*
Comment by Jim Kalb re: posting on Political correctness versus natural selection:
"One way to explain what has happened is that people decided there is no personal God, so the world around us isn't intended or meaningful.
"You can't trust it and you certainly don't want it to dominate you. Salvation lies in escape.
"In Buddhism escape from that situation involved something that looks like personal extinction. In the West it has involved self-deification."
*
Tuesday, 21 June 2011
The "Not even trying" test
*
I find that I use the "Not even trying" test a lot nowadays, in evaluating stuff I come across.
If I come across scientists or a branch of science who are clearly not even trying to discover the truth or tell the truth, then I reject their work - because there are infinitely more ways to be wrong than right.
When I listen to or read a modern philosopher, I reject their status as a philosopher if it is obvious that they are not even trying to seek or speak the truth.
When I perceive that government policy is not even trying to solve economic problems, then I know that these problems will not be solved (at least not by government).
When writers, poets, musicians, artists and architects are not even trying to create beauty, then their works will be ugly.
In journalism, in the media generally - are they even trying to be accurate? If they are not even trying to report the news, obviously they cannot be trusted or believed, obviously they will be worthless at best, more often actively misleading.
*
If people and institutions are not even trying to fulfil their stated functions, not even trying to do good or be good - then they should be avoided.
We should not contaminate our minds with such stuff. We should not be tempted to take them seriously.
They don't deserve it; we owe ourselves better.
***
NOTE:
The above view contrasts with the idea that personal motivations are unimportant in social systems: that bureaucratic systems or selection mechanisms (such as markets) can produce functionality indifferent to motivation, indeed in the teeth of motivation.
This is the standard view in social science.
But I now believe that you cannot produce a silk purse from a sow's ear: that real science cannot come from hypotheses testing working on the output of dishonest scientists; the real art cannot come from selecting among the works of those who regard beauty as kitsch - and shock, disgust and boredom as aesthetic experiences; that good governance cannot come from a combination of careerism and voting; that real education does not emerge from a system primarily devoted to promoting diversity - even when there is competition.
Markets, democracy, bureaucracy - all systems rely on selecting, and are constrained by that which is available for selection.
Good outputs can only come from Good inputs.
Unless at least some people are trying to do what is supposed to be done, then it will not be done.
*
I find that I use the "Not even trying" test a lot nowadays, in evaluating stuff I come across.
If I come across scientists or a branch of science who are clearly not even trying to discover the truth or tell the truth, then I reject their work - because there are infinitely more ways to be wrong than right.
When I listen to or read a modern philosopher, I reject their status as a philosopher if it is obvious that they are not even trying to seek or speak the truth.
When I perceive that government policy is not even trying to solve economic problems, then I know that these problems will not be solved (at least not by government).
When writers, poets, musicians, artists and architects are not even trying to create beauty, then their works will be ugly.
In journalism, in the media generally - are they even trying to be accurate? If they are not even trying to report the news, obviously they cannot be trusted or believed, obviously they will be worthless at best, more often actively misleading.
*
If people and institutions are not even trying to fulfil their stated functions, not even trying to do good or be good - then they should be avoided.
We should not contaminate our minds with such stuff. We should not be tempted to take them seriously.
They don't deserve it; we owe ourselves better.
***
NOTE:
The above view contrasts with the idea that personal motivations are unimportant in social systems: that bureaucratic systems or selection mechanisms (such as markets) can produce functionality indifferent to motivation, indeed in the teeth of motivation.
This is the standard view in social science.
But I now believe that you cannot produce a silk purse from a sow's ear: that real science cannot come from hypotheses testing working on the output of dishonest scientists; the real art cannot come from selecting among the works of those who regard beauty as kitsch - and shock, disgust and boredom as aesthetic experiences; that good governance cannot come from a combination of careerism and voting; that real education does not emerge from a system primarily devoted to promoting diversity - even when there is competition.
Markets, democracy, bureaucracy - all systems rely on selecting, and are constrained by that which is available for selection.
Good outputs can only come from Good inputs.
Unless at least some people are trying to do what is supposed to be done, then it will not be done.
*
Monday, 20 June 2011
Political correctness versus natural selection
*
There is a paradoxical relationship between the theory of evolution by natural selection and Leftism, liberalism or political correctness.
At one level, to 'believe in' evolution by natural selection is used by the Left as a litmus test of seriousness - and 'creationism' is regarded as a marker of imbecility.
On the other hand, the Left will not accept the conclusions of natural selection when applied to humans, so that sociobiology/ evolutionary psychology is regarded with extreme suspicion (even though the discipline is colonized almost entirely by Leftists).
*
The politically correct Leftist ideology is primarily ethical - yet as a secular ideology it excludes divine revelation as a basis for ethics, and as a revolutionary ideology it also excludes spontaneity and common sense as a basis for ethics.
This opposition to the spontaneous and commonsensical is the basis for the aversion to natural selection - because natural selection shapes instinct.
Hence Leftism sets itself against the instinctual, has an automatic suspicion of that which is natural, because the natural is essentially 'selfish' (whether conceptualized as selfishness of organisms or of genes).
*
Political correctness cannot accept the implications of the natural selection it espouses, because PC regards natural selection as leading to a secular version of 'original sin' - intrinsic human selfishness.
For political correctness to accept the full implications of natural selection would therefore be to refute itself.
It would be for PC endorse selfishness, since animals are selfish; it would be to endorse cruelty, because animals inflict suffering on each other.
*
Political correctness (correctly!) recognizes that natural selection cannot lead to real virtue, to real disinterested unselfishness - therefore PC is intrinsically trying to get outside natural selection.
*
Political correctness, as the most advanced form of Leftism, has evolved to locate virtue in terms of abstract ethical rules which are instantiated outside of the human organism and human society.
(Given the suspicion of the spontaneous and commonsensical) these abstract ethical rules ought to be followed literally even when (especially when) they contravene instinct and common sense.
Therefore, for political correctness, the ideal is that all human behavior should be regulated by abstract ethical rules - and the outraging of spontaneous human morality is a feature, not a bug: it is evidence of transcending the 'natural' (where the natural is intrinsically regarded as corrupt).
*
But which rules?
If they are not to be purely arbitrary, abstract ethical rules must have two characteristics:
1. Moral inversion.
PC rules must contradict spontaneous common sense.
2. Face plausibility.
Since there are (in principle) an 'infinite' number of morally-inverted ethical rules; those which are selected must have a kind of face plausibility - must have (in the social context of modern society) a kind of platitudinous uncontradictability; for instance when denial of the morally-inverted rule must seem to convict the contradicter of cruelty and/ or selfishness.
*
This means that the ethical principles of political correctness depend on an implicit consent; they cannot be founded, nor defended in any fundamental fashion, but only by 'sophistry', displacement and counter-attack.
They are not necessary, but neither are they arbitrary. They are not approximate, neither are they exact - yet their interpretation must be precise and literalistic.
*
(Specific PC rules, developed in this fashion, are then subjected to progressive harmonization/ simplification by being brought under ever-more-general 'meta-principles'- such as diversity, equality, peace, non-discrimination. Presumably these meta-principles will - if PC lasts long enough - eventually be brought together under a single primary, foundational evaluation.)
*
Literal interpretation of rules in the face of the natural means that there is no such thing as moderation in PC, nor is there any hierarchy of PC transgressions: use of a single taboo word in a private conversation may elicit the full majesty of legal prosecution, social exile, permitted violence; yet tyranny, torture, rape and murder may be ignored when to notice these might be seen to tend towards disruption of over-arching PC priorities.
The two options are full and unrelenting legalism, or complete ignoring: the end goal of promoting universal PC justifying the means of ignoring specific transgressions of PC.
*
Natural selection is seen as having led to that to which political correctness is opposed: the natural and instinctive.
Hence PC opposes the consequences of natural selection, even as it accepts (as dogma) the reality of natural selection.
The rules of PC are therefore set-up in opposition to natural selection as abstract and partial summaries of concrete and infinitely complex realities - presented as self-evidently true - followed and enforced without compromise in the face of spontaneity and common sense - and the denial of which is seen as a moral monstrosity.
*
There is a paradoxical relationship between the theory of evolution by natural selection and Leftism, liberalism or political correctness.
At one level, to 'believe in' evolution by natural selection is used by the Left as a litmus test of seriousness - and 'creationism' is regarded as a marker of imbecility.
On the other hand, the Left will not accept the conclusions of natural selection when applied to humans, so that sociobiology/ evolutionary psychology is regarded with extreme suspicion (even though the discipline is colonized almost entirely by Leftists).
*
The politically correct Leftist ideology is primarily ethical - yet as a secular ideology it excludes divine revelation as a basis for ethics, and as a revolutionary ideology it also excludes spontaneity and common sense as a basis for ethics.
This opposition to the spontaneous and commonsensical is the basis for the aversion to natural selection - because natural selection shapes instinct.
Hence Leftism sets itself against the instinctual, has an automatic suspicion of that which is natural, because the natural is essentially 'selfish' (whether conceptualized as selfishness of organisms or of genes).
*
Political correctness cannot accept the implications of the natural selection it espouses, because PC regards natural selection as leading to a secular version of 'original sin' - intrinsic human selfishness.
For political correctness to accept the full implications of natural selection would therefore be to refute itself.
It would be for PC endorse selfishness, since animals are selfish; it would be to endorse cruelty, because animals inflict suffering on each other.
*
Political correctness (correctly!) recognizes that natural selection cannot lead to real virtue, to real disinterested unselfishness - therefore PC is intrinsically trying to get outside natural selection.
*
Political correctness, as the most advanced form of Leftism, has evolved to locate virtue in terms of abstract ethical rules which are instantiated outside of the human organism and human society.
(Given the suspicion of the spontaneous and commonsensical) these abstract ethical rules ought to be followed literally even when (especially when) they contravene instinct and common sense.
Therefore, for political correctness, the ideal is that all human behavior should be regulated by abstract ethical rules - and the outraging of spontaneous human morality is a feature, not a bug: it is evidence of transcending the 'natural' (where the natural is intrinsically regarded as corrupt).
*
But which rules?
If they are not to be purely arbitrary, abstract ethical rules must have two characteristics:
1. Moral inversion.
PC rules must contradict spontaneous common sense.
2. Face plausibility.
Since there are (in principle) an 'infinite' number of morally-inverted ethical rules; those which are selected must have a kind of face plausibility - must have (in the social context of modern society) a kind of platitudinous uncontradictability; for instance when denial of the morally-inverted rule must seem to convict the contradicter of cruelty and/ or selfishness.
*
This means that the ethical principles of political correctness depend on an implicit consent; they cannot be founded, nor defended in any fundamental fashion, but only by 'sophistry', displacement and counter-attack.
They are not necessary, but neither are they arbitrary. They are not approximate, neither are they exact - yet their interpretation must be precise and literalistic.
*
(Specific PC rules, developed in this fashion, are then subjected to progressive harmonization/ simplification by being brought under ever-more-general 'meta-principles'- such as diversity, equality, peace, non-discrimination. Presumably these meta-principles will - if PC lasts long enough - eventually be brought together under a single primary, foundational evaluation.)
