Bruce Charlton's Notions

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Among all the discussions of the fall of the West, and which civilization might take-over, there seems to be little attention paid to China.

Yet, as the Western elites have turned-against their own civilizations and nations, and as their tactics have by now turned from passive acquiescence in decline to active promotion of decline (national subversion, attacks on allies, systematic assistance of enemies), perhaps China is as well placed as any to take-over and run the West?

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Since a modern coup is about 'taking over the means of communication', China is exceptionally well-placed to mount such a coup - due to the international presence of Chinese nationals at high levels in science and technology, computation, and in key positions in the world of the internet and electronic media.

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The main question - and it is one to which I don't know the answer - is whether or not China wants to take-over and rule the West.

If China did want to take-over, it is hard to see the Western authorities as having the will to stop them.

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Indeed, since the Western elites are determined to abdicate rulership, and the Western populations are currently being prepared for future subordination; and if leadership becomes a choice of external powers or populations - is it possible that China might be among the best of potential candidates?

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Perhaps the best known British writer on 'Time' during the 20th century was not J.W. Dunne himself, but his interpreter and populariser J.B. Priestley (1894-1984).

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Priestley is hardly known nowadays except perhaps for his play An Inspector Calls (although, to be remembered for even a single play which stays in the commercial repertory is more than most playwrights achieve - it is as much as, say Oliver Goldsmith or Oscar Wilde achieved).

However, in his heyday, from the 1930s to the 1960s, Priestley was one of the best known 'public intellectuals' of the UK. He had written big-selling and critically-respected novels, travel, books, plays, essays; and was a very popular radio and television broadcaster: was was indeed awarded the Order of Merit (OM) which is the highest intellectual accolade in the British honours system.

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Anyone who was interested by my earlier blog posts on J.W. Dunne should probably get hold of Priestley's Man and Time, 1964.

Overall, I find Priestley interesting rather than convincing. His mature views were transitional between a youthful atheism and socialism, and later partial reactionary and spiritual interests.

Likewise, his reflections on the nature of Time are stimulating but seem rather confused and therefore not compelling.

What he seems to have done, in general, was outline problems worthy of attention.

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In terms of Time, Priestley took seriously his own experiences of a different kind of Time (or several different kinds of Times) than the usual linear, serial treadmill leading inexorably to death and extinction.

These other Times seemed to supervene in situations like aesthetic absorption, the act of creation, and of course dreams.

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Priestley was convinced from his own experience and some hundreds of accounts of others which he gathered (as well as from the work of Dunne's) that dreams could be pre-cognitive.

He also became convinced in the survival of the soul after death, probably in another kind of time.

Working wholly within a secular framework, he didn't explain these conclusions satisfactorily; indeed his explanations seem pretty poor to me - presumably because his assmptions rule out any possible coherent answer.

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Altogether, Priestley seems on the one hand an unjustly neglected figure, on the other hand not a major thinker - but worth a look.

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That's it really - but it is a point most people seem to miss.

People don't spontaneously and en masse pick-out their cousins from all others as marriage partners; nor will people marry their cousins above all others without powerful carrots and sticks.

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Of course I am referring to cousin marriage as a societal norm - and certainly not to each and every individual instance of cousin marriage - obviously some cousin marriages are spontaneous love matches. But most are not when it is the societal norm.

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And whether spontaneous love matches are the best basis for marriage as a social norm is another question again - maybe arranged marriages, and coercive marriages are better overall? Certainly there are strong arguments on that side.

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I'm just saying that cousin marriage as a societal norm is inevitably achieved by social mechanisms that are arranged and coercive.

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"None of the characters, as Tolkien wrote the story, really understands the whole of what is going on.

"Not even Gandalf. In fact, the only thing they do know is that their fate will not, in the end, be determined by visible events but by a mostly invisible one: the stealthy crawl of three insignificant-looking characters into the lion's mouth of Mordor.

"The great ones and the heroes are continually trying to see what is happening elsewhere, through the palantirs and the Mirror of Galadriel and the Eye of Sauron. The attempt is repeatedly disastrous. Denethor commits suicide because of what he sees in his palantir, but he has read it wrong. As Gandalf says, "Even the wise cannot see all ends," and the really wise remember that.

"The moral is the motto of the British redcoat: "Look to your front." Don't think about what other people are doing: you'll get it wrong and it's disheartening. Or, to quote Gandalf again - and Jackson picked out just these words to repeat in the first movie, varying the pronouns cunningly - "[The future] is not for us to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

"Tolkien surely did not mean these words just for Frodo. They were a major part of his own conviction and a part of his own cure for the defeatism, the appeasement, the lack of will and the weary calculation of odds that he saw dogging the Western democracies as he was writing The Lord of the Rings and still after he had finished it.

"Tolkien's achievement, it may be, was to reintroduce a heroic world view, drawn from the ancient texts he taught as a professor, to a world gone ironic."

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3585907/
Take-courage-things-may-not-be-as-bad-as-they-seem.html

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Supposing someone was to retreat from The World to The Desert in order to pursue higher spirituality...

(The Desert could be physically and geographically remote, or psychologically and societally remote - or both)

...but this very remoteness, precisely that which was desired in order to enable a greater degree of spiritual concentration, itself removed the person from contact with the Institutional Church?

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(Especially considering that the someone might be simply a single individual, and that the 'true' Church may now be very small in number; represented as an Institution so rarely as to be very hard to discover, very dispersed, yet very demanding of physical commitments (time, presence, practices).

