Bruce Charlton's Notions

The Hospital Society, where almost everybody is ill, was predicted by the great evolutionary theorist WD Hamilton, as an inevitable consequence of mutation accumulation, mainly (but not wholly) due to the decline in the massively reduced selection-out of deleterious genes from a reduction in child mortality rates from more than 50% to about 1%. 

Hamilton predicted that the Hospital Society would at first be the more-impaired being looked-after by the less-impaired; but as things proceeded, firstly the less-impaired would fail to look-after their sicker compatriots, and then the less-impaired be unable to look after themselves...

At which point current civilization would collapse utterly; and some other form of living - presumably much poorer, simpler, smaller scale - would eventually supervene.  

The Hospital Society is already here, and the trajectory is as Hamilton described; except that the illnesses are mostly "psychiatric" - that is, they are impairments in fitness; visible in sexual and social pathologies of behaviour. 

In other words; the major form of - presumably genetic - illness in the current West (and perhaps elsewhere) is seen in the endemic majority suffering from a wide range of psychological impairments that effect even, or especially, the youngest generations... 

With each generation more extremely and pervasively impaired in their biological fitness than the one before.  

It is important to clarify that biological fitness is an objective concept; which is a measure of the chance of reproductive success in a given human society. 

Reproductive success requires first survival, but then fertility of more than the threshold of replacement fertility (somewhat more than two children per woman, the exact number depending on societal child mortality rates). 

Furthermore, the more-than-two offspring must themselves be reproductively viable (i.e. the offspring must want-to, and be-able-to, themselves reproduce above replacement). In practice, this means an average of at least three surviving children per woman. 

The problem with mutation accumulation is that it can become terminal, when mutations accumulate faster than natural selection can sieve them out; and this will happen much more rapidly and inevitably when populations are shrinking; since natural selection can then only be very weak and slow. 

Looking around at the world, I see that genuine biological fitness has become extremely rare among adolescents and adults; and those who are among the most "health and fitness" focused are among the most psychologically pathological. 

We live in a world of sickness; a society where sickness is the norm and viable levels of biological fitness are almost unknown. 

My own impression is that the situation has become irrevocable; not least because in a world where everyone is psychiatrically impaired (to a greater or lesser extent) then (almost inevitably) the mainstream societal ideology becomes one in which psychological (sexual and social) pathologies are defended, rationalized - then promoted and supported. 

A genuinely spiritual religion - that recognized a world beyond the material and the possibility of eternal life - might be able to provide a world view in which Mankind could honestly face this reality, and learn from it in ways that would be of benefit to our life beyond death...

But there is no such religion at the social level; and therefore the social and individual experience of the Hospital Society is likely to be almost wholly negative: a matter of more and more material suffering and relentless collapsing of physical functionality. 

What positive perspective might we adopt as such a scenario unfolds? As long as there is life, there are reasons to live - or else God would not be sustaining us alive. 

Rather than focusing primarily or exclusively on present happiness and physical survival, which can - at best - be a merely temporary extension of our finite mortality; we need to understand and learn from what is happening. 

And by learning, I means spiritual learning - the learning of fundamental lessons such as those concerning the human condition, divine creation, and God.   

A note on a striking but contrasting re-use of the given-nickname "silver-handed", with resonances spanning across some thirty years of Tolkien's writing life. 

A happy childhood is a form of what Owen Barfield called Original Participation; that is to say, it is a mostly unconscious and spontaneous immersion-in the society of the family and more generally. The child feels a belonging that it not separated from 'the world'. 

When a childhood is happy, adolescence is likely to be a threat to that happiness; because of its psychological and spiritual separation from parental values, and the need to choose whether to accept or reject parental values; the loss of spontaneous engagement with the world; and an increasing self-consciousness. With adolescence there will be (whether threatening, or actual) some significant degree of isolation and loneliness. 

The happy childhood may lead to the attempt to reject adolescence in at least some of its aspects; a holding-onto childhood happiness - and this can work - to some degree, and for some time. 

However, sooner or later, adolescence will drive-away the spontaneity of childhood modes of being, and it will be discovered that they cannot be simulated convincingly. 

Therefore, adolescence will eventually separate us from the Original Participation of childhood, and precipitate us into the alienated state of the Consciousness Soul, as it is termed - which is the adolescent state-of-being of an individual, and also of our society. 

The pathological spiritual state of this modern (especially Western world) will then tend permanently to trap the maturing individual in this alienated state of a permanent adolescence; and modern people will be socially-encouraged to seek adolescent gratifications. 

(Hence the nature of modernity; and its images and goals.)

Indeed, in a world of materialism and spirit-rejection; a world where the divine is excluded from all public discourse and plays very little primary role in religious discourse; it requires a personal, individual, inwardly-motivated "quest" even to seek beyond the short-termist gratification - but purposelessness and meaninglessness - of modern pseudo-adulthood. 

The deficiencies of this state become more and more apparent with advancing age and the onset of old-age (when we recognize that feeling, looking and behaving younger is the only publicly-approved ideal); although the harshness of alienation may well be ameliorated considerably, albeit vicariously and temporarily, by creating a happy family life, and participating in the situation of a happy childhood for one's own children.   

