence, that we are to become little children, or in the feebleness and shortness of our anger and simplicity of our passions, but in the peace and purity of all our soul.

Which purity also is a deeper thing than is commonly apprehended. For we must disrobe ourselves of all false colours, and unclothe our souls of evil habits; all our thoughts must be infant-like and clear; the powers of our soul free from the leaven of this world, and disentangled from men's conceits and customs.

Grit in the eye or yellow jaundice will not let a man see those objects truly that are before it. And therefore it is requisite that we should be as very strangers to the thoughts, customs, and opinions of men in this world, as if we were but little children.

So those things would appear to us only which do to children when they are first born.

Ambitions, trades, luxuries, inordinate affections, casual and accidental riches invented since the fall, would be gone, and only those things appear, which did to Adam in Paradise, in the same light and in the same colours: God in His works, Glory in the light, Love in our parents, men, ourselves, and the face of Heaven: Every man naturally seeing those things, to the enjoyment of which he is naturally born.

Thomas Traherne - Third Century, Number 5

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Witchery and sorcery as wicked prayer - Kristor writes

2012-01-25T07:13:00.000+01:00

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Excerpted and slightly edited from an email by Kristor:

Witchery and sorcery – black magic generally – is just intercessory prayer that is evilly intended.

And intercession needn’t be formal, or even conscious. If I’m envious of someone, or feeling glad about them, it seems quite reasonable that my feelings might have a concrete effect upon them, even if I never express my emotions to them, or indeed even become conscious of them myself.

Everything is connected, and not a jot or a bit is dropped from the signal, however obscured it may be. Every atom, says Whitehead, is a system of all things.

The feeling I have about you, and the feeling you have about me, are concrete, physical aspects of the world. They are not just epiphenomena; so, they must have their complete, due effects upon all other things.

If the world is to be coherent, there is no alternative; the momenta of feelings cannot simply disappear from history, without being accounted for by the rest of the causal order. This is why the very notion of an epiphenomenon is an insult to rationality.

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Prayer then, sorcery whether white or black, is mediated by fields of mutual influence, of co-inherence and superposition. And in principle, fields extend without limit throughout all space, however weakly.

The body is contained by the soul, not vice versa; so also with physical objects and their fields. Physical bodies are the expressions of their fields, the fossils and artifacts of field transactions. In All Hallows’ Eve, Williams writes [p. 142]:

"The high thing which was now in his mind, [Lester’s] body that had walked and lain by his, was itself celestial and divine. Body? It was no more merely body than soul was merely soul; it was only visible Lester."

Lovely: the body as the soul made visible, tangible.

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“Coincidentally,” I have just begun reading Morton Smith’s Jesus the Magician, which explores the whole faith healer/miracle worker aspect of Jesus’ ministry.

Lots of info here about the phenomenon of the miracle worker in First Century Palestine. Much (but not all) of faith healing is of course due to the placebo effect – “your faith has made you whole.” But that a man’s faith in a cure has made him whole does not mean that the cure was not objectively curative.

The placebo effect can after all just as easily defeat a cure proven to be effective, as promote a cure that is known to be specious. The most brilliant and incontrovertibly efficacious drug can be completely impotent when the placebo effect is negative, thanks to the patient’s disbelief in the efficacy of the cure, or of the doctor; or thanks to his despair.

If you believe you are beyond help, you probably are, because such beliefs tend to be self-fulfilling.

If on the other hand you believe God can cure you, why, you’re only talking plain common sense, right? Of course God can heal you. But, he can do so only if you turn to him in love and trust. If you don’t do that, you’re rejecting the cure.

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So, faith healing is not rendered bogus or vacuous because the placebo effect is involved. That the patient’s willing cooperation in the procedure is needed to make it efficacious does not mean that the faith healer has done nothing at all, nor does it mean that the thing he has done is not really efficacious, any more than the fact that I choose not to notice a pinprick means I have not really been pricked.

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Ought we, therefore, not to refrain from despair over the prospects of the West, not just because despair is a sin, but because our despair will tend to frustrate the cure that might this very minute be working its way through the dough like yeast?

Ought we not to have faith in a cure, so that we don’t get in the way of that cure?

A cure is possible, after all. Stranger things have happened.

Like the Church. There have been several Great Awakenings in the last 500 years. We could easily be on the verge of another; Great Awakenings are just the sorts of things that flaccid, desiccate, depraved, apostate ages tend to generate.

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Would a global pandemic plague be the least-worst scenario?

2012-01-24T07:34:00.000+01:00

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Yesterday, I again came across reference to the impact of the Black Death plague on medieval society. It was a quite extraordinary phenomenon: so sudden, so universal, so devastating - and I simply cannot imagine what it was like to experience the death of around half the population within a short time.

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Yet, what is remarkable is how little affected medieval society was.

There are apparently only three brief references to the Black Death in the whole of Chaucer; and the fact of it does not seem to have made much impact on either Langland or the Gawain poet.

It is, in fact, quite easy almost to forget the plague when discussing the history of England. There were 'benefits': apparently peasant wages doubled after the Black Death (due to shortage of labour) and this effect took some hundreds of years to be lost. Indeed, it is the post-plague benefits which tend to get empasised these days.

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Of course, medieval society was segmentary - consisting of many almost-self-sufficient segments or units.

Modern society is by contrast massively interdependent - so the effect of a pandemic would be very different and in some respects probably much more devastating, and much harder to recover from.

In addition, all the non-governmental levels of organization (the trades, professions, churches etc) have been systematically attacked and mostly destroyed over recent decades.

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Anyway, with the impending collapse of the Western economy, organisation and capability (leaving aside culture) - which has been sustaining the world through its food, transport, medicine; there will be some kind of major mortality from disease, starvation or violence - or combinations thereof.

We are faced with the near certainty, the 'necessity' of billions of casualties worldwide, from some cause or another.

And I wonder whether a global pandemic might be the least-worst, most merciful of these options?

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(Although, for the reasons stated above, I suspect that pandemic might lead to massive violence and starvation as well, since modern society - perhaps I mean just British society - lacks the segmentary mechanisms for preventing them.)

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These reflections were prompted by these irony-tinged biological reflections from Greg Cochran concerning the benefits of near-extinction to a species:

http://westhunt.wordpress.com/2011/11/29/bouncing-off-the-bottom/

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Note: I am a Christian and an evolutionary theorist, and Cochran is the other one - he is Roman Catholic. However, his IQ is approximately double mine.

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From Kristor - error is permanent, and leads to further error

2012-01-23T10:46:00.000+01:00

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There is conservation, not just of fairness, but of value in general.

In any closed causal system, this must be so. You can’t increase the amount of value that a given state of affairs is capable in principle of expressing throughout its whole future, absent any exogenous inputs of value thereto.

All that you can do is rearrange the value that is already implicit in it. And all such rearrangements use up a bit of the store of available value, dispersing it in such a way that, spread about indiscriminably, it can no longer exert any allure toward a particular terminus ad quem, or therefore motivate any work, any action theretoward.

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But note that for any given moment in a causal order, the amount of value that it can express over its whole history may vary, depending on the decisions made in and as that moment.

There is for a cosmos at its beginning an optimum amount of value that it can possibly realize over its history, provided it follows the optimum pathway forward from that beginning, without error.

If it should ever err, then cosmic history would fall from its optimum path, and would forever thenceforth find itself unable to climb back thereto – again, absent any exogenous inputs.

The value that a given causal order can express – can actualize – is quite path-dependent.

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Once a cosmos has fallen a little bit, and cannot climb back up, it can of course fall still further. And, again, absent exogenous rescue, that is what must sooner or later eventually happen. For, once infect a world with error, and that error never thereafter goes away. It leaves its mark permanently in history, and queers everything after.

To see this, think of a bowling alley where the distance to the pins is, like, 15 miles. The tiniest error at the beginning of a ball’s journey is going to land it in the gutter, sooner or later. No ball will ever reach the pins.

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But even without exogenous rescue, a world may devolve to the general death of heat, and all other values, more quickly, or more slowly, again depending on the path it takes. The bowling ball may land in the gutter almost the moment it is released, or it may roll along beautifully for quite a while. In the latter case, more beauties will be realized than in the former.

So, while there is no way to prevent the eventual utter exhaustion of all the available store of potential creaturely value present in the cosmos at its inception, that process of exhaustion may actualize more beauty, or less. The world is eventually doomed; in the meantime, it may be better, or worse.

From the extensive comments added by Kristor to:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2012/01/conservation-of-fairness.html

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John the Baptist

2012-01-23T06:50:00.000+01:00

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As a new Christian, I found John the Baptist a baffling figure - he is given considerable prominence in the Gospels, yet my tendency was to regard him as having been superseded by Jesus, and therefore somebody that could safely be ignored.

John 1:8: He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.

Being a witness doesn't sound very important, at first...

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Yet he was, according to Christ, the best man who had ever lived, up to that point: greater, therefore, than even than the greatest of the Old Testament Prophets:

Luke 7:28 For I say unto you, Among those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist

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Of course the greatness of John the Baptist is not exactly a secret. The church I most often attend is indeed named after him. But perhaps it is hard for us to understand why a 'witness' is so great? It is hard to understand because 'witnesses' are so rare now.

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The key fact, in my understanding, is that John the Baptist was regarded, in the area and at the time Jesus operated, as the holiest man alive.

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This was an era of miracle workers and claimed prophets. How to discern between them?

The answer was to turn for judgement to the holiest man alive.

When John endorsed Jesus as the Messiah, then that was as strong evidence as could be imagined of the truth of Jesus's claims - stronger and more decisive, even, than the miracles and (thus far) partial-fulfilment of prophecies.

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And this emphasises the problem of our own era, so lacking in holy men, in saints. Who is there now alive of unchallenged holiness to whom we could turn for discernment?

This lack is perhaps why I did not easily understand the greatness of John the Baptist. Perhaps we, as a culture, have forgotten that such greatness did once exist on earth.

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There is, I think, no-one alive to whom we can turn - we must therefore turn to those who have died.

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Disbelief in miracles, belief in divinity of miracles - both vulnerabilities

2012-01-22T09:13:00.000+01:00

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Modern public culture, and the majority of the intellectual ruling elite, have a total disbelief in miracles.

They will deploy all possible resources to argue-down any possible miracle, especially of course the miracles of Christ; from a basis that miracles are impossible, all phenomena have scientific explanations, and therefore any naturalistic explanation is infinitely more plausible than a miracle.

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In other words, miracles are implicitly being taken as sufficient proof of divinity - especially the God of Christianity (and since God is supposed to have been proven not to exist, then neither can miracles).

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This leaves modern culture wide-open to utter deception by anyone who can credibly prove a miracle. Such a person will be assumed to be a divine messenger, or even a divinity.

The 'miracle' may or may not be real, it may be real or a cunning simulation; but if it can be proven such as to convince enough people, then whoever practised it will be worshipped as a god - since that is the covert assumption behind the utter refusal to regard miracles as real.

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Others who are vulnerable to deception by miracles (real, or indistinguishable from real) are Christians who disbelieve in 'unseen warfare'. This includes many who are prone to regard 'religion' as intrinsically 'good' and spiritual experience as intrinsically true, valid and divine in origin.

Even Charles Williams - a truly great theologian in many respects, whose work I study intensely - did not really believe in purposive evil, in 'the devil' (or found difficulty in doing so).

And this opened-him to the potential evils of magical practice (the quest for supernatural power; in his case poetic power) - at least to some extent and at some points in his life because he lacked sufficient awareness of the possibilities, the likelihood, of demonic deception.

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So, we need a proper understanding of miracles. On the one hand, miracles are real and possible; on the other hand, even real miracles are not necessarily derived from the divine indeed in a time of hedonism, aspostasy and corruption then deceptive (evil tending) miracles (whether supernatural or cunningly faked) are most likely.

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Three attitudes to miracles

2012-01-21T07:46:00.000+01:00

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Personal miracles are sometimes common events for praying Christians.

I am talking here of public miracles, miracles of claimed general significance.

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There are three main attitudes.

1. They are all fake - all explicable by error, dishonesty or delusion.

2. They are rare, but some are real - and these are divine. If error, dishonesty and delusion can be ruled-out - using reasonable criteria - then public miracles are divine communications.

3. Of real miracles, most are demonic. Indeed public miracles are assumed to be demonic, except when there are grounds to consider otherwise.

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The third position is, I believe, correct - it is the one I have derived from Eastern Orthodoxy especially Fr Seraphim Rose.

The normal public debate is therefore mistaken and a false dichotomy: I mean the debate between people who believe something is a miracle and that therefore it is from God on one side, and those who disbelieve that this event was a miracle (either specifically this event not a miracle, or often because they believe miracles to be impossible as such).

This is a distinctive aspect of Eastern Orthodox mystical tradition - a lively recognition that supernatural experience is real but usually demonic.

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All other traditions (and individuals) seem, by comparison, dangerously credulous about mystical experience.

It is real, not-uncommon, but usually harmful.

The difficulty about mystical experience is not to have it, but to have it real and benign (ie. divine).

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(Demonic miracles would no doubt be performed in a different way, using different methods, than divine miracles - but the point is that they may be very difficult or impossible for humans to distinguish in terms of their observable effects.)

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My attitude is that miracles happen, I mean real public miracles, but that most of them are demonic in origin and designed to mislead, to harm souls. I would not usually argue the toss over whether something really was or was not a miracle, but assuming it really was a miracle, would argue about whether it was a divine miracle.

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Fr Seraphim Rose on the end times

2012-01-21T07:15:00.000+01:00

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I could go on with details like this, but my purpose is not to frighten you, but to make you aware of what is happening around us.

It is truly later than we think; the Apocalypse is now.

And how tragic it is to see Christians... with this incalculable tragedy hanging over their heads, who think they can continue what is called a "normal life" in these terrible times, participating fully in the whims of this silly, self-worshipping generation, totally unaware that the fool's paradise we are living in is about to crash, completely unprepared for the desperate times that lie just ahead of us.

There is no longer even a question of being a "good" or a "poor" Orthodox Christian; the question now is: will our Faith survive at all?

With many, it will not survive; the coming Antichrist will be too attractive, too much in the spirit of the worldly things we now crave, for most men even to know that they have lost their Christianity by bowing down to him.

http://orthodoxinfo.com/praxis/rose_wv.aspx

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Thought Prison is "beautifully written and very wise"

2012-01-20T22:44:00.000+01:00

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That is a comment in an e-mail from James Delingpole

http://jamesdelingpole.com/

which he has given permission for me to quote.

Quite a compliment, I thought - and one I am delighted to share!

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Left brain life...

2012-01-19T07:10:00.000+01:00

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Life in a modern bureaucracy proceeds by the maxim that if it does not leave an audit trail it is evil...

If it is not 'recorded' then it is not real, it didn't really happen.

Indeed if it did happen but was not recorded then it probably should not have happened - since it was a waste of time and likely sinister in content.

And if it does leave a record, then whatever that record says is reality.

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So we are left with the Left hemisphere world - a vast, entropic pile of life-shards, heaped into a shape crudely-imitative of reality.

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Yet the worst aspect of it all is that people seem superficially to be pleased at the process, excited, zealous!

Even, or especially women - who are more naturally Right brain creatures. Stunned at the (supposed) novelty of life as a panopticon of good intentions and niceness.

They really seem to believe, and certainly would not publicly doubt, that this time it will work.

While all the time their souls must be screaming in silent torment, their eyes seem to shine with ecstatic joy - in worship of the wondrous vistas just ahead.

*

The ethics of the barnyard

2012-01-18T06:39:00.000+01:00

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What many or most secular materialists seem to want - what they ask for - is the ethics of the barnyard.

*

Specifically (for the men) to live the pampered life of a stud stallion - well-fed, beautifully groomed, toned-up with refreshing exercise, frequently touring in a stylish vehicle to nice places to have sex with many and diverse partners, admired and envied by all the non-stud stallions...

And then to die swiftly and painlessly, preferably 'on the job'.

That is, a meaningless and purposeless life - but one filled with pleasure.

*

Such a life is not impossible; it is just not human.

*

A human is not an animal; but a human might decide to turn himself into an animal, temporarily or permanently - by, drugs or a brain operation perhaps - and thereby lose self-awareness, reason etc.

*

And then that person might simply exist, simply be, simply respond to the stimuli he encounters in whatever way he is instinctively-equipped.

He would suffer, he might also experience pleasure; but would not be aware of either, nor would he fear the future - he would just behave differently according to whether a stimulus was aversive or gratifying.

All that kind of thing is certainly possible (i.e. from a secular materialist conception of the human condition).

*

I think many secular hedonists regard this kind of pampered animal life as a sort of paradisal daydream. Consciousness and rationality (and perhaps memory) are regarded as a curse. (A familiar trope in romantic literature.)

Yet, without that which makes us human, then the pampered stud stallion does not know he is happy - and from the S-H perspective he might as well be asleep: he might as well be dead.

The secular hedonist fantasy of unconscious animal bliss is therefore just one single logical step away from suicide.

*

Could Christian evangelism build on mystical yearning?

2012-01-17T07:53:00.000+01:00

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What do modern people lack, spiritually?

Some people have the experience of yearning for something which the world cannot give - for example when enjoying music, or a story, or a landscape - we may feel a joy which is also a yearning, since we know the world cannot satisfy it - indeed that we ourselves are unable to sustain it.

Either such moments are a meaningless delusion, or they mean something - and that something feels very important.

*

Christianity explains such moments and feelings as a foretaste or glimpse of Heaven.

The moments are meant to be an inspiration and encouragement - these moments ought not be sought for themselves, certainly these moments should not be grabbed or held onto; yet they are moments which with the right attitude are good for us, indeed potentially very good for us indeed - this is Christian mysticism, the via positiva - the worldly path to transcendence.

*

Christian evangelism and apologetics usually ignores this - instead focusing on morals and logic. But the yearning triggered by beauty is another way-in.

Yet Christian worship usually seems almost entirely to neglect this! Where, in the Christian life, are such moments of yearning encouraged?

*

This is not a matter of cheerful and enjoyable music, but of sublime music; not a matter of comfortable churches but beautiful churches (beauty which may be the glory of a cathedral or the plain austere beauty of a Quaker meeting house like Brigflatts).

And the words - the words ought not be merely true or sincere or interesting or relevant or funny - but poetic. Pointing beyond themselves. How dare we neglect that!

*

Imagine someone who feels this other worldly yearning going to church - what will they find? Will this yearning be encouraged and taken up into its full meaning; or will the church be irrelevant to yearning?

Church ought not be merely friendly, or at least friendliness is not enough - neither is happiness enough (there is plenty of modern friendliness, and even happiness, we can get happy friendliness at a fast food outlet) - but each and every formal act of Christian worship should itself be hinting or pointing at transcendence. Neither is good advice nor solid teaching enough; and certainly good works are not enough.

*

Modern souls cry-out for a Heaven-glimpsing beauty which is especially deficient in modern life since modern life is so comfortable, so full of varied distractions and instant pleasures.

Yearning for the unattainable, the unworldly, is not confined to Christians - but Christianity has the capability of not just explaining but doing something with this transcendent yearning.

Christian worship, Christian life ought - surely - to encourage transcendent Heaven-glimpsing experience if at all possible?

Christian evangelism should be able to encourage those who are experience this yearning, to take their search into the Christian church, in expectation that this feeling will be channeled and nurtured.

*

Note: The above argument is based on CS Lewis's writing on Joy/ Sehnsucht and JRR Tolkien's essay On Fairy Stories.

People who like this sort of thing...

2012-01-16T15:33:00.000+01:00

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...will find this the sort of thing they like.

http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/fraser.charlton/otherstuff/page29/antidote.html

From 15 years ago, three issues of 'Antidote' - a spoof university newsletter I co-wrote with my brother.

*

Hard and soft hearts - and toughness

2012-01-16T07:00:00.000+01:00

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We must make tough decisions - that is decisions that are right but which lead to upfront, immediate costs.

For those with a soft, warm heart - these decisions are a cause of pain; but we must not harden our hearts to make tough decisions.

*

It is, indeed, a terrible spiritual hazard to harden the heart - for any reason or purpose whatsoever. Nothing, ever justifies deliberate hardening of the heart.

*

Because to harden the heart is to exclude love, to build a carapace of pride - it is, indeed, an act of cowardice: hard-hearted people are cowards, in the sense that they take the easier and more expedient root of not caring.

I perceive many people, many intellectuals in particular, and perhaps especially intellectuals on the secular Right (Nietzsche as the model), adopting a strategy of deliberate heart-hardening.

They expose themselves to evils and suffering with the aim of becoming immune to them, of deadening their reactions to them. They want to be tough, imperturbable, at the cost of hardening their hearts, indeed by means of hardening theie hearts.

*

(The ideal of being 'cool' is this - it is a fairly pure form of evil since it entails chilling the soul until it is unaffected by good of bad, but moves serenely through life, needing nobody else, living-off its own invincible self-regard.)

*

Fr Seraphim Rose perceived hardening of the heart as one of the great hazards of the modern world especially among Christians. He saw this as a hazard of ultra-correctness in religious practice - of legalism, rule-following, an enforcement of the self-righteous spirit.

Once hardness has become advanced in us, we find it difficult or almost impossible to come into contact with the world, of feeling life, when we cannot moved by anything for good or ill (only experiencing pleasure or pain - but not feeling joy or sorrow).

Orthodox holiness is a matter of tears.

