*
In England there is a (military-slang) phrase which purports to describe the alternatives for why-things-go-wrong - Cock-up or Conspiracy - which means incompetence and stupidity, versus an organized plan.
This phrase, and the attitude it represents- is a fake dichotomy, false alternative, dishonest choice; and is covertly-intended to dismiss the possibility that significant groups of powerful people operate strategically to do harm.
*
The C-up v Consp idea is that incompetence is so common in human affairs, that anything which goes wrong can (and should) be explained by stupid accidents, rather than deliberate purpose.
Therefore when deliberate purpose is observed, inferred from a long-term and repeating pattern of behaviour, it can be dismissed as naive 'conspiracy theorizing'.
*
But stupidity is not fatal so long as people are honest and well-motivated - because honest and well-motivated people can perceive and learn from obvious errors even when they are stupid; and avoid repeating them.
Stupid people do not put their hand into the fire twice, when it hurts a lot the first time.
Pure stupidity does not explain denial of the harm of harmful outcomes, or persistence in voluntary actions which wholly fail in their purposes and lead to all-round bad outcomes.
*
On the other hand, although human conspiracies by wicked people are very common, indeed universal, they usually fall-apart from short-term selfishness and attempted exploitation among the conspirators - orc-ish squabbling and mutual slaughter.
But conspiracy is not the proper concept to understand these phenomena - what we are talking about is pursuit of a long term strategy.
*
People who share a long term strategy have no need to 'conspire' in order to cooperate.
People who share a long term strategy will repeatedly put their hands (or somebody else's hands) into the fire - because they are more interested in the long term plans than in immediate consequences.
People who share a long term strategy will agree to deny harmful consequences, will lie about benefits that don't exist, will persist in doing things which seem to lead to much harm and no good - IF these actions serve their strategic purposes.
*
Looked at in this way, it is crystal clear that the leadership of The West (US/ UK/ Europe especially) have a long term strategy upon which they agree (so there is no need to 'conspire') - and we can see this because they behave quite differently from stupid people.
In particular, it is not explicable in terms of incompetence that Western foreign policy again-and-again has an anti-Christian strategic purpose - because the anti-Christian outcomes are ignored, denied and hidden; and because there is a pattern, and because the strategy is pursued despite immediate-term and severe disadvantages to the West.
More generally, Western foreign policy is overall very obviously destructive of Good - and this is not a cock-up but is strategic; because only strategy can explain the pattern of denial, dishonesty, repetition and short-termist self-harm.
A foreign policy designed and implemented by stupid people, a series of cock-ups - would be much more rational, more beneficial, much better - than what we have had for the past half century.
*
Western leaders really are operating in service of evil and in pursuit of destruction.
To believe otherwise is wishful thinking: just naive.
The extent to which their service to evil is deliberate or unsuspecting is more debate-able - but the increase in public lying and elaborate propaganda shows that the balance is changing.
As the consequences of their cooperative strategies get plainer, so more and more of the Western elite are actively planning destruction, wittingly embracing evil.
*
Sunday 9 March 2014
Saturday 8 March 2014
If you don't believe that intelligence has declined by about one modern standard deviation in the past 150-200 years - then what DO you believe?
*
1. Do you believe that Victorian simple reaction time (sRT) data are not comparable with modern data? If so, would you be convinced by evidence of rapidly slowing reaction times over recent decades, measured in one laboratory and using only modern RT machines? Because this kind of evidence is in the pipeline.
2. Do you believe that - despite about 140 years consensus that sRT and IQ are significantly correlated, and the general belief that this correlation is because general intelligence is dependent upon processing speed of which sRT is an indirect measure - there is NOT a causal relationship between simple reaction times and intelligence? That, therefore, average sRTs could be getting much, much slower but that this would not necessarily make any difference to average intelligence?
3. Do you believe that the measured decline in average simple reaction time from a Victorian sRT average speed of about 180 milliseconds (in several independent studies) to a modern average speed of 250 milliseconds (or slower), a slowing of 70 milliseconds plus - is not enough to be of interest: that it is too small to not reflect any significant or meaningful reduction in intelligence.
4. Do you believe that because the measured slowing of sRT over the past 150 years seems unexpected, and is larger than you would have supposed possible, strikes you as indeed ludicrous - that therefore we should simply ignore it?
5. Do you believe that - because the data on long term sRTs seems anomalous with your world view, that we should therefore assume that somehow there is something wrong somewhere with the Victorian to Modern comparison; and therefore we should just carry-on just as if we knew nothing about longitudinal changes in sRTs?
6. Do you believe that there has been a significant reduction in average general intelligence over the past 150 years, but that it is much less than one standard deviation - probably more like HALF a standard deviation? And the large size of the sRT slowing is just a Red Herring?
7. Do you believe that average intelligence has NOT changed over the past 150 years - that moderns have the same intelligence as Victorians? And the slowing of average sRT is irrelevant?
8. Do you believe that average intelligence has increased over the past 150 years despite slowing of sRTs, because you believe the pen-and-paper IQ tests are more valid, reliable and/or objective than reaction time data?
9. Or something else, or what?
*
1. Do you believe that Victorian simple reaction time (sRT) data are not comparable with modern data? If so, would you be convinced by evidence of rapidly slowing reaction times over recent decades, measured in one laboratory and using only modern RT machines? Because this kind of evidence is in the pipeline.
2. Do you believe that - despite about 140 years consensus that sRT and IQ are significantly correlated, and the general belief that this correlation is because general intelligence is dependent upon processing speed of which sRT is an indirect measure - there is NOT a causal relationship between simple reaction times and intelligence? That, therefore, average sRTs could be getting much, much slower but that this would not necessarily make any difference to average intelligence?
3. Do you believe that the measured decline in average simple reaction time from a Victorian sRT average speed of about 180 milliseconds (in several independent studies) to a modern average speed of 250 milliseconds (or slower), a slowing of 70 milliseconds plus - is not enough to be of interest: that it is too small to not reflect any significant or meaningful reduction in intelligence.
4. Do you believe that because the measured slowing of sRT over the past 150 years seems unexpected, and is larger than you would have supposed possible, strikes you as indeed ludicrous - that therefore we should simply ignore it?
5. Do you believe that - because the data on long term sRTs seems anomalous with your world view, that we should therefore assume that somehow there is something wrong somewhere with the Victorian to Modern comparison; and therefore we should just carry-on just as if we knew nothing about longitudinal changes in sRTs?
6. Do you believe that there has been a significant reduction in average general intelligence over the past 150 years, but that it is much less than one standard deviation - probably more like HALF a standard deviation? And the large size of the sRT slowing is just a Red Herring?
7. Do you believe that average intelligence has NOT changed over the past 150 years - that moderns have the same intelligence as Victorians? And the slowing of average sRT is irrelevant?
8. Do you believe that average intelligence has increased over the past 150 years despite slowing of sRTs, because you believe the pen-and-paper IQ tests are more valid, reliable and/or objective than reaction time data?
9. Or something else, or what?
*
Brief Psychotic Disorder - a common condition, virtually unknown
*
In a city of a million people, about three cases per day - or in a large psychiatric hospitals acute admissions ward, a new case arriving every week or two.
That's about how common is a condition variously termed Brief Psychotic Disorder, or Psychogenic Psychosis, or Schizophreniform Disorder.
In other words it happens quite a lot - it will probably happen to someone you know.
*
A person is brought into hospital (usually against their wishes, brought in by their terrified family, or the police) with some kind of acute, excited, aggressive psychotic breakdown following several days or weeks of escalating disturbance - usually associated with a period of unusual stress or hard work, many late nights - perhaps skipping sleep.
They may be typically manic (happy or angry, over-active, grandiose, talking too much and too loud, impulsive, over-bearing); or a more typically schizophrenic picture (puzzled, suspicious, hearing voices, believing they are being observed, victim of some conspiracy, jumbled nonsensical speech); or there may be catatonic posturing and strange movements...
Very abnormal, very severe, very scary.
Yet after just a few days of admission, with sedation or tranquillization, a few nights of sleep - the patient completely recovers back to normal and may leave hospital within a week - and never suffer any further problems.
And that is that.
Or that is how it used to be...
*
Except that nowadays, in the developed world, they will likely be given antipsychotic (aka neroleptic, 'mood stabilizer') drugs, and kept on them after discharge - supposedly to 'prevent' future problems.
And will therefore suffer the inevitable and severe Parkinsonian effects of antipsychotics; including demotivation, inability to experience pleasure, lack of drive -the drugs will probably make them constantly sleepy and obese...
http://qjmed.oxfordjournals.org/content/99/6/417.full
And after a few months of 'preventive' treatment ('to be on the safe side') inevitably they will become dependent on the antipsychotics; so that if or when the drugs are stopped, they have a high chance of suffering a withdrawal-triggered psychotic breakdown - which will then be taken as proof that they 'need' the drug, and indeed need the drugs for the rest of their lives...
*
In psychiatry, all the drugs, without any exceptions, cause greater or lesser dependence when taken in significant doses for a few months - but the fact is not acknowledged; so long term covert (un-acknowledged) drug dependence is relabelled as disease.
http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/covert-drug-dependence.html)
*
So quite likely, nowadays, thanks to covert drug dependence, the patient with brief psychotic disorder will never recover from their breakdown; will never return to their former level of functioning - they will instead become a chronic psychiatric patient (and prescribed drug consumer) for the rest of their days (which may not be very long, considering that antipsychotics substantially elevate all-cause mortality rates).
*
In this brave new world where an on-patent and useless antipyschotic (Ablify) is the biggest selling drug of all drugs in the world; the person with a brief psychotic episode will not be allowed to recover and walk away; but will very likely be made into a fake diagnosis of 'bipolar disorder' or 'schizophrenia' or whatever is being promoted - and will spend the rest of their lives as impaired and dependent.
*
Why am I telling you this?
Because it may well affect you or your loved ones.
Antipsychotic prescriptions are sky high - when described as 'mood stabilizers' they are being given to people with mild, temporary and imaginary illnesses; they are being given to teenagers, young children and toddlers; the drugs are being given supposedly to prevent the 'risk' of future illness without any awareness that long-term antipsychotic drugs always cause present and future impairment and illness.
In sum antipsychotics (including labelled as 'mood stabilizers') are being grossly, hideously, evilly over-prescribed - millions of lives have been, are being, ruined for faked reasons on false grounds.
*
Why am I telling you this?
Because you may not have known that people can and do suffer severe psychotic breakdowns, yet these people would be expected to get better very quickly and (if left alone) will probably never experience any further trouble.
This is fairly common.
*
Why am I telling you this?
So you know to resist 'medical advice' which would - instead of letting the patient (which may be you) get better and stay well - will instead lead to them getting permanently-hooked on dangerous, brain impairing and dependence-producing drugs.
*
Antipsychotics are very nasty drugs - they should be used seldom, in as low as dose as possible and for as briefly as possible; and only as a last resort.
Avoid - if at all possible - the risk of getting dependent on them.
Addiction to a drug that makes you high or happy is a bad thing; but to become dependent on a drug that makes you look, act and feel like a dull, demotivated zombie, and probably prevents you ever holding a responsible job, is much, much worse.
*
In a city of a million people, about three cases per day - or in a large psychiatric hospitals acute admissions ward, a new case arriving every week or two.
That's about how common is a condition variously termed Brief Psychotic Disorder, or Psychogenic Psychosis, or Schizophreniform Disorder.
In other words it happens quite a lot - it will probably happen to someone you know.
*
A person is brought into hospital (usually against their wishes, brought in by their terrified family, or the police) with some kind of acute, excited, aggressive psychotic breakdown following several days or weeks of escalating disturbance - usually associated with a period of unusual stress or hard work, many late nights - perhaps skipping sleep.
They may be typically manic (happy or angry, over-active, grandiose, talking too much and too loud, impulsive, over-bearing); or a more typically schizophrenic picture (puzzled, suspicious, hearing voices, believing they are being observed, victim of some conspiracy, jumbled nonsensical speech); or there may be catatonic posturing and strange movements...
Very abnormal, very severe, very scary.
Yet after just a few days of admission, with sedation or tranquillization, a few nights of sleep - the patient completely recovers back to normal and may leave hospital within a week - and never suffer any further problems.
And that is that.
Or that is how it used to be...
*
Except that nowadays, in the developed world, they will likely be given antipsychotic (aka neroleptic, 'mood stabilizer') drugs, and kept on them after discharge - supposedly to 'prevent' future problems.
And will therefore suffer the inevitable and severe Parkinsonian effects of antipsychotics; including demotivation, inability to experience pleasure, lack of drive -the drugs will probably make them constantly sleepy and obese...
http://qjmed.oxfordjournals.org/content/99/6/417.full
And after a few months of 'preventive' treatment ('to be on the safe side') inevitably they will become dependent on the antipsychotics; so that if or when the drugs are stopped, they have a high chance of suffering a withdrawal-triggered psychotic breakdown - which will then be taken as proof that they 'need' the drug, and indeed need the drugs for the rest of their lives...
