Bruce Charlton's Notions

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If money - actual coinage and notes - is any kind of measure of cultural health: then England is finished.

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1. Five pound notes feature an unknown nonentity called Elizabeth Fry...

Elizabeth who? Who Fry? - apparently a prison reformer, whatever that might be.

In other words, the government is using money as a form of 'consciousness raising' to promote the 'achievements' of... well, 'A Woman'.

(Florence Nightingale had already been used on money - at least everyone had heard of her.)

Thus EF is celebrated alongside other British people of achievement featured on notes such as Isaac Newton, Shakespeare, the Duke of Wellington, Adam Smith, Charles Darwin... Elizabeth Fry !

Convinced?

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2. The small denomination coins have been recently re-designed in a way that is inefficient, ugly, pretentious in a childish way, in fact just plain vulgar.

Is this what national coins of the realm, legal tender, ought to look like?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coins_of_the_pound_sterling

Using each coin to make part of a larger design!!!

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

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3. The coins are so badly manufactured that different versions or dates of coins, supposedly of the same value, vary widely in size, shape, thickness, edging.

Slot machines nowadays reject about half of coins because they are ... well, rubbish.

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Put you hand in your pocket and pull-out some money.

There it is for you to see, undeniable: the decline of England.

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(Oh yes, and why were the smallest denomination coins of 1p and 2p not abolished when the currency was 'redesigned'? The currency has so inflated since decimal coinage was introduced in 1971, that the 5p coin in 2011 is worth les than 1/2p (halfpenny) which was the smallest denomination coin of 1971. So the 1p coins which are still in frequent use - especially as so many things are priced at x pounds 99 pence - is worth less than 20 percent of the smallest denomination coin of 1971...)

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One form of personal crisis is the sense that you are doing no good, or doing harm, in your work - and the desire to do good with your life.

To do something worthwhile.

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Because of the way that modern people conceptualize the world, doing good equates with 'helping people'.

And helping people equates with giving them stuff they need (or, at any rate want).

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But helping people turns-out be harder than you hoped.

In modern society it seems that 'helping people' requires training, exams, screening, a lot of paperwork, a lot of management...

And somehow the officially defined and measured and approved sort of 'helping' does not, at a common sense level, equate with actual, you know, helping...

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And you want to help people that need helping.

And helping (nowadays) involves giving stuff.

But most people in the West have enough stuff, more than enough - so first you need to find people who lack basic stuff before you can help them: before you can 'do good'.

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For moderns, the ultimate 'good' is to find someone materially poor, clearly suffering; then share your stuff and relieve their suffering.

If the media and institutional literature are anything to judge by - the ultimate modern act of goodness is, basically: to make Africans happy.

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The multi-faceted unsatisfactoriness of this moral strategy seems obvious enough; but for many people - including many Christians - it seems the only sure way that they can do good is... to make Africans happy.

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The problem is: if not that, then what?

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As so often, it is the basic assumptions that need to be questioned.

The mainstream modern assumptions are that the aim of life is hedonic: enhancing happiness, diminishing suffering - the main moral imperative is unselfishness, sharing.

But that fact should be seen as a reductio ad absurdum of mainstream modern morality, not a call to action...

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However, to find an answer involves nothing less than an abandonment of this-worldly materialism; it involves nothing less a belief in the soul and in life beyond death: nothing less than religious conversion.

(Which can be difficult if you consider yourself already to be religious, already a Christian - yet you nonetheless regard reducing suffering by giving people stuff to be the ultimate moral imperative.)

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But what if the main problem is not suffering, and especially not the kind of suffering that can be relieved by stuff - but what might be called 'lack of holiness' - spiritual impoverishment.

Then there would be two main ways to do good: missionary work, and spiritual progress.

Successful missionary work gets people across the line and is therefore of immense value.

But missionary work is hampered by the extremely low level of holiness that prevails, even among Christians.

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So perhaps the most valuable thing that could be done nowadays is to strive for sanctity, in oneself I mean.

By traditional means: prayer, asceticism, participation in rites and rituals and so on.

Because, if you are a Christian, you will know that all humanity is in fact united and all human choices are significant; so in seeking sanctity you are not engaged in a personal (nor 'selfish') behaviour - it is for everybody.

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At the same time, it is very difficult to seek sanctity in a society so spiritually impoverished - where do you start?

Who can give you good counsel and guard against the snares of spiritual pride?

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Who indeed? - it is a big risk to strive for sanctity nowadays (more so than it used to be, which may be one reason why success seems so very rare).

Nonetheless, that is what is most needed.

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The world does not really need more people to 'do good', but for some people to become good.

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People continuously parrot that X is, "of course, innocent until proven guilty".

But this is rubbish.

Dangerous rubbish. 

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Insofar as it is true that people are innocent until proven guilty, it refers purely to the results of contingent, unreliable and continually-modified legal processes; and has nothing necessarily to do with real life guilt and innocence.

And as the law has drifted further and further away from 'natural law' morality and from common sense, to the point that people also say as if it were obvious - rather than what ought to be regarded as an oxymoron - that 'you cannot legislate morality' - then a person's guilt or innocence in a moral sense is most safely regarded as irrelevant to the outcome of the legal system.

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(Of course, when saying that a person is 'innocent until proven guilty' it may be simply that this expression is not intended literally, but means that judgment is being reserved while awaiting further relevant knowledge - or perhaps this is expressing suspicion of the honesty or intentions of the source of information currently provided.)
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Individual experience, common sense and natural law (the innate sense of right and wrong) and sufficient knowledge of what happened and to whom form the only sound basis for judgments about guilt and innocence.

Legal procedure itself needs to be judged by these criteria - and when this is done, the legal process is often found wanting.

Laws are themselves frequently immoral, wicked, harmful. 

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In real life only a fool would imagine that people that have been acquitted as 'not guilty' (by the legal process) were truly (morally) innocent; or even to assume that they did not do what they were accused of doing.

What people are legally accused of does not capture precisely what they did, because offenses have to be fitted-into a finite set of legal provisions, and to optimize the chance of a conviction a lesser offense is often charged.

Someone may have done a lot more and a lot worse than the precise restricted definition of the crime of which they are legally accused.

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It is common for guilty people to be released on a 'technicality' due to some procedural irregularity in the trial, and then to claim to be 'innocent' in the sense of not having done anything wrong.

It is common for somebody who has done something very wrong to be convicted of some minor, simple misdemeanour (for procedural reasons - as mentioned above, or because the offense does not fit an existing category, or due to plea-bargaining, or something like that) - but this does not mean they are 'innocent' of the more complex serious crime. They did it!

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In the opposite direction, people sometimes accept some other punishment for an act which they did not commit, and are then regarded as legally-guilty, simply because, it is too expensive or time-consuming to contest the charge.  

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Just as only a fool would imagine that those found 'guilty' by due legal process actually did something morally wrong.

With so many ill-defined crimes on the books (such as hate crimes, or libels, or illegal things that no normal person would imagine would or could be forbidden) this is obviously false. 

