The Nativity according to a Primary School in Grasmere, Lake Distict

 

You will enjoy this! It is a video made by some primary school kids in Grasmere, the Lake District (which is where William Wordsworth lived in Dove Cottage; and a place my family often visit). 

While the production values are somewhat higher than is usual in these things - the acting and singing ability is exactly as would be hoped-for and expected. 

Look out for Joseph's big scene with angel, where the young lad deserves a Victor Mature award for sensitive facial responsivity. And the baaing 'sheep' on the hills, especially the last and smallest - who clearly does not like walking through the mud. Plenty of local rural accents. 

As often happens, there are plenty of topical references and updating (a sure way of getting some laughs); but there is also some wonderful scenery, and an authentic farm (and farmer) where Jesus is born (the hotels all having been closed due to the birdemic). 

Another version : https://vimeo.com/487593772/6a766bc848

Robinson Crusoe theme and incidental music (BBC TV 1965... etc)

British people of a certain age will often have fond memories of the Robinson Crusoe TV dramatisation that seemed to be on every summer holiday forever - fuelling our imaginations about surviving and making shelters in 'the wild' (as I supposed the nearby fields and woods to be). 

And everyone loved the short theme, and diverse incidental music from this show. Even as a child, the opening and closing credits used to evoke in me a sad kind of happiness, a mixture of nostalgia and expectation - such that I would usually tear-up a bit. 

In its way, this 25 seconds of music is almost unbearable in its power to evoke emotion, and this has been enhanced by the passage of time:

The series itself was very good, although I probably never saw all the episodes - being the summer holidays, I would be out-and-about and doing things for some of the mornings it was broadcast. In particular, I never saw the end; until I later got a re-released DVD nearly fifty years after. 

A few years ago I bought a CD of all the themes and tunes that were used through the 13 part series to underline the emotional singificance of the various types of scene. These are most effective in the original perfomances, using an orchestra (the silvery sheen of muted violins often prominent!) containing various characteristically '60s' electric guitars, organs etc. 

But to get a feel for the range of music, somebody arranged a few of the themes into a delightful suite for symphony orchestra:

However, if you want to experience the full appeal of this marvellous music, it is best to watch and episode or two of an actual episode, and hear the original performance in all its live, quirky, rough-edged cheesiness. For example, this theme was released as a single:

What is Christianity's USP?

USP = Unique Selling Point - that which distinguishes Christianity, in a good way, from all other religions. 

Regular readers will probably know my opinion on this question (which is the same as the Fourth Gospel, as I understand it) - but I would like readers to put forward what they think is Christianity's USP?

Be brief - a USP needs to be concisely expressed as well as clear - something comprehensible to the unconverted. 

What about the poor old Holy Ghost?

The Cinderella of the Trinity - not many people seem to take much notice of the Holy Ghost! 

Who is He, after all? There are several ideas:

1. A spirit of the undivided Trinity that proceeds from the Father. (Eastern Orthodoxy).

2. A spirit of the undivided Trinity who proceeds from the Father and the Son. (Western Catholic Christianity, and most Protestants too).

3. A separate personage from the Father and the Son (who are also separate personages); who is a spirit being (in contrast to the Father and the Son who are both embodied). (Mormon). 

4. The spirit of the ascended Jesus Christ. (The author of the Fourth Gospel and Bruce Charlton). 

No doubt readers will have their own opinion on this matter; but if you are undecided, I recommend re-reading the Fourth Gospel, testing its information on the Holy Ghost by your deepest intuition - and if confirmed than regarding the Holy Ghost as Jesus. 

I have certainly found that the Holy Ghost has become far more important and influential - more present - in my life, since I understood Him in this fashion.

Maybe this understanding will work for you too, will come to have the clear ring of truth?

Apple Tree Wassail from The Watersons, and more...

Christmas is coming! Wassail! 

One of my all time favourite unaccompanied folk-singing groups - The Watersons: a brother, two sisters and a husband. Singing the-opposite-of close-harmony.

Is anything better than this to instil the Christmas spirit? No - equaled, yes; but never bettered...

 

In an earlier incarnation, and another Wassail song; the bass was sung by a cousin:

 

...And a reprise of magical early Steeleye Span - with the same bass singer as in the first Watersons song (i.e. the legend that is Martin Carthy; who I once met on a train, queueing for a cup of coffee). 

This one is about the seasonal practice of hunting, killing and displaying the corpse of a little Jenny Wren, door to door, for money. Ah, the charm of traditional country life...

From my paper: Auditing as a tool of public policy

This is excerpted from: BG Charlton and P Andras. Auditing as a tool of public policy - The misuse of quality assurance techniques in the UK university expansion. European Political Science 2002; 2: 24-35.  

It comes from the time before I was a Christian, when I was pro-modernisation, and a kind of centre-right, mainstream-libertarian, but-actually-leftist. 

Nonetheless; the excerpted section on the nature of auditing, and of 'quality assurance' in particular, may be of some continued interest - considering that this technology has spread to include just about every institution of any size in the West. 

As such QA auditing has been a primary tool of global bureaucratic takeover.

 

Over the past decade and a half, UK universities have been required to teach many more students than before, but for broadly the same cost to the government (and universities have so far been prevented from raising significantly more money by capped fees). Naturally, this will tend substantially to reduce educational standards relative to the preceding ‘boom’ era of the 1960s and 70s, because poorly-resourced systems will typically produce a lower quality output than well-resourced systems. 

But the primary cause of reduced standards is the truly enormous expansion in intake. From after the second world war, the percentage of the age group participating in degree-level higher education in England climbed from less than 5 percent in the 1940s, to c.17 percent in 1987, up to c.32 percent in 1995 with the trend having continued (Trow, 1991; Smith and Webster 1997).

In itself, such expansion will inevitably inflate the value of a degree certificate, which depends on its relative rarity. Furthermore a mass system contains a majority of students who are less able and less motivated than those in a highly selective elite educational system, and this also would contribute to a lower average level of examination attainment. For all these reasons it can be seen that the UK university expansion entails a significant reduction in degree standards - in the sense that the average university graduate will have a lower educational attainment after expansion than before. 

The role of a national teaching inspectorate 

Accepting that the academic standard of an average university degree was intended to fall, the rationale of a national system of university inspection would be to monitor and control this reduction in standards. The function of a national inspectorate can be understood in terms of controlling degree inflation. 

Given the inevitability of inflation of the degree (ie. a progressive reduction in its career-enhancing value to the individual - or a drop in the 'purchasing power' of a degree qualification) an effective system of inspection might aim to prevent this inevitable inflation from proceeding to a 'hyper-inflation', or total collapse of academic standards. 

The proper aim of a national teaching inspectorate was therefore to prevent a situation in which a university would admit almost anyone, teach them almost nothing, then give them a degree. This problem of degree hyper-inflation would be most likely to occur in those parts of the system where per capita funding and selectivity was lowest prior to expansion - in other words the ex-polytechnics that were from 1992 re-named universities. 

The proper main function of a national system of teaching inspection in the context of a deliberate reduction in degree standards would then be to guarantee a minimum standard of teaching - especially ensuring that the low-funded, low-selectivity institutions did not make their degrees too easy to attain. 

The proper function of a teaching inspectorate would be to guarantee a minimum degree of necessary selectivity (eg. in admissions and in examination standards) and a minimum level of educational provision (e.g. of supervision in the form of lectures, seminars, practicals, coursework etc.). The implicit proper function of a national teaching inspectorate such as the QAA was in fact to ensure a minimum standard of selection and provision.

