Bruce Charlton's Notions

Your pious English habit of regarding the world as a moral gymnasium built expressly to strengthen your character in, occasionally leads you to think about your own confounded principles when you should be thinking about other people's necessities.

After Tolkien; George Bernard Shaw was the first grown-up author I read - and I read a great deal of his work, much of it several times. But my favourite was the play Man and Superman (1901-3) - which combined a scintillating comedy with an underlying seriousness about 'life'.

In the 'preface' to M&S,  Shaw described his deepest belief in what he termed Creative Evolution; which was a blind, impersonal Life Force struggling (by trial and error) towards greater self-awareness of Life, higher consciousness... the Superman of the title (from Nietzche's Ubermensch) is the future Man who has evolved-developed to a higher state of consciousness. This theme structures but is hardly visible in the play as it is performed; but may be found in a long interpolated, Platonic dialogue-type, dream sequence sometimes called Don Juan in Hell.


For many years, I would probably have described myself as a believer in Creative Evolution - so it is interesting to look back now and see what it was that appealed to me about the idea; and in what ways it failed. And Creative Evolution eventually did fail for me, comprehensively and wholly; as did the Fabian (gradualist, rationalist, egalitarian) socialism that I also absorbed from Shaw.

It appealed because it started-from the assumption that there was no God, that the whole idea was ridiculous - and that was my own assumption. But then it tries to generate personal meaning and purpose in Life despite there being no God - and this is its failure.

Perceiving the need for a purpose in reality is a good thing, compared with the arbitrary world of deterministic science. But having that purpose as an impersonal one that merely 'uses' individual human lives then casts them aside on the 'scrapheap', means that there is no reason for the Life purpose to be one that would engage my personal efforts. If ultimate reality is abstract, then there is no place for humans, and no place for me personally.

Why should I care about what the Life Force is aiming-at - any more than I care about what gravity or magnetism are aiming-at? I don't dedicate my best creative efforts towards hastening the work of gravity - why then an equally 'physical' and mechanistic Life Force?

Therefore to try and use Creative Evolution as a justification or reason for anything I might do, or not do, is incoherent - hence in practice CE has near zero effect on a person's life.

Insofar as it does have an effect this is due to an implicit but denied theism, the idea that the Life Force is really a god, and that the god is one who care about us and to whom we may choose to show allegiance in pursuing that god's aim. But the CE idea is set up specifically to deny such theism, so one gets stuck in a useless half-way house between theism and atheism.


Shaw's rejection of Christianity was, as is usual, rooted in a lazy and ignorant rejection of the simplifications and distortions of his childhood religion; without making any attempt to modify those simplifications and distortions - but instead throwing it out wholesale.

So, the fact that the religion of Shaw's childhood had at its centre an anthropomorphised god of (mostly) cruelty and the demand for blind obedience led Shaw to reject Christianity - instead of discovering the real nature of God for himself; and discovering that there is no error in personalising God (after all God is, for Christians, a person) - but only in wrongly personalising God - imputing to God characteristics that are covertly designed to serve social expedience.

(Shaw actually favoured inventing a God/ religion to serve social, specifically socialist, expedience; but he denied the real-reality of such a God/ Religion: it was merely a fiction designed by wiser and more intelligent rulers to control the young, ignorant or imbecilic 'little people' for their own - material - benefit.) 

This type of Christianity-rejection is very common, and reveals a pretty deep sin - because people don't behave that way about the many other false or oversimplified things they are taught in childhood. We don't reject science or history wholesale just because the primary teacher told us wrong things about them. We don't become anarchists just because the methods of discipline ('stand in the corner', 'sit on the naughty step') experienced as a child strike us as ridiculously childish. We don't stop eating food because we have have grown to dislike the mashed rusks we were fed as a baby.

Instead, we set out to develop an adult understanding of these things. How few do this with Christianity! (I didn't.) Instead, people take the crudest distortions of Christianity, the greatest abuses; and insist that these are the essence and reality of it.


It is as if people are looking-for-excuses to stop being Christian - and that is indeed the case. Usually, the reason is not far to seek, and it is sexual - as it seems to have been with Shaw himself.

His deletion of God and substitution of Creative Evolution rationalised his preaching against marriage and families - and advocating a kind of eugenic fantasy of unconstrained sex between the most intelligent men (such as himself, and the hero of Man and Superman) and the most beautiful women - on the basis that this may lead to the best hereditary outcomes, and a step toward The Superman. The state would look after the resulting children, to leave the parents unconstrained. The unfit would be allowed to breed, but their children would not be supported, and be allowed to die-out. And so on...

There is thus a horrible clash in M&S between the idealism of the preface and play, and the reductionist materialism of the 'Revolutionist's Handbook' published as an appendix, which is supposed to have been written by the hero of the play. It reveals the essential vacuity of Creative Evolution, because - lacking any idea of God - the socialistic 'rational plan' to encourage The Superman is merely a set of legal and political regulations that might serve to breed stronger and more attractive farm and factory animals; but which can have nothing to do with encouraging a higher form, or species, of Man.


On the other hand, and to give Shaw his due; he did not ever fully succumb to the mainstream materialism of his age; and his best plays (i.e. most of those written up-to and including Major Barbara - before he was fifty years old) have both vitality and also intimations of awareness that there are higher strivings and something better. And the most-idealistic/ least-materialist, the most spiritually striving, characters often are given 'the last word' in the Shavian debates.

The later Shaw (and he lived nearly another fifty productive years) suffered a relative decline of spontaneity and heart; and seemed (with a relatively brief exceptions, and never again at the pre-1905 level of quality) almost to cease genuine engagement with Life - often merely to be seeking public attention and spouting words in colossal quantities.

(Several of his later plays are indeed very good, by normal standards for plays, and have held their place in the repertoire - Doctor's Dilemma, Heartbreak House, Androcles, St Joan, Pygmalion, Apple Cart for instance; but they are none are as good as the best earlier ones - e.g. Arms and the Man, Candida, Devil's Disciple, Caesar and Cleopatra and - outstanding in its power - John Bull's Other Island.)

But like many of the greatest imaginative writers (such as JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis), Shaw's 'fiction' (i.e. his plays) are deeper and more complete than his prose essays. Indeed, his plays reveal the defects of his explicit beliefs. For example Shaw's plays reveal the deficiencies of Shaw's own person - since he often included characters who were - essentially - himself': such as Trefusis in Unsocial Socialist (a novel), Charteris in Philanderer, Caesar, Dick Dudgeon in Devil's Disciple - and John Tanner in Man and Superman. Tanner's limitations, his incoherence, his hypocrisy, his blindness to human nature and motivation... all this is starkly revealed; even as he is also presented as cool, fluent, witty; and dominant over all other stage characters (excepting one).

In sum: Read Man and Superman. It is one of the best plays in English, and - I should say - the best comedy outside of Shakespeare; and far more perfectly-made and continuously-enjoyable than anything by Shakespeare.

In writing the play Shaw was trying for a Mozartian atmosphere - explicitly that of Don Giovanni. Shaw succeeds in being Mozartian, albeit much more like the glittering, exhilarating, supreme-fluency with hints of poignancy of The Marriage of Figaro.

ANA. Tell me where can I find the Superman? 

