When I recently wrote a post musing on the possibility of quitting blogging, I received an extremely encouraging response from readers - some in comments, some in e-mails, asking me please to continue. To which I agreed - very happily and gratefully!
Some communications gave accounts of how the blog had been helpful in the reader's Christian life, and these were valuable to me because the underlying purpose of this blog, the thing which keeps me going with it, is Christian evangelism and apologetics - indeed I aim to promote Mere Christianity.
Mere Christianity is the title of a book by CS Lewis which contains collected radio talks from the 1939-45 war which Lewis tried to make acceptable and applicable to Anglicans, Roman Catholics and nonconformists such as Methodists. By and large, he succeeded spectacularly - and Lewis has also been very popular with Eastern Orthodox and Mormons.
Although I do engage in a lot more specific and specialized theology than Lewis, my intention has also been to 'speak' with the whole range of serious self-identified Christians - indeed a wider range than Lewis included; because I do not regard adherence to the creeds as a valid definition of a Christian (not least because they contain abstract, paradoxical and incomprehensible elements).
I would include among the Mere Christian family many of the newer denominations such as Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons (I regard myself as a theoretical Mormon - although I currently worship at a conservative Protestant Anglican church), the Salvation Army - and indeed unaffiliated Christians who are Christian only 'in their own heads' and perhaps in heretical ways - e.g. some Anthroposophists, some Gnostics and other people interested in 'spirituality'.
Advocacy of Mere Christianity is not arbitrary nor trivial for any serious Christian, because to make sense of being a Mere Christian, rather than working from inside a specific denomination, requires a faith that being 'any kind of Christian' is potentially a worthwhile thing to be; indeed the belief that it is more important to be 'A Christian' than to be any particular type of Christian.
In other words, Mere Christianity - by its relative neglect of actual membership of specific church denominations - embodies the conviction that it is possible to be a Christian who is not a churchgoer nor a church-member; and that this unaffiliated state is indeed much better than not being a Christian at all. This probably implies certain doctrinal things - regarding the nature of salvation; and the relationship between God and each Man.
Anyway, from the comments and letters I received, I was very pleased to see that my own Mere Christian convictions are reflected by a considerable variety of 'destinations' among that small group of people who tell me they were significantly helped in their faith by this blog - including Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Mormon. Indeed, the range of destinations delighted me! I feel that this is exactly what modern evangelism needs to do (in addition to traditional types of denomination-based evangelism, not replacing it) - to help people become generic Mere Christians first, and then join a specific church as a second and secondary decision.
An interesting feature about the great popularity and influence of Lewis among serious Christians of many types is that it suggests that that there is a strong core of basic Christianity behind doctrinal differences - and it suggests, indeed, that the deep conviction of someone such as Pope John Paul II (a big Lewis fan) was that this is almost independent of specific doctrine and theology.
The 'revealed preference' of the range of Lewis admirers is that Christianity precedes and is distinct from the metaphysics, theology and specific doctrines and practices of Christianity. The way I think of this is that the followers of Christ, as depicted in the Gospels and Acts, were Christians - and became Christian on the basis of a very small amount of knowledge and experience; and children and simple minded people can be (among the best) Christians.
So that real, core Christianity in its essence is on the one hand very simple - simple enough for a child to believe; yet also encompasses a wide range of subjective 'explanations' for beliefs - explanations as varied as the imaginations of a child.
This I am sure is true; although many people who agree and behave as if it is true - and acknowledge it implicitly - are loath to acknowledge it explicitly - and indeed may deny it explicitly.
I am not sure whether this is a problem or not - but I suspect it is. Many strong Christians are - according to their attitudes and behaviours - Mere Christians; but the explicit statements they make are often exclusivist, and they claim to regard those outwith their church as perilously deficient... perhaps not Christians, perhaps even excluded-from salvation.
I say 'claim to' because I think this exclusivism is often insincere - sometimes it is dishonest. For various reasons, some good and others bad, many denominations and churches cannot admit publicly and formally how Mere Christian they really are (the CJCLDS is a noble exception!). Not surprisingly, serious Christian churches fear liberalization and the apostasy and rapid decline which follows - and this leads them into exclusivist claims which are typically shrill and unconvincing - one suspects even (or especially) to those who are most vehement in them.
But actual liberal Christians usually dislike CS Lewis, sometimes indeed they hate him! So the 'Mereness' of Christianity certainly should not be regarded as evidence of its feebleness or liberalness.
My general conviction is that the real Christian church is a mystical phenomenon spread across many denominations and among unaffiliated individuals - but that the actual bricks and mortar and crowds of people and organizations of 'institutional' churches are essential to the survival and growth of Christianity through history and into the future.
Not all churches, to be sure! - I think that most liberal Christian churches do far more harm than good (even though they do do some good), and lead more away from faith and into apostasy than they help to be better Christians. But I suspect that many serious Christians nowadays are in the position of trying to find a specific accessible denomination, or even a specific church congregation, among the mass of hindering and secularizing churches - to find one local and strong group of Christians which help them personally to be better Christians.
That, at any rate, is the Mere Christian attitude.
Friday, 18 March 2016
Thursday, 17 March 2016
Reconceptualizing biology - request for help with proof-reading
I have substantially revised, re-shaped and expanded my paper on the metaphysics of biology - and it is nearly ready for archiving on The Winnower.
I would be very grateful for any assistance in picking-up typos, wrong spellings, errors in punctuation etc. before I submit the final version tomorrow.
(I have already spotted one, in the Abstract).
https://thewinnower.com/papers/3497-reconceptualizing-the-metaphysical-basis-of-biology-a-new-definition-based-on-deistic-teleology-and-an-hierarchy-of-organizing-entities
I would be very grateful for any assistance in picking-up typos, wrong spellings, errors in punctuation etc. before I submit the final version tomorrow.
(I have already spotted one, in the Abstract).
https://thewinnower.com/papers/3497-reconceptualizing-the-metaphysical-basis-of-biology-a-new-definition-based-on-deistic-teleology-and-an-hierarchy-of-organizing-entities
Thinking spiritually - versus elections
When it is complained that Christians don't really change for the better, or that Christianity is only for Sundays - what is perhaps being noticed is that we are failing to live by our Christian metaphysics.
It is like we have two programmes in our minds, one secular and one Christian, and we keep on using the secular software whenever we are inattentive.
We say, and we want it to be true, that Christianity is the most important thing, but we don't often use Christianity to explain things - not even the most important things.
This is especially evident with Liberal Christians, who have adopted a scale of socio-political priorities and secular explanations directly from mainstream secular society; and Christianity comes in much later to provide a few superficial flourishes once Leftism has done all the heavy lifting.
But that is the beam in my brother's eye; and I am extremely prone to do something very similar - that is to lapse, without really noticing it, into non-Christian selections of topic and style of thinking. Worryingly, this lapsing sometimes justifies itself to me as being 'this subject is too important' for taking the spiritual perspective.
What about politics itself? To what extent is my mind, or your mind, being colonized by the topics and the talking points that the mass media has decided to place there? In the US this might be today's take on the Presidential election, in the UK it would be the referendum concerning whether to leave the EU.
Partly this is a question of subject matter - but most worryingly it is about how we think. When we think about politics the usual thing is to think about campaigning, public relations and image, hype and spin, horse trading and intimidation, demographics and gerrymandering... that kind of thing.
This kind of thinking is so deeply and completely not-Christian that time spent thinking about elections is simply time deducted from real life. Actually it is worse than mere loss f life; because thinking is partly habitual - so we are ingraining channels of unChristian thinking; meanwhile our patterns of Christian thinking are atrophying. By thinking badly we are are making it harder to think well.
It is a conspiracy to stop us thinking Christianly - actually it is worse: it is a multiplicity of conspiracies competing to make us think in unChristian ways in order to get our attention, manipulate us, exploit us, waste our time and corrupt us. These are reaching us via the mass media, ubiquitous advertizing, casual conversation, official propaganda.
And how well modern Man has been trained! If he ever has a minute to spare from the battering of competing voices, he will feel bored and immediately seek them out. I look around on pubic transportation - where people have a few minutes that they might think for themselves - and everybody is plugged into distractions. A short walk might be a great time to think seriously - but not if you are listening to music, or messaging with social media.
People may be very busy - but apparently never too busy to waste, destroy and dissipate their free time.
But see - even this analysis, this blog post, is just another bit of secular sociology! I started out wanting to talk about how to think spiritually, and have ended by sounding like an opinion piece in the Lifestyle section of a newspaper.
What is needed is to think spiritually, using that spiritual Christian part of our mind, to strengthen those pathways and make them normal and usual. We need to understand the world - select topics, and how to think about topics - using our highest and Christian consciousness.
It would be hard and hazardous to do this all of the time; but it would be easy and wholesome - and of immense and immediate benefit - to do it a lot more than than we do.
It is like we have two programmes in our minds, one secular and one Christian, and we keep on using the secular software whenever we are inattentive.
We say, and we want it to be true, that Christianity is the most important thing, but we don't often use Christianity to explain things - not even the most important things.
This is especially evident with Liberal Christians, who have adopted a scale of socio-political priorities and secular explanations directly from mainstream secular society; and Christianity comes in much later to provide a few superficial flourishes once Leftism has done all the heavy lifting.
But that is the beam in my brother's eye; and I am extremely prone to do something very similar - that is to lapse, without really noticing it, into non-Christian selections of topic and style of thinking. Worryingly, this lapsing sometimes justifies itself to me as being 'this subject is too important' for taking the spiritual perspective.
What about politics itself? To what extent is my mind, or your mind, being colonized by the topics and the talking points that the mass media has decided to place there? In the US this might be today's take on the Presidential election, in the UK it would be the referendum concerning whether to leave the EU.
Partly this is a question of subject matter - but most worryingly it is about how we think. When we think about politics the usual thing is to think about campaigning, public relations and image, hype and spin, horse trading and intimidation, demographics and gerrymandering... that kind of thing.
This kind of thinking is so deeply and completely not-Christian that time spent thinking about elections is simply time deducted from real life. Actually it is worse than mere loss f life; because thinking is partly habitual - so we are ingraining channels of unChristian thinking; meanwhile our patterns of Christian thinking are atrophying. By thinking badly we are are making it harder to think well.
It is a conspiracy to stop us thinking Christianly - actually it is worse: it is a multiplicity of conspiracies competing to make us think in unChristian ways in order to get our attention, manipulate us, exploit us, waste our time and corrupt us. These are reaching us via the mass media, ubiquitous advertizing, casual conversation, official propaganda.
And how well modern Man has been trained! If he ever has a minute to spare from the battering of competing voices, he will feel bored and immediately seek them out. I look around on pubic transportation - where people have a few minutes that they might think for themselves - and everybody is plugged into distractions. A short walk might be a great time to think seriously - but not if you are listening to music, or messaging with social media.
People may be very busy - but apparently never too busy to waste, destroy and dissipate their free time.
But see - even this analysis, this blog post, is just another bit of secular sociology! I started out wanting to talk about how to think spiritually, and have ended by sounding like an opinion piece in the Lifestyle section of a newspaper.
What is needed is to think spiritually, using that spiritual Christian part of our mind, to strengthen those pathways and make them normal and usual. We need to understand the world - select topics, and how to think about topics - using our highest and Christian consciousness.
It would be hard and hazardous to do this all of the time; but it would be easy and wholesome - and of immense and immediate benefit - to do it a lot more than than we do.
Wednesday, 16 March 2016
The basics of Christianity (as I see them)
God created the universe, we are God's children, and he loves us completely.
