Bruce Charlton's Notions

*

As I tried to understand it, and when I try to explain it, it often strikes me that Christianity is a bit complicated. The essence cannot be explained in a sentence, not even in a paragraph.

At one time in my life I thought that this complexity was because Christianity was not true, therefore it lacked the concise precision of science and was forced to create a model of reality which I found difficult to hold in my head all at once.

Now I recognize that Christianity is complicated because of The Fall, because of Original Sin.

*

The 'original plan' for humans was a simple one, but the complexities introduced by the fact of free will of angles (i.e. the fall of angels, Satan and the demons) and the fall of man (shortly described in Genesis, but its consequences everywhere) then made the Christian plan of salvation considerably more difficult to summarize.

Christianity as we have it is God's Plan B - therefore to understand it requires that we know Plan A, how it went wrong, and how it was set right.

That, I think, is the main reason why Christian salvation is somewhat slow to be explained.

*

*

Having read this thoughtful review of the biography of Steve Jobs

http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/34440

provokes further thought on the nature of genius.

*

Jobs certainly had the kind of psychology characteristic of a potential genius

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/the-potential-genius-is-intrinsically.html

and his personal contribution seems clear, so the answer is yes - Jobs was a genius...

*

And Jobs was a genius of something difficult - the fusion of revived modernist design with user-friendliness, and convenience, and snobbery...

But a genius of something that did not need to be done, and indeed something about which it could be said, it would have been better if it had not been done.

Insofar as Apple Macintosh has done net harm to the world, by its amplification of novelty-seeking distraction to a anti-art form (modernist 'art' being anti-art), then Jobs was an evil genius.

(Apple-mania is a defining trait of the ruling elite, is utterly characteristic of the ruling elite, and amplifies the typical traits of the ruling elite - so the evaluation of Apple is an evaluation of the validity of the ruling elite; its characteristic motivations, beliefs, behaviours and methods.)

But yeah - Jobs was a genius, has all the hallmarks.

*

*

To understand free will, it must be distinguished from choice.

Will is always free, but choices are constrained.

Our will, therefore, is conceptualised precisely as that which is free. The will is that which is under our control.

*

For Christianity, it is the will that is primary - to be a Christian involves willed faith, willing that Christ is accepted as Lord, willing love of Christ and neighbour - and so on.

Indeed, it may be clearest to suppose that this is the full scope of will - it is that which constitutes a person's primary orientation  - and perhaps that is all that it does.

*

Will is therefore dichotomous: for Christ or for oneself, for Love or for Pride.

All the rest is choices, and constrained by circumstances - but the will is free to point ourselves in one direction, or its opposite.

We may label the directions variously, but perhaps that is on the one hand all that will does, but what it necessarily does.

*

Will thus is free, and points in one direction, or the other.

Determining which direction is our primary task, upon which all else depends.

*

*

*

I suspect that there are some people who do not become Christians because they (quite honestly) believe that they cannot stop sinning. (Most likely the sin they have in mind is sexual.)

They suppose that if they tried to become a Christian, but found that could not stop doing this particular sin, then they would be chucked-out of Christianity anyway, so why bother even trying...

In sum, they imagine that their inability to stop sinning prevents them becoming Christians - and that they must first stop sinning, then become a Christian: but they are as wrong about this is it is possible to be.

*

Christ came to save sinners, save people who are sinners, the Christian Church is for sinners.

You do not have to stop sinning before you become a Christian - the proper sequence is you become a Christian first, and then (try to) stop sinning.

*

But the fact is that nobody can stop sinning, they may defeat one sin (the one that most worries them) but always there will arise another or many more sins, and they will discover (after becoming a Christian) that they always have been sinning in ways they had not previously considered or noticed.

If people had to wait until after they were good before becoming a Christian: 1. There would be no Christians and 2. There would have been no need for Christ.

*

After becoming Christian, some have found the help to stop a particular type of sin which plagued them (for example alcoholism) - but many others have not been able to change.

But they are still Christians, indeed fully Christians, normal Christians; so long as they recognise the reality of their sin (that is, they do not pretend it is not a sin) and sincerely repent, and try again, and again.

So long, that is, as they recognize Christ as Lord. Everything else, the fruits of conversion, can follow afterwards, but even if they don't follow afterwards, you can still be Christian so long as that is your will.