I can never really endorse a book (or movie) that ends badly - and there are a lot of them. I mean works that begin well and fall to pieces to end poorly. It seems to be much more difficult to end well than to begin well. 

It is interesting to speculate why this might be. There might be many reasons - but one is clearly that the author is technically able to write, but does not have anything to say. The book goes nowhere, because there is nowhere for the book to go. 

This is a product of the fact that the work cannot be greater than the man - and there are a lot more technically-adept Men than there are great Men. 

For the same reason, there are a lot more first-rate minor writers, than major writers; and many problems arise from a minor writer trying to give the impression he is major. The word for this is pretentious.  

Another, related phenomenon is more modern - which is an author striving for originality or to 'make a point' - usually of a socio-political nature. Such authors sabotage their own works by their desire to avoid at all costs being clichéd; avoiding what they regard as tropes or stereotypes; wishing to be known as to be 'subversive', edgy, dark... 

That is; the desire primarily to please critics, editors, scholars and 'pseuds' in general. Naturally, this leads to poor works. 

Such self-sabotage with the intent of garnering the praise of those whose world view is primarily ideological can, itself, be a mask for incompetence; but is not necessarily so. 

One of the most notorious self-sabotages in literature is the ending of Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw; which has Eliza Doolittle marrying Freddie instead of Higgins - as the narrative irresistibly suggests she would. 

Shaw was trying to make an anti-romantic ideological point - as he explained in a (very unconvincing!) post-script; and for this he was prepared to wreck the end of a brilliant play - and he then doubled-down on this error. 

Because the actors who were successfully touring Pygmalion away from London changed the ending (without telling Shaw) by adding some unspoken 'business' to imply that Eliza would actually marry Higgins. This 'played' much better with the audiences; who were otherwise leaving the theatre confused and dissatisfied.

Shaw was incensed when he found-out, and did his best to stop it; yet when Pygmalion was converted to one of the most successful musicals ever - My Fair Lady - the anti-Shaw pro-Higgins ending was retained.  

Shaw was setting his undoubted genius against the autonomous and irresistible demands of natural narrative - and not even Shaw could make anything else work. 

In writing Pygmalion; Shaw had something to say, and said it - which is why the work has lasted. But for the play to be truthful, there can only be one ending - and it is not the ending that Shaw wanted to write. 

There are many works that contain much that is good, but are marred by a bad ending; and whether one responds to such works is a matter of preference. 

A couple of examples from my experience are Phillip Pullman's 'Dark Materials' trilogy; which begins very well indeed but begins to fall to pieces even before the end of the first volume - and of course ends very poorly. 

(The reasons why have been definitively described by John C Wright in his essay collection Transhuman and Subhuman). 

Another example is Elidor by Alan Garner - which is generally well-liked but which has an ending that is both abrupt and unsatisfying. 

Why this should be, I believe to be related to an element of bitter, disillusioned (apparently guilt-motivated) class-resentment; that seems to have grown in Garner throughout adult life almost to overwhelm him - and to spoil most of his books (and especially the endings).

Both Pullman and Garner are technically very gifted writers who are limited by their own natures, which are significantly stunted by their (very typically modern) failure to learn from experience and consequent doubling-down on a false and nihilistic world view. 

That same critic-pandering, reality-rejecting pathway was pioneered by James Joyce with Finnegans Wake, and Samuel Beckett from 'Godot' onwards. 

From the above analysis it can be seen why so many movies of the past few decades fail to end well - after a promising start. 

There is this determination to be praised for 'courageous' (ha!) subversive/ edgy/ dark qualities - for imposing value, sex and plot inversions without regard for the natural demands of narrative. So the movie draws us in, sets-up a situation - then delivers... nothing. No closure. No meaning. 

(And then gets Establishment-praised for 'bravery'!)

To construct a coherent and satisfying movie remains possible (e.g. Groundhog Day, Dunkirk), but is never easy nor common - and these all have a strong sense of inevitability about their unfolding and resolution.  How much simpler to write politically-correct dross - and reap the awards...

Surprising plot twists and ends can be done effectively - e.g. Maleficent, Rogue One; but always by deploying some alternative 'traditional' story trope - such as self-sacrificing heroism. 

In other words, new story shapes are possible; unpredictability and surprising twists may be effective. But these require exactly the kind of endorsement of narrative inevitability that the subversive/ edgy/ dark anti-heroic impulse rules-out.  

In sum; some of the poor endings (and, indeed, middles) of novels and movies can be explained in terms of authorial limitations; but even-more is subtracted by authors trying to make socio-political points, or curry the favour of cultural gatekeepers at the cost of narrative destruction. 

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One of the strangest traits on the Left is the one when people behave as if pacifism, secularism, egalitarianism, feminism, racism, the sexual revolution etc. are new ideas - fresh, exciting, untried, untested - give them a shot why not? Don't write-off idealism! They might work!

The most extreme example is communism, which ignores all actual experience of the idea; but feminism and anti-racism is by now equally stale.

And I am genuinely astonished to hear 'new atheists'  painting a picture of how much better life might be 'if only' people could be persuaded to recognize that God is a delusion - as if this hadn't happened again and again, for several generations - after all, it's a century since the first full-on atheist state in the USSR and there are numerous other examples, past and present.

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The point is that we actually know, in so far as anything can be known, how these ideas turn out - and they they turn out very differently from how idealism paints them.

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For example, George Bernard Shaw's play Mrs Warren's Profession was written in 1894 and first performed in 1902 - get that: written 1894 - and features a 'modern woman' called Vivie, who supposedly graduated third ('Third Wrangler') in the Cambridge Mathematics exam.

I presume the Vivie character was triggered by Philippa Fawcett having been placed top in this extraordinarily prestigious exam in 1890 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippa_Fawcett. This performance seemed - to Shaw at least - to 'prove' that women were equally adept as men on average at the highest levels of mathematics, but were being kept-out by men.

In Shaw's day, 120 years ago! - it was assumed that the only thing standing between women and equality with men in mathematics was lack of opportunity for women. That lack of opportunity for women was remedied several generations ago, yet of course at the highest level of mathematics (and the Cambridge Tripos exam was far-away from the highest level) there are probably proportionately as few women as ever there were.

Therefore, it is now known - insofar as these social things ever are known, and has been known for a few generations, that lack of opportunity was not the reason why women were less good than men at the highest levels.

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(Because even though it is impossible to attain complete equality of opportunity, any partial correction - and step in that direction, would have a big effect if indeed inequality of opportunity was an important explanation. For example, the history of the Ashkenazi Jews shows that even a very partial removal of the exclusion of Jews from mathematics professorships - led to a very big change in the proportion of Jewish mathematics professors. Anti-semitism remained, of course (complete eradication would be impossible) but this proves that the only significant factor preventing Jews from becoming mathematics professors in, say, Germanic universities circa 1700 - was their exclusion.)

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But it is currently a very big thing in the Mass Media and on the organized Left that women are being kept-out of the highest levels of mathematics (and physics and engineering). Such a view was probably reasonable and certainly excusable 120 years ago - it is not reasonable nor excusable now.

This view that women are kept-out-of the highest levels of mathematics, physics, engineering is nowadays necessarily either ignorant or dishonest - and often both. It is not any more fresh, untried; it is not idealistic - it is simply a manipulative, destructive, stupid lie.

