Modern people can't change because they spend all their time semi-conscious and externally driven; plugged-into and addicted-to the mass-social media, intoxicated, being-manipulated...
In one sense people need to break out of this before anything more can be achieved; rather as an alcoholic must first stop drinking, before he can even begin to fix his life.
But do they want to? - that is the question. There is a lot to suggest that most people don't want to change - and therefore they will not change. They may not be happy with what they are and what they do; but ultimately they want things to stay the same; only also made better - like an alcoholic whose deepest desire is easy access to limitless high-quality booze.
Some version of that (perhaps sex, drugs, admiration or money rather than booze?) is, apparently, what most modern people want from life.
If people want change, want God, want a Romantic life of spiritual connection - it is remarkable what can be achieved in despite of the most unpropitious circumstances; but when they don't want anything more than a more pleasurable version of what they already have, then none of it will happen - regardless of the external situation.
We live in a world of inverted-Good imposed from the Establishment and propagated via the media and all official institutions; but do the mass of people really object?
Not so far as I can see. They go along with it quite placidly, and are a lot more worried about the (imaginary) threat of people (extremists, fundamentalists, conspiracy theorists) rocking the boat.
They face a dire prospect is they look (not far) ahead - but when acknowledged this impending doom mostly intensifies their desire to wring as much pleasure as possible out of the next few hours.
Christians in general and Romantic Christians in particular might expend all their efforts in trying to change people who don't want to change - and it will be a completely ineffectual waste of effort. If, on the other hand, we respond as best and fast as we can to those who want to change - we may do good.
Yet there is an army of fake-askers - of 'trolls' who pretend to want to change, but are actually intending to waste our time. So, as always, discernment is required.
Fortunately, we have been equipped with a highly sensitive discerning ability, that works very well in face to face circumstances - if we let it: if we notice and listen-to what it is telling us (and don't try to argue with it by 'reasoning' and asking for 'evidence'!). This will - highly accurately - tell us who wants change versus who has some other agenda.
Discernment doesn't work so well online or in detachment or at second- or third-hand; there we are more easily fooled, and more likely to miss the subtle cues of a genuine desire for change.
At bottom, those who want to change must take responsibility for themselves changing; as the first and essential step. But we might be able to help - if that help is timely, specific and directed.
Clunky programmes, protocols, generic advice... are all counterproductive because adding delay, reducing specificity, and impairing the work of intuition.
Try to be ready; and when discernment say Yes, and intuition tells us What: act Now.
Monday, 26 November 2018
Sunday, 25 November 2018
The problem of Rudolf Steiner and the Anthroposophical Society
I continue to engage with the work of Rudolf Steiner, and continue to find him to be A Problem!
In the first place, it is important to acknowledge that the problem arises from the fact that Steiner was a genius of first rank importance in our cultural history - and therefore is thoroughly deserving of the most careful and sustained consideration.
To put it the other way around; it would be hazardous to leave-out Steiner from our thinking. He is certainly not indispensable; but we, at least, would each need to discover Steiner's contribution from other, often related and influenced-by sources (such as, in my experience, Barfield and Arkle; and Mormon theology) plus personal meditation.
But - within the overall context that Steiner is someone who made a deep and vital contribution; he comes-across as one of the most maddening and off-putting of writers!
I think this is due to the unfortunate historical fact that Steiner built an organisation, a movement, around his philosophy - the Anthroposophical Society; and that this became an institution; and that this institution has become the sole source of Steiner's legacy... Steiner and his work comes down to us, as it were, inside the Anthroposophical Society.
The further problem is that mainstream intellectual culture (partly, but only partly, because of this institutional capture) has completely ignored Steiner. So there is no independent tradition of engagement that takes Steiner with the extreme seriousness he deserves.
And for the Anthroposophical Society; it is clear that Steiner's work is regarded as primarily a vast and (apparently) systematic collection of set of spiritual scientific facts. Thus Steiner expertise comes in the form of people with an encyclopaedic knowledge of what Steiner wrote and (mostly) said on hundreds of topics and in hundreds of thousands of words.
This is a Big Problem, because We get Steiner via his Society, and the Society regards Steiner as systematic and vast; so that in practice we are confronted with an 'all-or-nothing' demand.
If we are to take Steiner seriously, we are asked to take him whole - and this means either a lifetime's work of reading and comprehending more than a hundred dense books, or getting him secondhand and through the lens of the Anthroposophical Society - for whom Steiner's nature and oeuvre are regarded as essentially perfect and infallible.
This sounds exaggerated, and I suppose Anthroposophists would strenuously deny it!; but I believe that it is literally correct.
The situation seems to have arisen from a contradiction in Steiner's teachings, and another contradiction between what he said and what he did... but noticing and taking-seriously this kind of contradiction is exactly what the Anthroposophical Society regards as tabu.
Indeed, it was because Steiner despaired of having his early philosophical works noticed by 'mainstream' intellectual culture, that he began to put his energies into lecturing to various niche audiences - an educational groups for socialist workers, Nietzchians, Theosophists and then forming his own Theosophical off-shoot called Anthroposophy. But in principle, Steiner might not have done this, might have remained 'independent'; and his books then would have come down to us as the work of a spiritual philosopher analogous to Coleridge, Emerson, Nietzsche, William James or Owen Barfield.
In a nutshell; the AS regards Steiner as systematic - therefore all-or-nothing; and the Society regards the person of Rudolf Steiner as wholly-well-motivated - but I do not.
Instead, I regard Steiner as a significantly-flawed individual; whose work is deeply self-contradicting, in multiple ways. And therefore to take Steiner whole is to lose his essence and to dissipate his importance.
Thus, I believe that we must be selective in reading Steiner; and this selectivity is not just in superficial details but in primary aspects of his legacy. As we read Steiner we need to recognise contradictions, and to take sides - accepting the valid, and rejecting the wrong. We also need to recognise the man's flaws, errors, and mistakes - and not to assume that he always meant well, nor that he was always truthful, nor that everything he did (or that happened to him) was For The Best.
The difficulty is - as I said - that Steiner comes to us inside the Anthroposophical Society, and all Steiner expertise is among Anthroposophists. So someone who wants to engage with Steiner as a major Romantic Christian and as an autonomous thinker is compelled to set himself against all this! - and to contradict those who know far more than he does!
This can, however, be done coherently by regarding Steiner as primarily a metaphysical philosopher, and regarding his teaching as primarily about each individual using this metaphysical understanding to attain a different and higher state of consciousness. The millions of 'facts' (i.e. the findings of spiritual science that Steiner provides in his later work) should therefore be regarded as merely suggestions.
In a nutshell, we can choose to regard Anthroposophy as a way or path; and to reject (in part or in whole) the vast collection of facts and theories by Steiner (on subjects such as cosmology, evolutionary history, politics, agriculture, medicine, education, dancing, music, drama, bees etc. etc.)
And finally, Steiner must be regarded as a Christian, and his whole philosophy as making sense only within a Christian framework.
For Steiner, Christianity is mandatory. Everything of primary value that Steiner said needs to be understood within a specifically-Christian frame.
And, significantly, Christianity is perhaps the only aspect of Steiner's legacy which is Not, in practice, taken seriously by the Anthroposophical Society.
Advisory note added for Romantic Christians: Do read Rudolf Steiner, anticipate learning from one of the great thinkers of all time and one of a handful of the most important thinkers for modern Westerners; but read selectively and critically - being prepared to reject the bulk of what he says. Focus on the early three philosophical books (GA 2, 3, 4) - up to 1894 - but don't restrict yourself to them. Interpret the later books in light of the early three. Understand that the whole must be interpreted in light of the foundational fact (for Steiner) that the incarnation and death of Jesus Christ is the centre and most important 'event' not just in the history of human society, but in the history of the earth - and indeed the history of all creation.
In the first place, it is important to acknowledge that the problem arises from the fact that Steiner was a genius of first rank importance in our cultural history - and therefore is thoroughly deserving of the most careful and sustained consideration.
To put it the other way around; it would be hazardous to leave-out Steiner from our thinking. He is certainly not indispensable; but we, at least, would each need to discover Steiner's contribution from other, often related and influenced-by sources (such as, in my experience, Barfield and Arkle; and Mormon theology) plus personal meditation.
But - within the overall context that Steiner is someone who made a deep and vital contribution; he comes-across as one of the most maddening and off-putting of writers!