Suppose this? Something will have to give...

The Church, the sacraments, the guidance, common worship?

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"For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." KJV 18:20



But supposing not even 'two or three' can gather together? What then?

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Yet if a person goes it alone in The Desert, they are highly vulnerable to the fatal temptations of spiritual pride ('prelest'), self-gratification, apostasy and heresy...

Is it not in itself prideful to set oneself apart?

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I can't see any earthly answer to the dilemma. 

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From The Letters of JRR Tolkien - letter number 131 to Milton Waldman, 1951:

The Downfall [of Numenor] is partly the result of an inner weakness in Men - consequent, if you will, upon the first Fall (unrecorded in theses tales), repented but not finally healed.

Reward on earth is more dangerous for men than punishment!

The Fall is achieved by the cunning of Sauron in exploiting this weakness. Its central theme is (inevitably, I think, in a story of Men) a Ban, or Prohibition.

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If it is indeed true that reward on earth is more dangerous for men than punishment, then this is a truth which has been lost from our culture.

I take it that 'reward on earth' means material goods, worldly pleasures.

If it is true, then we are in big trouble, and have been in big trouble for several generations - since for us there is nothing that is real except 'on earth', and indeed for us there is no such thing as 'reward'.

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We don't even think of earthly happiness as a reward because in modern culture we don't believe there is anybody or any-thing to do the rewarding; we don't believe in God, we don't believe that the universe cares about what we do.

We regard happiness as simply the natural state of things.

So, if we personally are not happy at this moment, if anybody is unhappy ever, then this can only be because it is someone's fault.

Since happiness is regarded as spontaneous, unhappy people must have been made unhappy - ultimately by other people.

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For our culture the contrast with 'reward on earth' is not reward in heaven (we don't believe in heaven), nor even anything to do with reward (we don't believe in rewards), and certainly not in hell (hell is a wicked joke); but the opposite of reward on earth is simply 'misery on earth'.

Modern culture has no higher value than comfort.

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We moderns cling to the comforts of life like the devil-worshipping Numenoreans, but not heroically - our elites are anything-but heroic.

Rather than be deprived of the comforts of life, our elite want the 'right' to be killed quickly and painlessly.

So this is what we have come to! A culture focused upon the process of dying - not death as a state (we don't believe in that), but merely on the process of dying.

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Ours is a very different state from Numenorean hubris - who determined to conquer the gods and achieve eternal life (because life for them - on their earthly paradise, with their enhanced powers of mind and body - was such delight).

We have killed the gods, hence rendered each and every life meaningless, purposeless, alienated - so we ask 'nothing more' than that life feels pleasant, right up to its end.

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Of course, logically, the modern elite ought to be killing themselves sooner rather than later; why put it off?

Why rely on doctors and clinics to 'put you out of your misery'? - surely people should do it while they can still implement their own choices for themselves.

It could happen, perhaps will happen.

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But somehow, at present, we don't yet believe our own nihilism to that extent.

We are lukewarm even in our existential despair!

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When I was an atheist I didn’t feel any need for Christianity.

I didn’t feel any need for it. I certainly felt alienated, but merely wanted relief from alienation, and conceptualised this in terms of relief in pleasure, or at least in distraction – in absorption, in leisure or in busyness.

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I strongly resented the assumption that I had a need which Christianity would satisfy. I denied any such need.

I resented the idea that I was in a state of sin (whatever that might mean) from which I needed to be saved.

I regarded Christianity as being like psychoanalysis – something which itself created the pathology which it then claimed to cure.

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I didn’t see that my alienation was a matter of perceived reality – that I felt alienated because the only things that seemed to matter were wholly subjective (unrelated to objective facts) hence delusional.

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The un-alienated life was merely (I thought) a successful delusion – a game of ‘let’s pretend’ where you are able to forget that you are pretending.

I learned that hunter gatherers were, apparently, un-alienated and well-adjusted to their reality; but (I thought) precisely because hunter gatherer reality (animism) was a successfully self-gratifying delusion.

Hunter gatherers believed that the forest (or whatever their environment) was a benign parent, that theirs was a perfect world where they had ‘always’ lived, that they were always surrounded by aware and purposive agents with whom they had a personal relationship (trees, stones, hills) that things were as they should be – full of spirits and powers.

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I regarded hunter gatherer beliefs as objectively wrong – but successfully self-gratifying. I envied them their happiness but regarded it as a delusion. The meanings which hunter gatherers perceived were projected meanings.

In reality I believed that there were no such meanings.

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I believed that human reason and investigation had not discovered any link between human subjectivity and objective reality – indeed I believed that we moderns had discovered there was no such link, in the sense that the rational default inference was no meaning – and anything else was to pander to wishful thinking.

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I did not believe in the reality of science, nor even of reason – but I believed that they were internally-consistent, un-contradicted and therefore (for some reason) preferable.

In a sense, I regarded the only reality as present gratification, and that the understanding of present reality was ultimately underwritten by the power of reason and science to enhance present gratification (e.g. more comfort, more stimulus, longer life…).

Yet, at the same time, I believed that hunter gatherers had greater personal gratification...

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Therefore the human situation was tragic. We were apparently addicted to our present delusions – even though these delusions were (by comparison with hunter gatherer life) sub-optimal.

The main hope was therefore that humans would gain control of their own subjectivity – so that we could perceive and experience as we wanted.

