The weakening effect of metaphysical mismatch (when you *know* something, but cannot explain it)

There are many situations in the modern world where people are in a situation that they know something, but cannot explain it; they cannot justify this "knowing" in terms of their underlying assumptions - their "metaphysics". 

In such situations, their knowing is weakened to the point that it is usually overcome easily, and the person is unable to resist the corrupting effect of immediate and chronic societal and personal pressures. 

Such a mismatch between metaphysical assumptions and intuition is one of the most significantly malign factors in the world today. It therefore ought to lead to an examination of the assumptions, but it almost never does - for a variety of reasons. 

To clarify; I mean the situation when a thing is asserted or proposed, and initially we experience a clear and deep (and true!) intuition that X is wrong. 

But then we find that our scheme of explanation fails to provide us with sufficient understanding of why or how X is wrong. 

And the consequence is that we assume that X must be okay after all... we go along with X; and maybe end by supporting X - if that is expedient. 

It works the other way around too, and with just as bad results. 

Someone or some-thing that our hearts - at first - tell us is of great and profound positive value* is challenged, is threatened... We would tend to defend this vehemently. 

But then we discover that our basic assumptions do not allow us to explain or grasp why this has such extreme importance. We realize that cannot justify its importance on the basis of fundamental metaphysics! 

*(A clear example is music, visual art and architecture. People may love some piece of music, greatly value a picture, building, landscape - or they may viscerally be morally-revolted or aesthetically-repelled - but they cannot find any fundamental reason why even such strong positive or negative feelings should be regarded as important.)

Lacking fundamental understanding; therefore our defence is enfeebled, at best; and often we are are crippled from defending that we value - even to ourselves! 

The threatened Good Thing is allowed to disappear without dissent, without resistant, without a fight...

 

Modern Man was thoroughly set-up for this situation by mainstream modern atheistic materialism; which inculcated the idea that metaphysics (the examination of fundamental assumptions) was meaningless nonsense. 

Instead our beliefs ought to be based on "evidence" and pragmatism - what is "helpful" and what "works"... 

This is a thoughtless, stupid or dishonest philosophical assertion; because what counts as valid or compelling evidence - what is regarded as helpful or working-well - are concepts embedded in fundamental assumptions. 

And this should be evident when people with different metaphysical convictions argue; the same "fact" means something different to each, because interpreted differently. 

But such is the ignorance-of, prejudice-against, or incompetence-at metaphysical reasoning; that such fundamental differences in assumptions are instead interpreted as moral differences (as in "anyone who disagrees with me must do so because he is a fool, insane, or a bad person"). 

Sometimes, especially in the past, such a mismatch did not matter too much; in the sense that people could recognize and defend goodness (and vice versa) despite the lack of metaphysical foundations. 

But, as CS Lewis said, what characterizes this current era is that "things are coming to a point", or, more exactly, this has already-happened. 

And one consequence is that metaphysical mismatches are now being exposed and probed as never before. And (by no coincidence) at just the time when we are less capable of metaphysical reasoning than ever before. 

This has fundamental Christian implications - implications which are generally denied, precisely because of our modern tendency to be ignorant of, or denigrate, or be unable to examine and analyse our fundamental assumptions. 

The most important of these is in relation to Jesus Christ, and why he is essential. 

In the past, justifying and explaining this did not seem so pressing; and the fact that classical theology cannot provide a clear and direct answer did not seem to matter - Christians were simply absorbed in the demanding and complex business of obeying their church and being-a-Christian (as defined by their particular church) to "bother" about metaphysics. Leave that to the experts! 

Consequently, yet astonishingly; the failure to explain metaphysically why Jesus is essential persisted through the Great Schism, the Reformation and the Mormon Restoration and up to now!   

But to the modern mind, a failure to explain simply and clearly why Jesus is necessary means that Jesus is not necessary, is inessential; hence Jesus is seen as ultimately disposable. 

This is one deep reason why so many modern people see nothing distinctive or definitive about Christianity, and no essential difference between the major religions. 

Another, for Catholics, is related to Mary, Mother of Jesus. 

In many times and places of the past, and especially Medieval England, Mary was venerated at the core of Christian practice - but not of Christian theology. 

Yet, in the past the inessential nature of Mary to theology, demonstrably comfortably coexisted with her centrality to devotional practice.  

But nowadays this just will not work. Nowadays it seems clear that if Mary is fundamentally inessential to theology, then this means she is optional: which boils down to Mary being no-more-than a personal lifestyle preference. 

Quite a change and come-down from the last days of Constantinople! When Mary united Eastern and Western Christians; and was the motivation for thousands of men courageously to fight to the death in defence of the city. 

With Mary; I mention a Catholic example, because intellectual Catholics are so devoted to logic. But there are innumerable other examples. 

The point is that there are many and vital instances where our intuitive knowledge is contradicted by our fundamental metaphysical assumptions: when we know but cannot explain. 

I regard it as imperative that we, each of us as individuals, are able to support our fundamental heartfelt convictions with deep metaphysical reasoning. 

This is a must because without the underpinning of a fundamental understanding and ability to explain-to-ourselves; all our convictions are built upon sand, and shall be swept away by the next flood of Establishment propaganda and public pressure or immediate expediency - as became all-too-obvious in 2020.  

And unless these mismatches are sorted-out - by discovering and analysing the validity of our assumptions, and bringing intuition into harmony with metaphysics - then we shall continue fatally to be enfeebled, and controlled by malign powers.  

Personal Development - is it a Good Thing? Analogy with development in the arts and literature.

In the early 1970s, it was a standard aesthetic criterion that "development" was a good thing, a necessary thing - and that the developed was better.  

I first came across it in pop music. e.g. The idea that The Beatles were good because their music developed, from album to another the style (and subject matter) changed - and later Beatles was better than earlier. 

Anyone who thought the opposite, and preferred "their early stuff" was shallow, simple-minded, dumb... 

Same in classical music, as I later discovered. The "Great Composers" all (supposedly) developed, and all kept on getting better. 

Critics seemed unanimous that middle period Beethoven was better than early - with which most lay-people agreed; and best of all were his latest works (especially the last string quartets), with which the music-loving public certainly disagreed.  

The same applied across the board really - whether in other arts and literature, or in intellectual pursuits; and even in the spiritual realm. 

CG Jung's most influential concept was perhaps the desirability of "personal development" as the proper goal of human life - through the middle and late twentieth century this ideal became almost a new religion. 

So what was this development that was so good? 

The direction of desirable-development was (nearly-) always towards less-immediate appeal; more serious/ less fun (or funny); longer; more complex - more difficult.   

Those qualities that had initially attracted people to, say, The Beatles or Beethoven and which brought them to notice, popularity, high status; were thereby downgraded. 

In particular that rather indefinable quality of "freshness" that characterizes early work and accounts for its immediacy of appeal; that unselfconscious spontaneity and fluidity; the absence of that striving, effort, and contrivance which typically dominates later (more serious/ complex/ lengthy etc) work...

That naturalness of expression and clarity of achievement was looked-down-upon; together with the responses that went with it - such as laughter (instead of sophisticated "wit"). 

In an overall sense; it was hard for an honest observer to conclude that development meant "better" - because "the developed" was almost a different thing altogether! Indeed; literally so in the case of developments in Modern Art and Architecture, and modern Classical Music - where "the developed" was often unrecognizable in terms of the aims and virtues and appeal of the starting point.  