I think this is due to the unfortunate historical fact that Steiner built an organisation, a movement, around his philosophy - the Anthroposophical Society; and that this became an institution; and that this institution has become the sole source of Steiner's legacy... Steiner and his work comes down to us, as it were, inside the Anthroposophical Society.
The further problem is that mainstream intellectual culture (partly, but only partly, because of this institutional capture) has completely ignored Steiner. So there is no independent tradition of engagement that takes Steiner with the extreme seriousness he deserves.
And for the Anthroposophical Society; it is clear that Steiner's work is regarded as primarily a vast and (apparently) systematic collection of set of spiritual scientific facts. Thus Steiner expertise comes in the form of people with an encyclopaedic knowledge of what Steiner wrote and (mostly) said on hundreds of topics and in hundreds of thousands of words.
This is a Big Problem, because We get Steiner via his Society, and the Society regards Steiner as systematic and vast; so that in practice we are confronted with an 'all-or-nothing' demand.
If we are to take Steiner seriously, we are asked to take him whole - and this means either a lifetime's work of reading and comprehending more than a hundred dense books, or getting him secondhand and through the lens of the Anthroposophical Society - for whom Steiner's nature and oeuvre are regarded as essentially perfect and infallible.
This sounds exaggerated, and I suppose Anthroposophists would strenuously deny it!; but I believe that it is literally correct.
The situation seems to have arisen from a contradiction in Steiner's teachings, and another contradiction between what he said and what he did... but noticing and taking-seriously this kind of contradiction is exactly what the Anthroposophical Society regards as tabu.
Indeed, it was because Steiner despaired of having his early philosophical works noticed by 'mainstream' intellectual culture, that he began to put his energies into lecturing to various niche audiences - an educational groups for socialist workers, Nietzchians, Theosophists and then forming his own Theosophical off-shoot called Anthroposophy. But in principle, Steiner might not have done this, might have remained 'independent'; and his books then would have come down to us as the work of a spiritual philosopher analogous to Coleridge, Emerson, Nietzsche, William James or Owen Barfield.
In a nutshell; the AS regards Steiner as systematic - therefore all-or-nothing; and the Society regards the person of Rudolf Steiner as wholly-well-motivated - but I do not.
Instead, I regard Steiner as a significantly-flawed individual; whose work is deeply self-contradicting, in multiple ways. And therefore to take Steiner whole is to lose his essence and to dissipate his importance.
Thus, I believe that we must be selective in reading Steiner; and this selectivity is not just in superficial details but in primary aspects of his legacy. As we read Steiner we need to recognise contradictions, and to take sides - accepting the valid, and rejecting the wrong. We also need to recognise the man's flaws, errors, and mistakes - and not to assume that he always meant well, nor that he was always truthful, nor that everything he did (or that happened to him) was For The Best.
The difficulty is - as I said - that Steiner comes to us inside the Anthroposophical Society, and all Steiner expertise is among Anthroposophists. So someone who wants to engage with Steiner as a major Romantic Christian and as an autonomous thinker is compelled to set himself against all this! - and to contradict those who know far more than he does!
This can, however, be done coherently by regarding Steiner as primarily a metaphysical philosopher, and regarding his teaching as primarily about each individual using this metaphysical understanding to attain a different and higher state of consciousness. The millions of 'facts' (i.e. the findings of spiritual science that Steiner provides in his later work) should therefore be regarded as merely suggestions.
In a nutshell, we can choose to regard Anthroposophy as a way or path; and to reject (in part or in whole) the vast collection of facts and theories by Steiner (on subjects such as cosmology, evolutionary history, politics, agriculture, medicine, education, dancing, music, drama, bees etc. etc.)
And finally, Steiner must be regarded as a Christian, and his whole philosophy as making sense only within a Christian framework.
For Steiner, Christianity is mandatory. Everything of primary value that Steiner said needs to be understood within a specifically-Christian frame.
And, significantly, Christianity is perhaps the only aspect of Steiner's legacy which is Not, in practice, taken seriously by the Anthroposophical Society.
Advisory note added for Romantic Christians: Do read Rudolf Steiner, anticipate learning from one of the great thinkers of all time and one of a handful of the most important thinkers for modern Westerners; but read selectively and critically - being prepared to reject the bulk of what he says. Focus on the early three philosophical books (GA 2, 3, 4) - up to 1894 - but don't restrict yourself to them. Interpret the later books in light of the early three. Understand that the whole must be interpreted in light of the foundational fact (for Steiner) that the incarnation and death of Jesus Christ is the centre and most important 'event' not just in the history of human society, but in the history of the earth - and indeed the history of all creation.
Saturday, 24 November 2018
Any (more) questions?
Puzzle the donkey...
Friday, 23 November 2018
My favourite Haydn symphony
This symphony is a delight from the stormy beginning all through to the unique, lyrical end.
If you don't know the story of how No. 45 in F-sharp minor got its nickname of the 'Farewell' Symphony - make sure you watch the second part of the final movement (from about 21 minutes).
And especially from 22:30 when the orchestra and conductor very amusingly re-enact (with a couple of twists, because there would not then have been a conductor) what happened during the first performance!
Spontaneity, selection and training ('initiation') in the developmental-evolution of consciousness
1. We begin spontaneously in contact with the gods, with the spiritual realm - dwelling immersed-in it; passive to it. Such is early childhood.
2. The gods recede as self-consciousness develops - spiritual specialists begin to be selected from those who have a spontaneous 'gift' for contacting the gods and spirits: shamanism among 'animistic' hunter-gatherers.
3. As well as selection, there is a period of training (or 'initiation') leading to a profession of god-spirit specialists: the priesthood among the 'totemic' religions of agriculturalists (including herders).*
4. Self-consciousness reaches a maximum and the gods and spirit realm become inaccessible: the alienation of modern materialism.
5. The conscious-self deliberately-chooses, again-spontaneously, to interact with gods and spirit beings: this is Final Participation (the aim of Romantic Christianity).
*Totemism is what most modern people know as 'traditional religion - that which grew and reached its peak among literate agriculturalists; indeed some would assume that this is the only 'real' religion since the founders of the great world religions all emerged in agrarian societies. Yet such religion - although better than the alienation of materialism - is far from wholly-satisfactory. Its basic stance is one of an intrinsically hostile world, with hostile gods and spiritual beings that require appeasement; and this appeasement can only come from a 'priesthood'. Therefore, there is absolute dependence on priests to avert the innate malevolence of reality. The laity may crave contact with the gods and spirits, but the deities are leaving man's consciousness because in order to gain freedom consciousness is creating a barrier against direct perception and knowledge. The state of absolute dependence on an organised and initiated priesthood leads to growing-child-/parent-like state of resentment and superiority variably mixed-with gratitude and an ethic of service. In such a situation of at-least-partial hostility, religion often darkens as self-consciousness increases: religion becomes based around the management of fear.
2. The gods recede as self-consciousness develops - spiritual specialists begin to be selected from those who have a spontaneous 'gift' for contacting the gods and spirits: shamanism among 'animistic' hunter-gatherers.
3. As well as selection, there is a period of training (or 'initiation') leading to a profession of god-spirit specialists: the priesthood among the 'totemic' religions of agriculturalists (including herders).*
4. Self-consciousness reaches a maximum and the gods and spirit realm become inaccessible: the alienation of modern materialism.
5. The conscious-self deliberately-chooses, again-spontaneously, to interact with gods and spirit beings: this is Final Participation (the aim of Romantic Christianity).
*Totemism is what most modern people know as 'traditional religion - that which grew and reached its peak among literate agriculturalists; indeed some would assume that this is the only 'real' religion since the founders of the great world religions all emerged in agrarian societies. Yet such religion - although better than the alienation of materialism - is far from wholly-satisfactory. Its basic stance is one of an intrinsically hostile world, with hostile gods and spiritual beings that require appeasement; and this appeasement can only come from a 'priesthood'. Therefore, there is absolute dependence on priests to avert the innate malevolence of reality. The laity may crave contact with the gods and spirits, but the deities are leaving man's consciousness because in order to gain freedom consciousness is creating a barrier against direct perception and knowledge. The state of absolute dependence on an organised and initiated priesthood leads to growing-child-/parent-like state of resentment and superiority variably mixed-with gratitude and an ethic of service. In such a situation of at-least-partial hostility, religion often darkens as self-consciousness increases: religion becomes based around the management of fear.
Colin Wilson and the wisdom of the 1950s
Colin Wilson published his first book, The Outsider, in 1956: it was an international sensation and best-seller, and it was about the alienation of modern man.
