Bruce Charlton's Notions

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The paradox of Christian reactionary blogging is that the basic ethos of blogging is hostile to the Christian reactionary life.

We blog, in part, for 'company', and to keep each other's spirits up; but the behavior of frequent blogging, keeping-up with blogs, commenting etc is all very much part of the world of mass media and on-line inter-connectivity that is one of the major reasons for that state of affairs which - in our blogs - we lament.

We want (and get) regular, attentive, insightful readers and commenters, yet deep down perhaps we would prefer that they had 'better things to do' - and that we did too!

Perhaps the underlying intention in Christian reactionary blogs is akin to Wittgenstein's last comments in his Tractatus. In paraphrase:

Anyone who understands me finally recognizes my propositions as senseless. When he has climbed out through them, on them, over them; then he must throw away the ladder. 


In other words, once the reader 'gets' what a reactionary blogger is saying, he should stop reading that blog!

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One aspect of 'things coming to a point' is that everything is becoming connected: beliefs are much more connected and inter-correlated than they used to be and people who are wrong about the main thing are wrong about almost everything.

I can observe that those who continue to hold to Secular Leftism - the face of its evident evils - dishonesty, incompetence, psychosis - are nowadays becoming more and more obviously wrong about everything else.

In the past it was possible, indeed common, for people to have a mixture of wrong and right beliefs; or to be right about the main things but wrong about peripheral things.

Now we perceive that evil - falsity, ugliness, moral-inversion - has spread, permeated-through people's whole minds to render their judgements generally unsound.

Because Leftists have systematically suppressed their discriminatory abilities, they are now rendered incapable of detecting blatant lying, gross incompetence, charlatans, careerists, psychopaths, charm merchants, thugs and hysterics.

The same people who used to cultivate their instincts, develop their hearts, to navigate through the world are now helpless dupes.

Their carefully cultivated inability to acknowledge the obvious has opened their mental doors to wicked, destructive nonsense.

They have trained themselves in habits of abstraction such that - whatever happens - and I mean anything that happens - is almost-instantly re-framed into the narrative of political correctness. The cognitive dissonance lasts only a few seconds....

And this is our ruling elite.

They are now far beyond human help - and will lead us to utter destruction; unless replaced lock, stock and barrel.

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Re-reading Pascal's Pensees on the 'hidden God' (surely one of the profound Christian insights ever put to paper) makes me reflect on the times we live in - and whether God is now more, or less, hidden than in the past - or about the same.

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I think things are about the same - because although on the one hand Christianity has become much weakened compared with even 100 years ago; on the other hand the spiritual, moral, aesthetic and philosophical pretensions of secular Leftism are not just weakened but utterly exploded.

So there is now no excuse for being a Leftist, its falsity and its evil are there for all to see - in the foreground and in the background, in books and in our daily lives and face to face conversations.

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While a century, or two, ago the pretensions of atheism, materialism, radicalism, modernism etc. were superficially plausible - now they are not.

Whereas it used to be the case that the nexus of worldly Leftism has some kind of plausibility as a rival 'religion' to Christianity - now it does not.

Now we know that Leftism is a load of toxic waste.

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Therefore it is an easy matter for a sincere seeker after God to recognize the evil of secular Leftism, and merely by default to take a close look at Christianity; where the answer will be found.

As Pascal makes clear, he who seeks  God will find God; but he who does not seek God will not find him. God is still hidden from the non-seeker  - as He always has been.

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Why, then - if Leftism is so obviously evil - are there not more Christians?

And why are so many self-described Christians really Leftists (who fit their 'Christianity' around the imperatives of Leftism - as Leftism 'progresses' so does their 'Christianity'). 

The answer is simple, the answer is obvious from the above.

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People know - in as much as such things ever can be known, which is never with absolutely certainty such as to be undeniable - that secular Leftism is evil and psychotic - but... they go along with it anyway; they are too skeptical to to seek God, too proud to humble themselves by repentance; too addicted to distractions, comforts and pleasures to want to rock the boat.

People make their choice.

God is hidden and obvious to about the same extent as always he was - but the choices are different.

God is the same, people have changed.

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“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  - p. 283)

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From:

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Dawson_-_Australian_aborigines_%281900%29.djvu/91

Among the associated tribes a public executioner was employed to put criminals to death when ordered by the chiefs to do so.

