When the age of faith began, rather obviously, to come to an end in the 19th century; there emerged an age of ideology - of 'secular religions', and initially the secular ideologies shared some of the strength of conviction, and capability of generating motivation, that is characteristic of religion.
The hallmark of motivation is self-sacrifice.
This led to the idea that ideology was, and could remain, a substitute for religion.
The earliest of these powerful ideologies was nationalism - which was strong enough to create regime changes all over Europe and Scandinavia, then later in places like India and Africa, due to the intense and sustained motivation of its adherents.
But in all cases nationalism faded after about a generation - and there have not been any powerful nationalist movements in recent generations.
Communism came along next; and the earliest communists were dedicated and motivated - it seemed as if communism had the same kind of power to evoke self-sacrifice as did religion.
But, as with nationalism, the motivational power of communism (and other types of socialism) faded after a generation - and modern Leftism is feeble, corrupt and pampered.
(Old-time communists accepted jail, violence and death for their faith; but a modern Leftist is regarded as an 'activist' if he attends a 'demonstration', or takes a make-work job as an 'organizer'.)
Since communism there have been no secular ideologies with the power to evoke self-sacrifice - the age of ideology is long-since over.
Nowadays, if you are not religious you are not motivated. If you are not religious you will not be capable of significant self-sacrifice for your beliefs.
We now know that there is no secular substitute for religion,
The future lies with one religion or another. It is a matter of choice between religions - ideology is not a valid choice.
Tuesday 12 January 2016
Monday 11 January 2016
Telemann - sublime and jolly
I discovered GP Telemann (in a serious way) slightly before JS Bach, because of Telemann's fondness for writing for the Treble Recorder, which I particularly liked.
Telemann clearly ranks below JS Bach and GF Handel - but could, at times, match them - as above.
And here is the start of his major work for the Treble Recorder:
The mass media overestimate the Western Masses
Every time there is some atrocity which contradicts the narrative of political correctness and reveals that the Western leadership is strategically operating to destroy the West; the mass media employ their range of cover-up techniques: ignoring the incident, drowning reports in boring bureaucratic prose (full of complex nuances, qualifications, and the use of 'alleged'), or someone whom the media dislike is blamed (right wing/ white nationalist extremists, Christians), or the focus fatalistically and despair-inducingly placed on people's misery, rather than what actually happened...
Or the focus is on the danger of 'backlash'.
The mass media are obviously terrified that if the Masses get to hear about what is going on in a timely and clear way - then they will 'backlash' - that is the Masses will rise-up and... well, put a stop to it... somehow.
In this they overestimate the Masses; as does almost everyone.
Nowadays, in The West, incidents and atrocities occur quite frequently which would - in the past - have caused instant and decisive reversal of policies, major changes of law, mass riots, civil wars, indeed inter-national wars - and nowadays they provoke... nothing at all.
The ruling Leftist elites are concerned that the Masses will rise-up and thwart them in their revolutionary projects - they are wasting their time: it won't happen.
The Right wing opposition are hoping and encouraging the Masses to rise-up and thwart the Left: they are wasting their time: it won't happen.
The Western Masses are inert, cowardly, ineffectual - they get reality from the media, they don't believe common sense, they don't even believe the evidence of their own eyes.
The Western Masses are utterly demotivated: they won't do anything about anything unless there is a payoff in instant diversion or hedonism... and even then, they would probably rather get intoxicated.
It used to be said of some measure that public opinion 'would not stand for it' - he fact is that THE problem is the Western Masses have proven, again and again, that they will stand for anything.
Given that this is a fact, and that it will lead to the continuation of a strategy of utter and deliberate destruction of all Good things in the West by the Leftist Establishment - what is to be done?
What is needed is Motivation.
Where does motivation come from? The answer is given by considering where did motivation go?
My inference is that motivation went when religion died as an effective force in the West. It seems to me that the Masses of all Religious societies are a force to be reckoned with; but in non-religious societies they are not a force to be reckoned with: they are not any kind of force at all.
This fact does not, of course, mean that people can or should become religious in order to find motivation. That is not a reason to become religious - it is certainly not a reason to become Christian.
But the fact that the Masses, since the end of Christianity, have become so utterly contemptible in their short-termist, hedonic, bovine placidity should at least be noted as a consequence.
And people might reflect that if subtraction of Christianity from a culture can lead to the Masses ignoring gross and lethal atrocities occurring, repeatedly, on their own doorsteps: then maybe, perhaps, there was something to be said for Christianity after all...?
Or the focus is on the danger of 'backlash'.
The mass media are obviously terrified that if the Masses get to hear about what is going on in a timely and clear way - then they will 'backlash' - that is the Masses will rise-up and... well, put a stop to it... somehow.
In this they overestimate the Masses; as does almost everyone.
Nowadays, in The West, incidents and atrocities occur quite frequently which would - in the past - have caused instant and decisive reversal of policies, major changes of law, mass riots, civil wars, indeed inter-national wars - and nowadays they provoke... nothing at all.
The ruling Leftist elites are concerned that the Masses will rise-up and thwart them in their revolutionary projects - they are wasting their time: it won't happen.
The Right wing opposition are hoping and encouraging the Masses to rise-up and thwart the Left: they are wasting their time: it won't happen.
The Western Masses are inert, cowardly, ineffectual - they get reality from the media, they don't believe common sense, they don't even believe the evidence of their own eyes.
The Western Masses are utterly demotivated: they won't do anything about anything unless there is a payoff in instant diversion or hedonism... and even then, they would probably rather get intoxicated.
It used to be said of some measure that public opinion 'would not stand for it' - he fact is that THE problem is the Western Masses have proven, again and again, that they will stand for anything.
Given that this is a fact, and that it will lead to the continuation of a strategy of utter and deliberate destruction of all Good things in the West by the Leftist Establishment - what is to be done?
What is needed is Motivation.
Where does motivation come from? The answer is given by considering where did motivation go?
My inference is that motivation went when religion died as an effective force in the West. It seems to me that the Masses of all Religious societies are a force to be reckoned with; but in non-religious societies they are not a force to be reckoned with: they are not any kind of force at all.
This fact does not, of course, mean that people can or should become religious in order to find motivation. That is not a reason to become religious - it is certainly not a reason to become Christian.
But the fact that the Masses, since the end of Christianity, have become so utterly contemptible in their short-termist, hedonic, bovine placidity should at least be noted as a consequence.
And people might reflect that if subtraction of Christianity from a culture can lead to the Masses ignoring gross and lethal atrocities occurring, repeatedly, on their own doorsteps: then maybe, perhaps, there was something to be said for Christianity after all...?
Sunday 10 January 2016
Mother in Heaven and Mr Hulot's Holiday - some Junior Ganymede posts
I have the privilege of posting at the Junior Ganymede blog, and have been somewhat monopolizing it over this weekend:
http://www.jrganymede.com/2016/01/09/mother-in-heaven-is-feminism-delaying-the-fullness-of-this-doctrine/
http://www.jrganymede.com/2016/01/10/mr-hulots-holiday-the-perfect-mormon-family-movie/
http://www.jrganymede.com/2016/01/09/mother-in-heaven-is-feminism-delaying-the-fullness-of-this-doctrine/
http://www.jrganymede.com/2016/01/10/mr-hulots-holiday-the-perfect-mormon-family-movie/
Saturday 9 January 2016
My epistemology
I used to be much troubled by questions of epistemology - how did we know that we knew something - how did we even know that knowledge was possible?
As far as I could see, there seemed no way that anything could be known.
But nowadays I am no longer plagued by such nihilism - and this is the solution I have worked-out (it seems valid enough to be going on with).
1. God knows - because he is the creator
2. We know because we are God's children
Explanation: We are God's literal (not symbolic) children - and therefore have inherited something of God in us, including the knowledge of the creator.
This establishes that validity of human knowledge is possible; because we have somthing of the creator (who made things) in each of us.
*
There remain many questions about explaining or deciding between disagreements in knowledge claims, errors, imprecision, uncertainty, changes etc.
But I find that the above simple epistemology does most of the heavy lifting in getting the weight of solipsism off my shoulders.
(Solipsism is the belief, or perhaps rather the fear, that I am the only thing which exists; and everything else is just in my mind.)
As far as I could see, there seemed no way that anything could be known.
But nowadays I am no longer plagued by such nihilism - and this is the solution I have worked-out (it seems valid enough to be going on with).
1. God knows - because he is the creator
2. We know because we are God's children
Explanation: We are God's literal (not symbolic) children - and therefore have inherited something of God in us, including the knowledge of the creator.
This establishes that validity of human knowledge is possible; because we have somthing of the creator (who made things) in each of us.
*
There remain many questions about explaining or deciding between disagreements in knowledge claims, errors, imprecision, uncertainty, changes etc.
But I find that the above simple epistemology does most of the heavy lifting in getting the weight of solipsism off my shoulders.
(Solipsism is the belief, or perhaps rather the fear, that I am the only thing which exists; and everything else is just in my mind.)
Friday 8 January 2016
Being coerced to be dishonest at work
http://www.jrganymede.com/2016/01/07/christians-required-to-be-dishonest-at-work/
I should make clear that my criterion for dishonesty is anything less than being as honest as possible at all times and about everything.
Being deliberately misleading (including hype, spin, selective exaggeration or hiding of problems etc) these are all dishonest: and indeed among the very worst and most insidious types of dishonesty - not least because they are 'deniable', hence insidious.
This type of expedient, deniable dishonesty is indeed endemic and almost universal in Britain - in mainstream public discourse of all kinds (including science, academia and medicine - which I know best), and even in most private discourse - in a way that was not the case forty, or even thirty, years ago.
The dishonesty is most obvious when it is self-serving - but most powerfully enforced (and difficult to resist) when it is regarded as (and may well be) necessary for the survival and/ or thriving of employing institutions - so we are asked/ required to be dishonest (as dishonest as we can get away with - without actual fabrication) for the good of our colleagues/ institution/ profession.
I should make clear that my criterion for dishonesty is anything less than being as honest as possible at all times and about everything.
Being deliberately misleading (including hype, spin, selective exaggeration or hiding of problems etc) these are all dishonest: and indeed among the very worst and most insidious types of dishonesty - not least because they are 'deniable', hence insidious.
This type of expedient, deniable dishonesty is indeed endemic and almost universal in Britain - in mainstream public discourse of all kinds (including science, academia and medicine - which I know best), and even in most private discourse - in a way that was not the case forty, or even thirty, years ago.
The dishonesty is most obvious when it is self-serving - but most powerfully enforced (and difficult to resist) when it is regarded as (and may well be) necessary for the survival and/ or thriving of employing institutions - so we are asked/ required to be dishonest (as dishonest as we can get away with - without actual fabrication) for the good of our colleagues/ institution/ profession.