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Of course, if we personally know nothing about the facts of a situation except what we have discovered from the mass media, then we may have no sound basis for knowing about another person's guilt or innocence.

(However, we may nonetheless have to make a judgment on this matter - for example in casting a vote in an election, or deciding whether or not to give a person money - e.g. by buying a book or a ticket for a show).

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But the baseline for judgment of guilt or innocence should not be a presumption of innocence: that would be suicidal.

Socially competent people should all be engaged continuously in 'profiling' those around them, categorizing, who can be trusted and will steal, who is gentle and who is dangerous, who looks like a potential ally and who an enemy.

We should base judgment on what we know of the person, of their character, what we infer from their appearance, manner and behavior; we need to do the same about the character of the person accusing them; and to take note of the general nature of the situation.

That is how wise people live their lives: that is what we should aspire to in determining guilt or innocence.

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The English 'man of letters' John Wain

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wain

published an early autobiography called Sprightly Running in 1963, the last year of C.S. Lewis's life, in which he reflected on the period when he was a member of The Inklings.

Although Wain liked and respected the Inklings, especially revering Nevill Coghill about whom he wrote an intensely-felt memoir, he conceptualized them as not only reactionary, but actually a counter-revolutionary group:

"The group had a corporate mind" that was both powerful and clearly defined. They were "politically conservative, not to say reactionary; in religion, Anglo- or Roman-Catholic; in art, frankly hostile to an manifestation of the 'modern' spirit", "a circle of instigators, almost incendiaries, meeting to urge one another on in the task of redirecting the whole current of contemporary art and life."

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C.S. Lewis immediately published a long letter strongly disputing this analysis of the Inklings in the January 1963 edition of the journal Encounter (he had presumably seen a review copy of the book) in which Lewis - while graciously thanking Wain for saying many kind things about him, and stating clearly that he regarded Wain as a friend ('friend' being a word Lewis used sparingly and rigorously).

Lewis focused on the ideological differences between various Inklings, the non-overlapping nature of some of the friendships within the group, and stating that "Mr Wain has mistaken purely personal relationships for alliances."

In essence, Lewis hotly denied that the Inklings were self-consciously an explicitly strategic, reactionary, counter-revolutionary 'cell'.

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Yet, of course, as we now recognize, Wain was substantively correct in every respect except that of supposing that the Inklings was self-conscious in their instigation and incendiary activities.

The Inklings were indeed - at their core of Jack Lewis, Tolkien and Charles Williams, and during their peak years of 1939-45 - a group of Christian reactionaries with very large scale ambitions to redirect the current of modern art and life.

This was very obvious to Wain who opposed this re-directing of art and life back to a pre-modern and religious spirit (at least, he did during the early decades of his life, when he was known as an anti-establishment figure, one of the 'Angry Young Men' of the 1950s - although in later years Wain's work, for instance on Samuel Johnson, strikes me as itself reactionary - or at least nostalgic for the pre-modern era).

That was why the Inklings were friends, that was an essential basis of their friendship: necessary but not sufficient.

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The reason for the continued interest in the Inklings is precisely that which Wain stated.

But of course, Wain's analysis was itself from a 'modern' perspective; a perspective which sees 'political' activity as necessarily self-conscious and explicit.

Whereas the reality was that the Inklings did not subscribe to this view of politics.

Lewis, Tolkien and Williams were individually, and passionately, engaged in recovering a pre-modern, a Christian spirit for life - with re-connecting with the thread of this spirit as it came down through the centuries - a thread which was almost broken, a spirit of which it could be said that they themselves were among the last examples.

And this, at least, was explicitly perceived - Lewis spoke of himself as a dinosaur left over from a previous era, Tolkien spoke of fighting the long defeat, Williams blurred pre-modern past and present and expounded (in The Descent of the Dove) a history of Christendom in which he discerned a two thousand year thread coming through Anglicanism right down to his own spiritual engagement.

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The substantive disagreement of Wain and Lewis over the true nature of the Inklings was only, therefore, a quibble over the degree of self-consciousness with which their counter-revolutionary activities was being pursued; there was no disagreement of the fact and tendency of the Inklings endeavors.

The Inklings were thus in effect precisely as Wain described them: instigators and incendiaries.

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The three main heroes of Lord of the Rings torture Gollum at some point:

1. Gandalf: "I endured him as long as I could, but the truth was desparately important, and in the end I had to be harsh. I put the fear of fire on him, and wrung the true story out of him, but by bit, together with much snivelling and snarling."

2. Aragorn: "He will never love me, I fear; for he bit me and I was not gentle. Nothing more did I ever get from his mouth than the marks of his teeth. I deemed it the worst part of all my journey, the road back, watching him day and night, making him walk before me with a halter on his neck, gagged, until he was tamed by lack of drink and food, driving him ever towards Mirkwood."

3. Frodo: "Tie one end to his ankle" (...) Sam tied the knot. The result surprised them both. Gollum began to scream, a thin tearing sound, very horrible to hear. (...) "It hurts us, it hurts us", hissed Gollum. "It freezes, it bites! (...) Take it off! It hurts us." - "No, I will not take it off you", said Frodo, "not unless" - he paused a moment in thought - "not unless there is any promise you can make that I can trust".

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Tolkien is one of my main mentors: I take him to be a man of great wisdom; certainly much greater wisdom than my own.

In general, and specifically here, I read Tolkien to learn from him - not to critique him.

In the context of LotR, Gandalf, Aragorn and Frodo are presented as having behaved properly in the above situations, and I accept that they did behave properly.

So why mention it?

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In this instance we can perceive that Gandalf, Aragorn and Frodo's behaviour illustrates the falsity of the mainstream modern ethical principle that relief of suffering ought to be the primary moral principle; and the common moral belief that torture is impermissable under any circumstances whatsoever.

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The examples illustrate the way that morality works. Moral dilemmas arise when there is a clash of moral principles - and they are resolved by choosing the higher over the lower principle.

For a mainstream modern Liberal/ Leftist who subscribes to the principle that torture must be absolutely forbidden under any circumstance whatsoever, the actions of Gandalf, Aragorn and Frodo would be classified alongside those of orcs who enjoy the 'sport' of torturing captives.

But for anybody who holds a primary moral principle other than that of minimizing suffering, there may arise situations in which - as Gandalf, Aragorn and Frodo exemplify - it was permissable, indeed it was necessary - to torture Gollum.

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Poor Smeagol. Poor Gandalf, Aragorn and Frodo. Poor all of us.

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My thoughts turn towards Wordpress...

Any thoughts on alternative blog hosts?

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I see Blogger is misbehavin' due to 'maintenance' problems - I'll wait a while before posting anything new.

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From The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis, 1946.

The scene: Heaven.

A group of ghostly souls from Hell are visiting to have another chance of salvation. A liberal Anglican Bishop is one of the visitors. He meets an old college friend, Dick, a Spirit who now inhabits Heaven.

Dick is speaking first:

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"Is it possible you don't know where you've been?"

"Now that you mention it, I don't think we ever do give it a name. What do you call it?"

"We call it Hell."

