Bruce Charlton's Notions

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Since the advent of the Romantic Movement with Coleridge and Wordsworth, it has been a counter-current of mainstream life to assert the truth of imagination, the validity of fantasy. But modern people, by and large, want to know how imagination is truth: they require an explanation; otherwise they cannot feel that imagination really-is valid.

But this is just part of a much larger problem for modern people; which is that they cannot feel the truth of anything. They suppose that if only they are presented with enough strong-enough evidence, that they will believe with indomitable certainty whatever is thus proven, and that this belief will sustain them through whatever may happen.

Somehow this never happens - and the usual excuse is that the evidence is insufficient, and they are (like any good modern person) simply awaiting more evidence before committing themselves. But the fact is that they never do quite seem to commit themselves. They may fool other people by acting as if they have a core of solid conviction, around which their lives are built - but they do not manage to fool themselves.

The modern consciousness is cut-off from its own thoughts, it words and emotions. And this does seem to be a modern phenomenon - in this respect something seems to have changed. Things were, for instance, different in the European Middle Ages (up until about the fifteenth century)

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Consider the following edited excerpts from pp 53-5 of Romanticism Comes Of Age by Owen Barfield (1944):

In the Middle Ages, words and thoughts began to be identified. Hence the medieval period was above all the age of Logic - it worshipped Logic, in which the word and the thought are kept as close together as possible. 

But if we scrutinize the men of the Middle Ages we shall find something yet more significant. They identified themselves with their thoughts.

It is this which strikes a modern observer as most incomprehensible and alien about the men of that time - for example, their intolerance. 

Identifying the thought with the words, they felt that truth could be wholly embodied in creed and dogma; and, identifying the self with the thought, they were - quite rightly - intolerant. A wrong thought could strike them as far more immoral than a wrong action. 

When confronted with the universal intolerance of the Middle Ages, we can only explain it in one of two ways. Either common sense, kindliness and self-control have miraculously increased among us, and the great men of that time were therefore a kind of foolish children compared with ourselves; or thinking was actually something different from what it is now - not only believed to be different, but actually different. 

Today, everybody is tolerant. We are extraordinarily polite to each other, even on such subjects as religion. Does this universal tolerance arise from the fact that we have at last succeeded in subduing the evil passions that formerly drove men to quarter and burn one another for their opinions? 

Or is it, can it possibly be, that we no longer care very much whether people agree with us or not?

There is no doubt at all about the answer. The fact is that we have ceased to identify ourselves with our thoughts - at any rate with such thoughts as can be expressed in words. We distinguish between thinking and believing. This is indeed one of the most typical modern experiences. 

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This is modern alienation. But the fact that we have ceased to identify ourselves with our thoughts cannot, I think, be solved by re-asserting medieval Logic, and the identity between thoughts, words and reality.

When I say we 'cannot' do this, I mean that it simply does not work. We can, or course - and many people have tried, assert that we are adopting that 'medieval' assumption that truth is wholly embodied in creed and dogma - but for us moderns it is an 'as if'.

The way our minds work means that our selves feel separated from creeds and dogmas. Since this is what we feel, an assertion of identity can only remain an assertion. In a sense we are all solipsists now...

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But not so, because - as the romantics discovered - the imagination enables us to escape from this solipsism. But the escape is limited - limited in time, context, and fullness. The Romantics escaped - but sooner or later - and usually all-too-soon - they returned to their predicament.

Since then, we have got no further. Currently, we have immersive distraction by the mass media, but clearly it is no more effective - probably much less effective - than the Romanticism of the 19th century. Nobody seriously advocates that increased engagement with the mass media is a solution to the fundamental alienation of the modern condition - we know that (even if it were desirable, which it is not) it would be ineffective, we know it would not work.

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So, we are not able to go back, we hate where we are, we must go forward - and seek to understand the imagination in new terms, by new kinds of explanation - and the validity of our explorations will be tested by our feelings.

Our feelings will not be fooled - if any new way of thinking fails to satisfy our innermost soul (currently trapped by its own operation, trapped by its own solipsism) then it will not carry sufficient conviction to be an effective solution.

Our appeal is not to logic (as in the Middle Ages) nor to Evidence (as in the modern age) nor to assertion of the intrinsic validity of the Imagination and Fantasy (as with Romanticism) - it must be an appeal which is not an appeal to anything else; but a kind of validation in-action.

Our consciousness must become such that it is satisfied by its own fundamental operations.

