Fantasy fiction (Fairy Stories) may currently be the only
source of sustained and convincing ‘good metaphysics’ available to many
people in The West: our only access to the eternal truths of real
reality – as contrasted with the despair-inducing, hope-less,
meaningless, purposeless fake-realities of modern life.
From my new essay published at L Jagi Lamplighter's 'Superversive' (i.e. the opposite of 'subversive') blog:
http://www.ljagilamplighter.com/2017/01/10/on-fairy-stories-and-why-they-matter
Wednesday, 11 January 2017
Tuesday, 10 January 2017
Triple moonbow - was it really there?
Not what I saw - but similar
I just saw a triple moonbow, or moon halo - a rainbow around the gibbous moon (apparently caused by the refraction of ice crystals in high cirrus clouds) - It took about five minutes before I began to see the third faint circle (and five minutes later it was gone).
All the time I was looking at the rainbow I was thinking of Owen Barfield's question - Is it really there?
Brexit is much more hope-full than Trump - and also more likely to fail
My interpretation of divine destiny is that we - in England, Britain, The West - are supposed to move forward to a new kind of Christian society different from both the present secular Leftist modernity and the preceding traditionalist religious societies.
If traditional society was, in essence, the immersion of individuals in a public realm of religious practices (with little self-awareness in distinction from society); the aim is, I believe, a society which takes the increased self-consciousness and individual agency (i.e. personal freedom) of modernity and joins-us-together into a voluntary network of loving relationships.
So, if the traditional past had us as something like young children in an ideal family - dependent, and primarily obedient; in the future we are supposed to be something more like the grown-up (fully agent) adult children in an ideal family.
Therefore, I judge current events by their potential for this next (and final) step in the evolution of consciousness and Christian love.
*
From this perspective Brexit (understood as a popular aspiration, rather than the specific vote which revealed it) potentially represents something altogether new; whereas Trump is much more like going-back to an earlier era.
Post-Brexit, England is in a high risk but high reward situation - which may well lead to nothing at all but might be the start of something very good.
Whereas Trump is quite likely to lead to several immediate benefits; but is - at best - essentially business-as-usual from a few decades ago, with a strong (albeit eccentric) Establishment/ Leader figure (and other major social institutions) at the helm.
(The secular Left nature of Trump and his administration can be seen from the key litmus test of being pro the sexual revolution - the sexual revolution having been the primary ideological battering ram of the secular Left for the past 50 years.)
The power structure and trends (and materialist metaphysics) remain intact - and secular Leftism will resume from the new reset-point.
*
The weakness of Brexit is therefore also its strength. The weakness is that there is no leader, and indeed no leadership class (what little, mostly simulated, leadership there was during the Brexit campaign has either melted away or been swiftly neutralised by the Establishment: corrupted or crushed).
Hence Brexit seems likely to fail in the short term - but if it does not fail then we have something very positive and hope-full for the long term.
Brexit is almost purely a consequence of invisible, politically-powerless people - it is a leaderless movement, unarticulated - unpredicted and unpredictable, undetected and unmeasurable; and apparently utterly uncomprehended and uncontrolled by the major social institutions.
The nature of Brexit is a consequence of the extremity of corruption in Britain; where the Establishment is so totally-dominant among the leadership of all major institutions (which are now thoroughly assimilated and inverted) that they monopolise all leadership and public discourse.
Therefore in Britain change will have to come (if it comes at all) by some wholly-novel 'mechanism' - based upon a mass of individual 'awakenings' - each of which is very private, very autonomous, against-the-odds - and very difficult, therefore, either to control or to extinguish.
*
If the underlying social change represented by Brexit gathers strength, then it would have its effect (at least initially) either invisibly or negatively - since it lacks explicit and recognised representation.
Of course there may be, I hope there is, a small and organised core of honest and competent leadership for the Brexit movement - but this would be secondary; it would have to be secondary, or else Brexit would quickly and easily be snuffed-out.
*
How is positive change even possible under a Brexit scenario? Well, modern society requires, and gets, a truly massive degree of self-policing, self-control, self-punishment - whereby the mass of people have been ideologically inverted into active support of evil (of nonsense and lies enforced as truth; ugliness as beauty; and wickedness as virtue - and vice versa).
This is done by the people, to the people - because it is expedient when Life is regarded relativistically, materialistically, and as terminated by death.
But if people have, as individuals, awoken to a new metaphysical awareness - that is, a new system of assumptions which they know from-themselves - then individuals become agent; and immune to the divide-and-rule system of control.
*
A system of true and self-aware agents would be new; and impossible to control - except by enrolling agency to positive goals - presumably by Love.
At present, modernity denies genuine agency, and indeed real-reality. If this changes - then everything changes. Inexorably, unstoppably, bottom-up.
And Christian agency (assuming that is what eventually emerges) just keeps bouncing back - no matter how many errors and failures it suffers, it cannot be demoralised because of the infinite power of repentance.
When Christian agency is sustained even in the absence of a strong, honest and true church and institutional leadership - then it indomitable; and indeed is all-but indestructible (in the eternal perspective).
If traditional society was, in essence, the immersion of individuals in a public realm of religious practices (with little self-awareness in distinction from society); the aim is, I believe, a society which takes the increased self-consciousness and individual agency (i.e. personal freedom) of modernity and joins-us-together into a voluntary network of loving relationships.
So, if the traditional past had us as something like young children in an ideal family - dependent, and primarily obedient; in the future we are supposed to be something more like the grown-up (fully agent) adult children in an ideal family.
Therefore, I judge current events by their potential for this next (and final) step in the evolution of consciousness and Christian love.
*
From this perspective Brexit (understood as a popular aspiration, rather than the specific vote which revealed it) potentially represents something altogether new; whereas Trump is much more like going-back to an earlier era.
Post-Brexit, England is in a high risk but high reward situation - which may well lead to nothing at all but might be the start of something very good.
Whereas Trump is quite likely to lead to several immediate benefits; but is - at best - essentially business-as-usual from a few decades ago, with a strong (albeit eccentric) Establishment/ Leader figure (and other major social institutions) at the helm.
(The secular Left nature of Trump and his administration can be seen from the key litmus test of being pro the sexual revolution - the sexual revolution having been the primary ideological battering ram of the secular Left for the past 50 years.)
The power structure and trends (and materialist metaphysics) remain intact - and secular Leftism will resume from the new reset-point.
*
The weakness of Brexit is therefore also its strength. The weakness is that there is no leader, and indeed no leadership class (what little, mostly simulated, leadership there was during the Brexit campaign has either melted away or been swiftly neutralised by the Establishment: corrupted or crushed).
Hence Brexit seems likely to fail in the short term - but if it does not fail then we have something very positive and hope-full for the long term.
Brexit is almost purely a consequence of invisible, politically-powerless people - it is a leaderless movement, unarticulated - unpredicted and unpredictable, undetected and unmeasurable; and apparently utterly uncomprehended and uncontrolled by the major social institutions.
The nature of Brexit is a consequence of the extremity of corruption in Britain; where the Establishment is so totally-dominant among the leadership of all major institutions (which are now thoroughly assimilated and inverted) that they monopolise all leadership and public discourse.
Therefore in Britain change will have to come (if it comes at all) by some wholly-novel 'mechanism' - based upon a mass of individual 'awakenings' - each of which is very private, very autonomous, against-the-odds - and very difficult, therefore, either to control or to extinguish.
*
If the underlying social change represented by Brexit gathers strength, then it would have its effect (at least initially) either invisibly or negatively - since it lacks explicit and recognised representation.
Of course there may be, I hope there is, a small and organised core of honest and competent leadership for the Brexit movement - but this would be secondary; it would have to be secondary, or else Brexit would quickly and easily be snuffed-out.
*
How is positive change even possible under a Brexit scenario? Well, modern society requires, and gets, a truly massive degree of self-policing, self-control, self-punishment - whereby the mass of people have been ideologically inverted into active support of evil (of nonsense and lies enforced as truth; ugliness as beauty; and wickedness as virtue - and vice versa).
This is done by the people, to the people - because it is expedient when Life is regarded relativistically, materialistically, and as terminated by death.
But if people have, as individuals, awoken to a new metaphysical awareness - that is, a new system of assumptions which they know from-themselves - then individuals become agent; and immune to the divide-and-rule system of control.
*
A system of true and self-aware agents would be new; and impossible to control - except by enrolling agency to positive goals - presumably by Love.