Real tears are a consequence of a soft heart experiencing joy and sorrow - not hysterical tears, obviously not faked and manipulative tears, but natural 'weeping' from the heart.

(What is the cost of real weeping being taboo in modern society?)

*

In the past, tough men - not just monks but Kings and warriors - would cry readily in response to both beauty and loss.

Toughness is not indifference; indifference is not toughness.

My Northumbrian Charlton ancestors lived in a situation of sustained violence on the border of Scotland and England over some hundreds of years - indeed some regard it as the most sustainedly-very-violent human situation in history.

These were tough men living in a tough world by any historical standard, yet they composed and listened to the Border Ballads; which stand among the best anonymous poetry of the world; they were soft-hearted men, who were affected by life, they wept openly and often.

*

And modern Charltons have retained some of this!

Bobby was probably the greatest footballer England ever produced. A tough sport. That's him on the right of this picture, being awarded the World Cup in 1966:

In tears - and still crying several minutes later - at 2.50 minutes

http://www.spike.com/video-clips/spczv8/world-cup-1966-final-match-highlights

(What an image!)

*

And that is how we must be - both tough and warm-hearted like Bobby Charlton; Bilbo, Frodo and Sam; Harry Potter - all the real heroes.

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The conservation of fairness

2012-01-15T21:05:00.002+01:00

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A comment by Kristor at:

https://bonald.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/louis-gabriel-ambroise-de-bonald-monarchist-hero/

Everyone is unfairly rewarded, and punished, by the accidents of their births, and of their lives.

The world is not fair. That’s just the way it is.

Trying to make the world less unfair can only be accomplished by making it unfair in some other way.

There is conservation of fairness; it is a corollary of the conservation laws of physics.

***

This just strikes me as true.

We can move fairness around but we cannot make the world more fair.

But we are not supposed to move fairness around - that is a meaning of the injunction not to 'judge'.

Maybe fairness is like energy - it is conserved, it cannot be destroyed, but when fairness is deployed it is dissipated into slightly raising the background heat.

*

Perhaps when fairness is moved around it is dissipated into useless low level rhetoric, which can do no work.

*

A society addicted to moving fairness around is perhaps depleting the system of its ability to achieve anything by means of justice.

The fairness death of the universe...

Harry Potter, Co-inherence, and Substituted Love

2012-01-15T07:10:00.000+01:00

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I am actively reading both Charles Williams (the Inkling) and JK Rowling's Harry Potter chronicles - including John Granger's superb 'How Harry cast his Spell'...

when I suddenly realised that Rowling's book, across the whole series, is about the best possible illustration of C.W's distinctive ideas of co-inherence, substitution (including substituted love) and exchange.

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2012/01/understanding-charles-williams-co.html

*

It was the following passage, from the end of the first book of the series Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - Dumbledore is speaking to Harry:

Your mother died to save you. If there is one thing that Voldemort cannot understand, it is love.

He didn't realize that love as powerful as you mother's for you leaves its own mark.

Not a scar, no visible sign...

to have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever: It is in your very skin.

*

This is pure Charles Williams! Not that I think it derives directly from Charles Williams - rather it indicates that JK Rowling has independently worked-out the same implications as did C.W. - implications which are orthodoxly, traditionally Christian yet somehow neglected or de-emphasised.

*

He saved others: himself he cannot save - this was said of Christ, indicating the reality of co-inherence - and the same could be said of Harry Potter.

Throughout the book he is saved from death, again and again, by the love of others - especially by sacrificial love, up to and including acceptance of death for love - such love as a kind of real but immaterial and permanent protection... It is operative even when (as in most instances) 'the person who loved us is gone'.

*

And in the end, in The Deathly Hallows, Harry demonstrates that as we are saved by the love of others; so it is our task to save - not ourselves but others.

Harry sacrifices himself (allows Vodlemort to kill him) from love of others; and the effect of this act of sacrificial love is seen immediately because after Harrys death and rebirth the pupils, Professors, parents and friends of Hogwarts are rendered immune to the curses and magic of Voldemort and the Death Eaters - there are no more casualties from the Good side in the battle.

So, because of the effects of Harry's invisible love, the evil cannot (for a while, anyway) harm good.

*

Yet all this happens without the Hogwarts defenders or the death eaters being aware of it - only Harry (and Dumbledore) know what has happened.

*

So this is love that is real (not a psychological trick, not effective because people believe it is effective - but effective even without awareness) love as a real 'substance', but immaterial...

Rowling's is a description of love that is totally in contradiction to the mainstream one in our society - where love is seen as a type of pleasure; something wholly subjective, one-way and temporary.

For moderns, A loves B, and the love is something happening in A's brain. When the brain state changes, or the brain dies, then love dies and leaves nothing behind - unless it has influenced another brain state, which is equally evanescent.

Indeed the modern cliche idea is that love is a short term brainstorm, maybe pleasurable or maybe miserable - but inevitably disappearing like snow in sunshine to leave no trace. Unrequited or one-way love is seen as pathetic, undignified, a waste of time.

*

Rowling's is a concept of love that saves - as it saves Snape, an almost-wholly nasty man, but who is wholly and gloriously redeemed by his love for a long-dead woman - married to someone else and who eventually disliked him - and the courage this love enables.

And of course, via Lily his mother (who is long since dead, but not 'gone') Snape's love saves Harry, many times - even despite that at a superficial level Snape loathes Harry (and the feeling is mutual).

Snape is a classic 'loser', in love but not loved; making sacrifices - his whole double-agent life is a sacrifice and he is sacrificially killed by Vodemort; except that this is not mere infatuation but real love, as proved by his sacrifice - hence its effects are real and permanent.

*

And CW's definition of the worst thing - the exclusion of love - is almost a literal rendition of Dumbledore's and Harry's explanation for Voldemort - a man who deliberately lived without love, and therefore became a kind of demon.

*

So the Harry Potter books can be seen as an illustration of Charles Williams web of exchange, substitution - people doing the work of salvation for each other - and only indirectly for themselves; this enabled because of co-inherence - that we are members one of another (contain a bit of each other) and unified by Christ (contained by and containing).

Love always working in both directions, and across the divide between life and death.

Love as real, effectual, permanent - the only answer to death.

*

It is very difficult for modern people to understand 'love' (agape) and how it is central to Christianity.

But the Harry Potter series does not just explain Christian love, it shows agape in operation such that readers can experience it for themselves.

For moderns, Rowling's use of love in her plot is extraordinarily strange (so much of it being love between the living and the dead) and it is remarkable that this very obvious and repeatedly emphasized fact is apparently unnoticed - at least consciously.

*

Somehow, the fact has eluded secular culture that Rowling's mega-bestselling seven volume book is, at a deep level, a precise and completely unambiguous depiction of agape in action, in multiple acts of exchange and substitution, crossing between this life and the next.

*

Deadly 'safety' windows in a loft conversion... Psychotic Leftism in action

2012-01-14T07:54:00.000+01:00

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Some years ago we had a 'loft conversion' to add extra bedrooms in the roof of the house.

It emerged that these bedrooms were each required, by building regulations, to have access windows, like so:

That is, windows hinged at the top, so that IF there was a fire, and IF you were trapped in that particular room, and IF there was a fire engine with the right kind of ladder, THEN you could escape through this top-hinged window MORE EASILY than through the normal mid-hinged window.

This escape window was therefore a SAFETY feature.

Supposedly intended to SAVE LIVES (ta daa!)

*

So far so hugely-implausible but acceptable-ish.

*

THEN it emerged that in order for the escape window to be near to the eaves/ edge of the roof, and accessible to the hypothetical fire engine with a ladder of hypothetical length - the windows would need to be at FLOOR LEVEL.

THEN it emerged that the windows must (presumably because of the constant need for escaping blazes) be ALWAYS KEPT UNLOCKED.

*

Pause a moment and reflect.

1. Easy opening windows that give easy access to the sloping house roof, about 25-30 ft above the hard ground.

2. At floor level.

3. Unlocked.

What we are talking about is, in effect, a human sized hole in the wall of the top story of the house.

*

Add in young children...

Low glass door over hole in sloping roof, easy to open, left unlocked, small child in room...

(do the math)

*

Recall that these windows are compulsory.

And that these are SAFETY windows...

What are the differential odds of a combination of fire related events in which this type of low access window in this particular place make the difference between life and death compared with a higher window in a normal place?

Compare the odds that if you have an easy-opening and never-locked window at floor-level designed for people to get-out from, pretty soon (like, err, the next couple of hours) a little kid will open it and get out from it onto the sloping roof and - duh - fall off the roof?

*

Now, of course these windows are kept locked (we are not insane - we don't want our children to die) but the locks could not be added until after the building was inspected and we are stuck with these crumby almost useless floor level windows that can't be left open.

But this single minor incident is enough to tell you what you need to know about the modern world, its psychotic irrationality, our captivity to regulations and interest groups propounding'good causes' ("What? You wanna see people burned to death?"), its un-reform-ability; its exclusion of personal responsibility, individual judgment and common sense - pretty much the whole thing is in there.

*

What is Christian celibacy?

2012-01-13T14:12:00.000+01:00

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Some ideas, as a basis for discussion...

*

Not merely not having sex, not merely voluntarily refraining from sex in situations where it is not permitted or where children are not wanted...

(that is chastity - I think: a contingent suspension of sexual activity for a reason, rather than celibacy as a resolved cessation offered as a consecrated act...).

*

Nor is celibacy legitimately a means to the end of creating an autonomous and dedicated professional priesthood - but celibacy is (like it or not) a spiritual practice.

*

In particular, celibacy is an ascetic practice - a denial, part of the via negativa (negative way) akin to fasting, prayer vigils, endurance of heat, cold and other physical harshness etc.

These designed to develop control of passions, and resistance to temptations (including demonic masquerading as divine visions and experiences); prior to attempted Sainthood.

*

And, as such, celibacy is hazardous: spiritually hazardous. Especially, celibacy in isolation is hazardous (for many men) - since this is a partial acesticism.

Celibacy is likely to be much harder and more hazardous to attempt when the body is indulged and fuelled by plenty of food, warmth, comfort, alcohol, tobacco...

*

Celibacy should therefore properly be done under monastic supervision, as part of a general and mutually-reinforcing programme of ascetic training. (And when monasteries lack such conditions, celibacy is presumably that much more difficult and hazardous.)

Just as monks are only allowed to become solitary hermits after a period of disciplined training under supervision, with the gradual and incremental development of the powers of self-discipline as discerned by a competent Spiritual Father, the same should apply to lifelong celibacy.

*

Because celibacy is spiritually dangerous - it strongly tends (like other advanced spiritual practices) to produce spiritual pride; which is why it ought to be practised only under supervision and discipline until a person is 'ready' to go it alone and resist the temptations of pride - and this takes (apparently) something of the order of ten to twenty years of monastic supervision.

Therefore - since celibacy is so difficult to attain and so prone to go wrong, it is spiritually safer, as a general rule, to have mostly married priests administering the sacraments (since many such priests are needed and it is impractical/ impossible that there are sufficient trained and willing ascetics to perfom them), these being led by an elite of Holy and celibate monk-Bishops (Holiness being - ahem - more important than, for example, managerial abilities, eloquence or scholarship).

This was, I understand, the usual and universal practice until medieval times.

*

Rotten organizations

2012-01-13T07:24:00.000+01:00

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One of the hardest, and most paradox generating, aspects of modern life for a reactionary Anglican Christian is that all the organizations are rotten; including the institutional church.

I can still remember what it was like to believe that my medical school and university, the Medical Research Council, the National Health Service and other large organizations in which I worked were basically good, I even remember feeling that the British government was basically good.

By basically good I mean well intentioned, good at heart, productive of mostly good decisions and policies...

*

And over the years all these comforting feelings have fallen away or been stripped away. When almost every single decision an organization makes, and (especially) every new policy or rule, every initiative is bad - and not just slightly bad - then comes a time when your attitude 'flips'.

So suddenly you are in an essentially hostile world - where power resides in bureaucracies that run everything and are active agents of evil. Of course good people and good impulses remain in these organizations (thank Heavens) - but you can see them being mopped up and eliminated over the years.

What this means is that I find myself in the service of evil - since I live in a world of these organizations. Not the service of pure evil, of course! - but in service of organizations whose hearts are rotten.

*

It is like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows when Voldemort rules from behind the scenes - using and subverting the established institutions to opposite goals - and the situation resembles Mr Weasley at the Ministry of Magic (promoting a pure blood agenda) or Professor McGonagall at Hogwarts (where torture is on the curriculum) - and where the Daily Prophet is propaganda in moral inversion and people believe it. How can a hoping-to-be-good individual operate in a trying-to-be-bad institution? Might they actually be making matters worse, lending support to the evil agenda? such that people might say: "well if Weasley and McGonagall are going along with all this stuff, it must be okay - they're decent people...".

*

What to do when a society, an organization, an institutions is set up such that it serves evil?

And such that individuals are neutered - all authority vested in impersonal committees, impersonal rules - where responsibility is displaced up and up until it reaches the purest ideology (just following orders); where the basis of each evaluative decision is bad in principle as well as practice...

*

Some reactionary Christians may feel that their Church is a refuge from this - but that is obviously impossible for an Anglican to believe - and I feel that other denominations are deluded on this matter: maybe this is an advantage for Anglicans? The recognition that insofar as a church or part-of-church is powerful, it is corrupt; insofar as a church is true it is beleaguered.

The clarity of knowing that there really is no powerful institutional refuge. The recognition that all which is good in an institution is under threat, feeble, may disappear at any time. Sooner or later Mr Weasley will be sacked and arrested; sooner or later Professor McGonagall will be forced to leave Hogwarts, the good priests will retire and be replaced by undercover Leftists.

*

Contraception, patriarchs and monks

2012-01-12T08:08:00.000+01:00

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Contraception and the Roman Catholic hierarchy

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2012/01/contraception-and-roman-catholic.html

was my most commented post ever, and many of the comments were excellent.

One result has been to clarify my thoughts, as follows...

*

I while back I made the statement that from a Christian perspective men were - as a generalization, or 'ideal type' - supposed to be patriarchs or monks:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/04/patriarchs-or-monks.html

From the purely sexual perspective, this implies that most men are called to the sexual life within marriage; and if they are not then they are probably called to a life of monastic (institutional) celibacy.

So that men (in general) either live in their family, or else in the monastery - they do not live alone, therefore they do not practice sex outside marriage - and they do not practice celibacy outside the monastery.

*

In traditional societies, before about 1800 in Europe, sex within marriage led to large numbers of conceptions - maybe about ten?- of which an average of eight children died before reproducing (very approximate numbers, but the orders of magnitude are about right).

This was one of the greatest sorrows of life - the deaths of so many children, mostly from disease and starvation.

*

So, the usual situation in traditional societies is to have no contraception (because it hasn't been invented), unrestricted sexual activity, large numbers of children, and large rates of child mortality.

After about 1800, child mortality rates dropped a lot, so that more children survived childhood, and the population grew very quickly.

For the first time in history, it was possible - normal - for almost everybody (even the poorest) to have about ten children and probably more than half of them would survive to adulthood. This was possible because of the rising standard of living, and massive transfers of resources to poor families.

(Contra the story of communism/ socialism, the Industrial Revolution was a massively egalitarian phenomenon - the rich keeping-alive the babies of the poor in unprecedented numbers.)

As modernity continued, contraception was invented in more versions and with greater availability, and first the upper classes, then the lower classes reduced their family size (until eventually it was less than two).

*

Anyway, the two basic realities of traditional society - and a society without contraception - are patriarchy with very large families for the majority, and communal celibacy for a minority.

The children of these very large families will nearly all die in traditional societies; but in post-Industrial Revolution societies all children who are born (to anyone) will be kept alive (at first by voluntary charity, nowadays by wholesale confiscation and transfer of resources).

*

This clarifies the argument concerning contraception.

1. Marriage is not the place for celibacy. As a general rule it is unacceptable.

2. Celibacy is not a solo lifestyle. As a general rule it is unacceptable.

*

3. Marriage without contraception (and without celibacy) leads to very large families.

What happens to the children?

In modern societies any unrestricted number of children who are born will be kept alive and brought-up at the expense of others - and their children, and so on.

In traditional societies, most or (for the poor) all of the children born will die of starvation, disease and neglect.

*

If this natural form of non-celibate marriage is pursued without regard for consequences (that is, by a system of ethics which focuses on the correct decision and ignores the consequences of that decision) then under post-industrial revolution conditions nearly all families will have (say) ten children, and these children will be sustained on welfare at the cost of the taxpayers (whether the tax payers like it or not).

(Because it is is now regarded as ethically non-negotiable in the West that all children who are born must be kept alive - and their children - by coercive extraction of resources from the community with no limit or restriction on the numbers of children and no limit or restriction on the volume of coercive resource extraction.)

Since this is obviously a road to chaos and cultural collapse it seems that the RC Church cannot (or is not) ignoring the consequences of 'natural' marriage, perhaps it finds these consequences unacceptable.

This means that Roman Catholic married couples who are required both to avoid reliable contraception and to avoid huge families are being asked to do something generally unacceptable - to combine the disparate paths of marriage and celibacy.

(And it means that many Roman Catholic secular Priests/ Parish Priests - who currently live alone and outwith monastic or other orders - are being required to live a life that, in basic human terms, is generally unacceptable.)

In other words, the ethical problems which swirl around contraception, including the arbitrary division between natural and artificial methods, are a result of compromises.

The compromises are trying to achieve the end result of moderately sized families, when the natural result of no-contraception and a non-celibate marriage is to have very large numbers of children.

*

It trying to be 'as natural as possible' and yet to avoid the consequences of very large families (the consequences either being vast child mortality rates, or - as at present - vast coercive extraction of welfare; the RC Church seems to have reached a compromise between principle and practicality - by advocating 'natural' contraception it is not following strict principles, it is not ignoring consequences.

Neither is this teaching being strictly honest, in my opinion - because, by pretending to be based on principle, it is not being clear about the probable consequences of these principles; and yet its teaching does take into account consequences.

The result is itself a compromise - as is the current Roman Catholic demand for a high degree of celibacy within marriage a compromise - because it is required in order to avoid very large families and to avoid the use of artificial contraception.

(Which is the only reliable type of contraception) .

What will happen? On present trends, those religions who pursue principle without regard for consequences will carry the day - because (under modern conditions) these will have very large numbers of children who will all be kept alive and raised at the expense of everybody else.

The two basic long term possibilities are unrestricted fertility and huge numbers of births or celibacy. Medium sized families require compromise of principles - and the use of contraception: and contraception is contraception - whether it is called 'natural' or artificial it is still contraception, because there is nothing 'natural' about contraception.

Who will be the dominant nation in 30 years?

2012-01-12T06:51:00.000+01:00

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Prediction is difficult, except retrospectively.

But what would be my prediction for the dominant world nation in 30 years?

(Assuming the same nations, and excluding the possibility of new colonies, e.g. European nations taken-over and run by other groups.)

On present trends and assuming there is no 'Great Awakening' of Christianity in the West (for which we are hopeful, but not optimistic)...

Turkey.

*

Here are the assumptions I am working from.

1. The nation would be one with a young and growing population of reasonable size.

(This rules out the West and East Asia and Russia - all the most internally-complex societies; which means that the dominant society in a generation's time would be a society that is currently of mid-range complexity.)

2. It would be Islamic, and ride the rising tide of Islamic demography.

(Because, before 25 years have elapsed, one in four people in the world will be Muslim. http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1872/muslim-population-projections-worldwide-fast-growth This rules out most places. )

3. It must want to be the dominant nation, and be psychologically-capable of becoming the dominant nation.

(This rules out quite a few other places; and is of course a further factor in eliminating The West.)

*

Turkey seems to fit the bill better than any other - as (I think) the only nation left-standing after applying my assumptions.

It has a biggish population, a large military, is increasingly devoutly Muslim, and apparently wants to be a world power. Again. Because of course Turkey has many centuries of Empire behind it - so Turkey's recent state of relative weakness is the historical anomaly not its dominance. And there is likely to be psychological readiness for the particular demands of being a world power.

So on current trends I would envisage Turkey as (again) becoming perhaps the most dominant world power in about a generation's time. Although not with a global reach, nor domination everywhere; because no-place will have a global reach by then - but perhaps more powerful than any other contender.

*

What might increase devoutness? Micro-retreats?

2012-01-11T07:49:00.000+01:00

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Since I have been advocating that the cure for laxity is devoutness, and since I have been emphasizing the perils of rule following (the perils especially for the modern mind) - what should we do?

The answer should perhaps be re-phrased more like - what should we stop doing: and what we should stop doing is engaging with the mass media, interpersonal communications, socializing, passive forms of diversion (including those that are good for us, supposedly, like art).

We should dis-engage. Be silent. Go on retreat - or, at least, micro-retreats.

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I have been on one proper Christian retreat, and it was certainly worthwhile (staying in a monastery for couple of nights, observing the silences and attending the services - plus devotional reading and informal conversation).

But I was thinking more on a daily basis. Frequent micro-retreats.

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My own most frequent solitary retreats are for periods between half an hour and an hour - and take place in cafes and libraries - and in the walks to and from them (which can be used for prayer, or to fully aware of the surroundings).

Lacking these micro-retreats I feel a very big difference for the worse - a dissipation, a fuzziness, a loss of the sense of reality and contact with it, life just slipping past - they seem to be very important.

