On the limitations of a palantir: Tolkien on the irrationality of despair

That greatest of Tolkien scholars, Tom Shippey, noticed something profound yet hidden in the Lord of the Rings - which provides narrative 'evidence' for Tolkien's frequent theme that it is always wrong to despair. 

Despair is wrong primarily because we live in the ongoing creation of a God who loves us as his children; so this world is being-created, moment by moment, with an eye to the primary purpose of life: which is providing each of us with the experiences we most need to learn from in terms of our Christian choice of resurrected life in Heaven. 

 

(Conversely, this world is Not designed for atheist-materialists, who disbelieve in Heaven. Their lives are indeed, by their own assumptions, meaningless and pointless.)

So, 'general' despair is wrong, and a consequence of lack of 'faith' - that is, lack of trust in God's loving goodness and personal concern for each-of-us. But specific causes of despair are also a mistake; mistakes of inference. 

Why? Because despair is the certainty of bad outcome, such that one gives-up hope. And - simply put - despair is always wrong because we never have conclusive reasons to give-up hope. 

 

Despair is not based on probability, but certainty - and that certainty is always false. A high probability of a bad outcome should be called pessimism. It is not despair because it is a best guess, and estimate; and we realise that even the very improbable sometimes happens. 

Note: It is vital to distinguish between despair and pessimism; and between hope and optimism. 

Despair is a sin, and is always-wrong; hope is a virtue and (for a Christian) always-right. Optimism and pessimism are merely conjectural judgments about the likely future - constrained by individual ability, information and honesty...

 

But more fundamentally, despair is not even about strict-probabilities of the future of a known situation; since we are very unlikely to be framing, to be understanding accurately, the real nature of the situation.

Even if we know a lot about a situation, we never know every-thing about it; and some specific thing (some 'fact') that we do Not know, may have the capacity to transform our understanding. 

If we knew that particular fact, then our 'conclusive reason' for despair would go. 

 

In the Lord of the Rings, there is a seeing-stone device called a palantir, which may be used to gather information. Yet, whenever we see a palantir in use to gather more information and make a judgment, an error is made.

Always, something important about the user's assumptions are wrong, and some vital fact is missing; and therefore his interpretation of the factual information is in error. 

 

For example, when Sauron sees Pippin in the Orthanc stone, Sauron assumes this is the hobbit ring-bearer ('Baggins') who has been captured by Saruman - and he dispatches a Nazgul to collect this precious prize. 

This is a mistake, which happens because Saruman does not realise that the palantir is no longer in Saruman's hands - and because he assumes the stone is being deliberately used, rather than merely the object of hobbit curiosity - an 'accident'. 

Later, Aragorn shows himself deliberately to Sauron, after Sauron has discovered that Isengard was defeated and (presumably) the stone taken. 

Sauron then assumes that Aragorn, as the heir of Isildur, has taken the Ring and is learning to use its power. Sauron therefore 'hastily' launches his assault on Gondor before this has been fully prepared - and is defeated. 

 

A third example is easily missed (I missed it! - but this is where Tom Shippey contributed his key insight) because it can be inferred only by a careful calculation of chronology. It is that Denethor uses the palantir at the time when Frodo has been captured by Sauron - and sees a hobbit in the enemy's hands. 

Denethor assumes that this is the Ring bearer hobbit whom Gandalf sent into Mordor, and that Sauron now has the Ring. Denethor therefore despairs, his mind breaks, and he descends into madness, suicide; and the attempted murder of his son Faramir (who Denethor assume, also falsely, to be certainly fatally injured). 

What Denethor does not know is that although this is indeed Frodo, and he is indeed in the enemy's hands - at that time Sam has the One Ring; and is not in captivity. 

And it turns-out that this small unknown fact is enough to transform the entire situation from one of 'certain' despair - to the success of the quest. 

This warning of Tolkien's is of crucial significance to these times. 

There really has been a successful global coup, and the world really is ruled by an evil totalitarian government. And there probably are a large proportion of the population who have taken the side of evil. 

From what I know, according to my framing of the situation, the probabilities for the future seem extremely adverse: therefore I am a pessimist about what is coming.

 

Yet my understanding is at least distorted, and may be wrong; and my information is certainly incomplete. There are many facts of which I am unaware. So I have zero grounds for certainty. 

On the other hand, I know that this is God's creation and is being-created moment by moment; and that (since we are all God's beloved children) this creation is always taking into account each individual in ways that I cannot comprehend - but can guess-at based on the way that loving parents regard all their individual family members. 

God does Not see mankind as an homogeneous mass; but instead sees each person as a beloved son or daughter in relationships with other sons and daughters. 

And God is not trying to optimise our temporary, mortal earthly happiness (although that is a factor); but is instead primarily focused on our eternal salvation and life as participants in the work of divine creation.  

We do not have the advantage of a palantir, which always shows the factual truth. But even the palatir does not show the whole truth; and it cannot interpret what its pictures mean. So, even a palantir may well be deceptive - fatally deceptive. 

Our information is much less honest and reliable than that of a palantir; and we are even less 'wise' than either Sauron or Denethor...

So, as Christians we do not have grounds for general despair; and being poorly-informed fools, neither do we have specific grounds for despair - there may well be a transformative fact of which we are unaware. 

 

Therefore, be not afraid; be of good cheer! That is the only faithful and accurate way.

Trust in God! Follow Jesus Christ! 

And you cannot be wrong. 

 

Socio-political optimism is merely an estimate of probabilities - not a virtue (Christian hope is "not of this world")

Socio-political optimism is merely an estimate of probabilities - not a virtue. 

The Christian virtue of hope is properly "not of this world". It is directed beyond death, beyond resurrection  - towards Heaven.  

So, an optimistic estimate of this-worldly (including socio-political) probabilities may be honest or dishonest, objective or manipulative, well-informed or blind, rooted in joy or in fear.

On the other side: pessimism about this world, including pessimism regarding the future socio-political situation, is neither a virtue nor a sin. 

In and of itself, pessimism is just a different estimate of future probabilities. 

What makes pessimism a virtue or a sin, is the true motivation behind a declaration of pessimism.  

In these times, one besetting sin is to despair existentially; to despair of salvation and God's loving creation; because of our personal (incomplete, biased) understanding of the events and probabilities of this-world. 

Another besetting sin of these times is optimistic despair... A Micawber-like clutching-at-straws type optimism; motivated by the reality that someone cannot psychologically tolerate the reality of a pessimistic evaluation. This is a refusal to face fear - therefore itself a species of despair; driven by lack of faith in Christian hope.

Whereas; it is virtuous (albeit a fine-line to walk) genuinely to be a joyous, hope-filled, pessimist!

 

Optimism and the ideology of progress: the Achilles Heel of Western Civilization

I have often commented on the absolute need and demand for optimism that is characteristic of our Western civilization. 

So much so; that many Western Christians have come to identify here-and-now, this-worldly, optimism with the virtue of Hope - which ought to come from faith and trust in God and the salvation of Jesus Christ that happens beyond death. 

So much so; that too many Western Christians refuse even to entertain pessimistic socio-political analyses, because for them pessimism about the future leads them to despair - which they rightly recognize as a sin. 

Their mistake is to suppose that the fault lies in the pessimism, rather than their own this-worldliness, their absolute demand to feel optimism. 

I will argue here that the ideology of progress, and the dependence on psychological optimism, are an Achilles Heel of Western civilization - which both explains and predicts the decline of real Christian faith: a faith that ought to be rooted in hope, not optimism. 

Historically, as the religion of Christianity waned, the ideology of Progress waxed; so that the one replaced the other as the dominant world view.

(The term religion ought to be reserved for religions with gods, spirits, another-world etc. Secular, materialist, this-worldly belief-systems - such as nationalism, communism and other species of Leftism - should instead be termed "ideologies".)  

