*
I keep reading blog posts and comments which hold up East Asian societies as a model of adaptation - usually in relation to their nationalism and embrace of immigration restrictions - and on this basis recommend East Asian ideology as an antidote (a non-Christian antidote) to Western malaise.
I refute it thus:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_median_age
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_fertility_rate
If a Martian anthropologist saw this degree of chosen fertility suppression, amidst abundance; and most extreme among the wealthiest, most intelligent and skilled - he would diagnose extreme stress.
Since there is no obvious and powerful adverse physical stress, he would diagnose extreme existential alienation, demoralization, and demotivation.
Very extreme.
***
Note: I refute it thus - is a quotation from Samuel Johnson, as reported by his biographer James Boswell.
http://www.samueljohnson.com/refutati.html
*
Tuesday, 16 July 2013
Monday, 15 July 2013
Aborigine songlines
*
Lots of Western people know that Australian Aborigines navigate across the deserts by learning a song which contains a sequence of landmarks, and going from one landmark to another. The pathways are sometimes called Songlines, sometimes Dreaming tracks.
This fact is presented as if it were a remarkable and beautiful achievement, but there is less to it than meets the eye.
For a start, this is a terrible way of navigating - because the chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Any mistake at any point will mean that the navigator becomes lost.
Secondly, the idea that this was a special attainment of Aborigines is very recent - specifically it comes from the mid-nineteen seventies. Lewis, D. 1976. 'Observations on route-finding and spatial orientation... (in) central Australia.' Oceania 46: 249-282.
I have read some detailed book length accounts of Aborigine life from the 1800s which make no mention of this method - probably because it was regarded as of little interest.
Yet, suddenly, in the 1970s - as political correctness began to gather strength - this trivially crude method of navigation was presented as a great achievement. The public relations process was completed by my near namesake - the BS-merchant and darling of the chattering classes Bruce Chatwin, in a grossly hyped book called The Songlines.
Chanting songs to remember stuff is done by children - it is not specific nor distinctive to Aborigines.
The fuss and nonsense made about Songlines seems more like an example of gross Western condescension than an appreciation of 'indigenous peoples'.
*
Lots of Western people know that Australian Aborigines navigate across the deserts by learning a song which contains a sequence of landmarks, and going from one landmark to another. The pathways are sometimes called Songlines, sometimes Dreaming tracks.
This fact is presented as if it were a remarkable and beautiful achievement, but there is less to it than meets the eye.
For a start, this is a terrible way of navigating - because the chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Any mistake at any point will mean that the navigator becomes lost.
Secondly, the idea that this was a special attainment of Aborigines is very recent - specifically it comes from the mid-nineteen seventies. Lewis, D. 1976. 'Observations on route-finding and spatial orientation... (in) central Australia.' Oceania 46: 249-282.
I have read some detailed book length accounts of Aborigine life from the 1800s which make no mention of this method - probably because it was regarded as of little interest.
Yet, suddenly, in the 1970s - as political correctness began to gather strength - this trivially crude method of navigation was presented as a great achievement. The public relations process was completed by my near namesake - the BS-merchant and darling of the chattering classes Bruce Chatwin, in a grossly hyped book called The Songlines.
Chanting songs to remember stuff is done by children - it is not specific nor distinctive to Aborigines.
The fuss and nonsense made about Songlines seems more like an example of gross Western condescension than an appreciation of 'indigenous peoples'.
*
The dishonesty of JK Rowling - the fake biography of Robert Galbraith
*
One of my major ethical concerns in reading the Harry Potter series was Harry's habitual lying - up to the point in the Deathly Hallows when he is sanctified, after which he becomes completely truthful.
My problem was not so much that Harry lied, but that I did not sense any authorial disapproval of the lying - it was as if the author went-along with Harry's dishonesty, such that almost anything served to justify Harry's lies (even to Dumbledore).
I had the feeling that this flaw was a consequence of Rowling's own moral stance - that she was herself the kind of person who lied easily, and who easily excused her own lying.
Seems I was correct.
It has emerged that JKR has published a crime novel under a male pseudonym
http://www.hogwartsprofessor.com/j-k-rowling-ghost-writes-the-cuckoos-calling/
I don't have any disagreement with publishing under a pseudonym, nor even under a male pseudonym - but the fake-biography of the pseudonymous 'Robert Galbraith' is a self-serving lie:
“After several years with the Royal Military Police, Robert Galbraith was attached to the SIB (Special Investigative Branch), the plain-clothes branch of the RMP. He left the military in 2003 and has been working since then in the civilian security industry. The idea for Cormoran Strike grew directly out of his own experiences and those of his military friends who returned to the civilian world. ‘Robert Galbraith’ is a pseudonym.”
There is no doubt that the specific but lying claim of the novel to have a basis in direct personal experience lends fake authority to a crime novel in a way which is expedient and financially rewarding to the real author - as much as if the author of a scientific novel falsely-claimed to have a PhD in the subject, or if the author of a self-help book on money making pretended to be a multi-millionare.
I find this very disappointing, and indeed shocking - it goes far beyond even the most extreme exaggeration, hype or spin.
And it confirms my perception that JK Rowling, despite having written one of the most profoundly moral of popular novel series, has become corrupted, a turncoat and traitor, and is now working undercover for the Death Eaters.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/case-study-of-leftist-resentment-moral.html
*
One of my major ethical concerns in reading the Harry Potter series was Harry's habitual lying - up to the point in the Deathly Hallows when he is sanctified, after which he becomes completely truthful.
My problem was not so much that Harry lied, but that I did not sense any authorial disapproval of the lying - it was as if the author went-along with Harry's dishonesty, such that almost anything served to justify Harry's lies (even to Dumbledore).
I had the feeling that this flaw was a consequence of Rowling's own moral stance - that she was herself the kind of person who lied easily, and who easily excused her own lying.
Seems I was correct.
It has emerged that JKR has published a crime novel under a male pseudonym
http://www.hogwartsprofessor.com/j-k-rowling-ghost-writes-the-cuckoos-calling/
I don't have any disagreement with publishing under a pseudonym, nor even under a male pseudonym - but the fake-biography of the pseudonymous 'Robert Galbraith' is a self-serving lie:
“After several years with the Royal Military Police, Robert Galbraith was attached to the SIB (Special Investigative Branch), the plain-clothes branch of the RMP. He left the military in 2003 and has been working since then in the civilian security industry. The idea for Cormoran Strike grew directly out of his own experiences and those of his military friends who returned to the civilian world. ‘Robert Galbraith’ is a pseudonym.”
There is no doubt that the specific but lying claim of the novel to have a basis in direct personal experience lends fake authority to a crime novel in a way which is expedient and financially rewarding to the real author - as much as if the author of a scientific novel falsely-claimed to have a PhD in the subject, or if the author of a self-help book on money making pretended to be a multi-millionare.
I find this very disappointing, and indeed shocking - it goes far beyond even the most extreme exaggeration, hype or spin.
And it confirms my perception that JK Rowling, despite having written one of the most profoundly moral of popular novel series, has become corrupted, a turncoat and traitor, and is now working undercover for the Death Eaters.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/case-study-of-leftist-resentment-moral.html
*
Sunday, 14 July 2013
What worries me most about literary converts to Christianity (such as myself)
*
When someone becomes a Christian under the influence of an evangelist or a missionary, then the matter of 'what next?' is easily settled - the convert usually joins the specific church or denomination of the evangelist or missionary.
But what of those who, like myself, are converted by reading (and prayer) without any specific link to a church or denomination?
That is what worries me.
*
Because I think it quite likely that the next step - joining a specific church/ denomination - seems quite likely to deconvert the new Christian.
