Bruce Charlton's Notions

I like to visit the Durham Light Infantry Museum - and always pause to re-read the display dedicated to Richard W Annand (1914-2004) who in 1939 was awarded the first Victoria Cross of World War Two.

I never fail to be moved, and deeply moved, by the words and pictures which stand in memory of this man.

Annand was something close to the Victorian English ideal of a hero and a gentleman; in that he was valiant, compassionate, and withal utterly modest: my admiration is unbounded.

1. Look at the man's face - a boyish openness of expression, almost innocent, from the earliest pictures and retained into extreme old age.

2. In the citation below, note the extreme ferocity and also the military effectiveness of his fighting. That it was not a single act done in the heat of battle but repeated acts of heroism - in despite of accumulating injuries and exhaustion.

3. Yet also the loyalty, affection and self-sacrifice returning to the battle ground - after all this - to try and save his 'Batman' (military manservant).

4. Finally, the complete absence of boastfulness, reluctance to talk about his heroism, fundamental decency of character. 

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http://www.lightinfantry.me.uk/vcrannand.htm







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Young, healthy women are, on average, much more powerful than young men: powerful in the social arena, powerful in the sexual arena.

Indeed all young healthy women are valued, all have significant power - because all are significantly desirable and desired.

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(The situation is very different for young men. To be a man is to be part of a zero-sum game. If a man does not have valued qualities then he is not valued - is indeed despised - and is indeed regarded as, is treated as, disposable. Which, biologically and economically - although certainly not religiously - he is.)

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This difference between young men and women is probably mostly for biological reasons described by Robert Trivers in relation to investment of resources in offspring. Over many generations of our ancestors women invested differentially vastly more resources into children than men (9 months pregnancy, a few years of feeding, and several years of total care); and this deeply shaped human psychology. By contrast, one man could provide all the necessary investment to make as many babies as required, and only economically-valuable men were necessary for their upbringing.

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Young healthy women have the greatest reproductive potential - they can expect to have the most babies and stay well to look after them until the offspring have ceased to be dependent.

That is why visual and behavioural cues signalling 'young and healthy' in a woman = what we term beautiful, desirable, sexy.

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Anyway, this means that the attractiveness of young healthy women is a gift; it is not something earned or striven-for.

And since attractiveness is the basis of their interpersonal and social influence, the power of young healthy women is also a gift.

Therefore one primary moral challenge for young healthy women concerns how they bestow this gift.

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Almost all women face this challenge, almost all women have this power - almost all women have (for a while) the power to shape their own social arena by their choices concerning the bestowal of their gift of youth and health.

Such decisions have personal consequences (on the woman who bestows, and the man upon whom the gift is bestowed); but the decisions also have social consequences, as others observe and learn-from the choices of each young healthy woman: at what age she chooses, whom she chooses, how often she chooses, upon what grounds she chooses, upon what conditions she chooses etc.

Therefore, as a gift - not earned - each and every young healthy woman has some significant power to shape not just her own condition, but also the condition of society.

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Indeed, each and every young healthy woman does - whether wittingly or unwittingly, whether knowingly or denyingly, and to some significant extent, actually shape her society by her choices of when (if ever), where, how, upon-whom to bestow her gift of youth and beauty.

This is, and ought to be regarded, as an awesome responsibility for each and every young and healthy woman.

Each woman is, as in the Princess fantasy, suddenly propelled-into this situation of being a focus of attention and a source of power - simply by virtue of her normal development.

So there she is, quite suddenly - yet temporarily - a ruler of some domain: What will she do?

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As so often, reality is reflected in Nursery Rhymes!

Men must prove themselves:

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick!
Jack jump-over the candlestick!

Whereas for an exceptionally beautiful, healthy young woman...

Goldilocks, Goldilocks wilt thou be mine?
Thou shalt not wash dishes, nor yet feed the swine.
But sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam. 
And feed-upon strawberries, sugar and cream. 

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This post is complementary to:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/the-christian-god-is-similar-to-and.html

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How God-Like is Man?

Christians cannot reply "Not at all" because we are made in the image of God, we are Sons of God and God came to earth as a mortal Man.

But  how God-like are we?

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We are, let us say, god-like (with a lower case g).

Primarily, we have God-like power to refuse salvation.

That is, we are sufficiently God-like to refuse the offer of salvation - but not sufficiently God-like to gain salvation for ourselves.

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Salvation is "by invitation only" - and Men must be humble enough to accept the invitation, and acknowledge that they were indeed invited, and that invitation is why Men have access to Heaven.

There are no gate-crashers in Heaven.

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Hell is to refuse the invitation: usually to refuse the conditions of the invitation.

Hell is to discover that Heaven can be refused, but then we must needs dwell somewhere else.

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Damnation is to revel in the power to reject salvation - to be so proud of that power, so self-admiring of our exercise of that power, that we actively choose to take the consequences of that refusal.

And to be proud of our choice to take these consequences - to look down upon those who have failed to make this choice and take these consequences.

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Damnation is to say: "I do not want Heaven at the admission price." It is to say: "If those are the conditions, then I want nothing of it!"

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Damnation is to regard oneself as having a Right of Access to Heaven; and therefore to regard the necessity for an invitation as humiliating - indeed, as a deliberate infliction of humiliation.

