Comp Lit versus Comp Mus: Literary genius versus the "language" of music

I don't think that we can really appreciate literary genius outwith out own - high level - language ability. The field of "comparative literature" is, in this sense, somewhat bogus. 

As an historical example; the greatness of Shakespeare was discovered by German critics of the 1700s, and the British learned from them; but I don't think the Germans were really appreciating Shakespeare, because they didn't "get" the poetry. 

At any rate, the main reason the German critics appreciated Shakespeare was that they regarded him as a kind of primitive natural genius - a high level sort of idiot savant who spontaneously expressed the folk soul of his race. 

This evaluation is essentially false; but it is exactly the kind of mistake made by people who go beyond their linguistic competence. It was the kind of error that made an extremely high European (and American) reputation for the Ossian writings of James Macpherson. 

In essence, Comp Lit entails a type of "projection" - of reading-into the author what is wanted to be found there. 

Of course this sort of misunderstanding can be valuable in various ways - it can even be fuel for the work of a genius (creative misreading is a real thing). 

Yet there is an ineradicable problem when people try to discuss and rank world historical greatness across languages and cultures; and pretend to be able objectively to compare (say) Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, and Tolstoy...

 A few people may have the linguistic ability genuinely to attempt this; but it is not likely that these same individuals also have the needful literary capacity. And yet there are reams of comparative writings on these authors. 

Translations are at best re-creations - especially when it comes to poetry; and that isn't the same thing as the original. 

The classical tradition of music does, within limits, seem to be more naturally and spontaneously international than this. 

It is, at least, possible genuinely to appreciate and validly to compare the European (and Russian) composers back into the Renaissance. So it is quite normal and effortless to appreciate and compare Monteverdi, Purcell, Bach, Beethoven, Liszt, Debussy, and Tchaikovsky. 

The limit of valid comparison is more at the level of musicality and experience/ knowledge - rather than a problem with the language of music. 

This is presumably why there has been no such thing as "comparative music" which is analogous to "comparative literature" - Comp Mus is too easy and obvious and valid to require an academic apparatus.

But if "the language of music" is far more international and cross-cultural, then it is also much less of a language - if indeed it is a language at all. 

We cannot really express what it is about music that it says - whereas we can (to a significant extent) summarize writing by other writing, words being the major medium of communication. 

But we cannot summarize music by other music (or by writing); we cannot "translate" a piece of music!  

So, to the degree that music is international it seems to achieve this by its being non-propositional - by music being "an aesthetic experience" (or, at least, an emotional manipulator) rather than a meaning-carrying medium.

Therefore; Comp Lit is a kind of semi-deliberate self-delusion! 

More a matter of reading-into, than of reading. 

But an activity that can be personally fruitful, a source of fuel and direction for personal development; and there is plenty of genuinely interesting stuff to think and say about such comparisons, and the process and quality of translation. 

However, Comp Mus is of interest only to specialized (mostly professional and paid!) musicologists and historians - most music lovers will go direct to the music, and appreciate it (or not), without any demand for an interpretative apparatus. 

It is just Too Easy to be interesting!  

A case of what you gain on the swings, you lose on the roundabouts? 

Dylan Thomas's prose

Dylan Thomas

I was introduced to the work of Dylan Thomas at exactly the right moment - which was that post-Lord of the Rings era, after I first had felt the impact of major literary greatness, and began to seek more. 

The medium was a one-man-show in Bristol by David Ponting, a dental patient of my Father's, who went on to portray Thomas hundreds more times through his life, and all over the word. 

David Ponting

As I recall it, the show was in a small and intimate theatrical venue; perhaps at the Old Vic Theatre School* or somewhere in Bristol University (where I think Ponting worked). It was a biography using quotations from Thomas's poetry and prose works, mainly; and Ponting shifted between narration and acting the role of Thomas. 

After this I read a good deal of Thomas - perhaps all of his stories and some articles and essays, nearly all of which I liked a lot. 

I also tackled the poems, where my appreciation is more varied and selective. I do not much enjoy his early poems, and find "Do not go gentle" to be highly aversive in meaning. 

Bu several others I rate highly, and my absolute favourite (and one of the best poems ever, for me) is the second last published in the collected poems: Fern Hill. 

This is the one that starts "Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs" and ends "Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means/ Time held me green and dying/ Though I sang in my chains like the sea."  

But it is Thomas's prose that has had the biggest impact on me.  

He wrote wonderfully well about middle-late childhood and adolescence. Some of the pieces are bittersweet (like life) such as several stories in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog - including "Who do you wish was with us?" (read here by the magnificent Philip Madoc). 

Thomas wrote some of the most completely-enjoyable and perfectly-made examples of short humour I have encountered: such as A Child's Christmas in Wales and The Outing (originally titled "A Story". The short prose form most suited his particular genius - and when he wrote consecutively at greater length (such as Under Milk Wood) there get to be dull patches and a sense of contrivance - in between the marvels.

How deep was Dylan Thomas - was he more than a supreme wordsmith and sentimentalist? I think he was; I think he was one of the greatest 20th century writers; because he understood and memorably expressed both the delights and the tragedy of life. 

This is why Thomas always has spoken powerfully to so many serious "general readers" beyond the professional and the academic - like the many thousands, all over the world, who saw David Ponting's show, over several decades.. 

Dylan Thomas's actual life (as told in Paul Ferris's biography, and in stark contrast to the mass media propagated "legend") was badly marred by immaturity, dishonesty, selfishness, and sheer self-destructiveness. 

But underneath and fundamentally is evident a strongly religious conviction and aspiration, a cosmic perspective - which both frames and permeates even his comic writings. God is nearly always a hidden presence - even when unmentioned. 

The opening of: "Who do you wish was with us":

Birds in the Crescent trees were singing; boys on bicycles were ringing their bells and pedalling down the slight slope to make the whirrers in their wheels startle the women gabbing on the sunny doorsteps; small girls on the pavement, wheeling young brothers and sisters in prams, were dressed in their summer best and with coloured ribbons; on the circular swing in the public playground, children from the snot school spun themselves happy and sick, crying 'Swing us!' and 'Swing us!' and, 'Ooh! I'm falling!'; the morning was as varied and bright as though it were an international or a jubilee when Raymond Price and I, flannelled and hatless, with sticks and haversacks, set out together to walk to the Worm's Head. 

Striding along, in step, through the square of the residential Uplands, we brushed by young men in knife-creased whites and showing-off blazers, and hockey-legged girls with towels round their necks and celluloid sun-glasses, and struck a letterbox with our sticks, and bullied our way through a crowd of day-trippers who waited at the stop of the Gower-bound buses, and stepped over luncheon baskets, not caring if we trod in them. 

'Why can't those bus lizards walk?' Ray said. 

'They were born too tired,' I said. 

We went on up Sketty Road at a great speed, our haversacks jumping on our backs. We rapped on every gate to give a terrific walkers' benediction to the people in the choking houses. Like a breath of fresh air we passed a man in office pin-stripes standing, with a dog-lead in his hand, whistling at a corner. 