Auditing universities 

The choice of quality assurance technologies as a basis for inspection of university teaching was rational to the extent that university teaching is done by an explicit and objective system. If QAA had constructed its audits on the basis of ensuring that each teaching unit was 'delivering' an educational system of minimum acceptable standard, then it would probably have succeeded, and its audits would have been simple, swift and cheap. 

The nature of quality assurance auditing is shown most clearly by examining the origins of the practice (Power, 1997). Auditing was originally financial auditing, and the principal purpose of financial auditing is to detect and deter error and fraud in the handling of money within a closed system. 

A closed system is necessary because only within a closed system may it be expected that all money flows will balance. Indeed, financial audit defines the units of closed finance, the units of 'accountability'. There are legal requirements for certain individuals and organisations to be auditable, and this requirement enforces the monetarily-closed nature of such systems. 

Within a closed system, audit detects errors and fraud through sampling information and cross-checking it for inconsistencies when compared with established organisational and practice criteria (Flint, 1988). Independent sources of information should be consistent with each other when checked every-which-way. 

Since a complex organisation has so many strands making up a web of cash flows, the number of potential cross-checks is almost infinite. Anyone wishing to ‘cook the books’ has a great deal to fake if they are to ensure that every possible inconsistency between independent sources has been ironed-out. 

Financial accounting (usually) works in its job of deterring and detecting fraud because it is (usually) easier, cheaper and more efficient to be honest than to prepare internally-consistent fake accounts which can stand-up to skilled cross-checking. True accounts automatically balance when cross-checked because they are a reflection of reality, while it takes a great deal of work to create audit-proof false accounts. 

Managerial audit 

The relationship between auditing and the management function derives from a formal similarity in the information processing involved. 

Auditing involves setting up ‘second-order’ system-referential systems, in a manner closely analogous to the function of management - ie. both audit and management sample information from organisations, model the activity of organisations, and make predictions on the basis of these models which can be checked against further samples (Luhmann, 1995). 

Of course, auditing has traditionally been done by external accountancy firms, while management has been done by sub-systems of the organisation being managed - but these conventions are not formally necessary. In principle, management could be out-sourced, while auditing is increasingly an internal activity of subsystems ('quality units') within organisations. 

Given this similarity, the potential for using audit-generated information for modelling and controlling the organisation was obvious. This led to the development of Quality Assurance auditing as a generic managerial technology (Stebbing, 1993; Mills, 1993). 

QA auditing has many analogies with financial auditing. But instead of monitoring money flows in a closed system to detect financial fraud, quality assurance auditing samples information in order to monitor compliance to a system (Power, 1997). So an organisation explicitly defines the system by which they are supposed to be operating, and quality assurance auditing monitors whether that system is, in fact, being complied with. 

In this context, the word quality has come to mean something like 'reliability of outcome'. A 'quality' system has the operational meaning of a system that predictably delivers a pre-specified outcome (Power, 1997). 

For example, the quality assurance management systems of a fast-food franchise are designed to achieve a consistent product - so long as the system is complied-with, you get the same standard of hamburger (within pre-defined limits) every day and everywhere in the world. The outcome is therefore a product of the system, and so long as the system is functional then the outcome is predictable. 

In other words, the quality of the product may be 'assured' simply by checking that the system is indeed functioning - in a sense the actual hamburger need not be sampled or tasted. This is what it means to say that quality auditing monitors systems and processes, rather than outcomes (Feigenbaum, 1991). 

A quality audit operates by sampling what is happening in different strands of the system, and checking the mutual consistency and compatibility with the system blueprint (which is usually provided in the form of a flow chart). Given the validity of its assumption that a given system results in a given outcome (which assumption needs to be empirically tested), in a variety of competitive economic contexts quality assurance auditing has proved itself capable of delivering consistent outcomes with relatively low transaction costs. 

Quality assurance in universities 

Properly speaking, when QA is applied to university education it would require prior validation in terms of outcomes, to answer the question 'does this system lead to a reliable and satisfactory outcome?' Just as you need first to taste the hamburgers before concluding that your quality assured system is reliably producing good ones, so you need to test that students coming out of a quality assured education systems are indeed reaching a minimal educational standard. Only after the system has been empirically proven to produce predictably tasty burgers (or skilled students) can you neglect this empirical check. 

But with QAA there was no attempt made to test the assumption that any specific teaching system led to any specific outcome. Instead it was simply assumed that the existence of an explicit and self-consistent system of teaching was synonymous with excellence. By this omission, university teaching quality assurance lost any meaningful link to educational outcomes. 

By ignoring the connection between processes and outcomes, QAA implicitly chose the criterion of pure, abstract 'auditability' as its benchmark. 'High quality' teaching was defined as that which was comprehensively and self-consistently documented in a closed system. 

This meant that QAA definition of high quality teaching was an explicit system characterised by Mission Statements, aims and objectives, flow-charts, monitoring, feedback and formal procedures for all imaginable contingencies. 

By itself, this definition of quality is neutral in evaluative terms - however the public relations 'spin' of QAA equated this technical definition of teaching quality with the general language usage of 'high quality' which has to do with excellent outcome measures, not system properties (Charlton, 2002). 

Failure of QAA 

The root of QAA failure can be traced back to a very early stage in the policy implementation. Failure can be blamed upon the way that the legitimate goals of university inspection were first subverted and finally defeated by the public relations aspects of the policy. 

In other words, the political expediency and media spin concerning the advertised role of QAA, pushed QAA into outright misrepresentation of their function and dishonesty as to what they were doing. In the end, QAA was using a system of quality assurance auditing to try and perform a function which was alien to the capability of the technology. 

1. Minimum standards versus continuous improvement 

Quality assurance is really about enforcing minimum standards and predictable outcomes, and certainly this was what was required by the UK university system in a time of rapid degree inflation. The function of a national quality assurance scheme should have been to oversee this reduction in standards, and to ensure that inflation did not go further than was necessary to achieve the objective of much higher rates of university graduation. 

But the QAA advertised their role as increasing academic standards, explicitly by improving teaching, and this meant that there was a fundamental dishonesty involved in the QAA mission. 

One lie usually leads to more lies, and the claim to be improving standards could only be made plausible by further dishonesties such as the claim that QA auditable systems of teaching were intrinsically superior to non-auditable teaching methods, hence that the post-QAA teaching was by its own definition superior. 

A further problem was obfuscation. The sheer complexity of procedures and measures, and their non-comparability between institutions, meant that it became impossible to understand what was going-on in the university system. 

Instead of measuring and publishing simple, clear-cut and comprehensible proxy measures of selectivity and provision, such as average A-level grades and staff-student ratios, the QAA published numerical scores derived from the aggregation of multiple non-transparent (and non-rational) variables (QAA, 1998). This effectively obscured the bald facts of degree inflation and diminished per capita educational provision, and contributed to the prevailing atmosphere of dishonest evasiveness. 

2. Pass-fail versus league table 

Like financial auditing, quality assurance auditing (when properly used) classifies systems in a binary fashion as pass or fail, satisfactory or not. By contrast, QAA used auditing to generate grades on a scale - this is evidence of a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of auditing. 

It would seem both strange and suspicious if a financial audit was to award an institution a grade on a scale such as excellent, good, average or poor. Such an audit would be regarded as failing to achieve its objective of checking financial probity. A completed financial audit will either be satisfactory ('pass' - within acceptable levels of tolerance for the system) or unsatisfactory and 'fail'. Either the institution is using a proper accounting system and the books balance - or not. 

It was a methodological error to use audit technologies to award grades to British universities. The fault presumably arose from the initial dishonesty of announcing that quality assurance would be used to raise standards, which implies a quantitative system of grading. A proper quality assurance system would maintain minimum consistent standards, but it is not of itself a system for continually cranking-up standards. 

