A wrong and bad script = Wasted effort... Service to evil

Some things in life take tremendous effort: resources, planning and organizing - assembling many people with many skills in a particular place and time...

Consider performing a play in a theatre, when all this must be accompanied by the business of attracting and assembling a paying audience, seating them in comfort and according to regulations about fire and safety. We might add the mass transport system, electrical grid, water and sewage!

My point is that this is all futile, wasted effort, if the script of the play being performed is Bad, of low quality.

And when the play being performed is purposively Wicked in some fashion; all this colossal effort is not just wasted - but harnessed to service of an agenda of evil.

Indeed, the more impressive and compelling the performance, the more harm is done.

Vast resources and efforts in service to agenda items of the strategy of evil is a summary of The West, Now.

Such thoughts came to mind when attending an elaborate choral Evensong service in one of the most beautiful buildings in Britain: York Minster Cathedral; attended by a large gathering of (mostly) tourists.

And when the actual music being performed by the choir was Rubbish (with the exception of a short anthem by Victoria).

Consider all the human effort and skill involved, and the vast resources of beautiful church music available - and the choice instead to perform a low quality and actively unpleasant musical "script" to the large "audience".

But this is just a microcosm of how our culture is, and has been for many decades.

While it is a-good-thing for individuals to make efforts, learn skills, cooperate towards a difficult goal etc...

This is vitiated when these people are Not Even Trying to do Good scripts; when they instead actively prefer and choose Bad Scripts.

So ultimately, strategically; all this human endeavour contributes towards the subversion, destruction and inversion of What Is Good.

Ambivalence about The Beatles

It is not really possible for later generations to understand the central and dominating place that The Beatles had in British cultural life through the middle and late 1960s. And this can never be replicated because it was due to a particular and transient phase in society and technology. 

So, in this sense The Beatles are (for Brits, anyway) so much the number one pop group, that whoever is number two (and that is not at all obvious) is so far behind as for there to be no competition. 

And by my evaluation, The Beatles released a large number of very good singles, in many styles, across several years - as well as a fair bit of dire and dreary, pretentious stuff - especially in their later years. 

But also by my evaluation, Not One of The Beatles singles was what I would regard as first rate*. 

Which is an interesting combination!

Here we have what I regard as the number one band of all time, yet a band that never (IMO) released a first rate track!

A few examples of my first rate singles for that general era include Gimme Some Lovin by the Spencer Davies Group, Silence is Golden by the Tremeloes, Knock on Wood by Eddie Floyd, Daydream Believer by The Monkees, Long Shot Kick de Bucket by The Pioneers, Liquidator by the Harry J All Stars... 

Many of these groups were, more or less, "one hit wonders" - never again attaining the same heights. 

This provides a clue. 

Pop music is - at its best - an almost accidental, but at any rate irreproducible-to-order, product of an ephemeral combination of youth, talent, and inspiration - attuned with a cultural moment. 

Most of the long-lived and culturally significant bands and artists - no matter how musically talented and productive of good quality - never released what I would evaluate to be a genuinely first rate single: Elton John is a clear instance.  

Also; despite The Beatles, the 1960s was Not the peak of pop music in Britain: that came afterwards, in the late 70s and early 80s. 

Why is the current Left so dominant and powerful?

Why is the current Left (i.e. the post mid-1960s New Left) so dominant and powerful? 

Since the mid-1960s the mainstream Left has transformed from its Old Left roots in communism and socialism, based on transformations of economic and social structures; to the new Left rooted in multiple, additive and fluid oppositions - anti-racism, feminism (anti-men), environmentalism (anti-CO2). 

And throughout by the many-faceted sexual revolution evolving through anti-family, anti-monogamy, anti-marriage, anti biological sex and sexuality, and now pan-societal chosen subfertility and extinction.   

How and why did this New Leftism swiftly so universally dominant that it overcame more than a century of Old Left socialism/ communism; and the New Left now includes and embraces all its mainstream would-be opposition ideologies such as Republican, Conservative, Libertarian, Nationalist* - even theocratic etc? 

This is an important question because so many who oppose the Left try to emulate and exceed the Left's power by studying and copying its methods. 

The reason for the pervasive, continuing, and (so far) unstoppable domination of the New Left is very simple. 

