If not psychological neoteny: what? The role of old age

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One of the most influential of my ideas - if you can even call it an idea - was psychological neoteny -

http://www.hedweb.com/bgcharlton/ed-boygenius.html

- which was covered internationally by the mass media and became one of the 'ideas of the year' in the New York Times.

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The name put a word to, and some kind of explanation for, the phenomenon that modern humans retain many immature traits into adult life: the behave like teens, they try to look like teens.

At the time I wrote this (when I was a hedonic libertarian agnostic), I was vaguely positive about the phenomenon; on the basis that it might help the economy if people were flexible and 'open' in their behaviour.

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But, there is a big problem about old age in modernity.

There is essentially no role or function for the old.

Consequently, the only positive thing that can be said about an old person nowadays is that they look or behave younger than their true age.

At best, therefore, the old are second-rate youngsters.

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So what should the old be doing?

The answer is obvious: old age is for spiritual development.

Even CG Jung saw this clearly - although his idea of spiritual development was (merely) self development.

Since modern society is secular and hedonic, it does not value spiritual development - therefore modern society does not value old age.

But that is modern society's problem: it does not affect the reality of the situation.

At any rate, this is the 'function' of old age; spiritual development is what old people do better than the young, for which they are better equipped.


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Or should I say we instead of they?

By any rational calculus, once he is aged 50 a man is  old - plain and simple - indeed probably even before that.

So I am old. 

Of course I am old. 

But why does it sound affected or disingenuous to say so?

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One of the signs that our materialist, secular society has no role for the old, is that it leads to continual inflation of the age at which one becomes 'old'.

It is now generally regarded as an insult to a female human aged 60 years to call her what she plainly is: an old woman!

The notion is apparently that 'attitude', cosmetics, dyed hair, exercise and fashionable clothing have somehow changed the fundamental nature of human reality...

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The age at which one becomes 'old' is now the age at which is can no longer credibly be denied that one is old; but that age keeps creeping-upwards because - in a society where the median age is c45 and rising - and where old age is dis-valued, it suits the mass of the old to be able to collude in denial of their own status.

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Protestations that someone (superficially) looks younger, or feels younger, or behaves younger - are vain and irrelevant at best; but more often this is a serious, indeed sinful, evasion of the proper business of human life.

If one is fortunate enough to reach old age, then this is good fortune. But not in order to try and emulate a superficial and second-rate youthfulness; because old age is a chance for spiritual development: a gift denied to almost everyone in human history but which is now common.

We should be grateful to be old.  

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When does old age begin?

There is, of course, no strict numerical and chronological division of life - but if we are talking about an approximately threescore and ten year lifespan (and anything beyond merely an extension of old age); then we could reasonably follow CG Jung and divide it into quarters; then we get four periods of about 18 years each.

This would mean that old age began at about 54 years old.

That seems about right to me.


This four-part division is - of course - somewhat circularly-defined; in the sense that it is partly based on observation and partly based on what ought to be. In other words, childhood and development not only do, but ought to continue to about 18-21 (childhood lasts longer for men than women) - and it would not be a good thing for it to end much earlier or much later than that.

Perhaps the least obvious is the idea that adulthood is divided at about 36 years old (between something like 'young adult' and 'middle age') - and this can only easily be seen among creative people such as artists, authors and research scientists, because mid-thirties is about the time when there is a transition between learning the craft or profession and beginning to contribute in an original way.

It is the division between master-ing and being a Master.

Even among 'precocious' creative people, who begin to make contributions in their twenties; the very best work usually comes between the middle thirties and middle fifties. For instance, Einstein made major scientific contributions in his middle twenties; but General Relativity was the achievement of his middle thirties. 


With respect to old age; the point is not merely that there is a decline in the quantity and quality of publicly recognised attainment in most people; but that there ought to be a change in emphasis away from extraversion to introversion; from this-worldly achievement towards next-worldly orientation.

A shift from duty to conscience. 


And this 'ought' applies to the individual, and has a cosmic and spiritual aspect.

In modern materialistic society, then the external perspective is the only one that is regarded as really-real; so old age is merely a time of declining productivity on the objective public side, and the struggle to delay (or at least deny) this decline on the subjective private side.

The notion that old age is - in some respects - like childhood, has considerable validity. Both are periods of mostly-dependency, in a materialist sense. Both are less worldly-active and more 'contemplative'.

Both childhood and old age should also be times when the self and the world are less sharply divided, and the world is more 'animistic', more a matter of beings than things... The night is more important,  dreams are more important, the spirit (and religion) is more important.

The not-here and not-now, the not-worldly/ un-worldly looms relatively larger. 


There is, however, a major difference in consciousness between childhood and old age.

The child is 'in' the world (albeit this dwindles through childhood), takes it for granted and has never been otherwise; but the old person has stood-outside the world, has worked upon the world - has grappled with the present moment - and then moved away from the world and the moment. The longer he lives, the more the old man's consciousness moves away-from the world.

In old age, memories of childhood take on a greater sharpness and spiritual power; in many respects childhood is re-experienced. But these are memories, so the experience is consciously known as such, when the child simply lived it.

The matter can be focused by a single word: death.

As soon as a child is fully conscious, he becomes aware of his own death as a pervasive possibility. All children spontaneously have theories of death and may develop rituals about death. Then death recedes from adult consciousness as the world grows.

Through old age, death returns to awareness: 'the dead' loom ever larger.


Old is age is 'about' death - the last phase of life is structured-by death; and therefore the quality of old age depends on how death is understood.

For the modern materialist humanist, this means 'coming to terms with' imminent extinction - trying to accept, or even desire, extinction.

For the Romantic Christian, however, 'coming to terms' with death means something very different; because death is not the end; but instead the necessary gateway to a positive transformation.

The task of old age may be learning about the nature of this transition, its possibilities, and how to 'manage' this transition.

What is old age for?

The current answer is - trying not to be old.

The current mainstream and approved idea of old age is that it ought to be a time of sport, travel, socialising and sex - the greatest compliment to pay an old person is that they seem (look, behave) younger than they actually are.

Thanks to technology and prosperity, old people do indeed - on average and especially at peak - seem younger than their chronological age would suggest - and celebration and assertion of this fact emphasises there is no doubt that being old has no function.

Biologically, of course, senescence (getting old) has indeed no function (at least, not for the individual) - it is merely an accumulation of damage, with a progressive increase in degenerative pathologies, and an increased probability of death.

Socially, old age has no function; since the elderly are less socially-useful than younger people.

Therefore, so far as mainstream secular society is concerned - old age is wholly a bad thing, except insofar as its effects can be compensated, hidden or delayed.

Yet the guilty secret of The West is that it is the oldest society in the history of the world.

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So, from a spiritual and Christian perspective; what ought to be the function of old age? Well, CG Jung was on the right lines when he said that the last quarter of the archetypal lifespan (of approximately threescore years and ten) was a time for spiritual matters. In an ultimate sense this is so - ageing brings a kind of enforced simplification of the problem of living - as the errors and evasions of younger life becomes less and less viable.

Young people are wrapped-up in their desires or wrapped-up in The World - they are focused on pleasures and distractions.

Age is a simplification of the problem of living, a distillation towards its essence - even the mental changes of age.