At present, modernity denies genuine agency, and indeed real-reality. If this changes - then everything changes. Inexorably, unstoppably, bottom-up.
And Christian agency (assuming that is what eventually emerges) just keeps bouncing back - no matter how many errors and failures it suffers, it cannot be demoralised because of the infinite power of repentance.
When Christian agency is sustained even in the absence of a strong, honest and true church and institutional leadership - then it indomitable; and indeed is all-but indestructible (in the eternal perspective).
Notice of Rogue One: a Star Wars Story
[No spoilers]
I went to see this movie with my son - and I knew nothing much about it except what I saw in the trailer and that John C Wright had said it was good.
http://www.scifiwright.com/2016/12/rogue-one-spoiler-free-review
I agree with JCW - Rogue One is good!
I liked the spirit behind the film - its confidently measured build-up; the cast of characters and their development; the fact that the action scenes (fights etc) were the proper length (having been skilfully constructed and edited by criteria related to dramatic effectiveness), and not drawn-out and artificially-extended, as is usual with such things .
And most of all I liked the spiritual dimension which underpinned it and was referenced throughout - this made the film be 'about' more than just an adventure.
Perhaps because of the somewhat Zen-Buddhist-like spirituality, the overall plot of the movie was very unusual, and often surprising - the only other films with this feel and dramatic shape that I have seen were by the great Japanese director Kurosawa.
I can see why Rogue One was a box office success - it is an excellent movie. But what is more important, I think it is likely to be - overall - good for the audience. Timely - one might say.
Well done to the people who made it!
I went to see this movie with my son - and I knew nothing much about it except what I saw in the trailer and that John C Wright had said it was good.
http://www.scifiwright.com/2016/12/rogue-one-spoiler-free-review
I agree with JCW - Rogue One is good!
I liked the spirit behind the film - its confidently measured build-up; the cast of characters and their development; the fact that the action scenes (fights etc) were the proper length (having been skilfully constructed and edited by criteria related to dramatic effectiveness), and not drawn-out and artificially-extended, as is usual with such things .
And most of all I liked the spiritual dimension which underpinned it and was referenced throughout - this made the film be 'about' more than just an adventure.
Perhaps because of the somewhat Zen-Buddhist-like spirituality, the overall plot of the movie was very unusual, and often surprising - the only other films with this feel and dramatic shape that I have seen were by the great Japanese director Kurosawa.
I can see why Rogue One was a box office success - it is an excellent movie. But what is more important, I think it is likely to be - overall - good for the audience. Timely - one might say.
Well done to the people who made it!
Monday, 9 January 2017
The Way of Repentance via strict honesty, judged in an ideal context
Given that we nearly always fail in this world (e.g. see previous post about how we fail to live in a higher conscious state in the mainstream modern life of work and society)... given this endemic failure, our way must be a Way of Repentance.
In other words, the spiritual path is one where we recurrently recognise our failures; and (I would add) this recognition can potentially be attained by a strict and never-ceasing honesty.
We need to recognise that in normal discourse there is (intrinsically):
1. Simplification
2. Selection - in terns both of narrowness and short-termism
3. Bias
4. Wrong motivations (false aims)
The key is to recognise the deficiencies of routine discourse in terms of truth and reality: not true (not even trying to be true) and not embedded in reality (but only in a micro-operational reality, such as bureaucratic imperatives, or here-and-now social advantage or harmony).
Truth and reality are understood in the most total and ideal fashion - truth in terms of the wholeness of validity in every respect (anything short of which, must be recognised as a pragmatic, short-termist 'model' or hypothesis of unknown validity) - and a reality which encompasses divinity and eternity; (including God the creator and divine parent, post-mortal life, and our ultimate destiny and desire to become fully divine sons and daughters of God).
Everything ought to be seen in this perspective - and since this rarely happens we must explicitly notice, acknowledge and repent the failure. We must therefore respond to our deficiencies, and the deficiencies of everyday life and discourse as judged against this ultimate standard.
This implies we should not let any falsehood pass without noting it.
This absolutely requires us to interrupt every conversation or process whenever any such dishonesty (failure of honesty) becomes apparent - explicitly to note this dishonesty.
(It is the difficulty of doing this which holds us back. It is this habit which we need to inculcate in ourselves; by intent and then by practice.)
For instance, any and all questions (or required responses) that are framed in narrow, biased, false-motivated terms should not be answered without explicit reference to the falsehood of the situation.
For example, false statements should be noticed for what they are - eg intentionally deceptive, a screen for bad motivations, or simply hypothetical models which are known (for sure) to be grossly-simplified: selective, distorted, short-termist hence not-true (at best pragmatic means to a proximate end - which must be evaluated for its compatibility with the ultimate end of Life).
So first we experience honesty - in private, and in solitude and detachment - this enables us to recognise the basic situation...
This Way of Repentance is both very positive and motivating, and also starkly realistic.
It is positive in the sense of the fact that by repentance we are continually escaping the narrow and deadly constraints of 'the iron cage of bureaucracy', and the triviality and exploitativeness of normal social life; and on the other hand it is extremely humble in that we are forced continually to recognise our failures: our pervasive, recurrent, and impossible to avoid failures
In other words, the spiritual path is one where we recurrently recognise our failures; and (I would add) this recognition can potentially be attained by a strict and never-ceasing honesty.
We need to recognise that in normal discourse there is (intrinsically):
1. Simplification
2. Selection - in terns both of narrowness and short-termism
3. Bias
4. Wrong motivations (false aims)
The key is to recognise the deficiencies of routine discourse in terms of truth and reality: not true (not even trying to be true) and not embedded in reality (but only in a micro-operational reality, such as bureaucratic imperatives, or here-and-now social advantage or harmony).
Truth and reality are understood in the most total and ideal fashion - truth in terms of the wholeness of validity in every respect (anything short of which, must be recognised as a pragmatic, short-termist 'model' or hypothesis of unknown validity) - and a reality which encompasses divinity and eternity; (including God the creator and divine parent, post-mortal life, and our ultimate destiny and desire to become fully divine sons and daughters of God).
Everything ought to be seen in this perspective - and since this rarely happens we must explicitly notice, acknowledge and repent the failure. We must therefore respond to our deficiencies, and the deficiencies of everyday life and discourse as judged against this ultimate standard.
This implies we should not let any falsehood pass without noting it.
This absolutely requires us to interrupt every conversation or process whenever any such dishonesty (failure of honesty) becomes apparent - explicitly to note this dishonesty.
(It is the difficulty of doing this which holds us back. It is this habit which we need to inculcate in ourselves; by intent and then by practice.)
For instance, any and all questions (or required responses) that are framed in narrow, biased, false-motivated terms should not be answered without explicit reference to the falsehood of the situation.
For example, false statements should be noticed for what they are - eg intentionally deceptive, a screen for bad motivations, or simply hypothetical models which are known (for sure) to be grossly-simplified: selective, distorted, short-termist hence not-true (at best pragmatic means to a proximate end - which must be evaluated for its compatibility with the ultimate end of Life).
So first we experience honesty - in private, and in solitude and detachment - this enables us to recognise the basic situation...
This Way of Repentance is both very positive and motivating, and also starkly realistic.
It is positive in the sense of the fact that by repentance we are continually escaping the narrow and deadly constraints of 'the iron cage of bureaucracy', and the triviality and exploitativeness of normal social life; and on the other hand it is extremely humble in that we are forced continually to recognise our failures: our pervasive, recurrent, and impossible to avoid failures
The limited scope of meditation - bad habits of thinking
There is a striking gulf between what is possible in meditation and in the rest of life of social living and work.
In meditation we may achieve a pure, clear thinking - independent of our sensations and perceptions; and experience an intuitive knowledge of truth and universal reality - but it is astonishing how little impact this has on social/ work life - indeed, it seems often to have no impact at all.
And if our social/ work life is operating at an unsatisfactory level of shallowness, alienation, purposelessness... then it is clear that progress made during meditation may have essentially zero benefit on the rest of life.
Higher states of consciousness are contextual - bad habits are stronger than spiritual insights.
The social milieu (with its materialism, nihilism, despair...) is stronger than our individuality. When immersed in the stream of life we are overwhelmed - the rush and strength of phenomena and events quite overwhelm the practices we have attained during solitary and detached meditation.
We then live unspiritually, we live merely in automatic responses to stimuli - our behaviours merely effects of external causes; our very thoughts seem caught up by stuff we experience through the senses.