What about personal development? Well, the analogy seems close. 

The direction of PD was towards self-consciousness, seriousness, effort and control, a balancing and integration of multiple complexities, by means of complex theories and learned-practices.  

This can be linked-back to the development of personality in religion; where a similar trajectory was recommended and observed. 

There was little doubt that people could be (usually were) changed by prolonged religious training, increased knowledge, study, and practices; and these differences were of the same sort as seen in the arts. 

But whether that differentness from his starting condition actually made the person "better" in any kind of overall or basic sense was very debateable. Often enough it made them worse! 

This is where we now stand - at the end of an era in which development was the ideal, and its benefits were assumed; to one in which such claims are seen to be a false generalization, and often self-serving. 

But Men cannot live without purpose. And if development is discarded then it must be (indeed, it will be) replaced with some other ideal - even if that ideal is implicit, unconscious, denied. 

If we cannot truly develop in any genuinely religious or spiritual fashion - then what should we be doing, aiming-at, instead? 

(As usual, the necessary first step to finding an answer, is to acknowledge the question.) 

The Northumbrian church project: Anglo-Saxon churches

St Andrew's Church*, Bywell

We have recently begun a project to visit old churches in Northumbria; starting by getting suggestions from a little book by the legend that was Stan Beckesall ; backed-up by a copy of "Pevsner" for Northumberland; plus whatever booklets or leaflets we find in the churches we visit.  

Several of these churches, I have visited before; but they are well worth seeing again! This time we are spending about an hour per church on locating - and trying to understand - the architectural features. 

We began with several churches that contain Anglo-Saxon features; and Bywell St Andrew's (illustrated above) has an exceptionally well preserved tower from that era. 

I am, for the first time, beginning to learn and recognize the distinctions - and gradations - between Anglo-Saxon, Norman (c1066 to middle-late 1100s) and Early English (late 1100s to late 1200s). 

Naturally, there is a technological trajectory; with older churches being simpler in construction, visibly cruder in shaping and selection of the stones, and later churches having innovations such as buttresses to stop the walls bulging/ collapsing, multi-stone round arches instead of single stone lintels over doors; then (with Early English) pointed arches (enabling greater height for the same width of supports). 

The evil Normans must be acknowledged as great builders; and their rapid impact on architecture is very evident. I now recognize at a glance the typical EE "lancet" windows - tall and narrow, often paired, usually deep set on the inside.

However, there is always a special excitement of finding Anglo-Saxon features, maybe a font for baptisms - chiselled from a single block, a lintel shaped into a slight arch, or even just a few irregular stones at the corners ("long and short" quoins):

* My new knowledge of church architecture would lead me to recognize that the lowest window in the tower - the long thin, "lancet" with a pointed top - was inserted later. This is because such windows were not done in A-S times, and are usually a feature of the Early English style; also the disturbance to the horizontal lines of the stonework can be seen. However, the window is not genuine Early English, but a later pastiche.

+++

Today we visited St Mary's, Corbridge which is mostly Early English, filled (it seems) with aisles of pointed arches; 

...and with an actual Roman (not Roman-esque) arch, later inserted into the A-S tower; having been scavenged by the medieval masons from the nearby Roman town of Corstopitum/ Coria.  

  

Overpowering smells in childhood

A child's sense of smell is so much more acute than an adult's, that the child experiences his environment in ways that are very different - and sometimes the opposite.  

In a couple of week's time the Cow Parsley will dominate much of the English countryside, especially hedgerows. I now experience its smell as pleasantly sweet; but in the years I was walking to school along (very) narrow pavements alongside hedges, I was so overpowered by the smell of Cow Parsley that it made me feel horribly nauseated. 

We had some family friends who lived in an "architect designed" modern house up above Torbay in Devon; and I dreaded our visits because - to my young nose - their house smelled so horrible. 

The house was perfectly clean and well maintained; so I assume that the smell was probably something to do with its being made with "modern" materials, perhaps concrete and plastics; and perhaps also the presence of new and trendy furnishings? 

Another bane of my young life was when my Father smoked a cigarette in the car; and we kids were sitting in the back seats. 

I was always slightly prone to car-sickness (for example I could not read a book when travelling - and there was no car radio - so I was always bored stupid); but the added smell of smoke, and the fact that British cars in those days had no ventilation (except for windows, which could not be opened at speed due to the buffeting) meant that the back of the vehicle was horribly stuffy at all times. 

Add cigarette smoke; and you get sheer torture. 

I suppose this demonstrates the problem of sensitivity to the features of one's environment. Acute senses will pick-up lovely smells, and thereby enhance one's life - but they also do the opposite when the smell is disliked. 

A receptive musician can appreciate good music, but is horribly tormented by the garbage anti-music that is imposed by so much of our modern world. 

And one who gets profound enjoyment from beautiful architecture will almost be crushed by the usual run of public buildings and cityscapes. 

Architecture - a deeply flawed concept

The centre for UK PSYOPS and subversion - MI6... What else could it be?

There are certainly exceptions; but most of the best buildings in the history of the world were built by members of "craft-guilds" (such as masons) - and without "architects". 

And, for sure, over the past century since Art Deco; architecture has had a powerfully malign influence. 

The deliberate anti-beautiful impulse of the past century of architects is evident from the difference between the housing of recent domestic buildings - which are merely practical-without-beauty*, and those that were architect-designed with big budgets.

(*Or, at least, houses were mostly functional; until the allegedly "anti-Carbon" and "environmental" regulations began to inflict complex, expensive, dysfunctionality on all construction work.)  

Whereas the large, "showcase", private and public buildings - those that employ high-status architectural corporations or individuals; are anti-aesthetic, anti-human, anti-God monstrosities. 

Such that the purposive, actively-evil turn of our civilization is advertised explicitly, unambiguously, indeed shamelessly - more by its architecture than by almost anything else.  

The centre for UK surveillance and blackmail - GCHQ. Evidently, not a nice organization.

Totalitarian PSYOPS are literally black ritual magic

PSYOPS are regarded as top-down mass psychological/ sociological manipulations; and they are all evil by nature; because they are not motivated by love - not in harmony with divine creation. 

Also, since they aim to change "other peoples" behaviour in pre-determined ways, PSYOPS are intrinsically evil in that they are strategically un-truthful. 

In practice; all large scale top-down PSYOPS are also intentionally evil - even if/when those human-tools who implement the PSYOPS (the bureaucrats, managers, professionals, labourers) are ignorant of this evil purpose. 

In 2026 our lives are full of PSYOPS, and have been for decades, accumulating. 

These include the highly prevalent, major totalitarian strategies that I call Litmus Tests - such as class and inter-sex warfare, climatism, antiracism, the Birdemic, and currently "AI"-dolatry.   

There are no good PSYOPS. Supposed good intentions are fake excuses for evil. 

PSYOPS are like The One Ring, a tool of The Enemy, that and cannot be used to fight The Enemy. So, when PSYOPS are used purportedly for "altruistic" purposes - such as Health Promotion or Public Health - supposedly to "help people" in a scientific and medical spirit; if followed through they result in strongly net evil outcomes. 

But to what extent are PSYOPS actual ritual magical practices, performed by black magic techniques? 

In other words, are the methods and intended effects of PSYOPS all operating at the cause-and-effect level of human behaviour and thinking, using quasi-scientific models?

Or, are there spiritual methods at work, with intended spiritually harmful consequences?

