Bruce Charlton's Notions

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Aubade by Philip Larkin


I work all day, and get half drunk at night.

Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.

In time the curtain edges will grow light.

Till then I see what's really always there:

Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,

Making all thought impossible but how

And where and when I shall myself die.

Arid interrogation: yet the dread

Of dying, and being dead,

Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse

- The good not used, the love not given, time

Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because

An only life can take so long to climb

Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never:

But at the total emptiness forever,

The sure extinction that we travel to

And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,

Not to be anywhere,

And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.



This is a special way of being afraid

No trick dispels. Religion used to try,

That vast moth-eaten musical brocade

Created to pretend we never die,

And specious stuff that says no rational being

Can fear a thing it cannot feel, not seeing

that this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,

No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,

Nothing to love or link with,

The anaesthetic from which none come round.



And so it stays just on the edge of vision,

A small unfocused blur, a standing chill

That slows each impulse down to indecision

Most things may never happen: this one will,

And realisation of it rages out

In furnace fear when we are caught without

People or drink. Courage is no good:

It means not scaring others. Being brave

Lets no-one off the grave.

Death is no different whined at than withstood.



Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.

It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,

Have always known, know that we can't escape

Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.

Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring

In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring

Intricate rented world begins to rouse.

The sky is white as clay, with no sun.

Work has to be done.

Postmen like doctors go from house to house.


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Psalm 49



Hear this, all ye people; give ear, all ye inhabitants of the world:

Both low and high, rich and poor, together.

My mouth shall speak of wisdom; and the meditation of my heart shall be of understanding.

I will incline mine ear to a parable: I will open my dark saying upon the harp.



Wherefore should I fear in the days of evil, when the iniquity of my heels shall compass me about?

They that trust in their wealth, and boast themselves in the multitude of their riches;

None of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him:

(For the redemption of their soul is precious, and it ceaseth for ever:)

That he should still live for ever, and not see corruption.

For he seeth that wise men die, likewise the fool and the brutish person perish, and leave their wealth to others.

Their inward thought is, that their houses shall continue for ever, and their dwelling places to all generations; they call their lands after their own names.

Nevertheless man being in honour abideth not: he is like the beasts that perish.

This their way is their folly: yet their posterity approve their sayings. Selah.



Like sheep they are laid in the grave; death shall feed on them; and the upright shall have dominion over them in the morning; and their beauty shall consume in the grave from their dwelling.

But God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave: for he shall receive me. Selah.


Be not thou afraid when one is made rich, when the glory of his house is increased;

For when he dieth he shall carry nothing away: his glory shall not descend after him.

Though while he lived he blessed his soul: and men will praise thee, when thou doest well to thyself.

He shall go to the generation of his fathers; they shall never see light.

Man that is in honour, and understandeth not, is like the beasts that perish.

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Comment

Larkin's Aubade is perhaps the best English poem written over the past six decades? - well, for quite a long time. That is the opinion of many mainstream poetry critics, and it is my opinion also.

And yet, masterpiece though it surely is - when I (by chance) turned to look at Aubade after reading Psalm 49, I could not but notice the gruesome narrowing from a universal, metaphysical, prophetic perspective to Larkin's merely personal statement of nihilism.

For Larkin, death negates life, an irony that is absurd: death makes him, personally, terrified by its implications; but for the Psalmist death underpins life with a tragic ballast: death fills him with sorrow for the world.

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And in particular, I felt the contrast between Larkin's apparently modest, blunt, plain man's 'no nonsense' pragmatism - and the actual, underlying arrogance, glibness and superficiality of his casual discarding of the wisdom of the centuries - discarding the perspective of prophet and common man as regards death.

For Larkin death is nothing; for the Psalmist death has tremendous, overwhelming density.

Larkin's (famous ) dismissal of religion as "That vast moth-eaten musical brocade/ Created to pretend we never die" - is that really how the ancient metaphysics of the Psalmist struck him when he said? "Like sheep they are laid in the grave; death shall feed on them; and the upright shall have dominion over them in the morning; and their beauty shall consume in the grave from their dwelling."

And if it did, what does that tell us of Larkin as a representative modern man?

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The Psalmist's prophecy of Christian salvation comes only after his profoundly (in the sense of heavily, weightily) serious hymn of the existential nature of the human condition of a society for which death was the end of worldly human delusion ("They that trust in their wealth, and boast themselves in the multitude of their riches"), exchanging this for an eternal reality of Hades: "He shall go to the generation of his fathers; they shall never see light."

Larkin speaks - or reports - as an isolated, observing self.

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It is the characteristic modern stance of seeing through all that rubbish from past generations which struck me so forcibly about Aubade on this reading.

Larkin's arrogance is that of the isolated self whose pride at its own autonomy is based on an habitual sneering sense of its own superiority; when the self dislikes what it has made of life, then it takes pride in telling itself how bravely it is taking the nasty medicine of life.

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Just how, exactly, did Larkin see though the perspective of the Psalmist and - suddenly, for the first time in history - recognize all-that-stuff as obviously absurd?

So obviously absurd as to require no more justification than mere statement: what amounts to pointing and smirking.

And why is this supposed to be an advance in understanding?

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Of course, Larkin stands for us all, he is a modern Everyman; his poem is great because it depicts with searing honesty our own habitual default state.

Yet, Larkin's poetic depiction is easy to mistake for searing honesty about metaphysical reality (that is a consequence of its poetry, the sense of a general validity).

But it is not honesty about general reality, Larkin's poem is searing honesty about personal sin; a very common but distinctively modern state of sin.

Larkin's inferiority to the Psalmist derives from the fact that he had no framework from which he could perceive this depicted terror of death as a consequence of sin: the master sin of arrogant, self-sufficient pride.

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Larkin, as a representative modern, felt the consequence of sinful pride, but could not perceive the cause: his only constructive suggestion was characteristically modern: to attempt a life of continual distraction, not to think about it: people or drink.

Larkin envied those he believed to attain this state naturally: those too dumb or unreflective to perceive the human condition, those for whom life came and went without recognition of what was happening.

Larkin envied people like that! The Psalmist pitied them.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYnrmmyoW1Y&feature=related

This takes place shortly before Harry and Dumbledore return to Hogwarts from seeking the Horcrux in a sea cave - it is the prelude to the invasion by Death Eaters.

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To me this is (by a margin) the best scene in any of the Harry Potter movies (so far); in particular for the marvellously powerful yet understated acting of Alan Rickman as Snape. If you know the back-story you will recognize that this is first-rate stuff.

Yet it ended on the cutting room floor; only being released as a cut-scene 'extra' in the 2 volume DVD.

Why?

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I sometimes wonder about the competence of movie editors.

Particularly as the HBP movie was padded-out with dull 'action' sequences; and inexplicably, amazingly, failed to include the vital piece of information as to why Snape had called himself The Half Blood Prince - thereby failing to explain the movie's title.