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This trajectory - from untried idealism to cynical lying - is seen all across the Left and its principles and policies; from pacifism (the earliest distinctive Left ideology) right through to the ever-expanding and more-coercive demands of the sexual revolution and the talking points, hot button issues and litmus tests of today: all tired and worn-out, all stale, all tried and failed - all known to be false and harmful by those competent to have an opinion.

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I did not touch the sublime in music until I experienced opera in my mid-teens - and the first time that opera hit me with full force was in watching TV.

There were two: the funniest opera - The Barber of Seville by Rossini, in the performance conducted by Claudio Abbado and starring Berganza, Alva and Prey; and then there was Ingmar Bergman's Swedish-language movie version of the best opera/ the best piece of music ever written - namely Mozart's Magic Flute.

When I got from the record library the Magic Flute excerpts conducted by Georg Solti I felt for myself musical greatness - as in the above-linked performance of Sarastro by the gigantic Finnish Bass Martti Talvela.

This is music which Bernard Shaw, the greatest British music critic of his day (as a young man) said was the only music which it would seem appropriate to hear from the mouth of God.

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Mozart's Magic Flute is both the simplest and easiest, most child-like of the canonical operas, and also the deepest, most heavenly. Through its five contrasting main characters it touches on the most important human emotions and types - Tamino, the heroic poet; Papageno, the earthy, lusty, family-loving Everyman; Pamina the innocent maiden; Sarastro the noble sage; and Queen of the Night, the beautiful, insightful, gifted, proud demon.

Bergman's film version is not just the best of all opera films, and a fine musical rendering (with good although not great singers) - but Bergman's subtle reworking of Schikaneder's inspired but chaotic libretto matches more closely the depth of the music with the words. For instance, Bergman unforgettably makes Sarastro into Pamina's father - which makes perfect dramatic symmetry.

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The role of the Magic Flute in my life was spiritual, as well as aesthetic. I recognized, but struggled to make sense of, the vision of something higher and beyond. It is to my credit that despite professed atheism I did not reductively explain-away this experience of the transcendent - but unsuccessfully tried to articulate it within my covert and imprecise belief in Creative Evolution (a doctrine which was also derived from Bernard Shaw - especially as it was put-forth in my favourite play of that time: Shaw's Man and Superman, an explicitly Mozartian drama).

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My enjoyment of The  Magic Flute and Barber of Seville led onto an intense period of opera exploration on LP recordings, with the vital assistance of the Bristol City library - such that over the next four year I listened to the whole of the canonical opera repertoire from the classical and romantic era. Sometimes I was seeking aesthetic experience, often it was a love of singing - especially technical aspects of the tenor voice.

Music, especially opera, became a serious activity: a religious activity. As often as not I would borrow a musical score of the opera - and read that as I listened; if not, I would follow the libretto; and while I listened my focus was intense - I would not be doing anything else.

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Naturally I wanted to participate in this world of classical music, and did so in the only way I could - by singing in choirs and choruses, and on my own at home - which was unsatisfying but better than nothing. I had vague, unformed, but important-to-me notions of doing something musical more seriously at some point - perhaps being a music critic.

The best of Classical Music, especially opera, was the highest thing I knew, and I deeply wanted to be 'inside' it - somehow.

But at the same time I always held back from commitment, somehow knowing that even if the luck went my way; music could not provide me, with my nature as it was, and very limited aptitude and inadequate training, with what I sought.

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I have just had a careful re-read of Colin Wilson's follow-up to The Outsider, Religion and the Rebel - and found it thoroughly worthwhile and stimulating.

Wilson self-consciously takes up the baton from Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West (1918) which is given a fairly extended analysis, supplemented by consideration of some other rather analogous 'big picture' historians such as Toynbee.

Wilson accepts the conviction, dating especially from the early twentieth century, that the West needs 'a new religion'. The perspective of 1957 therefore works on the assumption that Christianity has failed, in its mainstream aspects anyway. Events since have, of course, confirmed this - at least in a broad-brush socio-political sense.

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In Religion and the Rebel, Wilson gives biographical summaries and analytic interpretations of numerous representative figures from the existentialist tradition - some secular, but mostly Christian. These include mystics such as Boehme, Anglican monastic revivalists such as Farrer, Law and the early JH Newman - and the book culminates with the philosopher AN Whitehead who is regarded as the most important modern figure.

Wilson's other analytic frame is The Outsider - who is regarded as a type of socially-rejecting-social-reject proto-genius that is generated by end-phase civilization in an attempt to reverse the decline and revitalize the civilization. Most of the figures discussed fall into the Outsider category in some way - for instance, Wittgenstein is an Outsider having an Insider philosophy, while AN Whitehead is the opposite.

As often happens in my reading, I found myself broadly agreeing with the diagnosis, but not the prescription. In particular, I feel that 1956-ish was a time, perhaps the last time' when the Western civilization was 'meant' to re-evaluate and re-structure its goals and move into a new phase. This didn't happen, and we instead opted for 'more of the same' - and plunged into the still dominant and fluctuating combination of hedonic consumerist materialism with self-hating and self-destroying Leftism.

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What of the 'new religion'? How did that idea fare?

I was brought-up on this idea from the work of Bernard Shaw - which is given considerable emphasis in religion and the Rebel - Shaw's choice was Creative Evolution, as outlined in my favourite of his plays Man and Superman, and the later dull, clunky and unperformable Back to Methuselah. This idea was dead-in-the-water, in terms of being a socially-viable and effectively motivating religion, but distracted and stimulated a few people for a while - the philosopher CEM Joad and the mystical nature writer John Stewart Collis (both teenage favourites of mine) for example.

The New Age movement is the most obvious New Religion - but this has proven itself to be merely a semi-effective way of individual coping-with the consumerist materialism of modernity. New Age discourse is conducted in an eclectic, semi-serious tone of ironic detachment ('if it works for you...', take it or leave it) - and the really serious and motivating ideology in New Ageis secular Leftism; radical politics is the only subject that New Agers really get 'passionate' about. So New Age is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

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From my personal stance as a believer in Mormonism, what always strikes me about these overviews is that from 1830 there was a New Religion of exactly the kind that Colin Wilson hoped-for - that is, something Christian, real and motivating, that was also a fresh start, and which left-behind those aspects of Christian metaphysics and philosophy which seemed to have become ineffectual or counter-productive.

Of course, Mormonism was tiny in the years leading up to 1957, and even now the profoundly original and transformative metaphysical and philosophical aspects of Mormonism are hardly appreciated, even among Mormons - the 'new religion' is seen as (and in general functions as) a way of life, rather than an astonishingly transformative set of ideas.

But Mormonism pretty much has done, and does, what Bernard Shaw, Oswald Spengler and Colin Wilson wanted from a new religion. On the other hand, Mormonism stands at the furthest pole from the kind of bohemian existentialist life exemplified and practised by Colin Wilson in 1957.

Yet, in principle, there is no reason why there should not be existentialist bohemian intellectuals who regard those who practise Mormonism and who administer the LDS church as being an elite 'priesthood' who are regarded as an authoritative source of guidance.