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I have a wildly disproportionate hatred of the face and pseudo-persona of the woman above, who features in the Halifax Building Society adverts. (For foreign readers: a Building Society is a kind of bank.)

You may think this is a ridiculous obsession; but, you see, this woman's face is all over my life.

The TV adverts are on all the time, she is on billboards I can see from most bus stops, she is plastered all over one of the main city squares; and now - every time I log onto my e-mail - her bravely-smiling mug is unignorably staring at me from unwanted adverts just to the right of the text.

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The back story is given by the adverts - this creature has been dubbed Linda Turner and is supposed to be a really diligent hard-working and ultra-helpful person at a Do-It-Yourself megastore. We see her not only talking to customers but (as above) demonstrating power tools...

Demonstrating power tools in a shop! Look at this woman's hands - she is well into her sixties - although like 99 percent of British old women she has her wizened face adorned with a hairdressers 100 quid masterpiece of simulated 35 year old hair to create the impression of a skull in a wig.

On Take 537 when filming the advert, Linda managed to hold the power drill aloft for three wobbly seconds - and provided the staggeringly unconvincing footage of her using it.

Then we see her driving a fork life truck and loading things on palettes. Because, of course, that is what geriatric female shop assistants do all the time.

But mostly we see her smiling 'bravely' because, apparently, she is a woman alone (nobody at home - maybe she is a widow, maybe a spinster, more likely an abandoned divorcee which would explain the desperate attempt to look young).

Anyway her function is to be a pathetic person - so that the bank can advertize a stunningly lame scheme to 'reward' reliable investors with five pounds a month 'cash back' or something - not even enough money to buy two cups of coffee - and the character certainly depicts pathetic-ness well.

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I hate about Linda Turner that she is pathetic, bravely-smiling through her almost-tears and peeping out from her young woman's wig-hair - I feel sorry for her, and she makes me feel sorry for myself: and this is exactly what is supposed to happen.

She joins another hate-group of mine - the Pathetic People in the Lloyds-TSB adverts - which are like a whole world of Linda Turners.




These sad-happy, multi-ethnic fragile-stick people have been around for ages and ages; pitifully stumbling through their pathetic and courage-sapping lives.

Presumably the way in which we, the customers, are being depicted as pathetic people reflects, on the one hand, how mega-multi-national corporations regard us - and on the other hand how they want us to be.

We see these adverts and we feel close to tears at the image of our own aspiring yet timid helplessness in the face of overwhelming reality - and we turn to the welcoming arms of exploitative capital.

Or maybe they are just glorying in their strength and our submission, like Nietzschian supermen....

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Anyway, Linda Turner and the pathetic people are a glimpse of our Godless world of atomized individuals where family and community have been replaced by the trained nice-ness of shop assistants - a fantasy in which the height of aspiration is selling-ourselves into slavery to kindly masters who will kindly look after us until our purposeless, meaningless existences dwindle-away into nothingness.

A world without courage, a world without love.

THAT is why I hate Linda Turner and her stupid, simpering face. Hate her with passionate zeal. 

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Although a somewhat Eeyore-like and gloomy individual in many ways; I (thank Heavens) have been prone to outbreaks of unreasonable happiness through my life - those times various called, Peak Experiences (Maslow), Epiphanies (James Joyce), Joy or Sehnsucht (CS Lewis) and many other things - those feelings much loved by the Romantics such as Wordsworth and the New England Transcendentalists such as Emerson and Thoreau.

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The mainstream secular modern view is that such moments have no deep significance - being caused by physiological change, or drugs, or a brainstorm... or something like that. The attitude is to enjoy them while they last, and then forget about them - because there is no special significance, nothing to be learned from them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson regarded these moments as significant - but cautioned against regarding them as evidence for optimism about future life. For Emerson they were not harbingers of anything, but to be valued in and of themselves - they were on the one hand the most important things in life, on the other hand utterly self-sufficient and free of general implications.

In practice, however, this remained little more than a bare literary assertion: meanwhile such moments came and went, the complications of life continued and then ended. Was Mankind any further forward after Emerson's explanations and Thoreau's experiments - were Emerson and Thoreau themselves any further forward? Seemingly not.  

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Yet, as the secular, this-worldly, spirituality which Emerson pioneered began to gather strength, there emerged a view that such moments of unreasonable happiness were harbingers - of a possible 'evolutionary' future for Man: a future of Men developing a higher and much happier consciousness. Such was the theme of Colin Wilson, and his books from The Outsider onwards collected and analyzed many examples of this.

Indeed, some kind of fundamental change to the human mind, society, or some combination of the two (whether or not this change was called evolution) was necessary if unreasonable happiness was to be anything more than a glorious interlude.

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Yet, even this has been subverted by Transhumanism - which purports to engineer and make permanent such moments in a scientific project dedicated to transforming human physiology using drugs, genetics and anything else necessary.

Even supposing this were possible; the implicit conviction is that unreasonable happiness is a delusional epiphenomenon - the hope is to make it a permanent delusion (and without the shadow of death to cloud perfect bliss, because death would be abolished too).

A project genetically and pharmacologically to engineer a state of permanent happy delusion in Mankind is itself perhaps the bleakest and most despairing philosophy of life which humans have yet devised.  

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What of Christian views of such moments? There are many and diverse - from the pessimistic idea that moments of happiness are most likely to be demonic deceptions; to the optimistic and positive visionary theology of Thomas Traherne.