3. Objective versus subjective measures 

Auditing works most straightforwardly when the information sampled is stable, objective and quantifiable and the system being audited is simple. Indeed, objectivity of information and evaluation is a core requirement of auditing (Boynton et al, 2001). By contrast, the QAA tried to measure variables that were inflating, subjective and qualitative; in systems that were highly complex. 

Money (for example) is usually a highly suitable informational measure for auditing, since it is objectively quantifiable and stable throughout the period being audited (but even money becomes un-auditable in periods of hyper-inflation). And financial audit works best when the system is relatively simple - very complex money flows may become virtually un-auditable (as seems to have happened with Enron). 

In principle, it would be possible to construct an auditable system of university teaching by sampling only information that reached a high standard of objective quantifiability. Trow (1993) has remarked that teaching cannot really be assessed in the short term, but that not teaching can. 

For example, there might be a national standard for a degree which stated minimum criteria in relation to factors such as entry qualifications, staff-student ratio, contact hours, class size, number and type of examinations, distribution of degree classification - and so on. A quality assurance audit could then ensure that all such criteria were being met. 

(Indeed, exactly this kind of objective, user-orientated and comparative information is freely available for the US higher education system - e.g.. http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/eduhome.htm) 

Instead, the QAA measured all kinds of intangible and subjective factors. Marks were awarded in relation to six categories of activity on a scale of four (QAA, 1998). Most marks related to completeness and consistency of an un-checkably vast amount of paper documentation (for instance there were 17 headings and 64 separate documentation demands relating just to student assessment; QAA, 2000 ), some marks were awarded for an evaluation of non-randomly selected and pre-warned demonstrations of classroom teaching, some marks were awarded following interviews with non-randomly selected groups of graduates, and so on. All these variables were weighted and combined in a unvalidated fashion. 

The outcome was the QAA grades were non-transparent and non-objective. 

Dependence upon inspectorial subjectivity also contributed to the strikingly intimidating and humiliating nature of QAA visitations (Charlton, 1999). Many auditees felt that they were being evaluated more in terms of demonstrating a suitably subservient attitude, more than for the objective facts concerning their educational selectivity and provision. 

This contrasts sharply with the realities of an objective financial audit, which may be hard work for the auditee - but is a process from which the honest and competent organisation has nothing to fear. 

Expediency versus strategy 

The QAA forms a fascinating case study of how an apparently straightforward and readily-attainable policy of maintaining minimum standards while expanding the University system became muddied and eventually defeated by dishonesty and short-termism. The failure of QAA may be interpreted as an example of the way in which political expediency may unintentionally damage long-term strategy. The unwillingness of the UK government to acknowledge the downside of university expansion, and to explain and argue the case that the overall benefits of their policies would outweigh their specific disadvantages, has led to policies built upon reassuring lies (Andras & Charlton, 2002)...

References Andras P, Charlton B. (2002). Hype and spin in the universities. Oxford Magazine. 202: 5-6. Andras P, Charlton BG. (2002a). Democratic deficit and communication hyper-inflation in health care systems. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice. 8: 291-297. Baty P. (2001). Russell elite go for jugular of ailing QAA. Times Higher Education Supplement. 21 September. Boynton WC, Johnson RN, Kell WG. (2001). Modern auditing 7th Edition. John Wiley & Sons: New York. Cagan P. (1956) The monetary dynamics of hyperinflation. In (Ed) Friedman M. Studies in the quantity theory of money. University of Chicago Press: Chicago. Pp 25 -117. Charlton B. (1999). QAA: why we should not collaborate. Oxford Magazine. 182: 1-3. Charlton BG. (2002). Audit, accountability, quality and all that: the growth of managerial technologies in UK universities. In (Eds.) Prickett S, Erskine-Hill P. Education! Education! Education! : Managerial ethics and the law of unintended consequences. Imprint Academic: Thorverton, UK. Feigenbaum AV. (1991). Total quality control 3rd edition revised. McGraw-Hill: New York. Flint D. (1988). Philosophy and principles of auditing. Macmillan: London. Gellner E (1983). Nations and nationalism. Blackwell: Oxford. Gellner E. (1988). Plough, sword and book: the structure of human history. Collins Harvill: London. Gellner E. (1994) Conditions of liberty: civil society and its rivals. Hamish Hamilton: London. Habermas J. (1989). The structural transformation of the public sphere: an enquiry into a category of the bourgeois society. Cambridge: Polity Press. Kindler J, Kiss I. (Eds) (1969). Systems theory (in Hungarian). Kozgazdasagi es Jogi Konyvkiado. Budapest. Luhmann N. (1995). Social Systems. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, USA. Luhmann N. The reality of the mass media. Polity Press: Cambridge, UK. Maturana HM, Varlea FJ. (1980) Autopoiesis and cognition. Reidel: Dordrecht, Netherlands. Mills D. (1993) Quality auditing. Chapman & Hall: London Pokol B. (1991) The theory of professional institution systems (in Hungarian). Felsooktatasi Koordinacious Iroda: Budapest. Power M. (1997) The audit society. Oxford University Press: Oxford. QAA. (1998). Annual Report 97-98. QAA: Gloucester QAA. (2000). Code of practice for the assurance of academic quality and standards in higher eduation. Section 6: Assessment of students. QAA: Gloucester. Sargent TJ. (1982). The ends of four big inflations. In (Ed) Hall RE. Inflation: causes and effects. University of Chicago Press: Chicago. Pp 41 - 97. Siedentop L. (2000) Democracy in Europe. Allen Lane, Penguin: London Smith A, Webster F. (1997). The postmodern university? Open University Press: Buckingham, UK. Stebbing L. (1993). Quality assurance 3rd edition. Ellis Horwood: Chichester, UK. THES Leader. (2001). There is quality assurance, then there is the QAA. Times Higher Education Supplement. 15 August. Trow M. (1991). The exceptionalism of American Higher Education. In (Ed.) Trow M & Nybom T. University and society. Jessica Kingsley: London. Trow M. (1993). Managerialism and the academic profession: the case of England. Weber M. (1978). Economy and society: an outline of interpretative sociology. University of California Press: Berkeley. Williams R. (1997). Quality assurance and diversity. In (Eds.) Brennan J, de Vries P, Williams R. Standards and quality in higher education. Jessica Kingsley: London. Wright R. (2000) Nonzero: the logic of human destiny. Pantheon: New York. E-mail bruce.charlton@ncl.ac.uk HOME also by Bruce Charlton Quality Assurance Auditing The Malaise Theory of Depression Public Health and Personal Freedom Psychiatry and the Human Condition Pharmacology and Personal Fulfillment Awareness, Consciousness and Language Injustice, Inequality and Evolutionary Psychology Peak Experiences, Creativity and the Colonel Flastratus Phenomenon

 

What is the scale of divine providence in 2020?

Providence is a good word for 'destiny' - I prefer it because destiny has connotations of a blueprint or at least of a stepwise plan; which I do not believe captures the way God works. 

By my understanding (and apart from His desire that we should follow Jesus Christ to resurrected eternal life in Heaven, which is a qualitative choice); God does not have predetermined end-points in view, so much as directions. 

In essence, I think God acts like ideal parents of an earthly family. Parents ought not to have plans of exactly where they want their children to end-up; but should be assisting them to develop their divine potentials in Good directions in accordance with their unique nature - starting from whatever situation each child is actually in - and this situation changes every day. 