*
Literal interpretation of rules in the face of the natural means that there is no such thing as moderation in PC, nor is there any hierarchy of PC transgressions: use of a single taboo word in a private conversation may elicit the full majesty of legal prosecution, social exile, permitted violence; yet tyranny, torture, rape and murder may be ignored when to notice these might be seen to tend towards disruption of over-arching PC priorities.
The two options are full and unrelenting legalism, or complete ignoring: the end goal of promoting universal PC justifying the means of ignoring specific transgressions of PC.
*
Natural selection is seen as having led to that to which political correctness is opposed: the natural and instinctive.
Hence PC opposes the consequences of natural selection, even as it accepts (as dogma) the reality of natural selection.
The rules of PC are therefore set-up in opposition to natural selection as abstract and partial summaries of concrete and infinitely complex realities - presented as self-evidently true - followed and enforced without compromise in the face of spontaneity and common sense - and the denial of which is seen as a moral monstrosity.
*
Astrology and free will - the medieval understanding (C.S. Lewis)
*
From Imagination and thought in the Middle Ages - by C.S. Lewis. An essay delivered in 1956; posthumously published in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, edited by Walter Hooper, 1966.
*
"...the planets had more than a physical effect. They influenced the course of events and they influenced human psychology. Born under Saturn, you were disposed to melancholy, born under Venus to amorousness.
(...)
"The important question, theologically, was whether the planets compelled or merely disposed men to action.
"If they compelled, then of course there was an end to human freedom and responsibility.
"If they merely disposed, then planetary influence, like heredity or health or education, was merely part of the concrete situation handed over to the individual to do the best he could with.
*
"The theologians were in fact, as so often, fighting against determinism.
"Nor were they fighting against a phantom: in Renaissance times, if not before them, astrological determinism was very widely accepted. It seemed (odd as this sounds to us) to have the support of age-old experience and common sense, and the theological resistance seemed idealistic wishful thinking.
"In the Middle Ages men's mind's no doubt wavered. The ordinary, moderate, respectable view was summed up in the maxim sapiens dominabitur astris; a wise man, assisted by Grace, could get over a bad horoscope just as he could get over a naturally bad temper.
(...)
"On a practical level orthodox people, while admitting planetary influence, strongly disapproved of 'judicial astrology', the lucrative practice of foretelling the future.
"They did not need to deny that some astrological predictions might be correct.
*
"Planetary influence could not remove free will but it could alter the states of mind and imagination which free will has to deal with.
"Any man can master the psychological raw material and thus refute the prediction; but few men do and therefore the predictions will succeed as regards the majority.
"Just in the same way and for similar reasons a modern theologian might say that Marxian predictions based on economic determinism or Freudian predictions based on psychological determinism will usually be true, and true about mass-behaviour, but not necessarily about a given individual."
***
Comment:
Medieval thinkers were more rational about astrology that modern thinkers are about genetics.
*
Medieval Christian understanding was built-around free will: that free will could be influenced, but was not ultimately compelled, by emotions and images, by disposition and circumstances, by planets and angels and demons.
By contrast, the modern 'scientific' understanding, by its prior assumptions, excludes free will from rational causal explanations.
Yet the modern thinker does not recognize that he has excluded free will in his assumptions. Instead he believes that he has discovered free will does not exist.
*
The modern thinker ignores free will when he is at work - until after he has reached his conclusions; then he wonders how on earth he can make sense of his conclusions in a world where free will is assumed.
Having constructed a model of the world without free will (a model world with which he is well satisfied); he begins to wonder - in a bewildered fashion - how free will might somehow be re-inserted into the description of the world?
Then, finding that free will has no role, serves no necessary causal function in his model world; the modern thinker believes that somehow free will has thus been refuted, has been discovered - after empirical investigation - to be absent, been exposed as a primitive philosophical error...
*
Once what Lewis called 'chronological snobbery' has been pushed aside, a decline in human intelligence, in reasoned discourse, seem inescapable.
Again and again I find that modern thinking cannot distinguish between assumptions and conclusions.
I mean really cannot distinguish between assumptions and conclusions; not even (especially not even) when the difference has been pointed-out.
Neither is this basic inability a trivial matter, but is a radical fact of modern discourse. And it leads on to unbounded evil consequences because the devil is inaccurate (to quote Charles Williams - meaning evil does its work by building-upon falseness).
***
Note: I could not recommend highly enough this essay by C.S. Lewis to anyone with an interest in medieval thought, or indeed the history of ideas. It is simply superb.
*
From Imagination and thought in the Middle Ages - by C.S. Lewis. An essay delivered in 1956; posthumously published in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, edited by Walter Hooper, 1966.
*
"...the planets had more than a physical effect. They influenced the course of events and they influenced human psychology. Born under Saturn, you were disposed to melancholy, born under Venus to amorousness.
(...)
"The important question, theologically, was whether the planets compelled or merely disposed men to action.
"If they compelled, then of course there was an end to human freedom and responsibility.
"If they merely disposed, then planetary influence, like heredity or health or education, was merely part of the concrete situation handed over to the individual to do the best he could with.
*
"The theologians were in fact, as so often, fighting against determinism.
"Nor were they fighting against a phantom: in Renaissance times, if not before them, astrological determinism was very widely accepted. It seemed (odd as this sounds to us) to have the support of age-old experience and common sense, and the theological resistance seemed idealistic wishful thinking.
"In the Middle Ages men's mind's no doubt wavered. The ordinary, moderate, respectable view was summed up in the maxim sapiens dominabitur astris; a wise man, assisted by Grace, could get over a bad horoscope just as he could get over a naturally bad temper.
(...)
"On a practical level orthodox people, while admitting planetary influence, strongly disapproved of 'judicial astrology', the lucrative practice of foretelling the future.
"They did not need to deny that some astrological predictions might be correct.
*
"Planetary influence could not remove free will but it could alter the states of mind and imagination which free will has to deal with.
"Any man can master the psychological raw material and thus refute the prediction; but few men do and therefore the predictions will succeed as regards the majority.
"Just in the same way and for similar reasons a modern theologian might say that Marxian predictions based on economic determinism or Freudian predictions based on psychological determinism will usually be true, and true about mass-behaviour, but not necessarily about a given individual."
***
Comment:
Medieval thinkers were more rational about astrology that modern thinkers are about genetics.
*
Medieval Christian understanding was built-around free will: that free will could be influenced, but was not ultimately compelled, by emotions and images, by disposition and circumstances, by planets and angels and demons.
By contrast, the modern 'scientific' understanding, by its prior assumptions, excludes free will from rational causal explanations.
Yet the modern thinker does not recognize that he has excluded free will in his assumptions. Instead he believes that he has discovered free will does not exist.
*
The modern thinker ignores free will when he is at work - until after he has reached his conclusions; then he wonders how on earth he can make sense of his conclusions in a world where free will is assumed.
Having constructed a model of the world without free will (a model world with which he is well satisfied); he begins to wonder - in a bewildered fashion - how free will might somehow be re-inserted into the description of the world?
Then, finding that free will has no role, serves no necessary causal function in his model world; the modern thinker believes that somehow free will has thus been refuted, has been discovered - after empirical investigation - to be absent, been exposed as a primitive philosophical error...
*
Once what Lewis called 'chronological snobbery' has been pushed aside, a decline in human intelligence, in reasoned discourse, seem inescapable.
Again and again I find that modern thinking cannot distinguish between assumptions and conclusions.
I mean really cannot distinguish between assumptions and conclusions; not even (especially not even) when the difference has been pointed-out.
Neither is this basic inability a trivial matter, but is a radical fact of modern discourse. And it leads on to unbounded evil consequences because the devil is inaccurate (to quote Charles Williams - meaning evil does its work by building-upon falseness).
***
Note: I could not recommend highly enough this essay by C.S. Lewis to anyone with an interest in medieval thought, or indeed the history of ideas. It is simply superb.
*
Sunday, 19 June 2011
Dream-dozing - Micro-sleeps and micro-dreams
*
Usually when people (including myself) have a micro-sleep (e.g. momentarily nodding-off while reading quietly) this is perceived as an absence, an interruption in the stream of consciousness, a jump-ahead in time with a chunk missing.
Indeed, people may not realize that they have been asleep unless told by an observer.
*
But sometimes I doze-off straight-into REM/ dreaming sleep; indeed alternate between being awake and aware of surroundings with being asleep and in dreams.
Eyes open, there is the world; eyes closed, in a dream.
So the micro-sleeps are associated with micro-dreams, or fragments of dreams.
*
(Dream-dozing can typically only happen if the person is lying down, or has their body and head supported to some extent - such as resting in an armchair; since dreaming sleep is associated with muscle relaxation which would otherwise cause the person to jerk-awake.)
*
My experience of this phenomenon of dream-dozing with micro-dreams is interesting.
It feels like flipping-between two ongoing realities, with time subjectively moving at the same rate in both waking and dreaming; but going at different rates when one state is compared with the other.
By ongoing realities, I mean that (of course) the real world is going-on even when I am not attending to it, so that when I awaken from a micro sleep things have moved-on in the real world: if I have been asleep of a second, then a second has gone past - obviously).
*
The same applied to the dream world: if I have been awake, then when I return to sleep, then time has passed in the dream world.
But if I have been awake for one second, then more than one second of subjective experience - indeed much more than one second, has passed in the dream world when I re-enter it.
And, conversely, what feels like some minutes of dream story can occur in a few seconds of awake time.
*
If awake time is taken as the calibration, then dream time moves 'faster' - in the sense that a lot more narrative happens in a dream during one second of awake time than vice versa.
*
Also, the dream world is narrative, a story; whereas the awake world may not be perceived as a story.
The micro-sleep is a slice of narrative; the micro-awakening may be simply an image - for example a static picture of the room where I am dozing.
So in the micro-sleep I am in a story, when I open my eyes, I merely see the wall and chair.
*
What this feels like is that dreams are stories going on all the time, without me being aware of them.
When I have a micro sleep I can sometimes dip-into a segment of this on-going dream narrative.
So I fall asleep and experience in dream what feels like quite a lot of some narrative, then wake-up and almost no time has passed; then fall asleep and rejoin the dream but the dream has moved on a lot while I was awake.
*
In general, dreaming seems to be like a process that is going on behind the scenes, mostly without awareness. Awareness of dreams seems like an non-essential optional extra.
Whatever it is that dreams are doing, apparently does not need our awareness (and indeed many people claim not to dream, or very seldom; and everyone rapidly forgets most of most dreams).
*
So if (if) it really was true that dreams are pre-cognitive in the kind of way tha JW Dunne and JB Priestley have said, and that JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis apparently believed, then much of this pre-cognition would have to be having effects without awareness, would be having unconscious effects.
If pre-cognition was real and had a purpose; that purpose would be unconscious, implicit, a background to our aware lives.