Ho hum... 

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In a sense, the core value of political correctness is fashion.

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Fashion is not coercive, but everybody follows it (or, at least, everybody who 'matters').

So fashion is 'harmonious' - we all cooperate to make fashion, and we do so as a result of - well - propaganda I suppose. It is discourse (mostly the mass media) which informs and persuades people to follow fashion.

People follow fashion (merely) to belong; but to follow fashion is to belong; and the only (non-ceorcive) sanction is that if you do not follow fashion then you do not belong.

It all seems very mild; but it turns-out that this combination of reward and sanction is sufficient under modern conditions to ensure the domination and perpetuation of fashion everywhere and in everything.

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So fashion is social harmonious, implemented non-coercively via discourse - and of course fashion provides novelty.

So, unlike traditional societies in which social harmony is static, often coercive and aspires to be eternal; and therefore has a tendency to be boring - fashion is dynamic and interesting because new and unfamiliar.

When we begin to get sick of fashion, and the novelty starts wearing off, fashion can either become more extreme in the same direction, or else a completely new fashion may be invented, or else a more-or-less-forgotten old fashion can be revived but with some twist, or several old fashions can be recombined.

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Isn't fashion, therefore, an almost-exact analogy for the world to which PC aspires?

A world where everybody believes and wants the same thing - and so is harmonious and free from conflict and dangers; but also a world where the 'same thing' is continually changing (and progressing); and finally a world where all this is achieved (potentially) non-coercively by monopolistic control of discourse, of human communications.

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Of course the world of fashion (and of PC) has nothing to do with real reality, but only to do with reality as perceived in human discourse - but this virtual world does go a surprisingly-long-way to seeming like real reality.

And of course discourse is only about humans, so it can only control human-caused harms and not 'natural' dangers - but it turns out that human perceptions of harms overlie and obscure reality to a surprisingly powerful extent.

So that discourse can frame and shape our perception of reality (because discourse fills the mind hourly, and what it fills the mind with is continually changing) - so reality seems plastic, and seems under human control.

So monopolistic control of discourse feels like it can almost control everything.

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The only threats come when the would-be-monopolistic harmonious-yet-changing, mind-filling discourse is threatened with disharmony or when progress is threatened with statis or reversal.

This is why PC is so vicious towards dissent in discourse. Reality threats (starvation, disease, war etc) can be reframed with more layers of discourse.

Reality can 'do what it likes' without threatening PC, so long as discourse remains harmonious and changing - so long as 'fashion' is under control.

After all PC is about perceived reality, not underlying reality (which may or may not exist - PC is indifferent on this question of underlying reality).

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But non-PC discourse is the real danger - because it threatens the seamless and harmonious integrity of perceived-reality itself.

Indeed, non-PC discourse - anything inharmonious with fashionable perceptions - is infinitely-threatening to virtual reality (after all, just one single loose thread might eventually unravel the whole carpet), non-PC discourse is the ultimate threat; and therefore political correctness is utterly ruthless in crushing and deleting non-PC discourse.

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In desperate times, where moral inversion dominates discourse; could it be time to try and lead lives in which transcendental priorities are inverted?

Not, of course, to stop fighting the transcendental inversions (evil is good; lies are truth; ugliness is beauty); but to fight them on a different front, where they are less defended.

Not to fight with laws and rules, but with mysticism and authority?

Not to fight claims of status and power with an attempt at the same; but to fight them with failure...

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A particular horror of modernity is the legalism, its procedural quality - a pseudo-rational process of strict definition and algorithmic calculation...

Or, more precisely, its literalism.

How to combat literalism? Well, not (I would say) by an opposing literalism.

And not either by a 'post-modern' denial of reality - obviously not by that!

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This could, perhaps, be fought indirectly, by refusing to enter that arena; by a focus on the mystical aspects.

Not to fight democratic politics (politics without authority - with merely the fake-authority of votes and survey) with ideas of divinely-sanctioned politics, nor pseudo-logic with real logic, nor legalism with laws... that doesn't seem to work.

Indeed I wonder if these weapons have not been turned against us?

But to fight the actually corrupt processes with the non-rational (not irrational) certainties of mysticism - and not our own mysticism, but on authority of real mystics, those much further advanced on the path.

It would perhaps be the best possible approach, in such an era - to be an unsuccessful mystic

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What would it be to give the highest status to mysticism, to try to practice mysticism oneself - but to fail abjectly (of course! how could one succeed under modern conditions?).

(And, anyway, if one did succeed in walking the mystical path - how inevitably it would lead downhill: into the cut-off, self-perpetuating state of spiritual pride)

...to be a fully-acknowledged failed mystic; but not to give-up - to continue being just that!

A failed mystic as a way of life!

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One great advantage is the humour of the situation!

(Mysticism nowadays maybe needs humour, for most of us at least.)

Another could be its subversive effect - it eludes the worldliness and status seeking of modernity.

(To adapt Peter Sloterdijk's terminology) It is a Kynical stance, but not cynical - it fully honours the transcendent: more than that - it bases action on the transcendent.

Subversive of subversion.

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And w.r.t. to the transcendental Goods - how if we put virtue, morality, ethics (especially social ethics) as the lowest of them?

Not of course to deny or disregard the necessity of virtue, but simply to place it lower in current priorities than beauty, and lower also than truth.

Because on the one hand, virtue is corrupted by legalism - and seems always to descend to atomistic discussions of what makes people happy or suffer - while on the other hand, beauty is surely the most disregarded of transcendental Goods in modernity.

For modernity, virtue/ morality/ ethics is the bottom-line, be-all and end-all of the human condition (or rather, the project of subversion of traditional concepts of virtue is this, anyway).

Currently and for a couple of hundred years, beauty is the Good which (deep down, or not very deep down) we believe is not really as important as virtue or truth, beuaty is (to moderns) really just a matter of opinion (or fashion, or money) - because it has no acknowledged laws.

The problem is that beauty fails to be literalizable.

Let us acknowledge this failure, with no quibbling, no excuses.

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(Even when 'modern art' is accorded awards and prizes and government funding, and its practitioners are given status, money and honours - still the public refuse to recognize modern art as... beautiful! So it has given up even pretending to be beautiful. Beauty is apparently not assimilable by bureaucracy.)

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So not literalism, not a virtue focus - but of course strength is necessary. (Especially if we are operating apparently 'alone' in this world - albeit in a great company at the real transcendendal level).

We must be able to draw lines and to refuse to join and cooperate in the social project of soul-destruction (whether or not this involves actually 'saying no')

We must be able to say a firm yes to the Church - but not the corrupt actual Church (although we should be careful not to oppose or damage it) but yes to the mystically pure Church.

A mystical yes to the mystical Church - and not to defend this with logic or literalism.

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To refute wickedness and lies of course - but not with literalism and logic, instead with mystical beauty.