So my worry is that an ignorant and fragile new Christian - a real Christian but ill-informed and with only a tenuous grasp of faith - will choose to attend then join a 'liberal-Christian' church (i.e. almost all of the currently existing churches self-described as 'Christian') - which is to say they will end-up at an anti-Christian church preaching the modern Leftist religion of kindness, equality, diversity and self-loathing.
*
IF that new convert goes to the average 'Christian' church under the impression that what he will find there is Christianity, and that he (as a new convert) should learn and submit to this teaching - then pretty soon the new convert will have stopped being a Christian (except for the use of some subverted terminology) and will find himself engaged in this-worldly Leftist politics-by-another-name.
And that is what most worries me about literary converts to Christianity.
*
When someone becomes a Christian under the influence of an evangelist or a missionary, then the matter of 'what next?' is easily settled - the convert usually joins the specific church or denomination of the evangelist or missionary.
But what of those who, like myself, are converted by reading (and prayer) without any specific link to a church or denomination?
That is what worries me.
*
Because I think it quite likely that the next step - joining a specific church/ denomination - seems quite likely to deconvert the new Christian.
So my worry is that an ignorant and fragile new Christian - a real Christian but ill-informed and with only a tenuous grasp of faith - will choose to attend then join a 'liberal-Christian' church (i.e. almost all of the currently existing churches self-described as 'Christian') - which is to say they will end-up at an anti-Christian church preaching the modern Leftist religion of kindness, equality, diversity and self-loathing.
*
IF that new convert goes to the average 'Christian' church under the impression that what he will find there is Christianity, and that he (as a new convert) should learn and submit to this teaching - then pretty soon the new convert will have stopped being a Christian (except for the use of some subverted terminology) and will find himself engaged in this-worldly Leftist politics-by-another-name.
And that is what most worries me about literary converts to Christianity.
*
Our Men
*
Starting school from a non-religious background, I found prayers confusing - especially the Lord's Prayer which I learned by rote never having seen it written.
In particular I recall being age five - standing at assembly, puzzling over why the prayers always ended by us saying Our Men.
Questions such as: Who were these Men? Why were they ours? And what was the point of chanting about them?
*
Starting school from a non-religious background, I found prayers confusing - especially the Lord's Prayer which I learned by rote never having seen it written.
In particular I recall being age five - standing at assembly, puzzling over why the prayers always ended by us saying Our Men.
Questions such as: Who were these Men? Why were they ours? And what was the point of chanting about them?
*
Saturday, 13 July 2013
The Leftism of Mencius Moldbug
*
...is clear from his first and foundational (and, I believe, unrepented?) statement of 2007:
The basic idea of formalism is just that the main problem in human affairs is violence. The goal is to design a way for humans to interact, on a planet of remarkably limited size, without violence...
The key is to look at this not as a moral problem, but as an engineering problem. Any solution that solves the problem is acceptable. Any solution that does not solve the problem is not acceptable.
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.co.uk/2007/04/formalist-manifesto-originally-posted.html
*
At that time MM was available for e-mail discussions, and - as I recall, I've lost the e-mails - I took him to task over this; as being a project which was obviously Leftist in aim, but having different methods: in other words; the same end, but different means.
But if I didn't say so then (when I was a libertarian secular pro-democracy kind of person) I certainly would do so now: This is a Leftist project!
However, I now recognize that all secular projects are Leftist, inevitably, since they are merely species of utilitarianism - different variants on how to enhance the pleasure of various people or groups, or diminish their suffering (e.g. by eliminating violence).
In other words, these are hedonic projects in which the pleasure-pain axis is the bottom line - indeed, how could they be anything else? since religion is ruled out as the goal of socio-political organization.
*
If it wasn't obvious then, it is obvious now - since Moldbug's concepts and terminology have become a typical Leftist talking shop (about of the kind familiar to those such as myself who steeped themselves in the world of quasi-Marxist small magazines of the 1970s to 90s) - I mean animated conversations about precise definitions, tactics, and purity.
The underlying idea is that if the ideological structure can be got right, then reality will crystallize around it in the desired form.
These conversations are interminable since the basic underlying ideas are incoherent except at an extreme level of abstraction - but they are not without effect; as the phenomenon of Political Correctness shows.
Those obscure and obsessive Marxist nutters wrangling about the 'isms' in the small magazines of the 1970s to 90s are now the intellectual lunatics in charge of that asylum which is 21st century public discourse.
*
So I would not characterize the Moldbug acolytes as nonentities who are wasting their time on trivialities - it is perfectly possible that these ideas could catch on and spread, and that some of these advocates could become successful and influential.
I merely want to make the point that this is Leftist would-be careerism, in one of its purest and most characteristic guises.
*
I mention this because MM himself, and some of his followers, seem to suppose that they are engaged in a reactionary project - or even that they are aiming at restoring some previous historical phase of human political organization.
But all previous phases of human political organization were religious - and Moldbug's ideas are not preceded by a religious Great Awakening, and so amount to wanting past social organization but minus its single most importantly motivating and cohering factor.
Pick and mix politics of preference - wanting what you want and not what you don't: and convincing yourself you can have it.
Which is, if I may say so, a typical Leftist trick!
*
...is clear from his first and foundational (and, I believe, unrepented?) statement of 2007:
The basic idea of formalism is just that the main problem in human affairs is violence. The goal is to design a way for humans to interact, on a planet of remarkably limited size, without violence...
The key is to look at this not as a moral problem, but as an engineering problem. Any solution that solves the problem is acceptable. Any solution that does not solve the problem is not acceptable.
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.co.uk/2007/04/formalist-manifesto-originally-posted.html
*
At that time MM was available for e-mail discussions, and - as I recall, I've lost the e-mails - I took him to task over this; as being a project which was obviously Leftist in aim, but having different methods: in other words; the same end, but different means.
But if I didn't say so then (when I was a libertarian secular pro-democracy kind of person) I certainly would do so now: This is a Leftist project!
However, I now recognize that all secular projects are Leftist, inevitably, since they are merely species of utilitarianism - different variants on how to enhance the pleasure of various people or groups, or diminish their suffering (e.g. by eliminating violence).
In other words, these are hedonic projects in which the pleasure-pain axis is the bottom line - indeed, how could they be anything else? since religion is ruled out as the goal of socio-political organization.
*
If it wasn't obvious then, it is obvious now - since Moldbug's concepts and terminology have become a typical Leftist talking shop (about of the kind familiar to those such as myself who steeped themselves in the world of quasi-Marxist small magazines of the 1970s to 90s) - I mean animated conversations about precise definitions, tactics, and purity.
The underlying idea is that if the ideological structure can be got right, then reality will crystallize around it in the desired form.
These conversations are interminable since the basic underlying ideas are incoherent except at an extreme level of abstraction - but they are not without effect; as the phenomenon of Political Correctness shows.
Those obscure and obsessive Marxist nutters wrangling about the 'isms' in the small magazines of the 1970s to 90s are now the intellectual lunatics in charge of that asylum which is 21st century public discourse.
*
So I would not characterize the Moldbug acolytes as nonentities who are wasting their time on trivialities - it is perfectly possible that these ideas could catch on and spread, and that some of these advocates could become successful and influential.
I merely want to make the point that this is Leftist would-be careerism, in one of its purest and most characteristic guises.
*
I mention this because MM himself, and some of his followers, seem to suppose that they are engaged in a reactionary project - or even that they are aiming at restoring some previous historical phase of human political organization.
But all previous phases of human political organization were religious - and Moldbug's ideas are not preceded by a religious Great Awakening, and so amount to wanting past social organization but minus its single most importantly motivating and cohering factor.
Pick and mix politics of preference - wanting what you want and not what you don't: and convincing yourself you can have it.
Which is, if I may say so, a typical Leftist trick!