*
Usually when people (including myself) have a micro-sleep (e.g. momentarily nodding-off while reading quietly) this is perceived as an absence, an interruption in the stream of consciousness, a jump-ahead in time with a chunk missing.
Indeed, people may not realize that they have been asleep unless told by an observer.
*
But sometimes I doze-off straight-into REM/ dreaming sleep; indeed alternate between being awake and aware of surroundings with being asleep and in dreams.
Eyes open, there is the world; eyes closed, in a dream.
So the micro-sleeps are associated with micro-dreams, or fragments of dreams.
*
(Dream-dozing can typically only happen if the person is lying down, or has their body and head supported to some extent - such as resting in an armchair; since dreaming sleep is associated with muscle relaxation which would otherwise cause the person to jerk-awake.)
*
My experience of this phenomenon of dream-dozing with micro-dreams is interesting.
It feels like flipping-between two ongoing realities, with time subjectively moving at the same rate in both waking and dreaming; but going at different rates when one state is compared with the other.
By ongoing realities, I mean that (of course) the real world is going-on even when I am not attending to it, so that when I awaken from a micro sleep things have moved-on in the real world: if I have been asleep of a second, then a second has gone past - obviously).
*
The same applied to the dream world: if I have been awake, then when I return to sleep, then time has passed in the dream world.
But if I have been awake for one second, then more than one second of subjective experience - indeed much more than one second, has passed in the dream world when I re-enter it.
And, conversely, what feels like some minutes of dream story can occur in a few seconds of awake time.
*
If awake time is taken as the calibration, then dream time moves 'faster' - in the sense that a lot more narrative happens in a dream during one second of awake time than vice versa.
*
Also, the dream world is narrative, a story; whereas the awake world may not be perceived as a story.
The micro-sleep is a slice of narrative; the micro-awakening may be simply an image - for example a static picture of the room where I am dozing.
So in the micro-sleep I am in a story, when I open my eyes, I merely see the wall and chair.
*
What this feels like is that dreams are stories going on all the time, without me being aware of them.
When I have a micro sleep I can sometimes dip-into a segment of this on-going dream narrative.
So I fall asleep and experience in dream what feels like quite a lot of some narrative, then wake-up and almost no time has passed; then fall asleep and rejoin the dream but the dream has moved on a lot while I was awake.
*
In general, dreaming seems to be like a process that is going on behind the scenes, mostly without awareness. Awareness of dreams seems like an non-essential optional extra.
Whatever it is that dreams are doing, apparently does not need our awareness (and indeed many people claim not to dream, or very seldom; and everyone rapidly forgets most of most dreams).
*
So if (if) it really was true that dreams are pre-cognitive in the kind of way tha JW Dunne and JB Priestley have said, and that JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis apparently believed, then much of this pre-cognition would have to be having effects without awareness, would be having unconscious effects.
If pre-cognition was real and had a purpose; that purpose would be unconscious, implicit, a background to our aware lives.
*
Saturday, 18 June 2011
Science reporting: from breakthroughs to projects
*
Scientific progress has gone into reverse, and one of the most obvious signs is that the media now do not report breakthroughs but projects.
eg. Some random biological fact is 'expected to' lead to a cure for cancer; Professor x has won a multimillion grant to make discovery y; University z has built a vast new (eco-friendly) institute and filled it with people and machines...
*
Of course, this began some time ago with the human genome project, the rise of brain imaging, the relabelling exercise of 'nanotechnology' and with money-raising for the big physics machines.
None of these led to anything interesting or useful, but created a new evaluation system in (what still calls itself) science.
So, for the past generation, most research careers have been built by 'working-on' problems - the solution to which would be, it is claimed, a breakthrough.
*
We no longer wait to find out whether something actually does lead to any significant or useful outcome - presumably because they very seldom do.
Best to get the publicity on the basis of what research might do, rather than await inevitable disappointment.
*
But anyway, nobody is interested in scientific breakthroughs. Nowadays a breakthrough is something which leads to major new funding opportunities.
That was why the Human Genome Project was regarded as the most important research in history. Scientifically it was nothing, professionally it was a gravy train.
As big grant awards and expensive projects are themselves the sole and sufficient purpose of a research career, then naturally these are what gets reported and celebrated.
And dressing-up bureaucratic expansion as a scientific breakthrough is business-as-usual for the modern media.
*
Scientific progress has gone into reverse, and one of the most obvious signs is that the media now do not report breakthroughs but projects.
eg. Some random biological fact is 'expected to' lead to a cure for cancer; Professor x has won a multimillion grant to make discovery y; University z has built a vast new (eco-friendly) institute and filled it with people and machines...
*
Of course, this began some time ago with the human genome project, the rise of brain imaging, the relabelling exercise of 'nanotechnology' and with money-raising for the big physics machines.
None of these led to anything interesting or useful, but created a new evaluation system in (what still calls itself) science.
So, for the past generation, most research careers have been built by 'working-on' problems - the solution to which would be, it is claimed, a breakthrough.
*
We no longer wait to find out whether something actually does lead to any significant or useful outcome - presumably because they very seldom do.
Best to get the publicity on the basis of what research might do, rather than await inevitable disappointment.
*
But anyway, nobody is interested in scientific breakthroughs. Nowadays a breakthrough is something which leads to major new funding opportunities.
That was why the Human Genome Project was regarded as the most important research in history. Scientifically it was nothing, professionally it was a gravy train.
As big grant awards and expensive projects are themselves the sole and sufficient purpose of a research career, then naturally these are what gets reported and celebrated.
And dressing-up bureaucratic expansion as a scientific breakthrough is business-as-usual for the modern media.
*
Friday, 17 June 2011
What is the difference between science and philosophy? (and theology)
*
I have been reading and thinking about the nature of science, and its definitions, for a long time - probably since I saw Bronowski's TV programme The Ascent of Man in 1972.
Any comprehensive definition must be minimal - in particular there is no characteristic scientific method, nor mode (i.e. Popper was wrong, although interesting and useful) - nor does science have any essential attribute of being self-correcting, nor is science necessarily observational or empirical.
And so on.
So what made the difference between science and what went before?
*
This is the idea: Science came from philosophy and philosophy from theology - by a process of specialization - a part coming off from the whole, and being pursued autonomously as a social system.
Theology is a social system that aims to discover the truth; and which puts the truths of divine revelation first and reason subordinate (if at all); philosophy aims to discover truth (or used to) but puts reason first - but remains (in its early phases) constrained by revelation.
Then science broke-off from philosophy by eliminating divine revelation as an allowable explanation.
*
So science is a specialized social system, based on reason, but which excludes all reference to divine revelation.
But what is special about being a social system?
Mainly time and effort, in a co-operative sense (although the cooperation can be between just a few people).
So science is simply some people devoting time and effort to investigating the world using reason and excluding reference to divine revelation.
*
Naturally, since Science excludes divine revelation, science can have no formal impact on theology, nor can it have any formal impact on philosophy.
Yet, apparently, science has substantially impacted on theology and philosophy - it is, for example taken to have discredited Christianity.
How did this perception arise?
1. Science as (until recently) been perceived as in enabling (somehow, indirectly) humans to increase power over nature (this perception may be subjective/ delusional, or false, as it often is now - or it can be all-but undeniable).
Yet science is (or rather was) successful mainly because a lot of smart people were putting a lot of effort into discovering truth.
(And now that people don't try to discover truth, they don't discover it - naturally not.)
2. Sheer habit. People trained and competent in the (wholly artificial) scientific way of thinking, which a priori excludes religious explanations, leads to human beings who habitually exclude divine explanations.
*
And it turns out that habit is very powerful as a socialization device.
Such that people trained in an artificial (hence difficult) and socially-approved specialized mode of thinking, eventually do not notice the exclusions of their mode of thought, and assume that their mode of thought is the whole thing; assume that that which was excluded a priori has instead been excluded because it was false.
A mistaken inference - but mainstream in modernity.
*
NOTE ADDED: in sum, to put it another way, progress in science was essentially a consequence of the quality and quantity of man-hours dedicated to the aim of discovering truth about the world using reason and excluding religious explanations.
When the most able truth-seeking people with leisure from subsistence increasingly shifted their interest, activity and effort away from theology into philosophy (from, say, the twelfth century onwards in the West) and then from philosophy into science (from, say, the seventeenth century) - this shifted achievement in the same direction.
And when the most able people with leisure from subsistence increasingly shifted their interest, activity and effort away from truth-seeking and into other things (especially careers) (from, say, the early-middle twentieth century) this shifted achievement into... well, bureaucracy and media distractions.
*
I have been reading and thinking about the nature of science, and its definitions, for a long time - probably since I saw Bronowski's TV programme The Ascent of Man in 1972.
Any comprehensive definition must be minimal - in particular there is no characteristic scientific method, nor mode (i.e. Popper was wrong, although interesting and useful) - nor does science have any essential attribute of being self-correcting, nor is science necessarily observational or empirical.
And so on.
So what made the difference between science and what went before?
*
This is the idea: Science came from philosophy and philosophy from theology - by a process of specialization - a part coming off from the whole, and being pursued autonomously as a social system.
Theology is a social system that aims to discover the truth; and which puts the truths of divine revelation first and reason subordinate (if at all); philosophy aims to discover truth (or used to) but puts reason first - but remains (in its early phases) constrained by revelation.
Then science broke-off from philosophy by eliminating divine revelation as an allowable explanation.
*
So science is a specialized social system, based on reason, but which excludes all reference to divine revelation.
But what is special about being a social system?
Mainly time and effort, in a co-operative sense (although the cooperation can be between just a few people).
So science is simply some people devoting time and effort to investigating the world using reason and excluding reference to divine revelation.
*
Naturally, since Science excludes divine revelation, science can have no formal impact on theology, nor can it have any formal impact on philosophy.
Yet, apparently, science has substantially impacted on theology and philosophy - it is, for example taken to have discredited Christianity.
How did this perception arise?
1. Science as (until recently) been perceived as in enabling (somehow, indirectly) humans to increase power over nature (this perception may be subjective/ delusional, or false, as it often is now - or it can be all-but undeniable).
Yet science is (or rather was) successful mainly because a lot of smart people were putting a lot of effort into discovering truth.
(And now that people don't try to discover truth, they don't discover it - naturally not.)
2. Sheer habit. People trained and competent in the (wholly artificial) scientific way of thinking, which a priori excludes religious explanations, leads to human beings who habitually exclude divine explanations.
*
And it turns out that habit is very powerful as a socialization device.
Such that people trained in an artificial (hence difficult) and socially-approved specialized mode of thinking, eventually do not notice the exclusions of their mode of thought, and assume that their mode of thought is the whole thing; assume that that which was excluded a priori has instead been excluded because it was false.
A mistaken inference - but mainstream in modernity.
*
NOTE ADDED: in sum, to put it another way, progress in science was essentially a consequence of the quality and quantity of man-hours dedicated to the aim of discovering truth about the world using reason and excluding religious explanations.