God's greatest wish is that we should eventually grow to become divine and choose to dwell with him.
Jesus is fully-divine and also (like us) a child of God. The birth, death and resurrection of Jesus therefore made a path which all humans now follow into eternal life.
When he died, Jesus took away the sins of the world. This established the power of repentance.
So that when we repent our wrongs, we will be washed clean.
We end-up with all the benefits of having been alive and none of the disadvantages; every human life can be safe, and life can only do us good.
All this is a gift - we are free to accept or refuse it.
God's greatest wish is that we should eventually grow to become divine and choose to dwell with him.
Jesus is fully-divine and also (like us) a child of God. The birth, death and resurrection of Jesus therefore made a path which all humans now follow into eternal life.
When he died, Jesus took away the sins of the world. This established the power of repentance.
So that when we repent our wrongs, we will be washed clean.
We end-up with all the benefits of having been alive and none of the disadvantages; every human life can be safe, and life can only do us good.
All this is a gift - we are free to accept or refuse it.
Tuesday, 15 March 2016
Richard Dawkins versus Jonathan Sacks - atheism versus orthodox religion
Professor Richard Dawkins, and ex-chief-Orthodox Rabbi Jonathan Sacks are of similar age, social background, class and education: but the first is an atheist and the second an observant, conservative Jew.
How can we concisely summarise the difference between them, in terms of reproductive success or evolutionary viability; as individuals representative of atheism and traditionalist, patriarchal religion?
Three marriages and one child versus one marriage and three children.
That's it in a nutshell! (And consistent-with a large mass of demographic data.)
Secular liberalism is biologically maladaptive; but (some) religions are - even in the modern world, and among the intellectual elite - the only known antidote to slow extinction of the human species.
How can we concisely summarise the difference between them, in terms of reproductive success or evolutionary viability; as individuals representative of atheism and traditionalist, patriarchal religion?
Three marriages and one child versus one marriage and three children.
That's it in a nutshell! (And consistent-with a large mass of demographic data.)
Secular liberalism is biologically maladaptive; but (some) religions are - even in the modern world, and among the intellectual elite - the only known antidote to slow extinction of the human species.
What is swing music? A personal view
Swing is a particular rhythm which is very simple - yet not really.
The rhythm is this:
And here is Caravan Palace - a French band consciously revisiting The Hot Club of Paris Quintet sound:
The rhythm is this:
The Quintet of the Hot Club of Paris - Sweet Georgia Brown
So it's not really very difficult to understand, to play, to appreciate swing.
But the fact is it wasn't used until the twentieth century - wasn't popular until less than 100 years ago. Which I find interesting - swing seems to be one of the those inventions that is so simple and obvious that it needs a genius to discover. But once it was discovered, that rhythm tore through mass popular music and was dominant for a couple of decades.
One place I see it is in the transition from the solid foursquare left hand rhythm of ragtime piano to the swinging left hand part on stride piano: here is Fats Waller:
Still a lot of syncopation (and now improvisation) in the right hand but this new rhythm. Indeed, my own definition of swing proper is that it is an evolution of ragtime that retains the use of syncopation (triplets) in the treble part, but uses this differently-stressed version of 4/4 rhythm in the bass part.
Indeed, listening to Waller, I thing swing should perhaps have been called 'spring' - because there is a sense of springing-off from the first beat of the bar:
Anyway, swing sounds simple - it is simple - but it is almost impossible to write down using using musical notation. Which I presume is why it took so long to discover.
You just have to hear it, then do it.
But this means that it was also fiendishly difficult to program into a synthesised drum machine. I had a drum machine, back in the early 1980s, and it could do almost anything - but not swing.
Swing rhythm only really began to work in electronic music when sampled, instead of synthesised, sounds became usual.
The rhythm is still reasonably popular - and has its own genre Electro-Swing.
The rhythm is still reasonably popular - and has its own genre Electro-Swing.
And here is Caravan Palace - a French band consciously revisiting The Hot Club of Paris Quintet sound:
Monday, 14 March 2016
Rediscovering the artistry and musicianship of Denis Matthews
When I went to medical school, my main interest in classical music was studying the piano literature. This was somewhat later for me than for most people that become interested in 'serious music', because I came into the classics via opera and baroque music; and conceived a dislike for the pianoforte and a compensatory preference for the harpsichord.
Anyway, at some point - probably via chamber music and specifically Schubert's 'Trout' quintet - I decided that this was silly, and started work on the piano repertoire, beginning with a present from my mother: John Lill performing Beethoven's third piano concerto with the Scottish National Orchestra (I still have it).
My serious engagement with the piano was around two very contrasting pianists of special distinction: on the one hand I attended many performances at the university given by Denis Matthews, who was our Professor of Music - and his qualities were a wonderful lyricism, lightness of touch in the right hand, and a long-line of architecture in music of the classical and early Romantic era; and on the other hand recordings by Glenn Gould, with his astonishing counterpoint and close-up analytic (indeed dissection-like!) approach, focusing on the baroque era (and moderns, although I didn't ever take to this).
It has therefore been an unusual and unexpected pleasure for me to engage with the many recordings of Matthews now available on YouTube, and to hear again exactly those qualities I appreciated in live performance. Evident - for example - here:
I could have encountered these long before, if I had properly listened-to the BBC Radio Three memorial trilogy about Matthews, which was compiled and produced by my former Newcastle University flatmate (and ex-student of Matthews) Jeremy Hayes - not long after Matthews very sadly took his own life on Christmas Day of 1988.
Anyway, at some point - probably via chamber music and specifically Schubert's 'Trout' quintet - I decided that this was silly, and started work on the piano repertoire, beginning with a present from my mother: John Lill performing Beethoven's third piano concerto with the Scottish National Orchestra (I still have it).
My serious engagement with the piano was around two very contrasting pianists of special distinction: on the one hand I attended many performances at the university given by Denis Matthews, who was our Professor of Music - and his qualities were a wonderful lyricism, lightness of touch in the right hand, and a long-line of architecture in music of the classical and early Romantic era; and on the other hand recordings by Glenn Gould, with his astonishing counterpoint and close-up analytic (indeed dissection-like!) approach, focusing on the baroque era (and moderns, although I didn't ever take to this).
It has therefore been an unusual and unexpected pleasure for me to engage with the many recordings of Matthews now available on YouTube, and to hear again exactly those qualities I appreciated in live performance. Evident - for example - here:
I could have encountered these long before, if I had properly listened-to the BBC Radio Three memorial trilogy about Matthews, which was compiled and produced by my former Newcastle University flatmate (and ex-student of Matthews) Jeremy Hayes - not long after Matthews very sadly took his own life on Christmas Day of 1988.
Colin Wilson's existential criticism - its validity and limitations
I came across Colin Wilson's The Outsider (first published 1956) at the age of nineteen, and was astonished and delighted to find for the very first time someone grappling directly with what I found to be the main problem in life.
The Outsider set the pattern for most of Wilson's books in being constructed around multiple biographical summaries, woven about with essayistic passages of criticism, analysis and manifesto. I went on to read many others of Wilson's books of this type.
As I read, I would be in state of excitement, with a feeling of being just about to cross a threshold, achieve understanding, and transform my life for the better - but it never actually happened (indeed, overall, my life was getting worse - my character closing and coarsening).
What usually happens in these Existentialist books of Wilson's is that he will take a writer, artist, philosopher or some such person - and discuss his life and work from the perspective of their understanding of questions such as 'What is life really worth? What can be got out of life by a man with no material worries and no obligations to fulfil?' [Reference is to The Strength to Dream section on HG Wells.]
I still agree that this is among the most fundamental of questions. The revealed preference of mainstream modern people can be seen in what they actually do when in this situation of having no material worries and no obligations to fulfil: they create material worries (by their compulsion to spend so much money) and they create obligations (by keeping themselves 'busy' and boasting about it).
Material sufficiency for almost everyone has been available in The West for more than 60 years; but instead of leading to an increase in existential, spiritual, religious living - it has fuelled a shallowing and trivializing of life by entertainment, distraction and busyness - necessitating a continually increasing surplus beyond sufficiency and driving yet more material worries and obligations.
But having raised such an important question, and having decided to tackle it by a new, and more optimistic, existentialism; Wilson never really came much closer to solving it than in his second 'outsider' book - Religion and the Rebel (1957), where he considered and rejected Christianity.
Wilson had, indeed, created an insoluble puzzle for himself, as can be seen from a comment at the end of Strength To Dream when he calls-for an existential literary criticism. He describes TS Eliot's earlier attempt to create an existential criticism in After Strange Gods as a failure because Eliot refused to discuss the basis of his religious convictions and therefore made his criticisms from the basis of a 'deliberately mystifying dogmatism'.
What Wilson is therefore asking-for is an impossibility - an existential criticism which is also turned-upon-itself. Because all criticism must be from a standpoint or perspective, and if criticism cannot be allowed to proceed until that standpoint or perspective has itself been critiqued, then nothing will ever be accomplished - since no assumptions have been allowed, and any assumption must first be justified - which can only be done by calling on some other assumption/s - which is itself then open to challenge. It is an infinite regress.
This brings me to my understanding of why Wilson never got further with his existentialism than a brilliant diagnosis of the noble failure of other thinkers -- because he denied the reality of a perspective outside of human life. At the bottom line, all deep thinkers are a failure from the perspective of answering 'what is life really worth/' - because they all died.
Mortality - along with the other related problems such as suffering, limited ability, disease, decay - puts an end to all pretensions to have solved Life.
Wilson perceived this to a limited extent, in taking up GB Shaw's fascination with extended human life (eg 300 years) - but more-of-the-same does not solve anything, really - just puts it off. So long as we know we will die and our perspective acknowledges only this mortal life, then we are stuck.
The answer is, of course (as presumably TS Eliot perceived) that we should not be trying to answer the question of the meaning of life from a perspective restricted to mortal life - but from a larger perspective which encompasses mortal life.
In a nutshell, this perspective can only derive from divine revelation - or else we are back inside the infinite regress.
Mortal life can be understood, and its success evaluated, only in light of a perspective which is outside mortal life, which sees it as a whole, and judges it in terms of what lies outside of mortal life. An existential criticism which denies, as a metaphysical assumption, the reality of a wider frame for mortal life, has set itself a formally, necessarily, insoluble problem.
We may term another person's metaphysical assumptions a 'mystifying dogmatism' but that is facile; because it can always be said about any fundamental, bottom-line belief with which we disagree.
The reason that I was never able to get across the line from my excitement with Wilson's defining of the fundamental question, and exploring the possible answers, was that I too (for three decades) shared this 'anything-but-religion' assumption - and saw Christianity as an evasion, a cop-out, a false answer; rather than being the only and necessary answer.
The Outsider set the pattern for most of Wilson's books in being constructed around multiple biographical summaries, woven about with essayistic passages of criticism, analysis and manifesto. I went on to read many others of Wilson's books of this type.
As I read, I would be in state of excitement, with a feeling of being just about to cross a threshold, achieve understanding, and transform my life for the better - but it never actually happened (indeed, overall, my life was getting worse - my character closing and coarsening).
What usually happens in these Existentialist books of Wilson's is that he will take a writer, artist, philosopher or some such person - and discuss his life and work from the perspective of their understanding of questions such as 'What is life really worth? What can be got out of life by a man with no material worries and no obligations to fulfil?' [Reference is to The Strength to Dream section on HG Wells.]
I still agree that this is among the most fundamental of questions. The revealed preference of mainstream modern people can be seen in what they actually do when in this situation of having no material worries and no obligations to fulfil: they create material worries (by their compulsion to spend so much money) and they create obligations (by keeping themselves 'busy' and boasting about it).
