Bruce Charlton's Notions

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No - because they have already scraped the barrel, and are now scratching stained sawdust off the wood at the bottom.

How do I know?

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1. The prizewinners are getting older - some are very old indeed.

For a while the prize committee have been sifting the second-raters who missed-out on prizes a few decades ago. Now they are sifting the third-raters - it seems than the younger generation are only fourth-rate, and the scraping hasn't got down that far - yet...

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2. The actual prizewinners are now almost impossible to predict, because there are so many third rate scientists who are all more-or-less at the same level, that it has become a near-lottery which of such a vast pool will get the Nobel.

In the past the first rank scientists were real geniuses, and pretty much selected themselves. There were quite a lot of them - but sooner of later they got a Nobel unless they died young.

Nowadays there are very few real scientists alive, and vanishingly few at the upper echelons (the leading, ruling, most-powerful scientists are the most corrupt, the most dishonest, the worst motivated of all) - so the Nobel committees are no longer able to evaluate science.

A modern 'elite' 'scientist', of the type that gets himself onto major committees, could not recognize real science even if it jumped up and bit him on the nose.

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3. Even with all the hype and spin that modern media can provide - the reported achievements of winners are distinctly underwhelming.

This is not for lack of important unsolved problems in science, but because modern scientists (or to be more accurate modern 'professional researchers and project managers', who refer to themselves scientists) can't solve the difficult problems.

Why not? - many, many reasons. The modern scientific career sieves out creativity and intelligence in favour of obedient, industrious mediocrity - but there aren't so many bright and creative scientists anyway; so-called science is a fake - it is not even trying to do science but is instead trying to get funding, publish papers, and for the big names to become powerful, rich and famous; research is now done by bureaucracies - science is not just bureaucrat-ic, but is now nothing-but-bureaucracy: truth is defined by peer review, not by what works.

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Nobel prizes began as awards for scientific genius, then became prizes for being excellent at science, but are now prizes for - well, some-things altogether different than science,

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Sometimes people suppose that prayer is meditation - but although there may be some overlap between prayer and meditation - and the two may alternate in the same 'session' - it may be helpful to regard the two as different.

I have used the analogy that prayer is a conversation with God, while meditation is being with God; that meditation is therefore a communion - and what comes from it is not so much information or guidance; but instead things more like motivation, sweetness, love, companionship, encouragement, inner strength.

But the most important clue to Christian meditation is that:

Meditation is inwardly directed, while prayer is externally-directed.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/three-obstacles-to-christian-meditation.html

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(But the two states are not symmetrical - inward direction is more like inward awareness, than it is like 'looking' within.)

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Christian meditation is possible because God is within us.

This fact can be conceptualized in various ways - as a divine spark, perhaps - the metaphor which makes most sense to me is that God is within us like a glowing coal (a potential source of energy, warmth and light).

(That God is within us in a literal sense, however conceptualized, is a necessary but mostly indirect, inference from scriptural revelations such as that we are children of God, that our destiny is to become Sons of God, that we are able to make good choices - including the choice to follow Christ, that we are not wholly evil and so on.).

Christian meditation is therefore an act of communion with God within us.

Meditation is not essentially a focused, but a receptive state.

Meditation is not a purposive act but rather intends to allow our selves to be suffused with divine influence.

Meditation is not an alert state, but an attuned state - we hope to harmonize with the divine, we aim at empathic identification with the divine. 

This last point concerning empathic identification can be elaborated: empathy is sympathy, which is to resonate with the other. By empathic identification with God we briefly and partially share in His nature, hopes, purposes - we may gain clarification about our proper orientation in life.

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All the above emphasizes that meditation is a trance-like, dreamlike state of altered consciousness - not alert, nor active, nor problem-solving - so to meditate requires a situation where alertness, activity and problems are not required, are set aside. And since the attention is inward (not focused inward, but allowing what is within to suffuse the self) then the situation for meditation must be somewhat removed from external stimulus, from anything which would tend to direct attention and interest outside the self - these are distractions to meditation.

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The essence of meditation is therefore not a matter of the external senses and perceptions (such as vision and hearing) but primarily a matter of the sixth sense - the inward directed perception of body states, of emotions.

This is the reason why meditative states are hard to describe - because the private and inward information which comes from meditation must first be translated into the public language of vision and perhaps hearing - e.g. described as pictures and voices. These are second order descriptions, and only as accurate as would be any description of what an emotion feels like. 

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What makes meditation Christian is that a Christian knows that God is within us, that God is good, that he is a child of God, that Christ is our Lord and Saviour and so forth. Such faith frames and controls the meditation - lacking Christian faith then inward-attentive meditation may only find other things that are not God - for example our own instincts and impulses, information and perspectives we have learned or been inculcated-with, or evil spirits and influences.

So meditation per se is a neutral activity - what makes meditation good or bad is the purpose of the meditation (the real true purpose), and the object of the meditation (at what it is directed) - whether God or something-else.
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I believe that modern circumstances are such that meditation would benefit many, or most, Christians - but meditation is rather poorly understood, and there are at least three significant obstacles.

1. Some Christians regard meditation as bad

2. Meditation must usually be learned

3. Meditation is different from prayer (and also different from creative inspiration).

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1. Is meditation a bad thing?

Some Christians regard meditation as a bad thing - and of course it may be a bad thing if it is done for bad reasons - personal power, wealth or status; to manipulate others for gain, for occult powers or something of that sort.

These are the situations where, instead of achieving communion with God, someone might instead be influenced by evil spirits or one sort of another; and their salvation may be threatened.

But if meditation is done for good reasons, it can do - and probably will do - good.

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2. Meditation must be deliberate and purposive

Meditation is not something that comes naturally to everybody, and modern life is extremely hostile to the possibility of meditation - so unless someone deliberately sets out to meditate, makes time for it, creates the right conditions, and then practices it - meditation is unlikely ever to happen.