On the one hand static detached meditative thought and some sense of spiritual progress - on the other hand simply automatic functioning as a puppet of social and media life and the constraints of work and survival...
So we find many people who have put considerable sincere effort into meditative spirituality (or prayer, or study of scriptures or the practise of religion...) who strike us, in normal life and social or work-interactions, as spiritually just like other people - indistinguishable...
We perceive no special depths in them, no spirituality, no holiness. All their meditation (prayer, study, practices) seem like a complete waste of time: ineffectual, self deceieving...
And - much worse - the same applies to ourselves - in our mainstream normal discourse and behaviour we perceive no depths, spirituality or holiness in ourselves! Our meditative self is aware that our everyday 'personality' is shallow and materialistic, just like everybody else!
We imagine we are acheiving a better, higher, more spiritual state - but 'real life' suggests we are deluding ourselves.
Can anything be done? Yes - but clearly it is difficult: clearly it is very difficult indeed - much, much harder than most people make-out; and only few people have ever gone any way towards overcoming it.
Our ai is to become one of those who are deep, spiritual, holy in the mainstream, everyday, social and working life - transformed right down to the small mundane details, the instant 'automatic' responses, the fine grain of functionality.
In meditation we may achieve a pure, clear thinking - independent of our sensations and perceptions; and experience an intuitive knowledge of truth and universal reality - but it is astonishing how little impact this has on social/ work life - indeed, it seems often to have no impact at all.
And if our social/ work life is operating at an unsatisfactory level of shallowness, alienation, purposelessness... then it is clear that progress made during meditation may have essentially zero benefit on the rest of life.
Higher states of consciousness are contextual - bad habits are stronger than spiritual insights.
The social milieu (with its materialism, nihilism, despair...) is stronger than our individuality. When immersed in the stream of life we are overwhelmed - the rush and strength of phenomena and events quite overwhelm the practices we have attained during solitary and detached meditation.
We then live unspiritually, we live merely in automatic responses to stimuli - our behaviours merely effects of external causes; our very thoughts seem caught up by stuff we experience through the senses.
On the one hand static detached meditative thought and some sense of spiritual progress - on the other hand simply automatic functioning as a puppet of social and media life and the constraints of work and survival...
So we find many people who have put considerable sincere effort into meditative spirituality (or prayer, or study of scriptures or the practise of religion...) who strike us, in normal life and social or work-interactions, as spiritually just like other people - indistinguishable...
We perceive no special depths in them, no spirituality, no holiness. All their meditation (prayer, study, practices) seem like a complete waste of time: ineffectual, self deceieving...
And - much worse - the same applies to ourselves - in our mainstream normal discourse and behaviour we perceive no depths, spirituality or holiness in ourselves! Our meditative self is aware that our everyday 'personality' is shallow and materialistic, just like everybody else!
We imagine we are acheiving a better, higher, more spiritual state - but 'real life' suggests we are deluding ourselves.
Can anything be done? Yes - but clearly it is difficult: clearly it is very difficult indeed - much, much harder than most people make-out; and only few people have ever gone any way towards overcoming it.
Our ai is to become one of those who are deep, spiritual, holy in the mainstream, everyday, social and working life - transformed right down to the small mundane details, the instant 'automatic' responses, the fine grain of functionality.
Sunday, 8 January 2017
Patrick Harpur - interview
Good interview with Patrick Harpur - an English scholar and writer whose wide-ranging work is worth exploring.
Friday, 6 January 2017
Britain's best future already exists in the national unconsicous - Owen Barfield in 1940
If you are convinced that it is well for a man, or it may be a nation, to make something, there are two possible ways of imparting the conviction to him.
You may convince him by argument that such a thing, if made, would be a good and useful thing. That is one way.
On the other hand you may say: “This thing already exists, potentially, and is merely waiting to be brought into visible being. Moreover it is your true nature to make it, because its archetype already exists in you. If you fail to make it you will be acting in a way that is fundamentally false: you will be a sort of hypocrite.”
Now I believe that this second method is the only one which has any chance of success to-day. I also believe that it is inherently a better method, because for one thing it is in harmony with religious faith. Ethics are concerned with what ought to be, where religion is concerned solely with what is.
It is, for instance, not a religious appeal to say “You ought not to be acquisitive,” whether or no we add “because in that way peace will be secured.” It is a religious appeal to say: “It is the will of God that you should not be acquisitive,” whether or no we add “and you will find that it is really your own will also, the will of that true self of yours for whose salvation Christ died.”
The question is, therefore, is there any chance of producing by this second method a widespread conviction in the minds of English people that it is their urgent business to create a new society? In attempting to answer this question one naturally asks first, whether attempt has ever been made before.
A century ago a great man was writing in this country on social change and political questions... Coleridge saw that a new society was needed in Europe and that it could only be brought about by a change in people’s ways of thought and feeling. He virtually foresaw, as the inevitable result of habits of thought which were then comparatively new but were rapidly becoming prevalent, the very disintegration which we are now experiencing. He chose the second method of appeal.
Coleridge tried to familiarise English people with the notion that there is what he called the “idea” of a nation, a constitution, a church – that is, not a theory of these things worked out empirically, but something which they are in fact and in the nature of things striving to be; and that the first problem is to recognise this “idea” in each case.
He failed to “get it across” -- it was beyond his, probably beyond any man’s, powers and he never won more than a small audience. The failure was disastrous because for anyone who will first take the trouble to master Coleridge’s system of thought these writings of his contains a depth of Christian political wisdom which I believe to be unsurpassed by any other English, possibly by any other, thinker.
Is there any better prospect of success to-day? I believe there may be... People have gradually acquired the habit of referring in the most matter of fact, even glib, way to this particular aspect of the “unmanifest.” To this extent we are all accustomed to “moving about in worlds not realised”.
This fact seems to me to create a totally different situation; so that, if Coleridge were here to-day, he would fine exactly what he formerly lacked, a point of contact with the minds of his contemporaries from which at least to make a start.
Am I making my suggestion at all clear? What I want to get at is that the true form of the society which Britain ought to create already exists potentially in the nation’s unconscious; and that an appeal which proceeds on that basis stands the best chance of success.
Edited from Effective Approach to Social Change - Owen Barfield - 1940
http://www.owenbarfield.org/effective-approach-to-social-change
**
Note: This seems an inspiring and energising insight into the nature of desirable social change; and how we ought to set about inducing it.
(And also - very helpfully - what not to do!)
You may convince him by argument that such a thing, if made, would be a good and useful thing. That is one way.
On the other hand you may say: “This thing already exists, potentially, and is merely waiting to be brought into visible being. Moreover it is your true nature to make it, because its archetype already exists in you. If you fail to make it you will be acting in a way that is fundamentally false: you will be a sort of hypocrite.”
Now I believe that this second method is the only one which has any chance of success to-day. I also believe that it is inherently a better method, because for one thing it is in harmony with religious faith. Ethics are concerned with what ought to be, where religion is concerned solely with what is.
It is, for instance, not a religious appeal to say “You ought not to be acquisitive,” whether or no we add “because in that way peace will be secured.” It is a religious appeal to say: “It is the will of God that you should not be acquisitive,” whether or no we add “and you will find that it is really your own will also, the will of that true self of yours for whose salvation Christ died.”
The question is, therefore, is there any chance of producing by this second method a widespread conviction in the minds of English people that it is their urgent business to create a new society? In attempting to answer this question one naturally asks first, whether attempt has ever been made before.
A century ago a great man was writing in this country on social change and political questions... Coleridge saw that a new society was needed in Europe and that it could only be brought about by a change in people’s ways of thought and feeling. He virtually foresaw, as the inevitable result of habits of thought which were then comparatively new but were rapidly becoming prevalent, the very disintegration which we are now experiencing. He chose the second method of appeal.
Coleridge tried to familiarise English people with the notion that there is what he called the “idea” of a nation, a constitution, a church – that is, not a theory of these things worked out empirically, but something which they are in fact and in the nature of things striving to be; and that the first problem is to recognise this “idea” in each case.
He failed to “get it across” -- it was beyond his, probably beyond any man’s, powers and he never won more than a small audience. The failure was disastrous because for anyone who will first take the trouble to master Coleridge’s system of thought these writings of his contains a depth of Christian political wisdom which I believe to be unsurpassed by any other English, possibly by any other, thinker.