Tossing the sounds and smells of the town from us with the swing of our shoulders and loose-limbed strides, half-way up the road we heard women on an outing call 'Mutt and Jeff!' for Ray was tall and thin and I was short. Streamers flew out of the charabanc. Ray, sucking hard at his bulldog pipe, walked too fast to wave and did not even smile. 

I wondered whom I had missed among the waving women bowling over the rise. My love to come, with a paper cap on, might have sat at the back of the outing, next to the barrel; but, once away from the familiar roads and swinging towards the coast, I forgot her face and voice, that had been made at night, and breathed the country air in.

* I recently discovered an ancient programme from a performance at attended of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing; acted by students at the Old Vic theatre school c.1974-5; in which the non-speaking part of a spear carrier was done by a certain Peter Postlethwaite. Everybody has to start somewhere...

"I must create a system", said William Blake... But systems are never Good - and yet...

"I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's." 

So said William Blake - and he did; he created an idiosyncratic and incomprehensible system of assumptions, archetypes, and analogies; as expounded in the very long and obscure "prophetic" books.  

William Blake - 1757-1827 - lived at the very beginning of the first Romantic era; so he was among the first to experience and express the inner need to escape from the toils of the already-existing systems of knowledge. 

And surely he was right? Surely there is no tyranny more complete than that of a system of thinking, a religion, an ideology? 

But it is apparent that creating one's own system is not an answer - not even to oneself. 

The creating of a new system is, indeed, a creative activity; but once the system has-been made... Well, then it really is just another system.

What happened with Blake has happened innumerable times since. Nowadays, almost everybody experiences the oppression of the system; yet among those who desire and are determined to escape it, and make their won system - the process ends in... just-another system. 

It happens even to creative geniuses such as Joseph Smith, HP Blavatsky, Rudolf Steiner... They start out with exciting and apparently liberating spiritual experiences and insights; but end-up with ludicrously-complicated and vast systems. Systems that their followers are supposed to learn and obey; in a way that never applied to the originators of those systems, while they were originating them. 

In sum; those who themselves successfully follow Blake's advice and create a system to avoid enslavement by another-man's system; have merely created another system. And the new system them process to enslave first of all its originator; so we see the creative genius struggling to impose his system on himself! And then... anyone else who chooses to follow the founder. 

So that the creative genius becomes merely a leader -  a bureaucrat of the new system; and his followers merely functionaries of the new system; and/or corrupt and/ or careerist manipulators, who try to use the system for their own this-worldly benefit.   

The same trajectory applies to movements of renewal and awakening within the stale and empty forms of established religions. 

At first the founder of the movement is creative, and the process of making a system is exciting, enlivening... 

But to the extent that this is successful, the system crystallizes; and presses upon any individual; crushing, and incrementally killing, the soul. 

It seems that we follow the same loop over and again. We recurrently hope, and may believe, that Goodness can be captured in a system: Goodness can be made-into a system.

And either that the latest system has finally succeeded in capturing Goodness; or else that some old system has never yet been properly tried, but would capture Goodness is properly implemented. 

People are temporarily energized and motivated; by trying to develop and impose their system - believing that This Time they have got-it-right...

That this time, this system really will made this world a better place, if only people would do it. 

But it never happens; and it never can happen - because systems are the problem. 

And yet (as Blake saw, so long ago), we must have a system; we can't avoid them. There is no alternative in this life and world as it actually is - which is why creative pioneers always end-up with just another system. 

The situation is that what we most-want and most-need - is not possible in this mortal life and on earth. 

Is life, therefore, forever and inevitably a tragic paradox? 

Or; is what we want and need possible to all of us who understand the problem - but someplace else: maybe after death, and in Heaven?

This seems to be a problem well-worth solving; seeking the answer to which is an activity well-worth our best and most serious effort. 

By prolonged and intensive effort; we can enhance our powers, but we cannot make ourselves better people

St Paul realized that his being a brilliant orator, high-adept, and genius were ultimately irrelevant to salvation

We are much inclined to believe that people can (and should) improve themselves by prolonged and intensive effort. In short; that strong and sustained will, properly directed, leads to better people. 

Indeed, for most people, now and in the past; this is almost a definition of "religion" - redirecting our will, training and implementing our will.  

And when people are not getting better; the answer is therefore intensification of willed-effort across a longer span of time.

I personally underwent, in accordance with my will, two prolonged and intensive efforts at self-transformation in search of new abilities: first in medicine, secondly as a scientist. 

The years-long and immersive training as a doctor had many effects on me; and I developed many abilities. But there were costs. My personality was somewhat distorted and considerably hardened; and I became prone to be negatively-motivated by the group ethos, especially by a nagging sense of guilt - that lasted several years, even after I ceased to practise as a doctor. 

The years of training as a scientist also developed new aptitudes and habits, especially in the realms of thinking. I became not just able, but also almost compelled, to adopt explicit and few assumptions; stick-to and follow-through clear and transparent lines of reasoning from them; and to exclude all other factors that were not part of the "model". 

This was a deep change, and it made me a pretty good scientist; but was bad for me as a person, overall - at least until it was understood and contained. Because it was a deliberate but also compulsive form of self-blinding.  

In sum; the application of will in a prolonged and intensive training led, in both medicine and science, to functionality and power in a this-worldly sense; but were spiritual dead-ends that impaired me in significant ways as a person. 

I believe that exactly the same applies within the realms of spirituality and religion. 

I mean that when people pursue their religion by prolonged and intense training, by exercise of will (for example in the training and initiation of a priest or monk, or the leading of a rigorous, devout, or holy life) - the result can certainly be enhancements of of the mind in accordance with will; a transformation of personality; an increase of ability, of power...

But the outcome of any sustained and focused exercise of our conscious will, is also a degree of spiritually-negative distortion of our nature.

We may delude ourselves otherwise; but this becomes obvious if we can spiritually evaluate other people, and how observe the ways they are changed by prolonged and intensive effort in accordance with their conscious will-power. 

   

This was an insight of St Paul; who recognized that he himself had been impaired by the effects of his prolonged and intensive (and high-level) initiation into Priesthood. 

Paul realized - indeed he knew, from experience - that Men could not be improved in their spiritual quality by an exercise of will...

That no matter how much we wanted and strove to become better, and now matter how genuine was this desire and effort; we are unable to accomplish this.

For Paul; this was a great insight into the nature of reality, the nature of what Jesus needed to do to help us (help genuinely and qualitatively) - and also a revelation of what Jesus actually did: 

With Jesus there was not (ultimately false) promises of positive personal transformation and enhancement; achievable by following his new prescription of attitude and activities; and rewarded by salvation... 

What Jesus offered was not a new (and better!) sort of life and mind therapy - not even a spiritual therapy; but something altogether different. 

I think Paul saw vividly the limitations of human will and effort; probably because he had himself first accomplished so much by his own will and effort, but then recognized (in a flash) that all this was irrelevant to what Jesus had done for us. 

