Bruce Charlton's Notions

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I' the how-dumb-deid o' the cauld hairst nicht
The warl' like an eemis stane
Wags i' the lift;
An' my eerie memories fa'
Like a yowdendrift.

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We lack courage because if we happen sometimes to be brave as individuals we know that we will for sure be undercut by committees (by managers). 

Once this has happened, once some individual has done the right thing (what would strike any individual as the right thing - maybe just a normal routine right thing - like telling the truth) only to be deserted, persecuted, harassed, interrogated, left hung-out-to-dry by a faceless, un-responsible, safety-first, avoid-costs-at-all-cost, dodge-risks-at-any-risk, short-termist committee/ bunch of managers (and put through some kind of prolonged time-, emotion- and money-draining procedural torture) ... then it is a strong (um...) deterrent against doing the right thing.

Ever.

Again.

Which makes a perfect, and perfectly understandable, excuse to be cowardly thenceforth.

Which is presumably why we lack courage.

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There is no doubt that Christianity is weak in the West.

The Christian Church is very fragmented, most mainstream Christians (and especially Christian leaders) adopt their beliefs from mainstream leftists political correctness (fitting Christianity around this as best they can), and indeed it is hard to detect any difference made to behaviour by Chrsitianity except among the more separatist groups such as Anabaptists (e.g. Amish) and Mormons.

But this should not be surprising since we live in a profoundly secular society, the most secular society in the history of the world - and one in which the ruling ethos and lifestyle is solvent of Christianity.

Therefore, Christianity is very weak, and Christians are almost all extremely undeveloped in their spirituality.

In most Western nations there are now essentially no saints, no inspired holy advisers (starets), none (or very few) of the spiritually-advanced monks or nuns...

We are living in an almost completely worldly and secular society.

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This does not, I think, prevent Christians from attaining salvation; but it does all-but prevent any advanced forms of holiness such as were seen in past societies.

At the one extreme there is a kind of legalistic, rule-following Christianity - of the more puritan type.

On the other hand, those who seek to move towards a state of communion with God (theosis) while still on this earth are left without advice or disciplined guidance, and are likely soon to fall into a state of spiritual pride (prelest), corruption, and perhaps insanity.

So, as a society, we have what we deserve - only the most rudimentary and preliminary level of Christianity, such that life on earth is spiritually either dry or dangerous.

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But this demonstrates what advantages there are from a devout Christian society.

The main difference between a holy/ devout and a secular/ corrupt society is not in relation to the basic fact of salvation - but in the degree to which one can advance towards divine communion while still on earth - on the possibility of approaching toward sainthood.

(And also whether a society has benefit from the presence and influence of living saints and starets.)

In a corrupt and secular society, therefore, Christianity is (in general) more primitive and less joyful than it could be and should be; and than it actually has been in times and places such as Byzantium, late Anglo-Saxon England and Holy Russia - times of saints and thriving Orthodox monasticism.

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The answer is along the lines of 'greater personal happiness than offered by the secular left'. For example by running a more efficient economy and education system (greater competition, dispensing with the system of racial and sexual preferences - aka. AA).

But there are two aspects of happiness - there is the personal happiness offered by a comfortable life in which one can express lifestyle preferences; and there is the second order happiness of knowing that other people are happy.

The secular right is not necessarily better at offering the first kind of happiness, in the sense that the left vote consists of interest groups to which resources are transferred from right voters (various greivance groups, plus the public sector workers, education and the media).

So that left voters would - both as individuals and as a group - mostly be made more miserable (at least in the short- to medium-term) by secular right policies.

This means that the happiness-based vote for the right entails a mathematical calculation of what makes most voters happier, or perhaps optimises happines for the most worthy voters; or perhaps (quite plausibly) what would maximize the happiness of the greatest number of worthy people in the long term - probably.

I think this is the basis of the secular right's appeal: that their policies would maximize the happiness of the greatest number of worthy people in the long term - probably.

On the other hand the secular right policies would reduce the happiness of many people in the long term, and of even more people in the short term.

And this reduction of happiness would happen certainly, not probably; and sooner rather than later.

So, the secular right attempts to transcend interest group politics in the interests of 'rational government'.

But it has no means for doing this.

This is, in a nutshell, why the secular right cannot get power in a democracy - except by deception; but then what got power would continue to deceive, and what got power certainly would not trascend interest group politics and implement the rational secular right program.