The natives have a vivid recollection of a bloodthirsty savage named Pundeet Puulotong, 'dragger out of kidney fat,' who acted in that capacity, and who was so fond of doing cruel deeds that he solicited the office himself.

He killed his victims with a club called yuul marrang, 'wild hand,' made of quandong wood, and kept for the purpose.

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Pundeet Puulotong was a great fighting man. On killing one of a neighbouring tribe, he would show himself to the relatives of his victim, and challenge them to spear him. None, however, dared to meddle with him.

On asking members of his tribe how many lives he had destroyed, the reply was that he took one at almost every meeting.

When he was seen approaching a meeting the women wept, as they were certain he would put someone to death before he left.

If he received a scratch, or had blood drawn from him, he would kill some person in revenge.

The old savage grew quite blind and helpless in his old age, and the natives say, that, instead of putting him to death, which they could easily have done, they left his blindness to punish him for his innumerable murders and cruelties.

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COMMENT: I find it shocking that the tribe did not, apparently, have any way to deal with this sadistic multiple killer. I would have imagined that he could/ would have been executed in his sleep, or surprised and set-upon by a posse. But no. He killed to his heart's content. The tribe just waited until he became decrepit and dependent, and then punished him by not killing him.

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I am sick and tired of people who do very well thank you - gain power and usually wealth - from 'good works' - especially those involved 'raising money' for supposedly virtuous causes.

This amounts to no more than extracting resources from others - by various means, some coercive - then redirecting these resources such that the manager of the process gets credit.

Show me an ascetic who does good work - someone who has minimal power and money, and either faithfully monogamous or strictly celibate - only then will I take them seriously.

Only an ascetic deserves acclaim for good works.

Otherwise those high status doers of good works are merely successful parasites.

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At root - yes. Simple explanations will not suffice.

PC cannot just be explained as expedient careerism - because PC is something new.

Once a system of political correctness had been established, it became expedient for careerists to spout PC; but why did the system of PC become established in the first place?

And, having been established, why did PC not immediately get changed? - given that it is obviously irrational, obviously self-destructive?

The self-loathing craziness of PC is not a subtle thing: it is as obvious as having central London looted and burned for several nights in a row while thousands of police stand by watching and the media conceal the racial identity of the rioters.

Once it is up and running and stable, to be PC is merely expedience; but the creation and sustenance of the sociopolitical framework which defines what is expedient still needs to be explained.

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From An account of the manners and customs of the Aborigines, by Edward John Eyre, 1845.



http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/e/eyre/edward_john/e98m/chapter2.html

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In the female the average height is about five feet, or perhaps a little under. The anterior part of the brain is more limited than in the male; the apex of the head is carried further back; the facial angle is more acute; and the extremities are more attenuated.

The latter circumstance may probably be accounted for from the fact, that the females have to endure, from a very early age, a great degree of hardship, privation, and ill-treatment.

Like most other savages the Australian looks upon his wife as a slave.

To her belongs the duty of collecting and preparing the daily food, of making the camp or hut for the night, of gathering and bringing in firewood, and of procuring water. She must also attend to the children; and in travelling carry all the moveable property and frequently the weapons of her husband. In wet weather she attends to all the outside work, whilst her lord and master is snugly seated at the fire. If there is a scarcity of food she has to endure the pangs of hunger, often, perhaps, in addition to ill-treatment or abuse.

No wonder, then, that the females, and especially the younger ones, (for it is then they are exposed to the greatest hardships,) are not so fully or so roundly developed in person as the men. Yet under all these disadvantages this deficiency does not always exist.

Occasionally, though rarely, I have met with females in the bloom of youth, whose well-proportioned limbs and symmetry of figure might have formed a model for the sculptor’s chisel. In personal appearance the females are, except in early youth, very far inferior to the men.

(...)


In their domestic relations with one another polygamy is practised in its fullest extent. An old man having usually from one to four wives, or as many as he can procure.

The females, and especially the young ones are kept principally among the old men, who barter away their daughters, sisters, or nieces, in exchange for wives for themselves or their sons. Wives are considered the absolute property of the husband, and can be given away, or exchanged, or lent, according to his caprice.

A husband is denominated in the Adelaide dialect, Yongarra, Martanya (the owner or proprietor of a wife). Female children are betrothed usually from early infancy, and such arrangements are usually adhered to; still in many cases circumstances occur frequently to cause an alteration; but if not, the girls generally go to live with their husbands about the age of twelve, and sometimes even before that.

