*
This is only one aspect of a general abuse of language, but it is striking how the Liberal/ politically correct impute to their enemies attitudes which are false opposites of the attitudes of the Left.
*
For example, there are various groups, often 'victim groups' for which the PC express Love and Admiration.
They impute to their enemies what they regard as the opposite of Love and Admiration, which they claim is is Fear and Hatred - hence the imputed label of 'x'-phobia' used to characterize the non-PC.
However, although some victim groups are indeed feared, and others are perhaps hated - the true attitude may more accurately be characterized as Pity and Disgust.
*
In effect, Leftism conflates Fear and Disgust.
Yet Fear and Disgust are, according to a lot of research, distinct emotions, with different biological functions, instantiated in different parts of the brain.
And of course they feel different - we might fear a savage dog, but be disgusted by that dog's excrement.
*
So if a group evokes disgust, this is a very different matter from evoking fear.
But - for the group under discussion, it is much 'cooler' and more self-gratifying to suppose that you are feared than to admit that others find you disgusting.
People often, indeed usually, fear high status groups - but if they are disgusted by a group, then they regard that group as being of intrinsically lower status.
A person might even want to join a group that they hate (if the group has high status and if they got the chance); but would almost-never want to join a group which evokes their disgust - unless as a deliberate act of humility (a Saintly act, perhaps).
*
Furthermore, Disgust is distinct from Hatred.
In general the attitude towards entities which evoke disgust is to keep one's distance - it is akin to a fear of infection or contamination.
Disgust - if carried through - may lead to destruction of that which evokes disgust; as one might exterminate plague rats to remove the threat of infection.
The Nazi attitude toward Jews seem to have been one of disgust, indeed disgust, specifically, was carefully cultivated by Nazi propaganda.
*
What prevents the destruction of that which Disgusts is pity.
If humans are threatened by something that disgusts them; then they may try to destroy that threat.
But if not threatened, they may instead pity.
But usually people don't like to be pitied - they want to be admired. And if they can't be admired they prefer to be feared than pitied.
(Yet, in reality, we are all piteous creatures; and it is pride which makes us resent the pity of others.)
*
So a group which actually evokes Pity and Disgust may deny this is true, and claim that they are instead Feared and Hated - yet, it may be pity which defends that group from the consequences of disgust.
Disgust coupled with Fear may be a deadly combination.
*
Hatred is more complex and variable in its manifestation - it is more like a belief that others have evil intentions; and this may or may not be true.
It is rational to hate that which is motivated to harm you.
In a sense, then, hatred is potentially a virtuous human emotion - although, of course, one which may lead to evil.
For Christians it seems that hatred is necessary (e.g. 'hate the sin, love the sinner'), or at least allowed; while resentment (refusal to forgive) is completely forbidden - so resentment-free hatred might be a valid and virtuous state.
*
This, then, is another false antithesis of the Left: the Left claim to Love, and impute Hatred to their enemies.
The Left (therefore?) regard Hatred as a sin, indeed the cardinal sin - and advocate that people should never allow themselves to experience hatred.
*
(What actually happens if Hatred is suppressed is that it may be replaced by Disgust. And Disgust leads to the desire to avoid contamination, to cleanse that which is disgust-evoking. When they will not allow themselves to Hate their enemies views but Love the enemy himself; then Leftists may begin to feel disgust for their enemies as entities: to regard them as noxious vermin. And people may actively seek-out and exterminate that which disgusts them - especially if they fear 'contamination' by the disgust-evoking group.)
*
But the opposite of Love is not hatred but Pride.
This Leftist error of assuming the opposite of Love is Hate therefore does the further harm of disguising the cardinal sin of Pride; and Pride becomes - for the Left - a virtue.
Think about it: the greatest Christian sin is remade into a Leftist virtue.
*
So these false antitheses have a way of ramifying, and causing damage in all kinds of places.
As Charles Williams used to have it (I paraphrase):
Precision, Precision - always and everywhere. The devil is imprecise.
*
Thursday 10 November 2011
Wednesday 9 November 2011
What's wrong with (real) paganism? Three (main) things
*
Paganism is much better than nothing, as we are beginning to recognize, but requires completion by Christianity.
From a Christian perspective, I venture to suggest three main things wrong with paganism: pride, cruelty and meaninglessness.
*
1. Pride
Pride is the worst of sins for Christians, it is to prefer oneself to God. But for pagans, pride is a virtue - it is, indeed, the only thing holding life together and providing some kind of motivation.
2. Cruelty
Cruelty is not a virtue for paganism, but it is an endemic feature because there is no prohibition of cruelty - therefore when cruelty is expedient or pleasurable there is no compelling reason to refrain.
(Christians are also cruel, obviously - but this is against the core imperative of Love: so by being cruel they are not being Christian; whereas cruelty is compatible with paganism.)
3. Meaninglessness
Paganism offers no meaning for life - or more exactly no human meaning for human life - or the human soul.
Paganism offers only a spark of life in an infinite universe of darkness, or the 'hope' of being extinguished or absorbed into nature, or recycled - at any rate there is no human meaning, no preservation of the essential self.
The pagan soul may be eternal but is not individual.
Pagan immortality is merely an indefinite extension of human life, perhaps more focused on pleasurable things.
(The Christian hope for salvation and eternal life is of the human life made God-like - individuality preserved but enhanced, eternity made not merely bearable but wonderful. Indeed, I am convinced by Pascal that properly-considered *only* Christianity offers a meaningful life - and that no other religion or philosophy does so.)
*
Paganism is much better than nothing, as we are beginning to recognize, but requires completion by Christianity.
From a Christian perspective, I venture to suggest three main things wrong with paganism: pride, cruelty and meaninglessness.
*
1. Pride
Pride is the worst of sins for Christians, it is to prefer oneself to God. But for pagans, pride is a virtue - it is, indeed, the only thing holding life together and providing some kind of motivation.
2. Cruelty
Cruelty is not a virtue for paganism, but it is an endemic feature because there is no prohibition of cruelty - therefore when cruelty is expedient or pleasurable there is no compelling reason to refrain.
(Christians are also cruel, obviously - but this is against the core imperative of Love: so by being cruel they are not being Christian; whereas cruelty is compatible with paganism.)
3. Meaninglessness
Paganism offers no meaning for life - or more exactly no human meaning for human life - or the human soul.
Paganism offers only a spark of life in an infinite universe of darkness, or the 'hope' of being extinguished or absorbed into nature, or recycled - at any rate there is no human meaning, no preservation of the essential self.
The pagan soul may be eternal but is not individual.
Pagan immortality is merely an indefinite extension of human life, perhaps more focused on pleasurable things.
(The Christian hope for salvation and eternal life is of the human life made God-like - individuality preserved but enhanced, eternity made not merely bearable but wonderful. Indeed, I am convinced by Pascal that properly-considered *only* Christianity offers a meaningful life - and that no other religion or philosophy does so.)
*
Tuesday 8 November 2011
Monday 7 November 2011
Left & Right: Evil v not-necessarily Evil
*
I am beginning to think that it would be much clearer to stop talking about the Evils of The Left and simply recognize it as intrinsically Evil - simply take the Evil of the Left for granted, and discuss matters on that basis.
There will never enough evidence of Evil for those who are blind to it; but for those with discernment the evidence of The Left's Evil is by-now overwhelming.
*
“If you dip into any college, or school, or parish, or family–anything you like–at a given point in its history, you always find that there was a time before that point when there was more elbow room and contrasts weren’t quite so sharp; and that there’s going to be a time after that point when there is even less room for indecision and choices are even more momentous. Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing. The whole thing is sorting itself out all the time, coming to a point, getting sharper and harder. . . .”
(That Hideous Strength by C.S Lewis. Dimble speaking - p. 283)
*
(What is much harder, in these times when all institutions have been corrupted and inverted by Leftism, is to discern Good - we can see the baddies massed all around; but where are the goodies?)
*
I am beginning to think that it would be much clearer to stop talking about the Evils of The Left and simply recognize it as intrinsically Evil - simply take the Evil of the Left for granted, and discuss matters on that basis.
There will never enough evidence of Evil for those who are blind to it; but for those with discernment the evidence of The Left's Evil is by-now overwhelming.
*
“If you dip into any college, or school, or parish, or family–anything you like–at a given point in its history, you always find that there was a time before that point when there was more elbow room and contrasts weren’t quite so sharp; and that there’s going to be a time after that point when there is even less room for indecision and choices are even more momentous. Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing. The whole thing is sorting itself out all the time, coming to a point, getting sharper and harder. . . .”
(That Hideous Strength by C.S Lewis. Dimble speaking - p. 283)
*
(What is much harder, in these times when all institutions have been corrupted and inverted by Leftism, is to discern Good - we can see the baddies massed all around; but where are the goodies?)
*
All The Left is Evil - but not all Evil is on The Left.
All The Left is Evil - but not all Evil is on The Left.
This might (wrongly) be taken to imply that the Right is Good - however that would certainly-not be true.
Good is on The Right, but The Right is mostly Evil, of course.
The choice (in this world) is between the wholly-and-intrinsically Evil Left; and the mostly-Evil Right.
*
(Remembering that the mainstream political Right is actually The Left.)
*
(And noting that most Evil is done by people who are tools of Evil - not originators of Evil purpose - people who say Yes to Evil purpose, find reasons to cooperate with Evil intent.)
The choice (in this world) is between the wholly-and-intrinsically Evil Left; and the mostly-Evil Right.
*
(Remembering that the mainstream political Right is actually The Left.)
*
(And noting that most Evil is done by people who are tools of Evil - not originators of Evil purpose - people who say Yes to Evil purpose, find reasons to cooperate with Evil intent.)
*
Real Pagan or Neo-pagan: How to tell the difference?
*
Easy.
In a word: politics.
*
Real pagans are Right-wing, indeed Reactionary;
while Neo-pagans are Left-wing/ Liberal/ Socialist.
*
In other words, Real pagans fit their politics into their religion;
while Neo-pagans fit their religion around their politics.
*
Easy.
In a word: politics.
*
Real pagans are Right-wing, indeed Reactionary;
while Neo-pagans are Left-wing/ Liberal/ Socialist.
