Folco Boffin: NPC or lacking an Equity Card? A Loose End in Lord of the Rings

Peter Jackson claims that this image is of Folco Boffin - Personally, I doubt it...

The unsolved mystery of Folco Boffin is described over at my Notion Club Papers blog. 

Was his fate too sinister to be mentioned, or did Tolkien "nod"? 

Never say no to a panda...

This is one of the funniest TV advert sequences I've seen - seven shorts, each about thirty seconds; made in Egypt for Panda brand cheese. 

What makes them, is the comic timing; and the panda himself. 

Enjoy.

A Fresh Spate of Laeth's Aphorisms

Selected from the current iteration of Laeth's "blog": Trees and Triads 

the ease with which those of above average intelligence are manipulated into unfounded and dumbfounded optimism is a confirmation of my pessimism. and there isn't even pleasure, or pride, or fun in being right when the ruse is so obvious. 

any sufficiently serious optimism is indistinguishable from brain damage. 

never trust a man who proudly owns a 'smart' car 

hoping for the best is the primary sign that one is in fact a pessimist. otherwise, what need does one have of hope. 

many cannot fathom that there is such a thing as supernatural evil and that it has no master plan beyond defilement and destruction. a willful blindness. 

love is when every single one of your particles becomes quantum entangled with her particles. do you want to be quantum entangled with me, this is how i proposed to my wife.

"Spiritual activism" versus Lifestyle Hacks

I think there is too often a self-gratifying conflation at work when individuals are (implicitly) bragging about their "lifestyle hacks" that are (after all is said and done) ultimately rooted in the same value system as the  mainstream leftist ideology; in other words, hedonic utilitarianism. 

The conflation occurs when it is stated or implied that such activities constitute a programme of resistance and reform directed against the evil System of our Western world and towards the positive construction of a better alternative world. 

My criticism is that (while pretending to spiritual Christian significance) such discourse is actually being held at the level of selfish, worldly, goals  - tips for living a safer and more comfortable life for "me and mine" (with the political spectrum mostly being about who qualifies as "mine").

People naturally seek ways to combine "what is good for my personal enjoyment" with "what is good for civilization" - but I believe that there is a near-zero link between these when it comes to positive good. 

(I mean by the limitation on "positive good" that our personal material lifestyle choices can much more powerfully make things worse at a large scale; than they can have a positive benefit. We are more likely to do general harm than net-good, and that harm is likely to be greater. This is probably due to a combination of the entropic nature of this world, and the current - unprecedented - degree of dominance by demonic evil.)

When I come across people expounding the "worldly-wisdom" of lifestyle hacks as if these were a programme for The Good Christian; it is my strong impression that this confusion and false-connection is a consequence of failing to realize the depth and breadth of The Problem, especially as it affects The West. 

Anyone who thinks that their hacks, tips, and social or business schemes are addressing The Problem is living in a state of self-gratifying delusion  (or maybe trying to manipulate and exploit us for their own goals - whether consciously, or not). 

Therefore; while I don't think we ought always to be harping-on about The Problem - i.e. the scale, scope, breadth and depth of pervasive evil in our world - and neither should we be brooding upon it continually; it nonetheless seems obvious that this awareness must be our starting-point. 

A Christian can only orientate himself correctly in the world, from a situation in which he recognizes the pervasive "normalization" of extreme evil. 

This recognition reveals that our personal-level material lifestyle choices are all-but powerless to have a positive effect on things-in-general. 

More to the point, lifestyle discourse displace attention from where it properly lies - which is the spiritual, not the material. 

The delusional futility of seeking material solutions to The Problem ought to provoke an attempt to shift from material life-hacks to "spiritual activism" at the individual level. 

An honest recognition of the the hope-less-ness of incremental lifestyle fixes, can point at our best (and only) realistic source of hope; which is in addressing our own spiritual motivations and aims: starting now. 

No Man is an island - Not Even if he uses Linux on his home computer! ("Prepping" as psychotherapy.).

The smug-to-the-point-of-self-blinded idiocy of the dissident "right" was on display in spades last week, with respect to the global computer shut-down. 

We, especially in The West, live in the most interconnected and outsourced society the world has ever known By Far. 

What happens to The System therefore happens to everyone - sooner or not-very-much later. 

The notion that individuals or small groups can separate themselves from any general collapse is risible. 

Therefore; the fact that someone, or some company or institution, was able to avoid direct harm when the world computer system shut down for several hours is irrelevant.

What is on view here is that the ideal of "prepping" is no more significant than any other form of self-psychotherapy. 

It may make you feel safe and smug and superior for a few hours or days; but that is its only significance.

Outsourcing understanding: What explains mass devotion to ethical abstractions such as economic equality or "the environment"?

It has been statistically normal for so many generations that the mass of people have some kind of principled, ethical devotion to an abstraction - that the extreme strangeness of it gets unnoticed. 

An early form was Marxism/ Communism, which asked people to devote their lives - even sacrifice their lives - to the almost mathematical abstraction of global economic equality. And, in vast numbers they did!

Yet how very weird it is that modern people - people who naturally and firmly believe that the universe has no purpose or meaning but happened by accidents, and that life and Men evolved by the blind workings of natural selection - should care strongly about the abstraction of economic equality, or justice. 

Something that can only be measured by research and which concerns remote strangers, of whose existence they know only vaguely by unreliable report.

The particular abstraction about which the masses (mostly) care varies through time, almost arbitrarily; and indeed people and institutions may profess several or many abstract principles, regardless of whether these cohere or contradict. 