But this truth is a slippery insight: hard to keep a-hold-of (indeed, Paul often drifted from it), such are the advantages of the kind of worldly enhancements and satisfactions we may achieve from applying our will-power in a sustained and focused way.

In sum: Training and initiation may certainly be useful in this life and world; but such achievements do not and cannot make us better people, or better followers of Jesus - and, indeed, most often our transformation and enhanced aptitude will function as a snare, a distortion, and a distraction.

    

Yuzvendra Chahal returns: It's the Indian Premier League again!

"Yuzi" Chahal's unique celebration after taking a hat-trick (three wickets in three balls) in last year's IPL 

It is the IPL again - the Indian Premier League; which means the highest overall standard of T20 cricket in the world; with a match (sometimes two) for us to view every day, and for many weeks. 

The team I have supported recently is the Punjab Kings, who come from the north (including several Sikhs in the team) and play in one of the most beautiful Test Match grounds in the world: Dharamshala, nestling beneath the Himalayas:

 

There is something about the atmosphere and camaraderie of PBKS that I like, and several players - including my current favourite: Yuzvendra "Yuzi" Chahal. 

Chahal is something of a legend, having taken more wickets in the IPL than anyone else; and having won the coveted "Purple Cap" in 2022 for the highest number of wickets in a season (27 wickets in 17 games, bowling a maximum of four overs per game). 

He usually looks very un-healthy - rather like an emaciated and renegade "street person" - being very short, gap-toothed, extremely underweight, and with many tattoos. 

Yet he is respectably bespectacled off the pitch, and was an India youth international chess player. 

So Chahal is that best kind of of all good cricketers; a vivid and unique character; who I suppose to have the high intelligence/ low conscientiousness traits that often go-with creativity, and maybe a touch of genius.      

But the main reason I like Yuzi, is that he is a master of that most difficult and entrancing of cricketing crafts: leg-break, wrist-spin bowling. 

Yuzi has such command of varieties of pace, length and line - plus direction and degree of spin; that he is able to bowl six different deliveries per Over - the ball landing pretty-much where and how he wants. 

When he is bowling well (as at present); each of these deliveries is individually and psychologically-tailored to confuse or deceive the specific batsman Chahal is facing - a batsman who, in T20 cricket, is under constant pressure to score quickly. 

Thus cricket becomes a mind-game, the bowler striving to out-think and anticipate the batsman; and each Over a mini-drama of character - and a microcosm of Life. 

The unacknowledged genius of simple breakthroughs: the wheel, the arch, the bottom buttonhole on shirts...

 

If I look back on the technological breakthroughs of my life, and reflect on the genius required to make them; none are more impressive than the bottom buttonhole of shirts. 

I mean, of course, the idea of rotating the bottom buttonhole by ninety-degrees compared with those above it - to make an horizontal slit, instead of vertical.

The functional benefit is qualitative and decisive - a problem utterly solved: bottom shirt buttons used to come undone all the time, nowadays they never do!

The simplicity of the idea is simply stunning! No technological breakthrough was required - the horizontal buttonhole is pure concept: like the wheel or the arch. 

And like all the most fundamental inventions; as soon as discovered, it could be - and was - copied everywhere, and by everyone. 

The idea was simple, the method had always been possible: yet it took an unsung, indeed unknown genius to "see" this for the first time, after centuries of blindness.

 

We live in a world shaped and dictated by invisible subsidies

In the old days, a King would grant a favoured vassal a legal monopoly on the provision of some sort of goods or services; but nowadays the rulers inject invisible subsidies - at the early stages, and for many years, to ensure the success of those corporations that they wish to establish as a part of the totalitarian system. 

These vast subsidies are concealed by fairy-tales about how mega-corps were founded by a rag-tag band of eccentric college dropouts who had a bright idea, working from their Mum's front parlour. 

They then launched some tiny start-up that (somehow) made no money for many years; yet (somehow) managed to expand more and more, recruit more and more people, and (because their service was so incredibly cheap (or, amazingly, provided "free" at point of use!)...

And eventually these supposed genius slackers (somehow) ended-up with a large-majority market-share in an enormous new business...

At which point they (suddenly!) become one of the biggest, wealthiest, most powerful corporations in the history of the world - and dictate to nation states and international organizations alike.  

Such is the immense power of invisible subsidy. 

The artistic genius of Buddy Christ

It is possible some of my readers do not know that remarkably... memorable image of our Saviour "Buddy Christ" - which was a briefly glimpsed statue, peripheral to the plot of a rather mediocre 1999 film called Dogma. 

Such is the genius of this movie prop that it has since become a lasting cultural phenomenon.

 

Francis Berger and I try to analyse the greatness of this icon in the comments to a post at his blog; which is primarily about another (for rather different reasons) striking image of Jesus:

 

What is the IQ of "AI"? Answer: None at all

I don't go looking for trouble, so I had not realized until now that people are confidently saying that such-and-such an "AI" has some particular level of IQ, apparently as measured by the program's performance in some or another Intelligence Test... 

From this is inferred that such-and-such an "AI" has a measured intelligence in (say) the top 10%, or 5%, or 0.01% of the UK population, or whatever... 

From which it is stated as a solid objective fact that "AI" is already at "genius level" IQ and will soon surpass all human capability...

After which comes various pseudo-concerned hand-wringings of the plight of human beings in this world where "AI" has inetellectual mastery; or else a techno-triumphalism asserting that humans must now "make way for the rule of machines" etc. 

But this is utter nonsense. 

That it is nonsense really ought to be obvious*.

If people can't realize this, then I'm afraid they are putty in the hands of those who strategize to destroy us - worse, they are complicit in their own proximate degradation and ultimate damnation.

I feel embarrassed at having to explain (and it is seldom possible to explain the really obvious); but here goes...

"AI" has no "IQ", because it has no intelligence.

None At All. 

Computers don't have intelligence. 

It is reasonable, and has been done, to measure using IQ tests (specially devised) the comparative intelligence of chimpanzees, or dogs, or other animals - because animals are living beings, and beings have intelligence...

But not computers, because computers don't have intelligence. 

Intelligence (i.e. "general intelligence" or "g") is an inferred underlying attribute behind all cognitive abilities - and IQ tests infer this from one or a range of cognitive tests used to put people into a rank order - to which the IQ number is applied on the basis of an assumed normal distribution. 

The test is not the intelligence, it is just a way of ranking the intelligence among beings with intelligence. 

The IQ test score does not mean anything at all, of itself....

After all, if a person had been provided with a cheat sheet containing all the answers to an IQ test, then the test would would not be measuring intelligence, would it?

Correct answers are not the ability, are they? 

An "AI" doing an IQ test is just an elaborate cheat sheet.

Computerized cheating to provide the right answers to a cognitive test is not intelligence. 

The validity of an IQ test as a measure of intelligence depends on the fact that the person (or other being) doing the test is actually working it out, by using their intelligence-correlated cognitive abilities.  

Computer mechanisms for answering IQ test papers have nothing to do with intelligence - computers don't think; they are nothing-but cheat-sheets when it comes to intelligence testing. 