Relatives nearer than cousins are not allowed to marry, and this alliance does not generally take place.

(...)

Brothers often barter their sisters for wives for themselves, but it can only be done with the parents’ consent, or after their death. If a wife be stolen, war is always continued until she is given up, or another female in her place.

There is no ceremony connected with the undertaking of marriage. In those cases where I have witnessed the giving away of a wife, the woman was simply ordered by the nearest male relative in whose disposal she was, to take up her “rocko,” the bag in which a female carries the effects of her husband, and go to the man’s camp to whom she had been given.

Marriage is not looked upon as any pledge of chastity, indeed no such virtue is recognised.


(...)

But little real affection consequently exists between husbands and wives, and young men value a wife principally for her services as a slave; in fact when asked why they are anxious to obtain wives, their usual reply is, that they may get wood, water, and food for them, and carry whatever property they possess.

(...)

No age is prescribed for matrimony, but young men under twenty-five years of age do not often obtain wives, there are exceptions, however, to this: I have seen occasionally young men of seventeen or eighteen possessing them.

When wives are from thirty-five to forty years of age, they are frequently cast off by the husbands, or are given to the younger men in exchange for their sisters or near relatives, if such are at their disposal.


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NOTE “The early life of a young woman at all celebrated for beauty is generally one continued series of captivity to different masters, of ghastly wounds, of wanderings in strange families, of rapid flights, of bad treatment from other females amongst whom she is brought a stranger by her captor; and rarely do you see a form of unusual grace and elegance, but it is marked and scarred by the furrows of old wounds; and many a female thus wanders several hundred miles from the home of her infancy, being carried off successively to distant and more distant points.”

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Women are often sadly ill-treated by their husbands or friends, in addition to the dreadful life of drudgery, and privation, and hardship they always have to undergo; they are frequently beaten about the head, with waddies, in the most dreadful manner, or speared in the limbs for the most trivial offences. No one takes the part of the weak or the injured, or ever attempts to interfere with the infliction of such severe punishments.

Few women will be found, upon examination, to be free from frightful scars upon the head, or the marks of spear-wounds about the body. I have seen a young woman, who, from the number of these marks, appeared to have been almost riddled with spear wounds.

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COMMENT: It should be noted that the author of this book was writing as an advocate of the Aborigines, and much of the book is taken up with documentation of the abuses and injustices they had suffered at the hands of whites, and ideas for improving their condition.

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I read two books on Australian Aborigines written in the 19th century, hoping to find contemporary accounts of the 'songlines' - the idea that they were able to navigate across deserts by means of songs which contained the major landmarks in proper order, and also the myths about totem animals and how these landmarks had been formed.

I found no such information nor any reference to problems of navigation in the bush; but there was this curious account of the religious life of Aborigines in the early 1800s, which is consistent with my characterisation of (most, simple, immediate-return) hunter gatherers as 'pre-rational' made in this posting:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/12/hunter-gatherer-agnricultural-modern.html

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From Edward John Eyre. Journals of expeditions of discovery into Central Australia, and overland from Adelaide to King George's Sound in the years 1840-1 (etc). Volume II. T*W Boone: London, 1845:

 http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/e/eyre/edward_john/e98m/chapter5.html

The natives of New Holland, as far as yet can be ascertained, have no religious belief or ceremonies. A Deity, or great First Cause, can hardly be said to be acknowledged, and certainly is not worshipped by this people, who ascribe the creation to very inefficient causes.

They state that some things called themselves into existence, and had the property of creating others.

But upon all subjects of this nature their ideas are indistinct and indefinite, as they are not naturally a reasoning people, and by no means given to the investigation of causes or their effects; hence, if you inquire why they use such and such ceremonies, they reply, our fathers did so, and we do it; or why they believe so and so, our fathers told us it was so.

They are not fond of entering upon abstruse subjects, and when they are induced to do it, it is more than possible, from our imperfect acquaintance with their language, and total ignorance of the character and bent of their thoughts upon such points, that we are very likely to misunderstand and misrepresent their real opinions.

It appears to me that different tribes give a different account of their belief, but all generally so absurd, so vague, unsatisfactory, and contradictory, that it is impossible at present to say with any certainty what they really believe, or whether they have any independent belief at all.