But I notice that people seldom use such periods of unstructured time in the way I do - instead they try to structure the time, or to distract themselves from it.

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The whole point about these times is that they are unstructured, unplanned. It is a question of attitude.

I take a notebook, I always carry a miniature Bible - maybe read a psalm or two; each day I carry a couple of books (mostly 'non-fiction') - these are 'used' (if used) in short intense bursts of reading interspersed with note-taking.

(The notes are seldom or ever looked at again, but sometimes serve as an aide memoire).

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I would go so far as to say that - lacking some analogous times - the lives of many people seem to me to be quite hopelessly engaged and distracted. I can't see how they can get out from under this without time, unstructured time - if not a proper retreat, then developing a habit of micro-retreats.

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Kristor on spiritual maps

2012-01-11T07:20:00.000+01:00

From the comments to yesterday's posting, a mini-essay from Kristor:

The way I have parsed this is to distinguish between map and territory. Scholasticism, and more generally philosophy and theology – including even Eastern mystical theology – are maps. You get into trouble when you begin to be more attached to your map than to the territory.

When it comes to theology, this error arises when the thinking is dissociated in the thinker’s life from his direct devotional/mystical/revelatory experience. My reading of Aquinas indicates to me that his thought life was definitely not dissociated from his devotional life, or, for that matter, from concrete experience in general. On the contrary, Aquinas is one of the most concrete, common-sense philosophers I have read. Many of his refutations – perhaps even most of them – are of doctrines that are radically incompatible with life as we actually experience it, but that have nevertheless grown popular enough to call for their refutation.

If you hike along treating your map as more authoritative than the territory, you are going to get lost, because maps can be properly interpreted only in terms of and by reference to the territory. So, Scholastic philosophy can be terribly useful and enlightening, but it should not ever become the main thing.

Similar caveats apply to scientific life, to politics, to legalism (ecclesial and secular) – to life in general. Scholars are particularly prone to this danger of idolizing the map, but anyone who has tasted the allure of that delicious feeling of systemic intellectual mastery is vulnerable. Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Protestantism are all equally susceptible to this error (this is why, despite the overwhelming force and integrity of the mystical experience common to all 3 traditions, the schisms perdure).

And, these days, the set of people who have been seduced by the temptation to intellectual mastery includes most of the population. Much of your work is about how our culture has got itself all tied up in great messy knots – in falsehood, error, sin, and wickedness – through an over-emphasis on rules, procedures, committees, etc. Viz., any of your stuff on pc, bureaucracy, etc. Much of our current problem as a culture derives from the fact that most of our people are wholly employed in dealing with these map issues; almost all “knowledge workers” are spending their lives on interpreting and reconciling maps, and never ever raise their heads to look out the window. I have referred to this portion of the economy as the “fake” economy.

On the other hand, if you try to get through the wilderness without a map, you are going to have a much, much harder time of it – and the chance of getting lost in such a situation is far, far greater than it would be if you had even the most sketchy and inaccurate map. I know this from experience! Having a lousy map is infinitely better than having no map at all, especially when lives are at stake (NB: lives are always at stake). It can be done – that’s how maps get charted in the first place – but it’s a lot harder, and more error-prone.

One may of course hire a guide, who knows the territory directly. One may apprentice oneself to a master; sooner or later, advancement in the spiritual life depends upon this step. There aren’t many masters, these days, or ever, I suppose. So, most people must fall back on maps.

As to where we go from here, I think you are right that simply substituting the old maps for the current maps is not going to work. Because they interpret things in such radically whacked categories, that would seem to our modernist interlocutors as if we were speaking Latin at them. From the modern perspective, the Traditionalist maps are simply incomprehensible; indeed, they seem like wicked deluded nonsense.

No; we need to confront the territory directly. One must first experience the truth in order to know it, or to know that one has known it, or then – last of all – to try to formalize it in a statement or map that others can use, can follow, back to that experience of truth. Experience of truth is the main thing, the first thing, always.

Where we must start then is to keep pointing out to moderns that their map is deeply whacked; that it is leading us directly over the precipice. We must point to the precipices that now surround us on every side but one (the one that leads back over the way we traversed in order to get to this tiny point of cornice, high above the abyss); as in, “Hallo! Look at the demographic death that is already upon us!” Once they see themselves teetering at the very lip of that great maw, they will throw their wicked old maps away as fast as they can, and scamper on tip-toes back over the narrow road that leads back to the highway. Then and only then might we be able to rummage about in our rucksacks for the old maps that we once used, with some interest in actually using them again.

The fallacies of legalism and precision from a position of low spirituality

2012-01-10T06:47:00.001+01:00

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Most Western Churches are highly prone to fall into legalism and precision; but these are signs of a lack of spiritual depth, and are themselves false paths.

The true path is of course a middle way - not laxity, not legalistic precision; but not a compromise.

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The early Church (according to Charles Williams) began to shape itself by discovering what it believed.

It was rather like Tolkien writing the Lord of the Rings - he gradually discovered what it was about. It was not invention, it was not extrapolation nor interpolation - it was a discovery of what was already there but not clearly seen.

When a council - designed to discover what the Church believed - was later found to be wrong, then it was regarded as not-a-council.

This is how things work when the Church is filled with the Holy Ghost.

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However, when laxity increases because sanctity declines, there is a strong tendency to respond with legalism and precision - with sharp definitions, with increased discipline, with assertions of authority.

This is an error - when sanctity declines, the answer is an increase in sanctity and nothing else will work.

That was the error of the Reformation - to oppose laxity with Legalism. But, insofar as the Reformation really was an increase in sanctity (and it really was to a significant extent) - then that was to the Good.

And perhaps has often been the case with heresy - the benefits of heresy come from the increase in sanctity - and there often are such benefits even when the heresy is overall harmful or even evil in its ultimate tendency.

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So the 18th century Evangelical/ Nonconformist 'revival' (Wesley, Methodism etc) did Good insofar as it was linked with devoutness and spirituality.

So did the almost-oppositely-inclined 19th century Anglo-Catholic revival do Good insofar it revived devoutness and zeal in the Established church.

By contrast, 20th century Anglican liberalism is an almost-unmixed evil since it was not only heretical, but associated with reduced sanctity, zeal, and spirituality.

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From where we are now there is - I would think - zero-probability of making people more spiritual by more and more-precise legalism and more strict enforcement.

It must come (if it can come) from increased sanctity, probably from a revival of ascetic monasticism - that is, from example, from intercession and other spiritual means.

Insofar as this leads to greater sanctity, then those who achieve it will know just exactly what to do, but at present we do not know what to do, therefore we cannot make people do it.

But if we are trying to be more precise and strict about what to do from our current position of low spiritual development, then we will probably do more harm than Good.

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What happens when corruption comes from leaders - even Church leaders?

2012-01-09T07:18:00.000+01:00

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It seems likely that our society has been, is being, led into corruption.

This is not to absolve those-who-are-led from responsibility - clearly they should not follow evil leaders.

And these evil leaders are almost everywhere - found in all large and powerful organizations. Not necessarily dominant, not always in a majority, but having a very significant effect.

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This, of course, applies to the institutional church (to all the institutional churches - when they are large and powerful).

Again and again we perceive that the fish is rotting from the head down.

Again and again we perceive that the best people are almost-never at the top of institutions, but can rise no higher than the middle.

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This does mean that teachings based on obedience require at least modification. If our primary ethic is obedience then we will be led into the abyss.

Is obedience a sufficient excuse for a Christian to follow church leaders wherever they may take you? Probably not.

At least, I do not detect that obedience should be the primary virtue - a virtue to which Love, Courage and all the other virtues ought to be sacrificed.

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It is an apparent paradox of traditionalists living in an age of change that they assert the necessity of hierarchy yet are themselves insubordinate.

But (although insubordination may be due to pride or other sins) it is not necessarily a paradox - merely recognition that there are more important things than obedience, and that disobedience is sometimes necessary.

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Indeed, surely disobedience is more-and-more necessary to Christian reactionaries all the time?

Surely obedience is, nowadays, more often an excuse, than a virtue?

To develop a habit of disobedience to the leadership but without becoming consumed by spiritual pride - that is where the habitual nature of the thing may be helpful - that seems to be something like the task before us.

To assume that the leadership is wrong about most things most of the time and should therefore habitually be disobeyed; but that sometimes they may be right about some things and sometimes we should go along with what they want...

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Contraception and the Roman Catholic hierarchy

2012-01-08T07:12:00.000+01:00

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It is understandable that opposition to contraception has become, in the popular mind, the main defining feature of Roman Catholicism, or at least its senior hierarchy.

And it is notable that the RC Church hierarchy has utterly failed to convince its flock to follow this teaching - since the most RC dominated countries of Europe are among those with the lowest fertility (Ireland, Spain, Italy).

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To have failed does not, of course, mean that the RC hierarchy were wrong. Indeed, they may have had little choice in the matter since sex-without-conception was the main (ahem) thrust of the culture war when Leftism clashed with institutional religion from the mid-1960s onwards.

But the deep problem of the RC emphasis on no-contraception is that it strikes so many people as senseless - specifically, I mean in breach of common sense.

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This is probably because the RC opposition to contraception is not common sense, nor is it core Christian teaching; rather it is a distal, logico-philosophical consequence of some core Christian teachings.

In particular, the opposition is expressed in Thomistic terms of the intrinsic function of sex, as inferred from the complementarity of sexes, that they fit together - plus some scriptural back-up, and therefore the permissible occasions and types of sex.

All this is way too fine-spun and drawn-out for people to comprehend - especially modern people with their short attention span and impatience.

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The obvious core basis of RC opposition to contraception is pro-natalism - that marriage should aim to be fertile, that having children is good, that larger families are better (so long as they are self-supporting, at any rate).

Yet, the attempt to yoke contraception to pro-natalism fails - there is no necessary nor observable reason why contraception cannot be linked with pro-natalism - as among the Mormons.

(Mormons are not exactly pro-, but in practice not-against-contraception, and nearly all Mormons use contraception. Yet Mormons, unlike Roman Catholics, have been successful in their pro-natalism, with significantly above-replacement family sizes (greater than 2.1 children per family) and much larger families than RCs especially among the wealthiest and most educated.)

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And, indeed, there is something terrifying in the modern world about pro-natalism without contraception - fertility can get terrifyingly out of control.

For tribal hunter-gatherers, living on a hunter gatherer diet, the maximium number of babies a woman can have is probably around six - because menarche is late and pregnancies are spaced-out by lactation acting as a natural contraceptive (and if this fails the newborn baby will nearly always die, be abandoned or killed - since there is not enough milk for two and the older child is usually privileged).

(Of these six, an average of two survive to reproduce, in the steady population state.)

On a more modern, agriculture based diet, with high levels of fat and protein, menarche is earlier and lactation is no longer a natural contraceptive and women can have a lot more pregnancies going to term - ten births is not unusual, and even more is not uncommon.

Such fertility rates either leads to massive death rates among children (e.g. about eight deaths per family), or else requires rapid economic growth or massive support from outside the family.

This was the norm for pre-industrial revolution societies: the average peasant had near-zero surviving children - regardless of fertility.

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Of course, there is an alternative - celibate marriage. That is possible among the most devout of certain populations with high intelligence and conscientiousness; but is not possible for most of the people in the world most of the time. Celibacy must be enforced on them, or it won't happen. And the sanctions must be extreme, encompassing the death of surplus children - otherwise the celibate devout will merely be amplifying the numbers of incontinent apostates, generation upon generation...

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So, this is the reality of the Roman Catholic combination of pro-natalism and anti-contraception under modern conditions.

I am not saying that this is an unacceptable reality, because it was the state of affairs for some thousands of years; but I have never seen it honestly set out.

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Now, of course, people don't exactly and explicitly realize that this is the reality of Roman Catholic teaching on contraception - but they do sense intuitively, by common sense, that combining pro-natalism with anti-contraception under modern conditions leads to unacceptable outcomes: either ten kids leading to impoverishment plus/ minus life on welfare - or else a life of reluctant monkish celibacy.

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So, which is more important? Pro-natalism or anti-contraception?

We can see that modern Roman Catholics have voted with their feet, or rather loins, to abandon both.

My first point is pragmatic (merely) and is that pro-natalism is vastly more important than anti-contraception; and given the perceived conflict between the two, pro-natalism should have been what the RC hierarchy pushed hard, while saying little or nothing about contraception.

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My second point is theological/ religious - which is that the Church should take care to be definite about core teaching, and indefinite about derived teachings - since the derived teachings are vulnerable both to logical errors and - more importantly - to the errors of logic.

In my opinion, it is an intrinsic flaw of Western Christendom (including the Roman Catholic Church, and also the Protestant denominations) that they feel compelled to give a philosophical opinion, indeed lay down the law, on all conceivable matters - to create a coherent, internally-non-contradictory and fully-comprehensive intellectual structure.

Yet Christianity is a religion of mystery and incomprehension - right at its core. Philosophy and Law are an optional extra - and should not be allowed to usurp the core mystery. When the specific and the explicit usurp the mystery we have the tail wagging the dog.

Christianity cannot win battles of law and logic on worldly matters like the precise details of sexual practice - rather the 'answers' to these must emerge (for each person) from the primary recognition of the core mystery.

The core mystery, in this instance, being to do with the mystical unity of Mankind (at the level of souls, a web of salvation) and the special (sacramental) importance of marriage and birth - this was one of the distinctive teachings that set Christianity apart from paganism.

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In a wider sense, the modern Christian Church needs desperately to recover its mystical focus, even at the cost of setting aside its focus on specific moral conflicts.

People break the Christian Laws because they cannot understand, cannot feel, the reason for these precise Laws - and without this feeling the Laws seem merely arbitrary.

And sometimes the Laws are - if not arbitrary - then not tightly consequential. Some Christian Laws are the result of a chain of logical reasoning, and only as secure as the process of logic - which is to say not necessarily secure. Natural Law and Revelation trump logic.

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I do not, of course, mean that Christianity should go-along with modernity and accept its 'reforms' and constraints - but these should be reacted to simply by getting on with things, and refusing to budge on core issues - without argument and 'rational' discourse, preferably; just a stubborn holding to tradition and ancient wisdom in the face of insatiable desire for change and progress fueled by shallow nihilism.

In other words, we ought to live by the built-in assumption that under modern conditions any proposed change is almost certain to be wrong and harmful and must therefore be resisted for at least a few generations - after which it may cautiously be tried-out.

In sum, my discomfort and indeed irritation with the Roman Catholic focus on contraception and other issues of precise sexual conduct is part of a conviction that the Christian Church must at this point in history eschew worldliness as much as possible, to develop and emphasize instead the Heavenly, mystical and prayerful, salvific core.

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Christ followed the spirit of The Law, even as he broke the letter of specific laws.

Justice is not the outcome of applying specific explicit laws; but the use of specific and explicit laws to attain Justice.

The same applies to specific ethical rules, such as those pertaining to sex within marriage.

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Legalistic hyper-correctness is not a solution to laxity; it is indeed merely to substitute one form of sin for another.

The only solution to laxity is sanctity.

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We must now throw the baby out with the bathwater - there is no alternative...

2012-01-07T09:35:00.000+01:00

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We are inculcated into modernity. Through childhood the unity of our experience is broken up and in teens we emerge into consciousness with already fragmented thinking.

We become adults already pre-alienated - and with no concept of how to heal this alienation - because using modern thought it cannot be healed (but only by retrieving ancient thought).

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It has been the great illusion of the past couple of hundred years that there is some way, some *trick*, by which we can retain the advantages of fragmentation (i.e. retain the advantages of specialization in science, law, art, public administration etc) while glue-ing all these fragments back into unity.

There is thus a vast tradition, going back to The Romantics and up to New Age, of people who diagnose the problem brilliantly but utterly fail to solve it, because they seek a new solution (e.g a 'new' religion, or spirituality).

Working through these failures - learning, testing and discarding them - took me more than thirty years.

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We are now in the situation where the baby will (indeed must) be thrown-out with the bathwater.

Because trying to preserve the baby will lead to drowning by the bathwater...

(The baby is the good things of modernity, the bathwater is the tide of total destruction of all things Western that is overwhelming modernity - from within and from without.)

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We are in the situation where destroying the One Ring will also and inevitably destroy the power of the High Elves (because this depends on the Elven Rings hence comes, ultimately, from the same source of the One Ring). And where the High Elves have nobody to blame but themselves, since they tried to use evil to promote Good, with the inevitable result.

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Psalm 8 - which 'version' is best?

2012-01-07T07:46:00.000+01:00

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EITHER:

The King James or (Authorized) version:

O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens.

Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.

When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;

What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.

Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet:

All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field;

The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.

O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!

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OR

New International Version of the Bible (one of the most popular translations in recent use):

LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory in the heavens.

Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,

what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?

You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor.

You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet:

all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild,

the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.

LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

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This is a fair comparison for me, since the NIV was the first version of the Bible I read extensively (and aesthetically it is far-from-the-worst translation), and it is used at two of the three Churches where I most often worship.

But - Good Heavens! Why would any sane person reject the first in favour of the second?

The first as great a piece of poetry as anything in English, and as profound a devotion as anything I have come across; the second... is... inferior.

Little wonder why the Psalms have lost their properly central place in worship...

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/08/psalms-and-cs-lewis-lewis-nods.html

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Note: The Book of Common Prayer, containing the daily liturgy for Anglicans, uses a different and translation of the Psalms, done earlier than the King James Bible and by Miles Coverdale.

The BCP Psalter is very good indeed; but not as good as the KJB Psalter - to go from the BCP to the KJB is like the difference between somebody like Spenser, or Sidney and then Shakespeare.

Psalm 8 - BCP/ Coverdale:

O Lord our Governor, how excellent is thy Name in all the world; thou that hast set thy glory above the heavens!

Out of the mouth of very babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength, because of thine enemies,

that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.

For I will consider thy heavens, even the works of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained.

What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

Thou madest him lower than the angels, to crown him with glory and worship.

Thou makest him to have dominion of the works of thy hands; and thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet

all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field,

the fowls of the air, and the fishes of the sea, and whatsoever walketh through the paths of the seas.

O Lord our Governor, how excellent is thy Name in all the world!

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The patriarchal beard versus the anti-patriarchal beard

2012-01-06T08:12:00.001+01:00

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I have always been clean shaven (and short-haired - even before it started to recede and thin) - a typical Roundhead Puritan in fact - and this description probably fits fairly well with my natural disposition.

But it has always seemed surprising that to be clean shaven has been the norm for the past several generations.

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Surprising, too, that beards fall into two main categories: the patriarchal and the anti-patriarchal (or Leftist) beard: these seem to be perennials.

(I leave aside temporary fashions for sculpted facial hair - moustaches, goatees, long sideburns etc - I focus on the full beard in its natural more-or-less natural form.)

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It is notable that the full beard is worn by patriarchs such as Orthodox Jews, Muslim clerics, Eastern Orthodox Priests, Amish (well, this shaggy rim-beard is a bit more of a tribal symbol) - the beard apparently signifies maleness and authority.

But a similar beard may be sported by beatnicks, hippies, feminist men, communistically-inclined scientists, health food shop owners and the like - where it signifies something near the opposite: gentleness, pacifism, abstraction?...

There are patriarchal religious exceptions. Roman Catholic priests, who are of course not strictly patriarchs, seem never to be bearded (maybe they are forbidden?) and nearly all Mormons seem clean shaven (Orson Scott Card has a goatee).

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Conclusions?

I accept that men are supposed to be bearded, and there is something a bit warped about the norm of being clean-shaven - it probably signifies some kind of narrow fanaticism (certainly it does in my case...).

But then why the anti-patriarchal beard?

Best guess is subversion. Look like a patriarch, behave like... something very different - hence destroying the power of the beard as masculine symbol.

Any better ideas?

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A letter from Kristor on Free Will and Determinism

2012-01-05T09:46:00.001+01:00

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This is excerpted from a letter by penfriend and commenter Kristor, in relation to:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2012/01/free-will-versus-left-brain-fusion-of.html

and

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2012/01/explaining-zenos-paradoxes.html

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The first thing I would say is that while the left and right brains may process their data using different sorts of algorithms, so that one half treats of things in terms of linear causal chains while the other treats of them in terms of holistic field superpositions [how different, really, is a vector sum from a field superposition, when push comes to shove?], nevertheless they must both be subject to ontological causal inputs from their pasts. I.e., however things might seem to be different to the two sides of the brain, the world as it impinges upon them causally must impinge upon both to the same ontological extent and via the same ontological mechanisms. The two halves of the brain do not, after all, inhabit different metaphysical causal orders.

So, any resolution of the seeming contradiction between freedom and causal order – for that is what we are talking about – must be made available to both of them, must cover both of them, equally. The resolution cannot be derived from the differences in the way that they treat data. The resolution must rescue all sorts of creatures from the contradiction.

Some related items that are of interest:

1. The problem of the resolution of freedom with causal order is a department of the problem of the resolution of creaturely freedom with Divine foreknowledge/Providence. This is a clue that should point us in the direction of searching for an ultimate resolution in the reconciliation of the reality of time and temporality – which is to say, simply, causation and a causal order, things happening, and happening to each other, and affecting each other, and all coordinated – with the superordinate reality of eternity – which is to say, not Eleatic immobility, not the impossibility of motion, but rather the subsumption of all subsidiary, creaturely motions in the immense and singular Divine motion, or act.

