Bruce Charlton's Notions

I grew-up in a world where public discourse had the built-in assumption that functional systems were (and ought to be) focused on their function! - and any departure from this was corruption.

So that a school ought to be about education, a newspaper about accurate information, a hospital about improving health, a police force about maintaining civil peace and order, an army about military effectiveness and so forth.

Because this was expected, it was substantially true - and this was the basis of the industrial revolution and the expansion of human capability - culminating in repeatedly landing men on the moon and bringing them back alive.

By the middle 1960s, Western societies were composed of multiple functional units - each focused on performing their 'sticker function' with other aspects subordinated to it. The modern world resembled a machine of many parts. If an institution was to put religion or ideology above its function, then this was a corruption.

The first steps in this direction, back in the early modern period (1700s, 1800s) were to dispense incrementally with what might be termed 'religious tests'. Because (as Alasdair MacIntyre made clear in his body of philosophical and historical work from After Virtue to Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry- and was independently argued by Ernest Gellner in books such as Plough, Sword and Book) all 'traditional' societies - that is, all societies up-to and outwith modernity - have been organised primarily around their religion.

Part of this was that all institutions were, ultimately, regarded as having a religious function primarily - because religion was the basis of social cohesion. This was the case most of the time, for internal affairs and in peace-time - during war then the primacy of religion may be displaced by military objectives.

(In Gellner's terms, traditional societies were thus ruled by various combinations of the Sword - or military specialists; and the Book - or religion specialists: soldiers and priests. They were not ruled by other types of functional specialist such as businessmen, scientists, teachers, craftsmen or whatever - nor by the mass of peasants - represented by the 'Plough'.) 

In traditional societies, therefore, it was functional focus that would have counted as the 'corruption' of an institution. For instance, any school or research institute (university) that ignored religion and focused on science would have been regarded as dangerous (because intrinsically immoral, and intrinsically hostile to social cohesion).

This means that the society of my childhood, with its functional institutions, was very unusual in world historical terms  - and that this had been achieved by means of (at the cost of) displacing religion from its central position in public, national life.

Gellner realised that communism, and its variants such as socialism and national socialism, represented a reversion to the pre-modern form of organisation in which all social institutions were primarily ideological (that is with an atheistic ideology replacing religion in the scheme). If modernity was functionally specialised and differentiated, as the basis of its increased capability; then Leftism was inevitably and intrinsically anti-modern - since Leftism entailed all institutions being primarily, compulsorily, Leftist.

(For instance, a metal pipe factory in the Soviet Union was primary about propagating and enforcing Communism; and any production of functional metal piping had to be subordinated to that ideology - such that the actual metal piping might be unusable. A current equivalent is the mass of schools and colleges in which there is a focus on identity politics, and no actual education.)

This is, of course, the world we live in - the world of New Leftism and Political Correctness - a world in which all of societies institutions now have the priority of Left ideology (in its mutating and evolving forms). So all schools, hospitals, police forces, legal institutions, government offices, military units, and media corporations now have the primary and compulsory goal of pursing Left Wing Ideology - the sexual revolution, diversity, equality and so forth.

All current institutions in The West are Left Wing Ideologies first and foremost (and almost - but not quite, exclusively). Any other functions are optional, and must be fitted-around this mandatory focus.

(This failure to be functional requires that institutions be state subsidised to some degree - and this is in fact the case - extremely few modern institutions do not receive a significant portion of income from the State - either directly or indirectly, explicitly or covertly. There are no 'markets' - we inhabit a 'command economy'.)

Any institution which does not put Leftism as its primary focus is now, and has been for several decades, regarded as immoral and dangerous to cohesion. Opposition is not necessary - simply to dissent from - to fail-to-subscribe-to the ruling ideology will block your appointment and lead to your removal from any position of high status power and influence in Western Institutions now.

This is a major underlying reason why current societies do not work as well as they did 50 years ago, when it comes to the primary social functions.

So, functionality was a blip - and it was a blip because it was unsustainable. At a deep level, the mass of people do not want to subordinate their lives to functionality - they do not want to be cogs in a national machine. But what has happened is that over the past century or two - religion has been replaced by Leftist ideology as the primary focus of human activity.

This applies everywhere in the developed world and without any exceptions - the differences are merely differences of degree. There are no functionally-orientated societies remaining in the developed world, nor are there any religiously-focused societies in the developed world. 

But Left Wing Ideology is unsustainable - not least because it is self-destroying. Opposite to religion - Leftism is anti-cohesive, intrinsically negative, oppositional and a state of perpetual revolution. We live, therefore, in the paradoxical, nonsensical, auto-destructive situation of a society which places as its primary focus ideological coherence on the basis of an ideology of anti-coherence. All developed societies have broadly this same ideology of self-hatred - differences (conservatism, libertarianism, nationalism etc.) are merely 'heresies' within one secular Left ideology.  