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Accepting that not every Man can live the highest path, and that the path of an active Mormon is too strait and narrow ever to become universal, there is scope for a wider form of non-practising Mormonism - which humbly and explicitly accepts itself as a lower calling, but from this situation tries to be supportive of the higher calling, and tries to make the kind of contribution which is difficult for the high status people.

I am thinking of a situation much the same as lay Roman Catholics who accept that they are operating at a lower level than priests, and non-monastic Eastern Orthodox (including priests) who accept that they are operating at a lower level than ascetic monks.

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In terms of Wilson's terminology, I tend to regard Mormonism is the New Religion he hoped for - and a religion of socially-minded Insiders - because Mormonism has continued to grow and thrive as the West declined. However, it has not had a visible positive impact on Western civilisation in general - its benefits have been mostly restricted to Insiders.

But there is, I believe, also room for Outsider Mormons of one sort and another (inside the church and outside it too), who support the Insiders, and accept the reality and validity of the framework they provide.

It is Insiders - with their ability to organise and cooperate - who may change the world and save (some of) the West. But Outsiders may also be necessary - or at least useful. 

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Outsiders, by their nature, cannot themselves live inside the communal and disciplined structure of society, of the priesthood - yet, so long as they are loyal to the goals, Outsiders may legitimately aspire to make a positive (albeit rightly low status) religious contribution.

Organised Religion is substantially (but not entirely and not as its core) about social cohesion. Outsiders are those who live psychologically out-with social cohesion (being an outsider is primarily a state of mind: e.g. Wittgenstein mostly lived physically inside the walls of Trinity College, Cambridge); they are loners not joiners.

But loners need not undermine society, it is possible that loners are functionally (albeit intermittently) necessary to society - rather as the shaman or the hermit has apparently been necessary to past societies.

Indeed, Outsiders are by their nature and location in a position to do things that cannot necessarily be done by Insiders. And so Outsiders may perhaps turn-out to be necessary to Mormonism in the long run - and via Mormonism to The West - as they have seemed to be necessary to Philosophy, Literature, Art and Science.   

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That phrase attributed to Voltaire " If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him" recognized that God served an indispensable function in the public sphere - and when Nietzsche stated, noticed and advocated that God was now dead - the reality of that death has turned-out to be primarily in the realms of discourse (rather than in the privacy of the individual mind, where God may still, often, be acknowledged).

The other famous phrase of relevance here is attributed to Dostoevsky and states that: Without God everything is permitted. This captures on the one hand the horror of a world in which evil is openly advocated and enforced under the label of Good; and on the other hand the demonic delight, and intoxication, at the endless new possibilities for transgression and destruction that this allows.

But discussion of this whole area of the post-God world has collapsed over the past forty-some years since I came to adult consciousness. When I read that old socialist atheist Bernard Shaw, I found a man who brooded on the absolute need for a 'new religion' to replace Christianity - and this was a theme of his writings for more than half a century: he even tried to launch this religion of Creative Evolution via some of his most successful plays.

So, despite his being a major figure in promoting the evils of Leftism, Shaw was not so much of a fool as to suppose that Man could live without religion.

But we are! - I mean that is the implicit conclusion of a million items per day of propaganda from the mass media, the education system, government officials and corporations. Their message is loud and clear: that God is Dead - and we do not need to reinvent him.

Shaw knew that men must have religion... or else! So did Fritz (Small is Beautiful) Schumacher - whose early works were based on the advocacy of Buddhist Economics, and whose last book was an argument for traditional Thomistic Catholicism.

When I read Robert Graves, I found another author who, like Shaw, was viscerally hostile to Christianity - but promoting his own version of Neo-Paganism (which turned out to be extraordinarily influential is establishing that new religion). Graves was a very strange man with innumerable odd ideas, but he was not such a fool as to imagine that Man could live without religion.

Anyway, here we are! In a world which has no religion, and has lost that understanding shared by Voltaire, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Shaw, Schumacher, Graves... and indeed everybody who had thought about the subject for more than five minutes: that Man must have a religion.

Is this a paradox - that Man does not have what he must have? If so, the paradox is there for all to see, in the gross incoherence, negativity and destructiveness of modern public discourse.

The answer is that "everybody who had thought about the subject for more than five minutes" knows that Man must have a religion - because we live in a world where nobody from the major leaders of public opinion, the 'intellectuals', from the Politicians to the People - including both the Mandarins and the Masses ever has thought about the subject for five minutes.

Five minutes counts as an impossibly long attention span nowadays. Nobody thinks about anything for five minutes without 'working', or doing, or engaging with the mass media. This was a revelation when I became a medical scientist - to find out that famous researchers had never thought about their subject for five consecutive minutes - and indeed stubbornly refused to do so.

(I became a theoretical biologist simply by thinking about the implications of my empirical research for a little while - although, of course, most theoretical biologists never think either, because they are too busy reading other people's papers and doing hard sums.)

So this is the situation. A few generations ago everybody - including atheists and anti-Christians - knew explicitly (and discussed endlessly) that Man cannot live without religion; now everybody 'knows' implicitly (but never discusses) that Man can, should and does live without religion - and indeed nothing else makes any sense to them!

Thus incoherent nonsense caused by not-thinking, has been take-out of Men's heads and put onto display in the world for all to see... but nobody sees it!

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From Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw:


UNDERSHAFT. Well you see, my dear boy, when you are organizing civilization you have to make up your mind whether trouble and anxiety are good things or not. If you decide that they are, then, I take it, you simply don't organize civilization; and there you are, with trouble and anxiety enough to make us all angels! But if you decide the other way, you may as well go through with it.

(...)

UNDERSHAFT. Cleanliness and respectability do not need justification, Barbara: they justify themselves. I see no darkness here, no dreadfulness. In your Salvation shelter I saw poverty, misery, cold and hunger. You gave them bread and treacle and dreams of heaven. I give from thirty shillings a week to twelve thousand a year. They find their own dreams; but I look after the drainage.

BARBARA. And their souls?

UNDERSHAFT. I save their souls just as I saved yours.

BARBARA [revolted] You saved my soul! What do you mean?

UNDERSHAFT. I fed you and clothed you and housed you. I took care that you should have money enough to live handsomely--more than enough; so that you could be wasteful, careless, generous. That saved your soul from the seven deadly sins.

BARBARA [bewildered] The seven deadly sins!

UNDERSHAFT. Yes, the deadly seven. [Counting on his fingers] Food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven millstones from Man's neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the millstones are lifted. I lifted them from your spirit. I enabled Barbara to become Major Barbara; and I saved her from the crime of poverty.

CUSINS. Do you call poverty a crime?

UNDERSHAFT. The worst of crimes. All the other crimes are virtues beside it: all the other dishonors are chivalry itself by comparison.

Poverty blights whole cities; spreads horrible pestilences; strikes dead the very souls of all who come within sight, sound or smell of it. What you call crime is nothing: a murder here and a theft there, a blow now and a curse then: what do they matter? they are only the accidents and illnesses of life: there are not fifty genuine professional criminals in London.

But there are millions of poor people, abject people, dirty people, ill fed, ill clothed people. They poison us morally and physically: they kill the happiness of society: they force us to do away with our own liberties and to organize unnatural cruelties for fear they should rise against us and drag us down into their abyss. Only fools fear crime: we all fear poverty.

