Because they are not real scientists - or, at best, no longer real scientists - but merely successful bureaucrats of research.
No real scientist, who was primarily motivated by the desire to learn and speak the truth about whatever is their 'problem' - wold give this up to join the dishonest world of hype, spin and outright lies entailed by senior administrative/ managerial roles in modern institutions.
Thursday 10 March 2016
Wednesday 9 March 2016
How would governing entities actually impose teleology during evolution?
In a teleological (purposive) model of evolution I have inferred that there must be governing entities that shape evolution in order to overcome the destructive effects of entropy and short-termist and ultra-selfish natural selection, in order to enable long-term survival and reproduction to be pursued.
In general, teleology seems to be required for the imposition of a background level of cooperation and coordination between similar entities and across the different levels of organization.
If this is accepted, and some kind of general mechanism for teleology is devised - such as the hierarchy of governing entities - then the question arises as to how teleology is imposed?
There seem to be two possibilities - purpose could be imposed from outside by the operation of some kind of field, force or form; or purpose could be built-in.
While I think it likely that external forms/ fields/ forms have a role - they strike me as radically too simple, too lacking in dynamic complexity, to perform the necessary job in biological entities - although perhaps they suffice for the mineral world such as atoms, molecules, crystals etc.
My instinct is that purpose is most likely to be built in, specifically that, as an entity is formed, its purposive nature is built into the structure and organization (by the action of its governing entity) such that there is a degree of agency and self-regulation directed at the overall purpose.
For example, in multicellular organisms there may be the mechanisms of cell-suicide or apoptosis - such that if a cell experiences a mutation that may endanger the organism - perhaps by a neoplasm such as cancer - then the cell destroys itself (for the good of the whole organism).
There is considerable altruism built-in at the cellular level - white blood cells (some of which closely resemble free living amoebae) will kill themselves in the process of defending the organism against microorganism invasion (these dead soldiers are found in pus): this purpose is apparently built-into them.
Another example is reproductive self-suppression; which is found in some social animals. For instance, when a male orangutan fails to become the alpha, he remains as a partly developed adolescent. Now, in one sense he is biding his time and hoping for sneaky coercive sex with a female - but in another sense he is preserving the cohesion of the group by removing himself from competition.
Similar behaviours are seen in primates in relation to submission - a defeated male will submit and accept the dominant male - on the other side the dominant male will refrain from killing the defeated opponent.
In humans, there is considerable altruism and risk taking among young men in defending their group. Of course, this behaviour - once established, may be sustained by the advantage of protecting genetic relatives - but the behaviour had to occur and be stable before such advantage could be established; and it is consistent with observation that such motivations are built-in.
The primary reliance upon built-in teleology also makes it easy to understand the existence, indeed often at high rates, or the opposite - of behaviours which are non-functional, free-riding, parasitic. The teleology - including traits that are long-termist, altruistic, cooperative and coordinated - are vulnerable to subsequent, later events that disrupt or destroy these built-in mechanisms: such as damage or mutations during the life of the entity - mutant mitochondria in a eukaryotic cell, cancer in a multicellular organism, the effects of mental illness in human society.
Therefore, I think it most likely that governing entities work to impose teleology at the point where entities are being formed - either originally and/ or when being reproduced. The teleological behaviours are part of the design specification built into the entity.
In general, teleology seems to be required for the imposition of a background level of cooperation and coordination between similar entities and across the different levels of organization.
If this is accepted, and some kind of general mechanism for teleology is devised - such as the hierarchy of governing entities - then the question arises as to how teleology is imposed?
There seem to be two possibilities - purpose could be imposed from outside by the operation of some kind of field, force or form; or purpose could be built-in.
While I think it likely that external forms/ fields/ forms have a role - they strike me as radically too simple, too lacking in dynamic complexity, to perform the necessary job in biological entities - although perhaps they suffice for the mineral world such as atoms, molecules, crystals etc.
My instinct is that purpose is most likely to be built in, specifically that, as an entity is formed, its purposive nature is built into the structure and organization (by the action of its governing entity) such that there is a degree of agency and self-regulation directed at the overall purpose.
For example, in multicellular organisms there may be the mechanisms of cell-suicide or apoptosis - such that if a cell experiences a mutation that may endanger the organism - perhaps by a neoplasm such as cancer - then the cell destroys itself (for the good of the whole organism).
There is considerable altruism built-in at the cellular level - white blood cells (some of which closely resemble free living amoebae) will kill themselves in the process of defending the organism against microorganism invasion (these dead soldiers are found in pus): this purpose is apparently built-into them.
Another example is reproductive self-suppression; which is found in some social animals. For instance, when a male orangutan fails to become the alpha, he remains as a partly developed adolescent. Now, in one sense he is biding his time and hoping for sneaky coercive sex with a female - but in another sense he is preserving the cohesion of the group by removing himself from competition.
Similar behaviours are seen in primates in relation to submission - a defeated male will submit and accept the dominant male - on the other side the dominant male will refrain from killing the defeated opponent.
In humans, there is considerable altruism and risk taking among young men in defending their group. Of course, this behaviour - once established, may be sustained by the advantage of protecting genetic relatives - but the behaviour had to occur and be stable before such advantage could be established; and it is consistent with observation that such motivations are built-in.
The primary reliance upon built-in teleology also makes it easy to understand the existence, indeed often at high rates, or the opposite - of behaviours which are non-functional, free-riding, parasitic. The teleology - including traits that are long-termist, altruistic, cooperative and coordinated - are vulnerable to subsequent, later events that disrupt or destroy these built-in mechanisms: such as damage or mutations during the life of the entity - mutant mitochondria in a eukaryotic cell, cancer in a multicellular organism, the effects of mental illness in human society.
Therefore, I think it most likely that governing entities work to impose teleology at the point where entities are being formed - either originally and/ or when being reproduced. The teleological behaviours are part of the design specification built into the entity.
The concept of teleology - the creation of everything
On reflection, I think that teleology must be of the nature of following a blueprint plus instructions - in other words, teleology entails achieving what is already in existence conceptually.
And therefore teleology is not a matter of following a particular direction towards some as-yet unrealized condition. In other words, with teleology, the destination must be foreknown - you have to know where you are going.
This means that in a teleological, purposive concept of evolution on earth; the perceptible evolutionary sequence must be conceptualized as a process of incremental - step-by-step - development towards a situation which already exists as a plan.
Indeed, this must be the case if things are to be coordinated - the coordination of nature, of reality, must be 'top-down' - so that things evolve to occupy pre-ordained 'slots'.
(This is not to deny that other types of evolution are working against this plan - for example entropic change and natural selection.)
The primary purpose of evolution is to make more Deities - the highest type of consciousness, this is achieved by the deification of Men - so the intermediate purpose is to make Men - which is done via raising animal consciousness, which is done by raising plant consciousness, which is the first obvious form of 'life' itself derived from the primordial level of the simplest and minimal level of baseline life and consciousness which is found in the mineral, physical world (a world that is usually assumed to be non-living and non-conscious).
1. First half of evolution: Creating the plan
So, the evolutionary history of life on earth comes in two halves - the evolution of the plan then the realization of the plan; but the first half is usually neglected.
The plan evolves into a hierarchy from the simple unity of purpose at the top ('deity'), and down through layers of higher 'governing entities' concerned with advanced consciousness ('angels'), middle entities concerned with animal and plant life ('nature spirits'), and mineral entities concerned with the basic organization of matter in terms of what we would term physics and chemistry - elementary particles, fundamental forces, elements, molecules etc.
So - top-down, simplified, and descending in a pyramidal fashion, with greater numbers of simpler and more specialized governing entities at each lower level:
1. Deity
2. Angels
3. Animal then Plant Nature Spirits
4. Physical spirits
These entities are all purposive, conscious and cognitive - that is, they are capable of thought, analysis, modelling - but at very different levels. The idea is that there are extremely large numbers of extremely simple physical entities; and many-fold fewer numbers of (say) angels having far greater levels of consciousness and cognitive ability.
The first half of evolution involves the development of these purposive entities from the top downwards - until before the physical realization of creation has begun, the above hierarhcy of entities is already in place.
So this is the plan - containing both the 'blueprint' of the end result, and the step-by-step 'instructions' of how to achieve it.
2. Second half of evolution: implementing the plan
The assumption is that such a vast and complex plan cannot be implemented in one step - but requires multiple incremental steps - because only so much, some finite degree of organization, can be attained in a single step.
Therefore, at each stage the process requires the building-blocks to be ready - pre-prepared. So the first stage is to make the most primary building blocks and elaborate them stepwise until they are suitable to make first plant, then animal life of increasing complexity and consciousness; sexual reproduction, animal society; then Men - and then to raise the consciousness of Men towards Deity.
The history and sequence of evolution of and on earth is therefore the reverse direction from that of the governing entities:
4. The basic stuff and forces of the universe - The universe, solar system, earth; the physico-chemical 'mineral' structures of earth - done by Physical Spirits
3. The origins of life, elaboration of life through plants and animals via specialization and coordination and sexual selection - done by Nature Spirits
2. Origins of Man - done by Angels
1. Deification of Man - done by God
The second half of evolution is - overall - therefore a process akin to (but vastly more complex and long-lasting than) the development of the fertilized egg into an organism; in the sense that it is a growth and unfolding by multiple stages towards a previously established and planned end-point.