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To refute democracy (managed mob rule by voting); but not with some alternative system but instead with the mystery of authority.

To defend our submission to authority, but not with logic and literalism (not with facts about the deservedness of our authority: that to which we cleave) - but with statements of the mystical authority of authority.

Not to defend authority on the basis of its incorruptibility (especially not to devise systems that are supposed to prevent corruption) but on a mystical basis of providence.

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Unsuccessful mystics, focused on beauty, authority and transcendental values...

Hmmm...

Would it work?

What do we mean by 'work'?

Do we means would it work at a socio-political level validated by literalism and logic? Of course not.

But would it work at the level of the individual?

Maybe it could.

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Maybe, at least for a while, it would wrong-foot our enemies, and allow us a breathing space

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It is often claimed that if we enforce some policy or allow some behavior; then it will not stop there but further policies and behaviours in that direction will be enforced or allowed until some undesirable end point is reached.

i.e. Once we step onto a slippery slope, we will slide to the bottom.

When does this apply, and when does it not?

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It does not apply when there is a qualitative distinction which prevents further sliding.

Nepotism, or favouring family over strangers, is not the first step on a slippery slope to favouring everybody exept oneself - nepotism gets weaker (and other incentives get stronger) with reducing degrees of relatedness.

(Favouring strangers over family is a slippery slope.)

Eating animals for food is not a slippery slope on the path to eating people for food.

(Moral vegetarianism is a slippery slope.)

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But there are real slippery slopes, and these occur when there is a violation of a qualitative distinction; because once the qualitative distinction is violated then there are only gradual, incremental, quantitative non-distinctions preventing descent of the slippery slope.

There are many examples from the past decades and few centuries in relation to leftism/ progressive/ Liberal politics.

When a qualitative distinction between men and women is denied, then there is a slippery slope. 

When the qualitative superiority and sanctity of heterosexual sex and marriage is denied, there is a slippery slope.

And so on.

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The point is that it is relatively predictable; we pretty much know in advance when one is stepping onto a slippery slope, and when one is not.

When one is violating a natural taboo, or a religious taboo; or violating natural law or revelation, then a slippery slope has been stepped onto.

No matter how small the step - once onto the slope, the slide downward will begin (slowed only by the inertia of persons and society).

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My understanding is that natural law/ spontaneous human morality apparently accepts the action of 'letting die', under certain circumstances; and the qualitative distinction between letting die and actively killing.

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From my reading of the anthropology of hunter gatherer tribes, it seems very likely that passive infanticide of newborns by a mother abandoning her baby, and also abandonment of chronically incapable elderly relatives, are regarded as morally acceptable actions under some circumstances

(although certainly very regrettable and an occasion of grief and mourning which may be intense and prolonged).

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Indeed, as convincingly argued by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy in Mother Nature; infanticide by neglect or abandonment is probably the fall-back method by which humans (as a species) control the number of offspring (when the normal method of spacing-out offspring by the contraceptive effect of lactation has failed).

(Other mammals fail to conceive under stress, reabsorb the fetus while it is still in the womb and have other methods of controlling the spacing of offspring according to circumstances.)

The abandonment (leaving-behind) of chronically-incapable elderly relatives seems to be the norm among hunter gatherers and nomadic herders.

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It also seems that these actions of passive abandoning and letting die do not elicit a spontaneous and almost-universal abhorrence among mankind in general - in the way that active killing of newborn infants or incapable elderly would elicit a spontaneous and almost-universal abhorrence.

(Which is not to say that this abhorrence cannot be overcome - it can be overcome. Humans can, under certain circumstances, actively kill infants and elderly relatives and can regard this as morally justified. Nonetheless, there is a spontaneous abhorrence of these actions.)

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In practice, the abandonment of infants and elders means (so far as we can tell) all-but-certain death; and quite likely the horrible death of being eaten, perhaps while still alive, by predators or scavengers.

(But this fate would not be known for sure; and there may well be a hope of some fortuitous rescue or supernatural intervention, and the hope that this had in fact happened.)

This suggests that - for our ancestors, and probably spontaneously for all humans - the 'mercy killing' of infants and elderly relatives was probably perceived as being morally worse than allowing horrific suffering.

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Note that I am stating this as a factual observation, and not in terms of the 'naturalistic fallacy' of 'what is, is right'.

But I think these facts need to form the basis of honest moral discussion.

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I regard it as simply false to assume that abandoning and letting die of of the newborn and incapable elderly is something that humans, qua humans, find morally abhorrent.

And the prohibition of these acts of letting die or passive killing is more or less specific to Christianity. It was, indeed, one of the distinguishing marks that set apart the early Christians from those who surrounded them.

If, then, it is to be argued (perhaps, although not necessarily, by Christians) that humans ought not to commit passive infanticide or 'euthanasia' of the elderly by stopping active interventions etc; then the argument cannot (in my opinion) be based on natural morality, nor can it depend on a spontaneous abhorrence of humans qua humans for these actions.

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It is also false to argue that letting die amounts to the same thing (morally speaking) as active killing; since spontaneous human morality recognizes a qualitative difference between these actions.

To abandon someone to almost-certain death is not the same as murdering them - according to natural law.

Spontaneous human morality says that neglect of a person even unto their death is not the same as purposive destruction of life.

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Humans are not 'naturally' inclined to regard the prevention of suffering of loved ones as a higher moral imperative than the avoidance of oneself killing loved ones.

(An exception occurs during mental illness - specifically melancholia, when it is fairly common for a profoundly depressed parent to kill their family, then kill themselves, in order to protect the family from what is perceived as an unendurably miserable world.)  

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If, then, an argument is to be mounted that (probably-) fatal abandonment of infants and incapable elderly relatives is morally wrong, then the reasons for this prohibition must properly be based upon Christian revelation; and not on natural law.

Following from this, there is no coherent, truthful and rational argument by which non-Christians can prohibit the passive letting die of (for example) infants and elderly relatives.

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(Non-Christians might, nonetheless, wish to prohibit these actions; what I am saying is that non-Christians would have no coherent, truthful and rational arguments by which to justify such prohibitions.)

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Since we are creatures of this world, we are motivated by a desire to attain pleasure and to relieve suffering; yet since we are transcendentally-orientated creatures this desire cannot be primary.

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So long as we perceive suffering in the world - even if that suffering is just insufficient pleasure or mere boredom - then we will be motivated to end it.

Indeed, we are motivated to end suffering everywhere and for everyone for all time - simply as a matter of security.

(Because so long as suffering happens, it could happen to us - and if there is no more suffering, then we need not fear it.)

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But suppose that there was no such motivation to end suffering - either because all suffering has been ended, or because all suffering as been ended so far as we know.

What then?

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Do we imagine that when all suffering has been ended then we can shift our aspiration to higher things?

Do we really think that is what would happen?