"There is no need to be profane, my dear boy. I may not be very orthodox, in your sense of that word, but I do feel that these matters ought to be discussed simply, and seriously, and reverently."

"Discuss Hell reverently? I meant what I said. You have been in Hell: though if you don't go back you may call it Purgatory."

"Go on, my dear boy, go on. That is so like you. No doubt you'll tell me why, on your view, I was sent there. I'm not angry."

"But don't you know? You went there because you are an apostate."

"Are you serious, Dick?"

"Perfectly."

"This is worse than I expected. Do you really think people are penalised for their honest opinions? Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that those opinions were mistaken."

"Do you really think there are no sins of intellect?"

"There are indeed, Dick. There is hidebound prejudice, and intellectual dishonesty, and timidity, and stagnation. But honest opinions fearlessly followed-they are not sins."

"I know we used to talk that way. I did it too until the end of my life when I became what you call narrow. It all turns on what are honest opinions."

"Mine certainly were. They were not only honest but heroic. I asserted them fearlessly. When the doctrine of the Resurrection ceased to commend itself to the critical faculties which God had given me, I openly rejected it. I preached my famous sermon. I defied the whole chapter. I took every risk."

"What risk? What was at all likely to come of it except what actually came-popularity, sales for your books, invitations, and finally a bishopric?"

"Dick, this is unworthy of you. What are you suggesting?"

"Friend, I am not suggesting at all. You see, I know now. Let us be frank. Our opinions were not honestly come by. We simply found ourselves in contact with a certain current of ideas and plunged into it because it seemed modern and successful. At College, you know, we just started automatically writing the kind of essays that got good marks and saying the kind of things that won applause. When, in our whole lives, did we honestly face, in solitude, the one question on which all turned: whether after all the Supernatural might not in fact occur? When did we put up one moment's real resistance to the loss of our faith?"

"If this is meant to be a sketch of the genesis of liberal theology in general, I reply that it is a mere libel. Do you suggest that men like ..."

"I have nothing to do with any generality. Nor with any man but me and you. Oh, as you love your own soul, remember. You know that you and I were playing with loaded dice. We didn't want the other to be true. We were afraid of crude salvationism, afraid of a breach with the spirit of the age, afraid of ridicule, afraid (above all) of real spiritual fears and hopes."

"I'm far from denying that young men may make mistakes. They may well be influenced by current fashions of thought. But it's not a question of how the opinions are formed. The point is that they were my honest opinions, sincerely expressed."

"Of course. Having allowed oneself to drift, unresisting, unpraying, accepting every half-conscious solicitation from our desires, we reached a point where we no longer believed the Faith. Just in the same way, a jealous man, drifting and unresisting, reaches a point at which he believes lies about his best friend: a drunkard reaches a point at which (for the moment) he actually believes that another glass will do him no harm. The beliefs are sincere in the sense that they do occur as psychological events in the man's mind. If that's what you mean by sincerity they are sincere, and so were ours. But errors which are sincere in that sense are not innocent."

"You'll be justifying the Inquisition in a moment!"

"Why? Because the Middle Ages erred in one direction, does it follow that there is no error in the opposite direction?"

"Well, this is extremely interesting," said the Episcopal Ghost. "It's a point of view. Certainly, it's a point of view. In the meantime . . ."

"There is no meantime," replied the other. "All that is over. We are not playing now. I have been talking of the past (your past and mine) only in order that you may turn from it forever. One wrench and the tooth will be out. You can begin as if nothing had ever gone wrong. White as snow. It's all true, you know. He is in me, for you, with that power. And- I have come a long journey to meet you. You have seen Hell: you are in sight of Heaven. Will you, even now, repent and believe?"

"I'm not sure that I've got the exact point you are trying to make," said the Ghost.

"I am not trying to make any point," said the Spirit. "I am telling you to repent and believe."

"But my dear boy, I believe already. We may not be perfectly agreed, but you have completely misjudged me if you do not realise that my religion is a very real and a very precious thing to me." (...)  Oh, must you be going? Well, so must I. Goodbye, my dear boy. It has been a great pleasure. Most stimulating and provocative. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye."

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The Bishop returns to Hell.

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The Bishop's attitude is very familiar to me since I used to share it.

After all, what could be wrong with 'honest opinions, sincerely expressed'?

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Oblique reference:

In the old days Church of Scotland ministers did not mince matters.

In the course of a sermon one said: Ah hed a dreem, an in that dreem Ah saw a vision o' better folk than you, efter they were deed, in the place where the wurm dieth not and the fire is not quenched, callin' out tae the Lord in their agony, callin' out:

'O Lord, we nivver kent it wud be as bad as this.'

And the Lord, out of His love and tender mercy looked down on their agony and He spoke and answered:

'Weel... ye ken noo.'


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From Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works by Hieromonk Damascene - pp 696-8.

"Today (in 1982), some New Age circles speak of "The Plan" for a "New World Order," which would include a uni­versal credit system, a universal tax, a global police force, and an inter­national authority that would control the world's food supply and transportation systems. In this Utopian scheme, wars, disease, hunger, pollution, and poverty will end. All forms of discrimination will cease, and people's allegiance to tribe or nation will be replaced by a planetary consciousness." (...)

"Never has there been more talk of “peace and security” than today. One of the chief organs of the U.N. is the Security Council, and organizations for “world peace” are everywhere. It men do achieve finally a semblance of “peace and security,” it would seem to contemporary man to be a state like heaven on earth – a millennium. The practical way to do this is to unite all governments under one. For the first time in history such a ideal becomes a possible goal of practical politics – a world ruler is conceivable now. For the first time, the Antichrist becomes an historical possibility." (...)

"With the establishment of the European Union, the creation of the Euro currency, the control of former Eastern-bloc countries by Western financial interests, the advances towards a cashless society, the formation of an international criminal tribunal by the United Nations and NATO, we see what appear to be the forerunners of such a one-world system. Some of these developments are not necessarily evil by themselves. Taken together, however, they help to set up a global apparatus which can make way for the rising religion of the future."

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The Western elites have long since embraced the idea of a New World Order, global government, dissolution of national boundaries and so on.

The rationale is hedonic: prosperity and peace..

And if not prosperity, then at least peace...

And if not peace, then at least pacifism.

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Political correctness is the 'religion' of such folk - or rather the spirituality, or if not that then the perspective on life and the human condition.

PC is (presumably) supposed to synergize with global government - the ethical system of multiculturalism and diversity combining with a mixed word without border - all under the 'benign' leadership of democratically elected... and so on.

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When Fr Seraphim Rose died in 1982 it certainly looked as if world government was the trend - and since then there has certainly been an expansion of global bureaucracies.

Yet the reality is that governments - both national and international - have lost control.

Stripped of the means of effective government by political correctness; national and international governments are mostly Brezhnev-style corrupt bureaucracies - engaged in a propaganda of denying reality (by means of replacing experience with virtual reality via the mass media) and simply relabelling what happens as desirable - re-interpreting trends asif they were beneficial to the cause of global peace and prosperity.