*
In other words, Real pagans fit their politics into their religion;
while Neo-pagans fit their religion around their politics.
*
Sunday 6 November 2011
A kind of logic
*
Does it have a name?
It is used a lot - everywhere from politics to everyday life.
*
It relates to large scale and imprecise policy and action taking place in large scale and imprecise situations - there can be no formal proofs or controlled experiment.
But the situation is one where action must be taken (or else there must be a choice to take no action) and there is a choice of a possible actions.
*
The logic is that if there is something that you want to be done, or you think needs to be done, or from which you personally benefit - then the fact that it has been tried before and failed - perhaps tried several times before and failed - is not counted as evidence against trying it again because this time things are different.
In one sense this is correct, things are different, things always are different - yet what this means is that past experience has zero influence on future action.
The reason is that just because it happened like that then, does not necessarily mean that it will happen the same now.
*
The logic is that there is no necessary link between the past and the future; therefore the link can and perhaps should be ignored.
The fact that communism used to be bad does not mean that it is necessarily bad to be a communist now; the fact that a person used to behave badly does not mean they will necessarily continue to do so.
Give them another chance/ ignore experience.
*
However... when the situation is such that there is disapproval: when you want something not to be done, when the people involved are disliked, when there is a personal disadvantage from a potential course of action - then a single past experience in a different situation may lead to an absolute prohibition.
Nobody give Nazis a second, third, fourth and tenth chance like they do with Communists!
(Indeed, potential or imaginary Nazis are regarded as a bigger threat than actual, existing, massive, expansive, aggressive Communist Empires!)
Nobody says things are different now - just because Fascism/ National Socialism led to bad results in the past does not means that it will necessarily do so in the future. Nobody imagines the experience of the Holocaust is irrelevant to future policy.
A single specific unreplicated instance has absolute authority over all present and possible future actions.
*
So this logic works such that on the one hand:
1. No past experience or possible future evidence is ever sufficient to condemn that which is pre-approved.
The onus of proof is that to reject communism entails demonstrating that communism must - under ALL possible and imaginable circumstances - lead to the worst possible results.
And if this cannot be proven beyond doubt we shall give communism another try!
2. Minimal or no past experience is necessary to absolutely rule out that which is pre-loathed.
The onus of proof is that to accept fascism entails demonstrating that under NO possible or conceivable circumstances could it ever lead to any kind of harm.
*
In sum, to reject communism requires showing that it is totally evil; while to accept fascism requires demonstrating that it is totally good.
No evidence is ever sufficient to reject that of which we approve, no evidence is ever enough to get us to accept that of which we disapprove.
Probabilities, amount of data, strength of evidence have absolutely no affect on things.
Because this logic is absolutist not probabilistic.
*
Policy choices - personal choices - are thus pre-determined, pre-immunized.
Vast edifices of research, analysis and critique are rendered utterly ineffectual.
All that needs be done is change attitudes - and from attitudes this all else follows.
*
What to call this style of absolutist reasoning in which attitude is 100 percent determinative of outcome?
In the past it would have had a name: something rather like 'un-manly logic' - and its current dominance would have seemed easily explicable.
Its dominance also seems strongly related to the rulership of society by bureaucracies - by committees not individuals, by democracy and voting.
*
In many ways this kind of logic - a logic based wholly on attitude, on prejudice - is the natural, default mode of human functioning.
There is something to be said for a society which knows what it likes and want, knows what it hates and fights against, and just gets on with the job.
But the domination of a society ostensibly devoted-to knowledge and ruled by research and evidence by covert yet determinative prejudice is simply dishonest and irrational, hence evil.
*
So - what to call it?
The logic of prejudice, perhaps?
Or just plain prejudice - a prejudice that - once established - orders all past, present and possible experience to confirm itself?
Yet a prejudice that is ultimately ashamed of itself, that therefore lies about its own nature and operations. That disguises itself with borrowed trappings of skepticism, reason, evidence.
(And the plain fact that the logic of prejudice utterly rules exactly those individuals and groups who claim to be most opposed to prejudice really ought to have been a dead give-away!)
*
Does it have a name?
It is used a lot - everywhere from politics to everyday life.
*
It relates to large scale and imprecise policy and action taking place in large scale and imprecise situations - there can be no formal proofs or controlled experiment.
But the situation is one where action must be taken (or else there must be a choice to take no action) and there is a choice of a possible actions.
*
The logic is that if there is something that you want to be done, or you think needs to be done, or from which you personally benefit - then the fact that it has been tried before and failed - perhaps tried several times before and failed - is not counted as evidence against trying it again because this time things are different.
In one sense this is correct, things are different, things always are different - yet what this means is that past experience has zero influence on future action.
The reason is that just because it happened like that then, does not necessarily mean that it will happen the same now.
*
The logic is that there is no necessary link between the past and the future; therefore the link can and perhaps should be ignored.
The fact that communism used to be bad does not mean that it is necessarily bad to be a communist now; the fact that a person used to behave badly does not mean they will necessarily continue to do so.
Give them another chance/ ignore experience.
*
However... when the situation is such that there is disapproval: when you want something not to be done, when the people involved are disliked, when there is a personal disadvantage from a potential course of action - then a single past experience in a different situation may lead to an absolute prohibition.
Nobody give Nazis a second, third, fourth and tenth chance like they do with Communists!
(Indeed, potential or imaginary Nazis are regarded as a bigger threat than actual, existing, massive, expansive, aggressive Communist Empires!)
Nobody says things are different now - just because Fascism/ National Socialism led to bad results in the past does not means that it will necessarily do so in the future. Nobody imagines the experience of the Holocaust is irrelevant to future policy.
A single specific unreplicated instance has absolute authority over all present and possible future actions.
*
So this logic works such that on the one hand:
1. No past experience or possible future evidence is ever sufficient to condemn that which is pre-approved.
The onus of proof is that to reject communism entails demonstrating that communism must - under ALL possible and imaginable circumstances - lead to the worst possible results.
And if this cannot be proven beyond doubt we shall give communism another try!
2. Minimal or no past experience is necessary to absolutely rule out that which is pre-loathed.
The onus of proof is that to accept fascism entails demonstrating that under NO possible or conceivable circumstances could it ever lead to any kind of harm.
*
In sum, to reject communism requires showing that it is totally evil; while to accept fascism requires demonstrating that it is totally good.
No evidence is ever sufficient to reject that of which we approve, no evidence is ever enough to get us to accept that of which we disapprove.
Probabilities, amount of data, strength of evidence have absolutely no affect on things.
Because this logic is absolutist not probabilistic.
*
Policy choices - personal choices - are thus pre-determined, pre-immunized.
Vast edifices of research, analysis and critique are rendered utterly ineffectual.
All that needs be done is change attitudes - and from attitudes this all else follows.
*
What to call this style of absolutist reasoning in which attitude is 100 percent determinative of outcome?
In the past it would have had a name: something rather like 'un-manly logic' - and its current dominance would have seemed easily explicable.
Its dominance also seems strongly related to the rulership of society by bureaucracies - by committees not individuals, by democracy and voting.
*
In many ways this kind of logic - a logic based wholly on attitude, on prejudice - is the natural, default mode of human functioning.
There is something to be said for a society which knows what it likes and want, knows what it hates and fights against, and just gets on with the job.
But the domination of a society ostensibly devoted-to knowledge and ruled by research and evidence by covert yet determinative prejudice is simply dishonest and irrational, hence evil.
*
So - what to call it?
The logic of prejudice, perhaps?
Or just plain prejudice - a prejudice that - once established - orders all past, present and possible experience to confirm itself?
Yet a prejudice that is ultimately ashamed of itself, that therefore lies about its own nature and operations. That disguises itself with borrowed trappings of skepticism, reason, evidence.
(And the plain fact that the logic of prejudice utterly rules exactly those individuals and groups who claim to be most opposed to prejudice really ought to have been a dead give-away!)
*
Saturday 5 November 2011
Extraordinary claims, extraordinary evidence, psychic dreams
*
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".
This is only true when the claim really is extraordinary.
And the criterion of extraordinary ought to be that of common sense - the wisdom of the ages - extraordinary cannot be defined by whatever weird beliefs Westerners of 2011 have been filled-with.
*
This phrase "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"is attributed to Carl Sagan - which is hardly any kind of recommendation for its validity in my book - but it is a common, near-universal, rhetorical move used by people to dismiss claims that they want to dismiss.
It is a standard method of 'debunking'.
*
Let's think of one extraordinary claim, as it is perceived to be in mainstream modern discourse: 'psychic dreams'.
I mean dreams that mean something more than having reference to personal psychology and physiology - especially dreams that foretell future events or provide knowledge of remote or inaccessible matters.
Does the claim that there really are psychic dreams count as extraordinary, such that it should not be believed without extraordinary evidence?
*
1. Every child apparently believes in psychic dreams. Such a belief is apparently spontaneous.
2. All of the hunter-gatherer, nomadic tribes I have ever read about seem to regard psychic dreams as not just real but very important for tribal well being - having and interpreting such dreams may be the role of the 'shaman'.
3. Educated intellectuals in, say, medieval Europe, seemed to believe in psychic dreams. For instance, Chaucer did, and wrote about little else. Langland's great poem Piers Plowman is also structured as a series of symbolic and insightful dreams.
4. JRR Tolkien, C.S Lewis and some of the Inklings believed in psychic dreams and were indeed fascinated by them - as I have documented on this blog and the Notion Club Paper's blog.
*
5. A lot of modern people in modern societies actually do believe in psychic dreams, as I see from a recent article by Erlendur Haraldsson in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research (2011; 75: 76-90).
In Iceland 36% men and 41% women (30% of university graduates) report having had experience of psychic dreams. This proportion rose between 1974 and 2006.
In terms of attitudes, 30% Icelanders thought psychic dreams were likely, a further 26 percent thought they were certain - more than half the population.
In other countries, 40 percent of people in Virginia USA reported experiencing psychic dreams, 35% of people in the UK said they believed in psychic dreams.
*
So it seems that most people of most types in most places seem to believe in the reality of psychic dreams, and even in modern societies at least a quarter of people still do.
So, why are psychic dreams counted as extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence?
(In practice, to state this about psychic dreams means that there is nothing which would ever be enough to convince the skeptic of the reality of psychic dreams.)