Educating the group soul of The West
If we acknowledge that God is concerned not just with our individual souls, but also with the souls of peoples, nations and whole civilizations - with what we might term the 'group soul' - then we may interpret current trends in terms of the teaching, the education, the disciplining of the group soul in The West.
Whatever we may believe as individuals, and however we may behave, our time (and this era of some hundreds of year - exacerbated in recent decades) has been one of apostasy - of leaving the Christian religion, of actively rejecting Christianity.
We rejected God, then we came to believe that God is Dead, now that God had never been alive and the history of humankind was one of mass delusion. We believe that only modern Man has woken-up to realize his total freedom. Total freedom from all constraints, total freedom to do whatever he thinks is good - or evil.
This radical cutting-off from God, religion, the past - this is something, as a civilisation, we absolutely insist upon.
During this period of apostasy there has been (up until a generation ago, anyway) a great growth in prosperity, diversion, comfort, convenience - also, ever since the French Revolution there has also been wave upon wave of extermination, repression, torture and death. The twentieth century was one of the darkest in the history of the world.
It is clear, however, that there is no repentance in The West, no heed is paid to the writing on the wall. The culture has become ever more explicitly nihilistic - the major policies from the leaders of all Western Nations will have the effect of destroying the West with a very high degree of certainty.
The peace, prosperity, diversion, comfort and convenience are - pretty obviously - not meant to be 'an end in themselves'; but intended to be a means to some higher end. And everybody used to acknowledge that until the mid-20th century.
But, as a civilisation, all that 'higher' stuff has since been rejected. Yet, the leaders, the poets and artists and thinkers, the 'commentariat', are not even trying to safeguard the prosperity, comfort, convenience and radical freedom by which they justified apostasy.
Think of it: as a group soul we reject the past, and we reject all spiritual aims, and we reject defending that radical freedom which was supposed to be the justification of all the other rejections.
As a civilisation we aggressively refuse to think to learn, to perceive our true errors, to repent and change. It seems that even if all our worldly freedoms are to be lost - nonetheless we still want to be free from God at any price, at any cost, even if it causes us pain, misery, fear and an abject and cowardly death without honour.
Despite the ever-open doorway to repentance; it seems that our cultures, nations, and civilisation - the group soul of The West - insists upon playing this out to the very end.
It looks very much as if we have implicitly decided to insist upon bringing on ourselves the consequences of mass apostasy - in this world, and presumably the next.
As individuals we can, and should, opt-out of this act of civilisational suicide in the name of a 'freedom' we cannot even be bothered to defend, but instead take steps to annihilate. We should save our souls.
But the group soul? It cannot be saved if it is determined to be damned - and not damned in the end for any positive benefit, but simply from the negativism of what it does not want: it does not want God at any price; at any cost, it craves its own annihilation.
Whatever we may believe as individuals, and however we may behave, our time (and this era of some hundreds of year - exacerbated in recent decades) has been one of apostasy - of leaving the Christian religion, of actively rejecting Christianity.
We rejected God, then we came to believe that God is Dead, now that God had never been alive and the history of humankind was one of mass delusion. We believe that only modern Man has woken-up to realize his total freedom. Total freedom from all constraints, total freedom to do whatever he thinks is good - or evil.
This radical cutting-off from God, religion, the past - this is something, as a civilisation, we absolutely insist upon.
During this period of apostasy there has been (up until a generation ago, anyway) a great growth in prosperity, diversion, comfort, convenience - also, ever since the French Revolution there has also been wave upon wave of extermination, repression, torture and death. The twentieth century was one of the darkest in the history of the world.
It is clear, however, that there is no repentance in The West, no heed is paid to the writing on the wall. The culture has become ever more explicitly nihilistic - the major policies from the leaders of all Western Nations will have the effect of destroying the West with a very high degree of certainty.
The peace, prosperity, diversion, comfort and convenience are - pretty obviously - not meant to be 'an end in themselves'; but intended to be a means to some higher end. And everybody used to acknowledge that until the mid-20th century.
But, as a civilisation, all that 'higher' stuff has since been rejected. Yet, the leaders, the poets and artists and thinkers, the 'commentariat', are not even trying to safeguard the prosperity, comfort, convenience and radical freedom by which they justified apostasy.
Think of it: as a group soul we reject the past, and we reject all spiritual aims, and we reject defending that radical freedom which was supposed to be the justification of all the other rejections.
As a civilisation we aggressively refuse to think to learn, to perceive our true errors, to repent and change. It seems that even if all our worldly freedoms are to be lost - nonetheless we still want to be free from God at any price, at any cost, even if it causes us pain, misery, fear and an abject and cowardly death without honour.
Despite the ever-open doorway to repentance; it seems that our cultures, nations, and civilisation - the group soul of The West - insists upon playing this out to the very end.
It looks very much as if we have implicitly decided to insist upon bringing on ourselves the consequences of mass apostasy - in this world, and presumably the next.
As individuals we can, and should, opt-out of this act of civilisational suicide in the name of a 'freedom' we cannot even be bothered to defend, but instead take steps to annihilate. We should save our souls.
But the group soul? It cannot be saved if it is determined to be damned - and not damned in the end for any positive benefit, but simply from the negativism of what it does not want: it does not want God at any price; at any cost, it craves its own annihilation.
The un-understandability of abstraction: or, let's be clear about God (reflections on Owen Barfield)
First, the abstract version...
Abstract thinking, thinking about things in general, is very difficult - so difficult that it is difficult to know when you know - and when you have got lost in abstraction.
A lot of the philosophy I read is made more difficult by lacking a basis in metaphysics - the philosophy just 'hangs there' in mid air - not really explaining, lacking context.
It is an advantage of theology when God is put into position at the top of the explanatory scheme - rooting the further speculations. But then again, for most philosophical writers, God is conceptualised with extreme abstraction - impersonally, as a collection of attributes or non-attributes.
Only when God is understood as a person with personal attributes; a man with a plan; a man who has motivations, hopes and can feel sorrow and joy: our Father... only with such concrete clarity are the abstract schemes rooted.
I find that what was a complex and hard-to-follow explanation often enough becomes something simple enough to tell a child - when expressed in terms of what God wants.
All this is a factor when authors leave-out God. They may leave Him out because they suppose they don't believe him (although their scheme entails implicitly that they actually do), or in deference to the conventions of the genre that they are writing in, or in hope of attracting a wider audience.
But there is a price to pay - misunderstanding by others, on top of the danger of self-misunderstanding.
Is abstraction more explanatory? Maybe not. Maybe the greater scope of abstract explanations is merely the result of a wider deficit of understanding?
*
Now the concrete version...
Understanding the work of Owen Barfield has been made far more difficult than it need be by the omission of God from the explanatory scheme. In particular, the failure to link the philosophical scheme to what God wants, and why.
For example, great effort is made to explain the evolution of human consciousness through three phases from Original Participation and aiming at Final Participation - but it is never explicitly explained why, what this epic drama of millennia is all for. Nor is it explained why God needs to achieve His goals by such a long-drawn-out and unreliable process.
Now, all this can be answered, and the answers are implicit and can be quarried out. Barfield was a Christian. But the fact is that most of Owen Barfield's advocates and admirers were and are not Christian (or, if they are, never mention the fact) - and indeed may be 'post-modernists.
Clearly, the modern Barfeldians do not realise that the evolution of consciousness metaphysic is neither-here-nor there without God.
In the first place, it is a metaphysical scheme which, as with all metaphysical schemes, intrinsically cannot be proven empirically. Barfield says he came upon it by studying the changing meaning of words, but that is autobiography. Observations of changing meanings of words can be 'explained' in innumerable ways that do not entail a fundamental restructuring of metaphysical reality.
But secondly - even if it is true (which I believe it is!) the evolution of consciousness has no significance unless there is some reason for us to live by it - we need to know whether the new metaphysics of consciousness is Good for us to believe, no just whether it is coherent and consistent with the facts.
I presume that Barfield left-out God partly in order to make his work accessible to a wide audience who did not share his Christianity, and partly because he did not himself see his work as flowing-from his Christian belief - but rather as pointing-at it. Whatever the reason, there was a price to pay - and the price was:
1. His work became very difficult to understand , due to its abstract nature. and,
2. People who misunderstood his work were unable to detect their own misunderstanding - again due to the difficulties of extended abstract thinking. Consequently,
3. Most writer about Owen Barfield seem to leave out God, and thereby implicitly reduce the significance of his work to being some kind of conceptual metaphysical schema simply floating in a space somewhere in-between our personal lives and the ultimate basis of reality.
*
The trouble is that when we force or allow ourselves to be crystal clear about God, it comes across as childish which puts off most intellectuals and academics - thereby destroying ones' audience. It also makes things so clear and easy to understand that people immediately feel able to mock, criticise and to reject - whereas an abstract scheme can seldom be understood well enough to reject it outright, and will be ignored rather than mocked.
So, what should Barfield have done?
Well, I am not sure how Barfield understood God - and probably he had the rather unclear conception which is usual among most Anglicans - that is, he probably regarded God as in some symbolic way our Heavenly Father, but probably felt embarrassed and uncomfortable about 'anthropomorphising' God - and preferred to discuss Him abstractly, symbolically and so on.
But my own view of God is derived from Mormonism, and is straightforwardly anthropomorphic and concrete - also I believe that we can and do know what God wants for us and from us in general terms: he wants us to grow spiritually to become divine like him, so we can eventually have a relationship of 'friendship' rather than a parent-child relationship (or rather, a perfected loving relationship like that between a grown-up child and his Father rather than like the relationship of a perfect Father and his infant son).
Anyway... I think that what Barfield needs is something on the lines of explaining that God wants us to grow up, and attain adult consciousness (which is Final Participation) - but we must ourselves want this to happen. It can happen by the experience of living - experience is necessary, therefore the process takes time.
By our innate agency, we are free to accept or reject each step in our spiritual growth - and this applies not only to the individual soul but to the (various type of) group soul. The individual soul can achieve final participation (albeit temporarily and imperfectly during mortal life), but at the level of the group soul - e.g. the nation, or civilisation, the process is much slower.
This happens because, as the Bible makes clear, God works with 'people's as well as with individuals - because individuals are actually, in fact, like it or not - part of peoples. We began as immersed in a group consciousness, and that link to the group remains.
The stages in the evolution of consciousness which we may observe in history are the deliberations of the groups soul in moving through the developmental process form childhood consciousness, through adolescent consciousness - but none have yet reached adult consciousness (and indeed the current most advanced civilisation has turned-away-from adult consciousness).
I could go on - but this is just supposed to illustrate how the ideas are easier to express and understand when they are put into the full context.
*
Men need, Men must have, purpose - and purpose entails a divine plan and the reasons for it - reasons which we can understand and agree to.