Nowadays, the analogous ethical concern to Marxism is with that abstraction called "the environment", and in particular with abstractions to do with supposed concentrations of carbon dioxide, and theories and data to do with its generation and effect on the abstraction of global climate. 

So we have the phenomenon of people who argue strenuously that they are themselves merely higher animals or naked apes, whose lives have no relevance or relation to the universe - and that everything which exists does so because of "physics"... 

And yet these same people regard it as an urgent moral imperative that they themselves, and everybody else, and indeed every living being on the planet! - be organized and regulated in order to maintain a certain average global temperature - because that is best for "the earth"! 

The Big unasked question is: From whence cometh this moral imperative? 

Why should creature of the kind modern people assume themselves to be, and living in such a pointless and indifferent reality as modern people assume the universe to be; express (and sometimes live-by) the conviction that we have a moral duty towards abstractions as Communism or 21st Century Environmentalism? 

This is surely a bizarre combination. In the first place, why do people feel a binding morality for anything at all? But secondly: why for such remote abstractions? 

(It has often been observed that many of those who care for "the people" are indifferent or actively cruel to actual human beings around them; and that a "passionate" devotion to "the environment" has led to gross destruction of nature - and its replacement with technology, in and around the same people's actual homes and work-places.)

There is no explicit and coherent answer, and there can be none. 

This bizarre situation must arise from unacknowledged and implicit causes; not from acknowledged fundamental beliefs.

The fact that people regard themselves as moral, and live in pursuit of these abstract moral abstractions; suggests that there is a deep but denied basis for "morality" at work unconsciously and invisibly. 

My best guess is that it is exactly because the basis for our actual mass morality is inexplicit, unconscious and denied. 

And this secondhand nature of values also explains the fact that the actual mass morality is highly arbitrary and unstable, and reactive rather than innate. Public morality changes in line with the perceived needs of the ruling authorities; and when these needs change, morality changes. 

The mass of people have simply got used to living with the mismatch between mandatory and aggressive superficial abstract moral beliefs on one hand; and on the other, an explicit and supposedly science-based rejection of any basis for such beliefs.

To assert that one can have a meaningful and purposive personal life in a random and undirected universe of determined or selfish entities; is something that is so general as to seem like common sense.   

This situation has been building-up for a couple of centuries - and the tacit assumption is that therefore it doesn't really matter. Even though people don't understand why they should care about the survival and equality of the human species; or the survival and temperature of the planet. 

In particular, people don't have any understanding of why they should care more for these remote secondhand abstractions than they care about the people and life around them. 

But a vital part of this modern world-view is that understanding is itself outsourced. 

In other words; people have become used-to the idea that "other people" - experts and the like - will do their understanding for them! 

That, after all, is what churches have mostly told the masses for centuries (millennia?), and that is the basis of the division of labour that underlies modern industrial society.  

To live one's morality and get one's strongest values amidst incomprehension, incoherence and even stark contradiction; is therefore regarded as just another component of the modern human condition. 

Very few are immune to this socially-endorsed habit of outsourcing values; as can be seen by the willingness of so-many Christians to accept incomprehension/ incoherence/ contradiction as articles of faith... 

And thereby not only to take their faith secondhand; and to prize institutional/ social loyalty and obedience as their highest religious value -- but to regard this delegation of responsibility for life-itself as necessary (as well as sufficient) to being-a-Christian. 

The catalogue aria from Don Giovanni: Mozart makes the sordid, sublime

My somewhat unconventional evaluation of Mozart's Don Giovanni is that it does not really work as a whole; and its quality ranges from the superb to the distinctly sub par. 

To focus on the best; I suggest listening to the "Madamina" or "Catalogue" aria sung by Leporello, servant to Don Giovanni; in which he numbers the Don's seductions, describes their variety, and the undiscriminating nature of his taste. 

As is usual with Mozart's librettist Da Ponte, the lyrics are sordid and suggestive in the extreme, with an unpleasant nudge-nudge wheedling quality to the last couple of lines: purché porti la gonnella,

voi sapete quel che fa - "if she wears a petticoat, you know what he does". 

And yet, and yet! Mozart makes of it the most utterly wonderful thing! And, as usual, does so not only with delightful melody, but with the most delicately delicious of orchestral accompaniment. 

I chose this recording mainly because of the characteristic lyricism, sympathy and crisp rhythm of Claudio Abbado's conducting, and because the orchestra comes well forward in the sound balance - so that this aspect can be heard readily. The singing by Bryn Terfel I would regard as only adequate, and much better can be found online - e.g. by Walter Berry. 

So, when listening, I advise focusing on the accompaniment - and right from the beginning when the singer's phrases are punctuated by the little runs-upward of some seven ascending four note phrases from the violins; before these are joined by the woodwinds. 

Despite being an unusually long five-plus minutes, including some repeated words; the aria always remains interesting due to the musical variety - with rapid patter alternating with strong and dramatic sections. 

Astonishingly; the very best of Mozart is saved for those last two seedy and instituting phrases ("if she wears a petticoat, you know what he does"). Listen closely from 4:20 - to the point when Mozart sets the Italian phase voi sapete quel che fa - and he suddenly, but utterly characteristically, launches the whole thing up to a sublime level of transcendent beauty, far beyond the range of almost anybody else. 

This passage is what is utterly distinctive to Mozart at his very best. Who knows how he did it except that it is terribly simple and a whisker from banality. Who knows why his genius flew at just the point when the lyrics seemed least promising. 