Communism - in various versions - has conquered the entire developed world - where all nations are secular and Leftist in their ideology, and all have placed ideology above any functional priority. You may be one of the best scientists, doctors, chief executives, editors or generals in the world - but you will still be removed from your institutional leadership position (or not appointed in the first place) if you not not put Left ideology above all functional considerations.

 The future is therefore inevitably that of religion. We may pine for an era in which functionality could be a priority - but that has been decisively rejected by the mass of people who neither understand nor support it. We have returned to the traditional world where beliefs and ideas are primary - except that our beliefs and ideas do not make sense and fail to motivate the cooperation and altruism upon which society depends.

Leftism has collapse built-in; in the end, secular ideology simply cannot replace religion. Historically, all secular ideologies are, like functionality, merely a blip. 

The future is therefore religion, again, at the centre of society and all social institutions - the only question for each nation or human group to determine is: which religion? 

(The above condenses the argument of my book from 2011 - Thought Prison: the fundamental nature of political correctness - which is now available free online: http://thoughtprison-pc.blogspot.co.uk.) 

For me, the Christmas spirit is palpable; like a vapour which seems to inhabit the air at increasing concentrations over these weeks approaching the date.

Yet I am very unsure about what it is, or even why.

Nothing actual about Christmas seems to come close to defining what the spirit is; because of the mystery of Jesus.

I find Jesus a deeply mysterious... phenomenon. He is at the centre of our faith, but the reason cannot be pin-pointed - because it seems on the one hand no reason fully captures it; while on the other there are too many reasons.

For most people on Earth, Jesus is either just one of many similar spiritual exemplars; or just an optional extra to, or distraction from, the primary and necessary work of God - for Christians he is central, but we can't say why in any concise fashion. The New Testament authors grapple with this question in many ways. 

The birth of Jesus was a cosmic event, and Jesus was a human baby - everything Jesus did or said seems to raise as many questions as they answer. If he was necessary why was he local; since he was saviour, how come he brought sharp choices? He is our King and our brother; of astonishing power and status, and the close companion of the humblest and the worst of people.

We try to bring system and clarity to these matters - but the systems are too loose as well as too contrived. Yet lack of system seems to let us off the hook and sets us adrift, or spiralling downward. 

It is all too much for human reason - and in the end a child, the ignorant or the fool make as much - or more - sense of Jesus as the eloquent, the learned, the disciplined...

All this is brought out at Christmas with the greatest clarity, by the Nativity story, the prophecies, the foreknowledge of what happened afterwards, the setting so remote in time and space: yet brought very concretely alive in the specific instance of our own specific, modern church and family.   

This post on Vox Day's blog hit the mark for me

http://voxday.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/how-to-let-go-of-bad-ideas.html

(Vox gets a lot of flak for his hard-line attitudes; but unlike many other verbal tough-nuts he has the basic humility to acknowledge errors and to emphasise that he can't do more than tell it as he sees it from what he currently knows. Nietzsche was of the same type; pulling no punches, but ready to sacrifice self-consistency to fresh insight - until cerebral syphylis briefly made him a genuine megalomaniac in Ecce Homo - en route to silencing him altogether.) 

My life has been mostly a matter of grabbing onto and then letting go of wrong ideas. I cannot claim to have been 'always right' about much - but I do claim to have been willing to acknowledge my errors when I later recognise them, and doing my best to leave them behind.

This is really a matter of honesty - and perhaps it is therefore the most crucial aspect of being a scientist; and I feel I was well educated in this matter, at a formative age, by reading Jacob Bronowski with his wonderful phrase 'The habit of truth'. We constantly make honest mistakes, and honesty compels us to repent them.

The longer I am a Christian, the more I believe that repentance - rather than 'being good' - is the primary duty of a Christian life; because all repentant sinners are saved; but the best man in the world is self-damned if he (dishonestly) does not perceive the need to repent.

Among the worst people I have encountered are the Right Men (as Colin Wilson terms them) - who are often women. I mean those people who believe they are always, basically, right about everything - and always have been. The type is common among psychopaths up to the highest level of social power in most types of institution.

Nearly all atheist 20th century dictators were of this sort (Lenin, Hitler, Stalin...); but not so many monarchs - for instance Henry the Eighth was a Right Man, but Henry the Second was not; Queen Mary was; her half-sister Elizabeth was not. But the type abounds in modern life - to get promoted it seems one must either be a psychopathic Right Man/ Woman - or a docile, drudging middle manager.

Of course, goodness is a middle course - and cringing self-doubt is also a sin; not least because it is an excuse for immoral obedience: to have courage we must not abandon our convictions without genuine cause. Cowardly virtue is not virtue at all...