*
In psychiatry, all the drugs, without any exceptions, cause greater or lesser dependence when taken in significant doses for a few months - but the fact is not acknowledged; so long term covert (un-acknowledged) drug dependence is relabelled as disease.
http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/covert-drug-dependence.html)
*
So quite likely, nowadays, thanks to covert drug dependence, the patient with brief psychotic disorder will never recover from their breakdown; will never return to their former level of functioning - they will instead become a chronic psychiatric patient (and prescribed drug consumer) for the rest of their days (which may not be very long, considering that antipsychotics substantially elevate all-cause mortality rates).
*
In this brave new world where an on-patent and useless antipyschotic (Ablify) is the biggest selling drug of all drugs in the world; the person with a brief psychotic episode will not be allowed to recover and walk away; but will very likely be made into a fake diagnosis of 'bipolar disorder' or 'schizophrenia' or whatever is being promoted - and will spend the rest of their lives as impaired and dependent.
*
Why am I telling you this?
Because it may well affect you or your loved ones.
Antipsychotic prescriptions are sky high - when described as 'mood stabilizers' they are being given to people with mild, temporary and imaginary illnesses; they are being given to teenagers, young children and toddlers; the drugs are being given supposedly to prevent the 'risk' of future illness without any awareness that long-term antipsychotic drugs always cause present and future impairment and illness.
In sum antipsychotics (including labelled as 'mood stabilizers') are being grossly, hideously, evilly over-prescribed - millions of lives have been, are being, ruined for faked reasons on false grounds.
*
Why am I telling you this?
Because you may not have known that people can and do suffer severe psychotic breakdowns, yet these people would be expected to get better very quickly and (if left alone) will probably never experience any further trouble.
This is fairly common.
*
Why am I telling you this?
So you know to resist 'medical advice' which would - instead of letting the patient (which may be you) get better and stay well - will instead lead to them getting permanently-hooked on dangerous, brain impairing and dependence-producing drugs.
*
Antipsychotics are very nasty drugs - they should be used seldom, in as low as dose as possible and for as briefly as possible; and only as a last resort.
Avoid - if at all possible - the risk of getting dependent on them.
Addiction to a drug that makes you high or happy is a bad thing; but to become dependent on a drug that makes you look, act and feel like a dull, demotivated zombie, and probably prevents you ever holding a responsible job, is much, much worse.
*
Friday 7 March 2014
Jungian spirituality and Joseph Campbell - Literalism versus Symbolism
*
Before I was a Christian I was deep into Jung and had a phase of intense reading of Joseph Campbell. It is interesting to revisit these authors after a gap.
What strikes me is how ultimately everything including belief and the life of faith, ritual, organizational structure - everything - is boiled-down to personal feelings - to my specific personal feelings as evoked by these things.
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, considering its origin in psychiatry, the emphasis is therapeutic.
*
And I think a Jungian perspective does, in a limited way, deliver its therapeutic claims - that is it enables, allows, facilitates a reconnection of the individual with 'life' - for the alienated modern man it restores the animistic sense of being a part of things.
This is valuable, since alienation is the most subjectively obvious, pervasive, painful malaise of modernity - our sense of being a detached and isolated consciousness. And this is something which is often not-much-helped by some brands of Christianity - which have become demythologized, doctrinal, negative, obedience-focused.
*
But these soul-therapists of a Jungian stripe - including Campbell - find themselves in the paradoxical position of arguing that their explanations are true, while also arguing that truth does not matter but only how we feel about it.
They also find that they spend a lot of time analysing society, and giving advice on how society might be better conducted - in view of producing more more soul-full kind of life for more people. Yet their analysis boils down to 'well, this is how I personally feel about it, today, here and now' - which is no possible basis for any form of cooperation.
*
Jungianism is indeed intensely individualistic; to the point of a selfishness so extreme as to be off-the-map - for each Jungian, ultimately, the world exists primarily in order that he personally - in his here and now - feels connected with it and positive about it.
Everything else is, at root, a deceptive elaboration of this prime imperative: for each Jungian the world should be organized so that he personally feels as good about things as possible.
*
Since such radical individualism is impossible; in practice, this means that Jungians cohere and cooperate by defaulting to the usual, mainstream, Left-Liberalism, and have, like everybody else - pretty much, followed this into political correctness.
So the Jungian perspective as it has permeated the vast business of New Age healing, and Mind, Body and Spirit - is utterly politically correct, just like everybody else.
New Age leaders are always active in whatever happens to be the latest Leftist cause, and always vote for the Leftist party, and always have snide and hostile things to say against the somewhat-less-Leftist party; even though Leftist modernity is very obviously the dominant form of life, hence the main cause of alienation.
This proves the partiality, the incompleteness of Jungian New Age thinking - it utterly fails to generate an alternative political world view - it implicitly defers utterly to the fashionable taboos and nonsensical crazes of political correctness.
Jungianism is, in sum, utterly in thrall to the modern Mass Media - and those (many!) aspects of Jung the man which are unacceptable to the modern Mass Media PC (the fact that he was a neo-pagan fascist patriarch who ran a virtual harem, for example) have been long since discarded from mainstream New Age thinking.
*
Thus, even if we grant (as I generally do) that the Jungian brand of New Ageism can diminish alienation - its twin defects of lack of motivation and lack of meaning are what paralyse it.
Jungianism can do no more than advise about how to establish a frame of mind in which you are psychologically re-connected with 'life' - it does not tell you what this connection means (because feelings as such have no meaning), and it does not give any guidance as to purpose in life- since to seek such apparently meaningless moments is not any kind of purpose; any more than living to get intoxicated is a purpose.
The big danger of Jungian New Age-ism is that it is relativistic in its evaluations, hence may sabotage the process of moving on into a real all-round religion. If a person becomes convinced that there can be nothing more than symbolism, then they are stuck.
*
I would say that the core idea of Jungian/ New Age thinking is the contrast between Literalism and Symbolism.
They (accurately, on the whole) accuse both traditional Christianity and Mainstream Modern Culture of Literalism - that is of regarding things as detached, dead facts; to be obeyed, or to be manipulated in an instrumental - goal-orientated - fashion.
And this is contrasted with a Symbolic way of thinking in which meaning is not about facts, history, science - but instead about a world in which I am connected with everything and everything is connected with everything else: things are deep, glowing, resonant, and we have a personal relationship with things.
Indeed, there are no 'things' but everything is a sentient entity (at some level) with which we have a relationship. Thus things are not to be obeyed or manipulated but experienced.
*
So, Jungian/ New Agers are scathing about the Literalist bureaucratic thinking (which they regard as a Right Wing phenomenon, to do with a 'business' model of society), and also about the Literalism of 'fundamentalist' Christians, or traditionalist Catholics who are 'hung-up' on things like the actual historical existence of Jesus and his life and death. Christians are accused of 'missing the point' and treating their faith as facts and rules - and who is interested in a bunch more facts and rules?
For New Agers it is not the facts that matter, but whether we respond to symbols, whether the symbolism is alive and effective.
Christian symbolism seems to them dead, dry, detached, outmoded - we need to seek wider among world religions and myths in search of something, anything, to which we can respond in a large and glowing fashion - which stimulates feelings of connectedness, depth, relationship...
*
As an objective - all this? - yes, fine, good...
But the dichotomy of Literal and Symbolic is false and fatal; what we want, need and must have is both at the same time.
We need symbols that are factually true, we need facts that are actively symbolic.
We need that Jesus really lived, died, ascended to Heaven - and the other facts of Christian belief; and we need that these facts have the connectedness and rootedness and glowing quality of symbols.
Because if a symbol is not a fact, then it is just a feeling.
Feelings are personal, they come and they go, and they lead nowhere.
*
Jungian New Ageism was, and perhaps is, a response to the disenchantment, the de-magic-ing, the pure dull dry literal partialism of so much Christianity.
A proper Christian life, faith, practice would give Jungian New Ageism no toehold, no advantage; because it would include all that is good, wholesome, desirable and enchanting about Jungian symbolism.
But it would be true - and not just whatever happens to strike me personally (but about anyone else, who knows?), here-and-now (but in five minutes - who knows?), as making me feel better (in some way or another) about my current situation.
True, factual symbolism is the only symbolism that really matters - any other kind is a snare, a blind-alley, a prelude to nihilism.
*
Before I was a Christian I was deep into Jung and had a phase of intense reading of Joseph Campbell. It is interesting to revisit these authors after a gap.
What strikes me is how ultimately everything including belief and the life of faith, ritual, organizational structure - everything - is boiled-down to personal feelings - to my specific personal feelings as evoked by these things.
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, considering its origin in psychiatry, the emphasis is therapeutic.
*
And I think a Jungian perspective does, in a limited way, deliver its therapeutic claims - that is it enables, allows, facilitates a reconnection of the individual with 'life' - for the alienated modern man it restores the animistic sense of being a part of things.
This is valuable, since alienation is the most subjectively obvious, pervasive, painful malaise of modernity - our sense of being a detached and isolated consciousness. And this is something which is often not-much-helped by some brands of Christianity - which have become demythologized, doctrinal, negative, obedience-focused.
*
But these soul-therapists of a Jungian stripe - including Campbell - find themselves in the paradoxical position of arguing that their explanations are true, while also arguing that truth does not matter but only how we feel about it.
They also find that they spend a lot of time analysing society, and giving advice on how society might be better conducted - in view of producing more more soul-full kind of life for more people. Yet their analysis boils down to 'well, this is how I personally feel about it, today, here and now' - which is no possible basis for any form of cooperation.
*
Jungianism is indeed intensely individualistic; to the point of a selfishness so extreme as to be off-the-map - for each Jungian, ultimately, the world exists primarily in order that he personally - in his here and now - feels connected with it and positive about it.
Everything else is, at root, a deceptive elaboration of this prime imperative: for each Jungian the world should be organized so that he personally feels as good about things as possible.
*
Since such radical individualism is impossible; in practice, this means that Jungians cohere and cooperate by defaulting to the usual, mainstream, Left-Liberalism, and have, like everybody else - pretty much, followed this into political correctness.
So the Jungian perspective as it has permeated the vast business of New Age healing, and Mind, Body and Spirit - is utterly politically correct, just like everybody else.
New Age leaders are always active in whatever happens to be the latest Leftist cause, and always vote for the Leftist party, and always have snide and hostile things to say against the somewhat-less-Leftist party; even though Leftist modernity is very obviously the dominant form of life, hence the main cause of alienation.
This proves the partiality, the incompleteness of Jungian New Age thinking - it utterly fails to generate an alternative political world view - it implicitly defers utterly to the fashionable taboos and nonsensical crazes of political correctness.
Jungianism is, in sum, utterly in thrall to the modern Mass Media - and those (many!) aspects of Jung the man which are unacceptable to the modern Mass Media PC (the fact that he was a neo-pagan fascist patriarch who ran a virtual harem, for example) have been long since discarded from mainstream New Age thinking.
*
Thus, even if we grant (as I generally do) that the Jungian brand of New Ageism can diminish alienation - its twin defects of lack of motivation and lack of meaning are what paralyse it.
Jungianism can do no more than advise about how to establish a frame of mind in which you are psychologically re-connected with 'life' - it does not tell you what this connection means (because feelings as such have no meaning), and it does not give any guidance as to purpose in life- since to seek such apparently meaningless moments is not any kind of purpose; any more than living to get intoxicated is a purpose.
The big danger of Jungian New Age-ism is that it is relativistic in its evaluations, hence may sabotage the process of moving on into a real all-round religion. If a person becomes convinced that there can be nothing more than symbolism, then they are stuck.
*
I would say that the core idea of Jungian/ New Age thinking is the contrast between Literalism and Symbolism.
They (accurately, on the whole) accuse both traditional Christianity and Mainstream Modern Culture of Literalism - that is of regarding things as detached, dead facts; to be obeyed, or to be manipulated in an instrumental - goal-orientated - fashion.
And this is contrasted with a Symbolic way of thinking in which meaning is not about facts, history, science - but instead about a world in which I am connected with everything and everything is connected with everything else: things are deep, glowing, resonant, and we have a personal relationship with things.
Indeed, there are no 'things' but everything is a sentient entity (at some level) with which we have a relationship. Thus things are not to be obeyed or manipulated but experienced.
*
So, Jungian/ New Agers are scathing about the Literalist bureaucratic thinking (which they regard as a Right Wing phenomenon, to do with a 'business' model of society), and also about the Literalism of 'fundamentalist' Christians, or traditionalist Catholics who are 'hung-up' on things like the actual historical existence of Jesus and his life and death. Christians are accused of 'missing the point' and treating their faith as facts and rules - and who is interested in a bunch more facts and rules?