***

Lyrics for Madamina, il catalogo è questo... (Madame, this is a list...): 

My dear lady, this is a list of the beauties my master has loved, a list which I have compiled. 

Observe, read along with me. 

In Italy, six hundred and forty; in Germany, two hundred and thirty-one; a hundred in France; in Turkey ninety-one. In Spain already one thousand and three, one thousand and three, one thousand and three. 

Among these are peasant girls, maidservants, city girls, countesses, baronesses, marchionesses, princesses, women of every rank, every shape, every age. 

In Italy six hundred and forty, etc. 

With blondes it is his habit to praise their kindness; in brunettes, their faithfulness; in the very blonde, their sweetness. In winter he likes fat ones, in summer he likes thin ones. He calls the tall ones majestic. The little ones are always charming. 

He seduces the old ones for the pleasure of adding to the list. His greatest favourite is the young beginner. It doesn't matter if she's rich, ugly or beautiful; if she is rich, ugly or beautiful. 

If she wears a petticoat, you know what he does. If she wears a petticoat, you know what he does. 

Christianity is pure choice - with no compulsion

Christianity, properly grasped (and I personally fail in this all-too-often) is pure choice. 

There is no compulsion; because we can affiliate with God only voluntarily; as love must always be voluntary (else it is not love). 

So there is no compulsion to join with God in His creation - only the natural consequences that flow from our choices. 

Many people over the past two-plus centuries have rejected Christianity outright, because they experienced and regarded it as necessarily a package of choices mandatorily backed-by coercive compulsions. 

While this rejection may merely be an excuse for sinning; rejection has been felt most deeply by those of romantic disposition; those who felt and valued their freedom, their creativity, and personal love; and who intuitively opposed any attempt at external compulsion - whether of motivation, thinking, feelings, purpose...

They rejected the reality of the Christian understanding of God as a personal creator; because they could not believe that any loving person would relate to us as an absolute tyrant demanding obedience or else. 

Thus they rejected (variously) the Christian reality of God and creation (choosing instead determinism), the personal nature of God (choosing instead abstraction), or the goodness of God (choosing instead power to satisfy need or pleasure). 

We (here and now) need to ignore centuries of misrepresentation and manipulation; dig-down to the root of reality; and recognize that the essence of Christianity is - and always has been - the opportunity to choose or not to affiliate our-selves with God's creative will - in Heavenly life eternal.  

**

If you don't want it - then just walk away. We Christians ought not to try and stop you. 

What we can and should try to do (especially if we love you) is clarify just what is on offer when Jesus made-possible resurrection. That isn't easy, and is impossible unless you want to know, and will therefore (really) listen.   

But if resurrection and the eternal life of loving creation really is not for you, if your preferences lie elsewhere - then that's that.

It's your decision. That's what you need to grasp. 

You cannot avoid it, you have not avoided it. Either you make this decision your-self; else you instead decide to let someone else (or some-thing else) make the decision for you. 

And if you make the choice on the basis of what I would regard as too little thought or a lazy failure of imagination; then it was your choice to do behave thus. 

From my Christian perspective; the choice is, ultimately, inescapable; because it comes to everyone after death (if not before): the choice of yes or no to joining your purposes with God's. 

Forget about compulsion, if you can - set it aside!

Think of it as pure choice; as purely your choice. 

"4-Dimensional Chess" in politics is a variant of The Boromir Strategy (hence always evil)

Even Spock was limited to Tri-Dimensional Chess...

Recent and forthcoming events in relation to the US "President" elections, have once again filled the mass media and blogosphere with complex, labile, incoherent "4-Dimensional Chess" explanations of what is really going-on...

We know that the official story is never true; nonetheless it's a snare to get drawn into these attempts to discover the real truth. 

Not only because they are necessarily false explanations (although the truth is that we cannot ever know, because some key relevant information is unavailable to outsiders, and the insiders are all evil liars). And not only because even-if the truth was discovered, and the villains and their villainy identified, justice would not be done.   

I fully accept that there are indeed many people playing 4D chess in politics; that is, adopting multi-layered strategies whereby the meaning of a "move" on one level may (or may not) mean the opposite, on another level; and where the overall strategy is only apparent by a multi-level and dynamic awareness.

And, of course, other people (and probably most of them) are merely using 4D chess explanations to cover-up incompetence, ignorance and insanity. 

But complex and long-term 4-Dimensional Chess strategizing is how many of the leadership class operate; as I know from my own experiences working inside large bureaucracies such as the National Health Service, Universities Think Tanks and the like. They discuss and make such plans, and they try to accomplish them.

(The 4D strategies are always derailed by endemic dishonesty, incompetence, and corruption. They invariably end by having different outcomes from intended, and by destroying capability and efficiency. Nonetheless, there are many such plans in the pipeline and operative.)

 

What I am saying is that reasoning about politics on the lines of 4D chess, demonstrates that participants in this kind of strategy and analysis are on the side of evil. 

In other words: regarding politics as any kind of four-dimensional chess problem, is an evil-stance on human society; because it derives from a perspective on other people that is deceptive and manipulative. 

Typically, complex schemes of deception and manipulation are presented as being "in a good cause" - e.g. to defeat some evil, or in order that "we" (the supposedly good side) can win, and then do good things...

 

In short, 4-Dimensional Chess is a version of our old friend The Boromir Strategy - which is an ancient demonic temptation to encourage a moral separation between ends and means; to encourage the delusion that we can pursue good ends by evil means. 