But my particular interest is the idea from CS Lewis, and less explicitly from Tolkien, that such moments of happiness are evidence for Christianity - the 'argument from desire'.

That such moments of happiness are actually a desire-for - and foretaste-of - something not-of-this-world (since nothing imaginable in this-world could be a fulfilment of this desire); and the fact that we have such other-worldly yearnings is evidence that that desired world is real (otherwise we would not have such feelings).

In a nutshell, we are unreasonably happy because of hope for Heaven - and that hope was implanted in us by God.

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I personally find this a compelling argument (while being aware that others do not) - but as expressed in Lewis and Tolkien, it is somewhat incomplete. The reason it is incomplete is that this feeling is not only forward-looking and hopeful but (and Lewis says this very clearly) is also very powerfully nostalgic and backward-looking. Our state of unreasonable happiness is a yearning for what was, as well as what may-be.

Tolkien expresses this as a yearning for Eden - a real state of Paradise in which Man dwelt and from which he now is exiled. Tolkien seemingly regards this as a kind of inherited race-memory (indeed, the concept of hereditary memory is central for Tolkien's world view).

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But I find the complete explanation for the unreasonable happiness of Joy, Sehnsucht, Peak Experiences in the doctrine of a pre-mortal spiritual and Heavenly existence.

This was also the implicit explanation of Wordsworth in his famous phrase: Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: the soul that rises with us, our life's star, hath had elsewhere its setting, and cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, and not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our home.

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This I find to be a full and satisfying explanation for the phenomenology and function of these significant-seeming happy experiences: that the special quality of both backward nostalgic yearning and forward hopeful yearning, combine to locate my mortal life in-the-middle - between partial memories of a pre-mortal spirit-existence in Heaven before my birth and optimistic anticipations of a resurrected Heavenly life after my death.

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Christianity must encompass - on the one hand - Gods' similarity to us (due to us being His children, made in His image; and to make understandable the centrality of Love - that is, a relationship - to Christianity)...

And - on the other hand - Christianity must also encompass God being the One God, Creator, and of qualitatively greater knowledge and power, and perfect Goodness. And as such different from Man.

In other words God is very similar to, and very different from, Man.

Both.

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Among mainstream, intellectual, philosophical, theological thinking there is (I believe) a persistent and stubborn tendency to over-emphasise the differences between God and Man.

Many Christian writers and leaders speak as if there were no dangers from over-emphasizing this side, as if it were impossible to over-exaggerate the utter gulf between God and Man.

They talk as if God and Man were incomparable in nature and kind, and inhabited incommensurably-different worlds..

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But, from a Christian perspective,  this is an error and not a small one, and an error in the worse direction.

If God is regarded as primarily different-from Man, then this frames God as an entity primarily remote. It easily collapses-into something essentially identical-with the God of Christianity's most formidable rival - that is, an incomprehensible God of total power and knowledge to whom, therefore, the proper response is absolute submission.

(But who is not the kind-of-thing that can be loved, is not the kind-of-thing that loves - is impassive and unchanging  - neither needs love nor can really give love except in some abstract and distant sense of being benign.)

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This is, it seems, a worse error than the error towards the other side (i.e. the error  of 'anthropomorphically' over-emphasizing God's human qualities, and thereby underestimating or understating God's power, knowledge, glory, goodness &c) - because we know for sure that Love is central to Christianity.

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Therefore, it seems to me; it is non-optional for Christians to have an understanding of God that sees Him as primarily sufficiently-'similar-to-Man' as to make the centrality of Love between us and Him into something comprehensible, natural and necessary.

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There are five 21st Century activities that separate us from a transformed vision and authentic theocentric human life: 

1. Classroom education, 
2. Following current events (‘news’), 
3. Watching screened images of any kind (film, video, tee vee), 
4. Eating processed food especially sweeteners and dairy, and 
5. Driving a car or even being driven about on a regular basis. 

But driving is much worse than riding.

Edited from: 

http://www.hogwartsprofessor.com/the-wonderland-interview-context-confirmation-even-cars

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The Hogwarts Professor is John Granger, an inspired and deep writer on Harry Potter matters, a devout Russian Orthodox Reader, ex-US Marine - and a penfriend. His list is not theoretical, but based on personal experience, What his list amounts to is, I think, a tested recipe for detachment from contemporary culture (1,2,3) - increased self-discipline and asceticism (4) and an attempt to maintain contact with surrounding reality (5). 

These Five would not be optimal for everybody - for other people, other things might take a higher priority.

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Given that mainstream Leftist secular culture is so obviously bankrupt - intellectually, artistically, and especially morally; given that mainstream secular culture is filled with despair - so very obviously engaged in ever-more frenzied distraction and intoxication - a society without hope, without purpose, without meaning - self-hating and suicidal - attaining motivation only in self-righteous hatred...

Given all this, Mainstream real Christians often find it hard to understand why secular society, secular people, don't simply admit their failure and turn back to religion - but instead adopt an ever-more hostile and ridiculing attitude to Christianity.

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To understand this, Mainstream real Christians might reflect on their own attitude to Mormonism - the a priori negativity, the wilful ignorance, the prevailing attitude of incredulity, hostility and ridicule.

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Secular people see Christian beliefs through negative spectacles, as merely ridiculous - childish, absurd, wishful thinking, arbitrary stuff conjured out of nothing with zero evidence: actually embarrassing.