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3. Prayer versus meditation

Sometimes people suppose that prayer is meditation - but although there may be some overlap - the two are different.

Prayer is a conversation with God, but meditation is being with God.

Meditation is therefore a communion - and what comes from it is not so much information or guidance; but instead things more like motivation, sweetness, love, companionship, encouragement, inner strength.

These are things which most Christians need, or would at least benefit from - so, meditation should probably be given more attention as an aspect of Christian life.

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Note added 15 October 2014
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Christians have been explicitly taught by divine revelation that prayers should be addressed to God the Father, and that Jesus Christ is an intermediary for these prayers (hence the phrases such as 'in the name of Jesus Christ' which are so often appended to prayers as a reminder of this fact).

Although it is not mandatory doctrine, many Mormons, including the modern General Authorities, have expressed a belief in Mother In Heaven - celestially wedded to God the Father - and they have also stated that we ought not to pray to Mother in Heaven (for the reason previously outlined).

But meditation is different from prayer because it is a state of being-with, and communing-with, God - and meditation is possible because we are God's children and God is within us.

This seems to say that both our Heavenly Parents are within us in a divine sense, including both God the Father and Mother in Heaven - just as both of our earthly parents are 'within us' in a genetic sense.

The implication is that when Mormon Christians mediate, they are in the presence of both Heavenly Father and Mother.

So this is apparently another significant difference between prayer and meditation (the one addressed to the Father via Son, the other to both Father and Mother); and it suggests the particular, unique value of Mormon Christian meditation - that by it, and perhaps only by it, may we come directly to know our Mother in Heaven.

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Continued:
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/christian-meditation-as-inward-directed.html *

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http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/a-common-misunderstanding-of-rk.html
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Insights rapidly become trivialized - especially in the modern mass media world.

The slang usage of 'Hashtag' (#) to mean a category of communication that is trending, significant - a kind of accolade of popularity - comes from the most insidiously destructive of all the social media so far (Twitter) and will surely be short-lived.

Nonetheless, I have recently found myself murmuring 'Hashtag Mouse Utopia - Terminal Phase' to categorize those phenomena in the news which most clearly demonstrate the irrevocable and self-willed decline of our civilization: those phenomena which combine up-front moralized-incompetence, with a dishonesty, with not-even-trying all wrapped-up inside a covert death wish (nihilism, the inversion of values, hope-less-ness and despair; leading to self-hating and self-willed suicide at the individual and cultural level).

These I associate with the Woodley interpretation of the final and fatal phase of the Mouse Utopia experiment,

http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/the-demise-of-mouse-utopia.html

which I have equated with the current phase of the West.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/how-to-live-in-mouse-utopia-terminal.html

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This is, of course, a shallow and intellectually-indefensible reductionistic over-simplification of a multi-causal and interactive phenomenon.

But I do it anyway.

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A prime example was triggered by reading The Ebola IQ Test on James Thomson's Psychological Comments Blog

http://drjamesthompson.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/ebola-iq-test.html

The situation is that, from at least the Medieval Black Death until quite recently, Western Europeans used to know how to manage infectious epidemics - and the matter was clarified greatly by Pasteur and the germ theory.

However, political correctness, not even trying, rampant lying about everything, and the fact of ruler-ship and policy-making by the mass media - combined with massive declines in intelligence, the consequences of mutation accumulation and a secret death wish cult consequent upon the decline and suppression of Christianity... have all combined to lead us to the current situation of Western governments and agencies gambling with the possibility of mega-death and societal collapse, rather than take simple and obvious preventive action.

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This is not new, exactly the same happened back in the 1980s with AIDS - but since AIDS is not very infectious, there were probably only a few hundreds or thousands of extra deaths by government policy.

(Don't worry. Just think of them as necessary sacrifices on the altar of secular Leftism.) 

Therefore the Western response to the Ebola epidemic immediately gets classified under Hashtag Mouse Utopia - Terminal Phase.

...But then, when you think about it, all major mass media news stories, without any exceptions at all, are in this category.

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http://addictedtodistraction.blogspot.co.uk/
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This was always a puzzle to me. Of course, slow bowlers spin the ball, but that seemed like small compensation for bowling slower. After all, the faster the ball is delivered, the less time the batter has to react, and very fast bowlers are nearly always successful so long as they have reasonable aim.

(Faster bowlers are also much scarier than slow ones, and the batter is in greater danger of getting hurt, and hurt badly.)

Yet the very best bowlers in history have actually been slow bowlers - I am thinking of the likes of SF Barnes, Muttiah Murilitharan, and Shane Warne.

What happens with the best 'slow' bowlers is that the energy that would have been used to impart velocity on the ball is instead imparted into spinning it - and a spinning ball does all sorts of things which make it difficult to hit, and even more difficult to hit with control.

Most obviously a cricket ball typically bounces before it gets to the batter, and the ball will 'turn' or move off the straight line according to the direction of its spin. If the ball is spinning clockwise it will go to the right, anticlockwise will go to the left; if it has top spin it will jump forward, back spin will slow its velocity (or sometimes make it skid low).

But that is only half the story, in fact probably less than half the story - because a rapidly spinning ball will swerve in the air even before it bounces. The ball spinning clockwise will swerve to the left - and the swerve will increase as the velocity declines. So a clockwise spinning ball will swerve to the left more and more as it approaches the batter - and then will turn to the right - very tricky to hit!

The situation is reversed for an anticlockwise spinning ball. And forward and back spin have other interesting effects. A forward spinning ball (top spinner) will swerve downwards - so the ball will bounce closer to the bowler (and further away from the batter) than expected. So the ball will come towards the batter, then at the last moment drop further away than he expects, and then bounce rapidly towards him.

The back spinner will look as if it going to bounce in a particular place - but will keep going, and 'float' closer to the batter than expected before it hits the ground - then it might stop and bounce higher than expected, or else skid along the ground.