The only intelligence involved in "AI"-cheats on IQ testing; is that of humans; who are needed to provide the computer with the right answers - and programmers who engineer the algorithms for matching the right answers to the test questions. 

+++

*I mean that when people are claiming that current "AI" has very high, or above possible, "intelligence" this is a stark reductio ad absurdum - at least for someone capable of understanding the world spontaneously from-themselves and directly-known (rather than through distorting lenses supplied by the totalitarian Establishment).  

Bernard Shaw - the one volume definitive biography by Michael Holroyd (1997)

Bernard Shaw was often silly, childish and reckless to the point of breaking stuff and causing injuries (especially driving a car) - here he insisted being photographed as Rodin's "Thinker" while being sculpted by that great artist (unfortunately the resultant bust was mediocre*). 

For a couple of weeks, several hours per day, I have been reading Michael Holroyd's 1997 single volume condensation of his previously-published four volume biography of Bernard Shaw.  

It took me a long time. Even greatly shortened, this was one of the biggest biographies I have read all-through. Another reason for my slowness is that Shaw's life, or at least his adult life, was so complex, fascinating, and varied. 

Also, I (like most people) find Shaw's character extremely odd, inconsistent - in fact incoherent.

He was sometimes the kindest most considerate and helpful of people - genuinely saint-like in behaviour (including keeping secret the vast scale of his gifts and assistance). He could be almost paralysed with horror by the contemplation of cruelty and suffering, in reality or imagination.  

At other times, especially when wearing his persona of GBS; Shaw was himself, and advocated, a calculated hard-hearted indifference to well-being and life that was a glorification of cruelty and unkindness. 

This can be explained by thinking of Shaw as an extreme version of the Leftist (or Liberal) ethic that regards suffering as the worst thing in life and therefore the elimination of suffering as the primary value; to the point that mass deployment of suicide and humane killing become imperative, and a moral necessity. 

In this sense, as in others; Shaw was in the vanguard; because this perspective is nowadays mainstream and officially endorsed - although very few are honest enough to state it explicitly. 

I have been reading Shaw since my early teens. Back then, I thought that, although he persistently pushed some silly and false notions; Shaw was right about most of the most important things; and I modelled some of my own main ideas and aspirations on his work - at least in some moods, and to some extent.  

Nowadays, by contrast, Shaw seems to be fundamentally wrong about most important things, as well as having multiple very annoying or self-indulgent attributes! 

Yet I continue to regard him as a great genius, and return to his works to relish their distinctive quality of expression - whose good and bad qualities were both very obvious; and therefore probably two sides of the same coin. 

My main criticism of Shaw - as of so many people - is that he never reflected on his fundamental (metaphysical) assumptions concerning the nature of reality. Therefore, he never really understood that the inadequacies and contradictions of his attitudes, opinions, and actions; originated and were sustained by the incoherence of his deepest assumptions - many of which I believe Shaw would have rejected, had he ever become aware of them.  

*

Bernard Shaw by Rodin. Meh...

Tron: Ares at the cinema - brief notice, and consideration of its "AI" agenda

Yesterday I went to see Tron: Ares at the cinema, and found it exciting and enjoyable: a solid three star (out of five) movie of the "worth watching" category. 

I had not seen the male lead Jared Leto before, or at least I don't recall seeing him; and I found him a very good actor with definite screen presence. He seems to have considerable scope - including understated comedy. 

The rest of the acting was okay or decent; except female lead Greta Lee who was moderately sub par - neither a good actor, nor having star quality; but this didn't much matter in the action-orientated context of the movie. 

What I found interesting as I left the cinema, was to reflect - yet again - on how often a modern mega-corporation with net-evil motivations, produces movies that at least seem to be about the intrinsically evil nature of modern mega-corporations... 

This was particularly strange, given that Tron: Ares has a happy (albeit cursorily so) ending which involves the intrinsic evil being overcome, and a mega-corps made net-beneficial to humanity - simply by having a nice person in charge! 

The threadbare notion of a benign dictator "setting all to rights" in an intrinsically corrupt world; is still (for lack of alternatives, perhaps) a governing wishful delusion for many people. 

Witness that (albeit very brief!) episode earlier this year when so many people expressed intense and joyful - and insanely optimistic - fantasies of just this kind, when DT became US president. 

The other aspect I found intriguing was how Ares frames the "AI" aspect; given that this is currently (and during the production of this movie) perhaps the numero uno socio-political strategy of the totalitarians in the the Western Establishment. 

In sum: throughout Tron: Ares "AI" is assumed to be - and is presented as - functionally powerful, in a way that it just cannot be. 

The whole world of "AI" is visually-depicted as overwhelmingly vast and sophisticated, its progression and take-over happening with a stream-roller inevitability - a combination that induces in the audience a kind of awed-helplessness. 

Furthermore; it is both shown in the script and explicitly asserted that these "AI" systems are genius-like; in that they are creatively problem-solving. 

This superhuman creativity is harnessed to the usual left-progressive agenda - which is to reduce/eliminate particular forms of human suffering and environmental damage. 

Because of "AI"'s steamroller effectiveness, this fantasy of progress is given an apparent inevitability... if only we can ensure "the right people" are "in charge". 

And - most strikingly - we are (yet again) shown that "singularity-moment" whereby sufficiently-advanced "AI" will develop agency, autonomy, human characters - including motives, feelings, and morals. 

Since I understand these as attributes of Beings; and because "AI" is not a Being - also Beings are eternal entities and cannot be manufactured -- then I know that this singularity stuff is either 100% incoherent impossible nonsense - or else an evil-motivated and -manufactured dishonest manipulation.  

But the singularity assumption also has a consoling spin; because, despite the probabilities of evil-AIs to contend with; it holds-out the hope of a world where (as in Tron: Ares) the conscious-AI agents can become our mutually-loving friends. 

In sum;

By funding and enabling the production of spectacular action movies that assume and depict nonsensical and impossible attributes of "AI" - the Establishment creates a halo around the actuality of that necessarily-destructive and function-destroying "AI" which is being rolled-out and implemented all over the world - in one of the biggest technological projects of all time.

At some level of this process, there are people (or, at least, sentient beings) who know perfectly well that the Hollywood depictions of the scope, nature and possibilities of "AI" have nothing whatsoever to do with the actuality.

At another level, the (qualified) techno-optimism of Tron: Ares reveals to me that the great mass of people who are involved in the Great "AI" Project - the AI-dolators - are literally deluded...

By literally deluded; I mean that (in the active and functional aspects of their thinking) the AI-dolators have a false understanding of what they are dealing with, and what they are doing. 

They may, somewhere in their memories, have a correct understanding of the nature and limits of so-called AI -- but, if so, this truth is cut-off, encapsulated from their everyday and working-life cognitive processing. 

(Such encapsulations are characteristic, indeed necessary, for modern mainstream thinking, as was described by Owen Barfield in Saving the Appearances. For example, both those who assume that reality is "out there" and objective (including most traditionalist Christians); and those who assume the only reality is subjective and individual - are both engaged in encapsulated delusional thinking.) 