For seculars, it is not a matter of Christians being wrong 'on balance', or them having some validity but but more wrong than right - Christianity is simply bizarre.

Secular people find it incomprehensible that any sane and intelligent person could believe the utter nonsense that Christians believe.

Therefore, it is inferred that Christians are neither sane nor intelligent, and logically must be treated as idiots or lunatics - capable of doing great harm (if given the chance) - and therefore, necessarily, people who ought to be excluded from all positions of power, responsibility or influence (including parenthood).  

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Against this, actual Christian behaviour is irrelevant - how Christians actually behave in the real world is completely and totally irrelevant.

It does not matter one jot whether actual Christians are generally nice to seculars, have (overall) better ethics, make better neighbours, are more fertile, have stronger marriages, are more charitable, are happier, more hopeful, more motivated and find their lives meaningful.

What Christians actually do in real life and personal experience makes not the slightest difference - because, 'unfortunately' from the secular perspective Christians are cringe-inducing idiots and lunatics, who believe nonsense for no reason - and people like that (obviously!) need to be watched and cannot be trusted.

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And (mutatis mutandis) it is much the same for Mainstream Christians with respect to Mormons.

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So, if Mainstream Christians struggle to comprehend why it is that they are damned-if-they-do and damned-if-they-don't by secular culture; why despite all attempts of all kinds, they have zero impact on Mainstream attitudes - they merely need to look within: look at their own attitudes to the Mormon church.

As Mainstream Christians find Mormonism to be merely a mixture of fraud, gullibility, oppression, cultic manipulation, wishful-thinking - and sinister ulterior purpose - that is how you look to the secular world (in so far as you are devout real Christians).

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Christianity is judged not by results, but by its assumed-intent; not by (overall) behaviour, but by a negatively-framed and selected perception of its ideology and the - possible, inferred - consequences of that perceived-ideology.

The more that Christians succeed in living Good lives, the more that secular culture sees the results as a product of weird, zombie-like fanaticism.   

Mainstream real Christian: Consider how Mormons look to you; that is pretty much how you look to secular people.

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Mainstream Christians must strive to lead good lives, of course; but should not suppose that doing so will have a political effect, should not suppose that being good Christians will bring secular culture even one millimetre closer to repentance and conversion.

Even if mainstream Christian denominations succeeded in living as well as the best Mormons - and they have a long way to go to achieve this - then they could not expect that this would have any greater effect on secular culture than the exemplary qualities of Mormon life have had on Mainstream Christianity.

The root problem with modernity is not (real) Christians' behaviour and attitudes to secular culture; but the opposite. And this may be something that Christians cannot fix.

It may, indeed, be something that is unfixable - as was so often the case in the Old Testament (or, for that matter, The Book of Mormon).    

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NOTE ADDED: I haven't printed many of the comments submitted, because the point of this post is about attitudes; as it says: if Mainstream Christians want to know how they look to Mainstream culture, then they could consider how Mormonism looks to Mainstream Christians (and how actual behaviour is irrelevant to both). Of course Mainstream Christians may disagree with this analogy, or may think it is wrong - but that is the point I am trying to make. Again: If you want to know how you appear, then that is (more or less) the answer. This post is not meant to be an argument about validity - it is an illustration of analogous attitudes.

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Quaffing is, according to Terry Pratchett, like drinking - only you spill more.

Alternatively, it is a form of drinking where more ends-up in the ears, than the mouth.

Quaffing is mostly done by rough chaps such as Vikings, Bad Medieval Barons and dwarves - although a more genteel version was practised by Robin Hood during his al fresco picnics.

The cause is quite simple, the cause is wide drinking vessels.

It is the diameter of the top of the mug or glass which matters. When the diameter is wide, then the liquid spreads widely, and the deeper the liquid, the more widely it will spread.

So if you try to drink quickly from a wide vessel, the liquid will spread more widely than your mouth: liquid will go around the mouth, rather than into the mouth - and (assuming your head is tilted backwards, as necessary for a vigorous quaff) your ears will soon fill-up with fluid.

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It seems to me that as relativity is to quantum physics, so the metaphysics of pluralism is to monism.

Sort of.

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These are two different, basic ways of looking at the world. Thus relativity cannot be integrated with quantum physics, the particle theory of light cannot be integrated with the wave theory of light, and pluralist theology cannot be integrated with monist.

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If Einstein was perhaps the most creatively inspired scientist who ever lived, then the fact that he regarded quantum physics (which he helped to found) as fundamentally wrong, ought to be of significance - significant in the sense that Einstein recognized that quantum physics was simply based on a fundamentally different set of assumptions - and one which he regarded as alien to his basic understanding of how things work.

General Relativity is based-in, extrapolated-from, a metaphysical world that is common sense, real world, normal logic: a world where time is linear and sequential, where you get nothing from nothing, where causality is understood like bouncing billiard balls and where all interaction is constrained by the maximum possible speed of even the tiniest and fastest billiard ball: the speed of light.

Relativity can be, and is,explained by 'thought experiments' such as 'riding on a beam of light' - apparently Einstein used these thought experiments to discover the theory. Quantum physics cannot be explained by thought experiments - and what you get from an attempted quantum thought experiment such as Schrodinger's cat is the fact that quantum physics cannot be explained by thought experiments!