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I regarded morality – for example altruism, caring for others – as ultimately explicable as a contingent consequence of natural selection – therefore its imperative was pragmatic, but not ethically compelling (change the instinct, by science or maybe training, and the morality would change – so I was forced to admit, when trying to be consistent).

Why not be a selfish psychopath, then? That would be consistent? Why not exploit the world and other people for personal gratification?

Why not indeed?...

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Yet I found myself constrained (and it could only be regarded as a constraint, ultimately) by Natural Law – by spontaneous human morality.

In a sense, I resented the spontaneous presence of ‘Natural Law’ in myself as a barrier to self-gratification.

At one level, I wanted things to be as I wanted them to be; but was frustrated that mind and body would not go along with this desire: that instinct and pathology (as I interpreted the phenomena) would contradict and often thwart me in trying to attain self-gratification.

So, in that sense, evolved instincts and the constraints of ‘the rest of the world’ (both experienced as two sides of the frustration of evolved instincts) were the only realities.

But all this had no moral implications – unless morality was re-defined as the relation between evolved instincts and the current environment (either or both of which might at some point be changed).

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So, reality was self-contradictory, paradoxical.

But then why not? Who said reality had to make sense?

(Especially to a contingently evolved animal such as myself.)

Whatever the nature of reality, all I knew were my preferences and the constraints on their gratification.

Yet, how could I even know this?

Somehow I ‘knew’ that hunter gatherers were deluded in their contentment; but the criteria by which I judged them to be delusional were not – somehow – regarded as equally delusional.

I knew that science was a kind of delusion – yet somehow it seemed less delusional than animism.

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All the time I was making evaluations and judgments (for example that science was realer than animism) yet there seemed no grounds for these – except perhaps that what is, what exists, has a greater reality than what was and is not now.

Existence validates reality?

(But how to evaluate existence?)

What seemed compelling was that hunter gatherers were few or extinct whereas rationalists, atheists, had ‘taken over’ the world.

This was an argument of validation by demographic trends, as it dawned on me. Demography is truth?

A pragmatic argument.

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Yet what about these demographic trends? Had rationalism and atheism and materialism really taken-over?

How come if atheism is valid then religions are increasing? How come that, among religions, Islam has been the most obviously successful in recent demographic trends?

The conclusion could be delayed by comparing wealth and technical ability – but surely these are only a means to an end; and wealth and technical ability are only validated if they are able to prevail – which surely means they ought to be prevailing now?

I was trying to judge pragmatically, yet I was finding that pragmatic judgement pointed towards transcendental values.

How to stave-off transcendence?

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‘Transcendent reality’ is (by definition) outside of science and pragmatic discourse.

Yet apparently the application of a pragmatic system of evaluation seemed to conclude that transcendence is pragmatically validated.

Apparently, only by basing life on transcendent Goods can life be pragmatically validated…

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I was led to the same conclusions in science and it art. In science, it seemed that honesty was vital to real science, yet honesty depended upon regarding transcendent truth as real.

In art, it seemed that regarding beauty as transcendentally real was essential to real achievement.

Indeed, the achievements of creative genius in whatever field seemed to depend on the sense that reality was transcendent of that field.

Pragmatism led merely to professionalism, or careerism, or plain psychopathic fakery.

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Once I had reached this point, the point of acknowledging the primacy of the transcendent, then I was no longer an atheist.

The question changed: from then onwards, it was not a question of atheism versus religion, but instead a question of which religion?

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Tolkien's Numenoreans were mortal men - but they did not suffer illness, lived about three times as long as we do, and when it came to die were able to surrender their lives of their own free will.

But when the Numenoreans later became corrupted, they would cling to life, suffer pain and misery, become senile, and eventually die anyway - unwillingly.

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What about us? Sadly we cannot do as the old and uncorrupt Numenoreans; but is there any reason why we must cling to life like the dark Numenoreans - the one's who worshipped Morgoth?

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How about this?

When we reach the time of life when our vitality is waning and we know it is about time to die; and when we then get sick and suffer (unlike the Numenoreans); maybe we should not take antibiotics, not have life-extending surgery, not use life support systems, not sustain our exhausted physiology with medication and mechanization, and certainly not get resuscitated?

Maybe we should just avail ourselves of painkillers and palliatives (but preferably not to the extent of clouding our consciousness - trying to keep a clear head) and 'let nature take its course'?

Be Aragorn, not Arwen.

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Aragorn: "At last, Lady Evenstar, fairest in this world, and most beloved, my world is fading. Lo! we have gathered; and we have spent, and now the time of payment draws near."

Arwen knew well what he intended, and long had foreseen it; nonetheless she was overborne by her grief. "Would you then, lord, before your time leave your people that live by your word?" she said.

"Not before my time," he answered. "For if I will not go now, then I must soon go perforce. And Eldarion our son is a man full-ripe for kingship." (...) 

Then all left him save Arwen, and she stood alone by his bed. And for all her wisdom and lineage she could not forbear to plead with him to stay yet for a while. She was not yet weary of her days, and thus she tasted the bitterness of the mortality that she had taken upon her. (...)

Aragorn: "Let us not be overthrown at the final test, who of old renounced the Shadow and the Ring. In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound forever in the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory, Farewell!"

"Estel, Estel!" [Arwen] cried, and with that even as he took her hand and kissed it, he fell into sleep.