The Outsider was a deep analysis; and in his second book, a year later, Religion and the Rebel; Wilson completed his argument and outlined what must be the solution: this solution was Romanticism and Religion (specifically a Romantic Christianity).
Although Wilson was far from the first to reach this conclusion - for example Owen Barfield had been absolutely explicit about it in Romanticism Comes of Age a decade earlier - but accessible to only a tiny audience of Anthroposophists...
My point is that by the middle 1950s we knew what was the fundamental problem with our Western Civilisation and what to do about it; and we also knew what would not work.
What has happened over the past 60 years is that we now no longer know what is wrong with our civilisation, and all the ideas of what to do about it that have occupied so many people for the past two generations have been wrong and harmful.
We have spent decades of a vast and thousand-fold enlarged and still-amplifying realm of public discourse in the mass media; in analysing, discussing, debating, implementing and resisting stuff that cannot possibly work - even if it was perfectly implemented in an ideal world.
This applies without exception to the entirety of mainstream political, social and academic discourse - it has been a truly colossal... what? Waste of Time? Displacement activity? Deliberate harm?
And still it goes on! Truth and True-Motivation recede further and further from consciousness. And in this respect the opposition are no better than The Establishment; since the opposition spend all their time analysing, debating and resisting the Establishment agenda - and remain utterly indifferent to the fact that even-if the world was remade in the way they aspire-to; it would only get us back to where we were in the 1950s...
- which we know (from Colin Wilson, at least) was intrinsically intolerable to the human spirit.
The Outsider was a deep analysis; and in his second book, a year later, Religion and the Rebel; Wilson completed his argument and outlined what must be the solution: this solution was Romanticism and Religion (specifically a Romantic Christianity).
Although Wilson was far from the first to reach this conclusion - for example Owen Barfield had been absolutely explicit about it in Romanticism Comes of Age a decade earlier - but accessible to only a tiny audience of Anthroposophists...
My point is that by the middle 1950s we knew what was the fundamental problem with our Western Civilisation and what to do about it; and we also knew what would not work.
What has happened over the past 60 years is that we now no longer know what is wrong with our civilisation, and all the ideas of what to do about it that have occupied so many people for the past two generations have been wrong and harmful.
We have spent decades of a vast and thousand-fold enlarged and still-amplifying realm of public discourse in the mass media; in analysing, discussing, debating, implementing and resisting stuff that cannot possibly work - even if it was perfectly implemented in an ideal world.
This applies without exception to the entirety of mainstream political, social and academic discourse - it has been a truly colossal... what? Waste of Time? Displacement activity? Deliberate harm?
And still it goes on! Truth and True-Motivation recede further and further from consciousness. And in this respect the opposition are no better than The Establishment; since the opposition spend all their time analysing, debating and resisting the Establishment agenda - and remain utterly indifferent to the fact that even-if the world was remade in the way they aspire-to; it would only get us back to where we were in the 1950s...
- which we know (from Colin Wilson, at least) was intrinsically intolerable to the human spirit.
Bureaucracy just-is totalitarian (and vice versa)
Bureaucracy is at the very heart of the modern world - it is the common factor that unites all organisations and nations and super-national organisations - because all such are primarily bureaucracies, and only secondarily whatever the organisation is supposed to be doing.
(Another surrent term for this is 'convergence' - because bureaucracy is intriniscally Leftist*.)
At an obvious level, the organisations become organised for the benefit of managers rather than doers: because there are more managers than functionaries, and the bureaucratic systems take all power to the managerial role.
This means that organisations do things that benefit (senior) managerial careers - things like reorganisations, initiatives, and publicity seeking activities.
But aside from providing an environment for a certain type of careerism; what does bureaucracy aim-at? Well, we can see for ourselves: control.
Bureaucracy aims-at an ideal of machine-like, computer-like organisation - and the main obstacle is human beings. So all bureaucracy intrinsically aims at first ever-closer monitoring and then ultimately at micro-control of the personnel (actions, attitudes, motivations - because all behavioural control aims-at thought-control).
Hence the vast apparatus by which people spend more time in data collection than in actually doing stuff.
As a single representative example: the engineers who come to maintain my central heating spend about half an hour on the job and a half hour afterwards filling forms and logging their activities so that the bureaucracy may monitor and control him. The cost is that he probably does only 2/3 of the maintenance work he could otherwise accomplish - productivity reduced by more than 30 percent.
Or, more extremely; after nearly thirty years of this stuff, the amount of actual medicine practised in a day by the average British doctor has halved (at least).
So, we can see that bureaucracy is aiming at something very different from doing any-kind-of-job; it is aiming at monitoring and control of... well, of every-thing and every-body, ultimately.
And because this trend is 1. across-the-board and 2. bureaucracy is unopposed, and indeed encouraged, by those with power and influence - we can infer that the ideal of total-control is 1. intrinsic to the nature of bureaucracy and 2. a strategic goal of those in power.
Now - the obvious 'functional' rejoinder is that bureaucracy is tending towards a situation of 100% monitoring and control, 0% functionality (a populace whose function is merely to-be-monitored, to-be-controlled) - and that is true; and great strides have been made towards this implicit goal.
Yet, obviously, this would be an end to human society, the death of human society. Yet still the process of bureaucratisation unrolls and is implemented... This implies first that those who are behind the process care nothing about whether human society continues or not; and that instead the goal of controlling actually-existing-humans - here and now, in the immediate term - is over-riding.
All this is no mystery if we recognise the Hidden Hand behind global bureaucracy as demonic.
My conclusion is that bureaucracy is both intrinsically and purposively evil; and this is The Reason why it is expanding so rapidly towards ever more complete totalitarianism.
*All bureaucratic organisations are substantially Leftist, and Left-tending - including churches; this being, indeed, a major mechanism for the Leftist corruption of churches.
(Another surrent term for this is 'convergence' - because bureaucracy is intriniscally Leftist*.)
At an obvious level, the organisations become organised for the benefit of managers rather than doers: because there are more managers than functionaries, and the bureaucratic systems take all power to the managerial role.
This means that organisations do things that benefit (senior) managerial careers - things like reorganisations, initiatives, and publicity seeking activities.
But aside from providing an environment for a certain type of careerism; what does bureaucracy aim-at? Well, we can see for ourselves: control.
Bureaucracy aims-at an ideal of machine-like, computer-like organisation - and the main obstacle is human beings. So all bureaucracy intrinsically aims at first ever-closer monitoring and then ultimately at micro-control of the personnel (actions, attitudes, motivations - because all behavioural control aims-at thought-control).
Hence the vast apparatus by which people spend more time in data collection than in actually doing stuff.
As a single representative example: the engineers who come to maintain my central heating spend about half an hour on the job and a half hour afterwards filling forms and logging their activities so that the bureaucracy may monitor and control him. The cost is that he probably does only 2/3 of the maintenance work he could otherwise accomplish - productivity reduced by more than 30 percent.
Or, more extremely; after nearly thirty years of this stuff, the amount of actual medicine practised in a day by the average British doctor has halved (at least).
So, we can see that bureaucracy is aiming at something very different from doing any-kind-of-job; it is aiming at monitoring and control of... well, of every-thing and every-body, ultimately.
And because this trend is 1. across-the-board and 2. bureaucracy is unopposed, and indeed encouraged, by those with power and influence - we can infer that the ideal of total-control is 1. intrinsic to the nature of bureaucracy and 2. a strategic goal of those in power.
Now - the obvious 'functional' rejoinder is that bureaucracy is tending towards a situation of 100% monitoring and control, 0% functionality (a populace whose function is merely to-be-monitored, to-be-controlled) - and that is true; and great strides have been made towards this implicit goal.
Yet, obviously, this would be an end to human society, the death of human society. Yet still the process of bureaucratisation unrolls and is implemented... This implies first that those who are behind the process care nothing about whether human society continues or not; and that instead the goal of controlling actually-existing-humans - here and now, in the immediate term - is over-riding.
All this is no mystery if we recognise the Hidden Hand behind global bureaucracy as demonic.
My conclusion is that bureaucracy is both intrinsically and purposively evil; and this is The Reason why it is expanding so rapidly towards ever more complete totalitarianism.
*All bureaucratic organisations are substantially Leftist, and Left-tending - including churches; this being, indeed, a major mechanism for the Leftist corruption of churches.
Thursday, 22 November 2018
Take sides, be personally responsible
Gnomic wisdom!...