On the other hand, a man of courageous principle may be brave (and thus far virtuous) in defence of falsehood; indeed it is common among martyrs. Although we are sons and daughters of God (and therefore embyronically divine) we are also weak, limited, and easily confused or fooled.

Which is precisely why we absolutely must be ready and willing to acknowledge and repent what we sincerely regard as our mistakes, deliberate wickedness, wrong ideas, bad ideas - and errors may include mistakenly acknowledging a mistake; as when later consideration convinces us that our previously repudiated 'bad idea' was not, after all, bad! - And then having (embarrassingly) to take it up yet again!

This is just Mortal Life - a zig-zag course with loops; and mostly about experience, rather than progress - or rather, experience only becomes progress when it is all over, beyond the grave...

In an excellent essay at Albion Awakening; John Fitzgerald argues that the Inklings, especially JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis, can be seen as 'heralds' of a potentially dawning Christian Renaissance - men who kept alive in The West, through declining decades, a thread containing both traditional Christianity and pagan romanticism and spontaneity:

http://albionawakening.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/the-inklings-heralds-of-coming.html

We live in unprecedented times, and it is disorientating for many or most people.

The current warmongers of the International Establishment/ Illuminati/ global conspiracy (I mean the ones who who are demonising Russia and Putin, and to all appearances trying to star World War III with Syria as the excuse) are commonly misunderstood to hope and believe that The West will win this war.

But this is an error - those who are trying to engineer this war don't want or expect to win it, nor do they want to lose the war. They want a war for its opportunities - because war creates fear, hatred and resentment and a desire for (or at least acceptance of) increased surveillance, information control and behavioural manipulation.

Look at the Middle East - The Western leaders created endemic chaos by destabilising one country after another - but ensuring that nobody is allowed to win. They back both Israel and Palestine, and also undermine and criticise both - so that problem festers on and on.

(Oceana is always at war with Eastasia...)

Much the same applies to mass immigration.

I used to think the intention of Western elites was to engineer a takeover by the immigrant population from the native population. But that isn't it - the intention is to create a chronic, escalating but matched conflict - supporting and criticising, subsidising and persecuting both sides - but rendering both sides ineffectual.

Both sides are constrained and kept incapable of victory. Fear, hatred and resentment are stoked on both sides. And all the time (without even addressing, without in any substantive way solving, the actual problems) the Establishment are ramping-up the surveillance, information control and behavioural manipulation...

The aim is a population ruled by some combination of those two great sins: pride and despair - a population which will eventually, en masse, choose its own damnation.

Most of our thinking is not Pure Conceptual Thinking - indeed, it is possible and perhaps likely that most people will never engage in Pure Conceptual Thinking at any time.

Most people may, indeed almost certainly will, at times think in the realm of universal concepts - for example, this is the spontaneous thinking of childhood.

After all, at first we only have real true universal concepts to think-with - because they are 'built-in' in the sense that we are born able to access them (albeit very partially at first). However the spontaneous thought of childhood (or of, apparently, some hunter gatherer and tribal societies) is a passive thinking - by which I mean that the thinking is a product of prior causes.

By 'passive' I mean not-creative; we think what we do, because of what - in our environment, experience, memories etc - has triggered thoughts: this type of thinking is an effect not a cause. Childhood thinking is not free; but a constrained and channeled product.

If the passive thinking is using real true universal concepts, then it is true; but it is not free. It is not 'our' thinking, it does not change the web of causes and effects in the world. Such a thinker is in the (real true) world, participating in the world; but does not change the world - rather is changed by it.

However, most modern people, most of the time, do not in their thinking participate in the real, true and universal world of concepts; instead they think by using what might be termed communicated-concepts.


Communicated concepts are not a part of the realm of real, true universal concepts - they come from communications - from the people around us, from schools and colleges, from government propaganda and (mostly, nowadays) from the mass media.

Communicated concpets may also be devised by ourselves - in what appears (superficially) to be an act of creativity, but it is actually merely 'novelty'; is actually merely a selection, combination or extrapolation of other communicated concepts.

Communicated concepts are therefore percepts, inputs - and they are only possible because of the already-existing world of real true concepts that serve as an interpretative background and provide that which makes communicated concepts 'work'.

However, the communicated concepts may (usually do) make-up a surface world of thinking, a 'fake personality', which may come to occupy all attention and block our ability to think with real true concepts - indeed, that has been precisely the history of modern thought as it developed over the past several centuries.

Because communicated concepts are an artificial thought world, they can be shaped to serve immediate human wishes, to achieve human will - sometimes useful, sometime harmfully - but never in a way which engages with with the real true world.

So communicated concepts are the cause of the modern malaise of alienation - the sense (and reality) of our thinking being cut-off from reality, from each other - and from our-selves.