If we leave-out purpose from our explanations then those explanations will be abstract, and become very difficult to understand, and more difficult to make sense of; and easy to misunderstand without realizing...
But if we include purpose, clearly and explicitly... everything gets much simpler. The difficulty is then related more to doing what is required, rather than (as so often) getting stuck on trying to understand what it is that we are supposed to do.
Abstract thinking, thinking about things in general, is very difficult - so difficult that it is difficult to know when you know - and when you have got lost in abstraction.
A lot of the philosophy I read is made more difficult by lacking a basis in metaphysics - the philosophy just 'hangs there' in mid air - not really explaining, lacking context.
It is an advantage of theology when God is put into position at the top of the explanatory scheme - rooting the further speculations. But then again, for most philosophical writers, God is conceptualised with extreme abstraction - impersonally, as a collection of attributes or non-attributes.
Only when God is understood as a person with personal attributes; a man with a plan; a man who has motivations, hopes and can feel sorrow and joy: our Father... only with such concrete clarity are the abstract schemes rooted.
I find that what was a complex and hard-to-follow explanation often enough becomes something simple enough to tell a child - when expressed in terms of what God wants.
All this is a factor when authors leave-out God. They may leave Him out because they suppose they don't believe him (although their scheme entails implicitly that they actually do), or in deference to the conventions of the genre that they are writing in, or in hope of attracting a wider audience.
But there is a price to pay - misunderstanding by others, on top of the danger of self-misunderstanding.
Is abstraction more explanatory? Maybe not. Maybe the greater scope of abstract explanations is merely the result of a wider deficit of understanding?
*
Now the concrete version...
Understanding the work of Owen Barfield has been made far more difficult than it need be by the omission of God from the explanatory scheme. In particular, the failure to link the philosophical scheme to what God wants, and why.
For example, great effort is made to explain the evolution of human consciousness through three phases from Original Participation and aiming at Final Participation - but it is never explicitly explained why, what this epic drama of millennia is all for. Nor is it explained why God needs to achieve His goals by such a long-drawn-out and unreliable process.
Now, all this can be answered, and the answers are implicit and can be quarried out. Barfield was a Christian. But the fact is that most of Owen Barfield's advocates and admirers were and are not Christian (or, if they are, never mention the fact) - and indeed may be 'post-modernists.
Clearly, the modern Barfeldians do not realise that the evolution of consciousness metaphysic is neither-here-nor there without God.
In the first place, it is a metaphysical scheme which, as with all metaphysical schemes, intrinsically cannot be proven empirically. Barfield says he came upon it by studying the changing meaning of words, but that is autobiography. Observations of changing meanings of words can be 'explained' in innumerable ways that do not entail a fundamental restructuring of metaphysical reality.
But secondly - even if it is true (which I believe it is!) the evolution of consciousness has no significance unless there is some reason for us to live by it - we need to know whether the new metaphysics of consciousness is Good for us to believe, no just whether it is coherent and consistent with the facts.
I presume that Barfield left-out God partly in order to make his work accessible to a wide audience who did not share his Christianity, and partly because he did not himself see his work as flowing-from his Christian belief - but rather as pointing-at it. Whatever the reason, there was a price to pay - and the price was:
1. His work became very difficult to understand , due to its abstract nature. and,
2. People who misunderstood his work were unable to detect their own misunderstanding - again due to the difficulties of extended abstract thinking. Consequently,
3. Most writer about Owen Barfield seem to leave out God, and thereby implicitly reduce the significance of his work to being some kind of conceptual metaphysical schema simply floating in a space somewhere in-between our personal lives and the ultimate basis of reality.
*
The trouble is that when we force or allow ourselves to be crystal clear about God, it comes across as childish which puts off most intellectuals and academics - thereby destroying ones' audience. It also makes things so clear and easy to understand that people immediately feel able to mock, criticise and to reject - whereas an abstract scheme can seldom be understood well enough to reject it outright, and will be ignored rather than mocked.
So, what should Barfield have done?
Well, I am not sure how Barfield understood God - and probably he had the rather unclear conception which is usual among most Anglicans - that is, he probably regarded God as in some symbolic way our Heavenly Father, but probably felt embarrassed and uncomfortable about 'anthropomorphising' God - and preferred to discuss Him abstractly, symbolically and so on.
But my own view of God is derived from Mormonism, and is straightforwardly anthropomorphic and concrete - also I believe that we can and do know what God wants for us and from us in general terms: he wants us to grow spiritually to become divine like him, so we can eventually have a relationship of 'friendship' rather than a parent-child relationship (or rather, a perfected loving relationship like that between a grown-up child and his Father rather than like the relationship of a perfect Father and his infant son).
Anyway... I think that what Barfield needs is something on the lines of explaining that God wants us to grow up, and attain adult consciousness (which is Final Participation) - but we must ourselves want this to happen. It can happen by the experience of living - experience is necessary, therefore the process takes time.
By our innate agency, we are free to accept or reject each step in our spiritual growth - and this applies not only to the individual soul but to the (various type of) group soul. The individual soul can achieve final participation (albeit temporarily and imperfectly during mortal life), but at the level of the group soul - e.g. the nation, or civilisation, the process is much slower.
This happens because, as the Bible makes clear, God works with 'people's as well as with individuals - because individuals are actually, in fact, like it or not - part of peoples. We began as immersed in a group consciousness, and that link to the group remains.
The stages in the evolution of consciousness which we may observe in history are the deliberations of the groups soul in moving through the developmental process form childhood consciousness, through adolescent consciousness - but none have yet reached adult consciousness (and indeed the current most advanced civilisation has turned-away-from adult consciousness).
I could go on - but this is just supposed to illustrate how the ideas are easier to express and understand when they are put into the full context.
*
Men need, Men must have, purpose - and purpose entails a divine plan and the reasons for it - reasons which we can understand and agree to.
If we leave-out purpose from our explanations then those explanations will be abstract, and become very difficult to understand, and more difficult to make sense of; and easy to misunderstand without realizing...
But if we include purpose, clearly and explicitly... everything gets much simpler. The difficulty is then related more to doing what is required, rather than (as so often) getting stuck on trying to understand what it is that we are supposed to do.
Thursday 7 January 2016
What is going-on with global conspiracy theories?
I knew almost nothing about the world of large scope conspiracy theories, certainly no details, until I discovered a couple of years ago that somebody who I had once known quite well was actually the leader of one of the lesser known but still substantial groupings (having very detailed theories about alien Illuminati who control most of the major political and social systems).
(It was only yesterday I came across the idea that these members of the elites are a race of large reptilian shape shifters - apparently, I had unconsciously screened and edited-out this material in the past so it never reached awareness.)
Anyway, this old friend sent me links to his stuff which I sampled, and I had to form an opinion of it to make a response.
My overall view (and this includes the reptilian stuff I have only just heard about) is that these 'global conspiracy' people are mostly intelligent and well-informed individuals (my old friend is both of these), and that among a mass of errors and deliberate frauds, they are responding to a core of what might be termed some genuine 'underlying raw phenomena'.
(This is, in broad terms, the interpretative strategy of Fr Seraphim Rose in his book Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future of 1975 - when he looks at the upsurge in paranormal interest of the late sixties, including UFOs.)
It is striking that some of the conspiracy theorists have for a long time been accurately describing - in specific detail - the grossly depraved sexual culture of the British Establishment since the nineteen sixties; of which most of us have only been aware since Jimmy Savile - but which continues to astonish and appall with its revelations. I would certainly have regarded endemic, pervasive elite paedophilia as the craziest of allegations; until I, like everyone else, was forced to accept the weight of evidence.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/the-satanic-british-establishment.html
In a nutshell, my interpretation is that these global conspiracy theorists are essentially atheists who are describing what they can perceive of the actuality of Spiritual Warfare in the End Times.
The conspiracy theories are about aliens; my guess is that the core of reality is demonic activity at the high levels of global society, and presumably some rare manifestations or detections of actual demons (who are said to be discarnate beings, but who can simulate human bodies).
That is, reptilians = demons (and not aliens).
(Also, some'good aliens' may actually be angelic - in principle, Christians must accept that possibility.)
So that is what I said, and what I think is probably going on - global conspiracy theory is what you get when spiritually acute people notice the situation of spiritual warfare which has played-out on earth and through history; they are people who disbelieve the positive side of Christianity and therefore misinterpret the real activities of Satan and his minions and servants.
The result of this one-sided combination is a horrified and dread-full state of mind, in which the individual conspiracy theorist feels himself overwhelmed by the power and scale of purposive spiritual evil in this world, and sees no realistic hope for escape during mortal life, and no hope of opposite and compensatory supernatural good.
This state of mind can be experienced by engaging with their world for even a few minutes - the nature of the analysis leads strongly towards despair, and therefore indirectly supports the evil agenda (since despair is a sin) - which may perhaps be why propagation and discussion of such ideas is allowed to continue.
Indeed, this is what seems to happen with all secular groups who practise what they term Red Pill thinking - I mean those who develop a world view focused on the harsh-but-denied 'truths' of modern life.
If this perspective is taken seriously, on its own terms, such thinking must lead to horror, misery, dread and despair - which is the inescapable state of mind of those of the ultra-radical anti-establishment anarchic Left who genuinely believe their own analysis.
(It was only yesterday I came across the idea that these members of the elites are a race of large reptilian shape shifters - apparently, I had unconsciously screened and edited-out this material in the past so it never reached awareness.)
Anyway, this old friend sent me links to his stuff which I sampled, and I had to form an opinion of it to make a response.
My overall view (and this includes the reptilian stuff I have only just heard about) is that these 'global conspiracy' people are mostly intelligent and well-informed individuals (my old friend is both of these), and that among a mass of errors and deliberate frauds, they are responding to a core of what might be termed some genuine 'underlying raw phenomena'.
(This is, in broad terms, the interpretative strategy of Fr Seraphim Rose in his book Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future of 1975 - when he looks at the upsurge in paranormal interest of the late sixties, including UFOs.)
It is striking that some of the conspiracy theorists have for a long time been accurately describing - in specific detail - the grossly depraved sexual culture of the British Establishment since the nineteen sixties; of which most of us have only been aware since Jimmy Savile - but which continues to astonish and appall with its revelations. I would certainly have regarded endemic, pervasive elite paedophilia as the craziest of allegations; until I, like everyone else, was forced to accept the weight of evidence.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/the-satanic-british-establishment.html
In a nutshell, my interpretation is that these global conspiracy theorists are essentially atheists who are describing what they can perceive of the actuality of Spiritual Warfare in the End Times.
The conspiracy theories are about aliens; my guess is that the core of reality is demonic activity at the high levels of global society, and presumably some rare manifestations or detections of actual demons (who are said to be discarnate beings, but who can simulate human bodies).