Any truths about "AI" reality such people may once have grasped, have since been sealed-away in a watertight mental compartment; so that functionally-speaking they can and do believe the fantasy-hype that lies behind the media representations; and in practice they conflate such untruths with the mundane reality of multi-national mega-corps top-down-mandatory "AI"*.  

That, at any rate, is how I regard Tron: Ares. 

At one level it is an enjoyable and decently-made spectacle and drama; at another it is a work of deep and re-framing propaganda; at another level I can observe the propaganda working in myself - and thereby have the chance to learn something more about the Establishment agenda. 

    

*This is used in self-deceptive as well as publicly dishonest ways: "Yes, of course, we all know that This is the case... Look we acknowledged it Here..." While, in practice, taking zero account of such knowledge and acknowledgements. Thus someone who parrots phrases about the nature and constraints of current-"AI" - completely ignores these realities whenever reasoning or making decisions, and the fantasy-hype assumptions inevitably encroach-upon on and dominate both behaviour and rhetoric. 

James D Watson has died - so, no more great scientists remain alive

Ed Dutton and James Watson

I hear that James D Watson has died, aged 97. He is somebody that had a significant impact on my life as a scientist, including the way I did science - from my mid-teens onwards. 

I wrote about him several times (and he is positively cited in my book about real science); but especially a defence of him (just about the only defence in the official scientific literature of that time; for which he thanked me) when he was subjected to a lying and evil-motivated Woke/ PC media firestorm as an exemplary-punishment for speaking and writing unacceptable truths. 

My colleague Ed Dutton recently published an extremely interesting book about Jim Watson, and was the first to announce his death.

I read Ed's Genius under House Arrest in draft and made a few suggestions. Unfortunately the hardback is too expensive for private buyers (paperback on its way); but this is its summary:

In 2007, the Watson Affair – the worldwide character assassination and exclusion from public life of Dr. James Watson, the brilliant, Nobel Prize-winning scientist co-credited with the discovery of DNA – shocked the global public in an early episode of what would come to be called "cancel culture." Watson was as an early and very public victim of incipient wokeism: a warning to others who might be tempted to dissent from favored ideologies of expression and behavior. With the Watson Affair, Western society had changed to the point of inversion; from being broadly supportive of genius, and providing protected niches for those of great accomplishment, to exactly the opposite – a censorious surveillance culture where even minor missteps could result in personal and professional ruin. Genius Under House Arrest explores how this dramatic shift occurred and argues that not only was every "controversial" remark of Watson's empirically accurate, but that geniuses – with Watson as the example – are a package deal: extreme creative ability as a consequence of sometimes difficult personalities, with effects ranging across social, ideological, and professional life. As society has begun to realize, nothing less than the West's culture of merit and achievement is at stake. 

Anyway... Watson was the last of the widely-recognized massive-impact great scientists whose achievement could stand alongside those of the past; and he has died. 

So now there are none left; and the West publicly, gleefully, destroyed Watson's life and livelihood 18 years ago - and has been stamping on him ever since.

I agree with Ed Dutton that this coordinated action against Watson in 2007 was an inflexion point in our civilization. 

It marks the time at which totalitarian evil became dominant, indeed officially unopposed; and from then self-hating self-destruction has been a multi-national strategy - supported by the Globalist Establishment - including the "scientific" establishment.

If real science had died-out by the 1990s, then The Watson Affair was its funeral.    

But if you are interested in real science, and have not yet read Watson's marvellous 1968 book about co-discovering the structure of DNA - The Double Helix - then do yourself a favour. It's something I re-read every few years, and always with delight. 

**

One of my favourite photos ever; Crick demonstrates the structure of DNA for the cameraman using an improvised slide-rule as pointer - Watson on the left looks-on in awe at the beauty of their discovery. 

The moment was superbly re-created near the end of the first-rate movie Life Story - with Jeff Goldblum playing Watson, and Tim Piggott-Smith as Crick.   

Christian theories should be understood as like scientific theories - Even when judged True, they may be improved, or replaced

A big, maybe lethal, problem with almost all of Christian theology, is the absolute conviction that there can be nothing new under the sun.

So that (for instance) because we have inherited an either/or dichotomy - such that knowledge or values are either subjective or objective - that must be all there is, and nothing more valid can ever be discovered or devised. 

Or, there is the idea that - to be A Christian involves accepting some body of already-existing knowledge as Just True - all true, now and forever. 

This blocked me from becoming a Christian for many, many years - because I had never come across any field of knowledge that was ever Just True, now and forever - or where I was expected to accept this up-front - expected to submit my judgment (now and come what may) to a large, complex, total and unalterable package. 

This is what is required of a Christian convert in most churches; there is some body of statements that you expected to promise, to swear is true, to pledge obedience, to commit to behave thus...

This is difficult for a truthful person to do, and it does notfeel right to be asked to do it. It is an act of submission - and what the convert is asked to submit to claims to be divine truth - and yet it comes to us as human, all too human - and indeed it soon turns out that nobody on the inside really believes or does all of it; especially not church leaders.

  

Of course one can do this nonetheless, and suppress the worry that one will not be able to live up to the promises. But what is hard to suppress is the conviction that this is a bad thing to do: I mean, it is a bad thing to expect people to swear and promise to stuff that nobody really believes or acts upon - and which often does not make coherent sense. 

It is maybe because I was a scientist - and a theoretical scientist - for much of my life, that I have always believed that there are indeed new concepts that may be discovered or devised, and that these revisions may be better than what existed in the past. 

Something that is "true" - a theory, a monograph, a scientific paper, a field of research - is true in such a way that it is nonetheless capable of revision, or even radical reshaping - as when Newtonian Physics was true; yet gave way to Einsteinian or Quantum Physics - which was also true, and better. 

This seems quite normal to me - and the weight of tradition (the great names of the past) in science does not have the same inhibiting - indeed paralysing - effect that it does in theology. 

Creative science is about accepting the overall validity of tradition (its honesty, and usefulness), but that any actual science always has errors, incompleteness, and incoherences; and therefore can be - often needs to be - improved, and potentially transformed - at least in principle (although this is usually difficult). 

And our guide is primarily honesty - with ourselves and with others; and honesty in the context of transcendental values; which for a Christian means (I would say) motivated-intent to live in loving harmony with divine creation, and the aspiration to salvation . 

I think this is a true and healthy attitude to any functional body of claimed knowledge, any system - including theology and any particular church doctrine. 

In real science, we engage with tradition and great scientists, strive to understand them - but any serious scientist regards himself as at least able to add something, to change things for the better. 

And, if he is any good, and has found "his problem"; he ought to strive to make new discoveries (or reveal past neglected discoveries) - when these are needed. 

For instance; nobody in 20th century biology is, or would regard would regard himself, as an equal to Darwin - or as his superior as a scientist. 

But Darwin's mechanism for his theory of evolution by natural selection did not make coherent sense; because Darwin did not know about genetics.

