*
[I have avoided spoilers in this review, so anyone can read it.]
I read and enjoyed Colin Wilson's first two Spider World novels - The Tower and The Delta - when they were published in 1987 - the two volumes from Grafton books make up one novel - and I have recently finished reading them aloud as bedtime stories. The tow books make up one story arc.
(I mention this, because on Amazon there is a confusing plethora of names and volumes - if you buy the 1987 Grafton paperbacks you will get what you need. For some strange reason the novels are out of print.)
*
I would highly recommend these books. Reading aloud a novel, in short nightly segments, places considerable demands on a book - and any story which can survive this treatment and still seem satisfying and worthwhile - both night-by-night and overall - is a book to be reckoned with.
Spider World passed this test with flying colours.
Perhaps the best recommendation I can make about Spider World is that after something like 1000 (large) pages, the end of the novel, the conclusion of the plot, is very satisfying - both in terms of bringing together the threads, and also spiritually; and how seldom can that be said of a book?
*
Spider World depicts a society in which humans are slaves (and food) to highly evolved and intelligent giant spiders, or else the humans are hiding in remote places as small precarious groups of marginal hunter gatherers. It is not just the spiders that are gigantic, but many other bugs of various types: a dangerous place!
The basic situation makes for plenty of excitement and adventure, but the main focus of these novels is psychological - they are about the powers of the mind (actual and potential) such as will, concentration, intelligence, telepathy and animistic sensitivity to life.
The whole thing is written from the perspective of the hero Niall, a young man with distinctive psychological (or 'psychic') gifts. As the plot unfolds, he (and we) discover how humans got into this situation; and discover also the powers of the mind which enabled spiders to become the dominant (or co-dominant) species.
Like all of Colin Wilson's work, the underlying theme is human consciousness, and its expansion and strengthening - but in this instance the theme of consciousness is deepened by a convincing and rather beautiful religious dimension.
*
The first two-volume Spider World (i.e. The Tower and the Delta) was followed by another two stories set in the same world, which I will not discuss here.
But clearly the Tower/ Delta is a very considerable creative achievement in that rarely-successful genre The Philosophical Novel - and deserves to be much more widely read (and to be reprinted!).
In the meantime, you would be wise to snap-up the cheaper secondhand copies, while they are still available.
*
Tuesday, 10 February 2015
Monday, 9 February 2015
Echoes of Eden (by Jerram Barrs) - some principles of great art
*
Jerram Barrs recently published an interesting book entitled Echoes of Eden (2013), in which he tries to understand the particular depth and resonance of certain books, movies, plays and songs from a Christian perspective - and puts forward the idea that the best work upon us because they encapsulate the principles of our Fall from Paradise and hope of return to something better.
He suggests that 'greatness' in these arts comes from three things:
1. They lead us to appreciate the beauty of Creation.
2. We understand the reality of purposive and personal evil, as the fundamental threat in life.
3. The works express our yearning to escape from the corruption, wickedness and ugliness of this mortal earthly situation into a state of higher happiness and perfection - and offer some hope that this may be possible.
*
This analysis seems close to the truth - at least for the kind of art which most profoundly affects me, and which has the broadest appeal among non-professionals. Barrs's examples include Tolkien, CS Lewis, the Harry Potter novels, Jane Austen and Shakespeare - and these all illustrate and confirm his points quite straight forwardly.
One value of this analysis is that it clarifies how works which are implicitly and indirectly Christian, may yet be fundamentally Christian (and the near-irrelevance of explicit and direct Christianity to the genuine and valuable Christianity of art).
*
This point is linked in my mind to Christ's use of indirect and implicit teaching in the parables.
Here - in Parable of the Sower - Jesus explains to his disciples why he teaches in parables:
https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2014-01-029-parable-of-the-sower?category=bible-videos-the-life-of-jesus-christ&lang=eng
My understanding of this, is that successful evangelism among those not-already-Christian is likely to be, or to be based-upon, indirect, parable-based, narrative and not-directly-Christian art and creativity - such as (to mention recent examples) Lord of the Rings, the Narnia Chronicles, and Harry Potter.
*
Jerram Barrs recently published an interesting book entitled Echoes of Eden (2013), in which he tries to understand the particular depth and resonance of certain books, movies, plays and songs from a Christian perspective - and puts forward the idea that the best work upon us because they encapsulate the principles of our Fall from Paradise and hope of return to something better.
He suggests that 'greatness' in these arts comes from three things:
1. They lead us to appreciate the beauty of Creation.
2. We understand the reality of purposive and personal evil, as the fundamental threat in life.
3. The works express our yearning to escape from the corruption, wickedness and ugliness of this mortal earthly situation into a state of higher happiness and perfection - and offer some hope that this may be possible.
*
This analysis seems close to the truth - at least for the kind of art which most profoundly affects me, and which has the broadest appeal among non-professionals. Barrs's examples include Tolkien, CS Lewis, the Harry Potter novels, Jane Austen and Shakespeare - and these all illustrate and confirm his points quite straight forwardly.
One value of this analysis is that it clarifies how works which are implicitly and indirectly Christian, may yet be fundamentally Christian (and the near-irrelevance of explicit and direct Christianity to the genuine and valuable Christianity of art).
*
This point is linked in my mind to Christ's use of indirect and implicit teaching in the parables.
Here - in Parable of the Sower - Jesus explains to his disciples why he teaches in parables:
https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2014-01-029-parable-of-the-sower?category=bible-videos-the-life-of-jesus-christ&lang=eng
My understanding of this, is that successful evangelism among those not-already-Christian is likely to be, or to be based-upon, indirect, parable-based, narrative and not-directly-Christian art and creativity - such as (to mention recent examples) Lord of the Rings, the Narnia Chronicles, and Harry Potter.
*
Sunday, 8 February 2015
New Age energies or Christian love?
*
New Age spirituality mostly boils down to some concept of energy - this is a terms that comes up as the bottom-line explanatory concept in many of the alternative therapies,and in much of the speculation about the future of humankind - the evolutionary future is seen in terms of new energies, higher frequency vibrations or energies, a new high frequency consciousness.
This stands in contrast to the bottom line personal God of Christianity, especially the evangelical Jesus centred Christianity and Mormonism; which sees the bottom line as Love, and Love as (not an energy) a personal relationship.
*
New Age spirituality is generally animistic, in the sense that everything is seen as having the same kind of energy - but of different frequencies or types; however this style of animism makes the whole universe im-personal, abstractly spiritual, physics-like types of energy. Thus New Age 'holism' is a holism which obliterates persons - which is a very Eastern kind of perspective; therefore even Christian New Age people have a highly abstract, impersonal, physics-like, Buddhist-like underlying explanation.
Christian love, by contrast, pushes in the opposite direction - towards explaining everything that happens in terms of personality, of selves, and Love - or Love's negation.
When Christianity becomes animistic and holistic (includes everything), instead of explaining things in terms of energies and vibrations and frequencies and the like - Christianity would tend to explain everything in terms of aware, purposive, person-like entities engaged in relationships. Instead of energies there is relationship - and relationship is considered as ultimately Love (and Love is considered as a matter of personages of different levels).
Love is necessarily, at some level, a matter of agency and choice; of embrace or rejection, of harmony or breakdown - with these metaphors seen like societies (not like physical energies) - the network or web of everything is ultimately seen by Christianity as a network of voluntary loving relationships - and Christianity is not like a network of electric circuits and attractive energies.
*
The fact that Christianity is based on Love, and for Love to be comprehensible implies persons, has always been difficult for intellectuals to accept: it seems too childish, too simple minded - it is (frankly) an embarrassment.
Thus intellectuals have always tended (as a class) to pull Christianity away from Love between people and personages; and push Christianity towards abstraction: to the use of 'physics' metaphors akin to energy, frequency, vibration...
And the more holistic, animistic types of Christianity that get written about tend to be of the very abstract and impersonal types.Even when people talk about being 'at home' in the universe, the depiction is seldom at all home-like - because an ideal home is a place of loving people, not of abstract forces.
However, my sense is that the true tendency and distinction of Christianity is in the opposite direction - that the template for metaphors of how the universe works should be taken from human relations, human society, human Love.
The primary metaphors of Christianity should be like actual love as we have all (without exception) experienced it - and taken to a visioned perfection: family love, married love, the love of true friends, of a church or club, guild, village.