That is, reptilians = demons (and not aliens).
(Also, some'good aliens' may actually be angelic - in principle, Christians must accept that possibility.)
So that is what I said, and what I think is probably going on - global conspiracy theory is what you get when spiritually acute people notice the situation of spiritual warfare which has played-out on earth and through history; they are people who disbelieve the positive side of Christianity and therefore misinterpret the real activities of Satan and his minions and servants.
The result of this one-sided combination is a horrified and dread-full state of mind, in which the individual conspiracy theorist feels himself overwhelmed by the power and scale of purposive spiritual evil in this world, and sees no realistic hope for escape during mortal life, and no hope of opposite and compensatory supernatural good.
This state of mind can be experienced by engaging with their world for even a few minutes - the nature of the analysis leads strongly towards despair, and therefore indirectly supports the evil agenda (since despair is a sin) - which may perhaps be why propagation and discussion of such ideas is allowed to continue.
Indeed, this is what seems to happen with all secular groups who practise what they term Red Pill thinking - I mean those who develop a world view focused on the harsh-but-denied 'truths' of modern life.
If this perspective is taken seriously, on its own terms, such thinking must lead to horror, misery, dread and despair - which is the inescapable state of mind of those of the ultra-radical anti-establishment anarchic Left who genuinely believe their own analysis.
What do I think of The Holy Grail?
Commenter Crow asked me for my view on the subject of The Holy Grail - and his question was interesting to me, because I found it hard to give a brief answer.
In one sense I am not very interested by the HG, because I have very seldom thought about it spontaneously. In another sense, I have read quite a few books which feature the topic, and it is bound-up with something which does interest me intensely, a secret mania - perhaps, which is the idea of Jesus visiting Britain during his life and before his ministry, and the linked idea that Joseph of Arimathea came to Britain not long after the crucifixion, and founded The Church (probably in Glastonbury).
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/and-did-those-feet-jesus-in-england.html
So - the actual object of The Grail is not a thing I think much about, but the circumstances by which it arrived in Britain is. If pressed, I would say that I sort-of, mildly believe that the object was real and came to Britain; that it was precious and formed the centre of perhaps the founding church in England; but not that it had any magical powers - especially not of a kind which could be used for evil purposes.
In one sense I am not very interested by the HG, because I have very seldom thought about it spontaneously. In another sense, I have read quite a few books which feature the topic, and it is bound-up with something which does interest me intensely, a secret mania - perhaps, which is the idea of Jesus visiting Britain during his life and before his ministry, and the linked idea that Joseph of Arimathea came to Britain not long after the crucifixion, and founded The Church (probably in Glastonbury).
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/and-did-those-feet-jesus-in-england.html
So - the actual object of The Grail is not a thing I think much about, but the circumstances by which it arrived in Britain is. If pressed, I would say that I sort-of, mildly believe that the object was real and came to Britain; that it was precious and formed the centre of perhaps the founding church in England; but not that it had any magical powers - especially not of a kind which could be used for evil purposes.
Wednesday 6 January 2016
The ancient spiritual role of the Island of Britain - from Nikolai Tolstoy's Quest for Merlin
The evidence indicates that as priest prophet and magician, Merlin was the incarnation of a god - or was held to have been such. He stood as heir to an extraordinarily rich and varied mythological tradition.
In the Welsh Triads, the first name that this Island bore, before it was taken or settled, was Merlin's Precinct. Clearly there was a time when Merlin was regarded as embodying in some respects the Isle of Britain.
Another tradition tells how Merlin acquired the Thirteen Treasure of the Isle of Britain - various objects possessing miraculous powers - and went with them to the Glass House, and there they remain forever. The Glass House is the Otherworld, and may be alluded to in the Welsh name Myrddin meaning 'fortress of the sea' - the island fortress of Britain herself - hemmed in by the transparent walls of the ocean.
Britain herself was identified at times with the Otherworld. As early as the sixth century there existed a belief in Brittany that the souls of the dead were wafted across the English Channel in unmanned boats. On the British shore they saw no-one but heard a voice name them all, one by one.
Like Shakespeare's John of Gaunt, it seems that the Britons of old may have regarded their Island as as 'this little world, this precious stone, set in the silver sea, which serves it the office of a wall'; in which case Myrddin was simply a homonym for Britain.
It is likely that the coastal perimeter of Britain was regarded as a magic defence, marking out the middle of a chaotic space, peopled with demons and phantoms; an enclosure, a place that was organised.
In the case of Britain, 'the fairest island in the world', it may be that it was looked upon as a particularly sacred place, a microcosm of the larger world.
In Merlin's day the Island of Britain was regarded as lying in a direct path of the axis mundi which linked the Nail of the Heavens (the Pole Star) to Earth and the Underworld beneath. Gildas, writing in the middle of the sixth century, opens his history by stating that Britain is 'poised in the divine balance which sustains the whole earth'.
Edited and paraphrased from pages 117-119 of The Quest for Merlin by Count Nikolai Tolstoy, 1985.
In the Welsh Triads, the first name that this Island bore, before it was taken or settled, was Merlin's Precinct. Clearly there was a time when Merlin was regarded as embodying in some respects the Isle of Britain.
Another tradition tells how Merlin acquired the Thirteen Treasure of the Isle of Britain - various objects possessing miraculous powers - and went with them to the Glass House, and there they remain forever. The Glass House is the Otherworld, and may be alluded to in the Welsh name Myrddin meaning 'fortress of the sea' - the island fortress of Britain herself - hemmed in by the transparent walls of the ocean.
Britain herself was identified at times with the Otherworld. As early as the sixth century there existed a belief in Brittany that the souls of the dead were wafted across the English Channel in unmanned boats. On the British shore they saw no-one but heard a voice name them all, one by one.
Like Shakespeare's John of Gaunt, it seems that the Britons of old may have regarded their Island as as 'this little world, this precious stone, set in the silver sea, which serves it the office of a wall'; in which case Myrddin was simply a homonym for Britain.
It is likely that the coastal perimeter of Britain was regarded as a magic defence, marking out the middle of a chaotic space, peopled with demons and phantoms; an enclosure, a place that was organised.
In the case of Britain, 'the fairest island in the world', it may be that it was looked upon as a particularly sacred place, a microcosm of the larger world.
In Merlin's day the Island of Britain was regarded as lying in a direct path of the axis mundi which linked the Nail of the Heavens (the Pole Star) to Earth and the Underworld beneath. Gildas, writing in the middle of the sixth century, opens his history by stating that Britain is 'poised in the divine balance which sustains the whole earth'.
Edited and paraphrased from pages 117-119 of The Quest for Merlin by Count Nikolai Tolstoy, 1985.
Tuesday 5 January 2016
The metaphysics of natural selection in the context of evolution as a whole
I have been engaged in a period of intense metaphysical reflection recently
- in other words thinking about the fundamental structure of reality.
For those who don't know - I am (pretty much) an evolutionary theorist by profession, so this is a topic I have thought about a great deal over the years.
e.g. http://christian-evolutionist.blogspot.co.uk
But my recent engagement with the work of Owen Barfield has opened up the topic again; and in a more fundamentally challenging way than ever before.
*
What strikes me clearly is the extent to which the whole set of assumptions of the standard Natural Selection story is completely different from natural selection than for Mormon theology, indeed almost the exact opposite.
Natural selection is predicated on a basic situation of reality as purely-material, simple, dead, non-conscious, and purposeless - and envisages complexity, life, consciousness and (apparent) purpose as emerging incrementally from this by undirected mechanisms (it 'just happens').
The Mormon theology is the opposite - the basic situation - before the earth is made - was one of spirit, life, consciousness, purpose etc. (However, Mormonism has an implicitly evolutionary metaphysics, in that creation is the organization of pre-existing 'matter' over Time by a pre-existing divinity. There is no 'creation from nothing' - with its requirement for instantaneous change - outside of Time. Mormonism envisages everything unfolding and shaping inside Time.)
*
My current understanding is that there is no doubt that natural selection is real and observable - to some extent and in some situations. When a certain set of circumstances prevail - reproduction in excess, heritable variation competition etc - Natural Selection just-happens, it is algorithmic). But NS should be (logically, must be) regarded as a set of factors embedded within the larger reality.
Therefore, basic situation and long term trend is one thing - and natural selection is a local and short term modifier.
What this seems to mean, is that the mainstream modern, scientific understanding of the last 4.5 billion years on earth 'must be' wrong - because it assumes that the basic situation is entirely explained by natural selection. And this false but underlying metaphysical assumption of the ultimate validity of NS undercuts all religious belief in an insidious fashion - and destroys the reality of all and any purpose, meaning and relationships.
Barfield's insight was that we must restore a proper, true metaphysical framework to our story of the history of the earth - and we must put NS into this framework as a local and short-term factor, rather than trying to do the opposite - or trying to treat both metaphysical assumptions as (somehow) simultaneously (equally) correct.
*
So, I think we need to have a very different picture in our minds when we think of the history of earth and especially of life on earth. We need a picture of the earth and everything in it as alive, conscious, purposive and connected.
(My current notion is of original Earth as a living ocean with seeds of potential Men - spiritual intelligences - in it. This isn't quite right, but something of the sort...)
This primordial situation has the potential for all that happened - then evolves by a process of transformation, metamorphosis - of coagulation and incarnation - a 'segmenting' of this diffuse reality into ever smaller, and more concentrated, and autonomous self-aware and purposive agents.
This means we 'take for granted' communication, relationship, cohesion, coordination (as the primordial reality) - and see evolution as a process of individualization, self awareness, smaller scale purposiveness etc.
But - this is en route to a final situation when the autonomous agents of incarnate Men have become more fully divine and can return to a higher and fuller and more 'equal' relationship with God.
*
Natural selection is still in the picture; but working in a local and time-bounded way within this over-arching and dominant purpose. Natural selection with its tendencies to 'selfishness' and indeed parasitic exploitation; and the breakdown of complexity, order, purpose (life, consciousness...) All this is a fact; but does not have the last word. NS is 'merely' a (sometimes) counter-current in the inexorable flow of a vast and powerful river.
*
In principle, I don't see any fundamental problems with this overall view, because it retains all that is observable and logically-necessary about Natural Selection while recognizing its subordinate status in evolution; and I think some such reconceptualisation of our picture of deep history is likely to be required in the long term.
In principle... It is easy enough to state what we must or should do.
But the difficult task is for the correct metaphysics to become habitual, natural, indeed subconscious - in both thinking and in public discourse - consistently applied across all realms of human life.
For those who don't know - I am (pretty much) an evolutionary theorist by profession, so this is a topic I have thought about a great deal over the years.
e.g. http://christian-evolutionist.blogspot.co.uk
But my recent engagement with the work of Owen Barfield has opened up the topic again; and in a more fundamentally challenging way than ever before.