Is there any better prospect of success to-day? I believe there may be... People have gradually acquired the habit of referring in the most matter of fact, even glib, way to this particular aspect of the “unmanifest.” To this extent we are all accustomed to “moving about in worlds not realised”.
This fact seems to me to create a totally different situation; so that, if Coleridge were here to-day, he would fine exactly what he formerly lacked, a point of contact with the minds of his contemporaries from which at least to make a start.
Am I making my suggestion at all clear? What I want to get at is that the true form of the society which Britain ought to create already exists potentially in the nation’s unconscious; and that an appeal which proceeds on that basis stands the best chance of success.
Edited from Effective Approach to Social Change - Owen Barfield - 1940
http://www.owenbarfield.org/effective-approach-to-social-change
**
Note: This seems an inspiring and energising insight into the nature of desirable social change; and how we ought to set about inducing it.
(And also - very helpfully - what not to do!)
Quiet - too quiet? Something seems to have changed since Christmas... Spiritual revival?
Things are quiet - much quieter than usual.
From where I sit and walk; there aren't many people out and about. Not many cars, not many shoppers. Internet activity seems sharply diminished - at least, I suddenly have significantly fewer daily page views, and the blogs I look-at have fewer comments. The so-called 'news' seems to be even more content-free than usual...
Apparently, something has happened. What?
My hope is that this represents a withdrawal by many individuals, a withdrawal from the mainstream, virtual reality, media, bureaucratic Matrix-world... that people are making a bit more un-structured time for that most hope-full of all activities: thinking for themselves.
At any rate, this kind of change was what I predicted would need to be one of the first signs of a spiritual revival in the West:
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/signs-of-spiritual-revival-what-to-look.html
From where I sit and walk; there aren't many people out and about. Not many cars, not many shoppers. Internet activity seems sharply diminished - at least, I suddenly have significantly fewer daily page views, and the blogs I look-at have fewer comments. The so-called 'news' seems to be even more content-free than usual...
Apparently, something has happened. What?
My hope is that this represents a withdrawal by many individuals, a withdrawal from the mainstream, virtual reality, media, bureaucratic Matrix-world... that people are making a bit more un-structured time for that most hope-full of all activities: thinking for themselves.
At any rate, this kind of change was what I predicted would need to be one of the first signs of a spiritual revival in the West:
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/signs-of-spiritual-revival-what-to-look.html
What is my reason for saying that agency/ free will entails uncaused causality? Some notes...
My answer is metaphysical - that is, a matter of primary assumptions.
It is that agency is a divine and indivisible attribute. (Coleridge/ Barfield is clear that some things which can be distinguished - discussed separately - such as existence and agency - cannot be divided: this is a characteristic of 'polarity'.)
Indeed, one of the very primary attributes, maybe even the most important.
*
I therefore think of agency as a primary attribute of the essence of the self that - from itself - it can originate. What does agency originate? Thought.
(This derived from Rudolf Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom.)
So the agency we are concerned with is thinking (not doing stuff, not actions).
Some thinking is just a consequence of previous causes; but when it is divine, our thinking is an aspect of our primary essence. This is possible because we are - by origin - eternal intelligences: i.e. divine. This is what makes agency possible.
So, from eternity we have existed and had thoughts originating in our selves. I imagine, as a picture, an immaterial thinking entity; thinking things from itself, not in response to anything at all - this thinking entity would still have thoughts even if nothing else existed.
From this primal state, we have been built-up by the agency of the creator and by various accumulations and modifications - but everything ultimately depends on the fact that we are micro-gods by origin, generating our own realities by thinking. This also means that thinking (cognition) is primary, comes first for us as individuals.
*
The above is, of course, a pluralistic universe, because there are many other entities in the same basic situation; including God. God's role is therefore 'secondary' for us - we do not depend on God either for our primary existence or for agency/ thinking; but of course without God is a very simple state of aloneness.
One consequence is that rejection of God could mean simply declining to 'join' the shared and complex created reality - the economy of love - which was made by God - and this choice is not necessarily evil: we could choose silence, simplicity, aloneness, lack of self-awareness - just being, in our own world of thinking.
*
Often, in not understanding the possibility of agency/ free will, people are making a metaphysical assumption which is dominating.
Something like: everything that happens must either be caused by something else or just happen for no reason, 'randomly'.
But this does not exhaust all possibilities, and indeed is probably not a natural or spontaneous way of thinking. Indeed, randomness doesn't really make sense at all, at any level. It is just a pragmatic mathematical tool.
So, to simplify, most people are probably assuming that everything which happens is caused; a consequence of something else, back to infinity...
But then that doesn't make sense either - as Thomas Aquinas perceived. An infinite regress means that nothing could ever happen, or else everything just makes a gigantic circles of causes.
So, neither randomness nor all actions being consequences of prior causes is imaginable.
*
The way out of this impasse is probably by imagination - if an alternative can be imagined then he can be felt as real.
If a self can be imagined that is a real self (and not just consequences) then it must have the power to be an uncaused case (a first mover).
Such primary causes must be the causes of everything - I don't see that there just has to be one such cause (God) - rather I think the totality is full of such first causes (pluralism) - these are why things happen rather than nothing.
This is a situation I feel I can imagine, which is why it satisfies me. Therefore I accept it as assumption.
By contrast, universal causality, or randomness, don't make sense to me.
The basic problem here is how to do metaphysics, how to evaluate rival metaphysical assumptions...
I don't think we can go deeper than what we can imagine: imagine in a thorough kind of way, when giving it our best shot.
It is that agency is a divine and indivisible attribute. (Coleridge/ Barfield is clear that some things which can be distinguished - discussed separately - such as existence and agency - cannot be divided: this is a characteristic of 'polarity'.)
Indeed, one of the very primary attributes, maybe even the most important.
*
I therefore think of agency as a primary attribute of the essence of the self that - from itself - it can originate. What does agency originate? Thought.
(This derived from Rudolf Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom.)
So the agency we are concerned with is thinking (not doing stuff, not actions).
Some thinking is just a consequence of previous causes; but when it is divine, our thinking is an aspect of our primary essence. This is possible because we are - by origin - eternal intelligences: i.e. divine. This is what makes agency possible.
So, from eternity we have existed and had thoughts originating in our selves. I imagine, as a picture, an immaterial thinking entity; thinking things from itself, not in response to anything at all - this thinking entity would still have thoughts even if nothing else existed.
From this primal state, we have been built-up by the agency of the creator and by various accumulations and modifications - but everything ultimately depends on the fact that we are micro-gods by origin, generating our own realities by thinking. This also means that thinking (cognition) is primary, comes first for us as individuals.
*
The above is, of course, a pluralistic universe, because there are many other entities in the same basic situation; including God. God's role is therefore 'secondary' for us - we do not depend on God either for our primary existence or for agency/ thinking; but of course without God is a very simple state of aloneness.
One consequence is that rejection of God could mean simply declining to 'join' the shared and complex created reality - the economy of love - which was made by God - and this choice is not necessarily evil: we could choose silence, simplicity, aloneness, lack of self-awareness - just being, in our own world of thinking.
*
Often, in not understanding the possibility of agency/ free will, people are making a metaphysical assumption which is dominating.
Something like: everything that happens must either be caused by something else or just happen for no reason, 'randomly'.
But this does not exhaust all possibilities, and indeed is probably not a natural or spontaneous way of thinking. Indeed, randomness doesn't really make sense at all, at any level. It is just a pragmatic mathematical tool.
So, to simplify, most people are probably assuming that everything which happens is caused; a consequence of something else, back to infinity...
But then that doesn't make sense either - as Thomas Aquinas perceived. An infinite regress means that nothing could ever happen, or else everything just makes a gigantic circles of causes.
So, neither randomness nor all actions being consequences of prior causes is imaginable.
*
The way out of this impasse is probably by imagination - if an alternative can be imagined then he can be felt as real.
If a self can be imagined that is a real self (and not just consequences) then it must have the power to be an uncaused case (a first mover).
Such primary causes must be the causes of everything - I don't see that there just has to be one such cause (God) - rather I think the totality is full of such first causes (pluralism) - these are why things happen rather than nothing.
This is a situation I feel I can imagine, which is why it satisfies me. Therefore I accept it as assumption.
By contrast, universal causality, or randomness, don't make sense to me.
The basic problem here is how to do metaphysics, how to evaluate rival metaphysical assumptions...