*
The matter of psychic dreams is important because it shows how a common sense belief, a universal and cross-cultural human belief, and what is more a belief held by some of the most intelligent and able people in history, can be framed by mainstream modern discourse as being so utterly extraordinary that there is no point in considering the evidence of the matter since any evidence is certain to be insufficiently extraordinary.
Vast areas of basic human conviction and experience are eliminated from mainstream public discourse by this method: once a belief has been labelled extraordinary, then that belief becomes intrinsically and irrevocably absurd such that only stupid or evil people could hold it.
The knowledge and experience and wisdom of the ages - matters we all used to know as children - matters which in fact are believed by a quarter or half the population - become (sometimes quite suddenly) excluded from all serious consideration.
*
Yet the truly extraordinary claims - extraordinary claims made by the intellectual elite concerning matters of the greatest human import such as morality, beauty and the nature of truth; matters of vital fact - such extraordinary claims distinctive to the Leftist rulers rapidly are progress from oddball hypotheses, to careerist intellectual fashions, then to become not merely accepted in public discourse, but positively encouraged, subsidized and rewarded, then ruthlessly enforced...
This is the actual nature of skepticism in modernity.
The official skeptic makes a big display of gagging and spitting on ideas such as psychic dreams which are human universals, then effortlessly swallows great draughts of socially-approved poisonous, nihilistic drivel.
*
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".
This is only true when the claim really is extraordinary.
And the criterion of extraordinary ought to be that of common sense - the wisdom of the ages - extraordinary cannot be defined by whatever weird beliefs Westerners of 2011 have been filled-with.
*
This phrase "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"is attributed to Carl Sagan - which is hardly any kind of recommendation for its validity in my book - but it is a common, near-universal, rhetorical move used by people to dismiss claims that they want to dismiss.
It is a standard method of 'debunking'.
*
Let's think of one extraordinary claim, as it is perceived to be in mainstream modern discourse: 'psychic dreams'.
I mean dreams that mean something more than having reference to personal psychology and physiology - especially dreams that foretell future events or provide knowledge of remote or inaccessible matters.
Does the claim that there really are psychic dreams count as extraordinary, such that it should not be believed without extraordinary evidence?
*
1. Every child apparently believes in psychic dreams. Such a belief is apparently spontaneous.
2. All of the hunter-gatherer, nomadic tribes I have ever read about seem to regard psychic dreams as not just real but very important for tribal well being - having and interpreting such dreams may be the role of the 'shaman'.
3. Educated intellectuals in, say, medieval Europe, seemed to believe in psychic dreams. For instance, Chaucer did, and wrote about little else. Langland's great poem Piers Plowman is also structured as a series of symbolic and insightful dreams.
4. JRR Tolkien, C.S Lewis and some of the Inklings believed in psychic dreams and were indeed fascinated by them - as I have documented on this blog and the Notion Club Paper's blog.
*
5. A lot of modern people in modern societies actually do believe in psychic dreams, as I see from a recent article by Erlendur Haraldsson in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research (2011; 75: 76-90).
In Iceland 36% men and 41% women (30% of university graduates) report having had experience of psychic dreams. This proportion rose between 1974 and 2006.
In terms of attitudes, 30% Icelanders thought psychic dreams were likely, a further 26 percent thought they were certain - more than half the population.
In other countries, 40 percent of people in Virginia USA reported experiencing psychic dreams, 35% of people in the UK said they believed in psychic dreams.
*
So it seems that most people of most types in most places seem to believe in the reality of psychic dreams, and even in modern societies at least a quarter of people still do.
So, why are psychic dreams counted as extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence?
(In practice, to state this about psychic dreams means that there is nothing which would ever be enough to convince the skeptic of the reality of psychic dreams.)
*
The matter of psychic dreams is important because it shows how a common sense belief, a universal and cross-cultural human belief, and what is more a belief held by some of the most intelligent and able people in history, can be framed by mainstream modern discourse as being so utterly extraordinary that there is no point in considering the evidence of the matter since any evidence is certain to be insufficiently extraordinary.
Vast areas of basic human conviction and experience are eliminated from mainstream public discourse by this method: once a belief has been labelled extraordinary, then that belief becomes intrinsically and irrevocably absurd such that only stupid or evil people could hold it.
The knowledge and experience and wisdom of the ages - matters we all used to know as children - matters which in fact are believed by a quarter or half the population - become (sometimes quite suddenly) excluded from all serious consideration.
*
Yet the truly extraordinary claims - extraordinary claims made by the intellectual elite concerning matters of the greatest human import such as morality, beauty and the nature of truth; matters of vital fact - such extraordinary claims distinctive to the Leftist rulers rapidly are progress from oddball hypotheses, to careerist intellectual fashions, then to become not merely accepted in public discourse, but positively encouraged, subsidized and rewarded, then ruthlessly enforced...
This is the actual nature of skepticism in modernity.
The official skeptic makes a big display of gagging and spitting on ideas such as psychic dreams which are human universals, then effortlessly swallows great draughts of socially-approved poisonous, nihilistic drivel.
*
Friday 4 November 2011
What to say to kids about fantasy
*
Kids read and watch vast amounts of fantasy and make believe - many kids, (and I was one) find the world of fantasy more appealing than this world.
Indeed, it seems that this world - for all its distractions and excitements - is simply not enough.
*
Kids want so much for the fantasy to be real.
They ask: But is it real?
(If not real here and now, is it real at some place and time, or could it become so?)
*
So there is, on the one had, this world - which is not enough to satisfy the human spirit; and, on the other hand... what?
*
There is the perspective which says nothing.
That this life is real and all there is, fantasy may be nicer, but it is make believe and exists only in your mind.
And if you don't like this life, then that's tough - your life will be a miserable waste of time.
*
What can this perspective advise? There is only one thing: you must try to enjoy this life: it is absolutely imperative.
You must cease to yearn for the impossible, and make do with the attainable. The attainable may seem crumby - but that is all that is on-offer.
Grab and hold as much attainable pleasure as you can cram-in; don't waste a moment, fill your life with it (and use attainable pleasures to displace dissatisfaction and the yearnings).
*
Yet if this advice succeeds, then all it achieves is to convert a miserable waste of time into a pleasurable waste of time.
Is that what we should tell our kids?
Is it true?
*
For much of my adult life, especially the decade c 1998-2008, I was a sort-of Jungian; which was in fact not much different from the above.
As well as Jung, I read deeply in James Hillman, Joseph Campbell, Daniel C Noel - and sampled 'new age' writers widely.
Although this Jungian view claimed to have solved the problem of meaningless this life versus meaningless fantasy, in fact the problem was still intact.
*
The Jungian view has it that everything is psychology - nothing is outside of psychology - but psychology is shared.
Reality is wholly subjective, because the mind 'creates' everything; but not solipsistic exactly because the mind is (in some way) shared between people.
So, for Jung and his followers, everything is as-if. Fantasy is just as real as this life; but neither are realer than ideas in human heads.
*
But if my own imaginations are inadequate for life, then so is Jung's psychology; because it merely expands the scope from my psychology to human psychology - but does nothing to affect reality - because reality is regarded as a product of psychology.
In effect, Jung says that delusional reality is the only reality, but asks us to be happy about this because at least the delusion is (to some extent) shared among all humans.
We are not alone in our delusions...
*
Talking with a child makes one realize that while such tortuous abstractions may (apparently) satisfy adult intellectuals - they do not satisfy the basic human craving for reality.
Children want to know 'but is it real': they are at root not satisfied with make believe, even if that make believe can be sustained almost indefinitely by the abundance of modern media.
*
A thought experiment.
Suppose you love The Lord of the Rings and were totally absorbed by it on first reading. Suppose you feel that the fantasy world of Tolkien is more real than this life.
Would it be enough to spend your whole life reading LotR?
Okay - you would get used to it, habituated, it would lose its effect...
But, supposing your memory was wiped between each reading; such that each time you read LotR it was like the first time and undiminished?
(Something of this type happens in certain forms of brain damage, and might in principle be possible with some technical interventions.)
Would that be enough?
*
Ah, but you would know at the back of your mind that LotR was fantasy...
Suppose that that knowledge could be removed; suppose you dwelt in LotR as you read it - like an alternative or virtual reality, and unaware of the fact?
(Technically, this might too be possible - insight and awareness disappear in some psychotic illnesses - so they should be able to be abolished artificially.)
SO - you can read and re-read Lord of the Rings each time as fresh as the first, and this is taken to be this world in which you dwell - is it enough?
*
Well, is it enough for the creature who actually dwell in Middle Earth? The Hobbits, Men, Elves, Dwarves, Ents?
Is Middle Earth enough for them?
Obviously not.
*
So when a child yearns for the reality of fantasy, and implicitly recognizes the inadequacy of this life; in fact the fantasy is not itself an answer.
So this life does not satisfy, and the fantasy would not satisfy even if it became our own life (or was apparently our own life, by some kind of technical intervention - some kind of subtle brain damage).
*
The child's yearning, sparked by fantasy, in in fact a profound statement of the human condition; and a heart-felt recognition of the inadequacy of this world, and of any imaginable world, to our desires.
At this level the problem is inevitable and insoluble.
The problem can, indeed, be solved only at a transcendental level; and in a manner which cannot be understood.
Just as any actually imaginable fantasy would leave us yearning; so we cannot imagine what would satisfy our yearning to be ourselves-yet-transformed in a world which was like this-world-but-transformed.
Yet that is precisely what we yearn for; and nothing less could or would ever satisfy.
That is what the child's question 'but is it real?' is telling us.
*
Kids read and watch vast amounts of fantasy and make believe - many kids, (and I was one) find the world of fantasy more appealing than this world.
Indeed, it seems that this world - for all its distractions and excitements - is simply not enough.
*
Kids want so much for the fantasy to be real.
They ask: But is it real?
(If not real here and now, is it real at some place and time, or could it become so?)
*
So there is, on the one had, this world - which is not enough to satisfy the human spirit; and, on the other hand... what?
*
There is the perspective which says nothing.
That this life is real and all there is, fantasy may be nicer, but it is make believe and exists only in your mind.