This emergence of a "replacement for religion" of Progress was very evident, and much discussed, in the late 1800s and into the early decades of the 1900s - and it was so powerful a movement of thought that it hoovered-up and assimilated mainstream church Christianity. It also led to the Theosophical Society-derived, Hindu and Buddhist influenced, "New Age" spirituality of the past half century or so. 

Such a replacement of spiritual, other-worldly, religion by a this-worldly and materialist ideology; seems (in retrospect) almost inevitable - given the socio-political necessity for providing people in the Western nations with some sense of purpose and a basis for organization. 

This progressive expectation - this optimistic expectation - affected all the major Christian churches and denominations, especially those that saw (for some decades, at least) church growth - such as evangelicals both Protestant and Catholic, pentecostals, charismatics, Mormons... 

All were institutionally optimistic about continued expansion in numbers, growth in resources: outcomes of "success" that would be materially measurable. All looked towards some approaching this-worldly triumph, and socio-cultural dominance, or even takeover. 

Even that characteristic modern Western spiritual form called New Age, incorporated optimistic progressivism into its belief in reincarnation. 

Contrary to historical conceptualizations of reincarnation; New Age reincarnation provides grounds for optimism, being seen as an almost-inevitable process of learning, and consequent incremental increase in spiritual stature, with spiritual "progress" accumulating across many incarnations. 

New Age "Karma" will be the cause of this-incarnation constraints, and we may suffer set-backs from bad choices or bad-luck in our present life; but New Age Karma is essentially an optimistic process; building towards higher spiritual status.  

So - there are psychological (and consequently sociological) advantages to the modern spiritual ideology of optimistic progressivism. These include:

1. An expectation of change, therefore novelty and variety of life.

2. The expectation of something to look forward to, incremental betterment of the human condition; because things will improve - sooner or later, and all adversity is regarded as a set-back (e.g. the notion of "what does not kill me, will make me stronger").

3. Provision of a sense of historical direction, and therefore a basis organizing principle for one's life, and society. 

4. A belief that this Will Happen. That is, the implied (if not explicit) idea of "historical inevitability"; so that progress is something that happens to us, is imposed-upon us - and all we need do is respond accordingly; operating like a wave of positive change that we can surf into the future. 

   

However, there are (as is now evident) deep, inevitable, and ultimately fatal, problems with the ideology of progress, and a life built upon optimism. 

One is that by conflating Christian hope with optimism about this-world; Christians become vulnerable to despair when their life in this-world gets worse - and despair is something they are (rightly) told is a sin. 

Therefore, to avoid a despair which is actually a consequence of their secular and this-worldly ideology; such Christians refuse to be realistically pessimistic under any circumstances; e.g. deny the past reality and probable continuation of terminal decline in Christianity, and their church. 

They deny even the possibility that their church may be annihilated (whether by destruction, or by assimilation into some other institution or system) - because such a possibility would lead them into despair. 

The absolute necessity for optimism therefore renders modern Western populations (including most self-identified Christians) dangerously vulnerable to manipulation and external control, by any societal (or spiritual) powers that can affect their psychological state. 

At first people are manipulated into supporting almost any socio-political ideology that offers them an optimistic world view, that offers a feeling of participation in an inevitable trend...

But eventually, having been disappointed over and again, and having lost faith in a better this-world to come; then these people will be manipulated into despair - and by their own assumptions they will be trapped in this despair. 

In effect, such people will lose faith in God and will cease to believe in salvation, because they demand to feel optimistic about an inevitably better future in this-world. 

Such people will see their own pessimism as evidence of God's failure (or non-existence) to make this-world a progressively better place. 

And they will regard eternal salvation beyond death as merely a pitiable (and dubious) second-best compensation for what they regard as Jesus Christ's failure to ensure an always-improving mortal life and world. 

It can be seen that the ideology of optimism and the expectation of progress has been a highly successful long-term demonic strategy. 

Our only hope of hope, is our-selves to abandon the demand for optimism; which includes understanding and experiencing that the true object of Christian hope is located beyond the grave...

Such hope being situated safely out-of-reach of our current psychological feelings concerning the likely prospects for an improving mortal life on this earth. 

The ancients understood the need for a Saviour, a Messiah, for human life to be positive and hope-full - but modern people have lost this understanding, and therefore necessarily despair

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The title states my thesis. The ancients knew that without a Saviour (a Messiah) then mortal Man on earth was doomed to a more-or-less unhappy situation. I believe that this was understood implicitly, because the ancient religions (including the religion of the ancient Hebrews of the Old Testament) was uniformly pessimistic - grim and harsh.

The most one could claim for ancient religion was that it was not uniformly hope-less (although some kinds of paganism seem to be utterly without hope). For instance, we know that the ancient Hebrews had hope of being saved in some ultimate sense - saved from the otherwise necessarily miserable fate of Man.

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But my point is simply that the ancients understood that the basic human situation, mortal life in this world, was literally hope-less. They did not necessarily argue this, they simply perceived it, understood it, knew it.

The situation still broadly prevails among what might be termed 'serious religions' around the modern world - the basic human situation for these is, in its essence, pessimistic, grim, harsh. Their 'hope' is merely for an end to suffering, at most a permanent state of un-aware bliss. In other words the 'hope' is a death that is true extinction of thought, awareness.

The 'hope' of the self is destruction of the self. The 'hope' is that we cease to be.

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How come that we moderns no longer know this? How come we moderns cannot understand the basic human situation and the necessity of a saviour if life is to be hopeful and optimistic? How come we generally regard the claims of Christ to be the Messiah as simply superfluous or incomprehensible?

How come we suppose that we can simply choose believe there is no God, or believe in a God but not a Saviour - and that this makes no difference to life!

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My point here is not that Jesus is the Saviour - but more basic than that. My point is that we apparently cannot perceive that a Saviour is required if life is not to be hope-less; and that it was only the hope of a Saviour which stopped the ancients from despairing (because despair is the inevitable consequence of having no hope).

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Properly understood, the situation seems to be unavoidable and inevitable: No belief in a Saviour means pessimism; and no hope of a Saviour means pessimism plus despair. 

Small wonder, then, that our civilization despairs! The extraordinary thing is that we do not even understand why we despair. Indeed we actively-deny the real reason for our intractable despair.

We may or may not personally believe that Jesus Christ really was The Saviour (that is not susceptible of conclusive proof either way, but requires a voluntary choice: requires faith) - but we have reached the extraordinary situation that we do not even understand the that there is anything that we need to be saved-from!

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This-worldly pseudo-Christians cannot tolerate anything pessimistic, because that makes them feel despair

I have noticed that one of the barriers to (in the first place) valid Christian understanding, and (secondly) to a valid comprehension of how Very Bad things are in the world, now; is a mistakenly This-Worldly and Morality-Centred perspective. 

Furthermore, being this-worldly and morality-centred means that such Christians, almost-inevitably, are un-repentantly tainted by Residual Unresolved Leftism; since a TWMC perspective is also characteristics of the socio-political globalist totalitarian mainstream. 

Thus; this-worldly and morality-centred "Christians" gravitate towards a world view that could literally (non-pejoratively) be described as a type of Christianized fascism; since fascism was the early twentieth century's primarily-secular reaction against internationalist communism. 

Yet, of course, "fascism" is itself a species of Leftism - albeit a less complete and more-functional leftism than communism, socialism, or the current post-sixties "New Left"-ism.  

A Christianity that understands itself primarily in this-worldly and moral terms is catastrophically vulnerable to pessimism - where pessimism is understood as the belief that things in this world are already Very Bad Indeed, and most likely to continue getting worse. 

Anyone who is fundamentally this-worldly (whether self-identified as Christian, or not) will find it very difficult to avoid despair (which is, of course, a deadly sin) unless he is dogmatically and systematically optimistic; and this means that he cannot tolerate pessimism - no matter whether a pessimistic evaluation of this-world is valid or not. 