*
New Age spirituality mostly boils down to some concept of energy - this is a terms that comes up as the bottom-line explanatory concept in many of the alternative therapies,and in much of the speculation about the future of humankind - the evolutionary future is seen in terms of new energies, higher frequency vibrations or energies, a new high frequency consciousness.
This stands in contrast to the bottom line personal God of Christianity, especially the evangelical Jesus centred Christianity and Mormonism; which sees the bottom line as Love, and Love as (not an energy) a personal relationship.
*
New Age spirituality is generally animistic, in the sense that everything is seen as having the same kind of energy - but of different frequencies or types; however this style of animism makes the whole universe im-personal, abstractly spiritual, physics-like types of energy. Thus New Age 'holism' is a holism which obliterates persons - which is a very Eastern kind of perspective; therefore even Christian New Age people have a highly abstract, impersonal, physics-like, Buddhist-like underlying explanation.
Christian love, by contrast, pushes in the opposite direction - towards explaining everything that happens in terms of personality, of selves, and Love - or Love's negation.
When Christianity becomes animistic and holistic (includes everything), instead of explaining things in terms of energies and vibrations and frequencies and the like - Christianity would tend to explain everything in terms of aware, purposive, person-like entities engaged in relationships. Instead of energies there is relationship - and relationship is considered as ultimately Love (and Love is considered as a matter of personages of different levels).
Love is necessarily, at some level, a matter of agency and choice; of embrace or rejection, of harmony or breakdown - with these metaphors seen like societies (not like physical energies) - the network or web of everything is ultimately seen by Christianity as a network of voluntary loving relationships - and Christianity is not like a network of electric circuits and attractive energies.
*
The fact that Christianity is based on Love, and for Love to be comprehensible implies persons, has always been difficult for intellectuals to accept: it seems too childish, too simple minded - it is (frankly) an embarrassment.
Thus intellectuals have always tended (as a class) to pull Christianity away from Love between people and personages; and push Christianity towards abstraction: to the use of 'physics' metaphors akin to energy, frequency, vibration...
And the more holistic, animistic types of Christianity that get written about tend to be of the very abstract and impersonal types.Even when people talk about being 'at home' in the universe, the depiction is seldom at all home-like - because an ideal home is a place of loving people, not of abstract forces.
However, my sense is that the true tendency and distinction of Christianity is in the opposite direction - that the template for metaphors of how the universe works should be taken from human relations, human society, human Love.
The primary metaphors of Christianity should be like actual love as we have all (without exception) experienced it - and taken to a visioned perfection: family love, married love, the love of true friends, of a church or club, guild, village.
*
Saturday, 7 February 2015
Solitude, Exile and Ecstasy - Henry Thoreau, Hugh MacDiarmid and Glenn Gould: My 1991 BBC Radio programme, now for the first time available as an listen-able audio-file
The Liberal loophole approach to interpreting the Bible versus common sense (with respect to the Leftist agenda for the sexual revolution)
*
When Liberal 'Christians' interpret the Bible for guidance concerning modern sexual doctrine, and this criticism includes some of the most learned and eminent among modern scholars, they approach it looking for 'legal loopholes' which could be argued to allow what secular Left want to do anyway.
This applies to the two major recent issues that have riven the major denominations of ordination of women as priestesses within Christian Churches, and the extension of the post-sixties sexual revolution within Christianity.
*
The basic method is to assume that behaviour which is not explicitly and comprehensively forbidden - by multiple and wholly- reliable sources - is permitted, perhaps acceptable, potentially admirable. The 'null hypothesis' is that if there is uncertainty about what is forbidden, then it should be permitted.
Such a method is adept at exploiting inevitable imprecision, magnifying disagreements over translation judgements, encouraging disputes historical over historical practices - and so on.
In the end an atmosphere of the desired uncertainty is manufactured, and used to justify new practices.
*
But if we really want to know how the Bible wants people to behave, then the method is entirely different, much simpler, much surer. We would not ask what is forbidden by Scripture; but instead ask how the God wants us to behave as revealed in Scripture.
In relation to sexuality, what is encouraged? The answer is very obvious: celibacy, or sex between man and woman within marriage. That is what God wants us to do. Obviously! If we start asking whether other types of sexual arrangements are absolutely forbidden under all circumstances, then we have already left the path of wisdom.
And with the priesthood - there is nothing whatsoever in the Bible that could be regarded as a positive encouragement to establish priestesses in the Christian church. If we ask whether priestesses are therefore absolutely forbidden under all circumstances and for all time, then we have already left the path of wisdom.
*
When a question is framed wrongly, and when the wrong framing is prescribed and enforced by those in power; then there can never be a true answer. Additionally, Christian theologians and theorists are often addicted to legalism, and modern legalism is negatively framed - this approach cannot yield truth and virtue.
So long as the question is right, Christianity really is very simple; simple enough for a child to understand - but simplicity may not be welcome when it contradicts our desires and practices.
*
When Liberal 'Christians' interpret the Bible for guidance concerning modern sexual doctrine, and this criticism includes some of the most learned and eminent among modern scholars, they approach it looking for 'legal loopholes' which could be argued to allow what secular Left want to do anyway.
This applies to the two major recent issues that have riven the major denominations of ordination of women as priestesses within Christian Churches, and the extension of the post-sixties sexual revolution within Christianity.
*
The basic method is to assume that behaviour which is not explicitly and comprehensively forbidden - by multiple and wholly- reliable sources - is permitted, perhaps acceptable, potentially admirable. The 'null hypothesis' is that if there is uncertainty about what is forbidden, then it should be permitted.
Such a method is adept at exploiting inevitable imprecision, magnifying disagreements over translation judgements, encouraging disputes historical over historical practices - and so on.
In the end an atmosphere of the desired uncertainty is manufactured, and used to justify new practices.
*
But if we really want to know how the Bible wants people to behave, then the method is entirely different, much simpler, much surer. We would not ask what is forbidden by Scripture; but instead ask how the God wants us to behave as revealed in Scripture.
In relation to sexuality, what is encouraged? The answer is very obvious: celibacy, or sex between man and woman within marriage. That is what God wants us to do. Obviously! If we start asking whether other types of sexual arrangements are absolutely forbidden under all circumstances, then we have already left the path of wisdom.
And with the priesthood - there is nothing whatsoever in the Bible that could be regarded as a positive encouragement to establish priestesses in the Christian church. If we ask whether priestesses are therefore absolutely forbidden under all circumstances and for all time, then we have already left the path of wisdom.
*
When a question is framed wrongly, and when the wrong framing is prescribed and enforced by those in power; then there can never be a true answer. Additionally, Christian theologians and theorists are often addicted to legalism, and modern legalism is negatively framed - this approach cannot yield truth and virtue.
So long as the question is right, Christianity really is very simple; simple enough for a child to understand - but simplicity may not be welcome when it contradicts our desires and practices.
*
Friday, 6 February 2015
Mercy is a better word than tolerance
*
There seems to be a problem with the word tolerance - in that it tends to slide into approval.
There are many examples from the sexual revolution in which a disorder or sin is first tolerated then actively approved - first regarded as not-necessarily-bad then portrayed as actually good - first decriminalized then enforced by propaganda, rules, regulations and eventually laws.
For example, divorce was first tolerated, then incrementally destigmatized, then formally allowed, then made easier, then marriage contracts were declared unilaterally revocable (i.e. not contracts at all), until now divorce is widely portrayed as a positive freedom, the sign of a liberated spirit, a great opportunity: the kind of thing that authentic, brave, lively, admirable, passionate and spiritual people really ought to be doing...
(We have the bizarre situation that the only contract which we make with the highest solemnity, after prolonged consideration, in front of multiple witnesses; a promise which we swear solemnly to hold through thick and thin and for all of our lives - is treated by The Law as utterly trivial; such that either party can break it without sanctions and for trivial excuses or no reason at all.)
So perhaps mercy is a better word than tolerance; in the sense that mercy implies guilt.
When moral law (which is what all Law ought to be) has been transgressed, sometimes it is appropriate not to punish - because of the circumstances. So, the person is formally convicted of transgression - they are Guilty; but mercy is shown, and they are not punished.