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Is this, in fact, what we observe?

Are the societies that suffer least, those which aspire highest?

Are those individuals who are most free from suffering, also those individuals who have their sights set on the highest ideals?

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 Do we, in a word, conceive high ideals as luxury goods?

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(And what is our society's idea of higher things, anyway? Well, obviously we don't mean religious ideals, because as a society we don't believe in God, nor even the immortal soul. And spirituality without religion is just psychotherapy - so just another way of seeking pleasure; not higher at all. Like the lifestyle arts - restaurants, clothes, holidays... merely fashions, therefore the opposite of 'high'. Ummm - The Arts?  Shakespeare, Beethoven, Rembrandt - that kind of thing... oh, I forgot, we are beyond all that now; shock, disgust, subversion - that's what we like, isn't it. Not exactly 'high'. Philosophy and Science?... well, this is just getting embarrassing, we've just got rid of these and replaced geniuses with committees of sensible bureaucrats. How about having unrestrained and passionate political discussions in bars and cafes, is that it? Exploring new forms of sexuality and morality - are these the higher things? Somehow it doesn't seem right... Simmering self-loathing and slow cultural suicide? -Now you're talking! Those are the sort of high ideals that we love.)

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Or could it be that high ideals are, in some way or another, a product of suffering - or, if not exactly suffering, of a state of discontent?

Um - yes, that is right.

Isn't it?

It is our suffering that prompts us to look beyond the mundane.

(Prompts us - but does not force us.)

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Is suffering then good?

Obviously not.

As worldly creatures we are, and must be, motivated to escape suffering in some sense.

But suffering is - if not good - surely necessary in this world.

And - surely - a primary devotion to the elimination of suffering (i.e. the new religion, the new 'Christianity' indeed) is therefore not merely utopian or futile - but is actually evil.

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Repeat: although suffering is obviously not good; a primary devotion to the elimination of suffering is actually evil.

Because suffering is a prompt to look higher, to look beyond.

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I am saying that it is - not that it ought to be: suffering just is that which prompts us to transcendence; suffering that ultimately derives from the perceived insufficiency of the world.

We just are creatures who perceive the world as insufficient.

And the only way we can get rid of this perception is to kill it.

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We cannot make the world sufficient, we can only kill the perception that the world is insufficient.

But we can do that: for most of the people, for most of the time.

And that is, of course, precisely what we are doing.

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Indeed, although we are, and must be, and should not try not to be, creatures of this world; a primary devotion directed at anything of this world (including the elimination of suffering) is evil.

Our primary devotion must be The Good - the transcendental Good, a something not of this world.

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Or else we (and everyone else) might as well be dead, or never live in the first place, as the surest means of avoiding suffering...

... just as we 'put down' a suffering animal; whom we suppose not to have a soul, and whose role is to serve humans and/ or be happy - and if the animal can no longer serve humans nor be happy and is suffering, then it might as well be dead

- so we kill it.

And anything else we suppose not to have a soul - from humane motives - to eliminate suffering.

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Here is the hard bit.

The real sin here is not in the killing, whatever its scale, but in the reason for killing.

A soul-less society of soul-less individuals (that's how we perceive ourselves), killing soul-less entities as and when... necessary; because it is rational to kill soul-less entities when they suffer, or will suffer, or may cause suffering...

Note the paradox.

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I observed some of you. But do you know what you are doing? I observe a benevolent feeling here. There is also a tenderness. At the bedside of some children this morning I observed you shed tears.

"Do you know where tenderness leads? Tenderness leads to the gas chambers.”

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“These are strange times. There are now two kinds of people. This has never happened before. One are decent, tenderhearted, unbelieving, philanthropic people. The other are some preachers who tell the truth about the Lord but are themselves often rascals if not thieves.

"What a generation! Believing thieves and decent unbelievers! The Great Depriver’s finest hour! Not a guilty face here! Everyone here is creaming in his drawers from tenderness! But beware, tender hearts!

"Don’t you know where tenderness leads? To the gas chambers.”

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"Never in the history of the world have there been so many civilized tenderhearted souls as have lived in this century.

"Never in the history of the world have so many people been killed.

" More people have been killed in this [twentieth] century by tenderhearted souls than by cruel barbarians in all other centuries put together."


The Thanatos Syndrome, by Walker Percy, 1987

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Things begin in one specific place at one specific time - and spread-out from there - things don't happen simultaneously in many places all at once.

(If they seem to, then this is because all these things have a common cause: a cause in one particular place and time).

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When 'it' happens, whatever 'it' is - when things turn, or we cross a threshold - it won't be reported in the mass media.

Indeed (if the past is any guide to the future) we probably won't even know about it, until much later (if at all).

And we may not 'know'.

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(The birth of Jesus was not exactly front page news across the Roman Empire).

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Indeed, 'it' may already have happened - whatever it is.

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But the first to know will probably be those who are least orientated to the mass media, or official communications.

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Without suffering and with nothing but pleasure; when each person was (somehow) independent and able to extinguish immediately all incipient bad feelings and replace them with happy feelings.

A world where we personally would be distracted from pain and gratified to the limit of our comprehension 24/7 - either in reality or in virtual reality - it does not matter since we would not know the difference.

A world where we would be so gratified that we would cease to worry about, cease even to know, what other human beings might be doing - or even whether there were any other human beings, really.

We would each be truly independent and autonomous - freed from care.

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Whether we lived forever in this state of euphoria, or whether we lived a few moments and died and were utterly extinguished, would not make any difference at all - since there would be no dread of extinction - it would not interfere with our state of gratification.

Indeed, it would not matter whether we were born or came into existence, really.

We could be asleep all the time, or we might never have lived in the first place.

Because if we were not born we would not know what we had missed.

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There would be no motivation to change, there would be no motivation.

As long as there is something - even if just boredom - then there is motivation to escape it. So there would be no boredom. There would be no discontent.

We would not want anything - any glimmer of discontent would be eased and displaced.

No yearning. All yearning soothed-away, tranquillized.

We would not want to escape, there would be nothing we could imagine that we could escape to: in fact, we could not even formulate the idea of escape.

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Does this prospect strike you as paradise on earth, or are you made uneasy - perhaps even repelled?

Is this heaven or hell?

(Some would say that this is literally hell - if you want it, you will get it.)

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The only reason for being uneasy or repelled by this vision (as surely you, like me, must be?) is if you believe in the soul - and believe in transcendent reality - a reality which is the true human destiny.

If you are uneasy or appalled by this imagination then you are rejecting humanism (atheism, agnosticism) you are rejecting the ideals of secular politics (whether left or right) - you have a yearning for transcendence - for something not of this world.

Is this yearning a delusion, or is it significant?

*

*

Smoking cigarettes very probably causes lung cancer (although I am not so sure about arterial and heart disease - the effect size is so small that it could easily be due to incomplete control of confounders), shortens life expectancy, and I personally find it aesthetically unpleasant - and I have never smoked regularly.