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COMMENT:  The examples (see continuation of the above passage) sound to me much like the kind of ad hoc accounts that can be elicited from young children concerning adult topics that hold little interest for them, and about which they have never thought nor been formally taught: the sort of answers reluctantly given to questions which are not understood if an adult presses for some kind of response. 

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This is a correction to a previous posting, in which I stated that past hunter gatherers would allow new born babies to die of exposure or neglect, and would abandon the elderly, but did not purposefully kill them.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/03/active-killing-versus-letting-die.html

It turns out I was mistaken, according to Australian Aborigines by James Dawson, published in 1881 by George Robertson of Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide and available online:

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Dawson_-_Australian_aborigines_(1900).djvu/7

This is an account of several years collecting oral testimony in the native language by someone who was extremely sympathetic to Aborigines as stated in the introduction:

In recording my admiration of the general character of the aborigines, no attempt is made to palliate what may appear to us to be objectionable customs common to savages in nearly every part of the globe; but it may be truly said of them, that, with the exception of the low estimate they naturally place on life, their moral character and modesty—all things considered—compare favourably with those of the most highly cultivated communities of Europe. ... away from the means of intoxication, and were to listen to their guileless conversation, their humour and wit, and their expressions of honour and affection for one another, those who are disposed to look upon them as scarcely human would be compelled to admit that in general intelligence, common sense, integrity, and the absence of anything repulsive in their conduct, they are at least equal, if not superior, to the general run of white men..

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[Infanticide]

Large families of children are unusual among the aborigines. However many may be born, rarely more than four are allowed to grow up. Five is considered a large number to rear.

Twins are as common among them as among Europeans; but as food is occasionally very scarce, and a large family troublesome to move about, it is lawful and customary to destroy the weakest twin child, irrespective of sex.

It is usual also to destroy those which are malformed.


Malformations, however, were so rare before the arrival of the white man that no instances could be remembered.

When a woman has children too rapidly for the convenience and necessities of the parents, she makes up her mind to let one be killed, and consults with her husband which it is to be. As the strength of a tribe depends more on males than females, the girls are generally sacrificed.

The child is put to death and buried, or burned without ceremony; not, however, by its father or mother, but by relatives. No one wears mourning for it.

Sickly children are never killed on account of their bad health, and are allowed to die naturally.


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[Euthanasia]

When old people become infirm, and unable to accompany the tribe in its wanderings, it is lawful and customary to kill them.

The reasons for this are—that they are a burden to the tribe, and, should any sudden attack be made by an enemy, they are the most liable to be captured, when they would probably be tortured and put to a lingering death.

When it has been decided to kill an aged member of the tribe, the relatives depute one of their number to carry out the decision. The victim is strangled with a grass rope, and the body, when cold, is burned in a large fire kindled in the neighbourhood. All his property is burned with him except rugs, weapons, and implements. In this cremation the sons and daughters and near relatives take part; and two or three friends collect the necessary firewood and attend to the fire.

This custom is recognised as a necessity. There is, therefore, no concealment practised with regard to it.

Very often the poor creatures intended to be strangled cry and beg for delay when they see preparations made for their death, but all in vain. The resolution is always carried out.


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COMMENT:

Reading this book on the Australian Aborigines, and another equally sympathetic account from 1845 -

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/e/eyre/edward_john/e98m/

- was an eye-opener in more ways than one; causing me to revise several beliefs about human nature.

Clearly, the bowdlerisation and sanitation of our knowledge about tribal peoples is far greater than even I had imagined.

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It is striking that nearly all (but not all) of the mass media output - and also what passes for serious narrative High Art in recent literature, drama, the movies, TV - is written from a demonic perspective.

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Indeed, this could be taken as a brief definition of 'modernity' in the media - that phenomenon which got a grip in the first decades of the twentieth century, and which finished-off the centuries long traditions of visual arts, classical music and poetry.

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I have always been aware of this demonic perspective, and always disliked it - but for many years I pushed-down this dislike and forced myself to swallow large doses of demonic modernism and media, because this was supposed to be 'the truth' about the human condition; and because most of the 'best' work in recent art and prestige media was in this style, had this content.

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In demonic art, the standard by which the characters are judged is worldly: status, power, and pleasure. The successful characters are all evil manipulators, selfish, cruel, insensitive.

Sometimes the whole narrative is peopled by evil characters trying to exploit one another; some succeeding, while others fail and are crushed.

Sometimes there are 'good' characters whose virtue is kindness - these are depicted as weak and self-deluded individuals. They are 'hosts' from whom the evil characters feed.