*
Friday, 12 July 2013
Making the best of the coming Great Simplification
*
The Great Simplification is a term adapted from the dystopian futuristic sci-fi novel A Canticle for Leibowitz (by Walter M Miller) in which an anti-intellectual know-nothing populism actively kills scholars and destroys books and the institutions for the transmission of knowledge...
But in the West exactly the same has been achieved by elite Leftist secularism.
*
(As well, The Great Simplification is a necessary consequence of the substantial decline in average intelligence (hence creative genius) since the industrial revolution, which mostly results from secularism and Leftism.)
*
So our civilization both will not and cannot sustain the level of complexity it peaked at several decades ago.
There will necessarily mean simplification, which means that the proper focus of intellectual life and work will change (should already have changed) from research to teaching, from discovery to preservation
- or rather, from research and discovery of greater complexity to research and discovery of greater simplicity which yet retains functionality.
Thus teachers will be engaged in a generation by generation simplification - and to do this optimally will entail discovering the optimal simplicity.
*
To simplify well entails understanding.
(Simplification without understanding inflicts a double-whammy of damage, as can be seen from the recent mania for replacing complex individual skills with protocols imposed by ignorant and uncaring or frankly destructive management and politicians.)
And simplification must be to a level where the person who uses the simplification is fully able to understand it.
(There is no point in insufficient simplification since people will not, over the long term, follow a protocol they cannot understand - nor can they recover an incomprehensible protocol from errors nor make repairs to functionality nor adapt it to circumstances... People who are responsible have to know what they are doing and why...)
*
All this entails a restoration of apprenticeship as the major method of post-mid-teens education - because the education must be tailored to the ability of the apprentice (which is unpredictable, but probably lower than the Master) - and the education must be connected to functionality (not primarily theoretical not abstract - which can drift far from functionality).
*
So this is the opposite of popularization - popularized accounts typically take highly complex phenomena and make them entertaining (unrelated to functionality) - what is required is closer to self-help books...
(assuming such books really were used for self-help rather than education; and if such books were written by Masters of that which is professed, rather than by journalists; and if the value was continually tested against experience and achievement).
*
So here is a task for skilled and knowledgeable persons! - to analyze their skill and knowledge to discover the core simple comprehensible and useful essence - and to transmit this to such of the next generation who are genuinely motivated to know and use it.
*
The Great Simplification is a term adapted from the dystopian futuristic sci-fi novel A Canticle for Leibowitz (by Walter M Miller) in which an anti-intellectual know-nothing populism actively kills scholars and destroys books and the institutions for the transmission of knowledge...
But in the West exactly the same has been achieved by elite Leftist secularism.
*
(As well, The Great Simplification is a necessary consequence of the substantial decline in average intelligence (hence creative genius) since the industrial revolution, which mostly results from secularism and Leftism.)
*
So our civilization both will not and cannot sustain the level of complexity it peaked at several decades ago.
There will necessarily mean simplification, which means that the proper focus of intellectual life and work will change (should already have changed) from research to teaching, from discovery to preservation
- or rather, from research and discovery of greater complexity to research and discovery of greater simplicity which yet retains functionality.
Thus teachers will be engaged in a generation by generation simplification - and to do this optimally will entail discovering the optimal simplicity.
*
To simplify well entails understanding.
(Simplification without understanding inflicts a double-whammy of damage, as can be seen from the recent mania for replacing complex individual skills with protocols imposed by ignorant and uncaring or frankly destructive management and politicians.)
And simplification must be to a level where the person who uses the simplification is fully able to understand it.
(There is no point in insufficient simplification since people will not, over the long term, follow a protocol they cannot understand - nor can they recover an incomprehensible protocol from errors nor make repairs to functionality nor adapt it to circumstances... People who are responsible have to know what they are doing and why...)
*
All this entails a restoration of apprenticeship as the major method of post-mid-teens education - because the education must be tailored to the ability of the apprentice (which is unpredictable, but probably lower than the Master) - and the education must be connected to functionality (not primarily theoretical not abstract - which can drift far from functionality).
*
So this is the opposite of popularization - popularized accounts typically take highly complex phenomena and make them entertaining (unrelated to functionality) - what is required is closer to self-help books...
(assuming such books really were used for self-help rather than education; and if such books were written by Masters of that which is professed, rather than by journalists; and if the value was continually tested against experience and achievement).
*
So here is a task for skilled and knowledgeable persons! - to analyze their skill and knowledge to discover the core simple comprehensible and useful essence - and to transmit this to such of the next generation who are genuinely motivated to know and use it.
*
When is a Church not a Church? Leftism and the hollowing-out of institutions
*
Any Christian connected with the Church of England, and observing and experiencing its transformation, will be confronted by the teasing question of "When is a Church not a Church?" - but the problem is much more widespread both within churches and within modern society.
The phenomenon is one of hollowing-out an institution, and replacing it with something else; removing the functional reality from the inside of an organization but retaining the shell of appearances and rhetoric.
*
I personally don't believe that this has anything significant to do with the abstract strategies of Leftist intellectuals - I think it is simply what happens as a consequence of the long term insidious destructive evil of Leftism when applied to strong and/or necessary social functions.
In the Church of England the contrast between the shell (beautiful architecture, beautiful music, rich vestments, intermittently the use of sublime language) and the rotten pulpy slimily nasty innards can be particularly stark - but it is to the credit of the Church of England that the process of evisceration has been and is, even yet, a constant topic of public discourse.
There is much less discourse about much more extreme eviscerations which have been achieved over the past few decades - Oxford and Cambridge, the Police Force, the Legal profession, Medicine, the BBC... all the major pillars of English society have been hollowed out and all are in much, much worse shape than it apparent from their superficially similar external features.
*
So extreme is this that these major institutions have substantially reversed or inverted their functions - especially in terms of changes or 'reforms' which are introduced: 'reforms' have been for many years and continue almost always to be directed towards the destruction of the organizations primary ascribed function.
Indeed, overarching all of these is a fiercely implemented rule that disallows discourse on social primary functions - it is taboo within institutions to discuss the primary role of the institutions and how to achieve it - this is regarded either as crazily day dreamingly idealistic or - when persisted with - mean, nasty and fascistic in its disregard of the sensitivities of... um... vulnerable and oppressed groups... or something.
To discuss primary functions is taboo, because it might upset someone in a protected group; but to upset those who actually perform the primary functions is fine because they are an over-privileged, arrogant, crass elite.
And this the hollowing proceeds - month by month and year by year: no discussion of primary function, endless 'sensitive' debate and change in relation to Leftist political issues. Very soon there is nothing remaining inside of the shell, and the organization is moving with considerable momentum in the opposite direction from functionality, and staffed with a greater and greater majority of people who have no interest in, and may well be incapable of performing, the original function.
*
Eventually we get a situation like the Church of England, where the organization as a whole (although within in are individual exceptions, dwindling) is anti-Christian in its net effect - and instead more and more (and more) pro-Leftist in its concerns and activities, to the point that the mass majority of the personnel could not (even if they wanted to, which of course they don't) perform the proper functions of the Church - ditto Oxford and Cambridge, the police, the BBC and so on.
Internally generated reform is beyond possibility, and any reform applied would therefore have the first step of removing a large majority of personnel - especially senior personnel - and would therefore be met by maximal resistance.
Thus reform (incremental change) becomes impossible and the whole organization must be replaced by an institution which actually 'does what it says on the tin'.
*
The problem is that this now applies to all major social institutions in the UK. They are all hollow shells filled with amorphous Leftism.
The problem, therefore, is one of total societal collapse due to the purposive functional incapability of institutions.
This is new territory - it has never happened before in human history - because it has never been able to happen before.
And the longer things continue without collapse, the greater the internal rot, the less will remain after collapse and the vaster the scale of institutional rebuilding that would be required.
*
But of course that won't happen. There will either be chaos and chaos - or else a much simpler society will be imposed on a much smaller remaining population with what will seem like astonishing speed.