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In philosophical terms this is first-philosophy - i.e metaphysics. To get where we want to go, we need to turn philosophy back upon itself, and examine the fundamental assumptions of modern consciousness.

Metaphysics is perhaps the single most important intellectual activity of our time.

This is neither futile nor paradoxical - because we have separate ground to stand upon - the ground of the imagination. The lesson of more than two centuries is that Romanticism, the power of imagination, is too incomplete and feeble to replace modern consciousness; but it is different enough to analyse modern consciousness from a separate evidential basis - and I think this analysis can point-to the next necessary step.

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The future of consciousness, the cure for alienation, is something we can know - but it is not necessarily something we can, yet, do. Doing comes later, requires different circumstances; indeed doing may not come this side of death.

In a sense we could regard our task as trying to describe Heaven.

Heaven has currently lost its psychological effect, because our descriptions of Heaven typically have all the faults of our current predicament. But if Heaven can be described in a way that uses the Imagination, satisfies feeling, and if Imagination can also be validated as a genuine source of truth... well, then we have achieved our goal.

But knowing where we are going, even if we cannot expect to get there for a considerable while, can be a source of hope and an antidote for despair.

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The conservative/ reactionary blogosphere has adopted the tern Overton Window to express the range of 'acceptable' (i.e. non-crazy, non-evil) political opinion enforced by the mass media; along with the idea that this window moves ever-Leftward.

This is a useful shorthand in some ways, but misleading in others. The Left is not fundamentally about a different set of opinions (through its history, the Left has picked-up and discarded 'causes' with extraordinary and increasing rapidity); the Left is about destruction of The Good - it is about subversion, inversion of truth, beauty and virtue; propaganda and enforcement of untruth, ugliness and vice.

Insofar as there is a 'window' - it is therefore defining the scope for acceptable attack on The Good.

Insofar as the window changes, it does not really slide to the Left, but enlarges.

So the change Leftwards should be seen as a greater and greater scope for 'acceptably' critiqueing, problematizing, and in multiple ways attacking The Good.

The window has enlarged recently to allow attacks on various new themes - attack on marriage via the recognition and encouragement of non-marriage; attacks on the family by promotion of everything-but; attacks on sanity by the legal enforcement of individual person's delusions; attacks on health by the encouragement of behavioural/ psychiatric/ sexual diseases (disease being here biologically defined as a condition which damages probable functionality, lifespan or reproductive success).

And so on.

In sum -  if we use the Overton Window metaphor - we should regard the 'window' as enlarging the scope for 'acceptable' attacks on The Good and the 'acceptable' scope for active promotion of evil.

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Note added: Consider the 1960s sexual revolution. This reveals clearly the expanding range of behaviour it was acceptable to first accept, then approve, then advocate and finally (recently) actively promote and enforce. Divorce, sex outside marriage, promiscuous sex, non-reproductive and anti-reproductive behaviours and orientations. Indeed, most of the heavy-lifting against Good was done in the late sixties and early seventies with legal decriminalizations and elimination of negative moral status in the mass media. Recent expansion of the Overton window have been mostly about the escalation from illegal to officially-promoted; not-disapproval to approval, not-forbidden to actively-encouraged.
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Anyone who has been vilified in the mass media will recognize that nearly everybody believes mass media accounts, even when they are contradicted their own knowledge and experience as friends or colleagues.

There is a palpable reluctance, a suspicious resistance, against anything here-and-now, anything personal, which goes-against the mass media line.


But why? In theory everybody 'knows' the mass media selects, distorts and lies; everybody claims not to believe the mass media - in practice almost everybody believes almost everything.

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Part of it seems to be a kind of misdirected primitive deference to 'power' - the mass media, despite that it isn't a person, is perceived and regarded by the human mind as if it was something like a tyrannical totalitarian dictator who must be obeyed - even in terms of belief.

Another part of it is the psychological corruption induced by living in a mass media society, and being personally addicted to the mass media (as most people are) - so that people dwell psycho-spiritually inside the mass media, and cannot even imagine not living inside it.

But another part has to do with the nature of human consciousness as it is and has been in our particular civilization for some centuries; but which is different in other parts of the world and times.

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This is hard to describe, but it is something like the following: People are able to believe the mass media because they do not really believe anything.

This is part of the modern condition - that modern Man is so profoundly alienated, that he is alienated not just from work, bureaucracy, and society; but alienated also from his own thoughts and even his own beliefs.

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Our subjective experience of ourselves, is of an isolated self, detached from even our own beliefs.

