I hesitate to call it unbearable - because it can be can be borne - but it is so harmful, so horrible to feel one's mind slipping into that world view.
It is everywhere and all the time - and requires active avoidance - it is of course in the mass media, and in government speeches, and in the workings of bureaucracies, and in mainstream charities and churches. Sit down in a meeting it is there; somebody giving a speech somewhere and it is there; at awards ceremonies (any kind of award, for anything - indeed awards are among the very worst situations: and modern zombies are extraordinarily fond of giving each other awards!) and one is certain to be confronted by it.
It is the metaphysics of the thing that gets me: we hear somebody in public life give a speech - and it is the world view that the speech comes-from that is most horrifying, rather than the specific elements. It is not so much the individual lies as the root dishonesty which hits home. And this dishonesty is composed of linked elements - such that the lies cannot be tackled one at a time - and the whole basis needs to be attacked; yet of course that is never permitted, is pooh-poohed as fine spun abstraction in contrast with Real Life.
There is also detectable a kind of demonic laughter behind it - somebody, somewhere is cackling with glee at the millions of people being subjected to pernicious, mind-eroding lies from official propaganda and corporate communications and woven into the best and most popular movies and TV shows and novels; soaking it it up, having their deep metaphysics restructured in the direction of hope-less despair enlivened by active destruction of the good (usually the destruction of a greater good by a lesser, as when some 'freedom' or 'rights' are used to rationalise and institutionalize resentment, hatred, and schadenfreude - in other words normal and dominant and universal Left/ Liberal/ Conservative/ Republican/ Libertarian socio-politics).
And how to cope with the fact that so many people seem to seek-out these occasions of horror - and wish to enforce them on others and structure their lives by them; and regard this as the main thing in life, the justification of life, the basis of a proper existence?
And the reluctance to snap-out-of-it; the truly superstitious terror of (even, especially, mentally) stepping out of line... I think of those hordes of middle-aged nice women who are doing the work of demons with a vaguely kindly motivation - pathetically manipulated and praised into assisting their own destruction; those narcissistic young men who live for the mirror - preening their bodies with weights and drugs, self-mutilating, turned-in upon their own self-image; those young women who seek, and get, attention-attention-attention - always and above all things; those older men who want nothing more than to be young, or appear to be young, or to behave asif young.
It is sad to reflect on the worthlessness of the usual, admired human existence in The West, because it is a chosen worthlessness - built-upon the active and impatient rejection of Goodness; a deliberate worthlessness, a worthlessness embraced and made into a philosophy of leaden-featured, dead-eyed, screeching triviality and waste.
Sadness and anger are the reaction - sadness at the stupidity and self-deception; anger at the lack of resistance to stupidity on the one hand, and on the other hand anger at the sheer viciousness and excitement with which detectable-Goodness is mocked, infiltrated, subverted and macerated.
Friday, 13 May 2016
Thursday, 12 May 2016
Pay careful attention to the *specific* claims of religions and individuals because they are probably true (at least, claims made in the era of faith) - further notes on the primacy of John's Gospel
I have said before, and believe, that up until the past few hundred years (in The West) religious claims can nearly always be taken as true - so long as we pay careful attention to the specifics of those claims.
This is because in the past the great mass of people would not make any religious claims that they did not believe to be true; because for them religion was real, and it was existentially and permanently valuable to tell the truth and hazardous deliberately to lie about the core aspects of religion.
So, no religion except Christianity offers its adherents anything as good as, or better than, an eternal, perfected, bodily resurrection dwelling with the deity after death; and so far as I know, none ever have done in the past 2000 years.
*
We moderns might imagine it would be easy to offer something better than Christianity, or make the same offer on 'easier terms' - but that hasn't happened among - and indeed most religions offer a great deal less, and often enough offer something pretty horrible.
*
This is evidence of their sincerity, and I would say truth - in the sense that they are saying 'If you follow this religion, then this is what will happen to you' (within limits of mortal expression and comprehension - so nothing stated in public discourse can be taken absolutely literally as the whole truth) - and I think this is broadly correct. Do this, and this will happen.
*
Clearly this does not apply to modern times, because many people so profoundly disbelieve in religion that they regard themselves as free to say anything - including whatever lies and misleading comments are expedient in the short term. We live in an era when - for many self-identified Christians - Christianity, for such people, is 'just words'; and they will say and write whatever they regard as most necessary or useful to advance the - usually socio-political - cause which is their real belief.
*
When it comes to the Bible it is interesting to notice that of all the authors and sources in the various books of the Bible - only John in his Gospel claims (not explicitly, but clearly communicated) to have a full understanding of the reality of Christ and his teachings.
And it is also noticeable that John explicitly states (towards the close) that he has not been able to express this full understanding in the Gospel itself.
None of the other Gospel writers claim this (I don't think) - nor does the Apostle Paul. Nor does John himself in the Book of Revelation (which is presented mostly as a vision - indeed a glimpse, hence to be taken symbolically).
I regard this as a confirmation of the primacy of the Gospel of John in the Bible - and support for using this Gospel as a key to understanding the rest of that large and complex book.
This is because in the past the great mass of people would not make any religious claims that they did not believe to be true; because for them religion was real, and it was existentially and permanently valuable to tell the truth and hazardous deliberately to lie about the core aspects of religion.
So, no religion except Christianity offers its adherents anything as good as, or better than, an eternal, perfected, bodily resurrection dwelling with the deity after death; and so far as I know, none ever have done in the past 2000 years.
*
We moderns might imagine it would be easy to offer something better than Christianity, or make the same offer on 'easier terms' - but that hasn't happened among - and indeed most religions offer a great deal less, and often enough offer something pretty horrible.
*
This is evidence of their sincerity, and I would say truth - in the sense that they are saying 'If you follow this religion, then this is what will happen to you' (within limits of mortal expression and comprehension - so nothing stated in public discourse can be taken absolutely literally as the whole truth) - and I think this is broadly correct. Do this, and this will happen.
*
Clearly this does not apply to modern times, because many people so profoundly disbelieve in religion that they regard themselves as free to say anything - including whatever lies and misleading comments are expedient in the short term. We live in an era when - for many self-identified Christians - Christianity, for such people, is 'just words'; and they will say and write whatever they regard as most necessary or useful to advance the - usually socio-political - cause which is their real belief.
*
When it comes to the Bible it is interesting to notice that of all the authors and sources in the various books of the Bible - only John in his Gospel claims (not explicitly, but clearly communicated) to have a full understanding of the reality of Christ and his teachings.
And it is also noticeable that John explicitly states (towards the close) that he has not been able to express this full understanding in the Gospel itself.
None of the other Gospel writers claim this (I don't think) - nor does the Apostle Paul. Nor does John himself in the Book of Revelation (which is presented mostly as a vision - indeed a glimpse, hence to be taken symbolically).
I regard this as a confirmation of the primacy of the Gospel of John in the Bible - and support for using this Gospel as a key to understanding the rest of that large and complex book.
The polarity of self and persona - an ultimate reality
If we use the nomenclature of 'self' to express our true, innermost and embryonically-divine nature, and 'persona' to describe the public, interactive aspect - the 'personality' which is a consequence of experience; then we can see that while they need to be distinguished, the two are bound together as a polarity.
We start-out as the self, interacting with nature (the environment, everything that is not-the-self) and participating in it. At this stage life is real and involving because our selves are interacting with it and we know, therefore, moment to moment; that everything 'out-there' is known only by the interaction with the self 'in here'.
But at this stage, 'nature' overwhelms us and drives us, because pretty much all of the self is used in this interaction. We do not feel separate from the environment (or hardly so) but the cost is that we are unfree - because we cannot separate our self, the self is swept-along by the environment.
(The environment is experienced as real, alive, conscious - but the self is unnoticed and has no distinctive role: life is lived, the self does not live life.)
So, the self develops the persona - the public mask - which serves the useful purpose of interacting with the environment using automatic algorithms. The persona is like a protective robot which does the routine work of dealing with nature (including other people) - and the robot leans from experience how to do this.
(In each life, a human moves - to some extent - from the naked self dealing with the environment in the un-self-consciousness of early childhood, absorbed in the mother and family, home and community; to the later childhood and adolescent experience of becoming self-conscious - when the self is experienced as distinct from, potentially set-against, the environment (both social and physical).
The self benefits from the persona (at least initially, potentially) by having the persona do much of the routine work, and thus the self becomes increasingly aware of itself, and aware that it is separate from the environment - because now the persona is interposed. The self has autonomy, time and energies to devote to contemplating its self, its condition and situation, and to considering strategy beyond the moment to moment interactions with nature. Philosophy becomes possible.
As the environment becomes more complex and demanding (for example with increasing complexity of society) so the self diminishes in significance, and the persona increases in importance; until the persona is doing almost everything, using the 'automatic' (robotic) processes it has evolved. The self begins to lose contact with reality, because it no longer deals with nature; the self - that was master - becomes a helpless prisoner of its slave, the persona - the robot takes-over and imprisons the divine self.
(Initially the self was like an ideal manager who deals with strategy; while the persona was like the front-like workforce who mostly implement standard protocols to deal with the outside world. The manager knows about the outside world via the workforce and has a strong sense of the identity of the whole organization. But later the front-line workers imprison the manager and there is then no strategy at all, nobody has any knowledge of the overall situation of the organization in term of its own goals or the organizations situation in the environment: there is just the workforce, who are unconscious of everything except the immediate business of implementing predetermined protocols.)
So the persona is now doing pretty-much all the work and the self is no longer aware of 'nature' nor is the self directing the persona strategically; but is living in enforced idleness and impotence, having no direct contact with outer reality. Since we as individuals live ultimately in the self as the default to which we revert when not actively engaged with the outer world; insofar as we are aware at all, we experience our state (i.e. the state of the self) as alienation, impotence, meaninglessness, frustration - and indeed begin to doubt first our significance and then our reality.
Thus nihilism; when our self begins to doubt first its own reality (materialism, positivism), then - by a natural inference - doubt the reality of everything else (solipsism).
However, the relationship between self and persona is one of polarity; they cannot really be divided. The self can be overwhelmingly dominant, or the persona can be - as in modern culture; but they are both part of the same phenomenon (there must be an inner core and there must also be a periphery where this inner core interacts with what surrounds it - although the relative size of core and periphery may vary widely) and the reality is that the persona is generated continually by the self, and vice versa.
There are three possible futures:
1. We might stay as we are (and have been for more than two centuries in The West): We have a self that is unaware not just of the outer world but of its own reality - and therefore utterly unaware of the work of the persona: a self that simply takes for granted the persona, and since it lacks contact with environment it is unconscious of that too. So there is just a demoralized and self-despizing isolated self, for whom 'reality' is the product of the persona - and the self is alternately overwhelmed by this reality and doubting of its own reality; or doubts outer-reality and supposes that everything is a product of the self: the state of solipsism.
2. We might go back to the earlier stage of the self interacting directly with the outer world (unprotected by the persona), and unconscious of itself - the persona shrinking back to its earlier minimal state. This could probably only happen if the environment was greatly reduced in complexity (including size). This move to extinguish self-consciousness also amounts to a kind of death wish by which consciousness wills its own extinction.
3. We might go forward to a state of greater consciousness. The Self becomes aware of the persona, aware of the reality of the persona (and therefore of the outer environment with which the persona deals), and aware of the work-methods of the persona - aware that is, of the standard protocols of the persona in dealing with nature.