*
What strikes me clearly is the extent to which the whole set of assumptions of the standard Natural Selection story is completely different from natural selection than for Mormon theology, indeed almost the exact opposite.
Natural selection is predicated on a basic situation of reality as purely-material, simple, dead, non-conscious, and purposeless - and envisages complexity, life, consciousness and (apparent) purpose as emerging incrementally from this by undirected mechanisms (it 'just happens').
The Mormon theology is the opposite - the basic situation - before the earth is made - was one of spirit, life, consciousness, purpose etc. (However, Mormonism has an implicitly evolutionary metaphysics, in that creation is the organization of pre-existing 'matter' over Time by a pre-existing divinity. There is no 'creation from nothing' - with its requirement for instantaneous change - outside of Time. Mormonism envisages everything unfolding and shaping inside Time.)
*
My current understanding is that there is no doubt that natural selection is real and observable - to some extent and in some situations. When a certain set of circumstances prevail - reproduction in excess, heritable variation competition etc - Natural Selection just-happens, it is algorithmic). But NS should be (logically, must be) regarded as a set of factors embedded within the larger reality.
Therefore, basic situation and long term trend is one thing - and natural selection is a local and short term modifier.
What this seems to mean, is that the mainstream modern, scientific understanding of the last 4.5 billion years on earth 'must be' wrong - because it assumes that the basic situation is entirely explained by natural selection. And this false but underlying metaphysical assumption of the ultimate validity of NS undercuts all religious belief in an insidious fashion - and destroys the reality of all and any purpose, meaning and relationships.
Barfield's insight was that we must restore a proper, true metaphysical framework to our story of the history of the earth - and we must put NS into this framework as a local and short-term factor, rather than trying to do the opposite - or trying to treat both metaphysical assumptions as (somehow) simultaneously (equally) correct.
*
So, I think we need to have a very different picture in our minds when we think of the history of earth and especially of life on earth. We need a picture of the earth and everything in it as alive, conscious, purposive and connected.
(My current notion is of original Earth as a living ocean with seeds of potential Men - spiritual intelligences - in it. This isn't quite right, but something of the sort...)
This primordial situation has the potential for all that happened - then evolves by a process of transformation, metamorphosis - of coagulation and incarnation - a 'segmenting' of this diffuse reality into ever smaller, and more concentrated, and autonomous self-aware and purposive agents.
This means we 'take for granted' communication, relationship, cohesion, coordination (as the primordial reality) - and see evolution as a process of individualization, self awareness, smaller scale purposiveness etc.
But - this is en route to a final situation when the autonomous agents of incarnate Men have become more fully divine and can return to a higher and fuller and more 'equal' relationship with God.
*
Natural selection is still in the picture; but working in a local and time-bounded way within this over-arching and dominant purpose. Natural selection with its tendencies to 'selfishness' and indeed parasitic exploitation; and the breakdown of complexity, order, purpose (life, consciousness...) All this is a fact; but does not have the last word. NS is 'merely' a (sometimes) counter-current in the inexorable flow of a vast and powerful river.
*
In principle, I don't see any fundamental problems with this overall view, because it retains all that is observable and logically-necessary about Natural Selection while recognizing its subordinate status in evolution; and I think some such reconceptualisation of our picture of deep history is likely to be required in the long term.
In principle... It is easy enough to state what we must or should do.
But the difficult task is for the correct metaphysics to become habitual, natural, indeed subconscious - in both thinking and in public discourse - consistently applied across all realms of human life.
Monday 4 January 2016
Why are so many clever and creative people so fundamentally wrong? Unask the question: the proper question is to ask why they are motivated to expend such effort on propagating their wrongness
So many of the cleverest and most creative people nowadays are wrong about the most fundamental things that it is tempting (and I have in the past responded to that temptation) to try and explain why the intellectual elites are so very wrong about almost everything.
But I now see that this question falsely assumes that we should expect clever and creative people - I mean people such as writers, artists, musicians, performers, directors and actors, scientists, philosophers, academics, lawyers, theologians... - to be correct about fundamental things, or at least more likely to be correct than the average person.
Yet there is no reason to assume that clever and creative people are correct about fundamental things - since there is zero evidence to suggest or support that idea.
Clever and creative people have no greater insight into fundamental truths than anybody else; probably because fundamental truths are precisely what a person does not need to be clever in order to understand.
Therefore, the proper assumption should be that the intellectual elites are simply part of the modern cultural mainstream, just like (almost) everyone else.
*
When it comes to culture, clever and creative people are passive absorbers; just like almost everybody else.
This means that in a Good or insightful culture, the intellectual elite's work will be Good and insightful; but in an evil and deluded culture, such as the modern secular West - then the clever and creative people will (almost all of them) peddle evil and delusions.
(Why not? In the modern West, most of the dumb and unimaginative people also peddle evil and delusions, just like the intellectual elite - it is just that dumb people aren't very good at it.)
*
But the interesting aspect is that when the mainstream culture is as shallow, insufficient and incoherent as ours is; then the intellectual elite are galvanised to greater energies.
The elites lack any special insight, therefore they absorb as axiomatic whatever culture feeds to them; but they are clever enough to perceive that it does not make sense.
*
However, this shallow, insufficient incoherence of what they passively regard as axiomatically true; does not lead elites to reject the mainstream culture but instead to redouble their efforts to make sense of it.
Hence the vast outpourings of silly-cleverness and evil-propagating creativity which characterise the modern mainstream mass media culture: this is the sound of an intellectual elite doubling-down on wicked nonsense.
**
Note: This is, of course, almost the opposite of how the intellectual elite would like to see themselves.
When Shelly described 'poets' (implicitly the intellectual elite) as the 'unacknowledged legislators' of the world; he was fuelling this elite fantasy that culture is created and shaped by clever and creative people such as themselves - who are the only 'real' agents who lead change, while the masses merely follow where the 'poets' lead.
But if clever creative people are merely parroting, but not devising, their fundamental assumptions; then such 'poets' are redefined as merely diligent administrators: bureaucrats who operationalise and implement principles derived from elsewhere.
This seems obviously correct, once described. The Goodness and wisdom we find expressed so perfectly in Shakespeare is really just mainstream Tudor wisdom - as revealed by the fact that it is mixed with gross Tudor errors and evils. The mainstream culture Shakespeare's era had many deep insights into reality - although it was somewhat contradictory, as evidenced by the vicious religious wars; our modern culture is mostly composed of wicked inversions and lies, shallow distractions, superficial sensations and temporary intoxications - with only relatively few fundamental truths remaining and made explicit.
And this is exactly the mixture (mostly wrong and silly, yet with flashes of depth and wisdom) purveyed by modern masters of their arts, and by the bulk of clever contemporary commentators.
But I now see that this question falsely assumes that we should expect clever and creative people - I mean people such as writers, artists, musicians, performers, directors and actors, scientists, philosophers, academics, lawyers, theologians... - to be correct about fundamental things, or at least more likely to be correct than the average person.
Yet there is no reason to assume that clever and creative people are correct about fundamental things - since there is zero evidence to suggest or support that idea.
Clever and creative people have no greater insight into fundamental truths than anybody else; probably because fundamental truths are precisely what a person does not need to be clever in order to understand.
Therefore, the proper assumption should be that the intellectual elites are simply part of the modern cultural mainstream, just like (almost) everyone else.
*
When it comes to culture, clever and creative people are passive absorbers; just like almost everybody else.
This means that in a Good or insightful culture, the intellectual elite's work will be Good and insightful; but in an evil and deluded culture, such as the modern secular West - then the clever and creative people will (almost all of them) peddle evil and delusions.
(Why not? In the modern West, most of the dumb and unimaginative people also peddle evil and delusions, just like the intellectual elite - it is just that dumb people aren't very good at it.)
*
But the interesting aspect is that when the mainstream culture is as shallow, insufficient and incoherent as ours is; then the intellectual elite are galvanised to greater energies.
The elites lack any special insight, therefore they absorb as axiomatic whatever culture feeds to them; but they are clever enough to perceive that it does not make sense.
*
However, this shallow, insufficient incoherence of what they passively regard as axiomatically true; does not lead elites to reject the mainstream culture but instead to redouble their efforts to make sense of it.
Hence the vast outpourings of silly-cleverness and evil-propagating creativity which characterise the modern mainstream mass media culture: this is the sound of an intellectual elite doubling-down on wicked nonsense.
**
Note: This is, of course, almost the opposite of how the intellectual elite would like to see themselves.
When Shelly described 'poets' (implicitly the intellectual elite) as the 'unacknowledged legislators' of the world; he was fuelling this elite fantasy that culture is created and shaped by clever and creative people such as themselves - who are the only 'real' agents who lead change, while the masses merely follow where the 'poets' lead.
But if clever creative people are merely parroting, but not devising, their fundamental assumptions; then such 'poets' are redefined as merely diligent administrators: bureaucrats who operationalise and implement principles derived from elsewhere.
This seems obviously correct, once described. The Goodness and wisdom we find expressed so perfectly in Shakespeare is really just mainstream Tudor wisdom - as revealed by the fact that it is mixed with gross Tudor errors and evils. The mainstream culture Shakespeare's era had many deep insights into reality - although it was somewhat contradictory, as evidenced by the vicious religious wars; our modern culture is mostly composed of wicked inversions and lies, shallow distractions, superficial sensations and temporary intoxications - with only relatively few fundamental truths remaining and made explicit.
And this is exactly the mixture (mostly wrong and silly, yet with flashes of depth and wisdom) purveyed by modern masters of their arts, and by the bulk of clever contemporary commentators.
Sunday 3 January 2016
Review of BBC Sherlock 'The Abominable Bride'
I watched, live, the BBC 'Christmas Special (broadcast January 1 2016) of their highly successful Sherlock series starring the acting 'dream team' of Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, and produced by the scriptwriting dream team from Doctor Who - of Stephen Moffat and Mark Gatiss.
On the one hand it was (mostly) state-of-the-art entertaining, clever, witty hokum - with high production values; on the other hand it was 98% soft-sell propaganda; and 2% a full dress sermon, with an explicit moral message - all combined to promote an asonishingly evil morality based on distorted pseudo-facts.
The whole plot was built on the (false) premise of woman's pervasive and extreme historical oppression.
(In fact, in almost all societies in history, by biological, physical, and social structural criteria women are the privileged sex: obviously! and rightly so, in my view) - just compare the lives, dangers, hardships, mortality rates, life expectancies, privileges, responsibilities, exemptions, supports etc. The mass of men are, and always have been, regarded as disposible...)