Our beliefs are not 'us' - our beliefs are 'merely' one of many things which may entertain us or bore us, which we observe with various attitudes... our beliefs are things we 'entertain' rather as we entertain the guests at a party; which is to say we invite guests whom we hope will entertain us.

We sit in the solitary confinement of our selves, observing this parade of beliefs - hundreds, millions of them - nearly all of which come via the mass media - as they dance past us.

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Modern people are accustomed to having all kinds of beliefs in their mind - for a while, holding them only lightly. Entertaining them for a while, being-entertained by them for a while - playing with beliefs as a kitten plays with a ball of wool; or seizing upon beliefs and casting them aside in a desperate search for something precious that is lost... but all the time new guests are coming in and old guests are leaving.

It is not so much that people reject their personal experience and common sense in favour of the mass media, as that they do not hold to any beliefs with strength - not even those based on experience and common sense.

Modern Man does not even have conviction in his own nihilism - modern nihilism has turned and begun to consume itself. He suspects that nothing is real, he is dismayed that nothing is certain - but is he unsure whether some things might be real, and he is uncertain about his own uncertainty. 

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This is what it is to be nihilist - to believe nothing is really real - it is to believe tactically, as an entertainment, or indeed merely as a distraction; because we cannot believe that anything more is possible.

So, to come-up-against people believing the mass media instead of what they might be expected to know for themselves is something new, distinctive, modern, Western; to come-up-against the shallow, spiteful, superficiality of belief among nearly everybody about everything - even things they ought to know - is a revelation of the depth of our spiritual poverty.

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There are two broad classes of 'depression'.

Traditional depression can be called melancholia, or endogenous depression - it is rare, very rare - roughly a tenth of one percent prevalence (0.1% of the population) - including the even rarer and more severe 'psychotic depression' with hallucinations and delusions.

Melancholia is severe and debilitating (sufferers typically cannot look after themselves and nearly always require hospitalization of equivalent intensity of supervision); it comes-upon somebody like an illness.

Sufferers from Endogenous Depression have a very high rate of suicide and may dehydrate/ starve themselves to death. It is perhaps the worst kind of suffering of all.

But if the Melancholia/ Endogenous Depression sufferer survives/ is kept alive; after about a year he will probably recover fully (except for the memories) and return to normal; and he probably will not suffer another episode. This recovery can usually be hastened with some tricyclic drugs like imipramine, and electroconvulsive therapy/ electroshock.

So, melancholia a disease which can probably affect anyone, lasts about a year, and after recovery a return to normal. 

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(SSRI-type drugs such as Prozac are ineffective in Melancholia, or make things worse - so these drugs should never have been called antidepressants. SSRIs aren't antidepressants - SSRIs cannot do what imipramine does. To have claimed otherwise was a dishonest but successful marketing ploy, not a clinical observation.)


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The usual 'depression' diagnosed and treated nowadays is more like a personality type than a disease, therefore modern depression is a lifetime thing. Episodes are exacerbations of the usual situation for that person, and 'recovery' means simply a return to the usual suboptimal situation for that person. 

The most-commonly diagnosed 'depression' nowadays is therefore nothing like melancholia/ endogenous depression at all - except for the slight similarity that misery/ sadness/ inability to experience happiness may (or may not) be the most prominent symptom.

Depression nowadays gets diagnosed in around ten percent of the population - or sometimes even more. While significantly unpleasant, it is not usually severe - sufferers continue to work, look after families, drive - they continue to eat and drink and attend college.

And the suicide rate in modern depression is not increased - it is the the same as the general population.

Ninety-nine out of a hundred cases of modern depression are part of a mixed bag of diagnoses that can be gathered under names like Neurotic Depression/ Reactive Depression/ Dysthymia - and indeed until the 1990s were usually diagnosed as Anxiety States. The main symptoms are varied and would usually be anxiety, sadness, or mood swings; more rarely low vitality.

The main generalization to be made about modern depression is that it is not like a disease which comes over somebody, it is like a personality type which sometimes gets worse but (because it is the personality) is not the kind of thing which can be cured.

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So, melancholia is rare and terrible but can be cured and the sufferer recovers fully' modern 'depression' is common, unpleasant but not terrible, but cannot be cured - symptoms can be suppressed for a while by various types of drugs; but when you stop the drug, or when it loses effect from 'ttolerance', then the personality re-emerges - so the usual suboptimal personality state will return plus added problems from the drug withdrawal.