The supposed dangers of passive smoking are almost entirely invented (dishonestly and/ or incompetently) - other-peoples' smoke is very unpleasant, but the only real health danger of other-peoples' smoke is the acute one of people who have for example asthma which is triggered by smoke.

But maybe smoking - specifically nicotine - has psychological benefits for some people - maybe it boosts creative accomplishment?

*

Take a look at this video about the design team who built the Mosquito - probably the best aircraft of the 1939-45 World War

http://www.veoh.com/browse/videos/category/educational/watch/v1406840b8zsDG5Y

In every shot there is one or more of these conservatively-dressed design-genius chaps smoking-away like mad, on pipes and cigarettes.

Many of the most creative intellectuals were not just smokers, but heavy smokers - CS Lewis and the Inklings spring to mind, Crick and Watson's RNA Tie Club, Einstein and his pipe, and of course Gandalf and Saruman.

If we were to compare a collection of creative intellectuals 70 years ago and now the main difference would probably be that around 1941 they would have been surrounded by a dense cloud of tobacco smoke.

*

Smoking (especially cigarettes, because they deliver nicotine so rapidly) is of course addictive; but was smoking among intellectuals entirely a matter of addiction?

Unlikely, because nicotine is an indirect psychostimulant which probably has significant effects on boosting drive and energy and perhaps clarity of thinking - via both direct cholinergic (nicotinic) and indirect dopaminergic routes.

There is strong evidence that nictotine both prevents and treats Parkinson's disease, and perhaps also Alzheimer's disease.

http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.com/2008/11/sub-types-of-depression-and-self.html

Indeed, the mind sharpening effect of nicotine is very obvious, and is similar to but different from that of caffeine.

*

Could it be that the decline of smoking among creative intellectuals may have contributed to the decline of genius?

Could it be that we have sacrificed a human accomplishment for a longer life span?

Maybe.

If so, it is probably now possible to get the benefits of smoking - i.e. the nicotine - without the carcinogenic harm - i.e. the smoke.

***


NOTE: Thanks to WmJas, who has found some data on smoking and creative writers posted at:

http://wmjas.wordpress.com/2011/03/12/smoking-and-creativity-a-few-data-points/

*

*

The fact that all large modern institutions are thoroughly corrupted by political correctness and secularism (including all major churches) implies that pursuit of The Good is now restricted only to individuals (or small - probably informal - groups) - which in turn leads to a consideration of how individuals can - potentially - 'make a difference'.

*

1. There is a 'fake' way in which individuals can be argued to make a difference, and that when an individual is arbitrarily taken-up by a large and powerful interest group and used as a propaganda weapon.

This applies especially to designated victims (real, or contrived - it does not matter much) - of whom Rosa Parks is perhaps the best known example in the USA; although there have been many others throughout the West.

Clearly an individual becoming a tool of establishment power is not really what is meant by an individual 'making a difference'.

*

2. Individuals who truly make a difference do so by their example, which changes the lives of many other individuals.

Examples might include the Holy hermits of 'the desert' such as St Anthony of Egypt, St Cuthbert of Lindisfarne or St Seraphim of Sarov - people who sought and attained ascetic isolation for many years during which they developed their spirituality to an extremely high level, before returning to the world to teach and inspire.

While of course these figures can be (and are) later used for propaganda purposes (with all the selection and distortion this entails) - they are primarily examples, and individuals who were originally sought-out (rather than promoted) by people recognizing their special intrinsic qualities and responding to word-of-mouth outside of 'official channels'.

Other examples can be found in less perfectly-achieved  forms, and also among types of non-religious 'creative genius' - albeit many/ most creative geniuses in the arts and sciences were bad examples in many/ most ways other-than their specific creative gifts.

*

So, yes indeed, individuals can 'make a difference' - and the real examples of individuals making a difference are usually quite easy to distinguish from the fake - at least in the early stages of their making a difference.

*

Of course, there are also individuals who make a difference-for-the-worse - and there are plenty of these, and some have made a truly enormous difference for the worse: quantitatively far-outstripping and of the measurable effects of Saints, and operating with extraordinary rapidity.

But while building is slow and incremental, destruction is swift and facile - evil geniuses are pushing at an open door.

One sure way to discern the difference between real/ good and fake/ evil individuals-of-influence, is that the real and good individuals who make a difference only do so after many years of disciplined struggle. This is necessary - albeit not sufficient.

*

As a rule; any individual who makes a large and rapid difference without prior years of struggle is either a fake tool-of-propaganda or else 'demonically-inspired'.


*

*

From Walker Percy: Lost in the Cosmos, 1983.

*

"In the age of science, scientists are the princes of the age. Artists are not. So that even though both scientists and artists achieve transcendence over the ordinary world in their science and art, only the scientists is sustained in his transcendence by the exaltation of the triumphant spirit of science and by the community of scientists.

"It is perhaps no accident that at the high tide of physics in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the great revolutionary physicists — Faraday, Maxwell, Bohr, Einstein – were also men of remarkable integrity and exultant wholeness of character, of generosity and benignity. Compare the lives and characters of the comparably great in literature at the same time: Dostoevsky, Baudelaire, Kafka, Joyce, Lawrence, Hemingway.

"With the disappearance of the old cosmological myths and the decline of Judeo-Christianity and the rise of the autonomous self, one the study of secondary causes, the other the ornamental handmaiden of rites and religion, were seized upon and elevated to royal highroads of transcendence in their own right. Such transcendence was available not only to the scientists and artists themselves but a community of fellow scientists and students, and to the readers and listeners and viewers to whom the ‘statements’ of art, music, and literature were addressed.

"But what is not generally recognized is that the successful launch of self into the orbit of transcendence is necessarily attended by the problems of reentry. What goes up must come down. The best film of the year ends at nine o’clock. What do you do at ten? What did Faulkner do after writing the last sentence of Light in August? Get drunk for a week. What did Dostoevsky do after finishing The Idiot? Spend three days and nights at the roulette table.

"The only exception to this psychic law of gravity seems to be not merely the great physicists at the high tide of modern physics but any scientists absorbed in his science when the exaltation of science sustains one in a more or less permanent orbit of transcendence – or perhaps the rare Schubert who even during meals wrote lieder on the tablecloth …

"But the most spectacular problems of reentry seem to be experienced by writers and artists. They, especially the later, seem subject more than most people to estrangement from the society around them, to neurosis, psychosis, alcoholism, drug addiction, epilepsy, florid sexual behavior, solitariness, depression, violence, and suicide."

***

Walker Percy's Lost in the Cosmos is a very deft and thought-provoking piece of philosophy in the jokey guise of a self-help book. I bought it after reading a recommendation from the superb Roman Catholic apologist Peter Kreeft.