Yes, there is a spiritual agenda. Despite that the masses of modern people deny and are ignorant of the spiritual world; nonetheless those at very very top of the totalitarian system are spiritual operatives. 

At the top of the power systems; the ultimate and primary agenda is spiritual warfare; and naturally spiritual methods are deployed - ritual, symbol, charged language, music, "modern" architecture and art, ... the works. 

The phenomenon termed "gaslighting" is pure spiritual warfare: it prepares the way for the necessary invitation for evil to enter the soul. 

Gaslighting induces people - by systemic methods - legal, economic, religious, social, physical (coercion) etc. - to espouse/ support/ propagate/ endorse false assumptions, false logic, stark contradictions, nonsense, paradox... 

Meaninglessness is made to be treated as interesting, amusing, wise; destruction is celebrated as creation; resentment and Schadenfreude are praised as morally exemplary. 

All these are ways by which people are brought to voluntarily open their souls and invite external corruption, occupation - ultimately to hand-over control of the soul to external spiritual authorities.

Black magic is not effective unless it is - to some extent - invited-in. 

Once inside a receptive environment; entities of evil tend to become self-amplifying, by a positive feedback process. 

Therefore spiritual PSYOPS are not effective, unless the masses welcome them... 

However it is apparent that they/we do welcome them! 

Every major new PSYOP has been (at least, to all appearances) - and continues to be eagerly welcomed by large swathes of the Western population. 

People are controlled partly by acknowledged psychological-material techniques; but also - and more effectively - by magical-spiritual methods that harness and direct the malign will of those at high levels of strategic influence. 

It is difficult to resist materialist manipulations, but these are very resource intensive, and limited in effectiveness when they go against human nature. 

By contrast; magical-spiritual manipulations need to be met by open souls, and received with positivity; but when this offer and response happens; black magic is a highly  efficient and powerful malign influence on human behaviour, thinking and feelings. 

 

Lion, Crown, St George - Bad (because Norman) symbols of England

Richard I - rapacious absentee landlord of England, in-himself epitomising nearly-all that is alien about Normanised English symbolism

For about a thousand years, England has been a nation under occupation by a hostile and alien ruling class: the Normans. 

Well... to be clear, this statement is somewhat of an exaggeration! - but it has a solid core of truth, as Tolkien attested, among others. 

Evidence can be seen from several of the the Symbols of England - which are as alien (hence spiritually hostile) as those who imposed them. 

Most countries symbolic animal, is one which actually lives in that country; but England is stuck with a foreign-dwelling creature: a Lion. At best the Lion is a symbol of Empire, not nation - but Empire was an alien project, and the near death of England... So there you have it. 

The Crown - which features all over the place as a symbol, including (alongside the Lion) the sports teams - is of course The symbol par excellence of secular and top-down imposed alien power - of Us under the yoke of Them. 

And then there is St George; a pseudo-Saint from the Middle East, wished upon England by the usual Normans in consequence of their usual Norman warrings*, in their usual Norman pursuit of overseas Empire (since Normans prefer almost anywhere else to England, and almost any other people to the English). 

The Norman-backed "George" then coercively displaced our home-grown Anglo-Saxon Saint Edmund the martyr.

Of course there are some real - albeit inevitably somewhat Norman-co-opted! - English symbols - oak tree, rose, Stonehenge, the flat cap...

But even the primary English folk hero of medieval times, Robin Hood, was distorted into being an exiled Norman aristocrat, and make to work on behalf of a disastrously-typical Norman monarch:

i.e. Richard I - Crowned King of England, "Lion" hearted, and the originator of St George's cult.        

*Normans excelled at two main things: fighting and architecture. However, they had a short-termist psychopathic tendency, so they lacked the capacity for loyalty - even among themselves. Consequently, they spent most of their time fighting each other (and forcing everybody else into it). It was not until after four centuries, when the Barons had exhausted themselves in the War of the Roses, that a monarch with administrative genius (Henry VII)  managed to impose himself on the other Normans... But after just a generation (Henry VIII) the Normans were despoiling and killing each other again; only this time it was so one-sided in favour of the Norman King as against the Norman Abbots, Priors, and Heads of Religious Orders; that the process and outcome resembled unbridled rapine and pseudo-legal execution, instead of the usual civil war.   

Double-negative Christian thinking blocks the search for a positive solution

One of the themes on which I have harped in recent years is the importance of recognizing when we are engaging in double-negative thinking, without any positive strategy behind it. 

I mean that pervasive deformation of modern Western thinking which organizes society in terms of what people are against, with absolutely no notion for what people are for.  

This is a recipe for social destruction; but also for personal despair - since emotions are negatively triggered, and social life becomes a multi-pronged, recurrent sequence of urgent and often fanatical crusades against this, that, or the other "bad-thing"; but with no concept of where this is supposed to be leading. 

Thus we live in a society of dystopias, without any remotely plausible - or even remotely appealing, utopia For instance; the supposed-utopias put forward by the WEF over the past years "own nothing and be happy", "fifteen minute cities" etc. are actually horrific nightmare visions of the future, as well as ludicrously implausible. 

But a somewhat analogous situation applies to Christians; who are much clearer about what they are against than what they are for. And when most Christians do describe what they are for - typically they only succeed in painting a kind of nightmare scenario (usually with a totalitarian flavour); or else some more-or-less ludicrous and unconvincing clearly-subjective-and-partial daydream (e.g. of a sexual nature). 

This is apparently a basic and civilizational phenomenon, because what is most striking about the trajectory of religion in the West is the extent to which it replicates all other social institutions; and the extent to which broadly the same path has been followed by all the Christian denominations - and indeed all the religions, and all the political ideologies. 

Thus the publicly observable faith of all kinds of Christian is obviously much feebler than in the past; but also we can see the same in all other religions in the West. 

And the same again applies to political ideologies such as nationalism/ communism/ socialism; ideals that - only a century ago - inspired extreme personal heroism at a mass level -- yet now are feeble and tawdry excuses for personal hedonism, careerism, money-grubbing and power-seeking. 

Furthermore; while religion and ideology have declined; so has romanticism. People are more mundane and materialist in their thinking than ever before; accepting or indeed embracing of mechanistic, dehumanized, life-less and soul-less workplaces, art and architecture, music, movies and TV, literature - and churches. 

All of which are organized and conceptualized in bureaucratic terms - ruled by such abstractions as flow charts, auditing, hierarchy, surveillance and micro-control - and in which creativity is replaced by systematic plagiarism and fakery. 

There has been no significant mass movement in favour of individualism for half a century -- and even that one (in the late 1960s-early 1970s) was largely a fake: stage-managed by the Establishment/ Mass Media and Intelligence services.  

So if we honestly and rigorously seek for a genuinely positive outlook on life; we will search in vain through the public arena and public discourse. 

At all turns we will be baited-and-switched with (more or less disguised) double-negations of things-we-are-against; instead of things we are positively for.  

This change is so pervasive that I personally believe that it only makes coherent sense to regard it as a change in human beings, in human "consciousness" - that is; a change in the way we approach, perceive and understand The World, Our-Selves and The Divine. 

The above analysis and interpretation is why I feel that Modern Man already-is in a situation where the public realm is net-harmful (overall and by intent); where all forms of external guidance are harmful, not helpful; where all kinds of institutions, organizations, formal groupings are harmful, not helpful...