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Quantum physics is a world outwith common sense and human experience: where you can get something from nothing, where time may not be linear nor sequential, where there may be instantaneous interaction regardless of distance, and things can-and-cannot be simultaneously.

Ultimately, quantum physics is a world of equations - of formal models - it is not a human world, it is utterly non-commonsensical.

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General relativity and quantum theory cannot both be true, because at a metaphysical level they inhabit different universes. Both could be wrong, but only one can be true - with the other an un-grounded, ad hoc set of assumptions which happen to be useful for particular tasks.

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In theology somewhat likewise. Pluralism is based in common sense and everyday mechanisms of pragmatic causality; monism is based in a world of absolute theory.

This best comes out in relation to time. For pluralists, time is what it seems to be - linear and sequential; for monism, time can stop, be reversed... all sorts.

In fact, monists do not regard time as a constraint - since time is neither linear nor sequential, time can - in practice, time can be fitted-around other - more important, more fundamental - things.

Pluralism is ultimately materialist and there is one kind of stuff. Causality is direct - one thing causes another because in bangs-into the other. There can be no causality without physical interaction, which takes time - and time cannot be reversed. There is no communication which does not take time.

Monism sees all kind of interactions, and things different in kind. Monism may posit immaterial things, causality without substance - so causality may be instant over all of space: there may be action at a distance without any time elapsing. There is no before nor after - so the future may cause the past.

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Pluralism and monism cannot both be true, because at a metaphysical level they inhabit different universes: either everything has one ultimate cause, or more-than-one ultimate cause.

Both could be wrong, but only one can be true - with the other an un-grounded, ad hoc set of assumptions which happen to be useful for particular tasks.

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In religion, when it comes to the soul, a pluralist imagines it as a kind of stuff; a monist may regard the soul as immaterial.  Same with consciousness. Same with the Holy Ghost.

A pluralist necessarily regards God as material - because everything real is material; a monist can posit a God that is everything - all things; a God that is 'nothing' no-thing (in the sense of having no substance, material or stuff.

A pluralist supposes God to do things in broadly the same kind of way that humans do things: by one thing causing another over time, by taking pre-existing material and shaping it - all extrapolated to happen vastly accelerated and vastly larger in scope; but a monist regards God as working by entirely other means: making something from nothing, making many things happen instantly, making things happen simultaneously without any specific communication between them, whatever... 

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A pluralist regards God as broadly being of the same kind as Man - as a personage - having a character: a God of passions, emotions, feelings, intentions, desires, motivations - God as linearly and continuously linked to Man and inhabiting the same reality; but a monist regards God as utterly different from Man, inhabiting a different reality, qualitatively different, utterly incomprehensible, fundamentally unknowable, unpredictable, of a nature so other-than Man that it is ridiculous, childish, blasphemous to talk of God being a person or having passions, emotions, intentions etc.

The pluralist regards God as having a morality, the monist regards God as being morality. 

And so on.

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From all this it can be seen that Christians, trinitarians, have a tough job - probably an impossible job - in creating an adequate philosophy of Christianity; since necessary features and properties lie on both sides of the pluralism-monism divide; and this divide cannot be mended any more than relativity can be integrated with quantum physics.

My conclusion is that deep metaphysical coherence is unattainable in Christianity.

Christians must not get 'hung up' on philosophy.

Of course, most don't - but intellectuals, including theologians, certainly have done and continue to do.

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I have watched both with my family recently - I'm assuming everybody has seen them.

These were both second viewings - I saw them when they came out about twenty years ago, they both stuck in my mind as top-notch movies, and then I saw them again over the past few days.

What struck me this time round was how religiously-rooted they both are, how hostile to the prevailing secular hedonic materialism of modernity.

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At the end of The Truman Show, Truman is given a stark choice of either staying inside his 'show' where he will be assured of a pain free, pleasant and peaceful existence - or venturing out into our world, with all its unpredictability and horrors.

The choice is also between the fake and the real; between a pretend life, and an earnest life.

For most of the adult audience, this is a real dilemma - not least because modern culture is implicitly seeking exactly that state of comfortable distraction epitomized by life inside The Truman Show.

But Truman chooses to leave 'secular modernity'; and I asked my kids what they would have chosen, and both unhesitatingly chose leaving the show as obviously the right thing to do; they immediately rejected the pretend, fake, unreal comfort of life inside the bubble.

I found this interesting - that it is the more-corrupted adults who see the choice as a dilemma; while kids see it as straightforward, and instantly (and correctly) perceive Truman as being imprisoned in his air-conditioned daydream (that is really a nightmare).

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Truman's choice is given him, not by God - but by a man who is playing-God - the deviser and director of The Truman Show: an Antichrist figure with a superficially-protective (and pseudo-loving) attitude to his protegee Truman; but whose underlying pride and destructive sadism are revealed (to all around him, although not to himself) when he tries to kill Truman rather than letting him break out of the vast eco-dome which contains him.

So, in leaving the Show, Truman is also rejecting the temptations of Satan. As yet he does not know what else there may be on offer outside the dome, it is a step into the unknown - but he has started well: very well.

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In Groundhog Day, the protagonist Phil is forced to repeat that day in Punxutawney, Pennsylvania - beginning each repetition with full memories of what went before but recommencing at exactly the same starting point - free within that day to do as he chooses - but unageing, unable to die or escape in any way.