Then a great beauty was revealed in him, so that all who after came there looked on him with wonder; for they saw the grace of his youth, and the valor of his manhood, and the wisdom and majesty of his age were all blended together. And long there he lay, an image of the splendour of the Kings of Men in glory undimmed before the breaking of the world.

But Arwen went forth from the House, and the light of her eyes was quenched, and it seemed to her people that she had become cold and grey as nightfall in winter that comes without a star.

Then she said farewell to Eldarion, and to her daughters, and to all whom she had loved; and she went out from the city of Minas Tirith and passed away to the land of Lórien, and dwelt there alone under the fading trees until winter came. Galadriel had passed away and Celeborn had also gone, and the land was silent.

There at last when the mallorn-leaves were falling, but spring had not yet come, she laid herself to rest upon Cerin Amroth; and there is her green grave, until the world is changed, and all the days of her life are utterly forgotten by the men that come after, and elanor and nimphredil bloom no more east of the sea.


The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien - The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen

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http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/kanazawa-statement.pdf

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"The manager of a fruit-and-vegetable shop places in his window, among the onions and carrots, the slogan: “Workers of the world, unite!

"Why does he do it? What is he trying to communicate to the world?...

"I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient"


http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2010/08/vaclav-havels-poster-test.html

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From The Last Byzantine Renaissance, by Steven Runciman, 1970:

'...what the later Greeks had to say in general was restricted by their distinction between the Inner and the Outer learning.

'The Inner learning dealt with eternity, with truths that had existed before the beginning of time; and man could only know what God in his goodness had chosen to reveal. The rest was unknown and unknowable.

'The student of the Inner Learning might be able to expound and explain these revealed truths, but he could not add to them unless the Holy Spirit vouchsafed further revelations.

'The mystic might be permitted to penetrate a little further into the unknown but his experience was not an intellectual exercise. (...)

'The sophists who arrogantly explained the universe in terms intelligible to the intellect had no place in Byzantium.

'Philosophy could not open the door to Inner Learning.'


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From The Tyranny of Liberalism by James Kalb, 2008. Page 94 (re-paragraphed):

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The new religion, a system of moral absolutes based on a denial that moral truth is knowable, consists in nothing less than the deification of man.

To refuse to talk about the transcendent, and to view it as wholly out of our reach, seems very cautious and humble. In practice, however, it puts our own thoughts and desires at the center of things, and so puts man in the place of God.

If you say we cannot know anything about God, only our own experience, you will soon say that there is no God, at least for practical purposes, and that we are the ones who give order and meaning to the world.

In short you will say that we are God.

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Skepticism invariably turns into dogmatism. 

We cannot help but act, and if skepticism makes all action nonrational we will nonetheless act on some principle or other. 

If, because we are skeptics, we cannot take arguments in favour of other principles seriously, we will treat our arbitrarily chosen principles as absolute and denounce those who question them as a threat to peace and public order. 

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Liberalism (...) proposes a faith - man the measure as the highest truth and preference satisfaction as the summum bonum - but cannot discuss what it is doing or why. Any reasons it could give would fall far short of the clear demonstration it demands.

Rather than engage other beliefs it must obfuscate its position, claim that it wins by default, and declare other faiths out of bounds.

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I can easily recall feeling just this way, for years; accepting that man is the measure of all things, having what felt like strong moral principles, but unable to discuss what I was doing or why.

It was - curiously - a very secure position, since it was so unclear, so impossible to pin-down, that it could never be refuted: there was, really, nothing to refute.

Unfortunately, my way out of this was so slow, multi-step and complicated that it is hard to seem how it could be of any value to anybody else.

But one aspect was that I eventually admitted to myself that I had 'always' operated on the basis of some kind of benign providence which was like a path to which I ought to adhere, and which was revealed by instinct and serendipity - then gradually recognizing that this lifelong mode of actual-living made no sense except if there was a God with a personal 'interest' in my 'salvation'.

(I recognized that this was entailed by Jung's ideas - which I had explored in some depth - but that Jung had himself not followed his own logic; then I diagnosed that neither had I.) 

Once that fact of living was recognized, once the human centred-perspective was rejected (or was recognized as always having de facto been rejected), then this - obviously - led onto other things.

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From The Byzantine Civilization by Steven Runciman, 1933

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They loved beautiful scenery. Gardens and parks and flowers were a delight to them (...) and they would build their monasteries on sites commanding the loveliest views that they could find.

Their buildings, their stuffs, their books, all reflected the same yearning for beauty, but a beauty not quite of this earth.

Beauty had an inner meaning to them. It helped their mystical contemplation; it was part of the glory of God.

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Life was drab and ugly; but the worshipper, the citizen in Saint Sophia or the hermit on Mount Athos was away from it all.

The human architecture of the Cathedral and the divine architecture of the Mountain alike raised him out of the ordinary world and made him closer to God and True Reality.

To the Byzantine beauty and religion went hand in hand, to their mutual advantage.

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The alliance is the better understood when we remember the background to Byzantine life. The Byzantines lived in a hard and unreliable world. Beyond the frontiers roamed the barbarians, and all too often they would burst in across the provinces or over the sea, and their hordes would reach the gates of the capital itself. 

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Beset by dangers and uncertainty, the Byzantine could scarcely fail to be suspicious, to have nerves that flared easily into fury or panic.

He inevitably sought comfort in ultra-mundane things, in union with God and the hope of eternal life.

He knew existence to be sad.

The simple laughter and happiness of the pagans was lost. Byzantine wit was acid; its humour found expression in mockery and sarcasm.