And therefore a world in which the only place to look for a positive approach to the future is in ourselves as individuals, and the direct and unmediated relationships we have with other individual selves - including those we love among the living and the "so-called dead"; among the material-beings and spirit-beings; among human-beings and not-human-beings; and especially with God the Creator and Jesus Christ. 

How we personally formulate and describe this individual situation matters less than that we actually do it - that we actually take personal responsibility for doing it. 

This is why I put-forward, describe and affirm my personal vision of Romantic Christianity - despite that I simultaneously urge each individual person not to accept this but to do it for himself.* 

The first step (but only the first) is to break free from the self-imposed prison of dependence on external authority - and to take personal responsibility for ones fundamental assumptions and convictions. 

Then comes the process of self-critical evaluation and development of a coherent world-view in harmony with all of our deepest assumptions and convictions. 

Because of the entropic nature of this world, and the triumph of evil in the public realm; this process has no end point in this temporary mortal life - but must aim beyond it and towards resurrected eternal Heavenly life.  

This is why there is no coherent or plausible utopia in this-world. 

And this is also why Romantic Christianity is the opposite of subjectivist escapism - in spite that it is rooted in each individual and seeks salvation beyond life. 

The real subjectivity is willingly and by choice, to be subordinated to the nihilistic will of evil-affiliated demons, Men, and institutions - and to be manipulated by them, at their will - towards their goal of opposing creation by means of unending double-negations. 

The real escapism is to be deluded into regarding this death-pervaded, temporary, and mortal world as a possible location for Heaven.

Whereas the Heaven reached after death, by resurrection, and through following Jesus; is the only proper object of, and context for, positive hope. 

*Note: A particularly important point that I want to get-across, is that there is more than one way of being-a-Christian. 

That the Orthodox-Traditional-Mainstream theology (shared by all Catholics and Protestants) is not the only possible way of sustaining Christian faith. 

That there is more than one set of assumptions that - with broad coherence - can sustain Christianity. 

This was first evident to me when I began to understand Mormon theology, how its assumptions were qualitatively different from the Mainstream assumptions; and that it had important advantages (in terms of explaining and validating free agency, and the nature and origins of evil) compared with Catholic-Protestant theology.

But Mormon theology is only semi-rooted in its metaphysical assumptions; and Mormon doctrine and everyday practice almost ignores, and sometimes contradicts, its own theological metaphysics. 

Which is why I first realized that a more-coherent and comprehensive theology was possible than either mainstream-traditional or Mormon - but that discovering this needed to be an individual and inwardly-motivated project. 

What was good and also distinctive about Western civilization/ culture?

In discussing whether or not Western Civilization/ Culture is worth defending, saving, rebuilding; there is often confusion regarding what it is, and to what extent distinctive. 

I tend to assume that when it comes to what might be termed "the arts" - literature, poetry, visual arts, architecture, dance, music etc - there is a kind of relativity between civilizations and cultures; in the sense that each produces what it wants; and it seems overly subjective to assert the superiority of one over others. 

Looked at across time, and across history; it certainly seems that some bits of some civilizations (e.g. the music, the architecture) are better than the same bits of others; yet the cross-cultural cosmopolitanism that is able to make such comparisons is itself not really a creative or generative culture; but a second order kind of thing - an aspect of cultural criticism rather than creativity. 

At any rate; I find it unconvincing to assert any distinctive superiority of Western Civilization when it comes to the arts and humanities. There is superiority of my civilization for me, and for people like me; but I would not expect people of a different kind from different civilizations to see things the same way. 

But Western Civilization since the 17th century does have a qualitative superiority over all others (past and until the recent present) which is science: more exactly, in terms of science as a "social system".

There have been in many times and places, and still are, individual real scientists; or even duos, or small and short-lasting groups of scientists; but it was only in Western Civilization that science became a structured and multi-generational activity. 

It was only in Western Christendom that the necessary ethic of honesty; the truth-seeking and truth-speaking of and between scientists, became large scale and sustained. 

Therefore science in the West became qualitatively more powerful and wide ranging than at any other time or place. 

I think this can now be seen clearly because science is dead - or at least real science is dead. A bureaucratic professional research activity continues, now fully integrated with global totalitarianism; but this is not what used to be science, it is not real science. 

Science has died for lack of the reason it began: the ethic of inter-scientist honesty that created and sustained science has gone. So-called modern "science" is dishonest, untruthful, selectively exaggerated, deliberately misleading - from top to bottom and in external relations: therefore it is not science. It Does Not Work. 

Science as a social activity has dwindled to near-nothingness, and we have now reverted to the science of individual persons.  

  

Of course; science was always double-edged in its goodness. It was exceptionally honest; but only about its chosen subject.

Science is based on models of reality, not reality; and like all models this means it is distorted at best and deluded at worst -  yet unable (from "within" science) to recognize its own radical limitations and potential evils. 

(i.e. To stay science, science absolutely needs scientists to have an external viewpoint from which to evaluate "science", and keep it honest.) 

When the West, when scientists, ceased to be Christian and Christianity was forgotten; there was no ultimate reason for scientists to be honest - not even about science; so over several decades science became, briefly, net-evil - before it killed itself from corruption and fakery. 

My understanding is therefore that it was science that - in world historical terms - was the distinctive good of Western civilization; but that is dead and gone. While Westerners like myself love much of my civilization; after the death of real science The West no longer has anything distinctive and good to offer The World. So its demise will not be mourned by the world. 

 

Note: Although Western Civ an old topic here; this particular post was triggered by Bonald's recent reflections at the Orthosphere. 

The evil of Literature, Music, Visual Arts...

As an adolescent and young adult I was extremely idealistic about the possibilities of "the Arts" - which, for me, were particularly literature and classical music, but also the visual arts (fine arts, architecture etc). 

It seemed to me that creating, understanding and appreciating these, were the best possibility for a good life, and  - at any rate - represented the highest ideal of which I was aware. 

I now find my views almost at the opposite - except that I can see that the Arts have some kind of valid role as a developmental phase - an opening our of consciousness towards... 

Well "towards what?" is the whole point at issue. 

It is, for me, the personal and spiritual world of Christianity that now occupies the "ideal" mental territory once occupied by the Arts; and I can all-too-readily perceive that the Arts have (long since) been incorporated into the Totalitarian System - incorporated every bit as thoroughly as the legal system, education, science, and the mass media. 

Indeed, the Arts Today seem, mainly, just a sub-department of the mass media. 

Now, as with any System-included activity; the process of incorporation is incomplete, which means that a selective and discerning approach can find much that is good and spiritually helpful in that vast treasury of the Arts. 

But the Arts - on average and overall - are here-and-now a part of the value-inverted anti-Good, anti-creation, anti-God "side" of the spiritual war - as is readily conformed by considering a sample of its creators, performers, exponents, critics, scholars, broadcasters, administrators... 

Almost-everybody who is professionally a part of the Arts sub-System, or set-up, is - very obviously and explicitly - on the Wrong Side.  

This means that I have no "faith" in the Arts; no faith that they are good on the average or overall, no sense that the Arts (here and now) are A Good Thing; including no belief that experience or devotion to the High Arts is ennobling, or can validly be distinguished from Low or Popular Art. 

And this is a big change for me, and certainly leaves a sense of loss, a vacuum - and one that I have not discovered any wholly-satisfactory way to fill. Spiritual Christian activity does-not and cannot simply slot-into that existential-hole which the Arts have left-behind. 