(An example would be when someone is convicted of the murder of someone who has tortured and tormented and provoked them beyond endurance. They may really be guilty of murder; but in the circumstances they may be pardoned, and not punished.)
This would seem to be the best way to do things. First to recognize that wrong was done, then - when appropriate and reasonable - to be merciful for the wrongdoing.
This fits with how I feel about many sins and wrongdoings - particularly in the sexual realm. I regard them as real sins and genuine wrongdoings; but in some, many or even most circumstances I would advocate mercy - and not punish them.
*
There seems to be a problem with the word tolerance - in that it tends to slide into approval.
There are many examples from the sexual revolution in which a disorder or sin is first tolerated then actively approved - first regarded as not-necessarily-bad then portrayed as actually good - first decriminalized then enforced by propaganda, rules, regulations and eventually laws.
For example, divorce was first tolerated, then incrementally destigmatized, then formally allowed, then made easier, then marriage contracts were declared unilaterally revocable (i.e. not contracts at all), until now divorce is widely portrayed as a positive freedom, the sign of a liberated spirit, a great opportunity: the kind of thing that authentic, brave, lively, admirable, passionate and spiritual people really ought to be doing...
(We have the bizarre situation that the only contract which we make with the highest solemnity, after prolonged consideration, in front of multiple witnesses; a promise which we swear solemnly to hold through thick and thin and for all of our lives - is treated by The Law as utterly trivial; such that either party can break it without sanctions and for trivial excuses or no reason at all.)
So perhaps mercy is a better word than tolerance; in the sense that mercy implies guilt.
When moral law (which is what all Law ought to be) has been transgressed, sometimes it is appropriate not to punish - because of the circumstances. So, the person is formally convicted of transgression - they are Guilty; but mercy is shown, and they are not punished.
(An example would be when someone is convicted of the murder of someone who has tortured and tormented and provoked them beyond endurance. They may really be guilty of murder; but in the circumstances they may be pardoned, and not punished.)
This would seem to be the best way to do things. First to recognize that wrong was done, then - when appropriate and reasonable - to be merciful for the wrongdoing.
This fits with how I feel about many sins and wrongdoings - particularly in the sexual realm. I regard them as real sins and genuine wrongdoings; but in some, many or even most circumstances I would advocate mercy - and not punish them.
*
Is modern demotivation due to cultural decadence and soft living, or is it evidence of sickness (reduced fitness due to mutation accumulation)?
*
The way to tell the difference is to observe the response to crisis.
If the modern demotivation is due to excessive peace, prosperity, comfort and convenience - then when there is a crisis, the virtues will re-emerge.
The soft Shire Hobbits retain their ancient toughness underneath the plump and lazy surface, will respond to urgent necessity, and will save the world.
But if modern demotivation is due to sickness, if it is due to generations of mutation accumulation; then a serious crisis will simply reveal that sickness.
When the civilized comforts and conveniences are withdrawn, sick people will not cope, because they have lost their coping mechanisms (broken by genetic damage) - so they will simply curl-up and die.
*
Modern civilization is like a hospital, and we are the inhabitants of that hospital.
The question is: are we like fit people who just happen to be living in a hospital? Or, are we patients - seriously sick individuals who are only alive because we live in a hospital?
When the hospital (modern society) collapses - then we will find-out.
*
The way to tell the difference is to observe the response to crisis.
If the modern demotivation is due to excessive peace, prosperity, comfort and convenience - then when there is a crisis, the virtues will re-emerge.
The soft Shire Hobbits retain their ancient toughness underneath the plump and lazy surface, will respond to urgent necessity, and will save the world.
But if modern demotivation is due to sickness, if it is due to generations of mutation accumulation; then a serious crisis will simply reveal that sickness.
When the civilized comforts and conveniences are withdrawn, sick people will not cope, because they have lost their coping mechanisms (broken by genetic damage) - so they will simply curl-up and die.
*
Modern civilization is like a hospital, and we are the inhabitants of that hospital.
The question is: are we like fit people who just happen to be living in a hospital? Or, are we patients - seriously sick individuals who are only alive because we live in a hospital?
When the hospital (modern society) collapses - then we will find-out.
*
Thursday, 5 February 2015
Who has been the most important Christian writer in recent decades?
*
If you think about CS Lewis, my guess is that everybody in this room has read at least one book by him.
In almost every setting in which I speak, if I ask the question "Have you read a book by CS Lewis?" either everybody or almost-everybody is going to put up their hand.
I can mention any other Christian writer from any point in history, and the same thing does not happen.
God has used CS Lewis to bring very large numbers of people to faith in Christ - we'll only find out how many in the Kingdom.
Jerram Barrs speaking
http://vimeopro.com/westminsterts/apologetics-and-imagination/video/116788204
*
Since CS Lewis had such an important role in my own conversion to Christianity, I tend to take-for-granted Lewis's exceptional importance as a winner of souls for Christ in the English-speaking world; but sometimes the fact strikes me afresh and astonishing, as when I heard the above.
And furthermore Lewis is generally regarded with gratitude, respect and reverence by most types of Christian: evangelical protestant, Anglican, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Mormon - and no doubt others.
Clearly, then, most people who read, love, benefit-from Lewis are not taking him as the truth and the whole truth and nothing but the truth - rather, they are finding truth in-him; which is an attitude of considerable maturity and tolerance and positivity on the part of a wide range of Christians.
Since Lewis has a specific and somewhat distinctive theology, it seems clear that it cannot be the theology which people value; but something altogether more personal and inspirational.
*
My hope for the future of CS Lewis is that people focus less on his theology, and more on his morality - that is, on the social basis for his Christianity - Lewis's 'political' views. The same applies to Tolkien.
Lewis regarded himself as a pre-modern personality, a 'dinosaur'; and Tolkien felt much the same - they both felt that there was something profound wrong about modernity - something profoundly un-natural and something which made individual people and society as a whole vulnerable to open-ended extremes of evil; in particular to the deeply corrupt and perverse moral inversion of first denying the importance of good and evil, then denying the reality of good and evil, and finally regarding evil as good, good as evil.
This is where we are now, substantially, as a society and as individuals - confused, unwilling, unable, and inverted about good and evil; and this condition includes many of Lewis's great admirers (and even more of Tolkien's).
We have gone from being a society that knew good and evil and wished for good but where most people failed to live by their wishes;to a society that knows good and evil but buries this knowledge beneath self-confusion, self deception, complications, fear and constraint so that - for the first time ever - we live by an inverted morality.
Yet our inverted morality is not any kind of stark heroic Nietzscheian defiance of God; but a thoroughly muddled, cowardly, weaselling and dishonest pseudo-moralising - it is the banal, insidious, dull and depressing evil of faceless bureaucracy and fake public relations.
As a society, we reject even the goal of honesty - because real honesty is based-on acknowledging the stark, simple clarity of reality based on divinity; and instead wallow in the pseudo-sophisticated, contrived complexities of muddle and dishonesty and incoherence - a situation which gives us license to indulge ourselves according to whim and expediency.
But the muddle and dishonesty based on denial of real reality is a situation which dissolves all meaning, purpose and true relationships; and leaves us as merely points of temporary self consciousness for whom pleasure and suffering are the only - but temporary and unpredictable and arbitrary - realities.
Lewis (and Tolkien) saw all this; and were clear about all this - but many or most of their admirers bracket-it-out; and set it aside as merely outdated reactionary politics.
Not so - if we truly admire and understand Lewis and Tolkien, we too must be dinosaurs.
*
If you think about CS Lewis, my guess is that everybody in this room has read at least one book by him.
In almost every setting in which I speak, if I ask the question "Have you read a book by CS Lewis?" either everybody or almost-everybody is going to put up their hand.
I can mention any other Christian writer from any point in history, and the same thing does not happen.
God has used CS Lewis to bring very large numbers of people to faith in Christ - we'll only find out how many in the Kingdom.
Jerram Barrs speaking
http://vimeopro.com/westminsterts/apologetics-and-imagination/video/116788204
*
Since CS Lewis had such an important role in my own conversion to Christianity, I tend to take-for-granted Lewis's exceptional importance as a winner of souls for Christ in the English-speaking world; but sometimes the fact strikes me afresh and astonishing, as when I heard the above.
And furthermore Lewis is generally regarded with gratitude, respect and reverence by most types of Christian: evangelical protestant, Anglican, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Mormon - and no doubt others.