2. If there is causation, if there is happening, then reality cannot be continuous. If one thing is to cause another, then the causer and the caused must be different from each other, and disparate. If they are not truly disparate, they are then but one thing, and there is not properly speaking any causal relation between them, but rather a relation of unity. So this means that if there is a past that is going to have causal effect upon this present moment, that is going to influence this present moment, then that past and its events must all be different entities than this present moment. So that, if things do really happen, then they must happen quantally. Reality must be discontinuous if there are really events.

3. Given a certain configuration of past events, given a cosmic history, It is possible for a current eventuating event that arises from them as its data to turn out a number of different ways that are lawfully related to them. There are a number of different ways that the probabilities implicit in the [wholly determined] Schrodinger equation may turn out, without escaping the constraints of that equation. What evolves deterministically, then, is the range of possible orderly outcomes of a given past set of events. The predetermination of a given event that is imposed upon it by its past, then, does not constrain it to only one possible outcome. If it did, there would be no sense in talking about “probabilities” or “outcomes.” For, if an event were wholly determined by its past, down to the last jot and tittle, why then it would be nothing but a feature of that past. It would not in that case be a real entity, a real event. The complete and utter predetermination of events is the elimination of events as an ontological category – and, thus, also an elimination of entities.

4. Items 2 and 3 obtain with equal force whether we construe causation in a left-brained, linear fashion, as of the vector sum of particular interactions, or in a right-brained holistic fashion, as a superposition of fields. Again, what is the difference that makes a difference between a vector sum and a superposition of fields? Are these not merely different mathematical formalizations of the same basic notion: of causal inputs delivered to a locus in the extensive continuum from its past?

5. NB also that a vector sum or integral can be just as finally, teleologically oriented toward and ordered toward a strange attractor as a field.

So, whether we treat of causation using fields or vectors, we still face the problem of freedom versus predetermination. What then is the resolution? Put in terms of the Schrodinger equation, what is it that does the determination of what precisely will be the outcome of a given quantum situation? What is it that might prevent that outcome from being always and everywhere the one that is under the equation the most probable? I.e., how can there be more than one lawful outcome of a given step in the evolution of the equation?

The resolution, then, it seems to me, is provided by a distinction between the past of an event and the event itself. The past as past is fixed, determined, changeless (tace for the moment on backward causation mediated by prayer, that takes place in the supratemporal causal order). The past has to be just exactly, changelessly, what it is, in order to function as a completed set of data for the processes of the present moment of eventuation. If you are going to have inputs to the present, as yet unfinished moment of eventuation, then those inputs must be themselves finished. If they are not finished, then they just don’t yet fully exist to function for any subsequent events as causal inputs. It is, then, the past that is fixed, determined. The Schrodinger equation arising from a given past is determined because that past is determined.

And, therefore, it is the present moment that is free and – despite the constraints derived from its past, and formalized in the Schrodinger equation – not yet wholly determined.

What then feels to us like a unity of experience, a unification of disparate feelings in the integrity of the present moment – this unification being the matter of the binding “problem” – is just our present feeling of the feelings of past moments. A present moment is an integration and concrescence of impressions, feelings, of past events. And this is so whether we formalize the unification using vectors of particular interactions, or superpositions of fields.

[I got everything I have so far said from Whitehead. He doesn’t say it all explicitly, but it is all implicit in his metaphysics. Everything from here forward I got from Boethius, and Aquinas.]

Now notice that this is not the ultimate resolution of the problem. For, while we may so far have dealt with the problem of determinism versus free will by ascribing the former to the past and the latter to the present (and, a fortiori, to the future), we have not yet dealt with the problem of creaturely freedom versus Divine Providence.

To resolve that contradiction, we must transcend time altogether, and remember that temporal relations are characteristics of an eternal state of affairs that comprehends all events, whatever their spatiotemporal loci. That that state of affairs is eternal does not mean that the events that constitute it – i.e., the set of events that includes all events whatsoever, of whatever spatio-temporal locus in all actual causal orders, all worlds (in secula seculorum) – are not free. God’s eternal act is free, even though (being eternal) it is also necessary. So likewise with everything he knows, including all creaturely events. Everything that happens happens freely, even though it is eternally known, and thus necessary.

Thus the causal inputs of a temporal event are present to it only via the medium of the Divine Providence. It is God who forms the Receptacle for creaturely eventuation. He is the causal order, He the nexus. The past is real to the present, is “thingish” to the present, by virtue of its reality to God. We access the past via God; He is the medium of the causal influence of the past upon the present.

So Leibniz, Spinoza and Descartes were all right in ascribing to God in their various ways the ultimate function of relating and coordinating all events that, absent his provision of an ontological milieu for causal relations, would not – nay, could not – be related to each other at all. Things are orderly insofar as they are ordered in the Divine comprehension. And a thing that is not ordered in the Divine comprehension is not ordered at all.

Kristor

PS: what Zeno disproved was the impossibility of motion and causation in a continuous state of affairs. Motion is not, however, paradoxical in a state of affairs that is discontinuous. In such a state of affairs, things can be really disparate, so that there can be a relation of motion between them. It is obvious that if events are continuous with each other then there cannot be motion between them, for there is in that case no disparity between them; and where there is no disparity there is only unity.

Newton and Planck both in different ways ratified Zeno. Planck’s quantum of action is the physical implementation of the Newtonian infinitesimal.

The quantitative concept of sin - a deadly error

2012-01-05T07:28:00.000+01:00

*

Moderns tend to regard sin in a quantitative manner - as if the question of whether someone is 'a sinner' could be decided by weighing his good against his bad qualities and seeing where the preponderance lay; or taking an average of his behaviour and seeing whether it was on the side of sin or not.

This metaphor is wrong because the calculus is atheist - the quantitative calculus assumes the non-existence of God; indeed it is an attempt to retain morality after God has been subtracted from the worldview.

*

Sin is not about good and bad acts but about being turned towards or away-from God.

A man who does not sin is not a man that does only good acts, he is a man turned always towards God.

A sinner is a man who turns away from God, sometimes. In other words everyone.

*

Yet it may take just one single sin to keep a man turned-away from God, permanently.

It could be something 'trivial' - some clinging to something worldly, some mere distraction. But if it keeps a man turned away from God it will suffice: it does suffice.

*

In the end damnation is refusal of the offer of salvation. The offer is made to all, perhaps. Anything which leads a man to refuse salvation when offered is a deadly sin, deadly to his soul.

The more trivial-seeming, the more effective the sin may be - since it arouses no revulsion, no reaction; we do not guard against it....

And we may feel that we can compensate for trivial-seeming sins, by heroic good works (or something) on the quantitative concept. But so long as we stay turned-away from God nothing will work.

*

This is the particular hazard of modernity. It is asif the whole of modern life is set up to keep us turned away from God all the time yet by such trivial worldly matters that we feel that - surely - we cannot be sinners, surely the balance must be in our favour - surely we we not be damned for merely wasting our lives in frenetic busyness?

No we won't be damned, we will refuse salvation - indeed, we may not even recognise or understand the offer.

*

A consequence is that Christianity ought to be - in these modern conditions - a turning-towards God; I mean the main goal should be to help people to glimpse God (and know that this is God they glimpse) and thereby reveal their habitual state of being turned away. Moderns cannot be terrified out of their sin, because they see no place to escape from the world - they need to be shown a glimpse of the exit.

*

Understanding Charles Williams Co-inherence

2012-01-04T19:15:00.000+01:00

*

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2012/01/understanding-charles-williams-co.html

*

Explaining Zeno's paradoxes

2012-01-04T09:22:00.000+01:00

*

I was aware from mid-teens of Zeno's paradox about Achilles and the Tortoise* (for example as a Tortoise and Rabbit in Tom Stoppard's play Jumpers) - but I never properly got around to understanding just precisely what led to the paradox, why the mode of reasoning was wrong.

I see now this was an oversight and an error.

*

The penny dropped when reading pages 137-9 of The Master and his Emissary, by Iain McGilchrist:

Zeno's paradoxes ... rest on the adoption of the left hemisphere's view that every flowing motion in space or time can be resolved into a series of static moments or points that can then be summed to give back the living whole. The 'seamless' fluidity of motion in space or time is 'reduced' to a series, akin to the series of still frames in a cine film.

*

In essence, the paradox arises from the inbuilt assumption that every dynamic phenomenon can be resolved into a series of static units that can then be summed to recreate the dynamic whole.

There is absolutely no grounds for this assumption - this metaphysical assumption concerning the nature of reality, this basic assumption which frames all further analysis - indeed the assumption is obviously refuted by experience as demonstrated by the paradox.

*

(A further assumption is that metaphysics ought not be contradicted by plain, commonsense experience - since the best Ancient Greek philosophy was meant to enrich normal life and plain commonsense experience - not usurp and replace it. This is a major constraint on philosophizing, and if it is abandoned - as modern culture has abandoned it - then philosophy becomes an open-ended and unbounded activity with no grounds for choice between philosophical ideas, only subjective preferences or varieties of instrumental expediency.)

*

But with the paradox we (somehow) fail to notice we have made this metaphysical assumption and built it into the analysis - hence the paradox.

And it is suddenly obvious how deep an insight it was to understand this paradox, and what trap it is for humans to fail to recognise it.

*

All my life in science, medicine and education I have observed the progressive destruction of these professions by the failure to recognise Zeno's paradox; the failure to recognise that dynamic skills cannot be broken down into static units then rebuilt. They cannot. They cannot.

It does not matter how long you make the forms to be completed, how elaborate the checklists, how comprehensive the managerial oversight.

The problem remains: in making movement static you have frozen the movement - movement is not movement any longer if it has been frozen.

*

Achilles never catches-up with the tortoise.

Because both have been killed.

(To freeze a living entity is to kill it.)

*

What complexity of static summaries does is to make things worse not better - because few, crude and simple static pictures of a complex activity cannot be mistaken for the real thing, whereas humans are bewildered by complexity into assuming it is completeness.

***

*Achilles races the tortoise. He allows that tortoise a 'start' at point A, a little ahead of Achilles. They both begin to run. Achilles runs to the tortoises starting point A; but by this time the tortoise has moved a little ahead from A to point B. Then Achilles runs to point B - but by this time the tortoise has reached point C. So Achilles runs to point C, but by now the tortoise is at point D. And so on. Achilles never catches-up with the tortoise.

I sometimes think the Ancient Greeks did all the philosophy that was worth doing, that needed doing (especially metaphysics); and everything else since has been worse than nothing at all, since it made us lose sight of their insights. All we need to do is retain and re-express.

*

Yes of course - Not a problem

2012-01-04T06:58:00.000+01:00

*

Somebody has decided that assistants serving behind the counters of fast food outlets, coffee chains and big stores - will all from now be trained to respond to my request for a bacon sandwich or cappuccino with either: "Yes - of course" - or - "Not a problem!"

*

Well, since I am English and middle class, I am used to adopting a stance of servility towards all retail assistants; but really - I did not expect my polite requests to be taken seriously and for me to be treated as if I was craving a favour when I am ordering something off a retail menu.

*

To be honest, I cannot remember what assistants used to say before they had been inculcated with these catch phrases - perhaps they used to say "Yes Sir"?If so, then clearly that was insufficiently democratic, and had to be replaced. Ahem.

And of course the assistants are only saying what they have been trained to say: but why have they been trained to say it? For whose benefit?

*

I suppose I should be grateful that I am not yet required to enter shops shuffling on my bended knees.

*

Free will versus the Left brain - a 'fusion' of McGilchrist and Sheldrake?

2012-01-03T07:28:00.011+01:00

*

Reading Iain McGilchrist's The Master and his Emissary and mixing in some ideas from Rupert Sheldrake, provides me with what seems a very promising way of thinking about that long-standing philosophical chestnut - free will versus determinism.

*

McG makes it clear that the Left hemisphere perceives reality in a deterministic way - as linear sequential chains of discrete causes and effects.

Yet the Left brain also has a problem, an intractable problem, of truly linking cause with effect, since reality is seen as static units resembling a 'snapshot' and it is difficult/ impossible to see how a cause statically-conceived can actually 'cause' anything.

But although the Left hemisphere can perceive that its own perspective is inadequate, it is intrinsically incapable of conceptualising anything else!

It has its precise and partial way of representing reality, and that is all that it can do.

*

Determinism is like that.

If we conceptualise the world in terms of causes and effects, then of course then can be no free will since we have already decided that everything is caused by something else.

On the other hand, this assumption opens up an infinite regress (as Aristotle realised) which can only be terminated by a first cause or unmoved mover. For some reason, modern thinking never acknowledges this infinite regress of causality - just too impatient I guess...

*

To assume that reality is conceptualised in terms of causal chains is and unfounded - it is not something that humanity has discovered.

Rather it is something that modern man cannot help doing.

We know it cannot be the whole truth - yet (we moderns, at least) cannot conceive of any other way of imagining things.

*

Well, McGilchrist points to another way - the Right hemisphere way.

Whereas the Left sees reality as a sequence of snapshots, the Right sees reality as a dynamic whole.

A dynamic whole cannot be expressed in terms of a sequence of snapshots; but how can it be expressed?

*

My notion is to conceive of Right brain function in terms of three-dimensional and dynamic morphic fields to complement the Left brain conceptualised in linear cause and effect sequences of static units.

(In reality, there are both linear sequences and morphic fields on both sides of the brain, considerable overlap - but McG is completely convincing that there is also a qualitative functional distinction, and this can be summarised - the point can be made - by treating the Left as if it were purely linear sequential and the Right as if it were a morphic field.)

This seems helpful to me; the idea of Right brain as a field of activity exerting its effects in a manner analogous to magnetic fields or gravitational fields.

*

Note: by Sheldrake's account a morphic field imposes form, pattern, structure onto the system in it influence - organising disparate events and processes; furthermore the field is teleological, containing 'attractors' which dynamically shape the system towards goals.

*

The Right brain (by this view) is in contact with the environment by being affected by other morphic fields - the gives it the distinctive 'holistic' grasp that the Left brain lacks.

McG conceives the optimal cognitive situation as being when the Right hemisphere dominates, using the Left for specific detailed processing tasks, then the Right taking up the results of Left processing and integrating them into the larger whole.

This could be imagined as the Right brain taking detached linear sequences of the Left brain (like strings of beads) and embedding them into dynamic three dimensional patterns of organisation - so that each causal sequence is put into its proper place and related to other sequences and to the much larger and dominant aspects of form that are not encoded as causal sequences...

*

So, this picture of the brain would have free will as fundamentally a Right brain phenomenon; with free will operating as a field; this picture standing in contrast to free will being more usually (but incoherently) considered in a Left brain fashion, as the first, (somehow) uncaused and initiating step of a chain of causes and effects leading to obervable behaviour.

*

I am suggesting that morphic fields, conceptualised in terms of McG's Right hemisphere functionality, could be considered a mechanism for the operation of free will, an explanation for 'how' it works.

This is, of course, merely a manner of thinking about free will: a new analogy which breaks the tyrannical power of free will conceptualised in terms of Left brain causal chains.

To see free will as a field does not describe what free will actually is, or what makes it free. In a sense the shift from linear to field thinking has only pushed back the explanation by another step - but this pushing back does create the space necessary as a preliminary to recognizing that the exclusion of free will is a metaphysical property of a form of representation, and that the exclusion of free will is not a property of the observed world.

*

Because free will is a metaphysical concept, not a physical concept - free will cannot be discovered by science, but nor can its absence be discovered by science.

There is a very widespread notion that 'science' has discovered that free will is an illusion, never existed, was merely a religious dogma.

This is a mistake - the actual situation is that the assumptions and methods of science have made free will incomprehensible.

Modern people cannot even imagine what is meant by free will - and assume that this means that science has discovered the absence of free will, or discovered that free will is an unnecessary hypothesis.

*

Free will is not a thing which is, or is not, out there in the natural world waiting to be detected - or found absent.

Free will is a metaphysical assumption - just as determinism is a metaphysical assumption.

But determinism is carrying the day in practise, because people cannot understand what kind of a thing free will might be. Public thought can only see reality as chains of cause and effect, and can only assume that every human act of will, every choice, must have had a cause or causes (whether we know them or not) - and therefore every act of will or choice can be explained-away.

People are simply locked into this way of thinking and can see no escape from it.

Perhaps understanding Left and Right brain differences, and thinking of causation in terms of organising fields instead of linear sequences, might open up the recognition that there is no 'must' about determinism.

*

When we feel that reality 'must' be deterministic, we are simply reading-off the distal consequences of our proximate assumptions.

Change the assumptions, and determinism melts.

*

How to corrupt a whole civilization - the ratchet of corruption

2012-01-02T06:40:00.004+01:00

*

Simple, but not easy (or not easy at first...).

*

Get people to perform acts they know in their guts to be evil - then make sure they do not repent them.

(To make them sin is not at all difficult, they will all do this anyway, sooner or later - they are, after-all, sinners by nature. It is preventing repentance that is the difficult thing - by nature many will repent, so you must prevent what is natural.)

That is all you have to do - once this simple system is in place, then it will become self-corrupting.

*

To corrupt the world, just ensure that repentance is prevented. Ensure that repentance is portrayed as strictly meaningless, hypocritical, weak, lame, lacking in self-esteem. Just ensure that repentance is seen as blaming, repressive, inegalitarian, racist, sexist.

(Because if you repent an evil then you acknowledge an evil, you implicitly accuse others of an evil - and that is to be judgmental. Thus the ethic transforms, inverts: the only evil is now to repent evil...)

*

Unrepentant sin is a ratchet-process, because once corrupted people stay corrupted.

Instead of repenting acts which they know in their guts to be evil, they boast of them - they encourage others to do the same. Why not?

*

So Screwtape says: Sin - go ahead - do it, if you feel like it - if it makes you happy...

(The precise sin doesn't matter, so long as you disgust yourself.)

Repentance? Nothing to repent. Be proud of your decisions (they are yours - they define you).

(It is those who believe in repentance who are the real sinners.)

Thus spake Screwtape.

*

What is an unrepented sin, after all? - well, the answer is that unrepented sin is fixing one's face away from God. The sin is to turn from God, repentance is a turning back to God. So when there is no repentance you are stuck - living with your back to God.

*

Once a sinner (and it could be just once! - that's the beauty of it) you stay a sinner, and the corrupter can leave you alone to wreck others by your example and teaching, and can apply his attentions elsewhere.

Not tempted by the same old sins? Don't worry, be patient, fashion will provide a supply of novelties to tempt every soul.

*

It's so easy for Screwtape now!

In the old days people were washed clean of their sins and able to make a fresh start, again and again! - the tempter was never sure of his prey until the very end.

But now, you do one measly unrepented sin and the tempter has you!

The sin cannot be repented, cannot be forgiven (who is there to forgive it? Only a god can forgive sin, and we know that they don't exist...) and the only recourse is to deny the sin; and if you deny the sin then you promote the sin.

*

The ratchet of corruption is exponential - just a few proud souls at first.

But each unrepentant sinner permanently joins the ranks of the death eaters, and by example or argument brings another one or two out of the fold.

The growth is exponential.

And pretty soon there is a democratic majority to enforce sin - which cannot be repented.

Such a simple system - so very effective...

*

The Archbish of C speaks to the nation: spot the Christian Reference

2012-01-01T21:06:00.000+01:00

*

This person is the leader of my church giving his annual address to the nation.

It is essentially a stagnant heap of Leftist, evasive, multi-culti, politically correct propaganda - but don't miss the Christian reference...

http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/2312/archbishops-bbc-new-year-message

..it comes, briefly, about three and a half minutes into a four and a half minute video.

*

Otherwise, what can one say about this?

What words describe it?

Banal, trite, obscure, wrong whenever it is not platitudinous, missing the point - but then what is the point supposed to be?

I can only guess he is setting up a straw man of Britain's supposed hostility to 'young people' and then proposing some vague and ineffectual secular ways this can be tackled.

But why? Why did he do this? What does he think he is doing? Has he any conception of how clownish and unprincipled he appears - how c & u he actually is?

*

The Church of England evangelical protestant church I support has a tremendous range of exciting and amusing activities for children (including my kids); these activities also have an obvious and unashamed evangelical and Christian educational element to them. It 'works', and consequently this is one of the ten biggest Anglican Churches in England (measured by the size of the regular congregation). Yet of course, this church is at the opposite pole from the Archbish of C and seriously at loggerheads with the liberal Anglican hierarchy.

*

Hitler and Smoking

2012-01-01T11:53:00.000+01:00

I just stumbled across this article I wrote in the days when I was a highly prolific writer, and writing for major newspapers. I had completely forgotten its existence or that I had written it. Now it seems to be featured on a pro-tobacco collection of articles.

Written from a libertarian stance. Still, it makes a good point, I think...

http://tobaccodocuments.org/pm/2050154078-4116.html?zoom=750

Oh no - not another New Year!

2012-01-01T07:26:00.001+01:00

*

It's that disconcerting time of year when we are assailed by bright and friendly faces delightedly wishing us a Happy New Year - an orgy of public celebration over unwrapping the latest wall calendar.

*

It is not a new year in any meaningful sense, nothing new actually starts on January 1; it is not astronomically significant, it is not part of the Christian Year nor any other religion, it is not the tax year, it is not the academic year...

The New Year is the perfect celebration for a modern world which believes in nothing - literally. In the sense that nothing is precisely what it believes in and celebrates most uninhibitedly.

*

Marvelous. Great excitement, all night 'partying' and extreme drunkenness in honour of utter vacuousness: who could possibly be offended by that!