I'm not happy about the situation that the Arts have been subverted and inverted; such that they mostly need to be avoided, supped with a long-spoon, or taken unseriously! 

But, so far as I can tell, that's how things are; and have been for many decades by-now.

 

Yet, if there is a vacuum where once stood the vast edifice of the Arts of Western Civilization; we may be consoled to recall that this always was a symbolic edifice; that the Arts were a form of mediation between Man and divine realities. 

While symbols functioned effectively as an objective link between Man and the divine (i.e. specific symbols being linked, by human consciousness, with particular spiritual realities) - then the inevitable distance between symbol and reality (i.e. the incompleteness and intermittent nature of Art as a secondary representation of the divine) - was less evident. 

Symbol seems almost as good as reality; the actual gap was less evident, but the gap was still there. 

A positive way of regarding the loss of validity of the Arts is that now the underlying reality of the situation is more evident. 

Insofar as we desire personal knowledge and experience of the divine, we must seek it directly - rather than symbolically by via intermediaries.   

Perhaps - knowing this; and having (pretty much) no alternative; we may be more motivated, and more accurately orientated-towards, that which we ought to be doing, anyway. 

What comes after the death of art?

I've often written that real science is dead, and that there are no longer any world-class geniuses of the stature of the previous centuries; so it may be an obvious inference that real art* - as of here-and-now, is dead in an analogous sense to science. 

[* I mean art in its wide sense - music, literature, architecture &c. as well as the visual arts.]

That is, the institutions of art are dead - and such art as continues does so at the level of individual persons, or informal groupings of individuals built on dyadic relationships. The end of art institutions/ organizations/ formal relations - makes a significant difference. 

It means that 'objective standards' have become largely irrelevant, since the real art is not mass consumed; but is for self-consumption or 'local' consumption. 

Likewise, professional versus amateur has almost reversed its meaning; since to be professional means putting one's artistry in a very subordinate position - only amateurs can be committed artists. 

Putting all this together; I think we can see how it is that art has lost its power; people neither get, nor demand, strong - life-dominating - aesthetic relationships with art, in the way they used-to, up to a century ago. 

(Consider the intense attitudes to art displayed in Bernard Shaw's writings in the late 19th century, or James Joyce's work in the early decades of the 1900s - but seldom much later.)  

In my generation, a small minority were intense about art for a short phase of adolescence and young adulthood - but even this residue seems to have dissolved away. Nowadays, people demand - and receive - extremely little of art; just amusement or distraction, the stimulation of a bit of conversation (or writing), maybe a brief evocation of (visceral, not aesthetic) feelings; and the 'artists' are just the same... 

There may be the reality (or a simulation of) some aspect of the leftist-totalitarian socio-political agenda, as a claim to seriousness; but that isn't art... As used to be obvious - but isn't anymore.    

 

Art is dead in the sense that its public manifestations are feeble; and also corrupt - in that 'art' (self-defined) now pursues anti-artistic goals, anti-aesthetic goals; on the basis of that demonically-inspired value-inversion that grips our 'civilization'.

Yet - what it is that made art possible remains a factor in at least some people. And after all, art as a separate entity is a relatively modern phenomenon; since (apparently) 'art' used to be (up to the renaissance, at least) an inseparable part of what might be called 'religion'.   

Since I assume that our destiny is to complete - but this time consciously and by choice - a kind of return to the ways of being, thinking, knowing, doing of childhood (or, probably, early hunter gatherer-type life) -- I therefore suppose that art might again become a small scale, personal/ local, manifestation or enhancement of 'religion'; rather than there being a return of self-sufficient and powerful 'art works'.

After all, it was expected - and to a significant degree it was indeed the case - that each 'art work' (picture, sculpture, building, novel, poem, play, symphony etc) - from the renaissance to early 20th century - would be 'autonomous'; would be able of-itself to generate a powerful and objective (including generally, publicly shared) artistic experience.  

When this intent and possibility goes, and after the expectation of it goes; then people may begin to do art for themselves - including not just making artifacts and alterations to the world, but also in thinking, in imagination. 

Of course; this is not really "art" - not in the sense that art was from c.1500 and until a century ago. But it may stem-from and nourish the same ultimate aspect of Man's nature. 

In terms of objective achievement and autonomous power, such an activity will be as-nothing compared with the genius works of the past, according to the expectations and possibilities of this past.

But it may be much more like the artifacts are remains we see from ancient civilizations; little things and evidences that happened to survive; and which seem to result from the spontaneous impulses of ordinary people doing some-thing for their own satisfaction - and not for the consumption of others. 

Such 'gestures' were common among the better of the relatively less-corrupted people of earlier generations - people who did not look to the mass and social media for continual distraction. 

The Wood-Pile, by Robert Frost

Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day,
I paused and said, 'I will turn back from here.
No, I will go on farther—and we shall see.'
The hard snow held me, save where now and then
One foot went through. The view was all in lines
Straight up and down of tall slim trees
Too much alike to mark or name a place by
So as to say for certain I was here
Or somewhere else: I was just far from home.
A small bird flew before me. He was careful
To put a tree between us when he lighted,
And say no word to tell me who he was
Who was so foolish as to think what he thought.
He thought that I was after him for a feather—
The white one in his tail; like one who takes
Everything said as personal to himself.
One flight out sideways would have undeceived him.
And then there was a pile of wood for which
I forgot him and let his little fear
Carry him off the way I might have gone,
Without so much as wishing him good-night.
He went behind it to make his last stand.
It was a cord of maple, cut and split
And piled—and measured, four by four by eight.
And not another like it could I see.
No runner tracks in this year's snow looped near it.
And it was older sure than this year's cutting,
Or even last year's or the year's before.
The wood was gray and the bark warping off it
And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis
Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle.
What held it though on one side was a tree
Still growing, and on one a stake and prop,
These latter about to fall. I thought that only
Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks
Could so forget his handiwork on which
He spent himself, the labor of his ax,
And leave it there far from a useful fireplace
To warm the frozen swamp as best it could
With the slow smokeless burning of decay.

When AI is as good as crap-Art

I noticed an item by Vox Day - about how a (supposedly) science fiction story magazine had stopped accepting submissions of work because overwhelmed by 'AI' (i.e. pseudo-AI that plagiarizes human creativity) simulations.

Plus I have seen scores of other recent tales and depictions of 'AI' simulations of visual art, music, academic papers... 

Clearly "They" have now added 'AI' to 'Smart' devices and the 'internet of things' as one of their core (hence Litmus Test) strategies. 

Some people have concluded that this implies 'AI' is now as good as real, human Art and will therefore (sooner or later, and rightly) replace The Arts. 

(Neglecting that this procedure is, even by its own account, merely a recombinatorial form of recyling.) 

I agree! This AI will indeed replace The Arts...  in the modified sense that what is nowadays accepted as professional and high status Art and fiction (and academic 'scholarship') is crap; and pseudo-AI can easily generate vast quantities of crap: on demand. 

If the masses continue to be happy with the crap that is consumed as current fiction, pop music, TV and movies; if the intellectual classes continue to be happy with crap literature, sculpture, architecture, scholarship and teaching; if those in authority continue to justify policies with crap science, crap ideology, and the statements of crap-artists; and if crap design and crap construction of stuff is praised, subsidized and given awards... 

Well, then so-called AI can indeed replace nearly-all of purposive human activity in a crap world. 