Clearly, then, most people who read, love, benefit-from Lewis are not taking him as the truth and the whole truth and nothing but the truth - rather, they are finding truth in-him; which is an attitude of considerable maturity and tolerance and positivity on the part of a wide range of Christians.
Since Lewis has a specific and somewhat distinctive theology, it seems clear that it cannot be the theology which people value; but something altogether more personal and inspirational.
*
My hope for the future of CS Lewis is that people focus less on his theology, and more on his morality - that is, on the social basis for his Christianity - Lewis's 'political' views. The same applies to Tolkien.
Lewis regarded himself as a pre-modern personality, a 'dinosaur'; and Tolkien felt much the same - they both felt that there was something profound wrong about modernity - something profoundly un-natural and something which made individual people and society as a whole vulnerable to open-ended extremes of evil; in particular to the deeply corrupt and perverse moral inversion of first denying the importance of good and evil, then denying the reality of good and evil, and finally regarding evil as good, good as evil.
This is where we are now, substantially, as a society and as individuals - confused, unwilling, unable, and inverted about good and evil; and this condition includes many of Lewis's great admirers (and even more of Tolkien's).
We have gone from being a society that knew good and evil and wished for good but where most people failed to live by their wishes;to a society that knows good and evil but buries this knowledge beneath self-confusion, self deception, complications, fear and constraint so that - for the first time ever - we live by an inverted morality.
Yet our inverted morality is not any kind of stark heroic Nietzscheian defiance of God; but a thoroughly muddled, cowardly, weaselling and dishonest pseudo-moralising - it is the banal, insidious, dull and depressing evil of faceless bureaucracy and fake public relations.
As a society, we reject even the goal of honesty - because real honesty is based-on acknowledging the stark, simple clarity of reality based on divinity; and instead wallow in the pseudo-sophisticated, contrived complexities of muddle and dishonesty and incoherence - a situation which gives us license to indulge ourselves according to whim and expediency.
But the muddle and dishonesty based on denial of real reality is a situation which dissolves all meaning, purpose and true relationships; and leaves us as merely points of temporary self consciousness for whom pleasure and suffering are the only - but temporary and unpredictable and arbitrary - realities.
Lewis (and Tolkien) saw all this; and were clear about all this - but many or most of their admirers bracket-it-out; and set it aside as merely outdated reactionary politics.
Not so - if we truly admire and understand Lewis and Tolkien, we too must be dinosaurs.
*
Wednesday, 4 February 2015
Metaphysical perfection is a dyad (Thoughts on our Mother in Heaven)
*
It may be the most profound distinction of Mormon metaphysical theology that the perfection of Good is seen as a dyad, as two not one, as duality and not unity - man and woman in celestial marriage.
This is extraordinarily rare in world thought - every other thought system of which I know, no matter how much sexual difference is respected and celebrated, ultimately regards it as a imperfect state, an expedient state, a stage on the evolutionary route to un-sexual one-ness.
But Mormonism seems to regard sexual difference as basic to the structure of reality. Mormonism is absolutely serious about Love being the primary reality of the universe - Love takes the place of power, force, and physics - the Mormon universe is 'biological', or rather 'psychological', all the way down.
*
I say Mormonism 'seems' because this set of implications has not yet been very deeply explored, and probably does not feature much (at present, anyway) in the lives of Mormons - who are apparently no more overtly 'metaphysical' than most other people, and probably less so than Roman Catholics (for example).
But the extraordinary implications of Mormonism can be seen in the seldom publicly mentioned, not worshipped nor prayed-to, but officially-endorsed, widely-believed and canonical, personage of God the Father's eternal consort: Mother in Heaven.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=mother+in+heaven
Mother in Heaven lies behind Mormon theology as a vast, unexplored hinterland - depths beyond depths of implication. She is almost silent, seldom mentioned - but a personage of infinite consequence.
*
My understanding is that Her time has not yet come, in a sense, presumably because the Prophets have not received revelations to make, or endorse, the unveiling of this vastly important subject: it is a time of waiting.
One apparently 'unavoidable' consequence involves the wife of Jesus Christ (?pre-mortal, mortal, post-mortal?) about which nothing has explicitly been said in scripture - and very, very little even hinted by the most speculative implication - yet which does seem to be entailed by the metaphysical framework of reality and in particular by the requirements for theosis, for the highest exaltation.
All this could change at any time - for individuals by private personal revelation, and for the church as a whole if-or-when the Prophets receive further information and instruction.
Such a change would - IF it happened - be like a wave of crystallization spreading who-knows-where, or like new energies of new kinds welling-up and flooding the world; a change of incalulable consequence.
*
It may be the most profound distinction of Mormon metaphysical theology that the perfection of Good is seen as a dyad, as two not one, as duality and not unity - man and woman in celestial marriage.
This is extraordinarily rare in world thought - every other thought system of which I know, no matter how much sexual difference is respected and celebrated, ultimately regards it as a imperfect state, an expedient state, a stage on the evolutionary route to un-sexual one-ness.
But Mormonism seems to regard sexual difference as basic to the structure of reality. Mormonism is absolutely serious about Love being the primary reality of the universe - Love takes the place of power, force, and physics - the Mormon universe is 'biological', or rather 'psychological', all the way down.
*
I say Mormonism 'seems' because this set of implications has not yet been very deeply explored, and probably does not feature much (at present, anyway) in the lives of Mormons - who are apparently no more overtly 'metaphysical' than most other people, and probably less so than Roman Catholics (for example).
But the extraordinary implications of Mormonism can be seen in the seldom publicly mentioned, not worshipped nor prayed-to, but officially-endorsed, widely-believed and canonical, personage of God the Father's eternal consort: Mother in Heaven.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=mother+in+heaven
Mother in Heaven lies behind Mormon theology as a vast, unexplored hinterland - depths beyond depths of implication. She is almost silent, seldom mentioned - but a personage of infinite consequence.
*
My understanding is that Her time has not yet come, in a sense, presumably because the Prophets have not received revelations to make, or endorse, the unveiling of this vastly important subject: it is a time of waiting.
One apparently 'unavoidable' consequence involves the wife of Jesus Christ (?pre-mortal, mortal, post-mortal?) about which nothing has explicitly been said in scripture - and very, very little even hinted by the most speculative implication - yet which does seem to be entailed by the metaphysical framework of reality and in particular by the requirements for theosis, for the highest exaltation.
All this could change at any time - for individuals by private personal revelation, and for the church as a whole if-or-when the Prophets receive further information and instruction.
Such a change would - IF it happened - be like a wave of crystallization spreading who-knows-where, or like new energies of new kinds welling-up and flooding the world; a change of incalulable consequence.
*
Tuesday, 3 February 2015
Why must our God be Love? (William Arkle)
*
From Equations of Being by William Arkle
What I wish to do is to become very bold and suggest that we put ourselves in the position of this Creative Source, the God of what we love, and begin to see things from the position we would be in if we were about to design the plans for this scheme of manifestation of which our worlds are a part. This means that we must feel for the godlike image we have in our consciousness and clarify it to the extent that we can begin to understand at least something of the attitude that would be brought to bear on this creative endeavour.
Our Source will have many attributes which we can agree about. Our love for the ideals which we carry in our nature in common will know that such a Creator will have to be, first of all, love itself.
We know that we would resist any other Being however many qualities of power, knowledge and talent He had.
We know, therefore, that what we refer to as love, in its most profound sense, is also a simple but unmistakable beginning we require and respond to.
When we reach a certain stage of growth within our spirit we know this to a degree that we would never argue about it. It is the simple but profound basis to our understanding which is the only one that can remain in harmony with our good sense. And yet there are many things to be drawn out of this love knowledge which as yet we are still hazy about.
**
The italicized passage is very striking to me - a sudden clarification.
We might be intimidated into accepting a God of ultimate power, knowledge or talent.
We might also be brow-beaten into accepting that we must accept a God of logical necessity (i.e. the God of the Philosophers).
But we would only willingly, and with heart-felt joy, embrace as our God one who loved us personally and wholly - only such a God could be trusted absolutely.
*
We do not have to accept even a God who loved us personally and wholly - after all, here on mortal earth some humans reject and spurn their parents or spouses or friends who love them more fully and faithfully than anybody else does.