The above passage made a big impression on me, because throughout most of my adult life the 're-entry problem' was perhaps my greatest concern.

Like Einstein, 'I went into science to escape the intolerable dreariness of everyday life' - and the same applied to English literature.

And indeed I went into science and literature just early enough to catch the tail-end of their transcendence (at the same time as Walker Percy was writing this book) - an era now utterly gone.

*

In science, what I craved was precisely that complete world of transcendence achieved by the physicists at the 'high tide' of their subject, or by biologists a little later - I hoped that I could live 'in' science pretty much all the time (at least as a seamless, continuous background to life).

I achieved this state only briefly, from late 1994 up to around 2000, when I pretty much lived and breathed evolutionary theory - but only by cutting myself off from the mainstream; and at the cost of developing a carapace of indestructible pride which would - I felt sure - be validated and rewarded (some time soon, and in unforeseen ways) by worldly status, success and security.

*

I had earlier achieved a similar but briefer state when I was studying English literature (and philosophy, informally) full time 1987-8 - in other words I lived 'in' literature as scholar, critic, essayist and (sort-of) poet (cringe...).

For a while, sleeping and waking life seemed to be conducted within this transcendental bubble of literature.

*

But such states can only be sustained against the ennui of habituation by increasing doses of pride and neophilia - both of which are ultimately destructive of transcendence.

The re-entry problem always gets you.  Percy lists (and explains) the attempted solutions:

(1) reentry uneventful and intact, [not to feel any contrast between the transcendent and the everyday]

(2) reentry accomplished through anesthesia, [chemical assault on the conscious brain - by drugs or alcohol]

(3) reentry accomplished by travel (geographical), [keep moving - keep exposing oneself to the shock of the new]

(4) reentry accomplished by travel (sexual), [drown oneself in sexual pursuit and gratification]

(5) reentry by return, [give up transcendence and return to roots]

(6) reentry by disguise, [keep up an act of worldly satisfaction until it becomes habitual]

(7) reentry by Eastern window, [dissolve the self in Zen indifference]

(8) reentry refused, exitus into deep space (suicide),

(9) reentry deferred, [solitude, utterly cut-off from the mundane]

(10) reentry by sponsorship, [sponsorship from God, transparency before God: the religious solution - a seamless integration of work and spirituality]

(11) reentry by assault. [political confrontation with the mundane - the life of an uncompromizing and persecuted dissident]

But of course none of them really work except (10) because the problem is insoluble in this world - and the sponsorship by God is extraordinarily difficult for the isolated, nihilistic modern intellectual.

*

This-worldly transcendence of the kind I sought in science and literature (and which Einstein achieved, pretty much) was only available to an elite few, and as a temporary phase in the breakdown of Western society - a breakdown from transcendence as other worldly to the current situation where all forms of transcendence as seen as delusional - and the only 'solution' to the reentry problem is regard it as an artifact of an obsolete world view.

Modern scientists and literary scholars have no re-entry problem, because they are only and wholly engaged in the 'intolerable dreariness of everyday life' - from which they distract themselves whenever possible.

*

Or, more accurately, modern scientists and literary scholars have nothing but a reentry problem, since they do know what it is to transcend the everyday and mundane.

(And if they do know from experience, then they regard that experience as a delusion to be explained-away; not as a really real state.) 

And the failed solutions of the re-entry problem are, merely, the standard strategies of modern life.

*

*

In the lives of most Christians past and present, The Church is grossly deficient, and we must make do with the best that can be managed: which may not be very much.

Some denominations are much better than others at insisting-upon - sometimes eliciting - specific approved behaviours from adherents.

This might happen for many reasons: one common way of getting adherents to behave well is by being selective (excluding non-virtuous people, or only attracting the well-behaved to join), another is by having strict and explicit laws backed up by punishments (sometimes draconian) for transgression. Strictly, therefore, the behavior of adherents may have nothing to do with the specifically religious aspects.

*

However, the ideal of The Church varies between denominations, and I think these ideals can be compared and evaluated.

It is instructive to imagine how the world would ideally be organized (ideally according to specific aspiration) if a denomination or religion had its way.


*

In the Catholic Christian denominations, the ideal is sometimes termed The City of God -  a situation actualized in Heaven - but seen only incompletely and in corrupted form here on earth.

There are two main concepts of the City of God - Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox.

*

The RC concept of the City of God comes from Augustine of Hippo (St Augustine to the RC Church), and it refers to the ideal Church.

It is the Church - ruled by the Pope (Vicar of Christ) - which is seen as the earthly representation of the Heavenly order.

The secular world of 'politics', ruled by the monarch or by some other form of government such as democracy - is excluded from the City of God.

The Western Catholic tradition is therefore dualistic: Church and State, spiritual and secular - Pope and Monarch

*

The Orthodox concept of the City of God comes from Eusebius (early church historian and biographer of Constantine), and refers to the city of Constantinople.

It is the City - ruled by the Emperor (Christ's Vicegerent on earth) - which is seen as the earthly representative of the Heavenly order.

The Eastern Catholic tradition is therefore monistic: a single hierarchy with the divinely ordained monarch at its head and incorporating the Church and State, spiritual and secular interwoven within it.

*

I regard the Orthodox ideal vision as superior, since it includes the whole of human society in microcosm; whereas the Roman Catholic City of God explicitly excludes the secular world, and introduces a division into all human affairs.

This dualism, I believe, is the ultimate case of the thin-ness, the two-dimensionality which I feel in relation to the Roman Catholic church - even in my most idealistic imaginations of how it might be. I feel this even in its most passionate and eloquent advocates (even in such 'rounded' and earthy advocates as Chesterton and Belloc; even in such earthy places as Spain and Italy).

There is, for me, a dry-ness about the RC priesthood which I cannot prevent myself from noticing - this even comes through in the Gregorian chanting. It may be, often is, sublime - but always, for me, incomplete - even in its aspiration it excludes so much of human society.

Of course the dualism brings advantages: in practice the Western Church is less corruptible by politics, because more independent of it.

Furthermore, the Western Catholic tradition has a higher level of achievement (and a higher level of potential achievement) in the relatively-autonomous intellectual sphere of universities, systematic theology, philosophy and leading on to science.

Nonetheless, this achievement comes at the price of a fundamental societal disunity which - once introduced, has tended to increase and evolve until we get the micro-specialization of modernity and - indeed - the secularization of society, including the Church itself.

*

By contrast, when I read accounts of Byzantium I feel a straining towards an idea of organic completeness - or rather of Heavenly completeness.

I feel that the City of Constantinople in its ideality (an ideal which was indeed passionately and devoutly believed by its inhabitants for hundreds of years) was indeed a representation (incomplete and corrupt, inevitably) of Heaven on earth in a way that is beyond the scope of the Western Church - because not (in a sense) desired by the Western Church.