So, if he can do one or more of these things, a spin bowler can make life very difficult for a batter - especially he can switch between different directions of spin - and also unexpectedly mix-in non-spinning and faster deliveries.

But there is even more! If the spinning ball is angled at about forty-five degrees, the ball will swerve in two planes! For example, if a clockwise spinning ball is angled so the rotation is forward at 45 degrees to the right, then this introduces an element of top-spin. So the ball will do the following: 1.Swerve to the left because of the clockwise rotation, 2 Drop suddenly and land further away from the batter than expected from its early trajectory because of the top spin, 3. Bounce to the right because of the clockwise rotation, and 4. Jump off the pitch toward the batter faster then expected from its velocity because of the top spin!

So a slow bowler can potentially impart very rapid rotation on the ball, control how the ball is angled in the air, control where the ball lands, disguise the various directions and angles of spin so the batter cannot see the changes - and do this reliably many hundreds of times in a row (because slow bowling is less tiring than fast bowling, the spinner can potentially bowl for hour after hour).

To be able to do all this is very difficult and very rare - but IF a bowler can do it, THEN a slow spin bowlers can be most effective and most useful bowler of all.

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A belief in the soul (or spirit) seems to be innate and universal - found in children, and in all societies throughout the world and history - except Western secular modernity.

Belief in the reality of the soul goes with belief in its persistence after death - presumably because it feels distinct from the body and is not destructible in the same way.

(However, although almost everybody in history believed that the soul survived death, there was vast variety in what happened to it - hunter gatherers generally seem to believe in some kind of reincarnation/ recycling of souls, and so do Hindus, some Buddhists and many others - other times the fate of the soul was miserable, with some kind of shadowy and ghostly afterlife - or there was torment, or rarely a paradise.) 

This is no doubt closely related to the persistence of the normal situation in secular modernity whereby the soul is trapped and helpless, encased in the automatic responses of a fake personality which does our living for us - whether we like it or not.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/the-soul-versus-personality-real-self.html

In a world of the mass media, it is hard to avoid this situation; and hard for the soul to escape its jail once established - but the persistence and prevalence of hopeless and despairing souls is made possible by the fact that moderns don't believe they have souls.

For modern Men the soul is a misinterpretation, an artefact of conscious life, and its basis is certainly extinguished with death of the body.

So the imprisoned soul is in the position of a dissident arrested by the secret police and kept in solitary torment by the state - while the authorities deny all knowledge of the missing person.

In other words, the encaged and suffering soul looks out on a world that denies its very existence.

No wonder the modern soul loses hope, gives-up, and despairs.
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This may be the lesson taught by the relative success of Mormonism in the modern environment. In The Mormon Culture of Salvation - a sociological study by Douglas J Davies (Professor in Religious Studies at Durham University, England; and not a Mormon) he highlights the exceptional success of the CJCLDS in inculcating and sustaining what could be termed certainty about the reality of post-mortal life.

I only get exposed to this at third hand, and superficially (not being baptised into LDS, nor having attended the Temple ceremonies, nor living the Mormon life) - but even thus remote and incomplete, the impression of a people who live in full expectation of eternity in Heaven is powerful and convincing.

As a culture we perhaps need more than any other single thing this kind of active belief. As well as being true - here are many factors about the full-on LDS life which support this perspective; but one neglected aspect is that Mormons also believe in pre-mortal life.

This is not unique to Mormonism, and there have been Christians who believe in pre-mortal life throughout history - some extremely eminent such as St Augustine - but in the CJCLDS it is right up front, and indeed one of the very first things taught to novices.

https://www.lds.org/manual/the-plan-of-salvation/the-plan-of-salvation?lang=eng

Belief in eternal post-mortal life is clearly essential to all Christians and always has been, while belief in pre-mortal eternal life is not essential. However, while not essential to salvation, (as well as being true) the belief in pre-mortal life has considerable advantages in making common-sense of belief in eternal post-mortal life.

It is very simple to imagine and to explain and understand the sequence of being pre-mortal spirit children of God; who voluntarily came to earth to be embodied and experience life as mortals; then die - when the spirit and body are separated; and finally be resurrected with spirit and body reunited for eternity with cleansed spirit and a perfected body.

It is easier to believe that mortality is an episode in our eternal life, than that our spirit popped into existence some (uncertain but precise) time in the womb then lived forever from that point forwards.

If it is indeed true that modern Man needs first and foremost to believe in his own eternal life (and also the eternal life of anybody and everybody who chooses eternal life and is prepared to live accordingly) - then a wider awareness of our pre-mortal existence may be extremely important.

I don't think it would be hard to convince most people of this - since so many people have an intuition and some cloudy memories of their own pre-mortal heavenly existence, what is needed would be more in the nature of of a reminder and a validation of something they already sort-of know.

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Some people say, and apparently believe, that eternal life is not something which interest or attracts them: that they can do very well without it (Thank you very much!).

They notice that eternal life has all sorts of problems about it - that leaves all sorts of problems untouched. This is correct, indeed, eternal life does not solve any problems: except one.

That problem, is the problem of mortality. And the problem of mortality is that it means that nothing really matters, ultimately.

And the problem of mortality is so fundamental that that unless it be solved, then nothing is possible, ultimately.

So eternal life is necessary for anything of significance to matter, or to be possible.

Other than that, eternal life is trivial.

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The situation for many modern people is their soul, the real self, inhabits but does not control their personalities. The soul looks out on the world with a feeling of helplessness; in a passive state of despair.

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This situation usually builds-up through the teen years. The personality is in fact substantially innate and hereditary, and there is, even in childhood, a sense that the real self differs from the personality it finds-itself dwelling inside: the personality we are born with being like a suit of clothes that cannot be removed, but only modified; and that within limits.

But in the teen years the personality is often taken over by culture. The soul becomes detached from the world - and to an increasing extent the personality does all the attending, evaluating and responding as-it-were automatically, mechanically - without the soul being involved.