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So the real trends are now running against global governance by the Western elites, and the proponents of a New World Order are reduced to aspirational statements and cheer-leading chaos (in order to justify their salaries and status).

Instead of an actual world government, we have a bunch of grafting charlatans pretending to be a world government.

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What went wrong for them? What happened to their dreams of power?

Political correctness: that's what happened.

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PC is the Achilles Heel of the would-be international Leftist dictatorship.

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Even as PC justifies the global elite in their takeover of all and everything, at the same time all and everything is being ever-more-rapidly subverted by the chaos caused by PC - perhaps above all the truly massive demographic transformation and population movement which the world is experiencing.

Vast population growth in undeveloped countries, decline in developed countries and international migrations of populations - such as we are experiencing are 1. approved of by PC, 2. uncontrollable by PC-approved mechanisms, and 3. utterly destructive of governance.

PC can do nothing about all this (except prevent the subject being mentioned, the problem being analyzed, or action being taken) and responds by approving-of, pointing out the potential benefits of ... whatever happens.

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(What - you haven't heard about the impending and unstoppable demographic cataclysm? I am not surprised. It is no accident. Rest assured that the ruling elite have no plans to do anything about it.)

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So rather than world government, we have a world bureaucracy and a world mass media engaging in depicting in virtual reality what they want to happen, rather than what is happening; and - when this fails to convince - in the creative re-labeling of 'apparent' chaos, violence and impoverishment as actually nascent order, peace and prosperity.

Merely broken eggs en route to a vast and delicious global omelet.

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When Fr Seraphim Rose died in 1982, who would have thought it!

International dictatorship sabotaged by its own scruples!

Maybe PC is not such a bad thing after all - insofar as chaos is preferable to totalitarianism.

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It is a big step for many people to recognize and understand that - from a Christian perspective - intellectuals and the rich really are (as a class, and on average) worse than simple people and the poor.

Worse in the sense of further from God; further from salvation, further from heaven.

Those passages in the Bible about the difficulties of a rich man attaining salvation (camels and a needle's eye) or 'The Beatitudes' (those phrases commencing 'Blessed are...) about the poor, meek, humble and rejected are meant seriously, and are not merely a rhetorical device.

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It is hard for intellectuals and the rich to become Christians, and even harder for them to become advanced in holiness.

The problems include Pride (especially of intellectuals), and the availability of distractions (especially of the Rich); so it is no accident that a synonym for the poor and meek is 'humble', and that Humility is one of the greatest Christian virtues.

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But these facts are disguised by historical accident: that the holy, simple poor leave no written records.

And because some of the very greatest of Saints were intellectuals who overcame their innate disadvantage to achieve great holiness, and were able to use their intellectual gifts in service of their faith.

This began with such supreme intellectuals as St John the Evangelist and continued with Saint Paul then many of the greatest Fathers of the Church.

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I am currently engaged with reading Piers Plowman by William Langland (c. 1332 – 1386) - which is probably the greatest religious poem in English (albeit Middle English).

Langland was an intellectual - probably in Holy Orders but not a priest - who was also poor; and his poem strikes me as engaged in demonstrating to other intellectuals - especially those in higher Holy Orders and who were wealthy - that as a class they are inferior Christians to the common peasants (to whom they feel so superior).

The poem seems to me to regard the spiritual superiority of the ignorant peasant as a given, and to be trying-out various explanations of why this is so: why the virtuous peasant has (in effect) a 'pardon' from God - a symbolic guarantee of salvation.

(Some of Langland's 'experimental' suggestions of and for this 'pardon' are more convincing than others to the modern reader, but I see them less as proofs that this is so, and more as explanations of why this is so.

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Christian intellectuals therefore have potentially a very high calling - but Pride stands blocking the path.

Since humility is absolutely essential to the Christian, this means that it is very difficult for intellectuals to take even the first step, and even more unusual for an intellectual to be advanced in holiness.

Of course, being an intellectual does not prevent someone becoming a Christian. But it does means that most intellectuals will be mediocre Christians: last in line in the procession to Heaven; and lowest in the hierarchy of Heaven.

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The hierarchy of Heaven is for Men - roughly speaking - an inversion of worldly status.

The first necessary act of humility is to understand and accept this.

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I have just been reading my favourite JD Salinger stories about the Glass family ^ - which focus on the life and suicide of their American-born fictional 'saint' Seymour; and I have just started a re-read of the biography of the first real life American-born Saint (of the Russian Orthodox Church) Hieromonk Seraphim of Platina + - born as Eugene Rose (and usually called Fr Seraphim Rose).

The comparison is interesting.

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The fictional Seymour Glass was born in 1917, while Seraphim Rose was born in 1934 - half a generation later.

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Seymour Glass was raised in New York City on the East Coast of the USA, was something of a child prodigy who was often termed a 'genius' (by his family), and attended the local elite university - Columbia.

Seraphim Rose was raised in California on the West Coast of the USA, was something of a child prodigy who was sometimes termed a genius (by his friends), and attended the local elite liberal arts college - Pomona.

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Both Seymour and Seraphim developed an intense personal and scholarly interest in Eastern religions, meditation, Buddhism, Oriental languages and the like.

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In the end, Seymour developed a personal, eclectic, syncretic religion incorporating elements of Christianity, Hinduism (especially reincarnation), Zen, and a life dedicated to personal poetic creativity.

While Seraphim became a Russian Orthodox Christian of the most traditional kind, an ascetic monk, and led a life dedicated to attaining holiness (theosis) and evangelism via his writings and translations.

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Seymour died young in 1948 at the age of 31 - shooting himself probably due to psychological war trauma and despair at living up to his own ideals.

Seraphim died young in 1982 at the age of 48 - from an acute medical illness.

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After his death, Seymour became a kind-of saint to those who knew him personally, then to Western youth via the writings of JD Salinger and the (fictional) example of his life.

After his death, Seraphim became a Saint to those who knew him personally, and then to Eastern post-communist youth via his own writings and the example of his life.

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Seymour Glass was a seeker; Seraphim Rose was a finder.

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^ Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters; Zooey; Seymour: an introduction all by JD Salinger.

+ Father Seraphim Rose: his life and works by Hieromonk Damascene.

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Why should young women at the peak of their reproductive potential aim to get married and have children and care for them?

What are the answers of modern secular society?

That marriage and kids are a big risk - and this is perfectly correct: many things can go wrong, and some of these things are devastating.

*

So, if you want to avoid the risk of being very unhappy, don't get married, don't have children - and if you do make such choices - then make sure (legally and psychologically) you can walk away from them quickly and easily and without being blamed: otherwise they are is too great a risk.

*

Or if you must aim at marriage and children - then at any rate wait.

Our society says, implicitly, 'youth is for getting more education - not for marriage and children'.

*

The secular, psychological, biological arguments for getting married and having children when a young adult are weak and unconvincing to modern individuals.

And rightly so - they are weak and unconvincing arguments.

If your life is defined by optimizing gratification (minimizing suffering, increasing enjoyment) then it makes no sense to have children.