We feel sorry for these 'goodies', perhaps we despise them, perhaps they disgust us - certainly we do not envy them.

The 'good' characters are the people who cannot see reality, who refuse to see reality; they are those who are preyed-upon.

Thus the demonic perspective: the world as predators and prey.

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The message?

You are either an envied predator or one of the mass of despised prey. 

Therefore, be a successful predator and glory in your success; and if you can't then despair.

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The sub-text - we are all prey, ultimately.

Even if you succeed as a predator, glorious in your exploitation of others for your own gratification, you will become prey in your turn, become weak and pitiful prey -  and so despair.

The ideal of success is to die at the height of your predatory success, unconscious of the future, when most envied and most loathed - therefore, if you have achieved predator-hood then despair - make sure you die soon, before you too become prey.

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The sub-sub text - life is only about predators and prey, but ultimately it makes no difference because life is short, vile, and everybody dies.

So despair.

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This is the demonic perspective in which modern Man swims, which underpins media news and soap operas, prize winning novels and award winning movies, which fills the theatres and the galleries.

Is the demonic perspective honest? Is it the product of years of seeking the truth, of exhausting all possible avenues of enquiry?

Of course not! It is merely a miasma breathed-in during adolescence; it is a pose, a lifestyle.

It is the end of seeking the truth, not the product of truth-seeking. 

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Yet the demonic perspective rules the public arena, it is what we are taught and what we consume: it is our catechism: it is pervasive, encouraged - and alternatives to the demonic perspective are low status, dumb, wicked, forbidden, punished...

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So this is the nature of evil triumphant, merely this; a permanent culture consisting of life seen through the eyes of a demon; a demon for whom only the basest, most selfish motives are real, for whom everything is explicable in terms of eating or being eaten, for whom the ultimate reality is eternal suffering alleviated only by sadistic torturing of other demons.

And this milieu induced not by argument or demonstration, but by reiterated depiction: by millions and billions of instances of the demonic perspective, iterated day by day, minute by minute, apparently each confirming and confirmed by the innumerable others, all drilling us in the ultimate lie that this is the truth: seek no further: suck it up and despair.

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Childhood (youth is a modern invention), Maturity, Middle age, Elderhood - then death...

The stages of life make it possible for humans to live in earth:

to become human (by the childhood stage, with its development and education)

to be productive and reproductive (in the middle two stages)

to become less worldly and more spiritual (in the second half of life).

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Death makes salvation possible - without death a creature like a human and with free will would be damned, sooner or later; and to have free will is intrinsic to humanness.

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Imagine: who could remain uncorrupted if they were a perpetual modern teenager, subject to the impulses and temptations of the typical modern teenager, for eternity?

Just as well we age, just as well we die.

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Hieromonk Damascene

Walter Hooper

Verlyn Flieger

Peter Kreeft

Rupert Sheldrake

Tom Shippey

Christopher Tolkien


To them all: Thank you.

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I started thinking-out a Watership Down type of fable, about a strain of mutant rabbit which limited its own  reproduction in favour of 'industrial' activities that raised the standard of living; and where this disposition was combined with a compulsive altruism; such that the surplus product was shared with any mutant rabbits who cared to come and ask - and how this led to an horrific collapse of the warren...

And so on...

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It was (obviously!) meant as an allegory of modernity, and how the particular combination of reproductive suppression and altruism was even-more-rapidly self-destroying than either would be on their own.

And how the psychological factors which led to reproductive self suppression were themselves amplified by the consequence of that psychology; how modernity creates more of itself.

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Then I got to thinking that this could either be explained in terms of natural selection - of the weeding-out of deleterious genes (i.e that moderns are essentially a lower fitness mutant strain); or in terms of divine providence - like those Old Testament stories of wicked societies which get worse and worse yet still refuse to repent, until they are overwhelmed by catastrophe and slaughtered or enslaved.

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It is weird in the extreme to see this scenario unfolding relentlessly, step by step, and sustained not so much by ignorance as by self-blinding.

It is things like this which seem to require the operation of purposive evil in the world (if we did not already know this from divine revelation).

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And the greatest triumph of purposive evil is surely that the self-destroying society finds the concept of purposive evil laughable, infantile, embarrassing or itself evil; and regards this attitude as evidence of their enlightenment and intelligence, their superiority over all previous ages.