I even feel that this difference can be felt between otherwise very similar countries such as Western Spain and Eastern Greece - this is a question of impressions, not facts. For me the Greek Church feels a part of the social whole in a way that the Roman Catholic Church does not, and probably could not be, in Spain.

I feel it also in the contrast between Orthodox chanting and Gregorian chanting - the (various types of ) Orthodox chant have a much greater appeal to me, a more complete and rounded spirituality which does not separate the spiritual and secular. A glimpse of Heaven as a City, not as a Church... 

*

(All this is a nebulous impression which I could not back-up with data, nor would I want to - nonetheless I think it is true. At any rate, it is something I cannot help but perceive.)

*

*

If, as I have said, intellectuals are to blame for the current malaise

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/03/jim-kalb-mini-discussion-about.html

...then what should intellectuals do about it all?

What, in particular, am I - an intellectual - doing writing this blog to be read by other intellectuals?

What, then, do expect myself and others actually to do!

*

1. To understand. Which entails being honest - the iron law of truth-speaking and truth-seeking. If you can't then shut-up and say nothing; never defend or rationalize dishonesty. Equally - discern beauty and virtue as best you can and seek them - don't excuse ugliness or moral inversion.

2. To refrain, if possible - by-hook-or-by-crook - from making things worse.

3. Not to attack or undermine nascent possibilities of improvement arising from non-intellectuals (on what are likely to be speciously pseudo-intellectual grounds or from intellectual special-interests or - especially - from intellectual snobbery).

4. To seek to become devoutly Christian, as best you can (as best I can). If nothing else, to pray.

5. That's about it...

*

*

*

The characteristically modern malaise is alienation - detachment from the world, lack of a sense of involvement with life, a sense of unreality.

This has replaced the conviction of sin which dominated though most of recorded human history, and still dominates most of the world.

Modernity has escaped from guilt into meaninglessness.

*

To escape from alienation is difficult, since it is not a misunderstanding of the modern world, but on the contrary a realization of the actuality of the modern perspective, following it through to its correct implications.

So alienation is commonest among the most thoughtful, most reflective people - not so much among the ignorant or instinctive.

Alienation is therefore an aspect or attribute of the nihilism of modernity.

*

In a society which regards the soul as a fiction, which regards the individual as radically isolated (and where solipsism seems as irrefutable reality to many - that humans have nothing to do with each other except at a crudely material level of satisfying or frustrating desires) - the compelling urge to escape from alienation seems to dominate everywhere and in everything.

*

There is only one way to escape from alienation while continuing to embrace modernity (atheism, soul denial, humanism, materialism etc) - and that is not to think about it.

The first is to learn not to think about it, to be unreflective, to become immersed in busyness at work or in the home, in the media - news, sport, soaps, fashion - in the minutiae of life, absorbed in hopes and plans for the future, absorbed in powerful emotions such as hatred or lust, absorbed perhaps in arts or crafts or science or maybe even creativity of some kind.

Or when immersion is impossible; to use analgesia, pain killing maneuvers - principally serial distraction, to hyperstimulate oneself and to become (deliberately) addicted to this hyper stimulation - to make oneself (deliberately) a hyper-stimulation junkie - such that life is a matter of seeking and finding, and planning to seek and find, situations where the pressure of stimulus is such as to displace alienation. These situations may themselves be unpleasant - like arguments, abuse, violence, self-harm, nasty drugs that make you feel bad - but they prevent the boredom which leads to alienation.
 
Another method is to obliterate the type of thinking which leads to alienation - to become and remain intoxicated, in one form or another.

Another is to train oneself in unemotionality; to be (or aim to be) cool, cold, indifferent - psychopathic. Such that intellectual or analytic perceptions do not trigger emotional responses. To look upon the world with a hard eye - invulnerable.

*

Another is to 'regress' - to adopt (in actuality, or much more often in imagination) the unalienated state of childhood or some imagined simpler society - a world of animism.

This is how the world was for almost everyone before they were spoiled by nihilism - a world when we had an immortal soul, and so did our toys and trees, a world of bogeymen and ghosts, a world where our parents knew what we were doing and thinking even from afar - a world of proximate terrors (often) yet ultimate coherence. A world focused around ourselves yet not solipsistic because it seemed that everybody knew who we were and everything was somehow related to us and we were part of some kind of plan (a world, that is, of paranoia - it its technical sense).

An animistic world in which we were engaged - where there was real joy and real misery, and always meaning and purpose.

Yet to embrace animism is to reject modernity.

If animism is real then we have left modernity; if animism is imaginative we have encapsulated imagination from socio-political life and made it irrelevant to life - at best a recreation or escape (and that indeed may be valuable - even vital).

*

So - alienation is an inevitable and rational consequence of modernity and its soul-denial, its nihilism.

And - given the assumptions of secular humanism - there are no escapes from alienation except these two: not-thinking about it, or 'regressive' animism.

*

*

In modern public life there is a weird dance between regarding individual peoples desires as overriding every other consideration yet being infinitely plastic and changeable.


So that sometimes it is argued that if people want to do X then society ought 1. to allow X and 2. to make X possible

- yet it is also argued that if people stop wanting X and want Y, and then later Z

- they should 1. be allowed to change their mind and 2. society should facilitate whatever it is they have changed their mind to wanting.


(Except of course when people want something which society currently regards as wicked - something that is supposed to be a result of the disapproved forms of prejudice rather than the approved forms.)


*

Like sexual behaviour. At the same time society is supposed to form itself around individual people's expressed sexual preferences, yet these preferences are (for each individual) open-ended and labile.


At the same time sexual preferences are regarded as if they were permanent and constitutive of a persons identity - such that it is immoral to ask them to change their sexual preferences, because this is tantamount to attempting to destroy their individual essence, to destroy their identity.


Yet at the same time, sexual preferences are regarded as evolving, labile, open-ended - it is seen as an individual's right to change sexual preferences, to seek new sexual preferences. As if sexual preferences were utterly trivial, superficial, like this-year's fashion.

*


So sexual preferences, and other motivations, are treated like a fashion that carries moral authority, while it lasts.

Who is in charge of this process?


Why - the people who set the fashions! (whether they be sexual, political, moral, scientific, legal - whatever.)


In sum - this is a freedom for propagandists to have their propaganda treated as a mandatory yet open-ended fiction.


*

This is a consequence of trying to make a negative ideal (freedom-from) into a positive idea (freedom to).

But of having a metaphysical perspective which denies any essence - which regards humans as soul-less puppets that are actually moved by social manipulators, and puppets that ought to be moved by social manipulators.

*

Modernity has no answer to the question of what people want and what they ought to have.

Sometimes modernity (e.g. economics) acts as if people want what they choose.

Sometimes modernity acts as if what people say they want, or 'say' in the want in the context of a range of forced choices - as in a questionnaire - which is then subject to averaging...