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Indeed life seemed a mockery.

This great Empire, the last home of civilization in a dark stormy world, was continually tottering before the barbarians, and recovering only to meet a fresh attack.

For centuries the great City stood inviolate, to be in foreign eyes a symbol of eternal power and riches. But the Byzantines knew the end would come some day, that one of these onslaughts would triumph.

The prophecies written all over Constantinople on columns or in wise books told the same story, of the days when there would be no more Emperors, the last days of the city, the last days of civilisation.

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Summary comment: We now live long after the end of civilisation. We live in an increasingly hard and unreliable world, and barbarians roam among us and around us. We know existence to be sad. We know that the simple laughter and happiness of the pagans is lost. Beset by dangers and uncertainty, we must seek comfort, not in worldly distractions, but in ultra-mundane things; in a beauty not quite of this earth to help our mystical contemplation; in union with God and the hope of eternal life.


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Given that neutrality is impossible nonsense, and that we ought to support the better against the worse, how do we discern goodies from baddies?

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Cast aside the nonesense of legalism, proceduralism - that has landed us where we are now.

Go back to the ancient idea of settling a trial mainly by means of character: the relative character of the two sides, as revealed by their past behavior and known motivations.

Character and motivation: what are the two sides like and what are they trying to do?

What would they do if they won?

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Often this is clear: if one side won they would (on the basis of their character) do things we regard as wrong: they are the baddies.

In most conflicts this is very, very obvious. 

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The goodies are those who are either trying to do something good, and who have on the basis of their character a reputation for doing good; or else (in a fallen world) simply those who oppose the baddies.

That is enough! - if you have better character and better motivations and/or you are against the baddies - then you are a goody.

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Most baddies are working to impose the rule of a bad person (a person of bad character and motivations) - some baddies are working to impose the rule of bad gods or god (the divinity being judged by character and motivations).

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(Of course, here I am talking in a secular kind of way, but the principle works even better from a religious perspective, mutatis mutandis).

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If only goodies would discern in this fashion (avoiding the snares of legalism, of proceduralism) and if only the goodies would unite in opposing the baddies - well, it would be a better world: the world would get better, more good.

If only...

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What is the difference between good and evil characters in fantasy novels?

There is a superficial difference which seems universal to the genre, and a fundamental difference which is seen only in the best of the genre.

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The superficial difference is that good characters are kind, honest and altruistic, while bad characters are cruel, lying and selfish.

But the main superficial difference is kindness versus cruelty - the scenes which depict the evilness of the evil characters are typically those where they take pleasure in torment and torture.

This is seen in the best of the genre as well as the mainstream - Tolkien's orcs are cruel and love to torture, Rowling's Death Eaters love to torture Muggles and Muggle-lovers.

This can be seen as a hedonic morality, evil characters make others miserable: Vote for the goodies and have a better life.

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Cruelty is never good but it is possible to imagine a fantasy novel in which the goodies were violent and the baddies are pacifists. When the regime is evil and in control, and the only escape from oppression is by force, then evil may be pacifist. 

In Lord of the Rings Wormtongue takes a pacifist line when it comes to fighting Saruman, and he tries to protray Eomer as a blood-thirsty troublemaker who is the cause of provoking Saruman's aggression against Rohan.

In the Deathly Hallows where Voldemort controls in Ministary of Magic, official propaganda presents Harry and his supporters as the cause of all repressions, and provoking the necessity for the Snatcher squads. If only Harry would surrender, or would be handed-in to the authorities - then all would be peaceful...

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But the fundamental nature of evil in both Tolkien and Rowling is that evil desires to usurp God and itself be worshipped.

This meaning is deeply buried, but it is there.

The reality of Tolkien's universe is that The One is supreme; but Morgoth's prideful desire is to be worshipped in his place. Sauron is Morgoth's chief 'priest', and when he corrupts Numenor Sauron reinstates the worship of Morgoth. Presumably this would be Sauron's aim if he ruled Middle Earth - or alternatively to set himself up for worship (there are indications in the History of Middle Earth that Sauron pretended to be Morgoth at one point).

It is this displacement of God which is Morgoth/ Sauron's fundamental evil - that they falsely set themselves up as the supreme object of worship.

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And in Harry Potter something similar applies to Voldemort.

While Dumbledore and Harry implicitly serve some higher but unnamed Good (which is, in fact, God - as is suggested by the Harry-Dumbledore discussions of the King's Cross - Limbo chapter, and its depiction of the state of Voldemort's soul) - but Voldemort wants to be worshipped as supreme.

This is perhaps why Voldemort/ Tom Riddle will not allow anyone to speak his name, will not allow his name to be 'taken in vain' - this is characteristic of a jealous god.

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So, in the best fantasy, evil is ultimately that which would falsely usurp God as that which ought to be worshipped: evil is that which sets itself up to replace the true God.

The goodies are those who oppose this - and the characters are defined as good or evil not so much by their conduct as by which side they choose: real God or usurper; truth or falsehood (although conduct is also affected by the choice of sides).

Evil is an objective wrong because it is a denial of the Truth of the universe, the evil usurper is not - in fact - God: God is God - the only legitimate object of worship.

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In fantasy novels the attempt to enforce worship of evil leads to the superficial features of evil; because to worship evil and deny God is inherently false; it is distorting, unnatural.