Of course, in this corrupt and inverted culture - the facts and duties of age are resisted with extraordinary stubbornness: at resent, old people are no more spiritual than the young, and indeed perhaps less so. There has been a massive abandonment of the proper function and spiritual responsibilities of ageing.


As always, we must consider the matter in terms of each individual person's destiny, and the purpose that we gain important experiences and learn important lessons: the harshness of lives may be (as I say, in some individuals) harsh lessons in life.

For example; Mental decline with age may be a harsh lesson in inner priorities - a stripping away of capacities, that may be trying to teach the sufferer what is ultimately important, and what is not. Such lessons are needed now more than ever before, since so many people have led entire lives of the most extreme superficiality, evasion, worldliness, materialism and spiritual-denial,


All humans are free agents - and we must assume (since God is Good, our Heavenly parent/s, and has created this world for our progression towards divinity) that this is retained - inwardly, and to a sufficient degree - in everyone. In general we cannot understand the reason why things happen-to other people - but we should Not assume that things happen Only because of bad luck or for purely biologically-determined reasons.

In ourselves, and in those we know or love, we can (if we ask in the right spirit) know the workings of destiny at an individual level; we may sometimes know what is intended. From this perspective, the purpose of ageing is often clear enough.

The fact that the purpose is routinely unacknowledged and denied is a tragedy of our petty and trivial, and increasingly damnation-seeking, civilisation and society.


Old Age is therefore a barometer; a society's qualitative understanding-of and attitude-towards old age is a litmus test of its deep spiritual and religious health.

Unless or until we can learn the meaning and purpose of Old Age - not only in general terms but also but in each specific person we love; and in particular our-own-selves - we are indeed lost, adrift, self-damned,

Death and the Dead: the proper work of old age

This is aimed mainly at the elderly among my readership. 

Who are the old? It is approximately the last quarter of life when a Man is 'old'. Since the natural human lifespan is about 70 years, then the last quarter commences at about age 53. 

So, if you are that age or older you just-are Old, and ought to acknowledge the fact because there is work to be done!

What kind of work? If he is wise - a Man's thoughts will (and should) begin to turn towards death. Death is the work. 

The nature of 'work' in old age is provided-for by our natural disposition, and by the waning of other concerns and capacities. Modern people see old age in terms of loss of abilities (and appearance). 

This is because biological ageing does not generate any genuine 'compensatory' increase in other abilities - so the phenomenon seems wholly negative. 

So much for biology... It is  when we include the spiritual as our focus that we can see 'compensatory phenomena'. 

What old age brings is not capabilities but possibilities. There is a spontaneous tendency for a change in patterns of activity, sleep, and interests that are suited to the tasks of old age. 

These tasks are, broadly, a coming to terms with mortal (finite) human life, and the implications for the nature and meaning of death. 

This is why older people are spontaneously interested by the past - especially their own past, and by those who are dead. These natural changes provide clues to the spiritual task of the old. 

I get the impression that very few of today's old people are engaged in these proper and necessary tasks; essentially because they have decided that death will be an end for them and everyone, an annihilation. 

(Probably this is why modern old people are (in general) such a vain, foolish, and selfish bunch of parasites - as revealed so graphically by their terrified, hysterical and resentful response to the birdemic fraud.)

But if we instead assume that death is a transformation, we can begin to work on the nature and implications of that transformation...

The implications for our-selves, for those who have already died (the 'so-called dead', as Rudolf Steiner called them), and for those who love who will (at some point) face that transformation. 

That is (or should be) the primary work of the elderly. And, unlike many activities, it is something that the old are naturally equipped and inclined to do.  

Of course, this work cannot and should not be the whole of life; any more than going-to-school, playing, finding-a-spouse, raising kids, or making-a-living, or any other single activity can be the whole of life in earlier years. 

But it is something we ought to be doing in old age - and if we aren't doing it, then we will almost certainly experience old age as a net-negative phenomenon, a life-phase of overall-loss - and respond with an escalatingly desperate and delusional clinging to the activities and appearances of youth. 

An idea about old age

In general, we stay alive for as long as there is something we need to (or ought to) accomplish - spiritually.

(So many modern people live so long mainly because they have chronically failed to accomplish even the basic minimum necessary during their mortal lives. They are kept alive in hope that - eventually - they will do what is required.) 

What is this spiritual thing - that we ought to accomplish - varies between individuals; so one task of old age may be to discern what it is that we should be doing. Probably, since mortal life is 'about learning', this could translate to: 'What we still need to learn'.


Since an old person has always experienced a lot; this purpose is likely to be something that they already 'know-about' in the sense they are aware of the facts; but a thing that they do not know.

Much of old age is about sifting-through memories and past impressions, things we already know-about, to discern what is important: to discover what we have 'missed' first-time-around. Often our priorities have been wrong, through our adult lives; and old age can be about re-ordering these priorities.


But what is vital is context! What is vital is to know why we need to do this. And the reason is because in old age we are preparing for what comes after death.

So old age should be less about the present - present concern often leading to an active quest for pleasure, or at least distraction - and more about the past and the future.  

It is failure to acknowledge the context of the life beyond biological death, that makes modern society utterly incapable of dealing with ageing... For modern Man there is Nothing Good about ageing - it is pure decline; just as death, for a materialist, is 100% loss of self, rather than a transition.


In old age, we may find that the inevitable negative development, the incapacities, may (properly understood) serve to keep us focused upon our necessary task. For example, the problem of not being able to concentrate on reading in the same old way, a reduced ability to 'fill' our minds with new information, may encourage us to spend more time on thinking about the information we have already accumulated.

If we follow-up the negative constraints of our own particular, personal experience of ageing, understand and go with them rather than fighting them; the ratio of thinking/inputting may thereby increase in a valuable fashion... which is probably something that we should have done much earlier.

What is the spiritual work of old age?

I assume here that there is indeed a spiritual role for old age, and that ageing is not merely decline: that fact that God maintains someone alive, means that person has work of spiritual importance to be done. 

In the first place there is the chance for salvation, and secondly for spiritual progression towards higher consciousness (i.e. to make conscious and freely-choose those Goods which were previously unconscious and spontaneous). 

But these are personal spiritual jobs; and we are not isolated Beings but are some part of networks of love (love of 'neighbours' as the Gospels call it). 

Therefore, as well as personal or private work - old Age also has a task of 'social' or 'public' spiritual work to do.  

In other words; in Old Age each person has spiritual work to do for the general benefit. 

What seems to happen is that the material for such work comes to mind spontaneously; but the work itself requires agency. 

What we need to work-on will come to mind without specific effort; but the positive spiritual work that needs doing requires discernment and right-choices; and, as usual, there are temptations (wrong choices) that point in harmful and evil directions. 

In old age; attention naturally tends to switch from the present and future towards the past. Thus, it is a true stereotype of old age that certain 'memories' or themes recur; and the old person tends to go over-and-over events from his past (privately, and perhaps in conversation). 

Places, people, events, past decisions... these are examples of the kind of things that recur. 

They may recur by being reminded of them in everyday life, coming to mind in reflection or daydreaming, or in actual dreams. 

A particular thing may be the one subject of recurrent interest; and there may be a few - or many and changing things. This difference depends on what the individual most needs to do, and is capable of doing. 