Material sufficiency for almost everyone has been available in The West for more than 60 years; but instead of leading to an increase in existential, spiritual, religious living - it has fuelled a shallowing and trivializing of life by entertainment, distraction and busyness - necessitating a continually increasing surplus beyond sufficiency and driving yet more material worries and obligations.
But having raised such an important question, and having decided to tackle it by a new, and more optimistic, existentialism; Wilson never really came much closer to solving it than in his second 'outsider' book - Religion and the Rebel (1957), where he considered and rejected Christianity.
Wilson had, indeed, created an insoluble puzzle for himself, as can be seen from a comment at the end of Strength To Dream when he calls-for an existential literary criticism. He describes TS Eliot's earlier attempt to create an existential criticism in After Strange Gods as a failure because Eliot refused to discuss the basis of his religious convictions and therefore made his criticisms from the basis of a 'deliberately mystifying dogmatism'.
What Wilson is therefore asking-for is an impossibility - an existential criticism which is also turned-upon-itself. Because all criticism must be from a standpoint or perspective, and if criticism cannot be allowed to proceed until that standpoint or perspective has itself been critiqued, then nothing will ever be accomplished - since no assumptions have been allowed, and any assumption must first be justified - which can only be done by calling on some other assumption/s - which is itself then open to challenge. It is an infinite regress.
This brings me to my understanding of why Wilson never got further with his existentialism than a brilliant diagnosis of the noble failure of other thinkers -- because he denied the reality of a perspective outside of human life. At the bottom line, all deep thinkers are a failure from the perspective of answering 'what is life really worth/' - because they all died.
Mortality - along with the other related problems such as suffering, limited ability, disease, decay - puts an end to all pretensions to have solved Life.
Wilson perceived this to a limited extent, in taking up GB Shaw's fascination with extended human life (eg 300 years) - but more-of-the-same does not solve anything, really - just puts it off. So long as we know we will die and our perspective acknowledges only this mortal life, then we are stuck.
The answer is, of course (as presumably TS Eliot perceived) that we should not be trying to answer the question of the meaning of life from a perspective restricted to mortal life - but from a larger perspective which encompasses mortal life.
In a nutshell, this perspective can only derive from divine revelation - or else we are back inside the infinite regress.
Mortal life can be understood, and its success evaluated, only in light of a perspective which is outside mortal life, which sees it as a whole, and judges it in terms of what lies outside of mortal life. An existential criticism which denies, as a metaphysical assumption, the reality of a wider frame for mortal life, has set itself a formally, necessarily, insoluble problem.
We may term another person's metaphysical assumptions a 'mystifying dogmatism' but that is facile; because it can always be said about any fundamental, bottom-line belief with which we disagree.
The reason that I was never able to get across the line from my excitement with Wilson's defining of the fundamental question, and exploring the possible answers, was that I too (for three decades) shared this 'anything-but-religion' assumption - and saw Christianity as an evasion, a cop-out, a false answer; rather than being the only and necessary answer.
Sunday, 13 March 2016
Undirected (or arbitrary, practice) meditation doesn't go anywhere - there must be purpose
Most people who advocate 'meditation' have in mind something which is undirected, often deliberately anti-purposive, often passive and responsive - and there may well be a training in such meditation with exercises, instructions, breathing practices etc.
(The current fad for 'mindfulness', for example, comes under this heading.)
After expending quite considerable time and effort on such things, observing the effect on people who have expended even more time and effort on such things, and on theoretical grounds - I believe this type of meditation does not go anywhere, does not lead to positive personal transformation, and is not helpful in our primary life task of theosis (i.e. becoming more divine)
Undirected meditation may, therefore, be 'therapeutic' in the sense of making someone feel better or perhaps even function better; but it does not of itself lead to genuine spiritual progression - and may indeed stand in the path of it.
Meditation is a means to an end, which implies that the end is more important than the means - and you need to know where you are aiming before you set-out: including that we must have a goal before we meditate, each meditation should be driven by some real and personally-compelling purpose and need, and meditation should be honed and developed according to how well those goals are being reached.
Useful meditation therefore requires a valid metaphysical understanding of reality - in other words some approximation of Christian knowledge. Then meditation can be deployed for Christian goals - eg. (and these are only examples) as a kind of prayer to seek understanding or to clarify existing understanding, to seek revelations, to commune with the divine, to seek for strength and courage, to alleviate incipient despair and become re-infused with hope... that kind of thing.
So, when meditating, if it is to be more than merely some kind of self-induced 'trip', health spa experience, or more than merely relaxation and un-winding; then:
1. Meditation must be purposive
2. The purpose must be valid and Good
3. The method and style and mechanisms of meditation are likely to be personal - not stereotypical nor standard
In sum, meditation cannot really be taught but must be individually learned by trial and error.
And this is possible because when there is purpose, then each person is able to monitor his own attempts and to evaluate his own success at meditating; especially since there are several other sources to check the results of meditation against for validity - church teachings, scripture, reason, help from trusted spiritual advisers... and so on.
So meditation is an adventure of personal discovery; but like all real adventures it cannot be an aimless, passive wandering; but must have some purpose, direction and point to it.
Meditation will not reveal or teach you the meaning of life - it is one of the means by which you may choose to pursue what you already know to be the meaning of life.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/a-note-on-meditation-by-william-arkle.html
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=meditation
(The current fad for 'mindfulness', for example, comes under this heading.)
After expending quite considerable time and effort on such things, observing the effect on people who have expended even more time and effort on such things, and on theoretical grounds - I believe this type of meditation does not go anywhere, does not lead to positive personal transformation, and is not helpful in our primary life task of theosis (i.e. becoming more divine)
Undirected meditation may, therefore, be 'therapeutic' in the sense of making someone feel better or perhaps even function better; but it does not of itself lead to genuine spiritual progression - and may indeed stand in the path of it.
Meditation is a means to an end, which implies that the end is more important than the means - and you need to know where you are aiming before you set-out: including that we must have a goal before we meditate, each meditation should be driven by some real and personally-compelling purpose and need, and meditation should be honed and developed according to how well those goals are being reached.
Useful meditation therefore requires a valid metaphysical understanding of reality - in other words some approximation of Christian knowledge. Then meditation can be deployed for Christian goals - eg. (and these are only examples) as a kind of prayer to seek understanding or to clarify existing understanding, to seek revelations, to commune with the divine, to seek for strength and courage, to alleviate incipient despair and become re-infused with hope... that kind of thing.
So, when meditating, if it is to be more than merely some kind of self-induced 'trip', health spa experience, or more than merely relaxation and un-winding; then:
1. Meditation must be purposive
2. The purpose must be valid and Good
3. The method and style and mechanisms of meditation are likely to be personal - not stereotypical nor standard
In sum, meditation cannot really be taught but must be individually learned by trial and error.
And this is possible because when there is purpose, then each person is able to monitor his own attempts and to evaluate his own success at meditating; especially since there are several other sources to check the results of meditation against for validity - church teachings, scripture, reason, help from trusted spiritual advisers... and so on.
So meditation is an adventure of personal discovery; but like all real adventures it cannot be an aimless, passive wandering; but must have some purpose, direction and point to it.
Meditation will not reveal or teach you the meaning of life - it is one of the means by which you may choose to pursue what you already know to be the meaning of life.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/a-note-on-meditation-by-william-arkle.html
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=meditation
Saturday, 12 March 2016
Cultural despair evident in revealed preferences
Despair is usually denied as shameful and a refutation of one's life choices - but if the defiantly gay words are ignored and the behaviour is noted, then the ubiquity of despair becomes evident.
What characterizes those who most assert their happiness, that they choose to do the things they do in pursuit of happiness (fulfilment, personal growth... whatever)? - Especially those who make so much in public discourse of their happy and exciting lifestyles with lots of sex of lots of types with lots of people, choosing their sexuality and sexual identity, partnering and unparternering according to what brings them happiness, engaging in frequent exotic travel, owing the latest technologies, clothes, 'enhancing' their bodies (and 'self-esteem') with dyes, ink, holes, diet, exercise, drugs...
Those legions (especially women) who say they love, are serious about, their careers - who spend years in formal education (but never read anything that isn't on the curriculum, never do work that doesn't contribute to an exam or part of a task set by others) and training and seeking promotion - the same people who never cease talking about holidays past and future, and retire as soon as possible.
The fact is that hardly anybody in this world, and extremely few women, is genuinely motivated by education, or by work, except as a means to the end of participation in socially-approved lifestyles. But most people are motivated by relationships.
So how are relationships in the modern world?
The answer, when looked at over time, is feeble and fragile. The 'promise' is that we can have relationships with anybody, and do anything with them (and with ourselves). The reality is that such relationships have no more significance than a TV that talks back.
Family provides the most solid and secure relationships - but marriage and the family are subject to unending subversion and attack (often paradoxically, justified 'for the good of the children' - as if a careerist, salaried middle management drone of a government official cares anything about 'children' except as a means to their own ends!)
Real friends who would do what family would do (support and make sacrifices over many years) are very few, or utterly absent - instead modern people have a superficially impressive multitude of superficial fair-weather Facebook and Twitter 'friends' who are great at providing distractions and stimulus but useless when times are tough.
There are many people in this world, in the ubiquitous cities esepcially, many people who are in the situation of living in a place, in a life, where nobody - and I mean literally nobody, not one single person - actually loves and cares for you except for what you can do for them as a distraction and stimulus: nobody loves you unconditionally for yourself.
Except (perhaps, and thank Heaven for this) some hundreds or thousands of miles away there exists a member or two of their birth family. But for 24/ 7 they live among people for whom they are just an amusement, an annoyance or a functional widget, a cog in a machine that makes nothing valuable.
What kind of life is this? Was it for this psychological subsistence that so many people - most people - gave-up and rejected God, marriage, family, relatives, church?
My impression is that typically people are confusing happiness with attracting attention, with trying to make other people envy you, with trying to overwhelm their own selves with the most powerful distractions they can self-impose.
It reminds me of that most miserable of life-phases - adolescence - when life becomes a matter of constructing a publicly-convincing shell to cover the fear, turmoil and rage inside; hoping that the shell will becomes so convincing as you fool yourself as well as others.
Having said all this - what do I feel for these people who are in a bad place and working to make it worse? Whose net effect on the world is to make it unfit for habitation by actual humans? Whose response to existential despair is to try and forget about it?
Compassion and sorrow - that is what I feel. These desperate people who are wrecking themselves and everything else for - what? I don't know for what, and neither do they. They are so far gone in their addicted despair that they do not even want to be cured, not least because they do not even believe in the reality of a life other than the one they experience.
It is not a matter of wanting what they cannot get - but of not even wanting what is good for them.
How can they be helped, when they reject help and are offended and angered by the offer. They are surrounded, they have surrounded themselves, by a gulf of incomprehension.
And how do I know all this? Because of what people do - not because of what they say: by what economists call their revealed preferences.
But compassion and sorrow is the only and proper basis for interaction. Even as we necessarily fear, avoid, even shun such people and such a civilization - even as they anger us and make us afraid (like rabid dogs, or packs of rabid dogs, would make us afraid); even as we cut off our support to them and their lifestyles (as we would need to cut off a junkie from supplies of his drug) -- even so, and as we try to find the courage and means to do what is necessary to defend ourselves and the world from such people - we Christians must not hate, but must in our hearts pity them for their pitiful, despairing, dangerous state.