But the temptation of an idealistic yearning for a return to a happier early life (or even an imagined happier earlier life - i.e. childhood as we know innately it should have been, and sometimes is), is a yearning temptation that will seldom diminish - unless some kind of a spiritual revolution and the goal of a state beyond perpetual adolescence is accomplished. 

Hence, a happy childhood presents a problem in the world as it now is - a problem that does not go-away unless it is overcome; unless that early happiness can be understood as a foretaste of some higher state of being that is yet to come, and which is indeed attainable. 

Some people tend towards a hoped-for return to that childhood state, or indeed a complete and permanent version of the partial and temporary childhood state, in the world after death... 

Such are the desires for a paradise of unselfconscious, merely-being after death - entailing the dissolving of our plaguing sense of self, and the cessation of that adult thinking which separates us from life, the world, other people. 

At extreme; the desire is a total rejection of consciousness and its curses; yearning for an afterlife without body, a life as a pure spirit that is not separated from the divine or is continuous-with the rest of the world... A bliss state, a comfortable sleep.

As it were, a return back through childhood to the womb, and beyond into non-being - non-separation. This entailing a recognition of the futility of this earthly life - handing-back the entrance ticket of incarnation into mortality, and acknowledging that this world is wrong, bad, a torment - something best left as soon as possible.  

However, the happy childhood can be taken otherwise. It can be learned-from, instead of being either rejected (in favour of permanent arrested development in adolescence), or else something to be recapitulated (as some version of a future eternal and completed childhood). 

Childhood happiness can taken as evidence of the possibility of happiness as a separate and incarnated being; an experience from which we can learn in order to move beyond and to something higher, more satisfying across an eternal timescale. 

By my understanding, it is the possibility of an eternal higher happiness that is precisely what is on-offer with resurrection into eternal Heavenly life. 

But that is only fully and finally accessible via the portals of death. So how can that be helpful to our life here-and-now? 

The first thing to say is that the possibility of future post-mortal higher-happiness does not in any way guarantee present happiness in this mortal life. Indeed, the specifics of this mortal life - its degrees of happiness and misery, are as variable as the number of people alive and who have died. 

To look forward in faith to salvation does not "make us happy" here-and-now.   

But - such a prospect before us does make the miseries of this mortal life potentially worthwhile; and it is up-to each of us to realize this potential by learning from our suffering - as well as by striving-for and valuing our present happiness. 

The spiritual war is fought in public over whether the 'sins' of mainstream, totalitarian leftist-materialism ought to be regarded as primary (e.g. racism, sexism' climate- or peck-denialism...); or whether instead the traditional Christian sins such as adultery, fornication, drunkenness etc.) ought to be the major focus. 

(The mainstream has the advantage in this dispute because they deny that the Christian sins are sinful at all, but rather virtues; while the self-identified Christians usually agree with the totalitarian left that attitudes such as racism, sexism, and -denialism are indeed sins - and will, for example - routinely and officially exclude leaders who disagree with any of the mainstream leftist definitions of 'sin'.) 

My usual list of the most dominating sins of this time and place includes fear, resentment, dishonesty and despair. 

But these are - at best - almost completely neglected by Christian teaching - which continues to focus on more traditional (and spectacular!) sins of a sexual nature; or sins that are (at least officially) still against the law: things like murder, rape, theft etc. 

Such a focus has the unfortunate (but probably deliberate) effect of creating and sustaining "Pharisaism" among Christians, which I would here define as the belief that sin can be avoided - with enough effort. 

Well, yes! Spectacular sins can indeed be avoided. And avoiding these is made much easier by the fact that they are socially dis-approved, and if detected they will be punished. 

But my understanding is that Jesus said this was not only insufficient, but a harmful attitude to life. 

Sin, as such, is so pervasive in the human condition as to be unavoidable; and the belief that sin can be avoided leads to what Jesus termed 'hypocrisy' - that is, to assumptions of purity and authority on the basis of being (at least publicly) able to avoid a few extreme and spectacular sins; while neglecting the far more frequent, but equally in need of repentance, sins of everyday life - such as dishonesty.

Did you murder anyone yesterday? Probably not. And, if you did, you probably repent it. 

But were you dishonest yesterday? Yes You Were! And probably dozens, maybe hundreds of times; especially if you are a manager or a professional or any kind of leader. 

Indeed, most middle class people are dishonest as an essential (and growing) element of their job: they are strategically, calculatedly dishonest for-a-living.  

Did you repent these dishonesties - did you even notice them at all? Even worse - do you regard yourself as a truthful person, and deny that you were and are dishonest? 

Sins such as dishonesty are un-noticed and therefore un-repented because they are socially-approved, and often socially rewarded: 

Back in 2020-2021; we were all socially expected to fear the birdemic - and anyone who did not express sufficient fear was regarded as a danger to public health. 

Resentment is the motivational basis of antiracism, feminism, socialism and many other leftist ideologies (and several actually-left but supposedly-right ideologies such as nationalism); and nowadays such resentment (whether personal, or vicariously expressed 'on behalf of' the 'oppressed') is mandatory in public discourse. 