This means that when taking drugs to treat the usual (Neurotic/ Reactive) depression, there is a strong tendency to get hooked. Because drugs tend to lose their effect ('tolerance') there is a tendency to escalate doses; because the personality is pretty much fixed, there is a tendency to continue treatment for a long time - forever; because all psychoactive drugs produce withdrawal phenomena, then reducing or stopping the drugs will creates additional problems.

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In sum, once people with an exacerbation of their usual state of Neurotic Depression (e.g. anxiety, sadness, mood swings, demotivating) have started taking drugs, there is a tendency for this drug taking to become life-long.

This is because the drugs are not curing a disease, but temporarily modifying a personality; and because the body and brain adapt to drugs by becoming dependent on them.

Hence we have a serious, long-term, still-growing epidemic of prescribed-drug dependence among people with Neurotic Depression - with the prescription rates for so-called SSRI-type 'anti-depressants' climbing year upon year, even three decades after the SSRIs were introduced.

There is zero justification for treating Neurotic/ Reactive Depression in order to prevent suicide.The only sensible rationale for drug treatment is to make people feel better; recognizing that treatment will be a temporary suppression of problems not a cure; and any drug treatment will create problems of dependence that will have to be managed.

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Further reading:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/how-everyone-became-depressed/201502/dismantling-major-depression

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Modern depression is  increasingly being re-labelled as Bipolar Disorder; on the basis of a supposed but false resemblance with Manic Depressive Disorder. True Manic Depressive Disorder was extremely rare - a small fraction of 0.1% - and was diagnosed on the basis of a person having been hospitalized for sustained episodes - often lasting for months - of both melancholia and mania; from which there was complete recovery. 

Modern bipolar disorder is diagnosed at a prevalence rate of about 5% (one in twenty) one the basis of self-reports of both high and low moods lasting as little as a few days or weeks and no history of hospitalization; and typical patients never fully recover and seem to be ending up on lifelong treatment with multiple drugs. 

The situation developed in a way closely analogous to depression. In other words, modern Bipolar Disorder is being applied to a subgroup of much the same population described above as having 'Neurotic Depression' - that sub-group in which mood swings are prominent. In other words, Old Manic Depressive Disorder was a very rare disease, modern Bipolar Disorder is a relatively common (group of) personality type(s) - being misinterpreted as disease.

http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0030185

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I get the impression that many people are terribly confused about what cancer is - or rather they are just plain wrong about what cancer is. In particular they think of it as a disease category.

This is - of course - inculcated and exploited by medical researchers, the mass media, celebrities and the massive cancer charities (e.g. Cancer Research UK is a deeply dishonest and exploitative bureaucracy - and a fund of self-serving disinformation on many matters).

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People assume that cancer is like pneumonia - ie. a group of lung diseases; but cancer is like 'infection' or 'inflammation' - cancer is a pathological process.

So it is misleading to talk about 'fighting' cancer or 'eradicating' cancer as if it was a disease - as in the Cancer Research UK slogan: 'We will beat cancer sooner'.

Do we fight, eradicate or 'beat' processes such as infection or inflammation? There are general and often effective 'infection control' mechanisms (quarantine, hygiene etc.), there are general anti-inflammatory drugs (steroids, NSAIDs) but this activity does not generate the strident, militaristic nonsense that is usual with cancer talk.

Infection is part of the condition of life on earth; so is cancer. Cancer is not going-away.

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In general, people suffer diseases - as a man might suffer from pneumonia. But people afflicted with various diseases resulting from the cancer process are described as 'victims', they are said to be 'fighting' cancer. If they die, they have lost their long 'struggle' with cancer.

These are all fake and misleading metaphors, which cloak exploitation and ignorance.

In reality Cancer research, as such, is about the biology of a pathological process - which is as large, vague, complex and obscure - as as remote from curing disease or helping sick people - as research about the biology of 'infections' or the incredible intricacies of the immune system would be.

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Cancer is not one thing, nor is cancer many things - cancer is not a thing.

The word cancer describes - in general terms - a pathological process, a disease process, something which has gone wrong with certain aspects of the functioning of an organism.

To say what cancer is involves technical terms and uncommon knowledge, to understand what cancer is requires effort, a willingness to learn - to concentrate and read (or listen) for quite a few minutes at a stretch. The understanding must be built-up.

Most people won't do this, some people can't do this - hence very few people indeed have any idea what cancer is - or rather, they have an idea so false and misleading that it misunderstands the very nature of cancer.

This depth and level of misunderstanding of cancer is, I guess, is what has created a situation so wide-open to exploitation - and, by Heavens, it surely has been exploited!