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The fires are lit, the fuel is being loaded on them, the conflagration builds, the defenders are bound and gagged, all exits are sealed.

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A paradigm is a metaphysical system - it is what frames experience and observation, makes sense of experience and observation.

Therefore, experiences and observations have no effect (no necessary effect) on paradigms.

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Therefore, there is no point in using experiences or observations (data, reasoning) to attempt to change a paradigm, and two people arguing from different paradigms are either engaging in a game  - a pastime; or else in a kind of warfare on behalf of 'higher values' - typically intended to evangelize any onlookers, to convert the audience to one's own view by discrediting the enemy (which is why arguments across paradigms rapidly become ad hominem attacks on the morality and truthfulness of the opposition - whether directly attacking the person and their motivations, or indirectly attacking them by inference) .

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Higher values are those goods which determine the choice of paradigm.

Arguing from shared higher values can change a paradigm, regardless of the experiences and observations - since experiences and observations are simply re-interpreted in the light of a new paradigm.

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The most typical higher value is moral - Leftism has suceeded in shifting many paradigms by appealing to the Leftist morality of kindness (reduction of worldly suffering).

Another higher value is truth - although this was never very popular it did once rule philosophy, then later science; however, it now seems to have become all-but extinct.

Another higher value is beauty - although this was never very popular it did once rule the High Arts (painting, music, poetry), however, it now seems to have become all-but extinct.

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A false paradigm is a free-spinning cog in the universe: detached from articulation with reality.

When a paradigm is wrong this is not revealed by anything so distal and exact as 'evidence' but by a very proximate and basic lack of coherence; a lack of coherence which cannot be linked directly to its metaphysical cause.

What happens is disorientation, an accumulation of incomprehensible and inexplicable fundamental phenomena, then collapse of the whole thing.

Followed, one hopes, by a new and better paradigm. 

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Paradigms don't reform, they are destroyed - either by self-destruction and/ or by replacement (aided, or not, by self-destruction).

A better new paradigm will greatly reduce incoherence; yet - one can only arrive at a new paradigm via a path which traverses utter chaos; the new and better country can only be reached via a path which leads through the land of no paradigm.

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Or, to change the metaphor, the old paradigm must be destroyed before the new can be built on the same ground.

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If ever a real, effective and (on the whole) Good leader emerges in the West, I think they will break all the taboos which shackle the mainstream political Right.

They might seem (they might actually be) a bit crazy, unpredictably unpredictable, shockingly rude to those whom they oppose.

They will seem to the ruling elite (and probably will be) relatively unintelligent, simplistic or at least uneducated.

They will not care about their mistakes and will never apologize to their enemies.

They will be un-corruptable because indifferent to comfort, safety and status.

A political equivalent of the Orthodox Holy Fool; a modern Diogenes.

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I got from Ernest Gellner the division of human societies into these three categories.

And it seems that Christianity, and indeed most types of religiousness especially monotheism are most associated with the middle type of society, the agricultural: herders, and especially farmers.

The most religious, in the sense we understand religiousness, are those in Agricultural societies; H-Gs are something else, Moderns are anti-religious.

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Complexity goes  H-G, Agric, Modern: so does capability and (potential) power.

Agriculturalists are rational; H-Gs are pre-rational; Modernists are post-rational.

Happiness/ pleasure goes H-G (highest) to Agric (lowest). (This is why Agrics so often try to escape into Modernity.)

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In perspective and organization: H-G is cyclical; Agric is static; Modern is evolutionary. 

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In temporal focus: H-G is the present; Agric is the past; Modernity is the future.

The focus of time: H-G is the days; Agric is the seasons; Modern is the minutes and the millennia.

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In terms of incentives: H-G is custom; Agric is coercion; Modern is bribery.

Spiritually H-G is immanent - animistic - maybe totemistic, locates gods in nature; Agric includes monotheisms and creator God located outside nature; Modern locates god in humans - i.e. nowhere.

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H-G is pre-Good - non-moral, non-aesthetic, non-truthful; things just are obvious, necessary, how it is done.

Agric is in pursuit of The Good - Truth, Beauty and Virtue in Unity. Primary virtues are courage, loyalty, honour.

Modern is the anti-Good. The only primary virtue is kindness, the reluctance personally to inflict suffering here and now (except to prevent other suffering of someone or group more important).

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It seems inescapable that Man is a creature of Agricultural society, archetypal Man is a farmer of some type.