A manager and a politician is rewarded for dishonesty (e.g. calculated misleading, untruthfulness and indeed lying - if lies effective and deniable); and will be sacked if he refuses. Much the same applies to scientists, doctors, lawyers, church leaders, economists, the police and military... essentially it applies everybody in leadership or 'expert' positions in major social institutions. 

My point here - which I think was also Jesus's point in His teaching - is that we sin all the time, and deliberately - and we have no intention of ceasing to sin when those sins are socially-allowed/ mandatory; because to do so would put us out of a job, and exclude us from human society. 

Fortunately (!); Jesus came to save sinners, and not those (non-existent) persons who are sin-less.  

Jesus asks 'merely' that we acknowledge that we sin all the time, and cannot (indeed we do not wish to) stop sinning: and 'yet' these and we are exactly those who Jesus can and will save... So long as we are prepared to acknowledge and repent the fact.  

How does this fit with salvation? Well, in the Fourth Gospel ("John") the word "sin" is mostly used to mean "death" - that is, death without resurrection, death without salvation. 

Resurrection (i.e. eternal life, instead of death) depends on what we can call repentance, not on ceasing to sin. 

And repentance is necessary to salvation because resurrection requires that we are prepared to acknowledge sin as sin, and leave it behind us before we can proceed to eternal life in Heaven. After all, Heaven would not be Heaven if sin was still present - there can be no sin in Heaven; but we are all sinful, nearly all the time; therefore we must reject All sin before we can be resurrected into Heaven.

Repentance can therefore be thought of as the firm intent to leave-behind all sin (spectacular and unnoticed) when the choice and chance of resurrection comes to us (presumably, after death), and when all such sins shall be brought to our attention*. 

To "follow Jesus" means to repent all our sins. And it is those sins that are socially un-recognized, denied, or rewarded which are far less likely to be repented than the big and obvious sins on which nearly-everybody is agreed.   

*We cannot, of course, recognize all our individual sins during this mortal life - there are too many, and we lack sufficient discernment! But we can avoid falling into the damnation-trap of denying sin, especially when it is brought to our awareness. That way, when we come to the point of decision, we will not be held back from salvation by our habitual, ingrained and calculated unwillingness to let-go of 'the least of' our sins. For instance; someone who has spent forty years 'justifying' his own deliberate dishonesties in the workplace; may find it very difficult to acknowledge that dishonesty Must utterly and forever be repudiated in Heaven. 

The Red Pill is, both in the Matrix movie and in real life, in truth just another Blue Pill. 

This is because the depicted Red Pill, and also the supposed Red Pills of a vast amount of pseudo-anti-left stuff on the internet over the past twenty-something years; is just more politics, more sociology, more psychology... Just another variant of the usual materialist (spirit-excluding) public discourse.

The real-reality behind the fake-reality of mass mainstream official discourse concerning wars/ climate/ racism/ the birdemic/ inequity etc - is that the spiritual is primary, and all this is a manifestation of spiritual war. 

Any valid Red Pill should clarify that we are the beloved children of that God whose creation we all inhabit - and anything short of this is a dangerously partial distortion of real-reality. 

Fictional or factual depictions of the masses as mind-controlled, exploited and enslaved, tormented creatures etc - are Blue Pills unless they include that the motivating purpose of this is spiritual; totalitarianism is a means to spiritual ends.     

Socio-political discourse is nearly-always a Blue Pill; because it neglects, excludes and denies that we inhabit A Divine Creation; and that this creation - including the souls of Men - is under continual attack from demonic and demon-affiliated powers.  

Almost-all the Red Pill discourse I have encountered (whether using the Pill terminology or simply socio-political ideology masquerading as revelations of reality) functions as indirect propaganda for the exclusive reality of the material world. 

Exposes of merely political underlying structures and mechanisms are tacit denials that the material is only a part of the spiritual; they constitute an implicit exclusion of the reality that our mortal life and this earth are (if we so choose) a temporary and transitional stage leading to the eternity of resurrected Heavenly life.  

Thus (as a topical instance) the real Red-Pill reality includes that the current Fire Nation or Arrakis wars are (in their different ways) spiritual wars - ultimately these are conflicts over the souls of Men and the future of God's creation. 

Ultimately; as far as you and I are concerned, these primarily spiritual wars are only very indirectly related to whatever might (or might not) be happening materially in these wars. Material war (i.e what actually happens 'on the ground') are, spiritually speaking, almost (but not quite) irrelevant to the spiritual war currently afoot in your soul and mine. 

(Rather than being, as usually considered, the proper subject matter of Red Pill reality.)   

That is the true and spiritual framework within-which these and other wars are happening, here and now, and in the way that they being presented and conducted. 

And it is just-another Blue Pill to pretend otherwise.  

Just an observation, and something that (I believe) honest Trad Christians need to be aware of in themselves...

Almost any traditional form of Christianity (whether Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Calvinist, Mormon, or whatever) can mount a very deadly attack on... 'the other guy'. 