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Joseph Schumpeter - 1883-1950 - was a political scientist and (whisper it not) economist, who coined the phrase Creative Destruction.

This seems a useful idea to me - what I get from it (not necessarily what Schumpeter meant) is that institutions are not reformed, they are replaced.

Of course institutions change - but who knows whether this is improvement or degeneration? How can one balance the advantages and the disadvantages, over the short versus long term - how can these be quantified and mathematically summed?

But sometimes institutions are replaced - the horse and cart was replaced by the motor car, the player piano was replaced by the gramophone, and so on.

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This came to mind in relation to medicine and doctors - the 'doctor' is a relatively recent, late 1800s, idea - i.e. the idea that there was a unified medical profession sharing a common education and qualification process.

Before doctors (in Britain) there were high status physicians (gentlemen with university degrees) who did not touch the patients (maybe felt the pulse) - sometimes did not even see the patient - and who wrote prescriptions. They were classically educated, learned, wrote papers and books, mixed in the highest circles... But there were not many of them outside of the capital cities and their major satellites.

Apothecaries who were middle class, apprenticed, and made up prescriptions and sometimes treated patients on the basis of speaking with them and visiting them (but not examining them).

Druggists who were upper working class retailers and medicine wholesalers (these were the forerunners of modern pharmacists).

Surgeons who also treated the skin (including dermatology and venereal disease), and who were middle class apprenticed craftsmen. (skilled manual laborers).

And a multitude of gentry (including priests) who treated the lower orders, and midwives (working class, semi-skilled - not formally apprenticed), and healers, cunning men, wise women and so on.

From the late 1700s there were a few high status 'man midwives' the first of which was William Hunter (from Glasgow) who had a degree, and became *enormously* wealthy delivering the babies of the upper classes (I seem to recall his fee was 100 guineas - 1.05 Pounds Sterling - per 'confinement'; at a time when the average wage was much less than a guinea a week).  This began to bring Obstetrics into medicine.

Physicians, surgeons, man midwives and apothecaries were unified as doctors in the medical profession as it evolved (changed) in the late 19th century.

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But medicine is now, again, falling apart - due to sheer size, as much as anything. There is a continual reduction in the skill, status, average pay, and so on.

The mess that is medical education is not reformable - although it does undergo continual change.

At some point, therefore, we will see 'Creative Destruction' and doctors will be replaced. Not the whole set of functions now done by doctors, but some of them, will in future be done by some other kind of profession or job - and that aspect of being a doctor will wither away to an insignificant level.

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Same with universities and colleges - higher education. The situation is so big as to be unreformable - at some point they (or some big section of their activity) will be replaced.

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One point I take from Schumpeter is that we waste too much time on schemes of reform - do they ever work, I wonder?

We would be better thinking how to start something new and different, with which to replace what is not working.

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On the old radio programme, Desert Island Discs, they used to ask the 'castaway' to choose a book to take with them; but they were first reassured that Shakepeare's complete works and the Bible were already on the imaginary island.

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Shakespeare and the Bible - the meaning of this phrase depends on whether Bible refers to the King James version, or to the Bible in a generic form.

I have always assumed that in this instance the King James version was implied, and that the reassurance was that the twin pinnacles of English *literature* would be available.

For indeed the poetic qualities of the KJB are, quantitatively, equalled only by Shakespeare - and, like Shakespeare, are scattered through the books.

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From Psalm 42

As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.  

My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?  

My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?  

When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday.  

Why art thou cast down , O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.  

O my God, my soul is cast down within me: therefore will I remember thee from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar.  

Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.

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 This is poetry: Beauty, as well as Truth and Virtue. 

And, indeed, I can never ignore the content of poetry - its 'subject matter: to work as well as possible, a poem needs to be as true as possible, and to be virtuous. 

This fact, alone, goes a long way to explain the diminution then disappearance of poetry from England - since the writers no longer aim after the transcendental goods as a unity: at most they aim for one or two at the cost of others - truth at the price of beauty, virtue and beauty at the price of truth, beauty at the price of truth and virtue etc.  


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But why is this Psalm an example of poetry? 

There are no rhymes, no consistent rhythm and the lines vary in length. 

The 'technique' was re-used from the late 19th century by Walt Whitman, and his more modern imitators (such as Alan Ginsberg) - but never with anything like the poetic power frequently attained in the KJB (and, indeed, in many of the older English versions of the psalms, especially the Miles Coverdale translation used in the Book of Common Prayer).