In thinking with communicated concepts, modern grown-up man has detached himself from the web of cause and effect, he is no longer a passive responder only - and is in that sense Modern Man is free.

Modern Man is Free but he is disengaged from reality; free but only among artificialities and pragmatic notions.

Free; but cut-off from the truth of universal concepts. 



Pure Conceptual Thinking is therefore a thinking with real, true and universal concepts - but it is a free, active and purposive thinking in this realm of universal concepts - and in that vital respect differs from the thinking of childhood.

The difference can be summarised by the concept of creativity. A young child thinks with real true concepts (albeit in a partial, selective and therefore distorted fashion) and therefore spontaneously lives in the realm of reality - but passively because immersed in the web of cause and effect. The typical modern adult thinks with artificial, arbitrary and merely-expedient (although often very 'useful') communicated concepts - but is free, because detached from the web of causation.

Pure Conceptual Thinking is like spontaneous childhood thinking, in that it is in the realm of universal concepts - therefore intrinsically dealing with truth and reality, and naturally engaged with the primary stuff of reality - overcoming of alienation.

But Pure Conceptual Thinking is free - in the sense that the thinking is not passively caused; the self is detached from the web of causes and effects, stands apart and both observes the flow of concepts in the thinking of universal reality and also (from its status as free, as an agent, as capable of uncaused thoughts) may contribute one or more new concepts to Mankind's sock of universal concepts.

This is primary creativity: which is to contribute to the universally-available stock of real true concepts with which Man may think.


Primary creativity happens (or may happen) during Pure Conceptual Thinking - and it happens in full and purposive awareness of what is happening - in awareness of the web of existing universal concepts, and in awareness of our own originating of a new concept added to that stock.

Such new universal concepts are available to all Men (capable of thinking them) without any need for communication; although those who subsequently use these new concepts do not necessarily realise that they are new, now do users of the new thought typically know anything of its origin.

Unless a primary creative thought has been communicated 'by the normal channel's (e.g. by speaking, reading and other media) - and all such channels use merely communicated concepts, hence are prone to falsehood, distortion and even inversion - the user the user of a new universal concept does not know who first thought it; does not know who created it; nor where or when this happened.

Typically only the one who first made this new universal concept, when engaged in Pure Conceptual Thinking and acting freely as an agent among the web of universal concepts, will know for sure what has been done.

But to contribute to Mankind's stock of universal concepts is, surely, the primary act of purposive creativity in this mortal life.

William Wildblood writes (at Albion Awakening) of one of the most appealing and impressive of early English Saints: Dunstan. He was mostly a man of Somerset, the stamping-ground of my schooldays.

(What follows is metaphysics - it is neither proved nor disproven by 'evidence', because metaphysics is prior to evidence; evidence can only illustrate a metaphysical scheme.)

First (by an act of assumption) we divide our experience into percepts, which come into us via the senses - and from memory; and concepts.

Concepts are primary, because percepts can only be understood by means of concepts. (Incoming sensory 'data' is just random and meaningless noise - unless and until interpreted by concepts.)

In other words 'information' or (more clearly) 'knowledge' is only possible due to a pre-existing interpretative scheme into-which percepts are inserted. Mere sensory data - such as photons coming at the eyes, or vibrations coming at the ears, the the consequence nerve impulses... these mean nothing at all. All their meaning comes from the fact they are interpreted by out pre-existing concepts.

So concepts are primary - and if true knowledge is possible, then the validity of true knowledge must come from the validity of concepts.

(If true knowledge is not possible, - why are you reading this? Why are you even thinking? Our first assumption must be that true knowledge is possible or else there is no point in thinking about knowledge. That is not a proof of the truth of knowledge, it is another metaphysical assumption.)

So concepts must be valid - or at least some concepts must be valid. And if concepts are valid then for knowledge to be public and shared, then concepts must be public and shared.

It seems that when we use true concepts to understand the world, this means that each of us is thinking using the same concepts - I mean exactly the same concepts.

So concepts are not located privately in our brains or minds - and certainly concepts are not communicated via percepts (concepts are not shown, or heard, or explained) - true concepts exist in some place where everyone can access them and can think with them.

(As a metaphor, concepts are somewhat like a radio station, but a radio station not broadcasting from a particular antenna but located everywhere; with everyone always being permeated by radio waves, everyone potentially able (with the right equipment) to hear exactly the same radio programme; and any number of people may tune-into the signal if or when they want to hear the programme.)

The point is that it is concepts, not percepts - it is our ideas and not our sensory data - which confer validity to our knowledge, and enable knowledge to be shared - which enable true and valid communication.

Consequently, if we can think purely conceptually, then our thinking will be wholly valid.