Interest in these themes is spontaneous; but may be sustained or brief. Which happens in a particular person will depend on the individual's needs and capabilities. Some people need to work hard on one matter; while another person may need to survey many things - and become aware of their implications.  

These form the material of spiritual activity; and the task is to work on this material in the proper way - which is spiritual and inner rather than physical and outer; and with proper aims - which are directed at spiritual outcomes in eternal resurrected life, rather than material outcomes in this mortal life. 

Although the material appears as 'memories'; ultimately what is being worked-on is not what modern society regards as memories. Instead, what is being worked-on are past realities that survive in present creation - survive in the thinking of active Beings...

What come to mind is (presumably) shaped by our personal needs - as ascertained by that-which-is-divine in each Man; in the context of being in harmony with the aims and loving-nature of divine creation, as shaped by the Holy Ghost.  

In other words - we are given as material not only what is important to our salvation and spiritual development, but also what is important to other beings in ongoing divine creation. And 'important' is here understood in terms of post-mortal, resurrected and eternal life - not by the temporary and material aspects of this mortal and earthly life. 

The process of working-on these 'memories' is therefore not in terms of public use, and does not need to be communicated to other people. It is a matter of having the right kind of thoughts, not about saying (nor doing) the right kind of things. 

The 'right kind of thoughts' involve things like becoming aware of that which was unconscious, re-evaluating that which was misunderstood, grasping the wider context of that which was seen in isolation. 

In generic terms; we are called-upon to bring-to awareness from our own unique personal perspective things of the past; and to create new understandings, and to make new links and contexts. 

In sum, this is creative work: it is the work of changing and enhancing divine creation; by, in effect, picking-up unfinished or wrongly-understood business for our past and knowledge; and making new and better understandings, adding meanings, and making relationships... All guided by the aims and (loving-) methods of divine creation. 

It is work that only we our-selves can do; because our nature and perspective is unique. If we, personally, do not do this work: then it will not be done, and creation will be otherwise than it would have been. 

Therefore, old age is not meant to be passive and reactive merely; there is work to be done - but spiritual not physical work, and not necessarily involving other people in material terms.

That work will come to mind spontaneously; and then the active job is to review, consider, evaluated, contextualize that material - in a spirit of love.

To emphasize: the work itself is not automatic - the process of working must be chosen, and choices need to be active. 

And there are many potential temptations that can derail the work from its proper aims, methods and conclusions; and lead to harm instead of benefit. 

Indeed; it would seem that most old people nowadays fall prey to one or more of these temptations, and end by doing spiritual harm to themselves - and failing to benefit their 'neighbours'. 

For example; they may react wrongly, in the wrong spirit, to the material brought up by memories. In the first place, they may regard the whole business as physical, not spiritual; and earthly not eternal. 

Some people may brood resentfully and recurrently on (real or imagined) past wrongs done to them; others engage in wishful thinking and vain regrets - that they had, or had not, done some-thing (which they suppose would have then made their past or present lives better). 

Others may cycle and re-cycle remembered material superficially or verbatim - over-and-again but without ever bring to consciousness new aspects, or striving to learn from it. 

Or people may use past memories with an aim to ameliorate or improve present mortal life; perhaps by trying to attain higher status through memories of self-aggrandizement; or by seeking excuses/ rationalizations for present sins.   

Another spiritual mistake is simply to regard memories as nothing more than opportunities for pleasurable reminiscence; merely a chance for feeling better here-and-now, and passing the time pleasantly. 

 

So there are innumerable ways of derailing the task of old age; but also there is real and valuable work potentially to be done. And so long as God maintains us alive, the old can choose to do this work. 

Why is 'middle age' getting later and later?

What is Middle Age?

It is mostly about women, not men, since it is the reproductive span of women - in the context of lifespan, combined with the maturaltion rate of chidlren, that defines the basic cycles and stages of human life.  

So, three reasons why Middle Age seems to have gotten later...

1. As a stage of life

If middle age is defined as being around the middle of life, perhaps typically the beginning of the second half of life; then when natural life expectancy is 70 years, 35 is half-way.

In modern times life expectancy is more like 80 years, with 40 as half-way.

If this second half is divided into middle and old age - then middle age runs from either about 35-53, or 40-60 - when old age commences.


2. The dwindling and ending of fertility

The average menopause is women is about 50, but fertility declines with increasing rapidity from 35 - and perhaps 40 is the limit for conception for most women.

So middle age could be defined as starting at about 40. The span of conception has been extended by advances in medicine, and by prenatal testing with selective abortion for abnormal fetuses - therefore, although female reproductive span has not changed much or at all, in practice the age of average and last conception is much older... delaying the onset of middle age. 


3. The age at which offspring are mature and (culturally) ready to reproduce. This might be regarded as related to the average age of parents, especially the mother, at their first child.

In the past, the first child was usually about 20 (or less) but is now 30 (still increasing) - so middle age could be regarded as starting either as about 20 + 20 = 40 years old in the past, and 30 + 30 or 60 years old nowadays.

In other words, middle age is the age when you start having grandchildren.

Sixty years old seems absurdly late to be regarded as the onset of middle age - but I think this is more-or-less how it is now regarded; and to call even women in their fifties 'middle aged' would be regarded as an insult! - and I think this may be the reason why: Nowadays, women in their fifties frequently have children who have not (yet) married and not (yet) reproduced.

Until, or if, they have grandchildren, and themselves become grandmothers, women do not really feel themselves to be middle aged - hence the extraordinary delay in assigning the status of middle aged to women in modern society. 

What is the purpose of Old Age? A Romantic Christian answer

Since retiring from my job I have been revisiting the important topic of Old Age - which is of core importance in the oldest society the world has ever known. The median age of native populations in developed nations is in the middle forties and increasing: half the population are late middle-aged or older.

As I have often said, the best that modern society has to say about an old person is that they look and behave as if they were young. There is literally nothing positive to be said about the inescapable biological fact of growing old, by the hedonic and materialist standards of modernity.

Since ageing is entirely A Bad Thing; the modern strategy is to delay ageing at the level of public appearance, and to deny ageing at the level of self-knowledge. This is, for many people, a moral imperative - and I have heard venomous comments directed against those who 'failed' to 'make the best of themselves', who 'let themselves go': who revealed and acknowledged the fact of their ageing.

(When you are maintaining a self-delusion, awareness of others who contradict it can be experienced almost as a personal attack.)


This is understandable and inevitable given that - if the world really was as mainstream materialism depicts it to be - then there really is no function to ageing. It really is a wholly Bad Thing; and therefore delaying its appearance, and keeping it out of awareness, would be a rational strategy.

But if we try to understand ageing from a Romantic Christian perspective, then we start by assuming that ageing is not purely a disease but instead has a purpose and meaning; and that this purpose-meaning is tailored to the needs of the specific situation of a specific individual.

Thus each of us has a personal destiny which does not necessarily conform to general categories - nonetheless, the purpose can hardly be to try and pretend that ageing is not real, or makes no difference.


The positive value of ageing in general should be pretty obvious to a Romantic Christian, and that is that old age is a primarily spiritual time, during which the proximity to death ought to induce an increasingly next-worldly perspective and attitude.