In other words; once you have accepted a coherent set of theological premises; you can use these as an effective basis to attack any other religion, denomination - or no religion. 

So long as you stick to your own premises, and refuse to acknowledge these premises as being metaphysical assumptions that you-yourself have chosen to adopt -- you can easily impress yourself at the rigour and vigour of your own deadly dialectic! 

You can even convince yourself that effective argument from your chosen-but-denied-assumed premises is a validation of these premises; meaning they must be true (i.e. necessarily true for all Men, at all times and places). 

You can impress and convince yourself, perhaps; but it does not impress other people; because they do not share your chosen-premises, and they can see your baseline assumptions for what they are...  

So, this kind of Trad Christian may be smug and confident; but to anyone else outside the assumptions he will appear a deluded fanatic: someone who attacks all the time because he must; and he must always attack because has no effective defence. 

To the outsider; this kind of Trad Christian is just another example of the New Age mantra of: "it works for me". 

The idea that truth is whatever works... 

This is so, because no type of Christianity works as a whole; none are 'doing well'; no churches are large and powerful and growing... and also Christian. 

Therefore the Trad Christian is, in effect, one who tries (but fails) to assert that because "it works for me", therefore "it is objectively and necessarily true for everybody". 

My point is that the validity of Trad Christianity is only from-within, and it "works" only at the individual (or small group) level.   

In other words; the validity of Trad Christianity is of the exact same type as the validity of Romantic Christianity - that is, Trad Christianity is valid insofar as it motivates and sustains the individual to be and remain Christian. 

In yet other words; Trad Christianity is invalidated by the same standards from which it is derived. 

...That is, Trad Christianity is implicitly an assertion of the primacy of the validity of an institutional church - yet the corruption and weakness of all churches-as-institutions is the strongest argument against Trad Christianity.  

I call upon Trad Christians explicitly to acknowledge (to themselves) this fact (as it seems) - and its implications. I mean the fact that here-and-now, 2023 in The West - traditional Christianity works (when it does work) at an individual level primarily; and there is no honest basis for basing argument upon the publicly objective validity of any specific form of church, institution, theology, Biblical interpretation or other set of assumptions. 

All effective Christianity Just Is rooted in individual discernment and responsibility; and we need to be honest enough to acknowledge this - or else we are living a lie built on a delusion. 

Aggressively ranting and raving, or even manic self-congratulation and boasting, does no more objective good than (maybe) operating as a form of self-psychotherapy, intended to conceal-from oneself a fundamental personal dishonesty.  

It used to be assumed (taken for granted) among Christians, that the coming of Jesus Christ made the world a better place in some ultimate sense; and that conversion of a person or nation to being Christian did much the same. 

But I regard it as a fact that - spiritually - the world now is much worse than was the world 2000 years ago; because there has never before been so much (and top-down, official, propagandized, mandatory) inversion of true values. 

I regard Christianity as essentially about the next world, not this-world; so its effects on this-world are secondary to changes in attitudes and expectations consequent upon the desire for salvation. It is the desire for salvation - and also the expectation - that constitute the main societal effect of Christianity; and this main effect has manifested very differently among Christians of different types, times and places.  

Standing where we are, in 2023 and in The West; we find a world that has not just turned away from Christianity, but turned against it. 

Like it or not; the societal agendas of Christianity (and the other religions) have been subverted, corrupted... and are now largely subordinated-to, indeed assimilated-into, an international leftist, atheist, materialist ideology. 

A Christian now stands largely alone, or with a handful of companions; in a world where institutions (including churches) are actively net-evil - or else in present danger of becoming-so. 

The fact of Christianity's failure to make the world a better place ought not to surprise anyone whose faith is rooted in the Fourth Gospel - but that has not been the basis of Christianity (which, in practice, is rooted in the Synoptic Gospels, the Epistles, or church theology and tradition). 

When it became a church-focused, church-mediated, religion; Christianity almost-inevitably became primarily social. The church agenda was more often mainly up-front about this-wordly behaviour; and only much more secondarily and remotely about resurrection and Heaven. 

Indeed, Christianity has often become millennialist in its nature; and focused upon this-world being saved and redeemed by a second coming of Jesus Christ - implicitly acknowledging that Jesus only half-succeeded in his mission, and needed to come-back in order to finish the job. 

This, as I say, was partly a consequence of the expectation that Christianity implied that the world - this mortal world - would become a better place: indeed a perfect place. The coming of Jesus from heaven to Earth was taken to mean that a process had-been initiated by which the Earth would (by some combination of gradual and radical change) become Heaven. 

Well, as I said above; not only has this not (yet?) happened after 2000 years - but (IMO) this-world is further from Heaven, than ever before in the history of Mankind. Realistically, therefore, Christianity is now an individual-level religion - essentially 'about' the spiritual relationship between the individual Christian and Jesus Christ... Or else (if society is regarded the index of success) Christianity is a failure, and looks set to become worse. 

Another aspect of the two millennium span since the time of Jesus Christ is that Men have changed from being immersed in their group identities, to being very-much individuals. Insofar as modern Men have group identities, these are chosen (and often changed). 