What characterizes those who most assert their happiness, that they choose to do the things they do in pursuit of happiness (fulfilment, personal growth... whatever)? - Especially those who make so much in public discourse of their happy and exciting lifestyles with lots of sex of lots of types with lots of people, choosing their sexuality and sexual identity, partnering and unparternering according to what brings them happiness, engaging in frequent exotic travel, owing the latest technologies, clothes, 'enhancing' their bodies (and 'self-esteem') with dyes, ink, holes, diet, exercise, drugs...
Those legions (especially women) who say they love, are serious about, their careers - who spend years in formal education (but never read anything that isn't on the curriculum, never do work that doesn't contribute to an exam or part of a task set by others) and training and seeking promotion - the same people who never cease talking about holidays past and future, and retire as soon as possible.
The fact is that hardly anybody in this world, and extremely few women, is genuinely motivated by education, or by work, except as a means to the end of participation in socially-approved lifestyles. But most people are motivated by relationships.
So how are relationships in the modern world?
The answer, when looked at over time, is feeble and fragile. The 'promise' is that we can have relationships with anybody, and do anything with them (and with ourselves). The reality is that such relationships have no more significance than a TV that talks back.
Family provides the most solid and secure relationships - but marriage and the family are subject to unending subversion and attack (often paradoxically, justified 'for the good of the children' - as if a careerist, salaried middle management drone of a government official cares anything about 'children' except as a means to their own ends!)
Real friends who would do what family would do (support and make sacrifices over many years) are very few, or utterly absent - instead modern people have a superficially impressive multitude of superficial fair-weather Facebook and Twitter 'friends' who are great at providing distractions and stimulus but useless when times are tough.
There are many people in this world, in the ubiquitous cities esepcially, many people who are in the situation of living in a place, in a life, where nobody - and I mean literally nobody, not one single person - actually loves and cares for you except for what you can do for them as a distraction and stimulus: nobody loves you unconditionally for yourself.
Except (perhaps, and thank Heaven for this) some hundreds or thousands of miles away there exists a member or two of their birth family. But for 24/ 7 they live among people for whom they are just an amusement, an annoyance or a functional widget, a cog in a machine that makes nothing valuable.
What kind of life is this? Was it for this psychological subsistence that so many people - most people - gave-up and rejected God, marriage, family, relatives, church?
My impression is that typically people are confusing happiness with attracting attention, with trying to make other people envy you, with trying to overwhelm their own selves with the most powerful distractions they can self-impose.
It reminds me of that most miserable of life-phases - adolescence - when life becomes a matter of constructing a publicly-convincing shell to cover the fear, turmoil and rage inside; hoping that the shell will becomes so convincing as you fool yourself as well as others.
Having said all this - what do I feel for these people who are in a bad place and working to make it worse? Whose net effect on the world is to make it unfit for habitation by actual humans? Whose response to existential despair is to try and forget about it?
Compassion and sorrow - that is what I feel. These desperate people who are wrecking themselves and everything else for - what? I don't know for what, and neither do they. They are so far gone in their addicted despair that they do not even want to be cured, not least because they do not even believe in the reality of a life other than the one they experience.
It is not a matter of wanting what they cannot get - but of not even wanting what is good for them.
How can they be helped, when they reject help and are offended and angered by the offer. They are surrounded, they have surrounded themselves, by a gulf of incomprehension.
And how do I know all this? Because of what people do - not because of what they say: by what economists call their revealed preferences.
But compassion and sorrow is the only and proper basis for interaction. Even as we necessarily fear, avoid, even shun such people and such a civilization - even as they anger us and make us afraid (like rabid dogs, or packs of rabid dogs, would make us afraid); even as we cut off our support to them and their lifestyles (as we would need to cut off a junkie from supplies of his drug) -- even so, and as we try to find the courage and means to do what is necessary to defend ourselves and the world from such people - we Christians must not hate, but must in our hearts pity them for their pitiful, despairing, dangerous state.
What is the evidence that people despair in The West?
Two bits of evidence came to mind while thinking about Richard Adams's great fantasy novel Watership Down (1972) - the one about rabbits. If you have not yet read it: you should give it a try: I will try to avoid spoilers.
During their adventures, the heroes come across two contrasting dystopias: Cowslip's Warren, which superficially seems like a hedonic, lotus-eater's paradise; and Efrafa which embodies military virtue of courage, loyalty and organization.
But although both warrens have good qualities, each has a sign that something is very wrong, and indeed intolerably, fatally wrong - and these are signs we see in the modern West.
In Cowslip's Warren the 'poet' rabbit is a kind of degenerate who tells 'decadent' stories of despair, paradox, unattainable yearning, the beauty of horror - and the traditional encouraging stories of the rabbit's trickster-god El-Ahrairah are regarded by the Warren with embarrassment as being childish, simplistic, outdated.
Something is deeply wrong when the creative artists communicate inversions of the Good.
And in Efrafa, for all the efficiency and technical capability, the does (female rabbits) have stopped reproducing (by reabsorbing their kittens): a sign of their profound stress and despair.
I feel this way about our civilization. Our most admired and accomplished art is despairing, our women have (all but) stopped reproducing.
Whatever else is happening is pretty much irrelevant: these signs indicate extreme, underlying despair - which despair is what underpins our self-hatred, our inability to defend our values, the active but denied pursuit of cultural suicide.
Addressing this despair, and replacing it with hope, is the prime task.
During their adventures, the heroes come across two contrasting dystopias: Cowslip's Warren, which superficially seems like a hedonic, lotus-eater's paradise; and Efrafa which embodies military virtue of courage, loyalty and organization.
But although both warrens have good qualities, each has a sign that something is very wrong, and indeed intolerably, fatally wrong - and these are signs we see in the modern West.
In Cowslip's Warren the 'poet' rabbit is a kind of degenerate who tells 'decadent' stories of despair, paradox, unattainable yearning, the beauty of horror - and the traditional encouraging stories of the rabbit's trickster-god El-Ahrairah are regarded by the Warren with embarrassment as being childish, simplistic, outdated.
Something is deeply wrong when the creative artists communicate inversions of the Good.
And in Efrafa, for all the efficiency and technical capability, the does (female rabbits) have stopped reproducing (by reabsorbing their kittens): a sign of their profound stress and despair.
I feel this way about our civilization. Our most admired and accomplished art is despairing, our women have (all but) stopped reproducing.
Whatever else is happening is pretty much irrelevant: these signs indicate extreme, underlying despair - which despair is what underpins our self-hatred, our inability to defend our values, the active but denied pursuit of cultural suicide.
Addressing this despair, and replacing it with hope, is the prime task.
Friday, 11 March 2016
Theocratic Christian denominations ought to regard themselves as elite (not universal) and regard non-religionists as second-class citizens (not as evil heretics to be persecuted)
I regard theocracy as the only truly coherent (and best) form of government - by which I mean that all the various officially-approved aspects of national life ought (ideally) to be unified by the religion.
But Christianity is an opt-in kind of religion - and belief cannot be coerced - so in practice there are always a sizable proportion of the population who will not or cannot or are not eligible to opt-into any specific Christian church. So how should a theocracy treat them, given that all public affairs will be run in accordance with the ruling religion?
This thought-experiment can be examined using a wealth of historical experience - and I think the best solution is that the ruling Christian church (or denomination) ought to regard themselves as an elite and privileged group; but not as a universal church - because even when theoretically the church is open to 'anyone' in practice there will always be (and there must always be provision for) those who for various reasons cannot or do not want to join that church - or whom the ruling church will not have as members (perhaps because they fail to reach minimal standards of observance or obedience).
No matter how minimal is the compliance required by the ruling church - there must be rules, and these rules must be enforced - so there will always be those who do not wish to opt-in, or who are excluded.
Clearly, there must be some arrangement by which the ruling church is maintained and not allowed to be subverted or corrupted - so there is no possibility of treating all religions (and no religion) equally - and indeed this has never happened anywhere (except where religion is abolished, in which situation some secular ideology - typically Communism - has replaced religion; and religious people are treated as the non-compliers).
Too many Christian theocracies have treated non-church members with an appalling (and un-Christian) harshness based on hatred rather than love. These were, I think, those churches which implicitly (and usually explicitly) regarded themselves as universal; and therefore anyone who did not join them was assumed to be hostile, evilly motivated - and therefore deserving of harsh suppression.
This was applied even to 'heresies' so microscopic and (in practice, as history showed) theologically-insignificant, that even thoughtful and informed people of that era could not understand the difference between the labelled and persecuted heresy and approved orthodoxy - as with the supposed Monophysite heresy of the Fifth century, which was persecuted by the Christian Byzantine Empire with such unrelenting viciousness that the Oriental Orthodox welcomed the advent of a particular type of non-Christian monotheism as a blessed relief. There are many analogous and equally appalling examples from Christian history - Western and Eastern Catholic, Protestant and Anglican.
So what is the answer?
That denominations should regard themselves as in-practice an elite rather than realistically-universal. The ruling denomination can then be strong in its demands on believers; without being vicious towards non-aggressive unbelievers.
I emphasize non-aggressive - no nation can for long tolerate deliberate, organized subversion of its ruling order without opening the door to collapse. Non-believers must therefore submit to the ruling order - and must refrain from intervention to subvert or attack the ruling order in the public sphere - including refraining from generalized evangelism outwith their own group.
But it follows that non-believers must, in practice be treated as in some significant respects second class citizens - because the positions of leadership and authority must (as a matter of basic order and cohesion) be reserved for those in good standing with the ruling church.
Conversely, those who do not or cannot join the ruling church must accept that they are indeed second class citizens, who will inevitably (at least under normal circumstances) be excluded from power; as the price of not being persecuted for their discordant beliefs and their freedom from established church authority.
An example of what I am talking about was the theocratic Mormon state under Brigham Young (which I regard as having been potentially-sustainable - although in practice suppressed by the USA).
Of course, this situation is not optimal for everybody - because being a second class citizen excluded from significant privileges is not ideal for those people. On the other hand, being a constrained and second class citizen it is better than being coerced into conformity with the sanction of unbridled persecution for refusing - which has been the usual situation for most societies for most of history; and remains so.
(Ask the Copts of Egypt, or the millions of other Christians in the Middle East who have, in the past couple of decades, gone from being second class citizens able to practice their religion under constraints for more than 1000 years; to almost-all being forcibly converted, perpetually tormented and tortured, dead or expelled.)
A religious/ ideological free-for-all is not sustainable - so need not be considered as realistic.
One implication of this is that - in my opinion - Christian denominations should in practice (even when not in theory) regard themselves as an elite of the most devout of the potentially-saved, rather than themselves as the only path to salvation and everyone else as actively evil hence necessarily-damned.
But Christianity is an opt-in kind of religion - and belief cannot be coerced - so in practice there are always a sizable proportion of the population who will not or cannot or are not eligible to opt-into any specific Christian church. So how should a theocracy treat them, given that all public affairs will be run in accordance with the ruling religion?
This thought-experiment can be examined using a wealth of historical experience - and I think the best solution is that the ruling Christian church (or denomination) ought to regard themselves as an elite and privileged group; but not as a universal church - because even when theoretically the church is open to 'anyone' in practice there will always be (and there must always be provision for) those who for various reasons cannot or do not want to join that church - or whom the ruling church will not have as members (perhaps because they fail to reach minimal standards of observance or obedience).
No matter how minimal is the compliance required by the ruling church - there must be rules, and these rules must be enforced - so there will always be those who do not wish to opt-in, or who are excluded.