I don't think we can go deeper than what we can imagine: imagine in a thorough kind of way, when giving it our best shot.
Thursday, 5 January 2017
The world of thinking
http://blogs.ft.com/photo-diary/tag/northumberland
As I stood and looked at the stars; I had an insight that the world of thinking was the primary world -- Not that it was the only world: not solipsism nor idealism: not that the material is unreal...
But that the proper place and destiny is known in the mode or realm of thinking. And only there (in its fullness).
That in thinking I was divine, and that in thinking there were no limits on knowing.
(In practice thinking is partial, distorted, limited - but in principle there is no barrier or constraint on knowledge.)
Of course, love comes before all - and love is also in thinking: love is active and binding in thinking; and this is why I felt such happiness there-and-then. And this love includes those who have died or are estranged: that is a measure of the boundless power of thinking.
But is thinking good? - Is it always and necessarily good?
Well, it may be contaminated with falsehood, resentment, despair etc - which all amount to the failure of thinking. Because thinking of the kind I mean is intrinsically pure, real, good - its concepts are universal and eternal truths.
Anything which is known in the light of pure, real eternal truth is itself true.
That is exactly how we know truth.
(We don't know truth from facts - we know facts from truth)
And understanding of facts (not their 'factual nature') is then the quest.
Wednesday, 4 January 2017
Moth Attack!
But how? I threw-out fully half my wardrobe and washed all the rest; we found a horrendous nest-origin among an old, semi-hidden box of wool and knitting needles; we wiped, hoovered, swabbed and sprayed - We felt safe...
But... Last week. Again.
Eventually under the wardrobe I found a small, felt, Tyrolean hat I had kept as a memento from childhood; and inside was an horrendous moth headquarters and fortress. It had lain there, secretly incubating for two years.
So now, at last, we are All Clear.
Or are we?...
The Butterfly Effect is (metaphysical) nonsense with near-zero real-world relevance
Well, it is. And the reason is that the initial intervention is assumed to be uncaused - hence undetermined - while everything after that point is assumed to be determined (albeit in a non-linear fashion).
So, the flapping of a butterfly's wings is implicitly supposed to be uncaused - by the free will and agency of the butterfly; but from the moment those wings have flapped there is assumed to be no further agency, but events unroll inevitably (e.g. toward a hurricane somewhere else...).
This bizarre assumption probably comes from the origins of the Butterfly Effect in computer programming - including analogue computing: the programmer (implicitly assumed to be an undetermined agent) stands outside the system he is manipulating, but his set-up and interventions unroll deterministically.
In the real world, however, the validity of the Butterfly Effect depends on agency. In the first place, the Butterfly wing-flap may not be an act of agency, but may itself be a determined consequence of prior causes - in which case, the Butterfly wings do not cause anything at all - they are merely one link in a multi-factorial causal chain of unknown origin.
On the other hand, if the Butterfly Wing-flap was due to Butterfly agency, hence uncaused; then we have acknowledged the reality of agency in the world, and cannot afterwards coherently assume that agency is necessarily absent from the system from that point (i.e. we cannot assume that the entirely of the system is deterministic if the programmer is not).
(In computer programming terms, if the initial programmer has the free will/ agency needed to set-up a deterministic system and set it into motion; then other programmers may be a part of the system and divert it unpredictably (because interventions were uncaused) - or further programmers may intervene from outside the system to make changes to the outcome.)
In a softer version; the Butterfly Effect is mistakenly used to refer to the ancient observation that small causes may have large outcomes, and large outcomes may depend on small causes; as in the old nursery rhyme 'For want of a nail' - which traces the death of King Richard III in the Battle of Bosworth to the lack of a single horseshoe nail.
But even here, the Butterfly Effect gets misused and generally misleads. What is valid about the Butterfly Effect is to explain one reason why empirical and statistical methods that work well over the short term become worthless, rapidly as the timescale is extended. The longer-term is therefore either unpredictable; or else requires the measurement of entirely different variables.
For example weather forecasting, in the UK, sometimes works well over a few hours or a day, based on measures such as wind speed and direction and satellite pictures (and predictive programming); but becomes useless over a few days, and is worthless for medium- and long-term forecasting. Medium/ Long term forecasting either can't be done at all, or seems to be done better by focusing on different measures; for example the activities and doings of the sun and moon, somewhat as Piers Corbyn does. And the worthlessness of standard weather forecasting methods for medium/ long term forecasting based-on wind etc is utterly unaffected by the use of ever bigger superexpensive supercomputers (which are periodically successfully demanded by the state funded forecasting services, and which never work because they never can work).
On the whole, however, it is clear that the Butterfly Effect has approximately zero real-world relevance or validity - whether defined strictly, or as the term is used in pop culture.
So, the flapping of a butterfly's wings is implicitly supposed to be uncaused - by the free will and agency of the butterfly; but from the moment those wings have flapped there is assumed to be no further agency, but events unroll inevitably (e.g. toward a hurricane somewhere else...).
This bizarre assumption probably comes from the origins of the Butterfly Effect in computer programming - including analogue computing: the programmer (implicitly assumed to be an undetermined agent) stands outside the system he is manipulating, but his set-up and interventions unroll deterministically.
In the real world, however, the validity of the Butterfly Effect depends on agency. In the first place, the Butterfly wing-flap may not be an act of agency, but may itself be a determined consequence of prior causes - in which case, the Butterfly wings do not cause anything at all - they are merely one link in a multi-factorial causal chain of unknown origin.
On the other hand, if the Butterfly Wing-flap was due to Butterfly agency, hence uncaused; then we have acknowledged the reality of agency in the world, and cannot afterwards coherently assume that agency is necessarily absent from the system from that point (i.e. we cannot assume that the entirely of the system is deterministic if the programmer is not).
(In computer programming terms, if the initial programmer has the free will/ agency needed to set-up a deterministic system and set it into motion; then other programmers may be a part of the system and divert it unpredictably (because interventions were uncaused) - or further programmers may intervene from outside the system to make changes to the outcome.)
In a softer version; the Butterfly Effect is mistakenly used to refer to the ancient observation that small causes may have large outcomes, and large outcomes may depend on small causes; as in the old nursery rhyme 'For want of a nail' - which traces the death of King Richard III in the Battle of Bosworth to the lack of a single horseshoe nail.
But even here, the Butterfly Effect gets misused and generally misleads. What is valid about the Butterfly Effect is to explain one reason why empirical and statistical methods that work well over the short term become worthless, rapidly as the timescale is extended. The longer-term is therefore either unpredictable; or else requires the measurement of entirely different variables.
For example weather forecasting, in the UK, sometimes works well over a few hours or a day, based on measures such as wind speed and direction and satellite pictures (and predictive programming); but becomes useless over a few days, and is worthless for medium- and long-term forecasting. Medium/ Long term forecasting either can't be done at all, or seems to be done better by focusing on different measures; for example the activities and doings of the sun and moon, somewhat as Piers Corbyn does. And the worthlessness of standard weather forecasting methods for medium/ long term forecasting based-on wind etc is utterly unaffected by the use of ever bigger superexpensive supercomputers (which are periodically successfully demanded by the state funded forecasting services, and which never work because they never can work).
On the whole, however, it is clear that the Butterfly Effect has approximately zero real-world relevance or validity - whether defined strictly, or as the term is used in pop culture.
Tuesday, 3 January 2017
Notice of The Books of Unexpected Enlightenment by L Jagi Lamplighter
There are not many new novels that I enjoy these days (although I used to read recent fiction voraciously up to my early twenties) so I am always delighted to discover something that hits-the-mark; and I will always re-read any novels that I have enjoyed (often several times).
So I was very pleased to come across the Books of Unexpected Enlightenment by L Jagi Lamplighter:
http://www.ljagilamplighter.com/works/the-unexpected-enlightenment-of-rachel-griffin
(I will not be including any 'spoilers' in this notice (it is not a 'review') so that anyone who likes the sound of the books can discover what happens for himself or herself.)
There are three novels, so far, in this series; and I have enjoyed them all very much, with re-reads being even better than first time.
They are distinctly odd books, to me; I haven't come across anything of the kind before. They are light and humorous in tone, mostly - pitched at a Young Adult readership; but also very complex in terms of their magical and fantasy system ('hard' fantasy in terms of world-building); and they offer a lot of 'glimpses' of further vistas and back-stories (in the same kind of way The Hobbit does).