The many difficulties of ageing are related to this - they are not merely supposed to be regarded as patholgies to be fought and (hopefully) overcome; but should be regarded as potentially valuable experiences from which we are supposed to learn.

So long as we are yet alive, so long we still have important things to learn - and that is the same in old age as any other phase of life - but perhaps the urgency and importance are even greater.


Any old person has therefore at least one extremely important task yet to accomplish, which is why he remains alive.

(Probably, this task is extremely obvious, yet being ignored.)

The take home message is that life is not over in old age, the stakes are indeed higher than ever.

The common attitude of trying to 'stay young' and trying not to think about approaching the portal of death and entering the life to come thereafter, is therefore a bad strategy for accomplishing what most needs doing.

Old age is (partly) about re-evaluating your earlier life

I have written before about the fact that mainstream modern culture has no distinctive role for the elderly; and that all the old people held-up for admiration by the mass media are simply continuing to do what young people do as a matter of course - such as looking young, doing strenous physical activities, being very active (lots of sex, holidays and socialising - pre 2020).

In the end, however, for modern culture; old people are merely second-rate/ fake young people.  

The idea - and indeed the actuality - of old people as wiser then young, has disappeared. Modern 'exemplary' old people are Not wiser - unless 'wisdom' consists in pretending to be young; by ever-increasing usage of plastic surgery, cosmetics and drugs (lots of drugs!).

Modern old people are a failure! At present, especially in 2020, they are often much worse than the young in their cowardly and credulous embrace of the totalitarian Healthist agenda that (in reality) aims to imprison and (eventually) kill them.

Why are old people such a failure? The brief and truthful answer is Solzhenitsyn's phrase that They Have Forgotten God. Modern Old People are mostly Godless children of the fifties and sixties - even/ especially when they self-identify as Christian. 

This is significant, because one of the main roles of old gage - and the potential source of that wisdom associated with old age, is retrospective re-evaluation. 

When one is a Christian, retrospective re-evaluation happens almost spontaneously - which is why wisdom became stereotypical. 

What happens is that the past becomes as important as the present; and indeed looms larger in the attention of the elderly. Old people remember the events of their early life more often and more vividly than they remember the events of yesterday or last week. 

I don't mean due to the memory loss of dementia - although that is a pathological exaggeration of the natural phenomenon. I mean in terms of spontaneous attention and concern. 

The elderly find themselves going-over the events of earlier life in a way that is far more focused and concerned than they have ever previously experienced. What is then supposed to happen, is that these events are considered with Christian discernment.

 

Here, as in many places, we see that the purpose of this mortal life is Christian - and when one is Not a Christian it follows that mortal life is drained of purpose - as so many billions of people are experiencing at present.

 

What happens when we re-evaluate our earlier life from a Christian perspective; is that events and periods we regarded as being 'good times' often turn-out to be bad. 

For example, successful hedonism was enjoyable at the time; but we can now see that 'happiness' was merely pleasure - and often represented successful selfish short-termism. 

Periods of social success, high status, triumph - we now recognise were often bad for us; and ended by reinforcing the worst aspects of ourselves; generating pride, entitlement, passivity and other vices.

We may see that these supposedly 'happy' periods led to habits and attitudes, choices and decisions, that led to misery and alienation in the longer-term. Or led to harm done to other people - of which we were (selfishly) unaware at the time. 

 

On the plus side; we find that some of periods of 'ordinary' everyday experience, for example family life, which seemed at the time dull, mundane, constricting; were in truth the best and most important things we ever did!

That (then un-noticed) time, sitting or walking alone - looking at a view, or 'just thinking' - was actually of great and lasting importance! Part of our Golden Thread.

Superficially, 'nothing was happening' - yet now we find such events rising to the surface of awareness - and their magical transcendence is revealed for the first time. 

 

But none of this work of discernment and re-evaluation is possible unless we are Christian, and understand our mortal lives in terms of our choice to follow Jesus to resurrected life in Heaven. 

So it turns-out that one of the real functions of old age has been lost along with theism in general, and Christian faith in particular. 

Restore Christianity, and we recover the value of old age.  

 

What is the purpose of old age?

According to modern Western culture the answer is: To Stay Young; but given that is impossible, to pretend to stay young (by simulating a youthful appearance and behaviour).

(The only praise ever given to an older person nowadays is that they don't look or behave as if they are old - they seem almost asif they are young... They could pass as younger - in the dark, with the light behind them...)

There is, in fact, no alternative to this indirect condemnation of ageing - because from a secular materialist perspective ageing is decline, and nothing-but decline - and that's just a plain immovable fact about-which nothing whatsoever can be done.

For mainstream discourse old age is degenerative.


The real purpose of old age is spiritual - objectively spiritual - hence necessarily invisible to secularism.

In reality, old age - properly considered - is developmental (not degenerative) it is an unfolding of purpose. From one positive purpose to another...

The development from mature adulthood to old age properly includes the following shifts of focus:


From material to spiritual
From current to eternal
From elsewhere to here

From evaluating to knowing
From complexity to simplicity

From social to universal
From motivation to being
From creativity to comprehension

From speaking to praying
From listening to meditating
...Thus from commun-ication to commun-ion 

From teaching to answering
And from answering what is asked - to answering what is needed.

The tragedy of human life? Akenfield... again

From the movie Akenfield (1977) - a horse-drawn reaper binder - in action, from a distance; surely one of the most poetic of Mankind's machines (although very hard work for the horses). 

I am re-reading Ronald Blythe's Akenfield again, this time as an audiobook, and am again finding it a deeply moving experience. 

This applies especially to the earliest section, that has the old farm workers and their wives "speaking" about the span of their lives - memories and experiences which go back to the end of the 1800s, but which especially focus on the early years of the 20th century. The two World Wars loom large, but also the Agricultural Depression of the 1920s and 30s. 

The village is composite, and the people in the book are anonymised - their raw words have been selected and arranged by the poetic-pen of Blythe. It was published in 1968, and stories are from interviews in the preceding years. 

I first read this book when it was recently published and I was 14 or 15 - it was recommended by my favourite history teacher; and it had a lasting effect on me. 

I was made starkly aware of the qualitative transformation in the comfort and convenience of ordinary rural people's lives over the middle decades of the twentieth century. 

Listening again; I can see that my own reflections went beyond those of the author himself, who talked with the people and gave them each a voice and perspective  - and I think they still do, but differently. I suspect that Blythe himself drew rather different conclusions from his own work than I get from it - then and now. 

Fifty years ago; I saw the vast improvement in the security and abundance as having solved the age-long problem of material - or Biblical - poverty reported by the older Akenfield residents - the chronic hunger, insufficient and worn clothes, wet and cold, severe overcrowding; the serious lack of time, drainage of energy, cultural impoverishment, and infrequent fun.

My youthful conclusion from the contrasting interviews with younger people of the village - confirmed by my own experiences and observations - was that the recent abundance, the all-but universal comfort and convenience, was being dissipated in the quest for ever more of the material "goods" that had been had been in such short supply. 

Instead of saying "we have enough", people were saying "we want (even) more".  

Instead, my idea was that we should be striving in the direction of creative achievement - arts, and sciences - and building a world with wholesome (folkish) communal activities such as singing and dancing and crafts. 