 

Heaven is, I believe, a place of Loving Creation, and this is open-ended and eternal; and our own development likewise. So, this is my model for how God's providence works here in mortal life on earth - mutatis mutandis.  

I find is no problem about understanding how God's providence may be active in our own individual lives; and even in family lives (at least, when the family is working as it should be, or some sufficient approximation to that). 

But there is more of a problem thinking about how providence might work for a nation like England, and even more so when it comes to larger units like Mankind - The World. 

However, in principle, it can be imagined that England contains a vast family of The English, who are those who genuinely (in their hearts) regard themselves as such. 

Furthermore, we might extend this to the animals, plants and even the land itself; assuming (as I do) that creation is constituted by Beings, so every entity is actually a Being which is - in some way - alive and conscious. 

 

So, in considering the 'destiny' of England, and how providence might be-working now; it may be that the landscape and its features might be having a more powerful effect than the actual English people - most of whom are corrupted to the extent of being hostile to England! 

Consider. If the Beings which constitute the landscape, trees, animals etc are considered to be conscious, God's children (of a kind) and to have destinies; then I would guess that these operate on different timescales than with Men. Presumably some have a faster timescale (like most animals?), some slower than Men (like oak and yew trees?), others perhaps almost glacially slow (like mountains, rivers, moorland?). 

If so; some of the really-slow entities might have long term, cumulative effects - acting across human generations. Maybe they are only now beginning to notice, decide and respond to the cataclysm of the Industrial Revolution - from when Englishmen began increasingly to treat the land as dead, indifferent 'matter' - ripe for exploitation and destruction.

Maybe generations of bad, hostile, cruel attitudes communicated by Men to the animals, plants and lanscapes of England are finally leading to some kind of 'reply'? 

Or could there be consequences of whatever relationships these elements and Beings have with God; perhaps they may be working on some kind of compensatory, constructive and corrective action for the Good of England? ...If we would but deign to notice. 

 

All very fanicful, and I don't claim to have any knowledge of specifics. On the other hand, I am pretty sure that something of this sort is at work; not just in England, but in all natural 'group' entities. 

And I find this way of thinking to be a cause for hope. The are more things in Heaven and Earth than are taken account of by our usual calculations.

Romantic Christians may not be wholly-reliant upon Men as potential allies; which, in the circumstances of 2020, would be a very cheering thought.  

Thinking - Is it a bad thing, or essential to salvation?

There are plenty of spiritual teachers - especially in the New Age, but also among Christians - who assert that 'thinking' is a bad thing; and making various suggestions as to what should be done to ignore or stop it. 

By my understanding; all such notions become a lethal problem in a world dominated by evil - since any individual that is simply immersed in his environment, passive and absorptive, doing what comes 'naturally in response to whatever is around him... as of 2020 any such person will be doing the work of evil. 

Yet it needs to be acknowledged that there is some validity in the criticism of thinking. It could reasonably be said that bad thinking is a bad thing - and most thinking is bad!

 

On the other hand, 'good thinking' - which I have variously termed the primary thinking of the real self, intuition, and direct knowing -  is perhaps the most important thing, here and now. 

Interestingly, both those who regard all thinking as bad, and those who recognise the importance of good thinking, are often united in prescribing meditative practices and disciplines that in one way or another aim to 'control' thinking. 

I have come to believe that this is misguided; and that thinking cannot valuably be-controlled; because every attempt to control thinking uses, works-from, some lower from of mental activity such as habit (which is a sub-human behaviour), deliberately altered consciousness (e.g. by drugs, active imagination or 'shamanic' practices), or will-power (which is a superficial and labile, personality-level motivation).   

 

So what can be done if 'good thinking' cannot be achieved by any kind of 'systematic effort'? 

Well, we can recognise when good thinking is-happening. We can know that this kind of thinking is intrinsically a good thing, and can attend to it; and later reflect-upon it. 

Such behaviour is iteelf (to some extent) an act of attunement and alliance with God's creative work. 

Thus recognition, discernment, attention, and reflection on good thinking will therefore both encourage and detect God's creative work as it applies to us. 

 

So we can expect to get better at recognising 'good thinking'; and can expect also that 'good thinking' will happen more often; since we are actively-helping God in that providence by which he brings potentially-beneficial events to pass in our own specific lives.

History tells us... that history is a misleading guide to 2020

A word of caution. One common response among thoughtful people who are trying to make sense of 2020 is to look at history - in particular the fall of Rome. 

This is, in itself, an immediately misleading comparison; since when Rome fell, the capital of the Empire had been moved to Constantinople for several generations - and the Empire continued in the East for another 1000 years!

But the main problem is that our present situation is unprecedented - and for many reasons - and once these differences are given due weight, comparisons are very unlikely to be helpful. I will give only three, big, reasons, why we now live in a different world from any in history.

 

First, the world changed with the agrarian and industrial revolutions, beginning in Britain in the middle 1700s. Since then the economy has transformed to one of almost-continual growth (until 2020) - to sustain a world population of 7 billion compared with the 1 billion through much of history. In other words, there are currently about 6 billion people on the planet who depend on the industrial revolution system (technology, coordinated specialization, trade etc.) for their survival. 

Second there is the decline in religion from its historical role as the prime motivator in Men's lives. The extent to which religion has declined has been nailed-home in 2020 by the fact that nearly all the churches in the world (of all denominations) closed their doors and all-but ceased activities. Spiritual and religious reasoning is excluded from global discourse. Thus we are now living in a thought-world unprecedented in human history - a 'this-worldly' world, where 'good' has become (in practice) equated with pleasure or the absence of suffering. 

This narrowing of concern and shortening of time-horizons has had a huge effect on Men's understanding and responses, their attitudes and aspirations.  

A third factor is, of course, the interconnectedness of the world by political, administrative, transport and communications media. First the development, then the the extension, of bureaucracy from many national networks to a single international System. 

The idea of an almost simultaneous world-wide coup - such as occurred in the early months of 2020 - was impossible until recent decades; because there was no unified Global Establishment, and there would have been no global means of coordinated monitoring and control. 

The modern reality of a world where beliefs come almost wholly via the mass media, and where learning from personal experience and by common sense counts for nothing (and are often demonised) likewise is an almost wholly new phenomenon (perhaps only a sliver of the historical intellectual elites have ever functioned in this abstract way before). 

 

Those are just three of the biggest reasons why the situation of 2020 is almost wholly unprecedented; and why we cannot confidently look to the past for lessons and guidance. 

Indeed, any lessons we draw from history are more likely to be harmful than helpful. 

 

A Gross Fraud: auditing the birdemic

A while ago I became interested in the use of auditing technologies - especially Quality Assurance - in the UK public sector; especially universities, schools and the National Health Service. 

I described the essence of auditing as follows:

Auditing was originally financial auditing, and the principal purpose of financial auditing is to detect and deter error and fraud in the handling of money within a closed system. A closed system is necessary because only within a closed system may it be expected that all money flows will balance. 

Indeed, financial audit defines the units of closed finance, the units of 'accountability'. There are legal requirements for certain individuals and organisations to be auditable, and this requirement enforces the monetarily-closed nature of such systems. 

Within a closed system, audit detects errors and fraud through sampling information and cross-checking it for inconsistencies when compared with established organisational and practice criteria. 

Independent sources of information should be consistent with each other when checked every-which-way. Since a complex organisation has so many strands making up a web of cash flows, the number of potential cross-checks is almost infinite. 

Anyone wishing to ‘cook the books’ has a great deal to fake if they are to ensure that every possible inconsistency between independent sources has been ironed-out. 

 

In sum, therefore, auditing is a matter of cross-checking for consistency. 