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Reader's Question: I've read your blog on genius with great interest and find that my own profile fits many of the traits you describe. I've always been highly disagreeable, neurotic, creative, and with a strong dislike of formal education. I've never understood strivers or "head girls" as you mention. For much of my youth, I've heard those around me say things like "you're so smart, why are you wasting it?" or "why aren't you motivated?" or "It's too bad he refuses to live up to his full potential". I don't much like society or the thought of having to make a living (I just graduated university after dragging it out for eight miserable years) and am most content when I am left alone to read books of history, philosophy, poetry, and literature. I've never had much confidence in my own abilities despite lavish praise from others. Could I be a potential genius? Or just a creative person who lacks motivation? I'm not being arrogant here, just very interested in the topic. 

My response: There is always a problem about applying general arguments to specific instances! So the answer could only be - maybe.

At minimum, the genius-type would have to combine high intelligence (or specific ability) with creativity - but the creativity would only emerge once a channel had been found, and motivation evoked.  Creativity and motivation have the same inner source - and the genius-type is inner-dominated.

The genius (like everyone) has a destiny, but is usually very unclear about what that is. Only when he has found that destiny will inner creativity and motivation be triggered. Only if he finds that destiny will he be able to work intensely. So the thing is to embark on a 'quest' for that destiny.

Finding the destiny does not solve the problem of a career - indeed it might make things worse. Plenty of geniuses have made great breakthroughs, or produced great work, but made no money from them, or been denied the credit.

But that may not really matter. If a genius finds what he needs to do - then he will seek-out a way of doing it - the only tragedy would be not to find it or not to do it. What happens then is out of his control.

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Having said all that, genius is rare, and the problems you describe much commoner - especially among men in their twenties-plus.

The problems may simply be part of the endemic demotivation of modern society. Their cause may be that you are adrift- rather than a thwarted genius; that you are cut-off from the primary satisfactions of human life: religion, marriage, family.

One way to think about it is to consider whether you would be prepared to pay the cost of being celibate in order to pursue a creative destiny - this being what many men of genius have done.

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This has become apparent over the past year, especially in Oxford. Oxford is a place I love to visit, and I unfailingly find being-there an inspiring and refreshing experience.

However, the people of Oxford University are among the worst in the whole world - they are a well-spring of corruption, dishonesty, status-grubbing - the origin and focus and powerhouse of much that I regard as worst in the modern world.

Therefore, I imbibe the real spirit of England from the stones of the colleges and churches and chapels and walls of Oxford; and I do my best to ignore the fact that they are inhabited by (in effect) demons and their minions.

In microcosm, an analogous mismatch can be experienced from many old English churches and cathedrals; the stones, the carved wood, the coloured glass - even the smells are a source of English holiness and real Christianity. But the self-styled Christians (Bishops, Priests and Priestesses, most of the congregation) who ply their trade within these walls are nearly-always shallow, materialistic, glib, spiteful, and only active in subversion of virtue, truth, and beauty.

I was up on top of the Yorkshire Dales last week - and the sense of the goodness, beauty and reality of England was so strong as to be palpable: you could have hefted it in your hand. But that was partly because there were no other people around except my family.

So: the spirit of England is strong, the memories are intact, the resources for renewal are all there in place; but the English people, en masse ignore, reject, and (intermittently) try to destroy them.

So when renewal comes, it will appear as if from nowhere, and with no person or institution as its visible source. That is because it will be coming from the stones and soil and water.

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Given the nature of current society - is there a positive approach to life?

One way came from an e-mail that I got from a pen-friend, Laeeth Isharc. He pointed-out that it is (almost always) a delusion to imagine that we can 'work within the system', to 'change it from within': in practice, this is simply a path to corruption and self-dishonesty.

But we could instead aim to work at the fringes and avoid large institutions.

This does not answer all problems, of course; but it does provide a (potentially) positive framework for organizing life.

And the decision to work at the fringes and avoid large institutions might - in and of itself - induce and reinforce a good and helpful attitude to planning life.

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Having read the notes in addition to the novel, it is clear that Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (by Susanna Clarke) is one of the most real fictional subcreations I have ever encountered.

It is very difficult not to believe it really happened, because the world is so detailed, so consistent, so convincing. As I walked around Newcastle today, I kept thinking of the time when the Raven King ruled from here - I even saw a raven!

I was trying to the think of comparisons in the post-Tolkien literature.