Pah! [turning on Barbara] you talk of your half-saved ruffian in West Ham: you accuse me of dragging his soul back to perdition. Well, bring him to me here; and I will drag his soul back again to salvation for you. Not by words and dreams; but by thirty-eight shillings a week, a sound house in a handsome street, and a permanent job.

In three weeks he will have a fancy waistcoat; in three months a tall hat and a chapel sitting; before the end of the year he will shake hands with a duchess at a Primrose League meeting, and join the Conservative Party.

BARBARA. And will he be the better for that?

UNDERSHAFT. You know he will. Don't be a hypocrite, Barbara.

He will be better fed, better housed, better clothed, better behaved; and his children will be pounds heavier and bigger. That will be better than an American cloth mattress in a shelter, chopping firewood, eating bread and treacle, and being forced to kneel down from time to time to thank heaven for it: knee drill, I think you call it.

It is cheap work converting starving men with a Bible in one hand and a slice of bread in the other. I will undertake to convert West Ham to Mahometanism on the same terms. Try your hand on my men: their souls are hungry because their bodies are full.

***

The above passage had a huge impact on me as a young teenager - Shaw was one of the first adult authors I read extensively after Lord of the Rings began the process (the other from that era was Robert Graves).

"Their souls are hungry because their bodies are full" - that was the Communist, Fabian socialist hope - and it is the hope of political correctness. Indeed, the usual assumption - in Shaw then, and still nowadays - is that a hungry body obliterates a hungry soul.

Looking around the world, this idea is so obviously, completely, empirically wrong that it is difficult to understand why anybody ever believed it; why I believed it.

Our bodies are full: but our souls are dead.

*

And yet: "when you are organizing civilization you have to make up your mind whether trouble and anxiety are good things or not. If you decide that they are, then, I take it, you simply don't organize civilization; and there you are, with trouble and anxiety enough to make us all angels!"

The argument seems unanswerable!

*

The problem comes with: "But if you decide the other way, you may as well go through with it."

"Go through with it" - that is where the problem lies - in regarding the obliteration of trouble and anxiety as a single organizing principle to be carried right through.

*

In common sense, I think we would want to improve the comfort and convenience of life up to a point: up to the point where we had enough of these things - and then we would switch our attention onto other matters.

So we would want enough food of good enough quality, a big enough house that was convenient enough etc...

*

But that hasn't been what happened.

The point of satiation never arrived; our material wants are apparently insatiable - because they have become linked to status.

And because there is nothing else.

*

Shaw's argument is compelling at the material level. It is true if you don't really believe in the soul and its needs - or if, like Shaw/ Undershaft, your belief in the soul is merely residual from childhood Christianity (the next generation of intellectuals after Shaw were mostly raised such that even to mention the soul was regarded as whimsical or ludicrous).

But Undershaft's speech implicitly assumes that the purpose of organizing civilization is done in order to improve material conditions only - the argument rules-out a religious purpose for civilization: rules out (for instance) the idea that the primary purpose of civilization might be the salvation of individual souls.

Only such a higher purpose for civilization can (in principle) set a limit to the pursuit of status (which, being a zero sum competition, is endless and insatiable), to pursuit of material goods (which, by fashion, have been co-opted to the zero sum game of status), of comfort and convenience (which is, in practice, insatiable - since the threshold for suffering can be asymptotically lowered...

Only in light of a higher purpose could humans ever have 'enough' of these things.

*

Thirteen is the age of what Shaw calls ‘the birth of the moral passion’ - that is, the period when ideas are not abstractions but realities, when they are food and drink. The changes of puberty have altered one’s old conception of oneself. Identity vanishes; one’s inner being becomes formless, chaos waiting for the act of creation. There is a brooding feeling of anticipation; the clouds lie there, fragmentary, slate grey, waiting for the wind. And a book, a symphony, a poem, is not merely another ‘experience’ but a mystery, a wind blowing from the future. The problem of death is still far away; but the problem of life seems quite as tremendous. The mind contemplates vistas of time, the emptiness of space, and knows that the ‘ordinariness’ of everyday life is an illusion. And as the everyday becomes less real, so ideas are seen to be the only reality, and the mind that shapes them the only true power in this world of blind natural forces.

From The Philosopher's Stone; a novel by Colin Wilson, 1969

The above passage could describe my own adolescent development of consciousness; a phase which lasted up to age twenty-one and then went off the rails by regressing into pseudo-adolescent immaturity for a couple of decades. 

The reason was much the same as reported by CS Lewis in his autobiography Surprised by Joy which was that I strove to maintain or expand the highest experiences of ecstatic consciousness - 'Joy' - but found these actually becoming less frequent and intense. 

I failed to become a Christian, and thereby failed to discover a reality of purpose, meaning and personal participation in 'the universe'.

 

Yet in retrospect I can perceive that all of the necessary ingredients were in-place for me to take the step into Romantic Christianity: that is Bernard Shaw, Colin Wilson and William Arkle. 

From Shaw (which I began reading aged thirteen) I took the idea of Creative Evolution; which was that the purpose of life was to attain higher states of consciousness; and that this was (for someone like me) a master passion. 

From Colin Wilson I learned that this could be the basis of a positive and optimistic world view; in contrast to the nihilism and despair of the prevalent Western culture. 

From William Arkle (had I read him with more care and seriousness) I could have got that these ideas only become deep, strong and courageous with the insight that behind all is a personal and loving God who created reality with the aim of raising Men to divine level - by a process based (as Shaw perceived) on our own efforts, trials and errors.

Also from Arkle that this development (or 'evolution', in the older meaning) took place in the setting of a universe of Beings - where all of creation was alive, conscious and in relationship.  

Yes, all the required ingredients were indeed there - but I tool a very long, slow and tortuous route to notice, learn and assemble them. 

*

I used to be a keen socialist, from age about 13-18 - and as a teen I read fairly widely in the British tradition: William Morris (very much liked him), The Fabians (GB Shaw, Wells etc), Tawney (Christian socialism) and modern people like Schumacher, Anthony Crosland, modern Fabian Essays, the New Statesman every week...

(I was never a Marxist, however.)

*

Socialism is of course egalitarian, that is it is focused on equality - and most of the early socialists wanted equality of opportunity - an essentially equal chance for everybody, but naturally leading to unequal economic outcomes.

(The recognized the obvious truth that strictly equal opportunites lead to unequal outcomes.)

They focused on levelling-up of economic conditions, and on education: compulsory education for all, more schools and colleges, more scholarships for the poor, better schools all round etc.

George Bernard Shaw regarded this as insufficient, and argued for economic equality - specifically equal salaries for all - he regarded this as sufficient to address the problems of inequality - but of course he allowed for many other differences.

Essentially Shaw wanted to settle the economic problem (and socialism was based on an economic analysis) - and allow people to get-on with more important matters.

*

But none of these early socialists argued that people were equal.

None argued that that individuals and groups were the same.

They did not argue same-ness because it obviously was not true - to argue to would have been simply insane, nobody would have taken them seriously at all.

And because people were not the same, therefore their outcomes in a system of equality would naturally be different. Therefore if (like GB Shaw) you wanted equal outcomes you had to impose them coercively - precisely because people were not the same, and if you did not coercively-impose equal outcomes you would not get them.

They realized that as soon as you stopped actively-imposing equal outcomes, then outcomes would again become unequal.