Perhaps this is poetry because the psalms are intended to be sung. Poetry is, somehow, song: the relationship is close.   

The poetic line is, at root, a musical phrase. 

And after all, the full title of the best anthology of English poetry is  Palgrave's Golden Treasury of English Songs and Lyrics. 

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It is important to recognise that poetry is not the kind of thing that can be major - although of course there can be more or less of it, and it can be more or less powerful.

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England used to be a land of 'poets' - probably this went on for many hundreds of years and back into Anglo Saxon times. It was simply taken for granted.

But no more. Of course there are not really any 'poets' at all (except perhaps in the actual-act of writing poetry) - rather there are people who have-written poetry - written it in greater or lesser quantities.

Those who have written poetry in larger quantities are given higher status - and reasonably so. But they are not, should not be thought-of-as, 'major' poets.

Others have written smaller amounts, and some have done so by accident (so it seems - or at least they cannot repeat the feat). But they are not by this 'minor' poets.

At any rate there is probably nobody alive now in England who has written a lot of poetry - or if there are such people they are either unknown to the general reader, or lost among the professional (published-by-the-prestigious-presses, paid, certified, elected, prize-winning, teaching-in-the prestigious-institutions) writers of verse/ chopped-up prose.

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What has destroyed poetry (at least at the level of public discourse) are wrong ideas about poetry, not least the professionalization of poetry, its routinization, the notion of major or great poets, and the distinction between major and minor poetry.

Plus of course the fact that there never is very much poetry around, and it is relatively unusual to be able to 'appreciate' poetry - it is a minority taste. All real poets are 'minor' for this reason.

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Shapkespeare is a 'great writer' but (like all real poets) a minor poet.

To demonstrate what I mean by poetry, here is a short poem by Shakespeare:

Fear no more the heat o` the sun,
Nor the furious winter`s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta`en thy wages.
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

Fear no more the frown o` the great;
Thou art past the tyrants stroke;
Care no more to clothe and eat;
To thee the reed is as the oak.
The sceptre, learning, physic, must
All follow this, and come to dust.

Fear no more the lightning flash,
Nor th` all-dreaded thunder stone;
Fear not slander, censure rash;
Thou hast finished joy and moan.
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee, and come to dust.

No exorciser harm thee!
Nor no witchcraft charm thee!
Ghost unlaid forbear thee!
Nothing ill come near thee!
Quiet consummation have;
And renowned be thy grave!


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All the poetry is in the first stanza, and indeed in the last four lines of the first stanza.

But four consecutive lines of poetry make this a justly-renowned poem.

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Note:

Anyone who wants to explore real English poetry is fortunate enough to have a definitive anthology that distils the spirit: it is called Palgrave's Golden Treasury:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palgrave%27s_Golden_Treasury

Books I-IV were selected by Palgrave and are inspired and reliable.

Anything after that, or selected by anyone else than Palgrave but included in an editon of 'Palgrave', is fundamentally un-sound in its principles, and may be deeply misleading.

 
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In terms of tactics for success - the Christian right believes that there can be no real social recovery (or progress) without a Christian, supernaturalist basis - and therefore that the secular right is doomed to fail.

I think this is correct, and that the secular right is focused on alliance-building (between those on the right with diverse perspectives) almost precisely because it has no real, long-term prospect of building an effective political alliance on the basis of enlightened utilitarian self-interest (which is the underpinning moral basis of the secular right).

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Enlightened utilitarian self-interest has - over the past few hundred years - turned-out to be a pitifully weak motivation - easily surpassed by feel-good secular moralism (from the left) and religious (but not necessarily or usually Christian) zeal from the right.

And of course, the secular right is continually subject to schisms and fragmentation - as under pressure it degenerates from utilitarianism to selfishness, and from enlightened self-interest to short-termist grabbing-what-you-can-while-you-have-the-chance.

(This attitude - sometimes in the form 'if you can't beat them, then join them' - is a very common motivation expressed in the comments on secular right sites - and which underlies the secular right's immoral interest in the subject of 'Game' - which is the self-serving title self-given by those who try to devise algorithms describing how to deceive women into supplying sex without strings.)

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The secular right is, roughly, merely a collection of individuals who participate in the movement only to the extent that they find it amusing.

When the chips are down, and sanctions are looming, the individuals who constitute the secular right they will very seldom sacrifice themselves or their gratification to the well-being of the movement.