Therefore pure conceptual thinking - thinking without any percepts at all, thinking without any evidence, would be intrinsically valid, intrinsically true.

True although also partial and imperfect, insofar as our ability to access use concepts is incomplete in various ways and to various extents - so we all access and use the same concepts but from different and incomplete points of view.

To reiterate - the above is metaphysics - that is, it is a basic framework for structuring our understanding of reality - including all forms of 'evidence' including science. Its possible value comes from providing a way we can understand the possibility of valid knowledge at all, and how we personally may have valid knowledge, and how we may share and communicate valid knowledge with other people.

And it points to the central role of human thinking in knowledge; because thinking is where we put-together percepts and concepts; or else work-with pure concepts. Indeed, thinking, by this scheme, has not just a central role; indeed pure conceptual thinking is the unique basis of our interaction-with - our participation-in - the rest of reality.

**

Next, we need to know how we personally might engage in pure conceptual thinking, and know we were doing so. A topic for another post.)

(Note: the above is a re-explanation and re-interpretation of the argument of Rudolf Steiner's early philosophical book: The Philosophy of Freedom/ Freiheit.)

Of the great storytellers of recent times, the Welshman Gwyn Thomas (1913-81) must rank high: indeed nobody I know of ranks higher in terms of a spontaneous flow of colourful, poetic and unexpected language.

Through the nineteen sixties and into the seventies, Gwyn Thomas was probably the representative Welsh commentator on his nation, so far as the mass media were concerned - Wales was his prime subject matter.


Indeed, like many storytellers or raconteurs, he wrote and spoke mostly about himself: Gwyn Thomas in relation to Wales - he made himself and his environment (English speaking South Wales) into fictional characters; and articulating his response to a crazy and hostile world was the essence of the method.

If you love (as I do) the prose of Dylan Thomas (as well as the poetry) - then you will certainly feel the same way about Gwyn Thomas (no relation - Thomas is one of the commonest South Walian surnames); which shares the same virtues, while being more intellectual and baroque in form.

The Anglo-Welsh have a distinctive way of using language which seems to derive from their distinctive accent with its sing-sing intonations and rounding-out of round-vowel-sounds. Gwyn Thomas was probably one of the great talkers ever, a real spellbinder, and this too is an Anglo-Welsh thing - supposedly deriving from the hwyl style of chapel preaching.


But it is no coincidence that one of the handful of great talkers and conversationalists I have known was a South Walian; capable of improvising and elaborating (exaggerating and fictionalising) a couple of minutes of observation or personal embarrassment into a symphony of self-deprecating humour that left me gasping for breath with helpless laughter.

As with so many of the British 'Celts', Gwyn Thomas's gift was enhanced and fuelled by alcohol - the fluency and freedom apparently required it; as as usually happens in such cases it led to illness and psychological decline in later years. But Gwyn Thomas was never a happy man - indeed made no pretence at being one; on the contrary he was an angry young communist who grew-up to be a bitter sentimental socialist atheist - and not far beneath the hi-jinks of his verbal dexterity and intense appreciation of the small things in life, was a leaden despair at the human condition.

So, I have posted videos above - and I presume I saw a great deal of Gwyn Thomas during my childhood, because - being adjacent to Wales, we had Welsh TV; but (if so) he blurs into a tapestry of incantatory anecdote and exaggeration.

My proper discovery came after a TV play based on Thomas's autobiography A Few Selected Exits (written by Alan Plater - himself a North East English version of the same basic type) starring Anthony Hopkins. I went on to read the actual book - which is undoubtedly one of the very best of all autobiographies. That is certainly the thing to read.

Aside from his autobiography, I much liked his A Welsh Eye, and I have dug-out a couple of books of short pieces, and a biography by Michael Parnell. (I haven't any interest in what I have seen of the novels.)

But I think the truth is that Gwyn Thomas was a great talker and storyteller who once fully-succeeded in getting this onto paper, in A Few Selected Exits - a one-off permanent classic of English Literature. Here is an excerpt from its gorgeous final passage:

I was at the Fountain Inn one evening last summer. Our intention was to cross the plateau all the way to Mountain Ash and fix once and for all the location of that shrine of loveliness that had slipped furtively in and out of my father's talk and dreams of so many years ago. 

The whole day had been a throne of sweet sensations. The walk over the mountain-top had been exquisite, the air and the grass a matching velvet...

The choir roared into a piece about the irrelevance of death and the certain prospect of renewal... Then, the midsummer dusk outstanding, they sang one of the loveliest of the quiet carols. The night put on a cap of gold. I was home, at my earth's warm centre. The scared monkey was back in the branches of his best-loved tree. I've never had any truly passionate wish to be elsewhere.