*

(Anyone who imagines he is free of sin is not a Christian and is indeed in profound spiritual danger.)

*

All this is just a plain fact about Christianity, absolutely clear for 2000 years - and yet somehow modern people have been deceived into thinking that to be a Christians you must first be nice.

You may be a very bad sinner, you very probably are; and/but you can become a Christian now, at this very moment, without waiting, without preliminary preparations or purifications. Straight away.

There is nothing to stop you, and nothing in your past that would be able to prevent you.

*

Will to become a Christian because you believe it is true - be clear about that fact: and only then consider the difficult, indeed torturing matter, of 'joining a church', choosing a denomination, getting baptized or confirmed...

(All this can be a prolonged, difficult and dismaying business in a world where the Christian church, all denominations, have been so extensively corrupted and infiltrated by secular values, primarily Leftism. Still, we must will to become a Christian first, hold to that fact, and regard these institutional complications as necessary but secondary and subordinate challenges.)

You will not know, until you are a Christian, what the implications of Christanity may be, so you must become a Christian as a first step; just the first step - but it is the single most important step, a step into a new world which you can only begin to know only after you are in it.

*

*

A comic classic must be re-readable, must be read spontaneously (and not prescribed in courses), and must be not only enjoyable but also funny on re-reading.

The best comic work generates a kind of 'depth' from the world it creates - this world must be delightful.

Farce is not comic - because it is heartless.

But in the lists below this category excludes 'great' literature which is also comic - to get onto the list the work must primarily be comic (although almost never exclusively comic).

*

Best comic novel: Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis.

Best comic travelogue: Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome

Best comic novelist: PG Wodehouse, especially Jeeves stories

Best writer of comic verse: Lewis Carroll

Best writer of comic poetry: John Betjeman

Best comic playwright: Tom Stoppard (early)

Best comic 'diary': Diary of a Nobody by George and Wheedon Grossmith

*

*

Now it's a year post-publication, I've posted a text version of my book Thought Prison, online at

http://thoughtprison-pc.blogspot.co.uk/

If anyone notices any typos or other errors, I would be grateful if you could leave a comment here or e-mail me at hklaxnessatyahoodotcom. 

*

*

Too often Christianity is portrayed as a matter of being nice - of emulating a 'gentle Jesus meek-and-mild'; the idea that real Christians are hardworking, good-tempered, friendly, placid, sensible, empathic, conscientious... Good Citizens.

But what about people whose personalities are not-nice; who are the opposite in one or more respects: aggressive, dominant, lazy, solitary, crazy, irritable, inconsistent, unfriendly, impulsive - can the not-nice be Christians?

To ask the question is to answer it: of course!

*

Yet there is perhaps an expectation that becoming a Christian will also 'convert' the not-nice person into a nice person: will make an inconsistent and moody and wild guy, into the meek-and-mild, regular stereotype.

And if this does not happen, if the convert is not remade into the agreeable, empathic, sociable, conscientious ideal - than maybe the conversion was not real...

*

Yet personality is mostly inherited and mostly stable throughout life - so people seldom change much in their personality type - although they may change in response to different circumstances.

In terms of personality theory - when I refer to 'not nice' I am talking about people (most often men, but a smaller proportion of women) who are high in Eysenck's Psychoticism, low in the Big Five traits of Agreeableness and Conscientiousness, low in Baron Cohen's trait of Empathizing.

*

What would a Christianity for the not-nice type look like?

In the first place, there would be a major role for repentance and no possibility of hypocrisy since the not-nice Christian would very obviously not live-up-to the law, would not live by the rules - and so would be characterized by sinning and repenting rather than by not-sinning.

The vital thing would be that the not-nice Christian must acknowledge their failure to live by true and good standards of behaviour, and never try to re-define sin in terms of what they themselves can accomplish.

*

They must say - this is right; but I can't do it.

I keep trying but I keep failing, and I must repent and ask forgiveness.

But this is right.

*

Yet in a crisis, when something heroic needs to be done, and done now and reckless of consequence.

A single, profound, extreme, symbolic act - an insistence a refusal to comply... then the not-nice Christian is your man.

Such are numbered among the Sainted martyrs.

*
Christianity for the not-nice might have regular elements - indeed it might be highly-supervised and regimented as the life of a monk of the life of a soldier for Christ (eg a Knight Templar).