*
Any Christian connected with the Church of England, and observing and experiencing its transformation, will be confronted by the teasing question of "When is a Church not a Church?" - but the problem is much more widespread both within churches and within modern society.
The phenomenon is one of hollowing-out an institution, and replacing it with something else; removing the functional reality from the inside of an organization but retaining the shell of appearances and rhetoric.
*
I personally don't believe that this has anything significant to do with the abstract strategies of Leftist intellectuals - I think it is simply what happens as a consequence of the long term insidious destructive evil of Leftism when applied to strong and/or necessary social functions.
In the Church of England the contrast between the shell (beautiful architecture, beautiful music, rich vestments, intermittently the use of sublime language) and the rotten pulpy slimily nasty innards can be particularly stark - but it is to the credit of the Church of England that the process of evisceration has been and is, even yet, a constant topic of public discourse.
There is much less discourse about much more extreme eviscerations which have been achieved over the past few decades - Oxford and Cambridge, the Police Force, the Legal profession, Medicine, the BBC... all the major pillars of English society have been hollowed out and all are in much, much worse shape than it apparent from their superficially similar external features.
*
So extreme is this that these major institutions have substantially reversed or inverted their functions - especially in terms of changes or 'reforms' which are introduced: 'reforms' have been for many years and continue almost always to be directed towards the destruction of the organizations primary ascribed function.
Indeed, overarching all of these is a fiercely implemented rule that disallows discourse on social primary functions - it is taboo within institutions to discuss the primary role of the institutions and how to achieve it - this is regarded either as crazily day dreamingly idealistic or - when persisted with - mean, nasty and fascistic in its disregard of the sensitivities of... um... vulnerable and oppressed groups... or something.
To discuss primary functions is taboo, because it might upset someone in a protected group; but to upset those who actually perform the primary functions is fine because they are an over-privileged, arrogant, crass elite.
And this the hollowing proceeds - month by month and year by year: no discussion of primary function, endless 'sensitive' debate and change in relation to Leftist political issues. Very soon there is nothing remaining inside of the shell, and the organization is moving with considerable momentum in the opposite direction from functionality, and staffed with a greater and greater majority of people who have no interest in, and may well be incapable of performing, the original function.
*
Eventually we get a situation like the Church of England, where the organization as a whole (although within in are individual exceptions, dwindling) is anti-Christian in its net effect - and instead more and more (and more) pro-Leftist in its concerns and activities, to the point that the mass majority of the personnel could not (even if they wanted to, which of course they don't) perform the proper functions of the Church - ditto Oxford and Cambridge, the police, the BBC and so on.
Internally generated reform is beyond possibility, and any reform applied would therefore have the first step of removing a large majority of personnel - especially senior personnel - and would therefore be met by maximal resistance.
Thus reform (incremental change) becomes impossible and the whole organization must be replaced by an institution which actually 'does what it says on the tin'.
*
The problem is that this now applies to all major social institutions in the UK. They are all hollow shells filled with amorphous Leftism.
The problem, therefore, is one of total societal collapse due to the purposive functional incapability of institutions.
This is new territory - it has never happened before in human history - because it has never been able to happen before.
And the longer things continue without collapse, the greater the internal rot, the less will remain after collapse and the vaster the scale of institutional rebuilding that would be required.
*
But of course that won't happen. There will either be chaos and chaos - or else a much simpler society will be imposed on a much smaller remaining population with what will seem like astonishing speed.
*
Thursday, 11 July 2013
Was the Black Death a necessary cause of England's genius?
*
Why were the English the dominant nation of creative geniuses from Elizabethan times and for about 300 years?
Well, maybe they weren't but probably they were - and if so the cause may lie back in the Great Plague/ Black Death of 1348 onward
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/academic/broadberry/wp/britishgdplongrun8a.pdf
See figure 9 and Table 18
TABLE 18: English population, 1250-1700
Figure 19 shows that economic growth did not exceed medieval levels until after 1600, and the above table provides a possible explanation that the English population did not recover from the cull of the Black Death until about the same time - after 1600.
The idea is that the English population - which had already been selected for high intelligence in the early medieval period prior to 1348, was then subject to a fifty percent cull, differentially of those with lower intelligence (since the poor on average died at a greater rate than the rich), after which England had about half the population with a higher intelligence (and double the average per capita standard of living) - the English population then re-grew from this higher intelligence base and when it reached the previous size (after about seven or eight generations with lower child and young adult mortality rates) the creative explosion of the Elizabethan age foreshadowed many further generations of discovery and invention which included the start of the Industrial Revolution.
So the Black Death provided a (delayed) kick start for intelligence, and that drove creative genius.
*
Was this distinctive to England?
Why were the English the dominant nation of creative geniuses from Elizabethan times and for about 300 years?
Well, maybe they weren't but probably they were - and if so the cause may lie back in the Great Plague/ Black Death of 1348 onward
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/academic/broadberry/wp/britishgdplongrun8a.pdf
See figure 9 and Table 18
TABLE 18: English population, 1250-1700
| Levels of population (millions) Year up to Black Death | Total population | Year continued... | Total population |
| 1250 | 4.23 | 1400 | 2.08 |
| 1290 | 4.75 | 1450 | 1.90 |
| 1300 | 4.73 | 1490 | 2.14 |
| 1315 | 4.69 | 1560 | 3.02 |
| 1348 | 4.81 | 1600 | 4.11 |
| 1351 | 2.60 | 1650 | 5.31 |
| 1377 | 2.50 | 1700 | 5.20 |
Figure 19 shows that economic growth did not exceed medieval levels until after 1600, and the above table provides a possible explanation that the English population did not recover from the cull of the Black Death until about the same time - after 1600.
The idea is that the English population - which had already been selected for high intelligence in the early medieval period prior to 1348, was then subject to a fifty percent cull, differentially of those with lower intelligence (since the poor on average died at a greater rate than the rich), after which England had about half the population with a higher intelligence (and double the average per capita standard of living) - the English population then re-grew from this higher intelligence base and when it reached the previous size (after about seven or eight generations with lower child and young adult mortality rates) the creative explosion of the Elizabethan age foreshadowed many further generations of discovery and invention which included the start of the Industrial Revolution.
So the Black Death provided a (delayed) kick start for intelligence, and that drove creative genius.
*
Was this distinctive to England?
Wednesday, 10 July 2013
What does metaphysics mean in relation to Christianity?
*
Metaphysics is a very interesting subject - doubly so when it interacts with religion.
Interesting - and misunderstood.
*
Metaphysics describes the ultimate structure of reality - it is about the pre-suppositions or assumptions which underlie more detailed considerations such as specific philosophy (e.g. the philosophy of morals, beauty or specific religions) and science.
For a Christian, the most fundamental domain ought to be Christianity, which originates in revelation and revelation is in itself a complex product of tradition, scripture, authority, reason etc.
After this comes theology - but theology presupposes a particular metaphysics; for example monism or pluralism, serial time or eternal out-of-timeness, and some kind of point at which questions have to stop and the answer 'it just is' becomes accepted.
*
The underlying difference between Mainstream Christianity and Mormonism relates to metaphysics - Joseph Smith's Restored gospel is based on a different set of metaphysical assumptions - e.g. pluralism, dynamism, serial time, and the stoppage of questions at the terminus of the existence of the stuff of the universe and laws of nature.
The big question is whether a different metaphysics means that Mormonism is not Christian.
And the answer is: obviously not, because metaphysics is a matter of assumptions, and the Christian revelation did not refer to metaphysics.
(Or, at least, the metaphysics of Christian revelation is ambiguous - and can be interpreted in contrasting ways.)
*
But even though metaphysics is an assumption and not a discovery nor amenable to empirical investigation - it does make a difference.
Indeed, it can (for some people, at some times and/ or places) make a profound difference.