 

To combine natural selection with genetics (the "Modern Synthesis") was a colossal intellectual achievement that took several decades, and involved work by several people; such as Julian Huxley (brother of Aldous), Theodosius Dobzhansky, and Ernest Meyer - none of whom have a reputation as great as Darwin, and who (despite being genuinely creative and major scientists) are essentially unknown outside a group of specialists. 

If the scientists of the Modern Synthesis had shared the attitude of church-serving Christians; they would have said "Darwin may be incoherent, but Who Am I to try and improve on what such a toweringly great scientist did? How can little old me possibly succeed, where Darwin failed?" 

They would have given up without trying! And thereby the synthesis of Natural Selection and genetics - a theory that nowadays is understandable by innumerable normal school children (and even by most biological science majors at university) - would never have happened. 

Instead, if science had been like theology; Darwin's much more partial and incoherent theories would still be taught as the best that can be known by humans. 

In sum: the first and most famous of past scientific theories can be, and often have been, improved by other and later humans - even by those far less great that the originators (or not great at all); because it is so much more difficult to create a theory as Darwin (and Wallace) did, compared with being able to comprehend and improve a theory as Huxley et al did; compared with merely being able to understand and repeat a theory - like any 18 year old who has studied the theory of natural selection. 

Christian theology is stuck at the level of understanding and repetition. 

Well, by my reckoning; Theology consists of human theories. Theories about things like the nature of reality, the nature of God and what Jesus did; and human theories are prone to human incompleteness and error. 

(Analogously, church doctrines, principles, and rules are in-effect human theories about matters such as how best to become and stay a Christian, and how best to attain salvation.) 

In principle - so long as someone is honestly motivated to live in loving harmony with divine creation, and committed to salvation; then I see no reason why he needs to be a theological genius of the stature of Abelard, Scotus, Luther, or whatever is your idea of a definitive theologian. 

But with theology, as does not happen in science; this matter gets mixed-up with assertions of spiritual authority of churches and church-endorsed theologians. 

We are stuck at the level of repetition; because anything else is regarded as blasphemous pride - as if anyone who understands and tries to improve on the human theological theories of the likes of Paul, Boethius, Augustine, Aquinas - must be setting himself up as greater than them!

The point is that the issue at stake is - for each of us - my life in this world and my salvation. 

What matters crucially is whether I am satisfied with the truth and coherence of given theology, the implicit theories of church doctrine, or whatever is important to my situation in this world. 

In seeking to do better than what is inherited - or, more exactly, what current authorities interpret and assert has been inherited; I don't need to convince anybody else - than I need to satisfy myself. 

I should keep striving for something better until I am honestly satisfied.

And if I later stop being satisfied with what used to satisfy me, and this is making an adverse difference; well, then I should be prepared to start striving all over again. 

NOTE: This post is adapted from some comments I made at Francis Berger's blog.

Romantic Christianity is not Only negative and reactive...

The cultural era (commencing in Western Europe in the late 1700s) known as Romanticism, is usually described in terms of being a negative reaction; partly against the newly dominant "rationalism" and scientism - reducing divine creation to a contrivance of clockwork wheels; and then fuelled by the beginnings of urbanization, noise, regimentation and pollution from the Industrial Revolution. 

And much the same applies to those of us "dissident" Christians whom I have termed Romantic Christians - they/we are usually understood as reacting-against. 

As I say - this is correct, so far as it goes - but it is not the whole story. 

But Owen Barfield (following Rudolf Steiner) clarified that Romanticism also had a positive agenda; it tended to regard "nature" as much more significant, alive and purposive than did Medieval or Reformation Christianity. This included an interest and seriousness about "the supernatural", and the "magical".   

There was a strong focus on the value of more intense personal states of awareness, intuition, revelation and the like - a "poetic" perspective on life. 

There was a new high-valuation of individual creativity including genius. 

In terms of Christianity; these might briefly be translated as striving for a faith rooted in direct personal experience and responsibility. 

Altogether; Romanticism - and this includes Romantic Christianity - has now been around long enough that surely it ought to be accorded more than the usual dismissive condescension - or quasi-puritantical abhorrence - that is its fate among orthodox and traditionalist Christians?

As I understand it; Romanticism among Christians is partly a negative and reactive rejection of the corruption, dullness, triviality, and superficiality of the churches; but when it is serious is has a more motivating and positive agenda: which relates to an inner conviction that a better Christianity is possible than that resulting from the primacy of church obedience - a Christianity that is more honest, more coherent, more inspiring, and more responsible. 

This refusal to subordinate ones primary religious convictions to the external authority of a church does not - Of Course Not - mean that a Romantic Christian is obliged to live a solitary and isolated life of abstention from all ritual, music, scripture, tradition...

It merely means that these come second, and not first; and the Romantic Christian's engagement with the forms and symbols of Christianity are subordinated to his direct and personal relationship with the divine - which is given primacy, as his motivating ideal. 

A real creative scientist: Graham Cairns-Smith

1931-2016

It was probably 1990 or 91, while I was a lecturer at Glasgow University, Scotland; when I first met Graham Cairns-Smith. 

At that time he was a Reader in Physical Chemistry, and I interviewed him for an article that (I think) was published in the Glasgow Herald newspaper. 

That interview led to further discussions; because I realized quickly that GCS was not just a real scientist (truth-seeker, truth-speaker) - I had already met several of these - but a creative scientist; one who original in a genius way, and orientated towards developing new and true theories; rather than doing ever-more (and more expensive!) experiments. 

What jumped-out was the way he talked, the quietly sustained focus, that he went back to first principles, talked about theories; and the extreme clarity and simplicity with which he expressed his thinking. 

He very quickly explained his Big Idea, which was related to the origins of life on earth having have occurred via the replication of simple molecules, probably siliceous, possibly clays -- necessarily much simpler than the usual candidates of nucleic acids or proteins - which he ruled-out on chemical energetic grounds and the vastly improbable complexity required for their production. 

His ideas were accessibly published for a general audience in Seven Clues to the Origin of Life (1990) - and became widely influential, albeit often in somewhat garbled form - even in mainstream science fiction.

(Those many silicon-, instead of carbon-, based aliens mentioned in various media, might well be derived ultimately from GCS.) 

The way Graham discussed natural selection made me realize that I had never previously encountered anyone with his level of understanding; and with just a few deep insights - he made me begin to realize my own fascination with the subject; and set me onto the path whereby I worked on evolutionary theories for more than decade - worked with greater intensity and mental effort than I ever worked at anything else.   

Graham's quality was recognized at a high level among other real scientists, and he would (for instance) participate in meetings, symposia, lectures etc. where nearly-all the other people were Nobel laureates.

And/yet this status was not matched in terns of career, which was very modest. 

GCS was apparently almost obscure within Glasgow University. He rose to Reader but not Professor. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, but not of the (then) much more selective London RS. 

Many thousands of industrious but mediocre researchers garnered more elevated positions, greater system prestige, and achievement-awards - over his head, and those like him. 