Perplexity is a term used by some psychiatrists to describe the characteristic emotion of early, emerging hebephrenic schizophrenia - a state of worry, angst, concern that something is going-on but being unsure exactly what.

It is indeed the characteristic emotion of a number of psychotic states characterised by 'thought disorder' - the interruption and fragmentation of of the 'stream of sconsciousness' - so that the 'train of thought' is derailed, lost, stopped, or interrupted by (what are experienced as) external intrusions and insertions.

Perplexity also describes the state of some people with delirium - perhaps due to a high temperature (pyrexia), some kind of intoxication or drug withdrawal, a response to brain injury or some other cause of global brain dysfunction. Also the pervasive state of some people with dementia - that bemused, puzzled, 'lost' look.

And perplexity is the usual emotion I recall from dreams - this morning being typical. My dreams are usually incoherent and dull, and they tend to become repetitive as I approach awakening, such that I am pleased to get out of bed and away from them. (No doubt this is one reason I am such an early riser.)

But those dreams are characterised by perplexity - an awareness of memory crumbling behind as the dream is moving forward - to know that any current understanding is temporary and begins cracking almost as soon as it has been established.

This, I suppose, is what thought disorder feels like. 

 

Above is the house in Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne, that was inhabited by the Bolshevik Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin while he was working in the Tyne shipyards, building icebreakers during the First World War 1916-17 - returning then to join the Revolution.

This plaque is situated to the right for the front door:


As the plaque states, Zamyatin went on to write We - which is credited to be the first futuristic 'dystopian' novel - and is generally regarded as the model for George Orwell's 1984.

But We was actually a development of the earlier story The Islanders, a satire about the life and people of Jesmond:

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Evgeny_Zamyatin

Which means that I live in the exact place upon-which was modelled the world of Orwell's 1984.

**
Note: the other Orwell connection is described here:
https://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/george-orwell-intended-and-expected-to.html
which demonstrates that Orwell intended to be buried in Jesmond (alongside his wife) - buried, that is, in the prototype of 1984! That would have made an amusing irony.

What news is fake, and what is real? All of it is fake and none of it is real.

If it is news, then it is fake. The only reason that alternative media exist is because news is fake - but that doesn't make the alternative news media true: they aren't. It's just news...

It would be a good thing is instead of combing the intenet for 'the truth' about some News, we were all instead to cut our news consumption by 95% - starting NOW.

For so long as our minds are being directed by the news what to attend to, what to think about, and what to think about it - or reacting-against the above - then we are missing the point.

The mass media are trying to retain and expand their hold on our minds by the risky gambit of creating and attacking a virtual entity called fake news, an Emmanuel Goldstein counter-revolutionary, for us to get outraged about: attacking, defending, defining, debating, pledging opposition or loyalty...

It's all news - and its all fake.  

In my understanding; the Gospel of John has an uniquely important position in all of Christian Scripture, and indeed in all the world's writings - because of its author. The author was the disciple whom Jesus most loved, an eyewitness of his ministry; and the events of his death and resurrection.

The author of the Gospel was also, I believe, Lazarus - the first Man to be resurrected to immortality and re-named John - still alive and active in the world, until the second coming. He was sister to Mary of Bethany; who anointed Jesus's feet in a ceremony of sacred marriage after which she became Mary Magdalene and was the first to discover and speak with her resurrected Lord. Mary Magdalene and John were present with Jesus's mother Mary at Jesus's crucifixion; when John was given care of Jesus's mother.

All of this makes John's Gospel potentially of primary value for Christians - the 'source' above all others; the first source in importance, which should structure our interpretation of all other sources.

When I read the Gospel, in a proper state of mind that is both attentive and also open to its deep meanings, I find that it is - unlike the other Gospels, which read as reverend miscellanies and comprehensive compendia of memoirs - a through-composed, thematic and structured piece of writing in which everything written is of importance.

Furthermore, John's Gospel is almost wholly symbolic in its language and implications - it is absolutely not supposed to be read as a prose account of Jesus's life; but as a mystical, deep, poetic text from those who already know the basics and necessities, and have an ability to feel the resonances and implications.

This much is clear from many, many passages and parables in which Jesus's words are quoted both to demonstrate and to explain that this is what is going-on in the Gospel - again and again Jesus is asked for a straight, factual explanation of something and replies with a figurative one.

This is why I can only read and comprehend John's Gospel when I in a similar state of mind - when I am at a level of consciousness such that the symbolic, figurative, and poetical are natural and spontaneous modes of expression.

This is not a Gospel to decode or dissect or examine under a high-powered textual microscope; any more than is a soliloquy of Hamlet or a lyric by William Blake. John's Gospel is not a code - any more than Coleridge's Xanadu is a code! That attitude is guaranteed to miss the point and close-off even the slightest possibility of responsive and valid understanding.