Happy New Nihilism!

*

Good habits and civilization - especially prayer

2011-12-31T06:55:00.000+01:00

*

A devout life is not much about the flash of understanding but is mostly a matter of using insights into truth in building-up good habits; and this can be influenced by our will.

Modern society is a mechanism for inculcating bad habits, especially the habit of seeking instant pleasure, intoxications and distractions; a habit of regarding ourselves as passive recipients for 'entertainment'.

Against this we can inculcate Good habits - such as frequent participation in Holy Communion, reading of Scripture and devotional books (spiritual 'injections' as Fr Seraphim Rose called them), and most of all a habit of prayer.

I think that the use of one or a few repeated short prayers is especially valuable in modern conditions.

This practice is especially associated with Orthodox mysticism, and has a remarkable 'track record'; but it need not be Orthodox nor mystical.

The prayer chosen was traditionally drawn from scripture - the New Testament or Psalms or Prophecies. Or there is the Jesus Prayer - which has various versions.

The prayer is repeated and repeated whenever the need for prayer is remembered. There is no delay in finding a 'suitable' place or adopting a posture; as soon as the need is remembered the prayer is said (either quietly with the lips or in the mind).

Repetitions can be counted-off on the fingers - or with a device such as a prayer rope or rosary (maybe concealed in the pocket).

As the habit develops it will be found that sometimes the prayer comes to mind or is already running through the mind or being said unconsciously and without intention, and this is itself a reminder to pray consciously and with attention now.

The prayer can function as an alarm call; whenever we surface from the maelstrom of the modern world there is the prayer, ticking away, and reminding us of the real things.

A good habit to acquire!

*

Guard yourself against the world?

2011-12-30T15:46:00.000+01:00

*

Archbishop Averky also quoted often the words of St. Ignatius Brianchininov:

"Do not dare to raise your weak hand to stop the elemental tide of apostasy. Avoid it, protect yourself from it, and that is enough for you. Get to know the spirit of the times, study it so you can avoid its influence whenever possible."

Cited in http://startingontheroyalpath.blogspot.com/2011/02/one-man-in-face-of-apostasy.html

From its provenance, this must be taken as authoritative - assuming we can interpret it correctly.

*

The interesting thing is that the Saint's advice is the opposite from normal worldly advice which I used to follow. The worldly advice was that one had a kind of duty to expose oneself to the worst that the world could throw at you, otherwise you were shirking life, living in an ivory tower - otherwise you didn't truly know life.

The truly virtuous man could, and would, live among the seamiest characters and grossest experiences (whether actual or vicarious in art and the media) - and only by doing so would his virtue be proven.

Such was the worldly advice which I followed...

*

The worldly advisers knew what they were about, knew that if exposed to unrelieved and engineered temptation and horror 24/7 - then all but the most saintly would succomb to sin and despair; and that if everyone was exposed to incessant temptation and horror from an early age so that they never got clear of it, then there would be no saints.

*

H/T commenter Pierre.

*

The profound evil of non-judgment

2011-12-30T07:08:00.000+01:00

*

Political Correctness says: Don't judge - don't be prejudiced.

Christianity says: Judge everything, superficial or deep - because everything is tending either to the good or to the bad.

Christianity says: Be prejudiced about everything - because your attitude to good and bad things must be different.

*

Only, be prepared to revise your judgements or prejudices in light of further developments. You must judge and be prejudiced, but as a fallen Man these will err.

Only God knows justice and the truth - but we must judge as best we can, guess the nature of things as best we can - grow to be like God as best we can.

*

Six problems for modern Christian apologists - and a solution?

2011-12-29T07:02:00.000+01:00

Historical Christianity came into an already religious world and won converts from Jews and then pagans - the modern situation of converting secular, materialist, utilitarian hedonists is very different:

1. Paganism absent

Christianity is a much bigger jump from secular modernity than from paganism. Christianity seemed like a completion of paganism - a step or two further in the same direction and building on what was already there: souls and their survival beyond death, the intrinsic nature of sin, the activities of invisible powers and so on. With moderns there is nothing to build on (except perhaps childhood memories or alternative realities glimpsed through art and literature).

2. Incomplete

Modern Christianity as experienced by converts tends to be incomplete - precisely because modern Christianity has nothing to build on. This means that modern incomplete Christianity lacks explanatory power, seems to have little or nothing to say about what seem to be the main problems of living. For example, modern Christianity seems to have nothing to do with politics, law, art, philosophy or science; to inhabit a tiny, shrinking realm cut-off from daily concerns. Modern Christianity often deletes miracles; original sin; the virgin birth, the incarnation and dual nature of Christ; Christ's death, resurrection and atonement; the Holy Trinity; angels, demons and unseen spiritual warfare and so on - yet without these and other elements, Christianity does not really hang-together nor does it satisfy human yearning.

3. Shallowness.

Modern Christianity often feels shallow - it seems to rely on diktat of scripture and the Church - this is because moderns lack a basis in the spontaneous perceptions of Natural Law, animism, the sense of active supernatural power in everyday life. Modern Christianity (after the first flush of the conversion experience) thus feels dry, abstract, legalistic, prohibitive, uninvolving, lacking in purpose.

4. Judaism absent.

Modern Christianity has to do without the centuries of Jewish tradition developing an understanding of the nature of God, the prophets and their prophecies, the devotional life of the Psalms etc; but modern Christians have to discover all this from scratch and for themselves, and often do not.

5. Confusion.

Modern life is hedonic, distracted - often drugged. Consequently people are often unclear about the nature of life. On top of this, in recent decades the prevalent ruling culture has been actively against the Good. Modern art is anti-beauty, modern philosophies are anti-truth, modern morality is an inversion of Natural Law. Propaganda (implicit and explicit) inculcates that the spontaneous ideals of humans (native religion, sex differentials, family, nation, loyalty, courage) are wrong. In sum moderns are deeply (deliberately) confused about deep matters. Therefore, modern Christian apologists have to explain the human condition, the basic nature of life; before explaining how Christianity is the answer.

*

6. Anti-Christian inoculation

The ruling culture now inoculates specifically against Christianity and the prerequisites of Christianity. It supplies ready-made arguments grounded in modern materialist hedonism to be used against all evidence or steps in argument that might lead to Christianity if rigorously followed. Christian apologetics cannot advance one step without eliciting these slogans, and modern impatience, distractability and a short attention span does the rest. That these hedonic materialist arguments are circular, incoherent and ungrounded is irrelevant in practice; because they effectively block the development of an alternative metaphysics from which their invalidity would be apparent.

In sum - modern Christianity lacks both pull and push - it lacks the pull which comes from people being grounded in Paganism and Judaism; and it lacks the push of being a complex and complete explanation of the human condition, relations, meanings and purposes. If apologists both know and also attempt to supply all of this, to supply the depth and completeness of Christianity, they find they cannot do so all at once. If they try to be exact and comprehensive, the apologist comes-up against the modern inability to follow a long and complex line of argument; yet if he tries to present Christianity all at once then what can be communicated is inevitably a gross simplification: incomplete and shallow.

So what is the answer? If the fullness is too complex and the essence is incomplete?

And since people cannot become like pagans or ancient Jews - from where could they start?

Perhaps as children again, children re-awoken and reborn in us; since children have spontaneously the prerequisites which our culture fails to provide and has suppressed:

Mark 10.13-16

And they brought young children to him, that he should touch them: and his disciples rebuked those that brought them.

But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.

Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.

*

How strange that children should be our repositories of ancient wisdom - and childhood memories the basis of salvation; but there it is, explicitly - Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein....

*

Deliberate self-mutilation is an evil

2011-12-28T06:57:00.000+01:00

*

If someone was to spray-paint Durham Cathedral with graffiti, or slash all the best paintings in the National Portrait Gallery, or blast a Vuvuzela during the climax of a great operatic performance - we would (or, at least ought to) recognize these as evil acts in their varying degrees; as destructive the Good.

We should not be distracted because deliberately wrecking Great Art, deliberately marring beauty, is somehow 'not as bad' as torturing or killing - wrecking Great Art is bad: that is the point.

*

The same applies to the human face and body - deliberately to mutilate the human face and body is bad, is destructive of Good, is evil.

It is an act of desecration - a vandalism of sanctity.

And this is an objective fact - not a matter of opinion.

*

(As we all covertly recognize: our very viscera inform us of the fact.)

*

Even worse when the mutilation is permanent, scarring, cannot be undone.

Even worse when the mutilation is proudly advertized - so that others may be exposed to the act of evil; challenged to accept it, encouraged to emulate it.

*

Even worse when mutilation is normalized - brought into desirable situations in art, TV, movies, drama, news - into cultural institutions; into situations where the mutilation is accepted - perhaps after a struggle, or in face of ignorant hostility and prejudice - or simply made part of the background, assimilated unconsciously.

This is propaganda for evil - and far worse than oneself sinning (sin is inevitable in fallen Men; but the propagation - by favorable association, advertisement, by normalization - of sin is a voluntary act of strategic evil).

*

Evil cannot be undone, but it can be repented.

However, only at the cost of Pride.

Advertizing, normalizing, boasting of sin is a highly regarded activity in the modern world - by contrast it is regarded as evil to point-out sin, to reject sin, to say that a sin is bad and should elicit shame rather than admiration - because to do so is hurtful - humiliating, even.

But repenting evil hurts, it ought to hurt - it reduces one's self-esteem and status among others to say 'I made a mistake, I did a bad thing'.

But that is what ought to be done.

*

How should Reactionaries regard Conservatives? As seekers

2011-12-27T06:43:00.000+01:00

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There is a sense in which mainstream Conservatives are one of the worst enemies of Reaction.

This happens because - when effective - Conservatives make partial corrections that temporarily improve the situation without curing the underlying trend.

Effective Conservatives defer collapse but do not prevent it - and the longer collapse is deferred, the worse collapse will be when it eventually comes.

*

Yet of course Conservatives are much closer to Reactionaries than are out-and-out Leftists: Conservatives are more-nearly right/ Right.

*

What happens in modern socio-political life is that nuanced/ reasonable/ sensible/ moderate Conservative positions are continually being absorbed into Leftism/ Liberalism/ Political Correctness by default as the political 'centre' is moved ever Leftward...

Except in those exceptional instances when a Conservative perceives this assimilation as it begins to happen, takes a deep breath, makes a stand - then quantum-jumps into extreme, beyond the pale, Reactionary views.

*

This entails an inner rejection of modernity that is weird and indeed hypocritical; since nobody can live by it.

To the Conservative, the Reactionary is either crazy, or insincere - either way the Reactionary is seen not to be living by his beliefs, Reactionary beliefs are seen as inapplicable to 'real life'.

Yet this is the spiritual destination of Conservatism - pushed to the point of decision.

It is likely that few will make that inner decision, the quantum-leap, that road less taken: since all worldly considerations are against it.

*

But until a decision has already been made to take the broad path of the pragmatic mainstream; then the mass of Christian Conservatives should probably be regarded as 'friends of Reaction'; not for what they are but for what they might become.

Conservatives should perhaps be seen as 'spiritual seekers' on a path which may lead to Reaction, but as individuals who have not yet arrived at the fork in the way.

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Only one political principle for Christian Reactionaries

2011-12-26T08:36:00.000+01:00

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As Christians first, and reactionaries second, there is only room for one single, organising, inflexible reactionary political principle.

*

The Christian society is one organised-around the salvation of souls, or at least that is its ideal.

(Therefore, the Christian society is fundamentally different from the society we have.)

For Christian Reactionaries, political arrangements should be subordinated to retaining and growing the strength and possibility of Christianity.

*

Of course this does not at all mean that Christianity is the only important matter, since life cannot be divided and humans are corrupt, and almost all humans live 'in the world'.

It does not mean that The State/ Church should use 'compulsion' to engineer salvation. That makes no sense - the means must be the same as the end, and the end is that Christian salvation must be chosen, or not chosen.

(That is the necessity of Hell in the divine plan: because souls must be free to reject Christian salvation. This is perfectly explicit, and applies to angelic spirits as well as Men.)

*

Christianity is based on choice, on will; and the political principle must therefore also be based on choice, on will - that is on human attributes.

A Christian politics is necessarily a politics of individual choice - necessarily not (fundamentally) a system.

For the Reactionary Christian, civilisation must be fundamentally a thing of Man, of individual Men; therefore not of laws, rules, organisations, procedures, committees, votes, parliaments, panels, peer reviewing, nor democracy, nor mass movements, nor pressure groups...

Insofar as these things are necessary to civilisation, and they are, they must never be considered fundamental.

*

There is therefore no point, it is indeed counter-productive, to create blueprints for utopia for the perfect society that is Christian and much more.

Matters are too far gone, knowledge is too limited, that goal is too remote.

*

If we fight the battle on too many fronts, it will certainly be lost.

On the other hand, we must try to avoid being out-flanked - however this may not be possible with small forces.

The result may resemble a siege.

*

We cannot save everything, we must decide what it is vital to salvage.

In my opinion, when the nations and civilisations as a whole are anti-Christian then we probably, very probably, cannot save the current nation states and we cannot save our civilisation for the simple reason that Men are choosing not to save them.

*

There is no shortcut to the other side of salvation: we cannot make men want Good and then save them: salvation must come first: and repentance must precede salvation.

*

Societies have personalities (which are not the same, are the antithesis of, the results of votes and surveys and markets).

Modern Western societies must, as personalities, first acknowledge their sins (sin being the state of turned-away from God), and the cause of their sins; must take responsibility, repent, call for Divine aid.

This must come first, and it is pointless, no it is a dangerous delusion, to try and improve society without this; because it could be done only by coercion or trickery, and any apparent progress would swiftly be turned to its own undoing (since the apparent Good would in reality have come from the implementation of Bad intentions).

*

(contra Adam Smith, good results cannot ultimately comes from bad motivations but only briefly and delusively as a temptation; since over time bad motivations will thoroughly corrupt any well-intentioned system. Surely that is obvious by now? Isn't that precisely what we are experiencing?).

*

Thus the necessity for aiming fist-and-foremost at a state and practice of clear rejection of the world, and a humble acceptance of whatever consequences ensue.

(What possible inducement could people have to do this? - it might be asked. The answer is precisely the need for the conception of the wholeness of Christianity, that perceives the world as full or living intelligences ('angels') and life as Spiritual Warfare. From this perspective, suddenly, we are inside life and life is real with purpose and direction. This would be an infinite compensation for loss of worldly goods - if only we could hold to it; which we cannot, by our own efforts.)

Of course, as fallen Men, resolve will (almost certainly) fail, repeatedly; and need to be renewed; but ultimates outcomes are (as always) in the hand of Providence - and need not concern us.

*

As always, to a (simple) man of discernment, things are absolutely simple, what we need to do is absolutely simple.

And that state of simplicity and discernment is what needs to be striven for.

*

Happy Christmas!

2011-12-25T08:12:00.001+01:00

Some misconceptions about motivations

2011-12-25T08:12:00.000+01:00

*

I regard the Eastern Roman Empire as a kind of ideal society - in the sense that it seems to have been the most devout Christian society and with the fullest, deepest, highest kind of Christianity.

Byzantium seems to 'prove' or at least confirm that divine monarchy is the proper form of government, Empire the proper form of organization, that Christianity ought to permeate the whole life (and not be encapsulated away from the state), and that Christianity can reach its highest deveopment when led by the ascetic monsatic ideal; when productive of Saints and Elders.

*

Would it be true to say that I want to impose such an Empire on England, Britain, the West? To install a monarch, a Tsar, and re-organise life to emulate Constantinople?

And do I revere Byzantium because I personally crave to live somewhere of that sort?

*

Well, no and no.

The Byzantine ideal serves to show what can be done, how humans can be very different from now - how a society can be devoted to Christian ideals and richly civilised, yet tough enough to survive for centuries against strong and hostile forces.

Perhaps most impressively (for me, living here and now) a society which never lost faith in itself, never became self-loathing and suicidal; and which courageously chose to die rather than submit.

*

But Byzantium emerged from the Roman Empire when it became Christian; it became a fusion of Hebrew, Greek and Roman cultures with the Revelation; but it was not designed.

Spiritually, Eastern Orthodoxy was a completion of paganism, not a replacement.

*

But I am a product of modernity, hence cowardly and shallow and a lover of comfort and distraction. I would find it extremely hard to live under an Orthodox monarchy - in fact I would probably get sick and die in a few weeks.

So my motivations about such potential futures are - of course - abstract and fantasy-like.

If human society ought to be Christian rather than anti-Christian, devoted to salvation rather than peace and prosperity, a divine monarchy rather than a democracy, other-worldly instead of this worldly: honouring of Love rather than kindness, Courage rather than career, Authority rather than anarchy - and so on, then we would need something very different from what we have.

*

But I don't really think much about it - legitimate Christian reactionary politics is not about imposing a blueprint; it is about pursuing spiritual goals, making choices, and seeing what emerges from these choices.

Even if successful (which is highly improbable), even before corruption took its toll; likely as not we would not get what we bargained for; because what would be Good for us would, no doubt, be considerably different from what we consciously wanted.

Byzantium happened because the people deserved it, by their holiness; we do not deserve it, we could not create or sustain it - and it will not happen.

If Westerners, en masse, were to repent and reform, then - maybe - in a hundred years or more we might get somewhere near Byzantium...

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Living in myth

2011-12-24T09:06:00.001+01:00

*
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2011/12/living-in-myth.html

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Living on in memory solves nothing - Ceremonial Time by Hanson Mitchell

2011-12-23T07:10:00.000+01:00

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I commented recently on the fake modern 'insight' that death is not-so-bad because people live-on in memory, in our hearts

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/12/deathly-hallows-part-ii-movie-what-is.html

The bogosity of this insight is beautifully expressed in a beautiful book called Ceremonial Time: fifteen thousand years on one square mile by John Hanson Mitchell (1984), from pages 200-201.

*

The thing that had stalked me in the woods of Scratch Flat for all those years was nothing more than death.

But it came to me very clearly that morning that it was not simply my own death that walked a few steps behind me; it was the full realization that my own cohort will die, that everyone whom I now know, whom I have known, and whom I will know, is going to die; and that, in spite of this horrifying fact, the world, huge and momentous and indifferent, will carry one.

There is no escaping this devastating reality. The mysticism of Tonupasqua and the supposed indifference of Pokawnau, the bear shaman, will not alter it. The solid foundations and heavy timbers of the seventeenth-century English structures on Scratch Flat could not alter it, and for that matter, neither will an account of fifteen thousand years of history on a square mile of land.

No matter where I looked, in the running walls that line the woodlands, in the folktales of the American Indians, or in the town records or verbal accounts of the area, I realized I was reading the obituary of my era...

Time has obliterated and will obliterate all the places and all the living individuals of this earth in its course, and we are living in a little match snap of light and life in a dark and dead universe and there is not much that can be done about it in the end.

I found the thought curiously comforting...

*

Mitchell has never yet gone deeper than this in all his subsequent work: his subsequent work is perhaps precisely part of the 'curiously comforting' carrying-on of light and life in a dark and dead universe.

*

Mitchell's perspective is, in other words, pagan - as he is perfectly aware, however top-dressed with post-modern irony - it is the ground position of those who face the human condition honestly and insightfully and without divine revelation.

The conclusion of Ceremonial Times is a recognition that all the good things of life are floating soap bubbles - they are beautiful for a moment, then they burst; and soon after observing this we burst also.

*

Mitchell has responded to this insight by blowing more beautiful bubbles, becoming absorbed in the task, imaginatively dwelling in the beautiful bubbles...

But always lurking in the background is that awareness.

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To say that mortality is not-so-bad is to forget all this, or to suppress it.

When we watch a beautiful soap bubble burst, that loss is not solved by our having watched it happen and remembering, because we too will burst and everyone who saw us burst will themselves burst too.

Memory changes nothing about the reality of mortality except to displace the problem by one step.

Essentially, memory it is a distraction from the truth.

*

The only solution to mortality is im-mortality - everlasting life.

The only memory that solves anything is perfect, complete, absorbing, re-experienced reality - yet human memory is imperfect, incomplete, unreal, and decaying.

So, the only real solution to the inevitable change and decay of life in Time is Eternity: life out-of-Time.

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Fake boobs for women, fake bods for men

2011-12-22T09:16:00.001+01:00

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Because of silicone-fake-boobs there are now women around of a body shape that did not exist a generation ago and never had existed throughout human history. And indeed, in moderation, this is the most admired female shape in the mass media.

Likewise - but much less remarked upon - because of anabolic steroid-fake-bods, there are now men around of a body shape that did not exist a generation ago and never had existed throughout human history. And indeed, in moderation, this is the most admired male shape in the mass media.

But, due to a differential susceptibility of men and women to the influence of the mass media, and differential ability to discriminate mass media depictions from real life; this means that we now have a generation of women whose real life ideal of male attractiveness is (unknown to them) wholly a product of anabolic steroid use.

Just an observation...

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Why the Left always beats the secular Right in democracy

2011-12-22T07:40:00.000+01:00

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Both the Left and the secular Right derive from the same deep root – utilitarianism. The only difference is one of emphasis.

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The Left emphasizes transcendental morality/ virtue, the secular Right emphasizes transcendental truth/ honesty.

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Because feeling oneself to be virtuous is much more popular than feeling honest, and because people hate wickedness much more than they hate lies, the Left will always beat the secular Right.