When the most able truth-seeking people with leisure from subsistence increasingly shifted their interest, activity and effort away from theology into philosophy (from, say, the twelfth century onwards in the West) and then from philosophy into science (from, say, the seventeenth century) - this shifted achievement in the same direction.
And when the most able people with leisure from subsistence increasingly shifted their interest, activity and effort away from truth-seeking and into other things (especially careers) (from, say, the early-middle twentieth century) this shifted achievement into... well, bureaucracy and media distractions.
*
A monastic education - John Senior writes
*
Excerpted from The Death of Christian Culture by John Senior (1923-1999) [re-punctuated]:
*
"For the training of the body there is the ascetic life - the habit, the fare, the manual work; and for the soul - the liturgy (the Opus Dei as St Benedict called it), the continuous immersion in a very few texts.
"The Psalter [i.e. Book of Psalms] learned by heart in the first year of the novitiate and finally the whole of the Old and New Testaments in St. Jerome's Vulgate Latin.
"Beside the Bible were the Rule (of St Benedict] and a few select commentaries.
"No single monastery had anything like the bulk of the Patrologia. The monks read very little of their own tradition and still less of the liberal arts.
(...)
"Few in those days read the Greeks at all, or even any classical Latin other than some schoolboy books for learning grammar.
"As soon as Plato was taken up by St Augustine, there was no longer any need for Plato.
"As the children of Israel took vessels of Egyptian gold and silver with them into the wilderness, so Christendom took some of this and that - but not very much. As with Buddha's raft across the Ganges, it would be absurd, once having used the classics to get to St Augustine, to strap them on one's back and continue studying Virgil and Cicero on the dry land of Christendom.
*
"Old GG Coulton was right, I think: they were a narrow, antiliberal lot, if you measure them by the world's standards.
"Even the most learned of them, such as Alcuin, was no Socrates or even a Flaccus, as they jokingly called him; and when you consider the millions of monks in all the monasteries across the Dark Ages for a thousand years from the bitter Western Isles of Britain to the deserts of Egypt, those ages really were dark.
(...)
"[Yet] In what sense is the mind narrow that has not studied so much as become the substance of the Psalms?
"Day after day, hour upon hour, summer, winter, through the watches of the night, humming with a resonating sound that buzzes in the skull and bones, the long, slow-balanced verses and antiphons in the singular, sonorous silence of the Gregorian tones.
"We have confused simplicity with impoverishment and poverty with destitution."
***
John Senior, whose career was mostly as a Classic professor in the University of Kansas, is probably (in two books: The Death of- and then The Restoration of- Christian Culture) the clearest, most eloquent, most rigorous, and most convincing recent expositor of the nature of traditional Roman Catholic Christianity that I have yet encountered.
And yet, for me - at the end of all this - I felt (rather than perceived) something missing from the vision of an ideal full Roman Catholicism: a dryness, an incompleteness.
And this prompted me to keep looking, and to explore Eastern Orthodox Catholicism (mostly via Seraphim Rose), where I felt (rather than perceived) exactly that warmth and wholeness which I had felt was missing from the vision of ideal Roman Catholicism.
*
Nonetheless, John Senior is a marvellous writer, with acute insights into modernity.
And his point about the benefits of immersion in relatively few texts is one which has always appealed to me - despite the fact that I have read such a lot!
I tend to regard my wide reading as more of a compulsion and a shallow search for distraction, rather than any sign of wisdom.
And I am a great re-reader (as my Tolkien blog demonstrates) - I am only really happy reading a book which I know (even during the first reading) that I will be re-reading; otherwise I feel the time is probably being wasted.
*
NOTE ADDED:
I have unfortunately under-sold John Senior in the above, by my excess emphasis on autobiography: his books on Christian culture are very good indeed, and very well worth reading.
*
Excerpted from The Death of Christian Culture by John Senior (1923-1999) [re-punctuated]:
*
"For the training of the body there is the ascetic life - the habit, the fare, the manual work; and for the soul - the liturgy (the Opus Dei as St Benedict called it), the continuous immersion in a very few texts.
"The Psalter [i.e. Book of Psalms] learned by heart in the first year of the novitiate and finally the whole of the Old and New Testaments in St. Jerome's Vulgate Latin.
"Beside the Bible were the Rule (of St Benedict] and a few select commentaries.
"No single monastery had anything like the bulk of the Patrologia. The monks read very little of their own tradition and still less of the liberal arts.
(...)
"Few in those days read the Greeks at all, or even any classical Latin other than some schoolboy books for learning grammar.
"As soon as Plato was taken up by St Augustine, there was no longer any need for Plato.
"As the children of Israel took vessels of Egyptian gold and silver with them into the wilderness, so Christendom took some of this and that - but not very much. As with Buddha's raft across the Ganges, it would be absurd, once having used the classics to get to St Augustine, to strap them on one's back and continue studying Virgil and Cicero on the dry land of Christendom.
*
"Old GG Coulton was right, I think: they were a narrow, antiliberal lot, if you measure them by the world's standards.
"Even the most learned of them, such as Alcuin, was no Socrates or even a Flaccus, as they jokingly called him; and when you consider the millions of monks in all the monasteries across the Dark Ages for a thousand years from the bitter Western Isles of Britain to the deserts of Egypt, those ages really were dark.
(...)
"[Yet] In what sense is the mind narrow that has not studied so much as become the substance of the Psalms?
"Day after day, hour upon hour, summer, winter, through the watches of the night, humming with a resonating sound that buzzes in the skull and bones, the long, slow-balanced verses and antiphons in the singular, sonorous silence of the Gregorian tones.
"We have confused simplicity with impoverishment and poverty with destitution."
***
John Senior, whose career was mostly as a Classic professor in the University of Kansas, is probably (in two books: The Death of- and then The Restoration of- Christian Culture) the clearest, most eloquent, most rigorous, and most convincing recent expositor of the nature of traditional Roman Catholic Christianity that I have yet encountered.
And yet, for me - at the end of all this - I felt (rather than perceived) something missing from the vision of an ideal full Roman Catholicism: a dryness, an incompleteness.
And this prompted me to keep looking, and to explore Eastern Orthodox Catholicism (mostly via Seraphim Rose), where I felt (rather than perceived) exactly that warmth and wholeness which I had felt was missing from the vision of ideal Roman Catholicism.
*
Nonetheless, John Senior is a marvellous writer, with acute insights into modernity.
And his point about the benefits of immersion in relatively few texts is one which has always appealed to me - despite the fact that I have read such a lot!
I tend to regard my wide reading as more of a compulsion and a shallow search for distraction, rather than any sign of wisdom.
And I am a great re-reader (as my Tolkien blog demonstrates) - I am only really happy reading a book which I know (even during the first reading) that I will be re-reading; otherwise I feel the time is probably being wasted.
*
NOTE ADDED:
I have unfortunately under-sold John Senior in the above, by my excess emphasis on autobiography: his books on Christian culture are very good indeed, and very well worth reading.
*
Thursday, 16 June 2011
The Veterinary Society
*
Pondering the current British discourse on the necessity for legalizing and regulating euthanasia, I realized that under the prevailing Secularism, Leftism, Liberalism, Political Correctness we inhabit a veterinary society.
Our humane ruling elites see themselves asif caring vets, and the rest of us asif the animals they care for.
*
To a vet, the existence of animals is conceptualized purely in terms of their degree of contentment.
The kindly vet's job is to keep their animal clients happy and healthy, and to relieve their suffering.
And when the kindly vet sees terminal suffering, his instinct is to reach for the humane killer.
The kindly vet who sees a suffering animal wants to 'put it out of its misery'.
*
But since humans are sentient and spontaneously spiritual, the vets need first to persuade us that we are indeed animals; and our existence ought to be conceptualized purely in terms of our level of contentment.
In this, the vets have succeeded.
*
Soon we won't need the vets, we will all carry our own humane killers, we will live a lifestyle (not a life) dedicated to pleasurable distraction - and when the prospect of suffering seems too great, we will put ourselves out of our own misery.
That is our modern secular notion of eu-thanasia - the 'good death' - a swift and painless end to a pleasurable life.
Simple - and attainable!
*
Pondering the current British discourse on the necessity for legalizing and regulating euthanasia, I realized that under the prevailing Secularism, Leftism, Liberalism, Political Correctness we inhabit a veterinary society.
Our humane ruling elites see themselves asif caring vets, and the rest of us asif the animals they care for.
*
To a vet, the existence of animals is conceptualized purely in terms of their degree of contentment.
The kindly vet's job is to keep their animal clients happy and healthy, and to relieve their suffering.
And when the kindly vet sees terminal suffering, his instinct is to reach for the humane killer.
The kindly vet who sees a suffering animal wants to 'put it out of its misery'.
*
But since humans are sentient and spontaneously spiritual, the vets need first to persuade us that we are indeed animals; and our existence ought to be conceptualized purely in terms of our level of contentment.
In this, the vets have succeeded.
*
Soon we won't need the vets, we will all carry our own humane killers, we will live a lifestyle (not a life) dedicated to pleasurable distraction - and when the prospect of suffering seems too great, we will put ourselves out of our own misery.
That is our modern secular notion of eu-thanasia - the 'good death' - a swift and painless end to a pleasurable life.
Simple - and attainable!
*
Wednesday, 15 June 2011
China coup in the West?
*
Among all the discussions of the fall of the West, and which civilization might take-over, there seems to be little attention paid to China.
Yet, as the Western elites have turned-against their own civilizations and nations, and as their tactics have by now turned from passive acquiescence in decline to active promotion of decline (national subversion, attacks on allies, systematic assistance of enemies), perhaps China is as well placed as any to take-over and run the West?
*
Since a modern coup is about 'taking over the means of communication', China is exceptionally well-placed to mount such a coup - due to the international presence of Chinese nationals at high levels in science and technology, computation, and in key positions in the world of the internet and electronic media.
*
The main question - and it is one to which I don't know the answer - is whether or not China wants to take-over and rule the West.
If China did want to take-over, it is hard to see the Western authorities as having the will to stop them.
*
Indeed, since the Western elites are determined to abdicate rulership, and the Western populations are currently being prepared for future subordination; and if leadership becomes a choice of external powers or populations - is it possible that China might be among the best of potential candidates?
*
Among all the discussions of the fall of the West, and which civilization might take-over, there seems to be little attention paid to China.
Yet, as the Western elites have turned-against their own civilizations and nations, and as their tactics have by now turned from passive acquiescence in decline to active promotion of decline (national subversion, attacks on allies, systematic assistance of enemies), perhaps China is as well placed as any to take-over and run the West?
*
Since a modern coup is about 'taking over the means of communication', China is exceptionally well-placed to mount such a coup - due to the international presence of Chinese nationals at high levels in science and technology, computation, and in key positions in the world of the internet and electronic media.
*
The main question - and it is one to which I don't know the answer - is whether or not China wants to take-over and rule the West.
If China did want to take-over, it is hard to see the Western authorities as having the will to stop them.