But even if 'AI' cannot match the crappy non-quality of The Western pseudo-civilization in 2023; it can and will still replace nearly-everything - because AI will be forced upon the masses by the Evil-motivated Establishment whenever this is expedient.

And the Western masses have shown, again-and-again for decades, that they will accept and rationalize any amount of crap fed to them; will hardly notice, and near-instantly forget how things used-to-be. 

 

Season One of the Rings of Power, reviewed...

Well; I have now watched all eight looong episodes of Season One, Amazon's Ring's of Power; watched it with the kind of salacious and guilty fascination one observes the emergence of a tsunami to overwhelm a town, or the cumulative wreckage of a multiple-pile-up road traffic accident. 

I have lowered, and lowered, my expectations of this series. It is, of course, nothing to do with Tolkien - nothing in terms of plot, spirit, lore, and - especially not - moral and spiritual structure. 

So, I lowered my expectations down to the point of simply looking-for something that attracts and maintains my attention; I looked for simple light entertainment. 

I therefore lowered 'the bar' to the level of such mainstream soap-fantasy tripe as Shadowhunters; but Rings of Power did not reach this bar - except at too-rare intervals. 

I found (as I said in the above review) one of the most astonishingly incompetent shows I have ever encountered. There are stunning deficiencies in terms of overall conception, casting, acting, script, plot, direction and editing - the RoP breaks all the standard rules for how to construct a story and to get people involved. 

One gets the impression that this was because the makers have no clue about how to make a TV program (or movie), not even at the basic film school level; that they genuinely don't understand that (by their choice to make the show so complex, and with so many 'principal' characters) they have repeatedly painted themselves into a corner; from where it has become, not just difficult, but actually impossible for them even to provide low-level, mainstream entertainment. 

They seem to have no idea what works and what does not work; because they give the greatest attention to what does not work (e.g. Galadriel and the Harfoots). 

An example of the endemic ineptitude was that the picture advertising the final episode was the Balrog of Moria, which was depicted for a few seconds at the end of a previous episode. 

The Balrog did not appear at all in the final episode. Indeed, the episode did not even return to the Moria plot thread in which the Balrog occurred. 

It's not as if they lacked time to include it, because the final episode was full of padding - such as a full five minutes of farewell emoting and weeping from the Harfoots; and several utterly disconnected and dramatically futile scraps from the Numenor thread. 

Sheer incompetence. 

Some parts of it were fine, by the standards I set myself. The (at last...) 'revelations' concerning the identity of the wizard (presumably Gandalf) and Sauron were well enough done to keep me entertained and attentive - if morally both shallow and abhorrent in their underlying assumptions. 

(But four idiot-fool, unarmed Harfoots catching-up-with and defeating three super-powered and ruthless bad-angels was ludicrously unbelievable.)  

But if the makers knew what they were doing; these revelations would have happened in the third or fourth, not eighth, episode; since the absurdity of withholding such 'secrets' got less interesting, more boring, and more confusing. 

Contrary to the sophomoric expectations of some early-modern artists and writers; deliberately confusing the audience is not difficult, therefore not clever; and counter-productive to storytelling and script quality. 

The longer the deliberate confusion over identity persisted, the longer the pseudo-secret was sustained - the less interested I was in learning the answers (which I had guessed anyway). A script that relies heavily on the chronically-delayed-unveiling of artificially-withheld-information; represents one of the lowest, because least-effective, forms of storytelling. 

The Rings of Power was therefore a fascinating snapshot of the Decline of The West, where basic functionality is almost entirely disregarded; and the gap between claims and accomplishment is bridged by massive and coordinated media propaganda...

Yet, at the same time, that media propaganda is itself subject to the same self-imposed corruption, and therefore cannot sustain the lies it is trying to enforce.

Collapse of functionality in one sector, creates collapse of functionality in other sectors - until there is (there must be) general collapse. 

Incompetence is no longer regarded as a flaw; so long as failures happen in the context of woke/ politically correct signaling. 

Whether in TV, movies, novels, art, architecture, museums or whatever; the audience are required to admire (and enjoy!) the preaching and soft-sell of current socio-political taking points - and to pretend that they are thereby being edified and entertained.   

Ours is a world of value inversion; part of which is that the people in charge are picked from the least competent at their purported function. And indeed are appointed without any requirement for competence. 

Those 'in charge' of our social institutions are either de facto (or actual) actors (speaking someone else's lines), or were appointed to meet affirmative actions quotas, or else got jobs on the basis of their ability to bullshit in the necessary style. 

Thus the root of the problem is not incompetence, but instead actually malign intention; the incompetence happens by deliberate will and choices. 

The reason we have incompetent people in charge almost-everywhere, is because those who are ultimately In Charge, positively desire societal destruction; and therefore deploy incompetence towards this aim.

...At least, the use incompetent personnel whenever the motivation to failure needs to be deniable (i.e. when they cannot plausibly pretend that purposive destructiveness is a sensible and positive policy). 

Rings of Power might have been a well-made and cunningly-crafted inversion of Tolkien's work; done with the intent of over-writing and spoiling Lord of the Rings in memory and by framing of future expectations...

But in the actual case (for whatever reasons) somebody decided to recruit armies of incompetents, at every level and in most functions, to make the show. 

Apparently, it was decided simply to give incompetence its head - to bore the pants off the audience, and encourage them to stop-watching in droves. 

Perhaps 'they' are vaguely hoping that this fiasco of a show will stop too many people going-on to read the original Lord of the Rings - by encouraging the idea that it would be similarly dull, pointless and incoherent as the Rings of Power? 

I can't say I find this theory convincing; but such a disaster certainly did not happen just by accident: there were just too-many, too-bad decisions for random chance to explain. 

Perhaps it is some kind of cunning fraud on the lines of Mel Brook's The Producers... A plan to profit from failure? 

If so, and if the scam works; the Rings of Power may just be the first of many such shows!

"Training the mind" - double-edged effect at best, and preventive of Final Participation

The Romantic will always come-up against the fact that for most of the time he is mundane. Of course, life and (especially) surrounding people are often a real drag upon any aspirations to Higher Consciousness. 

After all, our world is built upon assumptions of anti-God, anti-spirit materialism - and when we are engaged with the world, our minds are entrained to this pervasive mundanity. 

Yet, even with as near a perfect 'environment' as this mortal world offers; the Higher Consciousness of intuition/ heart-thinking- mysticism that is desired sought by Romanticism; is always an intermittent state - and often disappointingly infrequent.

Indeed, some Romantics have ended-up being more distressed by the evanescence of Higher Consciousness, than encouraged by the occurrence of such states. 

Especially; if one is aiming at Final Participation as the goal of consciousness - the destined and necessary stage in human evolutionary development - then there are neither methods nor training to achieve it. 

It is tempting, indeed usual, for serious Romantics to try and escape this - apparently - unsatisfactory situation of endemic failure, by some or another method of 'training the mind'. 

This is what lies behind the grades of initiation beloved by some esoteric societies, the prolonged and daily practice of meditation; and external aids such as ritual, script, music, architecture.  

There seems little doubt that these are at least somewhat effective in training the mind; the question is: what is the effect of such training? 

My distinct impression is that all methods of training the mind that are aimed at Higher Consciousness will fail. 

Either they will just 'not work', will fail to achieve anything sufficiently powerful and lasting to make a significant different to the problem of mortal life; or else (more insidiously) they will succeed in imposing a System upon thinking. 