*

Yet nowadays same-ness of all people and groups is precisely the default of Leftism - and the assertion that because all people and groups are the same, then and difference in outcomes must have been coercively imposed.

Now, this modern doctrine of the same-ness of people and groups is not just a stupid and indefensible error - because it is not the kind of thing that somebody can be wrong about, it is not the kind of thing that could possibly be the result of a mistake.

None of the early socialists believed it, perhaps nobody believed it until the mid-twentieth century - and it was not believed then as the result of any kind of discovery!

*

So, the modern near-universal belief in the same-ness of people is not, therefore, any kind of stupidity, nor is it due to any kind of un-informedness.

And, although this belief is obviously insane - it is not plausible to imagine that belief in the same-ness of people was caused by actual clinical mental illness affecting the intellectual elite en masse...

No, no - what a belief in the same-ness of people is, is evil; pure evil.

(Evil is the destruction of Good - and Good is truth, beauty and virtue - in unity.)

*

Belief in the same-ness of people is an ideology which allows un-bounded destruction of human society - at every level - and without limit or restraint - and continuing until there is nothing left that can continue the process of destruction.

This is not the kind of thing that happens by accident, or as a consequence of well-meaning people blundering in their analysis and actions - it is done by people in service to pure evil.

The people themselves may or may not be evil or nasty people - just as Maoist Commisars, Gulag guards and Gestapo may or may not have been evil or nasty people.

But those who believe in the same-enss of humans serve evil - they are on the side of evil - and this is a straightforward objective fact: anyone who believes-in, argues for, or enforces policy based-on the same-ness of people and groups is serving evil.

*

It is very striking to me, how negative are people's ideals now; compared with even fifty or a hundred years ago. 

And I mean negative in practice - not just in theory; because there have been negative religious theories for at least a couple of thousand years - yet in practice Christians had strong positive motivations. 

Negative Theology (Via Negativa) was prominent in Christianity (substantially inherited from pagan Romans and Greeks) in the early centuries AD. I mean the ascetic path of opposition to the world, elimination of temptation, and repudiation of "the flesh", which was taken to the greatest extreme by the hermit Desert Fathers. 

The Neo-Platonic theology (e.g. associated with Dionysius the Aeropagite) was one of explicit negation; that asserted we cannot know God except by knowing what God is Not, are dragged down by our instincts and desires. This in general down-rated or rejected marriage, family, creativity as paths to God; due to their excessive risk of temptation by fleshly pleasures - binding us to mortal life, its pleasures and pains. 

These desires were to be overcome by prolonged disciplines of deprivation and chosen suffering; so that we may learn control of them, and ultimately independence from them. 

Yet, in practice, there was at this time also a very powerful yet implicit positive desire for communion with God, to emulate (their idea of) Jesus Christ, and to dwell spiritually in Heaven even while on earth.

Therefore, the true situation was one in which there was strong positive desires that were unconscious and implicit; which were disciplined and shaped by the explicit rituals and practices of a negative nature. 

Through human history, these unconscious and implicit positive instincts have dwindled, until many modern people are hardly aware of them, deny their validity, and often altogether deny their presence. People (especially in The West) are no longer guided by positive implicit instincts towards God, the spirit, higher consciousness... 

Instead we are guided by external human-originated ideals - especially the dominant ideology of 'secular-leftist-materialism' that underpins all of social and political discourse and institutions in The West. 

If an individual rejects the dominant ideology, he must (as a rule) do so by an explicit and consciously chosen act of will. 

Interestingly, even the ideology of left-materialism itself has been subject to the same trends in consciousness. It has gone from containing a considerable largely-unconscious and implicit positive element; to being almost wholly negative in its ideals, and oppositional in its practices. 

When it began to emerge a couple of hundred years ago, leftism often shared in the (mostly unconscious) positive goals of Christianity; so that there were many "Christian socialists" in the UK (from the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church of England, as well as Nonconformist churches), who (albeit misguidedly) saw socialism as a means to the end of a more Christian society. These were a significant cultural phenomenon into the middle 20th century. 

Even among the explicitly materialist-atheist leftists of the late nineteenth century - such as the revolutionary communist William Morris and the gradualist Fabian George Bernard Shaw - there was strong (albeit un-theorized, un-grounded) positive assumption concerning the goals of leftism. 

Such Men would argue that socialism was a necessary/ the best means to achieve the kind of society that was 'common-sensically' (by appeal to universal evaluations) regarded as a good environment for positive virtues. 

For Morris that was a quasi-Medieval agrarian society in which the arts and crafts thrived, and were universal - a world of craftsmen and artists, for whom labour was an altruistic joy. 

For Shaw it was a modern industrial society where all were allocated an equal income that made accessible all the higher things in life (arts, sciences etc). The purpose of universal and equal prosperity was to enable Men to pursue 'mystical' goals; such as attaining higher consciousness - en route to a somewhat Platonic world of pure intelligences whose gratification was contemplation, and untrammeled creativity.

For the likes of Morris, Shaw and other early socialists; the desirability of such a society was self-evident; but it is no longer self-evident in 2022. Indeed, such utopian schemes are all-but off the map, seldom mentioned; and so weakly believed (if at all) that such ideals are unable significantly sustain a life or even (noticeably) to influence behaviour.  

What I mean is that - diminishing, but evident until about the middle-20th century - the underlying, even if unstated, belief even on the Left was that if the obstacles to a better and higher life could be removed by socialism (or feminism, antiracism, an economy of common ownership etc) - then a better and higher life would spontaneously emerge - because that (it was assumed) was what Men wanted.

And it was that better/ higher life that was the ultimate justification of leftism. 

 

Well, that concept has become meaningless, and since the 1960s, as the New Left has focused on negative aims, without any positive sense of where this is going, or what state of society it is trying to achieve, or what people are supposed to do and live-by in a future society. Contra Morris; the arts and crafts, guilds and professions, small villages and farming as a vocation; have all declined catastrophically. And, contra Shaw; Men are more, not less, focused on materialism, consumption and shallow pleasures and dissipating distractions.  

Underlying such changes in both Christianity and Leftism is this waning of the unconscious and implicit, ultimately spiritual and self-justifying, ideal of The Good Life.  

Now we must consciously choose God, Jesus Christ, and to live by the transcendental values of divine creation. These are not longer spontaneously generated from within ourselves. 

On the one hand; we are free-er than Men used to be; because we are no longer subject to uncontrollable drives from unconscious motivations. 

On the other hand; if we do not choose correctly; then we are prone to purposelessness, meaninglessness and therefore despair - in a way that used to be extremely rare, even among the explicit atheists and nihilists of 100-plus years ago. 

*
Phillip Pullman published a well-known trilogy from 1995-2000 called 'His Dark Materials', comprising Northern Lights (aka The Golden Compass), The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass.

The point I wish to make about this series is that it starts very well, and ends very badly. The contrast is extreme - the first part of the first novel is very good, and by the end of the third volume it has become very bad.

This interpretation of His Dark Materials is not really a matter of opinion, but as close to objective fact as you can get in literary criticism - anyone who doubts should read John C Wright on the technical aspects; and the ideological reason for these gross errors and incompetencies.

http://www.scifiwright.com/xabout/transhuman-and-subhuman/#_Toc384557547

But bad endings are not unusual - indeed, it is quite normal, statistically common, even fashionable and mainstream - for books, plays, movies, and TV plays and series to start well and end badly.