This conditioning is done by all social interactions, but now especially by the Mass Media, which has unprecedented effectiveness in creating and reinforcing a superficial and false personality, indifferent to the real self within.

So far as the rest of the world is concerned, the personality IS the person - the assumption is that the personality merely reflects the real self. But the real self remains, imprisoned - unable to influence the situation...

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Thus, to quote Thoreau, the mass of Men lead lives of quiet desperation, trapped and helpless in a cell guarded by their own personalities - to reach the soul becomes as difficult as communicating with a a prisoner in solitary confinement in a a communist Gulag.

The equivalent of the Gulag is the modern Mass Media - which will operate to filter-out, confuse, muddy, mis-frame and invert any messages directed at the soul. If the soul of a media editor is touched by a communication, his personality will detect the problem, and act swiftly and powerfully to eliminate any risk of further truth getting through from the same source.

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The possibility of communication is rare, and likely to be brief. And for communication to be effective requires that the soul instantly recognizes it is being addressed directly - cutting through, ignoring, all the surrounding falsehood and fakery.

At this the soul will rouse-up and remember - but the personality will notice what has happened, and will certainly try to prevent the prisoner taking over the running of things; so the observable response to genuine communication with the soul may be negative: may trigger argument, obscenity, bad behaviour of many types. This happens precisely because the communication with the soul has been effective, but the soul has little or no power to control things.

So after real communication the soul is punished, the soul is subjected to distorting and subverting propaganda - the regime becomes even harsher - and the outside world tends to interpret the behaviour of the personality as the will of the soul - tends to perceive that they are wasting their time or making matters worse.

Only very subtle signs indicate that real communication has been made, and the soul has been encouraged and strengthened - a flickering look in the eyes, perhaps...

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So, to reach the soul, to strengthen it, to do good; communications need to be uncompromisingly high-toned, directed directly at the soul, and refusing to engage with and ignoring the vast mass of surrounding Mass Media and social conditioning.

To turn aside to respond to the mainstream mass of falsehood, to meet 'the world' halfway, is just to waste time and probably lose the brief opportunity of genuine contact.

Uncompromising address, clear and direct statement, communication from one real self to another real self - eye to eye, mind to mind. That is what is needed above all.

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The idea that ancient societies were Matriarchal and worshipped a Mother Goddess has been extremely popular in neo-pagan circles for about five generations. I certainly used to accept it - having imbibed it from Robert Graves The White Goddess, and seen much the same thing seemingly-confirmed in other literary, anthropological and archaeological works.

It isn't true, as a matter of fact. Or at least there is no objective evidence for it - or at least nothing that would count as evidence in other discourses.

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But leaving facts and their interpretation aside, it is clearly psychologically false as well - in the sense that there is zero subjective plausibility to a Mother Goddess worshipping Matriarchy. Such a society can neither be imagined nor depicted with plausibility, conviction and depth (and there are plenty of failed attempts - including those by Graves himself).

Or, perhaps, more exactly such a society cannot be depicted as the good, wholesome, 'golden age' kind of place that its devisers and believers hoped for.

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The Mother Goddess/Matriarchy people were and are motivated by a very obvious (and often explicitly stated) anti-Christian, anti-men animus - so that the desirable societies they discover/ devise and advocate have features in opposition to what they suppose are intrinsic to Christian Patriarchies.

But the only convincing Matriarchies in fact and fiction (and I mean real and robust societies - not little recreational clubs) are those run by evil and/or insane goddesses and priestesses who implement cults of blood sacrifice, lust, torture, death - something like the Thugs, or She (who must be obeyed). These do not worship a benign, loving Mother goddess, but an evil female demon - a prima donna of wilfulness, spite, and cruelty.

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Another reason why there never was a society which worshipped a supreme Mother Goddess who was loving and good; was that IF there was such a supreme Mother Goddess, she certainly would NOT want to be worshipped. Or, put is another way, worship would be an inappropriate attitude or relationship to a good Mother Goddess.

As an adherent of Mormon theology, I believe that the sex difference, male and female, goes all the way down; it is a fundamental and structural organizing principle of reality; and this is reflected by there being a Mother in Heaven, as well as a Heavenly Father.

However, the sexes are not symmetrical, but complementary - and while a relationship that could reasonably be called worship of the Father is appropriate and necessary (although requiring further definition of what constitutes 'worship') - this is not the case for Heavenly Mother. The proper relationship is of an entirely different nature - and a nature which seems intrinsically inexplicit.

(This position has consistently been supported by the LDS General Authorities, who clearly state that Mother in Heaven should not be formally worshipped nor prayed-to - although she is and should be loved, honoured and celebrated.)

This is just how it is. It is not accurate to believe that a good and loving Mother could, should or would evoke the same attitudes as a good and loving Father; in Heaven as well as earth.


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Which is a roundabout way of discussing Neolithic temples- stone circles, hilltop earthworks and large ritual pathways. These are so obviously sky focused; astronomically orientated; sun, moon  and stars-worshipping temples (circular, like the horizon - un-roofed - positioned with reference to celestial objects) that it seems silly to argue the matter.

And yet many people purport to believe that the Neolithic temples are dedicated to the Earth Mother Goddess - a good, wholesome, neo-pagan hippy kind of goddess.

I don't know how anyone could stand in such a temple, look up at the sky and believe that it was dedicated to an earth deity! - but they apparently do, and in their droves.

Which just goes to show that radical, secular Leftist, politics gets everywhere, can shape anything and everything, and will always critique, subvert and finally invert it: in this instance, turning the nature, objective and direction of Neolithic worship literally upside-down.

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http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/tolkien-describes-his-own-creative.html
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I have mentioned before the Golden Thread that runs back through my life into the mythical mists of remembered childhood: a thread of memories and images (snapshots of moments, mostly) drawn from my personal experience over the decades, also the arts and sciences, particular landscapes, and also some imaginations - which carry the sense of a special significance for me.