Thus a Christianity based on Platonic, or Aristotelian, or Pluralistic metaphysics will have very different emphases, gaps, biases, strengths and weaknesses.
And these metaphysical systems are incommensurable, meaning that one cannot be mapped onto the other, because each works by a different language - a different lexicon and grammar of belief.
But, they are all potentially Christian - why would they not be?
Christianity is prior to metaphysics.
*
Metaphysics is a very interesting subject - doubly so when it interacts with religion.
Interesting - and misunderstood.
*
Metaphysics describes the ultimate structure of reality - it is about the pre-suppositions or assumptions which underlie more detailed considerations such as specific philosophy (e.g. the philosophy of morals, beauty or specific religions) and science.
For a Christian, the most fundamental domain ought to be Christianity, which originates in revelation and revelation is in itself a complex product of tradition, scripture, authority, reason etc.
After this comes theology - but theology presupposes a particular metaphysics; for example monism or pluralism, serial time or eternal out-of-timeness, and some kind of point at which questions have to stop and the answer 'it just is' becomes accepted.
*
The underlying difference between Mainstream Christianity and Mormonism relates to metaphysics - Joseph Smith's Restored gospel is based on a different set of metaphysical assumptions - e.g. pluralism, dynamism, serial time, and the stoppage of questions at the terminus of the existence of the stuff of the universe and laws of nature.
The big question is whether a different metaphysics means that Mormonism is not Christian.
And the answer is: obviously not, because metaphysics is a matter of assumptions, and the Christian revelation did not refer to metaphysics.
(Or, at least, the metaphysics of Christian revelation is ambiguous - and can be interpreted in contrasting ways.)
*
But even though metaphysics is an assumption and not a discovery nor amenable to empirical investigation - it does make a difference.
Indeed, it can (for some people, at some times and/ or places) make a profound difference.
Thus a Christianity based on Platonic, or Aristotelian, or Pluralistic metaphysics will have very different emphases, gaps, biases, strengths and weaknesses.
And these metaphysical systems are incommensurable, meaning that one cannot be mapped onto the other, because each works by a different language - a different lexicon and grammar of belief.
But, they are all potentially Christian - why would they not be?
Christianity is prior to metaphysics.
*
Confessions of an unsystematic reader
*
I hate to be recommended books - to be strongly recommended I read a book often means I never get to read it.
Or, to be more accurate, I want to read what I want to read, as and when - and in the order - that I feel moved to read.
*
There was the famous Tarka the Otter incident when I was compelled by a school teacher to read this volume instead of my customary Biggles - I had to force myself through one page at a time, on a schedule.
When I audited courses during my MA (by thesis) in English, it was a kind of torture to follow the prescribed reading; whenever I tried to join a book club it seemed almost an intolerable imposition to have to read something that somebody else had chosen.
And it was a traumatic experience when, aged 18, I agreed to read a whole clutch of books recommended by my best friend.
*
Thus, I always have a stirring of sympathy about characters such as Samuel Johnson and Ralph Waldo Emerson who had similarly unsystematic habits.
I suspect that this disposition is evidence of high trait Psychoticism
http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=psychoticism
and probably, therefore, indicative of the most fundamental human characteristic - and it is a marker of creativity on the one hand; and impulsiveness, wilfulness, egotism, unemployability and general recalcitrant troublesomeness on the other.
*
I hate to be recommended books - to be strongly recommended I read a book often means I never get to read it.
Or, to be more accurate, I want to read what I want to read, as and when - and in the order - that I feel moved to read.
*
There was the famous Tarka the Otter incident when I was compelled by a school teacher to read this volume instead of my customary Biggles - I had to force myself through one page at a time, on a schedule.
When I audited courses during my MA (by thesis) in English, it was a kind of torture to follow the prescribed reading; whenever I tried to join a book club it seemed almost an intolerable imposition to have to read something that somebody else had chosen.
And it was a traumatic experience when, aged 18, I agreed to read a whole clutch of books recommended by my best friend.
*
Thus, I always have a stirring of sympathy about characters such as Samuel Johnson and Ralph Waldo Emerson who had similarly unsystematic habits.
I suspect that this disposition is evidence of high trait Psychoticism
http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=psychoticism
and probably, therefore, indicative of the most fundamental human characteristic - and it is a marker of creativity on the one hand; and impulsiveness, wilfulness, egotism, unemployability and general recalcitrant troublesomeness on the other.
*
Tuesday, 9 July 2013
Mortal incarnate life (human life) is an experience, not a test
*
Many Christians have said of implied that that mortal life is a 'test' - but for me this word is wrong; and I find it clearer and more coherent to think of mortal life (of being incarnated in a mortal body and then dying) as an experience.
Many Christians have said of implied that that mortal life is a 'test' - but for me this word is wrong; and I find it clearer and more coherent to think of mortal life (of being incarnated in a mortal body and then dying) as an experience.
This fits with the fact that so many humans never make it out of the womb, and so many more don't get past being born, and more don't make it to the years of responsibility - the idea of life as a 'test' therefore only fits a minority of the humans who have lived.
But I can certainly see that the experience of a pre-mortal spirit being - for however brief a time, and even if only in the womb - incarnate and mortal and then dying, might be necessary, irreplaceable for spiritual progress.
By analogy, it seems that for Christ to become our saviour, the experience of mortal life and death was necessary.
This line of argument suggests that experiencing death is as important, as necessary, for the spirit as is experiencing incarnate mortal life.
*
Monday, 8 July 2013
Evil cannot be destroyed - only sequestered (and that is why Hell is necessary)
*
Because time is linear and sequential, the reality and consequences of evil are permanent: it happened, it leaves a trace - changes the course of things.
Evil can be healed, but not reversed.
Because free will is real, some have not repented - and some perhaps may never repent.
Thus evil may be permanent - what then to do with it?
How can there be Heaven - how the New Jerusalem - when evil remains?
Evil must be sequestered - and that is what Hell is for: to sequester the unrepentant.
Hell is to sequester the evil, until they repent - or if they do not ever repent, if that is how they choose: then to sequester them for eternity.
*
Because time is linear and sequential, the reality and consequences of evil are permanent: it happened, it leaves a trace - changes the course of things.
Evil can be healed, but not reversed.
Because free will is real, some have not repented - and some perhaps may never repent.
Thus evil may be permanent - what then to do with it?
How can there be Heaven - how the New Jerusalem - when evil remains?
Evil must be sequestered - and that is what Hell is for: to sequester the unrepentant.
Hell is to sequester the evil, until they repent - or if they do not ever repent, if that is how they choose: then to sequester them for eternity.
*
Christian music - does it make a difference whether it is performed by believers?
*
I suspect it does.
I find myself more confused than moved by many performances of great, sacred Christian music - such as recordings and prestigious concerts - and perhaps this is a consequence of the music being performed by people who were not Christian, and the performance prepared and conducted in a setting and with a purpose that is not Christian...
*
Indeed, the manner in which a performance is done - the nature of making and selling a recording, the nature of rehearsing and performing in public - is often so powerfully anti-Christian that it seems to be able to overcome the fact of even sincere Christian beliefs on the part of the performers.
*
Given all this, and the fact that (a problem in the opposite direction to that described above) incompetent performance is also distracting, it is unsurprising how seldom sacred music seems to be effective in its primary purpose.
The fact is only disguised by our cultural tendency to mistake aesthetic feelings for religious 'uplift' - certainly, that was a mistake I made for several decades when (as an outsider to Christianity) I thought that sublime church music was also highly religious music.
*
This is, of course, the situation in the English choral tradition nowadays - where the secularization and corruption of the Church of England means that the norm at cathedrals and famous colleges at Oxford and Cambridge is aesthetically superb performances in glorious architectural settings - by unbelievers and Leftists who are actively subverting and destroying Christianity.