To accept and return the love of another is always a choice, must be a choice, and our God of love would not be satisfied with anything less than our choice to return His love.
*
From Equations of Being by William Arkle
What I wish to do is to become very bold and suggest that we put ourselves in the position of this Creative Source, the God of what we love, and begin to see things from the position we would be in if we were about to design the plans for this scheme of manifestation of which our worlds are a part. This means that we must feel for the godlike image we have in our consciousness and clarify it to the extent that we can begin to understand at least something of the attitude that would be brought to bear on this creative endeavour.
Our Source will have many attributes which we can agree about. Our love for the ideals which we carry in our nature in common will know that such a Creator will have to be, first of all, love itself.
We know that we would resist any other Being however many qualities of power, knowledge and talent He had.
We know, therefore, that what we refer to as love, in its most profound sense, is also a simple but unmistakable beginning we require and respond to.
When we reach a certain stage of growth within our spirit we know this to a degree that we would never argue about it. It is the simple but profound basis to our understanding which is the only one that can remain in harmony with our good sense. And yet there are many things to be drawn out of this love knowledge which as yet we are still hazy about.
**
The italicized passage is very striking to me - a sudden clarification.
We might be intimidated into accepting a God of ultimate power, knowledge or talent.
We might also be brow-beaten into accepting that we must accept a God of logical necessity (i.e. the God of the Philosophers).
But we would only willingly, and with heart-felt joy, embrace as our God one who loved us personally and wholly - only such a God could be trusted absolutely.
*
We do not have to accept even a God who loved us personally and wholly - after all, here on mortal earth some humans reject and spurn their parents or spouses or friends who love them more fully and faithfully than anybody else does.
To accept and return the love of another is always a choice, must be a choice, and our God of love would not be satisfied with anything less than our choice to return His love.
*
We are never (naturally) completely asleep
*
There is never a time during sleep when all of the brain is sleeping - and the sleep cycle is a rotation between one part of the brain sleeping and another.
Dissociated means that some parts of the brain (and some functions) are asleep while others are awake.
In Deep Sleep the conscious mind is asleep, and we are not aware of time passing - but the muscles remain tonic, and it is possible to respond 'automatically' to the environment, tossing and turning in be, and even sleep talking and sleep walking.
In REM/ Dreaming Sleep, the muscles are by contrast paralysed, and there is no physical interaction with the sleeper's environment - but we are conscious and aware of time passing, and dreaming; and can hear and feel the environment (sometimes this gets incorporated into dreams).
Why cannot all the brain be asleep at once? Probably because we must remain in contact with the environment to some extent, and because the awake parts of the brain are needed to re-awaken those parts that are asleep.
Presumably if the whole brain is asleep and 'switched off' and out of contact with the environment; then this is a coma. And it is hard to awaken from a coma precisely because the whole brain is asleep and also cut-off from the environment so the sleeper is both paralysed and unaware - cannot hear or feel or move.
So, naturally, we are never wholly asleep.
*
There is never a time during sleep when all of the brain is sleeping - and the sleep cycle is a rotation between one part of the brain sleeping and another.
Dissociated means that some parts of the brain (and some functions) are asleep while others are awake.
In Deep Sleep the conscious mind is asleep, and we are not aware of time passing - but the muscles remain tonic, and it is possible to respond 'automatically' to the environment, tossing and turning in be, and even sleep talking and sleep walking.
In REM/ Dreaming Sleep, the muscles are by contrast paralysed, and there is no physical interaction with the sleeper's environment - but we are conscious and aware of time passing, and dreaming; and can hear and feel the environment (sometimes this gets incorporated into dreams).
Why cannot all the brain be asleep at once? Probably because we must remain in contact with the environment to some extent, and because the awake parts of the brain are needed to re-awaken those parts that are asleep.
Presumably if the whole brain is asleep and 'switched off' and out of contact with the environment; then this is a coma. And it is hard to awaken from a coma precisely because the whole brain is asleep and also cut-off from the environment so the sleeper is both paralysed and unaware - cannot hear or feel or move.
So, naturally, we are never wholly asleep.
*
Monday, 2 February 2015
God's personal motivation in creation (William Arkle)
*
Edited (by cutting) from the Conclusion to A Geography of Consciousness (1974) by William Arkle (pp 237-8)
I find it in myself to expect that the motivation behind God's action in manifesting the Universes is that they should be a training ground for us, His children.
Furthermore, while we are yet children, it is God's deepest wish that we should choose to mature into individuals of 'the stuff of his stuff' - and who also choose him to be our friend.
I would further try the reader's patience by saying that God is truly a sadder God if we do not realise the basis of His deepest motivation; which is not that He should 'ingest' our individuality into the blissful nature of His being - but that we should, out of the simple recognition in our heart of hearts, realise the unspoken longing that lies behind the blissful aspect of the divine love.
This is to me such a subtle thing that I hesitate to go on, but in my blundering way I will do so. I believe that behind the bliss of divine union resides a relationship which is deeper than bliss; and that is the attitude which upholds and, if you like, protects the bliss. This is the attitude which has known that the blissful attitudes are good, but in a creative sense can be made even better. This sounds like a sort of spiritual heresy, but it is exactly what I find in myself to say.
Now, if we choose to become a friend and companion of God, then we can sense something of this underlying creative attitude towards the nature of the highest being Himself; and by standing apart from God while being perfectly in tune with Him, we can in fact take part in a creative process which is endeavouring to improve upon what to us seems perfect and un-improveable.
I am sure that I have offended many sincere and highly spiritual people by my remarks on these lines; for they feel it is conceited of me to begin to define or explore the motive behind what is referred to as The Absolute - and not only conceited, but simply impossible.
But if the personal motive is felt, as I have felt it, then the problem dissolves immediately.
[End of quotation]
**
[Bruce Charlton speaking:]
This mystical feeling of the personal motive of God is - I suppose - the only way that we can as individuals be convinced that God is a real person (and not just an abstract physics-like force/ energy/ law); a person who has real love and concern for each of us as individual persons.
*
Edited (by cutting) from the Conclusion to A Geography of Consciousness (1974) by William Arkle (pp 237-8)
I find it in myself to expect that the motivation behind God's action in manifesting the Universes is that they should be a training ground for us, His children.
Furthermore, while we are yet children, it is God's deepest wish that we should choose to mature into individuals of 'the stuff of his stuff' - and who also choose him to be our friend.
I would further try the reader's patience by saying that God is truly a sadder God if we do not realise the basis of His deepest motivation; which is not that He should 'ingest' our individuality into the blissful nature of His being - but that we should, out of the simple recognition in our heart of hearts, realise the unspoken longing that lies behind the blissful aspect of the divine love.
This is to me such a subtle thing that I hesitate to go on, but in my blundering way I will do so. I believe that behind the bliss of divine union resides a relationship which is deeper than bliss; and that is the attitude which upholds and, if you like, protects the bliss. This is the attitude which has known that the blissful attitudes are good, but in a creative sense can be made even better. This sounds like a sort of spiritual heresy, but it is exactly what I find in myself to say.
Now, if we choose to become a friend and companion of God, then we can sense something of this underlying creative attitude towards the nature of the highest being Himself; and by standing apart from God while being perfectly in tune with Him, we can in fact take part in a creative process which is endeavouring to improve upon what to us seems perfect and un-improveable.
I am sure that I have offended many sincere and highly spiritual people by my remarks on these lines; for they feel it is conceited of me to begin to define or explore the motive behind what is referred to as The Absolute - and not only conceited, but simply impossible.
But if the personal motive is felt, as I have felt it, then the problem dissolves immediately.
[End of quotation]
**
[Bruce Charlton speaking:]
This mystical feeling of the personal motive of God is - I suppose - the only way that we can as individuals be convinced that God is a real person (and not just an abstract physics-like force/ energy/ law); a person who has real love and concern for each of us as individual persons.
*
'Patriarchal' sociological lesson from the big four 19th century new American religions: Mormonism, Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses and Christian Scientists
*
The four major new religions featured in Harold Bloom's interesting book American Religion were Mormonism, Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses and Christian Scientists.
All grew quickly and went international - and the first three continue to thrive and grow significantly, year upon year, now with teens of millions of members in a context where the major Western denominations are all in decades long decline. However, Christian Scientists are the exception among the four, and have been declining for many decades, much like the mainstream Christian churches.