Agriculturalists seem to have least pleasure, but most religiousness, most rationality: they are un-worldly, unkind - orientated to life beyond life.

It seems inescapable that Hunter-Gatherers strike us as something less than human, less than moral, less than truthful - simply unconcerned by such matters - immersed in instinct and the here and now, doing what is needed or relaxing, regarding life as a cyclical flux of transforming souls and energies - unconcerned about where it came from or where it is going.  Just being. Much like animals, not-much like people.

It seems inescapable that moderns strike us as something other than Men, post-Men, trying to escape from being Men.

Moderns are transhumanists (unwittingly, most of the time) wanting to escape from the pain and alienation of Manhood into... something else. Not wanting to return to the child-like state of H-Gs, but to 'evolve' beyond the tragic unworldliness of Agricultural-Religious man.


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H-G, Agric; Modern - Pre-Man, Man, post-Man.

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If you get Christianity from an authoritative source, it will quite likely be a simple account - a linear narrative, suitable for simple people.

It is your job to understand and accept this.

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If you ask a question, then bear in mind that the answer will not be...

1. Simple.

2. Easily comprehensible.

3. Reliable.

4. Complete.

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Sometimes theological answers may clarify things, but always at a cost.

Safest to regard problems as a mystery, pending spiritual progress.

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Reading an essay by Richard Cocks on teaching Plato at college, made me think about my enthusiasm for Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZAMM), by Robert Pirsig.

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/4871

(H/T Laura Wood aka the Thinking Housewife)

I was recommended this by an instructor at an Outward Bound adventure school in my mid teens, loved it at first reading, and it became one of my favourite and most re-read books; indeed I published an 'academic' article on it at one time.

http://www.moq.org/forum/BruceCharlton/APhilosophicalNovel-ZenAndTheArtOfMotorcycleMaintenance.html

Most recently I published an article on Pirsig's use of ECT (electroshock) as a fictional (not factual) plot device

http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.com/2009/03/electroshock-and-pirsig.html

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Reading Richard Cocks made me recognize that one reason I found ZAMM so appealing, aside from its being superbly written, was that Pirsig was (like me) so non-Christian that he did not even consider God as an explanation for Quality. The whole book (and the much-worse follow up Lila) was about the importance of Quality (value, excellence) in our world, but that it was increasingly difficult to regard Quality as real and important.

Pirsig, and the reader, struggle to find a way to acknowledge the reality of Quality, the origin and nature of Quality - and at times it feels as if this has almost been achieved - but of course it never has and never is, because the only answer is that which is ruled out from before the beginning, so far back that its being ruled out is not something that needs justifying.

Quality is either transcendental and underwritten by the divine, or else it is nothing: Pirsig knows that Quality is vital, and will not let go of that, but he cannot (except by sleight of hand) do what he wants to do - which is regard Quality as real and objective but in a universe with no God.

This reminds me of the attitude of Cocks students, who regarded the introduction of divinity into metaphysical arguments as something of a 'cheap trick'.

If it is a cheap trick to invoke divinity as an explanation, then it is one which Socrates, Plato and Artistotle used, as well as the other greats of philosophy up to and including Descartes.

And divinity (the god of the philosophers, if not the God of Abraham) turns-out (as Pirsig apparently recognises at times) to be a 'cheap trick' without which nothing really makes any sense.

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John C Wright explains in a mini essay too good to be lost in the comments section of his posting.

http://www.scifiwright.com/2011/11/on-what-we-lost/

Wright is following-up on a prior commenter who says: A man who believes his wife faithful, and later finds that it is not so, has presumably lost some joy; it does not follow that he ought not to have learned the truth. And if, in the ensuing divorce, he also loses a shrewish mother-in-law and a horde of impecunious cousins, I would hesitate to call him wrong if he says that he is better off, even if a bit sadder.

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Wright's reply includes the following:


In this particular case the “wife” is a metaphor for the truth and the love of it that animated philosophers and saints of the past days whom we moderns now despise with malice.

That malice is the opposite of the humble yet manly sternness of character needed to follow the truth whereso it may lead, despite all costs. "

Hence, one cannot seek the truth despite all costs if one believes the malicious modern doctrine that “truth” is either scientific data hence meaningless or else is arbitrary personal opinion hence meaningless.

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There is no such thing as a Socrates who flatters the mob to save his life; there is no such thing as a Prometheus who cringes to Jove and obeys, leaving man to suffer as beasts in the dark.