*
Indeed, since the Western elites are determined to abdicate rulership, and the Western populations are currently being prepared for future subordination; and if leadership becomes a choice of external powers or populations - is it possible that China might be among the best of potential candidates?
*
Note: I intend to be very selective about publishing comments for this post.
*
JB Priestley and Time
*
Perhaps the best known British writer on 'Time' during the 20th century was not J.W. Dunne himself, but his interpreter and populariser J.B. Priestley (1894-1984).
*
Priestley is hardly known nowadays except perhaps for his play An Inspector Calls (although, to be remembered for even a single play which stays in the commercial repertory is more than most playwrights achieve - it is as much as, say Oliver Goldsmith or Oscar Wilde achieved).
However, in his heyday, from the 1930s to the 1960s, Priestley was one of the best known 'public intellectuals' of the UK. He had written big-selling and critically-respected novels, travel, books, plays, essays; and was a very popular radio and television broadcaster: was was indeed awarded the Order of Merit (OM) which is the highest intellectual accolade in the British honours system.
*
Anyone who was interested by my earlier blog posts on J.W. Dunne should probably get hold of Priestley's Man and Time, 1964.
Overall, I find Priestley interesting rather than convincing. His mature views were transitional between a youthful atheism and socialism, and later partial reactionary and spiritual interests.
Likewise, his reflections on the nature of Time are stimulating but seem rather confused and therefore not compelling.
What he seems to have done, in general, was outline problems worthy of attention.
*
In terms of Time, Priestley took seriously his own experiences of a different kind of Time (or several different kinds of Times) than the usual linear, serial treadmill leading inexorably to death and extinction.
These other Times seemed to supervene in situations like aesthetic absorption, the act of creation, and of course dreams.
*
Priestley was convinced from his own experience and some hundreds of accounts of others which he gathered (as well as from the work of Dunne's) that dreams could be pre-cognitive.
He also became convinced in the survival of the soul after death, probably in another kind of time.
Working wholly within a secular framework, he didn't explain these conclusions satisfactorily; indeed his explanations seem pretty poor to me - presumably because his assmptions rule out any possible coherent answer.
*
Altogether, Priestley seems on the one hand an unjustly neglected figure, on the other hand not a major thinker - but worth a look.
*
Perhaps the best known British writer on 'Time' during the 20th century was not J.W. Dunne himself, but his interpreter and populariser J.B. Priestley (1894-1984).
*
Priestley is hardly known nowadays except perhaps for his play An Inspector Calls (although, to be remembered for even a single play which stays in the commercial repertory is more than most playwrights achieve - it is as much as, say Oliver Goldsmith or Oscar Wilde achieved).
However, in his heyday, from the 1930s to the 1960s, Priestley was one of the best known 'public intellectuals' of the UK. He had written big-selling and critically-respected novels, travel, books, plays, essays; and was a very popular radio and television broadcaster: was was indeed awarded the Order of Merit (OM) which is the highest intellectual accolade in the British honours system.
*
Anyone who was interested by my earlier blog posts on J.W. Dunne should probably get hold of Priestley's Man and Time, 1964.
Overall, I find Priestley interesting rather than convincing. His mature views were transitional between a youthful atheism and socialism, and later partial reactionary and spiritual interests.
Likewise, his reflections on the nature of Time are stimulating but seem rather confused and therefore not compelling.
What he seems to have done, in general, was outline problems worthy of attention.
*
In terms of Time, Priestley took seriously his own experiences of a different kind of Time (or several different kinds of Times) than the usual linear, serial treadmill leading inexorably to death and extinction.
These other Times seemed to supervene in situations like aesthetic absorption, the act of creation, and of course dreams.
*
Priestley was convinced from his own experience and some hundreds of accounts of others which he gathered (as well as from the work of Dunne's) that dreams could be pre-cognitive.
He also became convinced in the survival of the soul after death, probably in another kind of time.
Working wholly within a secular framework, he didn't explain these conclusions satisfactorily; indeed his explanations seem pretty poor to me - presumably because his assmptions rule out any possible coherent answer.
*
Altogether, Priestley seems on the one hand an unjustly neglected figure, on the other hand not a major thinker - but worth a look.
*
Tuesday, 14 June 2011
Cousin marriage = arranged marriage = coercive marriage
*
That's it really - but it is a point most people seem to miss.
People don't spontaneously and en masse pick-out their cousins from all others as marriage partners; nor will people marry their cousins above all others without powerful carrots and sticks.
*
Of course I am referring to cousin marriage as a societal norm - and certainly not to each and every individual instance of cousin marriage - obviously some cousin marriages are spontaneous love matches. But most are not when it is the societal norm.
*
And whether spontaneous love matches are the best basis for marriage as a social norm is another question again - maybe arranged marriages, and coercive marriages are better overall? Certainly there are strong arguments on that side.
*
I'm just saying that cousin marriage as a societal norm is inevitably achieved by social mechanisms that are arranged and coercive.
*
That's it really - but it is a point most people seem to miss.
People don't spontaneously and en masse pick-out their cousins from all others as marriage partners; nor will people marry their cousins above all others without powerful carrots and sticks.
*
Of course I am referring to cousin marriage as a societal norm - and certainly not to each and every individual instance of cousin marriage - obviously some cousin marriages are spontaneous love matches. But most are not when it is the societal norm.
*
And whether spontaneous love matches are the best basis for marriage as a social norm is another question again - maybe arranged marriages, and coercive marriages are better overall? Certainly there are strong arguments on that side.
*
I'm just saying that cousin marriage as a societal norm is inevitably achieved by social mechanisms that are arranged and coercive.
*
P.S - I won't be publishing comments for this post.
*
TA Shippey on Tolkien: Take courage - things may not be as bad as they seem
*
"None of the characters, as Tolkien wrote the story, really understands the whole of what is going on.
"Not even Gandalf. In fact, the only thing they do know is that their fate will not, in the end, be determined by visible events but by a mostly invisible one: the stealthy crawl of three insignificant-looking characters into the lion's mouth of Mordor.
"The great ones and the heroes are continually trying to see what is happening elsewhere, through the palantirs and the Mirror of Galadriel and the Eye of Sauron. The attempt is repeatedly disastrous. Denethor commits suicide because of what he sees in his palantir, but he has read it wrong. As Gandalf says, "Even the wise cannot see all ends," and the really wise remember that.
"The moral is the motto of the British redcoat: "Look to your front." Don't think about what other people are doing: you'll get it wrong and it's disheartening. Or, to quote Gandalf again - and Jackson picked out just these words to repeat in the first movie, varying the pronouns cunningly - "[The future] is not for us to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
"Tolkien surely did not mean these words just for Frodo. They were a major part of his own conviction and a part of his own cure for the defeatism, the appeasement, the lack of will and the weary calculation of odds that he saw dogging the Western democracies as he was writing The Lord of the Rings and still after he had finished it.
"Tolkien's achievement, it may be, was to reintroduce a heroic world view, drawn from the ancient texts he taught as a professor, to a world gone ironic."
*
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3585907/
Take-courage-things-may-not-be-as-bad-as-they-seem.html
*
"None of the characters, as Tolkien wrote the story, really understands the whole of what is going on.
"Not even Gandalf. In fact, the only thing they do know is that their fate will not, in the end, be determined by visible events but by a mostly invisible one: the stealthy crawl of three insignificant-looking characters into the lion's mouth of Mordor.
"The great ones and the heroes are continually trying to see what is happening elsewhere, through the palantirs and the Mirror of Galadriel and the Eye of Sauron. The attempt is repeatedly disastrous. Denethor commits suicide because of what he sees in his palantir, but he has read it wrong. As Gandalf says, "Even the wise cannot see all ends," and the really wise remember that.
"The moral is the motto of the British redcoat: "Look to your front." Don't think about what other people are doing: you'll get it wrong and it's disheartening. Or, to quote Gandalf again - and Jackson picked out just these words to repeat in the first movie, varying the pronouns cunningly - "[The future] is not for us to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
"Tolkien surely did not mean these words just for Frodo. They were a major part of his own conviction and a part of his own cure for the defeatism, the appeasement, the lack of will and the weary calculation of odds that he saw dogging the Western democracies as he was writing The Lord of the Rings and still after he had finished it.
"Tolkien's achievement, it may be, was to reintroduce a heroic world view, drawn from the ancient texts he taught as a professor, to a world gone ironic."
*
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3585907/
Take-courage-things-may-not-be-as-bad-as-they-seem.html
*
Monday, 13 June 2011
The (Institutional) Church versus The Desert
*
Supposing someone was to retreat from The World to The Desert in order to pursue higher spirituality...
(The Desert could be physically and geographically remote, or psychologically and societally remote - or both)
...but this very remoteness, precisely that which was desired in order to enable a greater degree of spiritual concentration, itself removed the person from contact with the Institutional Church?
*
(Especially considering that the someone might be simply a single individual, and that the 'true' Church may now be very small in number; represented as an Institution so rarely as to be very hard to discover, very dispersed, yet very demanding of physical commitments (time, presence, practices).
Suppose this? Something will have to give...
The Church, the sacraments, the guidance, common worship?
*
"For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." KJV 18:20
But supposing not even 'two or three' can gather together? What then?
*
Yet if a person goes it alone in The Desert, they are highly vulnerable to the fatal temptations of spiritual pride ('prelest'), self-gratification, apostasy and heresy...
Is it not in itself prideful to set oneself apart?
*
I can't see any earthly answer to the dilemma.
*
Supposing someone was to retreat from The World to The Desert in order to pursue higher spirituality...
(The Desert could be physically and geographically remote, or psychologically and societally remote - or both)
...but this very remoteness, precisely that which was desired in order to enable a greater degree of spiritual concentration, itself removed the person from contact with the Institutional Church?
*
(Especially considering that the someone might be simply a single individual, and that the 'true' Church may now be very small in number; represented as an Institution so rarely as to be very hard to discover, very dispersed, yet very demanding of physical commitments (time, presence, practices).
Suppose this? Something will have to give...
The Church, the sacraments, the guidance, common worship?
*
"For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." KJV 18:20
But supposing not even 'two or three' can gather together? What then?
*
Yet if a person goes it alone in The Desert, they are highly vulnerable to the fatal temptations of spiritual pride ('prelest'), self-gratification, apostasy and heresy...
Is it not in itself prideful to set oneself apart?
*
I can't see any earthly answer to the dilemma.
*
Sunday, 12 June 2011
Is reward on earth more dangerous than punishment?
*
From The Letters of JRR Tolkien - letter number 131 to Milton Waldman, 1951:
The Downfall [of Numenor] is partly the result of an inner weakness in Men - consequent, if you will, upon the first Fall (unrecorded in theses tales), repented but not finally healed.
Reward on earth is more dangerous for men than punishment!
The Fall is achieved by the cunning of Sauron in exploiting this weakness. Its central theme is (inevitably, I think, in a story of Men) a Ban, or Prohibition.
*
If it is indeed true that reward on earth is more dangerous for men than punishment, then this is a truth which has been lost from our culture.
I take it that 'reward on earth' means material goods, worldly pleasures.