By contrast; when good is genuinely being pursued in politics (a rare situation, and currently absent) then means and ends are in obvious, up-front harmony; because both are clear and simple, and fit-together. 

That's the only way that good is ever achieved in a top-down fashion.

Late blooming talent

There does not seem to be any reliable correlation between the degree of talent, flair, specialness exhibited when young; and ultimate achievement. 

Of course there sometimes is. My namesake (but not related) Bobby Charlton was perhaps England's greatest footballer of all time; and his talent was evident from a very early age. Indeed, he was famous for his prowess even in a county obsessed with the sport. 

For instance; at age eleven the local education authority redirected Bobby from the rugby-playing state grammar school he was supposed to attend according to residence, to the soccer-playing school in Bedlington (which had earlier been attended by my father - himself no mean footballer at semi-pro level). 

And when Bobby was old enough to sign professionally it was a national event, and his choice of Manchester United was widely reported in the press. 

Yet there are many exceptions. I have, over the years, known or known-of quite a few young people whose flair and talent seemed destined for greatness; yet the sparkle went flat, or they took the wrong path, or their interests changed - or the world failed to recognize their special gifts. (This bureaucratic era has, indeed, become actively hostile to genuine creativity.)

Exceptions also work the other way: In 1981 went to a superb evening of "Alternative" comedy at a local venue; which boasted a galaxy of fresh talent; such as Rick Mayall - who dominated the show. But there was also a rather lame, embarrassing, and forgettable female double act called French and Saunders... i.e. Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders (then aged about 24 or 25). 

Of all those brilliant comics; it was French and Saunders who (not long afterwards) went on to the best and most illustrious careers - individually and as the same duo. 

Yet, at the time, I could detect nothing of their later brilliance - probably because it wasn't yet there. 

A year or two later; I went to a one-woman revue in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival by someone called Emma Thompson; which was so bad that it ranks as one of my most embarrassing, least enjoyable evenings in the theatre. 

Admittedly, Emma Thompson was barking up the wrong tree; and she was never a good comedian as such - but she became, of course, one of the very best movie actresses of the past several decades. 

Yet I could see nothing of this, back in the early 1980s. At the time; I just wanted to avoid ever watching her again! 

Perhaps the most stark example of late-emerging talent is provided by my English Literature tutor at Durham University: Derek Todd. Derek had earlier been a lecturer at Queen's University, Belfast; where a young undergraduate brought some poems to show him. Derek found them not-good, and gently tried to dissuade the chap from further efforts in that direction. 

That untalented young student poet was Seamus Heaney -  who later won the Nobel Prize for Literature*. 

My assumption is not that Derek missed Heaney's budding talent and ability, but that it was not then evident. 

The point is that sometimes people change - and quite a lot. And sometimes that can happen very late; as when novelists take up writing in middle age or old age, and discover a surprising talent. 

One of my wife's favourite light-comic authors is Jodie Taylor; who began writing and published only after retirement, aged about sixty - which is very old for a humorous author (most of whom cease to be really funny before thirty). From this late standing-start; she has poured-out dozens books-after-books ever since her debut in 2013, at an astonishing rate by any standard. 

This is very unusual, very unlikely - maybe unique. 

But it happened - which just goes to show. 

* I personally don't rate Heaney as a poet. More exactly, I do not regard him as a real poet. But that's another story. 

When Gandalf had no beard

It seems that, when he first arrived in Middle earth and was more youthful in appearance; Gandalf had no beard!

My reasoning is presented over at The Notion Club Papers blog.

What's the point of "average" (and bad) work in the arts (opera, plays, music, poetry etc)

It's an interesting question as to whether it is worth having the mass of average stuff (not to mention bad stuff) in the arts - or whether we only really-need the really-good stuff?

Of course, it may be argued that the really-good stuff could not be produced without the average (and bad) stuff - because people need to learn. And it could also be said that we need to have the bad stuff in order that we learn what makes the really-good really good. 

Well, maybe. But once the really-good stuff has been produced, and once people know it for what it is - what then? Does the average stuff need to hang-around - does it demand attention - is it worthwhile?

It seems to me that there is a strong argument that we don't need anything but the very-good, and that we only really-need the really-good stuff. 

Indeed; it is possible that having so much average-to-poor stuff hanging around is a Bad Thing; it wastes people time, and wasted time is an evil - leaving aside the considerable quantities of the actively bad. 

Consider opera. There are maybe a score of really-good operas - and the rest seem to serve no essential value. They hang around because some people want to listen to (and perform) operas more often than we could tolerate the really-good stuff - so we get a great mass of pretty worthless opera being performed, recorded and watched. 

Yet we could just watch (and perform) the really-good stuff, and simply not go to the opera (or listen to recordings) very often. We could just do other things in the meanwhile. 

In other words, the problem is a kind of addiction. Opera people get addicted to opera, so they end up overdosing on the mediocre stuff, because the alternative is to get habituated to the really-good stuff by taking it too often. 

They consume (and perform) mediocre stuff , because there isn't enough good stuff; and they cannot stop taking the stuff: they cannot stay off the stuff long enough to refresh their palates. 

Classical music in general is the same - only a few really-good composers; although there are quite a lot of very-good pieces individual pieces. Still, so insatiable is the desire for music, that most of what gets recorded, played, listened-to is a kind of filler (and often actively unpleasant, at that !) 

Plays are even more extremely thus. There are (in English) very few good plays; and the vast bulk of plays are just ephemeral ways of passing an evening - keyed into current fashion rather than "the human condition". And the demand for bulk mediocrity is again because there just aren't enough really good things to supply the addiction. 