1. New Left is essentially oppositional. 

2. New Left is therefore essentially destructive, not constructive. 

3. It is much, much easier to destroy than to construct.

The weakness of the Old Left was that it was partially constructive, indeed utopian - the communists and socialists all had a (more or less detailed) picture of some kind of future and stable ideal society towards which they purported to be working. 

For example, a core ideology of the Old Left was economic equality - aiming therefore at a very highly equal "distribution" of income (especially), and also wealth (to vary degrees). 

(But not power! The Old Left invariably centralized power, so that the revolutionary class could control everybody else for their own good!) 

Another core objective of the Old Left was the imposition of public ownership of the means of production, usually by some version of nationalization or worker-control.  

The New Left has long-since abandoned any such constructive notions: there is no ideal future society being aimed-at, no utopia.

Because it has all-but abandoned even the intent, even the pretence, of construction; it is therefore very easy for the New Left to change society by opposing and destroying whatever it currently deems to be bad. 

Destructive change is vastly easier than constructive change, and when New Left is aimed-at a wide (and expanding) range of destructive changes; then destructive change of any thing the Lefts deems bad is perceived as an effective exercise of Left power. 

*There is no such thing as The Right in modern mainstream politics. All parties and organizations are now of-the-Left. This includes churches. 

In conclusion; the New Left is so powerful and has come to dominate the entirety of high-level institutional life in the West because it seeks and achieves destructive change; and destruction is quick and facile compared with construction. 

And this is, of course, why those who desire to oppose the Left cannot use the methods of the Left

...Because using the methods of the New Left is necessarily to pursue the agenda of the New Left. 

Contemplative bliss, or creative participation? An infinite perfect creation, or expanding creating?

Traditional religions and spiritual philosophies have "all" saddled themselves with underlying metaphysical assumptions that render significant-human-aspiration a delusion. 

When the power of God is infinite there is literally nothing for us to do. 

The offer is (perhaps) one of blissful contemplation of the perfection of an infinite creation. But because creation is perfect and infinite there is nothing for us to do about it. We cannot add to it in any way At All. 

Indeed even our obedience, adoration, and worship adds nothing since it is already a part of the whole. 

There is nowhere for an infinite perfect creation to go, nothing can really happen - indeed the only "sand in the gearbox", the irrational and inexplicable "fly in the ointment", is the apparently persistent human delusion that we matter at all! 

And that we even exist, as separate beings with a significant role to play.

Far too many Christians, and nearly-all other religions and philosophies, have painted themselves into a corner of personal futility. 

All possible human thought, action, achievement is pointless; because creation is already infinite and perfect. 

(And always was and always shall be infinite and perfect - some will add; diminishing our utter significance even further - if that were possible!)  

While I fully acknowledge that contemplative bliss is a very pleasant thing to feel for a while, it is negative and just does not constitute a purpose. 

Beyond contemplation is creation, and creative joy in a spirit of love is the greatest thing we can know - and far greater than a contemplative bliss that is (by its own definitions) irrelevant to reality. 

Surely we know this?

We know it, but our fundamental assumptions about the nature of infinite perfect creation far-too-often render our hope of creating into a mere delusion, of which we are supposed to rid ourselves.  

Yet we want to make a difference; and it feels as if this is possible! 

And those of us who have chosen to affiliate with the creator want to make a positive difference, we want to add to ongoing-divine-creation; such that "creation" needs to be replaced by something like "create-ing" to recognize it is continuous, open-ended, always expanding. 

Divine creating is always expanding, and we want to join with God and be part of that expanding. 

So: Divine creating must be expanding, potentially forever. 

Also, that expansion must all be Good - anything we and others add to creating it must all be in harmony with God's purposes...

Which means it must all be done from love. 

Which is where Jesus Christ comes in. 

On the one side ideas about God and Creation; on the other side Jesus and Salvation. 

Individual, serious, Christians must Make Sure that their assumptions about God and Creation do not logically-block their highest aspirations concerning Jesus and Salvation and our ultimate hopes for eternal life; because at present official Christian theologies of God nearly always do logically-block Jesus, Resurrection, Heaven. 

An experience of Original Participation: Thoreau's interactions with the Penobscot Indian Joe Polis in The Maine Woods

Henry David Thoreau's The Maine Woods is a posthumously-collected set of three essays about travels in that region in the middle 1800s. All are worth reading; but for me the best is the last: The Allegash and East Branch. 