Sociological explanations for the success of Mormonism, Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses focus on their high time and money and effort demands on members, with relatively high strictness of observations - combined with considerable efforts at recruitment ('evangelism').
These factors are clearly important - but I think a neglected factor has been that the three successful religions are all 'Patriarchal' while the unsuccessful Christian Science was substantially women-dominated.
(The Seventh Day Adventists were founded by a woman Prophet Ellen G White; but the church has a male 'priestly' structure and traditional concepts of marriage and sexual complementarity.)
I think this is a confirmation of an important socio-political principle; because while 'Patriarchy' is clearly resilient, I do not think there are any examples of long-term survival of mixed sex institutions under predominantly female leadership - certainly not churches.
(Female institutions under female leadership - such as orders of nuns, or maybe some women's schools and colleges, have sometimes survived for several or many generations.)
How this is interpreted is clearly another question - and the explanations will range between opposite extremes; but equally clearly the evidence is that when any mixed social organization - including a church - becomes predominantly female-dominated, it will decline and dwindle.
*
Anyone with a valid counter-example is welcome to e-mail me and I will append it here.
*
The four major new religions featured in Harold Bloom's interesting book American Religion were Mormonism, Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses and Christian Scientists.
All grew quickly and went international - and the first three continue to thrive and grow significantly, year upon year, now with teens of millions of members in a context where the major Western denominations are all in decades long decline. However, Christian Scientists are the exception among the four, and have been declining for many decades, much like the mainstream Christian churches.
Sociological explanations for the success of Mormonism, Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses focus on their high time and money and effort demands on members, with relatively high strictness of observations - combined with considerable efforts at recruitment ('evangelism').
These factors are clearly important - but I think a neglected factor has been that the three successful religions are all 'Patriarchal' while the unsuccessful Christian Science was substantially women-dominated.
(The Seventh Day Adventists were founded by a woman Prophet Ellen G White; but the church has a male 'priestly' structure and traditional concepts of marriage and sexual complementarity.)
I think this is a confirmation of an important socio-political principle; because while 'Patriarchy' is clearly resilient, I do not think there are any examples of long-term survival of mixed sex institutions under predominantly female leadership - certainly not churches.
(Female institutions under female leadership - such as orders of nuns, or maybe some women's schools and colleges, have sometimes survived for several or many generations.)
How this is interpreted is clearly another question - and the explanations will range between opposite extremes; but equally clearly the evidence is that when any mixed social organization - including a church - becomes predominantly female-dominated, it will decline and dwindle.
*
Anyone with a valid counter-example is welcome to e-mail me and I will append it here.
*
Sunday, 1 February 2015
Diana Damreau's Queen of the Night (Mozart's Magic Flute) - as an operatic performance, on a scale of one to ten, this one goes to eleven
This astonishing aria - far superior to the more famous Die Holle Rache - combines cynical psychological realism, with beauty (this is Mozart), and hair-raising demonic venom.
The Queen of the Night is manipulating the ardent young hero Tamino to do her dirty work by an intoxicating mixture of covert sexuality and hammed-up sentimentality. I love the part when she sneaks a glance to check that her performance is having the desired effect.
Her hatred begins to consume her as she abandons the slow lyrical first part of the aria and launches into just about the best bit of coloratura writing ever; during which loses control, tries to get a grip, then becomes carried-away into an almost orgasmic fantasy of hatred and revenge. Meanwhile singing with incredible control, subtlety and power.
Thrilling and chilling. And as a live operatic performance, I don't think this can ever have been bettered, or ever could be. Matched, yes, perhaps - but of its kind this is as good as it is possible to be. For instance, the up-going triplet at
Explaining luck in an animistic world
*
We recognise in our lives periods of good and ill luck - and secular mainstream society can only regard these as being either an illusion due to misreading randomness or else a psychological projection of our own state of mind. Religious people may add an explanation relating to the will of god/s and demons - and/ or an element of getting what we 'deserve'.
Indeed, in the end most explanations of luck reduce to either randomness or desert - and if randomness there is no meaning to the whole thing except to undermine our confidence in our own judgement: to persuade people that they live inside a bubble of delusion (yet, somehow and self-refutingly, manage escape these delusions for long enough to realise correctly that they live inside a bubble of delusions...).
If luck is what we deserve, then who are the agents - in particular ill-luck: who is punishing us when we have periods of bad luck?
First of all, bad luck may not be truly bad, considered in the full perspective of our pre-mortal and post-mortal lives. In other words, that which makes us suffer and be miserable (to some extent) on earth may in some unknown way be good for us (and/or for other people) in the wider frame.
However that does not seem to account for everything - in particular we sometimes feel we are 'at odds with' things in general - we feel as if we are in an antagonistic position with respect to our environment, and in a way that certainly feel bad - and certainly does not feel like any kind of positive or creative struggle.
If we try to explain this with reference to God's will then this leads to a punitive and unloving God; if to demonic will then to a God who allows the devil negatively to wreck our lives - which again seems unloving.
Another possible source of apparent malevolence of our surroundings, oft neglected, could be from the 'animistic' world view that all things are living and 'conscious' (to some extent, often very small). SO - the world is not divided into a few living conscious things (mostly humans) and innumerable dead and inert things - but rather the world is made up entirely of living conscious things, but with life/consciousness on a very large continuum so that some things have much, much more of this property than others.
By this account, there is a primordial consciousness in the stuff of the universe which does not derive from God (and therefore cannot be attributed to God or blamed on God) but was already-there before reality was shaped from chaos (which was the act of creation).
When we feel at odds with reality; it may therefore be that we have put ourselves into an antagonistic relationship with the millions and billions of micro-consciousnesses which constitute our environment.
In other words - we are always in communication with everything in our environment, but most of these things with which we communicate are much lower, simpler and weaker consciousnesses so much of their communication is reactive - we set the tone, and they respond.
So when our attitude to our environment is aggressive, exploitative, or even simply passive - then the environment will respond defensively against us as individuals - and the same thing will happen to humans as a group, nation, species or at any meaningful level of communicating-aggregation.
By this account, luck is real, and objective in the sense that there really are more positive and more negative relationships with our environment- the environment really can be more helpful to us or more aggressive against us - and we 'make our own luck' but not psychologically but in terms of the quality of communication with the mega-multiple intelligences which surround us.
The test and proof of this is that if, or when, we can get into a set of positive harmony with our environment then our luck will turn - and even 'misfortune' takes on a very different quality: it stirs us and mobilises our inner resources; rather than inducing despair and anger.
The living world responds positively to our attitudes of love, respect, concern toward it; and negatively to the opposite - and that is 'luck' (or one form of it).
*
We recognise in our lives periods of good and ill luck - and secular mainstream society can only regard these as being either an illusion due to misreading randomness or else a psychological projection of our own state of mind. Religious people may add an explanation relating to the will of god/s and demons - and/ or an element of getting what we 'deserve'.
Indeed, in the end most explanations of luck reduce to either randomness or desert - and if randomness there is no meaning to the whole thing except to undermine our confidence in our own judgement: to persuade people that they live inside a bubble of delusion (yet, somehow and self-refutingly, manage escape these delusions for long enough to realise correctly that they live inside a bubble of delusions...).
If luck is what we deserve, then who are the agents - in particular ill-luck: who is punishing us when we have periods of bad luck?
First of all, bad luck may not be truly bad, considered in the full perspective of our pre-mortal and post-mortal lives. In other words, that which makes us suffer and be miserable (to some extent) on earth may in some unknown way be good for us (and/or for other people) in the wider frame.
However that does not seem to account for everything - in particular we sometimes feel we are 'at odds with' things in general - we feel as if we are in an antagonistic position with respect to our environment, and in a way that certainly feel bad - and certainly does not feel like any kind of positive or creative struggle.
If we try to explain this with reference to God's will then this leads to a punitive and unloving God; if to demonic will then to a God who allows the devil negatively to wreck our lives - which again seems unloving.
Another possible source of apparent malevolence of our surroundings, oft neglected, could be from the 'animistic' world view that all things are living and 'conscious' (to some extent, often very small). SO - the world is not divided into a few living conscious things (mostly humans) and innumerable dead and inert things - but rather the world is made up entirely of living conscious things, but with life/consciousness on a very large continuum so that some things have much, much more of this property than others.