In such a context, the normal context; it is a case of the 'better' the performance, the worse it is religiously.
*
When a singer does not believe what they sing or a conductor the performance they prepare, it is a situation analogous to a preaching pastor being replaced by an actor.
The actor would probably be a better speaker than the pastor - more audible, more dramatic, more enjoyable... but the actor is just speaking his lines, and we know it.
At the end of that line of development we have a 'church' in which the most prestigious religious institutional manifestations are neither pastors nor priests nor saints nor anything primarily Christian; but singers and actors and academics and propagandists and diligent bureaucrats and so on.
And this is what we find.
**
Note: These thoughts came to me while watching a performance of Saint Nicolas by Benjamin Britten and reflecting that (even if I liked the music, which I didn't) it would be strange if I had been moved religiously when listening to the work of a subversive anti-Christian Leftist sexual revolutionary - especially in the original performance led by Britten's close friend and personal companion, Peter Pears - but that the Christian institutions which commissioned so many pseudo-Christian works and performances from Britten in the post-war era (when he and Pears had returned from sheltering in the USA) apparently did not think it odd. Even if I agreed that Britten was a major composer, I would find this odd - and revealing of the priorities of those involved
*
I suspect it does.
I find myself more confused than moved by many performances of great, sacred Christian music - such as recordings and prestigious concerts - and perhaps this is a consequence of the music being performed by people who were not Christian, and the performance prepared and conducted in a setting and with a purpose that is not Christian...
*
Indeed, the manner in which a performance is done - the nature of making and selling a recording, the nature of rehearsing and performing in public - is often so powerfully anti-Christian that it seems to be able to overcome the fact of even sincere Christian beliefs on the part of the performers.
*
Given all this, and the fact that (a problem in the opposite direction to that described above) incompetent performance is also distracting, it is unsurprising how seldom sacred music seems to be effective in its primary purpose.
The fact is only disguised by our cultural tendency to mistake aesthetic feelings for religious 'uplift' - certainly, that was a mistake I made for several decades when (as an outsider to Christianity) I thought that sublime church music was also highly religious music.
*
This is, of course, the situation in the English choral tradition nowadays - where the secularization and corruption of the Church of England means that the norm at cathedrals and famous colleges at Oxford and Cambridge is aesthetically superb performances in glorious architectural settings - by unbelievers and Leftists who are actively subverting and destroying Christianity.
In such a context, the normal context; it is a case of the 'better' the performance, the worse it is religiously.
*
When a singer does not believe what they sing or a conductor the performance they prepare, it is a situation analogous to a preaching pastor being replaced by an actor.
The actor would probably be a better speaker than the pastor - more audible, more dramatic, more enjoyable... but the actor is just speaking his lines, and we know it.
At the end of that line of development we have a 'church' in which the most prestigious religious institutional manifestations are neither pastors nor priests nor saints nor anything primarily Christian; but singers and actors and academics and propagandists and diligent bureaucrats and so on.
And this is what we find.
**
Note: These thoughts came to me while watching a performance of Saint Nicolas by Benjamin Britten and reflecting that (even if I liked the music, which I didn't) it would be strange if I had been moved religiously when listening to the work of a subversive anti-Christian Leftist sexual revolutionary - especially in the original performance led by Britten's close friend and personal companion, Peter Pears - but that the Christian institutions which commissioned so many pseudo-Christian works and performances from Britten in the post-war era (when he and Pears had returned from sheltering in the USA) apparently did not think it odd. Even if I agreed that Britten was a major composer, I would find this odd - and revealing of the priorities of those involved
*
Sunday, 7 July 2013
Hopelessness and alienation - brought-up against the one true story of Christianity
*
There are three broad categories of dissatisfaction with the mainstream secular world view:
1. The self-refuting nature of relativism.
2. The arbitrariness of ethics without religion.
3. Hopelessness and alienation.
*
Hopelessness and alienation are the hardest to identify and pin down, and are always deniable - but maybe they are the most damaging aspect of the modern malaise because - on the one hand - they render the individual unable to stand firm and make an effort to escape their situation; while - on the other hand - they lead the sufferer to escape his existential loneliness into distractions and intoxications (especially sexual) which take him further and further from the truth and from virtue.
*
Christianity solves all these problems; and that should be enough to recommend it conclusively when someone has nothing coherent or motivating to offer as an alternative - yet clearly this seldom happens, and conversion is typically a drawn-out process that is easily derailed (certainly it was for me).
What happens is that each Christian solution to each class of problem is met by a change of ground and criticized from a different perspective - so that the cure of alienation is met by the charge that Christianity is a made-up fairy story, while the cure of Christianity offering a coherent truth is met by objections that this system is immoral (according to modern secular norms); yet the grounded ethical system of Christianity is said to be arbitrary or alienating.
Such objections can go round and round without termination for weeks, years, decades...
*
It seems very difficult, in a world in of cognitive fragmentation/ specialization, to bring matters to a point - to force a total-world-view confrontation between Christianity and mainstream secular Leftism - a confrontation which Christianity would immediately and easily win.
Modern mass media culture, the partial professional cultures (e.g. politics, law, science, the arts), the weakness and wickedness of the human heart, and the cumulative corruptions of purposive evil at work around us all conspire to prevent such a confrontation.
But this is the great latent strength of Christianity. If, or when, a person brings themselves or is brought by circumstance to the point of balancing Christianity against secular modernity - and can hold themselves or be held at that point for more than a moment - then there is no doubt of the outcome.
*
There are three broad categories of dissatisfaction with the mainstream secular world view:
1. The self-refuting nature of relativism.
2. The arbitrariness of ethics without religion.
3. Hopelessness and alienation.
*
Hopelessness and alienation are the hardest to identify and pin down, and are always deniable - but maybe they are the most damaging aspect of the modern malaise because - on the one hand - they render the individual unable to stand firm and make an effort to escape their situation; while - on the other hand - they lead the sufferer to escape his existential loneliness into distractions and intoxications (especially sexual) which take him further and further from the truth and from virtue.
*
Christianity solves all these problems; and that should be enough to recommend it conclusively when someone has nothing coherent or motivating to offer as an alternative - yet clearly this seldom happens, and conversion is typically a drawn-out process that is easily derailed (certainly it was for me).
What happens is that each Christian solution to each class of problem is met by a change of ground and criticized from a different perspective - so that the cure of alienation is met by the charge that Christianity is a made-up fairy story, while the cure of Christianity offering a coherent truth is met by objections that this system is immoral (according to modern secular norms); yet the grounded ethical system of Christianity is said to be arbitrary or alienating.
Such objections can go round and round without termination for weeks, years, decades...
*
It seems very difficult, in a world in of cognitive fragmentation/ specialization, to bring matters to a point - to force a total-world-view confrontation between Christianity and mainstream secular Leftism - a confrontation which Christianity would immediately and easily win.
Modern mass media culture, the partial professional cultures (e.g. politics, law, science, the arts), the weakness and wickedness of the human heart, and the cumulative corruptions of purposive evil at work around us all conspire to prevent such a confrontation.
But this is the great latent strength of Christianity. If, or when, a person brings themselves or is brought by circumstance to the point of balancing Christianity against secular modernity - and can hold themselves or be held at that point for more than a moment - then there is no doubt of the outcome.
*
Saturday, 6 July 2013
Truth claims and Christianity - Jerram Barrs
*
In this very interesting and useful video, Jerram Barrs makes the excellent point that Christian evangelists must be very clear and careful to make the point that people need to believe Christianity because it is true, not because of the beneficial psychological or social effects it may have.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NMGCLapxd0
Jerram Barrs has probably the most entrancing voice since the late Bob Ross - so just listening to him speak is extremely pleasant!