This is metaphysics as an active process; it is awareness of our fundamental assumptions. Stage 3 is, indeed, primarily about increased awareness - new awareness of that which we previous took for granted hence were constrained by. It is therefore awareness that makes us ultimately free.
(It is as if we are currently sleepwalking, and have indeed been sleepwalking through all history - either unconsciously dominated by or unknowingly cut-off-from the outer environment. The evolution of consciousness is about increasing that of which we are aware, of bringing it to consciousness: a matter of waking-up!)
The self again becomes real - remains free and autonomous, because it retains the benefits of being protected by the persona. But the persona is no longer taken for granted nor assumed to be giving a complete and unbiased picture of the outer environment - rather, the persona is brought to awareness in its reality and qualities.
We will know that the outer environment is real, and we will also know that we are inextricably and necessarily involved in that outer environment - because everything we know about it comes from interaction. The division between inner and outer is therefore erased, and replaced by awareness of the distinction (but not division) between the self and the persona.
So, with the polarity of self and persona we reach an ultimate reality - beyond which we cannot go, because it makes no sense to try and do so. The polarity of self and persona is the conscious recognition and awareness that the two are different but make up a single process operating through time - indeed, operating eternally.
It is meditation on, contemplation of, the polarity between self and persona that holds the key to moving onto Stage 3.
**
(Beyond an ultimate reality of the polarity of self and persona, lies the ultimate polarity of God and Man - but that is already dealt with by Christian faith; within which the above schema should be embedded.)
We start-out as the self, interacting with nature (the environment, everything that is not-the-self) and participating in it. At this stage life is real and involving because our selves are interacting with it and we know, therefore, moment to moment; that everything 'out-there' is known only by the interaction with the self 'in here'.
But at this stage, 'nature' overwhelms us and drives us, because pretty much all of the self is used in this interaction. We do not feel separate from the environment (or hardly so) but the cost is that we are unfree - because we cannot separate our self, the self is swept-along by the environment.
(The environment is experienced as real, alive, conscious - but the self is unnoticed and has no distinctive role: life is lived, the self does not live life.)
So, the self develops the persona - the public mask - which serves the useful purpose of interacting with the environment using automatic algorithms. The persona is like a protective robot which does the routine work of dealing with nature (including other people) - and the robot leans from experience how to do this.
(In each life, a human moves - to some extent - from the naked self dealing with the environment in the un-self-consciousness of early childhood, absorbed in the mother and family, home and community; to the later childhood and adolescent experience of becoming self-conscious - when the self is experienced as distinct from, potentially set-against, the environment (both social and physical).
The self benefits from the persona (at least initially, potentially) by having the persona do much of the routine work, and thus the self becomes increasingly aware of itself, and aware that it is separate from the environment - because now the persona is interposed. The self has autonomy, time and energies to devote to contemplating its self, its condition and situation, and to considering strategy beyond the moment to moment interactions with nature. Philosophy becomes possible.
As the environment becomes more complex and demanding (for example with increasing complexity of society) so the self diminishes in significance, and the persona increases in importance; until the persona is doing almost everything, using the 'automatic' (robotic) processes it has evolved. The self begins to lose contact with reality, because it no longer deals with nature; the self - that was master - becomes a helpless prisoner of its slave, the persona - the robot takes-over and imprisons the divine self.
(Initially the self was like an ideal manager who deals with strategy; while the persona was like the front-like workforce who mostly implement standard protocols to deal with the outside world. The manager knows about the outside world via the workforce and has a strong sense of the identity of the whole organization. But later the front-line workers imprison the manager and there is then no strategy at all, nobody has any knowledge of the overall situation of the organization in term of its own goals or the organizations situation in the environment: there is just the workforce, who are unconscious of everything except the immediate business of implementing predetermined protocols.)
So the persona is now doing pretty-much all the work and the self is no longer aware of 'nature' nor is the self directing the persona strategically; but is living in enforced idleness and impotence, having no direct contact with outer reality. Since we as individuals live ultimately in the self as the default to which we revert when not actively engaged with the outer world; insofar as we are aware at all, we experience our state (i.e. the state of the self) as alienation, impotence, meaninglessness, frustration - and indeed begin to doubt first our significance and then our reality.
Thus nihilism; when our self begins to doubt first its own reality (materialism, positivism), then - by a natural inference - doubt the reality of everything else (solipsism).
However, the relationship between self and persona is one of polarity; they cannot really be divided. The self can be overwhelmingly dominant, or the persona can be - as in modern culture; but they are both part of the same phenomenon (there must be an inner core and there must also be a periphery where this inner core interacts with what surrounds it - although the relative size of core and periphery may vary widely) and the reality is that the persona is generated continually by the self, and vice versa.
There are three possible futures:
1. We might stay as we are (and have been for more than two centuries in The West): We have a self that is unaware not just of the outer world but of its own reality - and therefore utterly unaware of the work of the persona: a self that simply takes for granted the persona, and since it lacks contact with environment it is unconscious of that too. So there is just a demoralized and self-despizing isolated self, for whom 'reality' is the product of the persona - and the self is alternately overwhelmed by this reality and doubting of its own reality; or doubts outer-reality and supposes that everything is a product of the self: the state of solipsism.
2. We might go back to the earlier stage of the self interacting directly with the outer world (unprotected by the persona), and unconscious of itself - the persona shrinking back to its earlier minimal state. This could probably only happen if the environment was greatly reduced in complexity (including size). This move to extinguish self-consciousness also amounts to a kind of death wish by which consciousness wills its own extinction.
3. We might go forward to a state of greater consciousness. The Self becomes aware of the persona, aware of the reality of the persona (and therefore of the outer environment with which the persona deals), and aware of the work-methods of the persona - aware that is, of the standard protocols of the persona in dealing with nature.
This is metaphysics as an active process; it is awareness of our fundamental assumptions. Stage 3 is, indeed, primarily about increased awareness - new awareness of that which we previous took for granted hence were constrained by. It is therefore awareness that makes us ultimately free.
(It is as if we are currently sleepwalking, and have indeed been sleepwalking through all history - either unconsciously dominated by or unknowingly cut-off-from the outer environment. The evolution of consciousness is about increasing that of which we are aware, of bringing it to consciousness: a matter of waking-up!)
The self again becomes real - remains free and autonomous, because it retains the benefits of being protected by the persona. But the persona is no longer taken for granted nor assumed to be giving a complete and unbiased picture of the outer environment - rather, the persona is brought to awareness in its reality and qualities.
We will know that the outer environment is real, and we will also know that we are inextricably and necessarily involved in that outer environment - because everything we know about it comes from interaction. The division between inner and outer is therefore erased, and replaced by awareness of the distinction (but not division) between the self and the persona.
So, with the polarity of self and persona we reach an ultimate reality - beyond which we cannot go, because it makes no sense to try and do so. The polarity of self and persona is the conscious recognition and awareness that the two are different but make up a single process operating through time - indeed, operating eternally.
It is meditation on, contemplation of, the polarity between self and persona that holds the key to moving onto Stage 3.
**
(Beyond an ultimate reality of the polarity of self and persona, lies the ultimate polarity of God and Man - but that is already dealt with by Christian faith; within which the above schema should be embedded.)
Wednesday, 11 May 2016
Spiritual Science as a Goethian Science
If Man's destiny - the one thing needful for our era - is (necessarily within the Christian frame, which is primary) to move towards that higher form of consciousness (Final Participation) variously described or embodied by Coleridge, Goethe, Steiner, Barfield and Arkle - then the question is how? The answer seems to be some kind of Spiritual Science - to adopt Rudolf Steiner's phrase; but not that activity described by Steiner in terms of method, sequence, procedure or protocol.
In writing about 'how to do' spiritual science, Steiner failed to apply his own deep knowledge of and insights into the nature of science as articulated and done by Goethe; and instead lapsed into a positivistic model of science-as-method.
Consequently, Steiner was himself misled by assuming the validity of information gained by applying this method (leading to great masses of nonsense cluttering his writings), and his legacy was subverted by the ineffectiveness of Steiner's own recommendations for 'initiation' such that his followers have utterly failed to reproduce, correct and extend Steiner's original insights. Viewed from nearly a century after Steiner's death; the ability to do Spiritual Science seems as absent from Anthroposophists as from almost everyone else.
The answer, however, can be found in Steiner's own, earliest, work - which is the understanding that true science is not based upon any method, but upon a sustained and loving consideration of phenomena.
Since our task (as aspiring Spiritual Scientists) is - in Barfield's words - Thinking about Thinking, or to study our own 'persona' (i.e. our functional self that interacts with nature) as the phenomenon under consideration - our general attitude is as clear as the specific methods are undefined.
This attitude entails that we study our Thinking Persona as a phenomenon that is eternal in both directions - it has existed eternally, is active now, and extends into an eternal future. Through this span it undergoes developmental evolution, growth, metamorphosis - while retaining its eternal identity. In sum, the phenomenon is that process of being and relating extended across time.
So, Spiritual Science is not some kind of paradoxical attempt to grab and hold-onto our present thinking as it continually sweeps past us into the past - it is the recurrent, lifelong activity of our true and divine selves empathically seeking understanding of our eternally changing 'public'/ interactive personae - by whatever means is most effectual, as established by trial and error, clarification and struggle, sympathy and self-criticism, openness and discernment.
This is not a thing to be achieved in an instant of enlightenment - although there may well be such moments of grasping - but a long-term (and delightful) project of imagination: the aim is to grasp in imagination our eternal persona. The aim is not to 'understand' ourselves in terms of making a simplified 'model' of our persona - but in imagination to grasp the whole eternal phenomenon.
As I wrote yesterday, this is much like the way that we imaginatively grasp the eternal essence of someone we love - most characteristically a mother or father, brother or sister, spouse, son, daughter or other close and beloved relative. (At best, in our highest and ideal moments) we know and love them not for what they were, are, or will become - but altogether and at once.
(We know them as a 'process' - or rather, as a destiny.)
This is exactly how, in Spiritual Science, we (as our real and deepest selves) need to know our own Thinking Persona; that is the meaning of Thinking about Thinking - and that is what we should strive for.
In writing about 'how to do' spiritual science, Steiner failed to apply his own deep knowledge of and insights into the nature of science as articulated and done by Goethe; and instead lapsed into a positivistic model of science-as-method.
Consequently, Steiner was himself misled by assuming the validity of information gained by applying this method (leading to great masses of nonsense cluttering his writings), and his legacy was subverted by the ineffectiveness of Steiner's own recommendations for 'initiation' such that his followers have utterly failed to reproduce, correct and extend Steiner's original insights. Viewed from nearly a century after Steiner's death; the ability to do Spiritual Science seems as absent from Anthroposophists as from almost everyone else.
The answer, however, can be found in Steiner's own, earliest, work - which is the understanding that true science is not based upon any method, but upon a sustained and loving consideration of phenomena.
Since our task (as aspiring Spiritual Scientists) is - in Barfield's words - Thinking about Thinking, or to study our own 'persona' (i.e. our functional self that interacts with nature) as the phenomenon under consideration - our general attitude is as clear as the specific methods are undefined.