If it is true, then we are in big trouble, and have been in big trouble for several generations - since for us there is nothing that is real except 'on earth', and indeed for us there is no such thing as 'reward'.
*
We don't even think of earthly happiness as a reward because in modern culture we don't believe there is anybody or any-thing to do the rewarding; we don't believe in God, we don't believe that the universe cares about what we do.
We regard happiness as simply the natural state of things.
So, if we personally are not happy at this moment, if anybody is unhappy ever, then this can only be because it is someone's fault.
Since happiness is regarded as spontaneous, unhappy people must have been made unhappy - ultimately by other people.
*
For our culture the contrast with 'reward on earth' is not reward in heaven (we don't believe in heaven), nor even anything to do with reward (we don't believe in rewards), and certainly not in hell (hell is a wicked joke); but the opposite of reward on earth is simply 'misery on earth'.
Modern culture has no higher value than comfort.
*
We moderns cling to the comforts of life like the devil-worshipping Numenoreans, but not heroically - our elites are anything-but heroic.
Rather than be deprived of the comforts of life, our elite want the 'right' to be killed quickly and painlessly.
So this is what we have come to! A culture focused upon the process of dying - not death as a state (we don't believe in that), but merely on the process of dying.
*
Ours is a very different state from Numenorean hubris - who determined to conquer the gods and achieve eternal life (because life for them - on their earthly paradise, with their enhanced powers of mind and body - was such delight).
We have killed the gods, hence rendered each and every life meaningless, purposeless, alienated - so we ask 'nothing more' than that life feels pleasant, right up to its end.
*
Of course, logically, the modern elite ought to be killing themselves sooner rather than later; why put it off?
Why rely on doctors and clinics to 'put you out of your misery'? - surely people should do it while they can still implement their own choices for themselves.
It could happen, perhaps will happen.
*
But somehow, at present, we don't yet believe our own nihilism to that extent.
We are lukewarm even in our existential despair!
*
From The Letters of JRR Tolkien - letter number 131 to Milton Waldman, 1951:
The Downfall [of Numenor] is partly the result of an inner weakness in Men - consequent, if you will, upon the first Fall (unrecorded in theses tales), repented but not finally healed.
Reward on earth is more dangerous for men than punishment!
The Fall is achieved by the cunning of Sauron in exploiting this weakness. Its central theme is (inevitably, I think, in a story of Men) a Ban, or Prohibition.
*
If it is indeed true that reward on earth is more dangerous for men than punishment, then this is a truth which has been lost from our culture.
I take it that 'reward on earth' means material goods, worldly pleasures.
If it is true, then we are in big trouble, and have been in big trouble for several generations - since for us there is nothing that is real except 'on earth', and indeed for us there is no such thing as 'reward'.
*
We don't even think of earthly happiness as a reward because in modern culture we don't believe there is anybody or any-thing to do the rewarding; we don't believe in God, we don't believe that the universe cares about what we do.
We regard happiness as simply the natural state of things.
So, if we personally are not happy at this moment, if anybody is unhappy ever, then this can only be because it is someone's fault.
Since happiness is regarded as spontaneous, unhappy people must have been made unhappy - ultimately by other people.
*
For our culture the contrast with 'reward on earth' is not reward in heaven (we don't believe in heaven), nor even anything to do with reward (we don't believe in rewards), and certainly not in hell (hell is a wicked joke); but the opposite of reward on earth is simply 'misery on earth'.
Modern culture has no higher value than comfort.
*
We moderns cling to the comforts of life like the devil-worshipping Numenoreans, but not heroically - our elites are anything-but heroic.
Rather than be deprived of the comforts of life, our elite want the 'right' to be killed quickly and painlessly.
So this is what we have come to! A culture focused upon the process of dying - not death as a state (we don't believe in that), but merely on the process of dying.
*
Ours is a very different state from Numenorean hubris - who determined to conquer the gods and achieve eternal life (because life for them - on their earthly paradise, with their enhanced powers of mind and body - was such delight).
We have killed the gods, hence rendered each and every life meaningless, purposeless, alienated - so we ask 'nothing more' than that life feels pleasant, right up to its end.
*
Of course, logically, the modern elite ought to be killing themselves sooner rather than later; why put it off?
Why rely on doctors and clinics to 'put you out of your misery'? - surely people should do it while they can still implement their own choices for themselves.
It could happen, perhaps will happen.
*
But somehow, at present, we don't yet believe our own nihilism to that extent.
We are lukewarm even in our existential despair!
*
Saturday, 11 June 2011
Psychology of an atheist
*
When I was an atheist I didn’t feel any need for Christianity.
I didn’t feel any need for it. I certainly felt alienated, but merely wanted relief from alienation, and conceptualised this in terms of relief in pleasure, or at least in distraction – in absorption, in leisure or in busyness.
*
I strongly resented the assumption that I had a need which Christianity would satisfy. I denied any such need.
I resented the idea that I was in a state of sin (whatever that might mean) from which I needed to be saved.
I regarded Christianity as being like psychoanalysis – something which itself created the pathology which it then claimed to cure.
*
I didn’t see that my alienation was a matter of perceived reality – that I felt alienated because the only things that seemed to matter were wholly subjective (unrelated to objective facts) hence delusional.
*
The un-alienated life was merely (I thought) a successful delusion – a game of ‘let’s pretend’ where you are able to forget that you are pretending.
I learned that hunter gatherers were, apparently, un-alienated and well-adjusted to their reality; but (I thought) precisely because hunter gatherer reality (animism) was a successfully self-gratifying delusion.
Hunter gatherers believed that the forest (or whatever their environment) was a benign parent, that theirs was a perfect world where they had ‘always’ lived, that they were always surrounded by aware and purposive agents with whom they had a personal relationship (trees, stones, hills) that things were as they should be – full of spirits and powers.
*
I regarded hunter gatherer beliefs as objectively wrong – but successfully self-gratifying. I envied them their happiness but regarded it as a delusion. The meanings which hunter gatherers perceived were projected meanings.
In reality I believed that there were no such meanings.
*
I believed that human reason and investigation had not discovered any link between human subjectivity and objective reality – indeed I believed that we moderns had discovered there was no such link, in the sense that the rational default inference was no meaning – and anything else was to pander to wishful thinking.
*
I did not believe in the reality of science, nor even of reason – but I believed that they were internally-consistent, un-contradicted and therefore (for some reason) preferable.
In a sense, I regarded the only reality as present gratification, and that the understanding of present reality was ultimately underwritten by the power of reason and science to enhance present gratification (e.g. more comfort, more stimulus, longer life…).
Yet, at the same time, I believed that hunter gatherers had greater personal gratification...
*
Therefore the human situation was tragic. We were apparently addicted to our present delusions – even though these delusions were (by comparison with hunter gatherer life) sub-optimal.
The main hope was therefore that humans would gain control of their own subjectivity – so that we could perceive and experience as we wanted.
*
I regarded morality – for example altruism, caring for others – as ultimately explicable as a contingent consequence of natural selection – therefore its imperative was pragmatic, but not ethically compelling (change the instinct, by science or maybe training, and the morality would change – so I was forced to admit, when trying to be consistent).
Why not be a selfish psychopath, then? That would be consistent? Why not exploit the world and other people for personal gratification?
Why not indeed?...
*
Yet I found myself constrained (and it could only be regarded as a constraint, ultimately) by Natural Law – by spontaneous human morality.
In a sense, I resented the spontaneous presence of ‘Natural Law’ in myself as a barrier to self-gratification.
At one level, I wanted things to be as I wanted them to be; but was frustrated that mind and body would not go along with this desire: that instinct and pathology (as I interpreted the phenomena) would contradict and often thwart me in trying to attain self-gratification.
So, in that sense, evolved instincts and the constraints of ‘the rest of the world’ (both experienced as two sides of the frustration of evolved instincts) were the only realities.
But all this had no moral implications – unless morality was re-defined as the relation between evolved instincts and the current environment (either or both of which might at some point be changed).
*
So, reality was self-contradictory, paradoxical.
But then why not? Who said reality had to make sense?
(Especially to a contingently evolved animal such as myself.)
Whatever the nature of reality, all I knew were my preferences and the constraints on their gratification.
Yet, how could I even know this?
Somehow I ‘knew’ that hunter gatherers were deluded in their contentment; but the criteria by which I judged them to be delusional were not – somehow – regarded as equally delusional.
I knew that science was a kind of delusion – yet somehow it seemed less delusional than animism.
*
All the time I was making evaluations and judgments (for example that science was realer than animism) yet there seemed no grounds for these – except perhaps that what is, what exists, has a greater reality than what was and is not now.
Existence validates reality?
(But how to evaluate existence?)
What seemed compelling was that hunter gatherers were few or extinct whereas rationalists, atheists, had ‘taken over’ the world.
This was an argument of validation by demographic trends, as it dawned on me. Demography is truth?
A pragmatic argument.
*
Yet what about these demographic trends? Had rationalism and atheism and materialism really taken-over?
How come if atheism is valid then religions are increasing? How come that, among religions, Islam has been the most obviously successful in recent demographic trends?
The conclusion could be delayed by comparing wealth and technical ability – but surely these are only a means to an end; and wealth and technical ability are only validated if they are able to prevail – which surely means they ought to be prevailing now?
I was trying to judge pragmatically, yet I was finding that pragmatic judgement pointed towards transcendental values.
How to stave-off transcendence?
*
‘Transcendent reality’ is (by definition) outside of science and pragmatic discourse.
Yet apparently the application of a pragmatic system of evaluation seemed to conclude that transcendence is pragmatically validated.
Apparently, only by basing life on transcendent Goods can life be pragmatically validated…
*
I was led to the same conclusions in science and it art. In science, it seemed that honesty was vital to real science, yet honesty depended upon regarding transcendent truth as real.
In art, it seemed that regarding beauty as transcendentally real was essential to real achievement.
Indeed, the achievements of creative genius in whatever field seemed to depend on the sense that reality was transcendent of that field.
Pragmatism led merely to professionalism, or careerism, or plain psychopathic fakery.
*
Once I had reached this point, the point of acknowledging the primacy of the transcendent, then I was no longer an atheist.
The question changed: from then onwards, it was not a question of atheism versus religion, but instead a question of which religion?
*
When I was an atheist I didn’t feel any need for Christianity.
I didn’t feel any need for it. I certainly felt alienated, but merely wanted relief from alienation, and conceptualised this in terms of relief in pleasure, or at least in distraction – in absorption, in leisure or in busyness.
*
I strongly resented the assumption that I had a need which Christianity would satisfy. I denied any such need.
I resented the idea that I was in a state of sin (whatever that might mean) from which I needed to be saved.
I regarded Christianity as being like psychoanalysis – something which itself created the pathology which it then claimed to cure.
*
I didn’t see that my alienation was a matter of perceived reality – that I felt alienated because the only things that seemed to matter were wholly subjective (unrelated to objective facts) hence delusional.
*
The un-alienated life was merely (I thought) a successful delusion – a game of ‘let’s pretend’ where you are able to forget that you are pretending.