In other words, for the this-worldly "Christian" an optimistic understanding of this world is mandatory; and any pessimistic evaluation of current and future conditions is absolutely ruled-out, in-advance, by-assumption; otherwise the individual will be overwhelmed by despair.

This partly explains why so many Christians are so falsely optimistic about the condition of the world now, and its probably future; why they are so resistant to a realistic appraisal of this mortal life; and why they are so often drawn into advocating and supporting residually-Leftist and collectivist socio-political programs. 

Note: The answer to the impasse - which would enable Christians to be realistic about the nature and prospects of The World - would, of course, be to base one's Christianity primarily upon Jesus Christ's promise of  resurrected eternal life; as clearly set forth in the Fourth Gospel ("John").  

Where lies hope? A Schumpeterian analysis

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The greatest weapon of the enemy is despair - it is against despair that we must fortify.

Yet not by false optimism.

Because false optimism does not work.

In a situation where realistic evaluation leads to pessimism about the outcome, where lies hope?

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What seems futile is to hope that the mass of population, and all powerful institutions (including most churches) can be persuaded to abandon their path of suicidal, hedonic distraction.

Absent an almost-instantaneous switch to Christianity, any of the ruling elite who abandon secular materialism will instantly be thrown into a despair which is paralysing.

They will be denied their pleasures, their goals, their social status and support - yet they will have nothing to replace them.

(A grim satisfaction derived from the greater accuracy of one's world view will not be of any practical consoling value - certainly it provides near-zero motivation for most people most of the time.)

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To reform a thoroughly corrupt and rotten 'institution' like the Church of England, state schools and universities, the legal system, political parties, the civil service, health services, or the mass media - to reform any these in a world of dominant and interlinked bureaucracy, and a world where a change of direction in any one place will be fought by all the other places... well, it really is inconceivable.

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And yet we must hope for change. 

And I mean must: Despair is such an overwhelming sin that it sweeps away all virtue.

If reform is impossible (or, more accurately, something an informed and rational person cannot believe-in) then replacement is the only alternative.

Replacement, not reform.

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The master theorist of this simple but unfamiliar perspective was, I think, Joseph Schumpeter:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=schumpeter

The idea was that economies grew mostly by replacement of large units - as when one whole industry (automobiles) replaces an other (horse drawn carriages and carts).

That human societal adjustment was not typically incremental but categorical.

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On this basis, we can assume, realistically, that the current secular, hedonic society of nihilism and self-loathing suicide will not last, and will be replaced; and we can assume that it will be replaced by a religiously-based society - but we can also assume that on present trends that, in most places of the modern world, that religiously-based society will not be Christian.

The trends are against Christianity.

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So, we have a situation in which we await a Schumpeterian period of 'Creative Destruction' in which we anticipate wholesale replacement of many or most social institutions - but most Christians in most places must realistically anticipate that the wholesale replacement will not bring in a Christian society.

And yet we must hope.

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My conclusion is that Christians need to transfer their hope away from dying institutions that want to die. 

These are hope-less.

And instead channel their hopes to living institutions that want to live: no matter how small and powerless they may currently seem to be compared to the vast lumbering cancer-riddled dinosaur institutions which constitute modern socio-political life in the West.

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Life in the dinosaurs is one of mutual parasitism - success comes to the tumours which can most efficiently feed on the masses of rotting flesh which they themselves have caused and are exacerbating.

Modern leadership therefore celebrates neoplasia, and admonishes us to join-with the most malignant metastases; to focus on first killing, then consuming, the dwindling supply of healthy, living tissue

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This metaphor of malignancy seems to capture the weak-strength, the effete-vigour, the docile-domination displayed by modern bureaucratic 'leadership'.

Modern leadership is a matter of organizing the forces of destruction more effectively to exploit the destruction they themselves create and continue.

Replacing a modern leader with another who is more 'effective' is usually akin to a malignant transformation; in which a slow-growing local tumour - that might take many years to kill you - undergoes swift evolution into an invasive, metastatically seeding and rapidly-lethal sarcoma.

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The message of hope is not to cling to delusive optimism, not to seek by persuasion to reform suicidal institutions which do not want to be reformed.

Much of my life has been a serial (typically delayed) realistic recognition of the fact that things have now gone too far - and a withdrawal of hope from institutions, organizations, professions, groups that have now, one the whole and in overall tendency, abandoned their proper role and embraced self-destruction.

Realistic hope therefore depends on each of us finding at least one alternative group of at least some people who, one the whole and in net effect, embrace life not death, proper function not parasitism, creation and making not novelty and decomposition, Heaven not Hell.

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Clarification:

Lest I be misunderstood.

I am not advocating the utopian, impossible, unreal idea of quitting the evil bureaucracies of modernity - bureaucracy is in fact the world in which we all live, even when we do not work directly for a bureaucracy - bureaucracy, hence our complicity in evil-motivated institutions, is inescapable.

But I am stating that we must learn not to place hope in these institutions, not to hope that they will become self-reforming, or be persuaded to become good from the inside, or even significantly better.

Indeed, we must not 'give them the benefit of the doubt', as if they were basically well-meaning. If in doubt, we should assume (on the basis of past experience and organizational inertia) that they are always (except by accident) up to no good - any and all bureaucratic 'initiatives' are to be considered destructive (unless preceded by explicit repentance). 

Nor am I suggesting that we must join any or every group in which we have hope (that may, or may not, be possible, to varying degrees) - most of our hopes will necessarily remain theoretical and at-a-distance.

But if we cannot or do not join an institution in which we have hope, we should try to support it; and also I think we must endeavour to find at least one or two, or some group of, people with whom we can ally, meet, speak face to face. 

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Philosophy without God is just self-help - or self-harming... (Colin Wilson and William Arkle)

This struck me as I was considering Colin Wilson's discussion of the prevalent pessimism in philosophy - worse in the past 200 years, but always prevalent.

Most philosophy is an act of self-harm, insofar as it devalues life; insofar as it has the view that it would either be better never to have been born, or that life may be pleasant or unpleasant, but ultimately makes no difference to anything...

I have always affirmed Colin Wilson's basic optimism - but in a not-created world and absent a creator who is good and who loves us; I would have to admit that the pessimists are correct!

Because CW avoided metaphysics, his discussion operates at the level of feelings. He argues that our happiest and best, most meaningful feelings are correct about life - yet in the deepest analysis, if these are just feelings, then that basic situation is a pessimistic one.

In contrast is the Nobel prizewinning author Samuel Beckett, whose work is an act of self-harm, directed at harming others - designed to make life pessimistic, to persuade that despair is the rational response to this world. The read Beckett with seriousness is the psychological equivalent of slashing one's own wrists, or drinking poison.

Of course we want to be happy and optimistic (at least, we want this with a part of ourselves) but this happiness must be True. To mean more than just a fleeting emotion, flickering in the mind of a finite being; happiness needs to derive from Good news about Reality. Otherwise the situation would be that Beckett is describing reality correctly; and Wilson's denial of pessimism is merely a way of feeling, and perhaps functioning, better - in what is otherwise an intolerable universe. 

So philosophy is only about what we feel unless real-life really-is Good.

For William Arkle his optimism was based on his knowledge (and awareness) of the fact that this is a created reality, and the creator is our loving Father - so reality is designed-around each of us, and what we most need.

Furthermore, Arkle is convinced that we personally chose to be born into our lives. So - with these underpinning convictions - we have an essentially 'optimistic' situation, in which our life is has purpose, meaning, is specifically what we need; and this actual life (its situation) was specifically chosen by our-(pre-mortal)-selves. Therefore William Arkle's philosophy is more than just about feelings.  