And each and all of the major stages, as well as the integration of the whole plan, are guided by governing entities.
Conclusion: To put the whole matter extremely simply: the structure of creation is first established as a plan by the hierarchical structure of governing entities which evolve from the top downwards getting simpler and simpler as they descend; then secondly creation is organized by these governing entities from the bottom upwards, from simplest to most complex, such that the pattern of actual creation is mapped-onto the pattern of the governing entities in the reverse direction from the formation of the governing entities.
And therefore teleology is not a matter of following a particular direction towards some as-yet unrealized condition. In other words, with teleology, the destination must be foreknown - you have to know where you are going.
This means that in a teleological, purposive concept of evolution on earth; the perceptible evolutionary sequence must be conceptualized as a process of incremental - step-by-step - development towards a situation which already exists as a plan.
Indeed, this must be the case if things are to be coordinated - the coordination of nature, of reality, must be 'top-down' - so that things evolve to occupy pre-ordained 'slots'.
(This is not to deny that other types of evolution are working against this plan - for example entropic change and natural selection.)
The unifying purpose - to make more Deities from Men
The primary purpose of evolution is to make more Deities - the highest type of consciousness, this is achieved by the deification of Men - so the intermediate purpose is to make Men - which is done via raising animal consciousness, which is done by raising plant consciousness, which is the first obvious form of 'life' itself derived from the primordial level of the simplest and minimal level of baseline life and consciousness which is found in the mineral, physical world (a world that is usually assumed to be non-living and non-conscious).
1. First half of evolution: Creating the plan
So, the evolutionary history of life on earth comes in two halves - the evolution of the plan then the realization of the plan; but the first half is usually neglected.
The plan evolves into a hierarchy from the simple unity of purpose at the top ('deity'), and down through layers of higher 'governing entities' concerned with advanced consciousness ('angels'), middle entities concerned with animal and plant life ('nature spirits'), and mineral entities concerned with the basic organization of matter in terms of what we would term physics and chemistry - elementary particles, fundamental forces, elements, molecules etc.
So - top-down, simplified, and descending in a pyramidal fashion, with greater numbers of simpler and more specialized governing entities at each lower level:
1. Deity
2. Angels
3. Animal then Plant Nature Spirits
4. Physical spirits
These entities are all purposive, conscious and cognitive - that is, they are capable of thought, analysis, modelling - but at very different levels. The idea is that there are extremely large numbers of extremely simple physical entities; and many-fold fewer numbers of (say) angels having far greater levels of consciousness and cognitive ability.
The first half of evolution involves the development of these purposive entities from the top downwards - until before the physical realization of creation has begun, the above hierarhcy of entities is already in place.
So this is the plan - containing both the 'blueprint' of the end result, and the step-by-step 'instructions' of how to achieve it.
2. Second half of evolution: implementing the plan
The assumption is that such a vast and complex plan cannot be implemented in one step - but requires multiple incremental steps - because only so much, some finite degree of organization, can be attained in a single step.
Therefore, at each stage the process requires the building-blocks to be ready - pre-prepared. So the first stage is to make the most primary building blocks and elaborate them stepwise until they are suitable to make first plant, then animal life of increasing complexity and consciousness; sexual reproduction, animal society; then Men - and then to raise the consciousness of Men towards Deity.
The history and sequence of evolution of and on earth is therefore the reverse direction from that of the governing entities:
4. The basic stuff and forces of the universe - The universe, solar system, earth; the physico-chemical 'mineral' structures of earth - done by Physical Spirits
3. The origins of life, elaboration of life through plants and animals via specialization and coordination and sexual selection - done by Nature Spirits
2. Origins of Man - done by Angels
1. Deification of Man - done by God
The second half of evolution is - overall - therefore a process akin to (but vastly more complex and long-lasting than) the development of the fertilized egg into an organism; in the sense that it is a growth and unfolding by multiple stages towards a previously established and planned end-point.
And each and all of the major stages, as well as the integration of the whole plan, are guided by governing entities.
Conclusion: To put the whole matter extremely simply: the structure of creation is first established as a plan by the hierarchical structure of governing entities which evolve from the top downwards getting simpler and simpler as they descend; then secondly creation is organized by these governing entities from the bottom upwards, from simplest to most complex, such that the pattern of actual creation is mapped-onto the pattern of the governing entities in the reverse direction from the formation of the governing entities.
2017 coming-up
So... we approach the centenary of probably the worst year in the history of the Christian world.
In the scale of its unleashed and still-continuing massively-destructive viciousness and hatred; terror, torture and murder; In the scope of its calculated and principled lying; its achievement and example in the subversion and inversion of virtue; And in terms of its sustained, on-going and wide-spread effect -- surely the events of 1917 were the greatest and most lasting of blows against Christians, and against mankind generally?
Therefore let us expect, and prepare for, this tragic and damning anniversary to be noted with approval, positively-regarded - indeed actively-celebrated by our ruling elites and their servants.
Thus we may know our enemies - their motivations and the extent of their power and influence.
In the scale of its unleashed and still-continuing massively-destructive viciousness and hatred; terror, torture and murder; In the scope of its calculated and principled lying; its achievement and example in the subversion and inversion of virtue; And in terms of its sustained, on-going and wide-spread effect -- surely the events of 1917 were the greatest and most lasting of blows against Christians, and against mankind generally?
Therefore let us expect, and prepare for, this tragic and damning anniversary to be noted with approval, positively-regarded - indeed actively-celebrated by our ruling elites and their servants.
Thus we may know our enemies - their motivations and the extent of their power and influence.
Left-sided migraine (of the language area) and enhanced creativity?
Readers may have gathered that I am troubled by frequent, sustained migraines - these are always on the Left side; and indeed one-sided, severe headaches of a stereotypical pattern is pretty much the definition of a migraine.
Having migraines has been very limiting for me over the past twenty-something years - I have missed all sorts of good things, and my travelling and exploring has been cut down considerably (plus, they hurt! and the treatment isn't very nice either).
But one compensation has been that when the migraine pain has been treated, I am at the maximum of creativity of which I am capable. In the sense that I am more likely than at other times to make a breakthrough in whatever it is that I am working on. Indeed, when I have gone for an occasional couple of weeks without a migraine then I have noticed myself getting less creative.
Why might this be? I had usually supposed that the slight delirium of the treated-migraine state might be responsible for a more associative, looser, semi-psychotic way of thinking; but I recently had the notion that it might be a Right-brain- Left-brain balance sort of thing.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/iain-mcgilchrists-master-and-his.html
An early symptom of the developing migraine is nominal aphasia - an inability to find word names - indeed, this is so characteristic that my wife has sometimes noticed and told me I was getting a migraine when I hadn't myself noticed. Together with the fact that the pain is on the Left side, this may suggest that the migraine pathology (whatever it is) is located in the language area of the Left cerebral hemisphere (soewhere like Broca's area, perhaps).
And this might perhaps mean that during a migraine the Left side of my brain is impaired and therefore the Right side more dominant - and it seems true that during the migraine my thought is more 'holistic' (and creative, as I said) and certainly it is less precisely-detailed, consistent with Right-sided dominance.
If this rather vague hypothesis is correct, the there should be a pattern of more-creative-less precise thinking during Left-sided migraines; and more-precise and less-creative thinking among Right-sided migraineurs - although quite likely this only applies to migraines affecting certain parts of the cerebral hemispheres.
*
In passing; my migraines are boringly simple in form - merely a pain and referred skin tenderness starting in a particular place of my neck, getting more severe and moving to behind my eye. I don't get any exciting visual 'aura' as a warning: no flashing lights, zig-zags, bling spots (although most of my close family do or did - we all suffer migraines to some degree).
But, interestingly, the only reliable prodrome, that sometimes happens and will predict a migraine a few hours ahead, is the idea spontaneously coming-into my head that I don't feel at all migraneous, and maybe I have gotten over migraine and won't have any more of them...
NOTE ADDED: Today was a pretty good example of migraine-enhanced creativity. I was woken early with a particularly nasty migraine that went on for about 8 hours despite escalating treatment - then felt rather wretched from the treatment and the after effect --- but my mind was bubbling with ideas and I ended up scribbling pages of notes and writing five blog posts (including one at Jr Ganymede), so far... (This being a weekday when I have no face-to-face teaching - and which I try to keep clear for thinking, scholarship and 'research' of a theory-focused kind.)
Having migraines has been very limiting for me over the past twenty-something years - I have missed all sorts of good things, and my travelling and exploring has been cut down considerably (plus, they hurt! and the treatment isn't very nice either).
But one compensation has been that when the migraine pain has been treated, I am at the maximum of creativity of which I am capable. In the sense that I am more likely than at other times to make a breakthrough in whatever it is that I am working on. Indeed, when I have gone for an occasional couple of weeks without a migraine then I have noticed myself getting less creative.