By such means of external discipline, by obedience by fasting, heroic prayer vigils and so forth - sustained over years and perhaps decades - the inconstant and wilful personality; the ego, the pride; was subdued and dissolved into communion with God.

*

But in terms of self-discipline the rule would be: if frequent then brief, if prolonged then structured.

So the practice of regular, daily, low mass in the Roman Catholic church was a good way for the not-nice to maintain the faith - the practice of attending a very short mass first thing in the morning, every morning as a skeletal structure for life.

Long services and the like would need to be structured and would need to deploy all possible aids to attention and absorption: uniforms and vestments, solemn architecture, traditional ritual, formal and serious words and music.

This was the major devotional activity of JRR Tolkien who was - in many respects - a classic not-nice type of Christian, in that although he was empathic and sociable (a nice man), he was also irritable and impulsive and had great difficulty in sticking at jobs and seeing them through to completion.

*

Another model is the Eastern Orthodox idea of a Fool for Christ - a person whose apparently crazy, impulsive and seemingly-'random' acts are perceived to carry a Holy meaning; and to serve as a form of instruction for the community.

(A similar type was seen in the Ancient Greek characters of Socrates, to some extent, and Diogenes, as an extreme instance. And some of Shakespeare's 'fools' seem to be intended in this fashion.)

Such Holy Fools may indeed come to be regarded as Saints.

*

So here we have at least three ideal patterns or odels for the not-nice Christian: the supervised monastic or quasi-military life, where impulsive irregularity is coercively tamed by asceticism and routine; the use of regular, structured short religious practices; and the full-blown crazy Saint whose apparent indifference to the comunity, to status and standards, to social values is in fact divinely-inspired critique of the worldliness of the Good Citizens.

*

*

C.S Lewis often emphasized that it was re-reading that made a classic; and a book - no matter how good - which only invited a single reading, was comparatively deficient.

Also that the relatively small group of re-readers formed the most important literary audience. Lewis himself did not feel he had read a book until he had read it more than once, and would often reserve judgement.

*

JRR Tolkien, on the other hand, claimed seldom to re-read - and that he always enjoyed the first reading the most, when the 'bloom' was on the (and therefore that a book could be diminished by being read too young - as when Lord of the Rings was first-read by ten year olds).

*

I myself am a re-reader, and tend to feel that if a book is not worth reading more than once it is not worth reading once; yet I recognize Tolkien's point.

I also know people who have read books once and been transformed by them, and never gone back to re-read.

Indeed I know several (extremely well-read) people who essentially never re-read novels - and of course thereby end up with a much wider experience of literature.

(The greatness of Lord of the Rings is that it is often the only book which some voracious once-only readers will go back and re-read - and the same may apply to the Harry Potter series.)

*

A re-reader like myself might go on holiday with half a dozen 'old favourites' while a once-reader will take a set of newly purchased (or borrowed) books, looking-forward to the freshness of repeating that first (and only) experience of reading.

*

*

In a recent post:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/whats-so-good-about-shakespeare.html

the discussion established that in English poetry the authors which comes after Shakespeare are Chaucer, (+/- Spenser), Milton and Wordsworth.

I'd like to do the same now for prose and drama.

1. English Prose: This is easy - there are only two books of prose with comparable impact to Shakespeare: the Book of Common Prayer and the Authorised Version of the Bible (King James Bible).

So, the second-best prose writers to Shakespeare in English Prose are Thomas Cranmer, William Tyndale, Myles Coverdale and various other collaborators.


But if the fact that the second greatest writers of English prose are translators and a (kind-of) committee (albeit divinely inspired) is hard to stomach, then it gets much harder to identify a second placed writer.

I would put forward Samuel Johnson.


2. English Drama: This is easy - aside from Shakespeare there is only one dramatist in the English language who is productive and quotable enough to stand near him: George Bernard Shaw.

*

*

Sin induces guilt, and guilt craves therapy.

The physical problem is the guilt, but the metaphysical problem is sin.

*

Guilt can be induced in the absence of sin, guilt can be amplified to manipulate.

And therapy for guilt can be split off from sin - guilt can be removed by psychotherapy, which can be individual or social, and consists in denying the sin, or the reality of sin-as-such.

And therapy for guilt can be pharmacological (drugs - prescribed or not, such as alcohol).

And therapy for guilt can be to distract from guilt and displace it with another emotion (the mass media approach to therapy).