This, because GCS was quiet, modest, and interested in "the science". 

I should make it clear: Graham was not at all bothered about promotions or prizes! -He was very happy with what he had. 

All that he asked for, was to be able to do the scientific work he was motivated to do. Anything else in the way of rewards was a bonus, a gratuity: nice, but inessential. 

And - because GDS retired before things got too bad around 2000, he was just able to have that minimum needful support from the UK university system. 

By the 1990s there was already a wide and increasing gulf between achievement in real science, and the system of rewards accorded to professional researchers in the bureaucracies that had once been genuinely scientific.

Going into the next millennium; it soon became evident that real science was dead and gone; and internally-motivated, creative people like Cairns-Smith could not longer expect even his moderate and delayed success; but had near-zero realistic career prospects of any kind within professional "science".     

I didn't know Graham well, and not at all on personal level. But his example made a decisive difference to my life and work. 

Also the fact that he recognized me to the extent of asking me to review and comment on the developing texts of his subsequent works, was a great confidence-booster, indicating that he believed that I too inhabited the same world of "real" scientists. 

Yesterday, in sorting through my library, I came across the copy of Evolving the Mind (1996) that he had sent me; and read the hand-written inscription thanking me for help with it. 

I then belatedly realized that a personal tribute of thanks to this creative, brilliant, honest and significant scientist - had become long overdue. 

Bonald's explanation for AI-dolatry

The archetypal modern senior manager: heroic, far-sighted, at the cutting edge... 

A corrupt, mediocre, spiteful, psychopath

Bonald has come up with a convincing proximate explanation for the current AI-dolaltry; that seems to fit with the short/ medium term self-interest of the senior managerial class.  

My paraphrase of his argument is that the managerial class are strategically (and with calculated dishonesty) hyping AI by pretending that it can efficiently replace humans without significant loss of quality. 

This hype provides senior managers a pseudo-justification for making massive short-term savings on salaries by sacking a large percentage of the workforce; under cover of the lying notion that they are enhancing productivity by taking early advantage of a major technological breakthrough. 

What will actually happen is that the senior managers will save a lot of money for their corporations in the short term, will get performance related salary enhancements; and will surf out of the corporations on a wave of prestige, at a job well done - to get a better paid job elsewhere. 

When the company collapses due to the inevitable catastrophic failure of AI, this will no longer be a problem for the senior managers who implemented it - who by that point will long-since have departed to graze on pastures new; there to reap the rewards of their executive genius. 

An area of genuine supremacy of Girl Geniuses - spiritualist mediums and psychics of the past two centuries

Genius is much commoner in men than women. 

Indeed, in Charles Murray's historical survey of Human Accomplishment; English literature was the only one of the subjects surveyed in which women made a strong showing. 

And, even there, women did not feature among the very highest literary geniuses such as Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe. 

But there is one neglected but culturally highly significant area in which it seems as if women geniuses have been supreme, in terms of ability and influence; and that is as spiritualist mediums and psychics. 

1. The Fox Sisters, who from 1848 were the origin of Spiritualism, which became a global phenomenon for a century, and still persists (there is a spiritualist church within ten minutes walk of where I write).  

2. Madam HP Blavatsky - the founder of Theosophy; whose international influence is so vast as to be difficult to calculate and of extraordinary breadth. For instance; much of Rudolf Steiner's vast oeuvre derives from Theosophy; and it was the Theosophical Society in London that converted a secular-minded Gandhi to Hinduism. 

3. Mary Baker Eddy founded Christian Science, which grew very fast and went all around the world in a couple of generations to become extremely widespread at its peak - and, although much diminished, it still continues. (There is a Christian Science Reading Room about a mile from here.) 

4. Ellen G White was the prophetess whose insights underpinned the Seventh Day Adventist church - global in reach and apparently still growing, especially in the third world.  

5. Dion Fortune - who was the leading Christian magical occultist of the twentieth century. Her teaching and Fraternity of the Inner Light gave rise to multiple other major magicians and magical societies. Nowadays DF's influence appears to be growing in New Age and Neo-Pagan media.  

These five women (to which some others could be added) constitute a pretty formidable tally in a short space of time.

And the contributions of these women was apparently of a fundamental and foundational (rather than derivative) nature. 

This also fits with the oft-noticed fact (across several religions and churches) that women are intrinsically more often naturally psychic and mediumistic; and can also (like Dion Fortune, who was not naturally a medium) become psychic by effort and training. 

It is no coincidence that the (currently) best known, most beloved, English Christian mystic is Lady Julian of Norwich. 

Although genius is always rare, and in most cultures for most of the time (including our own, now) essentially absent; there are, indeed, solid psychological reasons (e.g. innate personality and intelligence) why genius is overall much more often to be found in men.   

Despite which, over the past half century, it has become a rather dodgy academic-journalistic pastime to manufacture and fake women-"geniuses" in science and the arts (and culture more generally). 

This has been attempted even in several fields in which there are zero women of the first, or even second, rank (such as mathematics, and the composition of classical music). 

Meanwhile, there has been this area in which women really do excel; but which has been ignored!

...Albeit for fairly obvious reasons; in that their activities seem fake, mad, or wicked both to the outgoing Christian traditionalists and the incoming Leftist materialists. 

Nonetheless, if evaluated by the normal standards of our culture; these womens' achievements clearly emerge as both socially significant and distinctively creative - and can then be recognized as products of genius.

  

DuckTales introductory song

I used to watch the Disney TV programme DuckTales when the kids were small. 

I never thought much of it, except for enjoying the Stax-Atlantic influenced introductory theme song; with its incomprehensible words, but marvellous brass section interjections. 

I later found a superb parody performed by the impressionist Hunter Davis; whose version of Ian McKellen reciting the lyrics of DuckTales is little short of genius in its phrasing and comedic timing. 

Review of The Occult Battle of Britain - by Paul Weston (2019)

For the last couple of weeks, I have been reading a fascinating book called The Occult Battle of Britain - History, Magic, Mythology from the 19th century to 1946, by Paul Weston and originally published in 2019. 

The book can be considered as an extensive background to the similarly titled The Magical Battle of Britain, by Dion Fortune and edited by Gareth Knight, which I've previously mentioned. 

Dion Fortune (a woman I both like and admire, and who I regard as a genius) is perhaps the central character. 

The climax is the magical activity in which she was engaged before and during the Battle of Britain - and the timeline ends with her death in 1946. In broad terms the book is about the intersection of occult thinking with the rise of National Socialism in Germany, and its opposition from within Britain - culminating in the Battle of Britain and its aftermath. 

The method is chronological. Starting in the late 19th century, with the international spread of spiritualism; then HP Blavatsky and the (extraordinarily influential) rise of Theosophy; and the Golden Dawn and similar revivals of ritual magic (magic both white and black in nature) - Weston notes some of the main characters involved, and what was happening in Germany and in England - but especially in relation to Glastonbury and its "Avalonians". 