Why might this be? I had usually supposed that the slight delirium of the treated-migraine state might be responsible for a more associative, looser, semi-psychotic way of thinking; but I recently had the notion that it might be a Right-brain- Left-brain balance sort of thing.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/iain-mcgilchrists-master-and-his.html
An early symptom of the developing migraine is nominal aphasia - an inability to find word names - indeed, this is so characteristic that my wife has sometimes noticed and told me I was getting a migraine when I hadn't myself noticed. Together with the fact that the pain is on the Left side, this may suggest that the migraine pathology (whatever it is) is located in the language area of the Left cerebral hemisphere (soewhere like Broca's area, perhaps).
And this might perhaps mean that during a migraine the Left side of my brain is impaired and therefore the Right side more dominant - and it seems true that during the migraine my thought is more 'holistic' (and creative, as I said) and certainly it is less precisely-detailed, consistent with Right-sided dominance.
If this rather vague hypothesis is correct, the there should be a pattern of more-creative-less precise thinking during Left-sided migraines; and more-precise and less-creative thinking among Right-sided migraineurs - although quite likely this only applies to migraines affecting certain parts of the cerebral hemispheres.
*
In passing; my migraines are boringly simple in form - merely a pain and referred skin tenderness starting in a particular place of my neck, getting more severe and moving to behind my eye. I don't get any exciting visual 'aura' as a warning: no flashing lights, zig-zags, bling spots (although most of my close family do or did - we all suffer migraines to some degree).
But, interestingly, the only reliable prodrome, that sometimes happens and will predict a migraine a few hours ahead, is the idea spontaneously coming-into my head that I don't feel at all migraneous, and maybe I have gotten over migraine and won't have any more of them...
NOTE ADDED: Today was a pretty good example of migraine-enhanced creativity. I was woken early with a particularly nasty migraine that went on for about 8 hours despite escalating treatment - then felt rather wretched from the treatment and the after effect --- but my mind was bubbling with ideas and I ended up scribbling pages of notes and writing five blog posts (including one at Jr Ganymede), so far... (This being a weekday when I have no face-to-face teaching - and which I try to keep clear for thinking, scholarship and 'research' of a theory-focused kind.)
Tuesday 8 March 2016
The three types of consciousness - my ideas then, and now
First, read this article from 2001 - when I was essentially an adherent of New Age spirituality - it was published in Abraxas - a Colin Wilson focused magazine photocopied and home-published by an eccentric and likeable, Somerset-born writer called Paul Newman (now, alas, deceased):
http://hedweb.com/bgcharlton/ceremonialtime.html
At that time I could see that there was an ancient, participative, immersive and unselfconscious-consciousness which I call here Ceremonial Time; then there was the dead materialistic and nihilistic way of thinking which was economically efficient and necessary to survival in the modern world.
And that was it.
I could see no realistic way out of this impasse: either you were an ineffectual but connected hunter-gatherer or an efficient but alienated modern.
Neither were more nor less ultimately true (I regarded both as more-or-less false) except that - realistically - nobody could live by the unalienated life unless cut-off from modernity. So I regarded this unalienated life as only, in practice, accessible by altered states of consciousness:
http://hedweb.com/bgcharlton/animism.html
Since then, one big step is that I now know that there is something beyond the above two possibilities - there is a third stage which Owen Barfield calls Final Participation: it combines the best of both worlds because it has all the connectedness of the ancient spirituality and all the consciousness and precision of modern consciousness.
This state of mind can be achieved - if you know what you are aiming-at (which needs metaphysical insight and restructuring) - to varying degrees of completeness and intermittently - but this takes will, work, effort and resistances must be overcome.
It is not a matter of surrender, relaxation, just-seeing - it is not a going-back but a going-forward - it cannot be done by artificial or technological means - and it is not a by-product of any actual religion but must be done by individuals (although information on this can, and should, be shared and discussed).
THIS is what I am mostly working on doing, and describing on this blog, at present.
http://hedweb.com/bgcharlton/ceremonialtime.html
At that time I could see that there was an ancient, participative, immersive and unselfconscious-consciousness which I call here Ceremonial Time; then there was the dead materialistic and nihilistic way of thinking which was economically efficient and necessary to survival in the modern world.
And that was it.
I could see no realistic way out of this impasse: either you were an ineffectual but connected hunter-gatherer or an efficient but alienated modern.
Neither were more nor less ultimately true (I regarded both as more-or-less false) except that - realistically - nobody could live by the unalienated life unless cut-off from modernity. So I regarded this unalienated life as only, in practice, accessible by altered states of consciousness:
http://hedweb.com/bgcharlton/animism.html
Since then, one big step is that I now know that there is something beyond the above two possibilities - there is a third stage which Owen Barfield calls Final Participation: it combines the best of both worlds because it has all the connectedness of the ancient spirituality and all the consciousness and precision of modern consciousness.
This state of mind can be achieved - if you know what you are aiming-at (which needs metaphysical insight and restructuring) - to varying degrees of completeness and intermittently - but this takes will, work, effort and resistances must be overcome.
It is not a matter of surrender, relaxation, just-seeing - it is not a going-back but a going-forward - it cannot be done by artificial or technological means - and it is not a by-product of any actual religion but must be done by individuals (although information on this can, and should, be shared and discussed).
THIS is what I am mostly working on doing, and describing on this blog, at present.
Thanks to commenters, and reflections on blogging and Christian evangelism
Thanks to everybody who commented yesterday - this generous response certainly inclines me to keep going a while longer with this blog: knowing that there are a significant number of people out-there who find the blog worthwhile.
It isn't a matter of stopping writing - since that is how I think; indeed an aspect of how I meditate. But the blog is a medium with a certain style and expectations - actually quite a delicate matter - IMO probably more blogs have been somewhat spoiled by their comments (e.g. Steve Sailer, Unqualified Reservations) than were enhanced by them (e.g. View from the Right). But comments are part of the medium.
When I began blogging I did so without allowing comments, because I found the whole business distracting - but after experimentation I found value in the interactive aspect; and it was a major factor in developing the ideas of Thought Prison (especially) and Addicted to Distraction. However, the need to 'manage' comments (and commenters!) is difficult for me, since I am not and do not want to be any kind of manager!
However, part of the problem is laziness - I never managed to get myself to learn the skills required to do web pages (probably this aspect has changed); while blogging is as easy as typing, cutting and pasting. I have only managed to tinker with the HTML facility of blogging in the past few months - to fix it when, for mysterious reasons, the blog post comes-out with wrong and ineradicable-by-normal-means formatting) - but I find it extremely soul destroying work!.
The truly wonderful thing about blogging, for someone whose creativity is somewhat pressured and fecund (I could fairly easily - and would want to - post three or even more times a day, on most non-busy days, on a wide range of subjects - but have found it somewhat counter-productive for this type of blog; not least because it seems to feed the media-frenzy way of thinking and behaving - rather than encouraging contemplation)... the wonderful thing about blogging is its immediacy and that fact that it removes The Editor from the equation.
I used to do a fair bit of journalism - in the early 90s I was writing for the New Scientist, Times Higher Education Supplement and peaked with regular well-paid stuff in The Times (of London) - and that worked for me essentially because the editors printed everything I sent with minimal changes! However, these outlets were cut-off by changes in personnel and policy, and those situations are much rarer nowadays - or else extinct (in my experience) except in very small magazines where a relationship of trust can be established. And anyway, blogging has been much more rewarding and creatively stimulating than any journalism I ever did - money has its price.
But the turn-around time to close the loop with readers with small magazines is terribly slow; and of course there is no small magazine which would take the range of things I blog about - or which would indeed be interested in my notions.
Furthermore, the heart of this blog is Christian evangelism - that is why I keep-on writing it. And the fact is that I am such a odd kind of Christian (through nobody's fault but my own!) that there is no audience in small magazines, or small publishers, for what I do. I am grateful to be included (recently) at the Junior Ganymede group blog, which is essentially a conservative Mormon blog - on the basis of having developed a pen-friendship with the blog-Meister; and to participate, albeit from outside the CJCLDS, with the community there. I think they could benefit from a higher rate of commenting; but on the whole there is a 'feel' about that blog (warm hearted and/ but tough minded) which is something positive that blogs can do.
So - the reason for this blog, and what keeps me going, is the attempt to bring people towards or into 'Mere' Christianity - mainly aiming at those whose metaphysical set-up (fundamental assumptions) are preventing this. As with any kind of evangelical work, each individual counts, and one 'success' is sufficient to justify a lifetime of effort - so from that perspective I have apparently been richly rewarded.
Beyond that, the matter of salvation (accepting the gift of eternal Heavenly life which Christ has already gained for us, but which we personally must accept - with its conditions), is theosis - the matter of becoming a better Christian by becoming more God-like during mortal life.
I still have work to do in developing my own understanding about how this might be possible and 'how to do it' in ways that 'work' for introverted, antisocial, wilful, irritable people such as myself - who have compulsively been picking fights with institutions for decades, and who can barely get themselves even to attend church services from time to time.