Clearly, there must be some arrangement by which the ruling church is maintained and not allowed to be subverted or corrupted - so there is no possibility of treating all religions (and no religion) equally - and indeed this has never happened anywhere (except where religion is abolished, in which situation some secular ideology - typically Communism - has replaced religion; and religious people are treated as the non-compliers).
Too many Christian theocracies have treated non-church members with an appalling (and un-Christian) harshness based on hatred rather than love. These were, I think, those churches which implicitly (and usually explicitly) regarded themselves as universal; and therefore anyone who did not join them was assumed to be hostile, evilly motivated - and therefore deserving of harsh suppression.
This was applied even to 'heresies' so microscopic and (in practice, as history showed) theologically-insignificant, that even thoughtful and informed people of that era could not understand the difference between the labelled and persecuted heresy and approved orthodoxy - as with the supposed Monophysite heresy of the Fifth century, which was persecuted by the Christian Byzantine Empire with such unrelenting viciousness that the Oriental Orthodox welcomed the advent of a particular type of non-Christian monotheism as a blessed relief. There are many analogous and equally appalling examples from Christian history - Western and Eastern Catholic, Protestant and Anglican.
So what is the answer?
That denominations should regard themselves as in-practice an elite rather than realistically-universal. The ruling denomination can then be strong in its demands on believers; without being vicious towards non-aggressive unbelievers.
I emphasize non-aggressive - no nation can for long tolerate deliberate, organized subversion of its ruling order without opening the door to collapse. Non-believers must therefore submit to the ruling order - and must refrain from intervention to subvert or attack the ruling order in the public sphere - including refraining from generalized evangelism outwith their own group.
But it follows that non-believers must, in practice be treated as in some significant respects second class citizens - because the positions of leadership and authority must (as a matter of basic order and cohesion) be reserved for those in good standing with the ruling church.
Conversely, those who do not or cannot join the ruling church must accept that they are indeed second class citizens, who will inevitably (at least under normal circumstances) be excluded from power; as the price of not being persecuted for their discordant beliefs and their freedom from established church authority.
An example of what I am talking about was the theocratic Mormon state under Brigham Young (which I regard as having been potentially-sustainable - although in practice suppressed by the USA).
Of course, this situation is not optimal for everybody - because being a second class citizen excluded from significant privileges is not ideal for those people. On the other hand, being a constrained and second class citizen it is better than being coerced into conformity with the sanction of unbridled persecution for refusing - which has been the usual situation for most societies for most of history; and remains so.
(Ask the Copts of Egypt, or the millions of other Christians in the Middle East who have, in the past couple of decades, gone from being second class citizens able to practice their religion under constraints for more than 1000 years; to almost-all being forcibly converted, perpetually tormented and tortured, dead or expelled.)
A religious/ ideological free-for-all is not sustainable - so need not be considered as realistic.
One implication of this is that - in my opinion - Christian denominations should in practice (even when not in theory) regard themselves as an elite of the most devout of the potentially-saved, rather than themselves as the only path to salvation and everyone else as actively evil hence necessarily-damned.
To know evil, you must become evil - so don't do it!
We can 'know about' something in a detached and observational way; but full knowledge of a thing entails experience of that thing, and by experience I mean empathic identification with it - which entails the inner experience of thinking and of feeling emotions at the most primary level.
Therefore, we should not try to understand evil - because to understand it we must become it; and that might have a lasting, even permanent, effect.
We need to know about evil sufficiently to resist it - but that is all. And that is not much, because the Good man can recognise evil without requiring to know much about it - so we ought to strive to be Good much more assiduously than we try to understand evil.
Evil, of course, is always telling us we don't understand it, and therefore really ought to go into it more fully and deeply - ninety-something-percent of the modern mass media - including many of the more prestigious novels movies and TV shows - are indeed designed to lead us into a deep identification with evil... ask yourself, why would that be, if knowing evil really was helpful?
Are the people who make and promote and admire these media the kind of people who would really want to aid the battle for Good? - or are they instead the kind of people who would want to subvert the Good? To ask is to answer.
The Good man is always, therefore, accused of ignorance, of naiveté, of not really understanding evil as evidence by his failure to describe evil such that people are drawn into empathic identification - how often have you heard Tolkien accused of this, or Chesterton, or anyone whose character or work is morally exemplary?
And indeed there is not much to understand about evil because it has no positive qualities - deep down, at root, evil is merely against-Good; and the varieties of evil are merely due to opposing the various subtypes of Good - unity, virtue, beauty, truth and their subdivisions.
That is all we need to know, and all that we should strive to know,
Evil is something to be resisted, fought or shunned - but not to be understood.
Therefore, we should not try to understand evil - because to understand it we must become it; and that might have a lasting, even permanent, effect.
We need to know about evil sufficiently to resist it - but that is all. And that is not much, because the Good man can recognise evil without requiring to know much about it - so we ought to strive to be Good much more assiduously than we try to understand evil.
Evil, of course, is always telling us we don't understand it, and therefore really ought to go into it more fully and deeply - ninety-something-percent of the modern mass media - including many of the more prestigious novels movies and TV shows - are indeed designed to lead us into a deep identification with evil... ask yourself, why would that be, if knowing evil really was helpful?
Are the people who make and promote and admire these media the kind of people who would really want to aid the battle for Good? - or are they instead the kind of people who would want to subvert the Good? To ask is to answer.
The Good man is always, therefore, accused of ignorance, of naiveté, of not really understanding evil as evidence by his failure to describe evil such that people are drawn into empathic identification - how often have you heard Tolkien accused of this, or Chesterton, or anyone whose character or work is morally exemplary?
And indeed there is not much to understand about evil because it has no positive qualities - deep down, at root, evil is merely against-Good; and the varieties of evil are merely due to opposing the various subtypes of Good - unity, virtue, beauty, truth and their subdivisions.
That is all we need to know, and all that we should strive to know,
Evil is something to be resisted, fought or shunned - but not to be understood.
Thursday, 10 March 2016
What is the ultimate source of, and reason for, teleology in biology?
Teleology (purpose) in biology is based on, requires, that reality be coherent, cooperative and complementary. This, in turn, requires that there is a single and unifying governing entity. In sum, teleology requires deism.
Deism is the assumption that the universe has an organizing principle (or entity) - which may be a personal supreme creator god among other lower gods, or one God, or may be something impersonal - a 'god of the philosophers' much like the way Einstein referred to when he stated that 'God' does no play dice, or the Platonic idea that there is a coherent primary reality to which the reality we observe is only an approximate, partial and corrupt approximation.
But for life, for reality, to have purpose, it must hang-together - and for reality to hang together requires some unified conception of deity.
Biology needs a teleology, and indeed the more specific that teleology the more can be inferred from it. However, if biology is to be a coherent and general science, then that teleology cannot be more specific than what can be agreed-on by deism.
Therefore, scientists can, and indeed must, agree on a general concept of deity - but beyond that there will be disagreement because the attributes of deity, including the nature and specific purposes of deity, are the product of divine revelation (deity revealing itself to Men) - and the reality and content of such revelations has been in chronic dispute for all of recorded history.
Therefore, deism supplies teleology, but only to a limited degree. Therefore we need to distinguish between the implications of:
1. The fact of teleology
This includes the consequences of their being an ultimate unity - and these implications include an expectation of a primary and significant degree of coherence, cooperativeness and complementarity.
2. The specific direction of teleology
There will be disagreement over the specific nature of overall teleology - i.e. disagreement over what exactly is the specific purpose of 'everything' and of specific entities at lower levels.
3. The mechanism/s of teleology
There will be disagreement over the specific ways in which purpose is applied or arises at the lower levels of reality; including disagreement over whether there is a single mechanism or many such mechanisms.
So, all biologists ought to be able to agree that there is an ultimate teleology - and that this is the primary source of cohesion both in the universe generally and among the 'living-things' which are the subject of biology. Beyond that - there will be disagreement concerning the specific direction of teleology and how it operates on specific entities, in specific situations.
Deism is the assumption that the universe has an organizing principle (or entity) - which may be a personal supreme creator god among other lower gods, or one God, or may be something impersonal - a 'god of the philosophers' much like the way Einstein referred to when he stated that 'God' does no play dice, or the Platonic idea that there is a coherent primary reality to which the reality we observe is only an approximate, partial and corrupt approximation.
But for life, for reality, to have purpose, it must hang-together - and for reality to hang together requires some unified conception of deity.
Biology needs a teleology, and indeed the more specific that teleology the more can be inferred from it. However, if biology is to be a coherent and general science, then that teleology cannot be more specific than what can be agreed-on by deism.
Therefore, scientists can, and indeed must, agree on a general concept of deity - but beyond that there will be disagreement because the attributes of deity, including the nature and specific purposes of deity, are the product of divine revelation (deity revealing itself to Men) - and the reality and content of such revelations has been in chronic dispute for all of recorded history.
Therefore, deism supplies teleology, but only to a limited degree. Therefore we need to distinguish between the implications of:
1. The fact of teleology
This includes the consequences of their being an ultimate unity - and these implications include an expectation of a primary and significant degree of coherence, cooperativeness and complementarity.
2. The specific direction of teleology
There will be disagreement over the specific nature of overall teleology - i.e. disagreement over what exactly is the specific purpose of 'everything' and of specific entities at lower levels.
3. The mechanism/s of teleology
There will be disagreement over the specific ways in which purpose is applied or arises at the lower levels of reality; including disagreement over whether there is a single mechanism or many such mechanisms.
So, all biologists ought to be able to agree that there is an ultimate teleology - and that this is the primary source of cohesion both in the universe generally and among the 'living-things' which are the subject of biology. Beyond that - there will be disagreement concerning the specific direction of teleology and how it operates on specific entities, in specific situations.
Why are modern day scientists so willing - and indeed eager - to take on senior administrative/ managerial roles?
Because they are not real scientists - or, at best, no longer real scientists - but merely successful bureaucrats of research.
No real scientist, who was primarily motivated by the desire to learn and speak the truth about whatever is their 'problem' - wold give this up to join the dishonest world of hype, spin and outright lies entailed by senior administrative/ managerial roles in modern institutions.
No real scientist, who was primarily motivated by the desire to learn and speak the truth about whatever is their 'problem' - wold give this up to join the dishonest world of hype, spin and outright lies entailed by senior administrative/ managerial roles in modern institutions.
Wednesday, 9 March 2016
How would governing entities actually impose teleology during evolution?
In a teleological (purposive) model of evolution I have inferred that there must be governing entities that shape evolution in order to overcome the destructive effects of entropy and short-termist and ultra-selfish natural selection, in order to enable long-term survival and reproduction to be pursued.
In general, teleology seems to be required for the imposition of a background level of cooperation and coordination between similar entities and across the different levels of organization.
If this is accepted, and some kind of general mechanism for teleology is devised - such as the hierarchy of governing entities - then the question arises as to how teleology is imposed?
There seem to be two possibilities - purpose could be imposed from outside by the operation of some kind of field, force or form; or purpose could be built-in.
While I think it likely that external forms/ fields/ forms have a role - they strike me as radically too simple, too lacking in dynamic complexity, to perform the necessary job in biological entities - although perhaps they suffice for the mineral world such as atoms, molecules, crystals etc.
My instinct is that purpose is most likely to be built in, specifically that, as an entity is formed, its purposive nature is built into the structure and organization (by the action of its governing entity) such that there is a degree of agency and self-regulation directed at the overall purpose.
For example, in multicellular organisms there may be the mechanisms of cell-suicide or apoptosis - such that if a cell experiences a mutation that may endanger the organism - perhaps by a neoplasm such as cancer - then the cell destroys itself (for the good of the whole organism).