By this account, there is a primordial consciousness in the stuff of the universe which does not derive from God (and therefore cannot be attributed to God or blamed on God) but was already-there before reality was shaped from chaos (which was the act of creation).
When we feel at odds with reality; it may therefore be that we have put ourselves into an antagonistic relationship with the millions and billions of micro-consciousnesses which constitute our environment.
In other words - we are always in communication with everything in our environment, but most of these things with which we communicate are much lower, simpler and weaker consciousnesses so much of their communication is reactive - we set the tone, and they respond.
So when our attitude to our environment is aggressive, exploitative, or even simply passive - then the environment will respond defensively against us as individuals - and the same thing will happen to humans as a group, nation, species or at any meaningful level of communicating-aggregation.
By this account, luck is real, and objective in the sense that there really are more positive and more negative relationships with our environment- the environment really can be more helpful to us or more aggressive against us - and we 'make our own luck' but not psychologically but in terms of the quality of communication with the mega-multiple intelligences which surround us.
The test and proof of this is that if, or when, we can get into a set of positive harmony with our environment then our luck will turn - and even 'misfortune' takes on a very different quality: it stirs us and mobilises our inner resources; rather than inducing despair and anger.
The living world responds positively to our attitudes of love, respect, concern toward it; and negatively to the opposite - and that is 'luck' (or one form of it).
*
Saturday, 31 January 2015
New name for this blog - Bruce Charlton's Notions
*
I've been wanting to change the name of this blog for a while, because most people don't know what a miscellany is; but especially since Adam Greenwood (of the Junior Ganymede blog) came up with this Notions suggestion that links this blog to my Tolkien blog (The Notion Club Papers) - and has been (unilaterally) using his suggested name to link this blog for some time.
Anyway, now that this 'blog' is becoming even less blog-like, by stopping comments (recognizing a de facto state of affairs by which commenting has been dwindling for considerably more than a year - but the amount of work/ angst in moderating has not diminished), I thought that the time had come, and I might as well make the change - which will at least please me...
I should thank Dennis Mangan for giving me the 'miscellany' name idea (I mean, I stole it from his Mangan's Miscellany blog without asking) which served this blog well through its heyday and beyond.
*
I've been wanting to change the name of this blog for a while, because most people don't know what a miscellany is; but especially since Adam Greenwood (of the Junior Ganymede blog) came up with this Notions suggestion that links this blog to my Tolkien blog (The Notion Club Papers) - and has been (unilaterally) using his suggested name to link this blog for some time.
Anyway, now that this 'blog' is becoming even less blog-like, by stopping comments (recognizing a de facto state of affairs by which commenting has been dwindling for considerably more than a year - but the amount of work/ angst in moderating has not diminished), I thought that the time had come, and I might as well make the change - which will at least please me...
I should thank Dennis Mangan for giving me the 'miscellany' name idea (I mean, I stole it from his Mangan's Miscellany blog without asking) which served this blog well through its heyday and beyond.
*
Why are secular people so reluctant to recognise evil? (Such as the concept of 'diversity')
*
By 'evil' I mean that a person, or group, is motivated by wanting to destroy good.
That this is a significant factor among the modern ruling elite is something that few will even contemplate. ("Conspiracy theory!") Instead, the motivation is nearly always ascribed to some combination of economic selfishness and short-termism - and almost any decision can be understood as selfishly benefiting the decider, if enough factors are considered.
So many of the critics of Leftism and Political Correctness in fact use a quasi-Marxist analysis of the modern elites - that is, they have a built-in assumption that the rulers are motivated by their own mostly-economic self-interest.
The idea on the Right is that the ruling elites are strategically and systematically (i.e. prioritizing one social system and institution after another) destroying The West from reasons of economic selfishness.
(Note:I totally agree that the mega-rich elites are destroying The West; but I totally disagree that the reason is economic selfishness. They are using their vast wealth primarily as a means to the end of destruction - not using their wealth as a means to make more wealth.)
But this quasi-Marxist analysis is an absurd form of self-blinding! When we see a consistent, long term pattern of destruction it is surely natural to assume that this destruction is intended!
And when it is recognized that the ruling elites are capable of creating and holding-to self-serving strategic, long-term, economic policies - why is it not also recognized that these same people cannot see that these same policies will also destroy that same elite's long-term self-interests?
(Why would an economically motivated strategic elite want utterly to destroy the very basis of that economic functionality upon which their economic position depends? Yet they are aggressively and incrementally destroying the very basis of their own prosperity - in multiple obvious ways. Thus they are not primarily motivated by economic self interest.)
And when we see all the very obvious destructive faults of previous elite policies not only denied but redoubled; surely it is reasonable to assume that these destructive faults are not being regarded as errors by those who make them; but that the destructive outcomes are simply the intended results of destructive policies!
Thus the recent expansion of already-destructive negative policies of policies anti-racism and anti-sexism and the sexual revolution into the hyper-destructive positive goal of diversity.
Surely there is nobody who is in a position to affect real world decisions that really believes that a policy to 'create diversity' is anything other than a policy aimed at comprehensive societal destruction? - surely this is obvious at every level? The idea of diversity being 'a good thing' doesn't even make superficial sense!
("Err, how shall we improve this government/ laboratory/ corporation/ university/ hospital? I know! Let's appoint women/ low status ethnic minorities/ people of unconventional sexual preferences to all the important positions! Let's stop even trying to do the job, and instead start trying to be 'diverse'! Yes, that'll fix everything, for sure...")
'Diversity' is probably the most absurdly and transparent false idea ever to have had significant influence among the powers of the world. Even to debate such a ridiculous notion is to accord it plausibility.
As a momentary fashion or fad, I suppose diversity would have been no sillier than many other crazes - such as pet rocks, or deely-boppers - but now diversity is being incrementally ratcheted-into all significant Western nations and institutions by the ultra-rich, by governments and the mass media. If you have eyes to see, we are seeing evil in action in the open field.
We are seeing long-term, strategically-directed and deliberate destruction of good: that is, destruction of truth, beauty and virtue. This is obviously what will happen when wicked nonsense is enforced as the highest good.
Why is this evil of imposing 'diversity' not recognized for the evil it is? I can only assume the answer is that secular people operating in a secularized public domain cannot recognize or acknowledge the reality true evil - therefore they necessarily fail to see evil, and must explain-it-away with soothing quasi-Marxist economic explanations.
For secular people self-interest is the true and only bottom line of all possible morality - so naturally they cannot perceive anything else.
The secular Right objection to the politically correct elites is merely that we have the wrong bunch of short-termist and selfish people in charge. The secular Right think that they could implement a system of markets and laws which will transform selfish short-termism into something that looks-like altruistic long-termism - regardless of the personnel who comprise the system.
The secular Right believe(to quote TS Eliot) they can make a system so perfect that Men will not need to be Good. In other words, the secular Right are fundamentally - at the deepest level - identical with the Left (which is why they always, always, always sell-out to the mainstream Left when they get a sniff of power).
Meanwhile deliberate, strategically-destructive evil continues to operate openly (or rather, under the flimsiest and most transparent of pseudo-rationalizations): being rendered invisible in plain sight by re-labelling its evil as merely economic self-interest; and thereby philosophically sustained by many of those who imagine themselves to be opposing it.
*
By 'evil' I mean that a person, or group, is motivated by wanting to destroy good.
That this is a significant factor among the modern ruling elite is something that few will even contemplate. ("Conspiracy theory!") Instead, the motivation is nearly always ascribed to some combination of economic selfishness and short-termism - and almost any decision can be understood as selfishly benefiting the decider, if enough factors are considered.
So many of the critics of Leftism and Political Correctness in fact use a quasi-Marxist analysis of the modern elites - that is, they have a built-in assumption that the rulers are motivated by their own mostly-economic self-interest.
The idea on the Right is that the ruling elites are strategically and systematically (i.e. prioritizing one social system and institution after another) destroying The West from reasons of economic selfishness.
(Note:I totally agree that the mega-rich elites are destroying The West; but I totally disagree that the reason is economic selfishness. They are using their vast wealth primarily as a means to the end of destruction - not using their wealth as a means to make more wealth.)