Nonetheless, I always recommend picking a real Christian denomination, a specific church - in light of oneself and the avaiable possibilities in a particular time and place - joining it, and living in and by it, as the best Christian path for most people. (I haven't given up on this, by the way - but keep trying intermittently.)
On the other hand, not everybody is most people, there are few 'real' churches available to choose from, and even fewer of these (in my case currently zero) which one is eligible to join - and there are also many 'ways' of being a real, self-identified, faith-full but 'Mere' Christian outside the churches; and that is, I think, my core role here.
Certainly not by being an exemplar of the mainstream and most-useful-for-most-people path - but helpful for a minority of Christian oddballs and eccentrics (in that respect similar to myself) on the one hand - and on the other hand indicating some more individual, intuitive and inward, subjectively-transformative-possibilities for those who are in churches.
Because I think this is the destiny of Western man - the divinely intended direction of Christian life which has so far been rejected or else thwarted. We are not supposed to be contented with a life of obedience and virtue (which is anyway, unattainable); but Christianity ought also to be transformative of the inner Man, of consciousness - albeit partially, intermittently and mainly as an ideal.
Christianity (and salvation) comes first, and acknowledgement of the validity of the rules and practices is essential; the church as an institution (as well as mystically) is essential - and without the institutional church (found in several and various denominations) Christianity will surely die; but Christian thinking ought not to be mundane. We should strive to be 'not of this world' in terms of our innermost experiences.
In sum, too many Christians are stunted by an exclusive focus on morality - because The Good also includes beauty and truth, and the transformation of being a Christian should have as its ideal not only (nor for everyone primarily) the goal of being ever-more-virtuous. That just isn't enough of an aim - especially in a world permeated with evil thought structures - as ours is.
Aside from a micro-minority, virtue is too small and partial to be the primary goal of life. Attempting primarily to be virtuous leads, too often, to a hard-hearted and shallow morality of legalism. Our minds, our very way of thinking - as deep inside us as we know, need to be different and distinct from the mundane, autonomous of the mundane, and a source of purpose, meaning and real (spiritual) relationships.
Everyone can work on this for himself and in himself - and need not wait for the world to change first. But to recognize that this is a valuable thing to do itself requires a metamorphosis of the normal and enforced assumptions and practices of thinking - normal and enforced just as much within Christian churches as outside them.
We are - almost all of us - self-trapped in a self-imposed prison of the dull, materialistic and ultimately nihilistic; but (properly understood) this is not a matter for despair because the Christian is in an uniquely hopeful and strong position to do something effective about this - starting here and now.
In sum: Modern Man is sleepwalking through life - and Christians are not exempt, indeed they are (on the whole) in this regard, no better than anyone else. We all need to wake-up. To wake-up from our state of ambulent sleep we (probably) first need to understand what we are trying to do, start doing it, then we may experience it - and only then will we know it.
So, there is work still to be done with this blog - work in-me, and perhaps from-me.
It isn't a matter of stopping writing - since that is how I think; indeed an aspect of how I meditate. But the blog is a medium with a certain style and expectations - actually quite a delicate matter - IMO probably more blogs have been somewhat spoiled by their comments (e.g. Steve Sailer, Unqualified Reservations) than were enhanced by them (e.g. View from the Right). But comments are part of the medium.
When I began blogging I did so without allowing comments, because I found the whole business distracting - but after experimentation I found value in the interactive aspect; and it was a major factor in developing the ideas of Thought Prison (especially) and Addicted to Distraction. However, the need to 'manage' comments (and commenters!) is difficult for me, since I am not and do not want to be any kind of manager!
However, part of the problem is laziness - I never managed to get myself to learn the skills required to do web pages (probably this aspect has changed); while blogging is as easy as typing, cutting and pasting. I have only managed to tinker with the HTML facility of blogging in the past few months - to fix it when, for mysterious reasons, the blog post comes-out with wrong and ineradicable-by-normal-means formatting) - but I find it extremely soul destroying work!.
The truly wonderful thing about blogging, for someone whose creativity is somewhat pressured and fecund (I could fairly easily - and would want to - post three or even more times a day, on most non-busy days, on a wide range of subjects - but have found it somewhat counter-productive for this type of blog; not least because it seems to feed the media-frenzy way of thinking and behaving - rather than encouraging contemplation)... the wonderful thing about blogging is its immediacy and that fact that it removes The Editor from the equation.
I used to do a fair bit of journalism - in the early 90s I was writing for the New Scientist, Times Higher Education Supplement and peaked with regular well-paid stuff in The Times (of London) - and that worked for me essentially because the editors printed everything I sent with minimal changes! However, these outlets were cut-off by changes in personnel and policy, and those situations are much rarer nowadays - or else extinct (in my experience) except in very small magazines where a relationship of trust can be established. And anyway, blogging has been much more rewarding and creatively stimulating than any journalism I ever did - money has its price.
But the turn-around time to close the loop with readers with small magazines is terribly slow; and of course there is no small magazine which would take the range of things I blog about - or which would indeed be interested in my notions.
Furthermore, the heart of this blog is Christian evangelism - that is why I keep-on writing it. And the fact is that I am such a odd kind of Christian (through nobody's fault but my own!) that there is no audience in small magazines, or small publishers, for what I do. I am grateful to be included (recently) at the Junior Ganymede group blog, which is essentially a conservative Mormon blog - on the basis of having developed a pen-friendship with the blog-Meister; and to participate, albeit from outside the CJCLDS, with the community there. I think they could benefit from a higher rate of commenting; but on the whole there is a 'feel' about that blog (warm hearted and/ but tough minded) which is something positive that blogs can do.
So - the reason for this blog, and what keeps me going, is the attempt to bring people towards or into 'Mere' Christianity - mainly aiming at those whose metaphysical set-up (fundamental assumptions) are preventing this. As with any kind of evangelical work, each individual counts, and one 'success' is sufficient to justify a lifetime of effort - so from that perspective I have apparently been richly rewarded.
Beyond that, the matter of salvation (accepting the gift of eternal Heavenly life which Christ has already gained for us, but which we personally must accept - with its conditions), is theosis - the matter of becoming a better Christian by becoming more God-like during mortal life.
I still have work to do in developing my own understanding about how this might be possible and 'how to do it' in ways that 'work' for introverted, antisocial, wilful, irritable people such as myself - who have compulsively been picking fights with institutions for decades, and who can barely get themselves even to attend church services from time to time.
Nonetheless, I always recommend picking a real Christian denomination, a specific church - in light of oneself and the avaiable possibilities in a particular time and place - joining it, and living in and by it, as the best Christian path for most people. (I haven't given up on this, by the way - but keep trying intermittently.)
On the other hand, not everybody is most people, there are few 'real' churches available to choose from, and even fewer of these (in my case currently zero) which one is eligible to join - and there are also many 'ways' of being a real, self-identified, faith-full but 'Mere' Christian outside the churches; and that is, I think, my core role here.
Certainly not by being an exemplar of the mainstream and most-useful-for-most-people path - but helpful for a minority of Christian oddballs and eccentrics (in that respect similar to myself) on the one hand - and on the other hand indicating some more individual, intuitive and inward, subjectively-transformative-possibilities for those who are in churches.
Because I think this is the destiny of Western man - the divinely intended direction of Christian life which has so far been rejected or else thwarted. We are not supposed to be contented with a life of obedience and virtue (which is anyway, unattainable); but Christianity ought also to be transformative of the inner Man, of consciousness - albeit partially, intermittently and mainly as an ideal.
Christianity (and salvation) comes first, and acknowledgement of the validity of the rules and practices is essential; the church as an institution (as well as mystically) is essential - and without the institutional church (found in several and various denominations) Christianity will surely die; but Christian thinking ought not to be mundane. We should strive to be 'not of this world' in terms of our innermost experiences.
In sum, too many Christians are stunted by an exclusive focus on morality - because The Good also includes beauty and truth, and the transformation of being a Christian should have as its ideal not only (nor for everyone primarily) the goal of being ever-more-virtuous. That just isn't enough of an aim - especially in a world permeated with evil thought structures - as ours is.
Aside from a micro-minority, virtue is too small and partial to be the primary goal of life. Attempting primarily to be virtuous leads, too often, to a hard-hearted and shallow morality of legalism. Our minds, our very way of thinking - as deep inside us as we know, need to be different and distinct from the mundane, autonomous of the mundane, and a source of purpose, meaning and real (spiritual) relationships.
Everyone can work on this for himself and in himself - and need not wait for the world to change first. But to recognize that this is a valuable thing to do itself requires a metamorphosis of the normal and enforced assumptions and practices of thinking - normal and enforced just as much within Christian churches as outside them.
We are - almost all of us - self-trapped in a self-imposed prison of the dull, materialistic and ultimately nihilistic; but (properly understood) this is not a matter for despair because the Christian is in an uniquely hopeful and strong position to do something effective about this - starting here and now.
In sum: Modern Man is sleepwalking through life - and Christians are not exempt, indeed they are (on the whole) in this regard, no better than anyone else. We all need to wake-up. To wake-up from our state of ambulent sleep we (probably) first need to understand what we are trying to do, start doing it, then we may experience it - and only then will we know it.