The movie charts Phil's various reactions and strategies to his inexplicable (and never explained) predicament; and although it is never stated, the implication is that he relives this day thousands of times, perhaps many thousands of times.

Eventually, after exhausting every sinful possibility (lust, greed, sloth etc) and indulging all the emotional vices (pride, anger, hatred etc), Phil learns what was (apparently) the lesson of his experience, and becomes a loving, altruistic humble man - at which point he is 'allowed' to move on to the next day - sanctified.

And it is not enough for Phil to fake this, to say the right things and do the right things - he must genuinely change within: become a better man - better motivated, a better character. 

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It turns-out that Groundhog Day was a test, and also an experience - an arena for free agency and choice.

And the tester seemingly knows Phil's inner life, his real motivations - and these are what must change before Phil can pass the test.

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But who is the tester; who does this to Phil - and why?

Implicitly, it has to be God, obviously - and a personal God who cares about Phil as an individual and has an individual relationship with him - and who also cares, equally, about all the people of Punxutawney and wants the best for them too. Thus the Jewish/ Christian God.

The point being that without such a God, and without the life that God prescribes - life is meaningless, purposeless and utterly lonely; and might as well be an unending cycle of futile repetition - as when an alcoholic slob responds to Phil's account of his predicament (every day the same, going nowhere) by saying that this description also fits his own life...

A super-truth joke; which hints that, minus-God, modern life is a mere repetition of distraction and intoxication and unreality; every bit as futile as the daily cycles of intoxication of a bar-fly. 

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Both movies are, in effect, Judeo-Christian critiques of the ideals and actuality of Godless modernity; demonstrations of the gross inadequacy of an ethic of self-centred hedonism; arguments for the necessity of hope being rooted beyond this-worldly ideals of peace, pleasure, comfort and convenience.

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http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/who-are-children-of-iluvatar.html
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http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/what-is-meaning-of-tolkiens-king-sheave.html
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The early Doctor Who (canonical incarnations one to seven - from William Hartnell to Sylvester McCoy) was a wizard - but the revived Doctor Who is a superhero.

This shows itself in many way, but mostly in relation to sex: a wizard is celibate and asexual - the revived Doctor is sexually-interested and sometimes has girlfriends - even a wife.

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Obviously a wizard cannot be married!

Think of the great wizards: Merlin, Gandalf, Dumbledore, Getafix...is it imaginable that any had a wife?

Equally, they cannot have a girlfriend nor indeed any kind of sexual infatuation; and if they do, then they will be punished and lose their powers - if they do not repent.

Think Merlin and Nimue - which got him imprisoned in an oak tree/ crystal cave; think Dumbledore and Grindlewald - which led to the death of his sister but then repentance.

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The new Doctor Who is all about smutty innuendos, snogging, declarations of undying love to (serial) companions, besotted companions, and so on - that is the stuff of superheroes.

The sex prohibition for wizards is absolutely non-negotiable, because we are dealing with an archetype: a basic, universal, fixed, symbolic figure.

However, in making the Doctor a sexual being, he has changed archetype: the revived Doctor Who is now a warrior, not a wizard - because the superhero is a version of the warrior archetype.

Warriors are, of course, exactly the kind of people to have a string of (ahem) 'girlfriends' and to become the objects of sexual infatuation like the revived Doctor.

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So with the revived Doctor Who we have gone from Merlin to Lancelot, from Gandalf to Boromir, from Dumbledore to Sirius Black, and from Getafix to Asterix (sort of...).

A poor exchange, in my opinion.

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Human Rights imply coercion.

Because when something is a Right, it must be fulfilled, somebody must fulfil that Right: by compulsory allocation of a portion of their time, effort, money or other resources.

If the Human Right is absolute - so is the coercion.

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Coercion implies that somebody be coerced.

When coercion is necessary, in practice this therefore means that - whoever can be coerced are the ones who are coerced.

Those who can be coerced are The Weak.

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(More taxes are taken from those who cannot avoid more taxes; not from those who 'deserve' to be taxed. The higher the tax take, the more this is so. Those who take taxes are The Strong, those who are taxed are The Weak; and the taking of taxes makes The Strong stronger, and The Weak weaker - the feedback loop is positive.)

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And, conversely, those who are in a position to resist coercion will not be forced to fulfil Human Rights.

Those who can resist coercion are The Strong.

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Therefore, in practice and always, Human Rights are provided by The Strong coercing The Weak to provide the necessary resources.

Human Rights are provided by The Weak. 

But because they are acting under coercion, and not acting by choice, The Weak get zero moral credit for providing Human Rights - instead The Strong get moral credit for confiscating resources from The Weak in order to provide Human Rights.

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In sum: Human Rights are provided by The Weak, but moral credit goes to The Strong.

Human Rights are how The Strong get ever more power, and more status, and more resources to deploy as they wish; all of this power, money and status being coercively-extracted from the The Weak. 

No wonder Human Right are so popular with The Strong! No wonder The Strong are always inventing new Human Rights!

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For many modern people the hardest part of the Bible is often the story of Abraham being told by God to sacrifice Isaac, obeying, then God stopping the procedure only when it was clear that Abraham really would kill Isaac in response to God's command.

This is a complex scene, which includes the element of prefiguring Christ's sacrifice; but I think one aspect that creates horror among modern people is that they assume God already knew what Abraham would do - therefore the scene becomes one of gratuitous psychological torture.