There is considerable altruism built-in at the cellular level - white blood cells (some of which closely resemble free living amoebae) will kill themselves in the process of defending the organism against microorganism invasion (these dead soldiers are found in pus): this purpose is apparently built-into them.
Another example is reproductive self-suppression; which is found in some social animals. For instance, when a male orangutan fails to become the alpha, he remains as a partly developed adolescent. Now, in one sense he is biding his time and hoping for sneaky coercive sex with a female - but in another sense he is preserving the cohesion of the group by removing himself from competition.
Similar behaviours are seen in primates in relation to submission - a defeated male will submit and accept the dominant male - on the other side the dominant male will refrain from killing the defeated opponent.
In humans, there is considerable altruism and risk taking among young men in defending their group. Of course, this behaviour - once established, may be sustained by the advantage of protecting genetic relatives - but the behaviour had to occur and be stable before such advantage could be established; and it is consistent with observation that such motivations are built-in.
The primary reliance upon built-in teleology also makes it easy to understand the existence, indeed often at high rates, or the opposite - of behaviours which are non-functional, free-riding, parasitic. The teleology - including traits that are long-termist, altruistic, cooperative and coordinated - are vulnerable to subsequent, later events that disrupt or destroy these built-in mechanisms: such as damage or mutations during the life of the entity - mutant mitochondria in a eukaryotic cell, cancer in a multicellular organism, the effects of mental illness in human society.
Therefore, I think it most likely that governing entities work to impose teleology at the point where entities are being formed - either originally and/ or when being reproduced. The teleological behaviours are part of the design specification built into the entity.
In general, teleology seems to be required for the imposition of a background level of cooperation and coordination between similar entities and across the different levels of organization.
If this is accepted, and some kind of general mechanism for teleology is devised - such as the hierarchy of governing entities - then the question arises as to how teleology is imposed?
There seem to be two possibilities - purpose could be imposed from outside by the operation of some kind of field, force or form; or purpose could be built-in.
While I think it likely that external forms/ fields/ forms have a role - they strike me as radically too simple, too lacking in dynamic complexity, to perform the necessary job in biological entities - although perhaps they suffice for the mineral world such as atoms, molecules, crystals etc.
My instinct is that purpose is most likely to be built in, specifically that, as an entity is formed, its purposive nature is built into the structure and organization (by the action of its governing entity) such that there is a degree of agency and self-regulation directed at the overall purpose.
For example, in multicellular organisms there may be the mechanisms of cell-suicide or apoptosis - such that if a cell experiences a mutation that may endanger the organism - perhaps by a neoplasm such as cancer - then the cell destroys itself (for the good of the whole organism).
There is considerable altruism built-in at the cellular level - white blood cells (some of which closely resemble free living amoebae) will kill themselves in the process of defending the organism against microorganism invasion (these dead soldiers are found in pus): this purpose is apparently built-into them.
Another example is reproductive self-suppression; which is found in some social animals. For instance, when a male orangutan fails to become the alpha, he remains as a partly developed adolescent. Now, in one sense he is biding his time and hoping for sneaky coercive sex with a female - but in another sense he is preserving the cohesion of the group by removing himself from competition.
Similar behaviours are seen in primates in relation to submission - a defeated male will submit and accept the dominant male - on the other side the dominant male will refrain from killing the defeated opponent.
In humans, there is considerable altruism and risk taking among young men in defending their group. Of course, this behaviour - once established, may be sustained by the advantage of protecting genetic relatives - but the behaviour had to occur and be stable before such advantage could be established; and it is consistent with observation that such motivations are built-in.
The primary reliance upon built-in teleology also makes it easy to understand the existence, indeed often at high rates, or the opposite - of behaviours which are non-functional, free-riding, parasitic. The teleology - including traits that are long-termist, altruistic, cooperative and coordinated - are vulnerable to subsequent, later events that disrupt or destroy these built-in mechanisms: such as damage or mutations during the life of the entity - mutant mitochondria in a eukaryotic cell, cancer in a multicellular organism, the effects of mental illness in human society.
Therefore, I think it most likely that governing entities work to impose teleology at the point where entities are being formed - either originally and/ or when being reproduced. The teleological behaviours are part of the design specification built into the entity.
The concept of teleology - the creation of everything
On reflection, I think that teleology must be of the nature of following a blueprint plus instructions - in other words, teleology entails achieving what is already in existence conceptually.
And therefore teleology is not a matter of following a particular direction towards some as-yet unrealized condition. In other words, with teleology, the destination must be foreknown - you have to know where you are going.
This means that in a teleological, purposive concept of evolution on earth; the perceptible evolutionary sequence must be conceptualized as a process of incremental - step-by-step - development towards a situation which already exists as a plan.
Indeed, this must be the case if things are to be coordinated - the coordination of nature, of reality, must be 'top-down' - so that things evolve to occupy pre-ordained 'slots'.
(This is not to deny that other types of evolution are working against this plan - for example entropic change and natural selection.)
The primary purpose of evolution is to make more Deities - the highest type of consciousness, this is achieved by the deification of Men - so the intermediate purpose is to make Men - which is done via raising animal consciousness, which is done by raising plant consciousness, which is the first obvious form of 'life' itself derived from the primordial level of the simplest and minimal level of baseline life and consciousness which is found in the mineral, physical world (a world that is usually assumed to be non-living and non-conscious).
1. First half of evolution: Creating the plan
So, the evolutionary history of life on earth comes in two halves - the evolution of the plan then the realization of the plan; but the first half is usually neglected.
The plan evolves into a hierarchy from the simple unity of purpose at the top ('deity'), and down through layers of higher 'governing entities' concerned with advanced consciousness ('angels'), middle entities concerned with animal and plant life ('nature spirits'), and mineral entities concerned with the basic organization of matter in terms of what we would term physics and chemistry - elementary particles, fundamental forces, elements, molecules etc.
So - top-down, simplified, and descending in a pyramidal fashion, with greater numbers of simpler and more specialized governing entities at each lower level:
1. Deity
2. Angels
3. Animal then Plant Nature Spirits
4. Physical spirits
These entities are all purposive, conscious and cognitive - that is, they are capable of thought, analysis, modelling - but at very different levels. The idea is that there are extremely large numbers of extremely simple physical entities; and many-fold fewer numbers of (say) angels having far greater levels of consciousness and cognitive ability.
The first half of evolution involves the development of these purposive entities from the top downwards - until before the physical realization of creation has begun, the above hierarhcy of entities is already in place.
So this is the plan - containing both the 'blueprint' of the end result, and the step-by-step 'instructions' of how to achieve it.
2. Second half of evolution: implementing the plan
The assumption is that such a vast and complex plan cannot be implemented in one step - but requires multiple incremental steps - because only so much, some finite degree of organization, can be attained in a single step.
Therefore, at each stage the process requires the building-blocks to be ready - pre-prepared. So the first stage is to make the most primary building blocks and elaborate them stepwise until they are suitable to make first plant, then animal life of increasing complexity and consciousness; sexual reproduction, animal society; then Men - and then to raise the consciousness of Men towards Deity.
The history and sequence of evolution of and on earth is therefore the reverse direction from that of the governing entities:
4. The basic stuff and forces of the universe - The universe, solar system, earth; the physico-chemical 'mineral' structures of earth - done by Physical Spirits
3. The origins of life, elaboration of life through plants and animals via specialization and coordination and sexual selection - done by Nature Spirits
2. Origins of Man - done by Angels
1. Deification of Man - done by God
The second half of evolution is - overall - therefore a process akin to (but vastly more complex and long-lasting than) the development of the fertilized egg into an organism; in the sense that it is a growth and unfolding by multiple stages towards a previously established and planned end-point.
And each and all of the major stages, as well as the integration of the whole plan, are guided by governing entities.
Conclusion: To put the whole matter extremely simply: the structure of creation is first established as a plan by the hierarchical structure of governing entities which evolve from the top downwards getting simpler and simpler as they descend; then secondly creation is organized by these governing entities from the bottom upwards, from simplest to most complex, such that the pattern of actual creation is mapped-onto the pattern of the governing entities in the reverse direction from the formation of the governing entities.
And therefore teleology is not a matter of following a particular direction towards some as-yet unrealized condition. In other words, with teleology, the destination must be foreknown - you have to know where you are going.
This means that in a teleological, purposive concept of evolution on earth; the perceptible evolutionary sequence must be conceptualized as a process of incremental - step-by-step - development towards a situation which already exists as a plan.
Indeed, this must be the case if things are to be coordinated - the coordination of nature, of reality, must be 'top-down' - so that things evolve to occupy pre-ordained 'slots'.
(This is not to deny that other types of evolution are working against this plan - for example entropic change and natural selection.)
The unifying purpose - to make more Deities from Men
The primary purpose of evolution is to make more Deities - the highest type of consciousness, this is achieved by the deification of Men - so the intermediate purpose is to make Men - which is done via raising animal consciousness, which is done by raising plant consciousness, which is the first obvious form of 'life' itself derived from the primordial level of the simplest and minimal level of baseline life and consciousness which is found in the mineral, physical world (a world that is usually assumed to be non-living and non-conscious).
1. First half of evolution: Creating the plan
So, the evolutionary history of life on earth comes in two halves - the evolution of the plan then the realization of the plan; but the first half is usually neglected.
The plan evolves into a hierarchy from the simple unity of purpose at the top ('deity'), and down through layers of higher 'governing entities' concerned with advanced consciousness ('angels'), middle entities concerned with animal and plant life ('nature spirits'), and mineral entities concerned with the basic organization of matter in terms of what we would term physics and chemistry - elementary particles, fundamental forces, elements, molecules etc.
So - top-down, simplified, and descending in a pyramidal fashion, with greater numbers of simpler and more specialized governing entities at each lower level:
1. Deity
2. Angels
3. Animal then Plant Nature Spirits
4. Physical spirits
These entities are all purposive, conscious and cognitive - that is, they are capable of thought, analysis, modelling - but at very different levels. The idea is that there are extremely large numbers of extremely simple physical entities; and many-fold fewer numbers of (say) angels having far greater levels of consciousness and cognitive ability.
The first half of evolution involves the development of these purposive entities from the top downwards - until before the physical realization of creation has begun, the above hierarhcy of entities is already in place.
So this is the plan - containing both the 'blueprint' of the end result, and the step-by-step 'instructions' of how to achieve it.
2. Second half of evolution: implementing the plan
The assumption is that such a vast and complex plan cannot be implemented in one step - but requires multiple incremental steps - because only so much, some finite degree of organization, can be attained in a single step.
Therefore, at each stage the process requires the building-blocks to be ready - pre-prepared. So the first stage is to make the most primary building blocks and elaborate them stepwise until they are suitable to make first plant, then animal life of increasing complexity and consciousness; sexual reproduction, animal society; then Men - and then to raise the consciousness of Men towards Deity.
The history and sequence of evolution of and on earth is therefore the reverse direction from that of the governing entities:
4. The basic stuff and forces of the universe - The universe, solar system, earth; the physico-chemical 'mineral' structures of earth - done by Physical Spirits
3. The origins of life, elaboration of life through plants and animals via specialization and coordination and sexual selection - done by Nature Spirits
2. Origins of Man - done by Angels
1. Deification of Man - done by God
The second half of evolution is - overall - therefore a process akin to (but vastly more complex and long-lasting than) the development of the fertilized egg into an organism; in the sense that it is a growth and unfolding by multiple stages towards a previously established and planned end-point.
And each and all of the major stages, as well as the integration of the whole plan, are guided by governing entities.