So, there is work still to be done with this blog - work in-me, and perhaps from-me.
Monday 7 March 2016
Two and a half million-plus page views, 3820 posts - but still declining...
This blog has now passed 2.5M page views over its lifespan. I have been actively, daily blogging since May 2010 - approaching 8 years - 3820 posts at an average of about 1.3 posts per day.
But despite the continual accumulation of posts, the monthly page views have been declining for two years; and the usual number of views per new post has gone down; and the rate of commenting has also gone down
So, this blog is dying in terms of its impact - and I suppose this is a fairly general trend in the blogosphere; but as yet I have no interest in participating in the 'social media' which are replacing blogging with briefer, and ever briefer (and less cognitively-demanding) stimuli.
As things are going, a blog like this is probably inferior in its value (including to myself) to some of the user groups which preceded blogging - at any rate my old sense of writing for an 'audience' has long since gone; and there may soon come a point when simply a personal web page would be better for what I want to do than the blog format.
But despite the continual accumulation of posts, the monthly page views have been declining for two years; and the usual number of views per new post has gone down; and the rate of commenting has also gone down
So, this blog is dying in terms of its impact - and I suppose this is a fairly general trend in the blogosphere; but as yet I have no interest in participating in the 'social media' which are replacing blogging with briefer, and ever briefer (and less cognitively-demanding) stimuli.
As things are going, a blog like this is probably inferior in its value (including to myself) to some of the user groups which preceded blogging - at any rate my old sense of writing for an 'audience' has long since gone; and there may soon come a point when simply a personal web page would be better for what I want to do than the blog format.
What kind of religion is political correctness? The only *completely* false one.
I don't personally find it helpful to term political correctness - aka New Leftism, the faith of Social Justic Warriors - a religion. But if we do this, and decide to designate PC a religion - what kind of a religion is PC?
PC is a religion in the same sense, a limited sense, that devil worship is a religion; which is to say PC is not a coherent world view nor a prescribed way of life; instead PC (like demonism) is a project for piecemeal, incremental destruction: over time, strategically, it entails destruction of that which is good (virtue, beauty, truth).
PC is therefore not a religion like other religions - not one religion among many choices: it is unique. All other religions are partial truths; but PC is not a partial truth.
Of course, at any given time point PC has truthful aspects or else it could not survive and thrive - but as a long term project all of these truths are susceptible to subversion, denial and inversion. Over time, sooner or later, by rotation; all values are marked for be destruction.
Therefore in its essence political correctness is a completely false religion; a religion that has not one single grain of truth.
(To put it another way: PC is the only religion that denies the reality of truth - but even this nihilism is not a core proposition, but simply what it does in practice: a motivation, feeling and trend.)
PC is a religion in the same sense, a limited sense, that devil worship is a religion; which is to say PC is not a coherent world view nor a prescribed way of life; instead PC (like demonism) is a project for piecemeal, incremental destruction: over time, strategically, it entails destruction of that which is good (virtue, beauty, truth).
PC is therefore not a religion like other religions - not one religion among many choices: it is unique. All other religions are partial truths; but PC is not a partial truth.
Of course, at any given time point PC has truthful aspects or else it could not survive and thrive - but as a long term project all of these truths are susceptible to subversion, denial and inversion. Over time, sooner or later, by rotation; all values are marked for be destruction.
Therefore in its essence political correctness is a completely false religion; a religion that has not one single grain of truth.
(To put it another way: PC is the only religion that denies the reality of truth - but even this nihilism is not a core proposition, but simply what it does in practice: a motivation, feeling and trend.)
Sunday 6 March 2016
Practical metaphysics - taking sides
What is most needed is a new metaphysics, and metaphysics are the basic assumptions through which we perceive reality; therefore metaphysics is not something chosen on the basis of evidence (it is nonsense to treat metaphysics as if there were competing systems, and trying to prove - perhaps by scientific or historical or sociological data - that one of these systems is the true, the correct, superior.
But although immune to proof and independent of evidence, metaphysics is not the ultimate personal reality; we our-selves lie behind metaphysics.
Therefore metaphysics is a choice - or, at least in principle subject to choice.
'Enlightenment' is to know that metaphysics is a choice, and to make that choice with deliberation
Metaphysics is a choice, but not an arbitrary choice (unless we choose to regard it as arbitrary) - because once the point is reached that we are aware of metaphysics as a choice, and know this for a fact, then we are in a position to make that choice on the basis of our fundamental discernment of reality - the truth about things.
Once that point is reached, then one can go no further. For example, Satan reached that point and made a choice based upon his fundamental discernment of reality - and there is now no arguing with him on the basis of evidence, or anything more superficial than metaphysics itself.
And if the self is convinced of the metaphysics, having made the decision with knowledge and deliberately then what more can be said?
At that point we must take sides.
But although immune to proof and independent of evidence, metaphysics is not the ultimate personal reality; we our-selves lie behind metaphysics.
Therefore metaphysics is a choice - or, at least in principle subject to choice.
'Enlightenment' is to know that metaphysics is a choice, and to make that choice with deliberation
Metaphysics is a choice, but not an arbitrary choice (unless we choose to regard it as arbitrary) - because once the point is reached that we are aware of metaphysics as a choice, and know this for a fact, then we are in a position to make that choice on the basis of our fundamental discernment of reality - the truth about things.
Once that point is reached, then one can go no further. For example, Satan reached that point and made a choice based upon his fundamental discernment of reality - and there is now no arguing with him on the basis of evidence, or anything more superficial than metaphysics itself.
And if the self is convinced of the metaphysics, having made the decision with knowledge and deliberately then what more can be said?
At that point we must take sides.
What is needed for a change of consciousness
It is a matter of achieving and developing a type of awake, alert, purposeful consciousness which can also perceive spiritual realities.
What is wanted is that the kind of intuitive, inspired, visionary thinking which currently or usually occurs only in dreams, intoxication, when immersed in reading fiction or watching movies, and in other altered, passive and in some fashion impaired/ lowered states of consciousness; this must develop to become a part of daily, working, active consciousness.
So that when we see a situation - people in front of us, current politics, a scientific theory or discovery - what is most evident needs to be the spiritual reality, causes, meaning of such situations.
This needs to be primary.
What is wanted is that the kind of intuitive, inspired, visionary thinking which currently or usually occurs only in dreams, intoxication, when immersed in reading fiction or watching movies, and in other altered, passive and in some fashion impaired/ lowered states of consciousness; this must develop to become a part of daily, working, active consciousness.
So that when we see a situation - people in front of us, current politics, a scientific theory or discovery - what is most evident needs to be the spiritual reality, causes, meaning of such situations.
This needs to be primary.
Saturday 5 March 2016
The absolute necessity for a change of consciousness, a metaphysical metamorphosis: Further reflections on Rudolf Steiner's great 1918 prophecy
Continuing from:http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/understanding-rudolf-steiners.html
and the reference cited therein:Steiner's prophetic essay called (in English) 'The work of the angels in man's astral body': http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/19181009p01.html
**
I have been pondering further the great prophetic utterance of Rudolf Steiner from 1918 - which has worked on me in the way that prophecies surely are intended to work in retrospect - the truth of the prophecy serving to validate the interpretations and reasoning which led to it.
My understanding is that it was during the 1960s that there was the decision time: men then knew what was required of them - but for this to happen it was necessary that there be a change in consciousness so that Man's 'destiny' was accepted at the highest level of alert, conscious awareness. What was needed was a metaphysical restructuring; a transformation in fundamental beliefs and assumptions underpinning daily, routine practice - such that Man began to work towards a situation in which the spiritual perspective (in this fully 'awake' sense) became the primary, daily, habitual mode of thinking to a greater extent for more and more people.
The point is that there was a choice presented - and a choice was required and unavoidable - Man (and individual men and women) could accept or reject this plan. It was decisively rejected.
The choice was made (by almost everyone) that the habitual mode of everyday thinking would be to sleep. And as a consequence, the new impulse would remain at the unconscious, instinctive, irrational level.
So our lives and our cultures divided - between a rational anti-spiritualism - which can be seen in the expansion and universal invasion of pseudo-scientific bureaucracy and the world of 'careers', work and 'official' discourse; and on the other hand an irrational, instinctive surge of animalism which is most evident in the mass media and leisure, daydreams or fantasy.
These two strands are both very powerful, uninegrated, and in opposition. The semi-awake rationality fences in life and drains all meaning; the hardly-awake instinctualism is almost wholly selfish and destructive and negates all purpose. We cannot behave rationally, not even with self-ineterst - because this is contradicted by the anarchic irrational impulses; we cannot behave according to our urges and hedonism because we our under increasingly-total survellance and encaged with laws, rules, regulations and managed-consensus.
The result has been - very exactly - the situation that Steiner prophesied. The situation is now one in which the reality of empathic identification between Men has been perverted into a political tool of self-hatred and suicide; in which the sexual impulse in pernicious forms has invaded and configured conscious social life, such that this is seen as a higher moral state; in which medical and therapeutic reasons are given for creating sickness - and such sickness is regarded as desirable; in which the interaction of human minds with physical technology is a pervasive daily reality.