Many of the 'ingredients' of the books are quote explicitly, and indeed self-referentially, drawn from other fantasy works (such as the Narnia Chronicles and Harry Potter) - but the way they are combined, twisted and added-to creates an unique 'flavour' which I find very appealing.
The character of 13 year old magical schoolgirl Rachel Griffin provides the point of view, and she makes an unusually multi-faceted heroine for this kind of book; yet she reminds me of several 'tomboyish' young women I have from real life - both in my schooldays and as an adult. Rachel combines courage with romanticism, innocence with encyclopaedic knowledge, she is independent - yet very loving of family and devoted to friends.
Indeed, her character and the books are strange in that way that sometimes strikes me when I realise (for the umpteenth time, yet it is still rare) that women are different from men not just biologically but in some deep and existential fashion; such that it is like sharing a world with elves or some other 'species'!
(As a believer in Mormon theology, I regard men and women as complementary parts and the completion of the wholeness of Man (there is no generic 'human being'); and that we all are either a man or a woman, in essence and from eternity. So to know Man it is not enough to know men - that is incomplete; one must also know women.)
The Rachel Griffin books are therefore fantasy fictions from a woman's spiritual perspective in a way that is not the case for, say, Harry Potter - and in a totally different way from the large mass of anti-men fiction-by-women.
(Which itself isn't all bad by any means! One of my absolute favourite novelists, Barbara Pym, is very bitter about men - not for doctrinaire reasons, but as a consequence of her own unusual nature and experiences.)
Anyway, Jagi Lamplighter's Books of Unexpected Enlightenment are both light and entertaining reading, packed with adventure, incident, love and friendship; but they also have touches and glimpses of something distinctive and deep. Some people, like me, will find them quite special and endearing with a flavour all their own.
So I was very pleased to come across the Books of Unexpected Enlightenment by L Jagi Lamplighter:
http://www.ljagilamplighter.com/works/the-unexpected-enlightenment-of-rachel-griffin
(I will not be including any 'spoilers' in this notice (it is not a 'review') so that anyone who likes the sound of the books can discover what happens for himself or herself.)
There are three novels, so far, in this series; and I have enjoyed them all very much, with re-reads being even better than first time.
They are distinctly odd books, to me; I haven't come across anything of the kind before. They are light and humorous in tone, mostly - pitched at a Young Adult readership; but also very complex in terms of their magical and fantasy system ('hard' fantasy in terms of world-building); and they offer a lot of 'glimpses' of further vistas and back-stories (in the same kind of way The Hobbit does).
Many of the 'ingredients' of the books are quote explicitly, and indeed self-referentially, drawn from other fantasy works (such as the Narnia Chronicles and Harry Potter) - but the way they are combined, twisted and added-to creates an unique 'flavour' which I find very appealing.
The character of 13 year old magical schoolgirl Rachel Griffin provides the point of view, and she makes an unusually multi-faceted heroine for this kind of book; yet she reminds me of several 'tomboyish' young women I have from real life - both in my schooldays and as an adult. Rachel combines courage with romanticism, innocence with encyclopaedic knowledge, she is independent - yet very loving of family and devoted to friends.
Indeed, her character and the books are strange in that way that sometimes strikes me when I realise (for the umpteenth time, yet it is still rare) that women are different from men not just biologically but in some deep and existential fashion; such that it is like sharing a world with elves or some other 'species'!
(As a believer in Mormon theology, I regard men and women as complementary parts and the completion of the wholeness of Man (there is no generic 'human being'); and that we all are either a man or a woman, in essence and from eternity. So to know Man it is not enough to know men - that is incomplete; one must also know women.)
The Rachel Griffin books are therefore fantasy fictions from a woman's spiritual perspective in a way that is not the case for, say, Harry Potter - and in a totally different way from the large mass of anti-men fiction-by-women.
(Which itself isn't all bad by any means! One of my absolute favourite novelists, Barbara Pym, is very bitter about men - not for doctrinaire reasons, but as a consequence of her own unusual nature and experiences.)
Anyway, Jagi Lamplighter's Books of Unexpected Enlightenment are both light and entertaining reading, packed with adventure, incident, love and friendship; but they also have touches and glimpses of something distinctive and deep. Some people, like me, will find them quite special and endearing with a flavour all their own.
Monday, 2 January 2017
You, personally, are going to be tested - and soon. Be Ready
In CS Lewis's famous phrase from That Hideous Strength, which has become something of a 'meme' on this blog: Things are coming to a point.
https://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=coming+to+a+point
This means that more and more people are being tested, being asked to make a choice; and if this has not yet happened to you, then it is more likely to happen this year than ever before:
http://meetingthemasters.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/the-test-of-today.html
Almost certainly you are already deeply morally compromised, probably by dishonesty (by having engaged in deniable but deliberate misleading) - we all are compromised - but when things come to a point, you personally will be asked actively and explicitly to give support to something that you know to be wrong.
This (whatever it is) is not trivial (nothing is trivial). If you can get into trouble for not doing it, then it is important.
(You don't get to choose the battle ground. Your choice is simply whether to surrender, as usual, to go-with-the-flow. Or not-to-surrender. To refuse. That is as much as most people are given to 'fight' over. Nothing glamourous - simply saying 'no, I won't'. It is enough - it is everything.)
This moment, this choice and decision, will change you one way or the other - that is the test; that indeed, is exactly why you have been put into the position.
Probably, this is a decision which you will face existentially isolated, and in making the right choice and doing the right thing - if that is what you do - there will probably be little or no visible support from those with power and influence (that is the nature of our modern condition in The West).
The issues, your motives, and your position will be lyingly misrepresented to other people; your character will be slandered; and the lies and slanders will (on the whole) be believed and repeated.
Be Ready.
Think through this situation in advance. Inhabit it imaginatively.
I am not advising you how to 'fight' in the public arena; because that can't be done - also, you are almost certain to make errors. You will also be likely to say or do things that actually help your enemies and worsen your situation (whatever they most want you to do, advise you to do, will almost certainly be bad for your situation - and it may not be possible to find out what would be the best tactical alternative).
Repentance
One thing I would emphasise - which I think has been neglected - is therefore the infinite power of repentance.
1. You are already morally compromised by your decisions and behaviours of the past - consistency suggests that you 'might as well' continue as you have done... But repentance wipes the slate clean and gives you a fresh start.
2. You will make mistakes in understanding your situation - you know something is wrong, something is going on, that you have reached a point of decision; but it is likely that you misunderstand things due to ignorance and inability - your first, second. third etc attempt to formulate your situation is wrong or badly emphasised... It doesn't matter! - in an ultimate sense: simply repent your errors as they emerge, and try again to the best of your ability.
3. Just as you will misunderstand your situation, so you will make mistakes in action: you will say the wrong thing, do the wrong things, trust the wrong people and doubt those who are on your side. You will be foolish - people will mock you, you will feel ashamed... So be it. Repent your mistakes and foolishness, and bounce back.
I repeat: Christian repentance is a weapon of infinite power that cannot be defeated. No matter if it feels like You against The World - with repentance you cannot lose.
You Cannot Lose.
(Note - If you don't already know what is repentance; then you need to find-out. If you are not already a Christian; then you should make it a priority as of this very moment. It is, after all, the work of an instant to become a Christian; and the status is open to everybody, without exception, at any time or place. Nobody and nothing can stop you. And if you don't understand how that is possible - then you need to find-out.)
https://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=coming+to+a+point
This means that more and more people are being tested, being asked to make a choice; and if this has not yet happened to you, then it is more likely to happen this year than ever before:
http://meetingthemasters.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/the-test-of-today.html
Almost certainly you are already deeply morally compromised, probably by dishonesty (by having engaged in deniable but deliberate misleading) - we all are compromised - but when things come to a point, you personally will be asked actively and explicitly to give support to something that you know to be wrong.
This (whatever it is) is not trivial (nothing is trivial). If you can get into trouble for not doing it, then it is important.
(You don't get to choose the battle ground. Your choice is simply whether to surrender, as usual, to go-with-the-flow. Or not-to-surrender. To refuse. That is as much as most people are given to 'fight' over. Nothing glamourous - simply saying 'no, I won't'. It is enough - it is everything.)
This moment, this choice and decision, will change you one way or the other - that is the test; that indeed, is exactly why you have been put into the position.