For New Agers it is not the facts that matter, but whether we respond to symbols, whether the symbolism is alive and effective.
Christian symbolism seems to them dead, dry, detached, outmoded - we need to seek wider among world religions and myths in search of something, anything, to which we can respond in a large and glowing fashion - which stimulates feelings of connectedness, depth, relationship...
*
As an objective - all this? - yes, fine, good...
But the dichotomy of Literal and Symbolic is false and fatal; what we want, need and must have is both at the same time.
We need symbols that are factually true, we need facts that are actively symbolic.
We need that Jesus really lived, died, ascended to Heaven - and the other facts of Christian belief; and we need that these facts have the connectedness and rootedness and glowing quality of symbols.
Because if a symbol is not a fact, then it is just a feeling.
Feelings are personal, they come and they go, and they lead nowhere.
*
Jungian New Ageism was, and perhaps is, a response to the disenchantment, the de-magic-ing, the pure dull dry literal partialism of so much Christianity.
A proper Christian life, faith, practice would give Jungian New Ageism no toehold, no advantage; because it would include all that is good, wholesome, desirable and enchanting about Jungian symbolism.
But it would be true - and not just whatever happens to strike me personally (but about anyone else, who knows?), here-and-now (but in five minutes - who knows?), as making me feel better (in some way or another) about my current situation.
True, factual symbolism is the only symbolism that really matters - any other kind is a snare, a blind-alley, a prelude to nihilism.
*
Thursday 6 March 2014
Comment to Greg Cochran on the decline of intelligence since Victorian times
*
Greg Cochran has been the most significant (intellectually substantial) critic and opponent of the idea (deriving from myself and Michael A Woodley) that historical reaction time data have shown a significant (approx. one standard deviation or 15 modern IQ point) decline in intelligence since Victorian times.
[http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/taking-on-board-that-victorians-were.html]
In his latest blog posting, Greg takes another side swipe at the idea.
http://westhunt.wordpress.com/2014/03/05/outliers/
Here is my comment in response.
*
*
1. The decline in question is (roughly) from IQ 115 to IQ 100 over the space of 150 years – about one IQ point per decade (whatever that means!). But I suggest that this would not be expected to have analogous functional consequences to a decline from 100 to 85, since IQ is not an interval scale.
(In a nutshell, I think Victorian English IQ was *about* the same or a little more than recent Ashkenazi IQ – but has declined.)
*
2. It may be that your example of maths does not refute the observation of reduced intelligence. It may be that modern mathematic breakthroughs are of a different character than breakthroughs of the past – and do not require such high intelligence.
I think this may be correct in the sense that I get the impression that modern maths seems to be substantially a cumulative, applied science – somewhat akin to engineering in the sense of bringing to bear already existing techniques to solve difficult problems.
So a top level modern mathematician has (I understand) spent many years of intensive effort learning a toolbox of often-recently-devised methods, and becoming adept at applying them, and learning by experience (and inspiration) where and how to apply them.
This seems more like the Kuhnian idea of Normal Science than the Revolutionary Science of the past – more like an incremental and accumulative social process, than the individualistic, radical re-writings and fresh starts of previous generations. And, relevantly, a method which does not require such great intelligence.
I also note that many other sciences, from biology to physics, have observed the near-disappearance of individual creative genius over the past 150 years – and especially obviously with people born in the past 50 or so years - which would be consistent with reducing intelligence.
*
3. Michael Woodley and I have discovered further independent – but convergent – evidence consistent with about 1 SD (15 IQ point) decline in intelligence from Victorian times, again using simple reaction time data – but, as I say, using a completely different sample and methods. The paper is currently under submission.
I mention it because the unchallenged consensus post-Galton has been that simple reaction times has some causal – although not direct – relationship to intelligence; and if we have indeed established that RT has substantially slowed over recent generations, then either this would need to be acknowledged as implying a similarly substantial decline in intelligence – or else the post-Galton consensus of IQ depending on RT would need to be overturned.
**
Note added: An e-mail correspondent writes:
Take the following claim of Cochran's:
"In another application – if the average genetic IQ potential had decreased by a standard deviation since Victorian times, the number of individuals with the ability to develop new, difficult, and interesting results in higher mathematics would have crashed, bring [sic] such developments to a screeching halt. Of course that has not happened."
Cochran is completely correct in his reasoning, and in his prediction that higher mathematics would have crashed given a one sigma decline in g. His last sentence is however empirically false, because a crash is precisely what the data indicate happened.
Charles Murray, in his 2003 Human Accomplishment presents graphic data of the rate of eminent mathematicians and major accomplishments in mathematics (p. 313). The trends reveal a precipitous decline in the occurrences of both of these between the years 1825 and 1950. Extrapolating the decline in this period out to the year 2000 would place the rate of eminent mathematicians and their accomplishments below the rate observed in 1400, despite massive population growth in the West during this interval. The peak of mathematical accomplishment clearly occurred during the heyday of eugenic fertility in the West, between 1650 and 1800, and actually occurred earlier than the peaks experienced in other areas of science and technology, perhaps suggesting greater sensitivity to shifting population levels of g (a testable prediction incidentally).
These data completely concur with my sense that modern 'mathematics' has stagnated. There are virtually no valid proofs being offered for the long-standing mathematical problems these days. Six of the seven Millennial prize problems remain unsolved. More worrying still, no one seems to have grasped the enormity of the problem posed to the foundations of mathematics by Georg Cantor's work on transfinite numbers, and we are no closer to understanding how these fit into the foundations of mathematics today than we were in the 1900's.
The two greatest mathematicians alive today are Andrew Wiles, who solved Fermat's Last Theorem, and Grigori Perelman, who amongst other things, solved Poincare's Conjecture (the only Millennial prize problem to have been unambiguously solved thus far). Of the two of these, Perelman is the only one who would compare favorably with the great mathematicians of the past. Wiles, whilst having undoubtedly made a major discovery, is clearly second rate by historical standards, as he had to marshal enormous amounts of time and effort into solving just one problem, which was not completed until he was more than 40 years old - an achievement pattern atypical of great mathematicians who typically reach peak accomplishment at less than 35 years of age.
That leaves Perelman, who has been prodigious and productive from a relatively early age. He is nothing if not scathing about the state of modern mathematics either, having claimed the following in a 2006 interview on why he turned down various prestigious mathematics prizes:
"Of course, there are many mathematicians who are more or less honest. But almost all of them are conformists. They are more or less honest, but they tolerate those who are not honest."
This could of course equally well apply to every area of scientific inquiry in the modern world. Data, such as that presented by Murray and others clearly reveal that what you have today are hoards of 'mathematicians' who are collectively not one iota as accomplished as the relatively less numerous, but vastly more talented individuals who dominated this field in centuries past.
Just because these over-promoted self-promoters claim something is 'interesting', 'new' or even a 'breakthrough' in their field doesn't make it so - the decline in eminence in point of fact makes it antecedently highly implausible that 'mathematicians' today are even capable of generating anything approaching a breakthrough (ultra-rare individuals such as Perelman and Wiles excepted).
*
Greg Cochran has been the most significant (intellectually substantial) critic and opponent of the idea (deriving from myself and Michael A Woodley) that historical reaction time data have shown a significant (approx. one standard deviation or 15 modern IQ point) decline in intelligence since Victorian times.
[http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/taking-on-board-that-victorians-were.html]
In his latest blog posting, Greg takes another side swipe at the idea.
http://westhunt.wordpress.com/2014/03/05/outliers/
Here is my comment in response.
*
@Greg
As you presumably know, I have an extremely high regard for your work (e.g. having provided a back page blurb for 10,000 Year Explosion and invited you to write for Medical Hypotheses on the germ theory of male homosexuality).
And I am – on the whole! – grateful for your opposition to the finding of an approximately 1SD (15plus IQ points by modern measurements) decline in general intelligence in England (and similar places) as measured by simple reaction times since about 150-200 years ago – grateful because it has stimulated me to organize my thoughts on the subject.
But I continue to think you are wrong! and that the evidence you bring against this decline is inadequate – so I continue to hope to persuade you otherwise.
I have three considerations to offer.
As you presumably know, I have an extremely high regard for your work (e.g. having provided a back page blurb for 10,000 Year Explosion and invited you to write for Medical Hypotheses on the germ theory of male homosexuality).
And I am – on the whole! – grateful for your opposition to the finding of an approximately 1SD (15plus IQ points by modern measurements) decline in general intelligence in England (and similar places) as measured by simple reaction times since about 150-200 years ago – grateful because it has stimulated me to organize my thoughts on the subject.
But I continue to think you are wrong! and that the evidence you bring against this decline is inadequate – so I continue to hope to persuade you otherwise.
I have three considerations to offer.
*
1. The decline in question is (roughly) from IQ 115 to IQ 100 over the space of 150 years – about one IQ point per decade (whatever that means!). But I suggest that this would not be expected to have analogous functional consequences to a decline from 100 to 85, since IQ is not an interval scale.
(In a nutshell, I think Victorian English IQ was *about* the same or a little more than recent Ashkenazi IQ – but has declined.)
This 150 year decline measure in modern IQ units
corresponds to a slowing of simple reaction times from approximately 180 to 250ms
for men – about 70 milliseconds.
And the minimum RT in the Victorian studies was
about 150 ms – which is probably near the physiological minimum RT (and maximum
real underlying IQ) constrained by the rate of nerve transmission, length of
nerves, speed of synapse etc.
So average Victorian RT was about 30 ms above
minimum RT, while modern RT is about 100 ms above minimum.
By contrast – modern reaction times (in Silverman’s study) for men average approximately 250ms with a standard deviation of 50ms – however there are good recent studies with an average RT of 300ms for men.
I would argue (on theoretical grounds) that as RT declines there ‘must’ come a point when it comes-up-against the neural constraints of intelligence, such as short term/ ‘working’ memory (the metal ‘workspace’, activation of which lasts a few seconds, seemingly) – and therefore there would be a non-linear effect of reducing intelligence – intelligence would cross a line and fall off a cliff.
My assumption is that a reduction in (modern normed) IQ from average 115 to 100 would *not* have such a catastrophic effect on high level intellectual (abstract, systemizing) performance as a reduction from average 100 to 85. (At a modern average IQ of 85, top level intellectual activity is *almost* entirely eliminated.)
When we are dealing with the intellectual elites, the same may be more apparent – the initial reduction in RT may retain the possibility of complex inner reasoning; while after a certain threshold the number of possible operations in the mental workspace would drop below the minimum needed for high scale intellectual operations.
By contrast – modern reaction times (in Silverman’s study) for men average approximately 250ms with a standard deviation of 50ms – however there are good recent studies with an average RT of 300ms for men.
I would argue (on theoretical grounds) that as RT declines there ‘must’ come a point when it comes-up-against the neural constraints of intelligence, such as short term/ ‘working’ memory (the metal ‘workspace’, activation of which lasts a few seconds, seemingly) – and therefore there would be a non-linear effect of reducing intelligence – intelligence would cross a line and fall off a cliff.
My assumption is that a reduction in (modern normed) IQ from average 115 to 100 would *not* have such a catastrophic effect on high level intellectual (abstract, systemizing) performance as a reduction from average 100 to 85. (At a modern average IQ of 85, top level intellectual activity is *almost* entirely eliminated.)
When we are dealing with the intellectual elites, the same may be more apparent – the initial reduction in RT may retain the possibility of complex inner reasoning; while after a certain threshold the number of possible operations in the mental workspace would drop below the minimum needed for high scale intellectual operations.
*
2. It may be that your example of maths does not refute the observation of reduced intelligence. It may be that modern mathematic breakthroughs are of a different character than breakthroughs of the past – and do not require such high intelligence.
I think this may be correct in the sense that I get the impression that modern maths seems to be substantially a cumulative, applied science – somewhat akin to engineering in the sense of bringing to bear already existing techniques to solve difficult problems.
So a top level modern mathematician has (I understand) spent many years of intensive effort learning a toolbox of often-recently-devised methods, and becoming adept at applying them, and learning by experience (and inspiration) where and how to apply them.
This seems more like the Kuhnian idea of Normal Science than the Revolutionary Science of the past – more like an incremental and accumulative social process, than the individualistic, radical re-writings and fresh starts of previous generations. And, relevantly, a method which does not require such great intelligence.
I also note that many other sciences, from biology to physics, have observed the near-disappearance of individual creative genius over the past 150 years – and especially obviously with people born in the past 50 or so years - which would be consistent with reducing intelligence.
*
3. Michael Woodley and I have discovered further independent – but convergent – evidence consistent with about 1 SD (15 IQ point) decline in intelligence from Victorian times, again using simple reaction time data – but, as I say, using a completely different sample and methods. The paper is currently under submission.