The only way out from this spiritual nightmare is by a fundamental change in the way we think, underpinned (necessarily) by a change in the basis of our thinking.
This necessity applies equally to Christians as to non-Christians - if your Christianity has been merely a change in the set of propositions which you believe - a change in the set of moral rules you endorse, a change in a checklist of propositions, then this is not enough.
What is required, is that we interpret our lives as the primarily a consequence and product of spiritual forces - by restructuring our primary beliefs (ie. metaphysical assumptions); and - building upon this and symbiotic with it - by incremental steps trasnforming our actual, moment-by-moment thinking to an alert, fully-consicous, fully-rational, awake and aware higher consciousness of these spiritual realities.
This means (among other things) rejecting political, economic, sociological, scientific explanations as (in essence) post-hoc ratioanalizations of the underlying spiritual warfare and evolutionary-change.
Steiner suggests that we start with our own life - in recognizing that the miraculous is everyday: that we could not get through a day without such occurrences. As often as not, the miraculous is what did not happen, rather than what did - the disaster that was prevented more than the reward which was given. That important things did not today - contrary to our expectations and perceived trends - get worse; but rather than that, they remained the same.
Above all we must not sleepwalk through life, must not dissipate our lives in unconsciousness (whether from addiction to media, causal time-killing or emotion-stimulating socialization, sexual or political fantasy, unthinking obedience or unthinking rebellion, intoxication or self-indulgence or whatever form of 'sleep' is most troublesome and pervasisve in our lives)...
We must instead strive to live for (and to increase in number and to extend) those moments of alertness, clarity and awareness of our agency that are the first fruits of evolution of cosnciousness, of metaphsyical metamorphosis.
And we must, by whatever means are possible to us, strive to elicit the same in others; whether Christian or not - everyone needs this.
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/19181009p01.html
and the reference cited therein:Steiner's prophetic essay called (in English) 'The work of the angels in man's astral body': http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/19181009p01.html
**
I have been pondering further the great prophetic utterance of Rudolf Steiner from 1918 - which has worked on me in the way that prophecies surely are intended to work in retrospect - the truth of the prophecy serving to validate the interpretations and reasoning which led to it.
My understanding is that it was during the 1960s that there was the decision time: men then knew what was required of them - but for this to happen it was necessary that there be a change in consciousness so that Man's 'destiny' was accepted at the highest level of alert, conscious awareness. What was needed was a metaphysical restructuring; a transformation in fundamental beliefs and assumptions underpinning daily, routine practice - such that Man began to work towards a situation in which the spiritual perspective (in this fully 'awake' sense) became the primary, daily, habitual mode of thinking to a greater extent for more and more people.
The point is that there was a choice presented - and a choice was required and unavoidable - Man (and individual men and women) could accept or reject this plan. It was decisively rejected.
The choice was made (by almost everyone) that the habitual mode of everyday thinking would be to sleep. And as a consequence, the new impulse would remain at the unconscious, instinctive, irrational level.
So our lives and our cultures divided - between a rational anti-spiritualism - which can be seen in the expansion and universal invasion of pseudo-scientific bureaucracy and the world of 'careers', work and 'official' discourse; and on the other hand an irrational, instinctive surge of animalism which is most evident in the mass media and leisure, daydreams or fantasy.
These two strands are both very powerful, uninegrated, and in opposition. The semi-awake rationality fences in life and drains all meaning; the hardly-awake instinctualism is almost wholly selfish and destructive and negates all purpose. We cannot behave rationally, not even with self-ineterst - because this is contradicted by the anarchic irrational impulses; we cannot behave according to our urges and hedonism because we our under increasingly-total survellance and encaged with laws, rules, regulations and managed-consensus.
The result has been - very exactly - the situation that Steiner prophesied. The situation is now one in which the reality of empathic identification between Men has been perverted into a political tool of self-hatred and suicide; in which the sexual impulse in pernicious forms has invaded and configured conscious social life, such that this is seen as a higher moral state; in which medical and therapeutic reasons are given for creating sickness - and such sickness is regarded as desirable; in which the interaction of human minds with physical technology is a pervasive daily reality.
The only way out from this spiritual nightmare is by a fundamental change in the way we think, underpinned (necessarily) by a change in the basis of our thinking.
This necessity applies equally to Christians as to non-Christians - if your Christianity has been merely a change in the set of propositions which you believe - a change in the set of moral rules you endorse, a change in a checklist of propositions, then this is not enough.
What is required, is that we interpret our lives as the primarily a consequence and product of spiritual forces - by restructuring our primary beliefs (ie. metaphysical assumptions); and - building upon this and symbiotic with it - by incremental steps trasnforming our actual, moment-by-moment thinking to an alert, fully-consicous, fully-rational, awake and aware higher consciousness of these spiritual realities.
This means (among other things) rejecting political, economic, sociological, scientific explanations as (in essence) post-hoc ratioanalizations of the underlying spiritual warfare and evolutionary-change.
Steiner suggests that we start with our own life - in recognizing that the miraculous is everyday: that we could not get through a day without such occurrences. As often as not, the miraculous is what did not happen, rather than what did - the disaster that was prevented more than the reward which was given. That important things did not today - contrary to our expectations and perceived trends - get worse; but rather than that, they remained the same.
Above all we must not sleepwalk through life, must not dissipate our lives in unconsciousness (whether from addiction to media, causal time-killing or emotion-stimulating socialization, sexual or political fantasy, unthinking obedience or unthinking rebellion, intoxication or self-indulgence or whatever form of 'sleep' is most troublesome and pervasisve in our lives)...
We must instead strive to live for (and to increase in number and to extend) those moments of alertness, clarity and awareness of our agency that are the first fruits of evolution of cosnciousness, of metaphsyical metamorphosis.
And we must, by whatever means are possible to us, strive to elicit the same in others; whether Christian or not - everyone needs this.
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/19181009p01.html
Friday 4 March 2016
Q: Why is it that the human condition is a 'mixed picture'? A: Because that is the nature of the longaevus
The best die first - in the womb or as young children.
The worst are not incarnated.
The longaevus (you and I) are somewhere in between - the middling people.
Hence the world is mixed, a mixed picture - Good and evil - and it is hard to say which predominates, overall...
The worst are not incarnated.
The longaevus (you and I) are somewhere in between - the middling people.
Hence the world is mixed, a mixed picture - Good and evil - and it is hard to say which predominates, overall...
Thursday 3 March 2016
Denis Matthews at his Mozartian best
New Age spiritual people - sordid shenanigans are not a good advert for their beliefs
Before I became a Christian, there was a period of about a decade when I was very interested in what might be termed New Age spirituality - I was one who could describe himself as Spiritual but not Religious.
I don't reject this tradition in toto, nor deny that there is value in it; and indeed a vital implicit message for Christians which is that alienation is probably the main disaffection of the modern world. Christians would do well to address this more up-front and focally - since it is a more acute form of angst nowadays than, for example, the consciousness of sin.
But for all my interest, I never joined any New Age group or organization, and the reason was that I found the individuals involved to be off-putting. Indeed, among the scores of authors I encountered -set aside cnsumers, there were barely a handful I found tolerable as persons or whose lifestyle seemed admirable (in so far as I could discover this): they were and are not an impressive bunch (at least, not to me).
This was confirmed by two visits to Glastonbury spaced out over six years - this town being the centre of all that is New Age spirituality in Britain; and a place that has had more hyperbolic praise for its special and wonderful atmosphere than perhaps anywhere else.
(Glastonbury is, indeed, one of the most significant places in the history of Britain and indeed the world - and I think, believing the legends as I do! - perhaps a place Christ visited as a young man with Joseph of Arimathea before commencing his ministry, and probably the site of the first Christian church outside the Holy Land.)
However --- I found Glastonbury as it is now at best underwhelming; but in fact mostly somewhat unpleasant - with a seedy, fake and slightly sinister feel about it; and (with a few exceptions) a much higher than usual head count of apparently damaged, emotionally-desparate or exploitative people.
This contrasts with my experience of (real, not liberal) Christians, where (without going over the top about it) there are located some very decent and trust-worthy people, the general atmosphere is considerably more wholesome than average, and there is a fair bit of courage, integrity, beauty and a lot more altruism than I myself am capable of. Something to look up to.
A lot of this boils down to s-e-x (variously extra-marital, promiscuous, unconventional, experimental) - I strongly suspect that the usual, mainstream secular and materialist motivation of sex is powerfully at work on or just below the surface of New Age spirituality - and there are very few who are exempt. This means that whatever spirituality is on-the-go is - in practice - put into a subordinate place; and the spiritual side really doesn't work as the primary motivator.
It would be going too far - but not much too far - to suggest that New Age spirituality in real life (as opposed to in theory) seems to operate like a gigantic rationalization for aspirational sordid shenanigans!
I don't reject this tradition in toto, nor deny that there is value in it; and indeed a vital implicit message for Christians which is that alienation is probably the main disaffection of the modern world. Christians would do well to address this more up-front and focally - since it is a more acute form of angst nowadays than, for example, the consciousness of sin.