This attitude entails that we study our Thinking Persona as a phenomenon that is eternal in both directions - it has existed eternally, is active now, and extends into an eternal future. Through this span it undergoes developmental evolution, growth, metamorphosis - while retaining its eternal identity. In sum, the phenomenon is that process of being and relating extended across time.
So, Spiritual Science is not some kind of paradoxical attempt to grab and hold-onto our present thinking as it continually sweeps past us into the past - it is the recurrent, lifelong activity of our true and divine selves empathically seeking understanding of our eternally changing 'public'/ interactive personae - by whatever means is most effectual, as established by trial and error, clarification and struggle, sympathy and self-criticism, openness and discernment.
This is not a thing to be achieved in an instant of enlightenment - although there may well be such moments of grasping - but a long-term (and delightful) project of imagination: the aim is to grasp in imagination our eternal persona. The aim is not to 'understand' ourselves in terms of making a simplified 'model' of our persona - but in imagination to grasp the whole eternal phenomenon.
As I wrote yesterday, this is much like the way that we imaginatively grasp the eternal essence of someone we love - most characteristically a mother or father, brother or sister, spouse, son, daughter or other close and beloved relative. (At best, in our highest and ideal moments) we know and love them not for what they were, are, or will become - but altogether and at once.
(We know them as a 'process' - or rather, as a destiny.)
This is exactly how, in Spiritual Science, we (as our real and deepest selves) need to know our own Thinking Persona; that is the meaning of Thinking about Thinking - and that is what we should strive for.
Tuesday, 10 May 2016
If you had been reincarnated - then who, what, where and when would you expect to have been in a previous life?
My general take on reincarnation is broadly that of the Bible which is that reincarnation is possible, it sometimes happens - but it is probably rare or at least unusual.
So far, so mainstream - but I would add that at least some of the most spiritually wise people who have taught reincarnation are or were themselves reincarnates - which is why they personally have a strong insight or revelation as to the truth of this teaching.
On the one hand, I do not feel or believe myself to be reincarnated - but just for fun I will speculate on who I might have been, if I was.
This is based upon those things for which I have a spontaneous affinity.
Language - that would have to be Middle English - the dialect of English spoken and written around 1350... so that is the time I would assume to have been alive.
Place - Somerset, England - especially around the Mendip Hills (the area that Jesus was legendarily supposed to have visited as a boy or young man, before his ministry).
Job - some combination of physician, philosopher and wizard. I find it easy to identify with the solitary (celibate), long bearded, staff-carrying figures of Gandalf, Merlin, and Getafix.
From these 'facts' and also some of my non-affinities/ aversions I can make a sketch of a wandering magical scholar-doctor in the West Country - an isolated figure at odds with, somewhat hostile to, my time - including the mainstream priests and monks (e.g. at Glastonbury).
My liking for the ancient city and university of Oxford probably means I studied there, but I have a feeling that I never graduated - and certainly I was never ordained (although I may have studied for the priesthood for a while). This may have been related to my inability to learn Latin - perhaps I was someone who paraphrased what knowledge I gleaned from manuscripts and conversation into the vernacular.
I imagine I had a fairly hand-to-mouth existence, and lived in some kind of woodland hut; but happy to accept hospitality in return for my services.
What about you?
So far, so mainstream - but I would add that at least some of the most spiritually wise people who have taught reincarnation are or were themselves reincarnates - which is why they personally have a strong insight or revelation as to the truth of this teaching.
On the one hand, I do not feel or believe myself to be reincarnated - but just for fun I will speculate on who I might have been, if I was.
This is based upon those things for which I have a spontaneous affinity.
Language - that would have to be Middle English - the dialect of English spoken and written around 1350... so that is the time I would assume to have been alive.
Place - Somerset, England - especially around the Mendip Hills (the area that Jesus was legendarily supposed to have visited as a boy or young man, before his ministry).
Job - some combination of physician, philosopher and wizard. I find it easy to identify with the solitary (celibate), long bearded, staff-carrying figures of Gandalf, Merlin, and Getafix.
From these 'facts' and also some of my non-affinities/ aversions I can make a sketch of a wandering magical scholar-doctor in the West Country - an isolated figure at odds with, somewhat hostile to, my time - including the mainstream priests and monks (e.g. at Glastonbury).
My liking for the ancient city and university of Oxford probably means I studied there, but I have a feeling that I never graduated - and certainly I was never ordained (although I may have studied for the priesthood for a while). This may have been related to my inability to learn Latin - perhaps I was someone who paraphrased what knowledge I gleaned from manuscripts and conversation into the vernacular.
I imagine I had a fairly hand-to-mouth existence, and lived in some kind of woodland hut; but happy to accept hospitality in return for my services.
What about you?
Why is Liberal Christianity so utterly useless? (Or, why mainstream modern Leftists cannot be *usefully* Christian.)
Liberal Christianity could be defined in theological terms as a type of Christianity which has gone far towards abandoning the historical and literal aspects of Christianity - but its essence is really that Liberal Christians have - over time, through more than a century, and with some time lag - fitted Christianity into the prevailing secular morality.
This means that Liberal Christians are nowadays on the political Left (a term which also includes all mainstream 'Right wing', conservatives, republicans and libertarians) - in particular in terms of their focus on the key Leftist moral issues of the day: feminism, antiracism, diversity, climate change, third world poverty - and the sexual revolution in general. Liberal Christians embrace these causes; and usually put them at or near the focus of their self-identified Christian life.
And this is precisely why Liberal Christians are, as a strong generalization, useless. By useless, I mean that being a Liberal Christin makes almost no perceptible difference to its adherents - who are assimilated to mainstream modern life in all significant respects; and by useless I mean that Liberal Christian Churches do no good in combating - or even in fighting - the besetting sins of modern times.
Indeed, Liberal Christian churches have no distinctive role at all. They do not address the besetting sin, so they are useless to Christians where it matters most; and they do assimilate to mainstream modern morality, which renders them superfluous to non-Christians. This is a major reason why all Liberal Christian groups in all denominations are shrinking - both in numbers of adherents and in the devoutness of adherents.
The reason is that the besetting sins of modernity - those sins to which we are most prone, and which most harm us - are all Leftist sins: including the anti-spiritual, anti-religious positivistic materialism that has utterly taken over all public discourse (including the public discourses and communications of mainstream Liberal Churches, which nowadays barely mention religions matters).
How do we know the besetting sins? A society's besetting sins are those sins that are actually approved and encouraged in high status, official public discourse.
We as individuals and as as society are trapped by our besetting sins - many of which are transcendental inversions - Good renamed as evil; the destruction of Good being called good.
Only by first addressing our societies besetting sins can we even begin the process of spiritual progression; and conversely those who are part of the modern moral mainstream (which is Leftist) cannot even begin to do the one thing needful.
Because the one thing needful is to reject the besetting sins of our era - and Liberal Christians do not even want to do that; since they have chosen to regard the besetting sins of modernity as their major priority.
Note: There are, of course, significant problems, limitations and deficiencies with many non-Liberal Christian churches and denominations - in particular relating to their implicit acceptance of the unspiritual, alienating and mechanistic consciousness of modernity. But Liberal Christians and their churches are of no use in changing Christianity in the necessary direction, nor in assisting genuine spiritual development, because they have in practice allied with the primary forces (the international ruling elites, the media, the bureaucracy, officialdom, corporations...) that are excluding and suppressing the reality of the spiritual.
This means that Liberal Christians are nowadays on the political Left (a term which also includes all mainstream 'Right wing', conservatives, republicans and libertarians) - in particular in terms of their focus on the key Leftist moral issues of the day: feminism, antiracism, diversity, climate change, third world poverty - and the sexual revolution in general. Liberal Christians embrace these causes; and usually put them at or near the focus of their self-identified Christian life.
And this is precisely why Liberal Christians are, as a strong generalization, useless. By useless, I mean that being a Liberal Christin makes almost no perceptible difference to its adherents - who are assimilated to mainstream modern life in all significant respects; and by useless I mean that Liberal Christian Churches do no good in combating - or even in fighting - the besetting sins of modern times.
Indeed, Liberal Christian churches have no distinctive role at all. They do not address the besetting sin, so they are useless to Christians where it matters most; and they do assimilate to mainstream modern morality, which renders them superfluous to non-Christians. This is a major reason why all Liberal Christian groups in all denominations are shrinking - both in numbers of adherents and in the devoutness of adherents.
The reason is that the besetting sins of modernity - those sins to which we are most prone, and which most harm us - are all Leftist sins: including the anti-spiritual, anti-religious positivistic materialism that has utterly taken over all public discourse (including the public discourses and communications of mainstream Liberal Churches, which nowadays barely mention religions matters).
How do we know the besetting sins? A society's besetting sins are those sins that are actually approved and encouraged in high status, official public discourse.
We as individuals and as as society are trapped by our besetting sins - many of which are transcendental inversions - Good renamed as evil; the destruction of Good being called good.
Only by first addressing our societies besetting sins can we even begin the process of spiritual progression; and conversely those who are part of the modern moral mainstream (which is Leftist) cannot even begin to do the one thing needful.
Because the one thing needful is to reject the besetting sins of our era - and Liberal Christians do not even want to do that; since they have chosen to regard the besetting sins of modernity as their major priority.
Note: There are, of course, significant problems, limitations and deficiencies with many non-Liberal Christian churches and denominations - in particular relating to their implicit acceptance of the unspiritual, alienating and mechanistic consciousness of modernity. But Liberal Christians and their churches are of no use in changing Christianity in the necessary direction, nor in assisting genuine spiritual development, because they have in practice allied with the primary forces (the international ruling elites, the media, the bureaucracy, officialdom, corporations...) that are excluding and suppressing the reality of the spiritual.
Monday, 9 May 2016
Marriage as Final Participation
It is hard to conceptualize Final Participation - not least because it is usually explained in terms of what it is not.
But just as Final Participation is the same thing as development of the individual person - but at the level of groups or societies - so Final Participation can be understood as what happens with an ideal marriage as the most mature form of human relationship.
The child is, to start with, in Original Participation - immersed in parental love and with his self not differentiated from this environment. Everything is conscious and alive in a delocalized, overlapping and undifferentiated way. He lives inside Love.
With maturation and especially adolescence, the child differentiates himself from this diffuse and unlocalized state. At some stage he reaches a point of inflexion when he is cut-off from love, loses all ties of relationship, and find himself a fully detached self, observing his environment - sometime the environment seems real and himself an illusion (positivism/ materialism), sometimes the opposite (solipsism). This adolescent phase of alienation may last a moment, or it may persist for the rest of his life (as - apparently - with so many modern people).
Marriage is (ideally) Final Participation: it is engaged objectivity. The spouse is seen not as a subject (about whom we can think whatever we choose, indifferent to the person), nor an object (to evaluate you spouse objectively - by checklist - is a failure of marriage) - but as a as a spiritual subject.
We do not see our husband or wife as we see other people: he or she is one-off and incomparable. The spouse is past, present and future all at once - and eternally. The spouse is always changing, yet his or her immaterial essence remains the same.
So it is Love which makes for Final Participation in marriage - and in everything else. Love is the primary reality.
Ideal marriage is the model for all human inter-relation with all things. And the further extension of Final Participation is itself therefore though Love - which is why no real work is ever done in science, art, crafts or anything else without Love.