And if you don't like this life, then that's tough - your life will be a miserable waste of time.
*
What can this perspective advise? There is only one thing: you must try to enjoy this life: it is absolutely imperative.
You must cease to yearn for the impossible, and make do with the attainable. The attainable may seem crumby - but that is all that is on-offer.
Grab and hold as much attainable pleasure as you can cram-in; don't waste a moment, fill your life with it (and use attainable pleasures to displace dissatisfaction and the yearnings).
*
Yet if this advice succeeds, then all it achieves is to convert a miserable waste of time into a pleasurable waste of time.
Is that what we should tell our kids?
Is it true?
*
For much of my adult life, especially the decade c 1998-2008, I was a sort-of Jungian; which was in fact not much different from the above.
As well as Jung, I read deeply in James Hillman, Joseph Campbell, Daniel C Noel - and sampled 'new age' writers widely.
Although this Jungian view claimed to have solved the problem of meaningless this life versus meaningless fantasy, in fact the problem was still intact.
*
The Jungian view has it that everything is psychology - nothing is outside of psychology - but psychology is shared.
Reality is wholly subjective, because the mind 'creates' everything; but not solipsistic exactly because the mind is (in some way) shared between people.
So, for Jung and his followers, everything is as-if. Fantasy is just as real as this life; but neither are realer than ideas in human heads.
*
But if my own imaginations are inadequate for life, then so is Jung's psychology; because it merely expands the scope from my psychology to human psychology - but does nothing to affect reality - because reality is regarded as a product of psychology.
In effect, Jung says that delusional reality is the only reality, but asks us to be happy about this because at least the delusion is (to some extent) shared among all humans.
We are not alone in our delusions...
*
Talking with a child makes one realize that while such tortuous abstractions may (apparently) satisfy adult intellectuals - they do not satisfy the basic human craving for reality.
Children want to know 'but is it real': they are at root not satisfied with make believe, even if that make believe can be sustained almost indefinitely by the abundance of modern media.
*
A thought experiment.
Suppose you love The Lord of the Rings and were totally absorbed by it on first reading. Suppose you feel that the fantasy world of Tolkien is more real than this life.
Would it be enough to spend your whole life reading LotR?
Okay - you would get used to it, habituated, it would lose its effect...
But, supposing your memory was wiped between each reading; such that each time you read LotR it was like the first time and undiminished?
(Something of this type happens in certain forms of brain damage, and might in principle be possible with some technical interventions.)
Would that be enough?
*
Ah, but you would know at the back of your mind that LotR was fantasy...
Suppose that that knowledge could be removed; suppose you dwelt in LotR as you read it - like an alternative or virtual reality, and unaware of the fact?
(Technically, this might too be possible - insight and awareness disappear in some psychotic illnesses - so they should be able to be abolished artificially.)
SO - you can read and re-read Lord of the Rings each time as fresh as the first, and this is taken to be this world in which you dwell - is it enough?
*
Well, is it enough for the creature who actually dwell in Middle Earth? The Hobbits, Men, Elves, Dwarves, Ents?
Is Middle Earth enough for them?
Obviously not.
*
So when a child yearns for the reality of fantasy, and implicitly recognizes the inadequacy of this life; in fact the fantasy is not itself an answer.
So this life does not satisfy, and the fantasy would not satisfy even if it became our own life (or was apparently our own life, by some kind of technical intervention - some kind of subtle brain damage).
*
The child's yearning, sparked by fantasy, in in fact a profound statement of the human condition; and a heart-felt recognition of the inadequacy of this world, and of any imaginable world, to our desires.
At this level the problem is inevitable and insoluble.
The problem can, indeed, be solved only at a transcendental level; and in a manner which cannot be understood.
Just as any actually imaginable fantasy would leave us yearning; so we cannot imagine what would satisfy our yearning to be ourselves-yet-transformed in a world which was like this-world-but-transformed.
Yet that is precisely what we yearn for; and nothing less could or would ever satisfy.
That is what the child's question 'but is it real?' is telling us.
*
Thursday 3 November 2011
Deification/ theosis and C.S. Lewis
*
From:
http://www.cslewis.org/journal/shine-as-the-sun-cs-lewis-and-the-doctrine-of-deification/
By Chris Jensen
*
When he was president of the Oxford Socratic Club during the 1940s and 50s, C.S. Lewis featured weekly discussions on “repellent doctrines.”
By these, he meant traditional Christian teachings that seemed puzzling or implausible—teachings on suffering, miracles, hierarchy, and the like.
Lewis thought these doctrines conveyed truths that modern people most needed to know but were least likely to recognize: “We must never avert our eyes from those elements in [our religion] which seem puzzling or repellent; for it will be precisely the puzzling or the repellent which conceals what we do not yet know and need to know.”
*
For many Christians today, deification would be such a doctrine. Deification (also known as theosis or divinization) sees salvation not merely as divine pardon but rather as a process of spiritual transformation that culminates in mystical union with God.
As Lewis understood it, human beings could one day enter into the very beauty and energy of God and become “true and everlasting and really divine persons.”
In his book Mere Christianity, which can be seen as a manifesto on the subject, Lewis argues that the whole purpose of Christianity is to turn people into what he variously calls “new men,” “little Christs,” “Sons of God”—and “gods and goddesses.”
*
Lewis knew such language might give many of us a shock, but he insisted that this is “precisely what Christianity is about.”
Although largely forgotten by Christians today, deification is at the heart of Lewis’ vision of reality. From his sermons to his apologetic essays, from his space fiction to his children’s stories, one can hardly find a corner of his literary universe that is not illumined by the idea.
(...)
Lewis encountered the idea of deification everywhere from St. Athanasius to George MacDonald, and he knew the doctrine was held from earliest times by many church fathers (like Athanasius) who helped establish the canon of the New Testament and the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation.
These fathers taught that Adam and Eve were created in the image and likeness of God, but after the fall they were estranged from their creator and subject to pain, sorrow, and death.
Deification, then, is the restoration of the divine likeness that humanity lost along with its beauty, purity, and incorruption.
In holding to deification, not only was Lewis in harmony with Eastern Orthodoxy, where the doctrine remains a distinguishing mark, but with many voices in the West like St. Augustine and St. Bernard of Clairvaux—and a forgotten strand of Anglican tradition including Lancelot Andrewes, Richard Hooker, Charles Wesley, and Ann Griffiths.
(...)
Lewis didn’t follow the path of Emerson or others who blurred dogmatic boundaries by confusing God and creation or by teaching that human beings are naturally divine.
Only God is transcendent, uncreated, and divine by nature.
Therefore deification does not mean the “actualization” or “realization” of one’s latent divinity, a belief that is less Christian than monistic or pantheistic.
Nor does deification mean that human beings eventually will evolve into something essentially equal to God (...) Lewis was always clear on the difference between creature and Creator—an irreducible ontological distinction.
Deified human beings forever remain human while at the same time sharing in divine grace or energy, just like blazing iron in the fire shares the properties of flame but doesn’t cease to be iron. Human beings will not melt into an impersonal God like a salt statue tossed into the ocean, or become new and independent divine beings in a type of polytheistic evolution.
*
For this reason, Lewis cannot be categorized with Neoplatonists, Hindus, Mormons, or even certain Christian mystics who seemed to lose sight of the essential distinction between God and humankind.
***
Note:
I agree that deification is a vital part of a coherent concept of Christian life: indeed I believe that it is deification which primarily sets Christianity apart from Judaism and Islam - because it is what the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus Christ made possible, over and above monotheism.
The concept is found in all legitimate Christian traditions, but most centrally in Eastern Orthodoxy - as theosis - marking its superiority.
*
So, becoming a Christian is properly a two-step process: first conversion and then deification.
Salvation is certainly possible without deification (e.g. The Good Thief) - but it is deification which is the purpose of Life and which potentially fits humans for their proper place in an hierarchical Heaven.
It is deification which makes Holy Elders and Saints, and enables them to do what they do.
*
But for some, probably for me, deification is merely the turing back to God again and then again, taking the first step and back-sliding a step. It is the qualitative movement towards God - even if it gets no further than that - but of course it has, in some people, in some times and places - gone much further than that.
For instance, theosis went much further than that in C.S Lewis himself...
*
From:
http://www.cslewis.org/journal/shine-as-the-sun-cs-lewis-and-the-doctrine-of-deification/
By Chris Jensen
*
When he was president of the Oxford Socratic Club during the 1940s and 50s, C.S. Lewis featured weekly discussions on “repellent doctrines.”
By these, he meant traditional Christian teachings that seemed puzzling or implausible—teachings on suffering, miracles, hierarchy, and the like.
Lewis thought these doctrines conveyed truths that modern people most needed to know but were least likely to recognize: “We must never avert our eyes from those elements in [our religion] which seem puzzling or repellent; for it will be precisely the puzzling or the repellent which conceals what we do not yet know and need to know.”
*
For many Christians today, deification would be such a doctrine. Deification (also known as theosis or divinization) sees salvation not merely as divine pardon but rather as a process of spiritual transformation that culminates in mystical union with God.
As Lewis understood it, human beings could one day enter into the very beauty and energy of God and become “true and everlasting and really divine persons.”
In his book Mere Christianity, which can be seen as a manifesto on the subject, Lewis argues that the whole purpose of Christianity is to turn people into what he variously calls “new men,” “little Christs,” “Sons of God”—and “gods and goddesses.”
*
Lewis knew such language might give many of us a shock, but he insisted that this is “precisely what Christianity is about.”
Although largely forgotten by Christians today, deification is at the heart of Lewis’ vision of reality. From his sermons to his apologetic essays, from his space fiction to his children’s stories, one can hardly find a corner of his literary universe that is not illumined by the idea.
(...)
Lewis encountered the idea of deification everywhere from St. Athanasius to George MacDonald, and he knew the doctrine was held from earliest times by many church fathers (like Athanasius) who helped establish the canon of the New Testament and the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation.
These fathers taught that Adam and Eve were created in the image and likeness of God, but after the fall they were estranged from their creator and subject to pain, sorrow, and death.
Deification, then, is the restoration of the divine likeness that humanity lost along with its beauty, purity, and incorruption.