And poetry! There are very few worthwhile poems (even from the best poets, and there aren't many of them); and the really-good poems are all-but lost in an ocean of average-to-bad poetry - such that most people never seem to find them; and spend their lives paddling in the shallows and swamps.  

 

Blaise Pascal commented that all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone. 

Well, not all of the problems; but the arts confirm what is seen in other domains of life; that much of what is mediocre, time-wasting, and corrupting; is due to our craving for diversion. 

And most diversion comes via novelty - not just the arts, but gossip, "news", critique - is the prime attribute of that which diverts us in the mass and social media - and everyday life. 

Hence the preponderance of so much that is average and bad in the arts and elsewhere.   

The "cosmic perspective" - strictly optional or unavoidable?

Most people seem to regard ultimate questions, metaphysics or "the cosmic perspective" as irrelevant frills (for people with too little to do, too much time on their hands) at best - but more likely as delusional nonsense, and something that ought to be avoided. 

The subject certainly is avoided (except to warn against it) in all of mainstream public life. 

My understanding is that this avoidance is very obvious, is like a veering away from somewhere that people are actively trying not to confront. 

The elephant in the room is that what people want, do talk about - is pointless. That is an implicit fact; and as such the choice is between pointless "fun" and pointless misery - so it's all about fun. 

And when life feels shallow, then depth is supposed to come from altruism, from fighting against bad things like racism, global warming; or fighting for the rights of officially-oppressed groups and their representatives. 

But if life is indeed pointless?... Or is "meaning and purpose" supposed to arise from striving to make other peoples' pointless existences more fun and more comfortable? I guess this is supposed to be how it works - but, of course, it doesn't work. 

When things are pointless, well they are pointless - and manipulating our temporary emotions or feelings doesn't affect that horrible fact. 

The assumption seems to be that there are no answers, and cannot be any answers to The Big Questions. Philosophy has even defined itself in terms of failing to answer the perennial questions; but just wittering-on about them, anyway!

So we should not waste time on raising the big questions... It can only make us depressed.

What about religion, what about Christianity, what about churches? 

Well, religion is about churches, and churches are about sticking to list of rules (or not sticking to them, but pretending anyway) - which is just more of the same stuff we get plenty of elsewhere; and about "worship". 

Worship is supposedly what God (or the gods) wants us to do. And this is supposed to please (or appease) God, and make us take a better perspective on life... It doesn't, of course; but why should it - even in principle? Worship does not address the question of ultimates, of what it is all about?

From this angle, church is just part of the colossal system of evasion in which we live; just another way of whiling away our pointless, mayfly lives until we crumple and die (and after we die... more of the same worship stuff; but forever). 

If not, then what? What actually would, or at least could, be helpful?

My answer is: reminders of the real cosmic perspective. So that our mundane lives can be seen (albeit only temporarily, but maybe something will last) in their place in the scheme of things.

A reminder of where we are from, where we are going; and what positive relevance our current lives have for all this.

(I say positive relevance, because that is something grossly lacking. Avoiding stuff, self-sacrifice etc is meaningless - unless there are positive and permanent things we ought to be doing.  

It is useful, fundamentally valuable, for us to know our lives in terms of what we personally are positively we are supposed to achieve in them.

A cosmic perspective for the here-and-now and the mundane. 

That would seem like a valid activity for religion - whether in terms of teaching, reading, conversation - or of formal church rituals and the like. 

 

A piece of my childhood: Jackie Charlton visits Ashington, Northumberland, 1971

"Big Jack" Charlton and "wor kid" (i.e. my little brother) Bobby - 1966 Soccer World Cup winners feted in their home town of Ashington

This is a marvellous half-hour 1971 "fly on the wall" TV documentary about the 1966 England football world cup winner Jackie Charlton, visiting his childhood home in Ashington Northumberland. 

I have previously written about the astonishing way that this mining village has - over several generations - produced international sportsmen - first in football, and now in cricket. 

All through my childhood I spent Easter and Summer holidays staying with grandparents in the next-door-to-Ashington villages of Newbiggin, and later Newsham; before, after and during the time this documentary was made. 

So, what is depicted is both familiar and nostalgic. Nostalgic, despite the decidedly un-glamorous nature of these smoky and coaly Northumbrian villages - a stark contrast to the bosky Devonshire and Somerset villages where I grew-up. 

We certainly enjoyed our holidays - much helped by the fact that Newbiggin - unlike Ashington - had a good beach, with rock pools, only a stones-throw from my grandparents house; and did not feel in any way deprived by comparison with our neighbours who were going abroad or to more genteel resorts.  

If you do decide to watch this programme, then you may find it difficult to understand what is being said. The dialect is mid-Northumbrian - sometimes called Pitmatic - and is still (even when the speaker is trying to speak posh) strange, or largely incomprehensible, to those who were not exposed to it as children; but in 1971 it was even more extreme. 

Why are most mass media populated Only by people I dislike and despise: and nobody-at-all with whom I wish to empathize?

For me, much of the mass media output is ruined and made intolerable because populated entirely by dislikeable characters. 

Indeed "dislikeable" is putting it mildly! Most media dramatis personae (whether in TV, movies, songs, plays or novels) are people I regard as actively loathsome individuals!

I used to theorize this on the basis that it was part of the strategy of corruption; for instance that heroes were - over the past decades - replaced by anti-heroes, and virtuous exemplars were replaced by "victims". This is surely correct - so far as it goes...