*
In this very interesting and useful video, Jerram Barrs makes the excellent point that Christian evangelists must be very clear and careful to make the point that people need to believe Christianity because it is true, not because of the beneficial psychological or social effects it may have.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NMGCLapxd0
Jerram Barrs has probably the most entrancing voice since the late Bob Ross - so just listening to him speak is extremely pleasant!
*
Friday, 5 July 2013
A passage very important in my conversion to Christianity
*
From The Last Battle (the final volume of the Chronicles of Narnia) by C.S. Lewis
"I hope Tash ate the Dwarfs too," said Eustace. "Little swine."
"No, he didn't," said Lucy. "And don't be horrid. Thery're still here. In fact you can see them from here. And I've tried and tried to make friends with them but it's no use."
"Friends with them!" cried Eustace. "If you knew how those Dwarfs have been behaving!"
"Oh stop it, Eustace," said Lucy. "Do come and see them. King Tirian, perhaps you could do something with them."
"I can feel no great love for Dwarfs today," said Tirian. "Yet at your asking, Lady, I would do a greater thing than this."
Lucy led the way and soon they could all see the Dwarfs. They had a very odd look. They weren't strolling about or enjoying themselves (although the cords with which they had been tied seemed to have vanished) nor were they lying down and having a rest. They were sitting very close together in a little circle facing one another. They never looked round or took any notice of the humans till Lucy and Tirian were almost near enough to touch them. Then the Dwarfs all cocked their heads as if they couldn't see anyone but were listening hard and trying to guess by the sound what was happening. "Look out!" said one of them in a surly voice. "Mind where you're going. Don't walk into our faces!"
"All right!" said Eustace indignantly. "We're not blind. We've got eyes in our heads."
"They must be darn good ones if you can see in here," said the same Dwarf whose name was Diggle.
"In where?" asked Edmund.
"Why you bone-head, in here of course," said Diggle. "In this pitch-black, poky, smelly little hole of a stable."
"Are you blind?" said Tirian.
"Ain't we all blind in the dark!" said Diggle.
"But it isn't dark, you poor stupid Dwarfs," said Lucy. "Can't you see? Look up! Look round! Can't you see the sky and the trees and the flowers? Can't you see me?"
"How in the name of all Humbug can I see what ain't there? And how can I see you any more than you can see me in this pitch darkness?"
"But I can see you," said Lucy. "I'll prove I can see you. You've got a pipe in your mouth."
"Anyone that knows the smell of baccy could tell that," said Diggle. "Oh the poor things! This is dreadful," said Lucy. Then she had an idea. She stopped and picked some wild violets. "Listen, Dwarf," she said. "Even if your eyes are wrong, perhaps your nose is all right: can you smell that?" She leaned across and held the fresh, damp flowers to Diggle's ugly nose. But she had to jump back quickly in order to avoid a blow from his hard little fist.
"None of that!" he shouted. "How dare you! What do you mean by shoving a lot of filthy stable-litter in my face? There was a thistle in it too. It's like your sauce! And who are you anyway?"
"Earth-man," said Tirian, "she is the Queen Lucy, sent hither by Aslan out of the deep past. And it is for her sake alone that I, Tirian your lawful King, do not cut all your heads from your shoulders, proved and twice-proved traitors that you are."
"Well if that doesn't beat everything!" exclaimed Diggle. "How can you go on talking all that rot? Your wonderful Lion didn't come and help you, did he? Thought not. And now - even now - when you've been beaten and shoved into this black hole, just the same as the rest of us, you're still at your old game. Starting a new lie! Trying to make us believe we're none of us shut up, and it ain't dark, and heaven knows what."
"There is no black hole, save in your own fancy, fool," cried Tirian. "Come out of it." And, leaning forward, he caught Diggle by the belt and the hood and swung him right out of the circle of Dwarfs. But the moment Tirian put him down, Diggle darted back to his place among the others, rubbing his nose and howling:
"Ow! Ow! What d'you do that for! Banging my face against the wall. You've nearly broken my nose."
"Oh dear!" said Lucy, "What are we to do for them?"
"Let 'em alone," said Eustace: but as he spoke the earth trembled. The sweet air grew suddenly sweeter. A brightness flashed behind them. All turned. Tirian turned last because he was afraid. There stood his heart's desire, huge and real, the golden Lion, Aslan himself, and already the others were kneeling in a circle round his forepaws and burying their hands and faces in his mane as he stooped his great head to touch them with his tongue. Then he fixed his eyes upon Tirian, and Tirian came near, trembling, and flung himself at the Lion's feet, and the Lion kissed him and said, "Well done, last of the Kings of Narnia who stood firm at the darkest hour."
"Aslan," said Lucy through her tears, "could you - will you - do something for these poor Dwarfs?"
"Dearest," said Aslan, "I will show you both what I can, and what I cannot, do." He came close to the Dwarfs and gave a low growl: low, but it set all the air shaking. But the Dwarfs said to one another, "Hear that? That's the gang at the other end of the stable. Trying to frighten us. They do it with a machine of some kind. Don't take any notice. They won't take us in again!"
Aslan raised his head and shook his mane. Instantly a glorious feast appeared on the Dwarfs' knees: pies and tongues and pigeons and trifles and ices, and each Dwarf had a goblet of good wine in his right hand. But it wasn't much use. They began eating and drinking greedily enough, but it was clear that they couldn't taste it properly. They thought they were eating and drinking only the sort of things you might find in a stable. One said he was trying to eat hay and another said he had a bit of an old turnip and a third said he'd found a raw cabbage leaf. And they raised golden goblets of rich red wine to their lips and said "Ugh! Fancy drinking dirty water out of a trough that a donkey's been at! Never thought we'd come to this." But very soon every Dwarf began suspecting that every other Dwarf had found something nicer than he had, and they started grabbing and snatching, and went on to quarrelling, till in a few minutes there was a free fight and all the good food was smeared on their faces and clothes or trodden under foot. But when at last they sat down to nurse their black eyes and their bleeding noses, they all said:
"Well, at any rate there's no Humbug here. We haven't let anyone take us in. The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs."
"You see, " said Aslan. "They will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out. But come, children. I have other work to do."
*
I can distinctly remember reading this passage, lying on a bed at home - although I cannot date the event, it was probably in the summer of 2008.
By that point I was getting close to becoming a Christian; but finding that for every particular item of evidence there was an alternative explanation. Everything that could be explained meaningfully, purposefully, personally by Christianity - could also be explained as a product of accidental, contingent, mechanical process. Every insight could be interpreted as a delusion.
I was, in short, behaving just like the Dwarfs - and, like the Dwarfs, was feeling smugly satisfied by my own skepticism.
And then I saw the self-destructive futility of living my life in this way. I could be living in a universe of purpose, meaning and relation - and yet I could all the time be stoutly maintaining that all of this apparent purpose, meaning, relation - truth, beauty, virtue - was an illusion, a cruel trick of chance...
What would be the point of going through life behaving like that, seeing things in that kind of way? Yet that was exactly what I had been doing for decades...
*
From The Last Battle (the final volume of the Chronicles of Narnia) by C.S. Lewis
"I hope Tash ate the Dwarfs too," said Eustace. "Little swine."
"No, he didn't," said Lucy. "And don't be horrid. Thery're still here. In fact you can see them from here. And I've tried and tried to make friends with them but it's no use."
"Friends with them!" cried Eustace. "If you knew how those Dwarfs have been behaving!"
"Oh stop it, Eustace," said Lucy. "Do come and see them. King Tirian, perhaps you could do something with them."
"I can feel no great love for Dwarfs today," said Tirian. "Yet at your asking, Lady, I would do a greater thing than this."