What 'evidence' does Arkle have? Quite simply: intuitive conviction. Arkle asked basic questions of reality, and knew the answers directly. He asked - is there God, is this reality created - answers came yes. Then, he knew by direct apprehension that this God was Good, and loved him. Looking around at life - he recognised meaning and purpose everywhere and in everything. 

Arkle might have been happy merely because he was optimistic by nature - as was Colin Wilson. The two men were indeed good friends, and would have long conversations together, keeping in touch from the 1950s into the 1990s. And on the surface, they were saying similar things.

Implicitly, I suspect that Wilson did have similar beliefs to Arkle - but he was not aware of them, and did not state them explicitly. Therefore, Wilson's work can reduce to self-help - to advice on how to be happier and more optimistic.

But the fact that Arkle stated his fundamental assumptions meant that his happiness and optimism were linked to, and derived-from, ultimate reality by means of stated assumptions. Thus Arkle, unlike most philosophers, broke-through from self-help to metaphysics. 

How to live in Mouse Utopia: Terminal Phase - Hope-full-ness and Pessimism

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How to live in a society already stagnant, nihilistic, purposively-dysfunctional, demotivated; and apparently doomed to mega-collapse?

This is a burning question!

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Some advocate that modern life should be a case of "Do not go gentle into that good night; rage, rage against the dying of the light" - in other words, we are obliged to expound (presumably in the mass media - so that as many people as possible should get to hear about it) loud defiance of inexorable material, social and psychological collapse.

Despite that this activity is believed to be futile - but which we supposedly ought to do anyway, just in case our best calculations are off and our warnings may be heeded?

Or should it be a case of being as unworldly as possible - while yet doing one's loving duty to some others, whom life has put in our orbit (in full awareness that this strategy almost certainly cannot succeed in its own objectives except on a small scale and temporarily, in the face of inexorable overall societal material collapse)?

Should Life be a case of living for the here-and-now, doing whatever duty is placed in front of us (and damn the probabilistic consequences) - of short-termism. Or should it be the opposite: always do the right thing as if we had forever to do it? Absolute and uncompromising long-termism?

(Something could be said for each.)

Should we focus on the past (as a time when people were certainly smarter, more creative and also more virtuous). Or should we focus on recognizing and encouraging the best on offer around us? (Something could be said for each.)

Or maybe made-do-and-mend and simply hope for the best? But no: Man absolutely needs purpose or else he will despair.

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The 'trick' is to be realistically pessimistic about what will happen; and hopeful at the same time: to be pessimistic about the probabilities, yet never to despair (because there is much we do not know or wrongly assume we know, and new things may come from unexpected places)?

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That is the way we would like to become. But what do we actually do?

The answer is not easy - is not meant to be easy - and there is no one answer. So there is not much scope for criticizing the specific strategies of other people - so long as they are both realistically pessimistic about probabilities and at the same time hope-full.

From this large strategic field Our Lives must be sub-created - each life by each person using his own actual abilities and from the materials actually available; and in light of what each person discerns is the best course.

Also, we must - we simply must - have faith that the materials for this decision, and the wherewithal to judge our environment and discern our path - are indeed at-hand, available, find-able. That there is a path, the path is for us, and we can get onto that path.

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A Christian knows that Our Loving Father and Creator would not leave us without sufficient guidance and sufficient strength to find a good-enough path - our path: if only we choose to turn and walk with hope in the right general direction.

This has always been the case; and the impending collapse of Mouse Utopia does not fundamentally affect it; any more than living-through the utter catastrophe of the Black Death - when half the population of England was killed by Plague over a few decades in the late 1300s - affected the fundamental paths and performances of those great, humane Christian poets Chaucer, Langland, and the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. 

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Data on the Black Death:
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/was-black-death-necessary-cause-of.html

Mouse Utopia is following on from:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/more-thoughts-on-mouse-utopia.html

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Impressions of TS Eliot's Four Quartets

One of the advantages of having severe recurrent unpredictable migraines is... well, being awoken at three am and treating the headache, sleeping a while, then waking again in a state of peculiar lucidity with the impulse to re-read (start to finish) Eliot's Four Quartets after a gap of nearly three decades.

I was in the perfect mood of receptivity - made more perfect by having just been out among the stars and plants and seen what I never saw before (probably never will again): Venus blazing, a multi-pointed white star on the Eastern horizon with - below and to the left, close together, in a slightly bent line - Jupiter, then Mars.

I have always had a negative feeling about the Four Quartets, before I even read them - and about Eliot. Not a dislike so much as a wariness not to be drawn into his world, his perspective on life - that sophisticated, fluid, memorable despair.

The Four Quartets was the work of a Christian, and a catholic Christian - it is a world winding down, written by a man winding down. The thesis is of this state being eternal - because now is all times. This is not ultimate pessimism - there are many meanings - but it is a sad stasis.

The poetry is close to prose, but has the compactness, epigrammatic, self-aware quality of poetry - and (mostly) a line of two half-lines each with two pulses (like a very loose descendant of Old English alliterative poetry). Eliot has a wonderful fluidity, no perceptible strain, a smoothness, an ability to use complex vocabulary without jarring and continuing the sounds, and (the test of poetry) quotability: this is, of course, reckoned one of the major poetic achievements of the last century.

But what a sad world he brings us into - what an end of civilizations, what a sense of hope-less-ness which pervades even - or especially - the hope that all will be well, all is well, all was well... if all is like this and well, that makes everything much worse!

Is all this the inevitable consequence of intelligence, knowledge and sensibility? That seems to be implied...

It isn't, of course; but that is how one feels during the reading; and no doubt in debate one would be unable to counter the argument by anything which did not sound, by contrast, superficial and crude.

Eliot is never vulgar - even the clashing slang of The Wasteland is parenthetic, ironic, detached; and yet vulgarity is a part of life - and perhaps a vital part of life; lacking which perhaps Eliot's resignation, the quiet aesthetic pessimism, becomes inevitable.

And I think he knew that - but nonetheless did what he did - incomparably well.

The saddest thing of the past 25 years - the unthinking, unrepented, almost universal drift Leftward of once-decent people and institutions into a whirlpool of the inversion of Good

*
The title says it. Over the past 25 years or so, I have watched appalled as almost every person and institution that previously I respected and admired, or even loved, has gone over to the dark side. This has been a terribly sad thing.

It is not that these people and groups have nothing good in them - of course they do. But it is a matter of balance - what once did more good then harm, had the heart in the right place; now does more harm than good, and the heart is fixed upon lies.

The people and institutions have succumbed to the inversion of Good: they have substantially relabelled virtue as wicked and vice as the-new-good; they have become habitually dishonest, systematically exaggerating their positives and deliberately concealing their negatives; they pronounce ugliness to be beautiful, and give awards to the hideous and soul-destroying anti-aestheic worlds they make.    

People who were once sensible and decent, organizations that were once working for sensible and decent goals, have thus by increments capitulated to the prevalent secular, Leftist evils; ideas that are superficially merely wrong or nonsensical or 'a matter of opinion' but which - once adopted - reveal themselves to be malignant cancers, actively and pervasively and terminally-destructive of Goodness in its manifestations.

*

It is like (and perhaps not just 'like') demonic possession: once fine churches, colleges, hospitals, schools, charities, professions like medicine and law... now spewing slight variations on the same corrosive stuff about diversity, social justice, global warming, inclusiveness...

If you want a clear example of great goodness turned to the service of evil, take a look at the web pages of The Salvation Army: http://www.salvationarmy.org.uk/ - it is all there, all the hype, the weasel words - the fingerprints of a modern Leftist bureaucracy corrupted by state subsidies and indistinguishable from the propaganda of government offices. [See note below.]

In fact take a look at the web pages of any and all large and powerful organizations and you will nearly-always see exactly the same underlying purpose at work.

*

And this has most often happened without any observable crisis, and without much in the way of objection - no visible or audible protest beyond a few private grumbles.