I mention it because the unchallenged consensus post-Galton has been that simple reaction times has some causal – although not direct – relationship to intelligence; and if we have indeed established that RT has substantially slowed over recent generations, then either this would need to be acknowledged as implying a similarly substantial decline in intelligence – or else the post-Galton consensus of IQ depending on RT would need to be overturned.
**
Note added: An e-mail correspondent writes:
Take the following claim of Cochran's:
"In another application – if the average genetic IQ potential had decreased by a standard deviation since Victorian times, the number of individuals with the ability to develop new, difficult, and interesting results in higher mathematics would have crashed, bring [sic] such developments to a screeching halt. Of course that has not happened."
Cochran is completely correct in his reasoning, and in his prediction that higher mathematics would have crashed given a one sigma decline in g. His last sentence is however empirically false, because a crash is precisely what the data indicate happened.
Charles Murray, in his 2003 Human Accomplishment presents graphic data of the rate of eminent mathematicians and major accomplishments in mathematics (p. 313). The trends reveal a precipitous decline in the occurrences of both of these between the years 1825 and 1950. Extrapolating the decline in this period out to the year 2000 would place the rate of eminent mathematicians and their accomplishments below the rate observed in 1400, despite massive population growth in the West during this interval. The peak of mathematical accomplishment clearly occurred during the heyday of eugenic fertility in the West, between 1650 and 1800, and actually occurred earlier than the peaks experienced in other areas of science and technology, perhaps suggesting greater sensitivity to shifting population levels of g (a testable prediction incidentally).
These data completely concur with my sense that modern 'mathematics' has stagnated. There are virtually no valid proofs being offered for the long-standing mathematical problems these days. Six of the seven Millennial prize problems remain unsolved. More worrying still, no one seems to have grasped the enormity of the problem posed to the foundations of mathematics by Georg Cantor's work on transfinite numbers, and we are no closer to understanding how these fit into the foundations of mathematics today than we were in the 1900's.
The two greatest mathematicians alive today are Andrew Wiles, who solved Fermat's Last Theorem, and Grigori Perelman, who amongst other things, solved Poincare's Conjecture (the only Millennial prize problem to have been unambiguously solved thus far). Of the two of these, Perelman is the only one who would compare favorably with the great mathematicians of the past. Wiles, whilst having undoubtedly made a major discovery, is clearly second rate by historical standards, as he had to marshal enormous amounts of time and effort into solving just one problem, which was not completed until he was more than 40 years old - an achievement pattern atypical of great mathematicians who typically reach peak accomplishment at less than 35 years of age.
That leaves Perelman, who has been prodigious and productive from a relatively early age. He is nothing if not scathing about the state of modern mathematics either, having claimed the following in a 2006 interview on why he turned down various prestigious mathematics prizes:
"Of course, there are many mathematicians who are more or less honest. But almost all of them are conformists. They are more or less honest, but they tolerate those who are not honest."
This could of course equally well apply to every area of scientific inquiry in the modern world. Data, such as that presented by Murray and others clearly reveal that what you have today are hoards of 'mathematicians' who are collectively not one iota as accomplished as the relatively less numerous, but vastly more talented individuals who dominated this field in centuries past.
Just because these over-promoted self-promoters claim something is 'interesting', 'new' or even a 'breakthrough' in their field doesn't make it so - the decline in eminence in point of fact makes it antecedently highly implausible that 'mathematicians' today are even capable of generating anything approaching a breakthrough (ultra-rare individuals such as Perelman and Wiles excepted).
*
Something to cheer-up Roman Catholics - things could be worse! (from Peter Mullen)
*
From the Rev Dr Peter Mullen (recently retired Anglican Priest):
From the Rev Dr Peter Mullen (recently retired Anglican Priest):
Love Life: Live Lent
The Archbishop of York is taking seriously his responsibility for the spiritual life of the nation. He has written the Foreword to three booklets to guide us through Lent: one for “The Family”; one for “Adults and Youth” and the other for “Kids.” Or is that last one for nanny goats?
These glossy booklets feature Mr Men style cartoon pictures whom we must suppose are meant to represent the general public. Achingly politically-correct with all races represented - but no fat people or smokers. Dumbing-down beyond the farthest reaches of infantilisation, the booklets urge us to “Do fun things together. Create a space in your home...a corner of a room...an understairs cupboard... a shelf...make a prayer den using furniture and blankets...gather some objects that are fun to touch, feel and smell: a piece of velvet, feathers, a tray of sand, lavender bags or pine cones.” These should be enough to satisfy at least some of the more mentionable fetishists among us.
And what are we supposed to do in the prayer space? “Take in some pebbles, shells or feathers” – presumably to demonstrate impeccable ecumenical relations with primitive animists and tree-huggers. And prayers are supplied: “Dear God, make wrong things right...” But this is not God; only the sentimental wish-fulfilment of Father Christmas or the Tooth Fairy We are even educated into the correct manual acts to perform while praying this desolate prayer: “Shake your finger from side to side for ‘wrong’ and then do thumbs up for ‘right’.”
You feel there should be a caution not to do this near a window in case the neighbours see you and phone for the men in white coats.
Lent involves us in acts of practical devotion too. So, “Give a lollipop to your lollipop person.”
Of course, as always in the Church of England these days, the sheer blithering inanities only faintly disguise the right-on political hard sell:
“Email or write to your MP about a global poverty issue... Buy a fair Trade Easter egg” But what, if you follow the advice of many leading economists who claim so called Fair Trade does nothing to help the poor, and recommend free trade instead?
The only orthodoxy we find in these booklets is environmentalist demagoguery and the pagan superstition of global warming: “Help lighten our load on the planet... defrost your fridge and find out how climate change affects poorer people...help stop global climate change: recycle your rubbish save trees, use both sides of the paper...”
(When doing what, by the way?)
Lent is supposed to be a time when we repent of our sins. But the only sins found here are those of not subscribing to the Christian socialist manifesto and global warming denial.
No wonder the pews are emptying faster than ever, when these booklets represent the mind of the Church of England. Lent is for deepening our understanding of the faith and for growing nearer to God. These booklets contain no nourishment for those tasks.
What might the Archbishop have offered, if he had been in his right mind? That we should all begin and end the day by saying the Lord’s Prayer. Read the Collect, Epistle and Gospel written in the matchless English of The Book of Common Prayer for each of the six weeks of Lent. Perhaps say the Psalms set for every day. Try to attend an early morning or lunchtime weekday service of Holy Communion. Competent shepherds of their sheep would also have recommended some spiritual reading.
These patronising booklets are worse than a joke, worse than useless. They ape the trite and gaudy language and images of a debased advertising culture, babyfied and debauched, and apply it to the Christian Gospel. But faith cannot be taught in this way. It cannot be communicated by the thing it is not, the thing that is actually anathema to it. People have to be taught. These booklets only insult the intelligence of the public. There is no Christianity in “Live Life: Love Lent” – only a blasphemous parody of the faith.
*
Christian alliances: individual and social - Exercise your inner judgementalism!
*
I have been publicly a Christian for not much more than five years - although it feels much longer.
It feels like time has slowed-up in the same way that parents' memories of the first five years of their first born child is slowed-up - so much happens in such a concentrated way, that subjectively it represents a much bigger proportion of my life.
Many things have changed and many things continue to change - and one of them is the decline of optimism in the growth of Christian alliances.
*
I used to have a simple vision of the power of Christians taking-sides: in particular of ceasing to support groups with evil intentions, and of starting to support those with good intentions - of tipping the balance of influence in that fashion.
But I had underestimated the degree to which almost all groups, and all large and powerful groups, in the developed-world have been first subverted then incrementally-demolished by their leaders (from the top downwards) - and since all hopes of group alliances depend on cooperation between leaders, the taking of sides has gone in the opposite direction from that which I hoped.
Christian alliance-building, such as the 'ecumenical' movement, has in practice been a matter of apostates and anti-Christian leaders joining together to demolish the faith of their flocks - using alliance building as an excuse.
Their idea of Christian cooperation is one in which everybody's faith has become so weak and superficial that there is no reason remaining why all self-identified "Christians" cannot join hands and march forward together in implementing the projects of something very much like international socialism.
*
Christianity is NOT the opposite of secular Leftism - that would be the reaction against Leftism and something more like (secular) fascism - but secular Leftism IS the opposite of Christianity in an Antichrist way: Leftism dishonestly mimics some features of Christianity - e.g. tactically pretends to love, truth, humility, meaning and purpose - but in practice is destructive.
Tactically and temporarily the Left allies with anybody who can provide (temporary) grounds for its work of destruction. The Left used to ally with native male proletarians, it used to ally with Christian socialists of the Anglo Catholic type (who then dominated the Church of England when Britain was a world power), it used to have Israel and China as their international poster children. But all these are now hate groups for the Left.
*
In recent times the Left allies with pacifists when pacifism used to have the greatest potential for destruction of Christianity - for example during the Vietnam war when Leftists temporarily linked pacifism with the sexual revolution.
In a nutshell, the Left are doves when the cause is good (or pro-God), and hawks when the cause is bad, futile or just plain incomprehensible
But Leftists also support new 'random' (i.e. seemingly unmotivated, wasteful and futile, anti-self-interested) acts of military aggression and support of rebellion when that seems more destructive (e.g. for the past few years and currently in the Middle East 'spring' revolutions, the one certain result of which has been the near-total elimination of Christianity in that region).
And the Left's latest anti-pacifist aggressive agitation is related to the Ukraine, where they sense vast possibilities of destructive consequences with near zero chance of benefit.
*
So the Left is willing to ally with anybody, for a while, in order to implement whatever destructive possibilities seem most urgent and fruitful - and this includes even supposedly-Christian leaders such as Pope Francis and the current and previous Archbishops of Canterbury, and Reformed Jewish Rabbis.
Christian alliances, on the other hand, are continually blocked and subverted by their leadership - who are a fifth column within.
So far as I can see, real Christians are mostly on their own - in worldly terms.
If they join one of the non-corrupt denominations which have Christian (rather than Leftist) leaders, they will often find that denomination to be small and weak - capable of great good in a small way but in no wise capable of turning the tide of Leftism.
*
This does not change Christian strategy. I think we still must seek alliances with those who are working for good, and (as far as possible) stop supporting strategic evil.
But good tending initiatives will often be at the personal and individual level, or in small and self-selected groups; and autonomous from official and leadership-driven changes.
*
This means that 'judgmentalism' is absolutely vital to the modern Christian.
Christians cannot allow themselves systematically to 'give the benefit of the doubt' to organizations and leaders who are very likely working for the destruction of Christianity and all Good. Instead Christians must use all their powers of discernment to detect evil intentions, especially when these are concealed behind fair words, smiling faces and acts of manipulative kindness.
*
(Most of the servants of strategic evil are consciously unaware of their tendency - for most of the time, anyway; they believe themselves to be 'on the side of the angels' while operating under orders from demons. They are quite happy, for the time being, to be 85 percent in service to Good; so long as the 15 percent of destructive evil has a greater pay-off and ratchets the world towards even greater destruction - the sexual revolution (aka sexual 'liberation') being the major conduit for strategic destruction.)
*
I think Christians must be absolutely explicit, in their own minds and among themselves, about the identity of strategic evil, and that this is the majority dominant tendency in the world.
Active resistance may be impossible. Passive resistance may be the only option - and (lacking a leadership) this must generally be at the individual level.
In so far as is possible, probably in multiple tiny ways, Christians need to withdraw all possible forms of support from strategic evil - labour, funding, rhetoric, approving nods of the head... Refusing funding/ subsidy/ subversive control, declining to participate in evil-tending activities, not putting significant amounts of money into the collection tins of evil-tending charities.
(i.e. most of them. Ask yourself - is any charity actively supported - nay, rammed down your throat! - by the BBC, or the NYT, or any major media organization likely to have an overall tendency to promote good, or evil?)
*
Do individual acts of allocation of support/ withdrawal of support make any difference?
Apparently yes - otherwise individuals would not be harassed and persecuted for doing them.
But how could such microscopic things ever be known about or ever have the slightest benefit?
Easy - we are engaged not in a worldly battle but spiritual warfare.
Whereas worldly powers may not detect micro-behaviours; spiritual powers (powers of evil, as well as good) can and do detect pretty much everything that happens - and perceive covert causal links and tendencies which we cannot detect.
Micro-alliances and micro-allocations are noticed, are known, and have an effect in the spiritual realm - for good or for ill.
*
Be judgemental!
**
Reference:
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/christians-must-exercise-discernment.html
I have been publicly a Christian for not much more than five years - although it feels much longer.
It feels like time has slowed-up in the same way that parents' memories of the first five years of their first born child is slowed-up - so much happens in such a concentrated way, that subjectively it represents a much bigger proportion of my life.
Many things have changed and many things continue to change - and one of them is the decline of optimism in the growth of Christian alliances.