In holding to deification, not only was Lewis in harmony with Eastern Orthodoxy, where the doctrine remains a distinguishing mark, but with many voices in the West like St. Augustine and St. Bernard of Clairvaux—and a forgotten strand of Anglican tradition including Lancelot Andrewes, Richard Hooker, Charles Wesley, and Ann Griffiths.
(...)
Lewis didn’t follow the path of Emerson or others who blurred dogmatic boundaries by confusing God and creation or by teaching that human beings are naturally divine.
Only God is transcendent, uncreated, and divine by nature.
Therefore deification does not mean the “actualization” or “realization” of one’s latent divinity, a belief that is less Christian than monistic or pantheistic.
Nor does deification mean that human beings eventually will evolve into something essentially equal to God (...) Lewis was always clear on the difference between creature and Creator—an irreducible ontological distinction.
Deified human beings forever remain human while at the same time sharing in divine grace or energy, just like blazing iron in the fire shares the properties of flame but doesn’t cease to be iron. Human beings will not melt into an impersonal God like a salt statue tossed into the ocean, or become new and independent divine beings in a type of polytheistic evolution.
*
For this reason, Lewis cannot be categorized with Neoplatonists, Hindus, Mormons, or even certain Christian mystics who seemed to lose sight of the essential distinction between God and humankind.
***
Note:
I agree that deification is a vital part of a coherent concept of Christian life: indeed I believe that it is deification which primarily sets Christianity apart from Judaism and Islam - because it is what the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus Christ made possible, over and above monotheism.
The concept is found in all legitimate Christian traditions, but most centrally in Eastern Orthodoxy - as theosis - marking its superiority.
*
So, becoming a Christian is properly a two-step process: first conversion and then deification.
Salvation is certainly possible without deification (e.g. The Good Thief) - but it is deification which is the purpose of Life and which potentially fits humans for their proper place in an hierarchical Heaven.
It is deification which makes Holy Elders and Saints, and enables them to do what they do.
*
But for some, probably for me, deification is merely the turing back to God again and then again, taking the first step and back-sliding a step. It is the qualitative movement towards God - even if it gets no further than that - but of course it has, in some people, in some times and places - gone much further than that.
For instance, theosis went much further than that in C.S Lewis himself...
*
Pagan missionaries?
*
I sometimes think we need pagan missionaries, almost as much as we need Christian missionaries. Indeed they could be the same people - adjusting their strategy.
Christian missionaries are very good at converting pagans, but nobody seems able to convert modern secular hedonists.
The jump between secular hedonism is too great - between believing whatever you like to believing a complex set of interlocking propositions (which perhaps don't make any better sense than secular hedonism unless they are all present and correct).
But maybe, simple paganism could be restored - and later on the person might be amenable to Christianity?
*
Simple paganism is the natural, spontaneous understanding of the world we had when children; and then there is also the complex philosophical paganism of the Ancient Greeks.
Intellectuals ought to be able to follow the logic of Plato or Aristotle to discover that there must be a god (or gods) for the universe to cohere at a very basic explanatory level.
This god/s is not, of course, the Christian God (although Christians might consider them to be angels). It is not a personal God, and it is not a loving God - indeed it is not even a creator God (it is a mistake to try and prove the necessity of a creator God to an atheist - this necessity was not apparent to Plato or Aristotle so why should modern butterfly intellectuals be compelled by the argument?).
What I am suggesting is that missionaries stop - for a while - at the necessity of god/s - and refrain from pushing straight on to God.
At any rate, if modern intellectuals can be got as far as the intelligent pagans of the Greek and Roman era, that would be an enormous advance in Truth.
*
And if the mass of ordinary people could be got as far as paganism (even if they denied Christian revelation) - then there is something-to-work on, and a perspective from which Christian conversion might happen in the blink of an eye.
But so long as the modern Western populations are distracted 24/7 by media and gossip and drugs and busyness and the deliberate derangements imposed by the Left... well, for so long no reasoning at all is possible, apparently, no illogic too extreme; and from this unrepentant state where even the need for repentance and the fact that there is anything even in principle to repent seems unclear - Christianity seems almost impossibly remote.
*
I sometimes think we need pagan missionaries, almost as much as we need Christian missionaries. Indeed they could be the same people - adjusting their strategy.
Christian missionaries are very good at converting pagans, but nobody seems able to convert modern secular hedonists.
The jump between secular hedonism is too great - between believing whatever you like to believing a complex set of interlocking propositions (which perhaps don't make any better sense than secular hedonism unless they are all present and correct).
But maybe, simple paganism could be restored - and later on the person might be amenable to Christianity?
*
Simple paganism is the natural, spontaneous understanding of the world we had when children; and then there is also the complex philosophical paganism of the Ancient Greeks.
Intellectuals ought to be able to follow the logic of Plato or Aristotle to discover that there must be a god (or gods) for the universe to cohere at a very basic explanatory level.
This god/s is not, of course, the Christian God (although Christians might consider them to be angels). It is not a personal God, and it is not a loving God - indeed it is not even a creator God (it is a mistake to try and prove the necessity of a creator God to an atheist - this necessity was not apparent to Plato or Aristotle so why should modern butterfly intellectuals be compelled by the argument?).
What I am suggesting is that missionaries stop - for a while - at the necessity of god/s - and refrain from pushing straight on to God.
At any rate, if modern intellectuals can be got as far as the intelligent pagans of the Greek and Roman era, that would be an enormous advance in Truth.
*
And if the mass of ordinary people could be got as far as paganism (even if they denied Christian revelation) - then there is something-to-work on, and a perspective from which Christian conversion might happen in the blink of an eye.
But so long as the modern Western populations are distracted 24/7 by media and gossip and drugs and busyness and the deliberate derangements imposed by the Left... well, for so long no reasoning at all is possible, apparently, no illogic too extreme; and from this unrepentant state where even the need for repentance and the fact that there is anything even in principle to repent seems unclear - Christianity seems almost impossibly remote.
*
Wednesday 2 November 2011
More on natural selection
*
http://thomism.wordpress.com/2011/10/29/its-not-about-evolution/#comment-6993
"The fundamental problem is whether natural science suffices to explain human beings."
James Chastek
*
Continuing discussion from: http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/10/natural-selection-as-metaphysical.html
Chastek's is an excellent framing of the discussion - with evolution by natural selection seen as merely a subtype of the general class of 'scientific' (non-divine, natural) explanations.
*
Science gets precision as a by-product of its metaphysical simplification - that which science leaves-out, it does not first disprove, it simply ignores and proceeds on that basis.
The consequent model of reality has no intrinsic validity (no matter how self-consistent that model may turn-out to be) because it is built on deliberately-simplified, and therefore presumably incomplete, foundations.
For the conclusions of science to be valid, would require a demonstration that the deliberate incompleteness of the foundations of science did not (?significantly) affect the validity of the model built upon them.
*
Interestingly, one of the ways that science has used to assume (without needing to demonstrate) its own completeness is to denigrate common sense, spontaneous knowledge, natural law, the consensus of human history etc.
If common sense is regarded as having zero validity, then the fact that aspects of common sense reality have been left-out of the scientific model is of no consequence.
If the consensus of history is ejected wholesale, this does not matter since it was, anyway, arbitrary.
*
Humans are (by this metaphysical account - it is not an empirical discovery) born into the world naked of mind and body, to be shaped by society - which itself has no intrinsic validity.
In a word: nihilism.
*
http://thomism.wordpress.com/2011/10/29/its-not-about-evolution/#comment-6993
"The fundamental problem is whether natural science suffices to explain human beings."
James Chastek
*
Continuing discussion from: http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/10/natural-selection-as-metaphysical.html
Chastek's is an excellent framing of the discussion - with evolution by natural selection seen as merely a subtype of the general class of 'scientific' (non-divine, natural) explanations.
*
Science gets precision as a by-product of its metaphysical simplification - that which science leaves-out, it does not first disprove, it simply ignores and proceeds on that basis.
The consequent model of reality has no intrinsic validity (no matter how self-consistent that model may turn-out to be) because it is built on deliberately-simplified, and therefore presumably incomplete, foundations.
For the conclusions of science to be valid, would require a demonstration that the deliberate incompleteness of the foundations of science did not (?significantly) affect the validity of the model built upon them.
*
Interestingly, one of the ways that science has used to assume (without needing to demonstrate) its own completeness is to denigrate common sense, spontaneous knowledge, natural law, the consensus of human history etc.
If common sense is regarded as having zero validity, then the fact that aspects of common sense reality have been left-out of the scientific model is of no consequence.
If the consensus of history is ejected wholesale, this does not matter since it was, anyway, arbitrary.
*
Humans are (by this metaphysical account - it is not an empirical discovery) born into the world naked of mind and body, to be shaped by society - which itself has no intrinsic validity.
In a word: nihilism.
*
Tuesday 1 November 2011
Life v Reality: The basis of all philosophy and religion
*
There is a natural, inbuilt, spontaneous knowledge of the nature of the world: that the world consists of Life and Reality.
Life is this world: the world of change, of growth and decay and transformation.
Reality is another and less obvious world: eternal and unchanging and the source of knowledge.
*
From this metaphysic of Life and Reality; arise all questions, all philosophy and all religions.
*
Questions such as the relation between Life and Reality: why are things set-up this way?
What things are eternal and changeless, what are ephemeral?
Why don't Life and Reality coincide? Or, if they do, why is this not obvious - why is the relationship not spontaneously felt?
What can Life know of Reality, and how?
What is Life for?
And so on.
*
It is the denial of this knowledge of Life and Reality - denial of the basis of all human thought - that has un-moored modernity and led to endemic insanity.
*
For modern man, there is only Life and no Reality. Only change and no eternity. Reality is an illusion, there is no source of knowledge, there is no knowledge - there is only growth, decay and transformation.
To believe this is insane, because it makes no sense - worse, it violates sense.
*
Denying the basis of all philosophy and religion, modern man is unable to reason.
(This applies especially to the most educated intellectuals).
*
There is a natural, inbuilt, spontaneous knowledge of the nature of the world: that the world consists of Life and Reality.
Life is this world: the world of change, of growth and decay and transformation.
Reality is another and less obvious world: eternal and unchanging and the source of knowledge.
*
From this metaphysic of Life and Reality; arise all questions, all philosophy and all religions.