Indeed, many would regard the idea of self-sacrifice for the 'common good' as exactly the kind of social manipulation which they themselves are too smart to fall for. They regard themselves as being astute enough to see through that kind of imposed delusion.

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At bottom, and with few exceptions, the secular right is made up of individuals who will only stay aboard the political movement for as long as it benefits them or makes them happier.

They are not driven by a sense of duty (which is common on the left), and only very few by a sense of vocation (which is the preserve of those who live by transcendental values). 

And this is precisely why the secular right cannot (and therefore will not) thrive as a political movement.

(Adapted from a comment sent to Mangan's Miscellany - http://mangans.blogspot.com/2010/10/character-of-traditionalism.html )

A while ago I blogged on the topic of why I had become disillusioned with the discipline of 'economics'.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2010/09/why-i-turned-against-economics.html

But as I now (again) regard economics as a bogus pseudoscience, this raises the question of how we should instead look at the phenomena which are currently dealt with by economists using economic concepts.

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The simple answer is to reduce them to the level of something that we do understand - the economics of a small village. Using this analogy, we then try to anticipate (maybe even roughly calculate) what effect things would have.

In other words, instead of using ludicrously over-simplified and also unintuitive and not-understood mathematical models, we should use ludicrously over-simplified by intuitive and well-understood real world models like the family, the small village, a market etc.

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The difference between 'economics' and real world models is between something we know to be inadequate and pretty much how and why it is inadequate, and something we don't really understand, don't know whether it has any applicability whatsoever, but which is clever and cool and high status; and which we are therefore childishly over-impressed by.

In a nutshell, economics is just as selective and biased as commone sense thinking on the same issues; but economics is in addition blinded by snobbery and arrogance.

And real world analogies have another great advantage which is that they actually do apply somewhere and do work in some context - whereas economic models and abstract principles are typically completely made-up or based on arbitrary assumptions (often ridiculous), have zero evidence of their applicability, zero evidence of their validity, and zero evidence of their predictive power.

If we cannot understand something using this kind of common sense real world analogy, then we probably should not be doing it - since it is more likely to be doing harm than good (e.g. weird aspects of the moeny markets).

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The main tool of 'sophisticated' analysis is to try and look two steps ahead, rather than the usual one step, using Thomas Sowell's maxim of 'and what will happen then?' e.g. if you do raise the price/ wages, first step is that the seller/ worker will get more money - but what will happen then... 

That is about the best that humans can do w.r.t. 'economics'. And it would be a heck of a lot better than we are doing at present.

Secular modern life is adapted to deal with 'problems' by distraction, by thinking about something else.

The mass media (the system of modern remote communications) have grown and specialised to grab and hold attention, and are a major mechanism by which this happens.

Roughly, the mass media have replaced Christianity in the West (as one grew, the other shrank) - the media is oppositely aimed than Christianity (worldly, hedonic), but performs a similar general function (not their main function) - i.e. creating and sustaining a psychological state of social connection.

The mass media is philosophy, it is religion - how else do people connect?

(The connection is almost entirely illusory, one-sided - that is what mass media means; but displaces real connection though occupying motivation, time and attention.)

(And mass media have evolved, become more efficient - now many people, perhaps especially women, accord the media greater validity than their surrounding lives - live in accord with the media ethos whatever or despite the ethos of surrounding culture.)

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But the primary role of Christianity and the mass media lie behind this social function: Christianity carries the message of salvation, the purposes of media are a melange of mind-shaping aims from the producers of the media and the paymasters. Purposes are often political/ philosophical/ ethical - often commercial. Increasingly short-termist (as, by a Gresham's Law, bad currency displaces good; as inflation takes grip).

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As things are now in the West, people are addicted to the mass media: they need doses frequently or else they will lose connection, will feel dead, will drift without (short term) purpose. Because if people withdraw from the media and cut-off from it, they experience rebound effects.

Rebound effects are the opposite of the stimuli: if the media generate excitement then people who have withdrawn from media will be bored, if the media provide conversation topics then withdrawn people will not have anything to discuss, if the media frame leisure then they will have 'nothing to do'.

Habituation is a basic biological principle - repeated stimuli cease to command attention. So the media must generate novelty - novelty is imperative.  This leads to endemic dishonesty - truth must continually be sacrificed to novelty. This leads to endemic ugliness - beauty must continually be sacrificed to novelty. This leads to moral corruption - virtue must continually be sacrificed to novelty.