*
I used to have a simple vision of the power of Christians taking-sides: in particular of ceasing to support groups with evil intentions, and of starting to support those with good intentions - of tipping the balance of influence in that fashion.
But I had underestimated the degree to which almost all groups, and all large and powerful groups, in the developed-world have been first subverted then incrementally-demolished by their leaders (from the top downwards) - and since all hopes of group alliances depend on cooperation between leaders, the taking of sides has gone in the opposite direction from that which I hoped.
Christian alliance-building, such as the 'ecumenical' movement, has in practice been a matter of apostates and anti-Christian leaders joining together to demolish the faith of their flocks - using alliance building as an excuse.
Their idea of Christian cooperation is one in which everybody's faith has become so weak and superficial that there is no reason remaining why all self-identified "Christians" cannot join hands and march forward together in implementing the projects of something very much like international socialism.
*
Christianity is NOT the opposite of secular Leftism - that would be the reaction against Leftism and something more like (secular) fascism - but secular Leftism IS the opposite of Christianity in an Antichrist way: Leftism dishonestly mimics some features of Christianity - e.g. tactically pretends to love, truth, humility, meaning and purpose - but in practice is destructive.
Tactically and temporarily the Left allies with anybody who can provide (temporary) grounds for its work of destruction. The Left used to ally with native male proletarians, it used to ally with Christian socialists of the Anglo Catholic type (who then dominated the Church of England when Britain was a world power), it used to have Israel and China as their international poster children. But all these are now hate groups for the Left.
*
In recent times the Left allies with pacifists when pacifism used to have the greatest potential for destruction of Christianity - for example during the Vietnam war when Leftists temporarily linked pacifism with the sexual revolution.
In a nutshell, the Left are doves when the cause is good (or pro-God), and hawks when the cause is bad, futile or just plain incomprehensible
But Leftists also support new 'random' (i.e. seemingly unmotivated, wasteful and futile, anti-self-interested) acts of military aggression and support of rebellion when that seems more destructive (e.g. for the past few years and currently in the Middle East 'spring' revolutions, the one certain result of which has been the near-total elimination of Christianity in that region).
And the Left's latest anti-pacifist aggressive agitation is related to the Ukraine, where they sense vast possibilities of destructive consequences with near zero chance of benefit.
*
So the Left is willing to ally with anybody, for a while, in order to implement whatever destructive possibilities seem most urgent and fruitful - and this includes even supposedly-Christian leaders such as Pope Francis and the current and previous Archbishops of Canterbury, and Reformed Jewish Rabbis.
Christian alliances, on the other hand, are continually blocked and subverted by their leadership - who are a fifth column within.
So far as I can see, real Christians are mostly on their own - in worldly terms.
If they join one of the non-corrupt denominations which have Christian (rather than Leftist) leaders, they will often find that denomination to be small and weak - capable of great good in a small way but in no wise capable of turning the tide of Leftism.
*
This does not change Christian strategy. I think we still must seek alliances with those who are working for good, and (as far as possible) stop supporting strategic evil.
But good tending initiatives will often be at the personal and individual level, or in small and self-selected groups; and autonomous from official and leadership-driven changes.
*
This means that 'judgmentalism' is absolutely vital to the modern Christian.
Christians cannot allow themselves systematically to 'give the benefit of the doubt' to organizations and leaders who are very likely working for the destruction of Christianity and all Good. Instead Christians must use all their powers of discernment to detect evil intentions, especially when these are concealed behind fair words, smiling faces and acts of manipulative kindness.
*
(Most of the servants of strategic evil are consciously unaware of their tendency - for most of the time, anyway; they believe themselves to be 'on the side of the angels' while operating under orders from demons. They are quite happy, for the time being, to be 85 percent in service to Good; so long as the 15 percent of destructive evil has a greater pay-off and ratchets the world towards even greater destruction - the sexual revolution (aka sexual 'liberation') being the major conduit for strategic destruction.)
*
I think Christians must be absolutely explicit, in their own minds and among themselves, about the identity of strategic evil, and that this is the majority dominant tendency in the world.
Active resistance may be impossible. Passive resistance may be the only option - and (lacking a leadership) this must generally be at the individual level.
In so far as is possible, probably in multiple tiny ways, Christians need to withdraw all possible forms of support from strategic evil - labour, funding, rhetoric, approving nods of the head... Refusing funding/ subsidy/ subversive control, declining to participate in evil-tending activities, not putting significant amounts of money into the collection tins of evil-tending charities.
(i.e. most of them. Ask yourself - is any charity actively supported - nay, rammed down your throat! - by the BBC, or the NYT, or any major media organization likely to have an overall tendency to promote good, or evil?)
*
Do individual acts of allocation of support/ withdrawal of support make any difference?
Apparently yes - otherwise individuals would not be harassed and persecuted for doing them.
But how could such microscopic things ever be known about or ever have the slightest benefit?
Easy - we are engaged not in a worldly battle but spiritual warfare.
Whereas worldly powers may not detect micro-behaviours; spiritual powers (powers of evil, as well as good) can and do detect pretty much everything that happens - and perceive covert causal links and tendencies which we cannot detect.
Micro-alliances and micro-allocations are noticed, are known, and have an effect in the spiritual realm - for good or for ill.
*
Be judgemental!
**
Reference:
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/christians-must-exercise-discernment.html
Wednesday 5 March 2014
The Vision of William Arkle - the question of Mother in Heaven
*
From The Hand of God by William Arkle
**
The Hand of God Prose-Poem - excerpted above - strikes me as an account of William Arkle's prime and (as it seems to me ) genuinely revelatory vision; which contains the compressed essence of his message, which he elaborated over a period of decades in various different forms - through prose narratives - factual and fictional, poetry, paintings, music, and (especially in the 1974 book A Geography of Consciousness) formal geometric/ engineering/ scientific/ philosophical analogies.
So the above excerpt contains:
The belief that we are in the hand of God (the theme of multiple paintings)
Then the idea of a Mother in Heaven, as well as a Father
Then the key to all the elaborations - that the creator Father (and Heavenly Mother) wanted more than anything to have children who might grow towards divinity and eventually choose to become friends (in an extremely elevated sense of that word) with their Heavenly Father (and Mother).
The whole of creation is then set up with that purpose in mind.
*
This matter of a Heavenly Mother is perhaps the most striking to Mainstream Christians, and is one of those undecided aspects of Mormonism.
Many Mormons believe there is a Heavenly Mother - who is our Mother in Heaven (some used to and a few probably still do believe there were several Heavenly Mothers), and this including Presidents of the Church and Apostles.
The divine parenthood is included in the language of that major (and wonderful) policy statement The Family: a Proclamation to the World - "Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents...".
Yet, this is not an official doctrine, nor from a specific church-wide revelation, nor a required belief; and it is specifically prohibited to pray to or worship Heavenly Mother (She is not regarded as equivalent to Heavenly Father).
Mormons are therefore free to believe in our Mother in Heaven, or not.
So what do I think, personally?
*
I am not certain. Initially I believed in Mother in Heaven, then I found I did not (regarding God the Father as solitary and eternal before having children - God the Father as unique exception to the need for divine marriage.
Now I am inclined to believe again that we do have divine parents, although I am uncertain (and incurious) about the origin of Heavenly Mother.
*
(My tentative theory is that all pre-existent spirits are either male or female; and the first thing God the Father and primary creator did (as a male) was to take a pre-existent female spirit and endowed her with divinity. She always had and continued to have autonomous agency (free will) and they both chose eternal celestial marriage and became the primal parents - all other personages being their children.)
*
Also, I have found that Arkle's revelatory vision have enhanced my confidence that there is a Heavenly Mother - because:
1. I regard his primary and basic vision as a valid revelation (although I do not find all his elaborations and extrapolations and systematization to be compelling).
2. I see not the slightest sign that Arkle had any knowledge of Mormonism; yet his basic vision seems strikingly convergent with Mormonism - so his witness of a Heavenly Mother looks to me like independent corroboration.
*
Having made that decision to believe, I find that it makes my heart leap with joy!
(Yet also a kind of fear and caution that I may be believing from self-gratification, and a fear of the contradictions with Mainstream Christianity.)
Yet the joy wins - and the simple symmetry between Mortal and Divine parents is a lovely thing.
*
I came to the point of love at my inmost heart, and I was glad and at rest, like unto the end of things. But the point was not a point, it was a doorway opening both inwards and outwards. Though I had thought to rest there for ever, I could not do so for long, since my deepest feelings pulled me. So pushing gently inwards I passed through the doorway and went in.
Then it was if I had walked onto the palm of the hand of my God, who had now become my great friend. The palm of His hand was as the most sensitive place in his heart might be. It was tenderly aware and responsive, so that I stopped still in case I should hurt it.
In some strange way the hand was the heart and it extended beyond my understanding in all directions unto the fingers. While the palm of this great hand was content to be at rest, as I was, the fingers had a longing in them to express the nature that was the heart of the hand. The place that had been a doorway had now become like a whole country opened from within...
Then go up to this house. He will ask you in and She will greet you there. Father and Mother of us all, dwelling in a valley of the hills that are not, but are the hand that is the heart always. From this place their spirit never moves and in this place is the measure of all things kept safely. But you may go in and touch direct the uttermost. Then you will have the foundation about you you did not know to need. It remains in the smile there and all things are borne up by it. This is what is served to every friend who comes...
Then go up to this house. He will ask you in and She will greet you there. Father and Mother of us all, dwelling in a valley of the hills that are not, but are the hand that is the heart always. From this place their spirit never moves and in this place is the measure of all things kept safely. But you may go in and touch direct the uttermost. Then you will have the foundation about you you did not know to need. It remains in the smile there and all things are borne up by it. This is what is served to every friend who comes...
With a voice that needed no sound, my friend spoke through the whole of the vast country. His hand and His fingers were full of the expression of each word. The fingers not only held fast the treasure of the hand, but they were also the means of discovery. The spirit of this discovery was in need of companions, and I could be such a companion. For that which remained to be discovered lay out beyond the finger-tips of God's person in a larger reality of being...
Long would be the telling of this aching hand whose heart shall hold friends and teach the art to many in that country that cannot be said, between whose spirits the potency of difference so gladly spreads to uncover and display a growth to all things new.
From The Hand of God by William Arkle
**
The Hand of God Prose-Poem - excerpted above - strikes me as an account of William Arkle's prime and (as it seems to me ) genuinely revelatory vision; which contains the compressed essence of his message, which he elaborated over a period of decades in various different forms - through prose narratives - factual and fictional, poetry, paintings, music, and (especially in the 1974 book A Geography of Consciousness) formal geometric/ engineering/ scientific/ philosophical analogies.
So the above excerpt contains:
The belief that we are in the hand of God (the theme of multiple paintings)
Then the idea of a Mother in Heaven, as well as a Father
Then the key to all the elaborations - that the creator Father (and Heavenly Mother) wanted more than anything to have children who might grow towards divinity and eventually choose to become friends (in an extremely elevated sense of that word) with their Heavenly Father (and Mother).
The whole of creation is then set up with that purpose in mind.
*
This matter of a Heavenly Mother is perhaps the most striking to Mainstream Christians, and is one of those undecided aspects of Mormonism.
Many Mormons believe there is a Heavenly Mother - who is our Mother in Heaven (some used to and a few probably still do believe there were several Heavenly Mothers), and this including Presidents of the Church and Apostles.
The divine parenthood is included in the language of that major (and wonderful) policy statement The Family: a Proclamation to the World - "Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents...".
Yet, this is not an official doctrine, nor from a specific church-wide revelation, nor a required belief; and it is specifically prohibited to pray to or worship Heavenly Mother (She is not regarded as equivalent to Heavenly Father).
Mormons are therefore free to believe in our Mother in Heaven, or not.
So what do I think, personally?
*
I am not certain. Initially I believed in Mother in Heaven, then I found I did not (regarding God the Father as solitary and eternal before having children - God the Father as unique exception to the need for divine marriage.
Now I am inclined to believe again that we do have divine parents, although I am uncertain (and incurious) about the origin of Heavenly Mother.
*
(My tentative theory is that all pre-existent spirits are either male or female; and the first thing God the Father and primary creator did (as a male) was to take a pre-existent female spirit and endowed her with divinity. She always had and continued to have autonomous agency (free will) and they both chose eternal celestial marriage and became the primal parents - all other personages being their children.)
*
Also, I have found that Arkle's revelatory vision have enhanced my confidence that there is a Heavenly Mother - because:
1. I regard his primary and basic vision as a valid revelation (although I do not find all his elaborations and extrapolations and systematization to be compelling).
2. I see not the slightest sign that Arkle had any knowledge of Mormonism; yet his basic vision seems strikingly convergent with Mormonism - so his witness of a Heavenly Mother looks to me like independent corroboration.
*
Having made that decision to believe, I find that it makes my heart leap with joy!
(Yet also a kind of fear and caution that I may be believing from self-gratification, and a fear of the contradictions with Mainstream Christianity.)