The nearest fantasy I could come are the Alan Garner Weirdstone of Brisingamen/ Moon of Gomrath duo in which the magical events are sewn-into a lot of local and family history, folklore and neo-paganism. The ring of truth and believable - but the detail is much less than in JS&MN.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/review-of-alan-garners-weirdstone-of.html

The other example is the Glass Family stories by JS Salinger, which are also difficult not to believe, and similar in their detailed and deep and partly factual back-story (albeit in a different style) to JS&MN.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/zooey-wins-and-explaining-seymours.html


('Difficult not to believe', that is, with the exception of the last Glass story published - Hapworth 16 1924, which is simply atrocious).
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I simply cannot believe how good this book is! It strikes me as one of the very best novels I have ever read, and one which will change my life and the way I think about things.

I am also bewildered as to how I have missed it for the past eleven years - indeed, when I was on holiday I picked-up a copy three years ago and leafed through it; then replaced it on the shelf unread.

I can only assume that I was put-off by various off-putting aspects of the book's presentation to the reading public which rubbed me up the wrong way.

(Apparently, an extreme hype; endorsements by 'the usual suspects'; the fact that it seemingly emanated from the world of professional publishing - and was, therefore, likely to have been expertly crafted to impress.)

Well, I eventually got to read the book through watching the first episode of a BBC TV adaptation, currently running - and being caught-up, liking it very much (the episodes have since declined a bit) - found it running in my mind... I was on holiday in the country when I felt I could not delay reading it. I did not want to wait to buy a paper copy - so I obtained it on Kindle.

But whatever it was that delayed my engagement; I was wrong, wrong, wrong! This is a truly wonderful book - a labour of love, deep, wise, inspired - extremely well-written and constructed - absolutely fascinating, and (plot-wise) un-put-down-able.

I have been living in its imaginative world for the past week - and already things look different.

(And I haven't even yet read the extensive footnotes, which some people say is the best bit!)

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is in the 'fantasy' genre; about magic, magicians, fairies; set in the early 1800s (and written in a semi-pastiche of the style of that era); and in an England (a world) where there is the back-story of a 300 year period of the middle ages during which the North of England was ruled by the greatest-ever enchanter (a human stolen and reared by fairies) called The Raven King - whose capital was Newcastle (i.e. the city where I live!).

So, one way and another; there is another English genius - and her name is Susanna Clarke.

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I often muse on how many close colleagues, i.e. men who I have at some point allied-with, or 'worked-with' on projects of various types, I have lost to Global Warming over the past couple of decades.

It amounts to quite a high percentage, considering that I have not had all that many collaborators.

(On the other hand, I too have changed - and much of what I worked for I now consider bad; much of what I work for now I would have considered bad in the past. That, no doubt, is how my current position would seem to them - it is I who have changed, who have deviated from the norm.)

It has been surprising and dismaying to recognize that people who seemed to have good judgement, seemed to understand how things worked, ended-up on the wrong side in the biggest, most obvious, most expensive, sustained and harmful scientific fraud of all time.

The causes have been various. One cause is the lure of grants, jobs, promotions, status etc. Another is that I misjudged and over-estimated people.

But the main cause is the recidivist Leftism of the Western intellectual elites. The intelligentsia have proven themselves to be Leftist uber alles and in the face of common sense, personal experience, science and reason.

It is clear that for the past generation, Leftism (and Leftism embraces all mainstream political views in The West, including nationalism, conservatism, libertarianism, and populism) almost-always leads-to corruption, sooner or later.

(The only non-Leftist groups are some traditional religions - none of them dominant or powerful among the Western ruling persons and institutions.)

Far too many once-decent men have incrementally drifted into habitual groupthink, selective blindness, habitual untruth, aesthetic and moral inversion - becoming in the process a species of deluded all-but zombie (dead souled - yet still moving, working, debating, judging, advocating).

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Note: When I say these colleagues or collaborators were 'lost'; I really mean lost-to-me qua colleagues or collaborators. Not necessarily as friends! But lost because my scientific-respect was lost. wrt. evaluations, if they cannot see the beam/ tree/ forest in their own eye, then their capacity for discernment in the smaller (yet vital) 'motes' I work on, has been thereby made un-trust-worthy.

Further Note: You cannot get apples out of Oranges. Garbage in: Garbage out. A truth-free system cannot generate truth (no matter how complex the mathematical procedures.

If science is to 'work' - all the participants need to seek truth and speak truth, all the time - and when they stray from this it must be explicitly noted, sanctions applied, confession and repentance are necessary. Or else the liar will be excluded: permanently. 

Historically, this has been extremely unusual behaviour for human beings, and it is very hard to fake. The fact that Climate Change research does not come anywhere remotely near this required behaviour is - I would have thought - about as obvious as anything can be. 