Likewise, one cannot seriously speak of seeking the truth despite all costs when the ‘truth’ sought is but the only truth is that there is no truth: that man is an animal, and animals are machines, and cosmos is matter in motion, the human thoughts (all but one’s own, conveniently) are the passive epiphenomena of an ill-tuned instrument called the brain.

When all human thought for all eons sees truth, beauty, and goodness in the cosmos, the so called truthseekers of the modern truth dismiss this as lens aberration.

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What is really being sought, in the narrow and empty darkness of the modern mind, is not truth but comfort. It is a transparent self-justification meant only to flatter one’s ego, to call oneself the creator of a private reality and the legislator of a private moral code: It allows one’s guilty conscience the false but comforting believe that no evil and no omission committed will ever be paid for.

http://www.scifiwright.com/2011/11/on-what-we-lost/


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Once philosophers, scientists, and then pretty much all modern intellectuals had swallowed the nonsense that humble yet manly sternness of character needed to follow the truth whereso it may lead, despite all costs led to the only truth is that there is no truth: that man is an animal, and animals are machines, and cosmos is matter in motion... then that was an end to philsophy, science and reason.

then the door was wide-open to invasion from lies in service of expediency; and - my goodness - didn't they just come stampeding in!

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All actual Christian denominations are significantly deficient; because schism is an evil.

(Although of course not necessarily the worst evil; nonetheless schism is always an evil - always destructive of The Good to some significant extent.)

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After schism, all parties are weakened, those who stay behind, and those who go.

Those who provoke schism (and stay behind) may be doing an evil, those who go into schism (and leave) may be doing an evil - and the necessity for schism (when it is necessary) is itself an evil, the product of evil of one sort or another.

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A world full of schismatic churches - this world - is seriously sub-optimal.

When a church divides, what remains is less than the whole - the process of division is destructive.

Even the best surgeon cannot cannot divide flesh without destroying tissue in the process; yet surgery may nonetheless be necessary.

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Even if we accept that the Eastern Orthodox Church is the remnant of the first unified catholic Church, it is but a remnant; Orthodoxy is a lesser thing in a world where Christainity is divided - the remnant must organize in response to the schism and this does harm.

Precisely the same applies if the Roman Catholic Church is seen as the remnant of the first unified catholic Church.

But Christianity has been through many, many schisms - therefore the Christian world is by now much diminished.

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Consequently, as things are - two thousand years down the line of schism upon schism - no Christian denomination can legitimately claim wholeness, none can claim the exclusive path; yet denominations which are eclectic, non-exclusive, 'ecoumenical' (in the modern sense) are merely apostate, weak, approaching spiritual death.

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This is why schism is bad. Schism makes a difference, a permanent difference, an unrepairable difference.

What is done is done and cannot be undone (although it can be repented and forgiven).

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(This is one reason why the Christian sees the world as finite; history is an accumulation of the effects of sin. The soul can be saved, but the world cannot.)

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At this point in things, the damage to the world precludes certain options which were possible in the past.

One of these impossible things is finding the true Church here on earth in institutional form and submitting to its teachings, holding nothing back.

Evil has learned much over the millennia, trail and error has yielded subtle strategies which easily turn the already weak and corrupt human will away from salvation and into the service of evil.

Read the The Last Battle by C.S Lewis to see how it works.

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Much of the insanity in modern politics is sustained because the alternatives seems impossible: which are essentially two-fold.

When people are behaving badly (I mean in such a way as to destroy the possibility of a Good society) then they must either be coerced into behaving well and/or prevented from behaving badly, which means using whatever sanctions are effective, which may mean severe sanctions (including loss of their freedom of choice);

or they must take the consequences of their actions, which means not getting any assistance from legitimate authority, and these consequences may be severe - up to and including letting people die (eg of hunger or disease) including letting children die.

Since modern, compassionate people cannot make this kind of tough decision (at least not by their chosen methods of decision-making), not wanting to choose and adopt either of these courses of action because the one is illiberal/ authoritarian and the other is cruel/ selfish; then the necessity of choice is denied and destructive mass processes are being allowed to continue until the point when matters are necessarily taken out of the hands of compassionate people by replacing them with non-compassionate people and/ or events are overtaken by natural disaster (famine, epidemic, slaughter).

The choice cannot, therefore, be avoided but only delayed; until such a point that brute necessity supervenes.

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