In the past, Men lived essentially as part of various groups they were born-into or socialized-into; much of their behaviour was spontaneous and driven by unconscious group factors; and their choices were merely amounted to 'take it or leave it', and were very much buried in those identities. 

Indeed, this immersive unconsciousness is probably why a church based Christianity was inevitable 2K years ago. It simply did not make sense (it was not a matter of awareness) to Men of that era, that an individual could and did exist primarily apart from the groups into-which he has been born... And therefore (because he has-chosen) that each Man's religion just-is now his own responsibility. 

Nowadays, this alienated individualist state (sometimes termed alienation) has gone from being the subject of vast comment and discussion, to being simply taken for granted and unavoidable.  

So; these are two great conclusions that I draw from the past 2000 years: 

First that Christianity is not primarily about the world, but about each individual Christian; and second that nowadays (like it or not) we experience ourselves primarily as individuals. 

I said these seem like 'facts' to me; but of course that isn't really accurate: I see them as assumptions that are unavoidable when I am honest with myself.  

And this forms the basis, my foundation, of that way of being a Christian that I (and a few others) term Romantic Christianity. 

A typically thoughtful and honest post from "trad" Roman Catholic blogger "Bonald" at The Orthosphere has had me mulling over his arguments and implications. 

As purpose and meaning are being, decade by decade, leached from public discourse and major institutions and the world (especially The West) descends into ever more explicit and aggressively imposed value-inversions -- is it really conceivable that such a situation is what we need for our spiritual well-being? 

Maybe this is not so far-fetched, if I consider the specific instance of myself. 

I grew-up into early adulthood in a much better world - more honest for sure, with a better appreciation of beauty; and a definite sense that the various social systems (law, academia, science, education) ought to be trying to perform these functions for the long-term benefit of everyone. 

Yet the fact was that living in this better world, even when living by the highest standards of this better world; was grossly insufficient in terms of ultimate realities. To take my own field of science in the context of academia: in actual practice - in my own life - the fact that science and scientists in the UK sought truth and spoke truth; and that academia broadly supported this activity (or, at least, did not actively dis-courage it); had the effect of my life and work being a partial satisfaction of profound drives. 

Because these profound impulses were partially satisfied in actual life, the fact that my life and world were ineradicably insufficient was for long concealed from me. There seemed to be (but actually was not) a valid hope that the inadequacies would be cured by some future change, some reform or improvement in the conduct of science and universities. 

My life was Not satisfying, despite its many satisfactions; there was Not a genuine purpose to my life in context of humanity, nor adequate meaning to my work in context of reality - because I believed (in line with my culture, the Western Civilization I inhabited) no purpose or meaning to reality-itself. The universe was a mixture of blind-determinism and randomness, and was utterly indifferent to humanity in general, and me-personally in particular. 

To summarize; the better world of my youth was At Its Best an only-partially-effective mere-palliative for a fundamentally inadequate world-view and a fundamentally meaningless public world. Yet the palliative was, for many years, good enough to prevent me seeking for anything fundamentally better. 

Therefore, I did not acknowledge the reality of a God, a Creator, until my late 40s, and did not become a Christian until I was nearly 50. 

And why did this truth eventually dawn upon me, after so long in this world? Probably the main proximate stimulus was the corruption of science and academia, such that their inadequacy was At Last forced upon me. 

In other words, it was the world getting worse that made me realize the nature of the world, and led eventually to a grateful acceptance of Jesus Christ's offer of everlasting resurrected Heavenly Life. 

My point is that it is at least conceivable that in some broad and general sense, the same may apply to many other people; and it may be that many people are led away from mainstream materialistic atheism and to conversion only by the worsening of the world, and the removal of partial-palliatives.

It may be that - in some average sense - a worse and worsening world may be the best hope for many or most people. 

Not that God wants a worse world for us! Of course not. God desires the best world for us, and our highest happiness in this (inevitably flawed and corrupt) mortal life - followed by the choice of immortal resurrection into Heaven. God desires us to be born-into and develop and be nurtured, in a context of loving relationships and Godly ideals. 

But Western humanity won't do that, does not even want that, and (increasingly) chooses the opposite; and therefore God (as creator) is able-to and does make the best of the evil choices of sinful Men. 

For me, the decline of The West made me recognize that - even at its best - our secular civilization was not merely inadequate, but actively harmful. My own strong distress that the top-down imposition of corruption and lies on the once relatively 'pure' worlds of academia and science, actually functioned as a trigger to deeper reflection and a fundamental reorientation in what I desired for myself and others.

It seems that I actually, in practice, in real-life - actually Needed a worse this-world to be induced to desire a better next-world; and maybe there are (in very different ways, mostly) many other people in a similar situation? People who will not be cured of this-worldly materialism, except by the withdrawal of this-worldly gratifications? 

It is not, of itself, an improvement in the world that real science has been (all-but) eradicated from professional "science"; and that the activity is now reduced to careerist bureaucrats striving to impress their official superiors rather than seek the truth; seeking funding rather than answers to real problems; publishing deliberately misleading deniable-dishonesties rather than the truth as they see it... 