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Nobody can ever know more than a little, so more knowledge seldom solves anything; but when knowledge is systematically incomplete, then the distortion is irrevocable - and increased information merely increases the persistence in error.

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Imagine that we live in that world we recognize in Mundane public discourse, but that Faery is also real - in a different dimension (accessible at certain nodal points, in certain circumstances).

But Mundane reality and Faery are real, both exert an influence on our lives.


There are two possible errors we might make, from our perspective in the Mundane world:

1. Ignore Faery, deny its reality, leave it out of all calculations.

We do not understand because we lack intuition - consequently all our predictions and prophecies will be wrong (except by chance - which will mislead us into thinking we know more than we do) and our interventions to shape the world will fail to achieve the desired effect.

We will be sustained in our error by our refusal or inability to consider any consequences except the Mundane.


2. The second error is to assume that Faery is real, and the mundane world merely a shadow.

We will devalue, write-off our mundane experience - because it entails that we Mundane creatures can known nothing real or true, and our experiences count for nothing - this will lead to monstrous misapprehensions, callousness, nihilism, despair.


So, only consideration of both Mundane and Fairy worlds is real.

Where, then, may such a consideration be attained?

Not, for sure, by any mundane system. But only in the individual mind of a person whose soul 'fuses' both Mundane and Faery elements into something inclusive of both.

Such a person would be the only entity capable of governing well. Anything other would be like a creature that was aware only during daylight and did not realize that he slept through all the nights - hence he knew nothing of night - hence he assumed there only was daylight.


Now: unravel the parable...

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Readers Question: "What, in your estimation, would be the best path for a creative and artistic, young (Christian) man to follow in a world so mired in de-motivation?"

My Answer is negative - Do not try to earn your living doing your creative or artistic work.

Fund your creative/ artistic work from your job- which has been chosen on the basis that it earns the greatest amount per hour, so you can work relatively few hours (perhaps part-time); and leaves you enough time and energy to do your creative/ artistic work.

So if you are a writer, don't try to live off your writing. If you are a real, creative scientist, don't get a job in 'science'. If you are an actor or singer, don't be a professional but instead an amateur.

As a general rule, under modern conditions, all large and powerful institutions of all types are corrupt - therefore only outside the economic realm can you be real, honest and committed.
 

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1. I should first say that I regard the philosophy of Aquinas as the most complete and perfect philosophy, qua philosophy, that there ever has been. 

IF I thought that philosophy was the most important thing, I would want my philosophy to be the most coherent and comprehensive philosophy - and I would be a Thomist. 

2. But the Roman Catholic Church began to destroy Thomism almost as soon as it had been made (e.g. William of Occam, Duns Scotus) - and this has gone on over the centuries since. Every 'improvement' to one specific part, damaged the whole to a much greater extent. When I read read Alasdair MacIntyre's God, philosophy, universities: A Selective History of the Catholic Philosophical Tradition (2009) it was profoundly disillusioning; it essentially finished me off with RCC philosophy in general and Scholasticism in particular (a catalogue of fashion-driven, pride driven change for change's sake). Since then I have never really looked-back. 

3. I do not much like the feeling I get from Scholasticism, or what it does to me - it feels cold and heartless, narrow and stultifying. If I had to be a classical philosopher, and if I had to choose a Catholic Christianity rooted within that tradition (and I lived in the right place, not England!), I would be a Platonist and Orthodox (or an old-fashioned Anglican of the type which no longer exists) since I feel that philosophical and theological tradition to be warmer, richer, sweeter.  

4. I am spontaneously a pragmatist pluralist - my heart leaps when I read William James! And when I discovered (from reading Sterling McMurrin) that Mormon Theology was located within this philosophical tradition - well, that was it: home at last!

So, that is why I reject the scholastic method!

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The term 'metaphysics' refers to the most fundamental assumptions upon which Men base their explanations.

A metaphysical belief, therefore - and by definition, has no 'evidence' to support it: none whatsoever.

This means that in an unthinking, habitual age of 'science', empirical investigation and 'data'; any person's metaphysical assumption can be destroyed by pointing-out that there is 'no evidence' to support it. 

This is the strategy of Metaphysical subversion.


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Metaphysical subversion is a false argument - because:

1. There never is any evidence to support metaphysical assumptions - else they would not be metaphysical assumptions; and

2. The concept of evidence is necessarily built upon metaphysical assumptions - all 'why-type' questions eventually lead to an assumption - even when, as in the case of 'science', these assumptions are seldom talked-of except to deny their reality or necessity.