Tolerance is a frequent finding in pharmacology - the dose must be increased to produce the same effect. So the media must continually increase the volume.There is no such thing as enough, there is no restraint, there is no feedback - there is no balance point, no stopping point short of collapse.

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It is obvious, therefore, how and why the media and Christianity are reciprocal; that society is undergoing progressive corruption; and how very far we are away from a good society - so far that we have lost the ability (an ability common to all previous human societies) of even conceptualising the nature of things, of the human condition.

From 'Mania' by David Healy, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008 - pages 225-6.

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"In psychiatry, branding depends heavily on neuroscientific research funded by government and research-granting bodies. Without this research, there would be very little understanding of what the pill does in the brain and, as a result, very little language available with which to describe the effects of drugs for marketing purposes.

"From the point of view of marketing, the advantage in a flourishing neuroscience is not that it might lead to better drugs, or a better understanding of how brains work, but rather that it provides concepts and languages for marketers to use.

"For this reason, when the first psychotropic drugs emerged in the 1950s, the pharmaceutical industry had little option but to bankroll 'academic' organizations to help grow the necessary language.

"When in the 1990s neuroscience threw up colorful images of the brain, marketers found these invaluable for purportedly showing the cleaner effects of SSRIs compared to older antidepressants. There was little neuroscientific value to the images, but they provided wonderful marketing copy.

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"This marketing process stands the science of psychopharmacology on its head. Tom Ban first noted in the 1980s the increasing gap between the former hope that new psychotropic drugs would help carve nature at its joints and the reality of psychiatric practice, which was that the neuroleptic drugs had become antipsychotic agents that it was impossible not to give to all psychotic patients despite good evidence that many would not benefit.

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"We have now arrived at a point that is almost the precise inverse of the original hope. Rather than drugs being used to carve nature at its joints, nature is instead being used to differentiate drugs whose differences are essentially trivial.

"A psychopharmacology of this sort will inevitably be sterile and is capable of rescue only by serendipity."

At present, in the West, people usually go on to higher education at about age 18-19; and there they study general (non-vocational) stuff.

This is probably a mistake, from a educational perspective.

General education should be over and done during the teens; and by 18-19 people should be specializing.

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In the middle ages, when universities were invented, most undergraduates were in their mid-teens, and this situation persisted in Scotland until the mid-19th century; and a similar situation (modelled on the Scottish system) prevailed in the USA, Canada and Australasia.

Undergraduates studied a standard general curriculum based (broadly) on the Trivium (Grammar - i.e. Latin plus/ minus Greek; Logic and Rhetoric) and the mathematics-based Quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, harmony and astronomy).

When this was out of the way, the student moved on to higher professional education: theology, law or medicine.

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In England, after the middle ages, this picture became confused by the fact that grammar schools pretty much took-over general education, so that by the time the scholars (a small minority of late-teenagers) went on to Oxford and Cambridge, they had 'done' the trivium/ quadrivium subjects and were ready to commence what was de facto post-graduate, advanced studies - typically in Classics or Mathematics.

The 'tutorial system' for scholars at Oxford and Cambridge therefore developed from the late 19th century into something rather like a post-graduate supervision or mini-seminar.  (In the post-medieval, pre-reform years the individual or small group tutorial/ supervision was actually given by private coaches or 'crammers' and and was not a critical examination of sources, a far ranging discussion or anything like that - coaching was narrowly devoted to getting the highest possible marks in examinations.)

Meanwhile, in Scotland and the US and most of the Anglosphere, schools did not take their pupils to such a high level, and colleges/ universities retained the medieval 'school' function, with mid-teen students.

It was therefore quite normal, indeed even 40 years ago, for first degree graduates from Scotland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand (as well as the US) to do 'another' undergraduate degree in Oxbridge - since relative to them Oxbridge teaching was pitched at (or near) a post-graduate level.

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So the real difference, which made possible the unusual system in England, was the highly academic grammar schools - the English grammar schools (and later on the scholarship classes in the reformed Public Schools) - which by virtue of high selectivity and beginning specialization at about age 14, probably took students up to a higher level than schools in any other Western country. In other words, they completed the students' general education, and they made them ready for specialization. 

Even now, England is very unusual in that medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine and law (as well as theology) are all mostly undergraduate degrees - typically started at age 18-19 and finished age 21-24. In most places they are post-graduate subjects - begun at about age 22 or even later.