I call it a thread because there is the sense that these all link-up, and run through the great mass of everyday matters - nearly all of which melt-away (even if they seemed terribly important at the time).

For some periods of my life, there is a lot of detail in the golden thread - in others (many years) there is almost nothing: that is to say I have memories, but they don't enter into the golden thread.

The content of the golden thread feels solidly meaning-full, although I could not say what the meaning actually is.

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For obvious reasons I am not intending to reveal much about the specific content of this golden thread, but it will come as no surprise for me to say that there is a lot of Tolkien in it! Things like the memory of reading specific passages in specific circumstances, thinking about particular themes while I was in certain landscapes, and a special feeling about some episodes from the book: for example the cloaked and hooded Silvan (= 'wood') elves sitting on the tree platform in Lothlorien at night, with their arms around their knees.

Before I became a Christian, I think it would be fair to say that of all the content that was not unique to me and my family and friends, and my unique experiences, Tolkien formed the most significant and enduring part of the golden thread - leading back to age 13, and foreshadowed before that in fairy tales, fantasies and myths - for example images from the Marvel Thor comic 'Tales of Asgard', and Longfellow's Hiawatha - things like this linked-up with Tolkien's world.

But if I was to mediate, then these were among the things I felt gave my life significance and a mythic reality - whereas the vast mass of my experiences, triumphs and traumas, school and work and leisure, seemed at best irrelevant and more often a horrible waste.

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Since I became a Christian, it has been a recurrent project, desire and hope to link up my new Christian life with the golden thread. My childhood experiences of Christianity had very little to do with the golden thread - they were mostly the other kind of memories: like school dinners, and long car journeys, and reading 'set books'.

(In fact, it applies to people and relationships too: by the test of the golden thread, some were real, others were not.)

The failure of some Christian endeavours to become a continuation of the golden thread has indeed been a major factor in discarding them: if I cannot continue the golden thread by my current Christian practice, then I must be making a mistake: I am on the wrong track; I am trying to force the pace; I am doing things for the wrong reasons; there is some pretence or dishonesty going-on.

As it turns out, there is a lot among the Christian traditions that is utterly dead to me, as measured by the test of the golden thread.

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The golden thread is therefore the most important, most fundamental discernment in my life - but it is slow, it is retrospective, it is not very precise. It is more likely to tell me where I have gone wrong, and where I have been on the right track may not become clear for quite some time - when it emerges that significant new material has continued the golden thread.

Why should I take any notice of this golden thread thing, anyway? Perhaps it is just a self-gratifying or self-justifying delusions.

No - the golden thread is real, it is the other stuff that is a delusion so far as I personally am concerned. But what is a delusion for me - a fake, a forced and feeble thing - may be primary reality for another person: part of another person's golden thread.

(Although it looks to me as if many, indeed most people violate, mock, ignore or deliberately invert their golden threads - they are living a lie; unintegrated strivings; nothing deep or continuous but only superficiality and unnatural assemblage; their life has no myth. At least, that is how it looks to me.)

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Where does it come from, this golden thread: what is it? I think it comes from and is that tiny glowing coal of my personal essence - the soul, self, agency - that stretches back into pre-mortality.

What is this personal essence supposed to do? Ultimately its destiny (which can be, and sometimes is, rejected) is to grow from experience (experience of the right kind) into harmony with the divine, and with other souls.

The golden thread is my picture of its longitudinal growth.

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http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/an-objective-and-biologically-valid.html
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To be a real intellectual is to be highly intelligent; and to be highly intelligent entails having high 'general intelligence' (or 'g') which is (as a generalization - that is to say when looking at group correlations) general to all specific cognitive functions such as the various academic subjects, general knowledge, reading ability, problem solving, learning for examinations, and the special IQ tests.

(g was discovered by noticing that all these cognitive measures correlated positively with each other in group studies.)

To be gifted in general is in contrast to being gifted in particular; to have a general cognitive aptitude - regardless of context - is to think in a way which does not depend on context; to be able to think in a way which applies across all cognitive contexts is to think abstractly - that is, to abstract from the specific and deploy the general.

So, whatever it is, intelligence is about abstraction.

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Intelligence is not is what intellectuals do, it is what intellectuals are. It is not something switched off and on as required - it is the way that intellectuals think.

And since being intelligent is about abstraction, so intellectuals are abstractors - not by choice, but by their very nature.

Abstraction is the pair of spectacles through which intellectuals perceive the world.

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Thus intellectuals have devised, and in general supported, the trend towards abstraction in public discourse which has characterized modernity.

This has been largely pernicious, because as a rule only intellectuals can operate in the realm of abstractions. So that when public discourse has been made abstract, non-intellectuals can only accept it or reject it - non-intellectuals cannot understand abstraction and they cannot evaluate abstraction.

And when intellectuals have - en masse - abandoned their responsibility to understand and evaluate the abstractions which other intellectuals have introduced into public discourse - then there is corruption and wickedness.

And when intellectuals lose their intelligence, then nobody at all can understand and evaluate abstractions - so society at large can only have cheer or boo abstractions - implement them blindly and uncomprehendingly; or reject them lock-stock and barrel: they cannot work with them.

That is precisely the situation of current modernity.

*

Our society has been saddled with abstractions from earlier generations which the intellectuals of modernity partly cannot, and partly will not, understand. Public discourse concerning these abstractions therefore merely amounts to hooray or boo.

*

Political life is dominated by abstractions such as democracy, equality, justice, rights - these are not only not understood - but there is no effort to understand them: they are slavishly or cynically implemented - or else rejected. Either way, the process is inarticulate and instinctive merely. 

Our society is utterly dominated by bureaucratic power, and utterly rejects the validity of personal power; and public discourse is utterly incapable of recognizing, comprehending or modifying this situation.

Art (high status art) has been for a century and more, dominated by abstraction. Nobody likes it and nobody can use it except as a career path. Art, which was great, has been destroyed as a force for good.