The desire to overturn the organizing principle of the world is indicative of the primacy of pride and will - and to re-order the world requires immense power to reshape everything according to the will of the usurper - the more unnatural the desired state, the greater the power required to create it.

Hence evil characters seek power over the world. The unnatural deployment of power then leads on to the 'superficial' side effects that characterize the evil characters in fantasy: destruction of beauty, denial of Natural Law, deceitfulness, and that cruelty that delights in bending the will of others to conformity with the will-full fantasy of the evil villain.

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I have noticed that Leftists are very free with accusations of conspiracy theory.

When evaluating some undesirable phenomenon, the options given are 'chaos or conspiracy' - and these are assumed to be exhaustive.

The error is to assume that a conspiracy is the only form of explicit purposive group action.

Yet clearly this is not the case. 'Conspiracies' are pretty rare, but explicit purposive group action is pretty common.

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There are plenty of examples of groups, some very large groups indeed, who are quite explicit about their aims: these aims are published, preached, discussed, enforced.

And they are purposive in pursuit of these aims, they push in a particular direction and keep pushing - they take a long term strategic attitude (they want to win the war, not just the next battle).

They know what they are doing.

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The whole debate seems to hinge on self-awareness and consistency.

The bar for a 'conspiracy' is set at an impossibly high level such that the conspirators must all be wholly aware of what they want and what they are doing: must be wholly explicit and relentlessly purposive.

Since humans aren't like that, then the reality of the situation is denied.

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The end result of this style of reasoning is a peculiar state of denial concerning the reality of evil, and even the reality of enemies.

When 'chaos' is used to explain everything in opposition it does (at least) two things.

The first is that the 'my side' is seen as on the side of reason and order; while 'the other side' are seen as irrational and random - my intelligence and knowledge versus your stupidity and ignorance.

While this distinction may seem fairly aggressive, in the modern context it points to an enlightened solution in more and better-directed remedial education (aka propaganda).

The second consequence is to get rid of the problem of deliberate and strategic evil, to get rid of it from individual and social awareness.

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Confronted by immense, organized examples of explicit and purposive evil; our response is first to prove that it is not a conspiracy (not wholly bad, not self-consciously bad, not completely organized); then to regard any evil phenomena as generated by random causes, and then simply to ignore the threat.

Anyone who regards an example of evil as explicit and purposive must themselves be evil.

By such methods any conceivable evil can be ignored, no matter its scale or obviousness, no matter how explicit or purposive.

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From The Tyranny of Liberalism by James Kalb  (2008: pp. 51-2):

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Crude political expressions of scientism, such as Marxism, once waged open war on the traditions and religion of the people. Contemporary liberalism, which supplements scientism with the claim of tolerance and popular consent, is more sophisticated.

It accepts the right of tradition and religion to exist, but it trivializes them as mere personal preferences that cannot be allowed to affect anything that matters.

Furthermore, the disciplines of mental health remain available to delegitimize popular preferences at odds with public policy. 

These disciplines were used as political tools with Bolshevik crudity in the Soviet Union, but they have been deployed with greater finesse in the West. 

Classic examples include Theodore Adorno's critique of the 'authoritarian personality', which allowed almost any sort of skepticism regarding liberal demand sot be treated as a sign of psychological disorder, and Richard Hofstadter's 'The paranoid style in American politics', which assimilated support of Barry Goldwater and dissent from the Cold War-liberal consensus to a pattern of political insanity that spanned centuries. 

A more recent example is the term 'homophobia, which turns adherence to traditional sexual morality into a mental disorder.'

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What has happened is that liberalism/ political correctness has become so pervasive an assumption among the intellectual elite, that they regard PC as not just statistically normal, but as natural and spontaneous such that any deviations require specific explanation.

A related example of this, written by a friend of mine and indeed the premier IQ researcher in the UK, shows the Leftist assumption that intelligent people will naturally gravitate towards 'liberal and antitraditional social attitudes' and the strong implication that such attitudes are 'enlightened' in the sense of Good:

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Bright Children Become Enlightened Adults. Ian J. Deary, G. David Batty, Catharine R. Gale. Psychological Science January 1, 2008 vol. 19 no. 1 1-6. Abstract: We examined the prospective association between general intelligence (g) at age 10 and liberal and antitraditional social attitudes at age 30 in a large (N = 7,070), representative sample of the British population born in 1970. Statistical analyses identified a general latent trait underlying attitudes that are antiracist, proworking women, socially liberal, and trusting in the democratic political system. There was a strong association between higher g at age 10 and more liberal and antitraditional attitudes at age 30; this association was mediated partly via educational qualifications, but not at all via occupational social class. Very similar results were obtained for men and women. People in less professional occupations—and whose parents had been in less professional occupations—were less trusting of the democratic political system. This study confirms social attitudes as a major, novel field of adult human activity that is related to childhood intelligence differences.

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I agree with Deary et al that higher IQ does indeed predispose towards PC and 'enlightened' attitudes - but I regard the word 'enlightened' as meaning something-like 'progressivism typical of the enlightenment era' rather than being conflated with 'virtuous'.

So I regard high IQ enlightenment as a 'clever silly' phenomenon - a phenomenon among the current intellectual elite which is a by-product high IQ among European populations.

High IQ has definite advantages in terms of social success and longevity in modern societies.

But it is the historically- and geographically-restricted attitude of liberalism and anti-traditional values which is objectively, biologically pathological - as revealed by the cumulatively-lethal effect on reproductive success among the intellectual elite and the societies they rule.