I probably mentioned before that a dream on the eve of my conversion to Christianity showed the globe being covered by evil, in an incremental creeping way; and I understood that I must (at least) not assist this evil in its work, its plan. I should try to do nothing voluntarily to help it. I realised this meant choosing sides in the 'spiritual war'.
As for responsibility - this is something that everybody knows, it is indeed the great challenge of the modern era.
The trouble is that people half do it. They challenge traditional authority, and will not take religion on trust or say-so. This - I believe - is an inevitable part of the divine plan: the final and necessary stage in moving out-from childhood, into and through spiritual adolescence.
But we will only move through spiritual adolescence to maturity, if we follow-through the necessity for responsibility.
The usual thing in the West is to be infinitely sceptical about Christianity and stubbornly-dishonestly credulous about mainstream modern Leftist culture and its assumptions.
Moderns simply assume the validity of that world view implicit to the entirely of mainstream public discourse - but dishonestly and evasively insist that it makes no assumptions (but is based wholly on 'evidence'). This applies whichever species of modern materialism they embrace (Left or Right or whatever).
What emerges is the anything-but-Christianity metaphysics that possesses so many, so strongly.
(I know... I used to have it bad.)
I am saying that this is not due to a wrong impulse, but a partial impulse; it is due to a wilful half-honesty and selective cynicism that is much worse than innocent credulity.
The Big Task of our time and place, as I read it, is to follow-through all-the-way on the modern instinct to seek personal validation, and to take personal responsibility.
But since no major or powerful group or institution is encouraging us in this essential work - our first act of personal spiritual responsibility is to go-it-alone.
I probably mentioned before that a dream on the eve of my conversion to Christianity showed the globe being covered by evil, in an incremental creeping way; and I understood that I must (at least) not assist this evil in its work, its plan. I should try to do nothing voluntarily to help it. I realised this meant choosing sides in the 'spiritual war'.
As for responsibility - this is something that everybody knows, it is indeed the great challenge of the modern era.
The trouble is that people half do it. They challenge traditional authority, and will not take religion on trust or say-so. This - I believe - is an inevitable part of the divine plan: the final and necessary stage in moving out-from childhood, into and through spiritual adolescence.
But we will only move through spiritual adolescence to maturity, if we follow-through the necessity for responsibility.
The usual thing in the West is to be infinitely sceptical about Christianity and stubbornly-dishonestly credulous about mainstream modern Leftist culture and its assumptions.
Moderns simply assume the validity of that world view implicit to the entirely of mainstream public discourse - but dishonestly and evasively insist that it makes no assumptions (but is based wholly on 'evidence'). This applies whichever species of modern materialism they embrace (Left or Right or whatever).
What emerges is the anything-but-Christianity metaphysics that possesses so many, so strongly.
(I know... I used to have it bad.)
I am saying that this is not due to a wrong impulse, but a partial impulse; it is due to a wilful half-honesty and selective cynicism that is much worse than innocent credulity.
The Big Task of our time and place, as I read it, is to follow-through all-the-way on the modern instinct to seek personal validation, and to take personal responsibility.
But since no major or powerful group or institution is encouraging us in this essential work - our first act of personal spiritual responsibility is to go-it-alone.
The revelatory significance of Anti-Brexit
While I expect that Brexit will be sabotaged by the Establishment (unless it sparks a genuine spiritual awakening among ordinary people) - and even at best it would be just a microscopic first-step towards something wholesome; the prime significance of Brexit is what it reveals about those who so vehemently, so vitriolically and incredulously oppose it. Those who so-very-very-much want to be bound-and-subordinated-to the European Union...
Anti-Brexit has been a stripping away of masks from those who regard-themselves and present-themselves as motivated by progressive, radical, artistic, humanitarian impulses.
I can certainly understand that it is off-putting to the intelligentsia to reject their own kind and instead align with the great mass of English people who so viscerally-dislike the EU (what it has-been, where it wants-to-go) and want as little as possible to do with it (as opposed to now being utterly ruled by it) - but the lack of self-awareness, the degree of self-blinding involved in this I find genuinely astonishing!
My interpretation is that this is a kind of self-hatred - a hatred of England and the English: not for the modern corruption, godlessness, materialism, hedonism... but a hatred of what was Good about England; a rejection of our destiny, a rejection of responsibility.
To be so starkly and angrily pro-EU is a conclusive, undeniable rejection - albeit naturally enough - of meaning, purpose and spirit in life; an emphatic embrace of the slow death of totalitarianism.
Anti-Brexit has been a stripping away of masks from those who regard-themselves and present-themselves as motivated by progressive, radical, artistic, humanitarian impulses.
I can certainly understand that it is off-putting to the intelligentsia to reject their own kind and instead align with the great mass of English people who so viscerally-dislike the EU (what it has-been, where it wants-to-go) and want as little as possible to do with it (as opposed to now being utterly ruled by it) - but the lack of self-awareness, the degree of self-blinding involved in this I find genuinely astonishing!
My interpretation is that this is a kind of self-hatred - a hatred of England and the English: not for the modern corruption, godlessness, materialism, hedonism... but a hatred of what was Good about England; a rejection of our destiny, a rejection of responsibility.
To be so starkly and angrily pro-EU is a conclusive, undeniable rejection - albeit naturally enough - of meaning, purpose and spirit in life; an emphatic embrace of the slow death of totalitarianism.
Wednesday, 21 November 2018
My melodeon
These days I am working on playing my melodeon - which is identical with the one above. I use it almost entirely to play English morris dance tunes. Melodeon is the standard instrument for accompaniment of morris dancing; and over the years many morris tunes have become adapted to the strengths and limitations of the instrument.
Ive had my instrument for nearly 20 years, but haven't played it very often; partly because my other, and 40-plus years of playing, instrument - a Hohner 48 bass piano accordeon - is sufficiently similar to interfere with learning the melodeon. The main problem is that the accordeon gives the same notes and chords on the push and pull; whereas the melodeon gives a different note on the push compared with pull - exactly like a mouth organ/ harmonica.
This video shows and compares the two instruments I play: D/G melodeon and 48 bass piano accordeon:
The melodeon is on the one hand a very limited instrument - which has two diatonic scales of D and G for the right hand and only four bass-chord buttons for the left; yet, on the other hand it has innate characteristics that make it ideal for morris dancing and folk music more generally.
For example, two pairs of bass buttons give the tonic on the push and the dominant on the pull; thus Dmaj push/ Amaj pull and Gmaj push/ Dmaj pull. This makes for a monotonous but drone-like accompaniments - which is 'bad' in classical music terms - but of course the drone is a major aspect of much folk music internationally (eg bagpipes and hurdy gurdy).
The other pair of left hand buttons (rather weirdly) are a bass-chord pair of Cmaj on push and also on pull (!); and a pair giving Bmin push and Emin pull. But the musicians among you may be able to work-out the logic behind all this...
The right hand of buttons gives a major chord on the push (e.g. G,B,D,G and D,Fsharp,A,D), and sounds the other notes on the pull (i.e. ACEFsharp and E,G,B,Csharp,) - which means that there are some notes that can be played in both rows, or on the push in one row, and the pull in another row - which is a way also of getting the required bass-chord to sound from your left hand. Plus there are a few accidental notes at the bottom of the right hand buttons...*
Any-Way! The point of all this is that the melodeon can be played such that the left hand side provides an almost automatic, albeit drone-like, tonic-dominant accompaniment to the right hand - and as such, the melodeon is one of the easiest of all dance instruments to play effectively and acceptably. But there are also possibilities for using the subdominant and relative minor root-notes and chords for variation or to play in minor keys (or, more likely with English folk music, to play in different modes; such as the Dorian mode running - e.g. and equivalent intervals - from D to D on the white notes of the piano).
The special quality of the melodeon is first that has a large range and it is surprisingly powerful for its small size. The treble buttons have two slight off-tuned 'vibrato' reeds per note - making a penetrating sound; and the bass is very 'meaty' in quality. So despite being easily portable, the melodeon can be used without amplification for accompanying even outdoor dancing:
Also, the instrument, played well, has a built-in bounce; which comes from the push-pull way of working it - this chap does this much better than the player in the previous video:
And this aspect of the melodeon playing is what I am working-on at present. I'm trying to use the push-pull as a feature, not a bug. Not to try and smooth-out the production of sound - as one would do for classical music; but instead to use the change in direction of the bellows to do what it is 'wanting' to do anyway - which is to make the music bouncy, jerky, uneven, pulsing.