But just as Final Participation is the same thing as development of the individual person - but at the level of groups or societies - so Final Participation can be understood as what happens with an ideal marriage as the most mature form of human relationship.
The child is, to start with, in Original Participation - immersed in parental love and with his self not differentiated from this environment. Everything is conscious and alive in a delocalized, overlapping and undifferentiated way. He lives inside Love.
With maturation and especially adolescence, the child differentiates himself from this diffuse and unlocalized state. At some stage he reaches a point of inflexion when he is cut-off from love, loses all ties of relationship, and find himself a fully detached self, observing his environment - sometime the environment seems real and himself an illusion (positivism/ materialism), sometimes the opposite (solipsism). This adolescent phase of alienation may last a moment, or it may persist for the rest of his life (as - apparently - with so many modern people).
Marriage is (ideally) Final Participation: it is engaged objectivity. The spouse is seen not as a subject (about whom we can think whatever we choose, indifferent to the person), nor an object (to evaluate you spouse objectively - by checklist - is a failure of marriage) - but as a as a spiritual subject.
We do not see our husband or wife as we see other people: he or she is one-off and incomparable. The spouse is past, present and future all at once - and eternally. The spouse is always changing, yet his or her immaterial essence remains the same.
So it is Love which makes for Final Participation in marriage - and in everything else. Love is the primary reality.
Ideal marriage is the model for all human inter-relation with all things. And the further extension of Final Participation is itself therefore though Love - which is why no real work is ever done in science, art, crafts or anything else without Love.
Sunday, 8 May 2016
Poetry properly performed - Tom O'Bedlam's 'Spoken Verse'
There is a YouTube channel called Spoken Verse where scores of poems are performed by the pseudonymous Tom O'Bedlam.
'Tom' has a natural bass, somewhat gravelly voice (a bit like Joss Ackland, but not so resonant) and he is probably - taken all round - the best speaker of poems I have ever come across.
Try this: 'If' by Rudyard Kipling
The man seems to be an actor - but usually modern actors are appalling at reciting verse -
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/why-are-actors-so-bad-at-reading-poetry.html
What 'Tom' has that makes him such a wonder - aside from a pleasing voice, which is common among actors - is a natural, fluid sense of rhythm - like that of a great jazz musician.
His performances are not 'flawless' (should be even ask for this from poetry?) - they are single-take, and recorded only with moderate production values - but they are alive, and full of insights and revelations. A glimpse of why our ancestors so valued bards.
Thank you Tom O'Bedlam!
'Tom' has a natural bass, somewhat gravelly voice (a bit like Joss Ackland, but not so resonant) and he is probably - taken all round - the best speaker of poems I have ever come across.
Try this: 'If' by Rudyard Kipling
The man seems to be an actor - but usually modern actors are appalling at reciting verse -
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/why-are-actors-so-bad-at-reading-poetry.html
What 'Tom' has that makes him such a wonder - aside from a pleasing voice, which is common among actors - is a natural, fluid sense of rhythm - like that of a great jazz musician.
His performances are not 'flawless' (should be even ask for this from poetry?) - they are single-take, and recorded only with moderate production values - but they are alive, and full of insights and revelations. A glimpse of why our ancestors so valued bards.
Thank you Tom O'Bedlam!
Saturday, 7 May 2016
Ingwaz - the metaphysics of '-ing', of polarity
Barfield focuses on the term polarity, derived from Coleridge - but I have found that this term - with its inner picture of a solid, rectangular bar magnet - is making it harder for me to grasp and use. The essence of the concept is not its having poles but that it is a dynamic process, an active thing: an -ing, as in think-ing, reason-ing, understand-ing, and imagin-ing.For me this philosophy only makes sense if I regard reality as happen-ing.
So I have decided to replace polarity with '-ing' which is the name and sound of a rune - more often called Ingwaz (and of a Norse god, also called Freyr - not the same as Freya). So the rune Ingwaz can serve me as a symbol of 'polarity', in my notetaking.
Like most good metaphysics, Ingwaz comes from the solid, primary, necessary intuition that we are thinking. From this comes the inference that whatever we think, do, know or whatever - thinking is involved. There is no way of getting-at any objective reality that does not involve thinking - it is nonsense (makes no sense) to be thinking there is an objective realm of 'facts' that are autonomous from thinking.
However, this is NOT the 'idealism' of stating that there is only mind, and 'reality' is an illusion; what is being stated is that thinking is involved in everything - therefore, everything includes thinking. The thinking cannot be detached from anything, thinking is always involved in everything.
So the division of inner mind and outer reality/ nature is nonsense; we are always and inevitably involved in everything we ever consider by thinking.
However, this thinking can be (usually is) something of which we are unaware. We therefore tend (unthinkingly) to regard the 'outside' world as if it was independent of our thinking. We tend to suppose that the outside world is real and solid, while our thinking (which is reality is involved in everything we know or imagine about that outside world) is merely ephemeral and pointless.
This is because if we divide thinking from the outside world, thinking dies - it becomes static, inert, it stops '-ing' and is a mere dead specimen ('thought'). What is really happening is that we have started thinking about a situation where there is no thinking, and are unaware that in thinking this we have not actually imagined a situation where there is no thinking - we are merely unaware of the thinking that is engaged in imagining it!
This is the modern condition. Modern analysis is unaware of - and denies - the pervasiveness of thinking at all times and in all situations. This state of unthinking doubt about thinking can be called cynicism.
So, the first move is to become aware of our own thinking in any and every situation - to recognize that everything involves thinking - we are therefore always engaged with everything, involved with everything: there is no objective alienation.
But is thinking valid? That is the fear that haunts cynical, nihilistic modern man. The fear is that - even though it makes no sense and cannot be done to use thinking to doubt the validity of thinking; maybe thinking is not valid anyway - maybe we just live in an un-avoidable delusion? The idea accepts that it makes no sense to be thinking about thinking being 'unreliable' - but maybe that is true anyway!
This cynicism, I believe, is the modern condition; it is a fear rather than a philosophy, it is a cynical suspicion that there is really no purpose, meaning or reality - and this state was facilitated by Natural Selection which seems to have 'discovered' that that is how nature works. This is untrue, and makes no sense; but the effect is rather to implant a fear, a suspicion that it might all be a delusion than to make any kind of logical point.
That has been the point at which Western thought has been stuck for more than 200 years - the fear that everything we think we know about everything comes from thinking, and that thinking - the very basis of knowing itself - might be a circular system of unavoidable but nonetheless false assumptions.
This places Man into an existential state where he does not know where to start in escaping. Once he has come to doubt thinking, then he cannot get out. All he can do is try to manipulate his emotions so as to feel better, here and now.
In fact this sense of existential nakedness is the perfect basis and understanding and clarity for feeling the necessity and reality of religious faith - which is trust - and only a loving God can be trusted... So the modern condition points to Christianity in a clearer way than anything ever has done.
(Kierkegaard probably said this too - but I can't read enough of him to be sure, and if he did say it, then he has usually been misunderstood or at least ignored.)
But the actual modern condition is an incomplete state of doubt - therefore it does not compel Christianity. The modern condition is a combination of doubt and arbitrary faith - which is so perfectly engineered to create despair, so perfectly being constantly adjusted to maintain this sense of hope-less-ness, that it implies the modern situation is a product of purposive evil (i.e. of demonic influence).
Because modern Man is not cynical enough. Or, rather, the cynic is flawed by its lack of questioning - his questioninsg of superficialities and his unthinking acceptance of deep assumptions. The modern cynic (i.e. pretty much everybody) uses thinking to deny the necessary validity of thinking on some topics (sex, esepcially), but leaves intact enough unthinking to prevent him seeing the situation as it really is.
He is obsessed by some illusions of thinking - but not others, and cynical about all positive faith - but unthinking and credulous about so much else.
Modern Man will go so far as to deny even the reality of thinking-about-thinking (i.e. metaphysics) - he will state that there is no such thing as metaphysics - simply because he does not DO metaphysics (or stops himself if he happens to start thinking about his own thinking). He arbitrarily decides that thinking about thinking is meaningless nonsense - and is therefore trapped by his own despair-inducing assumptions - which would dissolve if ever recognized as involving thinking.
It is the residual unthinking 'faith' in thinking about some subjects (for example, faith in the idea that cynicism implies that hedonism is rational) which is destroying modern Man.
From here we can go back into unthinking acceptance of thinking - or forward into thinking about thinking: becoming aware that Everything necessarily involves thinking.
Thinking is process: Everything therefore includes process, and the world can only validly be analyzed into processes - analyzed into -ings and not into things.
This is, in fact, the metaphysical solution to the modern condition: the solution to alienation, purposelessness, meaninglessness, relativism and so on. Once grasped, the problem for each of us as individuals is then to make it our normal, indeed habitual, way of thinking.
Friday, 6 May 2016
How do we ensure that science is reproducible?
https://thewinnower.com/papers/4328-how-do-we-ensure-that-research-is-reproducible
This is my entry for The Winnower prize essay competition.
Details at: https://thewinnower.com/posts/contest-how-do-we-ensure-that-research-is-reproducible
This is my entry for The Winnower prize essay competition.
Details at: https://thewinnower.com/posts/contest-how-do-we-ensure-that-research-is-reproducible
The problem of pain/ suffering - versus a child-like faith in God our loving Father
The existence of human suffering is used, in modern culture, as a refutation of the Christian belief that God loves us - indeed it tends to be used as an argument against the existence of God, with the assumption that God is loving built-in.
"Yeah, but how can you explain Hitler, and cancer and stuff? God wouldn't allow that"
Like most modern arguments, this is used in such a context and with such an expectation that the Christian is supposed to rebut it in a sentence or maybe two...
The logic goes something like: If God was real, he would have made a better world than this - therefore God is not real.
(Interestingly, the alternative that God is real but not primarily loving - a view affirmed by considerably more than a billion people, doesn't seem to be considered - because mainstream modern Western culture is specifically anti-Christian; so the 'USP' of Christianity {that God is love} is simply taken for granted as characteristic of any God.)
How would I answer such a challenge - if given the luxury of somebody's attention for a few sentences? I would need to state how I regard God, and also the purpose of human life - when both of these are known (but not until then) there is a possibility of explaining the problem of pain.
1. God is the creator, and our loving Father. We can often understand things by this real-metaphor. In other words, we are children, immature but growing, trying to understand why our parents behave the way they do.
2. The purpose of life on earth is 'educational' - we each are growing towards greater divinity (to be more like God) in an environment that is meant to provide maturing, deepening, challenging experience.
3. Every person's specific situation and needs are unique - so there are no general answers to 'why?' something happens to some people - but only explanations of this happening to this person in such a time and place.
4. Therefore, we may be able to understand the reason for our own personal suffering - if we sufficiently understand God, ourselves and our own specific needs and those of people around us. But, given the incredible complexity of things, and the multitude of possibilities, the only imaginable way we could understand even this limited question is from a divine perspective - i.e. if God grants us a personal revelation to explain to us our situation, to explain why X happened to me.
5. And clearly - given the reality of human uniqueness - we can never know this detailed information for most of the seven billion people on the planet, and the billions more who lived in the past.
*
Also - in general - we need to take a step-back and recognize the nature of what is being asked when a Christian - and I mean a sincere Christian, not merely some person such as a bishop who is claiming to be a Christian - argues that suffering refutes the lovingness of God.