*

The only compelling reasons to choose to get married, have children and care for them when a young adult are transcendental/ supernatural/ religious reasons: the essence of human life must be conceptualized as other than (and more than) the psychological/ biological/ economic.

*

Nowadays, the only groups who choose to have more than two children per woman on average, whose women marry and begin childbearing when young, who generally stick by these responsibilities, are devout adherents of orthodoxly supernaturalist religion: whether Jewish, Christian/ Mormon, or Islamic.

*

Indeed it is either dishonest, incompetent or unfounded speculation to propound a materialist, secular, hedonic basis for having marriage and children as the basis of society.

Because if knowing and understanding the actual world is to have any effect on beliefs and aspirations - then it is crystal clear (as clear as it ever will be, as clear as it ever can be) that the rationality of mainstream modernity implies not getting married, not having children, and making the state of marriage and sustained childcare a matter of choice - a lifestyle option to be discarded (like a house, a car or an insurance policy) if or when they interfere with the main purpose in life - which is to avoid suffering and to increase gratification.

*

In sum: there is no coherent positive reason to choose marriage and children as an organizing principle in life except on the basis of religion.

*


[Note: This argument ought to have the force of a reductio ad absurdum against secularism - however, mainstream modernity instead prefers to embrace the absurd as the basis of human existence. Hence the nihilism of the West.]

*

*

An aspect of political correctness which I have not really considered was pointed out in an e-mail from Henry Harpending: the extent to which PC is motivated by fear and a spirit of appeasement.

*

Clearly, there is a strong element of fear in the choices of groups upon which political correctness bestows special privileges.

Broadly speaking, the most feared groups are given the highest status by PC.

*

(One apparent anomaly is women; who, following after slaves and organized labour, were early beneficiaries of the appeasing spirit of PC. An argument could be made that there is indeed a very strong element of fear of women behind political correctness: women being the mutually cooperating arbiters of social status and inclusion, and the sex which (nearly always) controls the sexual arena in which/ for which men are competing. If correct, this would emphasize that for men fear as a motivator is not restricted to fear of violence, although that is often an element, but includes fear of status loss.)


*

However, feared groups are not treated by political correctness according to the methods of traditional common sense, but instead by appeasement.

Traditionally (historically and still throughout most of the world), feared groups were controlled, subordinated, repressed, excluded and (ultimately) exterminated.

These methods were usually effective - if applied early enough.

However, a deep aspect of political correctness is pacifism: in the sense of a personal reluctance to be involved in physical coercion and even to be complicit in physical coercion.

PC strongly dislikes negative sanctions.

*

Consequently, lacking access to negative sanctions and especially physical coercion; political correctness gravitates to appeasement of feared groups.

The aim of PC is positive encouragement (of peaceful behaviour), which it does by conferral of privileges, subsidies, bestowal of higher status and so on.

But to do this entails a rationale: the rationale is one of desert: the feared group is seen as deserving of special, positive treatment.

This represents an inversion of common sense government; and culminates in a privileging of the feared group, increased power of the feared group, and ultimately a hand-over of government to the feared group.

*

Thus appeasement of the feared group becomes transformed into submission to the feared group.

*

(According to Demonic Males - available on Google Books and a classic account of primate aggression by Robert Wrangham and Dale Peterson - submission is characteristic of some ape females. They explain this in terms of 'warfare' - inter-group aggression. In sum: the difference is that defeated primate males suffer 'murder' and reproductive death; defeated females suffer 'rape' and continue reproduction. When a primate band is defeated, the losing males are exterminated by the winners - 'hence' males must fight and win, or die; but losing females are abducted rather than killed, 'hence' female primates tend to submit to superior force rather than fight. A stark example occurs when gorilla females live in the harem of a dominant male, and a rogue male breaks through the dominant male's defences and kills an infant. The mother of the slain infant will leave the dominant male's harem to join the rogue male who killed her infant. Presumably, because the event establishes which male really is dominant.)

*

For the PC elite, appeasement at least buys time since the feared groups will be likely to behave well for at least as long as the ruling elite are needed to manage the handover of power.

Furthermore, the PC elite hope (in the teeth of common sense) that the process of appeasement, empowerment and submission will (before the handover is complete) transform the nature of the feared group - such that there will no longer be a need to fear or appease them.

***


(This analysis leaves open the question of why the PC elite should be reluctant to use traditional common sense methods of dealing with feared groups, what is the cause of this change? This leads back to the deep roots of PC in secular nihilism - and its hopes of an intrinsically altruistic/ unselfish society of optimal gratification and minimum suffering; a society of impartial and abstractly virtuous procedures. In terms of mechanism, the PC elite has its roots in the takeover of society by the intellectual class; who must distinguish themselves from, marginalize and disempower the traditional military rulers, and devalue the analysis and methods of the military class. It is only the military class who are able to apply the approach of control, subordination, repression, exclusion and (ultimately) extermination. For intellectuals to replace, to dispense with, the loathed military class entails intellectuals using non-military methods (even when the alternative methods are ineffective). Alternatively, the process might be conceptualized as consequential to an altered balance of power between the sexes - i.e. progressive feminization: increasing female societal dominance - leading to a reaction to external threat that is ever-less aggressive, ever-more submissive. The two explanations could be combined if the class of intellectual men formed an alliance with women against the class of military men: the intellectual gaining cooperation by appeasement. It all sounds highly Nietzschian!)

*

*

Three ideas - all, none, one or two of which might be correct:

*

1. Getting into proximity

Perhaps, as a reproductive strategy, women want high status positions to get closer to high status men so they can marry them.

However, this is not necessary.

In the past, when Oxford and Cambridge universities were male institutions, women got effectively close enough to high status men (and often married them) not by becoming undergraduates or dons; but by attending secretarial and language colleges in the same city, or training as nurses, or working at sociable jobs in public places such as shops and cafes, or attending churches and social events, or even working as servants.

Wherever the attractive women were, men would seek them out - if at all possible. (See The Double Helix by James D Watson for examples.)

So high status education, training and jobs are not necessary in order to meet and marry high status men - women merely need to be accessible.

*

Indeed, as we now realize, it is a counter-productive reproductive strategy to attain proximity by competing for status, since a woman attaining high status for herself strongly reduces the likelihood of her getting married and of having children.

Reasons include that the pool of men a woman finds both attractive and potentially a marriage partner will (on average) diminish as her status increases, because she is attracted (only) to men of higher status than herself - the higher her own status, the fewer such men she will encounter.

Furthermore, men are not much/ hardly at all attracted to status in women; but mainly to personality, intelligence and appearance (i.e. to an appearance which signal youthfulness and health - hence reproductive potential).

The process of attaining high status (education, training, working-up the hierarchy, building a business) usually takes a long time, and as the years roll past the woman will (on average) less attractive even as she becomes more selective concerning the men who she regards as suitable marriage partners.

Consequently, higher status women are less often married, more often have zero children. 

*

Still, it is quite possible that modern women falsely believe that they need to compete alongside men in the same institutions and work in order to get close enough to marry them (or have a satisfying relationship).

But why would modern women believe something so obviously wrong?