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The scientifically-correct response to accusations of mental illness among anti-PC traditionalists is therefore not to argue-against the whole idea of psychopathology as relevant in politics; but in fact to make the credible counter-argument that significant (because fitness-damaging) psychological disorder is endemic among progressives.

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http://turnabout.ath.cx:8000/node/2909

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When universities and colleges worked properly, or at least much better than they do now (which is 'hardly at all') - then they were vocational institutions.

Medieval universities taught that which was necessary for an individual to become a member of the intellectual ruling class (logic, grammar, rhetoric, mathematics) - and that was the vocational purpose of becoming a 'Master of Arts' (Magister Artium).

The Doctoral degrees were also vocational - both in a specific sense of educating for practice in Divinity, Law and Medicine - but also in the general sense of being a license to teach at Universities.

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Post-medieval secular colleges retained the vocational focus: the aim early on was to teach what was necessary to become an administrator in that particular state - then later the vocational focus shifted to include that of being a generic 'teacher' of advanced studies (which at that time was mostly teaching in 'grammar schools').

When school teaching was essentially focused on the classics or mathematics, they formed the focus of university degrees - vocational again. To these were later added new vocational professions such as engineering, architecture, dentistry; and specialist teaching subjects, such as the sciences or specific arts.

Even as recently as forty years ago, most English degrees were implicitly vocational: the subject matter of degrees focused on either training for a specific profession, or for a specific type of advanced school teacher. The bulk of graduates were assumed to become high school teachers of the subject they studied at college.

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(The apparent exception of historical US liberal arts colleges can be understood on the basis that they actually functioned as grammar schools not universities: they provided basic general education for elite administrators.)

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Since the vocational link was broken, universities and colleges have been adrift without land in sight.

They claim to 'educate', but what is 'education' in practice?

By assuming that 'education' is valuable in and of itself, the concept has been emptied of substance.

Education is now open-endedly defined as 'whatever universities teach'.

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Lacking any understandable vocational rationale for degrees, higher education makes implausible claims about its generic benefits.

However, the claimed effects of higher 'education' as such turn-out to be merely a combination of maturation and selection. Graduates (as a class) are three or four years older, and possess intellectual abilities according to the degree of selectivity of a particular institution.

Until age and selectivity are controlled, quantitative claims for the generic benefits of generic higher education are dishonest or ignorant (usually both).

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(By contrast the specific benefits of a specific program of study are much more comprehensible - when present. The professional programs potentially retain this core rationale - but this activity constitutes a small segment of higher education - and indeed the professional courses have been corrupted by a bogus goal of 'generic education'. The fake rationale of non-vocational higher education has thus contaminated the obvious functionality of vocational higher education!)

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Let's be clear: There are no generic benefits from spending x years studying something called a degree in some-subject-or-another, at something called a university.

Really - let's be sensible - how could there be?

Advanced formal education just is vocational - not in the sense of being a training for a specific job, but in the sense that it can cohere and potentially be valuable only when conceptualized as a preparation.

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From The Tyranny of Liberalism by James Kalb (re-paragraphed):

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Recent moral progress is an illusion.

What has happened, in effect, is that fairness and decency have been turned into nationalized industries.

Instead of people having to treat each other decently, each does what he wishes and society at large is expected to provide the decency.

From the standpoint of the managerial state, which even mainstream conservatives have come to adopt, the consequence is that fairness and decency have finally come into their own.

The actual consequences have been those common to all nationalized industries: inputs have shot up, while outputs have dropped in quantity and still more in quality.

Petty tyrants get cushy jobs as economic planners or diversity consultants while the people suffer from crime and abusive conduct. Things no one cares about like celebrations of diversity are overproduced while things desperately needed like integrity and trust are impossible to find.

Why should nationalization work better in the case of something as hard to force and easy to fake as fairness and decency than it does in the production of shoes?

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Many regular readers of this blog will be familiar with the work of Jim Kalb - and if you are not you should be! - at least if you are interested in understanding political correctness:

http://turnabout.ath.cx:8000/

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Kalb's work is the definitive treatment of Liberalism (hence PC); and many of my own ideas are perhaps most obviously regarded merely as an independently re-discovered, simplified and in-your-face version of Kalb's more sophisticated analysis.

So much so, that I needed to stop reading Kalb and avoid engaging with his magnum opus The Tyranny of Liberalism until I had my own thought clear, and had finished writing my book.

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But now I can allow myself the great pleasure and enlightenment of reading the ToL - and expect to be posting on the subject of this book for a while.

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The nationalization of fairness and decency, their absorption into national state bureaucracies, has had an amazingly powerful negative effect on society - it is responsible for that sense of being unable to 'do good' in the West which drives so many idealists abroad to help third worlders, especially (at present) Africans.

They are seeking a place where there is a 'market' in fairness and decency, and where virtue is still open for moral entrepreneurs.

But of course to talk in this way seems to be to regard alms-giving as primarily required for the benefit of the giver, rather than for the relief of the sufferer.

Yet whichever way you look at it, the nationalization of virtue has failed. It devalues the giver, it is less effective at relieving suffering; and even the administering bureaucrat gets very little out of it except a pay cheque, since he is merely following rules.

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The nationalization of virtue continues anyway. It claims to guarantee security and impartiality, it seems to 'sort out' the problem (ha!), it harnesses spitefulness against those who give charity.