Science too has been destroyed by 'peer review' - a vague abstraction, vaguely defined and never evaluated, little more than a buzz word - yet dumbly implemented and dumbly cheered as science is converted to nothing more than cynical, lying bureaucratic careerism - so uncritical that it loses the capacity even to notice what has happened. Science is now merely another something to cheer or to boo.

Abstract 'physics-like' concepts of the Christian God have been inherited from past intellectuals, some (at least) of whom could work with them: perfection, infinite, omni-potent/-scient/-present/, paradoxical formulations of the Trinity. Modern Christians, including modern Christian intellectuals as a class, can only defend or attack these formulations, they cannot comprehend or critique them - and they cannot use them in their personal lives.

 *

Past intellectuals made and gave society some good things some bad things. But modern intellectuals, as a class, are not intellectuals but pseudo-intellectuals. They occupy the social niches of intellectuals, but they are not intellectuals: they either will-not or cannot, but certainly do not do abstraction.

*

In general, modern intellectuals merely defend socially-dominant abstractions. Since their position depends on a (false) status as 'abstraction experts', and since modern intellectuals are (as a class) corrupt and incompetent careerists merely - modern intellectuals tend simply to defend those abstractions which seem likely to maintain their (false) status in the short-term.

Such is the situation. Modern (pseudo-) intellectuals are nearly all corrupt and overwhelming incompetent in the abstract realm - yet that is what they are for. They cannot and/or will not perform the intellectual work to know abstractions; but are too dishonest to admit the fact, and too incompetent even to comprehend the fact.

*

Modern society is being killed by abstraction, and modern so-called intellectuals are cheering-on the process.

It would seem an easy matter to improve things by discarding the murderous abstractions and dealing instead with specific persons and specific situations - but this is the one thing which intellectuals are united to oppose: and the intellectuals are the rulers.

(Rulership being a social position passively inherited from their predecessors - with institutions such as schools and colleges replacing genetics.)

*

So modernity is not just stuck, but being actively goaded towards destruction by supposed-ntellectuals who are clever enough to pursue their short term status, but too dumb and dishonest to understand what is going-on or even to know that they don't understand it.

Societies primary problems are regarded as incomprehensible or insoluble even in situations where the problem is simple, the answers obvious. Meanwhile the modern intellectuals occupy themselves on shadow games using abstract concepts like counters; playing a game for which they cannot learn the rules - and they wouldn't play by the rules even if they had learned them.

*

Consequently, speaking functionally - there are no intellectuals at all in modern society: that is to say, modern society has no class of persons who actually do the job of understanding and evaluating abstractions.

Instead there is a class of pseudo-intellectuals who at most pretend to do this job; and often deny that this job even needs doing - and do something different instead. (Especially Leftist political advocacy under other names and disguises.)

Since the social role of intellectuals is now being performed only by incompetent pseuds and lying fakes, nobody is doing the job: the job is not being done.

*

*
God loves children, as do all good Fathers - and so he loves as as we are.

He is in no great rush for us to grow-up to become a divine friend and companion - just so long as we eventually do (or, at least, some of us eventually do. I expect it would always be good to have children around the place; so long as they are real, children: children by their natures).

So we need not be in any great rush to grow-up either - certainly not to 'force the pace'; and not at the cost of rushing through and failing to appreciate each step and stage.

Equally there is no virtue to not growing up, in trying possessively to cling-onto what is (in general) meant to be transitional.

We ought to take the next step when we are ready to take it: take the next step then, and not before then - and we will (if we humbly discern) know when.

*

That he did go wrong seems obvious - in that his life was intensely sad, angry and pessimistic and he was more tormented by religion than helped - such that his 'last words' "Tell them I've had a wonderful life" seemed astonishing and incommensurable to those who knew him best.

And where he went wrong is not far to seek.

(From Culture and Value page 53)

One of the things Christianity says, I think, is that all sound doctrines are of no avail. One must change one's life. (Or the direction of one's life.)

The first sentence is false - but characteristic. Wittgenstein rejected 'doctrine' and he rejected any 'cosmology' or story or description of the nature of God and reality and Man's relationship and purpose in relation to God and reality - and any account of the specific implications of this description.

But it is - surely - very obviously untrue that these things don't matter to Christianity; at least, it is very hard to think of a Christian exemplar who did not have a belief in doctrine and an understanding of what life is about.



Indeed these things are absolutely essential to any minimally-coherent 'good life'. Wittgenstein placed enormous emphasis on 'good works', on 'helping others'- acts of kindness, altruism, alleviating suffering - but none of this can be done without a prior knowledge of what life is about.

If you do not know what 'good' is, then how could you know you were doing good to others?

Because if you don't know what life is about, then how can you 'help' anybody? You do not even know what 'help' is.



(Not even so minimalist and apparently-uncontroversial a principle as 'alleviation of human suffering' is adequate as a guide for 'doing good' - since this also implies a program for humanely-killing those who suffer now, or fear suffering in the future; and the need for more of his kind of thing is indeed a major theme of modern public discourse on 'euthanasia'. There is always a need to conceptualize suffering in a context of purpose, meaning, principles etc.)



Instinct or doing what seems natural is no assistance, because there are several or many goods, which conflict and clash - and must be prioritized and integrated.



Wittgenstein wanted faith and a New Life, but without believing the truth of anything in particular - hence he insisted on Christianity as a pure, inexplicable and ungrounded psychological change coming upon a person.

But this is grossly incomplete as an account of any actual or long-term-viable Christianity - or, at least, it takes for granted a vast implicit social-cultural grounding.

As it stands, Wittgenstein's account of Christianity sans cosmology, sans doctrine cannot be prevented from toppling-over-into relativism and subjectivism - hence nihilistic nonsense. And this has been Wittgenstein's major philosophical legacy.