This bouncy-jerky style is almost the opposite of what I have done with my little piano accordeon over the years - and is probably what has made it so difficult to switch between the two. So I am leaving off the piano accordeon altogether for a while - and trying to learn the push/ pull sequences by muscular memory...
BTW: There are some virtuosi of this kind of melodeon - and they can do some remarkable things!
But my personal aim is just to be able to play some of my favourite English dance tunes, for my own amusement; quite simply, but with that special melodeon bounce!
* One endearing aspect of the melodeon emerges when a tune has significantly more push notes than pull notes (or vice versa) - which happens quite often when a melody is based on arpeggio formations. The tendency is that the bellows runs-out of air, and the instrument closes-together with no more 'push' left to sound the notes (or else extends so wide that the bellows can expand no more). When such a situation approaches, the alert player has an 'air' button on the left had (controlled by the thumb) which lets air into, or out-from, the bellows without sounding a note. What it does sound-like is the instrument drawing in a great gasping breath! - or else exhaling with a whoosh.
Why schemes of reform are futile - indeed, counter-productive
I find myself more and more convinced at the futility - and therefore net harmfulness - of schemes of social, political, economic and any other kind of reform.
What happens is that I will often enjoy and appreciate the 'critique'-orientated 'introduction' to reform schemes, in which there is a description and analysis of the problems. But then, when it comes to making suggestions of how things might be improved, I just become escalatingly irritated and annoyed - and quit in disgust!
Not because the proposed improvements are 'wrong' but because They Will Not Happen; indeed they cannot happen.
The reason that they won't/ can't happen is the same reason that they haven't already happened but instead the opposite has happened - and that reason is the motivation of the people involved...
Continued at Albion Awakening...
What happens is that I will often enjoy and appreciate the 'critique'-orientated 'introduction' to reform schemes, in which there is a description and analysis of the problems. But then, when it comes to making suggestions of how things might be improved, I just become escalatingly irritated and annoyed - and quit in disgust!
Not because the proposed improvements are 'wrong' but because They Will Not Happen; indeed they cannot happen.
The reason that they won't/ can't happen is the same reason that they haven't already happened but instead the opposite has happened - and that reason is the motivation of the people involved...
Continued at Albion Awakening...
Ultimately, where does evil come from?
It is a classic, and in my view powerful, critique of mainstream Christian theology to find it to hard-to-understand where evil come-from if God is omnipotent, created everything-from-nothing and is wholly Good.
The - apparently unavoidable - implication is that since God created everything, then God created evil. But then God can't be wholly Good...
The best answer is that God wants Men to have free will/ agency; and evil is the price to pay.
However, this answer still leaves open the question of where evil ultimately comes from - how come there is any evil at all in a reality wholly made by a wholly Good God?
Where does that evil even come from? (Where, if not from God?... but then why did God create it?)
On the other hand; I regard creation as a work-in-progress; and each man and woman as having an eternal origin separate from God's creation.
So it is no mystery what evil is, nor where where evil comes-from: evil is that which is opposed to God's creation; and it comes from an agency of free will that is uncreated by God.
God does not need to invent and implement evil; it is something that just happens when Beings choose to act against creation.
The spiritual war is between those who align and (ultimately) ally with God and creation; and those who oppose God and creation.
The alternative to dwelling in God's creation is unorganised chaos - but chaos is not evil, since chaos has no purpose. From the Creator's perspective, chaos is the 'raw material' of potential creation.
But from the perspective of those who align with God, those Beings who purpose to reduce creation to chaos are evil.
And that is the origin and nature of evil.
The - apparently unavoidable - implication is that since God created everything, then God created evil. But then God can't be wholly Good...
The best answer is that God wants Men to have free will/ agency; and evil is the price to pay.
However, this answer still leaves open the question of where evil ultimately comes from - how come there is any evil at all in a reality wholly made by a wholly Good God?
Where does that evil even come from? (Where, if not from God?... but then why did God create it?)
On the other hand; I regard creation as a work-in-progress; and each man and woman as having an eternal origin separate from God's creation.
So it is no mystery what evil is, nor where where evil comes-from: evil is that which is opposed to God's creation; and it comes from an agency of free will that is uncreated by God.
God does not need to invent and implement evil; it is something that just happens when Beings choose to act against creation.
The spiritual war is between those who align and (ultimately) ally with God and creation; and those who oppose God and creation.
The alternative to dwelling in God's creation is unorganised chaos - but chaos is not evil, since chaos has no purpose. From the Creator's perspective, chaos is the 'raw material' of potential creation.
But from the perspective of those who align with God, those Beings who purpose to reduce creation to chaos are evil.
And that is the origin and nature of evil.
Tuesday, 20 November 2018
Hunters in the snow by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525-1569)
This was probably my favourite painting age about 18-20 years - exceptionally evocative of that sense of aching yearning, Sehnsucht, that CS Lewis termed Joy. After living from brief glimpses of the picture held in memory, I eventually found an affordable reproduction to put on my wall - it was actually some luxury wrapping-paper, purchased at Durham Cathedral!
At that time, and originally deriving from my immersion in Tolkien; I had an imaginative desire of 'Medieval' things - either original e.g. Gothic Cathedrals, Chaucer and his contemporaries) or in Revival (e.g. William Morris, Pre-Raphaelites, Carmina Burana by Carl Orff).
Although strictly this painting is a bit late for the Middle Ages, it has that God's-eye not-perspective which aims to depict the distance with the same detail as the foreground; and it was the distant, right side of this canvas that I found so very attractive.
I also liked the winter scene; since I associated it with being warm indoors beside a blazing fire; perhaps in the philosopher's tower of a castle (an image of Merlin from TH White's The Sword in the Stone). And the birds.
It strikes me now that the people are all anonymous, absorbed into the public roles: no 'characters' - and this doesn't appeal to me anymore. My tastes and hopes have changed. Then, I yearned for an earlier time of order, structure, guilds; and yearned to be the kind of person who could indeed live that way...
But that was a lack of self-knowledge, a fancy merely - because I am not of that kind. And have, indeed, spent most of my post-adolescent life resisting anything of the kind. I became a doctor - one of the last of the guilds, and now gone - but while I wanted to be a part of the profession, I was always on the outside and a mixture of unable and unwilling to join-in. The same problems applied to academic - earlier and more strongly.
And either way, there is now no real 'in' to join' - just the lies of public relations and the reality of bureaucracy. So it turned-out for the best, after all!
It should not surprise us if most people do not want Life Eternal as offered by Jesus
Most people rejected Jesus during his mortal life - either because they did not believe who he was - but some because they did not want what he offered.
Some of those who did not want what Jesus offered were evil; and lied about Jesus so that people who would want what Jesus offered would be induced to reject it. There are plenty such people around today.
But some who did not want what Jesus offered presumably just did not want it - for whatever reason. As far as I can understand it; Life Eternal is one of loving and creating. It is a life with other people and a life of activity; yet some people dislike other people and would prefer to do nothing.
The popularity of phrases about the post-mortal state such as Rest in Peace, and the echo of this sentiment on gravestone inscriptions, seems to indicate that many people yearn for perpetual sleep, or perhaps a state of almost unconscious bliss (Nirvana); such people do not want the Life Everlasting Jesus describes in the Fourth Gospel - a life of great perceptual and mental enhancements; but instead a life of inactivity.
Many mainstream Christian groups have little to say about the post-mortal state - and indeed they make it sound more like Nirvana than Heaven; but nonetheless the Holy Ghost is active and accessible to everybody, and so people can intuit directly for themselves the nature of Christ's Heaven; and perhaps some don't much like it.
My understanding of the general attitude displayed by Jesus in the Fourth Gospel is that he never expected everybody, or even a majority of people, to choose what he brought us. I think, in the past and in some places, a majority really did want Heaven; but nowadays it seems likely that a majority want Hell or Nirvana.
God cannot have known how many people would want the Heaven he made for us; because we are each different (from eternity) and have unique experiences; and have the reality of free will; so our choice at the point-of-decision cannot be known with certainty.
But I suspect that those who actively opt-in to the Heaven Jesus brought us, will be those who are motivated by a positive desire for loving and creating in participation with our Heavenly Family; and while I certainly am one of them, it would not surprise me if I was in a minority.
Some of those who did not want what Jesus offered were evil; and lied about Jesus so that people who would want what Jesus offered would be induced to reject it. There are plenty such people around today.