*
Questions such as the relation between Life and Reality: why are things set-up this way?
What things are eternal and changeless, what are ephemeral?
Why don't Life and Reality coincide? Or, if they do, why is this not obvious - why is the relationship not spontaneously felt?
What can Life know of Reality, and how?
What is Life for?
And so on.
*
It is the denial of this knowledge of Life and Reality - denial of the basis of all human thought - that has un-moored modernity and led to endemic insanity.
*
For modern man, there is only Life and no Reality. Only change and no eternity. Reality is an illusion, there is no source of knowledge, there is no knowledge - there is only growth, decay and transformation.
To believe this is insane, because it makes no sense - worse, it violates sense.
*
Denying the basis of all philosophy and religion, modern man is unable to reason.
(This applies especially to the most educated intellectuals).
*
Life v Reality: The basis of all philosophy and religion
*
There is a natural, inbuilt, spontaneous knowledge of the nature of the world: that the world consists of Life and Reality.
Life is this world: the world of change, of growth and decay and transformation.
Reality is another and less obvious world: eternal and unchanging and the source of knowledge.
*
From this metaphysic of Life and Reality; arise all questions, all philosophy and all religions.
*
Questions such as the relation between Life and Reality: why are things set-up this way?
What things are eternal and changeless, what are ephemeral?
Why don't Life and Reality coincide? Or, if they do, why is this not obvious - why is the relationship not spontaneously felt?
What can Life know of Reality, and how?
What is Life for?
And so on.
*
It is the denial of this knowledge of Life and Reality - denial of the basis of all human thought - that has un-moored modernity and led to endemic insanity.
*
For modern man, there is only Life and no Reality: Only change and no eternity: Reality is an illusion, there is no source of knowledge, there is no knowledge - there is only growth, decay and transformation.
To believe this is insane, because it makes no sense - worse, it violates sense.
*
Denying the basis of all philosophy and religion, modern man is unable to reason.
(This applies especially to the most educated intellectuals).
*
There is a natural, inbuilt, spontaneous knowledge of the nature of the world: that the world consists of Life and Reality.
Life is this world: the world of change, of growth and decay and transformation.
Reality is another and less obvious world: eternal and unchanging and the source of knowledge.
*
From this metaphysic of Life and Reality; arise all questions, all philosophy and all religions.
*
Questions such as the relation between Life and Reality: why are things set-up this way?
What things are eternal and changeless, what are ephemeral?
Why don't Life and Reality coincide? Or, if they do, why is this not obvious - why is the relationship not spontaneously felt?
What can Life know of Reality, and how?
What is Life for?
And so on.
*
It is the denial of this knowledge of Life and Reality - denial of the basis of all human thought - that has un-moored modernity and led to endemic insanity.
*
For modern man, there is only Life and no Reality: Only change and no eternity: Reality is an illusion, there is no source of knowledge, there is no knowledge - there is only growth, decay and transformation.
To believe this is insane, because it makes no sense - worse, it violates sense.
*
Denying the basis of all philosophy and religion, modern man is unable to reason.
(This applies especially to the most educated intellectuals).
*
Monday 31 October 2011
Reforming the calendar, Hobbit style
*
Thirteen lunar months of 28 days with one day left over and given its own name - say New Year's Day, or Christmas Day.
Every Leap Year, add another Leap Year's Day.
*
Each date would then fall on the same weekday every year: many diary makers would go out of business.
*
This system is (more or less) the one used by Shire Hobbits (according to the Appendices of Lord of the Rings); and was also 'discovered', or inferred, or at least claimed to be that of the pre-Roman ancient Britons by Robert Graves, in The White Goddess.
*
Thirteen lunar months of 28 days with one day left over and given its own name - say New Year's Day, or Christmas Day.
Every Leap Year, add another Leap Year's Day.
*
Each date would then fall on the same weekday every year: many diary makers would go out of business.
*
This system is (more or less) the one used by Shire Hobbits (according to the Appendices of Lord of the Rings); and was also 'discovered', or inferred, or at least claimed to be that of the pre-Roman ancient Britons by Robert Graves, in The White Goddess.
*
In contrast with the Total Perspective Vortex...
*
Contrast modern man
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/10/total-perspective-vortex-nihilist.html
with ancient man.
*
From Psalm 8:
O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens.
Contrast modern man
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/10/total-perspective-vortex-nihilist.html
with ancient man.
*
From Psalm 8:
O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens.
Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength ...
When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;
What is man, that thou art mindful of him? ...
For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.
***
For the modern hedonic atheist nihilist - to look at the Universe is to feel insignificance, despair, meaninglessness...
But the uncorrupted man sees the heavens as the work of God, is overwhelmed by gratitude, delight, amazement - is moved to praise and worship.
*
Sunday 30 October 2011
Putting clocks back-and-forth - a pointless waste of human life
*
This ridiculous business of putting clocks backwards and forwards twice a year gets me more annoyed every time it happens.
It is so stupid that if it didn't already exist it would be utterly inexplicable, an exotic tribal custom.
*
The basic problem is that in the West we have adopted a work timetable of roughly 9-5 (09.00-17.00) which has three hours before noon and five hours after noon.
But to maximize the useful daylight we should arrange the working day so that (if you are on or near the longitudinal time line) noon falls in the middle of the working day with an equal amount of daylight either side.
This is, for most people, enough to get to and from work because the sun still cast a fair bit of light for a while before and after sunset (unless it is very cloudy).
*
But instead of changing the working day to fit with astronomical reality, we mess about with the clock.
British Summer Time puts the clock time forward, so that noon is at 13.00h, which means that the average working day is then equally distributed around noon - for an 8 hour day, four hours before noon, and four hours after.
We have this arrangement during 'summer' - but then the nonsense sets in. We reset the clocks to Greenwich Mean Time, as happened last night.
*
At extreme latitudes the different day lengths in summer and winter create problems. For example, I live at about 54 degrees North, and at the winter solstice there are only about 7 hours between sunrise and sunset; while at the summer solstice it is only fully dark for about 3 hours.
The summer has so many daylight hours that the clock change makes no significant impact. But in the winter, it really does become important to maximize the use of daylight. Yet we change the clocks such that noon falls less than halfway through the working day, and it is pitch dark by the time many people finish work.
*
And what about the timing of this change?
The Autumn Equinox is on 21 September, and we are by now only seven and a half weeks from the Winter Solstice (Dec 21) when the days are shortest.
By that logic, we should switch back to Summer Time seven or eight weeks after the Winter solstice - about 12 February.
But we don't. In fact we go back to BST on 25 March, which is after the Spring Equinox (21 March).
Please don't try to explain the logic behind this - because there is no sense in it.
Yet this is what everybody in Europe actually does: changes the clocks about 8 weeks before the Winter Solstice, and then restores them 13 weeks afterwards.
*
What I most hate about this business of changing the clocks - aside from the inconvenient waste of time, millions of man hours twice a year in England alone; and the disruption to circadian rhythms leading to sleep disturbances, which in the case of children may take a week or two to set right - is that the process distances us from astronomical reality.
If modern humans will not acknowledge the basic astronomical framework of the world we live in, and adjust human timetables to the timing of the rotation of the earth and the orbit around the sun of a tilted planet - but instead try to fit cosmology around our timetables by manipulation the measurement of time - then we are living in a world of dangerously extreme and irrational abstraction.
Which, of course, we are.
*
This ridiculous business of putting clocks backwards and forwards twice a year gets me more annoyed every time it happens.
It is so stupid that if it didn't already exist it would be utterly inexplicable, an exotic tribal custom.
*
The basic problem is that in the West we have adopted a work timetable of roughly 9-5 (09.00-17.00) which has three hours before noon and five hours after noon.
But to maximize the useful daylight we should arrange the working day so that (if you are on or near the longitudinal time line) noon falls in the middle of the working day with an equal amount of daylight either side.
This is, for most people, enough to get to and from work because the sun still cast a fair bit of light for a while before and after sunset (unless it is very cloudy).
*
But instead of changing the working day to fit with astronomical reality, we mess about with the clock.
British Summer Time puts the clock time forward, so that noon is at 13.00h, which means that the average working day is then equally distributed around noon - for an 8 hour day, four hours before noon, and four hours after.
We have this arrangement during 'summer' - but then the nonsense sets in. We reset the clocks to Greenwich Mean Time, as happened last night.
*
At extreme latitudes the different day lengths in summer and winter create problems. For example, I live at about 54 degrees North, and at the winter solstice there are only about 7 hours between sunrise and sunset; while at the summer solstice it is only fully dark for about 3 hours.
The summer has so many daylight hours that the clock change makes no significant impact. But in the winter, it really does become important to maximize the use of daylight. Yet we change the clocks such that noon falls less than halfway through the working day, and it is pitch dark by the time many people finish work.
*
And what about the timing of this change?
The Autumn Equinox is on 21 September, and we are by now only seven and a half weeks from the Winter Solstice (Dec 21) when the days are shortest.
By that logic, we should switch back to Summer Time seven or eight weeks after the Winter solstice - about 12 February.
But we don't. In fact we go back to BST on 25 March, which is after the Spring Equinox (21 March).
Please don't try to explain the logic behind this - because there is no sense in it.
Yet this is what everybody in Europe actually does: changes the clocks about 8 weeks before the Winter Solstice, and then restores them 13 weeks afterwards.
*
What I most hate about this business of changing the clocks - aside from the inconvenient waste of time, millions of man hours twice a year in England alone; and the disruption to circadian rhythms leading to sleep disturbances, which in the case of children may take a week or two to set right - is that the process distances us from astronomical reality.
If modern humans will not acknowledge the basic astronomical framework of the world we live in, and adjust human timetables to the timing of the rotation of the earth and the orbit around the sun of a tilted planet - but instead try to fit cosmology around our timetables by manipulation the measurement of time - then we are living in a world of dangerously extreme and irrational abstraction.
Which, of course, we are.
*
Anglo-Irish writers of the first rank
*
I was reading a memoir of Nevill Coghill (Inkling and Oxford Professor of English - a scholar and translator of Chaucer and Langland) - and I was struck by the remarkable, indeed truly amazing, concentration of literary genius among the Protestant Irish gentry (the Anglo Irish) in the days when Ireland was ruled by Britain.