Probably, this is a decision which you will face existentially isolated, and in making the right choice and doing the right thing - if that is what you do - there will probably be little or no visible support from those with power and influence (that is the nature of our modern condition in The West).
The issues, your motives, and your position will be lyingly misrepresented to other people; your character will be slandered; and the lies and slanders will (on the whole) be believed and repeated.
Be Ready.
Think through this situation in advance. Inhabit it imaginatively.
I am not advising you how to 'fight' in the public arena; because that can't be done - also, you are almost certain to make errors. You will also be likely to say or do things that actually help your enemies and worsen your situation (whatever they most want you to do, advise you to do, will almost certainly be bad for your situation - and it may not be possible to find out what would be the best tactical alternative).
Repentance
One thing I would emphasise - which I think has been neglected - is therefore the infinite power of repentance.
1. You are already morally compromised by your decisions and behaviours of the past - consistency suggests that you 'might as well' continue as you have done... But repentance wipes the slate clean and gives you a fresh start.
2. You will make mistakes in understanding your situation - you know something is wrong, something is going on, that you have reached a point of decision; but it is likely that you misunderstand things due to ignorance and inability - your first, second. third etc attempt to formulate your situation is wrong or badly emphasised... It doesn't matter! - in an ultimate sense: simply repent your errors as they emerge, and try again to the best of your ability.
3. Just as you will misunderstand your situation, so you will make mistakes in action: you will say the wrong thing, do the wrong things, trust the wrong people and doubt those who are on your side. You will be foolish - people will mock you, you will feel ashamed... So be it. Repent your mistakes and foolishness, and bounce back.
I repeat: Christian repentance is a weapon of infinite power that cannot be defeated. No matter if it feels like You against The World - with repentance you cannot lose.
You Cannot Lose.
(Note - If you don't already know what is repentance; then you need to find-out. If you are not already a Christian; then you should make it a priority as of this very moment. It is, after all, the work of an instant to become a Christian; and the status is open to everybody, without exception, at any time or place. Nobody and nothing can stop you. And if you don't understand how that is possible - then you need to find-out.)
Sunday, 1 January 2017
Review: Brian Sibley's radio dramatisations of Tolkien's Tales from the Perilous Realm
I came across this little gem while browsing a list of JRR Tolkien Audiobooks available for download - it is a set of four dramatised radio programmes broadcast on the BBC in 1992. What filled me with anticipation was that they were done by Brian Sibley. When I approach Sibley's work I do so with pleasure and confidence that it will be sympathetic to the spirit of the original work, as well as creatively inspired. I wasn't disappointed... Continued at:
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/review-of-tales-from-perilous-real.html
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/review-of-tales-from-perilous-real.html
Meaning, Purpose, Evolution
Meaning:
One hot summer afternoon, 20 June 1921, Alfred Watkins was at Blackwardine in Herefordshire. On a high hilltop he stopped and looked at his map before meditating on the view below him. Suddenly, in a flash, he saw something which no one in England had seen for perhaps thousands of years.
Watkins saw straight through the surface of the landscape to a layer deposited in some remote prehistoric age. The barrier of time melted and, spread across the country, he saw a web of lines linking the holy places and sites of antiquity. Mounds, old stones, crosses and old crossroads, churches placed on pre-Christian sites, legendary trees, moats and holy wells stood in exact alignments that ran over beacon hills to cairns and mountain peaks.
In one moment of transcendental perception Watkins entered a magic world of prehistoric Britain, a world whose very existence had been forgotten.
John Michell - From The View over Atlantis (1969)
More at: http://albionawakening.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/michell-and-watkins.html
Purpose:
To recognise 'design' is to recognise meaning; and it is an essential thing.
Because if our lives, the world, everything isn't designed, then it has no meaning - and the only problem remaining is to explain why, then, we should ever have developed the widespread and resistant that there was or is meaning.
If the world is designed then there was a designer - and we are led to a creator deity (at this stage a deity, not necessarily a god - the deity might be some abstract principle of organisation, a force, the universal and necessary way of things...).
But for us to discern design and meaning is only one step - because Why?
For example: Why is there meaning, how come we, personally, can discern it truly - and what difference does, or should, this meaning make to us? What are the implications of the truth of design?
Thus meaning leads onto purpose - and those who wish us to regard life as purposeless will therefore always argue first of all that it has no meaning; and that life is some kind of a combination of mechaniscal determinism and statistical randomness - Life Just Happens - therefore it cannot have purpose.
On the other side, anyone who sees a meaning in life will, sooner or later, be prone to wonder what is its purpose. And for there to be any kind of a purpose to the whole things and ourselves in it, which actually matters - then we are led to a personal deity: a god who has some concern not just for setting-up a created universe but also for us as individuals, and our place in the scheme of things.
From this comes the secondary question of why this hasn't already happened, what is stopping it? This leads onto theories of the nature of God. It also leads to evolution ...
Evolution:
Evolution is about the change, movement, stages beyween then, now and the future; it is about the trajectory and nature of the difference between where we have been and where we are supposed to be going.
All coherent theology is evolutionary, because there is always a gap between what wee are and what we should be - requiring some kind of evolution to get from one to the other.
If we regard meaning pointing to purpose; then purpose points to evolution - we live in a reality which has evoluton built-in; and it would be useful to have some description of how this works: what evolution is like...
The most favoured and comprehensible description of evolution is that it is like growth and development; the transition from foetus to child to adult - the idea that this is a metaphor for the (intended, destined) evolution of everything: an analogy for the nature of reality.
Saturday, 31 December 2016
Tolkien and the Inklings/ Notion Club - does fiction recall real life?
I return to re-read Tolkien's novel-fragment The Notion Club Papers every year or so; and on the current encounter it struck me that - given the NCPs history of having been read-to The Inklings, as a light entertainment initially (later ripening to an extremely ambitious conception - perhaps the most ambitious work Tolkien ever projected), the very first significant incident of the book seems likely to refer back to an actual incident in an Inklings meeting.
What happens is that Ramer (who is substantially a Tolkien alter ego, being a philologist and science fiction/ fantasy writer) has just read a story to the Notion Club.
The club responds to Ramer's story with various jovial and satirical comments, the substance of which is that they much liked the story itself - which we don't know much about, but which apparently was set on another planet; but found the 'frame' describing getting-to and back-from this planet unconvincing and contrived, while the story itself had the ring of truth.
Indeed, some of the club members intuit that the story was not entirely fictional, in the sense that it seemed as if Ramer had actually 'been there', in the world he described.
Later, Ramer reveals that this is true - he has actually visited this other planet, in reality - but in a dream.
If we suppose that Tolkien was writing this episode based-upon an actual occurrence in an Inklings meeting, which seems likely; what story of Tolkien's might it refer to?
Continued at:
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/does-notion-clubs-fictional-response-to.html
What happens is that Ramer (who is substantially a Tolkien alter ego, being a philologist and science fiction/ fantasy writer) has just read a story to the Notion Club.
The club responds to Ramer's story with various jovial and satirical comments, the substance of which is that they much liked the story itself - which we don't know much about, but which apparently was set on another planet; but found the 'frame' describing getting-to and back-from this planet unconvincing and contrived, while the story itself had the ring of truth.
Indeed, some of the club members intuit that the story was not entirely fictional, in the sense that it seemed as if Ramer had actually 'been there', in the world he described.
Later, Ramer reveals that this is true - he has actually visited this other planet, in reality - but in a dream.
If we suppose that Tolkien was writing this episode based-upon an actual occurrence in an Inklings meeting, which seems likely; what story of Tolkien's might it refer to?
Continued at:
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/does-notion-clubs-fictional-response-to.html
Friday, 30 December 2016
The truth of Imagination - from William Wildblood
Excerpt:
More at:
http://albionawakening.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/imagination-is-vision.html
We currently live in an outer world where randomness and general purposelessness are the order of the day. Imagination takes us to an inner world of meaning where beauty is truth, and myth and fantasy are bridges into that world insofar as they recognise that there is something behind the scenes of outer appearance.
None of this means there is anything intrinsically spiritual about myth or fantasy or even imagination, but they can point to the spiritual. The world of myth and fantasy is a middle ground between the material world and the spiritual world, and that is why it seems more real than the former while, in its turn, is less real than the latter.
None of this means there is anything intrinsically spiritual about myth or fantasy or even imagination, but they can point to the spiritual. The world of myth and fantasy is a middle ground between the material world and the spiritual world, and that is why it seems more real than the former while, in its turn, is less real than the latter.