I learned that hunter gatherers were, apparently, un-alienated and well-adjusted to their reality; but (I thought) precisely because hunter gatherer reality (animism) was a successfully self-gratifying delusion.
Hunter gatherers believed that the forest (or whatever their environment) was a benign parent, that theirs was a perfect world where they had ‘always’ lived, that they were always surrounded by aware and purposive agents with whom they had a personal relationship (trees, stones, hills) that things were as they should be – full of spirits and powers.
*
I regarded hunter gatherer beliefs as objectively wrong – but successfully self-gratifying. I envied them their happiness but regarded it as a delusion. The meanings which hunter gatherers perceived were projected meanings.
In reality I believed that there were no such meanings.
*
I believed that human reason and investigation had not discovered any link between human subjectivity and objective reality – indeed I believed that we moderns had discovered there was no such link, in the sense that the rational default inference was no meaning – and anything else was to pander to wishful thinking.
*
I did not believe in the reality of science, nor even of reason – but I believed that they were internally-consistent, un-contradicted and therefore (for some reason) preferable.
In a sense, I regarded the only reality as present gratification, and that the understanding of present reality was ultimately underwritten by the power of reason and science to enhance present gratification (e.g. more comfort, more stimulus, longer life…).
Yet, at the same time, I believed that hunter gatherers had greater personal gratification...
*
Therefore the human situation was tragic. We were apparently addicted to our present delusions – even though these delusions were (by comparison with hunter gatherer life) sub-optimal.
The main hope was therefore that humans would gain control of their own subjectivity – so that we could perceive and experience as we wanted.
*
I regarded morality – for example altruism, caring for others – as ultimately explicable as a contingent consequence of natural selection – therefore its imperative was pragmatic, but not ethically compelling (change the instinct, by science or maybe training, and the morality would change – so I was forced to admit, when trying to be consistent).
Why not be a selfish psychopath, then? That would be consistent? Why not exploit the world and other people for personal gratification?
Why not indeed?...
*
Yet I found myself constrained (and it could only be regarded as a constraint, ultimately) by Natural Law – by spontaneous human morality.
In a sense, I resented the spontaneous presence of ‘Natural Law’ in myself as a barrier to self-gratification.
At one level, I wanted things to be as I wanted them to be; but was frustrated that mind and body would not go along with this desire: that instinct and pathology (as I interpreted the phenomena) would contradict and often thwart me in trying to attain self-gratification.
So, in that sense, evolved instincts and the constraints of ‘the rest of the world’ (both experienced as two sides of the frustration of evolved instincts) were the only realities.
But all this had no moral implications – unless morality was re-defined as the relation between evolved instincts and the current environment (either or both of which might at some point be changed).
*
So, reality was self-contradictory, paradoxical.
But then why not? Who said reality had to make sense?
(Especially to a contingently evolved animal such as myself.)
Whatever the nature of reality, all I knew were my preferences and the constraints on their gratification.
Yet, how could I even know this?
Somehow I ‘knew’ that hunter gatherers were deluded in their contentment; but the criteria by which I judged them to be delusional were not – somehow – regarded as equally delusional.
I knew that science was a kind of delusion – yet somehow it seemed less delusional than animism.
*
All the time I was making evaluations and judgments (for example that science was realer than animism) yet there seemed no grounds for these – except perhaps that what is, what exists, has a greater reality than what was and is not now.
Existence validates reality?
(But how to evaluate existence?)
What seemed compelling was that hunter gatherers were few or extinct whereas rationalists, atheists, had ‘taken over’ the world.
This was an argument of validation by demographic trends, as it dawned on me. Demography is truth?
A pragmatic argument.
*
Yet what about these demographic trends? Had rationalism and atheism and materialism really taken-over?
How come if atheism is valid then religions are increasing? How come that, among religions, Islam has been the most obviously successful in recent demographic trends?
The conclusion could be delayed by comparing wealth and technical ability – but surely these are only a means to an end; and wealth and technical ability are only validated if they are able to prevail – which surely means they ought to be prevailing now?
I was trying to judge pragmatically, yet I was finding that pragmatic judgement pointed towards transcendental values.
How to stave-off transcendence?
*
‘Transcendent reality’ is (by definition) outside of science and pragmatic discourse.
Yet apparently the application of a pragmatic system of evaluation seemed to conclude that transcendence is pragmatically validated.
Apparently, only by basing life on transcendent Goods can life be pragmatically validated…
*
I was led to the same conclusions in science and it art. In science, it seemed that honesty was vital to real science, yet honesty depended upon regarding transcendent truth as real.
In art, it seemed that regarding beauty as transcendentally real was essential to real achievement.
Indeed, the achievements of creative genius in whatever field seemed to depend on the sense that reality was transcendent of that field.
Pragmatism led merely to professionalism, or careerism, or plain psychopathic fakery.
*
Once I had reached this point, the point of acknowledging the primacy of the transcendent, then I was no longer an atheist.
The question changed: from then onwards, it was not a question of atheism versus religion, but instead a question of which religion?
*
Friday, 10 June 2011
Surrendering life versus clinging to life
*
Tolkien's Numenoreans were mortal men - but they did not suffer illness, lived about three times as long as we do, and when it came to die were able to surrender their lives of their own free will.
But when the Numenoreans later became corrupted, they would cling to life, suffer pain and misery, become senile, and eventually die anyway - unwillingly.
*
What about us? Sadly we cannot do as the old and uncorrupt Numenoreans; but is there any reason why we must cling to life like the dark Numenoreans - the one's who worshipped Morgoth?
*
How about this?
When we reach the time of life when our vitality is waning and we know it is about time to die; and when we then get sick and suffer (unlike the Numenoreans); maybe we should not take antibiotics, not have life-extending surgery, not use life support systems, not sustain our exhausted physiology with medication and mechanization, and certainly not get resuscitated?
Maybe we should just avail ourselves of painkillers and palliatives (but preferably not to the extent of clouding our consciousness - trying to keep a clear head) and 'let nature take its course'?
Be Aragorn, not Arwen.
*
Aragorn: "At last, Lady Evenstar, fairest in this world, and most beloved, my world is fading. Lo! we have gathered; and we have spent, and now the time of payment draws near."
Arwen knew well what he intended, and long had foreseen it; nonetheless she was overborne by her grief. "Would you then, lord, before your time leave your people that live by your word?" she said.
"Not before my time," he answered. "For if I will not go now, then I must soon go perforce. And Eldarion our son is a man full-ripe for kingship." (...)
Then all left him save Arwen, and she stood alone by his bed. And for all her wisdom and lineage she could not forbear to plead with him to stay yet for a while. She was not yet weary of her days, and thus she tasted the bitterness of the mortality that she had taken upon her. (...)
Aragorn: "Let us not be overthrown at the final test, who of old renounced the Shadow and the Ring. In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound forever in the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory, Farewell!"
"Estel, Estel!" [Arwen] cried, and with that even as he took her hand and kissed it, he fell into sleep.
Then a great beauty was revealed in him, so that all who after came there looked on him with wonder; for they saw the grace of his youth, and the valor of his manhood, and the wisdom and majesty of his age were all blended together. And long there he lay, an image of the splendour of the Kings of Men in glory undimmed before the breaking of the world.
But Arwen went forth from the House, and the light of her eyes was quenched, and it seemed to her people that she had become cold and grey as nightfall in winter that comes without a star.
Then she said farewell to Eldarion, and to her daughters, and to all whom she had loved; and she went out from the city of Minas Tirith and passed away to the land of Lórien, and dwelt there alone under the fading trees until winter came. Galadriel had passed away and Celeborn had also gone, and the land was silent.
There at last when the mallorn-leaves were falling, but spring had not yet come, she laid herself to rest upon Cerin Amroth; and there is her green grave, until the world is changed, and all the days of her life are utterly forgotten by the men that come after, and elanor and nimphredil bloom no more east of the sea.
The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien - The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen
*
Tolkien's Numenoreans were mortal men - but they did not suffer illness, lived about three times as long as we do, and when it came to die were able to surrender their lives of their own free will.
But when the Numenoreans later became corrupted, they would cling to life, suffer pain and misery, become senile, and eventually die anyway - unwillingly.
*
What about us? Sadly we cannot do as the old and uncorrupt Numenoreans; but is there any reason why we must cling to life like the dark Numenoreans - the one's who worshipped Morgoth?
*
How about this?
When we reach the time of life when our vitality is waning and we know it is about time to die; and when we then get sick and suffer (unlike the Numenoreans); maybe we should not take antibiotics, not have life-extending surgery, not use life support systems, not sustain our exhausted physiology with medication and mechanization, and certainly not get resuscitated?
Maybe we should just avail ourselves of painkillers and palliatives (but preferably not to the extent of clouding our consciousness - trying to keep a clear head) and 'let nature take its course'?
Be Aragorn, not Arwen.
*
Aragorn: "At last, Lady Evenstar, fairest in this world, and most beloved, my world is fading. Lo! we have gathered; and we have spent, and now the time of payment draws near."
Arwen knew well what he intended, and long had foreseen it; nonetheless she was overborne by her grief. "Would you then, lord, before your time leave your people that live by your word?" she said.
"Not before my time," he answered. "For if I will not go now, then I must soon go perforce. And Eldarion our son is a man full-ripe for kingship." (...)
Then all left him save Arwen, and she stood alone by his bed. And for all her wisdom and lineage she could not forbear to plead with him to stay yet for a while. She was not yet weary of her days, and thus she tasted the bitterness of the mortality that she had taken upon her. (...)
Aragorn: "Let us not be overthrown at the final test, who of old renounced the Shadow and the Ring. In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound forever in the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory, Farewell!"
"Estel, Estel!" [Arwen] cried, and with that even as he took her hand and kissed it, he fell into sleep.
Then a great beauty was revealed in him, so that all who after came there looked on him with wonder; for they saw the grace of his youth, and the valor of his manhood, and the wisdom and majesty of his age were all blended together. And long there he lay, an image of the splendour of the Kings of Men in glory undimmed before the breaking of the world.
But Arwen went forth from the House, and the light of her eyes was quenched, and it seemed to her people that she had become cold and grey as nightfall in winter that comes without a star.
Then she said farewell to Eldarion, and to her daughters, and to all whom she had loved; and she went out from the city of Minas Tirith and passed away to the land of Lórien, and dwelt there alone under the fading trees until winter came. Galadriel had passed away and Celeborn had also gone, and the land was silent.
There at last when the mallorn-leaves were falling, but spring had not yet come, she laid herself to rest upon Cerin Amroth; and there is her green grave, until the world is changed, and all the days of her life are utterly forgotten by the men that come after, and elanor and nimphredil bloom no more east of the sea.
The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien - The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen
*
The Satoshi Kanazawa Affair and Vaclav Havel's Poster Test
*
http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/kanazawa-statement.pdf
*
"The manager of a fruit-and-vegetable shop places in his window, among the onions and carrots, the slogan: “Workers of the world, unite!