*

Do any of these affect the reality of sin? No - they affect the awareness of sin as a possibility and a state, they affect the awareness of sin as an emotion.

It is as if pain was abolished but not the pathological causes of pain - a person might be torn and mutilated or feverish and prostrated, but feel no pain and deny the reality of pathology.

Deny the need for a cure, reject even an effective cure if offered.

*

But this would be a delusion, a denial of reality - the denial of pathology being itself a pathology.

But how if the reality of reality was denied?

How if single, objective, eternal truth was regarded as a nonsense concept?

How if what someone felt (here and now) was all that was regarded as valid - and reality, pathology and sin were alike discredited as meaningless (indeed manipulative) concepts...

*

Once somebody was in that situation, once a society was in that situation - how could they ever get out from it - I mean escape logically, by argument?

*

Why would such a person, such a society, be interested by a savior, when they feel they have nothing to be saved-from except bad feelings induced by the idea that they might need saving?

*

*

I have collected most of my blog postings and publications on the topics of Intelligence, Personality and Genius on an archival blog of that name

http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/

These constitute by far the most popular topic on which I blog - in terms of page views - so I thought that it might be convenient to have them lodged in one place.

If I have any more ideas on these themes, I will post here and archive a copy there.

*

*

The Left (which is intrinsically, primarily secular) would answer something like... equality, social justice, an end to oppression... (yawn) or whatever...

The secular Right might answer something like law and order, an end to mass immigration, the restoration of patriarchy...

But the Christian Right would say mass conversion, a Great Awakening, a re-birth and growth of Christianity in the West (first repentance, then faith - in that order).

*

For the Christian Right, good can only come via Christianity - and to attempt to attain the good before Christianity is simply a direct route to Antichrist - that is, to evil in the guise of good, evil in Christ's name.

*

Thus the answer to the question of the most urgent priority for the West is a litmus test of basic political allegiance; and marks a cleavage line between Christian and secular politics.

A cleavage line where real Christians are on one side; and the seculars of various types and stripes are on the other side - fighting each other, but synergistically working-against Christianity (whether deliberately, directly and explicitly; or unconsciously, indirectly and implicitly).

*

For Christians (and all real Christians are on the Right - however confused they may be on this matter, whether they acknowledge this fact, or not) Christianity must come first immediately, cannot wait for anything, must not be put-off until after whatever: it is the priority now and forever.

*

*

General intelligence (g) is a construct used to explain that (in group studies) each and all cognitive abilities are co-correlated - being good at one implies being good at all the others. The hypothesis is that this co-correlation of abilities is due to a single underlying ability of general intelligence or g, with specific abilities (having various levels) on top of g.

Since g cannot be measured directly, IQ is derived from measuring cognitive abilities and putting people into rank order for ability - for instance, measuring one, several or a lot of cognitive abilities in 100 people, marking the test, then putting the 100 people into rank order (best to worst marks) - highest to lowest IQ.

(The validity of IQ testing comes from the fact (and it is a fact) that the rank order on the IQ test is statistically highly significantly correlated with a wide range of outcomes including exam performance, job performance, health and life expectancy.)

*

So IQ is ultimately a matter of rank order in tests.

The actual IQ score a person gets comes from a statistical manipulation of the rank order data, to make the distribution into a 'normal' or Gaussian curve, and the average score of a 'representative' population into 100 with (usually) a standard deviation of 15.

This is the 'standard curve' of IQ, since it is the standard against which individuals are measured.

The standard curve is constructed such that it describes the proportion of people that would get a particular IQ score - for example, an IQ of 115 is one standard deviation above the average and therefore about 16 percent of the population would have an IQ of 115 or above.

*

But there are difficulties in generating an IQ score for individual people, and in moving between the rank order data generated in a group study (used to generate the 'standard curve') and the score of an individual person doing an IQ test.

*

The individual score in an IQ test ought to be measuring a fundamental property of human ability (a property of the brain, roughly speaking).

Yet many or most IQ tests in practice require non-g abilities such as good eyesight, the ability to read, ability to move hands and fingers quickly and accurately; they require concentration (that a person not be distracted by pain or other interferences), many tests require stamina, a degree of motivation and conscientiousness in completing it... and so on.

In other words there are a range of non-g related factors which might reduce the test score for non-g reasons.

This means that the most valid measurement of intelligence is the highest measure of intelligence in a person.