None of this is Good; and it comes from the short-termist expediency of modern Godless Men. yet from it; God can lead some Men (me, for instance) to recognize that even science at its best and noblest, is a radically-incomplete and dangerously-distorted human endeavor when made primary; an activity that cannot satisfy the needs of our soul; and a discourse which does not deserve to be the basis of a Man's mortal life.   

Therefore, perhaps this "sorrowful" world that Bonald well-describes, may be God's way of making the best of modern Man's innate and accumulated evil - and maybe, therefore, this actual world does what is most necessary in ways that are actually more effective than the actually-available alternatives?  

Further to yesterday's blog post: 

It strikes me that it is worthwhile to analyze the general, public significance of my - or anyone else's - claim of experiencing spiritual contact with an author - whether dead, or indeed still alive!  

In terms of such public activities as literary scholarship or criticism, (because false claims are so easy, and none can be checked externally) a person's claim of special spiritual understanding cannot be allowed to have any formal or explicit significance: Scholarship or criticism ought to stand or fall on its intrinsic qualities. 

(This is what ought to happen in an ideal sense; despite that, in practice, this is seldom the case - and that instead high status institutional affiliations and educational certifications of the scholar or critic are too-often taken as validation of specific claims.)

So, we ought to judge for ourselves and not accept spiritual claims of another person simply because they have been made. Nonetheless; it seems absolutely valid to take-into-account such matters as spiritual affinity, when (as a merely specific example) evaluating Tolkien scholarship and criticism. 

And, in practice, this is done; both by the majority mainstream, secular and academic, Tolkien scholars, and also by the significant minority of scholars whose perspective on Tolkien is rooted in his devoutly Roman Catholic religion. 

For myself; I make an evaluation concerning each scholars spiritual sympathy, that is his empathic understanding of Tolkien - and my attitude is (broadly) that the scope of a scholar's understanding is constrained by the limits of his spiritual sympathy. 

That does not exclude the possibility that - within that scope - a scholar may make a vast contribution to the understanding of Tolkien: thus (IMO) the greatest of Tolkien scholars so far - Tom Shippey - is neither a Catholic nor a Christian. 

Nonetheless, that constraint is still operative; and I would not expect Shippey to have much to contribute to a spiritual approach to Tolkien - that is, to the idea of regarding JRR Tolkien as a spiritual mentor and guide (as I do).  

Broadening-out the argument; my summary is that each of us whose concern is spiritual and Christian, can and should be discerning and evaluating, and taking into consideration, the degree and nature of spiritual affiliation between a specific scholar, critic or philosopher - and any person under discussion. 

In sum: making decisions concerning another person's spiritual affiliation is not just relevant, but a necessary activity in the world generally - as well as literature specifically.  

Excerpted from a post at The Notion Club Papers blog...

**

I have a strong, and still increasing, conviction that we ought to move away-from the kind of impersonal abstraction that has been characteristic of spiritual, mystical, meditative and prayer life for many centuries - so much so that the two are often regarded as synonymous. 

Christian mystics have, for instance, often been Neoplatonic in their rationale and experience, and mysticism is often asserted to be a negative state of indescribable, inexpressible experience.  

What I mean is that the ultimate is often supposed to be an experience and a 'subject' that is beyond the personal. 

On the other hand, personal experience of the spiritual - that is, when there is some kind of contact with a Christian personage - whether Jesus Christ, Blessed Virgin Mary, a saint of angel, or any other individual of higher spiritual stature - have also often been reported. 

But typically such an interaction has been conversational... 

An experience of meeting-together perhaps, and conversing. Such experiences as as talking-with a statue or crucifix, an icon, or at a shrine; speaking oneself and hearing replies in the mind... 

Maybe meeting with another person in a dream-like state (or an actual dream), accompanied by vivid visions. Perhaps writing questions and then being dictated answers; or automatic writing. 

These two seem like the options - either, on the one hand, a sophisticated and intellectual kind of abstraction and negation; or else, on the other hand, a rather child-like interaction with a personage that operates rather like a mundane conversation. This tends to encourage adult (and educated) Christians to abandon the personal and embrace the abstract. 

But there is at least one other option, which is something I have at times experienced. An example is when I was immersively reading and thinking about the Fourth Gospel - but an earlier instance relates to more recent historical people who I came to regard as spiritual teachers: William Arkle and JRR Tolkien. 

I have elsewhere talked about the Fourth Gospel and Arkle experiences; but not really about Tolkien... (Continued) 

** Read the whole thing at my Notion Club Papers blog **

I feel as if I am channeling WmJas Tychonievich, in reporting this following (sort-of) "synchronicity" -- which is that immediately after writing my post on the question of evidence of God; I continued my re-reading of The Transmigration of Timothy Archer by Philip K Dick (1982), in which I came across the following (edited, and with my additional emphases):

**

Most people in the West "know" that God does not exist; and they think they "know" this from the "lack of evidence". 

They may ask some variant of - "If God is really-real; then why doesn't God communicate with us?"