In case we missed the implicit message, at the denouement Sherlock stepped out of character, and delivered a (false) historical sermon almost straight to camera to explain this to the audience - illustrated with women characters stepping out of character to illustrate the various types of female oppression (cruelty, violence, infidelity, being marginalised as a servant, not being allowed to qualify as a doctor - all conflated); after which he drew the moral that because oppression women who have experienced oppression are entitled to murder men.
In other words, the episode was constructed - with considerable brilliance, expense and effort throughout - to prove the assertion that oppression of women (self-defined) is the greatest human sin, and (therefore) worse than murder - in the sense that it justifies murder.
Its overall purpose, almost perfectly achieved - although I would regard the sermon as a major artistic flaw - was to provoke resentment and anger among women viewers; and to encourage women to unite and organise to exact revenge and further crush the exploited sex (as modelled by the secret society of women depicted in the episode).
This is, of course, the bog standard, mainstream and high status modern secular morality of The West currently and for about the past half century - in that sense there was nothing at all exceptional about The Abominable Bride except for its exceptionally high quality is entertainment.
But the array of talent and wealth and media hype that was mobilised by this exercise in propagating evil morality demonstrates to me the utter futility of Christians imagining that they can win the Culture Wars by engaging the opposition on their own ground! The fight for Good must therefore take place outwith the mass media, and by invisible and undetectable communicative means - these channels are invisible and undetectable because the enemy think they are unreal, made-up, nonsense.
On the one hand it was (mostly) state-of-the-art entertaining, clever, witty hokum - with high production values; on the other hand it was 98% soft-sell propaganda; and 2% a full dress sermon, with an explicit moral message - all combined to promote an asonishingly evil morality based on distorted pseudo-facts.
The whole plot was built on the (false) premise of woman's pervasive and extreme historical oppression.
(In fact, in almost all societies in history, by biological, physical, and social structural criteria women are the privileged sex: obviously! and rightly so, in my view) - just compare the lives, dangers, hardships, mortality rates, life expectancies, privileges, responsibilities, exemptions, supports etc. The mass of men are, and always have been, regarded as disposible...)
In case we missed the implicit message, at the denouement Sherlock stepped out of character, and delivered a (false) historical sermon almost straight to camera to explain this to the audience - illustrated with women characters stepping out of character to illustrate the various types of female oppression (cruelty, violence, infidelity, being marginalised as a servant, not being allowed to qualify as a doctor - all conflated); after which he drew the moral that because oppression women who have experienced oppression are entitled to murder men.
In other words, the episode was constructed - with considerable brilliance, expense and effort throughout - to prove the assertion that oppression of women (self-defined) is the greatest human sin, and (therefore) worse than murder - in the sense that it justifies murder.
Its overall purpose, almost perfectly achieved - although I would regard the sermon as a major artistic flaw - was to provoke resentment and anger among women viewers; and to encourage women to unite and organise to exact revenge and further crush the exploited sex (as modelled by the secret society of women depicted in the episode).
This is, of course, the bog standard, mainstream and high status modern secular morality of The West currently and for about the past half century - in that sense there was nothing at all exceptional about The Abominable Bride except for its exceptionally high quality is entertainment.
But the array of talent and wealth and media hype that was mobilised by this exercise in propagating evil morality demonstrates to me the utter futility of Christians imagining that they can win the Culture Wars by engaging the opposition on their own ground! The fight for Good must therefore take place outwith the mass media, and by invisible and undetectable communicative means - these channels are invisible and undetectable because the enemy think they are unreal, made-up, nonsense.
Even sensation is imagined - there are no hard facts
In attempting to cure ourselves in ingrained habits of positivistic, nihilistic and despair-inducing modes of modern thinking; rather than trying to develop our imaginations and to acknowledge the reality of extra-sensory communications (as I suggested yesterday) - another different (but complementary) approach is to recognise that what we are accustomed to sense as as 'hard facts' of reality - that seem to force themselves upon us, such that we act as passive receivers, those thngs we feel ourselves to be 'sensing' rather than 'imagining' (the sky, this chair, my fingers)... these are as thoroughly 'imagined' as anything else.
Which is not to say the the sky, my chair, this computer are unreal - but that they are imagined. Facts do not have a direct route into our brains thereby to make accurate representations of themselves - rather, everything we get 'directly' is in a primary sense of divine origin - given us or built-into us by revelation.
Vision, hearing, touch, taste, smeel and feeling are not the direct communication routes for reality; rather the direct route for communication runs between God the creator, and our inmost true self - by 'pathways' (or mechanisms) imperceptible, undetectable, un-measurable to physics and biology.
It is not 'us and them', mind and facts - because us affects our sensory (as well as imaginative) grasp of them. Indeed (pushed to the limit) with no us, there would be no them - interpretation is more basic than facts, spirit is more basic than material.
Hard facts are neither hard nor facts - although there is a real reality.
The contrast between 'fundamental' sensations which force themselves upon us, and 'fabciful' imagination which we steer from our free agency, is a hierarchy which should be inverted - the most powerful evidence for which is that this has been inverted, by most humans, through most of history and even now in many places of the world.
Instead of perceiving 'reality' (like Western Man does) as a dead and meaningless world with a few temporary subjective and unreliable floating-islands of life and consciousness; the spontaneous and traditional human view is apparently the opposite - of an alive and purposive world, with 'objective' analysis merely an temporary, expedient, pragmatic tactic for attaining certain discrete goals - a means to an end.
In reality there are no facts - so that the contrast between the world of sensed objective facts and the world of imagined subjective ideas is a false dichotomy: these are one world.
This notion is a truth much emphasised in recent decades, partially and to create a falsehood. The project is sometimes termed de-literalisation: and the idea is that we should cease to regard things as true or false, but instead symbolically. This sustains the kind of self-refuting, yet universally destructive, relativism which is now mainstream.
But this relativism is a consequence of atheism, which takes a correct but partial analysis then removes the religious context - indeed, all ideas become nonsense when detached from any root in the divine.
(Most obviously in science - the whole endeavor of science becomes nothing but generic bureaucracy - careerism, as modern research mostly now is, when detached from a religious framework and the pursuit of transcendental truth.)
However, within the religious context of God the creator as our loving Father, then we can understand that imagination is primarily a way of understanding the workings of our deepest true self - which is divine (because we are children of God) albeit only embryonically, or nascently, divine.
In other words, much of our lives are 'automatic' - vegetative and animal processes, many of them simply functioning to perform routine tasks, or else arbitrarily implanted in us by culture and training. But that which makes us human is a deep, divine level of self-consciousness - and that is the core of our being, that is what looks out onto the world - and that is what apprehends reality by the faculty of imagination.
In sum, this is what we need to train in ourselves: this is what we need to make a habit -- that when we look-out-onto the world, we do not either lose-ourselves in a fluid undifferentiated reality (like that of childhood) that seems to 'drown' our self-awareness; or else a world in which our own self-awareness is mocked and crushed by the rock-like objectivity of cumulative hard facts.
We should aim to retain self-awareness at all times - that is indeed the destined (divinely intended) future of human consciousness.
We should regard what used to be hard facts from our dominant and sustained centre of self-awareness - of consciousness.
So that we look-out-from our sense of self onto a world which contains many kinds of things - we will see, feel and know that all is secondary to that regarding consciousness; that there is nothing out there in the world which is not imagined.
BUT, that the self which does the regarding is not imagined. That conscious, regarding self is the 'given', the 'assumption' which makes possible all other knowledge. It is not infallible nor is it 100 percent correct - but its basic,potential validity is real and fundamental because the true self is partly divine, and it is in communication with the fully divine.
Which is not to say the the sky, my chair, this computer are unreal - but that they are imagined. Facts do not have a direct route into our brains thereby to make accurate representations of themselves - rather, everything we get 'directly' is in a primary sense of divine origin - given us or built-into us by revelation.
Vision, hearing, touch, taste, smeel and feeling are not the direct communication routes for reality; rather the direct route for communication runs between God the creator, and our inmost true self - by 'pathways' (or mechanisms) imperceptible, undetectable, un-measurable to physics and biology.
It is not 'us and them', mind and facts - because us affects our sensory (as well as imaginative) grasp of them. Indeed (pushed to the limit) with no us, there would be no them - interpretation is more basic than facts, spirit is more basic than material.
Hard facts are neither hard nor facts - although there is a real reality.
The contrast between 'fundamental' sensations which force themselves upon us, and 'fabciful' imagination which we steer from our free agency, is a hierarchy which should be inverted - the most powerful evidence for which is that this has been inverted, by most humans, through most of history and even now in many places of the world.
Instead of perceiving 'reality' (like Western Man does) as a dead and meaningless world with a few temporary subjective and unreliable floating-islands of life and consciousness; the spontaneous and traditional human view is apparently the opposite - of an alive and purposive world, with 'objective' analysis merely an temporary, expedient, pragmatic tactic for attaining certain discrete goals - a means to an end.
In reality there are no facts - so that the contrast between the world of sensed objective facts and the world of imagined subjective ideas is a false dichotomy: these are one world.
This notion is a truth much emphasised in recent decades, partially and to create a falsehood. The project is sometimes termed de-literalisation: and the idea is that we should cease to regard things as true or false, but instead symbolically. This sustains the kind of self-refuting, yet universally destructive, relativism which is now mainstream.
But this relativism is a consequence of atheism, which takes a correct but partial analysis then removes the religious context - indeed, all ideas become nonsense when detached from any root in the divine.
(Most obviously in science - the whole endeavor of science becomes nothing but generic bureaucracy - careerism, as modern research mostly now is, when detached from a religious framework and the pursuit of transcendental truth.)
However, within the religious context of God the creator as our loving Father, then we can understand that imagination is primarily a way of understanding the workings of our deepest true self - which is divine (because we are children of God) albeit only embryonically, or nascently, divine.
In other words, much of our lives are 'automatic' - vegetative and animal processes, many of them simply functioning to perform routine tasks, or else arbitrarily implanted in us by culture and training. But that which makes us human is a deep, divine level of self-consciousness - and that is the core of our being, that is what looks out onto the world - and that is what apprehends reality by the faculty of imagination.
In sum, this is what we need to train in ourselves: this is what we need to make a habit -- that when we look-out-onto the world, we do not either lose-ourselves in a fluid undifferentiated reality (like that of childhood) that seems to 'drown' our self-awareness; or else a world in which our own self-awareness is mocked and crushed by the rock-like objectivity of cumulative hard facts.
We should aim to retain self-awareness at all times - that is indeed the destined (divinely intended) future of human consciousness.
We should regard what used to be hard facts from our dominant and sustained centre of self-awareness - of consciousness.
So that we look-out-from our sense of self onto a world which contains many kinds of things - we will see, feel and know that all is secondary to that regarding consciousness; that there is nothing out there in the world which is not imagined.