And - having been very thoroughly corrupted - there is no perceptible awareness among persons or organization that they have, in fact, changed sides - that they are no longer even trying to do what once they were trying to do; but are now dominated by the slogans and pseudo-goals of a political correctness which is almost wholly dishonest and destructive.

And without such awareness, there seems no prospect of repentance.

*

All this is terribly sad to me - a population, including many friends and ex-mentors, that has slid insensibly into very thorough, very comprehensive wickedness.

The main explanation is - I think - weakness; the weakness that comes from lack of roots - and the lack of roots from a lack of faith in anything real, objective, solid. In this respect the adherents of 'liberal' religion are indistinguishable from the prevalent agnosticism, atheism and New Age spirituality - all have drifted down the same slippery slope at the same rate and ended up in the same place of corruption, and flaccid, spiteful, aimless destruction of the Good.

So, the sadness is that so much which I thought strong was not strong; so much that I thought brave was not brave, so much that I thought principled was not principled. 

*

These are not men and women who have been broken by the system, crushed by overwhelming forces; rather, they are men and women who drifted feebly into corruption by incremental steps; because they were simply floating, bobbing-along like a buoy broken from its anchor, in an increasingly wicked world - floating, especially, in that sea of lies, sensation and despair that is the mass media.

The mass media has carried almost everybody and every organization into this deeply sad state of hollow horribleness, which is in fact a maelstrom, a whirlpool downward - so that there is an acceleration, and more powerful suction, as time goes by.

And - even worse - even among those who are not in that state, almost all people and institutions that remain on the side of net-Good are perceptibly drifting towards that whirlpool: it is a matter of 'not yet' rather than of them holding firm.

*

This situation provides near certain grounds for pessimism: for believing that things will get worse; but it is not, after all, grounds for despair.

This passage from the Gospel of John (Chapter 10: 26-30) explains why: it is a source of immediate consolation, and solid grounds for ultimate hope. Jesus is speaking:

Ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand. I and my Father are one.

*

No matter what kind of world we live in, no matter if everyone around us has fallen; if we hear and follow our Lord then his hand is about us - and nothing on earth can pluck us from his hand. 

We are ultimately safe. We have hope based on that certainty. 

And that certainty is what motivates, en-courages and enables us to fight back; to look about us at what may be done, and do what we personally can, in what manner we personally can, to save some others. 

*


Added: I used always to be referencing Nihilism by Eugene Rose (later Father Seraphim Rose) - but I still regard this small book as the best and deepest description of the scope and nature of that modern malaise which I call secular Leftism (or political correctness).

http://www.oodegr.co/english/filosofia/nihilism_root_modern_age.htm#V.

Inter alia he explains why the above mass apostasy from The Good has happened, even/ especially among erstwhile kindly, decent folk:

Nihilism has become, in our time, so widespread and pervasive, has entered so thoroughly and so deeply into the minds and hearts of all men living today, that there is no longer any "front" on which it may be fought; and those who think they are fighting it are most often using its own weapons, which they in effect turn against themselves...

Nihilism is but one side of [the modern] Revolution. Violence and negation are, to be sure, a preliminary work; but this work is only part of a much larger plan whose end promises to be, not something better, but something incomparably worse than the age of Nihilism. If in our own times there are signs that the era of violence and negation is passing, this is by no means because Nihilism is being "overcome" or "outgrown," but because its work is all but completed and its usefulness is at an end. The Revolution, perhaps, begins to move out of its malevolent phase and into a more "benevolent" one--not because it has changed its will or its direction, but because it is nearing the attainment of the ultimate goal which it has never ceased to pursue; fat with its success, it can prepare to relax in the enjoyment of this goal...

Nihilism is, most profoundly, a spiritual disorder, and it can be overcome only by spiritual means; and there has been no attempt whatever in the contemporary world to apply such means.

The Nihilist disease is apparently to be left to "develop" to its very end; the goal of the Revolution, originally the hallucination of a few fevered minds, has now become the goal of humanity itself. Men have become weary; the Kingdom of God is too distant, the Orthodox Christian way is too narrow and arduous. The Revolution has captured the "spirit of the age," and to go against this powerful current is more than modern men can do, for it requires precisely the two things most thoroughly annihilated by Nihilism: Truth and faith.

*

Note: Since I browsed the Salvation Army website yesterday, I have been 'spammed' with advertising from them, asking for money, situated on numerous of the web pages I have looked at - presumably via a cookie. This kind of high pressure marketing pretty much says it all that needs to be said about what has become of the Salvation Army.

My Quest: in response to modern Man trapped by his perceived lack of 'alternatives'

I've noticed a recurrent pattern in the (rather rare!) general conversations I have with people I don't know that well, or haven't seen for a while; which is that we agree that the old possibilities are corrupted, old goals are closed-off, but this disenchantment is so universal that there are no alternatives - so people end-up doing the old-stuff anyway. Lack of alternatives thwarts change.

Think of jobs, careers, professions, vocations... In the past 30 years all the jobs I know of directly have been destroyed, made into (mostly) mindless-bureaucracy-in-pursuit-of-evil-political-correctness. All the social institutions of size and power (including churches) have gone the same way - so there is no major grouping worthy of support, worthy of enthusiasm, worthy to be a channel of endeavour.

But, because its all - then there are virtually no alternatives - so people just carry on as before or else withdraw and do nothing (or as little as possible). 

The three possibilities I can think-of, are 1. to join the side of evil (which is what most people do); 2. work to rebuild some Good institutions (which someone like Vox Day is doing); or completely and utterly reframe one's understanding of the nature and purpose of life (which I what I do).

I did try option 2. for quite a while - I tried to rebuild institutions. I did this in various workplace and professional controversies and campaigns, and also when editing Medical Hypotheses (2003-2010). But I discovered that (as someone without any aspirations to be a leader, and without any abilities as an entrepreneur) it usually boiled down to me against The World, so I always lost!

(I built Medical Hypotheses over six years into a scientific and financial success - but this was snuffed-out in one weekend, without my knowledge, by managerial fiat.)

I have taken this to heart as a lesson that Life - or more specifically God - wanted me to learn. I no longer see my task as one of choosing between increasingly-evil alternatives, but as responding to the challenge of a world in which a different kind of aim is being asked of us... Indeed, as I see it, it is a stark choice between pessimism and despair; and finding hope in places, things, activities that are usually off the map; denied, neglected, rejected, or as-yet unknown.

It is a Quest: of a kind. Life here-and-now is a quest for meaning, purpose and hope - a Quest to a place we don't know, in search of something of which we are, at best, only vaguely and intermittently aware.

And yet, if this is what God wants of me, it is far from being a futile Quest; quite the opposite. It is a Quest which will succeed, so long as my motives are true.

I find this perspective to be exciting and encouraging; and I don't feel it depends on my first persuading any other people to join me, nor do I need to plan, or collect resources. I can just get on with the Quest on my own, immediately, from exactly where I happen to be.

Superstitious fear of nemesis thwarts joy and hope - Colin Wilson, William Arkle and optimism

The superstitious attitude assumes that there is some cunning and perverted consciousness presiding over all our acts and, if we fail to keep to the special and secret rules, this presiding entity causes unpleasant things to happen to us and our loved ones.

From 'Justice' in William Arkle's Geography of Consciousness (1974).

This above passage struck home hard with me, and I have returned to it often; since it describes a besetting problem of mine - which is that I fear to speak explicitly and honestly about my happiness and hope, or my appreciation of the goodness of things, for fear that this will be seen as arrogance (hubris) and will attract retribution form some kind of 'cunning and perverted consciousness' - that I will be punished for my presumption - I and those I love will suffer the nemesis of the gods.

This attitude runs deep: very deep.

I seem to worry that displaying a sunny and optimistic aspect will attract cosmic schadenfreude, and will get me noticed and singled-out for humiliation and degradation and torment -- that I will be like a butterfly broken on a wheel - and the wheel could be any one (or more than one) of so many hazards and horrors of the world.