Such a Christian is in the position of a child saying that because bad stuff happens this means 'therefore' his parents do not love him. There is an equation being made between 'my happiness' and my parents love for me - specifically the assertion that if I am suffering, it is because my parents do not love me.
This, I think, is a sufficiently accurate summary of 'the problem of pain' argument in many situations. It is usually a childish and selfish argument - that is, an argument motivated by selfishness and childish in its refusal to acknowledge self-ignorance and immaturity in a context which involves an already-existing lack of belief in the goodness (or reality) of God.
Consider: A child may be, often is, in situations where his parents seem (from the perspective of that child) to be inflicting suffering for no reason - this is one of the great sadnesses of parenting.
For example, taking a child for a painful medical procedure. A Father may be holding the child still while the doctor does something which from the child's perspective is a form of torture. From the child's perspective, Daddy brought me to this horrible place and Daddy is holding me tight so that this nasty man can hurt me.
But, in a good family, this does not destroy, does not even challenge, the child's confidence (faith) in the absolute love of his parents.
The reality is that the Father is doing all this from love of his child - although there is no way that a young child can comprehend the situation.
In practice a child is very likely to be hurt and confused by the situation; but also in practice the little boy clings even more tightly to his Father - because that child knows that whatever happens (or seems to be happening), his Father loves him and wants the best for him.
So the answer to the problem of pain is very simple - simple enough for a young child to understand; and indeed simple Christians of past generations understood this without having to be told. The context is that we know that God is our loving Father, and therefore the more we suffer here and now, the more we want and need him; the more we ought to cling tight onto him.
"Yeah, but how can you explain Hitler, and cancer and stuff? God wouldn't allow that"
Like most modern arguments, this is used in such a context and with such an expectation that the Christian is supposed to rebut it in a sentence or maybe two...
The logic goes something like: If God was real, he would have made a better world than this - therefore God is not real.
(Interestingly, the alternative that God is real but not primarily loving - a view affirmed by considerably more than a billion people, doesn't seem to be considered - because mainstream modern Western culture is specifically anti-Christian; so the 'USP' of Christianity {that God is love} is simply taken for granted as characteristic of any God.)
How would I answer such a challenge - if given the luxury of somebody's attention for a few sentences? I would need to state how I regard God, and also the purpose of human life - when both of these are known (but not until then) there is a possibility of explaining the problem of pain.
1. God is the creator, and our loving Father. We can often understand things by this real-metaphor. In other words, we are children, immature but growing, trying to understand why our parents behave the way they do.
2. The purpose of life on earth is 'educational' - we each are growing towards greater divinity (to be more like God) in an environment that is meant to provide maturing, deepening, challenging experience.
3. Every person's specific situation and needs are unique - so there are no general answers to 'why?' something happens to some people - but only explanations of this happening to this person in such a time and place.
4. Therefore, we may be able to understand the reason for our own personal suffering - if we sufficiently understand God, ourselves and our own specific needs and those of people around us. But, given the incredible complexity of things, and the multitude of possibilities, the only imaginable way we could understand even this limited question is from a divine perspective - i.e. if God grants us a personal revelation to explain to us our situation, to explain why X happened to me.
5. And clearly - given the reality of human uniqueness - we can never know this detailed information for most of the seven billion people on the planet, and the billions more who lived in the past.
*
Also - in general - we need to take a step-back and recognize the nature of what is being asked when a Christian - and I mean a sincere Christian, not merely some person such as a bishop who is claiming to be a Christian - argues that suffering refutes the lovingness of God.
Such a Christian is in the position of a child saying that because bad stuff happens this means 'therefore' his parents do not love him. There is an equation being made between 'my happiness' and my parents love for me - specifically the assertion that if I am suffering, it is because my parents do not love me.
This, I think, is a sufficiently accurate summary of 'the problem of pain' argument in many situations. It is usually a childish and selfish argument - that is, an argument motivated by selfishness and childish in its refusal to acknowledge self-ignorance and immaturity in a context which involves an already-existing lack of belief in the goodness (or reality) of God.
Consider: A child may be, often is, in situations where his parents seem (from the perspective of that child) to be inflicting suffering for no reason - this is one of the great sadnesses of parenting.
For example, taking a child for a painful medical procedure. A Father may be holding the child still while the doctor does something which from the child's perspective is a form of torture. From the child's perspective, Daddy brought me to this horrible place and Daddy is holding me tight so that this nasty man can hurt me.
But, in a good family, this does not destroy, does not even challenge, the child's confidence (faith) in the absolute love of his parents.
The reality is that the Father is doing all this from love of his child - although there is no way that a young child can comprehend the situation.
In practice a child is very likely to be hurt and confused by the situation; but also in practice the little boy clings even more tightly to his Father - because that child knows that whatever happens (or seems to be happening), his Father loves him and wants the best for him.
So the answer to the problem of pain is very simple - simple enough for a young child to understand; and indeed simple Christians of past generations understood this without having to be told. The context is that we know that God is our loving Father, and therefore the more we suffer here and now, the more we want and need him; the more we ought to cling tight onto him.
Thursday, 5 May 2016
Note: Change to commenting access
I am having increasing trouble with spam - and the changed setting now requires that commenters must have a Google account.
If you don't, and yet want to comment - you could send me an e-mail.
(Of course, even if you do e-mail, there is no guarantee your comment will get published; but then, you know how it is around here...)
If you don't, and yet want to comment - you could send me an e-mail.
(Of course, even if you do e-mail, there is no guarantee your comment will get published; but then, you know how it is around here...)
Desert Island Music favourites - Beethoven is the celebrity choice
Favourite composers to take to a desert island
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
- Ludwig van Beethoven
- Johann Sebastian Bach
- Franz Schubert
- Giuseppe Verdi
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
- Sir Edward Elgar
- Giacomo Puccini
Favourite specific works
- Beethoven - Symphony No 9 in D minor 'Choral'
- Rachmaninoff - Piano Concerto No 2 in C minor
- Schubert - String Quintet in C major
- Beethoven Symphony No 6 in F Major 'Pastoral'
- Elgar - Pomp & Circumstance March no 1 in D Major 'Land of Hope and Glory'
- Beethoven - Piano Concerto No 5 in E Flat Major 'Emperor'
- Elgar - Enigma Variations Nimrod
- Beethoven - Symphony No 7 in A major
Desert Island Discs is a BBC radio programme which has been going for more than 70 years. The idea is that some famous person, usually one residing in Britain, is invited to choose eight pieces of music, a book and a luxury item to take to an imaginary desert island - as a way of having a discussion about his or her life and opinions.
The above is the averaged list of the musical preferences of the hundreds of celebrities - what strikes me is how sound they are. The top three composers - Mozart, Beethoven and Bach - are exactly the same as Charles Murray extracted by his vast and systematic analysis of scholarship:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Accomplishment#Western_Music
And the specific pieces most often chosen are all worthy - if we allow Elgar's 'Land of Hope and Glory' its place due to English Patriotism.
It is interesting that although Mozart was the favourite composer. he does not make the top ten for specific pieces of music; which is probably due to his having written so many excellent and popular items in so many genres that the votes are thinly spread across them.
I wonder what the favourite Mozart items was? My guess would be the Requiem, due to its featuring in the play/ movie Amadeus - even though it is only partly by Mozart and not regarded as among his best works by scholars. What - if not the Requiem, then, should it be? For me: The Magic Flute; for most musically-informed people The Marriage of Figaro - but in a general poll, maybe the Clarinet Concerto?
Holy Communion - what is happening depends on conviction
Within the Anglican communion there are both Catholics and Protestants with the views of the nature of Holy Communion that you would associate with each of those.
The Catholics believed in the real and mystical presence of Christ in the bread and wine - so long as the Mass was conducted properly by a priest who has been ordained in a direct lineage from the Apostles. The Protestants regard Holy Communion as a memorial meal.
I used to attend an Anglo Catholic church for a short Mass at least once a week, and found the service and the actual taking of bread and wine very effectual: my feelings validated my own belief and that of those who conducted the service. Later I attended a Protestant (Evangelical) Anglican church and found that the Holy Communion was... mildly pleasant but inessential: my feelings validated the beliefs of those who conducted the service.
It seems to me that with Holy Communion, as a broad generalization, you get what you sincerely want and believe; if it is 'taken fully seriously' - as Anglo Catholics used to do (before most of them liberalized/ secularized), it is a renewal and a mystical communion. If you think of it as an optional-extra - the Lord's Supper performed, infrequently, simply because the Bible tells us to do it; then it functions as a memorial, but lacks any mystical aspect.
It seems to me that our hearts can discern these truths.
Once, not long after my conversion - and before I had recognized and rejected the anti-Christianity dominant in the Church of England, I participated in a Holy Communion conducted by a priestess. I wasn't thinking or worrying abut it, it was mostly experienced as a fairly normal service (for that church) until I took the bread and wine; at which point I was shocked by a powerful sense of wrongness.
That was, in fact, the exact moment when I became aware that women were not priests and that it was wrong to assert that they were priests - and that therefore I must stop prevaricating and delaying and 'sitting on the fence - must pick-my-side in the great Christian disputes of our era.
Because I currently attend a Protestant church, I seldom nowadays participate in Holy Communion; and when I do find myself indifferent to it (the 20 minute sermon is the focus of the service - whereas there was no sermon in the short Masses I used to attend); and I miss Mass.
But it is interesting that I reached a view on the validity of Mass by means of a very 'Protestant' exercise of individual conscience! I find a 'real' Mass objectively valuable to theosis, but Mass is not objectively necessary to salvation.
This may be supposed to be self-contradictory - that I would personally and subjectively evaluate the (small c) catholic church as objectively valid... but to me it seems obvious that this is how things are and ought to be. In a world created by God our loving Father for our benefit: honest, heart-felt understandings will converge upon truth.
The Catholics believed in the real and mystical presence of Christ in the bread and wine - so long as the Mass was conducted properly by a priest who has been ordained in a direct lineage from the Apostles. The Protestants regard Holy Communion as a memorial meal.
I used to attend an Anglo Catholic church for a short Mass at least once a week, and found the service and the actual taking of bread and wine very effectual: my feelings validated my own belief and that of those who conducted the service. Later I attended a Protestant (Evangelical) Anglican church and found that the Holy Communion was... mildly pleasant but inessential: my feelings validated the beliefs of those who conducted the service.
It seems to me that with Holy Communion, as a broad generalization, you get what you sincerely want and believe; if it is 'taken fully seriously' - as Anglo Catholics used to do (before most of them liberalized/ secularized), it is a renewal and a mystical communion. If you think of it as an optional-extra - the Lord's Supper performed, infrequently, simply because the Bible tells us to do it; then it functions as a memorial, but lacks any mystical aspect.
It seems to me that our hearts can discern these truths.
Once, not long after my conversion - and before I had recognized and rejected the anti-Christianity dominant in the Church of England, I participated in a Holy Communion conducted by a priestess. I wasn't thinking or worrying abut it, it was mostly experienced as a fairly normal service (for that church) until I took the bread and wine; at which point I was shocked by a powerful sense of wrongness.
That was, in fact, the exact moment when I became aware that women were not priests and that it was wrong to assert that they were priests - and that therefore I must stop prevaricating and delaying and 'sitting on the fence - must pick-my-side in the great Christian disputes of our era.