Thoreau describes a river trip with a friend, for which they hired a Penobscot Indian called Joe Polis as their guide. Polis was reputed to be, and Thoreau confirmed this, an exceptional man; highly-regarded both among the Indians and the Whites for his wisdom and personal integrity, as well as his skill as a woodsman and river man. 

Thoreau knew a great deal about Indians; both from reading widely, interviewing experts, and by attentive and respectful personal interactions. 

His particular interest was the ways in which Indians thought and experienced differently from himself, and how this was the basis for their unequalled abilities described throughout The Maine Woods.  

From my theoretical perspective (influenced by Owen Barfield, and some aspects of Rudolf Steiner); I interpret Thoreau's fascination as with the different consciousness of Indians; especially the distinct residue of Original Participation (OP) that these woodland guides had as the basis underlying their crafts. 

Original Participation is a different way of experiencing oneself and the rest of reality (other people, the nature), of understanding and interacting with the world - although we may remember something of this from early childhood, dreams, or states of altered consciousness. 

OP is mostly spontaneous and un-conscious, due to the individual being immersed-in the rest-of-the-world, living as part of the world ("participation"). 

And from this OP basis came the Indian's remarkable navigating, surviving, and hunting abilities; for which the White Men would typically hire him.  

But in the case of Thoreau; Joe Polis was hired more or less on the excuse of being a forest guide; Thoreau really wanted to get to know Polis, and get to know how he thought. 

Polis was very suitable because although he retained the OP stance as required, he was also unusually accomplished in his interactions with the modern world: was literate, a devout Protestant, an effective leader, well-travelled. 

This was a basis for the collegial friendship that developed between Thoreau and Polis; and in addition there was evidently a natural liking each for the other - a recognition of some basic similarity.  

There is much else to enjoy about The Maine Woods, especially for those (like me) who have a romantic feeling for such places, and for the Indians who originally inhabited them. 

In actuality, living in the Maine Woods, or even going on a trip like Thoreau's, would be a horrible experience for me - not least because of the swarms of mosquitos and biting-flies. 

Yet; as a place to think about, to imagine; those Hiawatha forests, lakes, rivers are potent and positive stimuli; especially to the extent I can appreciate the distinctive consciousness of an Indian like Joe Polis.   

Hiawatha fishing for the sturgeon - an ahistorical but spiritually-true illustration that captures the atmosphere I recall from reading Longfellow's wonderful poem when I was aged about nine.  

A little Spanish chap...

In our organization we have a little Spanish chap who attends to all our training needs. 

We call him "Instruction Manuel". 

Music (like books, or medicines) can do harm, as well as good. The example of Mahler

Following-up on my post of a couple of days ago, where I described authors who did me some harm by being the wrong books at the worst time for me; the same can apply to music. 

This is all-too-obvious with respect to pop music - especially because it is most targeted at youth, and adolescence is the time of greatest vulnerability. 

From 1967 onwards, a great deal of pop music was calculated to manipulate youth into amplifying the spiritual harm of culture generally. This can clearly be seen in the lyrics, and even the music itself, of the most culturally significant group of that era in the UK, i.e. The Beatles. 

But just as some people regard books as A Good Thing, so people regard Classical music as necessarily beneficial - yet this is absurdly untrue - at least for those who are engaged-with and sensitive to music. 

The classical music culture in the UK is one in which it is regarded as high status to be able to appreciate all the great composers of all eras; and as a late teen and early adult I went along with this, such as always to be trying to appreciate all the high status composers - even when their music seemed to work on me like a poison, or made me (more or less) feel spiritually ill.  

This was the case for Gustav Mahler. In the 1970s, he was being rediscovered as a composer (during his life he had been famous mainly as a conductor) - and promoted to the status of Great, as Wagner's premier successor. 

But for all its musical excellences and strong effects; Mahler's music seemed to me then, as it still does when I occasionally hear it, toxic and cloying. Nonetheless I persevered, attentively working through his symphonies (especially) on LP, and attending a couple of live concerts. 

This stopped after I had bought a recording of Mahler's Tenth Symphony (completed by Deryck Cook) and fell asleep while listening to the slow movement; waking with a profound and powerful mixture of revulsion and misery. 

After this, I was forced to acknowledge that Mahler was bad for me. And that by persisting with listening I was pushing myself towards a feeling of hopelessness and despair. 