But for all my interest, I never joined any New Age group or organization, and the reason was that I found the individuals involved to be off-putting. Indeed, among the scores of authors I encountered -set aside cnsumers, there were barely a handful I found tolerable as persons or whose lifestyle seemed admirable (in so far as I could discover this): they were and are not an impressive bunch (at least, not to me).
This was confirmed by two visits to Glastonbury spaced out over six years - this town being the centre of all that is New Age spirituality in Britain; and a place that has had more hyperbolic praise for its special and wonderful atmosphere than perhaps anywhere else.
(Glastonbury is, indeed, one of the most significant places in the history of Britain and indeed the world - and I think, believing the legends as I do! - perhaps a place Christ visited as a young man with Joseph of Arimathea before commencing his ministry, and probably the site of the first Christian church outside the Holy Land.)
However --- I found Glastonbury as it is now at best underwhelming; but in fact mostly somewhat unpleasant - with a seedy, fake and slightly sinister feel about it; and (with a few exceptions) a much higher than usual head count of apparently damaged, emotionally-desparate or exploitative people.
This contrasts with my experience of (real, not liberal) Christians, where (without going over the top about it) there are located some very decent and trust-worthy people, the general atmosphere is considerably more wholesome than average, and there is a fair bit of courage, integrity, beauty and a lot more altruism than I myself am capable of. Something to look up to.
A lot of this boils down to s-e-x (variously extra-marital, promiscuous, unconventional, experimental) - I strongly suspect that the usual, mainstream secular and materialist motivation of sex is powerfully at work on or just below the surface of New Age spirituality - and there are very few who are exempt. This means that whatever spirituality is on-the-go is - in practice - put into a subordinate place; and the spiritual side really doesn't work as the primary motivator.
It would be going too far - but not much too far - to suggest that New Age spirituality in real life (as opposed to in theory) seems to operate like a gigantic rationalization for aspirational sordid shenanigans!
From here, the only worthwhile reform is metaphysical
From where we are now, in The West, there is no point in hoping (or voting) for any significant change emanating from sensible people being sensible, or decent people behaving decently (even when, as is rare, such people exist in public life).
Sensible and decent people are of no use for this purpose - and neither are crazy, nasty people.
If, by chance, a sensible and decent person ended-up in a significant leadership position, they would not get us off the track to disaster - indeed they may well hasten it by disguising the metaphysical rottenness at the heart of things. Unless they both want to change and actually do change the fundamental, underlying metaphysical assumptions of the public world, then they will do no significant good towards saving The West from itself - because it is these assumptions which doom us.
There is no possibility of improvement by hints and nudges, by quips and satire, by rhetoric and spin; there is no possibility of imperceptible improvements creeping up unknown on the powers that be; the pendulum will neither stop nor will it swing in the other direction without everyone immediately being aware of a primal and cataclysmic metaphysical earthquake...
Everything will then change: what we focus upon, how it affects us, our interpretation, the implications we draw for action -- all we be overturned and remade.
This is a measure of what is necessary, and what indeed will happen, sooner or later - although not necessarily nor even probably in a Christian direction (unless we, en masse, choose that course).
Sensible and decent people are of no use for this purpose - and neither are crazy, nasty people.
If, by chance, a sensible and decent person ended-up in a significant leadership position, they would not get us off the track to disaster - indeed they may well hasten it by disguising the metaphysical rottenness at the heart of things. Unless they both want to change and actually do change the fundamental, underlying metaphysical assumptions of the public world, then they will do no significant good towards saving The West from itself - because it is these assumptions which doom us.
There is no possibility of improvement by hints and nudges, by quips and satire, by rhetoric and spin; there is no possibility of imperceptible improvements creeping up unknown on the powers that be; the pendulum will neither stop nor will it swing in the other direction without everyone immediately being aware of a primal and cataclysmic metaphysical earthquake...
Everything will then change: what we focus upon, how it affects us, our interpretation, the implications we draw for action -- all we be overturned and remade.
This is a measure of what is necessary, and what indeed will happen, sooner or later - although not necessarily nor even probably in a Christian direction (unless we, en masse, choose that course).
Review of Star Wars - the force awakens
Verdict: Four stars (from a maximum of five). No spoilers.
I enjoyed this movie much more than I expected to - I had read a number of adverse reviews and only went along in a family group. But I found the movie consistently enjoyable and sometimes touching.
It was also a different kind of movie than I had expected, and this was something I hadn't seen mentioned in reviews - which is why I am writing one.
The reason I did not give the movie five stars was because the plotting was both clunky and improbable; however, this film was not about plot, nor about action - it was about relationships. The plot served only to move the characters into interesting personal situations.
The clue is that the main scriptwriter for Force Awakens was Lawrence Kasdan, who wrote some very good 'group' movies back in the 80s, including The Big Chill - which was one of the best and most influential films of that era, extremely skillful in its writing for an ensemble. If we think of Force Awakens as 'The Big Chill in Space' that is a clue to where the focus - or heart - of the movie is located.
Time and again, the movie had scenes which somewhat surprised me in their direction and content - always in the direction of an emotional twist or punch. The cast and direction was very good, the new villain an interesting Snape-like character - and the use of the old actors from the first Star Wars to reprise their aged selves was effective and touching: adding a layer of references and feelings, rather than merely exploiting the link.
Altogether, this struck me as an honest, decent movie - by people who were doing their best to make it a high quality production. The level of detail - in, for example, the minor and background characters, events and incidents was generous and respectful.
In sum - I feel the the adverse or unenthusiastic reviews I had seen missed the point of the movie, judged it by inappropriate criteria, and failed to see it for what it is. TFA isn't Blade Runner (but then again, what is...) but it is a good and worthwhile movie.
I enjoyed this movie much more than I expected to - I had read a number of adverse reviews and only went along in a family group. But I found the movie consistently enjoyable and sometimes touching.
It was also a different kind of movie than I had expected, and this was something I hadn't seen mentioned in reviews - which is why I am writing one.
The reason I did not give the movie five stars was because the plotting was both clunky and improbable; however, this film was not about plot, nor about action - it was about relationships. The plot served only to move the characters into interesting personal situations.
The clue is that the main scriptwriter for Force Awakens was Lawrence Kasdan, who wrote some very good 'group' movies back in the 80s, including The Big Chill - which was one of the best and most influential films of that era, extremely skillful in its writing for an ensemble. If we think of Force Awakens as 'The Big Chill in Space' that is a clue to where the focus - or heart - of the movie is located.
Time and again, the movie had scenes which somewhat surprised me in their direction and content - always in the direction of an emotional twist or punch. The cast and direction was very good, the new villain an interesting Snape-like character - and the use of the old actors from the first Star Wars to reprise their aged selves was effective and touching: adding a layer of references and feelings, rather than merely exploiting the link.
Altogether, this struck me as an honest, decent movie - by people who were doing their best to make it a high quality production. The level of detail - in, for example, the minor and background characters, events and incidents was generous and respectful.
In sum - I feel the the adverse or unenthusiastic reviews I had seen missed the point of the movie, judged it by inappropriate criteria, and failed to see it for what it is. TFA isn't Blade Runner (but then again, what is...) but it is a good and worthwhile movie.
Wednesday 2 March 2016
What special wisdom does life on earth offer to us?
Wisdom recognises that there are three things that we need to achieve. First of all our unique separate beingness, then the objective understanding of values, which produces the ability to understand the real quality and value of all things, and then the strength and integrity which is necessary to support the being and the understanding; and it is on earth that these experiences have been made available for us, to a degree which they may not be available for us in any other form of experience. That is why there is a wisdom that is able to grow from the earth which is so valuable.
http://billarkle.co.uk/greatgift/text/wisdom.html
To recapitulate: the special purpose of life on earth (for those who survive to adulthood, anyway) is related to three types of striving:
1. To develop as unique, distinctive individuals - we are not supposed to conform ourselves into one single pattern. Life is set-up so that we can (and almost must) become ourselves, more and more, by our choices and experiences; so that the Heavenly world has no replicas but instead multiple characters, each of whom is indispensable to the intended ideal.
2. We should develop, by our experiences, an objective understanding of values, based on the fullest possible range of experience. Obviously this does not mean deliberately sinning, nor does it mean scrabbling after experience. But it does mean that life is to be lived, embraced as an adventure (in our own destined way) - not a regrettable thing to be minimized or avoided for fear of doing 'something wrong'. Risk is intrinsic; and even as we do our best we know we will often or usually fail. A recognition of failure and repentance is our greatest friend and infinite saving grace.
3. Strength and integrity to sustain these qualities. In other words, we should aim at a courageous attitude to life - including repentance of our many failures in courage - no matter how timid we are by temperament or circumstance; we know and need to acknowledge as fully as possible that we are supposed to be courageous. Also that there is such a thing as integrity of living, such a thing as knowing what is right and making the correct decisions - this we need to strive for (while recognizing the objective fact that our own integrity is not exactly the same as other peoples' integrity).
In sum - life on earth has been well-designed and planned by God to achieve what he wants us to achieve in terms of our long term, ultimate goal - which is to become ever-more divine in the way that He is divine.