The auditor makes an assumption that if everything was done honestly (and data is sufficiently complete and accurate) then all cross-checks should add-up. Any and all-possible valid cross-checks will then reveal internal coherence - everything holds-together. 

 

At a gross level, auditing is something we all do spontaneously. We could call it Common Sense Auditing. 

For example, when a Gross Fraud is being done with no attempt at concealment; then it is obvious to anyone who pays attention that 'things don't add up'. 

For example; if a multi-billionaire claimed to be deriving his income from a small corner shop for cheap goods, which had hardly any customers - nearly anybody could see that there was a Big Fake going on. 

But when there is a more moderate degree of fraud, and when there are also serious attempts to conceal the fraud (such as 'money laundering', and the employment of crooked accountants); then detection probably requires (honest!) expert professional auditors - who both understand this kind of business and have advanced numerical skills.  

 

So what kind of fraud is the birdemic? Is it one of those cleverly-concealed, moderate, 'money-skimming'-type, frauds - implemented by clever but crooked 'accountants'; and detectable only gradually, in retrospect, and by honest, expert auditors?

Is the problem, therefore, that honest expert 'auditors' (epidemiologists, immunologists, virologists etc) are so rare, or are being ignored? Or that the evidence of fraud is insufficient at present? 

Not at all! The birdemic is the first kind of fraud, a Gross Fraud with very little attempt at concealment, like the corner shop billionaire.  

 

There is no need for expertise or advanced abilities to discover that the birdemic is a Big Fake: Common Sense Auditing, by anyone who pays attention, is sufficient. 

All the birdemic fraud requires for its discovery, is ordinary cross-checking for internal consistency. 

Such cross-checks as comparing official predictions of what will happen, with what actually happens. Comparing what is stated to be happening in one place, with what is happening in other places. And comparing statements made now with statements made previously...

And wherever the cross-checks actually are performed on the birdemic, there are 'red-flags' - there is a failure of coherence; there is obvious, gross evidence of fraud. 

But the cross-checks are Not performed. The masses refuse to do Common Sense Auditing.

People will not pay attention and do for themselves the kind of ordinary comparisons that make it obvious the corner shop billionaire is a Big Fake.

Instead, the masses have presumed that the birdemic cannot be a Gross Fraud, but must (if anything) be a subtle and expert fraud. 

So the masses rely upon 'other people' to do the birdemic auditing. So the whole issue becomes just part of the usual media circus of claims and counter-claims...

 

Having decided that they themselves cannot, cannot be bothered to, or should not perform a common-sense birdemic audit for Gross Fraud; then the masses have overwhemingly concluded that it is the birdemic auditors who are a Gross Fraud - not the birdemic itself!

And therefore the masses are being duped by a Gross Fraud; an obvious fake, which could easily be detected by anybody paying attention; But Is Not. 

And therefore the masses have only themselves to blame for that which has been done to them in 2020, using the fake birdemic as 'justification'. 

My November 2019 Apocalypse (?) prophecy

For those who don't remember it; on 27 November 2019, I (sort-of) predicted this year's apocalypse, a few months ahead...

".. what is aimed-at - what is supposed to be the 'answer' to these created problems, is a total system of surveillance and control; funded by a massive shift to replace the current technological infrastructure with a new generation of self-styled 'smart', 'green' and 'sustainable' technologies - AI, 5G and so forth... 

The interesting aspect is the sheer urgency. There is a very obvious attempt to create a worldwide sense of emergency, of imminent cataclysm, of terrible things that are Just About To Happen... unless, we hand over complete power to the Establishment (preferably the-day-after-tomorrow, or quicker). 

And this handover - this Power Grab by the Global Establishment - is being aimed-at Very Soon; on a timescale of months, not years..."

 

So it it true that I did feel this coming. But I freely admit that I did not see this kind of thing happening which actually has happened. I did not think that there could be a global totalitarian coup and that almost nobody would notice! 

And I did not suppose it could happen with near zero resistance. 

 

And I did not think that the end of civilization would be caused by one of the four (apocryphal) horsemen of the Apocalypse being fake-Pestilence! 

Real famine, real war, real plague... yes, I could imagine those alright...

But for the 2020 scenario to be based-on what is functionally nothing... Nope, that was beyond my powers of fantasy. 

 

That is pretty much what I feel about the actuality of 2020: I simply can't believe it! 

Yet, Here It Is. If it had not actually happened, it would have seemed not just implausible, but impossible. 

Yet, Here It Is. 

Fear, Resentment and Despair - the triad of Ahrimanic sins... Leading towards purely-negative Sorathic evil - as seen in 2020 with social destruction

(Note: Here I am using a typology of evil: Luciferic, Ahrimanic, and Sorathic - which I have adapted and transformed from their origin in the works of Rudolf Steiner.) 

*

In the past, the dominant sins were probably the triad of Anger, Lust and Pride. These, at any rate, seem to be the dominant characteristics of great sinners of history - right up into the middle twentieth century. 

But as Western society became more industrialised, specialised, coordinated and impersonally-systemic; the dominant nature of evil became Ahrimanic. 

The most prominent triad of sins became Fear, Resentment and Despair. 

 

Fear, Resentment* and Despair is the dominant mood of the world in 2020 - these are the modern, 'bureaucratic sins'. 

The self-seeking, self-aggrandising evil of the mid-twentieth century (as exemplified by the atheist-socialist dictators such as Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot etc.) is not much in evidence in the West. Of course, Luciferic evil is still present; but these sins require greater courage and motivation than are possessed by the masses - or indeed the rulers - in 2020. 

Luciferic sin is weaker and less common than in the past; because it requires high motivation which is fuelled by the virtue of courage. 

Great Luciferic sin entails a positive, active, for-the-self mind-set. However; courage, hence motivation, has been incrementally eroded by the passage of several generations of de facto atheism. Hence the rise in Ahrimanic sin; which is much more passive, negating, and directed against-others. 

Beyond the Ahrimanic lies the Sorathic, which is even more fully negative in its motivations. I think this happens, because the Ahrimanic sins erode their own basis. 

A bureaucratic world tends towards a state of passive, unconscious, materialism. The Ahrimanic impulse begins with a denial of the aliveness of the mineral world, extends through denial of consciousness to plants, then animals, and eventually - as for the past decades, creates a world where aliveness, and consciousness is denied even to Men. 

This materialism (positivism, scientism) is the basis of modern bureaucracy; which terms Men 'human resources', and generates policy on the basis of numbers and statistics. The individual Man counts only as an integer. 

 

When this world view of negation of the Self, penetrates the soul and has been internalised; we get the Sorathic form of evil. 

...Evil as the negation of The Good - any good. 

So, evil loses any positive goal and becomes directed-against Truth, Beauty and Virtue; against life and consciousness, against the natural and spontaneous, against Beings and their relationships. 

Sorathic evil's only 'satisfaction' (because it has become incapable of 'pleasure') is in this destruction of anything that is of-God; anything created, anything capable of creation.

 

An example? Well, a very obvious instance of Sorathic evil in 2020 is the imposition of that demonic-triad of lockdown, social-distancing, and masking. Leading, as they must do, to the permanent annihilation of human society - and the construction of a world of universal solitary-confinement.

Obviously the mainstream, birdemic-related, excuses for annihilating human society and culture are lies. But - much more significantly - even the architects of the Great Reset cannot make a coherent argument why societal destruction is necessary!

They do it, but They can't explain it.

 

Their attempted justification of universal isolation relates to the need (and benefits) of automation, robots and artificial intelligence systems; but this is a non sequitur. The 'need' for one, does Not imply the destruction of the other.