Yet the joy wins - and the simple symmetry between Mortal and Divine parents is a lovely thing.
*
The evidential basis of the Book of Mormon, Mormonism and Mainstream Christianity
*
In a nutshell, I regard the matter of the evidential nature of the Book of Mormon (BoM) as a microcosm of the nature of Mormonism, which is itself a microcosm of Christianity.
That is to say there is evidence on both sides - evidence that the Book of Mormon is true - in the sense of being what it says it is; and other evidence that it is not true.
So that there are grounds for belief and also grounds to reject belief - and ultimately there is a choice to be made.
*
As Terryl Givens has said, the whole way that the production, the existence, of the Book of Mormon explains itself, and the way the BoM was explained-by Joseph Smith - with such concrete exactness and wealth of specific detail (the size, weight, location of the gold plates, the instruments of translation, the convoluted history of the visitations and manuscript etc.) presents a stark dichotomy: either such an elaborate and concrete story is basically true (with some inevitable human errors and distortions), or it is an elaborate and deliberate fraud (a fiction grossly elaborated from a mere handful of unremarkable facts).
*
And - because the BoM is the root and basis of the LDS church, the same argument applies to Mormonism - it is either essentially what it says it is, or else an elaborate and deliberate fraud.
*
The evidence is not all on one side, there is a significant balance of evidence; not equal balance - whatever that would mean - but the mass of unbelievers cannot accurately or honestly say there is nothing (or nothing significant) to be said in favour of the reality of the BoM and Mormonism itself; nor can Mormons accurately or honestly state that the evidence for the book and the faith is overwhelming and could only be rejected irrationally or maliciously.
Even those who conclude that the BoM is a fraud cannot legitimately claim it is an obvious fraud; even those who claim the BoM is the most important book in the world cannot legitimately claim that its production and nature are transparently and compellingly consistent with that status.
*
Furthermore, I feel that - at this point in history and in The West - the situation for Christianity is closely analogous to Mormonism.
CS Lewis put this crisply (although I would qualify his statement a little) when he said that Jesus Christ can only be regarded as either what he said he was; or else a deliberate fraud or insane.
My qualification is that the idea of Christ being insane is not much more plausible than that Joseph Smith was insane: considered as men (because those who deny the divinity of Christ regard him as a man) both functioned at far too high a level to be truly insane.
Those who regard Jesus as insane are required to believe that Christianity was fabricated by the Apostles - who would have had to be men of genius (and John and Paul certainly were); those who regard Joseph Smith as insane would be required to believe something similar - that Joseph Smith was surrounded by geniuses who did the real work of writing the BoM, devising a radically new theology, devising and organizing a new kind of church and so on - attributing the heavy lifting to the likes of Sidney Rigdon, Brigham Young and perhaps Parley Pratt and with Joseph Smith as a charismatic, inspired but unwitting and crazed 'front' for these covert operations.
*
So, in both instances it comes down to elaborate and deliberate fraud versus truth.
And neither mainstream Christians nor Mormons should be offended by hypothetical fraudulent explanations of their churches - since fraud is the only intellectually rigorous explanation for not believing.
*
Now, of course, there is no reason why a Christian who has faith in the self-claimed divinity of Christ and is certain that Jesus was not a fraud; there is no reason why such a person is in any way compelled by consistency (or the similarity of the cases) to believe that 'therefore' the self-claim of Joseph Smith that he was a prophet was genuine.
It is logically possible that Jesus was genuine and Joseph Smith was a fraud. (Which is, of course, the mainstream Christian view.) And the opposite (i.e. JS genuine and JC a fraud) is not possible - because the fraudulence of Christ would invalidate all of Joseph Smith's visionary and prophetic claims.
*
BUT the evidential position for Jesus Christ and Joseph Smith is similar to the modern mind, using evidence we have today and with that evidence regarded as we regard it today: which is to say there is reasonable and plausible evidence on both sides of the question, and that the ultimate decision of truth or fraud must be a choice and a matter of faith, intuition, inspiration, personal conviction.
The evidence does not decide the question for us - we must necessarily choose and we must know that we are doing the choosing; and yet we will (like it or like it not) believe and live by our choice; because upon our choice hinges the basic frame and understanding of our future life - our basic motivation and sense of purpose.
(Or, alternatively, our state of essential nihilism - characterized by underlying alienation, incomprehension and demotivation.)
*
I think Mormons are considerably more aware of this reality of modern existence as both consciously chosen and yet believed with certainty than are Mainstream Christians - and that this is one of the strengths of Mormonism.
*
In a nutshell, I regard the matter of the evidential nature of the Book of Mormon (BoM) as a microcosm of the nature of Mormonism, which is itself a microcosm of Christianity.
That is to say there is evidence on both sides - evidence that the Book of Mormon is true - in the sense of being what it says it is; and other evidence that it is not true.
So that there are grounds for belief and also grounds to reject belief - and ultimately there is a choice to be made.
*
As Terryl Givens has said, the whole way that the production, the existence, of the Book of Mormon explains itself, and the way the BoM was explained-by Joseph Smith - with such concrete exactness and wealth of specific detail (the size, weight, location of the gold plates, the instruments of translation, the convoluted history of the visitations and manuscript etc.) presents a stark dichotomy: either such an elaborate and concrete story is basically true (with some inevitable human errors and distortions), or it is an elaborate and deliberate fraud (a fiction grossly elaborated from a mere handful of unremarkable facts).
*
And - because the BoM is the root and basis of the LDS church, the same argument applies to Mormonism - it is either essentially what it says it is, or else an elaborate and deliberate fraud.
*
The evidence is not all on one side, there is a significant balance of evidence; not equal balance - whatever that would mean - but the mass of unbelievers cannot accurately or honestly say there is nothing (or nothing significant) to be said in favour of the reality of the BoM and Mormonism itself; nor can Mormons accurately or honestly state that the evidence for the book and the faith is overwhelming and could only be rejected irrationally or maliciously.
Even those who conclude that the BoM is a fraud cannot legitimately claim it is an obvious fraud; even those who claim the BoM is the most important book in the world cannot legitimately claim that its production and nature are transparently and compellingly consistent with that status.
*
Furthermore, I feel that - at this point in history and in The West - the situation for Christianity is closely analogous to Mormonism.
CS Lewis put this crisply (although I would qualify his statement a little) when he said that Jesus Christ can only be regarded as either what he said he was; or else a deliberate fraud or insane.
My qualification is that the idea of Christ being insane is not much more plausible than that Joseph Smith was insane: considered as men (because those who deny the divinity of Christ regard him as a man) both functioned at far too high a level to be truly insane.
Those who regard Jesus as insane are required to believe that Christianity was fabricated by the Apostles - who would have had to be men of genius (and John and Paul certainly were); those who regard Joseph Smith as insane would be required to believe something similar - that Joseph Smith was surrounded by geniuses who did the real work of writing the BoM, devising a radically new theology, devising and organizing a new kind of church and so on - attributing the heavy lifting to the likes of Sidney Rigdon, Brigham Young and perhaps Parley Pratt and with Joseph Smith as a charismatic, inspired but unwitting and crazed 'front' for these covert operations.
*
So, in both instances it comes down to elaborate and deliberate fraud versus truth.
And neither mainstream Christians nor Mormons should be offended by hypothetical fraudulent explanations of their churches - since fraud is the only intellectually rigorous explanation for not believing.
*
Now, of course, there is no reason why a Christian who has faith in the self-claimed divinity of Christ and is certain that Jesus was not a fraud; there is no reason why such a person is in any way compelled by consistency (or the similarity of the cases) to believe that 'therefore' the self-claim of Joseph Smith that he was a prophet was genuine.
It is logically possible that Jesus was genuine and Joseph Smith was a fraud. (Which is, of course, the mainstream Christian view.) And the opposite (i.e. JS genuine and JC a fraud) is not possible - because the fraudulence of Christ would invalidate all of Joseph Smith's visionary and prophetic claims.
*
BUT the evidential position for Jesus Christ and Joseph Smith is similar to the modern mind, using evidence we have today and with that evidence regarded as we regard it today: which is to say there is reasonable and plausible evidence on both sides of the question, and that the ultimate decision of truth or fraud must be a choice and a matter of faith, intuition, inspiration, personal conviction.
The evidence does not decide the question for us - we must necessarily choose and we must know that we are doing the choosing; and yet we will (like it or like it not) believe and live by our choice; because upon our choice hinges the basic frame and understanding of our future life - our basic motivation and sense of purpose.
(Or, alternatively, our state of essential nihilism - characterized by underlying alienation, incomprehension and demotivation.)
*
I think Mormons are considerably more aware of this reality of modern existence as both consciously chosen and yet believed with certainty than are Mainstream Christians - and that this is one of the strengths of Mormonism.
*
Tuesday 4 March 2014
Another new comment policy
*
The regime introduced last week seems to be too restrictive - I will try another.
I shall go back to the old requirements for comments but, because of the volume of spam-bot infiltration, ALL ANONYMOUS COMMENTS WILL BE DELETED WITHOUT READING THEM.
SO if you want me actually to read your comments at all YOU MUST USE A NAME/ PSEUDONYM.
The regime introduced last week seems to be too restrictive - I will try another.
I shall go back to the old requirements for comments but, because of the volume of spam-bot infiltration, ALL ANONYMOUS COMMENTS WILL BE DELETED WITHOUT READING THEM.
SO if you want me actually to read your comments at all YOU MUST USE A NAME/ PSEUDONYM.
Is meditation hard or easy? Pleasant or unpleasant?
*
Thomas Traherne (c1637-1674)
Centuries of Meditations - First Century
What is more easy and sweet than meditation? Yet in this hath God
commended His Love, that by meditation it is enjoyed. As nothing is
more easy than to think, so nothing is more difficult than to think
well. The easiness of thinking we received from God, the difficulty of
thinking well proceeded from ourselves. Yet in truth, it is far more
easy to think well than ill, because good thoughts be sweet and
delightful: Evil thoughts are full of discontent and trouble. So that
an evil habit and custom have made it difficult to think well, not
Nature. For by nature nothing is so difficult as to think amiss.
*
Meditation (musing in solitude) ought to be easy and sweet. Naturally it is.
But if so, why then do more people not meditate? - why is it so rare, and apparently getting ever rarer?
Modern people behave as if they would do almost anything except meditate.
*
Since meditation is free and universally available - it must be that people are either afraid to meditate, or at least unrewarded by, most likely bored by, meditation.
Plus there is a large apparatus of addictive Mass Media in place to deter and sabotage meditation.
This apparatus ensures that nothing is, for us, more difficult than to think well..
*
Yet thinking well is naturally easy (hence 'common' sense is indeed - naturally - common).
It is 'evil habit and custom' that make us avoid meditation - this is what makes modern people avoid meditation; and the widespread and active avoidance of meditation is a measure of our thralldom, as a culture, to evil habit and custom.
*
Thomas Traherne (c1637-1674)
Centuries of Meditations - First Century
What is more easy and sweet than meditation? Yet in this hath God
commended His Love, that by meditation it is enjoyed. As nothing is
more easy than to think, so nothing is more difficult than to think
well. The easiness of thinking we received from God, the difficulty of
thinking well proceeded from ourselves. Yet in truth, it is far more
easy to think well than ill, because good thoughts be sweet and
delightful: Evil thoughts are full of discontent and trouble. So that
an evil habit and custom have made it difficult to think well, not
Nature. For by nature nothing is so difficult as to think amiss.
*
Meditation (musing in solitude) ought to be easy and sweet. Naturally it is.
But if so, why then do more people not meditate? - why is it so rare, and apparently getting ever rarer?
Modern people behave as if they would do almost anything except meditate.
*
Since meditation is free and universally available - it must be that people are either afraid to meditate, or at least unrewarded by, most likely bored by, meditation.
Plus there is a large apparatus of addictive Mass Media in place to deter and sabotage meditation.
This apparatus ensures that nothing is, for us, more difficult than to think well..
*
Yet thinking well is naturally easy (hence 'common' sense is indeed - naturally - common).
It is 'evil habit and custom' that make us avoid meditation - this is what makes modern people avoid meditation; and the widespread and active avoidance of meditation is a measure of our thralldom, as a culture, to evil habit and custom.
*
Monday 3 March 2014
Q: Why is Harry Potter's wizarding world so reckless? A: It is an intrinsically high risk society
*
From Nathaniel Givens
http://difficultrun.nathanielgivens.com/2014/02/05/j-k-rowlings-brilliant-world-building-wizards-muggles-and-human-nature/
...Wizarding society is incredibly reckless relative to Muggle society. It’s impossible to get even ballpark mortality estimates because the wizarding world is at war throughout most of Harry Potter, but even the peacetime activities are frightfully dangerous compared to what would be acceptable in a Muggle world.