But some who did not want what Jesus offered presumably just did not want it - for whatever reason. As far as I can understand it; Life Eternal is one of loving and creating. It is a life with other people and a life of activity; yet some people dislike other people and would prefer to do nothing.
The popularity of phrases about the post-mortal state such as Rest in Peace, and the echo of this sentiment on gravestone inscriptions, seems to indicate that many people yearn for perpetual sleep, or perhaps a state of almost unconscious bliss (Nirvana); such people do not want the Life Everlasting Jesus describes in the Fourth Gospel - a life of great perceptual and mental enhancements; but instead a life of inactivity.
Many mainstream Christian groups have little to say about the post-mortal state - and indeed they make it sound more like Nirvana than Heaven; but nonetheless the Holy Ghost is active and accessible to everybody, and so people can intuit directly for themselves the nature of Christ's Heaven; and perhaps some don't much like it.
My understanding of the general attitude displayed by Jesus in the Fourth Gospel is that he never expected everybody, or even a majority of people, to choose what he brought us. I think, in the past and in some places, a majority really did want Heaven; but nowadays it seems likely that a majority want Hell or Nirvana.
God cannot have known how many people would want the Heaven he made for us; because we are each different (from eternity) and have unique experiences; and have the reality of free will; so our choice at the point-of-decision cannot be known with certainty.
But I suspect that those who actively opt-in to the Heaven Jesus brought us, will be those who are motivated by a positive desire for loving and creating in participation with our Heavenly Family; and while I certainly am one of them, it would not surprise me if I was in a minority.
Monday, 19 November 2018
The spiritual significance of mass/ social media saturation-usage is not so much its effect, as being evidence of motivation
There is a lot of discussion about the bad effects of continuous, intensive, immersive social media usage (i.e. what is now normal everyday life for the majority of young and middling adult Western people); but what worries me much more, is the personal motivational state of which this usage is evidence.
It is the simple and obvious fact that the majority of people actively-want to spend most of their lives interacting with the mass and social media; on average, they want this - by evidence of how they behave - more than they want anything else.
(This is very often the case with addiction - people get addicted because they want to become addicted: they work at it.)
And what this tells me is equally simple: that the majority of modern Western people actively reject Heaven, and positively desire Hell - because the materialistic-subjective-passive milieu of mass and social media is itself a segment of Hell (i.e. that state which follows the rejection of salvation).
I'm not saying that the media saturation 'makes people' desire Hell; but something much worse: that the way that people have embraced the mass/ social media and made them the centre of their lives reveals that people want Hell, and that is exactly why people have embraced mass/ social media.
A revealed-preference to live by continuous mass/ social media is therefore a revealed-preference for Hell. Then, the media saturation will amplify and consolidate this preference. But the preference came first.
I am not saying 'this will happen unless'... on the contrary, I am describing what has already happened, and is happening; and what it actually means. And I am emphasising that the problem is much deeper than generally recognised - because when mass/ social media are being consumed immersively as a means to the end of Hell - then what Christians regard as media's ill effects are a desired feature, not an inconvenient bug.
The spiritually-malign effects of saturation-media are exactly why people saturate themselves in media; and why they do this purposively, obsessively - and why they react with such fear and anger when their continued immersive media usage is threatened.
The implication is that even if mass/ social media were savagely curtailed - or altogether removed; it would have much less beneficial effects than if the media had been the root of the problem.
The primary problem is at a very deep level in the souls, and in the fundamental life choices, of very large numbers of Western people.
It is the simple and obvious fact that the majority of people actively-want to spend most of their lives interacting with the mass and social media; on average, they want this - by evidence of how they behave - more than they want anything else.
(This is very often the case with addiction - people get addicted because they want to become addicted: they work at it.)
And what this tells me is equally simple: that the majority of modern Western people actively reject Heaven, and positively desire Hell - because the materialistic-subjective-passive milieu of mass and social media is itself a segment of Hell (i.e. that state which follows the rejection of salvation).
I'm not saying that the media saturation 'makes people' desire Hell; but something much worse: that the way that people have embraced the mass/ social media and made them the centre of their lives reveals that people want Hell, and that is exactly why people have embraced mass/ social media.
A revealed-preference to live by continuous mass/ social media is therefore a revealed-preference for Hell. Then, the media saturation will amplify and consolidate this preference. But the preference came first.
I am not saying 'this will happen unless'... on the contrary, I am describing what has already happened, and is happening; and what it actually means. And I am emphasising that the problem is much deeper than generally recognised - because when mass/ social media are being consumed immersively as a means to the end of Hell - then what Christians regard as media's ill effects are a desired feature, not an inconvenient bug.
The spiritually-malign effects of saturation-media are exactly why people saturate themselves in media; and why they do this purposively, obsessively - and why they react with such fear and anger when their continued immersive media usage is threatened.
The implication is that even if mass/ social media were savagely curtailed - or altogether removed; it would have much less beneficial effects than if the media had been the root of the problem.
The primary problem is at a very deep level in the souls, and in the fundamental life choices, of very large numbers of Western people.
Sleeping through life - ego and self
Isn't just a matter of not being alert; because the most alert people include those who are most asleep.
In a spiritual sense, sleep refers to a blindness, rather than a level of consciousness. The sleep of a modern adolescent plugged into social media is certainly very active, very alert; but it is a sleeping-through Life. Such an one is passive, absorptive, reactive. Thoughts go-through the mind; and do not originate-from the mind.
To become awake is consciously to become aware of Living, as it is happening, here-and-now. That is one step. But further it requires a wider appreciation of what is happening in living.
But if living is conceptualised in the mainstream terms of modern public discourse; then it is indistinguishable from the processing activities of a computer. A person might regard himself as awake when 'switched 'on' and asleep when on standby, energy-saving... Such a person is asleep; always and inevitably.
If living is doing, then what is doing? If doing means altering stuff in the world; then we are constrained by the world. If the world stops us from altering stuff, the world has put us to sleep...
But if doing is thinking - thinking in some deep primary and active way - then thinking is something of tremendous scope on the one hand; yet on the other hand, it might never happen.
The thinking that comes from our divine selves emerges from a 'black-box', the workings of which are inaccessible - utterly inaccessible. That is the nature of freedom - it cannot be known, only its outcome can be known. We can observe the thoughts as they come-out-of the black-box that is our divine self - so, this means there is our real-self and there is an observing ego.
The observing ego is that which has choice - it can choose its attitude to the emerging thoughts of the divine self - for instance, does it regard them as illusory imaginings; does it regard them as necessarily true and real?
Mainstream life regards these thoughts emerging from the divine self as purely subjective and a species of wish-fulfilment. But the Romantic tradition of Christianity regards these same thoughts as real and true, because divine; because a part of ultimate reality - these thoughst from the divine self are direct reality - as constrained by time, experience and capacity (so we can know more, and more, of reality).
So, in talking to you - it is my ego talking with your ego; and recommending a change of your ego's-attitude to the thinking that is emerging from your divine self.
In a spiritual sense, sleep refers to a blindness, rather than a level of consciousness. The sleep of a modern adolescent plugged into social media is certainly very active, very alert; but it is a sleeping-through Life. Such an one is passive, absorptive, reactive. Thoughts go-through the mind; and do not originate-from the mind.
To become awake is consciously to become aware of Living, as it is happening, here-and-now. That is one step. But further it requires a wider appreciation of what is happening in living.
But if living is conceptualised in the mainstream terms of modern public discourse; then it is indistinguishable from the processing activities of a computer. A person might regard himself as awake when 'switched 'on' and asleep when on standby, energy-saving... Such a person is asleep; always and inevitably.
If living is doing, then what is doing? If doing means altering stuff in the world; then we are constrained by the world. If the world stops us from altering stuff, the world has put us to sleep...
But if doing is thinking - thinking in some deep primary and active way - then thinking is something of tremendous scope on the one hand; yet on the other hand, it might never happen.
The thinking that comes from our divine selves emerges from a 'black-box', the workings of which are inaccessible - utterly inaccessible. That is the nature of freedom - it cannot be known, only its outcome can be known. We can observe the thoughts as they come-out-of the black-box that is our divine self - so, this means there is our real-self and there is an observing ego.
The observing ego is that which has choice - it can choose its attitude to the emerging thoughts of the divine self - for instance, does it regard them as illusory imaginings; does it regard them as necessarily true and real?