Therefore, there can be no recipe for reading John's Gospel, no Footnotes or Cliff Notes encapsulation, no prose summary capturing what it 'means' - and the only advice I can offer is: to read it when you, personally, are at your best and most elevated; and then read it in solitude and with concentrated and trance-like attention.

Then, and only then, may it speak to you.

Note: Commenter WmJas points out that the author of the Gospel of John may NOT have been named John - the author of the Gospel may NOT be John the son of Zebedee named in the other Gosepls. The author of John's Gospel names himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved, ie. the Beloved Disciple. So my contention should be rephrased that Lazarus was resurrected as the Beloved Disciple, author of the text called the Gospel of John. 

In the past, many people would experience contact with 'the spiritual' and 'the divine'  - it was not that they 'believed' it, but that it was a matter of their personal experience and the experience of people whom that they trusted and others in authority.

'Belief' in God, in our Heavenly Father, is not - then - what we want or need. What is required is experience.

And yet, the kind of experience people had in the past (before 'The Enlightenment', before the Industrial Revolution, before the era of Mass Media) is no longer available to us, or rather seems available only in altered states of consciousness - and as such it seems to us a kind of delusional wishful thinking, or a mental pathology.

What is wanted and needed is experience of the divine and spiritual but which is wholly integrated with alert and everyday thinking, but which casts a luminosity over that thinking so as to transform it, and transform our understanding of reality: to restore the meaning of lived-experience and remind us continually of lived-purpose.

It is into our everyday thinking which we need to welcome this transformation - that direct knowledge, direct perception, direct conviction of purpose which is called imagination and arrived not by the senses or from memory or from reasoning... by which arrives nonetheless, and carrying its own experiential conviction; which we ('merely') need to acknowledge, and appreciate as valid.

John Fitzgerald provides an introduction to a fascinating but forgotten English literary Titan of the mid-twentieth century - Charles Morgan; a Platonist, whose intense and spiritual perspective on life may be just what is needed by some people at this time.

http://albionawakening.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/charles-morgan-englands-forgotten.html

William Wildblood speculates on the implications of Smartphone technology, and what may lie ahead. Best to be prepared!

http://meetingthemasters.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/technology-and-smartphone.html

I absolutely love the style of close harmony singing called Doo-Wop. Of which this is probably (for me) The Classic Song - "I wonder why" - here done by Dion and the Belmonts singing in a lip-synched 'live' performance - you can find better sound quality of this performance elsewhere on YouTube, but this video is priceless (the sponsor made chewing gum, as you might be able to infer):


My own introduction to Doo-Wop came from the late 70s revival band The Incredible Darts, with some very nice production - and the remarkable vocal (and visual craziness) talents of Den Heggerty as their Bass:


The above track inspired my one one-and-only venture into Doo-Wop which was written and sung by me in a medical review in front of a backing group - a dream fulfilled. There is no record of the performance, but my tune was a pastiche of the 50s style and the lyrics were a medicalised version of a joke I stole from Bill Oddie on the radio series I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again.

As I recall, there was an introductory verse addressed to an imaginary girl describing how I loved her so much that I could only spell it out, then came the chorus:

F is for the Flatulence that keeps me awake at night
E is for your prosthetic Eye, which gave me such a fright
N is for the Nausea that you inspire in me
S is for the Sputum you left floating in my tea
A is for the Agony, when we made love in the sand
S is for the Sweatiness when I hold your hand
H is for your Hernia, which I reduce for you...

Put them all together and it All... Spells...
F.E.N.S.A.S.H...

(Awkward pause, shrugs, and skulks off the stage)

Anyway, another favourite from The Darts - a real beauty, this one!

As someone who got into significant trouble over hate facts (ie non-politically-correct truths) back in 2008 (i.e. social class intelligence differentials) - and considering that the suppression of hate facts is stepping-up, internationally, both in severity and scope - it is useful to ask how valuable hate facts are in The West.

The answer is; not very.

The systematic and official process of suppressing hate facts began in the middle 1960s (focused on intelligence testing). With the internet, it has never been easier or faster for people to access hate facts - and this outcome was anticipated twenty years ago - but they just don't.

The public are worse informed than ever before about the basic realities; and the reason is that they are addicted to the mass media, such that it structures their reality.

It is not merely a question of people 'believing' what the mass media tells them; but that they spend so much time engaged with teh mass (including social) media, and the mass media controls their attention and mode of thinking.

http://addictedtodistraction.blogspot.co.uk

So facts of any kind have become almost irrelevant.

So why are they being so actively suppressed at the moment (under cover of the Orwellian inversion of 'Fake News')? I would say it is a panicky miscalculation by The Establishment - so, overall, I am very pleased! They are likely to create a situation in which - because facts are more difficult to find, there will be induced a craving for them; as with the Samzdat information sheets of the Eastern Bloc, and the secret seminars, and the word-of-mouth networks... Perfect!