The notion that God is supposedly omniscient - in particular that God already knows everything that is going to happen in the future, is a piece of unnecessary Classical philosophy which has been unwisely built-into mainstream Christianity, and which deeply confuses people's understanding of the Bible.

Really, this is quite straightforward: God needs to test Abraham because God does not know whether or not Abraham will obey.

God does not know in advance the outcome of his test, for the very simply reason that Abraham is a free agent: he has free will, he really can and does choose what to do.

Therefore, the only way that God can know that Abraham is faithful is to observe him over time, and especially to observe Abraham's response to trials and tests. 

This is one fundamental reason why our mortal life is necessarily - to some extent - a trial. (It is not, of course, the only reason for trails - because some and perhaps most trials come from evil forces, while others are consequences of the natural world).

How we respond to trials - and also how we respond to the temptations of luxury and pleasure - is something God needs to know in order to know us, and to measure our faith; and there is no short-cut to this knowledge: we must endure these trials.

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At first I thought, for the millionth time, what a sordid world we live in where internet usage forces such things - and worse - upon us, every day and many times per day.

And then I recognized that 'Life is short. Have an Affair' is actually the sub-text of innumerable mass mainstream novels, magazine articles, news reports, TV soaps and movies - and has been all of my life.

And then I realized how difficult it has become for people to have a solid and lasting marriage under this relentless propaganda and encouragement to evil (with sin portrayed positively; as intelligent, natural, enlightened, self-enhancing behaviour).

And then I remembered that it has actually become illegal and punishable for anyone in Britain straightforwardly to advocate the protection and strengthening of marriage and families.

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So - this is the modern world: a place where it is okay to advocate 'having an affair' at every level from sleazy spam e-mails on upwards; from all varieties of the Mass Media 24/7, and to the pinnacle of contemporary art, politics and social research.

But a world where to oppose this is strictly and explicitly against the rules of 'decent' society, and subject to harsh sanctions.

All of which is not some extreme extrapolation of present trends, some dystopian fantasy - but just how we live, here and now.

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I have been blogging daily since the summer of 2010 - a strange business...

The main purpose of this blog is clearly Christian, that is its raison d'etre - but it is important that the blog is a 'Miscellany' where I can write anything or else it would pretty soon become a fake or a chore; because I don't have enough Christian things welling-up in me to have something I want to write on that topic every day.

There are, it seems to me, very few daily bloggers, except for professional bloggers and people who mostly publish topical links to other blogs. This blog remains completely amateur, totally non-money-making, and tries to avoid topicality - and is mostly about my 'notions' (and not about my life - this post being an exception).

Essentially, the blog is produced - as now - by my getting up early (about 05.00h, which is the time I like to get up anyway) and writing the day's entry over the next hour or two and posting it - then maybe thinking about it, revisiting it to edit, or add a summary note over the next few hours (by which time I am at work).

As often as not I add another blog post through the day, sometimes more than one - but on the whole I try to keep to one or two per day to avoid the reader having to skim.

Productivity has not, so far, been a problem - I have not felt myself running out of ideas for more than the odd week or two (e.g. when ill, or the slump after finishing a big project). Of course I repeat myself sometimes, thematically, in the sense of trying to make the same point but in a better or clearer way (what works for one person may not work for another).

The ideas are just there  - they come from thinking; which is the one thing I do more of than most people.

The trouble is that thinking looks so much like doing nothing much, wasting time, not doing stuff I should or could be doing! - nonetheless, that is apparently the way I am (at least, up to now), thinking is a compulsion rather than a decision;  and all attempts to be more 'efficient' and 'get more done' have crashed and burned. If I do not spend time thinking, then I don't do anything else more valuable - I just dissipate even-more time.

Of course the thinking is fuelled by reading and (to some extent) conversation - but the ratio is very strongly slanted towards thinking.

Anyway, that is apparently how it is that - to my surprise, and certainly not planned or wished-for - I find myself a daily blogger; and how it is that I don't often lack things I want to write.

But if it was not for the hope of spreading Christianity, or strengthening faith, then I would not have continued writing for this blog - certainly not on a daily basis.

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Today I rewatched one of my favourite-ever documentaries - the 1996 BBC Horizon episode of Fermat's Last Theorem which recounts the marvelous, inspiring story of the English mathematician Andrew Wiles's proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FnXgprKgSE

What I get from this program is a sense of how Andrew Wiles worked during the seven years of total secrecy while he focused intensely on the problem.


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Probably there is no subject upon which more nonsense, and fatally-confusing nonsense, has been written over the past half-century, than the subject of 'judging' other people.

I will not attempt to summarize what is the mainstream view on this subject, because I cannot summarize incoherence - but the gist of it is that we, as individuals, should feel very uncomfortable if we judge, if we evaluate, the good or evil of another person's behaviour.

Indeed, this mainstream view - which includes many self-identified Christians and especially Christian leaders - is that 'judging others' is a worse sin than any possible sin which might be judged.

In sum, the modern mainstream view amounts to the conviction that it is those who judge others who are the worst of all possible sinners.

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Now, obviously this is evil nonsense. 

But I think many genuine Christians are confused by this prohibition on judging others - and by the pseudo-Christian rationale put forward to support it (for example, by quoting certain Biblical verses, or putting forward certain aspects of Christs behaviour as precedents).

Yet the prohibition on judging others absolutely prevents someone living a Christian life.