Answer: mass media brainwashing, probably.

*

2. Institution a proxy for family 

Perhaps women don't really want high status - they want the high status environment.

A high status environment (such as an Ivy League college, a top law firm, an elite hospital) might be subjectively perceived as equivalent to being married to a high status man, or living with a high status father.

But why would women be so mistaken about this; why would they perceive a high status institution to be equivalent to membership of a high status family?

Answer: mass media brainwashing, probably.


*

3. Pathology

Perhaps a few strange and unusual women really do want high status (even though it does not benefit them either biologically or psychologically) - and they want status for themselves for what are essentially pathological reasons: and then (from their positions of influence) this small minority of status-driven women encourage the mass of non-status-seeking women into emulating this pathological behaviour.

(Steve Moxon - in The Woman Racket - speculates that the rare situation of a genuinely status-seeking woman may be due to masculinization, maybe in the womb.)

These rare and abnormal status-seeking women may not just gather in high status institutions, but when they have the right set of abilities, actually do high status things: like becoming big time entrepreneurs or politicians, or creative intellectual geniuses/ near-geniuses.

Of course, being pathological does not stop status-seeking women from making a major societal contribution (or, at least, having a major effect on society). After all, the annals of genius are packed with crazies.

But how could a tiny cadre of genuinely status-seeking women manage to convince the mass of women to emulate their pathological behaviour?

Answer: mass media brainwashing, probably.

*

So, why do so many modern women want to achieve high status?

Whatever the answer, the mass media are surely necessary to this becoming a widespread condition.

*

*

The single largest factor in shaping world demography has been the global decline in childhood death rates.

Throughout human history around half of humans died during childhood, and without reproducing:

http://137.140.1.71/jsec/articles/volume2/issue4/NEEPSvolkatkinson.pdf

In developed countries, almost all children (about 99 percent) now survive to adulthood, and even among the most impoverished, ignorant or undeveloped segments of these populations, the proportion of children who die during childhood is biologically almost insignificant.

*

The above 50 percent childhood death rate is only an average - among the poorest sector of the population the childhood mortality probably approached fairly close to 100 percent.

So it did not matter much how many children were born to the poor, since almost none of them would survive - and extra children born to the poorest and most ignorant classes probably served merely to reduce the survivorship of those children who had not reached adulthood.

But childhood mortality was probably considerably lower than 50 percent among the wealthier, more intelligent, higher in status.

Therefore, the modern population in developed countries (you and I) are almost entirely the offspring of the wealtheir, more intelligent, more conscientious, higher status classes of history.

*

So, in the past, it was childhood death rates which - mostly - drove demographic change. Things that reduced childhood death rates (more food, less disease, less violence, fewer fatal accidents, better hygeine, better medicine, better - more loving, intelligent and conscientious - mothers) would increase reproductive success.

http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.com/2010/02/why-are-women-so-intelligent.html

*

But in the modern world nowadays reproductive success is essentially a matter of birth rates: of fertility. Childhood mortality is so low it can (almost) be ignored (I mean ignored from a strictly biological point of view).

*

No matter how relatively underdeveloped and underprivileged a population - no matter how stupid, feckless and uncaring the mothers - for almost everywhere in the world at present, childhood death rates are all-but irrelevant to reproductive success: almost all children are 'kept alive' by 'society'.

Consequently, for the first and only time in human history, pure fertility drives demographic change - and also evolutionary change.

*

*

There is a mis-match between human psychology - which mostly evolved in a context of hunter-gatherer societies - and life in modern society: but the mis-match seems to be much more extreme in women than men.

*

Essentially, the mis-match is evident in terms of human choice and especially in relation to 'reproductive success'.

(Happiness is irrelevant to this - natural selection operates on reproduction, and happiness is merely a means to that end.)

*

Reproductive success of a person is, roughly, the relative proportion of viable offspring it contributes to the population - this is, roughly, measured by the number of children born to a person (minus those children who die before completing their reproductive lifespan).

In the modern world where death rates are very low, reproductive success can pretty much be measured as the fertility rate: the number of children.

*

If you look at figures 1 and 2 in this paper -

http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/daniel.nettle/amnat.pdf

you can see that the situation is very different for men and women.

Men are biologically reasonably well adapted to modern society - but not women: the graphs go in opposite directions in this particular sample.

*

Overall, as men become wealthier and higher in status it either increases the number of children (which is what would be expected, biologically - and is the reason why men strive for status) - or at least does not damage reproductive success too much.

(Of course, in a sample worldwide, this would not hold, since less wealthy men would have a lot more children. This argument only applies to modern, developed societies with control of reproduction.)

But as women become more wealthy, more educated (and even more so with respect to increasing IQ) the number of children declines sharply and the proportion of women who are childless increases.

*

Why should women be so much more adversely affected - from a biological perspective, purely in terms of reproductive success, by modernity?

Because, almost certainly, in the past (in the pre-contraceptive era) increasing wealth among women almost certainly strongly increased reproductive success.

It is contraception which is the main factor.

Women seem predisposed to avoid or minimize childbearing, in proportion that they are more intelligent, educated, wealthy and high status.

*

This is surprising, and remarkable, and - currently - pretty much unexplained.

Here are some ideas.

*

In biology in general, females are (almost always) the investing sex: they invest a lot more resources into offspring (before and sometimes after birth) than males.

In order to allocate investment most female mammals will temporarily suppress reproduction under conditions of stress - fear of violence, starvation, disease etc.

This can be conceptualized in terms of saving resources for better times which may be ahead.

Reproductive suppression may be achieved by not ovulating, by reabsorbing the fetus, by abandoning or even killing newborn offspring etc.

*

Maybe women in modern society are engaged in reproductive suppression (mostly by means of contraception and abortion): maybe there is (at some level) a perception of 'stress'; maybe (in some way) the modern situation is perceived as alien and hostile to such an extent that reproduction is deferred (in hope of better times ahead) - but since this situation does not change, better times never arrive and reproduction gets (in practice) deferred permanently - until the reproductive lifespan is over.

*

Or could it simply be distraction? Any focus on reproduction is overwhelmed by the multiple attractions and distractions of modern evolutionary novelties.

*

In historical societies reproduction just happened as a by product of instinct: people sought 'happiness' and the children just came along (and there was no way of stopping them).

Now, with the presence of so many evolutionary novelties, people in general are confused and distracted, such that if they 'do what comes naturally' it does not lead to having children - but merely to (mostly short lived) pleasure/ avoidance of suffering.

In modern societies this means that women behave much more bizarrely (from a biological perspective) than men - from a biological perspective, women (by choice) make themselves ugly and unattractive (with fashion, by their behaviour), and (biologically) waste their time and resources.

*

But why should women be more 'confused' by evolutionary novelties than men?

Perhaps because women are more peer oriented than men.

Each man is, in a biological sense, a loner who seeks status, seeks to become the dominant male and get the lion's share of reproduction. Each man is against other men - except that self-interest dictates that one way to pursue self interest is via alliances.