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Personal intellectual breakthroughs of 2011

2011-12-21T15:37:00.000+01:00

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Some things that spring to mind (all are linked):

1. Properly engaging with the ideas of Rupert Sheldrake - accepting the metaphysical value of morphic fields and morphic resonance.

2. Relating morphic fields to the nature and activities of angels.

3. Understanding the relationship between Time and Eternity as set out in Boethius's Consolations of Philosophy. Consequently, understanding the retrospective effects of prayer and the way that prayers for the dead can be conceptualized.

4. Understanding Christianity as the completion of paganism and the reality of animism - especially from considering the medieval universe as set-out by C.S Lewis.

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All of the above were helped, behind the scenes, by e-mail interchanges with a new penfriend of 2011 - commenter Kristor.

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Any other lists of personal breakthroughs 2011 from commenters?

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Three little words - in The Lord's Prayer

2011-12-21T07:00:00.000+01:00

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Three little words in the Traditional Anglican version of the Our Father seem to represent the infinite perils of modernization, and yet in themselves them seem to be an example of reasonable and cautious modernization.

*

The Book of Common Prayer 1662 version was in use for about ten generations universally, and I learned it as a child attending a Church of England school:

Our Father, which art in heaven,

hallowed be thy name;

thy kingdom come;

thy will be done,

in earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our trespasses,

as we forgive them that trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation;

but deliver us from evil.

[For thine is the kingdom,

the power, and the glory,

for ever and ever.]

Amen.

*

At some point, three little words were changed:

"Our Father, which art in Heaven" - and this was modified to "who art in Heaven".

"Thy kingdom come, in Earth as it is in Heaven' - which was modified to "on Earth".

"As we forgive them that trespass against us" was modified to "those that trespass against us".

I'm not sure when this change was made, maybe 1928, but it spread gradually and widely.

*

In some ways the change to three little words made an almost imperceptible difference - certainly it did not destroy much of the power of the language.

In another sense they make the prayer slightly clearer to modern ears.

And yet - changing three little words was the first step that led to the horrors of the paradoxically named 'Common Worship' which is (apparently) the most commonly used form now:

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power,
and the glory are yours
now and for ever.

Which is merely a literal translation of the poem - an 'executive summary' of the Lord's Prayer (complete with invisible bullet points).

*

We now see that there should have been no meddling.

If people really cannot understand the usage of which, in and them (and the idea is nonsense since the meaning is obvious from context) - then the meaning should have been explained to them.

The prayer should not have been changed at all, not even by three little words.

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Iain McGilchrist's The Master and his Emissary

2011-12-20T14:55:00.002+01:00

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The Master and his Emissary: the divided brain and the making of the Western world.

Iain McGilchrist, Yale University Press, 2009.

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If you are interested in the brain and consciousness, this is one of the best books ever written.

Indeed, it is such a good book of its kind (philosophically-informed science) that it reveals with great clarity the limitations of the kind of book this is - the limitations, in other words, not only of science but of philosophy.

*

I will not try to summarize the book - suffice to say it is about the right and left hemispheres of the human brain.

Further information (and excerpts) are available at http://www.iainmcgilchrist.com/

*

Indeed, although I have been dipping-into and stepping-away-from the book for more than a year, I still keep coming across sections that jump out at me as if I hadn't seen them before.

Today I noticed on page 137:

If one had to characterise the left hemisphere by reference to one governing principle it would be that of division.

Manipulation and use require clarity and fixity, and clarity and fixity require separation and division.

What is moving and seamless, a process, becomes static and separate - things. It is the hemisphere of either/ or: clarity yields sharp boundaries.

And so it makes divisions that may not exist according to the right hemisphere.

Just as an individual object is neither just a bundle of perceptual properties 'in here', nor just something underlying them 'out there', so the self is neither a bundle of mental states or faculties, nor, on the other hand, something distinct underlying them.

It is an aspect of experience that perhaps has no sharp edges.

*

You won't find better quality scientific writing this side of Erwin Chargaff!

And for the sheer number and density of insightful and suggestive points, there is little else in this league.

*

Indeed, The Master and his Emissary is so good that you recognise where the book falls short of timeless greatness (although there is still time for a revised version which might scale this ultimate height).

As it stands, The Master and his Emissary is a brilliant and beautiful set of essays which is not unified due to a reluctance to ground its arguments in the metaphysical. It goes, that is, as far as science can go, and then as far as philosophy can go; but does not take the next step - which would be metaphysics, and indeed an explicit statement of religion.

The solution is pointed-at, implied, but not itself stated; not because a solution cannot be stated, but for whatever reason it is not stated.

It is, as a matter of fact, unstated - or at least not stated here.

*

The book is like a hemispherical dome that lacks its capstone - and therefore the book resembles a series of incomplete arches - each of which (because the dome is incomplete) requires substantial buttressing with the end result that the book needs far more 'building material' (words, evidence) than would be the case were the dome completed and self-supporting.

*

In other words, the component arguments are necessarily elaborated beyond what could potentially be an achievable level of clarity and brevity.

*

However, if The Master and his Emissary had indeed been capped-off with its implicit key metaphysical and religious statement, then it would probably (in these corrupt times) have alienated both publishers and many sympathetic readers.

So it is quite understandable that this was not the case.

Nonetheless, it is a wonderful achievement, especially for the time and place it was published - very much an old style piece of scholarship, written from the heart by a man of exceptional brilliance and erudition who expended two decades of his best efforts on the task. .

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Characteristics of discernment

2011-12-20T07:36:00.000+01:00

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What is the characteristic of a person of discernment: someone who perceives the truth among errors and lies, and is able to reject even the most cunning deceptions on the one hand, and spiritual pride on the other hand?

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Discernment is quantitative, a matter of degree.

Even among Saints and Holy Elders there are degrees of discernment - only the highest and Holiest are infallible in discernment.

*

Persons of great and reliable discernment are not always to be found.

Indeed, such an ability is so rare as to be almost absent in the modern world; we are all prone to appalling lapses of judgement - yet of course we must judge.

*

(No natural means of judgement suffice - for example, although we cannot trust reason because it partial and fallible, neither can we trust gut feelings. Neither is revelation sufficiently plain and specific to be a clear guide to the corrupted soul in times of devious temptation.)

*

Discernment is not an optional extra - it is of the essence; and yet because truth is a middle way and a narrow path there is no default, no safe option.

*

Clearly discernment is not attained by philosophy, nor by science, nor by sensitivity to the feelings of others, nor by arrogance nor hatred.

These negatives are easy and straightforward.

But what is the positive?

*

Discernment is straightforward, but of extraordinary difficulty.

Discernment is attained through Holiness, which is precisely what we lack.

Is that a paradox? No, because it tells us what we must do (non-optionally) and enough about how to proceed.

*

We need to be aware of the need for discernment, of our own lack of discernment, and what is necessary to solve problems of discernment.

We know what not to do (not to do what comes naturally, not to depend on logic, not to take an opinion poll), and we know what we should do (strive for greater Holiness).

Whether we achieve sufficient Holiness to attain necessary discernment is itself a choice; not entirely a choice, but necessarily a choice.

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I am in serious danger of shutting-up about current politics forever...

2011-12-20T07:30:00.000+01:00

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I have been predicting (in blog comments) for the past two years that Obama would not run for a second term as President - that he would prepare an exit. I won't bore you with my reasoning, but I was as sure of this as I have been of anything in current politics. And I made a bet with myself that if I got this wrong, then I would shut-up about politics forever, since it would then be clear either that I knew nothing about the subject, or that it was impossible to know anything about the subject, or both. There is still time, but it certainly looks like my pol pundit days are numbered.

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"Differences in how we make sense of things" - A Jim Kalb comment

2011-12-19T17:14:00.000+01:00

[This comment from Jim Kalb's blog seems worth preserving.]

Liberals justify by reference to what they see as reason—fairness and avoidance of harm. But their vision of those things is religious. It relates to some ideal world rather than the practicalities of this one.

You can see that in the attitude toward HBD. Natural differences that matter among groups of human beings are metaphysically impossible for them. Belief in them is dirty and somewhat uncanny. The EU is another example. It’s not a policy, it’s a metaphysical necessity.

That being so, I don’t think their ideals are really fairness and avoidance of harm. If you take something limited and relative and dependent on facts and circumstances and turn it into a divinized absolute it’s not going to be the same thing any more. Ares and Aphrodite, taken literally as active divine presences, are not the same as war and sexual attraction simply as such.

You’re right that Republicans are a team. Their nationalism, for example, is a matter of rooting for Team

America

. But liberals are a religion. If you’re not a Republican you’re not on their team, but if you’re not a liberal, you’re not a legitimate human being. Is being on a team more of an in-group concern than being a legitimate human being? It’s less a purity concern for sure.

It seems to me that left-wing morality has to do with compliance with an infinitely demanding system of abstract concepts. That’s a purity concern. Among true believers, PC is purity purified. That’s one reason why—as you note—liberals often work very hard to prove their worthiness.

Why do you say liberalism needs the support of overwhelming numbers to triumph? Certainly not prior support. The overwhelming numbers of people can find something to like in almost any political view from Nazism to traditional monarchy to PC liberalism. The point is that they’re not the active factor. That’s why there have been so many different political regimes, each of which has seemed inevitable and overwhelmingly real while it has lasted.

I’d tend to explain why we get one regime rather than another less by differences in psychology, in the sense of desire and motivation, than differences in how we make sense of things—that is, in basic explanatory concepts. Such things are not just for intellectuals any more than grammar is just for grammarians.

So on that view indoctrination would tend to work if it plausibly applies how people generally make sense of things in a particular setting. That’s an obvious reason why PC indoctrination works better than say Calvinist indoctrination among North American middle class whites in the year 2011. If you want Christian indoctrination that works you have to go to the most basic issues and deal with them seriously.

http://turnabout.ath.cx:8000/node/2922#comments

Statistical assumptions are not scientific assumptions

2011-12-19T09:24:00.001+01:00

It is worth noting that frequentist statistics are built on the assumption of no difference between groups (that two groups are assumed to be random samples from a single population).

From this assumption, which has nothing whatsoever to do with reality (and is essentially an historical accident derived from the work of Ronald Fisher on crop yields), we tend to assume there is no difference between groups unless 'proven' otherwise.

*

Yet, in the case of human groups separated by scores of generations, and when looking at traits (such as 'g' - general intelligence and personality) which

1. substantially affect reproductive success, and

2. are substantially heritable - then this assumption of sameness is irrational.

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In other words, it would make more sense, scientifically (as opposed to statistically) to expect to find important differences in cognitive abilities and dispositions (including their magnitude and distribution) between separated human populations.

*

Indeed, that was pretty much always the case in the past - people expected that 'strange' people would be different from themselves - often exaggerating the degree of difference to an absurd extent in travellers tales.

*

We have gone crazily far in the opposite direction and not only expect, but statistically assume that there are zero differences in the mean and standard deviation of traits, and that apparent differences are due to sampling biases - except when this probability is very (albeit arbitrarily) low.

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In practice, as we observe, there is never conclusive evidence to reject the 'null hypothesis' that all human populations everywhere are actually one population varying randomly and apparent differences are due to biased sampling - the null hypothesis can always be saved by ever more attention on real or imagined sampling errors - when people really want to save it.

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And failing to reject the null hypothesis is falsely assumed to be 'proving' no difference - yet it is nothing of the sort. It is merely the default assumption of statistics, which is an arbitrary - indeed non-scientific, assumption.

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(Bayesian statistics claims to overcome this problem of frequentist statistics, but I think it leads to other problems and disagreements. In fact, common sense/ built-in human reason is enough to overcome the problem to the extent that it needs ot be overcome. .i.e The common sense that if things seem to be different, it is reasonable to proceed on the assumption they are different, until proven otherwise. This assumption of difference should not automatically be inverted, as it is with Leftism/ political correctness.)

How much nurturing does faith require? Does society matter?

2011-12-19T07:10:00.000+01:00

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There is an extreme position that all people in all societies have an equal chance of salvation, that the quantity of devoutness is fixed, that there are always about the same number of Saints at whatever time or place in the world.

Such a view is wrong: it denies free will of individuals on the one hand, and it denies that humans are 'in it together' on the other hand.

(It denies co-inherence - mutual in-dwelling.)

*

Christianity places free will and the choice of the individual at the centre of salvation, yet the individual is not isolated but a part of Man, and men are united with each other, and with God by and via Christ.

Our personal choices therefore affects everybody; other people's personal choices affect us.

Good deeds do Good; but evil deeds do evil.

Not merely materially, which is obvious, but transcendentally - in a supernatural way.

*

When a mass of people in a society are devoutly Christian, this aids the others in salvation; but when a mass of people in a society are consumed by pride and are willing servants of evil - this harms the chance of salvation of others.

When many people in a society have made bad choices, have chosen pride rather than the Lordship of Christ, this is not merely a matter of numerous isolated choices, but an accumulating burden of sin.

This burden is not only felt at the level of a society of interacting humans, although it is felt very directly there, but everywhere in the world, and indeed everywhere in the universe.

*

Some societies are therefore better than others, some societies are worse than others - human choice makes a difference and not just to the person making the choice.

In some societies salvation therefore is 'easier', more probable, can reach a higher level of sanctity due to the help of others - however, the flip-side is that in other societies salvation is harder due to the effectiveness and ubiquity of temptations (to selfishness, to pride, caused by the choices of other humans) and because the individual would-be-Christian gets little help from others but instead gets misleading advice, deceptions and distractions.

The Biblical prophecies imply that the burden of sin is accumulative through human history, because the consequences of bad choices cannot be cleansed from this world (at least, not without destroying human choice); and that at some point therefore the world will be brought to an end - probably when the probability of any individual choosing salvation has dwindled to zero or close to zero.

*

In a sense, none of this is any of our business - certainly it is not necessary knowledge, either way we must make the best choices we can in the situation in which we find ourselves.

But - to deny the differences in Christian devoutness in different times and places and types of society is false: it is to damage one's discernment of Good from evil and may be a denial of the co-inherence of each with all.

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Living as a Reactionary Christian - a handbook of strategies and tactics

2011-12-18T09:29:00.000+01:00

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It strikes me that a useful 'book' might be written on this topic - bits of analyses and lists of suggestions.

Comments?

Suggestions?

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Deathly Hallows Part II movie - What is the moral? - Part II

2011-12-18T07:25:00.000+01:00

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I re-watched the movie Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II last week - which confirmed my early view

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/07/moral-message-of-harry-potter-at.html

(i.e. Flawed, but more importantly contains perhaps the most moving sequence of scenes I have ever seen in any movie - viz from the death of Snape up to include Harry's own death and the King's Cross limbo scene.)

*

The HP franchise movie's most serious weakness is their deletion of the deepest, and Christian, moral or message from the books.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/07/soul-in-harry-potter-and-deathly.html

This leaves the movies somewhat incoherent, and lacking in profundity.

*

But watching this time I noticed some attempt to replace the Christian core with a modern secular moral.

This moral is a version of the idea that - while there is no real immortality - and nothing truly survives death, the dead continue to 'live' in the minds' or hearts, of those who loved them.

(Yes, I know that this is nothing more than a play on words, but it is what passes for high minded and inspiring spirituality nowadays.)

*

There seem to be two key moments when this morality is given quite explicitly, and where the text of the novel has been changed.

In the chapter The Forest Again, Harry finds the resurrection stone inside the golden snitch left him by Dumbledore, and recalls from the dead ghostly - but real - images of his parents, Lupin and Sirius, who will accompany him through the forest repelling the dementors.

Harry asks Sirius, "won't they be able to see you?" and in the book Sirius replies no - "we are part of you, invisible to anyone else".

But in the movie, Sirius is given the line: "No, we're here you see" - and on the word 'here' he points a finger at Harry's heart.

*

In the book, Neville runs forward and tries to attack Voldemort and Nagini, and because he is a 'pure blooded' wizard is is asked to join the Death Eaters.

In the book, Neville replies "I'll join you when hell freezes over... Dumbledore's Army!"

In the movie Neville is given a set-piece speech (which made me cringe) in which he delivers what I felt was intended to be the moral:

"Yeah, we lost Harry tonight (pause) But he's still with us - in here!" Pointing to his own heart on the word 'here'.

*

My interpretation of these added and visually/ verbally linked scenes in the movie, is that they were an attempt to provide a secular and non-denominational equivalent for the excised Christian morality - and they were about as effective and convincing as such attempts always are - which is to say, hardly at all...

*

The deficit of discernment

2011-12-17T06:59:00.000+01:00

*

A big problem in the modern spiritual life is the deficit of discernment - our inability to know Truth from Falsehood - to see-through deception.

This deficit is perfectly understandable, considering the weak and shallow nature of modern Christianity; yet it is devastating in this particular time and place, where evil walks in a multitude of disguises, and puts forth a kaleidoscope of temptations.

The spiritual life has mostly been eroded by softness, blurring, laxness - yet the alternative of strict 'ultra-correctness' (the unyielding observation of forms) is often not a solution, since it can too easily be impersonated, and too easily transforms from love to pride.

Perhaps the lack of discernment, and the consequent inability to hold the true middle way, is the single most important spiritual problem of all in the end times when lies come salted with truths, and purposive evil wears the cloak of virtue?

Perhaps if only we could recognise the path, then we would be able to tread it?

Perhaps it is discernment for which we should pray, even above all other gifts of Grace?

*

Charles Williams and co-inherence - a residue of magic?

2011-12-16T15:17:00.000+01:00

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One of Charles Williams most important contributions as a theologian seems to have been to clarify, explain and emphasize the idea of co-inherence - and its related ideas of exchange and substitution.

The concept is that we are members one of another, and with Christ, and therefore can substitute for one another, for example in the exchange of suffering.

As when I agree to take on your anxieties, and your anxieties might be taken on by me - or by a third party; so that we 'bear one anothers' burdens'.

This also links to the taunt of Christ on the Cross - He saved others himself he cannot save" - this is assumed to be a general observation about mankind - to be saved we must save others, and be saved by others.

This makes the main plot of Descent into Hell, and features in the mature theology of He Came Down From Heaven and Descent of the Dove.

But Williams pushed this idea too far, in my opinion.

In Descent into Hell, especially, he detached it from Christian life, and made it a kind of technology - almost a magical therapeutic practice for the alleviation of anxiety and pain.

Williams biographer - Alice Mary Hadfield, says she had a long running disagreement with Williams on precisely this point - the extent to which exchange and substitution could be practiced apart from Christianity: she said it couldn't - he said it could.

This strikes me as a residue of C.W's fascination with ritual magic as a young man, and his decade long involvement with A.E Waite and the 'Golden Dawn' movement.

Perhaps it was things like this which made CS Lewis say in a letter to his brother, tongue in cheek, that for all his sanctity (which Lewis acknowledged and appreciated more than almost anybody) there was something 'combustible' about Williams - the sense that in another era he would have been burned for heresy, and (in a sense...) deserve it!

*

How could humans cope with immortality?

2011-12-16T08:09:00.000+01:00

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Life would be bearable only if cyclical, like Tolkien's primordial unfallen Wood Elves.

Each day the same, no planning, no history, not going anywhere - waking to a day of hunting, eating, singing, love of nature - then sleep.

No ageing nor sickness, no necessity of death - everything governed by instinct and custom.

No sense of the years passing, no accumulation of sorrows and regrets; no big projects, no purpose - just more and more of the same until the (unanticipated) end.

*

A life ultimately non-attached.

No meaning, no purpose - instead absorption.

A non-reflective life, an unaware life.

A life strikingly similar to non-Christian Heaven.

*

Something missing?

Something big missing?

The human bit?

Yes, that's how it seems to me too.

*

To imagine a kind of timeless human perfection is therefore to reveal that to be merely human is fundamentally unsatisfactory, it is intrinsically wretched.

To be human is to be wretchedly incomplete, to be an animal is not to be human; to be truly human entails becoming a god - which (if to be a god is not to be merely an immortal human) requires God.

To be an immortal god is wretched unless in communion with God.

*

Thus human destiny - like it or not, choose it or not.

*

What has the internet ever done for us?

2011-12-15T06:30:00.000+01:00

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One word: distraction.

*

The internet was supposed to be revolutionary: the internet was supposed to deliver (among many other benefits):

Economic growth - a massive boost to economic efficiency.

Reduced travelling - as information was exchanged online - so massive reduction in road, rail and air usage, home working replacing offices and factories etc.

A better informed population, less subject to propaganda and manipulation by the mass media; free self-education replacing physical attendance at schools and colleges, a quantum leap in science and scholarship.

*

All these and more the internet has failed to deliver. It hasn't even delivered a plateau.

IF there were any such effects, they have been swallowed-up by much larger trends in the opposite direction.

Okay, there are lots of conveniences - but it really is stunning how anything so big, so pervasive, so time-consuming could yield up so very, very little.

*

The internet: all means, no end - all process, no product.

*

So the net effect of the internet, overall and on-average, has been:

More of the same stuff.

*

The Orthosphere it is? Do Ortho bloggers and other Ortho people agree?

2011-12-14T16:23:00.001+01:00

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From reviewing the most recent discussion about what 'Christian reactionary' bloggers might call themselves,

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/12/kalbosphere-idea.html

my sense is that Orthosphere (coined by Kristor) seems (to my subjective judgement) have emerged as the 'winner'.

Plus the suggestion from Imnobody that it could be shortened to 'Ortho' as an adjective - as in

"ortho blogs, ortho people, ortho thought, ortho books. It is a new name, which is useful when you construct a new identity."