But why should this be? Why do they, on the one hand, start well; and on the other hand, finish badly?

*

I think the answer is quite simple. Great works are written with the assistance of genius, which can be understood as a visitor who will only stay if treated well.

Many more talented writers are visited by genius than succeed in completing works of genius, because most writers betray their visiting genius before the work is complete - the genius flies away, and the work must be finished without it; and talent without genius is comparatively a very poor thing.

So, Phillip Pullman was a talented writer who was visited by genius and began Northern Lights; but he was dishonest in the way he used this gift - so away it flew and he cobbled together the rest of the trilogy on his own - getting across the 'message' which meant so much to him, but making a an artistic pig's ear of the writing.

JK Rowling is different. She was visited by genius when writing Harry Potter, and it sustained her through seven volumes - and the last volume, including its ending, are wonderful! The best thing in it (probably).

There are signs that, part way through, Rowling became personally dishonest and corrupt -  probably due to the temptations of fame - but she kept this out of the books. However, when she finished Harry Potter, Rowling embraced the dark side, and away genius flew - her work has waned even as her commitment to political correctness has waxed - and she has been caught in several blatant lies about her life and work. I would not expect her ever to write anything really good ever again.

However, throughout HP, Rowling was true to her visiting genius - it stayed with her for the duration, and she was therefore able to complete a great work.

*

And of course the benchmark classics all end well, else they would not be real classics. The Lord of the Rings, the Narnia Chronicles (despite extreme digressiveness en route), The Wind in the Willows (despite major incoherence and a detachably episodic structure) - all of these have deeply satisfying endings.

No author is so great as to overcome the need for a good ending. When George Bernard Shaw tried to end Pygmalion with an anticlimax, the actors when on tour secretly substituted the dramatically-implied-and-required 'comedic' ending (ie implying marriage between Higgins and Eliza). This, to Shaw's extreme annoyance! - but they would not stop doing it, because the audience response told them what was right. And the highly successful musical adaptation (My Fair Lady) made exactly the same change.

So, even so great a playwright as Shaw was not immune to the absolute requirement for a good ending. Even the greatest of all - Shakespeare - has to bow to this imperative...

All Shakespeare's best plays (best, that is, according to the consensus of playgoers through the ages) end well; and the ones that don't end well are not regarded as great.For instance, Measure for Measure is shaping-up superbly for most of its length; but the play has a truly terrible ending - so it never has become a part of the standard dramatic repertoire (despite having the best 'strong' female role Shakespeare ever wrote).

*

This, then, is a possible reason why too many books end badly; and why so many other narrative forms end badly too. It comes down to the abuse of visiting genius.

Bad endings have indeed, become a feature of modernist writing over the past century. The inability to finish a book, play, movie has been covered-up with nonsense about the sophistication of an 'ambiguous' ending, or 'deliberate' anticlimax, or the desirability of 'dark', 'subversive' conclusions; or the need for some kind of radically transgressive and expectation-thwarting finish (to educate the audience).

But the fact is that it is an extremely difficult thing to end a narrative well - and I would regard supposedly deliberately ambiguous (etc.) endings as a fake; an excuse to cover-up incompetence and failure.

*

Bad endings are so common nowadays because corruption of writers has become so common as to be nearly universal. When visited by genius, the writer is not grateful, does not perceive that this entails a duty to be truthful to his inspiration - but instead he tries to use the gifts of genius to pursue to fashionable ideology, or to ride some personal hobby horse.

Corruption leads to betrayal of genius - usually by dishonesty; and the cause of dishonesty is usually some brand of Left Wing/ radical politics - which the writer or artist places above the truth of art.

Dishonest art cannot be great; and an habitual liar can only be a great artist when he is (nonetheless) utterly truthful in his art - however badly he behaves the rest of the time.

*

*

Political correctness is, in its purest form, an extreme type of idealism: since a life in which all human 'goods' are allocated by impersonal mechanisms and without any individual influence is either utopian (for the PC elite) or dystopian (for normal human beings).

But PC does not operate at this level of clarity and abstraction - rather it operates in a pragmatic way.

Policies are chosen on the basis of 'moving things in the right direction' and without taking account of exactly where these policies are going: what is the state being aimed-at.

And therein lies the danger.

Since the state being aimed-at is never articulated, it is never evaluated, which means that things may end-up some place nobody wanted them to go.

*

As a teenager I began with a very pure form of egalitarianism - economic equality.

I got this from the great writer George Bernard Shaw (who was also an early socialist and a founder of the Fabian Society). Shaw envisaged absolute equality of income - more exactly, income equality to the point that differences made no practical difference of status.

But after a while I realized that nobody else seemed to want this, indeed the most powerful British 'socialists' of that era - the Trades Unions - seemed to be obsessed by maintaining wage 'differentials' (or inequalities).

So I fairly rapidly gravitated to the idea that we needed to move in the direction of equality.

This negative doctrine seemed to encapsulate the behaviour of socialists, who did not seem to want actual equality, not even to have any clear idea of how much inequality was acceptable - but instead had essentially three ideas, with which I (at that time) agreed:

1. Inequality is important

2. There is, now, too much inequality.

3. We should move towards having less inequality.

*

I think that this negative way of framing politics is, in fact, dominant - especially with political correctness.

The basis for policy is indignation at a current state of affairs. Something which is happening is pointed at, and it is proclaimed to be intolerable.

The current state of affairs need not be referenced to any actual state of affairs (past or present, real or imaginary) - but the point is that the state of affairs is obviously unjust, obviously intolerable, therefore obviously something must be done to ameliorate it.

*

(To disagree with the above analysis is taken to be approval of the injustice.

(To advocate tolerating the intolerable is - obviously - evil.

(Of course the intolerable may prove ineradicable - in principle, or merely in practice [e.g. prejudice - pre-judging] - but it must still be pronounced intolerable.)

*

For example, thousands of papers have been written about 'inequalities in health', demonstrating and measuring differentials in health on the basis of social status, education, income, wealth, race, ethnicity and so on.

The measured inequalities are implicitly (or explicitly) regarded as intolerable. 

But without any author of these papers ever troubling themselves in any way about what degree of inequality would be tolerable.

Indeed, a frequent tactic of such papers is to do international comparisons which show that - say - health inequalities are smallest in Japan and Sweden, largest in the USA, and middling in the UK. Then the recommendation that the UK and the USA should move in the direction of Japan or Sweden.

But it is never ever stated that Swedish and Japanese inequalities are acceptable, just, and fair; and therefore that the Japanese/ Swedish degree of health inequality is what we in the UK/ US are aiming-for; and that therefore (assuming policies are successful) when we have reached Japanese/ Swedish levels of inequality then the inequalities-in-health pressure-group will disband themselves as now obsolete...

*

So, what superficially appears to be a reasonable, non-fanatical pragmatism - instead of insisting upon absolute equality, we merely ask that things be moved 'in the right direction' - actually makes the demand for 'more equality' insatiable.

As long as any degree of inequality can be found in any situation, then the demand to move things in the direction of 'more equality' can be sustained.