At any rate it is clear (from centuries of experience) that the most academic kids attending selective and rigorous schools can normally complete their general education by about 18-19 and commence specialized 'graduate school' type study at that age.

This leads to specialists who rapidly become well-equipped to embark on high-level and independent work at an early enough age that they have a fighting chance of achieving something in the field!- or at least of earning a living by exercise of their specialized craft.

It seems likely that this educationally-efficient system was an important factor in the high rate of top level academic attainment per capita which the English educational system used-to attain.

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The advantages of early university are educational, and relate to the greater aptitude of the most academic teenagers for learning and studying, and their superior and longer-lasting memory.

This would require reinventing the highly selective grammar school - and recognizing that such schools can move their pupils through the curriculum *much* faster than at present, by specialization. And of course the university curriculum would need again to be linked to the school curriculum - which is achieved by giving elite universities control of the school examination process.

The sooner that the most academic kids tackle advanced subjects, the better. The disadvantages are merely 'social' in the sense that nowadays college social life has evolved to be suitable only for 'adults' (i.e. those legally above the age of consent) - but maybe shattering that association would be an advantage too?

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This is, of course, not intended as a serious proposal for reform (indeed, I tend to the idea that secular universities are near the root of our present societal troubles, and that tinkering with the current structure cannot achieve anything worthwhile).

I intend simply to show how far away from a rational and coherent educational system we have drifted.

The current situation in relation to formal education is one where we apparently accept the waste of huge proportions of young lives and vast economic inefficiency.

To this I am here adding a reduction in educational effectiveness. As a general rule, if kids are not educated as highly as possible in their teens, then they never will achieve their best potential. We cannot afford to waste these years.

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(But the biggest problem is that of purpose - the reason why mass education cannot now be reformed is that (beyond basic 'literacy') we do not know what formal education is for.)

Modernity is apparently about increasing efficiency, mainly by means of new technologies involving the complex organization of more specialized functions.

(So the classic example of Adam Smith's pin factory involved replacing one pin maker who performed dozens of functions with a complex organization of dozens of pin makers each performing a single specialized function).

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But measuring efficiency entails creating an operational definition of output - something which can be measured. So that to measure the output of a pin factory requires that a 'pin' is defined in operational terms, so that pins can be counted (and the input required to generate 'n' pins can be calculated).

Something similar applies in medicine - if we are looking for progress in medical treatment, for example in curing pneumonia, then progress can only be measured by operationally defining 'pneumonia', and also 'cure' - such that improved outcomes could be detected.

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Operational definitions of diseases, or cures - or inputs or outcomes in general - can be more or less valid, and more or less precise.

In the Soviet Union it was commonplace to 'improve efficiency' by using invalid operational definitions and adjusting them over time. For example, a metal pipe was defined in terms of a tube with a hole in it and the output was measured according to weight - therefore efficiency was 'improved' by making ever-heavier pipes (until and beyond the point where they were  unusable as pipes).

In medicine, a skin lesion is defined as a 'malignant melanoma' in such a way that more and more benign skin lesions are brought within the category ('just in case'), and the death rate among those with 'malignant melanomas' falls. Or breast cancer is diagnosed earlier and earlier, and with less and less certainty that it is a cancer, and the death rate of people with 'breast cancer' goes down.

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But these are specific example of a general phenomenon - all operational definitions are incomplete and biased - and there is always the possibility that apparent improvement is merely a by product of the changing nature of measurement; and that the overall situation may be worsening even as all measured proxies are improving.

This is a flaw right at the heart of modernity.

And the flaw is amplified when, as now, people realize that decline can be concealed by invalid operational proxies, or by changing thresholds of operational definitions, or ultimately by *not* measuring that which declines (or which is suspected of declining).

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So, the calls for more 'evidence' or more 'objective' evidence. or more 'systematic' evidence' or more statistically-significant data can be and are used to manipulate the official picture.  

The only safeguard against this is that bottom line evaluations be individual, direct, personal and common-sensical.

Can individual common sense be wrong? Of course it can be and often is!

But the fact is that we have nothing better - and the worst error is to believe that we have.

From Secularisation by Edward Norman, 2002, pages 47-9 (excerpts).

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"Modern people have actually shown that they can get on very well without religion. Many in the Church find this puzzling, for they suppose that there exists a kind of interior disposition in each person to need a religious sentiment - (...) a 'God-shaped hole'.