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In a world of sin and evil - how can a man know what to do, what to believe - who to believe, without deploying judgement of good and evil motivations, intentions, character?

It is obviously impossible - and therefore must be utterly rejected. 

Or rather, this ought to be obvious but, as I said, people are confused.

And what happens in consequence is that faith is weakened; anti-Christian people, policies and organizations are supported instead of opposed - in sum, Christianity becomes feeble, ineffectual and cannot offer direction or hope.

And this is what we find. 

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So what is the proper meaning of that strand of Christ's teaching which we misunderstand as 'not judging others' - it is, quite simply, that we do not know who will be saved and who will choose damnation.

That specific but crucial matter is not for us to judge and we are in no position to judge it.

But all other matters are necessarily to be judged - but especially, vitally, above-all we must judge the goodness, virtue, and truthfulness of other people; or, alternatively, must judge and take-note-of and act-upon-our-knowledge-of their evil intentions, their sinfulness, their dishonesty.

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Christians must understand clearly and unambiguously that judgement is not only 'allowed'; but absolutely vital and indeed central to the Christian life.

Obviously!

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In the pre-modern era there were civilizations that lived upon the mere hope of hope - the varieties of paganism, the Ancient Hebrews of the Old Testament and many others.

They did not have grounds for hope, nor anything specific to hope for; but they hoped that such grounds and actualities might nonetheless exist.

This was possible, was natural, in a world where everyone believed that the soul or spirit survived death.

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The noble pagans (of which many are recorded) always implicitly operated on the basis that there were permanent standards of human behaviour, and that humans were meant to live by them; and that if humans did not live by these permanent standards then there were genuinely-bad consequences which extended beyond their personal death.

Although unarticulated, this perspective necessarily means that the universe somehow has a very long-lasting and personal interest in the doings of each person.


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But modernity disbelieves in post-mortal existence, and therefore insists that hope be this-worldly.

For modernity, hope must be located in this world, because there is nowhere else for it to be located.

However, it turns-out that there are no this-worldly grounds for hope - so disbelieving in the next world, there are no grounds for hope.

It turns-out that modernity systematically eliminates all grounds for hope; and insists that this is merely realistic, and that all previous human generations were grossly deluded.  

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We live in the most hope-less world ever.

Somehow, modernity has persuaded almost everybody that 'science has discovered' that death is extinction (sorry, somehow I missed that research paper so I can't give a reference). 

What has really happened is that the metaphysical understanding of reality has changed - modernity operates on a different set of assumptions than any society in human history: that there is no human spirit or soul, that death is extinction, that the purpose of mortal life must be contained within mortal life, that there is no god/ God of any kind - and so on.

These modernist metaphysical assumptions were not discovered - they were invented; they have not been proven - they have simply become habitual to the point that people cannot imagine anything otherwise.

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Under modern conditions, therefore, paganism is hope-less - and many types of society which used to work on the basis merely of hoping-for-hope, will not work any longer: hoping for hope will not cut the mustard under the pervasive nihilism of modernity.

Thus, under modernity, the human race has gone mad with despair - and instead of hope there are only negative energizing motivations: pleasure seeking distraction and hate-fuelled destruction.

Under such conditions, the only ones with hope that is strong enough to combat the all invading and aggressive despair, are those whose hope is correctly-located in the life-to-come, and whose belief in that hopeful life-to-come is strong and secure.

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The challenge for any religion in the modern world is that it must provide hope in a hopeless world - in a world whose habitual and publicly-enforced thinking eliminates any possible grounds for hope.

(And - even worse - a world which stupidly, carelessly and lying-ly denies that this is what it is doing.)

This is very, very difficult; and many, many religions that used-to 'work', do not work any longer; they were destroyed, they have gone - leaving only shells.

They simply could not withstand the unprecedented hope-destroying power of modernity.

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Modernity is a hurricane of skeptical assumptions.

Lots of religions, ideologies, world views which were functional in the past, have withered under the blast of modernity because they were undercut by modernist metaphysical assumptions.

Religion now must be far stronger than ever it was before - and the metaphysical basis of religion, the structuring frame of interpretation which shapes all experience and reasoning - must, nowadays, stand apart from the mainstream of public discourse (and will therefore seem stupid or crazy by prevailing standards) - and yet this religious frame must be believed in a way strong enough to withstand continuous and unrelenting attack from modern institutions and from the mass media. 

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We have now 'done the experiment' with this-worldly hope and the results are in - our public culture has, for several generations, insisted that hope be located in this world and within mortality; and that hope located beyond death is dumb, evil, crazy nonsense.

We have done the experiment, and we can see the results: nihilism, paralysis, lies, deliberate ugliness, strategic vice, decadent addiction to comfort, clamouring egotism, cowardice, craving of stimulation... in one word - ignobility.

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The modern pagan stands in the starkest possible contrast to the bleak, stoic dignity of an ancient pagan!

There is no modern Socrates.

No wonder that there are so few religions that 'make a difference' under modernity! - existence is harder for real religion than ever before, anywhere.

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The lessons:

We must have hope.

Hope must be located beyond mortal life. 

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And all this is a matter of habitual metaphysical assumptions - a matter of how we, personally, at the deepest level, interpret life.

And this we can choose - and indeed must and do choose; because nobody and nothing can prevent us from choosing.

And, having chosen, we will experience the consequences of our choice. 

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