More at:
Religious *and* spiritual: Prejudicial hostility to non-normal states of consciousness, mysticism, magic, 'the occult' etc among (real) Christians
Many modern Christians, including real Christians, have a reflexive and inflexible hostility to 'Religious Experience' - that is, to anything like mysticism, magic or what they term the occult.
Such attitudes come-out, for example, in the visceral hostility to JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, and Harry Potter as being demonically-inspired and/ or tending to lead people into evil preoccupations and practices - such as conjuring spirits.
This particular mind set is associated with Low Church, Charismatic type Protestants (especially in the USA). Such people claim to be able to draw a sharp line between Religious Experience (such as speaking in tongues or faith healings: good) and Magic (bad), usually defined on the presence of key words or practices such as wizard, witch, divination and spells.
Similar - albeit 'less extreme' attitudes are also prevalent in a mind-set to be found among Western and Eastern Catholics of a Traditionalist type, and the more traditionalist, scriptural Protestant churches.
What this amounts-to is the belief that normal everyday consciousness is the only 'safe' way to be - and any form of altered consciousness - such as is associated with mystical, magical and occult experiences or knowledge - is to be avoided, absolutely (or rejected if it happens) as being likely to be of demonic origin.
In a nutshell, such people are real Christians - and yet they are solidly against Religious Experiences, in the modern world; because these may be evil in origin or effect.
Such traditionalists will acknowledge that in theory Religious and mystical experiences may also be of divine or angelic origin (as is amply attested in The Bible, the early church, among Christian Saints of the past etc.). This might be taken to imply a middle path - of approving mystical experience but with caution; and indeed that is my own view of things.
But in practice, Traditionalists are prejudiced against Religious Experiences - by which I mean they pre-judge all claims of mysticism to be fraudulent or deluded unless-proven-otherwise; and in practice there never-can-be objective, public proof otherwise.
Such people will never actually be convinced of any proof of or evidence for the validity of mystical experience - at least not when mystical claims are made by people or groups they dislike - which amounts to people outwith their own denomination +/- a shortlist of other approved churches.
(Part of this is that they typically have an unexamined assumption that true Religious Experiences only happen to those of exceptional sanctity; and such people are extremely rare, especially in the modern world. Where they get this assumption, given the vast number of Biblical and real-life counter-examples - and the fact that Jesus came, and Christianity was founded, explicity for sinners - I can't imagine: but they clearly do assume it.)
I am sure that the Fundamentalist or Traditionalist prejudices against Religious Experience/ magic and mysticism is a very major error of modern Christianity; because Christianity is essentially a mystical religion, and if mystical aspects (whether they are labelled magic, occult or whatever) are excluded; then the faith is dead - becomes a mere matter of obedience to a bureaucracy or set or rules.
(Obedience to legitimate authority is a virtue - true; but I see not the slightest sign that Jesus regarded it as the primary virtue!)
Particularly damaging is that this prejudice against Religious Experiences implicitly consigns modern Christianity to operate within Modern Consciousness - which is of its nature materialist, reductionist and positivist. Indeed Modern Consciousness is a truly horrible thing; which drains contemporary life of felt meaning and purpose; so that the Christian who lives within it can have a faith only 'in theory' - because any validating mystical experiences will be rejected as demonic.
If ever there was a playing into Satan's hands, and doing just exactly what he wants: then this is it! - A Christianity which (from a secular perspective) has all the disadvantages of an absurdly magical foundation; yet vehemently rejects all possible experiential advantages of a magical consciousness!
So we get the weird spectacle of the adherents of a magical religion, with a magically validated organisation (i.e. a church), who spend their time reading and discussing magical events (in the Bible, lives of Saints etc), and performing magical rituals such as the Eucharist and Prayer... yet living within a distinctively modern and rootedly anti-magical discourse which expends great energy in distancing itself from any people who actually experience magic in the here and now and strive to live in a more expanded and sensitive consciousness than that of a modern bureaucracy!
In sum Christianity need to be spiritual as well as religious; and must not be squeamish or prejudiced against mysticism, magic, the occult.
Yes, this is a risk; but Life is a risk: intrinsically (Christianity takes a middle-way about pretty much everything except Love, Repentance and Forgiveness) - and the opposite risk of promoting a dry, legalistic, merely doctrinal Christianity is to advocate a mere corpse of Christianity.
Mysticism is, simply, a risk we have to take.
Such attitudes come-out, for example, in the visceral hostility to JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, and Harry Potter as being demonically-inspired and/ or tending to lead people into evil preoccupations and practices - such as conjuring spirits.
This particular mind set is associated with Low Church, Charismatic type Protestants (especially in the USA). Such people claim to be able to draw a sharp line between Religious Experience (such as speaking in tongues or faith healings: good) and Magic (bad), usually defined on the presence of key words or practices such as wizard, witch, divination and spells.
Similar - albeit 'less extreme' attitudes are also prevalent in a mind-set to be found among Western and Eastern Catholics of a Traditionalist type, and the more traditionalist, scriptural Protestant churches.
What this amounts-to is the belief that normal everyday consciousness is the only 'safe' way to be - and any form of altered consciousness - such as is associated with mystical, magical and occult experiences or knowledge - is to be avoided, absolutely (or rejected if it happens) as being likely to be of demonic origin.
In a nutshell, such people are real Christians - and yet they are solidly against Religious Experiences, in the modern world; because these may be evil in origin or effect.
Such traditionalists will acknowledge that in theory Religious and mystical experiences may also be of divine or angelic origin (as is amply attested in The Bible, the early church, among Christian Saints of the past etc.). This might be taken to imply a middle path - of approving mystical experience but with caution; and indeed that is my own view of things.
But in practice, Traditionalists are prejudiced against Religious Experiences - by which I mean they pre-judge all claims of mysticism to be fraudulent or deluded unless-proven-otherwise; and in practice there never-can-be objective, public proof otherwise.
Such people will never actually be convinced of any proof of or evidence for the validity of mystical experience - at least not when mystical claims are made by people or groups they dislike - which amounts to people outwith their own denomination +/- a shortlist of other approved churches.
(Part of this is that they typically have an unexamined assumption that true Religious Experiences only happen to those of exceptional sanctity; and such people are extremely rare, especially in the modern world. Where they get this assumption, given the vast number of Biblical and real-life counter-examples - and the fact that Jesus came, and Christianity was founded, explicity for sinners - I can't imagine: but they clearly do assume it.)
I am sure that the Fundamentalist or Traditionalist prejudices against Religious Experience/ magic and mysticism is a very major error of modern Christianity; because Christianity is essentially a mystical religion, and if mystical aspects (whether they are labelled magic, occult or whatever) are excluded; then the faith is dead - becomes a mere matter of obedience to a bureaucracy or set or rules.
(Obedience to legitimate authority is a virtue - true; but I see not the slightest sign that Jesus regarded it as the primary virtue!)
Particularly damaging is that this prejudice against Religious Experiences implicitly consigns modern Christianity to operate within Modern Consciousness - which is of its nature materialist, reductionist and positivist. Indeed Modern Consciousness is a truly horrible thing; which drains contemporary life of felt meaning and purpose; so that the Christian who lives within it can have a faith only 'in theory' - because any validating mystical experiences will be rejected as demonic.
If ever there was a playing into Satan's hands, and doing just exactly what he wants: then this is it! - A Christianity which (from a secular perspective) has all the disadvantages of an absurdly magical foundation; yet vehemently rejects all possible experiential advantages of a magical consciousness!
So we get the weird spectacle of the adherents of a magical religion, with a magically validated organisation (i.e. a church), who spend their time reading and discussing magical events (in the Bible, lives of Saints etc), and performing magical rituals such as the Eucharist and Prayer... yet living within a distinctively modern and rootedly anti-magical discourse which expends great energy in distancing itself from any people who actually experience magic in the here and now and strive to live in a more expanded and sensitive consciousness than that of a modern bureaucracy!
In sum Christianity need to be spiritual as well as religious; and must not be squeamish or prejudiced against mysticism, magic, the occult.
Yes, this is a risk; but Life is a risk: intrinsically (Christianity takes a middle-way about pretty much everything except Love, Repentance and Forgiveness) - and the opposite risk of promoting a dry, legalistic, merely doctrinal Christianity is to advocate a mere corpse of Christianity.
Mysticism is, simply, a risk we have to take.
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