"But this is a mistaken notion. The human inclination to satisfy an interior sense of emotional need is an acquired characteristic; it is cultural. People are simply taught from birth that they have emotional needs that can be accommodated by some higher reflective capacity. (...)

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"Authentic religion - the true understanding of Christianity - is not about emotional satisfaction, or what belief can do for the sentiments of the individual; it is a duty owed to God because he exists. It is not about us, but about him.

"Alas, once more, modern Christians are among the first to get their priorities wrong, and they often set out to propagate the message of Christ in a manner which presents it as the answer to human emotional need. (...)

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"The Marxists have always said that religious belief indicates the existence of a wrongly ordered society; once society has been rationally organized, the need for faith will disappear as a social phenomenon. The observation (...) is true enough.

"It is true, that is to say, of the use commonly made of religion by those concerned with social control, and does not affect the question of whether Christianity is true in itself.

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"Christianity, as it really is, needs for its survival to be taught to each person and to each generation, as true in itself, and as dependent for its authority on uniquely revealed knowledge. It is not effective because it fills an intrinsic need - had it been so it would indeed have been no more than just another candidate for occupancy of the false consciousness of the people.

"Christianity is in the market place of competing ideas; its survival is not because of its appeal - or its fulfillment of human need - but because it is rational. It is an account of the Creator and his involvement with the Creation; and about human fallibility and redemption.

"The emotional condition of people, and their liability to believe seemingly everything they are conditioned to believe, does not come into it.

Following on from the previous post about the Norman Conquest, I have noticed that attitude to the French is a major cleavage point in the English class system.

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The English upper class are, and always have been, pro-French (presumably because they - originally - were culturally and linguistically French, and used to hold lands there).

They like to speak French, holiday in France and own homes there - maybe retire there, regard the French as more sexually attractive than English (upper class English men regard French women as more beautiful and sophisticated; u-c English women regard French men as more charming), regard French food as the best in the world, and the upper classes are pro-European Union (which the British regard as an essentially French thing).

The upper middle class (professionals - doctors, lawyers, professors, senior civil servants and senior public sector managers, the media etc) mostly have the same views as the upper class - and presumably adopted these in emulation of the upper classes.

But the majority of people below this level, in so far as they have any views at all, are somewhat anti-French - but especially the lower middle class (trades and crafts, private sector workers etc).

For Tolkien to be anti-French was therefore unusual for an Oxford Professor - and was probably related to Tolkien's unusual, impoverished, 'scholarship boy', Roman Catholic and lower middle class up-bringing. 

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(The anti-French feeling in England is pretty mild - mostly a kind of impatient irritation - it is not a gut-level hatred or fear: that is reserved for really alien nations. For example, after the experience fighting in the Far East in WWII, there was a real visceral horror and incomprehension at the behaviour of the Japanese - for example the treatment of English inmates in the Japanese prisoner of war camps - which surpassed that of any attitude towards other enemies or allies.)

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Reciprocal to this is the attitude to America (the USA): the English upper- and upper-middle-classes are anti-American, while everybody else is reflexively pro-American.

The English lower classes tend to favour American women and men (e.g. movie, pop and films stars), emulate US culture, adopt US slang, tend to buy American food (pizzas, burghers etc.), would visit the US (eg New York City or Florida) in preference to France.

In the military, the rank and file would rather fight alongside 'Yankees' than 'Frogs'.

If they had been asked, the lower class English would have preferred to become the fifty-first state of the USA than to join the European 'Common Market'.

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You could see this immediately post-9/11 - ordinary lower-class English people had a spontaneous and attitude of sympathy and solidarity with the New Yorkers; the upper classes had a highly 'nuanced' response, and (within a few minutes of the atrocity) swiftly recovered from their transitory shock, and then were clearly much more worried about a possibility of a US retributive 'backlash' than they were about the thousands killed and injured.


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Interestingly, post-WW II, this negative attitude to the French persisted, even (or especially) among the military who had served overseas. The French allies were blamed for their incredibly-rapid capitulation to the German invasion, which stranded the English Army in Dunkirk; while the German enemy were (despite everything) grudgingly admired for their exceptional military discipline and courage.

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Of course the Anglo Saxon English were Germanic, while the Normans were (culturally) French - so maybe this 'us and them' distinction has persisted in an underground populist way for a thousand years since 1066?