The interesting question is why Wittgenstein made such an obvious and gross blunder - did he really not perceive the inadequacy of his assertions? Surely his own life (and the lives of people around him - many of whom were exemplars of hyper-intelligent glib shallowness and self-indulgence) refuted his expressed views?

Or was it a psychological blind spot - something Wittgenstein personally could not do, so he assumed it was a universal incapacity?

Or was there a valid reason - such that Wittgenstein simply could not commit himself fully to Christian doctrines and cosmology as he knew them? I suspect that this was the real answer. For example, he expressed profound reservations about Predestination, and seemed very averse to scholastic philosophy in Roman Catholicism - probably there were others.



The way I suppose it worked was something like the following: Wittgenstein could not accept the validity of Predestination as he understood it; and while he accepted that there may be a higher sense in which it was true - he could not simply take that on trust when it was insisted that he believe, make public avowal of the truth of, predestination here and now.

(Such a declaration would be required before Wittgenstein would be qualified and entitled to become a church member of some (Calvinistic?) Protestant denominations, which he presumably felt otherwise attracted towards.)

Something similar probably applied to the necessity for acknowledging the ultimate validity of the philosophical system of Thomism (including Aquinas's proofs of the existence of God, which W particularly objected-to) within the Roman Catholic church.



Since Wittgenstein could not with honesty swear to the truth and validity of certain core doctrines or philosophical propositions, regarded as essential for all members, there was simply no possibility of Wittgenstein becoming a church member in any of the denominations of which he knew.

Yet he quite possibly regarded church membership as essential to the status of being a publicly-identified Christian. So he was stuck - outside of any actual denomination, yet extremely concerned with Christianity: 'merely' a simple believer in the reality of Christianity in his own life, and the lives of others.

So Wittgenstein reduced the definition of Christianity to being something inferred from 'the difference it makes to a person's life' - which is correct but incomplete.

In trying to make sense of his (chronic, painful) situation; Wittgenstein tried to argue that doctrines were not a necessary part of Christianity, since it was doctrines which kept him out of the churches.

In a limited sense, then, this hostility to Christian doctrine was an accurate specific observation - Wittgenstein himself was a Christian despite being unable publicly to assent to some specific doctrines variously regarded as crucial to church membership by the known Christian denominations - but as a general principle the hostility to Christian doctrine, and statements that Christianity did not require doctrine, was false: an error.

*
Humans started-out as 'simple' hunter gatherers - with no storage of food and extremely little technology; and there are two distinguishable paths by which hunter gatherers apparently began to evolve cultural complexity - and increase their power.

These are exemplified by Eskimos which increased technology, and Australian Aborigines which increased cooperation.

*


If it is assumed that the lives of peoples like the the Kalahari Bushmen and similar adjacent groups like the Hazda represent something like the baseline state for human hunter gatherers - it can be seen that Australian Aborigines have a larger scale society, able to get larger numbers to cooperate.



Technologically they have even less than the Bushmen (e.g. lacked bows and arrows), but in a war the Aborigines would be able to field a considerably larger number of men.

The factor seem to be religion.As contrasted with the simple, rather undefined and very variable and fluid animism of the Bushmen; Aborigines have a complex totemic religion, and great effort is expended in preserving this unchanged between generations. It is likely that is is the sharing of a common religion (which is also linked with landscape knowledge, hence survival in arid desert conditions) is the key factor in enabling cooperation. But this seems to have happened without any significant increase in general intelligence.

*

The Eskimos, by contrast, remain a small scale society with small scale cooperation and ill-suited to warfare; but use several examples of advanced technology such as canoes and hunting weapons.



This technology is necessary for their survival in Arctic conditions; and technology seems to have been made possible by the evolution of higher intelligence. Eskimos may have the highest average intelligence of hunter gatherers, and a significantly higher level than either Bushmen or Aborigines.

*

Alone, neither larger scale cooperation nor advances in technology were enough make a complex society - together they form something like the basis of a complex, large scale, internally-specialized society such as the Pacific Northwest Amerindians (totem religion and technology).

And the implication is that high intelligence is necessary to preserve technological aspects, and cooperation (via religion) is necessary to preserve large scale cooperation.

*
Hegel said that the Owl of Minerva flies only at dusk - meaning that only in retrospect, when they are declining, can philosophers understand cultures.

But (according to Wittgenstein) Spengler said almost the opposite - that a civilization can only have its 'epic poets' in advance, with prevision, as prophets; because at the end of a civilization there is nobody capable of understanding it.

Spengler seems right on this matter. We live at the end of a culture, a civilization - yet 'nobody' understand it: modern philosophers and poets are just too small and feeble and corrupt - their audience too dumb and distracted.

To understand we need to go back. A century ago, two centuries ago, there were great men who knew what was coming; and their fore-knowledge was deeper and more accurate than our retrospective understanding.

We can, at least, recognize that reality - although seldom fully appreciate it.
*

*
I was reading the posthumous collection of Wittgenstein's aphorisms called Culture and Value yesterday - focusing on the references to Christianity across his whole adult life, in the midst of an exceptionally prolonged and severe migraine and its treatment - so I was in a particularly intense and peculiar frame of mind.

For the first time, it struck me as obvious that Wittgenstein was a serious and sincere 'seeker' by Pascal's definition, hence Wittgenstein certainly was (in an ultimate sense) A Christian - despite that there was probably no time in his life when he could or would have stated : I Am A Christian.

This is a new understanding for me because I was introduced to Wittgenstein by the the ultra-liberal Christian-apostate Don Cuppitt - who, I now perceive, was selectively misrepresenting W to be arguing for a non-realistic, 'as if', culturally-embedded, way-of-living such as Cuppitt believed-in (before he abandoned even this vestige). I also encountered Wittgenstein via Richard Rorty, who was the epitome of urbane, bland, self-contradictory Leftist postmodernity. Indeed, all the books I read about W were from this subjectivist, relativist, politically-correct perspective - even one by a Dominican Friar (this will surprise nobody who knows what they are like).