And this System will either become unconscious and habitual, thereby subjecting thinking to uncontrolled lower consciousness (while terming this state 'higher'). This would apply to Jungian-derived methods; based on lucid dreamlike trances; and also to meditation practices that aims to eradicate 'the self' or 'ego' or discard 'thinking' itself. 

Or else, it will subject thinking to the conscious will, yet this conscious will is merely ordinary mundane consciousness - and subject to the external influences of mundane consciousness. This would apply to the types of meditation that focus on training concentration, imagination and 'visualization' - such as those of ritual magic societies and Steiner's Anthroposophical 'exercises'. 

The apparent 'success' of training may generate increased gratification in life (make people 'feel better' in some way) - but do not achieve the objective of Final Participation.

Both the System and the training in 'concentration' may be effective in producing change - but they are not effective in encouraging Final Participation. And, in failing, they lead to that contamination of genuine insight and achievement with confident error and vast delusion which has been so characteristic of those who aim at Higher Consciousness. 

The limitation is a consequence of Final Participation being a participation in divine creation; which can (for obvious reasons) only happen when a Man is fully aligned with divine purposes of creation. 

This alignment with God happens seldom and briefly, is easily blocked or reversed; which limits the frequency of this state of consciousness. 

But when a Man is fully aligned with God's creation - what a man is following his destiny and that of providence; then Final Participation will happen - spontaneously, without effort or intent. 

Our main job is to recognize when this is-happening and recall when it has-happened. 

And for the Romantic Christian these are the key moments of our mortal life - vital life lessons from which we ought to learn. 

So; these Final Participation experiences will not happen often, and we cannot 'make' them happen by training.

Attempts at training and beliefs that training is efficacious are, indeed, counter-productive. 

But we can notice Final Participation states, value them, learn from them.

Glasgow closed: Active cultural destruction

I revisited Glasgow recently - where I had lived for several years, three decades ago; and Oh the difference!

I knew Glasgow best from the 1980s-90s; when it was in the throes of an era of cultural construction and celebration - you could hardly switch on the TV or radio, or open a highbrow magazine, without something about Glasgow's architecture, film, art, literature and whatever; a place of galleries, museums, plays and exhibitions. A great deal of money and effort was spent on funding (and publicizing!) all this.  

Certainly, one could reasonably claim that all this 'Glasgow's Miles Better'/ 'City of Culture' stuff was greatly exaggerated, but there was no doubt that the city was trying its best. 

The Art Nouveau design and architecture of Charles Rennie Mackintosh was a symbol of this - and the craze went international. Among the buildings were the Art School - (burned down), Hill House (closed), a recreated house at the Hunterian Gallery (closed), Scotland Street School (closed)... The once famous Burrell Collection (one of Scotland's major visitor attractions) has been closed for five years. 

You get the idea. 

I walked the streets in the West End, in and around the university where I worked for more than three years; famous as the hub of artistic and cultural life in the city, and they were all-but deserted. A place that crackled with creative energy has been smothered. 

Dead.   

I use Glasgow merely as typical - a microcosm of the way that (since the totalitarian takeover of early 2020) the cultural life of Britain (and, I presume, everywhere else) has undergone an almost complete destruction by asphyxiation. 

Operas, concerts, plays, museums, galleries, stately homes etc are either closed - or else undergone a massive collapse in quality. They have imposed punitive restrictions - e.g. requiring days of pre-booking, allowing tiny numbers, with miserably intrusive conditions (eg. plastered with aggressive notices, insistent masking, one way systems even outdoors).

And these going far beyond those implemented for large retail institutions like supermarkets. 

Even such dubiously cultured places as research facilities, laboratories and universities in general are often grossly-depleted or moribund (at least from those I have walked around).  

Much the same applies to sports - who have made themselves absent altogether, or (at best) much less enjoyable by their zealous embrace of (zero resistance to) a deadly combination of 'distancing' practices and antiracist evil-propaganda. 

(I can only tolerate cricket by turning the sound off - to avoid the woke pieties of commentators; and by missing the Nuremberg Rally celebrations of 'diversity' that start each game.)

There is an enhanced zeal in the 'cancel culture'; which is deployed differentially anti-culturally, against things that have a stronger tendency to any-thing notably Good (high in Truth, Beauty and/or Virtue). 

It is now a dead-certainty that all cultural work of high quality and value is targeted, with its authors and makers. 

Any person or opus that is exceptionally Good will sooner or later be attacked; and it is certain that those bureaucrats, managers and practitioners charged with the preservation, defense and promotion of culture; will take this, and every other possible, opportunity to destroy, replace or deface it.

It seems clear that 'culture' has suspended activity; but apparently with full complicity from the cultural professionals (artists, actors, and so forth) - who seem to be solidly behind the birdemic response (and asking for more); they are apparently content to live off doles and do nothing but symbolic internet interactions; and continue without any definite end point. 

Active cultural destruction on all sides - blatant and proud - is merely one among many symptoms of a civilization in the terminal phases of self-loathing and strategic suicide - led by the demonic elites and colluded-with by the Godless masses. 

How to recognise evil? When it impinges on us, we know

These are great days for learning about the nature of reality, the spiritual war of God and creation under assault from Satan and moral inversion; and that is what this mortal life is for. 

But it is possible, frequent, to feel overwhelmed by the task of discernment... Yet to feel overwhelmed is to fall into a snare. 

In reality things are made easy for us; if we maintain a proper (eternal) perspective, and stop trying to analyse and strategise about the specifics of this-worldly effectiveness. 

 

What we need to do is simple, albeit difficult. It is simply: to recognise evil when it impinges upon us. 

We don't need to know about evil that is abstract, absent, elsewhere, to-somebody-else we don't know or love. It is only that evil which actually impinges that we must know.  

 

So, the task is two-fold: the first to be aware of evil, to know it; the second to reject it. 

Evil knocks on our door, and asks (or demands) to be invited-inside. All that we need to do is to say No. Because evil cannot enter without permission.

 

Naturally, evil adopts disguises - It might come in the form of a kind old lady, a sexy youth, an expert professional, a charming wit, a pitiful wreck of a person. Evil might be in words, symbols, music, landscape, architecture... pretty much anything. Even worse - evil often regards itself as good, has a 'clear conscience'; and sees goodness as the 'real' evil!

But the thing is - We Always Know Evil. 

 

We all have an inbuilt, spontaneous, sensitive evil-detector; active 24/7 and that penetrates all disguises; an alarm that sounds when evil impinges, when evil requests an entry. 

Therefore we need not care about all the disguises and deceptions of evil - Our simple task is just to become aware of that inner alarm, in our heart; to recognise its warning; and to respond. 

 

Christians who are self-blocking the potential intensity and power of spiritual experience

With most of the mainstream Christian churches increasingly corrupted into the active support of evil; and most of them effectively closed anyway - the prospect for Christians is one of a solo spirituality. And this is something which has very seldom been seen before: Christians are in uncharted territory. 

Many people already (before 2020) found that church Christianity was insipid - even despite the potentially powerful effects of group reinforcement, singing and music, ritual and symbolism, architecture and tradition. Subtract these, and the prospect of a lifetime of solitary Christian practice may sound very unattractive - likely to be feak and weeble. 

Certainly, I personally feel a need for my experience of faith to be intense and powerful; and when this cannot be assisted by external stimuli; this situation naturally points towards the near necessity for direct and personal spiritual experience. 