Yet at the same time people are allowed, entitled, to change what they say - indeed people must change what they say in line with evolving socio-political imperatives.

*

So fashion is god.

What people choose and what people say are manipulable. If these are supposed to form the motivational basis of society then who is in charge?

The propagandists and those who define the choices.

Those who make the fashions have ultimate moral authority.

*

So a perspective which purports to place in the individual (his 'rights', motivations and desires) at the centre of politics - but which in theory and in practice strips the individual of essence (because the modern human has no soul, officially - and is a merely socio-biological collection of attributes)...

actually makes the individual irrelevant, a pawn for propagandists.

*


Note - having written the thing, I recognise that these arguments are plagiarised from C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man:

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/lewis/abolition3.htm

*

*

I was recently re-reading my favourite Charles Williams novel The Place of the Lion and noticed for the first time that the lovers (Anthony and Damaris) are first cousins.

In the novel, the fact that they are cousins is treated as a 'good thing' - it seems to imply that there is a kind of familial love between them, as well as an erotic love.

In Tolkien's world, Hobbits often marry their cousins - and this also seems to be regarded as 'a good thing' on the whole.

Yet this matter of cousin marriage (or sex) is in fact highly controversial around the world: ranging from societies where cousins (even double cousins - on both the mother's and father's side) are more-or-less forced to marry, through a mildly pro-cousin marriage atttude such as that exemplified by Charles Williams and Tolkien, though indifference to cousinness as an irrelevance to marriage, to first cousin marriage being actually illegal (in many US states).

This is a quite remarkable - but almost un-remarked - range of opinion.

Anthropologists have shown that some societies more or less depend on cousin marriage for their cohesion (a cohesion based on genetic relatedness - the cohesion of 'clans'); while for other societies - especially more modern societies - the cohesion of families is a direct threat to the cohesion of the larger state.

Of course there are concerns (or pseudo-concerns) about 'in-breeding' being a bad thing; on the other hand there is some evidence that a degree of inbreeding is beneficial to biological fitness.

I simply flag this up as a fascinating but almost-ignored divergent aspect of social morality: is the ideal spouse a cousin, or anything-but-a-cousin?

*

*

When comparing successful writers from two generations ago - the likes of JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis - with a near-equivalent from now - JK Rowling - I am struck by the fact that Rowling's personality is highly fragmented and grossly inconsistent by comparison with her predecessors.

So that Rowling's world view in the context of the Harry Potter books is grossly at-odds with her personality as expressed in interviews etc; while Tolkien and Lewis are 'all-of-a-piece' - all their works in different genres, their letters and interviews and biography, very obviously amount to a self-consistent and integrated world view.

What I find interesting is that Rowling's world view in the Harry Potter books is both self-consistent and also broadly consistent with Tolkien's and Lewis's world views (although relatively simplified) - and it is the 'public persona, the non-literary world view which is so sharply at odds.

*

Indeed it is very characteristic of modernity that people have fragmented, unintegrated world views.

The world view in their work is inconsistent with their world view as private individuals; their political views are inconsistent and changeable, their motivations do not match their explicit aspirations, and so on.

This is unsurprising in that modern life is (or was) composed of specialist social systems, each with different rules and languages - and these tended to evolve away from each other. So that science focused almost exclusively on Truth - which became operationalized in terms of replicable facts and approved methods; art became focused on aesthetic factors - which became operationalized in terms of theory; the media became focused on attention grabbing - and so on.

And of course Tolkien and Lewis both regarded themselves as 'dinosaurs' - out of step with the fragmented and specialized world of modernity which surrounded them, throwbacks to a much earlier (pre-Renaissance) style of thinking and being.

And they were pretty much the last representatives of that style - except for some few people operating in enclosed and detached religious groups (I am thinking of Fr Seraphim Rose), who do not impinge on mainstream culture.

*

On the other hand, political correctness represents a kind of re-integration of world views: so that all the social systems are currently being re-integrated in terms first of being made consistent with political correctness, then being motivated by political correctness.

So, for instance, arts and sciences are no longer either aesthetically-motivated/ truth-motivated but these are now subordinated to the motivations of political correctness.

One might expect that this would lead to a re-emergence of the integrated personality - except that political correctness is itself grossly incoherent, continually changing, and indeed oppositional and reactive rather than propositional and substantive.

*

Where good work is still being done, as with the Harry Potter novels, then this is always non-politically correct insofar as it is good.

Yet, at a personal level, the penalties for being non-PC get greater and greater - so we still see (as with JK Rowling) gross fragmentation of personality; such that the ability to hold-by and be-adept-in multiple incompatible ways of thinking and world views is now adaptive, sophisticated - almost 'common sensical'.

So that if JKR expressed views views that were consistent with the world view of HP, she would be a social pariah - a hate figure - and the novels would be suppressed by one means or another. So the best that she can do (whether intentionally or by instinct) is to smuggle the world view out in the form of a novel (as, indeed, a kid's novel), hidden by a veneer of PC - and to ensure that never at any time does she follow through the logic of the novels into her public persona.

*

Of course there is a price to pay.

JKR comes across as immature, vapid and evasive in her interviews and essays, compared with the tremendous adult solidity and gravitas of Tolkien and Lewis.

But she is in good company. Everybody in public life comes across as immature, vapid and evasive: because that is precisely what they are.

Worryingly, almost everybody in private life now comes across as immature, vapid and evasive - because it has become habitual (it has had-to become habitual, since the cost of failing to be dis-integrated is so high).

The triumph of political correctness is that we always feel asif Big Brother is watching us. A social grouping of unselfconscious truth seekers and truth tellers such as The Inklings would be almost impossible nowadays.

*

(I should point out that Tolkien and Lewis are vastly more intelligent and knowledgeable than Rowling, or indeed than anyone else in modern public life - and Tolkien more intelligent than Lewis, Lewis more knowledgeable than Tolkien - but this is not mainly a matter of intelligence and knowledge. It is primarily a matter of partly-trained and partly-habitual honesty; and underneath that a grounding in reality. Reality regarded as real.)

*

The consequence of all this is that moderns are incapable people. At most they can operate with technical adeptness within small, grossly-incomplete and hermetically-sealed specialist worlds - they are dogmatic technicians.

But most moderns are even worse than that because they lack technical expertise of any kind - this being continually stopped short or diverted by the over-riding application of political correctness - so that even very simple causal chains of a purely technical nature become disrupted whenever they get anywhere near human applicability (or else their human applicability is denied, and the activity thereby neutered).

And this is why modern humans cannot solve any problems anymore.

All they can do, all we can do, is reframe things so that they are no longer perceived as a problem: we simply redefine threats as - what is the jargon? - opportunities.

Transcendental inversion, again 

*

And such is the fragmentation of thought and the dis-integration of world views that the gross insanity of the process is concealed.

Fragmentation leads to more fragmentation, until...

Everything falls apart.

*