This was a realization that all Great Composers were not good - some were harmful by my intuitive estimation! 

More generally; this fits with the observation that anything which has a powerful enough effect that it might do good, for the same reason may do harm. 

This applies to drugs (and other treatments) in medicine; which is why there is no qualitative distinction between therapeutic effects and "side effects" - to be of possible benefit, a drug must have an effects on the body, much change physiology; and because it has an effect, it will do harm to some people nearly-all the time, and other people some of the time.   

It is only because Mahler is a powerful and effective composer, that his music was able to do me harm. 

To generalize again; it is talented artists, authors, musicians; who can do us the most harm. So, for our own good; we need to be able to distinguish between matters of virtue, and matters of ability and effectiveness.   

NOTE: There are so few Real scientists and medics, that the "debates" You hear about are fake

Considering that I spent my working life deeply engaged with science (especially evolutionary biology and human intelligence and creativity) and medicine (especially psychiatry and psychopharmacology); it may be surprising to some readers that I do not notice or comment on the debates about medical therapies or scientific theories that are spread across the internet. 

The reason is that I believe there are extremely few scientists and medical researchers who are real: that is who are strongly motivated by truth wrt the matter under consideration; which motivation (in a subsidiary way) means they become and are sufficiently knowledgeable and competent in the relevant matters being debated. 

There are still very few people who realize both that much more science used to be real; but now extremely little of what is called science is real while there is a truly vast amount of fake science - which is either generic careerist bureaucracy, or generic mass media manipulation. 

Indeed the public debates are themselves typically based on mistaken and false premises; such that they are fundamentally worthless, or indeed actively harmful. 

Unless you are yourself real with respect to that specific matter under discussion, then you cannot genuinely evaluate such debates - you are merely experiencing them as a gladatorial display, and one that is probably being staged with the aim of manipulating you, one way or another. 

And the unreal debaters may themselves convinced that they themselves are real scientists, and outraged by any suggestion otherwise - despite that their motivations are so obviously not-real!  

Real science and medicine is difficult, slow, and rare, especially here and now; and is not a public affair. 

For instance, it is nearly always very difficult to know whether or not a treatment is effective in a general way. 

Science never really has been a public affair; but happens between those few people who are real; and happens largely inter-personally. Same with its sub-type medical research, with added diffiulties of an inter-personal kind. 

**

(Although sometimes in the past the public "overheard" a real debate; and that may be genuinely interesting and enlightening! But now? The odds are overwhelmingly high you are overhearing a fake debate.) 

NOTE ADDED. Quite a lot of the "scientific" debates (and indeed many academic and scholarly debates as well) are in reality failures to clarify and acknowledge metaphysical assumptions. Examples include some of the debates of high-level physics theories (cosmology, particles, forces etc), the nature and origins of Life, and the validity of evolution by Natural Selection. Discussions of such matters need to grasp that science only operates within metaphysical assumptions; such that evidence and reason are secondary to these assumptions. Which means (inter alia) that debates of evidence and reasoning cannot in principle overthrow the metaphysical assumptions that govern a type of science. 

Which is the more Pathetic - to live for this Life only, or a future Life of Heaven?

To live towards a future life, an after-life: to orientate our mortal lives in the expectation of immortality in Heaven - is this good, or just pathetic? 

It is, in the West, is mainstream and normal for powerful, wealthy, high status, vigorous people to regard future-life orientation as dumb, crazy, dishonest, manipulative - but even at best it is pathetic, a behaviour which moves a compassionate Man to pity. 

The idea is that only someone who is Fundamentally A Loser ("retarded") in this world would have a Heavenly orientation. 

Yet the mainstream, normal attitude of living for this mortal Life is equally pathetic, pitiable, in that among those who regard-themselves as Winners, Life is seen optimistically. 

"This Lifers" believe that good times are just around the corner, seeds of improvement are sprouting, the pendulum is about to swing in the desired direction... that History is on the side of Progress. 

"This Lifers" may look at the sad fate, and desperate situations, of so many people around them; yet optimistically (as a matter of faith) believe that they-themselves will somehow be exempt from such a pathetic life. 

Is there anything sadder, more ignorant and insane - or more deviously manipulative - than constantly to be harping on a better future in this mortal life; and absolutely to need to believe in such improvement? 