Mainstream life regards these thoughts emerging from the divine self as purely subjective and a species of wish-fulfilment. But the Romantic tradition of Christianity regards these same thoughts as real and true, because divine; because a part of ultimate reality - these thoughst from the divine self are direct reality - as constrained by time, experience and capacity (so we can know more, and more, of reality).
So, in talking to you - it is my ego talking with your ego; and recommending a change of your ego's-attitude to the thinking that is emerging from your divine self.
Sunday, 18 November 2018
Any questions? - Enquiries invited
If readers want to ask me a question - this is an invitation for them to do so; in the comments below.
I can't guarantee to print your question (because it may go beyond the guidelines - mostly legal - that I myself adhere to about the scope of the blog) - I can't even guarantee to answer the exact specific question, if I regard it as one for which the proper response is to go deeper and back to the assumptions behind the question; but I will undertake to make a response linked to an identification of the questioner.
I'm quite happy to respond to 'trivial' questions (of the favourite-colour, special-dislikes type); but also - if you are concerned about some aspect of my deep, philosophical and religious views and want that clarified - I shall do so as honestly as I can.
Saturday, 17 November 2018
What does Jesus mean (in the Fourth Gospel) by the promise of life eternal/ everlasting?
The promise of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel is that those who believe in him will have the reward of life eternal/ life everlasting.
As Jesus explains to Nicodemus; this is to be attained only after mortal life: via biological death and being born again.
Life eternal/ everlasting is the state of resurrection; and its consequence explained in terms of the various events of the gospel when Jesus contrasts the satisfactions of this mortal life - wine, water, bread, meat, sight - with the great, qualitative enhancement that these mortal experiences will have in the life to come.
How can we understand this?
The answer is that the resurrected body is what transforms worldly experience into Paradise. The resurrected body is eternal, everlasting, indestructible - and has divine powers of both perceiving and thinking.
(Because the incarnate body and the soul are indivisible, therefore transformation of the body is itself a transformation of the Man.)
The resurrected Man has, in effect, 'extra senses' unknown to mortal Men, and creative powers of imaginative and intuitive thinking.
(These we may experience briefly, in the context of our constantly-changing mortal state - but mortality is primarily for learning, rather than doing.)
Thus the promise of resurrection is itself the cause of the astonishing enhancements in the quality of living that Jesus promises. It is because Jesus brought resurrection that he also brought the possibility of Heaven.
Note: This was clarified for me by the discussion of William Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell on pp 194-5 of Fearful Symmetry by Northrop Frye.
As Jesus explains to Nicodemus; this is to be attained only after mortal life: via biological death and being born again.
Life eternal/ everlasting is the state of resurrection; and its consequence explained in terms of the various events of the gospel when Jesus contrasts the satisfactions of this mortal life - wine, water, bread, meat, sight - with the great, qualitative enhancement that these mortal experiences will have in the life to come.
How can we understand this?
The answer is that the resurrected body is what transforms worldly experience into Paradise. The resurrected body is eternal, everlasting, indestructible - and has divine powers of both perceiving and thinking.
(Because the incarnate body and the soul are indivisible, therefore transformation of the body is itself a transformation of the Man.)
The resurrected Man has, in effect, 'extra senses' unknown to mortal Men, and creative powers of imaginative and intuitive thinking.
(These we may experience briefly, in the context of our constantly-changing mortal state - but mortality is primarily for learning, rather than doing.)
Thus the promise of resurrection is itself the cause of the astonishing enhancements in the quality of living that Jesus promises. It is because Jesus brought resurrection that he also brought the possibility of Heaven.
Note: This was clarified for me by the discussion of William Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell on pp 194-5 of Fearful Symmetry by Northrop Frye.
God and the Universe and Creation - two pictures
The mainstream Christian view is of God outside of everything to start with; and God, as it were, creating the Universe from nothing, inside of Himself. Time exists only within the created Universe. Men are wholly created by God within this Universe.
My view (which I got from Mormonism) is - to start with - God inside-of a chaotic Universe and 'in' Time; and Creation as a matter of God shaping the chaos around-Himself; in a progressive and cumulative fashion. Men, in a primordial form, are already-present in the original chaos, and are incrementally taken and shaped-into Children of God, inside of Creation.
The mainstream view is a monism, because everything began as, and implicitly reduces to, the unity of God. My view is a type of pluralism (the term taken from William James); in which primary reality is of many and irreducible entities.
The mainstream God's problem is to Create anything that is not merely Himself - hence futile; the pluralist God's problem is that Creation is partial and on-going - an imperfect, developing work-in-progress.
The mainstream God's Goodness is perfect conformity with God; the pluralist God's Goodness is the process of creating.
The mainstream God's Universe does not need to be 'held-together' because He created it all from nothing as a unity; the pluralist God's dynamic, expanding, developing Universe is held-together by Love - and Love is a choice, voluntary; an opt-in kind of thing.
To opt-out from the mainstream God's Universe is irrational because there is nowhere else to go - in fact, there can be no real opting-out. But to opt-out from the pluralist God's universe is rational; since each person has a primordial independence - it is to opt-out from God's plan of creation into chaos; to opt-out from the cohesion of Love into the solitude of pride.
Indeed, it is a positive choice for each Child of God, to join-with God in the plan of living and creating within a dynamic, expanding, developing Universe.
My view (which I got from Mormonism) is - to start with - God inside-of a chaotic Universe and 'in' Time; and Creation as a matter of God shaping the chaos around-Himself; in a progressive and cumulative fashion. Men, in a primordial form, are already-present in the original chaos, and are incrementally taken and shaped-into Children of God, inside of Creation.
The mainstream view is a monism, because everything began as, and implicitly reduces to, the unity of God. My view is a type of pluralism (the term taken from William James); in which primary reality is of many and irreducible entities.
The mainstream God's problem is to Create anything that is not merely Himself - hence futile; the pluralist God's problem is that Creation is partial and on-going - an imperfect, developing work-in-progress.
The mainstream God's Goodness is perfect conformity with God; the pluralist God's Goodness is the process of creating.
The mainstream God's Universe does not need to be 'held-together' because He created it all from nothing as a unity; the pluralist God's dynamic, expanding, developing Universe is held-together by Love - and Love is a choice, voluntary; an opt-in kind of thing.
To opt-out from the mainstream God's Universe is irrational because there is nowhere else to go - in fact, there can be no real opting-out. But to opt-out from the pluralist God's universe is rational; since each person has a primordial independence - it is to opt-out from God's plan of creation into chaos; to opt-out from the cohesion of Love into the solitude of pride.
Indeed, it is a positive choice for each Child of God, to join-with God in the plan of living and creating within a dynamic, expanding, developing Universe.
Friday, 16 November 2018
Don't try to explain evil by self-interest - evil is malice (William Blake)
Those who say that men are led by interest are knaves.
A knavish character will often say - 'Of what interest is it to me to do so-and-so?'
I answer - 'Of none at all, but on the contrary, as you well know. It is of malice and envy that you have done this: hence I am aware of you, because I know that you act, not from interest, but from malice - even to your destruction'.
William Blake - from Descriptive Catalogue (re-punctuated and emphasis added)
So many people, so often, regard self-interest as the prime evil, and try to explain the evil in this world as due to persons and institutions motivated by self-interest...
Everything gets explained that way; so people will seek-out why such and such an action benefits the person that did it. And when this isn't obvious, then remote and indirect self-interest will be wheeled-out.
Contrariwise; if self-interest is not obvious - or if the chain of explanation is disbelieved - then it is assumed that there was no evil but merely some inexplicable coincidence, or incompetence - bad things are confidently ascribed to the sheer 'randomness' and uncontrollability of things.
Those who do this are what Blake termed knaves - cunning, dishonest, deceitful, cowardly, traitorous. In other words knaves are themselves those who are motivated by malice, by spite, by their taking of pleasure in the misery of others.
Northrop Frye (in Fearful Symmetry p56-7) amplifies Blake's passage thus:
By turning away from the world to be perceived we develop an imaginative idleness which spreads a sickness and lassitude over the whole soul, and all vices spring from this... Murder is obviously an expression of the same death-impulse that suicide is, and all evil acts are more or less murderous...
This death-impulse, this perverted wish to cut down and restrict the scope of life, is the touchstone not only of all the obvious vices, but of many acts often not classified as such; like teasing, instilling fear or discouragement, or exacting unthinking obedience.