(The Left's venomous hatred against charitable people is really something! - evangelical Christians and Mormons are simply loathed for their large scale and effective charitable work. They are taking bread from the mouths of bureaucrats!)

But perhaps the biggest incentive for nationalizing fairness and decency is that we ourselves no longer have any obligation to be fair and decent.

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Under PC we can be as partial and selfish as the rules allow; and if we are not effectively prevented from this then it is the fault of the rules, not our fault.

We can, and in a sense should behave as badly as the law allows us; since it is the business of the law to define and enforce good behaviour, and bad but law-abiding behaviour only demonstrates the need for a change in law.

(Yet, of course, the Left also say that 'you cannot legislate morality' - as if legislating morality wasn't the core and essence of law! But what they actually mean is that traditional values, Natural Law, should not be legislatively imposed. When it comes to moral inversions, the Left naturally devise and enforce such behaviour, and do so without a second thought.)

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This is all part of the demoralization induced by political correctness, and which itself sustains PC.

Civil society is destroyed, churches are destroyed, marriage is destroyed, alternatives are disallowed, individuals are left on their own with nobody to trust - and the essentials of life are provided (or not provided) by nationalized bureaucracies.

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The possibilities of an individual actually practising fairness and decency (rather than merely administering f&d) are now so limited that people can only feel good about themselves in an officially-sanctioned way (and that only temporarily) by joining in hysterical campaigns of persecution of the non-PC.

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It is a new nationalized sport for the elite! Attacking the non-PC!

You get to gang-up on isolated victims, you get to humiliate and harm them, and yet you feel good about it!

Come on! Even if you can't join the mob inflicting the actual punishments, you can still experience the solidarity of cheering from the sidelines.

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I have previously posted on the concept that intellectuals in traditional (pre-modern) societies are de facto 'eunuchs' -

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/03/intellectuals-are-intrinsically-eunuchs.html

- but the experience of the Byzantine Empire also suggests that actual eunuchs (castrated men) probably make excellent intellectuals.

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The first point to clarify is that the Byzantine Empire was a huge success. As Sir Steven Runciman stated: "No other constitution in all the history of the Christian era has endured for so long."

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So, how did they do it?

The primary factor underpinning all else, was the high level of religious (specifically Christian) devoutness. Aside from the salvific 'benefits' (!) this provided Byzantium with extraordinary social cohesion, confidence and resilience.

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But one of the secondary factors in the endurance of the Eastern Roman Empire was probably an efficient and effective Imperial bureaucracy, and this was staffed by eunuchs.

Eunuchs were barred from being Emperor (although could and did rise to the top of all other prestigious hierarchies; including the Patriarch of Constantinople and the premier military General) but provided a layer of personnel between the Emperor and his subjects.

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Eunuchs were prized for their loyalty (which was presumably biologically caused) but the 'price of admission' to this powerful elite ("Hello Sir. Come about the clerical job? Please check-in your testicles at the door.") may go some way to explaining how it was that the Byzantine bureaucracy did not go the way of all other privileged administrations, with unstoppable over-expansion of personnel leading to terminal inefficiency.

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Those who look for hope in mainstream politics: listen-out for repentance before you believe-in reform.

Unless preceded by a wholesale confession or error, a wholesale repudiation of previous policies - nothing will happen, it won't make any difference, it is all a deception (us-deception for sure, self-deception very possibly).

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Politics is simple - one thing or another thing.

If they have been doing one thing and it leads to trouble, they must reject it and do another thing.

But they must reject it.

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Otherwise it is (in effect if not intention) just a trick to enable them to keep doing 99 percent of what they want, while making a big fuss over the 1 percent concession - until the concession is a tiny island of common sense in an ocean of political correctness, when it will (obviously) be swamped.

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The only major UK political change I have experienced which went against the tide of Leftism, was the reversal (albeit short-lived) of decades-long economic decline by Margaret Thatcher's government. All the other stuff from the Conservative was either moderate Leftism or empty wind.

But the economic reversal was done in the teeth of resistance (including mine); it was done after repenting and repudiating the whole idea of socialist economic central planning; and the new principle was re-stated over and over.

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That is what is required, that is what we would need to see if destruction is to be reversed before catastrophe.

The ruling elite must repent loudly and clearly and repeatedly; must humbly acknowledge that they have been wrong all along; must reject their self-justifying narrative of equality and progress; must explicitly apply a wholly different aim and discourse...

The ruling elite must be, in effect, born again.

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Naturally this seems utterly implausible - that such a collection of preening, prancing popinjays would actually humble themselves en masse in face of ordinary common sense and traditional values: to proclaim they had been utterly mistaken about secularism, leftism, modernity...

I see no sign of it.

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Pride has them in its grip. They will not give-up their narrative.

It seems they would sink into despair and destruction rather than admit they were wrong.

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(You see it all the time, disillusioned ex-radicals wallowing in despair, blotting-out their sorrows as best they may. Self-punishing. But utterly useless - completely wrong. They still hold fast to their deluded dreams. Their despair is that the dreams turned out false or nightmarish - they do not reject the dreams as an ideal. There is no repentance, no humility - they remain proud of their younger selves, their youthful idealism, their lifestyle... They regard themselves as martyrs to hedonism.)

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Yet despair is no answer to pride: despair is also a sin.

The despair of the elites will lead only to self-hatred, submission or hedonic escape.

The proper escape from the consequences of pride is not despair but humility.

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Repentance... that must precede all else. It is necessary: the inescapable first step towards anything better.

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