But I now think the proximate reason may be simpler: 

That the authors of TV, movies, songs, plays and novels are writing about what they know - and they know evil from the inside and by-experience; and know almost nothing of heroism, virtue of Goodness. 

The authors and artists themselves typically lack such virtues to begin with; and to make matters worse have strategically affiliated themselves firmly to the devil's agenda.

I mean, they authors have embraced the anti-God, anti-creation, anti-Good agenda that is pursued by "the global establishment", top-down; and via all possible means...

From direct coercive power (laws and regulations), through subsidy and awards; to multi-pronged ideological propaganda that naturally (and very importantly) includes "the arts". 

Furthermore, the mass media world they have chosen to inhabit and in which they participate is pervasively corrupt: the world of movies and television, directors and actors, publishers and marketing, patrons and "arts administrators", reviews and critics, musicians and production...   

In conclusion; there are (by my judgement) no virtuous characters in the great bulk of mass media, simply because those who produce the mass media are themselves deficient in virtue and live-out their lives among some of the most corrupt and value-inverted human beings the world has ever known. 

And, what is worse, authors depend on the good opinion of these corrupted persons; insofar as the authors desire money, fame and high status. 

With authors being as-they-are and working in the environment they actually do; it is to-be-expected that the modern mass media is replete with actively-evil protagonists (liars, cheats, selfish hedonists, psychopaths); while the truly virtuous are depicted unconvincingly - or most-often not-at-all. 

And when there is any attempt to depict genuine virtue; because authors personally know nothing of such matters; these characters inevitably will be pathetic, miserable, simple-minded, deluded - but inevitably victims. 

It's not that authors are merely representative of the corruptions of this era - things are much worse than that! It is that authors are among the avant garde of evil: they personally are active advocates of, not merely going-along-with, the agenda of evil; and that authors inhabit a social-world of like-minded persons - the society of those who have chosen, professionally, to join the primary servants and implementers of the demonic strategy. 

Memories of the Birdemic-Peck years of 2020-2022...

Does anyone vaguely recall those remote, almost legendary, days of 2020-22? The birdemic and the peck campaign...

(And in the midst of it all, the lying, resentment, and spite of the "MLB" antiracism debacle of later summer 2020, and its permanent sequelae in law and regulations and social practices). 

If you really try, can you remember how most people (and all institutions) behaved? What they said - and what they willingly, and with pleasurable anticipation, approved and anticipated? 

I do. It isn't a subject I think about much; but it is an era that permanently affected my evaluation of people and organizations - especially "Christian" churches. 

It was a time when true-colours were revealed - starkly exposed. The metaphorical gloves were off to reveal the iron fist inside the velvet. Proudly wearing the cloth or paper masks (and displaying selfies of it!), so many people un-masked their real natures.   

It's not so much that I dwell-upon their embrace of the agenda of evil and their reluctance to think, reason, learn - their cowardice and the short-termist hedonism that governed them...

But that - in terms of my system of mental evaluation, 2020-21 established the categories within-which I "place" entities - in terms of their motivations, their aspirations, ultimately the side they have taken in the spiritual war. 

These are the categories from-which I continue to make inferences. 

And this is why I have zero optimism - that is no expectation of things positively improving - emanating from any of the people, institutions, or systems of the public discourse, or the Establishment system. 

And this is why I am saddened and disappointed to observe so many people who are optimistic about the way things are going. So many who imagine that the West (the world?) has bottomed-out, and begun a rise to better times; or done a U-turn and begun to retreat from the strategy of self-annihilation...

But spiritually nothing has changed for the better: there has been no large scale repentance - therefore nothing substantive has been learned. 

Therefore (since change is inevitable) we should infer that those who chose the side of evil in 2020-22 have since come to endorse the assumptions of that side more deeply and thoroughly (whatever their self-identification may be). 

I regard this-worldly-optimists as not merely deluded, but as having been seduced from good (if they ever supported it), and made choice of the wrong side. 

What made me "a writer"

When I was a late teenager and young adult; I envisaged being "a writer"; by which I meant some kind of creative writer - if not as a living, as a significant side-line to my job. 

Aside from a few comedy sketches for performance in revues, and scientific articles for journals (which were collaborative) I did not "publish anything much in the way of writing until I was about 28; when something "clicked"; and I suddenly became able to write fluently and quickly (and get published, and quite often paid for) essays and journalistic pieces. 

For the next couple of decades I published a great deal of this kind of stuff - and we have in the past couple of days been sorting through many boxes of such material that had been piled-up in various places for many years. 

I found it amazing, and somewhat appalling, to rediscover the sheer quantity and variety of these outpourings. 

Quite aside from a couple of hundred mainstream "papers" and a few books (which were done in relation to my academic job); it seems I also did a very large number of editorials, book reviews, comments, commentaries and columns, in all kinds of places. 

I must have been publishing something every week or two for many years. These were placed in all sorts of publications: prestigious scientific and medical journals, national newspapers and magazines; and also numerous obscure and small-circulation outputs such as literary and cultural "small magazines", professional and trade journals, and local "in house" magazines and newspapers for places I worked (and places I didn't work - e.g. I published scores of things in the Oxford Magazine).  

So I really did end-up as "a writer" - albeit I found my niche in "non fiction" rather than in the poems, plays, short-stories and novels which I attempted to write - and failed to write well - in the first decade of adulthood.  

From 2010; I all-but ceased to do this kind of paper-work, apart from four books done for Buckingham University Press and a handful of scientific papers - and instead began to blog on a daily (actually about 1.5 pieces per day) basis. This blogging amounts to a broadly similar number of words as I used to publish on-paper. 