Conclusion: To put the whole matter extremely simply: the structure of creation is first established as a plan by the hierarchical structure of governing entities which evolve from the top downwards getting simpler and simpler as they descend; then secondly creation is organized by these governing entities from the bottom upwards, from simplest to most complex, such that the pattern of actual creation is mapped-onto the pattern of the governing entities in the reverse direction from the formation of the governing entities.
2017 coming-up
So... we approach the centenary of probably the worst year in the history of the Christian world.
In the scale of its unleashed and still-continuing massively-destructive viciousness and hatred; terror, torture and murder; In the scope of its calculated and principled lying; its achievement and example in the subversion and inversion of virtue; And in terms of its sustained, on-going and wide-spread effect -- surely the events of 1917 were the greatest and most lasting of blows against Christians, and against mankind generally?
Therefore let us expect, and prepare for, this tragic and damning anniversary to be noted with approval, positively-regarded - indeed actively-celebrated by our ruling elites and their servants.
Thus we may know our enemies - their motivations and the extent of their power and influence.
In the scale of its unleashed and still-continuing massively-destructive viciousness and hatred; terror, torture and murder; In the scope of its calculated and principled lying; its achievement and example in the subversion and inversion of virtue; And in terms of its sustained, on-going and wide-spread effect -- surely the events of 1917 were the greatest and most lasting of blows against Christians, and against mankind generally?
Therefore let us expect, and prepare for, this tragic and damning anniversary to be noted with approval, positively-regarded - indeed actively-celebrated by our ruling elites and their servants.
Thus we may know our enemies - their motivations and the extent of their power and influence.
Left-sided migraine (of the language area) and enhanced creativity?
Readers may have gathered that I am troubled by frequent, sustained migraines - these are always on the Left side; and indeed one-sided, severe headaches of a stereotypical pattern is pretty much the definition of a migraine.
Having migraines has been very limiting for me over the past twenty-something years - I have missed all sorts of good things, and my travelling and exploring has been cut down considerably (plus, they hurt! and the treatment isn't very nice either).
But one compensation has been that when the migraine pain has been treated, I am at the maximum of creativity of which I am capable. In the sense that I am more likely than at other times to make a breakthrough in whatever it is that I am working on. Indeed, when I have gone for an occasional couple of weeks without a migraine then I have noticed myself getting less creative.
Why might this be? I had usually supposed that the slight delirium of the treated-migraine state might be responsible for a more associative, looser, semi-psychotic way of thinking; but I recently had the notion that it might be a Right-brain- Left-brain balance sort of thing.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/iain-mcgilchrists-master-and-his.html
An early symptom of the developing migraine is nominal aphasia - an inability to find word names - indeed, this is so characteristic that my wife has sometimes noticed and told me I was getting a migraine when I hadn't myself noticed. Together with the fact that the pain is on the Left side, this may suggest that the migraine pathology (whatever it is) is located in the language area of the Left cerebral hemisphere (soewhere like Broca's area, perhaps).
And this might perhaps mean that during a migraine the Left side of my brain is impaired and therefore the Right side more dominant - and it seems true that during the migraine my thought is more 'holistic' (and creative, as I said) and certainly it is less precisely-detailed, consistent with Right-sided dominance.
If this rather vague hypothesis is correct, the there should be a pattern of more-creative-less precise thinking during Left-sided migraines; and more-precise and less-creative thinking among Right-sided migraineurs - although quite likely this only applies to migraines affecting certain parts of the cerebral hemispheres.
*
In passing; my migraines are boringly simple in form - merely a pain and referred skin tenderness starting in a particular place of my neck, getting more severe and moving to behind my eye. I don't get any exciting visual 'aura' as a warning: no flashing lights, zig-zags, bling spots (although most of my close family do or did - we all suffer migraines to some degree).
But, interestingly, the only reliable prodrome, that sometimes happens and will predict a migraine a few hours ahead, is the idea spontaneously coming-into my head that I don't feel at all migraneous, and maybe I have gotten over migraine and won't have any more of them...
NOTE ADDED: Today was a pretty good example of migraine-enhanced creativity. I was woken early with a particularly nasty migraine that went on for about 8 hours despite escalating treatment - then felt rather wretched from the treatment and the after effect --- but my mind was bubbling with ideas and I ended up scribbling pages of notes and writing five blog posts (including one at Jr Ganymede), so far... (This being a weekday when I have no face-to-face teaching - and which I try to keep clear for thinking, scholarship and 'research' of a theory-focused kind.)
Having migraines has been very limiting for me over the past twenty-something years - I have missed all sorts of good things, and my travelling and exploring has been cut down considerably (plus, they hurt! and the treatment isn't very nice either).
But one compensation has been that when the migraine pain has been treated, I am at the maximum of creativity of which I am capable. In the sense that I am more likely than at other times to make a breakthrough in whatever it is that I am working on. Indeed, when I have gone for an occasional couple of weeks without a migraine then I have noticed myself getting less creative.
Why might this be? I had usually supposed that the slight delirium of the treated-migraine state might be responsible for a more associative, looser, semi-psychotic way of thinking; but I recently had the notion that it might be a Right-brain- Left-brain balance sort of thing.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/iain-mcgilchrists-master-and-his.html
An early symptom of the developing migraine is nominal aphasia - an inability to find word names - indeed, this is so characteristic that my wife has sometimes noticed and told me I was getting a migraine when I hadn't myself noticed. Together with the fact that the pain is on the Left side, this may suggest that the migraine pathology (whatever it is) is located in the language area of the Left cerebral hemisphere (soewhere like Broca's area, perhaps).
And this might perhaps mean that during a migraine the Left side of my brain is impaired and therefore the Right side more dominant - and it seems true that during the migraine my thought is more 'holistic' (and creative, as I said) and certainly it is less precisely-detailed, consistent with Right-sided dominance.
If this rather vague hypothesis is correct, the there should be a pattern of more-creative-less precise thinking during Left-sided migraines; and more-precise and less-creative thinking among Right-sided migraineurs - although quite likely this only applies to migraines affecting certain parts of the cerebral hemispheres.
*
In passing; my migraines are boringly simple in form - merely a pain and referred skin tenderness starting in a particular place of my neck, getting more severe and moving to behind my eye. I don't get any exciting visual 'aura' as a warning: no flashing lights, zig-zags, bling spots (although most of my close family do or did - we all suffer migraines to some degree).
But, interestingly, the only reliable prodrome, that sometimes happens and will predict a migraine a few hours ahead, is the idea spontaneously coming-into my head that I don't feel at all migraneous, and maybe I have gotten over migraine and won't have any more of them...
NOTE ADDED: Today was a pretty good example of migraine-enhanced creativity. I was woken early with a particularly nasty migraine that went on for about 8 hours despite escalating treatment - then felt rather wretched from the treatment and the after effect --- but my mind was bubbling with ideas and I ended up scribbling pages of notes and writing five blog posts (including one at Jr Ganymede), so far... (This being a weekday when I have no face-to-face teaching - and which I try to keep clear for thinking, scholarship and 'research' of a theory-focused kind.)
Tuesday, 8 March 2016
The three types of consciousness - my ideas then, and now
First, read this article from 2001 - when I was essentially an adherent of New Age spirituality - it was published in Abraxas - a Colin Wilson focused magazine photocopied and home-published by an eccentric and likeable, Somerset-born writer called Paul Newman (now, alas, deceased):
http://hedweb.com/bgcharlton/ceremonialtime.html
At that time I could see that there was an ancient, participative, immersive and unselfconscious-consciousness which I call here Ceremonial Time; then there was the dead materialistic and nihilistic way of thinking which was economically efficient and necessary to survival in the modern world.
And that was it.
I could see no realistic way out of this impasse: either you were an ineffectual but connected hunter-gatherer or an efficient but alienated modern.
Neither were more nor less ultimately true (I regarded both as more-or-less false) except that - realistically - nobody could live by the unalienated life unless cut-off from modernity. So I regarded this unalienated life as only, in practice, accessible by altered states of consciousness:
http://hedweb.com/bgcharlton/animism.html
Since then, one big step is that I now know that there is something beyond the above two possibilities - there is a third stage which Owen Barfield calls Final Participation: it combines the best of both worlds because it has all the connectedness of the ancient spirituality and all the consciousness and precision of modern consciousness.
This state of mind can be achieved - if you know what you are aiming-at (which needs metaphysical insight and restructuring) - to varying degrees of completeness and intermittently - but this takes will, work, effort and resistances must be overcome.
It is not a matter of surrender, relaxation, just-seeing - it is not a going-back but a going-forward - it cannot be done by artificial or technological means - and it is not a by-product of any actual religion but must be done by individuals (although information on this can, and should, be shared and discussed).
THIS is what I am mostly working on doing, and describing on this blog, at present.
http://hedweb.com/bgcharlton/ceremonialtime.html
At that time I could see that there was an ancient, participative, immersive and unselfconscious-consciousness which I call here Ceremonial Time; then there was the dead materialistic and nihilistic way of thinking which was economically efficient and necessary to survival in the modern world.
And that was it.
I could see no realistic way out of this impasse: either you were an ineffectual but connected hunter-gatherer or an efficient but alienated modern.
Neither were more nor less ultimately true (I regarded both as more-or-less false) except that - realistically - nobody could live by the unalienated life unless cut-off from modernity. So I regarded this unalienated life as only, in practice, accessible by altered states of consciousness:
http://hedweb.com/bgcharlton/animism.html
Since then, one big step is that I now know that there is something beyond the above two possibilities - there is a third stage which Owen Barfield calls Final Participation: it combines the best of both worlds because it has all the connectedness of the ancient spirituality and all the consciousness and precision of modern consciousness.
This state of mind can be achieved - if you know what you are aiming-at (which needs metaphysical insight and restructuring) - to varying degrees of completeness and intermittently - but this takes will, work, effort and resistances must be overcome.
It is not a matter of surrender, relaxation, just-seeing - it is not a going-back but a going-forward - it cannot be done by artificial or technological means - and it is not a by-product of any actual religion but must be done by individuals (although information on this can, and should, be shared and discussed).
THIS is what I am mostly working on doing, and describing on this blog, at present.
Thanks to commenters, and reflections on blogging and Christian evangelism
Thanks to everybody who commented yesterday - this generous response certainly inclines me to keep going a while longer with this blog: knowing that there are a significant number of people out-there who find the blog worthwhile.
It isn't a matter of stopping writing - since that is how I think; indeed an aspect of how I meditate. But the blog is a medium with a certain style and expectations - actually quite a delicate matter - IMO probably more blogs have been somewhat spoiled by their comments (e.g. Steve Sailer, Unqualified Reservations) than were enhanced by them (e.g. View from the Right). But comments are part of the medium.
When I began blogging I did so without allowing comments, because I found the whole business distracting - but after experimentation I found value in the interactive aspect; and it was a major factor in developing the ideas of Thought Prison (especially) and Addicted to Distraction. However, the need to 'manage' comments (and commenters!) is difficult for me, since I am not and do not want to be any kind of manager!
However, part of the problem is laziness - I never managed to get myself to learn the skills required to do web pages (probably this aspect has changed); while blogging is as easy as typing, cutting and pasting. I have only managed to tinker with the HTML facility of blogging in the past few months - to fix it when, for mysterious reasons, the blog post comes-out with wrong and ineradicable-by-normal-means formatting) - but I find it extremely soul destroying work!.