So the best way to measure intelligence is for a person to do a series of IQ tests on different occasions and to take the highest score as the true-est score.

*

BUT this must also apply to the standard curve used to generate the IQ score.

The standard curve must be constructed from the highest IQ score of (say) 100 randomly chosen people - and these highest scores put into rank order and made into a normally distributed curve with the correct properties.

*

Yet this is not what happens.

The standard curve is typically generated using a one-off test on the representative sample, but the individual IQ is derived from the best performance in an IQ test - this systematically biases individual IQ scores towards being higher than they really are.

*

Of course, there are great logistical difficulties in using multiple tests (on several occasions) and best performances to generate a standard curve - much easier to get a representative group together just once for testing.

But this emphasizes the imprecision of individual measures of IQ.

If an individual gets their IQ score from a single test, it is likely to underestimate their real g, if the test is done in a way or at a time when their performance is impaired.

Yet if the individual has several tries at IQ test on different occasions, in order that their best possible level of performance be used to generate their real, underlying g, then this will overestimate their IQ.

(Doing several tests and taking an average does not work, because the bad performances drag-down the average.)

*

So, in practice and as things are - I do not feel that individual, one-off personal IQ measurements can be regarded as precise.

Probably individual IQ should be banded into roughly half-standard deviations.

Something like average as 96-104, above average as 105-114, high as 115-124, (above this 'g' begins to break-down as the component tests lose co-correlation) very high as 125-140, and above that we have the super-high and strange world of potential geniuses.

(Below average would probably be a mirror of this - but the meaning of low IQ is a bit more variable, and the levels may be very low.)

But IQ differences between individuals of less than half an SD (less than about 7 or 8) are uninterpretable - even around the average. 

*

*

Over past months I have been thinking much on the idea of co-inherence - which I got from Charles Williams, e.g.

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/centrality-of-co-inherence-to-salvation.html

There is a tendency (often derived from an admirable desire for accuracy) for this idea to become over complex and incomprehensible - when our society is at such a low spiritual level (including myself) that only ideas of clarity and simplicity can be understood and acted-upon.

Therefore I venture to suggest that one great value of a greater emphasis on co-inherence would be in relation to primary description of what each individual Christian is trying to do in their spiritual life.

*

Too often, the Christian life is seen in terms of being a selfish matter of seeking after one's own eternal happiness - and to the modern mind this contrasts unfavourably with the (supposed) Leftist project of altruism: 'making' a world with less suffering.

But to understand that Christianity entails co-inherence, opens-up the possibility of changing the one-line-description of Christain aspirations into something more like:

"Working for the salvation of that which we love".

*

Naturally, any one line description is necessarily a gross over-simplification - but I feel that a focus on the Christian as working

(by their life of repetance, worship, prayer etc)

on the project of saving the eternal souls of the people they love -

that is to say to work for those whom they love -

(but perhaps also to work for the eternal preservation of the essence of things they love such as the values or society, animals and plants and places) -

might perhaps provide a better starting point for the modern Christian setting-out on the path, than the more common preliminary over-simplified caricature of each Christian ('selfishly') working on their own individual salvation.

*

*

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/the-greatest-mystery-of-cs-lewiss-life.html

NOTE: The above 'headline' is a gross exaggeration...

*

*

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

*






*


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

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

*

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

All of it utterly futile nihilism.

*

With comic verse like this, who needs tragedy?

***

  

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

*

There is a Protestant idea that Christians ought not to pray for the dead.

I am not entirely sure of the history, but as I understand it the theological basis for this prohibition is that once somebody is dead their salvation-status is fixed and cannot be affected by the living.

Prayers for the salvation of the dead are for this reason excluded from public worship. And this even applies to the Church of England in its traditional (Book of Common Prayer) form.

*

Yet I believe this exclusion is an error - and one with potentially damaging ramifications.

The error comes from over-reaction against Roman Catholic abuses of prayers for the dead - and (as too often at the Reformation e.g. with respect to veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Saints, and monasticism) rather than reform the abuses, the response was to reject the practices lock, stock and barrel - leaving the residue incomplete and unbalanced.

*

Prayer for the dead is a natural thing for humans, including Christians - and since prayer is the primary Christian activity, I would hazard that most Protestant Christians (both in the past and now) have prayed for the dead in their private devotions, even when such prayers were prohibited by or excluded from communal worship.