I ignored the book's story of the decline of religion - by which Blythe mainly means serious and frequent church or chapel participation - because at that time religions seemed obviously untrue; and the descriptions of the olden-days life of church and chapel were without any appeal to my young self. 

Nowadays, I am more intrigued by the way that people regard their lives, taken as a whole - what they seem to think their lives were "about". 

For many of the villagers, "life" seems to have been about some aspect of the village. Even the religious ones seem to think of it in terms of communally recognized activities. 

I see this now, with a different generation of the oldest - and in my own, now-old, generation - a tendency to look back and seek, bring-forward, various achievements; usually from earlier life, or recently, or perhaps those of family - and to regard these as justification. 

The younger or fitter elderly seem nowadays to be justifying their lives in terms of continuing activities - the "I am busier than ever since I retired" sort of thing. 

In Blythe's 1979 book about old-age - The View in Winter, based on interviews with the elderly (a book which I did not much like) he concluded similarly that the things to strive for in old-age was continued activity and engagement for as long as could be managed. 

Blythe himself lived to the age of 100 and was writing - and writing well - into his nineties; but (as so often happens nowadays) he was apparently afflicted with dementia for the last decade-plus, and dis-engaged from reality. He continued living in his own house and alone (he never married), but with a great deal of essential outside help - as he had advocated as best for the elderly several decades earlier. 

Yet I find this kind of advice about old-age - staying active and engaged, living in one's own home etc - to be better than most alternatives, but merely a temporary and very partial palliative, when it comes to understanding and justifying "what my life is about". 

Such reflections always lead to the solid insight that human life, as such, is tragic. If life is about what happens during life - it cannot help but be sad, one way or another. 

Because real or supposed achievements in the past, or by the now-deceased, do not really mean anything of themselves - no matter how often or vehemently we may repeat or pretend they do. 

But some things that happen in our lives go much deeper than others, and are experienced as much "better". 

Nostalgia for being-active, working-hard, social engagement, or for the fun (of various kinds, including the obvious...); are simply not very profound - no matter how we spin it with words, pictures, or stories. 

Or, if such things genuinely are regarded as the most profound experiences of our lives - as so often seems to be the case (by self-report); then that does seem ineradicably, and finally, tragic.   

Pandering and the destruction of linguistic meaning

*

I have noticed several examples of how pandering to particular groups destroys the meaning of language (Note: I am talking from a British perspective here).

1. Pupils to students.

Kids want to be thought of as older than they are. Children at school used to be called pupils, now they are called students - whereas 'students' used to be reserved for those at college or university. Now there is no generic terms to differentiate those at college from those at school.


2. Middle aged.

After the age of about 25, adults want to be thought of as younger than they are. Hence the term Middle Aged seems to have disappeared altogether; because of the delusional concept of modern middle aged people - not only women - who resent not being thought of as 'young'. Yet just 30-40 years ago, middle aged began by 40 at the latest - now, it would be regarded as insulting to call a 45 year old middle aged.


3. Old people.

For the same reason as the above, apparently nobody wants to be referred to as 'old' - yet this term used to be used from about age 50-55. Enforcement of this 'nobody is old' rule amounts to a pretended selective-blindness - and we are supposed to feign that we believe old people to be a couple of decades younger than their chronological age. But no matter the age, nobody wants to be thought of as old. This has now reached ridiculous proportions - a 90 year old recently felt she had to reassure me that she personally 'did not mind' being called old.


4. 'Young Adult' fiction, a 'hot' category in publishing, which used to mean college-age books like Catcher in the Rye; is now used to refer to books such as The Hunger Games (read by many 10 year old kids) and even Harry Potter (read by 8 year olds).

'Nuff said.

*

Old Men in Shorts - versus growth in old age

A phenomenon that has swept my part of the world over the past couple of years is old men out and about on the streets and in shops, wearing shorts - or what Americans call "short pants" - ie. short trousers. 

This used to be very rare, except at the height of summer and on holiday - but nowadays, it's clear that old men have - in droves! - set aside their long trousers, and taken to wearing shorts all the time and in all seasons. 

This weirdly-misguided and counter-productive assertion of continuing youthfulness; fits with the theme of  a thought-provoking post from Francis Berger where he discusses "growing old" with an emphasis on what kind of growing this ought to entail:

"Growing old should refer to the spiritual—that we should use old age to focus on changing, developing, and expanding our spirit; on reflecting on our mortal lives and our memories; on learning lessons yet unlearned; on tying up loose ends and neglected frays from our mortal relationships; on preparing and building up our “self”, our true “self”, for resurrected life."

While the sight of superannuated codgers in cut-off trews seems like a trivial inconvenience, merely an eyesore; I have nonetheless come to regard this as symptomatic of a deep and increasing the spiritual resistance to growing old; which is one of the besetting sins of modern Western civilization. 

The reason is obvious enough; that, without a confident expectation of continued personal existence beyond death - a post-mortal life that is affected by present life; then there really is no benefit but many disadvantages in getting-old, and no viable coherent prospect of growing-old. 

The life of the modern middle-aged and elderly person (including, so far as I can tell, nearly all self-identified Christians) is then inevitably some kind of combination of an always-losing battle to remain (or seem) youthful; and a progressively-increasing terror of physical deterioration, suffering, dying, and then annihilation. 

Memory versus forgetting in old age

It is especially a feature of Old Age (from the early fifties, typically) that some have a strong memory while others forget - some live in the past, others in the now.

I believe that those who survive to old age do so for a reason - they are sustained by God to learn something important to them. 

Crudely put, to acknowledge and repent their sins, but perhaps a particular sin which threatens salvation - which may provoke them to reject resurrection and Heaven, to refuse to follow Jesus after death.

Everybody who is alive, remains alive for Reasons - and these reasons are spiritual, and these reasons shape our situation.

One who has a strong memory and lives in the past probably has something in need of acknowledging and repenting. Not to feel Guilt for sin (feeling which is akin to fear and itself a sin indicating lack of faith), but to recognise, and ask God for forgiveness.

One who forgets, and whose disposition is to live in present and future, might need to examine motivations. 

One whose drive diminishes and motivations dwindle, may be being encouraged to set aside hopes placed in worldly plans and schemes.

in sum, our actual situation and condition are shaped by The Creator so that we have the best possible chance to learn what we most need  - need Spiritually. 

We Are Alive for reasons, all of us - and learning the reasons is a vital aspect of why we are still alive.

It's time to think about death...

William Wildblood has published an excellent post about a subject that almost nobody (in Western civilization) thinks about, except when compelled: death, and how we ought (yes ought) to prepare for it throughout our mortal lives.  

And by death, I don't mean dying. 

Dying - and especially the fear of suffering when dying - is a subject that almost obsesses our society, albeit usually in a covert sort of way. Not that dying is unimportant, of course it is (potentially) important; but that the fear of dying seems to block consideration of the overwhelming importance of what happens afterwards, and forever.   

The embarrassed evasiveness that greets any attempt to discuss death, would strike our ancestors (or probably most non-Western people) as utterly bizarre. Yet I was exactly like that myself, for most of my life. 