But in historic societies, alliances were very difficult to sustain unless underpinned by genetic relatedness: most gangs and tribes were of male relatives.

Otherwise male v male competition would tend to break them up.

*

But women seem more able and motivated to form alliances with unrelated women (perhaps because a women would usually move to the husband's tribe, and needed to establish herself among female strangers?). Therefore, whatever the reason for greater peer orientation, women are strongly influenced by the opinions of other women (or, more exactly, by what they perceive to be the opinions of other women.

*

So women will do almost anything which they perceive to be necessary to fit with what they perceive to be the peer group of other women - from the mild level of sending innumerable greetings cards, through adopting fashions which (nearly always) usually make them less attractive; up through drunkenness and promiscuity, to tattooing, foot-binding and other self-mutilations.

(By less attractive I mean objectively so, from a biological perspective such as the massive amount of data on male sexual preferences cross-culturally and the correlations between attractiveness and signals of reproductive potential and what makes a potentially good long term partner and parent.)

All of these originated and enforced by that biggest and most influential of evolutionary novelties: the mass media, which in this instance functions as a super-stimulus interpreted as representing the female peer group.

*

So, a couple of ideas ...

1. that the very high level of maternal investment in humans makes women relatively highly likely to engage in reproductive suppression under situations of stress: and modern society is perceived as extremely stressful - so reproduction is deferred, indefinitely...;

or,

2. that because women are more peer orientated, they are more vulnerable to influence by the mass media - which is an evolutionary novelty functioning as a superstimulus that is perceived to represent the female peer group...

but the phenomenon seems undeniable and calls out for explanation.

*

To restate the question:

Why are women so much more adversely affected (in a biological sense: reproductive success) by modernity than are men?

Or, why do modern women choose - on average - to damage their reproductive success?

Or, why does the pursuit of happiness – under modern conditions – cause de facto reproductive suppression in women so much more strongly than in men?

*

*

I have condensed and re-ordered these points from An Experiment with Time by J.W Dunne, Revised third edition of 1934 - Chapter III - The Experiment. 

*

I have just re-read (for the first time since I became a Christian) JD Salinger's three most religious stories: Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters, Zooey, and Seymour: an introduction.

I enjoyed them all, but most appreciated Zooey.

RHTRC struck me as a perfect short story, but - in terms of Salinger's ouvre - transitional; Zooey is IT, a perfect short story that is uniquely and 100 percent Salinger; and Seymour crosses the line from short story into a kind of fictional essay.

*

As well as its brilliant character delineation, dialogue, density and description; I was fascinated by the religious aspect of Zooey - and the light it shone on the big unifying question of the Glass chronicles: why did Seymour commit suicide?

*

Zooey begins with Salinger's characteristic eclectic, syncretic 'perennial philosophy' New-Age-ish -type spirituality; and builds towards Salinger's most wholly-Christian epiphany - the famous Fat Lady parable at the end.

This trajectory is one which is - apparently - undergone by Franny, Zooey and Buddy; but not by Seymour.

*

Seymour's suicide was - I believe - caused by what Walker Percy termed the 're-entry problem.

(see WP's Lost in the Cosmos and my earlier blog posting http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/03/re-entry-problem-for-artists-and.html )

This is intrinsic to any worldly spirituality - perhaps to any non-Christian religion - which does not include a heavenly afterlife with a process of theosis - or movement of the human towards becoming a Son of God.

Seymour seems to have had only a vague kind of transcendental belief (he does not quite seem to believe that Truth, Beauty and Virtue are objective, real - and to the extent he does he regards them as immanent - within nature - rather than supernatural).

Indeed, Seymour's spirituality is characterized by a belief in reincarnation rather than afterlife.

*

Yet reincarnation (even if true) is no answer to anything - or rather it is merely a superficial answer to specific questions (such as explaining a person's character and behaviour) not ultimate questions.

Reincarnation merely pushes the problems of life backward or forward, without providing any understanding of the human relation to The Good, to reality, to meaning or purpose.

*

Seymour argues (I think) that this worldly life here on earth is perfect - if only we looked at it correctly.

The fault is with people and their perspective.

But Seymour apparently couldn't get the right perspective and keep it. He could get himself into the correct frame of mind for periods, but would at some point have to re-enter the perspective which saw the world as mundane, painful, full of ugliness, lies, cruelty, short-termist selfishness.

And it was this re-entry which he found unbearable; and which (it seems to me) led to his suicide.

*

Seymour simply could not live up to his own ideals, his own aspirations - could not maintain his own temporary achievements.

And, lacking a conception of Original Sin, and lacking a belief in the possibility of Christian salvation - he had nowhere to go, nothing to turn to but (as he imagined) extinction and (he hoped) an end to his own suffering.

*

*

Since 1945 (and building up for a couple of centuries before), intellectuals in the West have risen to hold power in the World.

*

The first Western intellectual elite was probably Germany, from the late 19th century up to 1933 - when the country was led by 'mandarins' - mainly the senior state administrators, Professors and major Gymnasium teachers.

However, unlike nowadays, the German mandarins also had a military ethos and presence - such that intellectuals were screened by university dueling fraternities for the military virtues such as dominance, masculinity, hierarchy, nationalism, obedience, group loyalty and physical courage.

(But their self-assertion was their downfall.) 


[See Fritz Ringer The Decline of the German Mandarins: The German Academic Community, 1890–1933].

*

An even greater dominance of the intellectual elite emerged after WWII

This time, however, and especially since the mid-1960s; the elite was anti-military: pacifist, submissive, quasi-equalitarian, xenophilic, feminist (indeed, increasingly female), and lifestyle-rebellious.

(And their self-hatred was their downfall.)


[See Herrnstein and Murray's The Bell Curve.] 

*

Well, all this has been in place for the past couple of generations, and what have we got?

The intellectuals promised inspirational High Art, Pure Science and the Social Virtues.

What they delivered was ugly and depressing art, dishonest and incompetent science; and moral inversion.

*

What we have is fashion-driven, novelty-seeking, self-indulgent, lazy, cowardly, unprincipled, careerism/ holiday-making - all of this disguised by ever thicker and more garish coatings of public relations, hype and spin.

*

The intellectual class wanted to run things, they had they chance and ran things, and they failed...

We failed.

We won't get another chance. 

*

*

An Experiment with Time by J.W Dunne was a major influence on The Inklings, and forms a background to the posthumously-published and unfinished novels The Notion Club Papers by JRR Tolkien and The Dark Tower by C.S Lewis.

*

One of the most striking passages in The Dark Tower is the following:


" '... that we see the future is certain. Dunne's book proved that - '

"MacPhee gave a roar like a man in pain.

" 'It's all very well, MacPhee,' Orfieu continued, 'but the only thing that enables you to jeer at Dunne is the fact that you have refused to carry out the experiments he suggests. If you carried them out you would have got the same results that he got, and I got, and everyone got who took the trouble. Say what you like but the thing is proved. It's as certain as any scientific proof whatever.' "

*

Dunne had recorded his dreams in detail and in writing the instant he awoke. The method he describes is very specific, and he is clear that unless this method is followed, then the necessary information will not be available.