Lucy led the way and soon they could all see the Dwarfs. They had a very odd look. They weren't strolling about or enjoying themselves (although the cords with which they had been tied seemed to have vanished) nor were they lying down and having a rest. They were sitting very close together in a little circle facing one another. They never looked round or took any notice of the humans till Lucy and Tirian were almost near enough to touch them. Then the Dwarfs all cocked their heads as if they couldn't see anyone but were listening hard and trying to guess by the sound what was happening. "Look out!" said one of them in a surly voice. "Mind where you're going. Don't walk into our faces!"
"All right!" said Eustace indignantly. "We're not blind. We've got eyes in our heads."
"They must be darn good ones if you can see in here," said the same Dwarf whose name was Diggle.
"In where?" asked Edmund.
"Why you bone-head, in here of course," said Diggle. "In this pitch-black, poky, smelly little hole of a stable."
"Are you blind?" said Tirian.
"Ain't we all blind in the dark!" said Diggle.
"But it isn't dark, you poor stupid Dwarfs," said Lucy. "Can't you see? Look up! Look round! Can't you see the sky and the trees and the flowers? Can't you see me?"
"How in the name of all Humbug can I see what ain't there? And how can I see you any more than you can see me in this pitch darkness?"
"But I can see you," said Lucy. "I'll prove I can see you. You've got a pipe in your mouth."
"Anyone that knows the smell of baccy could tell that," said Diggle. "Oh the poor things! This is dreadful," said Lucy. Then she had an idea. She stopped and picked some wild violets. "Listen, Dwarf," she said. "Even if your eyes are wrong, perhaps your nose is all right: can you smell that?" She leaned across and held the fresh, damp flowers to Diggle's ugly nose. But she had to jump back quickly in order to avoid a blow from his hard little fist.
"None of that!" he shouted. "How dare you! What do you mean by shoving a lot of filthy stable-litter in my face? There was a thistle in it too. It's like your sauce! And who are you anyway?"
"Earth-man," said Tirian, "she is the Queen Lucy, sent hither by Aslan out of the deep past. And it is for her sake alone that I, Tirian your lawful King, do not cut all your heads from your shoulders, proved and twice-proved traitors that you are."
"Well if that doesn't beat everything!" exclaimed Diggle. "How can you go on talking all that rot? Your wonderful Lion didn't come and help you, did he? Thought not. And now - even now - when you've been beaten and shoved into this black hole, just the same as the rest of us, you're still at your old game. Starting a new lie! Trying to make us believe we're none of us shut up, and it ain't dark, and heaven knows what."
"There is no black hole, save in your own fancy, fool," cried Tirian. "Come out of it." And, leaning forward, he caught Diggle by the belt and the hood and swung him right out of the circle of Dwarfs. But the moment Tirian put him down, Diggle darted back to his place among the others, rubbing his nose and howling:
"Ow! Ow! What d'you do that for! Banging my face against the wall. You've nearly broken my nose."
"Oh dear!" said Lucy, "What are we to do for them?"
"Let 'em alone," said Eustace: but as he spoke the earth trembled. The sweet air grew suddenly sweeter. A brightness flashed behind them. All turned. Tirian turned last because he was afraid. There stood his heart's desire, huge and real, the golden Lion, Aslan himself, and already the others were kneeling in a circle round his forepaws and burying their hands and faces in his mane as he stooped his great head to touch them with his tongue. Then he fixed his eyes upon Tirian, and Tirian came near, trembling, and flung himself at the Lion's feet, and the Lion kissed him and said, "Well done, last of the Kings of Narnia who stood firm at the darkest hour."
"Aslan," said Lucy through her tears, "could you - will you - do something for these poor Dwarfs?"
"Dearest," said Aslan, "I will show you both what I can, and what I cannot, do." He came close to the Dwarfs and gave a low growl: low, but it set all the air shaking. But the Dwarfs said to one another, "Hear that? That's the gang at the other end of the stable. Trying to frighten us. They do it with a machine of some kind. Don't take any notice. They won't take us in again!"
Aslan raised his head and shook his mane. Instantly a glorious feast appeared on the Dwarfs' knees: pies and tongues and pigeons and trifles and ices, and each Dwarf had a goblet of good wine in his right hand. But it wasn't much use. They began eating and drinking greedily enough, but it was clear that they couldn't taste it properly. They thought they were eating and drinking only the sort of things you might find in a stable. One said he was trying to eat hay and another said he had a bit of an old turnip and a third said he'd found a raw cabbage leaf. And they raised golden goblets of rich red wine to their lips and said "Ugh! Fancy drinking dirty water out of a trough that a donkey's been at! Never thought we'd come to this." But very soon every Dwarf began suspecting that every other Dwarf had found something nicer than he had, and they started grabbing and snatching, and went on to quarrelling, till in a few minutes there was a free fight and all the good food was smeared on their faces and clothes or trodden under foot. But when at last they sat down to nurse their black eyes and their bleeding noses, they all said:
"Well, at any rate there's no Humbug here. We haven't let anyone take us in. The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs."
"You see, " said Aslan. "They will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out. But come, children. I have other work to do."
*
I can distinctly remember reading this passage, lying on a bed at home - although I cannot date the event, it was probably in the summer of 2008.
By that point I was getting close to becoming a Christian; but finding that for every particular item of evidence there was an alternative explanation. Everything that could be explained meaningfully, purposefully, personally by Christianity - could also be explained as a product of accidental, contingent, mechanical process. Every insight could be interpreted as a delusion.
I was, in short, behaving just like the Dwarfs - and, like the Dwarfs, was feeling smugly satisfied by my own skepticism.
And then I saw the self-destructive futility of living my life in this way. I could be living in a universe of purpose, meaning and relation - and yet I could all the time be stoutly maintaining that all of this apparent purpose, meaning, relation - truth, beauty, virtue - was an illusion, a cruel trick of chance...
What would be the point of going through life behaving like that, seeing things in that kind of way? Yet that was exactly what I had been doing for decades...
*
Thursday, 4 July 2013
What is Heaven like?
*
The analogies are drawn from our own best experiences - but each points to a qualitatively different Heaven, an essentially different Heaven.
1. An endless timeless moment of ecstasy; to be blissed-out with empathic love, aesthetic arrest, sudden deep insight - always now but infinitely prolonged?
2. A perpetual adventure, a cornucopia of infinitely various pleasures of mind and body - always fresh; love in praise, in thanks, in song?
3. The perfection of perfect family life, in God's family; as Son or Daughter, as Brother or Sister, as Father or Mother; Aunties and Uncles, Nephews, Nieces and Cousins (by blood and by adoption): eternal growth of love in relations?
4. Perpetual triumphant war - courage, comradeship, excitement, alternating with rest and recreation, feasting and celebrating and planning the next campaign: to be God's warrior?
*
The main distinction is Heaven as a perpetual state versus Heaven as a perpetual process; Heaven as being or Heaven as becoming.
*
Which do you most desire?
Which is truest?
Or/ And: are there other Heaven's, essentially different; more true?
*
The analogies are drawn from our own best experiences - but each points to a qualitatively different Heaven, an essentially different Heaven.
1. An endless timeless moment of ecstasy; to be blissed-out with empathic love, aesthetic arrest, sudden deep insight - always now but infinitely prolonged?
2. A perpetual adventure, a cornucopia of infinitely various pleasures of mind and body - always fresh; love in praise, in thanks, in song?
3. The perfection of perfect family life, in God's family; as Son or Daughter, as Brother or Sister, as Father or Mother; Aunties and Uncles, Nephews, Nieces and Cousins (by blood and by adoption): eternal growth of love in relations?
4. Perpetual triumphant war - courage, comradeship, excitement, alternating with rest and recreation, feasting and celebrating and planning the next campaign: to be God's warrior?
*
The main distinction is Heaven as a perpetual state versus Heaven as a perpetual process; Heaven as being or Heaven as becoming.
*
Which do you most desire?
Which is truest?
Or/ And: are there other Heaven's, essentially different; more true?
*
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