"Why does he do it? What is he trying to communicate to the world?...
"I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient"
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2010/08/vaclav-havels-poster-test.html
*
http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/kanazawa-statement.pdf
*
"The manager of a fruit-and-vegetable shop places in his window, among the onions and carrots, the slogan: “Workers of the world, unite!
"Why does he do it? What is he trying to communicate to the world?...
"I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient"
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2010/08/vaclav-havels-poster-test.html
*
Thursday, 9 June 2011
Inner and Outer Learning in Byzantine intellectual life - Steven Runciman
*
From The Last Byzantine Renaissance, by Steven Runciman, 1970:
'...what the later Greeks had to say in general was restricted by their distinction between the Inner and the Outer learning.
'The Inner learning dealt with eternity, with truths that had existed before the beginning of time; and man could only know what God in his goodness had chosen to reveal. The rest was unknown and unknowable.
'The student of the Inner Learning might be able to expound and explain these revealed truths, but he could not add to them unless the Holy Spirit vouchsafed further revelations.
'The mystic might be permitted to penetrate a little further into the unknown but his experience was not an intellectual exercise. (...)
'The sophists who arrogantly explained the universe in terms intelligible to the intellect had no place in Byzantium.
'Philosophy could not open the door to Inner Learning.'
***
From The Last Byzantine Renaissance, by Steven Runciman, 1970:
'...what the later Greeks had to say in general was restricted by their distinction between the Inner and the Outer learning.
'The Inner learning dealt with eternity, with truths that had existed before the beginning of time; and man could only know what God in his goodness had chosen to reveal. The rest was unknown and unknowable.
'The student of the Inner Learning might be able to expound and explain these revealed truths, but he could not add to them unless the Holy Spirit vouchsafed further revelations.
'The mystic might be permitted to penetrate a little further into the unknown but his experience was not an intellectual exercise. (...)
'The sophists who arrogantly explained the universe in terms intelligible to the intellect had no place in Byzantium.
'Philosophy could not open the door to Inner Learning.'
***
Wednesday, 8 June 2011
The new religion of liberalism (political correctness) - James Kalb
*
From The Tyranny of Liberalism by James Kalb, 2008. Page 94 (re-paragraphed):
*
The new religion, a system of moral absolutes based on a denial that moral truth is knowable, consists in nothing less than the deification of man.
To refuse to talk about the transcendent, and to view it as wholly out of our reach, seems very cautious and humble. In practice, however, it puts our own thoughts and desires at the center of things, and so puts man in the place of God.
If you say we cannot know anything about God, only our own experience, you will soon say that there is no God, at least for practical purposes, and that we are the ones who give order and meaning to the world.
In short you will say that we are God.
*
Skepticism invariably turns into dogmatism.
We cannot help but act, and if skepticism makes all action nonrational we will nonetheless act on some principle or other.
If, because we are skeptics, we cannot take arguments in favour of other principles seriously, we will treat our arbitrarily chosen principles as absolute and denounce those who question them as a threat to peace and public order.
(*)
Liberalism (...) proposes a faith - man the measure as the highest truth and preference satisfaction as the summum bonum - but cannot discuss what it is doing or why. Any reasons it could give would fall far short of the clear demonstration it demands.
Rather than engage other beliefs it must obfuscate its position, claim that it wins by default, and declare other faiths out of bounds.
***
I can easily recall feeling just this way, for years; accepting that man is the measure of all things, having what felt like strong moral principles, but unable to discuss what I was doing or why.
It was - curiously - a very secure position, since it was so unclear, so impossible to pin-down, that it could never be refuted: there was, really, nothing to refute.
Unfortunately, my way out of this was so slow, multi-step and complicated that it is hard to seem how it could be of any value to anybody else.
But one aspect was that I eventually admitted to myself that I had 'always' operated on the basis of some kind of benign providence which was like a path to which I ought to adhere, and which was revealed by instinct and serendipity - then gradually recognizing that this lifelong mode of actual-living made no sense except if there was a God with a personal 'interest' in my 'salvation'.
(I recognized that this was entailed by Jung's ideas - which I had explored in some depth - but that Jung had himself not followed his own logic; then I diagnosed that neither had I.)
Once that fact of living was recognized, once the human centred-perspective was rejected (or was recognized as always having de facto been rejected), then this - obviously - led onto other things.
*
From The Tyranny of Liberalism by James Kalb, 2008. Page 94 (re-paragraphed):
*
The new religion, a system of moral absolutes based on a denial that moral truth is knowable, consists in nothing less than the deification of man.
To refuse to talk about the transcendent, and to view it as wholly out of our reach, seems very cautious and humble. In practice, however, it puts our own thoughts and desires at the center of things, and so puts man in the place of God.
If you say we cannot know anything about God, only our own experience, you will soon say that there is no God, at least for practical purposes, and that we are the ones who give order and meaning to the world.
In short you will say that we are God.
*
Skepticism invariably turns into dogmatism.
We cannot help but act, and if skepticism makes all action nonrational we will nonetheless act on some principle or other.
If, because we are skeptics, we cannot take arguments in favour of other principles seriously, we will treat our arbitrarily chosen principles as absolute and denounce those who question them as a threat to peace and public order.
(*)
Liberalism (...) proposes a faith - man the measure as the highest truth and preference satisfaction as the summum bonum - but cannot discuss what it is doing or why. Any reasons it could give would fall far short of the clear demonstration it demands.
Rather than engage other beliefs it must obfuscate its position, claim that it wins by default, and declare other faiths out of bounds.
***
I can easily recall feeling just this way, for years; accepting that man is the measure of all things, having what felt like strong moral principles, but unable to discuss what I was doing or why.
It was - curiously - a very secure position, since it was so unclear, so impossible to pin-down, that it could never be refuted: there was, really, nothing to refute.
Unfortunately, my way out of this was so slow, multi-step and complicated that it is hard to seem how it could be of any value to anybody else.
But one aspect was that I eventually admitted to myself that I had 'always' operated on the basis of some kind of benign providence which was like a path to which I ought to adhere, and which was revealed by instinct and serendipity - then gradually recognizing that this lifelong mode of actual-living made no sense except if there was a God with a personal 'interest' in my 'salvation'.
(I recognized that this was entailed by Jung's ideas - which I had explored in some depth - but that Jung had himself not followed his own logic; then I diagnosed that neither had I.)
Once that fact of living was recognized, once the human centred-perspective was rejected (or was recognized as always having de facto been rejected), then this - obviously - led onto other things.
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Tuesday, 7 June 2011
The Byzantine attitude to beauty - Steven Runciman
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From The Byzantine Civilization by Steven Runciman, 1933
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They loved beautiful scenery. Gardens and parks and flowers were a delight to them (...) and they would build their monasteries on sites commanding the loveliest views that they could find.
Their buildings, their stuffs, their books, all reflected the same yearning for beauty, but a beauty not quite of this earth.
Beauty had an inner meaning to them. It helped their mystical contemplation; it was part of the glory of God.
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Life was drab and ugly; but the worshipper, the citizen in Saint Sophia or the hermit on Mount Athos was away from it all.
The human architecture of the Cathedral and the divine architecture of the Mountain alike raised him out of the ordinary world and made him closer to God and True Reality.
To the Byzantine beauty and religion went hand in hand, to their mutual advantage.
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The alliance is the better understood when we remember the background to Byzantine life. The Byzantines lived in a hard and unreliable world. Beyond the frontiers roamed the barbarians, and all too often they would burst in across the provinces or over the sea, and their hordes would reach the gates of the capital itself.
(***)
Beset by dangers and uncertainty, the Byzantine could scarcely fail to be suspicious, to have nerves that flared easily into fury or panic.
He inevitably sought comfort in ultra-mundane things, in union with God and the hope of eternal life.
He knew existence to be sad.
The simple laughter and happiness of the pagans was lost. Byzantine wit was acid; its humour found expression in mockery and sarcasm.
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Indeed life seemed a mockery.
This great Empire, the last home of civilization in a dark stormy world, was continually tottering before the barbarians, and recovering only to meet a fresh attack.
For centuries the great City stood inviolate, to be in foreign eyes a symbol of eternal power and riches. But the Byzantines knew the end would come some day, that one of these onslaughts would triumph.
The prophecies written all over Constantinople on columns or in wise books told the same story, of the days when there would be no more Emperors, the last days of the city, the last days of civilisation.
***
Summary comment: We now live long after the end of civilisation. We live in an increasingly hard and unreliable world, and barbarians roam among us and around us. We know existence to be sad. We know that the simple laughter and happiness of the pagans is lost. Beset by dangers and uncertainty, we must seek comfort, not in worldly distractions, but in ultra-mundane things; in a beauty not quite of this earth to help our mystical contemplation; in union with God and the hope of eternal life.
*
From The Byzantine Civilization by Steven Runciman, 1933
*
They loved beautiful scenery. Gardens and parks and flowers were a delight to them (...) and they would build their monasteries on sites commanding the loveliest views that they could find.
Their buildings, their stuffs, their books, all reflected the same yearning for beauty, but a beauty not quite of this earth.
Beauty had an inner meaning to them. It helped their mystical contemplation; it was part of the glory of God.
*
Life was drab and ugly; but the worshipper, the citizen in Saint Sophia or the hermit on Mount Athos was away from it all.
The human architecture of the Cathedral and the divine architecture of the Mountain alike raised him out of the ordinary world and made him closer to God and True Reality.
To the Byzantine beauty and religion went hand in hand, to their mutual advantage.
*
The alliance is the better understood when we remember the background to Byzantine life. The Byzantines lived in a hard and unreliable world. Beyond the frontiers roamed the barbarians, and all too often they would burst in across the provinces or over the sea, and their hordes would reach the gates of the capital itself.
(***)
Beset by dangers and uncertainty, the Byzantine could scarcely fail to be suspicious, to have nerves that flared easily into fury or panic.
He inevitably sought comfort in ultra-mundane things, in union with God and the hope of eternal life.
He knew existence to be sad.
The simple laughter and happiness of the pagans was lost. Byzantine wit was acid; its humour found expression in mockery and sarcasm.
*
Indeed life seemed a mockery.
This great Empire, the last home of civilization in a dark stormy world, was continually tottering before the barbarians, and recovering only to meet a fresh attack.
For centuries the great City stood inviolate, to be in foreign eyes a symbol of eternal power and riches. But the Byzantines knew the end would come some day, that one of these onslaughts would triumph.
The prophecies written all over Constantinople on columns or in wise books told the same story, of the days when there would be no more Emperors, the last days of the city, the last days of civilisation.
***
Summary comment: We now live long after the end of civilisation. We live in an increasingly hard and unreliable world, and barbarians roam among us and around us. We know existence to be sad. We know that the simple laughter and happiness of the pagans is lost. Beset by dangers and uncertainty, we must seek comfort, not in worldly distractions, but in ultra-mundane things; in a beauty not quite of this earth to help our mystical contemplation; in union with God and the hope of eternal life.
*
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