I wonder how many millions of intellectuals and educated people have fallen for this rhetorical trick?

I certainly have!

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We are born into this world, it seems, already believing in the supernatural, in gods/God, and believing that many features of our environment are alive and aware and purposive.

(I regard this knowledge as having been built-in.)

In other words, we naturally have in-place the necessary metaphysical assumptions to 'believe in God'.

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In the modern West, these spontaneous inborn assumptions are attacked by the prevalent secular Leftist society; and they are attacked mostly on the basis that there is no evidence for our assumptions.

(There is no actual evidence against these natural metaphysical assumptions!; in the sense that there is no evidence against them which does not depend upon equally evidence-free metaphysical assumptions.)

The only 'respectable' position to hold in modern Western society is therefore that there is no evidence for the existence of gods/ God, because the assumptions which lead people naturally to believe in gods/ God have 'no evidence to support them'.

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Having been mislead into abandoning his in-built metaphysical assumptions, having decided - in other words - to reject many of his own spontaneous beliefs about the nature of reality, modern Man then finds himself wondering why it is that God has failed to provide compelling, overwhelming, evidence of His existence!

(A trap: a fly bottle! Wander in, and there seems no way out!)

In other words, Modern Man decides to reject the evidence for the reality of God on the basis that this evidence rests on (natural, spontaneous, inborn) assumptions for which there is no evidence; Man therefore overthrows his in-built assumptions; finally Modern Man complains that there is 'no evidence' for the reality of God!

This is metaphysical subversion triumphant: completely incoherent, deeply dishonest, wholly lacking in rigour - and (almost-completely) successful!...

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Reader's Question: What is your opinion of present day Russia and do you think Vladimir Putin is a sincere Christian?

My Answer: Perhaps these need to be considered in reverse order?

Yes, I think Putin is a sincere Christian - therefore, I believe that he and others are trying, long-term, to restore Holy Russia (i.e. the Byzantine model of a society ruled as a unity by an anointed Christian monarch).

In this I wish Russia well - I think it is that nation's divine destiny to do this - however, that destiny must be chosen, and could (easily) be rejected or corrupted.

Given the assumption that Putin is a sincere Christian who genuinely wants to restore the Orthodox Church to a central place in Russia; I don't think it ought to be regarded as difficult to justify my attitude, if you ask 'compared with what?'

Russia has a stark choice - Western New Left, politically-correct Progressivism (and joining us in self-hating willed-suicide), or else a restored Byzantium.

It's a no-brainer, as far as I am concerned.

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http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/the-contrasting-dream-worlds-of-lewis.html
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We were looking at some mute swans on Bolam Lake, and speculating whether their beauty was what made them a protected species, and stopped (most) humans eating them (as reflected by various laws restricting their consumption to the monarch and a few others).

There seems to be an innate sense of the sacredness of lovely, sweet, things; a reluctance to damage beauty, to mar perfection.

We hesitate even to put footsteps on the flawless white smoothness of fresh snow.

There may also be a particular reluctance to kill (and perhaps eat) 'cute' young animals - lambs, calves, puppies, kittens.

Of course this sense of sacredness can be overcome - by need, such as hunger; or by (evil) counter-impulses to mar and damage, dominate and destroy beauty - and other kinds of goodness.

But a sense of the sacredness of loveliness does seem to be there, built-in.

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Regularly, I currently read:

http://www.jrganymede.com

http://www.scifiwright.com

http://www.millennialstar.org


Less regularly:

http://orthosphere.org

http://drjamesthompson.blogspot.co.uk

http://nonapologia.tumblr.com (infrequent posting)


I sometimes read (and comment on) other blogs - e.g. if they mention my name (led to them by word searching).

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My answer: I have read Gary Lachman's biography, RW Emerson's essay in Representative Men, watched a dozen or two YouTube vlogs, and sampled a few of Swedenborg's books and essays.

My conclusion is that Swedenborg was a genuine visionary and a genius, and has had admirers whom I respect; and therefore I regard his work is worthwhile and contains valuable insights.

I am also sure that much of his writing is mistaken, wrong. For whatever reason, he made many mistakes and could not discriminate between truth and error and published both, jumbled. This is, indeed, usual with mystics and visionaries such as William Blake. 

However, I personally find Swedenborg 'unreadable' in the sense that I don't enjoy reading it, I didn't get anything out of it - as I read it wouldn't 'go in' - consequently I remember nothing.

So - undoubtedly a great man - but not for me.

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