Yet this fear-full, dread-full, superstitious attitude may itself be one of the major hazards in the world. If (as I believe) the world is alive and responsive to our attitudes - full of sentient entities, many benign; then this attitude of suspicion and supplication cannot fail to bring out the worst in our environment.

Of course, nobody wants to be 'taken for granted' - but on the other hand we want our good intentions to be appreciated - and if despite we are treated as cunning, perverted, hostile; if we are treated as an implacable foe looking for any excuse to inflict harm - then we are likely to be wounded and dismayed even if we are the most virtuous of entities, and be irritated and angered and proviked if we are neutral.

I have therefore come to recognize a great courage in explicit declarations of joy and hope.

Our culture tends to admire the cynic, the pessimist, the hard-boiled, slyly-corrupt hedonist - the anti-hero. But I feel that the greatest Christian hero is the one who really believes in the goodness and love of God such that full value is accorded to those moment of joy, hope, beauty and inspiration which come our way.

It was a subject that Colin Wilson worked-through over many decades: the difficulty of being an overall-and-in-the-end optimist in a culture which regards pessimism, nihilism and assertions of the meaninglessness and purposelessness of life as being deeper and truer. Wilson got himself called naive, childish, shallow, insensitive - but he was right; and he was braver than his critics.

William Arkle took this optimism even further such that he started even Wilson (the two men were friends). Arkle had been in war, he knew about the harsh, tough and terrible things of life; but he would not allow himself to be deflected from his deepest convictions that this is a benign world, set up by loving Heavenly parents; that we are surrounded by helpers; and that in the end, so long as we strive and stay true, so long as we don't succumb to bitterness and despair, we will be given a prize, a situation, a world more wonderful in its scope and nature than our sweetest dreams.

The early Romantics were evolutionary "throws-forward" - Colin Wilson

And suddenly, like a thunderbolt, the realisation fell into my mind, so that I felt the roots of my hair stir with it. Of course! That was the whole meaning of the nineteenth century, Wordsworth and Keats and Hoffmann and Wagner and Bruckner. 

Certain people are born evolutionary throw-backs, victims of an atavism, less than fully human. And certain people he opposite . What could one call them? Evolutionary ‘throws-forward’? Typically, our language contains no word to describe it. But the fact is as clear as daylight. 

The romantics represented the next stage in man’s evolution , or at least, possessed one of its central characteristics - the ability to launch into these strange states of detachment. Could anything be more obvious, once one had seen it? 

The previous century had been an age of solid, earth-bound men - Dryden, Swift, Pope, Johnson, Bach, Haydn - even Mozart. And suddenly, for no apparent reason, you have an age of visionaries, beginning with Blake. But why? Why did Goethe and Coleridge and Wordsworth and Novalis and Berlioz and Schubert and Beethoven have these moments of pure exaltation, when man feels god-like? A ‘development of sensibility’? 

How could it be called a development, as if the change had been gradual? No, it was a leap of sensibility, as if there had been a high wall between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries... 

So what caused it? Could there be some simple cause – perhaps even chemical? A comet composed of psychedelic drugs, breaking up in the earth’s atmosphere and affecting the water supplies? Hardly likely. 

In any case, whatever the cause, there could surely be no doubt that the romantics and visionaries were presages of the future, heralds blowing trumpets to announce a new stage in human evolution - a new power in human beings - this power of detachment, of the ‘god’s eye view’ instead of the ‘worm’s eye view’.

 From The Philosopher's Stone by Colin Wilson (1969)

The 'leap of sensibility' that was first seen among the early romantics such as Goethe, Novalis, Blake, Coleridge and Wordsworth; was indeed a presage of what was to come much more widely. 

But when Wilson speculated about what may have caused this change in consciousness, he did not consider God. Yet, my understanding is that Romanticism was part of the divine plan for Man - that Men began changing because they began to be 'made differently'.

Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield assumed that this divinely-driven change was linked with reincarnation; that spirits which had been reborn over many centuries (indeed millennia) had been incrementally developing the 'romantic' capacities that became evidence around 1800. 

My own somewhat tentative view is that the cause was the nature of the human souls which were being incarnated (for the first and only time); and that from the late 1700 Men began  being born (initially in Western Europe) who had the romantic disposition and capability - and that this had been carried-through from our pre-mortal existence as spirits. 

Whatever the reason; the emergence of more and more Men with the Romantic disposition was a spiritual challenge and a fork in the road. There were various possibilities - but the divine intention was that this new Romanticism should be carried through into Christianity. 

But aside from a few individuals, this did not happen - and romanticism became either opposed to, or remained separate from, Christianity. 

This meant that the new romantic consciousness lacked direction and context - it lacked the direction that comes from divine purpose, and it lacked the meaning that comes from the context of eternal resurrected life. 

Therefore, Romanticism became focused on form not content. Romantics tried to have 'romantic experiences' by whatever means - including science, magic and drugs. They pursued a state of mind: and when they got it, they did not know what to do with it - except enjoy it. 

Romanticism without (and against) Christianity became merely a refined form of hedonism - with strong tendencies to selfishness and manipulation of others. 

And the fact that the Romantic could not enjoy this experience at will or continuously, and that it faded with repetition - tended to lead to pessimism, despair, even suicide. 

Meanwhile Christians came to associate Romanticism with anti-Christian motivations, and became hostile to Romanticism. 

Or Christians else subordinated the romantic within the faith, and rendered it at most an optional extra; at the level of psychology and lifestyle - rather than theological truth. 

But Romanticism was meant to be a means not the end - a Romantic Christianity. The content should be Christian, the form Romantic. 

Bricks and the building: You can't build real churches without real Christians

It seems futile to discuss how to improve churches by making changes, or resisting change, at the organizational level; when the underling problem is that there are not enough real Christians to make a church (at least, not a church of a size sufficient to register as significant in the modern world). 

Of course, most Church discussers would not agree with me that there were insufficient real Christians. At nearest, they might believe that the good Christians were outnumbered by bad and fake ones; or (more often) that fake pseudo-Christians had too much power within Churches, or had taken-over the bureaucracy. 

But my conviction that - in the West, in 2024 - there just aren't enough real Christians distributed such as to make a real Christian church - would be regarded as untrue; and a negativistic, despair-inducing pessimism liable to lead to the situation it asserts in a self-fulfilling way*.

This came to mind when reading discussions about whether or not it would be a good thing for the Roman Catholic Church to remove the current demand (or preference) for celibacy among its priests, and return to its more ancient practice of having married priests; and as a normal thing (rather than, as now, only as a minority of exceptions, intended to be temporary - such as the Anglican Ordinariate). 

Yet, none of this matters either way when there are not enough real Christians among Roman Catholics who might potentially become priests - plus enough real Christians already existing and in-place to make a (Christianly-valid) System for the choosing and training and regulation of a priesthood.  

If the Church is a building, and the people who make it up are bricks; then the question seems to be whether (spiritually) the building makes the bricks, or the bricks make the building? 

Can there be a valid Christian church "building" consisting of a majority of not-real-Christian "bricks", especially when the not-real-Christians dominate the leadership? 

Indeed, which seems relevant here-and-now; can there be a valid Christian church when there are probably (in significant areas of The West) no real Christians at all - none among the Priesthood, none among the laity - the Church rank-and-file, the masses?  

The answer (if the building and bricks analogy is valid, which it can be only partially, at best) depends on whether you believe that the Christians make the Church, or the Church makes the Christians - or, at least, on the nature of the relationship. 

And the question has particular relevance for an Episcopal Church that asserts its own indispensability for salvation.  

Can a silk purse be made from a sow's ear? 

The debate then moves on to the nature of the real Church, which would be said to be ultimately mystical - and non-identical with the worldly organization. 