From The JRR Tolkien Companion and Guide by C Scull & WG Hammond, page 251:

"Tolkien's antagonism to France, the French and the French language was due, in large part, to his regret that English culture was dislocated and nearly destroyed following the conquest of England by French-speaking Normans in 1066."

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Comment:

I feel pretty much the same about 1066 as does Tolkien - the worst of the axe blows at the spiritual roots of England.

Probably the second worst was the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry XIII - I didn't really appreciate the gravity of this until I reas EK Chambers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._K._Chambers) biography of Thomas More.

(And this was a book I read about in the above cited Tolkien Companion and Guide - Chambers was a friend of Tolkien's, and a fellow Roman Catholic).

The Cromwell revolution was another axe blow to England's spirit; and the 1914-18 and 1939-45 world wars were two more - mainly because of the huge kill-off and destruction of the cream of young men (especially in the 14-18 war).

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I watched the first episode of a recent BBC TV programme about the Normans, which programme was very well done, but which I found almost painful to contemplate.

My conclusion? The Normans'... (ahem)... efficiency, was certainly very impressive. They were great (and fortunate) conquerers and highly effective at ruling.

And on the aesthetic side, they built my favourite building in the world - Durham cathedral.

And yet, and yet...

Almost all bad things now are consequences of bad choices in the past.

On the other hand - we keep getting presented with choices.

It works like this: The bad choices of the past make it ever-harder to make good choices in the present - the immediate and predictable cost of making  good choices escalates (because of the cumulative bad choices of the past).

But we do still keep getting choices.

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9/11 was a moment when the West had a choice. There was a choice between continuing on the preceding path, the path determined by past choices, the path which led to 9/11. That was the easiest choice because there were the fewest immediate disadvantages.

And there was a choice to reverse the decisions of the past which had led to 9/11. But this choice would present immediate costs and problems.

Definite (albeit finite) short term costs could not be contemplated - even if they averted long term catastrophe.

(And anyway, they reason - the present is for sure, but the future is contingent. Maybe bad things won't happen, after all? Or maybe we can adjust to the badness? When all is said and done - what is 'good' and bad' anyway? - merely a state of mind...) 

We continued to march towards civilizational destruction.

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The Minority mortgage meltdown/ credit crunch was a moment when the West had a choice. There was a choice between making minimal immediate repairs then continuing on the path which led to the Crash; and a choice to accept moderate but significant short term costs in order to reverse the direction of travel. But short term costs are definite, and the future is not-wholly knowable. There was no hestitation - indeed, there seemed (to the rulers) to be no choice! So - we will re-inflate the housing bubble, if we can; increase international financial inter-dependancy, increase the size of institutions, increase political influence on the economy - and continue to march towards economic destruction.

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Such choices have been presenting themselves to the West for hundreds of years. In the past, sometimes the right choice was made, more usually the wrong choice.

However, each time a choice came around, the costs of making the right choice were greater, and our courage was less.

Sometimes, in the past, the right choice was made because these societies had the resources and capability to take a long-view. People had courage.

We still get presented with choices - nationally and individually. But now the West always seem to make the wrong choices, because we now lack the resources and capability to bear finite and short term costs in order to avert long term disaster.

We are all cowards now. Cowards cannot make a right choice; only the expedient choice.

From the Letter of JRR Tolkien, pages 332-3 (draft letter to Mrs Eileen Elgar, September 1963):

"...only Gandalf might be expected to master [Sauron] - being an emissary of the Powers and a creature of the same order, an immortal spirit taking a physical form. (...)

"If Gandalf proved the victor, the result would have been for Sauron the same as the destruction of the Ring; for him it would have been destroyed, taken from him for ever.

"But the Ring and all its works would have endured. It would have been the master in the end.

"Gandalf as Ring-Lord would have been far worse than Sauron. He would have remained 'righteous', but self-righteous. He would have continued to rule and order things for 'good', and the benefit of his subjects according to his wisdom (which was and would have remained great)."

[The draft ends here. In the margin Tolkien wrote: "Thus while Sauron multipied [illegible word] evil, he left 'good' clearly distinguishable from it. Gandalf would have made good detestable and seem evil."]

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Comment:

"Gandalf would have made good detestable and seem evil." This state of affairs has actually happened in this world, recently and still now, under totalitarian Communism. And we are seeing it becoming ever more the case, incrementally and quickly, throughout the West.