So, while the repression of hate facts is undoubtedly of evil intent - it is an error on the past of The Enemy, and there is a distinct possibility that it will back-fire.

Alt-Right has nowhere to go but fascism, unless it puts spiritual values at the front and heart of the program.

I say spiritual values, because I don't see it as plausible that there can be any fully-Christian mass movement from where we are now - which is a situation in which public discourse does not admit the objective reality of anything at all outside the material realm - everything else is psychological, subjective, labile, and manipulable.

Thus a secular Alt-Right will inevitably be simply a different version of Leftism; a Leftism which has different materialist priorities, and panders to a different set of subjective emotions as a means to that end.

(Indeed, my impression is that most of the Alt-Right are exceptionally materialist, positivist, anti-altruistic and reductionist in their outlook - taking a positive delight in simplification of politics to their own power, security and well-being -- only to be shared, grudgingly, with those who directly assist this agenda.)

But materialism is a feeble, ineffectual motivator for Men. The most powerful motivator is an ideal; followed by fear and hatred - and, lacking any effective motivator and uniter, a secular Alt-Right will be forced to manufacture cohesion by encouraging fear and hatred as an urgent priority to unify-around.

(I am assuming that nationalism was merely a temporary, post-religious phase - and will not work. If nationalism was going to work, it would long since have done so.)

Or else the Alt-Right will simply die - lacking any local and immediate reason for staying alive, The leaders will be bought-off or scared-off.

(As seems already to be happening - and there is a strong track record of secular Rightists selling-out at the first opportunity - And after all, why not? Expediency is their bottom-line.)

Nobody can compel a spiritual awakening - especially among ingrained and self-satisfied arch-Skeptics such as abound among the Alt-Right. I can only hope that they will leave-off the mass media addiction, and allow themselves to open-out and incrementally become aware of the wider world of reality beyond the immediacy of nuts and bolts and prideful self-seeking.

The modern Left does not really want to win - because it is in essence oppositional and there is no specific state it can win to. Of course the Left wants, and has got, power; but what the Left does with power is precisely to ensure that there are no-winners; that there is a lose-lose scenario.

The greatest success of the Left is perhaps the Middle East in general, and the Israel-Palestine conflict in particular - no side is allowed to win or made able to win; both sides are alternately supported and demonised, all sides have lost badly over a long time; the situation of mutual immiseration is well established and sustained. The future envisaged is... more of the same.

Much the same is worked for in internal national affairs in The West. For fifty years in The West here has been growing a great polarisation and conflict between sexes, classes, races, natives and immigrants... no side has won, all sides have lost - there has been solidly establishes a mutual mistrust, resentment, simmering hatred.

And such a dire psychological situation is what the effort of Leftism is all about - because ultimately Leftism is anti-salvation; its goal is to induce people to reject Good and damn themelves by choice.

Unending conflict is no accident - this is precisely the Left's aim and purpose: no winners, a lose-lose scenario.  

We all know the Gospel story of the Good Samaritan - and we probably suppose we know what it means - what is its moral.

But we are probably wrong, because the parable is normally misinterpreted as preaching undiscriminating and universal love, by God's second great commandment; on the basis that we should love our neighbour as ourselves, and everybody is our 'neighbour'.

In a nutshell, it is usual to assume that Jesus is teaching that everybody ought to model themselves on The Good Samaritan.  

What Jesus's parable actually does is to answer a lawyer who - following on from the commandment to 'love thy neighbour' asked Jesus who was his neighbour? And Jesus's answer, via the parable, was anybody that helps you when you have need is your neighbour, and that is whom you are commanded to love.

But the priest and Levite, who passed by on the other side and showed no mercy to the man fallen among thieves, were not his neighbours; and Jesus indicates that we are not commanded to love those who do not show us mercy. Anybody who fails to help us when we are in need (even if they are a priest or Levite) is not included in the commandment to love our neighbour.

So, the parable of the Good Samaritan preaches discrimination over who is your neighbour; and its meaning is very different from - and in a sense almost opposite to - the usual pulpit interpretation. Jesus's teaching is that we must love those who show mercy upon us - and therefore the parable is not telling us to all behave like The Good Samaritan.

I wonder if this correct interpretation surprised you as much as it did me?

NOTE: I got this interpretation from: http://www.jrganymede.com/2016/11/16/the-samaritan-groom/

*

Luke. Chapter 10: 25 ¶And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? 26 He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou? 27 And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself. 28 And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.

29 But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour? 30 And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. 31 And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 32 And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side. 33 But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, 34 And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35 And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.

36 Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves? 37 And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.