*

I didn't like the word Orthosphere at first - but just a few days have familiarised it, and it now seems quite natural.

I therefore propose that we go with Orthosphere.

*

Why Pascal's wager failed for me

2011-12-14T07:15:00.000+01:00

*

The Pensees by Blaise Pascal seem to me much the best book about Christianity I have read; although it is hard to believe that I only encountered them in August 2010, so they have not had a chance to withstand the test of time for me.

I first heard of Pascal's Pensees some decades ago in reference to the 'wager' concerning the reality or existence of God; and knowing only this was enough to put me off reading the rest.

*

Because the 'wager' does not work under modern conditions, for people like me - modern society pre-immunizes us against any such arguments.

Perhaps mostly due to the fact that modern man is trained to believe that the concept of the soul is meaningless and there is permanent extinction of consciousness at death - therefore Pascal's wager works in the opposite direction from intended.

The 'safe' option of belief for moderns is therefore selfish, short-termist hedonism - on the basis that moderns only 'know' whether they are happy now and everything else is conjecture.

So Pascal's wager seems to suggest that it is 'foolish' to do anything other than optimize the current, here and now, state of well-being.

*

And because the wager does not work (stands no chance of working), or works in reverse; the fact that the wager is nowadays always linked with Pascal's Pensees serves to neutralize the whole book.

Which is useful for the powers of darkness if, as it seems to me, Pascal's Pensees is the single most important book of the truth of Christianity for modern people.

*

Q: Why do Christians pay so much attention to Lust?

2011-12-13T07:31:00.000+01:00

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A: Because it has been the preferred weapon of modernity, over the past half century.

In opposing Lust, Christians have been dueling the enemy, using a weapon chosen by the enemy.

*

Lust is not a major sin in Christianity, not like Pride; but Lust is a major virtue for modernity - and a stalking horse for the other sins.

The gratification of Lust is used to justify more freedom of lifestyle, and this is used to reinforce Pride - which achieves the rest.

*

Leftism began by promising the mass of people food and shelter.

When food and shelter had been provided to everybody, albeit by capitalism not Leftism, Leftism shifted to promising the mass of people gratification of their sexual desires.

(Of course the primacy of Lust goes back a couple of hundred years among the classes who already had enough food and shelter.)

*

Leftism has emptied human life of all meaning and purpose and left humans isolated and atomized - yet all propaganda is directed against the one and only true solution to this self-created problem.

So distraction has become the primary mode of human existence, and this is where Lust comes in.

*

The distracting power of Lust, and its utter un-realism, has been built-up by modernity to a level where the reality of its psychological operations is so vast and encompassing that it is unbelievable when stated clearly.

Or not so much unbelievable, as humiliating.

(Are we really such pathetic creatures as to be led by the nose with ludicrously fabricated fantasies of Lust? Yes we are. Look around.)

*

Lust powers the modern world.

In our world as it has become, without Lust nobody would get up in the morning, nobody would talk to others, nobody would work, nobody would buy stuff, nobody would have anything to look-forward-to - people would have nothing to do, no reason for doing anything and - much worse - nothing to think about.

Of course Lust is very seldom actually gratified; yet the merest remote possibility of gratification is the most effective of all distractions.

*

Christianity has responded to this tsunami of Lust by trying to hold the line on specific points-of-Law - but with the exponential growth of mass media, mainstream Christianity has been like a pebble rolled by the tide.

Only those devout groups who cut themselves off from the mass media, who are actively hostile to modernity, have resisted.

*

So, the primacy of Lust is a consequence of the decadence that ensued from prosperity; since when it has become foundational to modernity as the primary motivator, Lust is that which lies behind most of the carrots offered by contemporary culture.

And mainstream Christians have been utterly unable to resist Lust because they are addicted to modernity.

Only those religious groups who have explicitly rejected modernity have resisted the primary distraction of Lust; and these are precisely the only organized groups which are now thriving, growing.

*

The West has been crazed by Lust, because Lust is all that it has.

*

The Kalbosphere idea

2011-12-12T07:37:00.000+01:00

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My idea for naming the Christian reactionary blogosphere after Jim Kalb...

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/12/should-christian-reactionary-blogs-be.html

...provoked an interesting but inconclusive and fissile discussion.

Many of the suggestions for names either took the 'Christianity' for granted or ignored it and focused on the political dimension.

But for me this would be unforgivable - Christianity must come first, and must be the foundation of any socio-political views; and the Christianity cannot be assumed, especially not in the 'reactionary' blogosphere which is dominated by atheists (libertarians, nationalists etc).

So, my conclusion is that we should call ourselves...

CHRISTIAN REACTIONARIES!

unless anyone has anything better to suggest?

I have added a highly-selective 'blogroll' on this basis (noting that Daniel is a Christian seeker rather than a convert, as far as I know); and intend to re-label my blog accordingly (I mean as a 'Christian Reactionary' blog) - unless prevented by strong arguments over the next few days...

*

One alternative which I would certainly consider is REACTIONARY CHRISTIAN - on the basis that linguistically this has Christian as primary and reactionary as the modifier.

But, on the other hand, when Christian comes first in the order of words, it will be the first thing which people notice and focus upon.

So, I do not have a strong preference between the two - but CR does seem more easy to say and more memorable than RC.

*

A Charles Williams bleg...

2011-12-11T12:48:00.002+01:00

*

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2011/12/charles-williams-companions-of-co.html

*

What is it to live without sin? What is active evil?

2011-12-11T08:07:00.004+01:00

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I feel that the modern understanding of what it is to live without sin is mistaken.

This mistake means that the very worst sinners feel clean and pure, and react incredulously to any notion that they are faithful and diligent servants of evil such as have seldom been seen before on this earth.

*

A man who lived without sin is not to be defined in terms of a man who objects all true and correct moral laws.

Rather, the man without sin is he who lives at all times in complete communion with God.

*

The correct understanding is only indirectly-related to the modern understanding of sin.

According to the modern understanding of sin, as breaking moral rules, the worst sinner is the one who breaks the most rules, or who breaks the most serious rules.

Therefore, for moderns virtue is measured in terms of behavior - that is in terms of objective, observable behaviour and how it corresponds to the laws of morality.

*

But the proper understanding of sin is mystical: to be sin-less is when the human soul is in continuous communication with God.

And by contrast, sin is not directly about behavior but about the soul being turned-away-from God, thereby by choice being cut-off from God - wholly concerned with the self.

*

Thus the meaning of Pride as the key sin - pride being the choice to prefer one's own will to God's will.

*

The modern secular Leftist elites do not perceive their own state of near-complete enthrallment to sin because they perceive themselves to be obedient to all the important laws of morality (especially after these moral laws have been revised and up-dated by people like themselves).

Modern secular Leftists do not recognize that their sin lies in the Pride of having turned away from God and trusting to themselves alone.

Indeed, modern secular Leftists perceive spiritually advanced Christians (including Christ, the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Saints) as sinful - insofar as they broken the rules of modern morality enshrined in political correctness.

*

This is a kind of ultimate in Pride: to set oneself in judgement over The Saints, the Mother of God and indeed God Himself.

Yet some of these people believe themselves to be Christians - and morally more 'advanced' than the Christians of the past!

*

We are (nearly) all sinners, humanity is wretched and (almost always) turned away from God and deep in Pride; yet sin is compounded, becomes active evil, when propagated deliberately, when propagandized, when subsidized, when enforced.

It is in this sense that the modern intellectual elites: politicians, bureaucrats and officials; lawyers; managers; journalists; teachers... are among the most evil people ever to have lived.

They not merely do evil impulsively, they not merely fail to discern evil, but strategically plan the triumph of evil - which they disguise from themselves and others by framing the world to exclude evil.

(By replacing evil with misery, they can do anything at all - so long as it can be rationalized as tending eventually, many steps down the line, to reduce the sum 'total' of misery.)

These modern creatures who rule the West (nothing like them has been seen before, except as isolated individuals or minute cults) are cut-off from God; they are nihilists (deniers of reality) and they zealously spread their disease.

*

They are so far gone that they find the idea of sin, of evil to be incomprehensible.

The reality of their own near-demonic state of sin is therefore literally incredible to them.

They lack the concepts to understand what they have become: because they have willfully-destroyed these concepts, and are now diligent agents of the destruction of these concepts in others.

*

It sounds bad: it is.

It sounds hopeless: it isn't.

I am describing my former self: repentance is possible no matter how far gone a person may be, it is never too late+.

*

+Strictly, never too late in this world; for so long as the choice can be framed and presented, it is never too late. Consider the 'Good' thief in Luke 23:

³⁹And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us.

⁴⁰But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation?

⁴¹And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss.

⁴²And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.

⁴³And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.

Hymnophobia

2011-12-10T08:18:00.000+01:00

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I don't like hymns - I much prefer a spoken Church service, using the traditional Anglican liturgy.

Obviously, I an wrong about this, in the sense that singing or chanting has always been a major part of Christian worship - in particular the psalms.

I acknowledge that far better Christians than myself have found music a valuable - even vital - element in worship.

And the Orthodox Church has the practise that only singing (not speaking) is permitted in services - although the 'singing' is often chanting a monotone (which I would regard as simply a means of vocally-projecting the words and of preventing vocal fatigue - monotone chant ought surely to be inflected just like ordinary speaking).

So, here I am being completely unreasonable...

*

But while chanting the liturgy and psalms are one thing, singing multiple hymns is quite another.

I really don't want to spend half an a hour of a Church service communally-droning half-a dozen or more multi-verse turgid hymns of vaguely praising sentiment - nor even short cheery hymns.

If I enjoy the music and my singing of it, then this is usually a non-Christian kind of enjoyment - an aesthetic enjoyment (or perhaps the enjoyment of group solidarity, like being in a football crowd).

Indeed, I used to enjoy hymns much more before I was a Christian than since I became a Christian - in fact the music was pretty much the only thing I used to enjoy about going to church; my enjoyment of hymns and the liturgy has been reciprocal, my spiritual life has grown with my hymnophobia!

*

I am backed-up in this hymnophobia by CS Lewis (who fought-against his hymnophobia, but found this difficult) and Charles Williams. Both, like me, preferred to attend the early, short, hymn-free communion or prayer services and evensong (which may be musical - but not usually hymn based) in the Church of England - rather than the main service of the day with its many hymns.

(Incidentally, these short Anglican services often also do not feature any 'sermon' or homily - which can be a valuable point in their favor in the case of politically correct priests.)

I wonder how many people are, like me, put off the whole idea of attending church by associating it with singing hymns and 'worship songs', and assuming that this is the proper focus of things?

*

Whether it is chanted or spoken sonorously, the formal Anglican liturgy (based on the Book of Common Prayer) and composed prayers are properly the focus in the services which I have personally found most valuable - the services are mostly stereotypical (the same every time) although elements change through the Church year.

These services contain the ancient wisdom and eternal perspective which we most need; whereas the improvised prayers, hymns and songs, and sermons are the place - too often - where worldliness has penetrated the Church, and taken over all-but completely.

When there is no ancient liturgy, when the words have been and continue to be changed and 're-translated' (i.e. brought into line with modern secular morality), when the forms and orders of activity are lost (I means elements like the creed, confession, Agnus Dei), when the prayers are topical and focused on utilitarian goals - then the Church is left wide-open to corruption, and has no fortifications for resistance.

And standing around and singing multiple hymns together is merely an off-putting distraction...

*

A step back from the abyss - a topical news post

2011-12-09T18:11:00.000+01:00

*

Regular readers know that I never blog on news items, which is why I feel compelled to mention that England today took one step back from the abyss that is the European Union.

Of course that leaves us just one step away from the abyss, but still, I'm pleasantly surprised... no, more than that, I am astonished.

The question is whether the Prime Minister has repented and this represents the first day of a new era; or whether it is today's step back which he will repent, and for which he will henceforth attempt to atone - in which case it will be business as usual, only more so.

*

Mozart's small operatic ensembles - the heights?

2011-12-09T15:28:00.002+01:00

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Whatever I think in theory, when I am actually hearing some of the duets, trios and small ensembles from Mozart's greatest operas - these seem to me the height of musical achievement.

I am thinking of things like the parts of Act 1 with the three ladies and/or three boys in The Magic Flute, or Papageno and Pamina's duet; or Soave sia il vento from Cosi, or the Letter duet and Act 4 Finale from Figaro...

Of these, above all I perhaps love the little scene where Tamino and Papageno get their flute and bells.

I mean this section - albeit not this performance nor the recording quality:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYHZipQ-wwk

Presumably this says a lot about me! but the lightness, the little orchestral touches and transitions, the harmonization of voices, the simplicity and sentiment, humanity and glimpsed divinity... well, only Mozart could do this; and perhaps this kind of thing is for me a higher achievement than any other in music.

*

Blind spots in the Arts

2011-12-09T12:38:00.000+01:00

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I am very sensitive and discriminating in relation to the literary arts (prose, poetry, drama), and also to music including singing; less sensitive to the visual arts - highly responsive to portraiture and architecture (and landscape); and hardly-at-all responsive to sculpture (Rodin is the one and only sculptor to move me); and I am almost-completely artistically insensitive to 'dance' such as ballet (I might enjoy the music and animal grace and beauty of the dancers - the not the artistry of 'dance' as such).

*

Some people have a *very* specialized artistic sensistivity: Charles Williams lived for poetry and literature but was completely indifferent to the visual arts and even to landscape; and was 'tone deaf' - in other words found music meaningless, could not sing in tune and was unaware that he could not sing in tune.

*

Should Christian reactionary blogs be called the Kalbosphere?

2011-12-08T19:07:00.000+01:00

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I suggest that we Christian reactionary bloggers might call ourselves the Kalbosphere on the basis that James Kalb (currently at Turnabout) is our 'blogfather'.

JK founded View from the Right - currently run by Lawrence Auster and VFR budded-off the Thinking Housewife. There are some ace commenters here too, like Kristor and Alan Roebuck.

Other Christian reactionary blogs that I read regularly - and comment at - include Bonald at Throne and Altar, Proph at Collapse: The Blog, and Daniel at the new blog Out of Sleep (strictly, he is a Christian seeker at present).

We form something of a micro-network within the Kalbosphere, and there may be others?

e.g. Jim Kalb kindly blurbed my Thought Prison book, and it was reviewed on T&A and Collapse, and Daniel's comments helped in writing it.

I am not sure what Jim Kalb would have to say about this idea - and strictly speaking Bonald did not lineally derive from the Kalb-sphere of influence (I don't think).

So maybe they would object...

*

The 'Kalbosphere' name corresponds to the Secular Right paleo-conservative 'Steveosphere' which has grownup around Steve Sailer - such as Dennis Mangan, 'Ron Guhname' at Inductivist (actually he is Eastern Orthodox, not secular), Audacious Epigone, HalfSigma, OneSTDV, Razib at Gene Expression and so on.

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DO NOT READ THIS BLOG - The paradox of Christian reactionary blogging

2011-12-08T16:39:00.000+01:00

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The paradox of Christian reactionary blogging is that the basic ethos of blogging is hostile to the Christian reactionary life.

We blog, in part, for 'company', and to keep each other's spirits up; but the behavior of frequent blogging, keeping-up with blogs, commenting etc is all very much part of the world of mass media and on-line inter-connectivity that is one of the major reasons for that state of affairs which - in our blogs - we lament.

We want (and get) regular, attentive, insightful readers and commenters, yet deep down perhaps we would prefer that they had 'better things to do' - and that we did too!

Perhaps the underlying intention in Christian reactionary blogs is akin to Wittgenstein's last comments in his Tractatus. In paraphrase:

Anyone who understands me finally recognizes my propositions as senseless. When he has climbed out through them, on them, over them; then he must throw away the ladder.

In other words, once the reader 'gets' what a reactionary blogger is saying, he should stop reading that blog!

*

Secular Leftism and brain rot

2011-12-08T12:21:00.000+01:00

*

One aspect of 'things coming to a point' is that everything is becoming connected: beliefs are much more connected and inter-correlated than they used to be and people who are wrong about the main thing are wrong about almost everything.

I can observe that those who continue to hold to Secular Leftism - the face of its evident evils - dishonesty, incompetence, psychosis - are nowadays becoming more and more obviously wrong about everything else.

In the past it was possible, indeed common, for people to have a mixture of wrong and right beliefs; or to be right about the main things but wrong about peripheral things.

Now we perceive that evil - falsity, ugliness, moral-inversion - has spread, permeated-through people's whole minds to render their judgements generally unsound.

Because Leftists have systematically suppressed their discriminatory abilities, they are now rendered incapable of detecting blatant lying, gross incompetence, charlatans, careerists, psychopaths, charm merchants, thugs and hysterics.

The same people who used to cultivate their instincts, develop their hearts, to navigate through the world are now helpless dupes.

Their carefully cultivated inability to acknowledge the obvious has opened their mental doors to wicked, destructive nonsense.

They have trained themselves in habits of abstraction such that - whatever happens - and I mean anything that happens - is almost-instantly re-framed into the narrative of political correctness. The cognitive dissonance lasts only a few seconds....

And this is our ruling elite.

They are now far beyond human help - and will lead us to utter destruction; unless replaced lock, stock and barrel.

*

Things coming to a point

2011-12-07T06:35:00.000+01:00

*

Re-reading Pascal's Pensees on the 'hidden God' (surely one of the profound Christian insights ever put to paper) makes me reflect on the times we live in - and whether God is now more, or less, hidden than in the past - or about the same.

*

I think things are about the same - because although on the one hand Christianity has become much weakened compared with even 100 years ago; on the other hand the spiritual, moral, aesthetic and philosophical pretensions of secular Leftism are not just weakened but utterly exploded.

So there is now no excuse for being a Leftist, its falsity and its evil are there for all to see - in the foreground and in the background, in books and in our daily lives and face to face conversations.

*

While a century, or two, ago the pretensions of atheism, materialism, radicalism, modernism etc. were superficially plausible - now they are not.

Whereas it used to be the case that the nexus of worldly Leftism has some kind of plausibility as a rival 'religion' to Christianity - now it does not.

Now we know that Leftism is a load of toxic waste.

*

Therefore it is an easy matter for a sincere seeker after God to recognize the evil of secular Leftism, and merely by default to take a close look at Christianity; where the answer will be found.

As Pascal makes clear, he who seeks God will find God; but he who does not seek God will not find him. God is still hidden from the non-seeker - as He always has been.

*

Why, then - if Leftism is so obviously evil - are there not more Christians?

And why are so many self-described Christians really Leftists (who fit their 'Christianity' around the imperatives of Leftism - as Leftism 'progresses' so does their 'Christianity').

The answer is simple, the answer is obvious from the above.

*

People know - in as much as such things ever can be known, which is never with absolutely certainty such as to be undeniable - that secular Leftism is evil and psychotic - but... they go along with it anyway; they are too skeptical to to seek God, too proud to humble themselves by repentance; too addicted to distractions, comforts and pleasures to want to rock the boat.

People make their choice.

God is hidden and obvious to about the same extent as always he was - but the choices are different.

God is the same, people have changed.

***

“Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing. The whole thing is sorting itself out all the time, coming to a point, getting sharper and harder. . . .”

(That Hideous Strength by C.S Lewis - p. 283)

*

How a tribal society dealt with a notorious serial killer

2011-12-07T06:26:00.000+01:00

*

From:

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Dawson_-_Australian_aborigines_%281900%29.djvu/91

Among the associated tribes a public executioner was employed to put criminals to death when ordered by the chiefs to do so.

The natives have a vivid recollection of a bloodthirsty savage named Pundeet Puulotong, 'dragger out of kidney fat,' who acted in that capacity, and who was so fond of doing cruel deeds that he solicited the office himself.

He killed his victims with a club called yuul marrang, 'wild hand,' made of quandong wood, and kept for the purpose.

*

Pundeet Puulotong was a great fighting man. On killing one of a neighbouring tribe, he would show himself to the relatives of his victim, and challenge them to spear him. None, however, dared to meddle with him.

On asking members of his tribe how many lives he had destroyed, the reply was that he took one at almost every meeting.

When he was seen approaching a meeting the women wept, as they were certain he would put someone to death before he left.

If he received a scratch, or had blood drawn from him, he would kill some person in revenge.

The old savage grew quite blind and helpless in his old age, and the natives say, that, instead of putting him to death, which they could easily have done, they left his blindness to punish him for his innumerable murders and cruelties.

*

COMMENT: I find it shocking that the tribe did not, apparently, have any way to deal with this sadistic multiple killer. I would have imagined that he could/ would have been executed in his sleep, or surprised and set-upon by a posse. But no. He killed to his heart's content. The tribe just waited until he became decrepit and dependent, and then punished him by not killing him.

*

Show me the asceticism!

2011-12-06T08:15:00.000+01:00

*

I am sick and tired of people who do very well thank you - gain power and usually wealth - from 'good works' - especially those involved 'raising money' for supposedly virtuous causes.

This amounts to no more than extracting resources from others - by various means, some coercive - then redirecting these resources such that the manager of the process gets credit.

Show me an ascetic who does good work - someone who has minimal power and money, and either faithfully monogamous or strictly celibate - only then will I take them seriously.

Only an ascetic deserves acclaim for good works.

Otherwise those high status doers of good works are merely successful parasites.

*

Are complex explanations of political correctness really necessary?

2011-12-06T06:45:00.000+01:00

*

At root - yes. Simple explanations will not suffice.