And in the past this conceptualization seems to be been sufficiently clear and understandable that it was not a problem - but it has become a problem now. 

The problem is that while people can argue about stuff (especially about abstractions to do with how best to organize an ideal Church); and people can say or write almost anything about what they would most like to be true and real - strong and lasting human motivations are another matter altogether! 

We see all around us that when strong and lasting human motivations that are also Christian are lacking; then words/ doctrines/ laws etc. mean next-to-nothing; and Churches, Priest and the Masses fall into line with... well, they fall into line with whatever the global totalitarian System is currently asking them to believe, support, and do. 

Perhaps, the thing that lies underneath all these discussions relates to the discernment that this material mortal world (and especially The West) is currently under the leadership of those in service to supernatural and spiritual evil.

This, I believe; and I believe this is a clear and obvious fact; such that those who do not see it, or who deny it, are actually and in practice on the side of demonic evil - whether unconsciously and implicitly, or consciously and explicitly, or some point between. 

I am aware of several Roman Catholic priests, even a few Bishops, who clearly and simply and decisively perceive this fact of evil-dominance; and who are real Christians.

(And not merely megalomaniac power seekers.) 

So there are some such people.  

But that is only less than half of what is needed; because the most important factor is that real Christians (including, for an Episcopal Church, at least some Bishops) be strongly and lastingly motivated to re-make the corrupted Church in a positive fashion, into a worldly organization dominated by real Christians. 

Are there enough such people, are they in sufficient agreement about what needs to be done; and do they attract sufficient support more widely?

To me, the answer is Obviously Not; or else we would not be where we are, and we would know about it.  

There are some strong and true bricks from which, in principle, something might be built; but at present these bricks are very few, and scattered among the rotten bricks making-up a rotten building that is already collapsing. 

And these strong and true Christian "bricks" often seem to repel each other - or even try and damage or destroy each other!**

Clearly this is no basis for any kind of building, any kind of Church. 

Given the actual choice between being included in a large-but-rotten building increasingly dedicated to the Satanic agenda, or else trying to make a Good building from mutually-repellant materials; sooner or later the "bricks" - i.e. the individual Christians - will be compelled to take primary responsibility for their Christianity, and cease to rely upon being a part of any kind of building. 

+++

*Church Christians are (sadly) very prone to the "boosteristic" delusion that enthusiastic optimism about their Church is good-for Christianity - when it is actually just good-for business... a very different thing from real Christianity nowadays.

**This inability to agree, indeed propensity to disagree with (extreme) vehemence, among traditional, orthodox and conservative Christians - including within denominations such as the RCC - is a consequence partly of decades of disunity/ conflict within the churches, and the loss of a Christendom that would diffuse a coherent Christianity among a whole society. 

By my understanding; partly it is also and more fundamentally due to significant (and, ultimately, divinely-ordained) changes in the consciousness of human beings towards greater autonomy and agency; therefore away-from that spontaneous propensity to absorb religion from external sources and an innate psychology of groupishness - which prevailed in pre-modern times.

What this means is that - no matter how traditional/ orthodox/ conservative a modern Christian aspires to be; as a matter of fact he has chosen his own beliefs and loyalties - has indeed "picked-and-chosen" them from among competing alternatives - in a way that seldom happened in pre-modern times.   

Delusional optimism on the political Right

I see a lot of this, especially online.  The 'tough' people who talk about 'winning' against the mainstream Left: some even believe that they are winning, that the tide has turned...

They pour scorn upon those who do not 'fight' - because they seem to feel that they can - from where we are now, and with people as they are now - actually 'win'! And roll society back to some earlier stage a few or many generations ago (which was, itself, in fact, a transitional phase en route to current Leftism).

It is delusional nonsense, however well-meant. The Left is not losing, the Right is not winning - because there is no 'Right' in the mainstream of public discourse: None. At. All.

Because even when a genuinely non-Left (i.e. religious) group speaks in the public sphere, that aspect is filtered; such that what appears has moved the debate onto the core secular Left ground of 'utilitarianism' - the calculus of human pleasure or suffering in this mortal life.

So the Right (whether actual or self-styled) is just proposing a different means to the identical Leftist goal of a comfortable and stimulating mortal life - full-stop - nothing else matters...

Therefore all supposed 'victories' of the 'Right' are merely reinforcing the deep-Left agenda.

The Right is Not winning, Nothing substantive has changed, Pessimism is the only rational calculation.

Yes, we must always hope and must never despair...

But someone can only be optimistic about the socio-political probabilities if they are deluded about the pervasiveness, depth and inertia of present realities.

Christians *must* have mythic thinking

*

Just something that struck me this morning - what lifted me from a mood in which legitimate and necessary pessimism was in danger of going into sinful despair - was the mythic mode of thinking.

Simply reading a couple of psalms then just recalling the spirit of Tolkien's work was effective - this was lifting my mind from the deadly pseudo-precision of the pervasive bureaucratizing of modernity, and opening it into the primal world of the human condition: which is mythic in form.

*

Before I was a Christian I focused a lot on the problem of alienation and its solution in 'myth'  - and was a part of that 'post-Jungian' movement which seeks to restore mythic modes to modernity.

The diagnosis was correct - partially - but it didn't work because a mode of thinking has neither meaning nor purpose, is self-subvertingly unreal, and anyway cannot be pursued in isolation. Trying to think mythically in a context of modernity is progressively less and less effective.

*

Yet Christianity as is - is so often so very dry, literalistic, legalistic, bureaucratic - that it is itself alienating.

We crave myth and we get crushing, oppressive dullness or mere cheerful entertainment - the two poles of modernity - meaningless procedure or meaningless laughter.

*

For Tolkien Christianity was the frame, in a vital sense just there and taken for granted. It was the metaphysics and meaning and tidal purpose - and within it was, properly, mythic thinking: with all the intrinsic imprecision but associative richness of myth.

*

Myth means; but we cannot say exactly just what it means, and when we try we get it wrong and what results stops being myth.

Myth is what we crave: we crave it like we crave wholesome food and drink; earth, wood, stone and water; trees and skies - not as abstractions but as palpable realities; and we find these in myth and only in mythic thinking, and in real myths.

And three of the most vital myths we lack are: Man and Woman, Marriage, Family. From a mythic perspective, all complications and arguments fall away, we know where stand - the human condition - we know what we want and feel why this must be.

*

Surely myth ought to be what we think about and the way we think - as Christians? Surely the content and mode of our thinking should be mythic, and this within Christianity?

Rather than, as so often - almost universally it seems - Christianity being non-mythic (legalistic, philosophical, bureaucratic, dead and deadly) modes of thinking but with with a (tediously, monotonously) Christian subject matter.

'Memo wrt. Jesus: Executive Summary and Action points...'

*

Why I am socio-politically pessimistic...

It is not surprising, but even Christians mix-up hope with optimism, and this-world with eternity. 

But in reality our Hope of salvation (getting to Heaven) and theosis (spiritual development during mortal life); have almost nothing to do with Optimism about our socio-political situation - with 'saving The West' - or, in my case, with restoring Albion. 

Therefore, while Christians must have hope, we are not obliged to be optimistic. And while despair is a sin; my pessimism about the prospects of a Western (or English) Christian revival rolling-back the Global Satanic Establishment coup, is merely my current personal evaluation about future socio-politics. 

And although I sometimes have preferences among the various powerful/ high-status/ famous/ influential persons and institutions of public discourse and organisation - from what I actually know; I regard them - one and all - as being On The Wrong Side in the great spiritual war of this world. 

 

Therefore... I am generally un-impressed by bravado and sabre-rattling among Christians when it comes to what Christians should Do, what Action we should take, and how important it is to Fight - when it comes to this-worldly socio-politics.  All this amounts to a vague wish that first somebody-else will make a Big Strong Army of God - and then I will consent to join-in the battle.