But of course there are countless people (now and in the past) who state they know that God exists, have seen or heard or reasoned-out evidence of this. 

What "most people" in the West actually mean is much more like "I, personally, don't believe those people who say that God exists, and I don't believe that the evidence the believers provide is real". 

What is really meant is something more like "I choose to believe the people and institutions that state God does Not exist; and I choose to disbelieve anyone who claims God Does exist."... which is a very different thing from there being "no evidence". 

That's a first line defense. People choose who to believe - what "authorities" to trust. But they then pretend that they have not made this choice! - they claim that their choice was not a choice, but was objective reality; to deny which is irrational self-deception... 

To make a choice, then to deny this was a choice, is surely the very worst kind of self-deception - because impossible of correction?

It also goes deeper than that... 

"I personally do not know of any evidence that convinces me that God exists" is the kind of phrase - and what this actually means is that no such evidence of God is possible, because "my" understanding of "reality" excludes the possibility of God - my understanding of The World has no space for God. 

Someone who says they personally know of no "evidence" that God exists is therefore in truth saying something about himself - not about reality. 

Because his grounds for claiming there is "no evidence" are rooted in many chosen-assumptions that might be otherwise; and these assumptions were themselves chosen. 

(Or else the assumptions were passively-accepted at first, and then later defended as being necessarily true - defended by personal choice.) 

"I know of no evidence that God exists" actually means something-like: 

"I deny the possibility that there could be any evidence of God's existence - because I already have decided there is no God, and therefore any supposed-evidence cannot be true".

Yet such convictions, like all convictions, are ultimately chosen; and therefore we are personally, and ultimately, responsible for both our beliefs and for our disbeliefs, equally. 

And "responsible" means that we personally will take the consequences for the life we choose to lead - which life is most deeply and essentially our thought-life: that of our lives over which we have the greatest choice, and in which our agency is manifested...

We have little or no direct control over the material context of our lives: we don't choose the physical world we inhabit. 

Yet, our thinking is free - if we choose it to be free. 

In particular; we can choose to affirm the ultimate truth, goodness and reality of whatever we want; and to deny the reality of whatever we want*. 

By That we make our life, and judge our-selves. 

*Note - Believing "whatever you want" does Not means that all alternatives are equally true; and choosing to want-to-believe that which you judge to be false or evil will have consequences. 

Many Christians, many people in general, approach the problem of human life in terms of a frame of its pleasures and sufferings - especially the sufferings. 

In other words, they primarily, as their main goal, seek to understand and explain - and find an answer for - the sufferings of 'the world'. 

This approach, while it may be spontaneous for Modern Man, is spiritually lethal; because it is an incoherent, hence insoluble - and in practice actively-harmful - way of understanding the world.   

I think we need to understand this world, this reality, from a starting point that assumed the reality of Man's agency, free will, capacity for autonomous motivation... 

And a reality in which Men are mixed in their nature; a mixture of Good-loving with evil (i.e. which opposes Good).

That is what God has to work-with in creation; and from-which Heaven must be made. 

God's creation includes Men with agency, and evil as well as Good - that is the starting-point.

And from such ingredients it is God's self-imposed task to build "Heaven" (a world of love). Heaven is to be made from a multitude of Men - each of whom just-is an agent, capable of choice and commitments. 

The question is how can God made a Heaven, using Men with agency who each 'contain' some evil - as well as loving motivations? 

Therefore; in creating Heaven God needs to work to encourage Men to choose to make the eternal commitment to live wholly and permanently by love: this outcome cannot be imposed on Men.

We cannot understand this up-front experienced world - including that we cannot understand human suffering - unless we understand 1. what God is trying to do with us, and 2. what God had to work-with. 

We need to understand God's aims and 'materials' as being related, bound-together, inextricably; by the nature of reality. 

Only thus can we grasp the meaning of the two great commandments: to love first God, then to love our 'neighbour'; to understand that these laws are a terse summary of God's great task in creation; and also a brief description of how it is that God can (in principle) make Heaven from a multitude of Men with innate agency...

Men who choose to commit-eternally to love God and the 'neighbours' (i.e. other men who have made the choice of Heaven) - are enabled to make this eternal-commitment by that resurrection - which was offered by the work of Jesus Christ. 

The result - among those who have made this choice - is Heaven. 

The Arrakis conflict has led to the reintroduction of of 1960s style mass "protest" for the current generation of would-be radicals. 

This is something that delights the kind of self-righteous people who most value the 'pure altruism' of public concern about the reported-doings of remote and barely-understood strangers. 

And, just as happened in the 1960s; the new generation of radicals are being offered a range of low risk/ high visibility opportunities to advertise their pure-altruism and anger-on-behalf-of strangers. 

The Establishment have created just enough Establishment homogeneity and resistance to the radical agenda - including a modicum of 'oppression' - such that the new radicals can imagine themselves engaged in a fight for right against wealth and power. 

This is perhaps the first large scale leftist radicalism since the "Occupy" movement of 2011; but the Fremen cause is more effective, because it provides young Western leftists with a chance to imagine themselves in 'solidarity' with a satisfyingly 'alien' ethnic-religious group - and whose agenda is almost completely different from, and hostile to, that of the new radicals... 