In the very first book, after all, Dumbledore keeps a vicious, man-eating, three-headed dog monster inside a school full of young kids who have a hard time knowing where their classes are. And, oh yeah, Fluffy is separated from the kids by nothing but a locked door that virtually any of the kids can defeat with a trivial spell. From that to Hagrid’s choice of ferocious textbooks to the potentially lethal Tri-Wizard Tournament, wizards all seem a bit deranged when it comes to matters of life and death.
But that sort of makes sense in a world where everyone is carrying the magical equivalent of a loaded bazooka from age 11 whether they want to or not. Ariana Dumbledore’s death is the most tragic example of this: she lived and died in peacetime before either Voldemort or Gridlewald had risen to power. She died simply because her brother got into a fight with his childhood friend. Similarly, Luna’s mother blew herself up messing about with potions. Because magic is so powerful, being a wizard is inherently dangerous, and there’s just no way around it.
But it’s not just individuals who are prone to early demise in the Wizarding World. The entire society itself is incredibly volatile because of all the characteristics noted so far. Wizarding society is completely dependent on Muggle society for its institutions, culture, and basic resources. And yet, because wizards aren’t subject to the same competitive pressures, the link between the Wizarding and Muggle Worlds is increasingly breaking down. This leaves the wizarding institutions increasingly arbitrary and brittle.
It’s also a very flat world, where the relative power of the weakest member is very high relative to the most powerful institutions. Add to this the very low numbers of wizards, and it’s clear that the entire society is dangerously volatile and will only become more so with time.
**
This satisfyingly solves a puzzle that has frequently recurred when I have been reading the Harry Potter series.
As Givens elucidates; for wizards, danger is intrinsic, universal, unavoidable and ever present - it cannot be avoided.
There is no possibility of 'safety first'.
Therefore risk has become just a part of wizarding life - hardly anyone notices unnecessary perils and hazards, and hardly anybody tries even to reduce risk - let alone minimize it.
*
From Nathaniel Givens
http://difficultrun.nathanielgivens.com/2014/02/05/j-k-rowlings-brilliant-world-building-wizards-muggles-and-human-nature/
...Wizarding society is incredibly reckless relative to Muggle society. It’s impossible to get even ballpark mortality estimates because the wizarding world is at war throughout most of Harry Potter, but even the peacetime activities are frightfully dangerous compared to what would be acceptable in a Muggle world.
In the very first book, after all, Dumbledore keeps a vicious, man-eating, three-headed dog monster inside a school full of young kids who have a hard time knowing where their classes are. And, oh yeah, Fluffy is separated from the kids by nothing but a locked door that virtually any of the kids can defeat with a trivial spell. From that to Hagrid’s choice of ferocious textbooks to the potentially lethal Tri-Wizard Tournament, wizards all seem a bit deranged when it comes to matters of life and death.
But that sort of makes sense in a world where everyone is carrying the magical equivalent of a loaded bazooka from age 11 whether they want to or not. Ariana Dumbledore’s death is the most tragic example of this: she lived and died in peacetime before either Voldemort or Gridlewald had risen to power. She died simply because her brother got into a fight with his childhood friend. Similarly, Luna’s mother blew herself up messing about with potions. Because magic is so powerful, being a wizard is inherently dangerous, and there’s just no way around it.
But it’s not just individuals who are prone to early demise in the Wizarding World. The entire society itself is incredibly volatile because of all the characteristics noted so far. Wizarding society is completely dependent on Muggle society for its institutions, culture, and basic resources. And yet, because wizards aren’t subject to the same competitive pressures, the link between the Wizarding and Muggle Worlds is increasingly breaking down. This leaves the wizarding institutions increasingly arbitrary and brittle.
It’s also a very flat world, where the relative power of the weakest member is very high relative to the most powerful institutions. Add to this the very low numbers of wizards, and it’s clear that the entire society is dangerously volatile and will only become more so with time.
**
This satisfyingly solves a puzzle that has frequently recurred when I have been reading the Harry Potter series.
As Givens elucidates; for wizards, danger is intrinsic, universal, unavoidable and ever present - it cannot be avoided.
There is no possibility of 'safety first'.
Therefore risk has become just a part of wizarding life - hardly anyone notices unnecessary perils and hazards, and hardly anybody tries even to reduce risk - let alone minimize it.
*
Ukraine crisis - Eastern and Western characteristics revealed
*
Corruption is rampant on both sides, and probably equally balanced; but one side knows it is corrupt, because the used notes have been shoved into their back-pockets; while the other believes that it is essentially pure because the vast bribes are all mediated, indirect and structural.
*
One side pretends to be altruistic but wants to keep-hold of what it has and ensure that more is not taken from it; while the other side pretends to be altruistic but is covertly destructive: is motivated mainly by destroying the enemy and the enemies possessions (even at the cost of destroying itself and its own possessions - for this side bilateral destruction is a feature, not a bug).
*
One side lies to outsiders; the other side lie to themselves.
One side believes that reality is reality; the other side believes that reality is a perception, and perception is a product of propaganda, and propaganda is pervasive.
*
The rulers of one side are Christian. Dishonestly hypocritical and backsliding Christians - but believing that Christianity is the truth: Christianity is the bottom line.
The rulers of the other are anti-Christian even when self-identified as Christian; and believe that the bottom line is that there is no bottom line.
*
One side is selfishly self-interested - and will behave in a predictably self-interested way; the other side is just insane.
Who knows what they will do?
*
Corruption is rampant on both sides, and probably equally balanced; but one side knows it is corrupt, because the used notes have been shoved into their back-pockets; while the other believes that it is essentially pure because the vast bribes are all mediated, indirect and structural.
*
One side pretends to be altruistic but wants to keep-hold of what it has and ensure that more is not taken from it; while the other side pretends to be altruistic but is covertly destructive: is motivated mainly by destroying the enemy and the enemies possessions (even at the cost of destroying itself and its own possessions - for this side bilateral destruction is a feature, not a bug).
*
One side lies to outsiders; the other side lie to themselves.
One side believes that reality is reality; the other side believes that reality is a perception, and perception is a product of propaganda, and propaganda is pervasive.
*
The rulers of one side are Christian. Dishonestly hypocritical and backsliding Christians - but believing that Christianity is the truth: Christianity is the bottom line.
The rulers of the other are anti-Christian even when self-identified as Christian; and believe that the bottom line is that there is no bottom line.
*
One side is selfishly self-interested - and will behave in a predictably self-interested way; the other side is just insane.
Who knows what they will do?
*
What was actually accomplished by the Left's post 1960s "long march through the instutitions"? A lot more destruction than subversion
*
Since the triumph of political correctness through the 1970s and 80s, the cultural Right has recognized that the Left's modus operandi was no longer the advocacy of take-over by revolution, nor even by the ballot box; but by the 'long march through the institutions' - that is, the take-over and subversion of the legal system, civil administration, Christian churches, education, health services, the police, military and so on.
*
This is the standard view, and it is correct in a way - the Left has indeed taken over these institutions and has indeed re-directed them to serve primarily Leftist functions.
But this analysis misses one very important fact: which is that all of these institutions have been severely weakened by the Leftist takeover.
So the Left has not, in the end, been primarily subversive but instead primarily destructive.
*
If the Left had been primarily subversive, then they would have taken over the running of government offices, the courts, schools and universities such as to maintain their strength and influence - but would simply have re-directed these institutions.
Yet, the most striking fact is that each and every one of these institutions has radically-declined in effectiveness, efficiency, status, cohesion - declined in every functionally-relevant way.
So the primary result of the long march through the institutions has not been to subvert, but to destroy, all of the functional social institutions.
*
How and why this should be the case has two levels of answer: the first and deepest answer is that the Left is now revealed as being primarily and fundamentally destructive: the Left's deep motivation is now apparent: and it is destruction The Good and all specific goods.
In a nutshell, the Left is simply the main organized embodiment of evil in the Western world.
*
But at a more proximate level; the way the Left works can be seen by the one-and-only example of an institution which has actually grown in power, wealth, effectiveness and efficiency over the past three decades: the modern Mass Media.
I have argued that the modern Mass Media is in fact the centre of Leftism and the central power in modern society - the Mass Media is the primary social system; and dominates all other social systems.
And the modern Mass Media has zero social function - it is overwhelmingly destructive in its net effect - it destroys cohesion, it destroys all other social systems, it encourages a psychological state and social mechanisms which are intrinsically and open-endedly anti-functional.
*
The modern Mass Media is a parasite, a malignant neoplasm, a cancer - whose growth has no intrinsic constraint, but (unless extirpated by external surgical resection) will continue and continue growing and growing until it kills its host: which is the whole of modern society.
*
So the long march through the institutions has turned-out to be nothing more than the long-term, serial and systematic destruction of the institutions - all of the institutions, that is, except the Mass Media: which is now the origin and source of destruction.
*
Since the triumph of political correctness through the 1970s and 80s, the cultural Right has recognized that the Left's modus operandi was no longer the advocacy of take-over by revolution, nor even by the ballot box; but by the 'long march through the institutions' - that is, the take-over and subversion of the legal system, civil administration, Christian churches, education, health services, the police, military and so on.
*
This is the standard view, and it is correct in a way - the Left has indeed taken over these institutions and has indeed re-directed them to serve primarily Leftist functions.
But this analysis misses one very important fact: which is that all of these institutions have been severely weakened by the Leftist takeover.
So the Left has not, in the end, been primarily subversive but instead primarily destructive.
*
If the Left had been primarily subversive, then they would have taken over the running of government offices, the courts, schools and universities such as to maintain their strength and influence - but would simply have re-directed these institutions.
Yet, the most striking fact is that each and every one of these institutions has radically-declined in effectiveness, efficiency, status, cohesion - declined in every functionally-relevant way.
So the primary result of the long march through the institutions has not been to subvert, but to destroy, all of the functional social institutions.
*
How and why this should be the case has two levels of answer: the first and deepest answer is that the Left is now revealed as being primarily and fundamentally destructive: the Left's deep motivation is now apparent: and it is destruction The Good and all specific goods.
In a nutshell, the Left is simply the main organized embodiment of evil in the Western world.
*
But at a more proximate level; the way the Left works can be seen by the one-and-only example of an institution which has actually grown in power, wealth, effectiveness and efficiency over the past three decades: the modern Mass Media.
I have argued that the modern Mass Media is in fact the centre of Leftism and the central power in modern society - the Mass Media is the primary social system; and dominates all other social systems.
And the modern Mass Media has zero social function - it is overwhelmingly destructive in its net effect - it destroys cohesion, it destroys all other social systems, it encourages a psychological state and social mechanisms which are intrinsically and open-endedly anti-functional.
*
The modern Mass Media is a parasite, a malignant neoplasm, a cancer - whose growth has no intrinsic constraint, but (unless extirpated by external surgical resection) will continue and continue growing and growing until it kills its host: which is the whole of modern society.
*
So the long march through the institutions has turned-out to be nothing more than the long-term, serial and systematic destruction of the institutions - all of the institutions, that is, except the Mass Media: which is now the origin and source of destruction.
*
A lie versus a true generalization - Leftist rhetoric about sexual beliefs
*
Leftists nowadays repeatedly state (perhaps 'shout' or 'scream' is a more accurate term than 'state') that traditional sexual beliefs are lies.
If not lies, that traditional sexual beliefs are so obviously untrue, that therefore they must be based on ignorance, hatred or 'phobia'.
But what they should be saying (if they were honest) is that traditional sexual beliefs are true generalizations, but that there are exceptions.
*
True generalizations, but there are exceptions.
Is that really so hard to understand?
*
No, it isn't - assuming you really do want to understand and communicate reality, rather than dishonestly to mobilize public opinion into hatred against your enemies.
To say that a true generalization is a lie is, when adopted as a sufficient statement of reality, far less accurate and more hazardous than belief in a true generalization.
*
All true and useful generalizations are simplified, and all have exceptions.
Obviously.
It isn't clever or insightful to point out this fact; it doesn't make you morally superior or intellectual sophisticated to notice that every brief statement is a simplification and necessarily leaves-out mention of exceptions.
*
But it is dumb (and/ or evil) to suppose that humans we can safely dispense with true generalizations.
So, when an honest Leftist (yes, I know it becomes more of an oxymoron with each passing year; but there are even exceptions to the true generalization that Leftist are dishonest...) states 'but that's a generalization' and that there are exceptions - the traditionalist can legitimately reply that (almost) all true generalizations have exceptions.
That is simply the nature of generalizations.
**
NOTE: You might wonder how to know when a generalization is true? Easy - just state the reverse of a generalization, and the degree of absurdity of the reverse is an index of the truth of the original.
This might be regarded as a way to win arguments with Leftists, except that arguing with Leftists is counter-productive.
Is the above generalization true? Reversal gives 'arguing with Leftists is a productive activity'. How absurd is that? Extremely absurd (assuming you have experience of doing it).