*
With no effort, I came up with Jonathan Swift, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Oliver Goldsmith, Richard Steele, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, WB Yeats, J.M Synge, Samuel Beckett, CS Lewis - all of whom are of the first rank in their genres within English Literature - plus a similar sized group of minor or lesser-known figures.
Indeed, considering that there are only few canonical playwrights, this is an extraordinarily high proportion (the only ones missing before the 20th century are ?Marlowe, Wm. Shakespeare (of course), ?Ben Jonson, ?Congreve...
...but really I am scratching around for anyone other than The Bard who is performed as often and provide such enjoyment as Sheridan (The Rivals, and School for Scandal), Goldsmith (She Stoops to Conquer), Wilde (mostly The Importance of Being Earnest) and (of course) Shaw (with a couple of dozen plays done frequently - perhaps even more than Shakespeare himself?).
*
Among the indigenous Irish I would only put James Joyce and Flann O'Brien into the same quality bracket.
At any rate, the number of Anglo Irish/ Protestant Ascendancy writers of the first or second rank in English Literature is grossly disproportionate to the small absolute size and minority status of their population.
And gives rise to the interesting question of the nature of the (much vaunted) Irish literary genius: it was certainly real, but actually mostly consisted of the English-living-in-Ireland (since expelled).
Note: Another first-ranker (among English poets) is Edmund Spenser, who was among the first of the English upper class to settle in Ireland as recent conquerers: the first of the great Anglo-Irish literary figures.
I was reading a memoir of Nevill Coghill (Inkling and Oxford Professor of English - a scholar and translator of Chaucer and Langland) - and I was struck by the remarkable, indeed truly amazing, concentration of literary genius among the Protestant Irish gentry (the Anglo Irish) in the days when Ireland was ruled by Britain.
*
With no effort, I came up with Jonathan Swift, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Oliver Goldsmith, Richard Steele, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, WB Yeats, J.M Synge, Samuel Beckett, CS Lewis - all of whom are of the first rank in their genres within English Literature - plus a similar sized group of minor or lesser-known figures.
Indeed, considering that there are only few canonical playwrights, this is an extraordinarily high proportion (the only ones missing before the 20th century are ?Marlowe, Wm. Shakespeare (of course), ?Ben Jonson, ?Congreve...
...but really I am scratching around for anyone other than The Bard who is performed as often and provide such enjoyment as Sheridan (The Rivals, and School for Scandal), Goldsmith (She Stoops to Conquer), Wilde (mostly The Importance of Being Earnest) and (of course) Shaw (with a couple of dozen plays done frequently - perhaps even more than Shakespeare himself?).
*
Among the indigenous Irish I would only put James Joyce and Flann O'Brien into the same quality bracket.
At any rate, the number of Anglo Irish/ Protestant Ascendancy writers of the first or second rank in English Literature is grossly disproportionate to the small absolute size and minority status of their population.
And gives rise to the interesting question of the nature of the (much vaunted) Irish literary genius: it was certainly real, but actually mostly consisted of the English-living-in-Ireland (since expelled).
Note: Another first-ranker (among English poets) is Edmund Spenser, who was among the first of the English upper class to settle in Ireland as recent conquerers: the first of the great Anglo-Irish literary figures.
Saturday 29 October 2011
Total perspective vortex: the nihilist universe
*
Among the ways in which Douglas Adams Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy expresses his nihilistic view of the universe
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/10/douglas-adams-attempt-at-nihilism.html
(a nihilism which is in fact mainstream in modern public discourse - thought very seldom expressed with such economy and wit)
is the concept of the Total Perspective Vortex.
*
The TPV is a punishment (indeed a capital punishment, in all but one instance) which shows the victim the (nihilist) Truth that they - and indeed everything they might value - are in 'reality' utterly insignificant, and that reality is (therefore) meaningless.
*
[The modern nihilist perspective should be contrasted with the description of the human situation of pre-modern man - for example the Medieval cosmology:
[ http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/06/medieval-cosmology-looking-up-at-stars.html
[A difference was that although the Medieval cosmology shared the sense of insignificance of size between humans (and earth) and the universe, and indeed regarded the earth as the lowest and most corrupt part of the universe - there was a spiritual sense which transcended physical differential by the centrality of the salvation of each individual soul.
[Adams believed and argued that this Medieval perspective, and indeed all genuine religious perspectives, were 'evil' (that is, evil in the sense of leading to sub-optimal human happiness) - and that adoption of the actuality exemplified by the imagined operations of the Total Perspective Vortex would lead to a better world with less suffering.
*
[How Adams believed this, I understand - because I believed it too - but I don't know of any coherent rational argument which truly, actually gets you from accepting the validity of insight deriving from the TPV to Left-Liberalism, Relativism and Lifestyle Hedonism. Let's just say that this link is accepted.]
*
The nihilist cosmology which the Total Perspective Vortex forces upon its victim has no real answer - the only answer (as Adams makes clear) is to avoid thinking about reality - perhaps by distracting the mind with serial pleasures such as going to parties, perhaps by obliterating consciousness with a Pan Galactic Gargleblaster; or perhaps by the conviction of total egotism as possessed by Zaphod Beeblebrox: the grandiose delusion of one's own importance.
*
For Adams, as a representative modern elite intellectual, the most important thing about reality is to avoid it as completely as possible and for as long as possible.
To do this is assisted by Lifestyle Freedom and Serial Distraction - indeed, these are imperative.
The body's 'natural' appetites are exploited to (ideally) overwhelm consciousness with absorption in pleasure (preferably pleasure, but if this doesn't work then just absorption in something like status-seeking, plans of seduction, consumption; and if this doesn't work then daydreams about these things.
*
Nihilism is the attempted avoidance of reality by denial of the reality of reality; because if reality really was what it seems to be, and one is really an insignificant speck, then one's own knowledge of reality could not be valid (since insignificant specks lack valid knowledge).
The choice, then, is to accept a self-refuting and paralyzing reality, which kills you; or to avoid the whole question until you are taken by death.
(Modern society does both, mostly the latter - so far - but increasingly more of the former...)
***
(From Episode 8 of the BBC Radio series transcript. I still recall listening to this broadcast live and for the first time - one of the great comedy moments of my life.)
The Universe, as has been observed before, is an unsettling big place. The fact which, for the sake of a quiet life, most people tend to ignore.
Many would happily move to somewhere rather smaller of their own devising, and this is what most beings, in fact, do.
For instance, in one corner of the Eastern Galactic Arm lies the great forest planet Oglaroon. The entire ‘intelligent’ population of which lives permanently in one fairly small and crowded nut tree. In which tree they’re born, live, fall in love, carve tiny, speculative articles in the bark on the meaning of life, the futility of death, and the importance of birth control, fight a few - very minor - wars, and eventually die strapped to the underside of some of the less accessible outer branches. In fact, the only Oglaroonians who ever leave their tree at all are those who are hurled out for the heinous crime of wondering whether any of the other trees might be capable of supporting life at all, or indeed be anything other than illusions brought on by eating too many Oglanuts.
Exotic though this behaviour may seem, there is no life-form in the galaxy not in some way guilty of the same thing. Which is why the Total Perspective Vortex is as horrific as it undoubtedly is.
For when you are put in the Vortex, you are given just one, momentary glimpse of the size of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation along with a tiny little marker saying, “You are here”.
Scene 7. Int. Frogstar
GARGRAVARR: [Humming]
MAN: [Blood-curdling scream]
ZAPHOD: Hey man, what was that?
GARGRAVARR: A man being put in the Vortex I’m afraid. We’re very close to it now.
ZAPHOD: Hey, it sounds really bad. Couldn’t we maybe go to a party or something, for a while… think it over?
GARGRAVARR: For all I know I’m probably at one. My body that is. He goes to a lot of parties without me… says I only get in the way. Hey ho
ZAPHOD: I can see why it wouldn’t want to come here. This place is the dismalest. Looks like a bomb’s hit it you know.
GARGRAVARR: Several have - it’s a very unpopular place. The Vortex is in the heaviest steel bunker ahead of you.
MAN: [Blood-curdling scream]
ZAPHOD: The universe does that to a guy?
GARGRAVARR: The whole infinite Universe. The Infinite sums. The Infinite distances between them, and yourself. An invisible dot on an invisible dot. Infinitely small.
The Vortex derives its picture of the whole universe on the principle of extrapolated matter analyses.
To explain - since every piece of matter in the universe is in someway affected by every other piece of matter in the universe, it is, in theory, possible to extrapolate the whole of creation - every galaxy, every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition, and their economic and social history, from, say - one small piece of fairy cake.
The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so, basically, in order to annoy his wife.
Trin Tragula, for that was his name, was a dreamer, a speculative thinker, or, as his wife would have it, an idiot. And she would nag him incessantly about the utterly inordinate amount of time he would spend staring out into space, or mulling over the mechanics of safety pins, or doing spectrographic analyses of pieces of fairy cake. “Have some sense of proportion,” she would say, thirty-eight times a day.
And so he built the Total Perspective Vortex - just to show her. And in one end he plugged the whole of reality, as extrapolated from a fairy cake, and in the other end he plugged his wife - so that when he turned it on she saw in one instant the whole infinity of creation and herself in relation to it.
To Trin Tragula’s horror, the shock annihilated her brain.
But to his satisfaction, he realised he had conclusively proved that if life is going to exist in a universe this size, the one thing it cannot afford to have, is a sense of proportion.
And it is into this Vortex that Zaphod Beeblebrox has been put, and from which, a few seconds later, he emerges.
Scene 8. Int. Frogstar
[The Vortex door opens]
ZAPHOD: Hi.
GARGRAVARR: Beeblebrox! You’re…!
ZAPHOD: Fine, fine. Could I have a drink please?
GARGRAVARR: You’ve been in the Vortex?!
ZAPHOD: You saw me kid.
GARGRAVARR: And you saw the whole infinity of creation?!
ZAPHOD: The lot baby - it’s a real neat place you know, heh-heh.
GARGRAVARR: And you saw yourself in relation to it all?!
ZAPHOD: Yah, yeah, yeah.
GARGRAVARR: And what did you experience?!