Western mainstream public discourse is (by no accident, I presume) restricted to a forced-choice between either an exaggeratedly childish and sentimental fairy-tale depiction of life after death; or else Nothing At All. 

Modern people have, apparently, really convinced themselves that the evidence is overwhelming and incontrovertible that death is utter annihilation - and that to think hard about, or to discuss, what happens afterwards - is either a morbid psychopathology, shallowly-idiotic self-deception, or some kind of selfish and dishonest mental manipulation. 

Yet, at the same time - and in mainstream public discourse (prestige mass media, corporate communications, officialdom etc) we see the strong encouragement of exactly morbid psychopathology, self-deception and blatant emotional manipulation when it comes to encouraging and exploiting people's fear of dying...

Fear of what suffering might happen, what it (supposedly) might be like, and how suffering may (supposedly) be avoided. These are recurrent themes in the mass media. 

Returning to William Wildblood's post: 

The everyday has its place... it is wrong to dismiss it as nothing. But that place stands in relation to the spiritual which is primary. And therefore since the spiritual will only fully come into view after death, you must start taking death seriously. 

Not in a way that makes earthly life futile for earthly life must be lived and lived properly. At the same time, death is the goal of life, the goal not just the end of it, and you must see it as in a sense the crowning achievement of your life.

That the great majority of people in the contemporary West do not see it like that may be one reason for the widespread dementia that afflicts much of the elderly population. 

The obvious reason for that is that people are just living longer, kept going by modern medicine. However, there could be an underlying spiritual purpose behind this too or accompanying it...

It could be that dementia strips away the resistance to the spiritual and leaves its victims on some level more open to the next world. An atheist has by definition erected barriers in his mind. Old age in general and dementia in particular might help to dismantle these barriers...

These are fascinating ideas - and similar thoughts have also occurred to me. 

I agree with William that "advances in medicine" and better living conditions (warmer houses, more food) are relevant - but they don't altogether explain the tremendous extension of life among the very severely incapacitated elderly. 

As a strong generalization: Dying is easy - it is staying alive that is difficult. 

However, many people nowadays live many years longer than they say they want to live, and in a extremely debilitated state. 

Yet traditionally, until recent decades; doctors and nurses with extensive experience of elderly people usually said that when someone loses the will to live (for example after the death of a spouse), and are ready to die: then they will soon die - and it used to happen despite even strenuous medical interventions. 

This no longer seems to happen. 

Of course, it is a matter of specific individual persons; but what often happens is, I think, consistent with what William suggests. 

In other words, among those (apparently a majority) who have lived by dogmatic materialism and in utter exclusion of the spirit; and who approach the end of life with the expectation, and even desire for, eternal spirit-annihilation. 

Through the effects of ageing and disease; such people may experience a return towards the simple and instinctive world-view akin to that of early childhood; a time of life when the spirit was a matter of spontaneous everyday experience - but in old age an analogous way of thinking is perhaps manifested as impaired cognition, delirium, and psychosis. 

If this is going-on (and surely it will not always be the case in everyone of extreme old age or dementia), such persons are perhaps being given an extra chance - by God - to reconsider their choice of death. 

Maybe they are offered a further opportunity to re-evaluate their long-standing choice of rejecting even the possibility of God, angels, spirits, life-after-death... and resurrection? 

We are always free, and the decision of salvation cannot be compelled: second, third and further chances to recognize spiritual realities may well be rejected. 

But when the inner barriers of willed-materialism have been dissolved by illness - then, what were regarded as idiocies and absurdities may become recognized as real possibilities that could be chosen... if that is indeed what we most want for our-selves.

 

The Old Straight Track

*

When I read Alan Garner's Moon of Gomrath fantasy novel

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/review-of-alan-garners-weirdstone-of.html

it was about 1974 - and therefore the wonderful description of The Old Straight Track was something arcane.

The end of the book referenced this idea to Alfred Watkins book of the same name; and my history teacher told me that the OST idea was unproven, but not disproved either.

*

The OST idea was that English people of ancient prehistory, probably neolithic, had made long distance, straight roads across the landscape, using a simple surveying method requiring just sticks - and navigating from one sacred point of high ground to another.

These points could be identified by the presence of ancient landscape features such as burial mounds, stone circles, and - it was said - the site of old Christian churches (which were assumed to have been built on these same sites).

The tracks could therefore be located using 1 inch to 1 mile maps (supplemented by two and a half inches to the mile detailed maps) - by trying to find straight lines that joined ancient landscape features, especially on hill tops.

A minimum of three 'points' was needed - but the more the better. Then you were supposed to walk the track, preferably with a camera, to look for other features and assess plausibility.

*

So I started hunting for Old Straight Tracks, using an Ordnance Survey maps of the Mendip Hills in Somerset - I just found this actual map a few days ago, and it is covered in neat pencil circles drawn with a compass around ancient sites and churches, and with a cross-cross of straight pencil lines trying to join them. The Mendip Hills are extraordinarily rich in these sites, so I managed to find a few possibilities.

What is interesting about this episode are the negatives.

I was looking for prehistoric Old Straight Tracks - and not 'Ley Lines'.

I don't think I had ever heard of Ley Lines. But Ley Lines are not exactly the same as The Old Straight Tracks, as originally described by Watkins; because he was talking about roads, while Ley Lines were/are conceptualized as primarily energy/ spiritual phenomena.

*

The second negative is related to this. My Mendip map included Glastonbury, and it would now seem blatantly obvious that Glastonbury - especially the Tor - ought to be a major focus for Old Straight Tracks or Ley Lines - yet I did not circle it!

This is because in the middle 1970s, Glastonbury had not become the nationally/ internationally known focus of New Age people and ideas it has since become. Or more exactly, the status of Glastonbury as a spiritual/ religious centre was only just coming out of a rather low ebb of a few decades - because it had been well known in the 1920s and 30s as evidenced by the early Glastonbury Festivals of Rutland Boughton and associated mysticism, and the great mega-novel A Glastonbury Romance by John Cowper Powys - but both of these were pretty much unknown (The reviving Picador paperback reprint of GR came only in 1975).

*

So my annotated map of Old Straight Tracks is something of an historical artefact. If it had been done just a few years later, I would have had to accept a spiritual dimension (or baggage) along with the Old Straight Tracks, and I would probably have assumed that any valid STRs in Somerset would be converging-on or radiating-out-from Glastonbury.

By the way - I personally no longer think it plausible that the ancient English did use straight roads, and in official circles the idea is nowadays generally regarded as untrue and having no significant support.

Which is a bit of a shame. However, among the New Age spiritual folk, in the form of Ley Lines, OSTs are sometimes a major focus of belief; and are referenced in dozens of books as the major theme, and hundreds or thousands of books as a significant phenomenon - being applied internationally and not just to Brtain.

'Ley Lines' is now almost a household word - albeit in a rather low status and 'flaky' kind of way.

So Alfred Watkins speculations have been a spectacular success - but in an extremely different domain of knowledge from that he envisaged when he wrote The Old Straight Track in 1925.
*

Why do so many people live so many years of decrepitude beyond what they say they want? Repenting sins in extreme old age?

Continuing on the theme of death and dying; and exploring the idea that the greatly extended lifespan in The West nowadays may have a spiritual purpose. 

The thing about many of the super-old (which is, approximately, anyone significantly older than the Biblical "three score years and ten") is that for most who attain it, it is a longer life of decrepitude - of significant, perhaps extreme, mental and/ or physical dysfunctionality. 

The modern extended life experienced by most people (a life that goes much beyond the seventies) is often explicitly unwanted by those who receive it.

In the sense that many younger people will state vehemently that they do not desire to live into their eighties or nineties - if that life is one of significant dementia, disability; if that life is one requiring massive support or residential care.

And yet that is exactly the extended life that many such people get; the kind of life that they always said they did not want, and which they may even continue to say they do not want...

But which, nevertheless, despite protestations; they act such as to extend, by seeking and accepting continual and escalating social support and medical treatment (even when at vast and crippling expense).  

It is physically easy to die, especially if you are prepared to experience suffering at the end: yet these people (and there are a lot of them) Do Not Die. 

Why?

My understanding is that their superficial personality-self in the "here and now" wants to die; but their deeper real-self retains an awareness that they are not ready for death - that they have unfinished business in mortal life. 

So, what is the nature of this "unfinished business", that may be keeping extremely old and decrepit people alive - despite surface protestations? 

I think the unfinished business is usually spiritual, usually an inner thing - and therefore we can only infer (or perhaps, in some instances, intuit) what that unfinished business may be. I shall now do this...

In one word, the major need is for repentance, in the broad meaning of the word to imply that people need to re-orientate their whole thinking and desiring; as they die, such people need to be pointed in a different direction. 

More exactly, they need to want to be pointed in a different direction - because (thanks to Jesus) that is enough. 

They need to let-go of their (perhaps) lifelong false and incoherent orientation towards seeking pleasure, avoiding suffering, and attaining material well-being. 

They need to let-go of their besetting sins; which are nowadays is perhaps most commonly rooted in resentment; so this is the example I will describe. 

Since the early 19th century, but especially since the 1960s, the West has been living in an Age of Resentment. 

The basis of most politics is a resentment against some other nationality, religion, class, sex, or race - and this resentment is regarded as  not just true but "good"; and forms the core of a system of values. 

In extreme old age the reasons for politics have long since gone - nobody cares what you think, and it makes no difference to anyone else...

But too often the earlier-life resentments remain; may indeed be amplified, brooded upon; and in a moralistic way, with self-satisfaction.

Elderly people - even with significant mental pathology - may nurse their social and personal resentments, express them obsessively; and seem to approve their own anger, hatred and spiteful desires - perhaps regarding this as signs of their own vigour; signs that they have not "abandoned their principles". 

To die in such a state has a bad spiritual prognosis. 

And I think that some of the extreme elderly are kept alive despite the failure of brain and/or body; in hope (God's hope, Jesus's hope) that as dependence increases, as life simplifies, as thinking simplifies - perhaps the individual may come to recognize the futility of resentment, the wickedness of resentment. 

Perhaps he may attain some other spiritually-healthy attitude; such as forgiveness, humility, gratitude, a benign disposition towards others...

An honest recognition of the pervasive decay and evils of this world, which includes all of us...

A focus on the genuinely important things of life: especially love; and the beautiful moments nearly everyone has experienced in reality and/or imagination. 

And perhaps a desire to move on, beyond death, to a world free of decay and evil, and wholly rooted in love.

Such is the kind of thing waited-for, hoped-for, in extending the life of the extremely elderly beyond what they say they want.

Such repentance may not happen... but it may.

After attaining which; the individual can die as soon as maybe, and with a vastly better prospect for life after death than would otherwise have been the case.   

When I am old...

*

The following is one of the most popular items of British modern verse, especially among women (just try doing a search on the first line; and look at images) - indeed, in some polls over the past couple of decades this has been the single most popular item of modern verse:

*

 WARNING - By Jenny Joseph 

When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple

with a red hat that doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.

And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves

and satin candles, and say we've no money for butter.

I shall sit down on the pavement when I am tired
and gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells

and run my stick along the public railings

and make up for the sobriety of my youth.

I shall go out in my slippers in the rain

and pick the flowers in other people's gardens

and learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat

and eat three pounds of sausages at a go

or only bread and pickles for a week

and hoard pens and pencils and beer nuts and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry

and pay our rent and not swear in the street

and set a good example for the children.

We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?

So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised

When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

*


At one level this is simply a mildly amusing bit of prose broken up into lines - the sort of thing that would work quite well in performance.

It is not,of course, poetry; and as comic verse goes it is mediocre - since any interest comes purely from content, and there is no discipline of rhythm or rhyme (it this respect it falls below many of the deliberately obscene but verbally-deft songs performed by 'choirs' of rugby players and soldiers.).

*

What I dislike about this piece of work is that so many find the content appealing, they regard it as a wish fulfilment fantasy.

And what a pitiful and bleak fantasy it is! - and even the fantasy aspects of it derive from regarding the disabilities and infirmities of age as if they were purposive, mischief-making, subversive. Everything which is of real and lasting value (family and real friends) is briskly disposed-of as onerous duty, a constraint on our liberty, an interference with... what? Acting-out?

As always in our civilization, age is given a positive evaluation only in so far as it imitates youth - which is merely a specific instance of the blazingly obvious fact that in our civilization life has no purpose or meaning except as something in which to be occupied as pleasantly and painlessly - and preferably as self-gratifyingly - as possible.

Life as something from which we need to be diverted, continuously.

*

The fact that our civilization has taken this turn during an era of unprecedented luxury and comfort is telling - but these work on us merely as addictions without which we cannot do, and fear of loss of which haunts us.

When I am old offers a future of more-of-the-same, a more-untrammelled self-indulgence and a more short-term short-termism - a fantasy revenge against society at the fraud of modernity.

Old age as acts of revenge against our disappointed former selves.

All of it utterly futile nihilism.

*

With comic verse like this, who needs tragedy?

***

  

But, to cheer us all, here is some real comic verse - in which humour derives from technical perfection applies to a ludicrous subject:

A Nursery Rhyme - by Wendy Cope
(as it might have been written by William Wordsworth)

The skylark and the jay sang loud and long.
The sun was calm and bright, the air was sweet,
When all at once I heard above the throng
Of jocund birds a single plaintive bleat.

And, turning, saw, as one sees in a dream,
It was a Sheep had broke the moorland peace
With his sad cry, a creature who did seem
The blackest thing that ever wore a fleece.

I walked towards him on the stony track
And, pausing, for a while between two crags,
I asked him, ‘Have you wool upon your back?’
Thus he bespake, ‘Enough to fill three bags.’

Most courteously, in measured tones, he told
Who would receive each bag and where they dwelt;
And oft, now years have passed and I am old,
I recollect with joy that inky pelt.

*

Late blooming talent

There does not seem to be any reliable correlation between the degree of talent, flair, specialness exhibited when young; and ultimate achievement. 

Of course there sometimes is. My namesake (but not related) Bobby Charlton was perhaps England's greatest footballer of all time; and his talent was evident from a very early age. Indeed, he was famous for his prowess even in a county obsessed with the sport. 

For instance; at age eleven the local education authority redirected Bobby from the rugby-playing state grammar school he was supposed to attend according to residence, to the soccer-playing school in Bedlington (which had earlier been attended by my father - himself no mean footballer at semi-pro level). 