Ergo, 'arguing with Leftists is counter-productive' is a true generalization.
*
Leftists nowadays repeatedly state (perhaps 'shout' or 'scream' is a more accurate term than 'state') that traditional sexual beliefs are lies.
If not lies, that traditional sexual beliefs are so obviously untrue, that therefore they must be based on ignorance, hatred or 'phobia'.
But what they should be saying (if they were honest) is that traditional sexual beliefs are true generalizations, but that there are exceptions.
*
True generalizations, but there are exceptions.
Is that really so hard to understand?
*
No, it isn't - assuming you really do want to understand and communicate reality, rather than dishonestly to mobilize public opinion into hatred against your enemies.
To say that a true generalization is a lie is, when adopted as a sufficient statement of reality, far less accurate and more hazardous than belief in a true generalization.
*
All true and useful generalizations are simplified, and all have exceptions.
Obviously.
It isn't clever or insightful to point out this fact; it doesn't make you morally superior or intellectual sophisticated to notice that every brief statement is a simplification and necessarily leaves-out mention of exceptions.
*
But it is dumb (and/ or evil) to suppose that humans we can safely dispense with true generalizations.
So, when an honest Leftist (yes, I know it becomes more of an oxymoron with each passing year; but there are even exceptions to the true generalization that Leftist are dishonest...) states 'but that's a generalization' and that there are exceptions - the traditionalist can legitimately reply that (almost) all true generalizations have exceptions.
That is simply the nature of generalizations.
**
NOTE: You might wonder how to know when a generalization is true? Easy - just state the reverse of a generalization, and the degree of absurdity of the reverse is an index of the truth of the original.
This might be regarded as a way to win arguments with Leftists, except that arguing with Leftists is counter-productive.
Is the above generalization true? Reversal gives 'arguing with Leftists is a productive activity'. How absurd is that? Extremely absurd (assuming you have experience of doing it).
Ergo, 'arguing with Leftists is counter-productive' is a true generalization.
*
Sunday 2 March 2014
Heavenly Father, love and worship
*
Excerpt - Letter from a Father by William Arkle [emphasis added]
http://www.billarkle.co.uk/prose/letterfromafather3.html
*
I know, and you know, that the world has produced some strange and unpleasant ways of picturing me and doing me service.
There are religions in the world of all sorts and the confusion in your minds about your own reality, the reality of the universe and about the nature of my being is a terrible tangle of fear, doubt and human shortcomings.
I would like you to try and raise your eyes above all this towards the one simple and salient fact that my nature is made of a degree of love which will go far beyond any longing you have ever carried in your heart as yet,
and, if such was my nature from the beginning, then such will always be the starting point for any understanding that you have of me.
*
If your understanding tries to start from a lesser position, then it will produce for you a lesser vision and one which may well hinder and hurt you if you try to live by it or serve it in ways which would be foreign to my ways.
You often picture me in your hearts as something less than a kind and strong human being, but, if you look at all the fine qualities that the world has witnessed, and then think of me as having them even more abundantly, then you will come closer to my bigness of heart and bigness of mind.
(...)
To love something is one thing, but to worship it is another.
Worship creates a gap in our understanding and valuation and into this gap creeps fear and self-deprecation.
Neither of these qualities are good in my sight, and I do not desire that you should worship me for it produces servility and fear where I should prefer friendship and affection.
**
What I found striking and shocking about this passage was that the primary and best understanding of God - that He is our Father and the idea, that Fatherhood should 'always be the starting point for any understanding' - does indeed imply that God would not want our worship, and may indeed regard an attitude of worship as inappropriate, worrying, missing the point, evidence of a profound (although not-necessarily fatal) misunderstanding of His nature.
As Fathers ourselves, the primary emotion and attitude that we most deeply hope-for from our children is certainly not worship; but, I think, much closer to 'friendship and affection' (plus a lot of other things, of course).
*
To picture God as wanting our worship may indeed be to picture him as being something less than a kind and strong human being.
I regard this as an example of the great hazard of abstract conceptualizations of God (e.g. abstractions such as God being infinite in power, knowledge, presence - the 'omnis').
In striving to make something as-Great-as-possible out of our understanding of God, perhaps motivated by fear rather than love; we reach for abstractions - and in doing so we forget His primary nature and end-up making our 'picture' of God into something less than a Man; indeed we end-up by understanding God as worse than ourselves - somebody whose behaviour we must apologize-for, excuse and explain.
*
But the mistake was made in abstraction - in abandoning the simple, 'anthropomorphic', primary reality of God as our Heavenly Father whose nature is made of a degree of love which will go far beyond any longing we have ever carried in our hearts; and such should always be the starting-point, and also the final check-point, for our understanding of God.
*
Excerpt - Letter from a Father by William Arkle [emphasis added]
http://www.billarkle.co.uk/prose/letterfromafather3.html
*
I know, and you know, that the world has produced some strange and unpleasant ways of picturing me and doing me service.
There are religions in the world of all sorts and the confusion in your minds about your own reality, the reality of the universe and about the nature of my being is a terrible tangle of fear, doubt and human shortcomings.
I would like you to try and raise your eyes above all this towards the one simple and salient fact that my nature is made of a degree of love which will go far beyond any longing you have ever carried in your heart as yet,
and, if such was my nature from the beginning, then such will always be the starting point for any understanding that you have of me.
*
If your understanding tries to start from a lesser position, then it will produce for you a lesser vision and one which may well hinder and hurt you if you try to live by it or serve it in ways which would be foreign to my ways.
You often picture me in your hearts as something less than a kind and strong human being, but, if you look at all the fine qualities that the world has witnessed, and then think of me as having them even more abundantly, then you will come closer to my bigness of heart and bigness of mind.
(...)
To love something is one thing, but to worship it is another.
Worship creates a gap in our understanding and valuation and into this gap creeps fear and self-deprecation.
Neither of these qualities are good in my sight, and I do not desire that you should worship me for it produces servility and fear where I should prefer friendship and affection.
**
What I found striking and shocking about this passage was that the primary and best understanding of God - that He is our Father and the idea, that Fatherhood should 'always be the starting point for any understanding' - does indeed imply that God would not want our worship, and may indeed regard an attitude of worship as inappropriate, worrying, missing the point, evidence of a profound (although not-necessarily fatal) misunderstanding of His nature.
As Fathers ourselves, the primary emotion and attitude that we most deeply hope-for from our children is certainly not worship; but, I think, much closer to 'friendship and affection' (plus a lot of other things, of course).
*
To picture God as wanting our worship may indeed be to picture him as being something less than a kind and strong human being.
I regard this as an example of the great hazard of abstract conceptualizations of God (e.g. abstractions such as God being infinite in power, knowledge, presence - the 'omnis').
In striving to make something as-Great-as-possible out of our understanding of God, perhaps motivated by fear rather than love; we reach for abstractions - and in doing so we forget His primary nature and end-up making our 'picture' of God into something less than a Man; indeed we end-up by understanding God as worse than ourselves - somebody whose behaviour we must apologize-for, excuse and explain.
*
But the mistake was made in abstraction - in abandoning the simple, 'anthropomorphic', primary reality of God as our Heavenly Father whose nature is made of a degree of love which will go far beyond any longing we have ever carried in our hearts; and such should always be the starting-point, and also the final check-point, for our understanding of God.
*
Saturday 1 March 2014
Everybody was killed - but why the children?
*
Genesis 19: 24 Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven; 25 And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.
*
Nathaniel Givens talks about a discussion of why presumably innocent children died when the city of Sodom was destroyed -
http://timesandseasons.org/index.php/2014/02/thanking-gods-advocates/
The assumption behind such discussions is that God could have destroyed the city while saving the children, if He had wanted to - but He chose not to.
Thus (it is being assumed) God chose to kill the children of Sodom when He did not need to.
And this was what the discussants were apparently trying either to justify or to critique - either to explain why God needed to kill the children, or else saying that God should not have killed the children.
*
However, I see a lot of scriptural evidence against the apparent background assumption that God can do anything He wants, so that things just become the way He wants. Like waving a magic wand and then - whoosh! everything is the way it should be...
In contrast, to me it looks as if - throughout the Bible - God usually accomplishes things in imperfect and roundabout ways, much as things are done in our mortal life.
*
For example, just before the above passage from Genesis, two angels arrive to rescue Lot and his family, and they do so by a combination of good advice, persuasion and supernatural - but limited - power (making Lot's attackers blind so they couldn't find the door to where Lots family were hidden). It all sound very roundabout - not to say clunky and probabilistic.
Why not just wave that wand and in a trice Lot and Co. would instantly be somewhere safe?
The best example is, of course, the single greatest event of history: the incarnation, life, teachings, joys and sufferings, atonement, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ - at a particular time and place of history; this is apparently an extraordinarily roundabout and seemingly contingent way of accomplishing the salvation of Man.
*
My point is that I find it conceivable that - given Sodom needed to be destroyed - the way it was destroyed was the best that could be managed.
In any war, the same dilemma is found. If the war must be won, innocents will die. Even with perfect knowledge, even with steps taken to inflict the minimum of innocent death - there is necessarily a very heavy cost.
This kind of thing is a terrible tragedy - terrible for us, terrible for God.
But - since neither we nor, apparently, God can 'wave a magic wand' and makes things just be the way we would want them to be - it seems unavoidable.
*
Genesis 19: 24 Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven; 25 And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.
*
Nathaniel Givens talks about a discussion of why presumably innocent children died when the city of Sodom was destroyed -
http://timesandseasons.org/index.php/2014/02/thanking-gods-advocates/
The assumption behind such discussions is that God could have destroyed the city while saving the children, if He had wanted to - but He chose not to.
Thus (it is being assumed) God chose to kill the children of Sodom when He did not need to.
And this was what the discussants were apparently trying either to justify or to critique - either to explain why God needed to kill the children, or else saying that God should not have killed the children.
*
However, I see a lot of scriptural evidence against the apparent background assumption that God can do anything He wants, so that things just become the way He wants. Like waving a magic wand and then - whoosh! everything is the way it should be...
In contrast, to me it looks as if - throughout the Bible - God usually accomplishes things in imperfect and roundabout ways, much as things are done in our mortal life.
*
For example, just before the above passage from Genesis, two angels arrive to rescue Lot and his family, and they do so by a combination of good advice, persuasion and supernatural - but limited - power (making Lot's attackers blind so they couldn't find the door to where Lots family were hidden). It all sound very roundabout - not to say clunky and probabilistic.
Why not just wave that wand and in a trice Lot and Co. would instantly be somewhere safe?
The best example is, of course, the single greatest event of history: the incarnation, life, teachings, joys and sufferings, atonement, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ - at a particular time and place of history; this is apparently an extraordinarily roundabout and seemingly contingent way of accomplishing the salvation of Man.
*
My point is that I find it conceivable that - given Sodom needed to be destroyed - the way it was destroyed was the best that could be managed.
In any war, the same dilemma is found. If the war must be won, innocents will die. Even with perfect knowledge, even with steps taken to inflict the minimum of innocent death - there is necessarily a very heavy cost.
This kind of thing is a terrible tragedy - terrible for us, terrible for God.
But - since neither we nor, apparently, God can 'wave a magic wand' and makes things just be the way we would want them to be - it seems unavoidable.
*
The magic of dawn
*
From Smith of Wootton Major by JRR Tolkien
From Smith of Wootton Major by JRR Tolkien
...the silver star was indeed a fay-star: the
apprentice was not one to make mistakes about things of that sort.
What had
happened was that one of the boys at the Feast had swallowed it without ever
noticing it, although he had found a silver coin in his slice and had given it
to Nell, the little girl next to him: she looked so disappointed at finding
nothing lucky in hers.
He sometimes wondered what had really become of the
star, and did not know that it had remained with him, tucked away in some place
where it could not be felt; for that was what it was intended to do.
There it
waited for a long time, until its day came.
*
The Feast had been in mid-winter, but it was now June, and
the night was hardly dark at all. The boy got up before dawn, for he did not
wish to sleep: it was his tenth birthday.
He looked out of the window, and the
world seemed quiet and expectant.
A little breeze, cool and fragrant, stirred
the waking trees.
Then the dawn came, and far away he heard the dawn-song of the
birds beginning, growing as it came towards him, until it rushed over him,
filling all the land round the house, and passed on like a wave of music into
the West, as the sun rose above the rim of the world.
*
"It reminds me of Faery," he heard himself say;
"but in Faery the people sing too."
Then he began to sing, high and
clear, in strange words that he seemed to know by heart; and in that moment the
star fell out of his mouth and he caught it on his open hand. It was bright
silver now, glistening in the sunlight; but it quivered and rose a little, as if
it was about to fly away.
Without thinking he clapped his hand to his head, and
there the star stayed in the middle of his forehead, and he wore it for many
years.
*
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