BUT, that the self which does the regarding is not imagined. That conscious, regarding self is the 'given', the 'assumption' which makes possible all other knowledge. It is not infallible nor is it 100 percent correct - but its basic,potential validity is real and fundamental because the true self is partly divine, and it is in communication with the fully divine.
Saturday 2 January 2016
A recipe for Christian revival - God the Father and Extra-Sensory Communication
Christian revival has proved impossible for many decades. This is understandable since Christianity alone is not enough to answer the most urgent spiritual needs of modern man.
Christianity is true, purposive, meaningful - but it is, in general, alienated.
The Christian typically lives in a world not much different from his atheist neighbours, in the sense that he communicates by the same channels - the difference is that in God he has someone significant to communcate with (creator of the universe, and also specifically concerned with him as an individual, and loving of him as a child).
The modern Christian metaphysics has become located within the Positivist, materialist, scientistic framework that assumes the only valid sources of information are those known to physics and apprehended through the senses. Physical communications.
(All other claimed communications are framed, a priori, as psychopathic, psychotic or due to feeble mindedness.)
In modernity, physical communications boil down to The Mass Media (mostly) - and this is intrinsically anti-Christian as a medium, as well as anti-Christian in nearly all of its specific content.
Living almost exclusively in this secular world of communications, regarding all other communications as either unreal or spiritually-hazardous - modern Christians usually feels just as alienated as everybody else.
(Even their view of Heaven seems alienated - hence unconvincing as a heaven.)
Modern Christians are typically trapped by the same subjective versus objective dichotomy as everybody else. Their world lacks magic, enchantment, awe and wonder - their surroundings are as cut-off, remote, impersonal, dull, mundane, dead, purposeless and insentient as the world is perceived by everyone else.
And indeed the surrounding world may be experienced as deader for Christians than it is for New Agers, Neopagans, and those 'seekers' explicitly involved in spiritual and occult movements.
Therefore Christianity on its own does not seem like an answer to the despair of modern man.
Conversion is blocked.
*
What Christianity requires is first acknowledgement, then emphasis, then training in habitual attention to the reality of extra-sensory communcations.
There needs to be a Christian discourse which focuses on, then eventually regards as common sensical, a life of frequent and significant communications with the invisible spiritual world (that world imperceptible to the usual senses, undetectable by physical instruments); there needs to be an expectation and reality of daily miracles, prophecies, synchronicities, messages and revelations from the divine.
Christians need to acknowledge the significance - and become more aware of the high frequency - of non-physical, extra-sensory channels of communication in the likes of personal revelations from the divine, healing, visions, dreams, spiritual impressions, telepathy, ghosts, dowsing, divination, 'speaking in tongues', near death phenomena, and many kinds of 'paranormal' and magical experiences.
Such communications, which affect primarily 'the imagination', with or without detectable external sensory input, ought to become the daily discourse, the way of thinking, of Christians (as they used to be in ancient times) - in contrast with and detachment from the dead, detached, despairing discourse adopted from secularism.
Thus Christianity will be not only true as an objective, but alive as an experience. Conversion will solve not just the lack of purpose and meaning of modern life - but also the alienation and spiritual deadness which is even more powerfully and urgently experienced.
*
Such Christianity will not merely be true as secularism defines truth, but also true in a direct, personal and experiential way. the Christian will not just be aiming in a new direction, but also immersed in a new discourse.
This is not easy, because it goes against the ingrained habits of thought, inculcated and sustained by mainstream culture.
A bad ingrained habit can only be defeated by replacement with a good habit. And such habits can be attained by individual agency - indeed all such social changes must begin with the summation of individual changes.
*
What is stopping this? Christian suspicion (or hatred) of magical, occult, paranormal things (sometimes, a belief in the end of revelations) - which have (chicken or egg?) also long been anti-Christian.
So we (mostly) have on the one side Christians offering the true goal of religion but no new communications (religion but not subjective transformation), and on the other side spiritually-seeking New Agers offering the appropriate communications but no transcendent goal (the goal of personal transformation gets reduced to merely 'therapy') - each is ineffectual against the tsunami of secularism; and each at war with the other.
But insofar as Christianity has Incorporated extra-sensory communications - such types of Christianity tend to have been the growth areas during the modern era - Charismatic denominations, Pentecostal Churches, Mormonism - it is clear that the combination of Christianity and non-physical communications retains the power to convert and inspire even in the most modern and alienated societies.
On the other hand, Christians are also among the most zealous and vigorous of the anti-extra-sensory communications groups - as the campaign against the Harry Potter novels demonstrated to the world. This will not change unless Christians understand that their effectiveness in gaining conversions is being blocked by what is, in fact, residual secularism.
A Christianity which does not address the necessity for re-connecting modern Man with the invisible spiritual world via direct non-physical communications is going to be a merely a distorted and incomplete semi-religion: true, but only minimally so.
Therefore I recoemmend a two-pronged evangelical strategy - neithere minimal Christianity, nor godless New Ageism - but both, presented together, mutally reinforcing, mutually interdependent, synergistic.
Both true and enchanting.
Christianity is true, purposive, meaningful - but it is, in general, alienated.
The Christian typically lives in a world not much different from his atheist neighbours, in the sense that he communicates by the same channels - the difference is that in God he has someone significant to communcate with (creator of the universe, and also specifically concerned with him as an individual, and loving of him as a child).
The modern Christian metaphysics has become located within the Positivist, materialist, scientistic framework that assumes the only valid sources of information are those known to physics and apprehended through the senses. Physical communications.
(All other claimed communications are framed, a priori, as psychopathic, psychotic or due to feeble mindedness.)
In modernity, physical communications boil down to The Mass Media (mostly) - and this is intrinsically anti-Christian as a medium, as well as anti-Christian in nearly all of its specific content.
Living almost exclusively in this secular world of communications, regarding all other communications as either unreal or spiritually-hazardous - modern Christians usually feels just as alienated as everybody else.
(Even their view of Heaven seems alienated - hence unconvincing as a heaven.)
Modern Christians are typically trapped by the same subjective versus objective dichotomy as everybody else. Their world lacks magic, enchantment, awe and wonder - their surroundings are as cut-off, remote, impersonal, dull, mundane, dead, purposeless and insentient as the world is perceived by everyone else.
And indeed the surrounding world may be experienced as deader for Christians than it is for New Agers, Neopagans, and those 'seekers' explicitly involved in spiritual and occult movements.
Therefore Christianity on its own does not seem like an answer to the despair of modern man.
Conversion is blocked.
*
What Christianity requires is first acknowledgement, then emphasis, then training in habitual attention to the reality of extra-sensory communcations.
There needs to be a Christian discourse which focuses on, then eventually regards as common sensical, a life of frequent and significant communications with the invisible spiritual world (that world imperceptible to the usual senses, undetectable by physical instruments); there needs to be an expectation and reality of daily miracles, prophecies, synchronicities, messages and revelations from the divine.
Christians need to acknowledge the significance - and become more aware of the high frequency - of non-physical, extra-sensory channels of communication in the likes of personal revelations from the divine, healing, visions, dreams, spiritual impressions, telepathy, ghosts, dowsing, divination, 'speaking in tongues', near death phenomena, and many kinds of 'paranormal' and magical experiences.
Such communications, which affect primarily 'the imagination', with or without detectable external sensory input, ought to become the daily discourse, the way of thinking, of Christians (as they used to be in ancient times) - in contrast with and detachment from the dead, detached, despairing discourse adopted from secularism.
Thus Christianity will be not only true as an objective, but alive as an experience. Conversion will solve not just the lack of purpose and meaning of modern life - but also the alienation and spiritual deadness which is even more powerfully and urgently experienced.
*
Such Christianity will not merely be true as secularism defines truth, but also true in a direct, personal and experiential way. the Christian will not just be aiming in a new direction, but also immersed in a new discourse.
This is not easy, because it goes against the ingrained habits of thought, inculcated and sustained by mainstream culture.
A bad ingrained habit can only be defeated by replacement with a good habit. And such habits can be attained by individual agency - indeed all such social changes must begin with the summation of individual changes.
*
What is stopping this? Christian suspicion (or hatred) of magical, occult, paranormal things (sometimes, a belief in the end of revelations) - which have (chicken or egg?) also long been anti-Christian.
So we (mostly) have on the one side Christians offering the true goal of religion but no new communications (religion but not subjective transformation), and on the other side spiritually-seeking New Agers offering the appropriate communications but no transcendent goal (the goal of personal transformation gets reduced to merely 'therapy') - each is ineffectual against the tsunami of secularism; and each at war with the other.
But insofar as Christianity has Incorporated extra-sensory communications - such types of Christianity tend to have been the growth areas during the modern era - Charismatic denominations, Pentecostal Churches, Mormonism - it is clear that the combination of Christianity and non-physical communications retains the power to convert and inspire even in the most modern and alienated societies.
On the other hand, Christians are also among the most zealous and vigorous of the anti-extra-sensory communications groups - as the campaign against the Harry Potter novels demonstrated to the world. This will not change unless Christians understand that their effectiveness in gaining conversions is being blocked by what is, in fact, residual secularism.
A Christianity which does not address the necessity for re-connecting modern Man with the invisible spiritual world via direct non-physical communications is going to be a merely a distorted and incomplete semi-religion: true, but only minimally so.
Therefore I recoemmend a two-pronged evangelical strategy - neithere minimal Christianity, nor godless New Ageism - but both, presented together, mutally reinforcing, mutually interdependent, synergistic.
Both true and enchanting.
Friday 1 January 2016
How to fix West Indies Cricket? End it; and start again with the island nations
From March 1976 to March 1995, the West Indies test cricket team won 71 Tests and lost 20. Since June 2000, they have won 14 and lost 81.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/international/westindies/12075892/West-Indies-cricket-is-becoming-a-relic-and-is-almost-beyond-redemption.html
What can be done to make the West Indies a top cricket team again?
Nothing can be done. It is time to end "The West Indies" cricket team and management, and start again.
When the "West Indies" began as a cricket team it could function as a nation, because all the contributing island were part of the British Empire - but now 'the West Indies' exists only as a cricket team, and the islands are now collection of autonomous, rival nations.
Cricket requires team spirit, not just individual talent. West Indies cricket has never been short of talent but the team (and its selection, management, training, strategy) utterly lacks cohesion - and national cohesion is the main basis of successful national teams,
There was a honeymoon period for a few decades after the big Caribbean nations got their Independence in the 1960s, due to ingrained habits and the overlap of generations; but the separate nations inevitably grew apart and became rivals rather than allies with respect to the cricket team.
It is now time to disband the last residue of the West Indies and to see how individual nations - such as Jamaica, Trinidad and Barbados - can function in cricket. The talent pool will be smaller (although the nations might recruit from each other, and especially the smaller islands - perhaps after a qualification period) but this will be compensated by cohesion.