And indeed prayer for the dead is a connection between generations, and supports the sense of tradition necessary to Christianity.

But what is the use of it? Surely, goes the argument, the condition of the dead is established (either saved or damned) and cannot be affected by our prayers?

*

We live, on earth, in Time - where things happen in linear sequence - but in Heaven dwell in eternity; and there is, necessarily, a transition between these states.

It is at this transition that we may suppose prayers for the dead to act.

Prayers are addressed to eternity and operate via eternity; they cannot affect what has already happened in the past, but prayers now can have-affected what already happened in the past.

It seems reasonable, and fits with much traditional teaching, to suppose that at the moment of choice for the soul (Heaven or Hell), all prayers (past, present and future) come together (from eternity) to sustain the choice.

*

Since prayer comes from eternity, it is never too early, nor too late, to contribute prayer - that is, to contribute love - to this moment of transition and choice.

Indeed, it may be necessary for the salvation of that soul - indeed, perhaps it is usually necessary for the salvation of a soul that it be sustained in its choice by prayer of, love of, others - since our wills are corrupt, sinful; and otherwise we would almost surely choose wrong.

*

So prayers for the dead are very important indeed - and if they don't happen in public devotions at church, then they ought to happen in private devotion.

*

*

There has never been anything in the history of Britain which has been so hyped as the current Olympics - but why such mega-levels of hype?

The short answer is that this is a Leftist Olympics through and through - but why has the Left embraced the Olympics?

(Especially considering that when I was a Leftist we used to be loudly disdainful of the Olympics as nationalistic and competitive).

*

There are two levels of answer - the corrupt and the idealistic.

The corrupt reason is that the Olympics provides a rationale for extracting coercively-extracting some thousands of pounds of resources from each productive unit; and diverting it to by votes from chosen clients and support cronies causes.

The idealistic reason is that the Olympics provides an effortless and defensible opportunity to 'celebrate diversity' since the Olympics really is diverse in the kinds of ways that Leftists so much love - so the usual depiction of favoured 'minorities' for once actually reflects reality.

For once, the mass media do not need to select, cover-up, distort and lie.

Which, for Leftists, must make a very refreshing change.

*

*

JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, has a grown-ups novel coming out next month called The Casual Vacancy.

Will it be good?

Well, now is the time to make a prediction, before I have read it.

*

I don't like the title, I don't like the plot summary, I don't even like the idea of her doing a modern adult 'literary' novel (which is a dead genre, IMHO)... so I am having a hard job looking forward to reading it.

But, being in the midst of sequentially reading aloud the whole of the Harry Potter series (currently nearly half way through the Half Blood Prince) I must rationally set aside my fear and dread, and have confidence that she will pull-off this improbable venture, and will be publishing another triumph.

The Harry Potter books are just so good - and the fact that she wrote the last five under immense and intense and indeed unprecedented public scrutiny is a hugely impressive feat - so she could do it again, I think.

*

How good are the Harry Potter books?

I think they are in the same league as, at or above the level of, the Narnia Chronicles in terms of Childrens' fantasy (below Lord of the Rings, of course, because everything is) - and in terms of novels as such they are at the level of Thomas Hardy or Anthony Trollope (which is second rank by the strictest criteria).

As novels they have many virtues, too many to list; most importantly including deep moral seriousness and genuine heroism - but their partial defect is in the sheer quality of the prose, which is considerably below the highest level.

There are also some fairly serious structural implausabilities in Prisoner, Goblet and Phoenix, upon which hinge major aspects of the plots: viz: the excessive power of the Time-Turner, the unbelievable sustained impersonation of Moody, the unexplained self-distancing from Harry by Dumbledore - why unexplained?, the notion that Sirius - a powerful wizard and animagus - was unable to leave Headquarters for months...

So they are not first rank - but their rank is very high, and probably higher than anything else in recent decades.

*

Can she do it again?

Well, why not?

As a person, JKR has never struck me in her public interviews and speeches as very smart, or very interesting, or very impressive - her personality seems poorly-integrated, her extensive facial plastic surgery (starting from about 2003) and embarrassingly juvenile dress style seem like evidence of lack of unrealistic vanity and shallowness

- but then all geniuses (especially women geniuses) are odd, so that does not make any difference, really.

I shall have a hard job getting myself to read Casual Vacancy - and maybe I will need more than one attempt - but in the end I expect to won over by it.