But this quasi-Marxist analysis is an absurd form of self-blinding! When we see a consistent, long term pattern of destruction it is surely natural to assume that this destruction is intended!
And when it is recognized that the ruling elites are capable of creating and holding-to self-serving strategic, long-term, economic policies - why is it not also recognized that these same people cannot see that these same policies will also destroy that same elite's long-term self-interests?
(Why would an economically motivated strategic elite want utterly to destroy the very basis of that economic functionality upon which their economic position depends? Yet they are aggressively and incrementally destroying the very basis of their own prosperity - in multiple obvious ways. Thus they are not primarily motivated by economic self interest.)
And when we see all the very obvious destructive faults of previous elite policies not only denied but redoubled; surely it is reasonable to assume that these destructive faults are not being regarded as errors by those who make them; but that the destructive outcomes are simply the intended results of destructive policies!
Thus the recent expansion of already-destructive negative policies of policies anti-racism and anti-sexism and the sexual revolution into the hyper-destructive positive goal of diversity.
Surely there is nobody who is in a position to affect real world decisions that really believes that a policy to 'create diversity' is anything other than a policy aimed at comprehensive societal destruction? - surely this is obvious at every level? The idea of diversity being 'a good thing' doesn't even make superficial sense!
("Err, how shall we improve this government/ laboratory/ corporation/ university/ hospital? I know! Let's appoint women/ low status ethnic minorities/ people of unconventional sexual preferences to all the important positions! Let's stop even trying to do the job, and instead start trying to be 'diverse'! Yes, that'll fix everything, for sure...")
'Diversity' is probably the most absurdly and transparent false idea ever to have had significant influence among the powers of the world. Even to debate such a ridiculous notion is to accord it plausibility.
As a momentary fashion or fad, I suppose diversity would have been no sillier than many other crazes - such as pet rocks, or deely-boppers - but now diversity is being incrementally ratcheted-into all significant Western nations and institutions by the ultra-rich, by governments and the mass media. If you have eyes to see, we are seeing evil in action in the open field.
We are seeing long-term, strategically-directed and deliberate destruction of good: that is, destruction of truth, beauty and virtue. This is obviously what will happen when wicked nonsense is enforced as the highest good.
Why is this evil of imposing 'diversity' not recognized for the evil it is? I can only assume the answer is that secular people operating in a secularized public domain cannot recognize or acknowledge the reality true evil - therefore they necessarily fail to see evil, and must explain-it-away with soothing quasi-Marxist economic explanations.
For secular people self-interest is the true and only bottom line of all possible morality - so naturally they cannot perceive anything else.
The secular Right objection to the politically correct elites is merely that we have the wrong bunch of short-termist and selfish people in charge. The secular Right think that they could implement a system of markets and laws which will transform selfish short-termism into something that looks-like altruistic long-termism - regardless of the personnel who comprise the system.
The secular Right believe(to quote TS Eliot) they can make a system so perfect that Men will not need to be Good. In other words, the secular Right are fundamentally - at the deepest level - identical with the Left (which is why they always, always, always sell-out to the mainstream Left when they get a sniff of power).
Meanwhile deliberate, strategically-destructive evil continues to operate openly (or rather, under the flimsiest and most transparent of pseudo-rationalizations): being rendered invisible in plain sight by re-labelling its evil as merely economic self-interest; and thereby philosophically sustained by many of those who imagine themselves to be opposing it.
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Friday, 30 January 2015
Desert Island Discs - Record five - Wagner's Ring conducted by Georg Solti
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1979-80 was undoubtedly the apex of my musical life, and it began with listening to the complete Ring cycle of opera's by Richard Wagner - on vinyl LP and a state of the art HiFi system, with a couple of friends, following the whole thing on scores, cocooned by the sensory isolation of a soundproof room in an underground 'bunker' administered by the Music department. In between we talked and read Wagner
The impact of living and breathing the mythic world Wagner for these four days was overpowering - and the mood lasted for several weeks afterwards - I recall a walking holiday in the English Lake District with my brother when almost everything seemed to remind me of the Teutonic woods and landscape, and I was continually more-than-half-expecting to find nymphs in the streams and wicked dwarves popping out from behind rocks.
The following year I was sharing a flat with some music students, one of whom was one probably the most 'musical' person I have ever known - he later became a BBC Radio Three producer, and then bought his own concert hall and recording studio.
I attended pretty much all the classical music concerts in the city and university - selling programmes at the main concert hall to get free tickets. I sang in tow Gilbert and Sullivan shows in lead parts (high baritone/ tenor) and sang tenor in large choral works with the auditioned Newcastle Bach Choir, and in a Chamber Choir of just twelve voices which was founded by the music students (and is still going, 35 years later).
Other highlights included attending a rehearsal with Sir Charles Groves conducting Das Rheingold, giving Sir Michael Tippet a birthday present on his 75th birthday, and later attending his birthday concert in London - travelling back five hours on the overnight train to arrive in Newcastle at 05.00h and going to medical school lectures the next day after only two hours of sleep!
Outside of classical music I played folk music on the accordion - at one point accompanying an impromptu ceilidh in the depths of Northumberland playing with the Duke of Northumberland's official bagpiper, busking for the Rag charity, and playing 'Scotland the Brave' in a country dance band made up entirely of my six flatmates (accordion, clarinet, guitar, piano, snare drum and double bass) at my 21st birthday party.
I suppose this was 'living at concert pitch' - and there were plenty of other non-musical activities going-on as well; not least learning medicine; and the frenetic year was followed by a bit of a collapse of morale and optimism which took a bit of getting-out-of. Such is what happens if one comes to rely on sequential powerful external pleasurable stimuli for personal happiness - the stimuli inevitably lose their potency, and there comes a point when the dose cannot be increased any further.
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As for Wagner, and the Ring cycle - I never really appreciated them again with the same depth and intensity - except for Das Rheingold, which I still regard as a magnificent and mythic achievement.
*
1979-80 was undoubtedly the apex of my musical life, and it began with listening to the complete Ring cycle of opera's by Richard Wagner - on vinyl LP and a state of the art HiFi system, with a couple of friends, following the whole thing on scores, cocooned by the sensory isolation of a soundproof room in an underground 'bunker' administered by the Music department. In between we talked and read Wagner
The impact of living and breathing the mythic world Wagner for these four days was overpowering - and the mood lasted for several weeks afterwards - I recall a walking holiday in the English Lake District with my brother when almost everything seemed to remind me of the Teutonic woods and landscape, and I was continually more-than-half-expecting to find nymphs in the streams and wicked dwarves popping out from behind rocks.
The following year I was sharing a flat with some music students, one of whom was one probably the most 'musical' person I have ever known - he later became a BBC Radio Three producer, and then bought his own concert hall and recording studio.
I attended pretty much all the classical music concerts in the city and university - selling programmes at the main concert hall to get free tickets. I sang in tow Gilbert and Sullivan shows in lead parts (high baritone/ tenor) and sang tenor in large choral works with the auditioned Newcastle Bach Choir, and in a Chamber Choir of just twelve voices which was founded by the music students (and is still going, 35 years later).
Other highlights included attending a rehearsal with Sir Charles Groves conducting Das Rheingold, giving Sir Michael Tippet a birthday present on his 75th birthday, and later attending his birthday concert in London - travelling back five hours on the overnight train to arrive in Newcastle at 05.00h and going to medical school lectures the next day after only two hours of sleep!
Outside of classical music I played folk music on the accordion - at one point accompanying an impromptu ceilidh in the depths of Northumberland playing with the Duke of Northumberland's official bagpiper, busking for the Rag charity, and playing 'Scotland the Brave' in a country dance band made up entirely of my six flatmates (accordion, clarinet, guitar, piano, snare drum and double bass) at my 21st birthday party.
I suppose this was 'living at concert pitch' - and there were plenty of other non-musical activities going-on as well; not least learning medicine; and the frenetic year was followed by a bit of a collapse of morale and optimism which took a bit of getting-out-of. Such is what happens if one comes to rely on sequential powerful external pleasurable stimuli for personal happiness - the stimuli inevitably lose their potency, and there comes a point when the dose cannot be increased any further.
*
As for Wagner, and the Ring cycle - I never really appreciated them again with the same depth and intensity - except for Das Rheingold, which I still regard as a magnificent and mythic achievement.
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