I would not be surprised if one or more Caribbean nation took cricket seriously, and again produced a high quality test team within a decade or two. But (as nearly always) things will need to get worse before they can get better.
It is terribly sad to end the West Indies as a cricket team - with its truly glorious history. But it is even sadder to see what it has now become - and there is no realistic prospect of anything other than further decline.
It is time for a fresh start.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/international/westindies/12075892/West-Indies-cricket-is-becoming-a-relic-and-is-almost-beyond-redemption.html
What can be done to make the West Indies a top cricket team again?
Nothing can be done. It is time to end "The West Indies" cricket team and management, and start again.
When the "West Indies" began as a cricket team it could function as a nation, because all the contributing island were part of the British Empire - but now 'the West Indies' exists only as a cricket team, and the islands are now collection of autonomous, rival nations.
Cricket requires team spirit, not just individual talent. West Indies cricket has never been short of talent but the team (and its selection, management, training, strategy) utterly lacks cohesion - and national cohesion is the main basis of successful national teams,
There was a honeymoon period for a few decades after the big Caribbean nations got their Independence in the 1960s, due to ingrained habits and the overlap of generations; but the separate nations inevitably grew apart and became rivals rather than allies with respect to the cricket team.
It is now time to disband the last residue of the West Indies and to see how individual nations - such as Jamaica, Trinidad and Barbados - can function in cricket. The talent pool will be smaller (although the nations might recruit from each other, and especially the smaller islands - perhaps after a qualification period) but this will be compensated by cohesion.
I would not be surprised if one or more Caribbean nation took cricket seriously, and again produced a high quality test team within a decade or two. But (as nearly always) things will need to get worse before they can get better.
It is terribly sad to end the West Indies as a cricket team - with its truly glorious history. But it is even sadder to see what it has now become - and there is no realistic prospect of anything other than further decline.
It is time for a fresh start.
The example of 'evolution' as an illustration of imagination (via meditation) as the final arbiter in science
As mentioned in the previous post, I have been working for some months on a concept of group selection using complex systems theory - and got to the point where the idea was complete, and the paper was about 85% done.
But then I got stuck, because as I got the idea clearer... there was something that felt wrong.
*
The way this proceeded was that the core of the paper was a concept of the network of communications among a human group became a cognitive entity ('group brain') capable of thought; and this would them impose upon the individuals of that group in order to shape behaviour - including naturally selecting among them, genetically.
I needed to get this clearer in my mind, by visualisation and by analogy - in other words, I needed to be able to imagine it. And to imagine it required what could be termed meditation - in other words a purposeful, focused, quiet kind of reflective thinking - the aim of which was to remove interferences, and to get this idea clear, isolated, as a thing which I could contemplate and evaluate.
When I did this, I found that it didn't really make sense to me - I could not see how this network of communications could do the work I needed it to do - I could not see how it performed cognition, or where its centre lay, or how it could use or make memories... most problematic I could not see how this could be stable enough to do selection across a timescale of several or many human generations.
In sum, this group entity - this group brain - just did not have the properties necessary... at least, so far as I could imagine.
*
So, in the end, I could not finish the paper - I could not put the last piece into the edifice; and indeed this failure to complete the idea threw into doubt everything that went before - because a partial theory isn't really a theory at all - it has no more strength or value than an arched bridge minus the keystone.
*
And then I was also reading Owen Barfield's reflections on 'evolution' - his analysis of evolution - which began with philology; in the old meaning of the word philology which was something like 'history of ideas' - i.e. the conceptual history of the idea of evolution in the context of the cultures which used it. This was far from the first time that I had read Barfield on evolution, but it was the first time that I understood the nature and meaning of the distinction he was drawing.
Barfield demonstrated that evolution was originally (and properly) something more like we would call 'development' - a situation that begins with a potentiality and which unfolds by a process of transformation, or metamorphosis.
Evolution was about the change of forms, gradually, continuously, and by all intermediate stages.
In sum, in old-style evolution everything was there to begin-with that was there after evolution - and what had happened was that the earlier state had transformed into the later state.
*
By contrast, Barfield described how post-Darwinian evolution was a discontinuous sequence of replacements of one form by another form.
Darwinian evolution was about introducing something new into the system from outside. It was based on change by the injection of new information, and change by means of swapping the new for the old.
So, in Darwinian evolution, we start with one kind of thing, and end-up with another kind of thing, and the difference is that something extra has been added that was not there before.
(The point at which this new information was added was the point of discontinuity - this might be a genetic mutation; or, in principle, some other heritable input.)
*
At the end of grasping the distinction in the meanings of evolution, I realised that I had not solved the problem I set out to solve - although I still knew that there was something going-on which, if not group selection defined in the Darwinian paradigm, had to do the same job as 'group selection'.
*
Furthermore, I got an imaginative grasp of evolutionary history which revealed that I was making a set of metaphysical assumptions about the evolution of 'complexity' and of 'groups' - and these metaphysical assumptions might not be correct, or there might be better ones.
My earlier metaphysical assumptions - standard to modern evolutionary theory - had been:
1. Alive things evolved from dead things
2. Complex things were incrementally built from simpler things (including that groups were more complex than individuals)
3. Matter came first, and mind (cognition, including consciousness) arose from it (including that 'mind' was in some way a product of increasing complexity)
Yet there are an almost opposite set of possible metaphysical assumptions which I might have instead deployed:
1. Everything is alive (in varying ways and degrees)
2. Things began as diffuse and uniform, and 'condensed' to become more solid and differentiated
3. Mind came before matter (e.g. spirit existed before it was incarnated)
This second set of principles is close to my own 'religious' convictions (my faith) - in other words it is the second set of principles which I regard as True, and not the first.
So how could I expect to understand 'group selection' correctly, if I was building my understanding in a metaphysical universe that was almost the opposite to the one I believed was real?
The theorising was bound to be false, surely?
No wonder that I could not imagine my theory - it did not hang-together with my understanding of reality, it did not make sense.
*
(This was what Thomas Kuhn dubbed a paradigm shift. The evidence, the problem remains the same - but the underlying framework within-which the problem needs to be solved has been transformed.)
*
So, the task has now become one of explaining the same set of evidences ('facts') using a completely different set of assumptions: a different model, logic, grammar, bottom-line.
Everything changes, yet everything remains the same -- The meaning and purpose of everything changes, the problem to be solved and the evidence available for its solution remains the same (although with different interpretation and emphasis, and perhaps with new evidences becoming relevant).
It is a big project and an exciting prospect!
But then I got stuck, because as I got the idea clearer... there was something that felt wrong.
*
The way this proceeded was that the core of the paper was a concept of the network of communications among a human group became a cognitive entity ('group brain') capable of thought; and this would them impose upon the individuals of that group in order to shape behaviour - including naturally selecting among them, genetically.
I needed to get this clearer in my mind, by visualisation and by analogy - in other words, I needed to be able to imagine it. And to imagine it required what could be termed meditation - in other words a purposeful, focused, quiet kind of reflective thinking - the aim of which was to remove interferences, and to get this idea clear, isolated, as a thing which I could contemplate and evaluate.
When I did this, I found that it didn't really make sense to me - I could not see how this network of communications could do the work I needed it to do - I could not see how it performed cognition, or where its centre lay, or how it could use or make memories... most problematic I could not see how this could be stable enough to do selection across a timescale of several or many human generations.
In sum, this group entity - this group brain - just did not have the properties necessary... at least, so far as I could imagine.
*
So, in the end, I could not finish the paper - I could not put the last piece into the edifice; and indeed this failure to complete the idea threw into doubt everything that went before - because a partial theory isn't really a theory at all - it has no more strength or value than an arched bridge minus the keystone.
*
And then I was also reading Owen Barfield's reflections on 'evolution' - his analysis of evolution - which began with philology; in the old meaning of the word philology which was something like 'history of ideas' - i.e. the conceptual history of the idea of evolution in the context of the cultures which used it. This was far from the first time that I had read Barfield on evolution, but it was the first time that I understood the nature and meaning of the distinction he was drawing.
Barfield demonstrated that evolution was originally (and properly) something more like we would call 'development' - a situation that begins with a potentiality and which unfolds by a process of transformation, or metamorphosis.
Evolution was about the change of forms, gradually, continuously, and by all intermediate stages.
In sum, in old-style evolution everything was there to begin-with that was there after evolution - and what had happened was that the earlier state had transformed into the later state.
*
By contrast, Barfield described how post-Darwinian evolution was a discontinuous sequence of replacements of one form by another form.
Darwinian evolution was about introducing something new into the system from outside. It was based on change by the injection of new information, and change by means of swapping the new for the old.
So, in Darwinian evolution, we start with one kind of thing, and end-up with another kind of thing, and the difference is that something extra has been added that was not there before.
(The point at which this new information was added was the point of discontinuity - this might be a genetic mutation; or, in principle, some other heritable input.)
*
At the end of grasping the distinction in the meanings of evolution, I realised that I had not solved the problem I set out to solve - although I still knew that there was something going-on which, if not group selection defined in the Darwinian paradigm, had to do the same job as 'group selection'.
*
Furthermore, I got an imaginative grasp of evolutionary history which revealed that I was making a set of metaphysical assumptions about the evolution of 'complexity' and of 'groups' - and these metaphysical assumptions might not be correct, or there might be better ones.
My earlier metaphysical assumptions - standard to modern evolutionary theory - had been:
1. Alive things evolved from dead things
2. Complex things were incrementally built from simpler things (including that groups were more complex than individuals)
3. Matter came first, and mind (cognition, including consciousness) arose from it (including that 'mind' was in some way a product of increasing complexity)
Yet there are an almost opposite set of possible metaphysical assumptions which I might have instead deployed:
1. Everything is alive (in varying ways and degrees)
2. Things began as diffuse and uniform, and 'condensed' to become more solid and differentiated
3. Mind came before matter (e.g. spirit existed before it was incarnated)
This second set of principles is close to my own 'religious' convictions (my faith) - in other words it is the second set of principles which I regard as True, and not the first.
So how could I expect to understand 'group selection' correctly, if I was building my understanding in a metaphysical universe that was almost the opposite to the one I believed was real?
The theorising was bound to be false, surely?
No wonder that I could not imagine my theory - it did not hang-together with my understanding of reality, it did not make sense.
*
(This was what Thomas Kuhn dubbed a paradigm shift. The evidence, the problem remains the same - but the underlying framework within-which the problem needs to be solved has been transformed.)
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So, the task has now become one of explaining the same set of evidences ('facts') using a completely different set of assumptions: a different model, logic, grammar, bottom-line.
Everything changes, yet everything remains the same -- The meaning and purpose of everything changes, the problem to be solved and the evidence available for its solution remains the same (although with different interpretation and emphasis, and perhaps with new evidences becoming relevant).
It is a big project and an exciting prospect!
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