And, up to now (who knows what comes next) this continues. 

What is strange is that (as I mentioned) it took a good decade of trying before I was able to write; at least I could not before age 28 write in the way I have found enjoyable and straightforward since. 

Partly this was a matter of psychological maturing, partly a matter of finding the form within-which my writing flows; and partly it was the "training" of writing scientific papers, journal articles - which activity made me unselfconscious and gradually take an objective attitude towards what I had written...

As a young would-be writer, I could not tell whether what I had written was any good; because I judged my own writing from the inside, and could not see how it struck other people. 

Once I learned how to do this self-monitoring: learned how to evaluate what I had written by the same standards I would apply to what other people had written - this seemed to provide the break-though I needed.  

It was writing scientific papers (as first author) and then having them critiqued and corrected by my doctoral supervisor, and other research collaborators; that did the trick for me. 

Which I still find surprising! - but that was what happened: that was what made "a writer" of me (i.e. a writer of the kind I am, and have been).  

Note: The other thing I was good at was teaching. But that was a thing I never needed to learn. I was good at it from the first attempt. This may be hereditary; since there are several good teachers in my family; including father, siblings, and a child. 

A big problem with spiritual interventions such as prayer/ meditation, especially in groups

I have been very un-impressed by what I know of the "results" of group prayer, or meditation - especially when groups are arranged to pray "for" something or another. 

Such things seem recurrently popular - among Christians, and also in the New Age and occult world. Those involved in group prayer/meditation/ ritual almost-invariably seem to be emotionally satisfied by their activities - yet, as so often, anyone outside of the magic circle of participants sees only a kind of self-fulfilling psychology at work. 

In principle, this could be because the change is at an imperceptible spiritual level of things; or it could be that actually nothing valuable has happened - but worse; I suspect that such attempts to do good by prayer or meditation often do actual harm. 

This is because people nearly always seem to be asking for the wrong things. 

Either they are asking for some outcome that is inferred from distorted or false information derived from the mass media-globalist bureaucracy; or else they are asking for something abstract that itself is an evil-motivated concept... 

I mean something like "peace", "justice", "healing", "safety" ;or the triumph of some particular side in some dispute. 

When it comes to matters outside of our direct experience, we are on shaky ground when we engage in attempted spiritual machinations. 

It is more important to pray or meditate for the discernment to know what is needed; than to try and achieve by consciously-willed spiritual-force some particular outcome; concerning situations for which our understanding is derivative and insecure (the significance of which is often externally dictated)... Situations when we personally don't really know what is happening, nor what would be a better thing to happen. 

The problem is not so much that group-prayer meditation does not work as that it does actual harm - because the harm of asking for wrong things is amplified by the "group dynamics" of the situation.  

There is no such thing as value neutrality. When we are not working to sustain the side of God and the good; we will very probably be lending spiritual aid to the side of evil - and/or opening our-selves to demonic influence: inviting it in. 

Note added: As so often, I think this problem is a modern one. In earlier eras of human consciousness, Men were (to a much greater extent than now) spontaneously immersed in both the group consciousness, and the spirit world of the divine. But one aspect of modern consciousness is that this is no longer the case: our freedom and individuality comes with the flip-side that we don't have a natural (and largely unconscious) connection with group, angels or God. We must make a conscious personal choice to attain knowledge of The Good - and positive groupishness tends to be rare and evanescent. 

Philosophy: insane or boring? An apocryphal story about Wittgenstein.

There is an apocryphal story hereabouts (recalled from memory) about Wittgenstein when he was working as a laboratory assistant in the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle upon Tyne during the second world war (lodging in the Jesmond house - illustrated above - that is currently, inhabited by some family friends). 

Apparently he turned up - unannounced, and at first unidentified - at a philosophy department, seminar presumably after his work had finished: I like to imagine he was still wearing his white lab coat. He sat, stony-faced, through the fumbling talk, as the whisper went around that he was present. When it came to the question time, nobody said anything - waiting for W to speak. 

Wittgenstein is supposed to have delivered the following crushing line: "Well, that was very interesting... Now! Shall we do some philosophy?"... And then he, of course, proceeded to take-over the proceedings. 

If there is any truth in this, W was being typically arrogant and cruel; but there is a "moral": he did have a point - In the sense that there are few things more boring and futile than studying and expounding "about" philosophy (as happens in 99-point-something percent of seminars); yet (for those with the taste for the activity) there is little in life more fascinating than actually doing philosophy.  

In other words; I think Wittgenstein may have been making the point that there is a world of difference between talking-about and doing.   

Actually doing philosophy - by oneself or with a few other people - is (like many of the best things) something that can only be done from a genuine motivation; from genuinely wanting to know oneself and for personal reasons.

Wittgenstein himself tried to do philosophy in a formal academic setting, in his "lectures" - but, while he sometimes found an audience of suitable stooges who stimulated him in the ways he required; I don't think he truly succeeded for other people. 

Because W's motivations were not their motivations; and his disciples turned-out every bit as conventionally academic and externally-driven as the adherents of any other "school".     

So perhaps, like all creative work, real philosophy is essentially a solitary activity. 

Note: The "insane" of the title may seem obscure. What I was getting at was that is that when some person, usually an individual, is doing philosophy - he is doing so for personal reasons, that may not be at all widely shared. His work is quite likely to seem incomprehensible, even crazy - especially when seriously pursued, and over a significant timespan. To other people; he seem to be engaged in a trivial pursuit, using idiosyncratic methods, in a thought-world of his own. Insane!...