Because I currently attend a Protestant church, I seldom nowadays participate in Holy Communion; and when I do find myself indifferent to it (the 20 minute sermon is the focus of the service - whereas there was no sermon in the short Masses I used to attend); and I miss Mass.
But it is interesting that I reached a view on the validity of Mass by means of a very 'Protestant' exercise of individual conscience! I find a 'real' Mass objectively valuable to theosis, but Mass is not objectively necessary to salvation.
This may be supposed to be self-contradictory - that I would personally and subjectively evaluate the (small c) catholic church as objectively valid... but to me it seems obvious that this is how things are and ought to be. In a world created by God our loving Father for our benefit: honest, heart-felt understandings will converge upon truth.
Is poetry important? Great poets say not. Frost and Eliot - stays and fragments
These fragments I have shored against my ruins... TS Eliot in The Wasteland
A momentary stay against confusion... Robert Frost in The Figure a Poem makes
It struck me yesterday how nihilistic are these famous self-evaluations of their art by two of the great poets of the early 20th century - Why should anyone be interested by, make sacrifices for, dedicate their lives to either producing or reading 'fragments' futilely trying and failing hold back ruin or something which only momentarily interrupts a state of confusion before being snapped?
Answer - they aren't interested and don't make sacrifices or dedicate their lives; and real poetry has been declining ever since (even as subsidizied 'poetry' and its official, certificated criticism is a bloated profession).
All this is bound-up with the mass loss of faith in religion (and Eliot no doubt changed his mind after writing the above and when he became a Christian; but the above quote is the one that is remembered) - because, without God nothing can be more than a temporary, feeble, and ultimately futile delusion of apparent meaning and order in a world which is in reality nothing more than confused ruin.
A momentary stay against confusion... Robert Frost in The Figure a Poem makes
It struck me yesterday how nihilistic are these famous self-evaluations of their art by two of the great poets of the early 20th century - Why should anyone be interested by, make sacrifices for, dedicate their lives to either producing or reading 'fragments' futilely trying and failing hold back ruin or something which only momentarily interrupts a state of confusion before being snapped?
Answer - they aren't interested and don't make sacrifices or dedicate their lives; and real poetry has been declining ever since (even as subsidizied 'poetry' and its official, certificated criticism is a bloated profession).
All this is bound-up with the mass loss of faith in religion (and Eliot no doubt changed his mind after writing the above and when he became a Christian; but the above quote is the one that is remembered) - because, without God nothing can be more than a temporary, feeble, and ultimately futile delusion of apparent meaning and order in a world which is in reality nothing more than confused ruin.
Wednesday, 4 May 2016
Final Participation as the theosis of the future - Owen Barfield's scheme given its full Christian context
It was seemingly difficult for Owen Barfield to express clearly what he meant by Final Participation of human consciousness - indeed I think he exhibited a reluctance to be explicit on this point.
I now feel I have sufficiently understood Final Participation to re-explain it in my own words; but in doing so I take a step further than Barfield was willing to go in most public fora; and I think I can understand why.
To make Final Participation clear involves acknowledging its basis in Christianity - which has a tendency to alienate non-Christians; while at the same time claiming to move-forward-from, and in that sense 'supercede' Historical Christianity - which would tend to alienate most Christians: thereby leaving Barfield with only a very small audience!
Anyway, whether or not the above understanding is a correct guess: here is my understanding of the assumed historical sequence of Original Participation - going through various phases to our current almost wholly-alienated Modern Western Consciousness Soul - to Final Participation.
The key concept is theosis, which is the process of becoming divine. The consciousness of theosis therefore clearly depends on the concept of the divine: in becoming like-god it depends what we understand by god.
Original Participation was the situation of the first Men - who lived in hunter gatherer societies. They understood the divine to be something like energies in a process of circulation and transformation. Theosis was therefore the living daily experience of participating in these energies and transformations. The system was closed, all is as it was and ever will be. Man is part of the divine, but not a separate self.
This was the childhood of Man.
Then came the start of an increasing degree of self-consciousness, of Man as aware of Himself as an Agent with 'free will'; which brought with it an increasing sense of separation from the divine. At first the separation was only temporary and could be overcome by the activities of priest, performing rituals, in temples - and the ultimate aim was to restore each man into the divine. Mundane life was an exile - the aim was reabsorption of the individual self-consciousness back into the divine consciousness. Man conceived himself as as 'a worm', with the merest glimmer or vestige of autonomy - and that autonomy essentially wicked.
By stages, over many centuries, the separation of self-consciousness and awareness of the self as unique increased until it became almost (but never fully) complete; so that now and for many generations Man regards himself no longer as a worm, but as the only god - which either leads to absolute (but brittle) pride at his self-creation of his own reality out of nothing; or (and eventually) to despair at his belief that therefore reality depends on his own continuous creation and is therefore feeble and temporary and doomed to end with death - Man regarding himself as something even-less-than a worm.
At this stage theosis has stopped, is no longer a purpose, life has no meaning outside of the contigent and ephemeral and private subjective consciousness.
This is the adolescence of Man.
Final Participation is the renewal of a new kind of theosis in which God and the Self are both regarded as real (eternally real) - and there are many selves, each on the path towards divinity. So the aim is not immersive participation in divine energies; it is not reabsorption into the divine; but the aim of Final Participation is instead to participate in the process of ever more, and ever more loving and creative, relationships between the many eternal selves of Men on the one hand and God (in divine multiplicity) on the other hand.
Final Participation is Final because the system is no longer closed (as it was in Original Participation) but open-ended and capable of eternal expansion, as we as individuals each and collectively grow towards a divinity of the same kind and level as God - but an unique, and continually added-to divinity; and with many others (being added-to) all around us, in relationships with us, who are doing the same.
To move towards Final Participation we need to consider the nature of our relationship with the divine - and that we are to understand ourselves as immature and very-partial divinities - but that God has a loving and paternal relationship with us; so we need have nothing to fear from him and an attitude of trust and confidence in him as he will always want the best for us and work for that end.
For Final Participation, therefore, we need to see God as a person and a personal friend; and not somebody or some-thing vast and mysterious to be awed by and needing to be appeased, not somebody to be pleaded-with, nor an alien and incomprehensible being to be worshipped - and not an abstract infinite perfection which we seek to 'lose ourselves' into. At least, such attitudes cannot be foremost and regulative of our relation to God - but only background, exceptional and temporary.
Of Course, God condescends greatly to meet us at our level, and for that we should be grateful; but having said that we just need to put aside that fact and get on with the relationship at our own childish or adolescent level (just as a child knows that the adult is condescending to play, but the play cannot be play unless that condescension is 'forgotten' while the play is in progress). Respectful friendliness, trust, confidence - and an 'equality' which (like the child's in play with parent, as he grows) is not less real for continually being superceded by higher levels of maturing and diminishing magnitudes of difference.
Barfield - following Coleridge - saw reality in terms of distinguishable, dynamic but not separable polarities. The Polarity of Final Participation may be between God as an eternal and fully-divine person; and each of ourselves as eternal and partially-divine persons. The poles never to be united, but always bound-together in dynamic process, energized by that thing we could call Love - so long as we are clear that Love contains many positive aspects such as creativity, intelligence, power...
In sum - the movement from Original to Final Participation (leaving-out the long transitional state that occupies recorded history, and in which we still seem to be 'stuck') is therefore centred on the work of Christ; understood as enabling the change from theosis as loss of the self and reabsorption back-into the divine - to theosis as a stronger and maturing self-awarness and consciousness; closer and closer towards the adulthood of a full friend-like relationship between the personal loving God and his growing-up child.
It is the lived experience of this theosis which is Final Participation.
*
Note added: Having posted the above I almost immediately came upon an explicit confirmation of my interpretation on page 154 of What Coleridge Thought by Owen Barfield:
...The polarity God [polar-with symbol] Man is the basis of all polarity, in nature and elsewhere.
This leads to my final summary:
Original Participation = Divine Unity
Consciousness Soul = Human Separateness
Final Participation = Divine-Human Polarity
I now feel I have sufficiently understood Final Participation to re-explain it in my own words; but in doing so I take a step further than Barfield was willing to go in most public fora; and I think I can understand why.
To make Final Participation clear involves acknowledging its basis in Christianity - which has a tendency to alienate non-Christians; while at the same time claiming to move-forward-from, and in that sense 'supercede' Historical Christianity - which would tend to alienate most Christians: thereby leaving Barfield with only a very small audience!
Anyway, whether or not the above understanding is a correct guess: here is my understanding of the assumed historical sequence of Original Participation - going through various phases to our current almost wholly-alienated Modern Western Consciousness Soul - to Final Participation.
The key concept is theosis, which is the process of becoming divine. The consciousness of theosis therefore clearly depends on the concept of the divine: in becoming like-god it depends what we understand by god.
Original Participation was the situation of the first Men - who lived in hunter gatherer societies. They understood the divine to be something like energies in a process of circulation and transformation. Theosis was therefore the living daily experience of participating in these energies and transformations. The system was closed, all is as it was and ever will be. Man is part of the divine, but not a separate self.
This was the childhood of Man.
Then came the start of an increasing degree of self-consciousness, of Man as aware of Himself as an Agent with 'free will'; which brought with it an increasing sense of separation from the divine. At first the separation was only temporary and could be overcome by the activities of priest, performing rituals, in temples - and the ultimate aim was to restore each man into the divine. Mundane life was an exile - the aim was reabsorption of the individual self-consciousness back into the divine consciousness. Man conceived himself as as 'a worm', with the merest glimmer or vestige of autonomy - and that autonomy essentially wicked.
By stages, over many centuries, the separation of self-consciousness and awareness of the self as unique increased until it became almost (but never fully) complete; so that now and for many generations Man regards himself no longer as a worm, but as the only god - which either leads to absolute (but brittle) pride at his self-creation of his own reality out of nothing; or (and eventually) to despair at his belief that therefore reality depends on his own continuous creation and is therefore feeble and temporary and doomed to end with death - Man regarding himself as something even-less-than a worm.
At this stage theosis has stopped, is no longer a purpose, life has no meaning outside of the contigent and ephemeral and private subjective consciousness.
This is the adolescence of Man.
Final Participation is the renewal of a new kind of theosis in which God and the Self are both regarded as real (eternally real) - and there are many selves, each on the path towards divinity. So the aim is not immersive participation in divine energies; it is not reabsorption into the divine; but the aim of Final Participation is instead to participate in the process of ever more, and ever more loving and creative, relationships between the many eternal selves of Men on the one hand and God (in divine multiplicity) on the other hand.
Final Participation is Final because the system is no longer closed (as it was in Original Participation) but open-ended and capable of eternal expansion, as we as individuals each and collectively grow towards a divinity of the same kind and level as God - but an unique, and continually added-to divinity; and with many others (being added-to) all around us, in relationships with us, who are doing the same.
To move towards Final Participation we need to consider the nature of our relationship with the divine - and that we are to understand ourselves as immature and very-partial divinities - but that God has a loving and paternal relationship with us; so we need have nothing to fear from him and an attitude of trust and confidence in him as he will always want the best for us and work for that end.
For Final Participation, therefore, we need to see God as a person and a personal friend; and not somebody or some-thing vast and mysterious to be awed by and needing to be appeased, not somebody to be pleaded-with, nor an alien and incomprehensible being to be worshipped - and not an abstract infinite perfection which we seek to 'lose ourselves' into. At least, such attitudes cannot be foremost and regulative of our relation to God - but only background, exceptional and temporary.