What we are therefore seeing here is a very pure form of Sorathic negation. Even the Global Establishment themselves, the people who are imposing societal destruction on the world, do not understand why they are doing this work of societal destruction. 

They insist upon its necessity; but they cannot coherently explain it!

 

The reason is that the 'need' for societal destruction cannot be explained in materialistic terms - which are the only terms possible in public discourse; and among those who deny the reality of God and creation. 

The true reason for societal destruction is that human society is Good and therefore needs to be destroyed. Society between Men is indeed one of the great and essential Goods of this mortal world; as Men at all times, everywhere, have acknowledged and acted-upon - quite naturally and spontaneously. 

The idea that this can and should be dispensed with is monstrous, outrageous and ridiculous... for anyone who is Not deep into the servitude of Satan. But then, that is precisely what we are dealing-with. 

 

Therefore human society is an obvious, and essential, target for Sorathic evil; not because it is 'useful' to destroy human community, not because its destruction will enhance the lives of the Global Establishment - but exactly because human society is Good, and a Great Good; and because destroying it will induce suffering and (in this atheistic world) despair on a scale unprecedented. 

 

(And despair is a sin, because it is a rejection of God: a failure to trust in God, and a refusal of Jesus's gift of eternal life in Heaven. Despair - that is, as an existential decision, not a mere emotion - is therefore the choice of damnation.) 

 

In this burgeoning world of Sorathic evil, we need to stop looking for the 'advantage' in evil. Need to stop trying to 'explain evil' in terms of it (for example) making more money for Them, or giving Them more power...

From now, evil needs gain no advantage by its action: evil thrives purely on the destruction of whatever is Good. 

Evil has therefore ceased to be a triad, and has become a unity - the unity of negation; the unity of simple destruction of Good.

This is Sorathic evil. 

* Resentment can be understood as primarily directed against others. Spitefulness is another term for this. A person motivated by spite will put his greatest efforts into causing harm to others, rather than promoting himself. He will even harm himself in his zeal to harm others. The 'positive' face of resentment is the burgeoning phenomenon of 'entitlement'; which, again, has a strong flavour that 'my' privilege is best expressed in terms of the intrusive inconvenience, anger and misery it causes to others.

 

Note added: 

There are implications in the above understanding for Christians; because Luciferic evil was usually opposed by trying to build church-administered systems to 'tame' Anger, Lust and Pride - by encouraging/ insisting-upon obedience to church rules. 

However, this strategy of taming by obedience (as we have seen) played-into the reinforcement of the Ahrimanic sins. And church-Christianity has dis-couraged, and de-motivated itself. Thus all the churches have (more, or less) become part of the global, atheistic bureaucratic System of Ahrimanic evil. In 2020, the mainstream churches have actively embraced their all-but annihilation by birdemic rules.

Ahrimanic evil was opposed by 'counter-cultural', anti-System, individualistic ideas - which, when not 'Romantic' Christian - often fell back into Luciferic evils (especially lust). And it is tempting, nowadays, to suppose that evil can be attacked by resisting and destroying the Global Bureaucratic System ('The Matrix'). But, if I am correct that this Ahrimanic System is already being superseded and consumed by negative, Sorathic evil; then the current, world dominating evil cannot be resisted by any form of destruction. 

In sum; if we aimed primarily to destroy The System, we would only reinforce the emerging Sorathic spirit of destruction. 

What then? Resistance to Sorathic evil is as simple as the evil it opposes; in that it is to pursue the positive virtues most characteristic of God - which are love and creation (which are one: creation being a superabundance of love); that is, to pursue loving and creating.

('Loving' in the sense of love in the best marriages and families; 'creating' in the broadest sense of thinking and acting from our real, divine self - we are children of God; which is always original and generative.)

And, resistance to Sorathic evil must be individual, or based upon personal, loving 'familial' relationships; because of the danger of Ahrimanic ('Systemic') evil, standing behind the Sorathic.  

So, our course seems clear and simple, as well as difficult and hazardous; which is for each individual to resist Sorathic destruction by creation; to resist Sorathic negation by love. And to ensure that these values and behaviours of creation and love come from within-us: that is, come from God-within-us. 

And not to wait for a lead from any church, institution or other-person - nor to look behind to see if anyone is following us. We must do what needs to be done our-selves, starting now.

 

Who *should* you trust - who *do* you trust?

Trust is a proximate matter. 

There are those who say they 'trust the science' but what they are proximately doing is trusting the mass media, and government officials. They know nothing of the ultimate that is 'science'.

Indeed, even professional and credentialled 'scientists' are not 'science' - since scientist (for several decades) is just a job; a job in which you are not evaluated by truth-seeking or exact truthfulness; and where all the modern incentives are in the direction of (deniable) exaggeration, hype, spin, selective distortion; money-making ability ('grantmanship'), careerism and conformity to bureaucracy. 

 

Or, if you are a Christian - who actually do you trust? The church in an ultimate sense... yes, but proximately there is massive and deep disagreement between churches, subdivisions of churches, even within your chosen church's sub-division; and between that church now, and in the past... 

And your exposure to any teaching of the past comes via understanding the communications of the present - indeed via a few very specific conduits who are not, themselves, 'the church'.

Reflection will show that you actually-have, your-self, already-chosen from among many various available 'church' possibilities - even as you claim (to yourself, probably to others) that you are 'simply obeying the teachings of the church'.  

And the same applies (mutatis mutandis) to those who shelter behind an assertion of mere-obedience to the authority of tradition, the Bible, theology, or Any Other external authority. 

 

(On top of all this is the - surely undeniable by now? - gross corruption of the churches - their assimilation to the mainstream secular agenda - such as (any one of, because one will suffice to corruopt) birdemic-healthism, antiracism, climate change, the sexual revolution, open-borders mass migration and egalitarianism. Mere obedience to any church that is thus corrupt, and has therefore substantially joined the side of The Enemy, is surely liable to lead to damnation more often than salvation?)

What these times are asking of Christians seems to be an acknowledgment of this actual fact of our personal discernment; demanding we cease to shelter-behind the evasion of personal responsibility that is an assertion of 'obedience' to a 'church' who you, personally, have in fact either selected, or else selectively-accepted.  

Again: To assert passive obedience to an authority which you deny having personally selected, is a dishonest evasion. 

...Hence, it should be needless to say: UnChristian.

The Great Clarification. Sleepers, wake!

I suspect that the main benefit of these times, and especially this annus horribilis of 2020; would be if the events awaken those who are sleepwalking to self-chosen damnation. These are those who can (perhaps) be saved, those for whom 'events' might be significant.

(Whereas those who have consciously and deliberately chosen evil are beyond such stimuli.)

So we are experiencing what might be termed a Great Clarification - when that which was covert has become overt; when the 'conspiracy theories' are coming out-of-hiding, displaying themselves proudly and nakedly, exposing their alliances, and shouting their formerly secret agendas of destruction.  

 

I am not saying that those who still sleep are blameless; because to remain asleep now is cupable. Sleeping through the Great Clarification takes some doing! And it does not happen unless people are determined Not-to Awake. 

They fear to awaken, because of dreading what they will find. 

To recognise that the ruling-class, the Global Establishment (politics, government, law, education, the mass media) are all One System, a monobloc; and that unitary System is so very grossly-dishonest, and  acts as if dedicated to the destruction of civilization, is indeed a terrifying prospect. 

The contrast between official reality and experienced, observed, common-sense reality has widened as never before.  

It seems to me that only strong faith in the loving, personal God known by Christians, and the prospect of resurrected eternal life through following Jesus Christ; could even potentially overcome such massive cause for fear.