*

*

In English Literature, Shakespeare is first; and the second is a matter of dispute (Milton, Byron, Walter Scott?) but far below.

Indeed, Shakespeare is - in terms of influence and attention - first in the world.

But why?

*

Obviously it is for the quality of his language, the 'poetry' of his language - its suppleness combined with crispness... yes, but how do people know about this?

Modern high brow purism has obscured the reason: Shakespeare is the most quotable writer. He works better than any other writer when given in digestible chunks.

No doubt, these quotable sections work even better in context, but the point is that they work superbly well even completely out of context.

*

This was brought home to me by a recent visit to Stratford upon Avon were I saw dozens, nay scores, of quotes from Shakespeare, engraved, carved and posted here and there, out of context; and where I also saw excerpts from the plays on video, and done live by one or two actors.

Some were so effective they literally brought tears to the eyes.

What other writer can do this?

The answer is simple: the answer is none.

*

In the time when Shakespeare became established as the pre-eminent writer; he was, indeed, presented almost wholly in excerpted form - in anthologies such as William Dodd's Beauties of Shakespeare of 1752 which inspired Herder who inspired Goethe and led to the deification of The Bard (this coming back to England from Germany, where Shakespeare was until then under-rated).

And from the 19th up into the early 20th century, Shakespeare was usually presented in a severely cut and edited form by the travelling Actor-Managers such as Sir Henry Irving and his successors - as more or less a collection of the best quotations and most dramatic scenes.

*

I suspect that the above are indeed the 'best' way to present Shakespeare the mass of people (including myself); not least because his philosophy of life, in so far as one can be discerned from his high points of poetry and rhetoric, is so bleak and pagan as to be hardly bearable except in brief-ish chunks.

But also because, with very few exceptions (e.g. for me Midsummer Night's Dream and Hamlet), the plays are very patchy indeed in terms of quality and coherence - so little is lost and much is gained by shortening and concentrating.

*

*

Natural Law is the inbuilt, universal human understanding of the good - the true, beautiful and virtuous.

Modern people violate this, the modern state propagandises the violation of Natural Law, the violation of Natural Law is taught explicitly, and inculcated covertly, by the 'arts' and entertainment and news.

(I mean that personal experience and observation are meaningless or intrinsically mistaken, that lies are truth, and truth is hate; that beauty is kitsch and deliberately-contrived-ugliness is true beauty, and the reversed/ inverted sexual morality which forms the focus of so much modern public and personal life where what was bad becomes a subsidised and coerced good, while what was good is labelled an agent of cruelty.)

*

It is not because of stupidity. Everybody already knows (by its definition) Natural Law. But under Leftism people know it only to violate it. And this is evil - intentional, purposive, deliberate evil.

To put it another way, the main problem is that people are not even not-even-trying to be good; they are actually trying to be bad, because they believe (because they are told, 24/7, and punished if they disagree) that bad is good.

(But 'people' are not innocent victims of this evil propaganda - they contribute to it and profit by it and try to exploit it for their own ends; they are culpable, they are blame-worthy - they will be held to account not for that which was coerced upon them, but for their self-interested propagation of the ideology which rationalizes this coercion.)

*

This is why there is no atheist solution to the current problems, it is why the secular Right is of no use; and why paganism is no use - why (ultimately) only traditional devout monotheism can and will defeat Leftism.

Nothing else than monotheism has the solid transcendental core to withstand the multifaceted worldly materialism of Leftism.

*

In the past, before the triumph of the Left, human society would 'naturally' be regulated by Natural Law.

But we are now in a situation in which Natural Law is regarded as evil.

(Evil because a universal tyrant, an inescapable and exclusive code of behaviour, a strangling constraint on freedom of self-development; because NL makes some people suffer - suffer either absolutely, or relatively compared with what they ideally-might experience... and so on.)

Therefore reminding people of universal values is worthless, or even harmful - because modern Leftism is precisely about violating and inverting Natural Law ('subverting' is their favourite term).

*

Argument is useless - the Left knows the arguments anyway (since they are common sense and based on universal knowledge and experience); but they will not argue.

The Left know that their own arguments are incoherent but have chosen to embrace incoherence as a sign of their own depth of moral conviction.

In fact incoherence is a sign of enthrallment to purposive evil, reflecting that evil is incoherent (because negative, destructive by its nature - the anti-Good does not need to be coherent).

*