Of Course, God condescends greatly to meet us at our level, and for that we should be grateful; but having said that we just need to put aside that fact and get on with the relationship at our own childish or adolescent level (just as a child knows that the adult is condescending to play, but the play cannot be play unless that condescension is 'forgotten' while the play is in progress). Respectful friendliness, trust, confidence - and an 'equality' which (like the child's in play with parent, as he grows) is not less real for continually being superceded by higher levels of maturing and diminishing magnitudes of difference.
Barfield - following Coleridge - saw reality in terms of distinguishable, dynamic but not separable polarities. The Polarity of Final Participation may be between God as an eternal and fully-divine person; and each of ourselves as eternal and partially-divine persons. The poles never to be united, but always bound-together in dynamic process, energized by that thing we could call Love - so long as we are clear that Love contains many positive aspects such as creativity, intelligence, power...
In sum - the movement from Original to Final Participation (leaving-out the long transitional state that occupies recorded history, and in which we still seem to be 'stuck') is therefore centred on the work of Christ; understood as enabling the change from theosis as loss of the self and reabsorption back-into the divine - to theosis as a stronger and maturing self-awarness and consciousness; closer and closer towards the adulthood of a full friend-like relationship between the personal loving God and his growing-up child.
It is the lived experience of this theosis which is Final Participation.
*
Note added: Having posted the above I almost immediately came upon an explicit confirmation of my interpretation on page 154 of What Coleridge Thought by Owen Barfield:
...The polarity God [polar-with symbol] Man is the basis of all polarity, in nature and elsewhere.
This leads to my final summary:
Original Participation = Divine Unity
Consciousness Soul = Human Separateness
Final Participation = Divine-Human Polarity
Tuesday, 3 May 2016
Christianity and the absorption of Romanticism
If we wind-back over two hundred years to the beginnings of the Romantic movement in the West - to that great upwelling of human creativity and aspiration that is associated with the likes of Coleridge and Wordsworth and reached its culmination in the person and works of Goethe - we can see that it was addressing real and deep problems in Western Christianity, and indeed in Christianity up to that point.
We can also see that Romanticism on the one hand never went away but has always since been present - and on the other hand that Romanticism never got any further, indeed it never again got as far as it did in that first wave. Compare the 1890s, or 1960s resurgences of Romanticism with the original to measure the partiality, feebleness and corruption of later Romanticism - yet the impulse has never left the West.
Romanticism was indeed deflected and corrupted - especially into atheism and a focus on sex; but its original aspiration was not just good but in fact necessary: the assertion of Imagination to heal the alienation that had overwhelmed Modern Man with the advent of the Scientific Revolution from the 1600s and the dualism described by Descartes.
Christianity did not accept or include Romanticism, indeed ever since Romanticism Christianity has been fighting the long defeat against secular Leftism; and almost the only Christians who have survived as Christian have been those who rejected Romanticism and have remained alienated - those with materialist attitudes to the spiritual, those with a spiritual attitude to bureaucracy, those who accept the 'literalism' of the scriptures as if they were science textbooks (by some theoretical and dead version of science where it is a series of true statements).
These are harsh words to use against those who are desperately maintaining a glimmer of light as all around is engulfed in darkness - but the fact is that Christianity is not-good-enough; the deep problems it had when Romanticism arose remain and have hardened. It is possible that the alienated literalism of the strongest remaining types of Christianity is a double-edged sword: a defence against being dissolved in the evil relativism/ nihilism of modernity - but also a defect that guarantees continual shrinkage and eventual defeat.
By this account, the greatest success of Secular Leftism is to keep Christianity so continually on the back-foot that in fighting to prevent its absorption by Secular Leftism (which has been the fate of all mainstream Christian churches in The West) it has been unable to Romanticize itself - because that is what is required: Christianity must itself absorb Romanticism.
We need to do the mental exercise of re-winding two hundred years and absorbing, and Christianizing, the impulse of the Romantic movement.
This is done by purpose. Romanticism was all about process, but lacked purpose - because it came to reject Christianity. Christianity provides the purpose which can be used to organize Romanticism, to keep the good and reject the bad - and error, corruption and sin are shed as there is movement towards the goal.
In a sense, the lesson of the history of Romanticism is that purpose is almost-everything. Life is - or should be - a much more creative thing than was envisaged by The Age of Reason, a much more heartfelt and instinctual and spontaneous thing than envisaged by the Age of Enlightenment, a much more loving thing than ever was known to the logical Middle Ages.
Above all, Life should be One thing; and our reason, understanding and thinking must include that Life is One thing. Romanticism is, should be, that reorganzing of our reason, understanding, thinking... and then grasping and assimilating it by the Imagination.
Men are intrinsically imperfect beings, prone to error, prone to sin - but Romanticism saw that this was a feature not a bug: we are made this way (by God) for a reason, and a vital reason. For Christian Romanticism, life was not about a perfection of being and our failure to be it; but about the process of living, striving, creating, loving, erring, sinning, repenting and everything else... But all guided and shaped by Christian purpose.
It is the purpose which makes Christian Romanticism Good. Romanticism saw that it was a metaphysical error to suppose that good and evil could be separated in the actual human condition: they can and must be distinguished, but they cannot be separated - always both are there.
Always and inevitably both Good and evil - therefore this is part of God's plan, therefore it is necessary and not to be regretted or extirpated. We cannot be 'good' every inch of the way, therefore we are not meant to be good every inch of the way - we are meant alwyas (and every inch of the way) to aim at good.
(To be of Good Purpose, to be working for God's plan - a 'plan' which is more like organic growth and development toward establishing and maintaining a dense and diverse ecosystem, than it is like an engineering blueprint to be 'implemented' by Project Management).
This is of course what God Himself does - in our lives, to reach good involves bad - for example self-denial, suffering, hardship: only via these bad things can good be reached. So in our own lives. It would be fatal to try and extirpate all bad things - indeed that is the underpinning error of that Secular Leftism/ Liberalism which seeks above everything to eliminate suffering. It is fatal, and it is also paradoxical and impossible - we need to set-aside such futile hankerings.
What God wants is not a paradox, but a direction. We take our mixed selves, living our mixed lives, and point them in the proper direction - and that is true and attainable and non-paradoxical Goodness; that is the Christianity we most deeply need: A Christianity which has absorbed Romanticism - a Romantic Christianity.
[For clarification of the nature and origins and fate of Romanticism, a start could be made with: http://www.owenbarfield.org/romanticism-and-anthroposophy ]
We can also see that Romanticism on the one hand never went away but has always since been present - and on the other hand that Romanticism never got any further, indeed it never again got as far as it did in that first wave. Compare the 1890s, or 1960s resurgences of Romanticism with the original to measure the partiality, feebleness and corruption of later Romanticism - yet the impulse has never left the West.
Romanticism was indeed deflected and corrupted - especially into atheism and a focus on sex; but its original aspiration was not just good but in fact necessary: the assertion of Imagination to heal the alienation that had overwhelmed Modern Man with the advent of the Scientific Revolution from the 1600s and the dualism described by Descartes.
Christianity did not accept or include Romanticism, indeed ever since Romanticism Christianity has been fighting the long defeat against secular Leftism; and almost the only Christians who have survived as Christian have been those who rejected Romanticism and have remained alienated - those with materialist attitudes to the spiritual, those with a spiritual attitude to bureaucracy, those who accept the 'literalism' of the scriptures as if they were science textbooks (by some theoretical and dead version of science where it is a series of true statements).
These are harsh words to use against those who are desperately maintaining a glimmer of light as all around is engulfed in darkness - but the fact is that Christianity is not-good-enough; the deep problems it had when Romanticism arose remain and have hardened. It is possible that the alienated literalism of the strongest remaining types of Christianity is a double-edged sword: a defence against being dissolved in the evil relativism/ nihilism of modernity - but also a defect that guarantees continual shrinkage and eventual defeat.
By this account, the greatest success of Secular Leftism is to keep Christianity so continually on the back-foot that in fighting to prevent its absorption by Secular Leftism (which has been the fate of all mainstream Christian churches in The West) it has been unable to Romanticize itself - because that is what is required: Christianity must itself absorb Romanticism.
We need to do the mental exercise of re-winding two hundred years and absorbing, and Christianizing, the impulse of the Romantic movement.
This is done by purpose. Romanticism was all about process, but lacked purpose - because it came to reject Christianity. Christianity provides the purpose which can be used to organize Romanticism, to keep the good and reject the bad - and error, corruption and sin are shed as there is movement towards the goal.
In a sense, the lesson of the history of Romanticism is that purpose is almost-everything. Life is - or should be - a much more creative thing than was envisaged by The Age of Reason, a much more heartfelt and instinctual and spontaneous thing than envisaged by the Age of Enlightenment, a much more loving thing than ever was known to the logical Middle Ages.
Above all, Life should be One thing; and our reason, understanding and thinking must include that Life is One thing. Romanticism is, should be, that reorganzing of our reason, understanding, thinking... and then grasping and assimilating it by the Imagination.
Men are intrinsically imperfect beings, prone to error, prone to sin - but Romanticism saw that this was a feature not a bug: we are made this way (by God) for a reason, and a vital reason. For Christian Romanticism, life was not about a perfection of being and our failure to be it; but about the process of living, striving, creating, loving, erring, sinning, repenting and everything else... But all guided and shaped by Christian purpose.
It is the purpose which makes Christian Romanticism Good. Romanticism saw that it was a metaphysical error to suppose that good and evil could be separated in the actual human condition: they can and must be distinguished, but they cannot be separated - always both are there.
Always and inevitably both Good and evil - therefore this is part of God's plan, therefore it is necessary and not to be regretted or extirpated. We cannot be 'good' every inch of the way, therefore we are not meant to be good every inch of the way - we are meant alwyas (and every inch of the way) to aim at good.
(To be of Good Purpose, to be working for God's plan - a 'plan' which is more like organic growth and development toward establishing and maintaining a dense and diverse ecosystem, than it is like an engineering blueprint to be 'implemented' by Project Management).
This is of course what God Himself does - in our lives, to reach good involves bad - for example self-denial, suffering, hardship: only via these bad things can good be reached. So in our own lives. It would be fatal to try and extirpate all bad things - indeed that is the underpinning error of that Secular Leftism/ Liberalism which seeks above everything to eliminate suffering. It is fatal, and it is also paradoxical and impossible - we need to set-aside such futile hankerings.
What God wants is not a paradox, but a direction. We take our mixed selves, living our mixed lives, and point them in the proper direction - and that is true and attainable and non-paradoxical Goodness; that is the Christianity we most deeply need: A Christianity which has absorbed Romanticism - a Romantic Christianity.
[For clarification of the nature and origins and fate of Romanticism, a start could be made with: http://www.owenbarfield.org/romanticism-and-anthroposophy ]
Monday, 2 May 2016
Why an elected Christian monarch is impossible; why good government of Western nations is impossible
A Christian monarch is one who rules as a servant of God - and on the assumption that he or she was chosen by God for the job, and is guided by God in this task.