As well as Fortune; Avalonians Wellesley Tudor Pole and Ronald Heaver are followed; since they had a complementary role to play in the occult side of events of 1940. Also; both TP and Heaver were long-term involved in military intelligence; as were many others from both sides of that apparent divide. 

Heaver was heavily involved in the (seemingly) utterly bizarre British Israelite movement - about which I previously knew almost nothing - and it has now disappeared from public consciousness. Yet, although the assumptions and goals of the BIs strike me as almost incomprehensibly strange and misguided; this was clearly a strong movement within the British ruling class - including intelligence services - up to a high level, and had a role to play in global geopolitics.   

With the notable (and noble!) exception of Dion Fortune herself; it seems that the occult-military nexus was so common as to be normal. On the "darker side" of things; Aleister Crowley and Dennis Wheatley were also spooks. 

But some of the most significant British military people were also occultists - most notably Air Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, head of Fighter Command up to and during the Battle of Britain, the architect of the integrated home defence radar system - and very plausibly the saviour of his nation. 

Dowding was heavily involved with spiritualism (publishing articles and a major book on the subject) and other esoteric subjects - e.g. he regarded fairies as a real and important influence on human life. 

The other side of the book charts the development of the spiritual side of national Socialism from its 19th century origins, and which reached a formalization with Himmler and the SS, and their cathedral like castle of Wewelsburg. But much of this requires to be disentangled from the distortions and fictions that have been widely propagated by early books such as The Morning of the Magicians (1960), and The Spear of Destiny (1972). 

Nonetheless, after the falsehoods have been set aside there seems little doubt of the fact and significance of occultism in National Socialism - and that there was indeed a Battle of Britain which operated purposively at this occult level - whether this phenomenon is interpreted spiritually or materialistically in terms of psychology. 

What is, for me, an open question - is the nature of the military-occult synthesis that Weston describes; not just for WWII, but extending back to encompass aspects of the First World War. 

There was surely a large element of intentional PSYOPS about the manipulations of public opinion (some very successful, both for good and ill) of British intelligence - yet there were also many instances of (apparently) sincere occult belief and activity among a surprisingly high number of very important personnel of both sides. 

The 21st century mind (from its assumption of innate moral superiority and greater insight) is spontaneously inclined to explain-away all this; as merely a mixture of cynical manipulation with the stupidity (and evil) of those unenlightened (sexist, racist etc) people of the past. 

And if this attitude is taken, there is nothing more to be said! But it is all based on assumptions about "our" modern superiority to every previous generation: assumptions that are arbitrary and without any coherent objective basis.  

Much of the fascination of this book is in the range of information provided, including aspects either neglected or passed-over by conventional histories. 

I was especially interested by the accounts of the Phoney War period from September 1939-May 1940 - and the ways that the British people were "prepared" for war. From Weston's account; the mood of the nation at this time (officially partly-feared, partly-seeded and encouraged) was very different in some respects from how it is usually portrayed - with a rampant paranoia concerning spies (leading to executions of the innocent), and wholly-imaginary fifth columnist activities by saboteurs, paratroopers, and sleeper agents. 

I was also impressed by Weston's discernments in relation to the side of the Allies. He is scrupulous about taking into account alternative interpretations - e.g. of the role of Winston Churchill, and the significance of the Battle of Britain. The he makes his decision among possibilities and explains his own assumptions. 

Therefore, Weston regards the "mythology" of the Battle of Britain as basically true, and that it was indeed a battle - spiritual as well as military - between good and evil. Consequently, after the Battle was won, there was a recognition of spiritual growth and commitment to the side of Good; and sincere hopes for a better world - spiritually better that is - to follow the war. 

Yet, Weston also feels that the purity of motive that Britain achieved in 1940, was significantly dissipated and corrupted throughout the course of the war. The alliance with the USSR was a significant downward step (Churchill explicitly likened it to a Faustian pact with the devil, yet embraced it nonetheless). 

The scale, priorities, purposes, and methods of Bomber Command (under the genuinely-delusional Arthur "Bomber" Harris) was another massive military error (a colossal misapplication of resources, causing gross neglect of more necessary and effective strategies); the whole increasingly fuelled by dark, sometimes evil, motives. 

Weston also notes that the strategic destruction of British and European geopolitical power was a sub-theme of US involvement. As was the in-practice building-up of the USSR as a world power, including by open-ended and unconditional "free gift" provision of materiel (in contrast to the sales and loans to the UK, with the consequential crippling war debt entailed). 

In some respects; by the end of the war there was a change of sides by the Allies - so that as the war progressed, not just Britain but also the real victors (ie the USSR and the USA) were spiritually, overall, also on the wrong side. 

And Dion Fortune's hoped-for beneficial spiritual outcomes of the Magical Battle of Britain... therefore didn't happen.    

The Occult Battle of Britain is not an easy read, and I spent many hours reading it; but this was mainly because I found I didn't want to miss anything. I found it to be original, gripping, and very stimulating - with implications that I need to think about much further. 

Disney Peter Pan (1953): one of the most perfect movies

Captain Hook - with his lantern jaw, five o'clock shadow, and double-cigar holder! 

Yesterday, I re-watched (maybe the fourth time?) Walt Disney's 1953 animated movie Peter Pan; and again it struck me as one of the very best of the Disney full length cartoons (running at about 75 minutes). 

Of course the source material of this adaptation is one of the great modern myths; which certainly helps. But what makes the movie so good is the script, pacing, and characterisation. 

The screenplay is coherent, sometimes very funny, and overall poignant and enchanting. It is objectively very fast paced, packed with variety and incident, and highly varied in tone, hence continually interesting. Nothing goes for nothing - there is zero padding. 

Yet this is achieved without the slightest sense of being rushed, all the important aspects are given full weight - the editing and pacing are immaculate. 

To my mind; Hans Conried's voicing of Hook (and Mr Darling) is maybe the greatest characterization of the dubbing-era toons (since Disney's Aladdin, modern toons animate the picture around the voice). The emotional range of Hook, displayed on such a small "canvas" is stunning. 

Peter Pan himself is shown with the complex moral ambiguity of the original - perhaps even more so. And Mr Smee is a tremendous, Dickensian, comic creation. Even such a minor character as Tiger Lily (who doesn't speak) jumps-out as a strongly-defined personality, simply from her facial expressions.  

The animation is less beautiful than - say - Snow White - and there is a degree of simplification evident in the basic pictures. Nonetheless the animation is impressively fluid (e.g. consider Tiger Lily's sinuous dancing), especially in the fast comedy sequences (the Smee slapstick is particularly well done), and the always inventive fight sequences. 

And whoever came up with, and executed, the "stuck record" interrupted scream of Hook as his final "words" of the movie; was some kind of genius. 

The economy and clarity achieved by the movie story is perhaps an improvement on the original, especially in its wistful and suggestive ending; I personally find the original Peter Pan ending to be rather messy, as if the author couldn't make up his mind, and wanted to cover all bases. 

Anyway, if you haven't yet watched the Disney Pan - or watched it inattentively - you are in for a treat!