Dunne's conclusion - surveying these results, from himself and others - was that some parts of some dreams consisted of recollections of past events (especially the day preceding the sleep) mixed with anticipations of future events - quite thoroughly mixed, so that which-was-which only became apparent later.

My sense is that Lewis and Tolkien both accepted this by the late 1930s into the 1940s, sought an explanation, and discussed its implications - presumably in Inklings meetings.

*

Let us assume that Dunne was right and that Lewis and Tolkien were right to accept his evidence.

And let us take the evidence of the Dark Tower and the Notion Club Papers to conclude that Dunne's experiments were replicated, were verified, at least by Lewis and Tolkien and (probably) some other of the Inklings.

Then why has this idea died-out? Why do so few people nowadays believe that dreams can predict the future?

*

The reason is easy enough to understand on reading Dunne - that the dreams were a mixture of past, future and apparently irrelevant material - but there was no way to evaluate which elements were predictive until after they had been confirmed.

So, although Dunne seemed to show convincingly that some aspects of some dreams were visions of the future - this had no practical value: specifically this partial and mixed knowledge offered no powers.

You could not - therefore - use future visionary dreams to make money (e.g from bets), manipulate people, avoid disasters or anything of that kind.

To the modern mind, this means that Dunne's work seemed trivial, hence ignorable, and was eventually discarded (without consideration) as being fake, or gullible, or something...

*

That dreams contained visions of the future was, of course, believed by everyone until a few hundred years ago - and probably is believed by the vast majority of people in the world even now. But in ancient times, the ability to interpret dreams, and decode the future visions - so that the knowledge they contained might become useful, was regarded as a rare gift (and one associated with a lot of fakery).

*

On the other hand, if Dunne was correct (and I find the testimony of Lewis and Tolkien hard to ignore) then this is very interesting for what it may tell us about the human condition.

Among other things, it suggests to me the following:

1. That dreams have a natural function - and not just related to memory (the past) but also to the future.

2. That this natural function happens during sleep and does not require conscious awareness (since most people most of the time do not recall dreams - and Dunne's results depend on specific techniques of rapid recall, association and the making of an objective record, which techniques were apparently not done by anyone before him; and by very few since).

3. That - therefore - although containing material from the future, the natural function of dreams is not predictive; and that the use of dreams to predict the future is a special, individual, learned skill.

4. My guess as to one function of dreams is therefore that they locate each person in time ('in the world') in an unconscious, implicit, non-verbal way; that dreams provide our relation to reality, our embeddedness in time, which we carry with us as a background to waking, conscious life.

(Dreaming is not, then, functioning only to 'consolidate' past memories, but perhaps also to prepare for the unfolding future - time stretching-out on both sides from the present moment of the dream.)

5. That it is therefore possible that the lack of dreams, or of dreams of the right kind (perhaps as a result of some illness, or unnatural lifestyle, or drugs or something) might cause alienation: might cause someone to feel isolated, un-integrated with life, solipsistic, that life has no meaning nor purpose.

*

Note: The above was adapted from a posting on my Notion Club Papers blog.

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2011/05/experiment-with-time-by-jw-dunne-and.html


*

*

Reading biographies and memoirs - as I do - I am often struck by the vivid, detailed recall of those who met eminent people - and contrast it with my own hazy recollections of meeting the philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._E._M._Anscombe -

who was, if not exactly eminent, someone that appears as a minor but significant figure in the annals of the twentieth century in relation both to Wittgenstein and to C.S. Lewis. Lewis, for example, regarded her as much more intelligent than he was.

*

The meeting was, I am pretty sure, in the summer or autumn of 1985, and comes from a rather lost episode of my young adult life (lost, because it did not lead on to anything), while I was working on my doctorate in neuroendocrinology.  I have no written evidence from this period, and I didn't discuss my plans very widely, so I am forced to operate purely on the basis of memory.

I was, at the time, much under the spell of Wittgenstein, and (therefore?) wanting to study philosophy as an undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge on an accelerated (2 year instead of 3 year) degree - possible because I was already a (medical) graduate.

I must have written to some people, and arranged some meetings and then I travelled to Cambridge where I had lunch with Anscombe at her college New Hall, then in the afternoon met with the admissions tutor of Trinity and their philosophy tutor (Nick Denyer).

So I was probably with Anscombe for an hour and a half or so. What do I recall?

*

Of the lady, that she struck me a very much the same type as the minor country gentry I had encountered in Somerset and Northumberland; a chunky, pugnacious and somewhat 'masculine' elderly woman (of course, masculine or not, she had had numerous children). Her speech was clipped and 'military' in style, the content I remember as cliched and at a superficial social level.

Her car was very muddy and full of bits and pieces.

The lunch at New Hall, and the college itself, I can picture as being similar to, but somewhat better than, a secondary school dinner - there was some kind of gimmick by which the lunch counter rose up out of the floor (electrically powered) to bring up food from the kitchens below, I imagine. In general I felt rather underwhelmed, disappointed.

The only remark I can recollect was in response to a query about her meeting with Wittgenstein - she said something about having heard about him while she was studying in Oxford, then concluding this to comment that 'of course, he had a first-rate mind'. This struck me at the time as a characteristic bit of Cambridge boilerplate.

*

So, in my memory at least, I have to admit that I was not impressed by G.E.M Anscombe, indeed I rather disliked her - yet of course she was both generous and tolerant to meet up with me, give me lunch, and talk with me - I who was someone merely considering applying to Trinity, and with no connection with her or with the university. I hope that I was suitably grateful.

(And I very much doubt whether G.E.M Anscombe was at all impressed with me! I can't recall saying anything which, even momentarily, captured her attention or interest. Quite likely, this was a basis of my slight feeling of resentment - that I did not, could not, impress her? Maybe I was hoping to be recognized as 'the next Wittgenstein'? - that unlikely notion would indeed be entirely consistent with my self-conceit of that era.)

*

The episode led nowhere because, although I was indeed offered a place at Trinity to read philosophy, when I saw the size of the college fees (on top of the university fees and the need to support myself for two years of very hard academic work) it was very obvious that I could not afford it.

But also, the visit had rather put me off the idea of studying undergraduate philosophy at Trinity, Cambridge; as I recall I was glad of a cast-iron excuse not to follow-through my plans.

In the event, I went to Durham to study for an MA by thesis in English (only one year, and with a British Academy scholarship - so easily affordable) - and this turned out to be a much more fruitful path for me.

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(Although Durham English did not cure me of Wittgenstien - in fact things got even worse as I continued reading philosophy alongside the English, and moved on to Richard Rorty and deep into the lunacy of 'postmodern' thinking, which I had successfully resisted up to that point. It took a few more years to extricate myself from that mess.)

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The Cambridge affair now feels like a near miss or lucky escape - a madness of a few weeks - on those rare occasions I remember it; and maybe that interpretation colours or extinguishes my memories.

But what a feeble set of recollections I have concerning this meeting!

For some people, such a meeting might have provided sufficient incident to fill a 15 000 word memoir!

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