It is quite inadequate to call self-interest a motive of evil conduct, though the death-impulse may be disguised in that form. Self-interest implies a good deal of control: in all extreme vices there is a mania in which one is hagridden by a 'ruling passion'.
As so often, children understand perfectly that evil is spite and malice; it is only in a culture so sophomoric, so adolescent, so knavish as ours - that we claim to see-through the 'obvious (and true) explanation such as to regard evil as an expression of mere self-interest (most often specifically economic self-interest).
Yet self-interest is universal - and so is no explanation at all; especially in a world where 'goodness' is defined in 'utilitarian' terms of publicly-observable and quantifiable 'altruism' (e.g. raising money for 'charity') - such that altruism is itself the grossest form of self-interest.
Furthermore, the focus on self-interest serves to disguise real evil; because the 'mania' that drives a 'hagridden' doer of malicious evil will often bring about his downfall - and in modern culture that makes him a 'victim', worthy of sympathy. Instead of seeing self-destruction as a hallmark of the murderous nature of true evil, it engages our sympathy - and thus we are corrupted.
This is vital to bear in mind when so much of modern evil is bureaucratic, such that responsibility for evil is eluded, and we seldom know even the identities of those whose malice drives the evil. But, whether we know them or not, we can be sure that they are there.
A knavish character will often say - 'Of what interest is it to me to do so-and-so?'
I answer - 'Of none at all, but on the contrary, as you well know. It is of malice and envy that you have done this: hence I am aware of you, because I know that you act, not from interest, but from malice - even to your destruction'.
William Blake - from Descriptive Catalogue (re-punctuated and emphasis added)
So many people, so often, regard self-interest as the prime evil, and try to explain the evil in this world as due to persons and institutions motivated by self-interest...
Everything gets explained that way; so people will seek-out why such and such an action benefits the person that did it. And when this isn't obvious, then remote and indirect self-interest will be wheeled-out.
Contrariwise; if self-interest is not obvious - or if the chain of explanation is disbelieved - then it is assumed that there was no evil but merely some inexplicable coincidence, or incompetence - bad things are confidently ascribed to the sheer 'randomness' and uncontrollability of things.
Those who do this are what Blake termed knaves - cunning, dishonest, deceitful, cowardly, traitorous. In other words knaves are themselves those who are motivated by malice, by spite, by their taking of pleasure in the misery of others.
Northrop Frye (in Fearful Symmetry p56-7) amplifies Blake's passage thus:
By turning away from the world to be perceived we develop an imaginative idleness which spreads a sickness and lassitude over the whole soul, and all vices spring from this... Murder is obviously an expression of the same death-impulse that suicide is, and all evil acts are more or less murderous...
This death-impulse, this perverted wish to cut down and restrict the scope of life, is the touchstone not only of all the obvious vices, but of many acts often not classified as such; like teasing, instilling fear or discouragement, or exacting unthinking obedience.
It is quite inadequate to call self-interest a motive of evil conduct, though the death-impulse may be disguised in that form. Self-interest implies a good deal of control: in all extreme vices there is a mania in which one is hagridden by a 'ruling passion'.
As so often, children understand perfectly that evil is spite and malice; it is only in a culture so sophomoric, so adolescent, so knavish as ours - that we claim to see-through the 'obvious (and true) explanation such as to regard evil as an expression of mere self-interest (most often specifically economic self-interest).
Yet self-interest is universal - and so is no explanation at all; especially in a world where 'goodness' is defined in 'utilitarian' terms of publicly-observable and quantifiable 'altruism' (e.g. raising money for 'charity') - such that altruism is itself the grossest form of self-interest.
Furthermore, the focus on self-interest serves to disguise real evil; because the 'mania' that drives a 'hagridden' doer of malicious evil will often bring about his downfall - and in modern culture that makes him a 'victim', worthy of sympathy. Instead of seeing self-destruction as a hallmark of the murderous nature of true evil, it engages our sympathy - and thus we are corrupted.
This is vital to bear in mind when so much of modern evil is bureaucratic, such that responsibility for evil is eluded, and we seldom know even the identities of those whose malice drives the evil. But, whether we know them or not, we can be sure that they are there.
TrumpPhobia among the liberal religious/ spiritual
When I venture into the mainstream mass media I expect strategic evil from the professionals - including systematically attacking Donald Trump for his virtues and his good statements and policies; but the mainstream religious/ spiritual blogs and social media are more worrying for what they reveal of stubborn, determined, deep-assumption-based adherence to the evil agenda.
In fact (from what I gather - necessarily very indirectly, via media of one sort or another), Trump is a considerably better-than-average mainstream US politician; better in the sense of what he says and does - mainly better in terms of honesty and courage when it comes to some of the most difficult terror-enforced Leftist-pieties. For that he deserves credit.
On the other hand, nothing Trump has said or done suggests he is going to reverse the primary, deep, sin of the USA or the West: its anti-Christian materialism in public discourse (and individual subjectivity). So, we should not be misled; Trump's leadership is only a better version of the same slow poison that has afflicted us since the early 19th century.
And it is here that the comment sections among the self-identified spiritual and religious people are so worrying. In the depth and vehemence of their TrumpPhobia they demonstrate a metaphysical commitment to the agenda of evil that undercuts all surface protestations of spirituality and religious concern.
These may well include people who spend many waking hours in meditation, prayer, reading edifying texts, doing altruistic works, conversing with others of their ilk, perhaps participating in church organisation and Christian services. They are people who seem to themselves and most others to be sincere. Yet this entire edifice is - plainly - erected upon cowardice, dishonesty and evil-intent.
I should not be surprised, since this is exactly what has been prophesied from the End Times, and I believe that we are in the End Times; but I must admit it does surprise me, recurrently.
And it emphasises that what is required of us - if we are to stop and reverse these end times - is an awakening and rebirth that is so deep, so metaphysical, so wide-ranging - that nothing of the kind has been known since the incarnation of Jesus.
We need not worry about looking for signs of such a thing, because if it were to happen it would be so obvious as to amount to a societal earthquake; although it would, inevitably, be misunderstood and misrepresented.
But unless or until something like this happens - when we will need to use all our powers of individual discernment to discriminate a real Christian rebirth from an Antichrist deception - we can and must proceed as individuals... not merely to resist (that is grossly insufficient and unsustainable) but to move-forward to the only possible counter-attack: which I term Romantic Christianity - a Christianity that encompasses and transforms our consciousness and brings The World alive, and makes its meaning and purpose a matter of direct personal experience.
In fact (from what I gather - necessarily very indirectly, via media of one sort or another), Trump is a considerably better-than-average mainstream US politician; better in the sense of what he says and does - mainly better in terms of honesty and courage when it comes to some of the most difficult terror-enforced Leftist-pieties. For that he deserves credit.
On the other hand, nothing Trump has said or done suggests he is going to reverse the primary, deep, sin of the USA or the West: its anti-Christian materialism in public discourse (and individual subjectivity). So, we should not be misled; Trump's leadership is only a better version of the same slow poison that has afflicted us since the early 19th century.
And it is here that the comment sections among the self-identified spiritual and religious people are so worrying. In the depth and vehemence of their TrumpPhobia they demonstrate a metaphysical commitment to the agenda of evil that undercuts all surface protestations of spirituality and religious concern.
These may well include people who spend many waking hours in meditation, prayer, reading edifying texts, doing altruistic works, conversing with others of their ilk, perhaps participating in church organisation and Christian services. They are people who seem to themselves and most others to be sincere. Yet this entire edifice is - plainly - erected upon cowardice, dishonesty and evil-intent.
I should not be surprised, since this is exactly what has been prophesied from the End Times, and I believe that we are in the End Times; but I must admit it does surprise me, recurrently.
And it emphasises that what is required of us - if we are to stop and reverse these end times - is an awakening and rebirth that is so deep, so metaphysical, so wide-ranging - that nothing of the kind has been known since the incarnation of Jesus.
We need not worry about looking for signs of such a thing, because if it were to happen it would be so obvious as to amount to a societal earthquake; although it would, inevitably, be misunderstood and misrepresented.
But unless or until something like this happens - when we will need to use all our powers of individual discernment to discriminate a real Christian rebirth from an Antichrist deception - we can and must proceed as individuals... not merely to resist (that is grossly insufficient and unsustainable) but to move-forward to the only possible counter-attack: which I term Romantic Christianity - a Christianity that encompasses and transforms our consciousness and brings The World alive, and makes its meaning and purpose a matter of direct personal experience.
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