All of which (if it comes to awareness) increases the feeling of pure altruism. 

In terms of the large-scale trends of the agenda of evil; this re-emergence of youth (and boomer!) radicalism is something of a step backwards for the Ahrimanic bureaucrats, but one by which they can still imagine themselves to be in control of the situation - because of their massive influence in the mainstream pseudo-radical media -- which are increasingly hard-line in their pro-Fremen stance with every passing day - and their close monitoring of the situation by means of surveillance and tracking media. 

But, by my understanding, the reality underlying these rationalizations is that the radicals are being neutralized by negative emotions and motivations (fear, resentment, pseudo-empathic compassion, guilt, despair) even as they are encouraged to emote publicly. 

Meanwhile the progression of the increasingly dominant Sorathic agenda of encouraging global and within-nation chaos proceeds under these masks. 

As was, indeed, the intention all along; and (presumably) the reason why the current Arrakis situation was collusively set-up in the first place. 

I seem to discern a pattern of belief or motivation among some of those who oppose the mainstream totalitarian Establishment; which is that they desire to combining maximum physical self-sufficiency with maximum spiritual dependency on their chosen church. 

Unfortunately, both physical self-sufficiency and spiritual dependence are so categorically impossible in the modern West that they cannot even be approximated; therefore this fantasy is delusional. 

The world is the most inter-dependent it has ever been, there is unprecedented surveillance, and attempted physical detachment from The System is treated as criminal. Physical self-sufficiency cannot even be approximated. 

But spiritual dependence on external church authority is likewise impossible. All the churches are so deeply corrupted that they are incoherent, their authority is internally fractured, their instructions are labile: fluctuating, contradicting, self-undermining. 

This means that anyone who desires to obey his church, must in fact continually be discerning which aspect of his church he ought to obey, and which disregard or oppose. 

The ideal of physical self-sufficiency and spiritual dependence is an inversion of what is unavoidable - and indeed Christianly-desirable. Physical self-sufficiency is not just impossible, but irrelevant. Spiritual dependence on the authority of a church is not just impossible, but the opposite of what Christians ought to be doing. 

Christians cannot - no matter how much they may wish it - avoid discernment and live-by obedience. Since Christians do discern and choose; this ought explicitly to be directed at God and Jesus Christ - and not at any (inevitably compromised) human institution.  

And, since we are - by any realistic calculation, all-but powerless in socio-political terms; we ought not to be focusing our attention on 'changing the world': nor on positively transforming and protecting one little corner of the world (as with the idea of self-sufficiency).  

We are responsible only for that over which we have genuine choice and control - our inner discernments, commitments, aspirations... 

In this actual world we inhabit; necessity combines with desirability to enforce a focus upon individual spiritual activity in a direct relationship with the divine. 

Ultimately; the physical (including socio-political) world is something with which we must cope - and not a valid object for our life's creative work. 

Ubik (1969) is a science fiction novel by Philip K Dick. Without summarizing the plot, or giving away the punch line; suffice to say that it depicts an evil-permeated and rapidly entropic world, which is opposed by a 'god' who is excluded from all mainstream and normal ways of communicating and helping. 

In this world, The System is all-pervasive. God's messages must come from peripheral and unexpected directions in order to get past the monitoring intelligence. Good can only work indirectly. "God" is to be found only in the "trash" of this culture. 

We might imagine an equivalent for our world, in which the real Christian needed to disguise itself as trash, and move out to the places into which The System does not (yet) extend. It can only find an outlet among the despised people, those regarded as absurd, insignificant - or labelled by The System as insane, idiotic, evil...

The System fights back by mimicking the secret divine messages by deploying fakes as bait... The System pretends that these people and messages are radical, anti-Establishment, or disapproved; yet The System contrives to draw attention to them, nonetheless. 

The System advertises (under pretense of warning against) exactly these baited traps; which it hopes will be mistaken for divine messages - but will lead back into The System. 

Meanwhile, the real messages from the divine, real goodness, are unknown or unnoticed except to those who honestly seek them, and are sensitized to their truth. 

The System is entropic, parasitic, destructive - and opposed to The System is Ubik. 

Ubik is found in various trashy forms, such as an aerosol that (albeit temporarily) opposes and reverses entropy; it heals the dissolutions of The System. 

Ubik is, indeed, understandable as an allegory to the Eucharist; the bread and wine of the Mass as it is supposed ideally to function; yet which is but a "momentary stay against confusion" (to use Robert Frost's description of poetry). 

Even if it was available in unlimited supply and on-demand (and, in PKD's story as in our world, Ubik is actually difficult and dangerous to locate, and has a short 'shelf life'); Ubik does not provide a permanent answer, as does Not the Eucharist.

But Ubik provides a chance to break free from the constancy of destruction by the entropy of the world -- a chance, perhaps, to clear our thoughts and make further enquiries; to seek and discover the availability of a permanent - an eternal - solution to entropy

To discover how to reach a world without entropy, without evil.

 Over at my Notion Club Papers blog.