This is only possible in and for a society which is, overall, Christian - and therefore wants to be ruled by a monarch who at least aims-to rule the society on Christain principles; wants to be ruled by a monarch who himself aspires to be representative of God's will on earth and in mortal life (as best as possible with imperfect people in an imperfect world).
Anybody who is elected owes their position to the electors - or more often to those who rig and fix the election - and not to God. The exception is when the electors are few enough to gather in a room, and devout enough to subordinate their wishes to what they perceive of the divine will; and devoted enough to their people to seek a good and universal Father (or Mother) to the nation.
But for the decision of such a small group of devout people to be accepted and binding; requires that the powers of the population-at-large acknowledge the authority of this group - and this can only happen on the basis of a geniune and shared religion.
The first conclusion is that good government is not possible in the West today, because the people have no religion and are secular rejectors. It is absurd to suppose that a Christian monarch could be planted atop our society, and allowed to rule impartially and lovingly - yet with power and authority - on behalf of God.
A society has to deserve a great leader, or else the leader will either not lead, or not be great.
So there is no possible system by which The West as it is could have good political leadership.
A good leader is usually Father to the nation - but our nations are in permanent rebellion against parents, and especially Fathers. A good leader operates on the basis of broadly-shared transcendental ideals - but The West does not believe in the reality of the transcendental.
A good leader rules for the general and long-term spiritual good of his people (his 'children') - but we want only material good, and specifically for ourselves, and we want it now.
The West must first become religious, specifically Christian - and only then will good leadership become possible. And if, as seems likely, we do not become Christian; then we might as well forget about pining for good leadership - which is an irresponsible waste of our finite time; and instead concentrate our efforts and attentions on something attainable.
This is only possible in and for a society which is, overall, Christian - and therefore wants to be ruled by a monarch who at least aims-to rule the society on Christain principles; wants to be ruled by a monarch who himself aspires to be representative of God's will on earth and in mortal life (as best as possible with imperfect people in an imperfect world).
Anybody who is elected owes their position to the electors - or more often to those who rig and fix the election - and not to God. The exception is when the electors are few enough to gather in a room, and devout enough to subordinate their wishes to what they perceive of the divine will; and devoted enough to their people to seek a good and universal Father (or Mother) to the nation.
But for the decision of such a small group of devout people to be accepted and binding; requires that the powers of the population-at-large acknowledge the authority of this group - and this can only happen on the basis of a geniune and shared religion.
The first conclusion is that good government is not possible in the West today, because the people have no religion and are secular rejectors. It is absurd to suppose that a Christian monarch could be planted atop our society, and allowed to rule impartially and lovingly - yet with power and authority - on behalf of God.
A society has to deserve a great leader, or else the leader will either not lead, or not be great.
So there is no possible system by which The West as it is could have good political leadership.
A good leader is usually Father to the nation - but our nations are in permanent rebellion against parents, and especially Fathers. A good leader operates on the basis of broadly-shared transcendental ideals - but The West does not believe in the reality of the transcendental.
A good leader rules for the general and long-term spiritual good of his people (his 'children') - but we want only material good, and specifically for ourselves, and we want it now.
The West must first become religious, specifically Christian - and only then will good leadership become possible. And if, as seems likely, we do not become Christian; then we might as well forget about pining for good leadership - which is an irresponsible waste of our finite time; and instead concentrate our efforts and attentions on something attainable.
Charles Williams novels on Kindle from amazon-uk for 'half a dollar'
The Inkling Charles Williams died in 1945, and came out-of-copyright last year - immediately, The Charles Williams Collection, including all his novels, has been issued as an ebook on Kindle by Karpathos publishers at a give-away price of 82p.
If you have been intending to read some CW but not yet gotten round to it, then now is the time. Most people find either The Place of the Lion, Descent into Hell or All Hallows Eve to be the best of these novels.
Place of the Lion was one of the key books that sparked-off CS Lewis's serious prose-writing with Lewi's Space Trilogy and Tolkien's Lost Road/ Notion Club Papers and the legends of Numenor - which eventually got into Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. General enuthsiasm for Place of the Lion among the Inklings (it was Nevill Coghill who 'discovered' it in 1936) also sparked the friendship leading onto Inklings membership three years later and for the rest of CW's life.
I found it a very potent book which worked on me after I had finished it, so I have returned and re-read it several times over three decades - each time liking it more. The special philosophical interest comes from the implications of Platonic Archetypes; but in general PotL is a compelling description of the invasion of mundane life by the super-natural - the profound realities.
Descent into Hell is powerful and memorable, with a compelling inner logic. The philosophical interest is about the nature of Time: the novel convincingly displays the implications of divine time as described in Boetheius's Consolations of Philosophy (which is the understanding of nearly all mainstream Classical Christian theology - God outside of Time; observing past, present and future simultaneously - but not typically of Mormon theology).
All Hallows Eve is the most novelistic and flowing - presumably because it was written with the benefit of the Inklings criticisms and advice. Jack and Warnie Lewis felt it demonstrated an astonishing understanding of life after death.
(For me the elements of sadism in AHE are too prominent - and this is an undercurrent in all William's books except for Place of the Lion. It is a thing to which I am particularly sensitive and averse in fiction - a fact for which my family could vouch, when it comes to watching TV and movies. For example, I initially could not get-into the first book of Harry Potter - which I now love - beause I felt a careless cruelty about the way it described Harry being treated by the Dursleys!)
The other Charles Williams novels are interesting in patches, rather than enjoyable, to me - and I have never succeeded in reading any of them straight-through. The exception, and the most distinctive of them, is The Greater Trumps; which is half very good and half botched.
I don't regard Williams as a great or even canonical novelist - but three significant successes out of seven is not bad - and these include books which have meant a great deal to some of the great authorities of English Literature; notably including the prime arbiter of quality in the mid 20th century, TS Eliot. So, and especially at this price! - they are well worth a try.
If you have been intending to read some CW but not yet gotten round to it, then now is the time. Most people find either The Place of the Lion, Descent into Hell or All Hallows Eve to be the best of these novels.
Place of the Lion was one of the key books that sparked-off CS Lewis's serious prose-writing with Lewi's Space Trilogy and Tolkien's Lost Road/ Notion Club Papers and the legends of Numenor - which eventually got into Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. General enuthsiasm for Place of the Lion among the Inklings (it was Nevill Coghill who 'discovered' it in 1936) also sparked the friendship leading onto Inklings membership three years later and for the rest of CW's life.
I found it a very potent book which worked on me after I had finished it, so I have returned and re-read it several times over three decades - each time liking it more. The special philosophical interest comes from the implications of Platonic Archetypes; but in general PotL is a compelling description of the invasion of mundane life by the super-natural - the profound realities.
Descent into Hell is powerful and memorable, with a compelling inner logic. The philosophical interest is about the nature of Time: the novel convincingly displays the implications of divine time as described in Boetheius's Consolations of Philosophy (which is the understanding of nearly all mainstream Classical Christian theology - God outside of Time; observing past, present and future simultaneously - but not typically of Mormon theology).
All Hallows Eve is the most novelistic and flowing - presumably because it was written with the benefit of the Inklings criticisms and advice. Jack and Warnie Lewis felt it demonstrated an astonishing understanding of life after death.
(For me the elements of sadism in AHE are too prominent - and this is an undercurrent in all William's books except for Place of the Lion. It is a thing to which I am particularly sensitive and averse in fiction - a fact for which my family could vouch, when it comes to watching TV and movies. For example, I initially could not get-into the first book of Harry Potter - which I now love - beause I felt a careless cruelty about the way it described Harry being treated by the Dursleys!)
The other Charles Williams novels are interesting in patches, rather than enjoyable, to me - and I have never succeeded in reading any of them straight-through. The exception, and the most distinctive of them, is The Greater Trumps; which is half very good and half botched.
I don't regard Williams as a great or even canonical novelist - but three significant successes out of seven is not bad - and these include books which have meant a great deal to some of the great authorities of English Literature; notably including the prime arbiter of quality in the mid 20th century, TS Eliot. So, and especially at this price! - they are well worth a try.
Sunday, 1 May 2016
Attempting briefly to explain the big picture about Life
By my current understanding there is pre-mortal spirit life and post mortal resurrected life, both of which are about theosis/ learning to become divine.
This is down to my (revealed, not logical) understanding that the basic purpose of creation is to enable/ encourage human spirits to become like our Creator and Father (i.e. at the same 'level' as him, so he can *fully* relate to us - this being his deepest wish, because otherwise his existence is relatively 'lonely' (although I also believe that God has a wife/ consort at the same level - i.e. our Heavenly , literal - tho not concrete, Mother) - or (to put it more positively) God may wish above all to live -ever-more abundantly - by the growth of loving relationships with a growing family of increasingly grown-up children.
This is naturally a vast task, and probably one taking an extremely long time/ great deal of experience and work - and never fully completed. But that is not a bad thing! rather it is what we are destined to do and our greatest conceivable and possible satisfaction. There is no hurry about this because it is a delight every inch of the way! (well, not every inch because of the suffering, but at every stage.)
Adding that there are things which can, at least by particular spirits, only be learned in this mortal incarnate life - not least by experiencing the negative side of things and through suffering - it seems a matter of common observation that (because of our free will agency) we find some thing very difficult to learn, and indeed - in practice, and over a finite timescale - some things we simply do not learn because we refuse to learn them.
To flesh out things in relation to reincarnation - my understanding is that most pre-mortal spirits need only what can be provided by a single mortal life; and that is the norm. But some need more than one life, and are offered the chance for another or more than another mortal life (always voluntary and chosen!); while others (who are, by one definition, mortal angels) have gained what they need from mortal life but choose to return to assist in this work.
As well as being united as children of the Father Creator (and Heavenly Mother) we really are and are meant to be unique individuals with unique paths all the way up to 'full' (but never finished) divinity!
This is down to my (revealed, not logical) understanding that the basic purpose of creation is to enable/ encourage human spirits to become like our Creator and Father (i.e. at the same 'level' as him, so he can *fully* relate to us - this being his deepest wish, because otherwise his existence is relatively 'lonely' (although I also believe that God has a wife/ consort at the same level - i.e. our Heavenly , literal - tho not concrete, Mother) - or (to put it more positively) God may wish above all to live -ever-more abundantly - by the growth of loving relationships with a growing family of increasingly grown-up children.
This is naturally a vast task, and probably one taking an extremely long time/ great deal of experience and work - and never fully completed. But that is not a bad thing! rather it is what we are destined to do and our greatest conceivable and possible satisfaction. There is no hurry about this because it is a delight every inch of the way! (well, not every inch because of the suffering, but at every stage.)
Adding that there are things which can, at least by particular spirits, only be learned in this mortal incarnate life - not least by experiencing the negative side of things and through suffering - it seems a matter of common observation that (because of our free will agency) we find some thing very difficult to learn, and indeed - in practice, and over a finite timescale - some things we simply do not learn because we refuse to learn them.
To flesh out things in relation to reincarnation - my understanding is that most pre-mortal spirits need only what can be provided by a single mortal life; and that is the norm. But some need more than one life, and are offered the chance for another or more than another mortal life (always voluntary and chosen!); while others (who are, by one definition, mortal angels) have gained what they need from mortal life but choose to return to assist in this work.
As well as being united as children of the Father Creator (and Heavenly Mother) we really are and are meant to be unique individuals with unique paths all the way up to 'full' (but never finished) divinity!
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