By my judgment, Kristor - at the Orthosphere - gives better strategic guidance, when he says:

The only question then is whether we shall die nobly, as faithful Christian witnesses and vassals of Christ our Captain and Head, or debased, as defectors from the cause of Truth in favor of the Father of Lies, and so for the sake of some lesser and impermanent good.

So; while it is indeed appealing to suppose we might engage in some modern, idealised version of The Crusades, side-by-side with other brave men and as part of an Army of God; it seems more likely that we should be preparing for a 'fight' requiring far greater courage and resolution: to make the choice that leads to a reviled death alone - or (if we are fortunate) with a handful of faithful family.

You know the kind of thing I mean...   

Review of Elidor by Alan Garner (1965)

The cover of my teenage copy of Elidor

I have always been disappointed by Alan Garner's Elidor (1965); coming as it does between two of my very favourite children's fantasy books The Moon of Gomrath (1963) and The Owl Service (1967). Indeed, I simply did not enjoy Elidor when first I read it (aged 14 0r 15), or at subsequent attempts. 

Yet, Elidor has been the most well-known of Garner's four children's fantasies; being often taught in schools, and leading to a BBC TV series. So I thought I would give the book another try - this time in the audio version read by Jonathan Keeble. 

I can see why I was not much taken by the book, since it is structured more like a thriller than a fantasy. The fantasy elements are swamped by the detailed, realistic descriptions of physical and social life in Manchester and its suburbs - which are often grimy; replete with arguments, angst and stresses; and containing implied 'social commentary' (which are very likely the exact reasons why British school teachers appreciated this book above Garner's true fantasies).  

Furthermore the book starts slowly and with a miserable tone. Following a deal of childish bickering, the fantasy land of Elidor is briefly glimpsed and seems almost-wholly unpleasant and hazardous. Malbron - the only Elidorian man the children talk-with - is a callous and unsympathetic character, and we know hardly anything about him - or indeed Elidor. 

The early chapters set up the main interest of the book which is that four siblings have been given (against their will) the task of guarding four treasures of Elidor, needed to stop the land being destroyed. 

However; I felt that I did not know enough about Malebron to be confident that he was honest, or to care whether Elidor was a place worth saving at great risk to the children. 

The siblings return to modern Manchester with the treasures disguised as modern objects - and the best part of the book is the exciting middle section during which the children gradually realize that the treasures are hazardous (giving-off a strong and disruptive electromagnetic field).

The treasures are also attracting sinister warriors from Elidor - who are repeatedly trying to break-through to the modern world, and getting closer and closer... 

After the slow pace and detailed descriptions of the main book; the ending is abrupt, feels incomplete, and is emotionally unsatisfying. 

Furthermore - it is so complete a plot re-set, as to leave the children in their modern world without any record or residue of their experiences: apparently the modern world is completely unchanged by its period communication with Elidor. 

So, the retrospective reframing of the Elidor narrative - looking back from its ending - is that its only purpose was to save a land we barely know; and that the process has been futile from a modern perspective.

Everything that happened 'might as well' have been a dream or a delusion (as some of the siblings tend to believe, about halfway through the story)...

And this was, unfortunately, Garner's own retrospective reframing (in Boneland some half century later) of his first two novels (Weirdstone of Brinsigamen and Moon of Gomrath) - as nothing more than dream-delusions of one of the child protagonists. As I remarked in my review - this is anti-fantasy, being subversive of fantasy - as evidenced by its rejection of eucatastrophe. 

The actual ending of Elidor comes across as cynical, pretentious, and indeed aggressive. 

This is very interesting to me in contrast with Garner's previous Moon of Gomrath; which ends with the liberation of the Old Magic into the modern world, and the implication that things will never be the same again - that, indeed, the modern world is just about to be transformed (for the better, it is implied) by a resurgence of enchantment and a renewed contact between Man, nature and the spiritual powers. 

My best guess would be that Garner underwent some kind of profound disillusionment between the writing of Gomrath and Elidor - which left him increasingly bitter and resentful (which is how he generally strikes me, as a person). 

But this is speculation; what is clear from the texts is that Garner lost his youthful optimism and decided to explore and evoke downbeat pessimism and despair in his later fiction, lectures and essays. 

My evaluation of Elidor is that overall it fails structurally as a novel and as a fantasy; and fails to establish credible characters and motivations in relation to Elidor. On the plus side, it is genuinely tense and exciting through the middle section and until near the end - which section, after all, includes most of the book.  

 

Life! The existential and the cosmological

Existentialism became increasingly evident in public (and, more, private) thinking through the middle twentieth century, with roots that were probably strongest in Nietzsche. It was a valuable - perhaps essential - consideration of "the human condition", of what it was like to exist. 

Yet it was partial, radically incomplete; because its assumptions were non-theistic, and "the world" was seen as unalive, and life as accidental, uncreated. 

So existentialism could not be made to work but led to pessimism and either despair or else (more commonly) the "bad faith" responses of careerism, intoxication, self-distraction...

"Cosmology" - in the sense of understanding Man's place in the cosmos - is likewise an essential consideration, and was (a few generations ago) a major subject of discourse. 

But, again, this went nowhere, and could go nowhere, because all possibility of purpose and meaning had been excluded by prior assumption: the cosmos was unalive, accidental, happening perhaps by "scientific laws" or regularities - but it had nothing to do with us, beyond providing the raw materials from which we happened to arise. 

Existentialism was mostly a matter of looking at the world from within, cosmological thinking looked at us (when it even considered human beings) from the outside  - and the two activities could not be integrated because their mode of thinking was alien to each other: the one worked from subjectivity as a given; the other took it as evident that subjectivity was something that (maybe?) went on inside people's heads, and had an effect only when it had led to action. 

After featuring in mainstream public conversation, books, media from the 1940s and into the 1980s; as the millennium approached such matters dropped out; and the age of materialism took almost complete control of Men's thoughts in the West.    

What we are supposed to do from here, is recognize the importance of such matters and that we cannot live meaningfully (that is, with a purpose that both comes from within each as an individual, and is harmonious with the purpose of "everything") unless we get such unfinished business back onto the agenda!

The old ideas were much better than anything now; but they all failed - and inevitably - because of their incompleteness - and this radical and insoluble partiality was a matter of fundamental assumptions. 

This is why we need to "start again" in a way that have never previously been necessary. And because of the actual situation we inhabit, this starting again cannot - certainly will not - be a group activity; nor can we get the answers we need from other people; and absolutely not from our actual culture. 

That's the quest and adventure; and that is something new and different in its very nature. 

We are compelled to take personal responsibility - and there are no excuses for failing to do this. 

 

If way to the better there be, it exacts a full look at the worst

Thus said Thomas Hardy - a man rather notorious for his unChristian pessimism. Yet he was surely right on this point.

At least, that is my philosophy, and that of this blog. Some readers sometimes comment and send e-mails assuming I am on the cusp of some kind of despairing breakdown; but the truth is that I regard ignorant, self-blinded optimism as a feeble kind of pseudo-faith.

Before being cheerful stoical, and 'making the best of things'; we ought to consider, in a realistic fashion, if not exactly 'the worst' - at least where this situation is planned to go (by its architects); and also where it might go if it escapes from the plans (which happens often enough).

That is, at any rate, what I have attempted over the past few weeks. I think the plan for the world is a very evil one; and the actuality may be even worse; but having looked at that  - I have found many compensations in the almost-palpable (well, actually palpable!) daily (hourly - when looked-for) evidences of the presence of the Holy Ghost and the work of God 'behind the scenes'.

(In between the usual 'wobbles' and waves of despair...) I have felt a deepending and strengthening of my Christian faith, an improvement in the scope of my perspective, a more solid hope and anticipated joy.

But all this exacts a full look at the worst - which ought not to be denied or ignored.