And when Bobby was old enough to sign professionally it was a national event, and his choice of Manchester United was widely reported in the press. 

Yet there are many exceptions. I have, over the years, known or known-of quite a few young people whose flair and talent seemed destined for greatness; yet the sparkle went flat, or they took the wrong path, or their interests changed - or the world failed to recognize their special gifts. (This bureaucratic era has, indeed, become actively hostile to genuine creativity.)

Exceptions also work the other way: In 1981 went to a superb evening of "Alternative" comedy at a local venue; which boasted a galaxy of fresh talent; such as Rick Mayall - who dominated the show. But there was also a rather lame, embarrassing, and forgettable female double act called French and Saunders... i.e. Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders (then aged about 24 or 25). 

Of all those brilliant comics; it was French and Saunders who (not long afterwards) went on to the best and most illustrious careers - individually and as the same duo. 

Yet, at the time, I could detect nothing of their later brilliance - probably because it wasn't yet there. 

A year or two later; I went to a one-woman revue in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival by someone called Emma Thompson; which was so bad that it ranks as one of my most embarrassing, least enjoyable evenings in the theatre. 

Admittedly, Emma Thompson was barking up the wrong tree; and she was never a good comedian as such - but she became, of course, one of the very best movie actresses of the past several decades. 

Yet I could see nothing of this, back in the early 1980s. At the time; I just wanted to avoid ever watching her again! 

Perhaps the most stark example of late-emerging talent is provided by my English Literature tutor at Durham University: Derek Todd. Derek had earlier been a lecturer at Queen's University, Belfast; where a young undergraduate brought some poems to show him. Derek found them not-good, and gently tried to dissuade the chap from further efforts in that direction. 

That untalented young student poet was Seamus Heaney -  who later won the Nobel Prize for Literature*. 

My assumption is not that Derek missed Heaney's budding talent and ability, but that it was not then evident. 

The point is that sometimes people change - and quite a lot. And sometimes that can happen very late; as when novelists take up writing in middle age or old age, and discover a surprising talent. 

One of my wife's favourite light-comic authors is Jodie Taylor; who began writing and published only after retirement, aged about sixty - which is very old for a humorous author (most of whom cease to be really funny before thirty). From this late standing-start; she has poured-out dozens books-after-books ever since her debut in 2013, at an astonishing rate by any standard. 

This is very unusual, very unlikely - maybe unique. 

But it happened - which just goes to show. 

* I personally don't rate Heaney as a poet. More exactly, I do not regard him as a real poet. But that's another story. 

Disenchantment and Myth turning into History

*

In much of his work, and perhaps most explicitly in The Lost Road/ Notion Club Papers and the accompanying development of the Numenor legends - Tolkien was very concerned by the process in which Men used-to live in Myth, but now Myth has degenerated into mere History

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=myth+history

This is Tolkien's version of the Disenchantment of the World, and his explanation for the modern sense of accentuated 'alienation' or Man's detachment from a world that is increasingly perceived as indifferent and mechanical.

Tolkien's lifelong 'project' was perhaps to reconnect modernity - that is History - with that world of Myth so nearly lost to us, and thereby re-enchant the world.

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/tcbs-inklings-notion-club.html

In a nutshell, Tolkien sought to restore Myth to Modernity.

*

But what is characteristic of Myth?

In Tolkien's world, Myth is about direct personal contact with the gods.

The gods are the major Valar such as Manwe, Morgoth and Varda/ Elbereth, and the minor (angel) Maia.

There is no direct contact with The One (creator) God Eru; but at times Elves, and very occasionally Men lived in contact with the Valar and Maia - some Elves by dwelling either in the land of the Gods (Valinor) or nearby (Eressea); men in exceptional instances meeting Valar like Tuor and Earendil, and (perhaps) in Numenor - plus those unfortunates who encountered Maia such as Morgoth, Sauron, Balrogs, and the corrupted Saruman.

At any rate, by the end of Lord of the Rings, all contact with the gods has ceased - in the Fourth Age Myth has ended and History has begun - Myth is but a memory.

*

With Christianity there is a similar movement from Myth into History. In the time of the Apostles there were Men who walked and spoke with the Son of God; but also throughout the Old Testament were Prophets who spoke with God, sometimes face to face (many theologians argue that this 'God' (Yaweh or Jehovah) was also the Son of God in a pre-incarnate form).

But since the time of the Prophets then the Apostles, most Christians regard Myth as having turned into History - and our modern reality therefore is assumed intrinsically to be second rate - our contact with God conceptualized as indirect via the Bible, the Church and other secondary means.

We are supposed potentially to be in contact, in a relationship, with God during prayer - but the age of Prophets is generally regarded as long-since finished in the sense that modern revelation (communication with God) is never supposed to add to, subtract from or substantively modify Christianity as received through the Bible, Tradition, Church authorities and so on.

*

At various times, there have been Christian revival movements which said that the age of Myth - living in a direct relationship with God - had returned  - but most have fragmented or rapidly degenerated. Mormonism, however, began as exactly such a revival, with its claim that the Heavens had opened, a Prophet was come, all could and would receive revelation: in sum, the Age of Myth was returned.

Mormonism survived and has thriven as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which has substantially modified the earliest impulses with a considerable organizational element - yet at its highest and most developed level, fully retaining the sense that the Age of Myth is returned.

This is something I find quite extraordinary and wonderful. That while the world sees the side of Mormonism that is par excellence the religion of control especially self-control; restrictions and rules; strictness, altruism and families; hard work and good works... And while this is true; it is also a religion in which the Age of Myth is restored to the Earth, and Man lives again in direct, frequent, personal contact with God and his angels.

And this, I believe, is the heart of Mormonism - for which all the emphasis on rules and proper living exists to sustain and encourage (and without which they would be meaningless).

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There are other denominations and churches in which a similar emphasis on a rebirth of the Age of Myth has arisen - perhaps (although I do not know) the very rapidly expanding Pentecostal movement.

Against this are the strict traditionalists (whether 'Ultramontaine' Roman Catholics, Calvinist and 'fundamentalist' (scriptural inerrancy) Protestants, or Old Calendar Orthodox).

While I do not deny the Christian validity of strict traditionalists, and I do regard them as valid Christian paths; I do personally deplore their embeddedness (as it seems to me) in a highly literalist and unMythical world which I find dry and heart-chilling.

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My deepest yearning is for the Age of Myth to be reborn; for a world with which we are (sometimes, and the best times) in a personal lively and vivid relation with God the Father, His Son Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost and the angels.

Any denomination that chills this impulse and thwarts this possibility will never have my heart-felt allegiance.

**


Note: It may be pointed out, and with justice, that the denominations I mention above as strict traditionalists, may in actual practice serve as Myths-to-live-by for some of their adherents. For example, a very strict Ultramontaine and Thomistic Catholicism was Tolkien's own religion - about which he had no complaints and many positive things to say. I can have no argument with this view. I merely state how things are for me (after several years of rumination and empathic consideration); and how many branches of what I regard as real (and valid) Christianity repel me powerfully by (what comes across to me personally as) their bottom-line dryness, strictness, coldness, literalism - their lack (for me) of Mythic reality.