 

Lacking which, it is unsurprising (although still culpable) that so many choose to dream the Big Lie; to live by faith in the Global Establishment (including, as it does, the mainstream self-identified Christian churches) - rather than in light of their direct and personal knowledge of God, and the guidance of the Holy Ghost. 

This is time for the sleepers to wake. 

 

 

What about the common idea that people become angels after they die?

I am reading On the banks of Plum Creek - which is part of the Little House on the Prairie (so-far, wonderful) series by Laura Ingalls Wilder - and the main character mentioned that she expected her reward for being a Good Christian was to become a beautiful angel. 

This idea much appealed to her, and was a strong incentive for 'good' thought and behaviour.

I have encountered similar ideas many times over the years - I mean the idea that the aim of a Christian life was to become 'an angel'. 

 

I personally think this is true-enough; since I regard 'angel' as a 'job-description' for messenger, intermediary; and therefore a resurrected man or woman might well be an angel. (The other type of angel is a pre-mortal, never-incarnated spirit.)

However, for mainstream Christians - whether Protestant, like Laura Ingall's Wilder's heroine; or any type of Catholic (Western or Eastern) - angels are a separate creation from Man, essentially spiritual beings (who cannot and do not ressurect) - so that Men cannot become angels; and especially not after resurrection into Heaven.

At least; that is what priests and theologians of mainstream Christianity have been saying for most of the past 2000 years... 

 

Yet, this popular/ lay/ naive Christian belief persists - apparently naturally and spontaneously - since I doubt whether anybody has been officially taught that mortal Men can look-forward to becoming angels.   

Here is a situation where many actual Christians over the centuries, including many (apparently) Good Christians, have held a heretical belief. 

And if you are like me, you may agree that those uncounted 'ignorant' folk may well have been closer to the truth than Establishment opinion - despite flying in the teeth of official doctrine as expressed by informed and educated opinion.   

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away?” Philip K Dick was wrong about That, wasn't he?

The above quote “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.” comes from a Philip K Dick essay; but PKD himself was not happy about that definition - and it is frequently refuted so in his own fiction and the Exegesis. 

It is being refuted on a daily basis in 2020. 

 

To define reality in terms of 'experience' is a pragmatic definition; the idea that reality will bite whoever denies it, and reward whoever honours it. 

But this, in the end (if you pursue it), this principle can be seen to reduce to "reality is whatever is expedient". What 'works' cannot atheoretically be distinguished from 'what is expedient'. Always a causal path must be inferred. 

And Expediency is, substantially, a matter of power. 

 

Furthermore, the assumption is that when reality bites, we will know it is reality. But this is obviously not the case in a world where government, education, major corporations and the mass media are all speaking from the same script. 

When reality is-biting, it may be denied that this is a bite, the pain can be attributed to some other cause; because there are no 'facts' without interpretation. 

Interpretation can deny the factuality of a fact in one direction; or make a lie, or an abstraction, into 'a fact' in the other direction - and people cannot usually tell the difference (nor do they care to try)

 

Power can make almost anything expedient, at least in the short term; for example believing that men and women can change sex. 

This is made true, according to pragmatic definitions, because those who sustain it are rewarded and those who deny it are punished. And that kind of in-your-face reality doesn't go away - at least not in the medium term of years and decades.

And power can - much more easily - make almost anything inexpedient - therefore 'un-true'; even when some-thing is supported by (for example) a century's worth of uncontradicted scientific evidence - such as class or racial differences in 'g' (general intelligence, measured by IQ). 

Many things that happened and are real - real according to science, personal experience and common sense - have been made to go away by the combined efforts of education, government, laws and the mass media.

 

So power can make anything true and anything untrue by PKD's definition - if we define truth according to our practical, everyday experience of things. 

This is because there are no facts without theories - and no theories without assumptions. 

And assumptions can be smuggled into culture, and minds, either by false arguments or by covertly concealing them in political communications, laws and workplace regulations, news stories, TV dramas, movies etc. CS Lewis called this Bulverism, and it happens all the time, deliberately and strategically - at many levels, and with many twists. 

 

Anyway; if reality cannot be defined pragmatically; then what is real reality; how can we define it? 

We first need to assume and acknowledge that reality is really real - we cannot define reality from a place of being agnostic about its existence! The only people who can coherently discuss the nature of reality, are those who acknowledge it is. 

We also need to acknowledge that we inhabit a creation. Only if life overall has a reason, purpose, meaning; can we talk in terms of reality - as a term contrasting with not-reality.

The we have to introduce God into the discussion: God the creator. A personal God (not an abstract deity) has to be the creator, if there is to be a reality that Men can know.

Indeed, for men to know - Men must also share in the same divinity as God the Creator. (Which, for Christians, is a fact.)

In conclusion, PKD was writing for a mixed audience of mostly atheists and 'agnostics' (de facto atheists); and was trying to discuss reality in a way that included this audience. But - as we know from the Exegesis - PKD was a theist (a Christian), and he knew from his personal spiritual experience, that materialism, the denial of God and the spirit, could not discern reality. 

PKD knew that Man relies upon God (a truthful and loving deity, outside of creation) if Man is to know reality - and this is a theme of much of his best work. For instance; In Ubik, Runciter is 'God', outside 'the world; trying to communicate with Man (inside the delusory and hostile world of cryogenic half-life) by means of signs - and providing help to awake to reality with the substance Ubik. 

At his best and deepest - Philip K Dick knew what everybody in 2020 ought to recognise. Without God Man cannot know reality - cannot distinguish reality from demonically-induced delusions, human manipulations, or from wishful-thinking.

And even with God, we still must make the right choices. God-without (the creator) gets us half-way to reality; God-within-us (present because we are children of God) is needed to get us the rest of the way. 

 

"Only a mother could love..." Or, how to spot a pop singer with a good voice

If you want a pop singer (or any kind of singer) with a very good voice - it may be that sacrifices must be made in terms of the... overall package. Sometimes the old phrase that "only a mother could love that face" (or whatever), springs to mind.

Of course there are some attractive singers who are very good singers (Debbie Harry from Blondie, for instance) - but good voices are rare enough that there is usually a trade-off between looks and voice. 

And this means that when the singer is less than gorgeous, it usually means that we are in for a vocal treat!

Typically, of course, pop singers are marketed on the basis of looks rather than vocal flair - and steps are taken during the recording process to cover-up the deficiencies. But when the vocalist is chosen by a musically-talented instrumentalists or composer; he is likely to choose a musically-talented singer. 

The gifted composer and synthesiser virtuoso Vince Clarke exemplifies this with his picks; about whom we can say they are all very good singers, and also that you could tell they were going-to be good, even before they opened their mouths:  

 

Note: Much the same applies in opera. My choice of probably the two greatest singers of the late 20th century would be Joan Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti - and they certainly weren't picked on the basis of their looks:

Mozart's Haffner Symphony (no. 35) - Karl Bohm, Berlin Philharmonic, 1959

 

Regular readers will know that I like to share astoundingly good musical performances here from time to time - this is one. 

I mention it not only as a great performance by a great conductor of a great orchestra of a Mozart masterwork - but because this symphony is only about 18 minutes long. 

So, if you have never sat down and really listened with concentration all through a symphony (which is a daunting prospect, outside the concert hall) - then this might be an ideal start; not least because it is such an immediately likeable piece of music.

 

I have always appreciated Karl Bohm as a conductor of Mozart, which was why I sought out one of his recordings. Initially I intended having this music as 'background' while I was writing - I know the Haffner Symphony pretty well. But as soon as this particular performance began, it grabbed my attention - gripped and held it. I was entranced. 