The truly wonderful thing about blogging, for someone whose creativity is somewhat pressured and fecund (I could fairly easily - and would want to - post three or even more times a day, on most non-busy days, on a wide range of subjects - but have found it somewhat counter-productive for this type of blog; not least because it seems to feed the media-frenzy way of thinking and behaving - rather than encouraging contemplation)... the wonderful thing about blogging is its immediacy and that fact that it removes The Editor from the equation.
I used to do a fair bit of journalism - in the early 90s I was writing for the New Scientist, Times Higher Education Supplement and peaked with regular well-paid stuff in The Times (of London) - and that worked for me essentially because the editors printed everything I sent with minimal changes! However, these outlets were cut-off by changes in personnel and policy, and those situations are much rarer nowadays - or else extinct (in my experience) except in very small magazines where a relationship of trust can be established. And anyway, blogging has been much more rewarding and creatively stimulating than any journalism I ever did - money has its price.
But the turn-around time to close the loop with readers with small magazines is terribly slow; and of course there is no small magazine which would take the range of things I blog about - or which would indeed be interested in my notions.
Furthermore, the heart of this blog is Christian evangelism - that is why I keep-on writing it. And the fact is that I am such a odd kind of Christian (through nobody's fault but my own!) that there is no audience in small magazines, or small publishers, for what I do. I am grateful to be included (recently) at the Junior Ganymede group blog, which is essentially a conservative Mormon blog - on the basis of having developed a pen-friendship with the blog-Meister; and to participate, albeit from outside the CJCLDS, with the community there. I think they could benefit from a higher rate of commenting; but on the whole there is a 'feel' about that blog (warm hearted and/ but tough minded) which is something positive that blogs can do.
So - the reason for this blog, and what keeps me going, is the attempt to bring people towards or into 'Mere' Christianity - mainly aiming at those whose metaphysical set-up (fundamental assumptions) are preventing this. As with any kind of evangelical work, each individual counts, and one 'success' is sufficient to justify a lifetime of effort - so from that perspective I have apparently been richly rewarded.
Beyond that, the matter of salvation (accepting the gift of eternal Heavenly life which Christ has already gained for us, but which we personally must accept - with its conditions), is theosis - the matter of becoming a better Christian by becoming more God-like during mortal life.
I still have work to do in developing my own understanding about how this might be possible and 'how to do it' in ways that 'work' for introverted, antisocial, wilful, irritable people such as myself - who have compulsively been picking fights with institutions for decades, and who can barely get themselves even to attend church services from time to time.
Nonetheless, I always recommend picking a real Christian denomination, a specific church - in light of oneself and the avaiable possibilities in a particular time and place - joining it, and living in and by it, as the best Christian path for most people. (I haven't given up on this, by the way - but keep trying intermittently.)
On the other hand, not everybody is most people, there are few 'real' churches available to choose from, and even fewer of these (in my case currently zero) which one is eligible to join - and there are also many 'ways' of being a real, self-identified, faith-full but 'Mere' Christian outside the churches; and that is, I think, my core role here.
Certainly not by being an exemplar of the mainstream and most-useful-for-most-people path - but helpful for a minority of Christian oddballs and eccentrics (in that respect similar to myself) on the one hand - and on the other hand indicating some more individual, intuitive and inward, subjectively-transformative-possibilities for those who are in churches.
Because I think this is the destiny of Western man - the divinely intended direction of Christian life which has so far been rejected or else thwarted. We are not supposed to be contented with a life of obedience and virtue (which is anyway, unattainable); but Christianity ought also to be transformative of the inner Man, of consciousness - albeit partially, intermittently and mainly as an ideal.
Christianity (and salvation) comes first, and acknowledgement of the validity of the rules and practices is essential; the church as an institution (as well as mystically) is essential - and without the institutional church (found in several and various denominations) Christianity will surely die; but Christian thinking ought not to be mundane. We should strive to be 'not of this world' in terms of our innermost experiences.
In sum, too many Christians are stunted by an exclusive focus on morality - because The Good also includes beauty and truth, and the transformation of being a Christian should have as its ideal not only (nor for everyone primarily) the goal of being ever-more-virtuous. That just isn't enough of an aim - especially in a world permeated with evil thought structures - as ours is.
Aside from a micro-minority, virtue is too small and partial to be the primary goal of life. Attempting primarily to be virtuous leads, too often, to a hard-hearted and shallow morality of legalism. Our minds, our very way of thinking - as deep inside us as we know, need to be different and distinct from the mundane, autonomous of the mundane, and a source of purpose, meaning and real (spiritual) relationships.
Everyone can work on this for himself and in himself - and need not wait for the world to change first. But to recognize that this is a valuable thing to do itself requires a metamorphosis of the normal and enforced assumptions and practices of thinking - normal and enforced just as much within Christian churches as outside them.
We are - almost all of us - self-trapped in a self-imposed prison of the dull, materialistic and ultimately nihilistic; but (properly understood) this is not a matter for despair because the Christian is in an uniquely hopeful and strong position to do something effective about this - starting here and now.
In sum: Modern Man is sleepwalking through life - and Christians are not exempt, indeed they are (on the whole) in this regard, no better than anyone else. We all need to wake-up. To wake-up from our state of ambulent sleep we (probably) first need to understand what we are trying to do, start doing it, then we may experience it - and only then will we know it.
So, there is work still to be done with this blog - work in-me, and perhaps from-me.
It isn't a matter of stopping writing - since that is how I think; indeed an aspect of how I meditate. But the blog is a medium with a certain style and expectations - actually quite a delicate matter - IMO probably more blogs have been somewhat spoiled by their comments (e.g. Steve Sailer, Unqualified Reservations) than were enhanced by them (e.g. View from the Right). But comments are part of the medium.
When I began blogging I did so without allowing comments, because I found the whole business distracting - but after experimentation I found value in the interactive aspect; and it was a major factor in developing the ideas of Thought Prison (especially) and Addicted to Distraction. However, the need to 'manage' comments (and commenters!) is difficult for me, since I am not and do not want to be any kind of manager!
However, part of the problem is laziness - I never managed to get myself to learn the skills required to do web pages (probably this aspect has changed); while blogging is as easy as typing, cutting and pasting. I have only managed to tinker with the HTML facility of blogging in the past few months - to fix it when, for mysterious reasons, the blog post comes-out with wrong and ineradicable-by-normal-means formatting) - but I find it extremely soul destroying work!.
The truly wonderful thing about blogging, for someone whose creativity is somewhat pressured and fecund (I could fairly easily - and would want to - post three or even more times a day, on most non-busy days, on a wide range of subjects - but have found it somewhat counter-productive for this type of blog; not least because it seems to feed the media-frenzy way of thinking and behaving - rather than encouraging contemplation)... the wonderful thing about blogging is its immediacy and that fact that it removes The Editor from the equation.
I used to do a fair bit of journalism - in the early 90s I was writing for the New Scientist, Times Higher Education Supplement and peaked with regular well-paid stuff in The Times (of London) - and that worked for me essentially because the editors printed everything I sent with minimal changes! However, these outlets were cut-off by changes in personnel and policy, and those situations are much rarer nowadays - or else extinct (in my experience) except in very small magazines where a relationship of trust can be established. And anyway, blogging has been much more rewarding and creatively stimulating than any journalism I ever did - money has its price.
But the turn-around time to close the loop with readers with small magazines is terribly slow; and of course there is no small magazine which would take the range of things I blog about - or which would indeed be interested in my notions.
Furthermore, the heart of this blog is Christian evangelism - that is why I keep-on writing it. And the fact is that I am such a odd kind of Christian (through nobody's fault but my own!) that there is no audience in small magazines, or small publishers, for what I do. I am grateful to be included (recently) at the Junior Ganymede group blog, which is essentially a conservative Mormon blog - on the basis of having developed a pen-friendship with the blog-Meister; and to participate, albeit from outside the CJCLDS, with the community there. I think they could benefit from a higher rate of commenting; but on the whole there is a 'feel' about that blog (warm hearted and/ but tough minded) which is something positive that blogs can do.
So - the reason for this blog, and what keeps me going, is the attempt to bring people towards or into 'Mere' Christianity - mainly aiming at those whose metaphysical set-up (fundamental assumptions) are preventing this. As with any kind of evangelical work, each individual counts, and one 'success' is sufficient to justify a lifetime of effort - so from that perspective I have apparently been richly rewarded.
Beyond that, the matter of salvation (accepting the gift of eternal Heavenly life which Christ has already gained for us, but which we personally must accept - with its conditions), is theosis - the matter of becoming a better Christian by becoming more God-like during mortal life.
I still have work to do in developing my own understanding about how this might be possible and 'how to do it' in ways that 'work' for introverted, antisocial, wilful, irritable people such as myself - who have compulsively been picking fights with institutions for decades, and who can barely get themselves even to attend church services from time to time.
Nonetheless, I always recommend picking a real Christian denomination, a specific church - in light of oneself and the avaiable possibilities in a particular time and place - joining it, and living in and by it, as the best Christian path for most people. (I haven't given up on this, by the way - but keep trying intermittently.)
On the other hand, not everybody is most people, there are few 'real' churches available to choose from, and even fewer of these (in my case currently zero) which one is eligible to join - and there are also many 'ways' of being a real, self-identified, faith-full but 'Mere' Christian outside the churches; and that is, I think, my core role here.
Certainly not by being an exemplar of the mainstream and most-useful-for-most-people path - but helpful for a minority of Christian oddballs and eccentrics (in that respect similar to myself) on the one hand - and on the other hand indicating some more individual, intuitive and inward, subjectively-transformative-possibilities for those who are in churches.
Because I think this is the destiny of Western man - the divinely intended direction of Christian life which has so far been rejected or else thwarted. We are not supposed to be contented with a life of obedience and virtue (which is anyway, unattainable); but Christianity ought also to be transformative of the inner Man, of consciousness - albeit partially, intermittently and mainly as an ideal.
Christianity (and salvation) comes first, and acknowledgement of the validity of the rules and practices is essential; the church as an institution (as well as mystically) is essential - and without the institutional church (found in several and various denominations) Christianity will surely die; but Christian thinking ought not to be mundane. We should strive to be 'not of this world' in terms of our innermost experiences.
In sum, too many Christians are stunted by an exclusive focus on morality - because The Good also includes beauty and truth, and the transformation of being a Christian should have as its ideal not only (nor for everyone primarily) the goal of being ever-more-virtuous. That just isn't enough of an aim - especially in a world permeated with evil thought structures - as ours is.
Aside from a micro-minority, virtue is too small and partial to be the primary goal of life. Attempting primarily to be virtuous leads, too often, to a hard-hearted and shallow morality of legalism. Our minds, our very way of thinking - as deep inside us as we know, need to be different and distinct from the mundane, autonomous of the mundane, and a source of purpose, meaning and real (spiritual) relationships.
Everyone can work on this for himself and in himself - and need not wait for the world to change first. But to recognize that this is a valuable thing to do itself requires a metamorphosis of the normal and enforced assumptions and practices of thinking - normal and enforced just as much within Christian churches as outside them.
We are - almost all of us - self-trapped in a self-imposed prison of the dull, materialistic and ultimately nihilistic; but (properly understood) this is not a matter for despair because the Christian is in an uniquely hopeful and strong position to do something effective about this - starting here and now.
In sum: Modern Man is sleepwalking through life - and Christians are not exempt, indeed they are (on the whole) in this regard, no better than anyone else. We all need to wake-up. To wake-up from our state of ambulent sleep we (probably) first need to understand what we are trying to do, start doing it, then we may experience it - and only then will we know it.
So, there is work still to be done with this blog - work in-me, and perhaps from-me.
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