If both can be seen as pathetic, according to perspective; who is the most pathetic: a this-Lifer or the next-Lifer? 

The answer (like all answers) depends on fundamental assumptions. 

If we assume that resurrected eternal Life in Heaven is real and possible - and from this perspective look back on human history and the experience of our own lives; then mainstream ideological optimism is just ridiculous, and to live by optimism for this-life and this-world is truly the most pitiable state. 

If instead we assume with materialistic-atheism, that this this world is the only world; that mortal Life - between conception and death - is everything; that Heaven is false, a day-dream or a manipulative lie... Well then; to believe in Heaven, and live for Heaven, is indeed pathetic: foolish or childish at best.

Because (such people still argue) by living in light of a false Heaven, we will presumably fail to make the best (or at least make-the-most) of this mortal life; and also by focusing on a fake afterlife we will fail to focus on improving the real world around us... 

Consequently; to live for Heaven is not merely regarded as the pathetic belief of a pathetic loser; but actually a belief that will materially-harm other people, and tend to sabotage the optimistic hope of a better life for me, and a better this-world for everyone*. 

The Heaven believer is then worse than pathetic: subversive, a saboteur, a public menace.  

*(Or, if future life is not better for everyone, then better for everyone that matters to me.) 

Yet materialistic atheism has zero basis for judging value objectively, interpersonally! 

So for mainstream modernity truth is ultimately no better than delusions, happiness no worse than suffering, success and failure are subjective distinctions without meaning. 

Subjectivity is all that is left; and personal preferences and emotions are transient, and externally influenced - hence ultimately meaningless.

And the terrible history of the twentieth century worldwide, and the ongoing artistic/ scientific/ cultural/ spiritual collapse of the West; demonstrates that a this-life atheist-materialist perspective actually does not lead people to focus on make the best and most of their mortal life and of human society. 

What, then, can be more arbitrary than the "confident" assertion that this mortal Life is all-there-is, and anyone who believes otherwise is pathetic?  

Mainstream modern materialistic atheism is a choice; and a choice that, rigorously pursued is itself a recipe for frenzied and psychopathic hedonism in the short term, and for despair and suicide in the long term. 

...As we see especially evident among the more powerful, wealthy, high status, vigorous people of the West - here-and-now. 

And if They think that We are pathetic compared with Them?

Well, I for one don't care what They think - except to avoid it!

 

Elevenses, anyone?

I haven't heard anyone talk about elevenses for quite a while, some decades; but the expression was at one time used almost daily. 

As far back as I remember in the 1960s, and continuing into the 80s; there was a mid-morning break situated roughly half-way between breakfast and lunch - during which people would also eat a snack. That snack was almost always biscuits. 

This applied whether at work - when it was either formally timed programmed in mass employment situations. Or informally a matter of convention in professional situations (such as laboratories). There was a mid-morning break for drinking tea or coffee, eating a biscuit or two - and conversation. 

A treasured memory of my mid-childhood and early teens was attending elevenses at the Bristol Dental School with my father; mainly on those Saturday mornings when I accompanied him to work to visit the nearby public library or bookshops. The event had a delightful atmosphere.  

Among my mother's circle there were "coffee mornings" for women neighbours, especially those with housewives with children, which went from house to house in an approximate rotation. As a pre-schooler, or duing school holidays; I was taken-along to these - but found them terribly boring, except for the biscuits (I was always hungry, and could never eat enough biscuits to satify this!). But for the housewives, coffee mornings were the main frequent form of social interaction. 

In those days in England; coffee was consumed almost entirely in people's homes - either instant coffee at elevenses, or ground coffee (invariably in tiny cups) after dinner in the late evening. The rest of the time, multiple cups of tea were normal. 

But coffee incrementally displaced, and sometimes replaced, tea; and was consumed more often in cafes; rather than at home or in "works" canteens. 

Later still, ground coffee replaced instant; and espresso displaced all other methods of brewing. 

During my working years, this practice of elevenses began as universal and much-valued, but diminished greatly - indeed it had altogether disappeared by the time of retirement.

This decline went hand-in-hand with reduced biscuit consumption; and a feeling that it was weak or wrong to eat anything - but especially anything sweet - between breakfast and lunch.  

The managerial-bureaucratic takeover also suppressed elevenses at work, when it suddenly and somehow became too expensive and/or inefficient to set aside a room for communal drinking and eating.