 

There is a lot here that deserves comment. Above all - because it is most important - is the phrasing of the melodic components. For example, the way the first violins carry the main melody throughout is so sinuous, so wonderfully-shaped, it seems to draw me from one note to another. 

And this is also happening all through the orchestra (if you switch attention to some of the inner lines, or the bass), while being held together in chords that have a delicate and beautiful musical-colouration from the various combinations of instruments (especially the winds) - which Bohm and the great Berlin band balance so delicately. 

Delicately yes, always - yet this is a symphony of wide dynamic contrasts, swelling and subsiding from loud to soft - extremely, and often. These volume changes are, like the melody, done in a smooth and always-connected way; so that when there is a sudden loud chord it feels as if it is an extremely rapid volume increase (instead of being a sudden and disconnected blast). All of which helps to hold the piece of music together - horizontally (through-time) as well as vertically (between simultaneous notes). 

 

Just a brief aside: this symphony and performance shows how important the bassoons are to an orchestra. They are nearly-always present, doing a vital job in articulating the bass line, giving it 'corners', in a fashion of which the double bass alone is incapable - but here we are more aware of the bassoons than usual!

 

One thing about a truly great performance, is that it combines what are usually regarded as opposites. Consider the rhythm. This is a very 'rhythmic' performance, with a strong forward movement; but this is not achieved by hammering out a strong beat - instead it is done by a bouncing, springing rhythm. Much as with the melodies; there is an ebb and flow of the rhythms, that shape-into and out-from what went before; rather like a heart-beat that accelerates and decelerates as needed. 

 

As with any great conductor; Bohm is showing us (teaching us) things about Mozart that we didn't know before, and could not be expressed otherwise than in performance. As I say, I have heard this symphony many times; but I was all through, again and again, being surprised (in a delightful way!) by what was happening, what Bohm was doing. 

The ensemble, the playing-together, is outstanding. Even a top-notch orchestra like the Berlin Philharmonic in 1959 plays better on particular days, for particular conductors. This gives a clarity to the loudest or fastest passages - which can so easily degenrate into fuzzy, indistinguishable blocks. 

The individual instruments (or sections) are distinguishable, at the same time as they blend, the individual notes are separated even as they flow...  this is another of those 'impossible' opposites which a great performance achieves. 

 

You may wonder why such a fuss is made of conductors. This performance shows why. A great conductor (and these are as rare as other kinds of greatness) plays the orchestra much as a great concert pianist plays his instrument. But the instrument of a symphony orchestra is far more complex than a piano; which means that a good band is even more important, and even harder to achieve, than a good Steinway. 

Furthermore; the potential complexity of the best symphonic music itself, and thus the number of factors at work in performing such music on that most complex instrument which is an orchestra; raises the musical difficulty to a very high level indeed. 

So, the great conductor needs to be a great musician - a master of musical understanding and execution - to a degree that is only exceeded by the great composer.   

 

One final thing - if you do listen. The thing that makes a symphony 'a symphony' is the 'development' of themes. So a symphony is not just a series of tunes - one after the other (like many overtures); but (often) just a couple of tunes, which are 'played-with', varied and combined. 

This is especially evident in the first (Allegro) movement. What to look-out-for is the way that the simple themes are 'stated' then transformed - fragments of melody are taken and recombined, overlapped, passed around the orchestra etc. 

Elements of the original tune may be used as countermelodies (counterpoint) to other elements. There are changes of key (up and up, or down and down); new chords generated; and the general effect is of increasing musical richness and sophistication as the movement proceeds. 

In some symphonies this development process may go on a long time and become rather hard to understand; but in this short and concentrated work there is just enough to make the point. 

Walter Hooper (the CS Lewis scholar) has died: an appreciation

This year we have seen the death of Christopher Tolkien and Walter Hooper (March 27, 1931 – December 7, 2020) - who were our primary links to those great men JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis. 

Christopher Tolkien was, of course, JRR's youngest son; and from early childhood there was a special bond between them. The relationship between Walter Hooper and CS Lewis was very different - they first knew each other by correspondence; but the amount of time they spent together was only a matter of weeks, and too-swiftly terminated by the death of Lewis - before Hooper could take up a job as his secretary. 

What set Hooper apart from other Lewis scholars was his intense and sustained interest in every aspect of Lewis's life. My favourite of the books Hooper edited were Lewis's early diaries (All My Road Before Me), the Companion and Guide, and the three volumes of collected Letters. These all display Hooper's insatiable curiosity.

For example, if Lewis mentioned somebody in his letters, Hooper would not only identify them, and track down some information about them - he would often arrange to visit and speak with them (or, if they had died, with their relatives or friends). 

Hooper is therefore the reason why Lewis's biography is known with a richer and and more detailed context than almost anybody else I have read (perhaps only Ralph Waldo Emerson, among authors I know, has been studied in similar detail; and he had a century's 'start' on Lewis.). To read Hooper's editions of the diaries or letters is therefore an immersive experience: you can really believe you were there!

And this, I presume, is exactly why Hooper spent more than 50 years on his multi-faceted work as a literary executor, editor and introducer; because by doing so he could imaginatively be present all through his hero's life.

We whose lives are shaped by their works; are therefore extremely fortunate that both Lewis and Tolkien, in their different ways, were exceptionally well-served by two younger men who so lovingly curated their legacy. 

Chronic fear is a sin - and we urgently need to acknowledge this fact

Just a reminder to myself and all of us; that chronic fear is a sin - because it means that we are failing to trust in God. 

Yet of course it is a sin to which most Christians are prone - and sometimes we react to realistic pessimism about the future with fear. 

And there are many grounds for realistic pessimism about the future in 2020. 

Fear happens. 

But when it does we should not excuse or defend our fear; but should repent it. 

And we should not try to allay fear by trying to convicne ourselves that 'it won't happen'; but by reminding ourselves to trust in God.

And by recalling that this trust is solidly rational; because God is the creator, thus has an influences on every current and all possible future scenarios; and further because the creator loves us, individually, as his children. 

In 2020 the left is correct: everything is moral

You know the arguments; you've engaged in them I'm sure... The left has it that everything is political, and all politics is moral - so that every issue about any decision, about how to do anything, becomes moralised...

Well, here and now - this year of 2020 - the left is correct. Every little thing is moral: truth is also moral, and beauty as well. 

 

So, let's not fall into the trap of finding ourselves arguing that such-and-such is not primarily moral. Of course that is true in terms of survival, thriving, and the rest of it. But none of that matters anymore - Mankind has decided that none of that matters. All that will happen when we say something else is more important than 'morality' is that we will come across as immoral, materialistic, money-grubbing etc. 

The left is correct - when pushed back and back, everything is indeed moral. Just that everything is moral in the opposite way that the left means.

Don't let the left have a monopoly on moral absolutism! Argue about morality and nothing else. 

The argument should be that when the left says moral, they mean anti-moral. Leftism is the primary, dominant, mainstream, systematic strategy of evil in 2020, and evil is oppositional to real values, true values, Christian values: 

Leftism just is oppositional to the values of God's creation - from roots to twigs.  

 

So, if we argue, let's argue about what is moral - not about what is most effective, efficient, reasonable, factual or anything else. 

In 2020 nobody cares about What Works. 

That's clear. The world is coming-down all around us, very obviously - it is being actively demolished, before our eyes, on the basis of Big Lies, on the basis of Moral Inversion... 

So, let's try and make sure that when it does come-down, at that moment we know what is virtue and what is evil. 

 

After all, that's minimally necessary for salvation. 

Because that is what all this is all about, ultimately. 

And ultimately might arrive quite soon. Be prepared.