PC cannot just be explained as expedient careerism - because PC is something new.

Once a system of political correctness had been established, it became expedient for careerists to spout PC; but why did the system of PC become established in the first place?

And, having been established, why did PC not immediately get changed? - given that it is obviously irrational, obviously self-destructive?

The self-loathing craziness of PC is not a subtle thing: it is as obvious as having central London looted and burned for several nights in a row while thousands of police stand by watching and the media conceal the racial identity of the rioters.

Once it is up and running and stable, to be PC is merely expedience; but the creation and sustenance of the sociopolitical framework which defines what is expedient still needs to be explained.

*

Life for women among the Australian Aborigines c1840

2011-12-05T15:40:00.002+01:00

*

From An account of the manners and customs of the Aborigines, by Edward John Eyre, 1845.

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/e/eyre/edward_john/e98m/chapter2.html

*

In the female the average height is about five feet, or perhaps a little under. The anterior part of the brain is more limited than in the male; the apex of the head is carried further back; the facial angle is more acute; and the extremities are more attenuated.

The latter circumstance may probably be accounted for from the fact, that the females have to endure, from a very early age, a great degree of hardship, privation, and ill-treatment.

Like most other savages the Australian looks upon his wife as a slave.

To her belongs the duty of collecting and preparing the daily food, of making the camp or hut for the night, of gathering and bringing in firewood, and of procuring water. She must also attend to the children; and in travelling carry all the moveable property and frequently the weapons of her husband. In wet weather she attends to all the outside work, whilst her lord and master is snugly seated at the fire. If there is a scarcity of food she has to endure the pangs of hunger, often, perhaps, in addition to ill-treatment or abuse.

No wonder, then, that the females, and especially the younger ones, (for it is then they are exposed to the greatest hardships,) are not so fully or so roundly developed in person as the men. Yet under all these disadvantages this deficiency does not always exist.

Occasionally, though rarely, I have met with females in the bloom of youth, whose well-proportioned limbs and symmetry of figure might have formed a model for the sculptor’s chisel. In personal appearance the females are, except in early youth, very far inferior to the men.

(...)

In their domestic relations with one another polygamy is practised in its fullest extent. An old man having usually from one to four wives, or as many as he can procure.

The females, and especially the young ones are kept principally among the old men, who barter away their daughters, sisters, or nieces, in exchange for wives for themselves or their sons. Wives are considered the absolute property of the husband, and can be given away, or exchanged, or lent, according to his caprice.

A husband is denominated in the Adelaide dialect, Yongarra, Martanya (the owner or proprietor of a wife). Female children are betrothed usually from early infancy, and such arrangements are usually adhered to; still in many cases circumstances occur frequently to cause an alteration; but if not, the girls generally go to live with their husbands about the age of twelve, and sometimes even before that.

Relatives nearer than cousins are not allowed to marry, and this alliance does not generally take place.

(...)

Brothers often barter their sisters for wives for themselves, but it can only be done with the parents’ consent, or after their death. If a wife be stolen, war is always continued until she is given up, or another female in her place.

There is no ceremony connected with the undertaking of marriage. In those cases where I have witnessed the giving away of a wife, the woman was simply ordered by the nearest male relative in whose disposal she was, to take up her “rocko,” the bag in which a female carries the effects of her husband, and go to the man’s camp to whom she had been given.

Marriage is not looked upon as any pledge of chastity, indeed no such virtue is recognised.

(...)

But little real affection consequently exists between husbands and wives, and young men value a wife principally for her services as a slave; in fact when asked why they are anxious to obtain wives, their usual reply is, that they may get wood, water, and food for them, and carry whatever property they possess.

(...)

No age is prescribed for matrimony, but young men under twenty-five years of age do not often obtain wives, there are exceptions, however, to this: I have seen occasionally young men of seventeen or eighteen possessing them.

When wives are from thirty-five to forty years of age, they are frequently cast off by the husbands, or are given to the younger men in exchange for their sisters or near relatives, if such are at their disposal.

*

NOTE “The early life of a young woman at all celebrated for beauty is generally one continued series of captivity to different masters, of ghastly wounds, of wanderings in strange families, of rapid flights, of bad treatment from other females amongst whom she is brought a stranger by her captor; and rarely do you see a form of unusual grace and elegance, but it is marked and scarred by the furrows of old wounds; and many a female thus wanders several hundred miles from the home of her infancy, being carried off successively to distant and more distant points.”

*

Women are often sadly ill-treated by their husbands or friends, in addition to the dreadful life of drudgery, and privation, and hardship they always have to undergo; they are frequently beaten about the head, with waddies, in the most dreadful manner, or speared in the limbs for the most trivial offences. No one takes the part of the weak or the injured, or ever attempts to interfere with the infliction of such severe punishments.

Few women will be found, upon examination, to be free from frightful scars upon the head, or the marks of spear-wounds about the body. I have seen a young woman, who, from the number of these marks, appeared to have been almost riddled with spear wounds.

***

COMMENT: It should be noted that the author of this book was writing as an advocate of the Aborigines, and much of the book is taken up with documentation of the abuses and injustices they had suffered at the hands of whites, and ideas for improving their condition.

*

The religious practices of Australian Aborigines

2011-12-05T15:25:00.004+01:00

*

I read two books on Australian Aborigines written in the 19th century, hoping to find contemporary accounts of the 'songlines' - the idea that they were able to navigate across deserts by means of songs which contained the major landmarks in proper order, and also the myths about totem animals and how these landmarks had been formed.

I found no such information nor any reference to problems of navigation in the bush; but there was this curious account of the religious life of Aborigines in the early 1800s, which is consistent with my characterisation of (most, simple, immediate-return) hunter gatherers as 'pre-rational' made in this posting:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/12/hunter-gatherer-agnricultural-modern.html

*

From Edward John Eyre. Journals of expeditions of discovery into Central Australia, and overland from Adelaide to King George's Sound in the years 1840-1 (etc). Volume II. T*W Boone: London, 1845:

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/e/eyre/edward_john/e98m/chapter5.html

The natives of New Holland, as far as yet can be ascertained, have no religious belief or ceremonies. A Deity, or great First Cause, can hardly be said to be acknowledged, and certainly is not worshipped by this people, who ascribe the creation to very inefficient causes.

They state that some things called themselves into existence, and had the property of creating others.

But upon all subjects of this nature their ideas are indistinct and indefinite, as they are not naturally a reasoning people, and by no means given to the investigation of causes or their effects; hence, if you inquire why they use such and such ceremonies, they reply, our fathers did so, and we do it; or why they believe so and so, our fathers told us it was so.

They are not fond of entering upon abstruse subjects, and when they are induced to do it, it is more than possible, from our imperfect acquaintance with their language, and total ignorance of the character and bent of their thoughts upon such points, that we are very likely to misunderstand and misrepresent their real opinions.

It appears to me that different tribes give a different account of their belief, but all generally so absurd, so vague, unsatisfactory, and contradictory, that it is impossible at present to say with any certainty what they really believe, or whether they have any independent belief at all.

***

COMMENT: The examples (see continuation of the above passage) sound to me much like the kind of ad hoc accounts that can be elicited from young children concerning adult topics that hold little interest for them, and about which they have never thought nor been formally taught: the sort of answers reluctantly given to questions which are not understood if an adult presses for some kind of response.

*

Purposive killing - infanticide and euthanasia - among Australian Aborigines

2011-12-05T15:03:00.001+01:00

*

This is a correction to a previous posting, in which I stated that past hunter gatherers would allow new born babies to die of exposure or neglect, and would abandon the elderly, but did not purposefully kill them.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/03/active-killing-versus-letting-die.html

It turns out I was mistaken, according to Australian Aborigines by James Dawson, published in 1881 by George Robertson of Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide and available online:

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Dawson_-_Australian_aborigines_(1900).djvu/7

This is an account of several years collecting oral testimony in the native language by someone who was extremely sympathetic to Aborigines as stated in the introduction:

In recording my admiration of the general character of the aborigines, no attempt is made to palliate what may appear to us to be objectionable customs common to savages in nearly every part of the globe; but it may be truly said of them, that, with the exception of the low estimate they naturally place on life, their moral character and modesty—all things considered—compare favourably with those of the most highly cultivated communities of Europe. ... away from the means of intoxication, and were to listen to their guileless conversation, their humour and wit, and their expressions of honour and affection for one another, those who are disposed to look upon them as scarcely human would be compelled to admit that in general intelligence, common sense, integrity, and the absence of anything repulsive in their conduct, they are at least equal, if not superior, to the general run of white men..

*

[Infanticide]

Large families of children are unusual among the aborigines. However many may be born, rarely more than four are allowed to grow up. Five is considered a large number to rear.

Twins are as common among them as among Europeans; but as food is occasionally very scarce, and a large family troublesome to move about, it is lawful and customary to destroy the weakest twin child, irrespective of sex.

It is usual also to destroy those which are malformed.

Malformations, however, were so rare before the arrival of the white man that no instances could be remembered.

When a woman has children too rapidly for the convenience and necessities of the parents, she makes up her mind to let one be killed, and consults with her husband which it is to be. As the strength of a tribe depends more on males than females, the girls are generally sacrificed.

The child is put to death and buried, or burned without ceremony; not, however, by its father or mother, but by relatives. No one wears mourning for it.

Sickly children are never killed on account of their bad health, and are allowed to die naturally.

*

[Euthanasia]

When old people become infirm, and unable to accompany the tribe in its wanderings, it is lawful and customary to kill them.

The reasons for this are—that they are a burden to the tribe, and, should any sudden attack be made by an enemy, they are the most liable to be captured, when they would probably be tortured and put to a lingering death.

When it has been decided to kill an aged member of the tribe, the relatives depute one of their number to carry out the decision. The victim is strangled with a grass rope, and the body, when cold, is burned in a large fire kindled in the neighbourhood. All his property is burned with him except rugs, weapons, and implements. In this cremation the sons and daughters and near relatives take part; and two or three friends collect the necessary firewood and attend to the fire.

This custom is recognised as a necessity. There is, therefore, no concealment practised with regard to it.

Very often the poor creatures intended to be strangled cry and beg for delay when they see preparations made for their death, but all in vain. The resolution is always carried out.

***

COMMENT:

Reading this book on the Australian Aborigines, and another equally sympathetic account from 1845 -

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/e/eyre/edward_john/e98m/

- was an eye-opener in more ways than one; causing me to revise several beliefs about human nature.

Clearly, the bowdlerisation and sanitation of our knowledge about tribal peoples is far greater than even I had imagined.

*

The pervasive demonic perspective

2011-12-05T07:00:00.000+01:00

*

It is striking that nearly all (but not all) of the mass media output - and also what passes for serious narrative High Art in recent literature, drama, the movies, TV - is written from a demonic perspective.

*

Indeed, this could be taken as a brief definition of 'modernity' in the media - that phenomenon which got a grip in the first decades of the twentieth century, and which finished-off the centuries long traditions of visual arts, classical music and poetry.

*

I have always been aware of this demonic perspective, and always disliked it - but for many years I pushed-down this dislike and forced myself to swallow large doses of demonic modernism and media, because this was supposed to be 'the truth' about the human condition; and because most of the 'best' work in recent art and prestige media was in this style, had this content.

*

In demonic art, the standard by which the characters are judged is worldly: status, power, and pleasure. The successful characters are all evil manipulators, selfish, cruel, insensitive.

Sometimes the whole narrative is peopled by evil characters trying to exploit one another; some succeeding, while others fail and are crushed.

Sometimes there are 'good' characters whose virtue is kindness - these are depicted as weak and self-deluded individuals. They are 'hosts' from whom the evil characters feed.

We feel sorry for these 'goodies', perhaps we despise them, perhaps they disgust us - certainly we do not envy them.

The 'good' characters are the people who cannot see reality, who refuse to see reality; they are those who are preyed-upon.

Thus the demonic perspective: the world as predators and prey.

*

The message?

You are either an envied predator or one of the mass of despised prey.

Therefore, be a successful predator and glory in your success; and if you can't then despair.

*

The sub-text - we are all prey, ultimately.

Even if you succeed as a predator, glorious in your exploitation of others for your own gratification, you will become prey in your turn, become weak and pitiful prey - and so despair.

The ideal of success is to die at the height of your predatory success, unconscious of the future, when most envied and most loathed - therefore, if you have achieved predator-hood then despair - make sure you die soon, before you too become prey.

*

The sub-sub text - life is only about predators and prey, but ultimately it makes no difference because life is short, vile, and everybody dies.

So despair.

*

This is the demonic perspective in which modern Man swims, which underpins media news and soap operas, prize winning novels and award winning movies, which fills the theatres and the galleries.

Is the demonic perspective honest? Is it the product of years of seeking the truth, of exhausting all possible avenues of enquiry?

Of course not! It is merely a miasma breathed-in during adolescence; it is a pose, a lifestyle.

It is the end of seeking the truth, not the product of truth-seeking.

*

Yet the demonic perspective rules the public arena, it is what we are taught and what we consume: it is our catechism: it is pervasive, encouraged - and alternatives to the demonic perspective are low status, dumb, wicked, forbidden, punished...

*

So this is the nature of evil triumphant, merely this; a permanent culture consisting of life seen through the eyes of a demon; a demon for whom only the basest, most selfish motives are real, for whom everything is explicable in terms of eating or being eaten, for whom the ultimate reality is eternal suffering alleviated only by sadistic torturing of other demons.

And this milieu induced not by argument or demonstration, but by reiterated depiction: by millions and billions of instances of the demonic perspective, iterated day by day, minute by minute, apparently each confirming and confirmed by the innumerable others, all drilling us in the ultimate lie that this is the truth: seek no further: suck it up and despair.

*

The stages of human life

2011-12-04T07:17:00.000+01:00

*

Childhood (youth is a modern invention), Maturity, Middle age, Elderhood - then death...

The stages of life make it possible for humans to live in earth:

to become human (by the childhood stage, with its development and education)

to be productive and reproductive (in the middle two stages)

to become less worldly and more spiritual (in the second half of life).

*

Death makes salvation possible - without death a creature like a human and with free will would be damned, sooner or later; and to have free will is intrinsic to humanness.

*

Imagine: who could remain uncorrupted if they were a perpetual modern teenager, subject to the impulses and temptations of the typical modern teenager, for eternity?

Just as well we age, just as well we die.

*

Some living persons to whom I am very grateful

2011-12-04T07:15:00.000+01:00

*

Hieromonk Damascene

Walter Hooper

Verlyn Flieger

Peter Kreeft

Rupert Sheldrake

Tom Shippey

Christopher Tolkien

To them all: Thank you.

*

A note on rabbits, political correctness and divine providence

2011-12-03T08:43:00.001+01:00

*

I started thinking-out a Watership Down type of fable, about a strain of mutant rabbit which limited its own reproduction in favour of 'industrial' activities that raised the standard of living; and where this disposition was combined with a compulsive altruism; such that the surplus product was shared with any mutant rabbits who cared to come and ask - and how this led to an horrific collapse of the warren...

And so on...

*

It was (obviously!) meant as an allegory of modernity, and how the particular combination of reproductive suppression and altruism was even-more-rapidly self-destroying than either would be on their own.

And how the psychological factors which led to reproductive self suppression were themselves amplified by the consequence of that psychology; how modernity creates more of itself.

*

Then I got to thinking that this could either be explained in terms of natural selection - of the weeding-out of deleterious genes (i.e that moderns are essentially a lower fitness mutant strain); or in terms of divine providence - like those Old Testament stories of wicked societies which get worse and worse yet still refuse to repent, until they are overwhelmed by catastrophe and slaughtered or enslaved.

*

It is weird in the extreme to see this scenario unfolding relentlessly, step by step, and sustained not so much by ignorance as by self-blinding.

It is things like this which seem to require the operation of purposive evil in the world (if we did not already know this from divine revelation).

*

And the greatest triumph of purposive evil is surely that the self-destroying society finds the concept of purposive evil laughable, infantile, embarrassing or itself evil; and regards this attitude as evidence of their enlightenment and intelligence, their superiority over all previous ages.

*

The fires are lit, the fuel is being loaded on them, the conflagration builds, the defenders are bound and gagged, all exits are sealed.

*

Paradigm shifts

2011-12-03T08:12:00.000+01:00

*

A paradigm is a metaphysical system - it is what frames experience and observation, makes sense of experience and observation.

Therefore, experiences and observations have no effect (no necessary effect) on paradigms.

*

Therefore, there is no point in using experiences or observations (data, reasoning) to attempt to change a paradigm, and two people arguing from different paradigms are either engaging in a game - a pastime; or else in a kind of warfare on behalf of 'higher values' - typically intended to evangelize any onlookers, to convert the audience to one's own view by discrediting the enemy (which is why arguments across paradigms rapidly become ad hominem attacks on the morality and truthfulness of the opposition - whether directly attacking the person and their motivations, or indirectly attacking them by inference) .

*

Higher values are those goods which determine the choice of paradigm.

Arguing from shared higher values can change a paradigm, regardless of the experiences and observations - since experiences and observations are simply re-interpreted in the light of a new paradigm.

*

The most typical higher value is moral - Leftism has suceeded in shifting many paradigms by appealing to the Leftist morality of kindness (reduction of worldly suffering).

Another higher value is truth - although this was never very popular it did once rule philosophy, then later science; however, it now seems to have become all-but extinct.

Another higher value is beauty - although this was never very popular it did once rule the High Arts (painting, music, poetry), however, it now seems to have become all-but extinct.

*

A false paradigm is a free-spinning cog in the universe: detached from articulation with reality.

When a paradigm is wrong this is not revealed by anything so distal and exact as 'evidence' but by a very proximate and basic lack of coherence; a lack of coherence which cannot be linked directly to its metaphysical cause.

What happens is disorientation, an accumulation of incomprehensible and inexplicable fundamental phenomena, then collapse of the whole thing.

Followed, one hopes, by a new and better paradigm.

*

Paradigms don't reform, they are destroyed - either by self-destruction and/ or by replacement (aided, or not, by self-destruction).

A better new paradigm will greatly reduce incoherence; yet - one can only arrive at a new paradigm via a path which traverses utter chaos; the new and better country can only be reached via a path which leads through the land of no paradigm.

*

Or, to change the metaphor, the old paradigm must be destroyed before the new can be built on the same ground.

*

A modern Diogenes

2011-12-02T15:25:00.000+01:00

*

If ever a real, effective and (on the whole) Good leader emerges in the West, I think they will break all the taboos which shackle the mainstream political Right.

They might seem (they might actually be) a bit crazy, unpredictably unpredictable, shockingly rude to those whom they oppose.

They will seem to the ruling elite (and probably will be) relatively unintelligent, simplistic or at least uneducated.

They will not care about their mistakes and will never apologize to their enemies.

They will be un-corruptable because indifferent to comfort, safety and status.

A political equivalent of the Orthodox Holy Fool; a modern Diogenes.

*

Hunter-gatherer, Agricultural, Modern - the three types of society

2011-12-02T07:44:00.006+01:00

*

I got from Ernest Gellner the division of human societies into these three categories.

And it seems that Christianity, and indeed most types of religiousness especially monotheism are most associated with the middle type of society, the agricultural: herders, and especially farmers.

The most religious, in the sense we understand religiousness, are those in Agricultural societies; H-Gs are something else, Moderns are anti-religious.

*

Complexity goes H-G, Agric, Modern: so does capability and (potential) power.

Agriculturalists are rational; H-Gs are pre-rational; Modernists are post-rational.

Happiness/ pleasure goes H-G (highest) to Agric (lowest). (This is why Agrics so often try to escape into Modernity.)

*

In perspective and organization: H-G is cyclical; Agric is static; Modern is evolutionary.

*

In temporal focus: H-G is the present; Agric is the past; Modernity is the future.

The focus of time: H-G is the days; Agric is the seasons; Modern is the minutes and the millennia.

*

In terms of incentives: H-G is custom; Agric is coercion; Modern is bribery.

Spiritually H-G is immanent - animistic - maybe totemistic, locates gods in nature; Agric includes monotheisms and creator God located outside nature; Modern locates god in humans - i.e. nowhere.

*

H-G is pre-Good - non-moral, non-aesthetic, non-truthful; things just are obvious, necessary, how it is done.

Agric is in pursuit of The Good - Truth, Beauty and Virtue in Unity. Primary virtues are courage, loyalty, honour.

Modern is the anti-Good. The only primary virtue is kindness, the reluctance personally to inflict suffering here and now (except to prevent other suffering of someone or group more important).

*

It seems inescapable that Man is a creature of Agricultural society, archetypal Man is a farmer of some type.

Agriculturalists seem to have least pleasure, but most religiousness, most rationality: they are un-worldly, unkind - orientated to life beyond life.

It seems inescapable that Hunter-Gatherers strike us as something less than human, less than moral, less than truthful - simply unconcerned by such matters - immersed in instinct and the here and now, doing what is needed or relaxing, regarding life as a cyclical flux of transforming souls and energies - unconcerned about where it came from or where it is going. Just being. Much like animals, not-much like people.

It seems inescapable that moderns strike us as something other than Men, post-Men, trying to escape from being Men.

Moderns are transhumanists (unwittingly, most of the time) wanting to escape from the pain and alienation of Manhood into... something else. Not wanting to return to the child-like state of H-Gs, but to 'evolve' beyond the tragic unworldliness of Agricultural-Religious man.

*

H-G, Agric; Modern - Pre-Man, Man, post-Man.

*