ZAPHOD: It just told me what I knew all the time: I’m a really great guy! Didn’t I tell ya baby, I am Zaphod Beeblebrox!!
***
Note: In my college year book for 1982 the class elected each other for various spoof 'awards': mine was 'The Zaphod Beeblebrox Ego Award'...
*
Among the ways in which Douglas Adams Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy expresses his nihilistic view of the universe
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/10/douglas-adams-attempt-at-nihilism.html
(a nihilism which is in fact mainstream in modern public discourse - thought very seldom expressed with such economy and wit)
is the concept of the Total Perspective Vortex.
*
The TPV is a punishment (indeed a capital punishment, in all but one instance) which shows the victim the (nihilist) Truth that they - and indeed everything they might value - are in 'reality' utterly insignificant, and that reality is (therefore) meaningless.
*
[The modern nihilist perspective should be contrasted with the description of the human situation of pre-modern man - for example the Medieval cosmology:
[ http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/06/medieval-cosmology-looking-up-at-stars.html
[A difference was that although the Medieval cosmology shared the sense of insignificance of size between humans (and earth) and the universe, and indeed regarded the earth as the lowest and most corrupt part of the universe - there was a spiritual sense which transcended physical differential by the centrality of the salvation of each individual soul.
[Adams believed and argued that this Medieval perspective, and indeed all genuine religious perspectives, were 'evil' (that is, evil in the sense of leading to sub-optimal human happiness) - and that adoption of the actuality exemplified by the imagined operations of the Total Perspective Vortex would lead to a better world with less suffering.
*
[How Adams believed this, I understand - because I believed it too - but I don't know of any coherent rational argument which truly, actually gets you from accepting the validity of insight deriving from the TPV to Left-Liberalism, Relativism and Lifestyle Hedonism. Let's just say that this link is accepted.]
*
The nihilist cosmology which the Total Perspective Vortex forces upon its victim has no real answer - the only answer (as Adams makes clear) is to avoid thinking about reality - perhaps by distracting the mind with serial pleasures such as going to parties, perhaps by obliterating consciousness with a Pan Galactic Gargleblaster; or perhaps by the conviction of total egotism as possessed by Zaphod Beeblebrox: the grandiose delusion of one's own importance.
*
For Adams, as a representative modern elite intellectual, the most important thing about reality is to avoid it as completely as possible and for as long as possible.
To do this is assisted by Lifestyle Freedom and Serial Distraction - indeed, these are imperative.
The body's 'natural' appetites are exploited to (ideally) overwhelm consciousness with absorption in pleasure (preferably pleasure, but if this doesn't work then just absorption in something like status-seeking, plans of seduction, consumption; and if this doesn't work then daydreams about these things.
*
Nihilism is the attempted avoidance of reality by denial of the reality of reality; because if reality really was what it seems to be, and one is really an insignificant speck, then one's own knowledge of reality could not be valid (since insignificant specks lack valid knowledge).
The choice, then, is to accept a self-refuting and paralyzing reality, which kills you; or to avoid the whole question until you are taken by death.
(Modern society does both, mostly the latter - so far - but increasingly more of the former...)
***
(From Episode 8 of the BBC Radio series transcript. I still recall listening to this broadcast live and for the first time - one of the great comedy moments of my life.)
The Universe, as has been observed before, is an unsettling big place. The fact which, for the sake of a quiet life, most people tend to ignore.
Many would happily move to somewhere rather smaller of their own devising, and this is what most beings, in fact, do.
For instance, in one corner of the Eastern Galactic Arm lies the great forest planet Oglaroon. The entire ‘intelligent’ population of which lives permanently in one fairly small and crowded nut tree. In which tree they’re born, live, fall in love, carve tiny, speculative articles in the bark on the meaning of life, the futility of death, and the importance of birth control, fight a few - very minor - wars, and eventually die strapped to the underside of some of the less accessible outer branches. In fact, the only Oglaroonians who ever leave their tree at all are those who are hurled out for the heinous crime of wondering whether any of the other trees might be capable of supporting life at all, or indeed be anything other than illusions brought on by eating too many Oglanuts.
Exotic though this behaviour may seem, there is no life-form in the galaxy not in some way guilty of the same thing. Which is why the Total Perspective Vortex is as horrific as it undoubtedly is.
For when you are put in the Vortex, you are given just one, momentary glimpse of the size of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation along with a tiny little marker saying, “You are here”.
Scene 7. Int. Frogstar
GARGRAVARR: [Humming]
MAN: [Blood-curdling scream]
ZAPHOD: Hey man, what was that?
GARGRAVARR: A man being put in the Vortex I’m afraid. We’re very close to it now.
ZAPHOD: Hey, it sounds really bad. Couldn’t we maybe go to a party or something, for a while… think it over?
GARGRAVARR: For all I know I’m probably at one. My body that is. He goes to a lot of parties without me… says I only get in the way. Hey ho
ZAPHOD: I can see why it wouldn’t want to come here. This place is the dismalest. Looks like a bomb’s hit it you know.
GARGRAVARR: Several have - it’s a very unpopular place. The Vortex is in the heaviest steel bunker ahead of you.
MAN: [Blood-curdling scream]
ZAPHOD: The universe does that to a guy?
GARGRAVARR: The whole infinite Universe. The Infinite sums. The Infinite distances between them, and yourself. An invisible dot on an invisible dot. Infinitely small.
The Vortex derives its picture of the whole universe on the principle of extrapolated matter analyses.
To explain - since every piece of matter in the universe is in someway affected by every other piece of matter in the universe, it is, in theory, possible to extrapolate the whole of creation - every galaxy, every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition, and their economic and social history, from, say - one small piece of fairy cake.
The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so, basically, in order to annoy his wife.
Trin Tragula, for that was his name, was a dreamer, a speculative thinker, or, as his wife would have it, an idiot. And she would nag him incessantly about the utterly inordinate amount of time he would spend staring out into space, or mulling over the mechanics of safety pins, or doing spectrographic analyses of pieces of fairy cake. “Have some sense of proportion,” she would say, thirty-eight times a day.
And so he built the Total Perspective Vortex - just to show her. And in one end he plugged the whole of reality, as extrapolated from a fairy cake, and in the other end he plugged his wife - so that when he turned it on she saw in one instant the whole infinity of creation and herself in relation to it.
To Trin Tragula’s horror, the shock annihilated her brain.
But to his satisfaction, he realised he had conclusively proved that if life is going to exist in a universe this size, the one thing it cannot afford to have, is a sense of proportion.
And it is into this Vortex that Zaphod Beeblebrox has been put, and from which, a few seconds later, he emerges.
Scene 8. Int. Frogstar
[The Vortex door opens]
ZAPHOD: Hi.
GARGRAVARR: Beeblebrox! You’re…!
ZAPHOD: Fine, fine. Could I have a drink please?
GARGRAVARR: You’ve been in the Vortex?!
ZAPHOD: You saw me kid.
GARGRAVARR: And you saw the whole infinity of creation?!
ZAPHOD: The lot baby - it’s a real neat place you know, heh-heh.
GARGRAVARR: And you saw yourself in relation to it all?!
ZAPHOD: Yah, yeah, yeah.
GARGRAVARR: And what did you experience?!
ZAPHOD: It just told me what I knew all the time: I’m a really great guy! Didn’t I tell ya baby, I am Zaphod Beeblebrox!!
***
Note: In my college year book for 1982 the class elected each other for various spoof 'awards': mine was 'The Zaphod Beeblebrox Ego Award'...
*
Friday 28 October 2011
A parable of PC
*
I know I never link to other blogs (we don't do 'topical' here); but this is blimmin brilliant and written by frequent commenter aka. Crow:
http://www.amerika.org/globalism/the-rainbow-death/
*
I know I never link to other blogs (we don't do 'topical' here); but this is blimmin brilliant and written by frequent commenter aka. Crow:
http://www.amerika.org/globalism/the-rainbow-death/
*
Fifteen percent of people will say yes to anything: above that, it's significant
*
Having, like most people, been subjected to innumerable reports of surveys, it is clear that 15 percent of the population will say Yes to anything.
"Are gibbons your favorite food?"
"Is the President doing a great job?"
"Have you got three legs?"
Yes, Yes, Yes - fifteen percent.
*
I conclude that fifteen percent of the population are simply crazed and incompetent (at least 15 percent - since it is the best case scenario that it is, in fact, the same 15 percent of people who make all the weird responses).
*
Fifteen percent sounds like a lot of people, nearly a sixth of the population, until you recognize that fifteen percent will say say (or no) to anything.
After which you can appreciate that any survey result showing <15% 'support' for something or another (or denial of it) should simply be ignored - indeed must be ignored.
*
Yet significantly more than fifteen percent is significant, by the same argument - and since that constitutes more than a sixth of the population then (by the logic of surveys) you have to take notice of it: this is way too big a proportion to ignore.
So fifteen percent is a sharp threshold: a clear demarcation of statistical significance.
*
Yet of course it is much, much less than fifteen percent of the modern population who are correct about anything...
So the safest course is never do surveys...
Lest you be tempted to take notice of them.
*
Having, like most people, been subjected to innumerable reports of surveys, it is clear that 15 percent of the population will say Yes to anything.
"Are gibbons your favorite food?"
"Is the President doing a great job?"
"Have you got three legs?"
Yes, Yes, Yes - fifteen percent.
*
I conclude that fifteen percent of the population are simply crazed and incompetent (at least 15 percent - since it is the best case scenario that it is, in fact, the same 15 percent of people who make all the weird responses).
*
Fifteen percent sounds like a lot of people, nearly a sixth of the population, until you recognize that fifteen percent will say say (or no) to anything.
After which you can appreciate that any survey result showing <15% 'support' for something or another (or denial of it) should simply be ignored - indeed must be ignored.
*
Yet significantly more than fifteen percent is significant, by the same argument - and since that constitutes more than a sixth of the population then (by the logic of surveys) you have to take notice of it: this is way too big a proportion to ignore.
So fifteen percent is a sharp threshold: a clear demarcation of statistical significance.
*
Yet of course it is much, much less than fifteen percent of the modern population who are correct about anything...
So the safest course is never do surveys...
Lest you be tempted to take notice of them.
*
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