This may be a reason behind my fascination with Philip K Dick's Exegesis - not in any specific way, but as an example of how intense and powerful Christian spiriual experience can be for a modern Man - one who was surrounded by a typical modern social environment that was mostly uninterested, actively-misleading or atheistically hostile. 

On the one hand, it is a snare for Christians to seek intense and powerful spiritual experience for its own sake, as a psychological 'trip'; on the other hand, many Christians are very obviously - by various methods, some metaphysical, some dogmatic, some psychological - actively blocking the possibility of themselves having intense and powerful spiritual experiences. 

In a context where institutional "Christianity" is either corrupt, absent - or both! - this self-blocking would seem to be a guarantee of too weak, too insipid, too feeble a faith to endure the current and future trials.  

A couple of musical discoveries - Yuan Sheng and Lauri Volpi

 

One cannot always be listening to Glenn Gould playing Bach; plus some of his pieces are excessively experimental and don't work over the long term. In the past, I have generally turned to Andras Schiff for a different and/but excellent way of  performing Bach's keyboard works. Schiff has a very smooth and lyrical, light and sensitive way of playing - as well as deeply thought. 

But just yesterday I stumbled upon a modern Chinese pianist called Yuan Sheng who may turn out to be (only time will tell) my back-up Bach pianist. He has a lyricism and delicacy much like Schiff, but a more clearly articulated (stunningly so!) and rhythmically secure basis. There is clearly a deep musical intelligence at work, evident bot hin the phrasing and the architecture.

Early days yet (and YS doesn't seem to have recorded 'The 48' yet) but I thought I would pass his name on, since he does not seem well known. 

 

Lauri Volpi is one of the acknowledged great operatic tenors of the recording era; but for some reason (that I cannot begin to explain!*) I never knowingly engaged with him until a week or two ago - when I heard him spoken of as The Master in an interview with one of my favourite modern tenors in the lyric Italian style: Alfredo Kraus.  

 

This is truly one of the most remarkable pieces of singing I have heard in the belcanto style - so beautiful that I get an almost reflex 'tearing-up'! 

The production of tone never seems to cease between notes; as if all the notes were linked by an inexhuastible, inaudible, 'glide' of the voice, which floats from note to note. Hear also the control of breathing, to produce effortless long phrases; and the display of what is termed "mezza di voce" in which the volume of a note is increased or diminished smoothly but without any change in tone quality, vibrato or pitch (this is apparently the single most difficult technique in operatic singing). 

Volpi also had immense power right to the top of the normal tenor range, and slightly above - which he did not unleash in this particular aria; although he easily goes up to what I think is a top C# (above top C, the normal highest note for large-voiced tenors) interpolated in the second verse; with beautiful ringing tone - but not at full voice. Apparently his top notes were, when he chose and in real life, louder and more resonant than any other great singer, ever. 

(Note, LV was apparently at his greatest as a singer in the 20s and 30; later he became much less subtle and more showy - although still with impressive power and control). 

*This may be related to the fact that my impression has been that most people, including most professional music critics, talk sheer nonsense when discussing the excellence or otherwise of singers. I must have read LV praised many times in the past; presumably by people whose judgment was worthless. But such praise from Alfredo Kraus (who singled LV out above all other tenors) is a different matter...

Art - Intuitively (or, What's Good for Me)

I was pretty much a 'culture vulture' as a young man; which entailed gobbling-up the books, music, art, philosophy etc. that was regarded as canonical - or else, at least, 'relevant' and 'important' to my high-status contemporaries.

Overall, it was not good for me, and was a corrupting experience.

Because, on engaging with some artefact - for example watching a movie, or reading a novel, viewing some architecture - I would often feel a strongly negative impression being made upon me. I did not like the author, I was averse by what was being said, or the way it was being said. I felt badness...


On the one hand there was an apparent consensus of scholars and critics saying that This Is Good Stuff (even 'essential') - and on the other hand there was this hard-to-express feeling that this was Not Good, that it was of malign intent or effect...

So far as I remember, this intuitive feeling was always correct, and the impressions I got were valid; and sooner-or-later I would regret having 'given-myself' (by attention, concentration, and openness) to such and such a play, poem, philosophy, movie, artwork or whatever it might be.

Sooner-or-later I would need to dis-engage and un-learn; in order to escape from the distortion and corruption that had been seeded in me.


Maybe this is the proper and underlying source of the 'modern' way of skating-across and sampling the deluge of 'information' that comes to us each day? Perhaps what we are supposed to do is develop consciousness of these (maybe subtle, maybe fleeting) feelings of aversion (and the rarer opposite ones of validation and attraction) - and thereby be able to disengage immediately, before much harm is done?


This reminds me of Ralph Waldo Emerson's self-described method of reading by skimming and homing-in on 'lustres. He warned against expending too much attention and effort on what we read; because most of it was not worth it; and also because the giving of oneself was stultifying to one's own creativity. Emerson said one ought to be reading mainly in order to 'start your own team' - that is: we should read (etc) in order to fuel our own creative activities.

Such practice leads-on-to a way of dealing with the mass media and the propaganda that cannot be avoided. Of course we should limit our exposure to it; but essentially media propaganda cannot nowadays be avoided - therefore perhaps we ought to engage with it in the skimming spirit recommended by Emerson?


And we should also develop our own awareness of these evaluative intuitions that so quickly (and reliably) arise from our true selves to tell us of the nature of what we are reading; tell us of its ultimate sources; tell us what side it is on?

This stance mostly works to unmask the foul intent behind fair words; but also may lead us to the (few) good people (i.e. people on the side of Good) who are nowadays seldom concentrated in any particular place; but who are thinly-distributed - and sometimes in unexpected places.

A note on the stature of pianist Lang Lang

The modern pianist Lang Lang is a 'base breaker' - i.e. among the fans of classical piano he evokes extremes of both approbation and rejection. Some regard him as - either already or potentially - one of 'the greats'; others as a hyped, shallow, flashy showman.

Here is my impression, for discussion among those who care about such matters. The range of evaluation suggests a combination of significant strengths and weaknesses, and one's attitude perhaps depends on the relative valuation of these strengths and weaknesses.

His main strengths are that, technically, he seems to be able to do almost anything; and furthermore he can play with that lyrical phrasing (musicality) that is indispensable but innate (and not teachable). 

His weakness is a musical equivalent of 'short-attention span'. He cannot sustain his concentration and grasp across the long spans of music that are a feature of classical music.

Consequently, his performances consist of (often) wonderful sections, each lasting some tens of seconds; but not joined together into the larger arcs of movements and whole works. Superficially, Lang Lang seems to get bored, and 'messes around' every few bars - in reality, he probably does not musically comprehend the structure of the work he is playing.

Lang Lang is like the sculptor of a bust who carves beautiful eyes, nose and mouth - but cannot assemble them into a face.

Those music critics who are able to apprehend and appreciate musical architecture therefore rate Lang Lang pretty low - while recognising the virtuosity; those who focus on the close-up musical detail (and perhaps can't grasp musical architecture, or who don't much value it), perceive that he can do this at a top-notch level, as well as anybody. 

(If I am right) Lang Lang's weakness is rare among the highest level of pianists - an architectural grasp is something usually to be take for granted at that level; and the disagreement about stature is concerned with which performer's interpretation is the best exemplification of the musical architecture of a particular work.

In other words, I am saying that Lang Lang is indeed a technical virtuoso rather than a great musician; but he is a virtuoso who has genuine, original musical insights at the level of musical detail.