The Trimphone of the 1970s

Although apparently designed in the 60s; at the time when I was in my teens during the 1970s the Trimphone still seemed the height of Space Age sophistication. 

My best friend's family had one; and when I was visiting I got great satisfaction from its electronic trill (with volume control!), its shape, and the crisp way that the receiver fitted into position. 

By contrast our home phone, with its old-fashioned bell and rounded contours, was unexciting; and it was a bit lame that we needed to share our telephone line with a neighbour so that only one of the houses could talk at a time. 

Not that that was often a problem, because the phone was used very seldom and only for very short periods. Calls in that era in England were extremely expensive; and the culture was one in which letters and cards were exchanged rather than electronically transmitted words. 

For instance; when I was at medical school I made one call home per week, from a public phonebox (outdoors or in a corridor) for three minutes - but wrote at least one newsy latter (and received the same). 

It was not until I did my overseas study elective in the USA, and was house-sitting for a Harvard Professor (who gave permission for it), that I sampled that culture of endless (because very cheap) rambling phone conversations with people who actually lived quite nearby; carrying the phone around the house with me on a 30 metre extension, or even putting it beside my bed - just like I had seen in the movies. 

There was one significant problem with the Trimphone, that became evident when our family eventually got one; which was that the base of the phone was too light and the diameter too narrow, so that dialling required the other hand (the one holding the receiver) to hold the phone steady... 

Our old-style phone had been so broad-based and solid that one-handed dialling had been easy and normal.

Later Trimphones had buttons, avoiding this problem; although the buttons just triggered a kind of pseudo-dialling sound. It took another decade or so before The Post Office/ British Telecom changed their system to use tone rather than clicks to distinguish numbers.

Why we are confident about things-in-general, while sceptical about the truth of facts (The metaphysics of the supernatural/ paranormal/ occult)

Following up on a post of mine from a few days ago; William James Tychonievich challenged the coherence of my statement that I believe in the reality of many supernatural/ paranormal/ occult phenomena - while disbelieving nearly all specific reports of such phenomena. 

How - he asked - could I believe in the reality of ghosts, if I did not believe in any particular report of a ghost? Surely the one depends on the other? 

After thinking about his argument a while, it seemed to me that William was discussing epistemology; while I was talking about metaphysics. 

That is; he was implicitly talking about the empirical or factual certainty of items of "knowledge"; while I was discussing underlying theoretical assumptions that describe the nature of reality. 

I have often argued here that epistemology has been an intellectual dead end - despite being the dominant philosophical mode since Descartes, exactly because it sets itself up as prior to metaphysics (indeed, typically, dismissive of metaphysics). 

Thus, epistemology discusses (or tries to discuss) how we can know stuff, without discussing its assumptions about the reality within-which such discussion are supposed to occur. 

What I am implying in my discussion of supernatural etc. phenomena; is that we can (and should!) be aware, clear, and explicit about our fundamental metaphysical assumptions - e.g. the assumption that ghosts really are true; yet in a way that does not apply to specific "factual" instances. 

This means we do not need to be sure that any specific report of a particular ghost is objectively true in order to believe that ghosts are real. 

We can rationally believe in ghosts in principle, but in practice reject many, most or even all of the specific reports of ghosts that come to our attention. 

There are some reports of paranormal phenomena from other people that I believe are "true", or at least possibly true; yet that truth which I believe is, in practice, more of a working hypothesis than any kind of certainty or assumption. 

Nothing major hinges upon whether any particular exact report really is true. 

Much the same applies to aspects of public life that I can never discover. I am confident that some of the totalitarian world leaders are in alliance with Satan in some way (perhaps as willing servants or slaves, or possessed by a demon, or in other ways I don't understand); but I don't know for sure the names of even one of these leaders, and have no conceivable way of checking this in a factual sense. 

For me, this is a metaphysical assumption concerning the nature of reality in our world now - validated by intuition, yet with no chance of empirical validation. 

Metaphysics is primary. Examples of metaphysics are religions and secular ideologies - nowadays, in the West, it is leftist secular ideology that is dominant. because ideology structures the identity, nature and interpretation of "evidence"; this is why evidence can never (and almost never does) overturn ideology; and why accumulating evidence "against" some ideology, has no effect on it. 

It is a commonplace insight that religions are un-dis-proveable. Less obvious, indeed ignored - but more relevant - is that this being undisproveable-by-evidence applies to that mainstream modern ideology (significant;ly; an ideology with no name!) that pervades and rules the West, is assumed in all public discourse, and is taught by every major institutions from the media to the schools and colleges.  same applies 

Therefore, secular ideology is much more dangerous than any religion (as seen by the unequalled scale and nature of evil of the secular totalitarian states of the past century, since the Russian Revolution). More dangerous than religion because it will not name, and indeed denies, its own metaphysical identity; indeed, denies that it has fundamental assumptions: denies that its ruling concepts (such as class/sex/race "equality") are assumptions - but instead pretends (in a circular argument) that its assumptions derive from evidence. 

It is an aspect of my oft-iterated theme, that we need (need spiritually) to honestly acknowledge, become clear and explicit about our metaphysical assumptions - especially that they are indeed assumptions. 

Our metaphysical assumptions concerning the nature of reality are believed, and acted-upon - yet such belief is of the nature of a choice and a commitment. This is not a knowledge-based belief, such as is the focus of epistemology.  

The qualitative distinction between committing to metaphysical assumptions and belief in particular facts is part of that argument.