This goal entails a lot of trial and error type learning, which entails a lot of mistakes and failures - because this is the only thing which has the potential (no guarantee) to work for us (you and me, personally.
(Those individuals who do not need this difficult and painful type of learning or who only need a little of it - include some of those who have a very short lifespan, including some of those who die (as divinely foreseen) in the womb or early childhood.)
http://billarkle.co.uk/greatgift/text/wisdom.html
To recapitulate: the special purpose of life on earth (for those who survive to adulthood, anyway) is related to three types of striving:
1. To develop as unique, distinctive individuals - we are not supposed to conform ourselves into one single pattern. Life is set-up so that we can (and almost must) become ourselves, more and more, by our choices and experiences; so that the Heavenly world has no replicas but instead multiple characters, each of whom is indispensable to the intended ideal.
2. We should develop, by our experiences, an objective understanding of values, based on the fullest possible range of experience. Obviously this does not mean deliberately sinning, nor does it mean scrabbling after experience. But it does mean that life is to be lived, embraced as an adventure (in our own destined way) - not a regrettable thing to be minimized or avoided for fear of doing 'something wrong'. Risk is intrinsic; and even as we do our best we know we will often or usually fail. A recognition of failure and repentance is our greatest friend and infinite saving grace.
3. Strength and integrity to sustain these qualities. In other words, we should aim at a courageous attitude to life - including repentance of our many failures in courage - no matter how timid we are by temperament or circumstance; we know and need to acknowledge as fully as possible that we are supposed to be courageous. Also that there is such a thing as integrity of living, such a thing as knowing what is right and making the correct decisions - this we need to strive for (while recognizing the objective fact that our own integrity is not exactly the same as other peoples' integrity).
In sum - life on earth has been well-designed and planned by God to achieve what he wants us to achieve in terms of our long term, ultimate goal - which is to become ever-more divine in the way that He is divine.
This goal entails a lot of trial and error type learning, which entails a lot of mistakes and failures - because this is the only thing which has the potential (no guarantee) to work for us (you and me, personally.
(Those individuals who do not need this difficult and painful type of learning or who only need a little of it - include some of those who have a very short lifespan, including some of those who die (as divinely foreseen) in the womb or early childhood.)
Tuesday 1 March 2016
French phase
French phase
It made a big impression on me - I fear mostly for the worst reasons! But it led to a couple of years in which I would go and see just about any French movie (with subtitles, of course), especially from New Wave directors, culminating in a couple of visits to Paris in my middle twenties.
From scores I watched, I probably thoroughly-enjoyed about three of these films - and I don't enjoy any of them now (L'amour en fuite seems painfully clumsy and clunky!); but I kept on going back, hoping to recapture whatever-it-was.
The word that sums-up this era is pretentious.
I don't say that the French movies were to blame for this, nor were they the only element; but the fact is that I did have a secret, rather ashamed, fantasy life about being the kind of alter-ego hero which the French directors (always?) put into their movies - a famous but pleasantly-tormented artistic genus who has elfin women throwing themselves at him - and who always yields in the end, after due examination of conscience. Or else who is obsessed by some initially-reluctant gamine creature - and who always yields in the end, after due examination of conscience.
In retrospect, I can see that my would-be or actual girlfriends at this time were often selected somewhat on this basis - as potentially fitting-into this general milieu either psychologically or visually (with predictably unsatisfactory consequences; mostly - of course - for them. Sorry!).
All this against a backdrop (maybe monochrome?) of cafes, bars, restaurants, bookshops, Citroen DS cars and Le Metro.
This was about not merely being 'an intellectual' but being a public intellectual - in the sense of doing one's thinking and writing in public, on display (for admiration, implicitly) - presumably seated at the table of some pavement café on the Left Bank.... Being covertly photographed by tourists perhaps?
So, there was nothing very noble or sophisticated about my French Phase - it was wishful thinking of the most unrealistic and hedonistic type.
Induced loneliness and the snaring of Good by empathy
It is dismaying to see so many basically decent people who are drawn into the net of evil and corruption woven by the demon-possessed ruling elites such that they cannot discern evil even when it is standing in front of them and haranguing them with anti-moral tirades based on an increasingly obvious loathing for the people they are supposed to be representing and leading.
The process of corruption is long and incremental - and often begins with loneliness. Modern life creates loneliness, disaffection, alienation; and the way out from this state (so nearly intolerable for social beings such as ourselves) is to join in with the fake empathy demands of the mass media; join in with the (more-or-less) sexualized, intoxication-focused and mutually exploitative events that go by the name of 'social life'; just, basically, Join In.
I presume that this is why the elites are so keen that as many as possible vulnerable and impressionable 18 year olds should be torn away from their friends and families and planted somewhere (anywhere!) else among people who they do not know and who care nothing for them, in spiritually barren colleges where their only escape is into meaningless mass media, superficial social interaction, sexual adventures, intoxication events, and self-righteous moral grandstanding --- the only alternative being to sit in your room, a cafe, a library for hours... alone and silent.
Here and now, pretty much all high volume, widely-available social interactions are thoroughly permenated by mass media attitudes, which are secular and leftist attitudes; any group of 'friends' casually interacting, or interacting on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat or whatever (and - so far as I can see - everyone is doing this all of the time, unless physically prevented) will be participating in a festival of shallow secular evil - will be thought-policing each other for crimespeak, will be demanding and eliciting 'appropriate' attitudes and responses to an agenda supplied and hourly updated by the mass media.
The only way out from this is solitude and silence, and the only way that solitude and silence are tolerable (let alone rewarding) is in a loving and nurturing context - which is, pretty much, restricted to the family context (i.e. embedded in the context of sociality and responsibilities which is - or should be - family life).
Of course families are themselves infected by the same anti-spiritual culture, including the culture of busyness - of over-planning, of always doing something (or feeling guilty about not doing something) - but at any rate, the family makes this basic life stance possible in a way that the public world simply disallows - there is the possibility of genuine human contact: soul to soul.
In the public world you can have solitude and silence, but at the cost of paralysing despair --- Or you can 'join-in' with the agenda of always inane and ever-more-frequently evil chit chat, opinionating, endorsing, mocking, cheering and ritually-condemning that is 'modern life'.
Nobody is going to solve this for us, because everybody is the problem. 'Society' won't reform because they don't want to 'reform'; they don't perceive anything wrong that coudn't be fixed by more-of-the-same; and anyway they personally are not the worst, so 'don't judge/ blame me'?
Once you have made the diagnosis, only you can implement (or work towards) a solution.
Being reasonable, friendly, agreeable, empathic... these are enemies of Life in this world. Sad but true. If you don't like it for yourself, get on with changing it for yourself - as best you can.
The process of corruption is long and incremental - and often begins with loneliness. Modern life creates loneliness, disaffection, alienation; and the way out from this state (so nearly intolerable for social beings such as ourselves) is to join in with the fake empathy demands of the mass media; join in with the (more-or-less) sexualized, intoxication-focused and mutually exploitative events that go by the name of 'social life'; just, basically, Join In.
I presume that this is why the elites are so keen that as many as possible vulnerable and impressionable 18 year olds should be torn away from their friends and families and planted somewhere (anywhere!) else among people who they do not know and who care nothing for them, in spiritually barren colleges where their only escape is into meaningless mass media, superficial social interaction, sexual adventures, intoxication events, and self-righteous moral grandstanding --- the only alternative being to sit in your room, a cafe, a library for hours... alone and silent.
Here and now, pretty much all high volume, widely-available social interactions are thoroughly permenated by mass media attitudes, which are secular and leftist attitudes; any group of 'friends' casually interacting, or interacting on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat or whatever (and - so far as I can see - everyone is doing this all of the time, unless physically prevented) will be participating in a festival of shallow secular evil - will be thought-policing each other for crimespeak, will be demanding and eliciting 'appropriate' attitudes and responses to an agenda supplied and hourly updated by the mass media.
The only way out from this is solitude and silence, and the only way that solitude and silence are tolerable (let alone rewarding) is in a loving and nurturing context - which is, pretty much, restricted to the family context (i.e. embedded in the context of sociality and responsibilities which is - or should be - family life).
Of course families are themselves infected by the same anti-spiritual culture, including the culture of busyness - of over-planning, of always doing something (or feeling guilty about not doing something) - but at any rate, the family makes this basic life stance possible in a way that the public world simply disallows - there is the possibility of genuine human contact: soul to soul.
In the public world you can have solitude and silence, but at the cost of paralysing despair --- Or you can 'join-in' with the agenda of always inane and ever-more-frequently evil chit chat, opinionating, endorsing, mocking, cheering and ritually-condemning that is 'modern life'.
Nobody is going to solve this for us, because everybody is the problem. 'Society' won't reform because they don't want to 'reform'; they don't perceive anything wrong that coudn't be fixed by more-of-the-same; and anyway they personally are not the worst, so 'don't judge/ blame me'?
Once you have made the diagnosis, only you can implement (or work towards) a solution.
Being reasonable, friendly, agreeable, empathic... these are enemies of Life in this world. Sad but true. If you don't like it for yourself, get on with changing it for yourself - as best you can.
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