But looking across the sweep of C and V, it is crystal clear that W was thinking and writing about real Christianity, and not the Leftism-in-disguise fake of the modern mainstream churches. Indeed, it is striking how very 'reactionary' Wittgenstein was - given that he became the darling of progressive academics and radical artists (or, at least, they took what they wanted from W and left-behind what W regarded as most important).

I found many passages were striking, in my peculiar state of mind - some seemed to be misunderstandings, for example in relation to miracles, others seemed to get at the root of things.

Page 49e Para 3 from 1946:

In former times people went into monasteries. Were they stupid or insensitive people? - Well, if people like that found they needed to take such measures in order to be able to go on living, the problem cannot be an easy one!

For W the problem was not an easy one, it was indeed the need for an ultimate underpinning. He recognized that this was not a matter of logic. He also - in practice, for constitutional reasons which he could not overcome - could not join any human association - hence could not be a member of a church. All this made it difficult for W to know what he was, or what to do about it.

I think what was probably needed for him was to understand that faith of the kind he wanted and needed is based in a personal 'testimony', on experience - which can come from miracles, revelations or in prayer - and this really is the bottom line. To look to validate the testimony by other means, is to destroy the testimony.

Wittgenstein knew what faith was not based-on, but I think he never knew what it was based-on. Probably because none of the churches he encountered put this up-front, all had very different emphases.  

In the end this will not have affected Wittgenstein's salvation - that was assured by his sincere and prolonged seeking for God - but it did mean that W never got beyond the threshold of Christianity, never progressed far on the path of theosis.

*

*
There is a strong tradition in mainstream Christian theology, deriving ultimately from Platonic philosophy, that because of the perfection of God and the absolute happiness of the blessed in Heaven - therefore God and the blessed look upon the existence of Hell and the sufferings of the damned as 'a good thing' - and their joy is not in the slightest degree impaired by the continued existence of unrepentant evil, pain and misery.

I regard this idea as pernicious nonsense - and a gross under-estimation of the temptations of evil - despite that the view is articulated by some of my very favourite, most loved and most revered theological mentors such as CS Lewis and Thomas Traherne.

It is truly monstrous to suppose that Heavenly perfection is unimpaired by the existence of evil, and that indeed Heaven-dwellers contemplate the misery of those who reject God with satisfaction - and the fault lies in giving priority to an abstract, absolutist, 'mathematical' concept of perfection derived from Platonic philosophy and cramming Christianity into this philosophical strait-jacket.

Philosophy really has no place to be thus usurping revealed Christian theology, and philosophy should firmly be shown the door when it leads to such an horrific reductio ad absurdum.

*

Another factor leading to this absurd conclusion is that classical theologians want the Satan and the damned to have no power over God - their view of God is so absolute and infinite that it is inconceivable to them that any individual created being could have the power to disturb divine equanimity - and from this they infer that, in effect, God doesn't care about the damned (because if He was to care, then that would impair His perfection).

However, this is precisely to miss the temptation of evil - in which the deepest motivation is precisely to harm God, to cause God pain and sorrow.

*

This is a common attitude here on earth: people inflict suffering upon themselves in order to harm other people.

At the most extreme, some suicides are motivated primarily by this form of hatred - a man kills himself in order to try and ruin the life of his girlfriend - "That will show her how much she has hurt me!".

And in general, many a person will 'cut off his nose to spite his face' - or take a 'dog in the manger' attitude.

That is, the dog lies in the manger where he is uncomfortable and cannot eat the hay - but does it because it stops the cows from eating. The dog makes himself miserable from pleasure at contemplating the irritation of the cows.

(Getting pleasure at the anger, distress and hurt of other people is called 'winding people up' in Britain, and is a favourite pastime of teenagers and comedians - and generally approved-of in the mass media, especially when the victims are regarded as undeserving of sympathy). 

*

I suspect, indeed, that although this seems like a petty and rather trivial kind of motivation and behaviour, that it may be one of the very gravest of all sins.

Be that as it may - it must be acknowledged that it works. The dog in the manger really is annoying to the cows; and the hatred-motivated suicide really often does cause misery to survivors, perhaps lifelong misery.

And when Satan (brightest of angels) rejected God's gift of happiness and descended into a pit of pride, hatred and eternal suffering - he really did cause God sorrow - and perhaps that sorrow is eternal.

To acknowledge the reality of God's sorrow is the only way we can comprehend God as infinitely loving; and this is much more important for us (as Christians) to understand than the scope of God's power.

*

And this power to hurt God is given to even the humbles, weakest and apparently most insignificant of Men - this power which is intoxicating to Pride: the power to use our own, self-inflicted suffering to 'get back' at God, to wound Him, to 'show Him what He has done to me...'.

It is the power of the hate-filled suicide, and it is a real power, and a very real temptation: the temptation to destroy oneself for the pleasure (and it is a real pleasure) of defying and hurting the creator of the universe, our Heavenly Father.

Even such puny creatures as ourselves can do this thing - it is within our ability - and it will give an everlasting satisfaction which (for some people) more than compensates for everlasting misery.

*

(This attitude is perfectly explicit in such anti-heroes as Milton's Satan, Mozart/ Da Ponte's Don Giovanni, or the later philosophy of Nietzsche: an exultation in pride accompanied by an open-eyed embracing of the consequent misery: the assertion that it is 'worth it' to live miserably in despite of, in defiance of, God: the arrogance of one who will 'pay the price' to 'be himself' and not what God wants him to be.) 

*

Damnation really is a choice, and there really is something to be said for it in terms of this dread-full, pride-full defiance. This is what must be renounced in order to be saved - and it should not be too surprising (even though a matter of endless sorrow) that some Men and Angels do choose evil, with all that entails.

It seems like a terrible bargain in every way - and it is - but sometimes, for some people, pride is stronger that anything else - even at the cost of permanent misery.

*