As long as the measurable situation is not absolutely perfect with respect to ideal hopes, then there is an absolute necessity for external intervention to change that situation.

And all this without ever having to define aims, defend demands, compare rival courses of action, or make tough compromises about the best attainable results. 

*

Political correctness therefore uses pragmatic methods to generate utopian demands - ensuring that it will never succeed, and that success will never threaten its own survival.

*

*
Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech: that your native language is the language of Shakespear and Milton and The Bible; and dont sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon.

Henry Higgins speaking to Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

*
Shakespeare: yes, of course, and pretty much maintained in England now.

Milton: no, does not deserve this place. Indeed nobody else is in the class of Shakespeare and the Authorized Version of the Bible.

But if a third name is needed then Johnson is the most deserving - Samuel Johnson - who bestrides English letters as a colossus: author of the first real dictionary, the first real critic, arbiter of good taste and morality; and writer of many first rank personal essays, anthology-quality poems, and a novel of high class. And a permanently-influential prose stylist of magisterial distinction.

But the King James Bible is the only prose (if we include with it that other Anglican classic The Book of Common Prayer) that can stand comparison with Shakespeare; as acknowledged even by GB Shaw (who was a communist, Irish, and an atheist); but the KJB has been rejected and abandoned by all of the larger (so-called) English churches.

I am happy to state that it is indeed possible to be English and a real Christian and yet to reject the Authorized Version of the Bible as the basis of your Christian scriptural life^ - but would add that such a person has something seriously wrong with him.

Either he is ignorant (and in need of education) or else he is making a large error of judgment.

So, for someone who is both a Christian and English: the Triad should be Shakespeare, Johnson and the Bible - but the greatest of these is The Authorized Version.

*

^Note: The AV should be the basis of an English Christian life - but need not, of course, be the sole translation used. 

*

I was reading a memoir of Nevill Coghill (Inkling and Oxford Professor of English - a scholar and translator of Chaucer and Langland) - and I was struck by the remarkable, indeed truly amazing, concentration of literary genius among the Protestant Irish gentry (the Anglo Irish) in the days when Ireland was ruled by Britain.

*

With no effort, I came up with Jonathan Swift, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Oliver Goldsmith, Richard Steele, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, WB Yeats, J.M Synge, Samuel Beckett, CS Lewis - all of whom are of the first rank in their genres within English Literature - plus a similar sized group of minor or lesser-known figures.

Indeed, considering that there are only few canonical playwrights, this is an extraordinarily high proportion (the only ones missing before the 20th century are ?Marlowe, Wm. Shakespeare (of course), ?Ben Jonson, ?Congreve...

...but really I am scratching around for anyone other than The Bard who is performed as often and provide such enjoyment as Sheridan (The Rivals, and School for Scandal), Goldsmith (She Stoops to Conquer), Wilde (mostly The Importance of Being Earnest) and (of course) Shaw (with a couple of dozen plays done frequently - perhaps even more than Shakespeare himself?).

*

Among the indigenous Irish I would only put James Joyce and Flann O'Brien into the same quality bracket.

At any rate, the number of Anglo Irish/ Protestant Ascendancy writers of the first or second rank in English Literature is grossly disproportionate to the small absolute size and minority status of their population.

And gives rise to the interesting question of the nature of the (much vaunted) Irish literary genius: it was certainly real, but actually mostly consisted of the English-living-in-Ireland (since expelled).

Note: Another first-ranker (among English poets) is Edmund Spenser, who was among the first of the English upper class to settle in Ireland as recent conquerers: the first of the great Anglo-Irish literary figures.

*

Having spent most of my life not a Christian, I am aware of how much can be provided spirituality by other 'religions' - as well as being aware that it is not enough. 

*

My first religion was that of Higher Consciousness, of what Bernard Shaw called Creative Evolution. The idea that our human future was a matter of making our rare and best states of mind into our normal states of mind - and continuing in that same direction. This view was mine from the mid teens, and was amplified by Colin Wilson from about twenty.

The view was optimistic (compared with secular culture) but was difficult/ impossible to accomplish fully (more of an aspiration than a plan) - and left all the big things unchanged. Life might become happier, more fulfilling... but there was still age, decay, disease, bereavement, and our own deaths.

*

The higher consciousness view makes everything depend on the mind, will, concentration active striving - and leaves out a great deal of unconscious life.

It was exhausting, and I could never stay inside the mindset, and always needed to take refreshment in more earthy and hearty activities and aspirations - folk music, dancing, vulgarity, feasting and carousing.

As well as wanting to become a being of higher consciousness -I wanted to be absorbed into the web of life, un-conscious like a happy animal. I wanted to live in the moment, and in dreams.

This was the other religion of animism - although I didn't find a name or theory for it until I was middle aged.

For animism life was and is and always will be. Everything significant is alive, and in communication. People die only to return - we ourselves are simply returned from previous lives. Life circulates: there is transformation but no real change.

There is no meaning to this - it just is; there is no purpose to this - it just happens.

*

Thus animism. When in the state, briefly, all problems dissolved. But it was just like - exactly like - a pleasant dream. It did not link up with anything else. While a real animistic society is in fact full of explicit rules and purposes and explanations that are simply accepted as true - to be a solo animist in the modern West is not the same thing at all - it is to extract a part of a greater whole, and to try and deny everything except that part - an impossibility except as a brief 'holiday' from mundane life.

*

So... Christianity. Meaning. Purpose.

But then, I found - I continue to find, mainstream public normal Christianity is incomplete. It lacks the necessary components of Higher Consciousness and of Animism. I needed - I still need - to incorporate the wisdom and sustenance of these into Christianity.

Christianity is the capstone of a full spirituality - it is not the whole thing, nor was it meant to be.

Or rather, it was the whole thing - but because Christianity was a capstone when Christ made it: it was an addition to what went before, to what existed - Christianity was a completion of what went before - it required much of Judaism and much else that was spiritually generic to early men.

That is worth bearing in mind - because trying to live by Christianity alone (as so often urged - often with the best motivations) can be to make something black and white, thin and hard, crude and cold, thin and unsatisfying fare (mere gruel) - whereas to regard Christianity as a capstone of much else can be to feel and follow Christ's teaching as a wholly-joyous and whole-some thing.

*

It is a sad fact that baritones never attract the adulation of tenors, or even basses - and even sadder that, on the whole, this is just; since the baritone voice - while capable of great nobility and comedy - somehow does not reach the aesthetic summits of the more extremes of the male range.

However, I do have a number of favourite baritone voices - none more than the unjustly neglected Sherrill Milnes; who was master of Verdi's ferociously taxing baritone roles, with their exhausting high-lying tessitura (which Bernard Shaw regarded as something of something of a scandal, and voice-wrecker). He has in abundance that virile, athletic masculinity which the best baritone embodies.

Here is an exceptionally beautifual aria from Wagner's Tannhauser (when he still wrote arias) - and this is, I think, one of the loveliest tunes ever.

For those too impatient to wait through the delicious recitativo, the main aria starts at 2:45 -


Milnes was most famous for his astonishing high notes: he was capable of singing a B-flat - which is only one tone below the usual tenor maximum high note of C - yet he sang these ultra-high notes with a full and ringing baritone-tone. A stunning example comes at the very end of this: